For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “You know what I’ve been wondering?” he said. He was on his fourth beer; the alcohol, the enclosure, was giving him a headache. And Rita looked so different to him—a business suit, stockings and heels, her hair done up. Only her pale blue eyes were the same.

  “What?” she said.

  “When the Communists entered Phnom Penh and Saigon, the war ended—or that ended the war.”

  “Yes.” She had turned sideways in her chair. His eyes caught a glimpse of her legs. “Ended the war, but not the suffering,” she said.

  “It’s something I don’t understand,” he said, leaning back. He could not think and look at her legs. “If we were invaded, if we’d fought for a decade for our land, would we give up if Washington was occupied? The French didn’t when Hitler held Paris. Why did Thieu order his divisions to cease resistance instead of ordering them into hiding? Why didn’t he establish a jungle headquarters? Maybe down in the bewitched Seven Mountains by Tri Ton. Why didn’t Lon Nol or Sirik Matak order FANK to establish bases in the Cardamom Mountains? Would Americans, if we were war weary, fall for those Communist ruses—there’s only seven supertraitors who must answer for their crimes? Everybody else will be granted amnesty?”

  “It’s irrelevant, isn’t it, John?” Rita said.

  Sullivan ignored her attempt to limit the thought. “Not we Americans,” he said too loudly. “We’d never fall for such blatant bovine excrement, eh?”

  “Eh!...?” She chuckled. She wanted to defuse what she saw as growing anger. “Becomes a part of you, eh?”

  “Not Americans,” Sullivan continued. His head was back, his eyes toward the ceiling. “Not in the wake of having fought.” He looked forward, at her. “I mean, we’re too sophisticated for such tricks. We’re too knowledgeable. Eh? Of course we, Americans, war weary from a war not even near our homeland, did fall for that exact ruse, did accept that exact Communist propaganda, that promise of Utopia if the imperialist pigs would just tuck tail and withdraw. Take their troops, their advisors, their material and moral support. Ha! It’s one thing to accept defeat for someone else, another thing to accept one’s own defeat. Eh?! We wouldn’t do that, would we? We’d fight to the end. Wouldn’t we? What do you think?”

  “John!”

  “What do you think?” he asked even more aggressively.

  “I don’t know,” she snapped. “You chase your wild theories. I just want to stop that misery.”

  Sullivan gritted his teeth to keep from shouting. “You bitch,” he growled. “Why were you against stopping it five years ago?”

  “Look!” Rita stared him in the eyes, forcefully smacked the table with her index finger. “You can accuse me of anything you want. I can’t turn time back. But right now I’m trying to correct a horrible situation. I thought I wanted your help.”

  “I’m...what the hell more could I have done?” He closed his eyes, squeezed them, squeezed his hands to fists on the table.

  “I’ve got a letter,” she said. Her voice was icy.

  “Hum...” He opened his eyes. He didn’t understand the reference.

  “Do you remember a Khmer named Louis?”

  Sullivan shook his head.

  “From Neak Luong. He was a friend of Pech Chieu Teck’s, Cahuom Vathana’s husband.”

  “A little guy,” Sullivan said. “Real small.”

  “Um-hum. He made it to a Thai camp.” Sullivan leaned forward. Words formed in his mind but would not come to his lips.

  “You bastard,” Rita said. “One thing you could have done is told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “You could have told me how beautiful that Cahuom woman was.” Sullivan didn’t answer. “Do you know about Amerasian children?”

  “I know chil—” he began. “What kind of children?”

  “Amerasian,” Rita said. “Kids with American fathers and Asian mothers. Kids left behind.”

  “I’m not up on them.”

  “There was a little girl born in Neak Luong on the day it was bombed. You did know that the American B-52s bombed Neak Luong, didn’t you?!”

  “No, dammit: I haven’t seen that. When? What happened? Was...Dammit! I told you I didn’t read any papers for three years. What girl?”

  “A little red-haired baby. You bastard! You don’t even know, do you?”

  “Vathana! A red-haired...”

  “Cahuom Chhuon,” Chhuon signed the document which stated that he had not been mistreated during his detention, that he, freely and openly submitted his confession of espionage.

