For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “What does that mean?” Vathana could not follow Sullivan’s thoughts.

  “It’s a clause in the document which authorizes my government to spend money on the military effort here. They put a condition on the spending. It says all Americans will be withdrawn from Indochina within four months of the time North Viet Nam releases our prisoners.”

  “You’re going home?”

  “No. Nixon will veto the bill but sooner or later it’ll pass. Vathana...” Sullivan stopped, forced her to stop, turned to her. He looked at her face, held his hands out palms up. She turned, looked at him, clenched her fists by her side, then slowly raised one hand to touch his. “Those bastards in Washington don’t understand,” Sullivan said. The shine of her hair, the glow of her skin, the sparkle of her eyes excited him. “Their concern is only that Lon Nol fight the NVA. That FANK tie them up on this front. Then they can cut and run.”

  “That’s news, John?” Vathana kept her eyes averted from his face. With him there with her, all the attraction she’d felt for him came rushing back. She fought it.

  “No, not that.” Sullivan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But what we can do about it is...” He smiled his beautiful boyish smile. She smiled back, locked eyes with him. “There’s a very influential American reporter”—Sullivan now squeezed both her hands—“in Phnom Penh. The one who’s gotten me in so much trouble.”

  “The lady one?”

  “Um-hum. Donaldson.”

  “I thought you disliked her.”

  “I...that’s not important. She needs a new interpreter. If she could see Cambodia through your eyes...Don’t you see? Her reporting would be so much more accurate. Americans might come to a better understanding of Cambodia. American policy might change...for the better. It could save thousands of lives.”

  Vathana’s brow furled. “She wants me?! We’ve...I don’t know anything about news.”

  “I told her about you. She was very impressed. She’ll hire you. You could...I...I could...We...”

  Vathana laughed.

  Sullivan’s silly grin covered his face. He turned slightly to the side. “Come live with me. We can get a house. I...I can’t be without you any longer.”

  “John.” Vathana hugged him, sweetly, not passionately. “I can’t leave right now. Maybe...”

  “For Cambodia, Vathana,” Sullivan whispered. “For your country. And for us. If...if...You could stay with that dragon lady if you don’t want to...”

  “John, it’s not you. I have my work here. The associations. Oh my...the meeting. I’ve a meeting right now! I must go.”

  “I’ll come.”

  “No. It’s...it’s the Women’s Association. Go home and I’ll send word soon. Okay?” She stretched up and kissed his lips, turned, then ran back to the camp.

  “What do you mean?!” Vathana’s speech was quick, urgent. The entire hospital was abuzz. “No one stopped them?! You.” She pointed to an orderly. “You know where the rivermen meet? Good. Run there. Get Keo Kosol. Tell him.” The orderly left immediately. Vathana had stopped in at the hospital on her way to the association meeting—just to check, to see that all was running smoothly. The soldiers had just left. “Tell me again.” She pounded on the wall with her small fist.

  “They just barged in,” a volunteer said. “Maybe two dozen.”

  “Are you certain they were FANK soldiers?”

  “Oh yes. The new security unit. I know the commander. He was our neighbor before the war.”

  “And who else did they take?”

  “No one.”

  “Just Doctor Sarin?!”

  “They said he was a Communist. They accused him of being a Communist. They tied him and dragged him off.”

  “Where?” No one answered. “Where?!” Vathana shouted, exasperated, angry.

  “Where else?” an amputee said from the back of the crowd. People stepped aside so he could speak directly. “Where they take anyone accused of that crime, eh?”

  An hour later Vathana was walking the back alleys with Keo Kosol. He held her tightly to his side with a strong wiry arm. “From great suffering comes great insight.” Vathana whispered the prayer. Her eyes were sore, foggy from tears and rubbing.

  “From great insight comes great compassion,” Kosol said. “It’s a very good prayer. Thank you for teaching me.”

  Vathana slumped against him. “When will this end?” she whimpered. “When will the war end?”

  “When all the foreign devils leave,” Kosol said. “When the superpowers withdraw and let Khmer talk to Khmer and let us solve our own problems.”

