For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Rita gritted her teeth. What The Sun? she thought. There’s nine hundred The Suns in the world. I should have slapped that son of a bitch, she thought. She had been angry since returning to reading, had not concentrated on the words, could barely remember what she’d read. She looked back over the last few pages, underlined “American bombing,” “Ho Chi Minh’s death,” and “televised speech.” She thought about the trip, about her air-conditioned Washington office. She had been given the assignment after Jasson’s abrupt cancellation, given it as if it were a present, a job bennie, a perk, something to put on her resume. One week in Southeast Asia because she’d been a loyal employee, a good little girl. Indeed, she had told herself, it was an excellent opportunity for advancement. Not unlike a military officer, a journalist needs to have her ticket punched. But Jim White had set something off in her. So too did her body’s reaction to the heat. She was fair skinned, fair haired, and had a soft Nordic countenance which was finding the tropical climate of the Cambodian dry season unbearable. I can do this, Rita Donaldson told herself. I can do it and do it right.

  The American military posture in South Viet Nam has become one of protective enclave defense. (Only the 1st Cavalry and the 101st Airborne still ran, though curtailed, offensive operations.)

  In the US, the Army opened its case, with heavy media coverage, against William Calley. President Nixon has requested an additional $155 million for small arms and ammunition for Cambodia.

  Between 29 November and 2 December, NVA units launched one hundred attacks—raids or shellings—in South Viet Nam, with the reported objective of relieving ARVN pressure against their Cambodian bases....

  Rita rocked back slightly. She raised her eyes, glanced up to see if people were still staring at her. Her report, she felt, and the story she’d received during her first embassy briefing, and what she’d obtained from the News-Times’s Cambodian stringer, didn’t jibe. But she didn’t know how or why. She pulled a steno pad from her bag, flipped it open, thumbed back several pages. The embassy aide had unofficially told her that in Hanoi General Vo Nguyen Giap had begun organizing for the next major phase of the war. The aide had said that ARVN/NVA engagements in Cambodia to this point had primarily been search and destroy for the ARVN, ambush and withdraw for the NVA. But with Americans banned from Cambodia, with increasing U.S. domestic pressure for U.S. withdrawal from South Viet Nam, the NVA general allegedly saw opportunity. The clashes between Viet Namese elements on Khmer soil were, to him, practice and preparation for a large-scale offensive invasion of South Viet Nam once U.S. forces were out.

  On 22 December, the US Congress passed an amended bill forbidding any use of American ground troops or advisors in Laos or Cambodia. The Force Armée Nationale Kampuchea (FANK), swollen in one year to eightfold its precoup combat strength, was, according to US military spokesmen, incapable, without advisors, of assimilating, training, even equipping most of this new manpower. Congress has also banned the use of US airpower in direct support of Allied troops.

  On the last day of 1970 the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) announced it had assassinated in the preceding 364 days “at least 6,000 South Viet Namese” civilians for the heinous crime of serving, at any level, in their nation’s government.

  The story, Rita thought. What is it? Who, what, when, where, why, how. She paged through her notes. American bombing? FANK training? Some supposed NVA-ARVN future engagement? She turned the report over and wrote on the back: “(1) Find FANK training facility. (2) Determine U.S. role. (3) To hell with The Sun.”

  From the front seat of the jeep Sullivan saw her stop. She was returning from morning prayers at the sala. He watched from a distance as she looked up, straight up into the cloudless morning sky. To Vathana the air felt soft, compassionate on the skin of her face, neck and arms. She closed her eyes momentarily, inhaled deeply. The temperature was mild, the humidity early-morning low. Vathana opened her eyes, stared into the endless deep blue, stared whispering a prayer of thanks to the Enlightened One for seeing her through the birth, for the beautiful healthy girl, and for the slowing of the war. And she prayed for her country, for Premier Lon Nol who had suffered a paralyzing stroke in early February and for Deputy Prime Minister Sisowath Sirik Matak who now, in reality, led the nation. As she prayed and gave thanks she thought about the depths of the sky, about the penetration by the astronauts of Apollo 14, men on the moon, again, about their journey which was barely a pinprick into the depth of the blue that she felt both a part of and a traveler through. As she prayed, her body felt light, weightless. The caressing blue depths called her. It was not light traveling infinite distances to her eyes but her spirit blossoming into the universe, being a part of what she knew she was a part.

