For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  ...who harms your belongings...Chhuon thought. I know those words. As he continued to dig he thought of Vathana and Teck and their infant son, Samnang. The thought made the work lighter. Certainly, he thought, Mister Pech has straightened out that young man. From proper seed comes proper behavior. Chhuon thought of his sisters, Voen in Phnom Penh and Moeun in Battambang, of his brother Cheam and Cheam’s wife. Had their mother’s ghost visited them? He had not been able to give her a proper cremation but he felt her soul was neither disoriented nor bewildered. For four years she had been ready to join her husband. He was certain the new state, death, was welcomed. Her soul would adjust easily. She might visit her children, but she’d not frighten them. Not harm them. Still, Chhuon wished he had a white cotton string to wear about his neck for protection.

  ...who harms your phum...Chhuon thought. I’ve said that myself. On the sixth day of the march Sakhron, the resister who’d fought with Sam and Kpa, had turned himself in to Nhel, Soth and the then still large unit of soldiers. Chhuon had seen him briefly, before a squad heading to the forest. Then never again. Of the others, there had been no word. When they settled and the long column closed up, Chhuon realized that the heads of most of the families had disappeared along with all the quadrant and production team leaders. Only the militia boys seemed intact—though they were isolated from the phum and seldom seen.

  ...he is evil. He is your enemy. Those are my words, Chhuon thought. I said them to Y Ksar, his boy and Kdeb. Kdeb! Alive! He must be alive!

  “Kosol.” Vathana looked back over her shoulder. “Not here,” she said. “Not now.” He had put his hands on her waist and had tried to turn her, to pull her toward him.

  “Not now?” the poet said in his deep sad voice. “Always you say, ‘Not now.’ Always I say, ‘When?’ ”

  Vathana turned. Kosol backed to the door of the small storeroom. His eyes rested on her bosom, his face drooped in woeful unfulfillment. “Maybe...” She tried to smile sweetly but her face too was pleading—desiring understanding and patience. “Maybe when my shift is over.”

  “Tonight! Tonight I speak to the Rivermen’s association.”

  “After. Maybe.”

  “You love this hospital. You love those who decay.”

  “Kosol!”

  “You do. And you love that infested puke pit of pitiable people.”

  “Kosol! Why...”

  “Why! Because I love you. You are an angel. I want you to be my angel.”

  “I owe you my life. If you hadn’t lifted...”

  “Oh, shut up! You don’t owe me. Be with me because I am a man! Because I am me! Me. You like me.”

  “Yes. But...”

  “But! But Teck, eh? Ah! Some papa, eh?! When was the last time he saw the children? Let me be their papa.”

  Vathana dropped her eyes from Kosol’s face. “He comes today,” she said.

  Teck was nauseous. The noise of the jet engine above his head, the heat, the overcrowding, the stink of cramped people mixing with the stink and feel of machine oil, the sway of the banking CH-47, of the nylon-webbed seat as the cargo helicopter followed the twisting path down the Mekong toward Neak Luong was, to him, torturous. It seemed there were more than a hundred people on board. Uniformed government soldiers en route to the Neak Luong perimeter, government functionaries making their mandatory inspection trips, whole families—who would they be? who would be authorized to be on the flight?—a few Western aid agency workers, a few Western contractors, two Japanese reporters and that Western guy from the Military Equipment Delivery Team. Ha! Teck thought. The guy would try to see her in the camp. He could fuck her there. He was so predictable. I’ll see her first. At the hospital. Yes, at the hospital, tell her what the khrou said, what our fortune will be. Teck leaned back in the seat, pushed his head back against the nylon strap, cranked his neck so he was looking up at the support structure for the rear turbines. He swallowed hard, tightened his stomach muscles, told himself he must not vomit, must not draw attention to himself, or the long-nose might see him, recognize him. Better, Teck thought, to be just another “Bode.” Bode! Ha! I know. I know what you Americans call us. You see us all as Bodes. That tall-nosed wife humper, too.