  “From great compassion comes a peaceful heart,” Vathana said. Her head was against his chest and she could hear his heartbeat. She raised her head to look at Kosol’s lean, drawn features. I am Khmer, she thought. I must be with Khmers. She put a hand on his chest and whispered, “Tonight, Kosol. Tonight.”

  “Nothing is more honorable than growing rice, together, eh, comrade?”

  The cadreman did not look at Chhuon. “You have grown rice all your life, is this so?”

  “Ay.” With his returning health had come a cluster of old emotions and suspicions.

  “In your dwelling, you have a sleeping mat, mosquito net and rice tube, eh?”

  “Two, comrade. One for me, one for my wife. Except only one mosquito net.”

  “And clothes?”

  “What was issued, no more.” He struggled with himself, forced himself to say as little as possible.

  “If you hide material possessions you will be severely punished, eh?”

  “We don’t need more, comrade. The Movement sees to all our needs.”

  “Good. You have a cooking pot and utensils?”

  “Yes. In the cooking area, not in the dwelling.”

  “Okay. When Met Nhel is ready for you, go to him. Next.” Chhuon exited the small administration gazebo and squatted by the door of a hut with several other men. The heaviest rains of the year had not yet begun but each day the sky became darker, the clouds grayer, the air thicker with moisture. Many changes had taken place in the few months since they’d cleared the land. Met Soth had moved up to khum level along with most of the Krahom soldiers and cadre who had not returned to fighting units. Rumdoah soldiers, mekongs (low-level cadre), ran the new camps and cooperatives. Life was spartan, collective behavior was tightly controlled, yet the Rumdoahs were benevolent within the range of the new policies, policies which essentially imprisoned the people within a military encampment, within a sealed perimeter surrounded by a half-kilometer-wide mine belt—a continuously patrolled barrier out of sight if not out of mind.

  Paddy and reservoir building had gone slowly. A few fields had been planted and the irrigation system was more a Crosshatch of ditches than an efficient holder and distributor of water. A backyard furnace had been constructed and the camp’s first hoes and rice knives had been forged and fitted with handles in the adjacent workshop. Life was not easy—nor was it torturous. It was primitive. All the time new people were added, either directly to the phum or by establishing adjacent phums, part of the same khum. Srok 16 now held more than ten thousand people. Why Met Nhel had come down from srok level to conduct Phum 117 interviews Chhuon did not know.

  From inside came the laugh of an older man. Nhel laughed too. Then Chhuon heard the man say, “Lomphat, it was leveled, oh, two years ago. Burnt to the ground...I don’t know. Some said by yuon artillery, some said by the ARVN. For all I know it was those renegade Mountaineers. They’ve burned all their villages so the yuon Communists couldn’t take them...”

  The man spoke freely and Chhuon wondered who he was, if he knew the fate of Keng Sambath. “There’s an empty village, maybe four, maybe five kilometers from here,” the man said. “Why don’t you people let us move there? I saw the well. Good water...No, fields...sweet potatoes, I’d say...”

  Then Met Nhel’s voice came hard, cool, without anger. “Angkar Leou,” Nhel said, “wishes you to construct a new village...occupation of t
he existing units will be severely punished...”

  Everyone was being interviewed. Family histories, work records, education levels, were recorded. For no apparent reason. Chhuon thought of his first interview six weeks earlier. A young Rumdoah had conducted it. “I’m an agronomist,” Chhuon had said.

  “Huh?” The boy had stared blankly at him.

  “I know rice,” Chhuon said. “What kind to plant. Where to put it. All the new and all the old strains.”

  “You plant rice, eh?”

  “Yes. For more than twenty years.”

  The boy had made an entry into the ledger. Chhuon’s second interview had been similar. “I am an agronomist,” he told a woman with a dark peasant face.

  “A what? It says here for twenty years you plant rice.”

  “Yes. That’s true. But I know how. I know where. I know what kinds. Eight hundred kinds grow in Cambodia...”

  “Comrade,” the woman had said, “everyone knows how to plant rice.”

