For the Sake of All Living Things (77 page)

For an hour Sar lambasted the traitorous Phnom Penh arch-antipeople fascists: Lon Nol, Sirik Matak, Son Ngoc Thanh, In Tam, Cheng Heng, Sosthens Fernandez and all others whose names and titles flowed from his cunning mind to his tongue. In a sweet voice he explained the failings of Norodom Sihanouk and the gang of exiled leaders in Peking. He noted that their sins were caused not by malicious hearts but by stupidity and incompetence. He added that although this was a family matter to be kept within Kampuchea, those sins, for whatever reason, were committed and the people had suffered horribly from the commitment.

Then Sar stopped. A mangled hand caught his eye. “We shall develop into a society where the great majority of the working class is served by all,” he said. His eyes jumped to a disfigured face. “As in China, we too shall give the people five guarantees: enough food, enough clothing, enough firewood, an honorable funeral, and education for the children.” Nang shifted. He lay his mangled right hand on his clean black trousers. Sar’s voice roughened. “For this,” he said—his eyes would not leave Nang’s features—“we must rely solely upon ourselves. Never again can we ally ourselves with tigers who are black on one side, white on the other. Kampuchea for Kampucheans.”

Four hours later Nang stood alone with Met-Sar. “You’ve sacrificed greatly for Angkar.” Sar struggled to keep his eyes from Nang’s face and hand.

“I am...” Nang began. Suddenly, before Sar he felt powerless, felt as if he’d been reduced to a robot. “...the sacrifice.”

“Angkar recognizes your sacrifice.” Sar’s voice was flat. “You’re to receive special privileges.”

“I ask nothing,” Nang responded.

Sar reached forward. He grabbed the boy gently by both upper arms. “This must be kept absolutely secret,” he whispered.

“Never has a secret seeped from my lips,” Nang answered.

Sar raised Nang’s right hand and stared at the jumbled, scarred mass. In his mind the repulsive paw reduced the yothea’s worth. Nang suspected the older man’s thought. He sees an invalid, Nang thought. An ugly pathetic cripple to be used and discarded.

“Struggle,” Sar hissed. “Struggle hard, Nang. Nothing is impossible. Let your will drive ten cadre. Let theirs drive ten leaders. Let the leaders’ drive ten squads and the squads’ drive ten cells. In that way your will multiplies and the revolution expands.”

“It is the Will of Angkar?”

“Yes. Each Khmer shall kill thirty Viets before he dies. You must drive them. Some will kill less. You must kill more to make up for them.”

“It is the Will of Angkar!”

“In this way we will regain our lands and liquidate our enemies. Indochina shall have no Viet Nam. Six million Khmers will rule.”

“I am desire not contrary to duty,” Nang answered. Inside he tensed at his own answer. As much as he loved Sar he did not like the near-magical control that Sar had over him.

“Very good. Tomorrow you shall be brought before the Center.”

Nang had not had, perhaps, never would have, an adolescence. He had the School of the Cruel. He had yothea training. Cadre training. Ever-growing combat experience. Beneath the hundred layers of barbarity still lay a small boy who had never grown up, who perhaps would never grow up, who would react to every confrontation, no matter how slight, with survival-mode behavior learned at eleven and twelve years of age, react because the very core beneath the cold layers was as insecure and fearful as a child in nightmare, was, since the scalding of his face and the cleaving of his fingers, further frightened for its own biological integrity. At fifteen Nang was, as Sar fully recognized, a perfect candidate for provisional membership. Along with Met Rin of Svay Rieng, Met Nu, head of the quickly expanding
neary
force, and four others, Nang was tapped for membership because he was controllable, predictable, capable of great violence without visible remorse. Sar knew the awarding of provisional status would whet Nang’s appetite and further cement Nang’s loyalty to him. Too, it would encourage others to struggle. Giving the new status to Nang was like improving the guidance system of a sophisticated weapons system. Despite his human core, Nang had reached a new automaton level—an ideologically preprogrammed intelligence capable of learning, capable of the most complex reasoning, yet still an ideopathic robotoid. Like every weapon system, inside, at the core, lay a flaw, a vulnerability, a weakness. In Nang, it was the fear, the nightmarish insecurity of preadolescence, that made him both capable of being controlled and susceptible to losing control. As older boys were shaped for the brotherhood Nang remained aloof, alone, loyal to Met Sar’s ideology; ever climbing, ever grabbing for more influence, more power, more something to sate the insatiable, to fill a void of the past that could have been filled only in the past and thus would always remain hungry and grabbing. And to it would come new confusions, new inner contradictions.

