For the Sake of All Living Things Read online

  “Nephew,” Cheam grunted politely. Immediately he became stern. “I must speak with your father.” The boy’s face fell, became expressionless. To Chhuon, Cheam said, “Mister Pech Lim Song is here. We’ve much to discuss. But first...” Cheam stopped. He looked at Samnang and Mayana. “Children, go see your aunt. There’s noodle soup for this cold morning. Younger Brother, come with me.”

  Samnang and Yani followed the stone path along the side of the warehouse. At the back of the building there was a modern wood and brick home with a tile roof and a porch overlooking the paddies which dropped west to the Mekong. Samnang led his sister to the house but he stopped, let her go to the stairs alone. “Come, come, little niece,” their aunt called, seeing Mayana on the steps. “Have they started talking politics? That’s all they talk anymore.”

  At the front of the warehouse Chhuon held his older brother’s sleeve. “I know,” Chhuon said. “Mister Pech can provide the very best rice for the wedding days. That’s all the more reason I must supply the most beautiful—the whitest ever seen in Cambodia. Good rice is so hard to find.”

  “Uhm!” Cheam shook his head. “You worry too much. It’s my honor to provide the rice for Vathana’s wedding. We trade in rice. Don’t you think we have connections?”

  “You. Not me. I thank you deeply. This marriage is so important. Mr. Pech’s second son will be my son-in-law. My daughter his daughter. The Wheel of Life...”

  “Not the Wheel of Life.” Cheam laughed brashly. “The Wheel of Commerce. Vathana will be the daughter of our chief supplier.”

  “You’ve arranged a fine union,” Chhuon said sincerely. “Again, thank you. Vathana asked, would it be possible to purchase a large portrait of Samdech Euv.”

  “Uhm.” Cheam grunted again. “I’ll bring one as my wedding gift.” Chhuon released his brother’s sleeve, stepped toward the outer door to the office. But now Cheam held him. “Did they stop you again?” Cheam asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred riels. Each time they ask for more. Last night I had a terrible dream. I dreamt the ancient dream of all Cambodia. We were being forced to choose between being eaten by tigers, devoured by crocodiles, or trampled by elephants.”

  “Ooh! You and your dreams! Younger Brother, you have dreams because you listen to old ladies. All the dream is is a folktale. Next you’ll tell me you’re going to the khrou. Better you should study finance.”

  Samnang returned to the warehouse and entered through a small back door. Quietly he walked the length of the large dark room, running a hand along the racks on one wall where rice sacks were stacked to the roof. His eyes skimmed the bins on the opposite wall full of ebony, mahogany, rosewood and teak blocks for statues. Outside the office he peered into the small rack for experimental rice seed. He could hear his uncle’s voice. Then Mister Pech’s. The men spoke of rice, fertilizer, hardwoods and breeding stock. Samnang listened but the words didn’t interest him. He ran his hands over the cold metal of a gas-powered forklift truck parked in the center of the floor. He wanted to sit in the seat but was afraid to without permission.

  Mister Pech’s voice came strong into the warehouse. “He’s a proper son,” the older man said. “A little lost right now, like all the university boys, eh?” Chhuon answered but Samnang couldn’t hear the words. Mister Pech continued. “He’ll come around. He’ll be a good husband. He comes from good stock, eh?” The men laughed loudly and Samnang laughed quietly.

  Then Samnang heard his uncle say, “Who’s printing these?”

  Cheam’s voice was so harsh, so uncharacteristic of Khmer society, in which overt expressions of hostility are considered reprehensible, that Samnang twitched. The boy crept forward to peek into the room. Cheam held a handful of fifty-riel notes. “This is what you brought.”

  Samnang squatted by a pallet of sacks they would later take to Lomphat and Plei Srepok. He listened quietly.

  “There’s a problem, Older Brother?”

  “These are fake.” Cheam did not disguise his disgust.

  “Fake?!” Chhuon responded.

  “Counterfeit!” Cheam shouted. “The bank won’t take them. Even street vendors recognize them and refuse to accept. These are the notes you brought last trip.”

  “I received money from Mister Keng and Y Ksar. They’re honorable...”

  Cheam scowled. “Y Ksar’s too stupid to counterfeit.”