  “Next,” Nhel called. Chhuon rose. I am an agronomist, he said to himself. I should tell him that. Let them punish me if they must. “I am but an ignorant peasant, comrade,” Chhuon said to Nhel. “I don’t know why I was made village chairman.”

  “But you resisted,” Nhel said. “That’s why you are of such value to the cooperative. Now you’ll be responsible for all the families in your group: If one person defects, two families will be held responsible.”

  I am a stone, Chhuon told himself. An indistinguishable pebble...“I understand,” Chhuon said. He’d been through it all before. “Comrade Nhel, I must ask you something...I...I have a son. Maybe about...well, younger than you. Met Soth, about his age. I think he is with the Khmer Liberation Army. Samnang. Small. He was always very small, very thin. Do you know him?”

  “No,” Nhel said. “I don’t know your son. If he is in the army...well...it gets larger every day.”

  “I’m sure...” Chhuon said quietly, “...certain he’s alive. I think he seeks me out. I think he must find me. Could you ask Met Soth?”

  “Soth is busy with the land reform,” Nhel said. “Perhaps when the war is over. Then you will find him. Work hard and the war will end sooner.”

  “Met Bella, she thought...”

  “She thinks nothing.”

  “Yesterday I spoke with her at the boray. She...”

  “She has been disappeared. She was tainted.”

  “Was tainted?”

  “Yes. Her mother’s mother was Viet Namese.”

  They were not at the work site but in their small cocoon, lying, in their exhaustion, side by side. The cloudburst beat on the woven roof only three feet above their heads. For a week the rains had beaten the earth. The boray, built without a spillway, had overflowed at the center; a rill had cut a small channel in the loosely packed dirt, releasing the caught water behind which had gushed through the gap cutting a chasm to the base of the dam. The deluge had flooded the few paddies, had washed away the dikes and the crop. Over the noise of the rain Chhuon said, “When the war is over we’ll go back home. We’ll rebuild our village.”

  “Yes,” Sok said warmly, yet too fatigued to add enthusiasm. “Bella is gone, eh?”

  “Yes. Van and Mey and Heng, too.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. Can you get the notebook?”

  “You’re still going to write it?”

  “Of course.” Chhuon’s tone was very slightly defensive.

  “Because...”

  “Yes,” he said. “You know my dream the night before Plei Srepok...”

  “If they find them...”

  “We’ll keep them in the wall.”

  Sok parted a plaited section of the woven cocoon wall and removed a plastic bag with Chhuon’s current work. He had filled up three and was halfway through the fourth. “Mey was a compassionate leader,” Sok said. They spoke sporadically while Chhuon made his notes.

  “The compassionate ones are disappearing,” Chhuon said. “Nhel considers them weak. Anyone who had any tie to the reach is tainted. They no longer even allow the word. Now everything is kana.”

  “Bella? She couldn’t have been tied to the royalty. She was a peasant.”

  “Maybe her father...” Chhuon shook his ballpoint pen. The paper was damp and the pen skipped. He was afraid of running out of ink. “When the rain slows,” he said after a pause, “I’ll cut your hair. You must wear it straight.”

  “Like them?”

  “Yes.”

  “How strong do they have to be?” Sok asked, referring back to the Rumdoahs who had disappeared. She thought the criteria of the new leaders were trivial, inane.

  “I don’t know,” Chhuon answered. “I don’t think that’s it. It’s a leadership struggle, eh? Angkar Leou can’t share leadership with the others.”

  “Nhel said that?”

  “No. No, he said we must struggle to strengthen the revolution. We must fight to launch the land reform. He said people can be reformed but not places. That’s why there are more and more new people. A whole column today from near Kratie. You know what he told me? He said, man is born from rice and by his labor and sweat he learns what is of value, what is worthless.”

  “He’s sweated, eh?”

  “I once thought like him, Sok. I once plowed and planted to search for understanding. To search for the right way of life.”

  “But while you labored you did search, eh?” Sok put a gristly callused hand on Chhuon’s forehead and rubbed the furrows until they relaxed. “You did search,” she repeated. “They pretend.”