“Come Nang.” They had met, as Met Nu had suggested at the end of the general meeting, at dusk at the back door of the now vacant warehouse. For half an hour, Nang had wandered the streets of Stung Treng. There were no cars, no
samlos
, few carts or trucks. Where market women once had cackled behind stalls heaped with produce, fish, tobacco and common wares, there were only the wooden skeletons of stalls. Where boys and girls had lingered before dancehalls, there was no one. Where students had wandered aimlessly listening to their transistor radios there was a jeep with a tape recorder and an amplifier blaring a recent speech by Norodom Sihanouk out to the sampan village which still clung to the south bank of the Srepok. “...join with all Khmer Patriots to oust...” Distant small-arms fire north of the confluence had interrupted Nang’s concentration.

“Come Nang,” Met Nu said again. She was as tall as he, as heavy as he. Only in her midtwenties, Met Nu was the commander of the
neary
force, an all-girl-woman brigade of the Krahom. Nu’s skin, deep brown from years in the jungle, was lined and cracked but her vibrance made up for what she lacked in personal care, youth, natural beauty.

What’s happened to the city? Nang thought but he did not speak. A slow, steady, hot dry wind was being sucked from the mountains toward the vast central plains. In it city dust swirled. The city had fallen to the NVA/KVM without much of a fight and again to the Krahom without battle. Few of the two- and three-story structures showed signs of war. Stung Treng had not been bombed. Nothing was reduced to rubble. Still the city’s countenance was one of war weariness and depletion.

“Come back into the warehouse with me.” Nu smiled pleasantly. “I want to show you something.” Then harshly she cursed, “Did you hear that fucking demagogue say all that crap about Khmer Patriots? Someday I’ll have him under my guns.”

“Oh,” Nang said as they entered the darkened cavern, “the broadcast...I don’t listen to him anymore.”

Again Nu’s voice was sweet. “Come Nang,” she said. “Come here next to me.” She stood with him close, face to face. “I like you. Do you know that?”

“I owe you my life,” Nang said, thinking of the unnamed hamlet south of Phum Chamkar where, by holding her skirt, he’d pretended to use her as a hostage and thus kept the Khmer Viet Minh agents at bay. Her closeness made him uneasy.

Nu stepped closer until their breaths mingled in the stale air of the warehouse. “It’s okay,” she whispered sweetly. Nu placed her hands at his hips. Nang thought of countermoves, of parries, of leg sweeps. Her touch was soft even though her hands were rough and callused. “It’s okay,” she whispered again as she slid one hand between his legs and gently squeezed him. Nang stood perfectly still. He was afraid, confused. A yothea was pure. A yothea was righteous. A yothea was desire not contrary to duty. Nu massaged the growing erection in his pants, “You like that, don’t you? I can tell.” Nang’s face flashed a silly smile. Nu unbuttoned his fly. Then she took his left hand and brought it to her breast. “It’s okay, Nang,” she said sweetly. “Squeeze me. Feel me.”

Nang squeezed Nu’s breast as she lightly stroked the hard rod pressing against his pants. For him the sensations were new. Her soft firmness, the nipple projecting into the center of his palm, the warmth. With his right hand he rubbed her hip, back to the hard muscular ass, down her outer thigh. She nuzzled her face into his neck and nipped him, then turned her head and gently bit his jaw, then his chin. As she did she slipped two fingers into his pants and touched, pulled at his cock. “I...I...I am of the Brotherhood of the Pure,” he stammered, confused.

“And I, of the Sisterhood of the Pure,” Nu purred. “That makes it okay. Two pure people can do this. It’s right for us. Undo my shirt.”

Nang raised his right hand to the buttons. Nu opened his pants. Immediately Nang dropped his hand. Nu grabbed both his hands and crushed them to her breasts as she thrust her groin against him. She grabbed his right hand and kissed the stubs. She licked them. She sucked them, all the time forcing his good hand under her shirt. “These”—Nu gasped, licked the stubs again—“these are a symbol of your love for our people and for Angkar.” Her left hand was strong, hard. With it she held his right wrist and jammed his mutilation into her mouth. Her shirt was open. She gyrated her breasts against his arm and chest. She grabbed his erection and pressed it against her pants. Then she backed half a step away to stare at the manhood in her hand as she roughly stimulated her own left tit with his two-fingered paw.

