For the Sake of All Living Things Page 6

  “Yes, Papa,” Samnang said. “I should know these things.”

  “Yuk.” Yani broke from her trance. “Why do you want to hear that?”

  “Men should know these things,” Samnang said to his sister. He leaned forward to talk directly to his father. “Why don’t we riot?”

  “There’s been too many arrests, too many exiles, too many teachers have run to the forests. Khmers must talk to Khmers. It’s a national flaw. If we don’t agree, we don’t talk. If we disagree, we are enemies forever.”

  The small truck entered the high plateau north of Lomphat. Chhuon made an ever-increasing number of detours over temporary culverts, around washed-out sections. Then the road split. Chhuon turned onto the lesser road and headed south down the mountains. The grade was steep. He forced the transmission into first gear. He said nothing as the truck descended but prayed silently. After half an hour of curves and drops the road leveled onto the floodplain of the upper Srepok River.

  “Isn’t there a better road?” Yani asked.

  “Always—” Chhuon began.

  A warning burst of rifle fire cracked over them. Samnang jerked. Chhuon scanned left and right. A small plastic lean-to at the road’s edge protected four or five soldiers from the rain. A corporal stood by the road’s edge. Behind his carbine he smiled broadly. The soldiers didn’t even look up. Two rifles lay on the pavement as if abandoned. Not far off the road three smaller huts of plastic had been set up amid a cluster of trees. Women and children, the families of the soldiers, were busy collecting firewood and cooking.

  “Your papers,” the corporal said. Chhuon had never seen him before. He handed the corporal his pass and smiled ambiguously. The soldier studied the form, then said, “From Stung Treng you come this way? Everyone out!” The soldier jerked the door open. Other soldiers surrounded the truck. One jumped into the bed and threw the pigs off. Hanging by their tethers they kicked and squealed. Another soldier ripped the tarpaulin back. Mayana clutched at her father. Samnang froze, unable to move.

  “Hey,” Chhuon said. “Brothers, my papers are in order. I’m to make two deliveries.” A soldier stabbed his bayonet into one of the rice sacks. “Stop. What do you look for?”

  “Silence!” the corporal yelled.

  Chhuon pulled a wad of counterfeit riels from his pocket. He peeled off ten fifty-riel notes and shoved them at the corporal who quickly stuffed them into his own pocket. “As you know, Brother”—the corporal’s manner softened and he again smiled—“this is a toll road.” To his squad he yelled, “Cover that rice. Pick up the pigs.” Then to Chhuon, “Have the children get back in. There’s no reason for them to get wet. The charge for road use is five hundred riels.”

  “Five hundred?!” Chhuon feigned shock.

  “Bandits raided the road,” the corporal said. “If it’s to remain open, eh? we must collect a road tax. Otherwise”—he shrugged—“there’ll be no money for protection. Then you would be robbed.”

  Again Chhuon removed a wad of riels. This time the soldier placed the bills on a clipboard. Don’t, Chhuon ordered himself, look at the money. He turned, looked beyond the road at the plastic huts. “This must be a very hard job,” he said.

  From the corner of his eye he could see the corporal studying the notes. “Eh...” the man groaned, “yes. You may go.”

  “A very tough and very important job, Brother,” Chhuon said.

  Samnang was shaken. His respect for his father increased. Why, he trembled inwardly, do I freeze? He felt humiliated. He might just as well have broken down and cried or screamed like a girl—like the girl Khieng and Heng said he really should have been. In the truck he was silent, sullen.

  “It’s okay,” Chhuon said to them. “It’s okay now. In a few minutes we’ll see the tall building of Lomphat. It’s okay to be scared. I was scared myself.”

  “Father,” Yani cried. Tears were in her eyes and on her cheeks. “You’re so brave.”

  Chhuon hugged his daughter. Brave, he thought. Stupid maybe. I shouldn’t have them with me.

  It was one in the afternoon when Chhuon pulled the heavily laden truck into Lomphat. The town was different from primarily Khmer Stung Treng. Its ethnic makeup was a mix of Khmer and Cham plus a number of minorities, including a substantial Viet Namese district, a small Chinese business district and Lao, Brao, Rhade, Jarai and Mnong sectors. The short main boulevard through town was dotted with cafes and dance halls and there was a provincial government office building. On a rise south of the main road was the governor’s villa. “Can we stop?” Yani asked.

