Survival in the Killing Fields (43 page)

Of course it was a crazy thing to do. I wanted to learn
something
, a new subject of any kind, to keep my mind sharp. I needed to use my brain for more than hammering nails for Angka. But
I had another reason too. English was the language of the enemy. Learning it was a subversive act. I asked Som to become my teacher.

During the day Som and I and about thirty others built houses. At the end of the afternoon, when the bell rang, the crew put down its tools, and Som and I got ready to visit our wives.

After a quick dinner at the common kitchen we walked toward a nearby lake as if to bathe. From the lake we cut over to a canal, a long, straight trough of muddy water, the orange ball of the
sinking sun reflecting on its surface. Birds chirped and twittered, and swallows dipped and soared above the water, catching insects. Frogs croaked, fell silent as we approached, then croaked again
when we had passed by.

When there was nobody in sight I pulled some pages I had torn from the book out of my pocket. We were on
Huitième leçon
, or, as it appeared in English on the facing page,
‘Eighth Lesson.’ Without effort, I read the French phrases:

I pointed at the equivalent English phrases and asked Som, in Khmer, how to pronounce them.

He looked at the first one. “Can I help you?” he said in what was undoubtedly English in a Cambodian accent.

‘ “Can I hel’ jou?” ’ I repeated.

Som went on to the second phrase: ‘ “Have you got any tea?” ’

“Haf jou enny tea?” ’ I repeated. ‘Tea’ was an easy word. It was the same as
thé
in French, only pronounced a bit differently. For that matter, it was
like
té
in Khmer,
té
in Teochiew and not too different from
cha
in Mandarin. The lesson went on, the English sentences numbered down the page, the syllables
receiving the stress printed in boldface. As Som pointed out, it was a lesson in British English:

So much food! Extra food! People were so polite! You could even pay later if you wanted! It was a bit confusing how the British used ‘pounds’ as a measure of weight
as well as money, but Som assured me that people who spoke real English didn’t do that. ‘They use dollars,’ I said in Khmer, and Som nodded solemnly. ‘I like dollars,’
I told him a moment later, thinking of the twenty-six hundred dollars I brought back from Phnom Penh on my scooter, along with the medicine and the gold. Several times on the front lines I had
traded a hundred-dollar bill for a yam. What amazed me was not that American money was worth so little but that it was worth anything at all in a society where money was outlawed and where there
was no contact with the outside world. But there it was – something very special about America that inspired hope and faith. What a marvellous place it must be, America. So much food to eat,
and people so polite to each other. ‘ “Yes, pliss,” ’ I read again. ‘ “Two loa-ves. Oh, and haff a poond of but-ter.” ’

It seemed completely normal to me, to be walking along the canal with Som and asking him how to pronounce English words and phrases.

We reached the dam and skirted the outdoor meeting where the ‘new’ people listened resignedly to the speeches. The message never changed: Lazy people are enemies of the revolution.
Because of traitors, the economy of the country is very low. ‘Please give me a big hand,’ the speaker was saying, followed by unenthusiastic applause.

We walked unnoticed into the longhouse. It was nearly empty, with most of its inhabitants at work or at the meeting. I located Huoy’s hammock and lay down in it and pulled the mosquito net
over me. It was the mosquito net we had brought from Phnom Penh, by now torn and mended many times, and nearly black from the smoke of fires. To have one at all was a luxury. Most people kept
mosquitoes away by building fires with piles of rice husks. The low, sloping, thatched ceiling reflected the red glow of fires, and smoke filled the air.

There was another round of applause outside and finally Huoy came in.

‘How was your day, sweet?’ I asked. ‘Did they give you enough food? Is your health all right?’

‘Not too bad today, thanks. Have you been here long?’ She reached for her washcloth and jar of homemade soap and began washing her face and hands.

‘No, I just got here.’ I loved watching her wash. She had learned a folk recipe for making soap by burning the skin of kapok fruit, which was rich in potash, and soaking the ashes in
water. She was always clean. Even her clothes were clean.

She changed from her black work trousers and blouse into her sleeping sarong, washed her feet, lifted the edge of the mosquito net and climbed in beside me, clutching her pillow. An arm’s
length away, a neighbour remarked from his hammock, ‘How nice! What a loving couple! Always coming here to visit your wife, eh, Samnang?’

I knew this fellow. He was friendly, like most of them in Huoy’s work group.

‘And why not?’ I answered. ‘I give ninety-nine percent to Angka, but I keep one percent for myself. I keep my wife for me.’

The neighbour on the other side of the hammock said, ‘Aaeee! I hope one percent of you is big and long enough to keep your wife satisfied!’

