For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  In Washington, General Alexander Haig sent a request to the FBI to wiretap, amongst other journalists, William Beecher, the New York Times reporter who’d first disclosed the secret Menu bombings. On 3 May, Communist troops seized Neak Luong, effectively cutting the Saigon-Phnom Penh river and highway link.

  They arrived at the rate of almost a thousand a day, arrived with almost nothing, some not even fully clothed. By the second of May, their number had reached twenty thousand—twenty thousand unassimilated refugees packing the eastern swamp, the edge of Boeng Khsach Sa at the low-lying rear area of Neak Luong, packing together, instantaneously creating a squalid slum, a jumble of lean-tos erected by those fortunate enough to have been given a square of thin blue plastic tarp.

  “There’s no salt,” a heavy, seated woman told a pleading young mother carrying two infants. “The oil is out but we hope to have more tonight.” The mother looked helplessly at the heavy woman. One infant grabbed her mouth. As she turned and left the large tent she kissed the baby’s hand.

  Beside the heavy woman sat another young mother, shoeless, haggard though lovely even in her weariness. Her eyes were large, melancholy, shrouded by mental pain—eyes like those of a wounded fawn in the forest. Behind her in a small makeshift hammock slept her six-month-old son. The younger woman did not speak except when interviewing and registering new arrivals. She had vowed to keep a sixty-day precept of silence and fasting, speaking only when she was serving the work of the Enlightened One, eating only once daily, late each night. “Your village?” Vathana spoke softly to a new arrival.

  “Phum Chey Kompok,” a young man with one eye answered. Without pausing for breath he added, “Will they bomb here?”

  “I don’t know,” Vathana answered, recording the man’s village in a large ledger.

  “The bombing is terrible.” His speech was quick, nervous. “The earth shook like a giant was walking in the paddies.”

  Vathana looked at the man. She had been hearing the same story for three days...the bombings, the bombings, the terrible bombings. She continued her list of questions then motioned for the man to move to Sophan for temporary identification and ration cards. As the next new refugee approached, Vathana bowed her head and thought a prayer. Ever since she had witnessed the corpses jamming the Mekong she had prayed to the Blessed One for help in strengthening her personal discipline and in being one with those who suffered, with the war victims, the refugees, the Viet Namese civilians and all the soldiers.

  As the crisis had worsened during the last days of April Vathana had mobilized all her organizational abilities, had called on all those whom she had helped previously and had beseeched every well-to-do Khmer, pleading with them to earn merit by extending the greatest possible compassion to the refugees who streamed into Neak Luong. Thirty thousand came from Svay Rieng Province, flowing like a river, passing through, heading for Phnom Penh, though like a river current swirling at the bank, many stopped in the backwater eddy of Neak Luong’s northeast swamp. From her father-in-law Vathana secured nearly fifty tons of rice—enough to feed the camp for a week. At the main pagoda she had arranged a special shelter for young children who had been either separated from their families or orphaned. Her original programs were expanded but in days were overwhelmed. Each day she begged local officials to establish control, each day she pressed FANK commanders for supplies and assistance, each day she telegraphed Phnom Penh pleading with Madame Pech to use her influence with upper-echelon Cambodian functionaries. And each day she received only a fraction of Neak Luong’s needs. “Dear Sister, the government just doesn’t have those quantities of supplies.” “Dear Sister, no one ever prepared the army for such a crisis.” “Dear Sister, there is only so much one can do. Perhaps we will receive aid from the IRC, or maybe the Americans.”

  “Sophan, we must have a medical clinic for the camp.”

  “Yes, Angel, we must. But we have no supplies, no personnel.”

  “Major Fernandez has captured a large tent from somewhere. He’ll allow us to use it in exchange for the barge. With the river cut it’s of no use. And the premier will confiscate it if we refuse its surrender.”

  Sophan laid the back of her hand on Vathana’s cheek. “Angel,” the wet-nurse said sadly, “you’re getting too thin. You can’t help everyone if you waste away. Tonight, just tonight, you must go home and sleep.”

  “Tonight, Sophan”—Vathana’s eyes flashed with the energy of total commitment—“tonight we’ll erect the tent. Tomorrow we’ll find a khrou and perhaps a doctor and from them”—she indicated the mass of waiting, milling refugees—“we’ll gain nurses.”