  “For a minute,” Chhuon answered.

  “Buy me a cola?”

  “Yani,” Chhuon warned, “Mister Keng will be insulted if we don’t eat with him.” Chhuon parked before a small cafe. “Be quick,” he said.

  Behind the counter a thin woman bent over a crude sink. She did not look up, did not really notice Chhuon or the children. In Viet Namese she asked for their order.

  “Three colas, please,” Chhuon said in Khmer. The woman straightened, gave them the bottles, took a counterfeit note and gave change without saying a word.

  Mister Keng bowed with his hands touching before his very round and very large head. He greeted Chhuon with a farm idiom which would translate literally as “Have you had rice today?” but in essence meant “Good afternoon.”

  “Mister Keng,” Chhuon returned his client’s greeting with a gracious lei. Samnang and Mayana also bowed. Keng Sambath ushered them into the central room of his small home. Immediately a servant brought the men a hot curry lunch. Keng’s wife, to Samnang’s umbrage, pushed him and Yani out the door and to a small lean-to kitchen at the side of the house. There they ate a simpler lunch, and each was treated to a single sweet rice cake.

  Inside, the men’s speech was animated. This was a happy occasion, good friends meeting after not having seen one another for some time. They spoke of irrigation problems and new rice, of how, where and when to plant the new seed, how much seed they would plant directly in the paddy, how much they would germinate and replant. And they asked after each other’s family. Then Mister Keng asked about the explosions in Stung Treng.

  Outside, Samnang could hear the early talk, but then it quieted. The men finished, sipped tea and nibbled on watermelon seeds. Samnang fidgeted. He wanted to hear. For a long time he had been curious about his father’s business and with what he’d overheard earlier, his insides were tense. “Ssshh!” He hissed at his sister each time she spoke.

  Chhuon had become contemplative. Prince Sihanouk’s own intelligence reports indicated that the Viet Namese, soldiers and civilians, were becoming increasingly hostile to the Khmer people and governmental authorities in the border provinces. Because Chhuon thought Sambath held similar beliefs to his own he ventured, “Some say Samdech Euv is selling out to the yuons.”

  “The North Viet Namese,” Mister Keng countered hard and loud before his wife and servants, “and the Viet Minh treat us with more respect than our Royal troops. It’s rightist factions that cause this evil. If Samdech Euv listened to someone other than that fascist colonel, the army wouldn’t treat us so.”

  Chhuon, with a most enigmatic smile, answered, “If I may broach this subject, Mister Keng, may I ask, from whom do you receive your largest cash sums?”

  For a split second Mister Keng’s face showed shock, then he too smiled. “I sell my rice to those who wish to purchase it,” he said.

  “Dear Honorable Sir,” Chhuon addressed his host in the most formal fashion, “I would not ask you this if it were not for a problem I have had. Please, Brother, I do not question your honesty for one second, but please...” Chhuon removed from his briefcase an envelope containing the order from their last transaction plus 400 fifty-riel notes. He spoke very softly as he fanned the notes and pointed to the defect. “Someone, Dear Brother, has paid you in counterfeit riels. These are the notes you paid with last.”

  Outside, Samnang heard none of the quiet talk. Suddenly Mister Keng’s vo
ice blurted loudly, “There is a problem developing with an insect I’ve never seen before. Come to the paddy. Examine the new plants.”

  Alone the two men walked the dikes to the far corner of one field where a small area had been sectioned off by a temporary low, narrow dike. “Mister Cahuom,” Keng Sambath began. He spoke very differently in the field than he had in the house. “I love my country very much. I love Samdech Euv. He’s a gentle king. I don’t know how to say this. One must be discreet, eh? Our problems are serious. I’ve no choice. I sell to the Viet Minh. They pay world market prices instead of the low rate set by the government. At first they bought only a little and I was happy to receive such a price. Then they asked to buy more. Still they paid a fair price. Last year they purchased half of what I produce. I told them they ate too much. I needed to sell more to state merchants. They told me they would need even more this year. And they told me...they told me how much I must produce. The Viet Minh say each hectare must produce one-point-two tons. They say I will harvest twenty-one tons. They say five tons will keep the government happy.