  “Mister Keng’s a farmer,” Chhuon defended him. “He wouldn’t print fake money.”

  Cheam turned from his brother. “But who? All the money you brought last time...all of it is the same. It’s worthless. Where do they get it?”

  “I don’t know,” Chhuon said.

  “Ask. Today, you ask. Look at these. See here, this is how you tell if they’re fake. Corruption—everywhere!” Cheam slapped a stack of notes into his palm. “Bribery—everywhere! This”—his voice sank to conspirator level—“is what we’ll do.” Samnang strained to hear. Before he could decipher the words, Cheam exploded again. “I can’t even send out a damn empty truck without paying hoodlums.”

  Chhuon hung his head, did not answer. In Khmer culture for a man to contradict another of equal or higher station caused both terrible humiliation. Yet his brother’s tone disgraced him before Mister Pech. He sat quietly. Chhuon believed both Cheam’s and Mister Pech’s authority came to them as divine incarnation, that their rank reflected how much merit they’d earned in earlier lives. The first belief was a vestige of the Hindu base of Khmer society, the latter came from Buddhism’s emphasis on personal salvation through the earning of merit. Both led Chhuon, at times, to extreme obedience.

  In the shadows of the warehouse Samnang suffered his father’s weakness. He recalled once overhearing his mother explaining his uncle’s behavior, “It’s because he has no children.” Samnang didn’t care. He wanted to storm the office, attack his uncle, tell his father to stand up.

  “La sale guerre,” Mister Pech Lim Song said in French. “It is this dirty war that causes you these problems.” He spoke in a way which absolved Chhuon of his brother’s charge and yet did not offend Cheam. “I think it’s the Prince’s fault,” Mister Pech continued in French. “His love for power keeps him from stopping corruption. He’s bound to our feudal heritage. He’ll never carry out the reforms needed to unify our country, to keep it safe from Viet Namese hegemony.” Cheam also spoke in French. “Khmers are warriors,” he said with passion. “Always we’ve fought for our people, for freedom and independence.”

  “Fighting is none of our business,” Chhuon said in Khmer. In his home, with his family, Chhuon’s speech was refined, lyrical Khmer full of sound redundancies, alliterations and rhymes. In business, he changed to a more technically based Khmer with a smattering of French. He was fluent in that language, used it liberally with officials in Stung Treng and Lomphat, but he detested it because it was non-Khmer. “Leave war to the politicians. It does nothing but serve the Prince of Death.”

  “Don’t be fooled, Brothers.” Mister Pech switched back to Khmer. “This is not something to ignore. It’s there whether we wish to see it or not.”

  “The country’s a mess,” Samnang heard Cheam say. “Mister Pech was telling me what he’s discovered about the attacks in Ratanakiri.” Now Cheam began to rant. “It’s not enough to nationalize imports and exports, to nationalize the internal distribution of goods...but we’re paid in counterfeit notes. And now this!”

  “Now what?” Chhuon began.

  “Corruption and foreigners,” Cheam blurted. “The Chinese control business, the Viet Namese labor. I won’t abandon commerce to the Chinese and I won’t hire a Viet Namese. They work hard but I don’t trust them. They work until they’re in just the right position, then, bam, they take over. Ingrates. There, Brother, are your crocodiles.”

  “The country is a mess,” Mister Pech repeated. “What the Royal Army did in Battambang Province last year...you know of the murders.”

  “I’ve
heard rumors,” Chhuon responded.

  “Riots in seventeen of nineteen provinces,” Mr. Pech continued. “Thirty thousand Royal troops internally yet no one to protect the borders. And this in the highlands.”

  “What in the—” Chhuon began again but Cheam interrupted him.

  “He thinks he can push everyone around.” There was anger in Cheam’s voice. “Brothers, we must respect the rights of all Cambodians, Khmer or not. The Holy One says that, eh? Tribal people are people, eh? If Samdech Euv wants to build a rubber plantation on their land...”

  “Is that what you were telling?” Chhuon asked.

  “I have a friend, Colonel Chlay,” Mister Pech said. “He tells me for two years his officers in Lomphat and Senmonorom have reported exact Yuon locations, exact units, exact strengths. The Prince has done nothing. Worse. He cut ties with America to earn respect from Hanoi and Peking. Now, who knows? Maybe he changes again. But he lets the yuons have the province, and he kills Mountaineers.”