  From two hundred meters south Sullivan studied her. He had not seen her since their first encounter five months earlier yet he held her in his mind as if the first impression had stuck, lodged in some gap between brain convolutions, refused to melt and flow, to spread thin, to be assimilated or to evaporate. What the hell’s she doing? he thought. Her slow approach and her idle standing at the edge of the road, standing staring straight up, irritated him. His irritation at it made him seethe. Of all the stupid fucking things I’ve done, he thought, this...He did not finish the thought.

  Sullivan’s tour with the 5th Special Forces Group had been scheduled to end in October, yet he’d extended. The group was now standing down, returning to the United States. The teams had broken up, the remaining Phoenix Program personnel had been transferred, on paper, to a different command. Nearly half the Special Forces advisors who were ready to leave the country had volunteered to remain in Viet Nam, to form special units to train—in Viet Nam because advisors weren’t permitted in Cambodia—FANK personnel in raid and reconnaissance tactics, in communications and in the most fundamental tactics of patrolling and base security. Even concepts like flank security had to be introduced—not taught, as in “how to,” but introduced, as in “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  In the few moments that Vathana had spent concentrating on the sky the temperature rise had begun, had taken hold of the day. It was not yet uncomfortable but the hint of heat was there and it pleased her. Vathana walked barefoot, at the road’s edge, careful not to step in the debris of the past several months, debris brought to her city by the clashing armies which had surrounded it. She walked lightly, feeling renewed freedom in her body. She paused briefly at a market stall to check the freshness of the eels the vendor hawked, though she had no intention of making a purchase. She walked on, wishing to run, to skip like a schoolgirl, though she was restrained by the thought of someone seeing her, the Angel of Neak Luong, not bearing the burden of her city’s suffering. Today she did not feel like suffering. Today she felt like living. Where the river and roadway squeezed the levee she again stopped, gazed out over the yellow-brown water, gazed across to the ferry landing being rebuilt for the fourth time in four months, gazed at the barges and piers and at an ocean freighter with riverine escort disappearing to the east. Sun reflections off the cockled water tickled her. For a brief moment she thought of her womb, which had nourished and nurtured her little girl and was now mostly contracted, and she sent a special small love signal from her mind and her whole body to this organ which had brought forth such lovely fruit.

  The death of Pech Lim Song and Vathana’s conditions to Teck for joining him in Phnom Penh had left her vulnerable to the whims and wraths of her mother-in-law, Madame Pech, who, since her husband’s assassination, demanded she be called by her own name, Sisowath Thich Soen. In November the woman had descended upon Vathana amid the refugees, verbally berating her. “Bonjour! One hundred thousand riels?! To whom? While these people live like...like...this!” Vathana had not answered but stood absorbing the abuse, thinking, Abuse given, like love, does not lessen that held by the giver but increases it, and with abuse it becomes self-damaging. “Bonjour? Perhaps, silly stupid girl, perhaps some to your own pocket? Three months, i
ndeed!” Two months later, as Vathana, eight and a half months pregnant, prayed for a safe delivery, Soen again violated her, bursting in upon her in the Neak Luong flat. “From today,” Sisowath Thich Soen had said, “the barges will be controlled from Phnom Penh. And you”—she had glared at her daughter-in-law, daring her to take the offer—“you belong with your husband. Tomorrow everything will be removed from this apartment. Come to Phnom Penh or live with the filth in that camp.”

  From the jeep Sullivan continued to watch her, to track her progress. He watched through the raised windshield as if he were spying. He attempted not to smile as she neared but found his heart racing, his muscles setting like a torn turkey’s about to strut, his face breaking into a silly grin. At seventy-five feet she still had not noticed him. The main road had become busy with morning activity, civilian and military. He watched her face, oval with strong cheekbones and large dark eyes. Serene eyes, he thought, knowing mysterious eyes. Eyes that have witnessed a thousand years, that can see the next thousand.