  “That’s very good,” Met Ku whispered to the torturer as they watched him. Chhuon sat at a flimsy table, his head hanging, almost resting on the top. “Very good,” Ku repeated. “Have you photographed him with it?”

  “He’s going now.”

  “Good. Met Nang will be pleased.”

  An underling grasped Chhuon by the elbow and pulled him up. The boy was young, plump, uncomfortable in his new job. “Eh,” he said to Chhuon, “you escaped from the mouth of the crocodile. The rest is easy.”

  Chhuon did not look at the boy but instead turned to where Ku and the torturer stood. He glanced at them, turned away, shuffled slowly in the direction the boy pushed. The boy shoved. Still Chhuon shuffled. “When you escape from the crocodile,” he muttered, speaking neither to the underling nor to himself, “you sometimes find yourself in the mouth of the tiger.” Chhuon laughed. The saying was an old Khmer proverb. The boy, Chhuon was sure, did not understand. He repeated it louder. The boy paid no attention. “Are you a Buddhist?” Chhuon asked. Still the boy did not answer. “I am a Buddhist,” Chhuon said. “Do you know your vows? No, eh? I will become enlightened for the sake of...” The boy shoved him harder. He stumbled and fell. “You do know them, don’t you?” Chhuon rose. He felt sorry for the boy. How difficult, Chhuon thought, this is for him. He needs to be so strong and he has so little strength. “...all living things.” Chhuon said the words disconnected from the beginning of the vow.

  Again the boy shoved him. Again he fell. The boy jerked him to his feet. “Shut up...ee...en...enemy. You...” Agitation, fear and confusion showed in the boy’s eyes. “...You...Enemies of the people voluntarily forfeit their humanity.”

  Chhuon was photographed with his hands tied, with a single cotton thread, behind his back. It would have been nothing to break the thread but he had been warned if his thread broke they would poke out an eye of the girl before him. The girl was similarly warned, as was the man after. About the photography hut there was a line of sixty people. Surrounding them were two squads of guards. As Chhuon joined the line of those completed he heard older yotheas in jolly debate. Was it better to put a child before a parent and thus force the parent to watch as they jabbed the child’s eye with a bamboo needle—yes, said a few—or better to put the parent first, trip the child, scream blame at the child as they cut the mother’s or father’s eyeball? Empirically the guards had tested their hypotheses. Best was still debated, though certainly it was good to pair fathers with sons, mothers with daughters; good, too, to separate the members of those pairs with one unpaired enemy of the people. Thus if the unpaired fell and broke his thread causing a wife’s eye to be impaled, the husband could retaliate by tripping, snapping his binding and causing the stabbing of the eye of the person between. How careful the Khmers were of their threads. How they tried to protect one another. How difficult it was to keep their wrists together standing for hours in line while one by one the enemies of the state were photographed. Keeping them docile was this promise: they were so despicable that the state had decided to expel them to Thailand. All they needed to do was follow the path and climb the escarpment without breaking their thread, and they would be allowed to cross into the imperialists’ hell.

  The last picture was taken. The column, five oozing from the left eyeball, began the thread march through the jungle toward the base of the cliff. A careful excitement fluttered in their souls. Expelled to Thailand! “Lord Buddha, keep me from fal
ling, keep the one behind me from falling too.”

  The trail rose slowly as it approached the foundation of the great escarpment, then it forked, veered left, and rose steeply. Quietly, slowly, the damned climbed. From somewhere above came music, then various announcements, then more patriotic songs. Chhuon recognized the trail, the ruse. He recognized the music and voice and knew that in the tree house soldiers were playing Radio Phnom Penh to mask the moaning from the abyss. He knew there would be no Thailand at the top of the climb. But he did not know what to do. His eyesight had continued to weaken in the months of torture and confinement and he felt cheated as he climbed that his insight had not improved. Was it better to yell, to scream, “It’s a trick. They’re going to kill us all,” or was it better to remain quiet and allow his column mates a last hope, a last day before death? If he yelled and they broke and ran surely the soldiers would shoot everyone. If they didn’t break but thought only that he, Chhuon, had cracked, gone mad, then the soldiers would beat him to death and the others would march on as if he’d never been one with them. Each step made the decision more difficult.

