The school to which Nang was being marched was officially known as the Liberation School, but Khmer Communist cadres (and later Royal Cambodian intelligence reports, and later still Western documents) referred to it as the School of the Cruel.
“Come on,” Nang tormented Y Bhur. “Get up. They won’t wait.” Y Bhur rolled to his side and pulled himself halfway up using the staff Nang had brought. He looked to Nang for assistance. They did not speak. In the five days since Nang had begun helping him his strength and condition had stabilized. He was sallow, limp, odorous and repulsive but the slide toward death had temporarily halted. Nang washed his bandage and wound only twice more, both on their second day. That night six guards beat Nang and for the next two days his rice ration was halved. “Damn it,” Nang cursed Y Bhur like Met Hon had cursed him so many times. “March. March, Met Ur, or I shall beat you.”
During marches Nang did not speak. He eyed Hon and the guards. Except for Met Hon all were humorless, faceless, hostile. Stupid, Nang thought. Underlings, he thought. Not crocodiles, not tigers: Dogs.
On the eleventh day they marched into the crotch of two blunt Laotian legs which jutted into Cambodia. They climbed beside a creek for several kilometers then rested and set up cooking fires. Met Hon motioned for Met Nang to come with him and Nang obeyed immediately. Hon led him nearly a hundred meters away from the others. Before he spoke he sized up Nang with his eyes. He spoke gently. “If you’re to survive, Little Brother,” he said, using the forbidden appellation, “you must learn to keep your mouth shut, your eyes closed and your ears plugged. You must forget everything from the past.” He glanced up the mountain. “Pong Pay is the hardest training on earth.” Nang looked up but could see little other than the vegetation of the canopy. “If you’re going to become a comrade of the Movement, not just a soldier, you must be serious. You must do what you are told.”
The cadres did not come for the conscripts until night had settled upon the temporary camp. At dusk the conscripts had been huddled together at the camp’s center, had had their wrists tied behind their backs with vines, and then all their hands were tied together. If seen from above they would have looked like a human wheel, their hands the hub, their arms stretched behind their backs like spokes.
“No words! No movement!” Met Hon had ordered. Then he and the guards had backed into the jungle and vanished.
For ten minutes no one spoke. They stood quietly in the blackness. Fear descended upon them, ten boys trapped, trussed together, cold, alone, shaking. Y Bhur broke the silence. He was wired to Nang on his left and a Khmer boy he’d heard called Pah on his right. “Samnang,” Y Bhur whispered. He spoke in Jarai. “My hands. I think I can get loose. We can run away.”
Nang shuddered silently. Y Bhur’s hands twisted at the hub of the wheel. The motion tightened the vines about the others’ wrists. “Samnang, raise your hand. No, push it down.”
On the far side a Mnong boy wept quietly, wrenched his hands distorting the circle. Another boy grunted. One groaned at the increasing pain. A third muttered in French, “Stop. You’re cutting me.”
“Be still!” Nang snapped. The boys quieted, quit pulling at the vines. Nang cowered—ashamed in the dark, ashamed of his voice, his order, afraid of alienating the others. Y Bhur again twisted. He pulled hard with his right hand and pushed with his left. The vines cut into the base of his right thumb. He pulled harder, twisting toward Nang. The vine slid. His hand deformed from the pressure, molded to the oblique circuit of liana. He pulled harder, gouging his flesh. The blood greased his skin. The vine began to slip. Nang raised his right foot. He cocked his leg behind him. “Be still!” he sneered. Then he whipped his knee into Y Bhur’s wounded thigh.
“Aaaaahhh!” Y Bhur shouted. “Why...oooph!” A club struck him in the chest. Another hit him. Then all of the conscripts were being wildly beaten by unseen attackers, bashed in the legs, the groin, the stomach. One cringing pulled another forward into a bludgeoning blow.
“Stand still!” The order came in Khmer from deep in the blackness. The blows softened to probes and jabs. Still the boys could not see their tormentors.
A club poked Y Bhur in the groin. “Fuck water buffalo,” he hissed in Jarai.
“With your member.” The tormentor laughed. He spoke Jarai.