  At fifty feet he turned his head, watched the Mekong. He had been raised by the Mississippi on Iowa’s eastern boundary and he’d always loved rivers, any river, and any river city which was still small enough to be affected by the current. “Not like New York,” he’d once told Huntley. “You get a huge metropolis and people go months, years, without even knowing they’re in a river city.”

  His mind stopped. Vathana stood only feet from him, a radiant smile, sparkling eyes greeting him. “Hello, Mister Lieutenant J. L. Sullivan,” she said in English.

  “Mrs. Pech,” Sullivan stuttered. His tongue tripped. Sounds barely emerged. “How many children have you?” He blurted the Khmer idiom, which was a simple greeting, not knowing its literal translation.

  “Two,” she answered in Khmer, thinking he actually was asking the question.

  He did not understand the answer and could not think of anything to say. Looking at her he smiled, then raised a hand to his face, covered his eyes, turned his head away, forced the ridiculous smile from his face, turned back and before he could speak broke into silly laughter.

  Vathana also smiled. She raised her fists playfully. In French she said, “En garde, Monsieur Sullivan. What brings you to Neak Luong? The camp or the army?”

  He grasped the steering wheel tightly. “Your camp, madame,” he said professionally. “I must inspect your camp again.” The smile fell from his face. There was nothing he needed to inspect. He’d come to see her but he couldn’t tell her and in lying he broke the fragile bubble of joy which had surrounded them. Glumly he said, “Will you ride with me?”

  The camp had shrunk from ten thousand to nine thousand. Major improvements had been made in housing, in food and potable water distribution. Waste removal was still abominable, and though the ground was dry, mosquitos and flies still swarmed. The stink of people unable to wash or clean their shelters mixed with dry-season dust.

  They circled the camp, walked its main aisles between flimsy huts, chatted softly, analytically, in French. The happiness of seeing each other turned sour. Sullivan’s reappearance stirred Vathana’s memory of the messenger she’d not seen or heard from since the first encounter. “Befriend the American!” She had had no idea what he’d meant. She thought, too, of her father and brother, of all her family, and she grew sad. She thought of sunshine and Americans and of Pech Lim Song hung by a leg, shot, slowly bleeding to death with no one to save or comfort him. Then it occurred to her that Mister Sullivan had not come to see the camp. He took no notes, seemed uninterested in the workings of the camp or in supplies, though, oddly, he seemed to have compassion for the refugees. Odd, she thought, for an American. So unlike the few Western “contractors” she’d met.

  “We never received the remainder of the roofing,” Vathana said in the main camp tent where she’d brought him to a sectioned-off corner and introduced him to Sophan, Samnang, and her new daughter.

  “I know,” Sullivan answered.

  He thinks I sold it to the Khmer Rouge, she thought. He thinks I’m a Communist agent. Perhaps he works for Soen.

  As they’d walked Sullivan had become filled with doubt. Perhaps she’s aiding the NVA, he’d thought. Perhaps...but he would not permit himself to think the thought.

  “She’s beautiful,” Sullivan said, gently picking up the tiny swaddled infant. “Oh, look.” He beamed, pulling the thin blanket back from her face. He tapped the tip of her nose. “Very pretty,” he whispered.

  “You have children?” Vathana asked.

  “No. No, I’m not married.”

  Sophan braced herself, stoic, silent, watching the large phalang cooing over the infant, disrupting her spirit, inviting the jealousy of the spirit of the baby’s last mother. The infant gave a minute cry. Immediately Sophan grasped for her. “Oh...ah...Okay. There,” Sullivan said. He looked at Vathana. Guiltily he whispered, “Did I do something wrong?”

  “We should go. I work at the hospital, too. Have you more questions?”

  “No. No. I’m sorry. Let me give you a ride to the hospital.”