  The column closed and opened like an accordion, depending on the difficulty of the climb at the lead. At one close a third of the way up Chhuon stopped, breathed deeply. His old legs were weak, rubbery. He could not fall. He could not break his thread.

  He stared at a boulder beside the trail. The front of the column began to move. His eyes searched the rock. Tell me, old one, he asked the rock spirit, tell me what to do. You are very old, you have been here for a very long time. Tell me, old one. A man lasts but half a century. You have endured a thousand centuries. Your spirit must know. Tell me.

  “Move!” A yothea smacked the small of Chhuon’s back with his rifle butt. Chhuon’s abdomen snapped forward, his head jerked back, his feet stuck in the gravel. As he fell his arms snapped sideways. He forced his hands back, took the force of the fall on his face. Still the thread broke. Immediately three yotheas leaped on him, cussing, kicking, beating him with rifle butts. On his side he curled into a fetal position, his arms over his head. “You’ve blinded her! You son of a bitch, you’ve blinded her!” Again and again they screamed. One jerked his head up forcing him to watch as others clamped a frail and frightened young girl before him.

  “No! Please! No!” A shriek. The girl’s mother from a step above. “Do mine!”

  “You’ve blinded that girl,” a yothea spit, kicked Chhuon’s ribs, held his face up. Chhuon saw another yothea jab the girl’s eye with a bamboo stiletto, jab it just deep enough to collapse the eyeball. The mother leaped on the yotheas and they beat her. Then others grabbed the man who’d been above her and stabbed his eye. Somehow he managed to bear the pain without breaking his thread. The yotheas retied the mother and Chhuon. They allowed the girl to walk holding her face.

  For Nang each day now became a chore, each chore a punishment. Each punishment he feared yet he bore them in silence, bore them, hating them, hating every element, every man, woman and child, yet cloaking hate, self-hate and feat in terms of wonderment and progress, in febrile enthusiasm, in praise of his kang chrops, his child-spies, in glowing reports of progress in the paddies and at the elimination sites. Every tenth day he filed a report for the Center. Every tenth day he boasted of the number of joyful workers toiling his lands, of the number of traitors he’d exposed, of the number of spies and useless elements he’d eliminated for others, of the confessions he’d obtained and the networks he’d exposed. And he bragged. His units were by far the best. His crops the densest, his slaves the most loyal, his zone the purest, his future the brightest. He basked in his righteous vengeance. His chest billowed when he thought of the difficulties he’d overcome, the enemies he’d beaten. But the satisfaction was shallow, fleeting, and in its void was the chore, the fear, and the hate.

  Met Ku found him at home late afternoon on the day Chhuon was photographed. Ku reported the statistics and the two young men along with Met Arn chatted and ate heartily as they discussed the report for the next period. Finally Ku said as he scooped some hot curried rice from the serving dish to his bowl, “You remember that old peasant, the one who did the irrigation drawings?” Nang looked at Ku, then Arn. He shook his head. “The one you took to the border on ambush so he would tell the others and...”

  “Yes.” Nang said it without conviction.

  “He’s confessed,” Ku said. “I brought his file.”

  “Eliminate him,” Nang said. He plucked three thin skewered slices of spiced, smoked meat from a platter.

  “His file’s very interesting. Very complete.” Ku looked at Arn, and Arn nodded confirmation. “Shall I leave it?”

  Nang did not ponder. “Why?”

  “For you to read. It’s a shame to have shown him so much then not let him go back and tell the others. The stories help keep the people in line.”

  “Aahggh!” Nang pulled a bamboo skewer from his mouth. “It only makes them more rebellious. All we do for them, and they are ingrates.” Nang threw the skewer. Harshly he rasped, “All Angkar provides...I hate them. I hate them all. They’ve earned their merit. They’re getting the reward for such evil. Enemies must be utterly crushed. What’s rotten must be excised.” Nang sprang up. “Where’s the file?”

  “It’s with...”

  “Never mind. I can’t read their lies. Their shit. Take me to that evil phnong. I’ll see him.”