  Again Teck swallowed hard. The helicopter felt as if it were disintegrating. Vibrations coming through his feet made his legs rubbery. He shifted his ass but was afraid to make a major adjustment in his position. The window gunner, in his thick flight suit and visored helmet looking like a cyclopean grasshopper perched on the black branch of his aviation machine gun, seemed nonchalant, but other passengers looked nervous. Teck swallowed again. Thick phlegm clogged his throat. Their nervousness elevated his own. The helicopter lurched in a thermal. Teck gritted his teeth. No, he told himself. It won’t happen. Not today. The fortune-teller said this is a lucky day.

  Three days earlier Teck, with Louis, had visited a longhaired middle-aged man with a tattered fortune-teller’s book. The man’s mortar-and-wood house near the new market in Phnom Penh had been light, airy, with a back room opening onto a small courtyard and formal garden. The men exchanged greetings and Teck slipped an envelope beneath the edge of the ancient book. “Your friend,” the man asked kindly, “he is not to join us, eh?”

  “Who? Him? Louis?” Teck stuttered nervously. “No. He’ll wait out there.”

  “Then tell me, what do you wish to know?”

  “It’s a long story,” Teck began. Once his words began to flow they did not stop. He told the fortune-teller of his marriage, of the refugee camp and Vathana’s work, of his mother and father, his own escape from Neak Luong and the separation from his wife.

  The man listened politely, asked Teck a few questions, asked him his birthday. Then he opened his large book and read an ancient legend about a virtuous man who, thinking his wife unfaithful, ordered her kidnapped and killed by marauders. The bandits beat her, raped her, but they did not kill her. Instead they took her to a remote forested region and released her. From there, the wife overcame many obstacles in her struggle to return. The virtuous man, thinking his wife dead, had himself beheaded. When the good woman reached home and found his tomb, she, in anguish, thinking he had killed himself over her loss, poisoned herself. Before she died her sister found her and told her her own husband had been responsible for the kidnapping.

  The khrou stopped. Teck looked at him, completely befuddled. The man flicked his head tossing his long hair back over his shoulder and away from the pages. He turned more pages, read a few lines to himself, then said, “Today is a bad day. Tomorrow also. On the third day go see her. Join in association with her and all things will come to pass.”

  As Teck, and Louis left through the rear garden gate an ugly man on an ugly samlo pulled up before the khrou’s house. “What did he say?” Louis asked Teck. “Did he say eliminate the blue-eye?” The driver wedged the back of the bicycle cart against the front door of the house then fled on foot.

  “He said, ‘In three days join her association,’ ” Teck said.

  “What association?” Louis asked.

  “I don’t know. She must have a new one. She always has a new one. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘is a bad day.’ In three....”

  A sharp explosive BAAM! blasted behind them. It came so quickly, lasted but a bare instant and ceased, neither Teck nor Louis reacted by more than snapping around. As they did they saw the roof of the khrou’s house collapse, disappear below the courtyard wall. Louis looked up. Teck’s mouth fell open. He looked around. There was nothing unusual. From, the new market dozens of people were converging on the sudden destruction.

  “A...a rocket?” Louis asked, disbelieving.

  “No.” Teck was dazed. “No. We would have heard it. I think.”

  “Should we see...”

  “No. What if another one comes in?”

  At the front of the helicopter cargo bay Sullivan stood with the forward gunner looking out the porthole at the saturated land beyond the south bank of the Mekong. He was thinking of Vathana, tr
ying not to think of her. From the air the land looked like a map yet without the neat lines—this side, ours and that side, yours—the embassy people drew. The new overlay of government-controlled territory had looked to Sullivan like a six-legged octopus with its Phnom Penh beak-head consuming everything dropped into it, and its legs of various sizes reaching out amorphously to Takeo, Kompong Som, Battambang, Kompong Thom, Kompong Cham and Neak Luong. In some places the legs were thin, broken or bent. The Neak Luong leg was a forty-kilometer stub protruding from the heartland. Still, he thought, the overlay isn’t indicative of the perils of travel down any leg...nor out beyond the legs. Damn, she’s got to see it. The defensive perimeter about Neak Luong has never been smaller. Thank God Rita agreed. I’ve got to get her out. Got to! Got to!