  3 May 1970—Suddenly, in the streets of Neak Luong, short staccato bursts of automatic weapons fire. Three dead, nineteen wounded in the first enfilade. Simultaneously, at every FANK outpost—across the river where a FANK company had secured the ferry landing and roadhead of Highway 1 leading to Phnom Penh; south of the city where a FANK garrison protected Highway 1 leading to Svay Rieng, the border and Saigon; and north on Highway 15 past the villa of Pech Lim Song where national troops lined the roadway leading toward Prey Veng—huge explosions.

  “They’re bombing! They’re bombing here!” Clouds of mosquitos rose from the muck of swamp and paddy as hundreds of panic-stricken refugees bolted from lean-tos, crashed through rice-mat walls, attempting to disperse, to flee from the unseen attackers.

  “Tell the men to tighten the ropes,” Vathana ordered. She stood inside the half-erected forty-man canvas structure, stood calmly by one of the thick center poles. About her, watching her, those helping fidgeted yet continued pulling at ropes leading to the canvas roof.

  From outside came shouts. “Bombings! The bombs...”

  “All the more reason,” Vathana said flatly. “We’ll need the clinic to treat the wounded. Now pull that side tight!”

  More firing. In the hot musty air inside the tent the rifle bursts sounded like corn popping in a thick pan and the large explosions seemed like beats on a giant muffled drum. In the camp the firing was sharp cracking and not only were the explosions heard and the fireflash and smoke seen, but the winds of concussion felt. With each eruption more people ran into the swamp, yet most hugged the ground or simply sat or squatted where they were, many praying, most silently suffering the hopelessness of fleeing.

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “Cahuom Vathana.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “The one they call the Angel.”

  “Oh. She’s at the medical tent.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Up there.”

  Pech Chieu Teck charged from the edge of the camp toward the large tent. He had never before entered the refugee area. The swamps, the shanties, the filthy unwashed bodies revolted him as had the street urchins and the orphanage his wife had set up so much earlier. Teck’s tight polished-cotton shirt sweat-stuck to his back and shoulders as he raced in. Twenty military cots were crammed, touching, along one wall. Forty more were jammed in five rows along the back. At the front, one table served as an administrative office, a second as an examining room, a third as a small dispensary. The setup had been efficient, quick. Within two hours the cots had been occupied and two dozen aides had volunteered to assist the afflicted. Only a doctor and a khrou were missing, and even a single box of bandages or bottle of aspirin.

  Teck made no pretext of compassion. He stood on one man’s cot and quickly scanned the room for his wife. Spying her he walked over the wounded and ill, stepping on a woman’s arm where there was no room for his feet, standing on a boy’s ankle to leap across another cot to an aisle.

  “Come with me.” He grabbed Vathana by the pit of her arm and lifted her from the cot of an elderly woman who complained her heart was having problems. “Come on. We’re going.”

  “Going?” Vathana shook herself from his grasp.

  “Phnom Penh,” Teck said angrily.

  For a moment Vathana looked into her husband’s eyes.
She had vowed not to speak unless it served the compassionate duty of Buddha; thus, working or nurturing she was confident in her speech, but this, this served no duty, no reason, no principle. She shook her head and bowed it down.

  “Now!” Teck shouted angrily. Again he grasped her. “The damn town’s about to fall.”

  About the standing couple everyone had become silent; most had dropped their gaze in respect for the Angel. “To whom?” an old man called.

  “To whom?! Does it matter?”

  “Who’s bombing? Is it the unseen planes?”

  “It’s the Viet Cong,” Teck snapped. “They’ve overrun the ferry garrison. They’re shelling the others.” He turned his bitter attention back to his wife, bitter as though her aid to these wretched creatures had caused the attack. “Come with me! Now! Where’s my son?”

  Again Vathana said nothing. She stood limply before him, passive to the hands shaking her, rag-doll calm until the child-man flung her down over cots to the packed earth and fled as he’d arrived, stepping on whoever was in his way, screaming jumbled curses. Abandoning her, she thought. Again, she thought. When I need you the most.