Y Bhur lunged outward trying to butt his head against the source of the voice in the dark. The entire circle stumbled, the sides fell, the back toppled. Y Bhur, pinned at the bottom, screamed vicious obscenities in Jarai and Khmer and Viet Namese.
“Quiet!” The order came from nearby. The officer moved close. “You shall be as one,” he said calmly. “You shall walk as one. School is two kilometers. If you walk as a team, we will be there shortly. If you walk as ten...Well, we have all night. You”—he reached down and grabbed a head by the hair and lifted—“you shall lead off. What’s your name?”
“Met Nang.”
A slap stung Nang’s face. He shivered, tried to pull his face into his chest. “Nang,” the cadreman said. “You don’t merit to be called ‘comrade.’ If you last through school, then you’ll be Met Nang. Now walk.” Nang could feel the conscripts struggling to their feet beside and behind him. “Met Din,” the cadreman said softly, “hook your rope to Nang’s neck so he’ll know the way.”
The night was hard on the conscripts. For hours, tied, they stumbled in the dark attempting to negotiate steep, narrow mountain trails. When one fell, they all fell. When one collapsed, they all collapsed. The clubbings continued. If their progress was too slow the leader was jabbed in the stomach. Then the lead changed. At times the boys worked together, counting steps quietly to develop a rhythm, but more often they argued nastily, blaming one another, or one gave up, fell, cried like an infant, or tugged back when he felt another tug too hard. The guards laughed at the boys’ pain.
As dawn broke they glimpsed the compound for the first time. Nang glanced furtively past Y Bhur. He looked down. Not until they had reached a point only two or three meters from the bluff did any of them realize they had finished their night’s trek. They stood at the edge of a small cliff which formed one end barrier of the school. Ten feet below, and stretching for several hundred meters, Nang could see a huge, partially camouflaged compound sectioned like an egg crate into subcamps by high bamboo fences. The closest compound was empty except for a flagpole with a small red flag hanging limp. Other sections held a variety of buildings: one had small shells, another seemingly had longhouses and schools. Glimpses of hundreds of armed guards along the fences made him tremble.
A guard’s laugh tore him from the view. The guard laughed hysterically. Other guards were pointing to different boys and giggling mean giggles. They placed wagers—this one will break, this one will die, this one will be good fertilizer. More guards appeared. They were dressed in black with red- or green-striped kramas about their necks. They were more solemn though they too laughed menacingly. The guards of the night stood back and gave wide berth to the new squad. The conscripts, still tied in a wheel, sensed a new phase had begun.
One boy, the smallest, to Nang’s left, began sobbing. Nang jerked the hub, trying to shake the child. Two more black-clad guards appeared. Between them they carried a long, thick bamboo pole. They chuckled. The others laughed. The conscripts cowered, silent except for the littlest, spent, exhausted from days of fear and constant walking, and the night of the wheel. Nang knew what was coming. He sensed the meaning of the bluff even before the pole appeared, and he vowed inwardly to survive. The pole was placed tangentially against the circle, contacting at the waists of two boys with their backs to the bluff. The two touched by the pole stepped back, forcing the wheel to stumble a step closer to the edge. At each end of the pole, first one, then two, then three guards pushed the pole toward the small cliff. The wheel resisted. The guards pushed harder though not hard enough to force the wheel off the edge. Y Bhur faced the cliff. Below, the ground was barren red-orange hardpack. Nang, to his left, planted his heels as best he could. He cro
uched, pulled with his right hand, pushed with his left, trying to turn the circle. He did not want to be on the bottom when they hit. Y Bhur stood, offered little resistance. Some resisted violently, some spasmodically. The circle turned counterclockwise a full hour as the side opposite Nang fell back a step under the pressure of the pole. The guards giggled, keeping the pressure constant, not wanting to push the wheel over the cliff, which they could have easily done, but wanting to see the conscripts relent, slowly, to their sense of the inevitable. “Nooo,” the smallest boy wailed. “No-aaahh.” The far side stumbled back another step, the circle rotated. If the boy with his toes over the bluff’s edge was at twelve o’clock, Nang was at nine. He judged that to be a good position. The guards forced the pole another inch. The heels of the boy at twelve skidded to the edge, he straightened, the edge collapsed, his feet shot out, his arms snapped up as the hub resisted, then slowly the sides collapsed, accelerating, Y Bhur to his right knee, off, others, then all. The wheel slapped down, a rapid thudding and three loud cracks. Guards cheered. Then the moaning began.