  “Dear Chhuon, I don’t wish to deprive the Prince or my country of profit it should make from exporting rice but I have no alternative. You know better than anyone, I don’t reap one-point-two tons on every hectare. My yield’s seventeen, maybe eighteen tons. Now you tell me they pay with fake money. It used to be so easy to live. I’ve always believed the rice yields were good because Samdech Euv had accumulated much merit. The Viet Minh say the Prince is surrounded by evil. By men who won’t protect us but still collect taxes. I’ve heard say the Prince hoards gold and has many women. I don’t believe it. When it’s time for war, I’ll stand with my king against all invaders. But why doesn’t the government help us?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE COMMUNISTS HAVE DEVELOPED a new kind of aggression in which one country sponsors internal war within another. Communist-sponsored internal war is clearly international aggression, but a form of aggression that frequently eludes the traditional definitions of international law. It means the use of native and imported guerrillas to serve the interests of Communist nations.

  —From the Foreword

  by Roger Hilsman to

  People’s War: People’s Army

  by Vo Nguyen Giap

  AGAIN THEY WERE STOPPED. From Lomphat they had traveled north and northeast, back onto the plateau, across flat, barren, crumbling red ledge, then into dense double-canopy mountain forest. This time the troops were neither motley, undisciplined nor rough. Chhuon got out. Samnang sank low in his seat, torn between curiosity and fear. Yani knelt and spied through the rear window. The officer seemed gracious. Yani nudged her brother and both children poked their heads up.

  Quietly the soldier accepted the papers Chhuon presented. He asked for a donation. Chhuon handed him ten fifty-riel notes. The man flipped the notes over. “You are much generous,” he said in broken Khmer. “Allow me give back you donation. No we need for hard work money. You donate rice.”

  As his father pulled back the tarpaulin Samnang winced. Four laborers came. “Our kind friend has offered us two sacks of rice,” the officer said in Viet Namese. “Help him.” Two men hefted each sack.

  Samnang wanted to jump out, yell, kick the soldier. He wanted his father to take the rifle. “They can’t do that,” he stammered to Yani. Then he slapped a hand against the seat. The officer started, spun, glared at him. The boy withered under his eyes.

  When the small truck was again under way Samnang blurted angrily, “Damn them. Damn them all.”

  “It’s not proper,” Chhuon said, controlling his own irritation, “for one to show anger. It only makes others angry.”

  “But...”

  “It’s difficult, but it’s something one must do.”

  Samnang had heard the admonition many times. To his eleven-year-old mind he understood it to mean, not control one’s anger, but don’t get angry. He repressed his anger, denied the emotions, pouted. Since early morning they had been on highways and back roads of northeastern Cambodia, passing through two major cities and by many villages, hamlets and isolated farms. Samnang had begun to see his country as a patchwork of different peoples, like contiguous rice fields separated by dikes and canals, forests and rivers. He saw them struggling, some prospering, some withering. It confused him and this too he repressed. With all that had happened in the past few days he felt like a powder keg.

  If going to Lomphat was like stepping back in time, going to Plei Srepok was a leap into time suspended, into an Iron Age tinged with technological sophistication. Cahuom Chhuon maneuvered the small truck up the last rutted incline. He watched the beautiful country of high mountains and deep valleys unfold under lightening monsoon clouds. By midafternoon the sun had broken through and was glistening in the wet canopy. Chhuon unwrapped his checked krama from his neck. He wiped his shaved head. They drove southwest into a jungled thicket, then arced west and northwest into the mouth of a tapering canyon created by mountainous fingers descending from a high peak. Four kilometers west a main branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail intersected Highway 19 near Ba Kev.

  “Yani,” Chhuon said, “this is a very different place.”

  “Boy! I’ll say,” Samnang said.

  Chhuon glanced at him, noticed him rocking in the seat, smiling. He’d accompanied his father to this and other Mountaineer villages numerous times. “Yani,” Chhuon said, “to speak another language is to enter a different world. Words influence thoughts. The Mountaineers not only dress differently, they think differently. Some Khmers call them phnongs, just as yuons call them mois. They are our friends. My friends. I expect them to be treated with the very highest respect.”

  “I know...” Mayana began.

