For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Nang carried a newspaper bag over his shoulder as he walked, strolled, toward Phnom Penh’s Old Chinese Market. He did not appear to rush, seemed to be without direction, yet his progress through the fringe of the refugee area toward his target was steady. The closer he came to the old market the finer became the homes. Trees lined the clean streets and lights from small shops spilled into the dark. The sights sickened him. It was not so much the rich exploiters themselves as it was the old Khmers and the refugees. Old residents avoided the Chinese section because of language and cultural differences, avoided the Old Market out of habit, a simple capitulation of the very best of Cambodia. More loathsome were the refugees. How can they live like this? Nang asked himself. In the jungle with so much less, with nothing, we lived so much better. Someday, we will teach them pride and the right way to live.

  Nang reached into the bag, withdrew a white painter’s cap and stretched it over his turban-covered head. He adjusted the bag, headed away from the market and back toward the railroad station, circled several blocks, emerged at the neighborhood’s south entrance. Here were a series of small banks, apothecaries, jade and camera shops and the city’s best restaurants. Nang smiled to himself. Outside one eatery Itha was propositioning two Chinese men. Both were obviously drunk. Nang cast a quick glance back to see if Rin was in view. He saw only a scattering of the rich. Two more men joined Itha. One pinched her ass, one tried to kiss her. To act, Nang thought, the way they act...He spotted Reth four buildings beyond the revelry, across the street by a tree. Where was Rin? Where was the signal?

  Nang continued his approach. He pulled his hat lower. From the bag he pulled a newspaper and shoved it under the door of a closed apothecary. At the next shop he repeated his delivery. He could feel the approach of police. His breath became shallow. A fifth gentleman joined the four with Itha. Nang was now less than thirty feet away. He knelt, removed a cardboard box from the news bag and plopped it down by the corner of the restaurant facade. Then he looked up as if searching for a sign. One man had a hand under Itha’s blouse.

  “Hey, you!” Nang yelled like a fresh kid. “Hey, chalk-face. Where’s Cherry Blossom Garden?” The men ignored his Khmer shout. “Hey, Chink,” Nang yelled. “You, white-face! Where’s...”

  “Who’s the brat?” one man said angrily.

  “I’ll tell him,” Itha said. “I’ll get rid of him.” She strutted away from the men, her firm behind drawing their leers. “The Cherry Blossom...”

  A shot cracked. One man fell. Screamed. Another shot from up the street. Nang bolted. A third, fourth, fifth. Four men were hit. Itha sprinted after Nang. Almost immediately a siren wailed. Nang turned a corner, shed the hat, pulled a skirt and other clothes from the sack. People began congregating by the restaurant. A FANK MP vehicle raced into the Old Market. Blocks away, Nang and Itha, he without head covering, she in a long sarong skirt and shawl, strolled arm in arm, her head leaning against the scarred side of his face. The box blew. “The way they act,” Nang whispered in Itha’s ear as if they were lovers, “is to denounce their humanity.”

  Sixteen people—four FANK soldiers, one policeman, the rest Chinese civilians—were killed. Within minutes Rita Donaldson and two cameramen arrived. Shortly the entire area was lit by American network TV camera lights. The devastation was picturesque. Rin crowded against the police barricade, meandered amid the crowd. “They’re saying it was government hoodlums,” he murmured, repeated every few meters. “I don’t believe it, but that’s what I heard that MP say. No matter, eh? This government offers us no protection. What do you think?”

  “We must love the Party, adore it, and serve it sincerely without reservation or condition...” Sar paused to see the reactions of Phan, Dy, Yon, Meas and Sen, to get their first impression of the concluding statement of the final draft of the Party’s history—the manifesto. None showed emotion. “...to repay the effort with which the Party has educated us, to be unreserved revolutionaries and Communists...”

  Met Reth, Sar’s bodyguard, tapped on the jamb of the open door. Sar finished the paragraph before acknowledging him. “Nothing is more precious and honorable than to belong to the Party’s ranks, and nothing is better than to be a Communist.” He looked at Reth. “What is it?”

  “Met Nang of Team SA-3 has arrived.”

  “Shortly. I’ll see him shortly,” Sar said.