  “The attack at Veunsai, eh?” Chhuon said.

  “I can no longer support the Prince.” Samnang heard his uncle’s vehement whisper.

  “It came one week before the North Viet Namese launched their New Year’s offensive against the South,” Mister Pech said. “The yuons haven’t tolerated Royal troops in those mountains for a year. Now, now?! I have heard”—Mister Pech hesitated—“the troop movement was a guise. My friend tells me it masked Viet Namese staging for their attacks on Pleiku and Kontum.”

  “He would not do that,” Chhuon said.

  “How can I support him?” Mister Pech said. “His troops supported the Communist offensive. He was a party to their Tet!”

  “ssshh!” Cheam said. “Mister Pech! The walls have ears.”

  Chhuon drove south on Highway 13. The road climbed quickly out of the floodplain, away from the rice fields, into the forest. On the uphill stretches Chhuon dropped to second gear so the small truck could pull its load. Under a tarpaulin in the bed of the truck were the dozen forty-kilogram sacks of rice and four sacks of fertilizer which Samnang had squatted beside as he listened to his father, uncle and Mister Pech. In a separate plastic bag were two ten-kilo sacks of experimental seed. On top of the load two small black breeding pigs were being soaked by driving rain.

  Chhuon leaned forward, wiped the windshield with a cloth. The moisture and smoke residue smeared. He wiped harder. “Damn,” he muttered in French. “Maybe one more trip before the rain makes the roads impassable.”

  “Papa,” Samnang said in Khmer, “why do all educated Cambodians speak French?”

  “Hum?” Chhuon said. He squinted, trying to see the familiar landmarks which would tell him he was nearing the junction with Highway 19.

  “France is eleven thousand kilometers away,” Samnang said.

  “Yes,” Chhuon said. They were approaching the turnoff. Mayana squirmed restlessly in the seat beside him. “Yes,” he repeated. “France is far away. It would be better to learn Jarai, Rhade or Mnong, but the educated look down on the mountain peoples.”

  “I can speak Jarai,” Samnang said.

  “You cannot,” Mayana challenged him.

  “Can too,” the boy shot back.

  They spoke intermittently. Chhuon again was gentle with the truck. On downhills where the wet brakes had diminished effect he slowed to a crawl and let the engine control the speed. As he drove he thought, How can I ask Mister Keng about these notes? What will I do if the soldiers recognize them? I should have seen the khrou. With such a dream how could I travel? Mayana and Samnang began playing a hand-slapping game and Chhuon felt relieved he didn’t have to entertain them.

  Highway 19 ran east over a small set of hills, then turned north and descended into the valley of the Srepok River. As they emerged from the forest Chhuon kept the truck in second gear, then shifted into third as the road leveled and the forest gave way to more paddies. They passed several poor hamlets where peasant families tilled their half-hectare plots, raising rice and vegetables. Too poor to afford fertilizer, they jealously reserved their own excrement, a source of nitrogen, for the family garden.

  They approached the river. Chhuon again said a prayer to the water spirit. Then spontaneously he said, “He who controls the water, controls life. Rivers flow like life flows, like ancestry, like rice in its rhythmic reproduction. In my great-greatgrandfather’s time,” he continued, “Cambodia covered all the Ca Mau Peninsula to north of Saigon. Saigon was Prey Nokor, ‘the Forest Home.’ Cambodia covered the Bolovens Plateau of Laos all the way to Luang Prabang. Even much of Thailand. All because we controlled the water.”

  “What happened?” Samnang asked.

  “Yuons, Thais, they invaded. They destroyed the irrigation because they were jealous.” Chhuon’s tone was didactic, without anger.

  “What happened to your great-great-grandfather?” Yani asked.

  “My father told many stories of the ancestors,” Chhuon said. “He said yuons killed him. And my grandfather. But my Uncle Choeu says no. He once showed me on the tablets that great-great-Grandpa lived eighty years. Choeu said Grandfather was killed by the French.”

  “The French?” Yani asked.