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR SEVEN DAYS THEY were beaten harshly. Their hair was cut, short on the sides, left thick on top. Their clothes were taken from them, even the clothes Nang had received from Met Hon after the coffin torture. Another break with the past, another barrier to even the minutest growth of security. The new issue of baggy, lightweight green utilities announced immediately to everyone they were plebes to be hazed, conscripts to be humiliated, boys with pasts that must be beaten, starved or terrorized out of them or who must die in the attempt.
For ten days they subsisted on reduced food and water rations until hunger and thirst became constant thoughts adding the fear of death by starvation to the fear of beatings. For fourteen nights they were locked, alone, hands tied, in tiny cages where lizards scurried about their bodies; or in twos, in leg stocks exposed to the elements in the open yard. One night, while Nang suffered in the stocks, Ur escaped from his cage. He did not attempt to escape from the camp. There was no possibility. He slinked to a water jug, stole the ladle and drank. Then, in the dark, he crept to Nang, then to the smaller boy, Pah. He dared not release them but he brought them water. Then he returned the ladle to the jar and himself to the cage.
Nang’s first interrogation, before the beatings began, was the night of the day he was delivered to the School of the Cruel. He was instructed to sit in a chair at a small wooden desk in what looked to him like his Uncle Cheam’s office, only much larger.
An older man asked him his name. The man was gentle, well spoken. Nang hesitated. Guards lurked in corners and doorways. Other conscripts were seated at other tables with other men. “It’s all right,” the man said. “Call me Met Sar. In here you will always be safe.”
“Nang,” the boy answered. As the word seeped from his mouth he flinched, expecting to be hit.
“It’s okay, Nang. No one will hurt you. We need to know more about you.” Met Sar’s voice was soothing. To Nang the man looked like Uncle Cheam. He even sounded like Nang’s uncle when Cheam was not talking business or politics. “Nang, what was your village?”
The interrogator wrote the answer. He asked the boy about his schooling and they talked for some minutes about the pagoda in Phum Sath Din, the lay of the homes, the names of the families and of each member. Met Sar systematically recorded the information and filed different sheets in different folders. Then they talked about rice and irrigation. Met Sar was amazed at Nang’s knowledge of the subject and made special note of it in his file. “One day, you will be a patriot and hero of Kambuja,” Met Sar told him. He used the ancient name for Cambodia as though time had receded a thousand years.
Sar leaned back in his chair. “What of your family?” he asked.
Nang looked bitterly at the older man. “You killed my father. And my sister.” He was vehement. His entire body trembled.
Met Sar placed his hands together and bowed in contemplation. “Tell me how this happened,” he said.
Nang’s face contorted. Tears ran from his eyes. His voice quivered. “The giant, Bok Roh...He chopped Mayana...”
“Bok Roh!” Met Sar interrupted with feigned astonishment. “He’s not part of us. He...I know of him. He serves the yuons. Tell me...tell me! Tell me what happened.”
For an hour Nang recounted the day at Plei Srepok, the village attack, soldiers, meeting, executions and fire. Nang described Bok Roh and repeated long passages of his rantings, he, Nang, did not know were in his mind. Met Sar urged him on, asked him to expand various parts. He interrupted various passages to explain, reexplain, to lead Nang to the knowledge that those responsible for his father’s and sister’s deaths were Viet Namese and a few bad Khmers who served their interests. “Bok Roh, eh?” Met Sar said. “He could have been a great warrior for Kambuja. But he was seized by the yuons at the time of the false independence. He spent a dozen years in camps north of Hanoi where they turned his mind against his own people. I too hate him. He and the yuons are worthy of your hate. We will teach you, systematically, how to avenge your father. You’ve much to learn.”
Nang stared at Met Sar. The smile on the older man’s lips was thin. His eyes sunk deeper into his skull. Nang glanced about the room. All the conscripts and interrogators were gone. Only a single guard remained at the far end where one wall was solid with files. “You must be trained,” Met Sar said. “At times it will be very hard. But everything is done with purpose. Once you are clean you’ll be allowed special privileges. You’ve been abandoned by your family and all elders. The Movement is your salvation. I have no past. You have no past. There is no past. You have no name. For now you are Prisoner. The Movement will name you when the time comes. There is only the present and the future, and the future exists only in the Movement.”