  “It’s very powerful,” Meas said. “Yet do we wish to make public our Communist...”

  “No! Of course not!” Sar scowled at the scribe as if Meas were an idiot. “This is strictly for internal use. Only for the Center.”

  “Then I think we all concur,” Phan answered for the group. “Yes. It is very good.”

  An hour later Nang was allowed to enter the inner sanctum of the Center’s mobile command post. They were only four miles south of the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong, between Takhmau and the heart of the capital. Sar sat at the table. Before him were Khmer, French and Chinese newspapers—each telling the story of the breakthrough at the Paris negotiations. “An Agreement in Principle,” the French paper declared. “A sellout,” Sar muttered. “Cease-fire-in-place Accepted by Kissinger,” the Khmer daily said. Sar spit on the floor.

  “Met Sar.” Nang immediately sensed Sar’s mood. He addressed the senior general formally. “It is very good of you to grant me this audience.”

  “It’s good of you to come, Nang.” Sar rose. He stepped to within inches of Nang, making the boy think the man was about to embrace him. Nang slid one foot back but Sar stopped him by gently hooking his right hand about Nang’s head. Sar leaned forward inspecting the scarred face. Nang was not sure what to do. He stood very still. “Has it faded?” Sar asked abruptly.

  “I...ah...” Nang was immediately off balance.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sar said. “One looks at a man from the inside, not the out, eh?”

  “Yes...”

  “You’ve received good coverage in the Yankee newspapers,” Sar said. Nang nodded. “Our first enemy is Lon Nol’s rodent-infested army, eh?” Sar did not wait for a response. “Without the imperialists, FANK will collapse. Your work is very important. Keep it up.”

  “It is why I’ve come.” Sar glanced at Nang as the boy attempted to regain his purpose. “I wish to discuss with you my future.”

  “When we are victorious,” Sar said, “you will be remembered and rewarded.”

  “I think I can do more. Now. To speed victory.”

  “If I had a thousand...what?...seventeen...”

  “In a month I’ll be sixteen.”

  “...sixteen-year-olds like you, Met Nang, we’d finish the war in a week.”

  “It is exactly what I wish to request.”

  “What is?”

  “I want to change assignments. I want to teach...teach new yotheas.” Nang now stepped slightly forward. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. Sar rocked back on his heels. “I could be a master teacher,” Nang said. “I know the land, the people. I know what to say to make them respond. I know the enemy, his tactics, how to use his power against him. The bomb which hit the FANK line at Stong...”

  Sar interrupted. “Where the South Viet Namese pilot...” Sar chuckled. “Where he accidentally hit FANK troops...”

  “It was not an accident.”

  “What was? The ARVN, they were punishing...”

  “No. I called in the A-37. I was on their radio. I called in the fictitious fight and described the enemy position.”

  “You!?” Sar began to chuckle.

  “Yes. If I could teach a thousand others, the victory will be ours that much more quickly. Let me direct a youth training camp. Let me tell what I can do...”

  Sar sat. He stared at Nang as the boy, in his enthusiasm, rattled off his plan to expand the new training school program to include more technical material like what he’d received in China, plus more physical drill like that which had been dropped with the closure of Pong Pay Mountain. “...it’s too short,” Nang was s
aying. “The new yotheas don’t know a fraction of what the old ones were taught. They don’t have the drive.”

  Now Sar leaned forward, placed his palms flat on the desk, his elbows locked. “We can,” he said, his face smiling though his entire bearing radiated anger, “indoctrinate a boy, especially if he’s been prepared for monastic training, if he’s ready to renounce his family and all worldly things, we can break him in three weeks, convert him in three weeks into a disciple of Angkar Leou.”

  “Certainly,” Nang agreed, attempting to regain command of the conversation. “But is an untrained disciple, no matter how devoted, as valuable as a yothea trained in supply, in underwater mines, in proselytizing, in recruitment?”

  Sar rose. He glanced at the papers on the table. “We have a core of trained soldiers,” he said amicably. “You’re one. This is a rice war. First we deny Lon Nol rice. Rice we trade to the yuons for American dollars. Ha! They get so much from China and North Korea. With dollars we can buy anything. We buy from FANK. We don’t need to rely on supply. Now we stockpile for when the imperialists leave. It will be soon. Then we strike. You want to teach yotheas how to strike, eh? It is more important to teach them to have the will to strike and to break the enemy.” Sar paused. “We already have the force to break FANK. By the way...” Sar added cynically, “Pech Chieu Teck, he’s still alive, eh?”