  “During the uprising of 1885. They were fighting to keep all the fields in the name of the king because in those times everyone worked the land and kept most of their rice. They didn’t worry about someone taking their fields. The French thought that was barbaric and insisted all land was private property. That’s when farmers began to lose the land.”

  “Yuons killed your great-great-grandfather?” Samnang said.

  “I don’t know,” Chhuon repeated.

  “If yuons killed him, I shall hate them forever,” Samnang blurted.

  Chhuon was aghast. Sternly he said, “One must exorcise traditional hatreds. We must tolerate all people who live beside us.”

  The conversation stopped. Samnang tensed. Hadn’t he just overheard Mister Pech describe the treachery of the Viet Namese?

  Chhuon drove on. He did not know how to handle his son’s animosity. Highway 19 consisted of long stretches of uninhabited dirt and gravel ridge with deep shoulder gullies to carry away the heavy rains. “At one time”—Chhuon began a story he felt would ease their talk—“rice grew wild. It had very large, very white grains and it had the fragrance of cow’s milk. A single grain would fill a hungry man. Men were good. Then they became selfish. They learned to lie, to steal and to possess. The rice grain deteriorated. The aroma faded. Now rice alone cannot sustain.”

  “Will we get the good kind for Vathana’s wedding?” Yani asked.

  “We’ll get the most beautiful that grows,” Chhuon answered.

  “Father,” Yani’s little-girl voice giggled, “is Vathana the prettiest girl in Cambodia?”

  “To me”—Chhuon smiled—“my daughters and their mother are the prettiest girls in all the world. But it’s their compassion that’s important.”

  “But Vathana really is the prettiest, isn’t she?” Yani persisted. “When all Teck’s uncles and aunts came to our house, and his parents, I loved them right away. They’re so gentle. I wish, when I’m eighteen, a kind and handsome man is found for me.”

  “We’ve some time before we concern ourselves with that,” Chhuon laughed.

  “Shouldn’t Mister Pech work for you?” Yani asked. She then announced, “When I get engaged, my betrothed shall work for you for a year.”

  “Little Yani”—her voice warmed Chhuon—“that custom has lost favor. Except amongst some farmers.”

  “Will they live with us?”

  “No. They’ll live in Neak Luong. Pech Chieu Teck is in business there with his father. They’re a good family. This will be the most spectacular marriage. Through their children we’ll be linked to all generations, for all generations.”

  Again they rode in silence. The land dipped and the forest gave way to uncultivated marshland or to small rice or sweet potato farms. Under the low monsoon clouds and heavy rain the land appeared u
npopulated. “The Holy One,” Chhuon broke the silence, “has taught the responsibility of each man to do good works.”

  Samnang had been slowly seething since his father’s call for toleration. “But,” he said dryly, “Buddha also fought dishonesty and deceit. He fought against privileges of one class over another.”

  “Man is born,” Chhuon said. “He lives, grows old, dies. Buddha teaches that man is then reborn to live again. The cycle continues. Life means suffering...” Samnang clenched his teeth. He hummed to himself. “If one is to alleviate suffering, one must renounce evil and pursue good. Only through good conduct can a man ease his burden; only through good deeds can one lighten his karma until he has no karma at all. Then he will enter the state of nirvana where there is no physical existence.

  “Keep the right thoughts,” Chhuon continued. “Anger produces anger. Gentleness produces gentleness. Aggression produces aggression. Generosity produces generosity.”

  “Papa...” Samnang’s voice was cold. “Why do you support Samdech Euv though he allows yuons to run rampant over our country? Though he allows corruption and lets the army attack farmers?”

  “Who told you...? You were in the warehouse, eh?”

  “Yes, Father.” The boy pressed. “What did Mister Pech say happened in Battambang? I heard him on Ratanakiri.”

  Chhuon hesitated. He glanced at his son and daughter. He wanted to say to Samnang, I can’t tell you before Mayana, but he was sure the boy would take it as another shun. For a minute he was silent. Then he told them what he’d heard of Samlaut and the riots. Then he said, “If it weren’t for Mister Pech and Uncle Cheam we’d never know. The Prince tries to protect us by keeping these things hidden. Just as I try to protect you.”

  Chhuon stopped. He looked at his children. Mayana’s mouth was open, Samnang’s eyes glared. “Is this what you want to hear?”