In Nang’s mind a floodgate holding back the long-inundated past creaked open, splashing his consciousness with humiliation.
Some of the girls already saw me
, a voice whimpered.
Khieng and Heng held me.

Nu opened her pants. Nang’s erection wilted. Nu mashed his two-fingered hand against her pubic bush, mashed and rammed it back and forth opening her labia. “This is your first time, isn’t it?” Her mouth was wet, juicy. “I’ll make it very special,” she whispered. She pushed him down to his knees, circled him, removed his shirt and hers. She stood before him. Removed her pants, advanced, rubbing her thigh against his scarred face. Then Nu put a foot under his cock and balls and worked it side to side, back and forth, working her big toe to the rim of his anus. “You’re such a sweet boy,” she babbled. Again she held his right wrist, now working his stubs over her clitoris. As if moonstruck Nang bit her thigh, hard from thousands of miles of trail walking, bit her as she undulated against his hand and head. “Do you think, my lovely Nang,” Nu mumbled, “that that bastard in China does this? He steals a hundred thousand riels every month to wine and dine Chinese whores while we fight and die for the people. Ooo!” She rubbed his stubs hard over her clit. “Smell me! Do I smell like Sihanouk’s whores? Oh, my little piggy. Can you smell other men on me?” She grabbed his head and forced it between her thighs. “Smell me, Piggy. Snort me. Root your nose in me, Pig. Am I a butterfly? Ummm...!”

Nu backed away, panting, spent. She smirked at the mostly naked boy still kneeling before her. “Next time,” she said as she pulled her clothes on, “I’ll make it very special...for you.” Then she left.

For a moment Nang remained on his knees staring down the length of the warehouse. He felt used, dirty, humiliated. He felt excited. He could not think. Then his mind cleared as if he simply erased all thoughts, as if in so doing he could protect himself, maintain his biological integrity. Then he thought, where’s the forklift? There used to be a forklift truck in here.

The room was dark. On a table at one end two small candles in thick glass cups flickered red-yellow. Behind the table were four men, Met Phan, Met Yon, Met Meas and Met Dy. There were others in the room, along the side walls and behind him but in the darkness Nang couldn’t see them. By his side, having led him to the room blindfolded, led him through a labyrinth of twisting corridors, was his mentor, Met Sar.

“Comrade, you bring before the Center a candidate.” Phan’s voice was cold.

“I do,” Sar responded.

“Are you his sponsor?”

“He’s his own sponsor.”

“Let him stand alone,” Phan directed. Sar disappeared into the blackness.

“Candidate”—in Meas’s voice there was disgust—“who are you?”

“I am Met Nang,” Nang answered. The two dim candles in the darkness seemed to move, rise slightly then fall. The entire room felt liquid and Nang felt off balance.

“I know of no Met Nang who qualifies for membership,” Met Dy responded.

“I am Met Nang of Kompong Thom,” Nang, said more loudly. “I am the commander of Battalion KT-104.”

“A battalion commander? That’s all?” There was a pause. Then Dy added, “Who is his sponsor?” No one answered. “Take him out of here.”

“Wait. Ah, I...I’m my own sponsor,” Nang said.

The leaders talked quietly amongst themselves. What reached Nang’s ears was “Only a battalion comm...” “...104th? Lost half his strugglers, didn’t he?” “Perhaps he didn’t fight...” “I heard some ran.” “Okay. Okay.”

“We have but two questions for you.” Phan was harsh, sneering, speaking as if Nang’s presence were an irritant. “Why should we accept you as a provisional member of the Party?”

The candles tilted again and the room seemed to shift. Nang was unprepared. The first slogan that came to mind blurted from his mouth. “I believe in what Angkar has done for me, for all people and for all eternity.” Nang hesitated. No one spoke. To fill the void he added, “I believe Angkar is a gift to the people. I praise and adore Angkar.”

“Hump!” Dy leaned toward a candle. The light streaked eerily up his face. “What can you do to advance the Will of the Party?”

“I can fight.” Nang’s words were clipped. “I can struggle. I can use my will to drive others as Angkar directs. I know how to fight the Viet Namese. And the nationals.”

When Nang stopped Meas asked curtly, “Is that all you have to say?”

Nang felt his answer was good. He stuttered incoherently.

“Blindfold him,” Phan ordered. “Take him away. The Center will inform the candidate in a short while.”

Sar led Nang to a pitch-black holding cell. “Remain here,” he directed the boy. “Think only of how much you wish to be a provisional member and of how much you love Angkar. I’ll be back shortly.”