Nang was fed his last full meal then taken alone to an isolation section where the week of beatings and deprivation began. Again and again he was interrogated—not by Met Sar but by toughs, by dumb, brutal guards who forced absurd confessions from him then beat him for the lies. He was forced to learn catchphrases and creeds, was beaten if he stuttered, refused to answer or didn’t know. Toward the end of the first week two very strong Khmer soldiers made him crawl into one of the isolated sections where beatings could be meted out without witnesses. They stood over him. Nang sat on the ground as he had learned. His legs were straight, his feet pointed, his back erect. He held his hands stiff, flat to the side of his knees. His chin was up. He stared forward in the posture of perfect attention.
“Ur...” one interrogator asked, “he is your friend, eh?” Nang did not answer. The interrogator spoke softly. “He does not have a proper attitude,” the soldier said. “You’ll keep an eye on him for us.” Still Nang didn’t answer. He concentrated all his energy into sitting perfectly still. “Prisoner, I said you’ll watch him for me.” No reaction. “Yes?” Nang’s eyes darted to the dark figure. “In the village of Phum Sath Din there is a woman, Neang Thi Sok, with a mother-in-law, two sons, Samay and Sakhon, and a daughter, Vathana. They say the daughter has very soft skin.” The soldier’s face contorted into an eerie smile. “You’ll spy on Ur. You’ll tell me every word he speaks or Vathana will be brought here for interrogation.” The guard laughed heartily. “Say yes.”
“Yes,” Nang answered.
“Say, ‘I will spy on Ur.’ ”
“I will spy on Ur.”
“If you kill yourself, Prisoner,” the second guard said, “she will be brought here for torture. Now, report!”
Nang chanted as he had learned, “In rain, in wind, in health, in sickness, day or night, I will obey, correctly and without complaining, what the Movement orders.”
“So,” Louis said, “what is she like?”
The five young men sat beneath a large umbrella at an outdoor cafe on the main street of Neak Luong. Louis and Kim sat with their backs to the road. Thiounn and Sakun bracketed Pech Chieu Teck, their backs to the cafe wall. “You know,” Teck said.
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p; “Ha!” Kim laughed. “Tell us.”
“She’s just a girl,” Teck said sheepishly. They spoke French at the cafe, at school, whenever they were together.
“Sure!” Louis laughed. Teck was the first of their crowd to be arranged in marriage and the others had been teasing him for weeks. “ ‘Just a girl,’ ” Louis mimicked Teck. “Ha! I thought the Dragon Lady would have found you a boy! Ha!”
“That’s not right speech,” Thiounn said mock-seriously. “You can’t call the madam ‘Dragon Lady.’ Her baby boy might feel hurt.”
“Really!” Teck said. He sipped his cola and winked at the waitress who was serving at the next table. All the friends laughed.
“Ooo-la-la.” Kim giggled. They were in excellent spirits. “Come on now, tell us.”
“Well,” Teck said, “she’s...you know, she’s a country girl.”
“Ha!” Thiounn blurted. “You mean she has a round rump and a round face and...”
“No! No,” Teck cut in. “She’s very pretty. Really. You’ll see.”
“So what does your mother say?” Louis asked.
“You know her. She wanted my father to arrange something with that Phnom Penh family she likes, but Papa’s so Republican...you know how he is. He arranged it because her uncle is very Republican, too.”
“And you agreed, eh?” Louis said.
Teck leaned forward on his arms, looked away from his friends, out across the street and across the river. “How could I do otherwise?” he said quietly.
“You can’t stand up to him?” Thiounn said.
“No,” Teck responded. “Besides, he’s giving me a river barge as a wedding gift.”
“So,” Sakun said, “that’s it!”
“What about the girl,” Louis asked. “I want to know about her. Is she Republican?”
“Vathana?” Teck said. “I don’t think she knows anything about politics. You know those ceremonies. We didn’t get to talk much. Everything was very proper.”
For the Sake of All Living Things Page 12