  The little dry season was upon the land. Days were intolerably hot and humid, evenings we’re no relief. Not until long after the sun descended, when the ground mist formed, was there some respite. Chhuon lay on his side in a concrete cell amid the rows of low cells atop the ledge of the lower cliff. Each small box held eight to ten people, people crammed onto one another so tightly they took turns inhaling. The air was putrid. A moaning came from the canyon like a wind from the underworld. Radio Phnom Penh, the Voice of Democratic Kampuchea, resounded off cell walls but was not enough to mask the gasping spirits of the chasm which filled the night wind for miles, which reverberated in the canyon like a low guitar string plucked within the sound box, vibrating the ground as if to shake the stones of the cliff loose, threatening an avalanche, tumbling and burying the misery below. All day the sounds had been punctuated with shrieks, screams, pleas, cries and the laughter of the yotheas. “When it’s dark,” Chhuon’s cellmates whispered to one another, “when the Thais can’t see, they’ll send us up the last escarpment. I overheard them. All we have to do is not anger them.” “But what’s the yelling?” “Rape,” Chhuon whispered. No one listened. The old one had been the only one to stumble on the climb. He’d caused them to blind the girl and the man.

  Unseen, the soldiers indeed raped a few women, but the screams came not from that but from their games. Those with one eye blinded were taken for “treatment.” There the right eye was poked, popped. Then they were brought, wrists lashed with wire, to the edge of the cliff. The soldiers spun them three or four times then left them to wander, jeering if they stumbled away from the edge, bashing them if they froze or fell to hug the ground. “Get up! Get up! Run!” One by one they found the edge, fell, bouncing off outcroppings, suffering mutilation and eventual death, landing on those still alive and those dead. Moaning in mass pain.

  At midnight a generator came to life and added its drone to the noises on the ledge. In the darkness house lights glowed, seemingly an entire electrified village. On the ledge yotheas dimly lit the aisles between the cells with small torches.

  “Bring the old one first.” Nang snapped the order and the yothea squad jumped. Nang cursed them for being slow. When Chhuon was brought forth Nang addressed him. “Old Man,” Nang lied, “this evening I read your confession.”

  “Yes,” Chhuon mumbled.

  “Are you sorry for the horrible atrocities you’ve brought upon the Khmer people?”

  Chhuon did not answer. In the darkness and mist he was disoriented. Then he blurted, “What are those lights?”

  “Come closer.” Nang held a h
and out to Chhuon. “You’re too far back to make it out clearly.” Chhuon hesitated. “Come,” Nang urged. “Walk with me. When we’re a little closer your eyes won’t deceive you.” Still Chhuon hesitated. “That’s the way to Thailand, Old Man. You’re being expelled. Remember?”

  “I’ve been here before,” Chhuon said clearly. “Remember? I know the cable over the canyon.”

  “Oh. Ha!” Nang laughed lightly. Gently he took Chhuon’s hand in his right pincer. “Let me explain what you see. And I will walk ahead. When you’re in Thailand don’t speak badly of us. Come.”

  Quietly Chhuon said, “I shall become enlightened...” He too laughed lightly. Nang’s mangled hand was warm and small and it reminded Chhuon of his son’s hand when the boy was six or seven. “...May...may I say good-bye to you?”

  Now Nang hesitated. Not a single victim had ever asked that. “Perhaps you’ll rejoin us when you realize how terrible the imperialists are.”

  “It’s okay. I know. You know I know. Don’t pretend. I had a son who would be your age. Eight years ago he was taken from me in the mountains. Every night I’ve prayed for him. I heard he’d survived. Become part of the resistance. How I wish to live to see him. He was a good boy and I loved him so.” Chhuon began to cry. “When they stole him my heart broke. I only wished to see him once more. To say good-bye. Let me say good-bye to you.”

  Nang did not answer. He walked the old man slowly toward the lights, which appeared to be a village in the distance. Somehow this repulsive creature with his gentle words had caused him to choke up. He cleared his throat. “I wish,” he uttered quietly, “you were not an enemy of Kampuchea. Good-bye.”

  With that Chhuon vanished from sight.

  All night human beings were taken from the cells and told to “walk to the light.” Many screamed as they fell but, as had happened every night since the site had become operational, not one refused to go.