  “Alive?” Nang’s eyes snapped to Sar’s lips as if he might see the words. Had he failed?

  Sar rose. Again stepped to Nang. He grasped the boy by the shoulders, smiled insincerely and said like a loving father, “Met Nang, go back to your team. Keep doing your job. You’ve a good mind, strong ambitions. I like that. Someday...” He winked at Nang. “You’ll be contacted.”

  When Nang left, Sar called in Met Sen, the new chief of security. “That boy,” Sar said. “He’s very smart, very ambitious. Make sure he’s kept where he can’t gain his own following.”

  Throughout the remainder of October and through all of November 1972, Nang brooded in his hovel between the tracks and the river. B-52s, released from flights over North and South Viet Nam by the paperwork in Paris, were redirected to Cambodia and Laos. (The level of bombing from the Easter offensive carried over to these countries despite the lack of massed forces or confirmed targets. This was to ensure that the appropriated money was used, not returned to the Treasury, thus indicating to Congress a lack of need for such funds. Some bombing missions at this time were purposely targeted—by target-control personnel, navigators and pilots—against such “enemy” installations as the center of the Tonle Sap, specifically picked to avoid areas of human occupation.)

  Each time Nang heard the rumbling of the bombs his body tensed. He did not connect the feeling to the times he’d been in the bomb boxes but instead became more and more depressed about having exposed himself, having trusted Sar with his ambitions, his plans for his future. That they had not been accepted, Nang knew, was disgraceful, dangerous.

  In November he and his team, with the help of North Viet Namese sappers also released from the eastern front by continued progress in the Paris talks, neatly dropped a span of bridge over the Tonle Sap River only two miles from the heart of Phnom Penh. A firefight ensued. Thirty-six Cambodian national soldiers were killed along-with twenty-eight Viet Namese. Nang’s team fled intact. Still Nang brooded. Every success increased the distrust which now surrounded him. Somehow, he thought, he would have to lie low. Somehow, he would have to shift the blame.

  Doctor Sarin Sam Ol’s house had been burned. His two eldest sons had been conscripted. Sovanna, his seventeen-year-old, had moved, with Sarin’s wife, to Phnom Penh to live with his mother’s brother and family. Two months after Doctor Sarin’s incarceration, Sovanna fled the capital, his destination unknown. In reprisal Doctor Sarin’s private office was sacked. It was now the tenth day of November 1972—one hundred days from the time of his arrest. The sun broke from the eastern horizon; its rays splashed on the spire of the wat’s vihear and glistened off the bells and ornaments of the sola.

  Vathana stood on the upper steps of the preaching hall. She had been praying for the doctor for three hours. Nem had joined her just before dawn. Sophan and a few nurses and aides had arrived moments later.

  “Kosol will come,” Nem said from the step below her friend.

  “I know,” Vathana answered.

  “Truly. He said he would.”

  “Yes. So he said.”

  “It’s not too late. Do you really think they’ll release the doctor?”

  “Sann said they would. He said he’d heard from his brother...”

  “Little Sann, the orderly?”

  “Yes. His brother’s a guard at the detention center.” Vathana turned, looked toward the camp. “Where is he?” she said quietly.

  “One hundred days.” Nem pursed her lips. “Is that normal for ‘Communist sympathy’? I mean, he...oh...”—Nem noticed the direction of Vathana’s gaze—“...poets are like that, eh?”

  Vathana looked down at Nem, then looked back north, up the highway toward the FANK facility. Others joined the vigil. A lay priest came, questioned them, left. In a short while he, several monks, a number of nuns and orphans, and teachers and students from the sala rien joined the congregation.

  An hour passed. A monk led a group of refugees in prayer. A teacher gave her class a lesson in arithmetic. Street urchins hustled about the fringe attempting to sell small cakes of ice. Others raced the half mile up the roadway to within a stone’s throw of the prison gate, then raced back to the pagoda and back again toward the FANK post. By eleven most of the children—orphans, urchins, students—had wandered away seeking more interesting adventures or simply a place in the shade.