  Away from the camp the sullen mood dissipated. In the sunshine by the river Sullivan stopped the jeep. “I’m afraid of this,” he said to her without looking at her. “Your country petrifies me.”

  “But why?” Vathana asked, surprised by both the words and the change of tone. “You are American. You are a soldier. The shellings in Phnom Penh have been bad?”

  “No. It’s not that. It’s the way you think. The way your people think. You’re...they’re so beautiful. So peaceful. I could gobble you up...” Vathana smiled. “Oh, I don’t mean me, you,” Sullivan said self-consciously. “I mean a good army could conquer this country like...like...like the Germans rolled over Poland. Does that make sense to you, Mrs. Cahuom?” He didn’t look at her, nor did he give her a chance to respond. “No,” he said. “No, it’s more than that. It’s...it’s like there’s a monster outside and half the country’s inviting it in and the other half is pretending it doesn’t exist. I’m afraid for you.”

  “And for yourself?” Vathana’s words were soft.

  “Me? Hum? I guess,” he said. He said it but he did not mean it. He did not feel fear for himself. The admission of vulnerability made him feel he was sharing something of himself with her, yet he knew it was not true. “It’s a good thing we arrived,” he said. “You people were about to be slaughtered.” Vathana smiled a wry smile but did not speak. “Doesn’t anybody understand?” Suddenly he threw his arms straight up. “The goddamned North Viet Namese have seventy-five thousand troops in here. Damn it. They’d butcher every Khmer if they could.”

  “You believe that and you’re angry?”

  “Damn it, yes. Those murdering bastards...” He stopped. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cahuom. I...I...I didn’t mean to use that language.”

  “The anger warrants that language, the language excuses the anger.”

  “God! That’s the kind of thing a Khmer would say.”

  “I am Khmer,” Vathana said. “Khmers are concerned.”

  “But nobody does anything!”

  “My father-in-law used to ask, ‘What will happen if we do nothing?’ You sound like him.”

  “It’s a damned good question. Giap, the NVA general...” Sullivan paused to see if she recognized the name. “Vo Nguyen Giap, he uses the phrase ‘aggression through internal war.’ Those Communist...pig’s...are conscripting and brainwashing thousands of Khmers in the seized territories. I see the documents. They’re trying to make it look like civil war.”

  Vathana smiled. “I don’t think anyone takes the Khmer Rouge seriously,” she said. “There are some but they’re so poor. That’s what the radio reports.”

  “But that’s it. They move in their agents. And it gives credibility to the Viet Namese.”

  “How?” Vathana’s speech quickened. Suddenly both were speaking fast, in French, talking politics as Vathana had not talked politics since conversations with her father before the trip to the mountains.
“How can anything give them credibility? And to whom? Khmers know they’re evil intruders. But they do support Prince Sihanouk, eh?”

  “To the international community,” Sullivan said, his words overlapping hers. “Cambodia needs international help.”

  “Then why is it your country offers so much but delivers so little? America is very perplexing. You ask what will happen if we do nothing, but you think you do much just speaking.”

  “We can’t bring troops in. The American Congress passed a law...”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. But, Mrs. Cahuom, that’s it. That’s the credibility problem...to...to the...Americans. Through their information sources.”

  “Call me Vathana.”

  Sullivan’s mind froze. The line of thought in quick exchange disappeared like the flash from a sniper’s rifle. “Vathana.” He said the name slowly. To him it was the most beautiful word he’d ever uttered. “Vathana,” he said smoothly, “your country still petrifies me.” He reached to her and very gently grasped the small finger of her left hand. “I’ve seen your mother-in-law a few times. And her son. They say she’s a Sisowath of the same family as the deputy prime minister.”

  “They’re of the same family.” Vathana did not move her hand. Has he come, she thought, to do Soen’s bidding?

  “Could you...I...Can she...” Sullivan stopped. He wanted to ask her to come to Phnom Penh where he might have a chance of protecting her, though he knew he had no real resources, that a month earlier downtown Phnom Penh had been rocketed by the NVA with thousands of people wounded or killed, that Phnom Penh was not safer, only closer to him.