  By dusk, Neak Luong had fallen to the NVA. Falling did not mean North Viet Namese troops occupied the town or the camp. Indeed, though various elements of attached Khmer Viet Minh with a few Viet Namese escorts did enter the town on 3 May, generally the troops hit and overran only FANK’s three garrisons and the scattered outposts, the Northern troops being under orders to maintain as low a profile as possible with the Khmer civilian community. Not until 5 May would NVA propaganda and assassination squads enter Neak Luong.

  Madame Pech had fled with the first rumors that Neak Luong was the next Communist target. Teck and most of the servants fled with the first shots. All fled to the nation’s capital. Pech Lim Song remained, at ease in his newly completed villa, remained, abandoned by all except his first servant, Sambath, an old genteel butler who in his youth had served as a houseboy to the French governor, then as chauffeur or butler to various embassies and foreign businessmen. He’d been in the employ of Mister Pech for seventeen years, ever since national independence.

  “Perhaps, sir,” Sambath addressed Mister Pech in French, “perhaps I should bring the automobile about. My third cousin’s son has a ferry on the Tonle Toch. We can avoid the main roads that way, sir.”

  “What’s the situation now?” Mister Pech turned the volume dial counterclockwise, leaned back in the old mahogany swivel chair, he’d used since he’d first entered business.

  “Both southern garrisons have been occupied,” Sambath reported without emotion. “The northside one is negotiating its surrender. At Banam, sir, the yuon devils have routed our troops.”

  “And the Highway 15 outposts?”

  “The far one evacuated yesterday, sir. The near one’s...well, sir, we can’t know for sure. Have you heard anything on the military channel?”

  “Not since morning. That’ll be the final cut. Have there been shots?”

  “Only a few, sir. My nephew’s third son sold the soldiers ice at noon. He felt the yellows were only awaiting orders. He saw a tank in the Khsach Sa swamp.”

  Mister Pech said nothing. He closed his eyes, put his hands atop his head and tilted the chair back to its stop. In the weak light of the small desk lamp the film of perspiration on Pech Lim Song’s forehead shone a satin redbrown, identical in color and brilliance to the redbrown of the oiled mahogany.

  “The automobile, sir?” Sambath said quietly.

  “I suppose that would be prudent,” Mister Pech whispered without opening his eyes. “Only...” He paused. A country in a bowl, he thought. And only one outlet. What a position and now it’s cut. “Only”—his voice sounded exhausted—“only if my daughter-in-law can be persuaded to accompany me.”

  “She’s in the camp, sir.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve spoken with her.”

  “Her precept, sir.”

  “Still?”

  “She vowed for sixty days.”

  “And my grandson?”

  “With her, sir.”

  “She’s not coming?”

  “She’s a very stubborn one, sir. She’s eaten so little I fear she’ll fall to an epidemic in all that filth. She insists upon staying.”

  “Then, Sambath, we too shall remain.”

  Pech Lim Song leaned forward, rolled his chair until his chest hit the edge of the desk. He twisted the volume dial of the Japanese transistor radio on his left until the sound was just audible. Viet Cong radio was rebroadcasting the news of Peking’s diplomatic break with Phnom Penh. The military radio before him dwarfed the am-fm. Slowly Mister Pech twisted the frequency tuners, pausing with each click, listening momentarily to each channel, hoping to intercept the military plans of the Viet Minh, as he called the NVA/VC, or of FANK or the Americans.

  “Sir...” Sambath had waited to be dismissed.

  “Certainly...” Mister Pech answered distractedly. Then his face tightened. “Sambath,” he said loudly, “fill the generator tanks. Turn the lights on. All of them.” For the first time in a week Mister Pech seemed back in control. “If the Viet Namese come,” he commanded, “invite them in and serve them. The same if it be Khmer Rouge.”