  “You know the other thing he says?” Chhuon closed the notebook, rolled to his side, handed the book to Sok. “Nhel says new villages are being bombed. We’re going to have to dig bunkers. He picked me as chief of interfamily bunkers.”

  Sullivan sat on his cot. After his return from Neak Luong his travel restrictions had been lifted and he’d accompanied Rita Donaldson and a few other correspondents down Highway 4 as far as Kompong Speu. Rita had wanted to know if “this Cahuom Vathana” was going to work for her. “I don’t know, yet,” Sullivan had said. “She has to make arrangements.”

  “Well, when are you going to tell me? I can’t wait forever.” Embarrassed to be without an answer Sullivan had slipped away from her, made a few quick stops and returned to the capital. For two months he’d lamented the disastrous trip to Neak Luong. Every day, every hour, he thought of her. He visited units, checked equipment usage and delivery. His concentration was splintered. Night after night he lay awake thinking of her, wishing she’d write, show up, send word. He thought of Suong, of many of the Khmer troops he’d gotten to know, learned to respect. They had come to rely on him, to trust him to make small corrections in their unit behavior. Now, he was certain, he was failing them. Vathana had become tied up in his ability to question, to analyze. Atrocity reports were getting worse. The Khmer Rouge were spreading, and FANK’s overall lack of discipline under the increasing stress was leading toward disaster. Neither the Lon Nol government nor the American embassy wanted either story released. They said they were afraid of panic. Really, Sullivan thought, they’re afraid of exposing their own failings. Cover yer ass.

  Sullivan rose. He sat. He picked up the copy of The New York Times he’d gotten from the colonel. There was a long article on Saigon’s “Land to the Tiller” land-reform program. “...probably the most imaginative and progressive non-communist land reform of the twentieth century,” the Times said. Two-point-five million acres taken from absentee landlords and given to landless peasants in two years. Sullivan translated the pertinent passages into French. It told of the joy of the people receiving deeds to the fields they’d worked all their lives for others. He’d seen it himself. It was quite a story. Sullivan added his own description and placed it into the letter he was compiling for Vathana.

  Twice since seeing her he had been in Neak Luong on official business. Once he’d stopped at the hospital. She hadn’t been there and he hadn’t had t
he time to search the camp. The other time he’d arrived at the garrison during the late afternoon. New demonstrations were wracking the downtown area. The Khmer colonel in charge had blocked his every attempt to leave the compound until he had helicoptered out the next morning. From the bird he’d thought he’d spotted her walking from the spired pagoda, walking with another man.

  How many times had he written? He had not kept track. He wasn’t certain any of his letters ever reached her. “Have you received the materials for the clinic?” He’d written that knowing she should have, knowing that it was a neutral question, a question without pressure, a question to which the response could in no way commit her. Still there had not been an answer. He wrote about the new anti-Viet Namese rioting in Kompong Cham, about lawlessness and about neutralizing the intelligence and proselytizing cadre who were upstanding but misguided citizens. He spoke about changing their minds, enlisting them into the national cause. It came from his training as an advisor—he’d seen it work in South Viet Nam. It could work in Cambodia. Again he cautioned her: “Terror must be introduced and all opposition leaders liquidated during the first days of occupation.” They were the words of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. They fit the reports from the “liberated” zones. Finally he wrote to her about the results of the still-sputtering Nguyen Hue Offensive, the impact of the U.S. presidential election, the cease-fire talks, the stand-down and withdrawal of the last U.S. ground combat unit in Viet Nam and the renewed buildup of NVA materiel in the border regions even as the Northerners dispersed and licked their wounds.

  Sullivan was out of things to say. He could think of nothing more except the words “Marry me.” And those he was afraid to put on paper.

  Quietly, one by one, they slipped from their hovel between the tracks and the river, slipped into the crisp blackness of the night. The winds had shifted, the rains had ceased. Evening stars dotted the sky. Vong had been killed. No one but Nang knew how. He had been replaced by two seventeen-year-old girls, neary. Their comings and goings roused less suspicion than Vong’s but Nang did not like them. Itha was very pretty. She aroused impure feelings. Rin was always trying to get her to his mat. Sithan was very ugly, repulsive.