  The hospital was very busy. Attacks along the lower Mekong had been heavy all month and many of the military wounded had been sloughed off on the civilian and volunteer staff. Medical supply delivery was sporadic. At times Neak Luong was inundated with tetracycline, ARALEN hydrochloride and diphenoxylate hydrochloride with atropine sulfate—stop the bugs, stop the chills, stop the shits—but between deliveries there was drought.

  “Go home,” Dr. Sarin Sam Ol said gently. “Let the others take over.”

  Vathana looked at the kind man. “What time is it?” Her voice was full of surprise as if she’d expected to stop much earlier but had worked longer than she knew.

  “It’s not too late,” the doctor said. “Only six.”

  “The rain stopped early,” Vathana said.

  “A little break.” Sam Ol smiled. “Are you going to the rivermen’s meeting?”

  “Y...yes. You’ve joined, eh?”

  “No. No, not me. But I spoke with that man who heads it up. What’s his name? You know. Anyway, he’s given us some guidelines. We should have an association, the ‘Patriotic Hospital Workers,’ eh?”

  “Can we!?”

  “Yes. Why not? You think it would be good?”

  “Oh, it would be my dream.”

  “Good. I want you to help me organize. You’re very good that way.”

  A short “ssst!” interrupted them.

  “Eh?” Dr. Sarin said.

  Again the “ssst!”

  “Oh. Someone for you. I’ve more rounds. Tomorrow, Angel.”

  “Teck!” Vathana’s tone indicated shock yet her voice was small.

  “Have you smiled today?” Teck greeted her. He’d spied on her while she’d been speaking with Dr. Sarin.

  “Have I...”

  “They ask that now—in the capital.”

  “Oh.”

  “I am so happy to see you,” he said formally.

  “I thought you would be with the children.”

  “In a while. I wanted to see you, alone.” Teck grasped Vathana’s hand and very meekly tugged her toward an exit. “You can come, yes?”

  “I’m finished. You should see the children. Samnang is getting so strong. And Samol, you’ll want to eat her up.”

  “Vathana...” Teck said her name very slowly. They left the hospital and walked into the dense humidity of late afternoon. “You know...” Teck appeared to search for his words though he knew exactly what he would say. “I am a FANK officer and a Khmer Patriot.”

  “I know.”

  “I have a very good house in Phnom Penh.”

  “Yes.”

  “I miss the children. I miss you. Terribly!”

  “What is it you’re saying, Teck?”

  “There is a coup coming. I can feel it. The Patriots’ group in the capital...it’s not...cohesive. It needs someone who can take charge. Mother runs some things but she’s a...well, you know...not like my father was. Come back to Phnom Penh with me. Help me there.”

  At first Vathana did not answer. When Teck had surprised her she had been thinking how exciting it would be to tell Kosol about the “Patriotic Hospital Workers.” “A coup?” Vathana’s eyebrows raised with her voice. “Teck,” she said, “there won’t be a coup. The Americans won’t allow it. They wouldn’t even allow In Tam to run for election.”

  “Oh...” Teck mused. “Yes...I forgot. You know how Americans think.”

  “Everyone knows.”

  “Not like my wife,” Teck said. He controlled his tone to ensure it was not an accusation.

  “I thought you approved,” Vathana snapped back sharply.

  “Don’t get me wrong, wife. What has been has been. I am not the same, nor are you. But this dirty war, it will not go away. What we have left is our families, and they are being shredded. I want us to reconcile. I could be a good husband.”

  “Show me! Damn you!” Vathana stopped, stamped her foot. “Why”—she stabbed a pointing finger at him—“why has it taken you so long? No! No, no, no. Damn it!”

  Teck clasped his hands before his face. “I beg you to forgive me. I heard. I heard the doctor. I want to join in association with you. But in the capital. A hospital association in...”

  “You show me. Here.” Vathana’s voice was cold, angry. “If you can be a father and a husband, here, then...maybe.”

  “But I’m assigned there.”