  “There he is!” a hospital worker shouted. “He’s coming.”

  “That’s not him. That’s an old man,” shouted a second.

  “That’s him. I know him well,” the first yelled.

  “Don’t crowd him. Just two go. Only two. Angel,” a third worker called, “you go. You’re his favorite.”

  “Let’s cheer him,” the second worker yelled.

  “No,” the third snapped. “Give him room. We’ll have time to cheer later. You don’t know what...”

  Vathana and a man she did not know were nudged to the front of the crowd. Quickly they stepped toward the small approaching figure. Even at a hundred meters Vathana was not certain...the eye patch, the uncertain walk. A minute later the doctor wrapped an arm over the man’s shoulder then collapsed.

  Vathana lifted his other arm, placed it about her neck, and the two helped Sam Ol walk the quarter mile to the pagoda. There they seated him on a monk’s pillow and brought him citrus water with honey and ice. At first Sam Ol did not speak. All about him people tried to get a good look, to catch his attention. Many called quiet, subdued wishes and encouragements. Some vowed to help him seek retribution. Vathana knelt by him, washed his face. This, she thought, this is destroying the infrastructure! She gently lifted the eye patch. The doctor lifted his hand to stop her. “Don’t.” His voice was sad, hoarse.

  “Did they...” Vathana began.

  “I can still see with the other,” Sam Ol said. Then he leaned forward and sobbed.

  “Let’s take him to the hospital,” the man who’d carried him said.

  Vathana nodded but the very mention sent a spasm of torment through the broken man. His sobs came louder. In the crowd people embarrassed for him shuffled back, wandered quietly away. Others embarrassed by their own inability to deal with his anguished cries put up various fronts—bitter, hostile, profane. They too left, but with angry oaths dripping from their tongues.

  “Home,” Sarin Sam Ol pleaded.

  Vathana looked to the man who had helped. He glanced back, then whispered, “to my home.”

  Later Vathana snapped at Keo Kosol, “How can you write that?!”

  “It’s an ayay. It’s good. Listen. I will call it ‘Doctor Ol.’ ”

  “You didn’t come.” Vathana�
�s lips were pulled thin. “You never came. You didn’t see.”

  “But you saw,” Kosol said. “And you described it to me. Especially the eye. He was disgusting, eh? Ha! I’ll read it at the Women’s Association tonight. Those sluts will love it.”

  “What!?” Vathana spun in place. She had no outlet for her anger. For months she’d loved this old poet who had steadily become more of a burden to her. Now he looked to her too old, too pretentious. “Sluts?” She hissed the word. “Sluts?!” Never, not even in her mind, had she used the word.

  “Oh come now,” Keo Kosol said. He stood, dropped his pen on the writing sheet. “That doesn’t offend you. I know the women who join. They sleep with everyone.”

  “Is that what you think of me?”

  “No. Not you. You only sleep with me and your foreign guy but I understand that...”

  “You...you...” Vathana shook with rage. “ ‘Struggle Against Fire,’ ” she lashed out at him, “...your mother, was she...”

  “She lives in Sisophon with my father. They have a big farm. They own lots of peasants. Ha! They...”

  “Get out of here!” Vathana regained control. “I let you come into my hut and you...”

  “And I what?” Kosol snarled sarcastically. “What, eh? You think you are some angel, eh? You’re like all women. You want catastrophe so you can play angel. Eech.” Kosol raised a hand, scolded her. “You listen. The Americans are pulling out. All our sacrifices, all our actions, are vindicated. Soon we’ll run...”

  “They haven’t all gone.” Vathana bit the inside of her lower lip. “Mister Nixon’s been reelected. I don’t...” She couldn’t complete the sentence. Why was Kosol saying this? Who was he? What did American withdrawal have to do with his not coming to see Doctor Sarin? With his faking his personal experiences in the ayay?

  Before Vathana’s questions could coagulate in her mind Kosol laughed maliciously. “It makes no difference. We believe, with or without Nixon, the American Congress will continue exactly as they have. Amendment after amendment. Cut off funds for their insidious military adventurism. It’s a matter of time. A short time.”