  “Forty, fifty years ago,” Chhuon said, “many of the tribes degenerated and acquiesced to the fate forced on them by lowland majorities and colonial powers. For them life stopped. They sat in their longhouses, smoked their pipes, drank from the jars. Then came the resurgence. They’re good-hearted people. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t understand. They’ll never allow harm to come to you.”

  “But Papa,” Mayana protested, “I know. You’ve told us their stories. Doesn’t Mister Y Ksar have a daughter my age? And don’t most of them speak Khmer? I bet I could talk to her even if she doesn’t.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Samnang snapped nastily.

  Chhuon ignored his behavior. To Mayana he said, “I bet you could. Mister Y Ksar is very old. His son Chung married into the Draam clan and lives with his wife’s family. Chung and Draam Mul have a daughter, oh, a little older than you. About Samay’s age. Maybe thirteen.”

  “Y Bhur’s my age,” Samnang said. “He showed me how to fire a crossbow.”

  The dense vegetation opened abruptly onto a vacant dry-rice field. Without the trees they could see the breadth of the valley, perhaps three hundred meters. Ahead, the road reentered the jungle. Above the canopy they could see the cliff which terminated the canyon and the mountain rising into broken clouds. They crossed a log bridge surfaced with woven bamboo mats. Beneath them the waters of the O Kamang Chong, the canyon stream, were dark. At first Samnang thought the stream still, then he noticed a single piece of grass moving quickly with the glimmering surface. Chhuon’s eyes darted everywhere. The emptiness caused eerie chills to rise up his back. Again the trees closed, the trail remained level, the ridges rose. Light filtered through the foliage. Chhuon felt as if he were driving directly into the mountain. Not a breath of wind stirred.

  Suddenly the revving whine of small motors surrounded them. Yani snapped about. Three gray Honda 90 motorcycles, each with two warriors, appeared. Chhuon laughed. “By the way children,” he said, “remember, here men think, eh? Women work.” Chhuon laughed happily. He waved his krama out the window at the riding soldiers. “Hello,” he clucked in Jarai.

  Immediately there were two heavy thunks at the bed of the truck. Mayana popped to her knees. A chestnut-colored man dressed only in loincloth
and open vest flashed a gigantic filed-toothed grin at her. “Oh!” She gasped.

  “Hello,” Samnang clucked out his window.

  The small truck entered another clearing, now carrying four soldiers, two in the bed plus one on each front fender. Mayana tried to see everything at once. Chhuon drove across another log bridge and up to a gate in a high bamboo picket fence. The escort motorcycles raced ahead as Chhuon chatted briefly in Jarai with the gate guard. High thatched roofs could be seen over the treetops of a mango grove.

  “If I believe,” Chhuon said to the children as he drove into Plei Srepok, “that one should speak Khmer in Stung Treng because it’s our country, then mustn’t I attempt to speak Jarai on Jarai land?”

  Samnang ignored the question. In an excited voice he said, “I hope Y Bhur’ll let me shoot his bow again.”

  The village before them consisted of eleven longhouses in four parallel tiers rising up the east hillside which had been notched like the notched logs that served as stairs into the homes themselves. The houses, sitting on four-foot-high stilt platforms, varied from fifty to as much as 120 feet long, though in other dimensions they varied little—width twenty feet, walls three feet, and immense thatched roofs like A-frames without windows beginning from below the height of the short walls and rising twelve to fifteen feet to cover the ridgepoles. Between and under the houses children played and bare-breasted women coated with sweat pounded grain, wove cloth or split wood. Samnang tried not to stare at the women, tried not to let his father see him staring. Older men in loincloths sat in the shade of small ritual verandas talking and smoking crooked pipes. Young men clad in Western-style shirts or partial military uniforms busied themselves with their motorcycles or rifles. The smell of cows mixed with the strong aroma of cinnamon.

  Chhuon pulled the truck up to Y Ksar’s longhouse. Chickens scattered, runt pigs squealed. “Eh! Look! Look at that!” Before them, across from a large vegetable garden, was a structure of a type Chhuon had never seen in a mountain village. Samnang looked about furtively, hoping to see Sraang, Y Bhur’s older sister, hoping, she, like the old women, would be clad in only a black sarong skirt.