  With the mass death and destruction of Khmer people and Khmer property came the accelerated decline of tradition. Fewer women wore the white blouse and black skirt of mourning. Fewer men wore the black arm bands of grief. Fewer heads were shaved for the killed fathers or mothers or older siblings. It was not a matter of callousness created by the enormity of the terror which had descended upon the Southeast but more a matter of the overwhelming speed with which villages and families were changing. From great suffering comes great insight, Vathana thought. She sat on the edge of an army cot at the deepest corner of the tent. Great insight and great compassion. On the cot two women and a young boy lay listless—all with fevers, with thick nasal discharges going unheeded, with persistent black flies feeding from small scratches as if invited. From great insight and great compassion comes a peaceful heart. Vathana felt nauseous. Her thoughts calmed only a single compartment of her honeycomb mind. Carefully she swabbed the boy’s face with a tiny square of cloth she’d dipped into her bucket of soapy water. The flies swarmed about her hand then relit on the boy’s face; the water seemed to sizzle and evaporate on his skin like drops on a hot skillet. Vathana dropped the cloth in a second bucket, peeled another square from her bundle and then dipped it and washed the face of the younger of the two women. She rose, her bare feet swishing through uncleared rotting garbage and vomit on the mud beneath the cot. Again her abdomen tightened as if to expel its nonexistent contents. Vathana settled at the other side to clean the face of the older woman. Mother, she thought as the woman shivered beneath her touch, if you wake from your ordeal all your passion, all your desires will have vanished and you will have inner peace. The nausea had been constant for two days yet in her vow of silence and fasting she’d pressed on with her mission to relieve the suffering of these homeless wretches, to excise her own desires by becoming one with the sufferers. She rose. Her soap bucket was nearly empty, the used-clothes bucket nearly overflowing. Vathana closed her eyes. The blackness turned slowly, increasing the squeamishness of her stomach. Her left knee began to buckle. She opened her eyes. Righted her head. Stared at the lantern over the table where Sophan held her son as she processed another in the endless line of the uprooted.

  Vathana reached the table, squatted behind the wet-nurse, dumped the dirty clothes into a large basket then held on to Sophan’s chair with all her remaining strength. “Angel! Angel, are you...? You look worse than the bedridden. Angel?”

  Vathana looked up. Her face was blank. Her large eyes were sunk in their sockets. Sophan caressed her cheek. “Come,” the stocky woman said. She turned to the refugee and indicated he’d have to wait to register. “Come. Let me take you from here.” She wrapped Vathana in one arm like a youn
g child, carried Samnang in the other, whispering to both a stream of prayers interspersed with curses. “No medicine. No clean water. Fourteen thousand people living on top of one another. Shit in the paddies. Bathe in the paddies. Drink from the paddies. Of course they’re all sick.”

  In Sophan’s arms Vathana trembled. The nausea and vertigo ignited in her fears far worse than the shellings. Sophan led her slowly from the camp toward the river and then toward the apartment. The queasiness of her stomach erupted in a renting spasm. “You must eat and rest,” Sophan ordered softly.

  “Sophan.” Vathana broke her vow. “My bleeding is late.”

  The lieutenant’s face was dark, grim, like the ash from the funeral pyre. All night he’d stared at the well-lighted villa on the rise, stared as he directed the burial squad in the proper manner of burning the bodies of their comrades in arms, his Khmer brothers who’d been killed by the surprisingly fierce resistance of the FANK outpost on Highway 15. All night he’d prayed for their souls—haunted by the image of three who’d died with their eyes wide open, died before they’d been ready to leave this earth. All night he’d prayed that when his time came his eyes would be shut. All night he’d cursed the mocking lights of Mister Pech Lim Song’s villa and the arrogant capitalist dog who had dared him, taunted him, openly defied him, defied the Khmer Viet Minh and their North Viet Namese sponsors.

  At seven forty-five on the morning of 6 May, Sambath swung the doors open, bowed, his hands raised high in respectful greeting, and invited in a KVM and an NVA captain and their contingents. “Mister Pech,” Sambath said in French, “had hoped you’d join him last night for dinner, sir. We’d turned the lights on as an invitation.”

  “The house is surrounded,” the NVA captain said as if reporting a business statistic. “Bring everyone here. Now.”

  “Of course, sir,” Sambath answered. “There’s only Mister Pech and I.” Subtly Sambath took note of each of the officers and scanned the villa porch. Politely he apologized for the lack of servants to feed the accompanying soldiers. “If the men won’t mind, sir,” the old servant said calmly, “I’ll serve the officers first.”