  “Get assigned here.”

  “There’s a middle path. We can live here and there” The khrou, he said it will come to pass.”

  Teck left Vathana before they had walked halfway through town toward the Khsach Sa camp. He did not tell her he knew Sullivan was waiting but told her he would go straight to the Neak Luong garrison commander and request dual posting. Instead he went to see his old friends Sakun and Kim, went to smoke a pipe.

  Vathana was furious. She did not know why. To have her children’s father return would be proper. Everything in her traditional rearing reminded her this was right behavior, right thought. Yet she did not trust him. She thought of Kosol.

  Quickly she walked the main road. She passed the apartment building where she’d been married, where she’d learned the river barge business. The lower story had been sandbagged to the top of the windows, the entrance to the central courtyard had been blocked with fifty-five-gallon drums filled with dirt. Only a narrow slit remained. At the inner entrance to the slit was an armed guard. How, she thought as she entered the alley which led to the trail to the camp, had Captain Sullivan explained it? “The criminal element” was what he’d called it. “The criminal element goes wild because there is no effective police, no social order.” Starving people rioting for food are not criminals, she thought. That’s what I should have written back. Kosol would have said it. “No structure in the society is capable of responding to the internal violence,” Sullivan had written. “Every crime goes unpunished...domestic tranquility cannot be guaranteed.” What of Lon Nol’s crimes? What of the corruption? America...what does it do? A coup? Ha! We’d be more successful trying to oust Mr. Nixon!

  “Hello, John Sullivan,” Vathana said, entering the administration and clinic tent of the camp. “I was just thinking of you.”

  Sullivan looked up. From his seat behind the reception table he beamed a boyish smile. He did not rise. Samol cuddled in his lap watching her feet as he gently tapped them on the table edge like drumsticks in time to a rock ’n’ roll tune coming from Sophan’s new tape player. Samnang clung to his back like Quasimodo’s hump. A dozen children were bouncing, jerking, flailing their arms, imitating Sullivan’s earlier dance show. Even Sophan was shaking her round bottom, lifting her arms alternately in backwards arcs.

  “Angel.” Sophan giggled as Vathana had never seen the obstinate wet-nurse giggle. “Come!” She waddled over. “Do the Mon-kiii,” she said in English. “Svaa,” she repeated in Khmer.

  Vathana shook her head in mock disbelief. She could not help but laugh. Two score of the infirm had dragged mats to the reception area and were sitting in a semicircle about the music. “Mon-kiii!” an old woman called. “Oh my!” Vathana laughed. She clasped her hands on top her head and looked at the tent roof. “Svaa Amerik,” the old woman called.

  “Now you are a
dance teacher,” Vathana called to Sullivan as Sophan pulled her to dance.

  “Better to dance,” Sullivan called back as he double-beat Samol’s feet, “than read the news.”

  “What news?” Vathana called. The song tailed off. Her voice sounded very loud. “I mean...” she said more quietly. “News!”

  “Would you like to make news?” Sullivan rose. Sophan was rewinding the tape. Samnang dropped from his back and dashed to the recorder to push the buttons. Samol squirmed in his hands. He bent over and put her down. She too ignored Vathana and pushed into the crowd of toddlers around Sophan’s new machine.

  “Someone I’d very much like you to meet,” Sullivan said, going to Vathana. He stopped before her, raised and clasped his hands. “I think...” His voice bubbled with enthusiasm. “...this...more than anything...It could be the most important thing I do in Cambodia. For Cambodia.”

  “What news? What do you do?”

  “Can we go out...to, ah...?”

  “To walk...”

  “Okay.”

  “Things have changed...for me.”

  “I’m not surprised. Things change everywhere.”

  “No, John, that’s not what I mean.” They reached the camp path which led to Vathana’s small hut. She directed him away, toward town and the river.

  “The handwriting is on the wall,” Sullivan said. Vathana looked at the side of the nearest building. “No, I mean...” Sullivan laughed, continued. “What is about to happen is pretty clear. Congress, the U.S. Senate, they passed an amendment to the military aid bill this week.”