I found myself grinning in the darkness. ‘Nothing so lucky as that,’ I said. ‘My wife hates me very much. She won’t even let me touch her in the hammock. She tells me she
wants to be alone.’

There was laughter throughout the longhouse. I always joked with them. It helped pass the time and keep our minds from other worries.

In fact, Huoy’s soft, feminine body was snuggled next to mine, and she was kissing me on the cheek. Now that she worked on the dam, this was our only chance to be together. She put her
lips next to my ear and whispered, ‘How were your rations today?’

I whispered back, ‘Not bad. A quarter at dinner.’ A condensed-milk can of cooked rice, split among four people, dumped into watery broth.
That
was what a quarter meant. But I
had other thoughts on my mind.

‘Sweet,’ I said so carefully that even Huoy could barely hear, ‘I want to go to America.’

We turned our heads so her mouth was next to my ear. ‘You’re crazy,’ she said.

We turned our heads again. ‘I know,’ I said into her ear. ‘But we’ve got to go there someday.’

Som’s lessons had started me thinking about America. Plenty of food there. A very developed country. In America, dams were built with real concrete, houses actually had electricity,
skyscrapers were real. Heavy work was done with bulldozers and tractors. It was a place as different from Cambodia as heaven is from hell.

‘I’d rather be a dog in America than a human being in Cambodia,’ I added.

Huoy’s fingertips found my temple, pushed gently, and her lips spoke into my ear. ‘How do you know?’ said Huoy. ‘You’ve never even been outside of
Cambodia.’

‘I just know. Let me dream in peace, will you?’ As I closed my eyes, I imagined what it would be like to be an American dog. How wonderful. Human hands would reach down to pat me and
brush my fur. They wouldn’t beat me or torture me. My owner would put plenty of food in my dish, and I could eat whenever I wanted. If I got sick they would take me to a veterinarian. I
wouldn’t even have to work.

‘Do you want to know my dream?’ Huoy whispered sleepily.

‘To open a pastry shop,’ I said.

‘Well, first I want babies. When the regime is overturned I want to make lots and lots of babies and raise them with you in a nice house, with plenty to eat. But when the children are old
enough to go to school I will open a sweet shop. I just want to cook food and have good things to eat and live in a city.’

‘I’d still rather be a dog in America,’ I said.

Around us, as the red glow of the mosquito fires flickered on the thatch roof, our neighbours grumbled and sank with heavy sighs into their hammocks. The snores begun. I leaned next to Huoy and
kissed her, but she barely stirred. Her breathing was regular. A minute later she was sound asleep.

It was usually like that. I met her in the hammock, we talked for a few minutes and then she fell asleep. She was exhausted. Once every few weeks we had a special night. Huoy and Som’s
wife would bribe their group leader with tobacco rations and then walk through the darkness to see Som and me. Together we ate the best wild foods the landscape offered and then retired, Huoy and I
to one side of the floor of a partially built house, Som and his wife on the other, and the floor boards squeaking underneath. But most nights Huoy came into the longhouse at 10.00 p.m. so tired
she fell asleep as soon as she lay down.

At 2.00 a.m. we were woken up by the group leader.

‘Time to wake up! Let’s go, group! Everybody awake! Back to work!’ he shouted. To finish the dam, each worker slept only four hours and worked or went to political meetings the
other twenty.

Huoy got groggily to her feet, slipped into her rubber shower sandals, washed her face again, changed into a clean sarong and blouse and brushed her hair. Somehow she had adapted to the schedule
without falling seriously ill. She trudged after her work group, carrying her hoe and a plastic container full of boiled water. I followed. I had to be up in a couple of hours anyway, and I liked
to keep her company.

Huoy’s group of about thirty men and women began to dig near the inside face of the dam. It was just like canal work. The men chopped halfheartedly at the clay with their hoes, and the
women gathered the loose clay with their hoes and scooped it into baskets. I sat on the ground, slapping the gnats that settled on my arms and face. When enough baskets were filled, the group
formed a human chain and passed them from one person to the next to the top of the dam. When they had done this they returned to their previous spot and sat with their elbows on their knees, in
that state of rest that is not quite sleep, with one part of the brain alert for soldiers.

From all across the dam face came the faint sounds of hoes and muttered conversations. Thousands of people were working there, though in the dark they were no more than shadows. A lone soldier
wearing a Mao cap appeared in silhouette, strolling along the dam top. The comments from the war slaves began, loud enough to reach him.

‘Hey, comrade, go to work! We’ll give you an extra ration!’

‘Comrade, be careful when you make your great leap forward! You might leap into a hole and break your neck!’

The soldier walked on without answering. He was outnumbered, and in the darkness he could not tell who was saying what.

I pulled my watch out of the small pocket inside my waistband. By peering in the starlight it was possible to read the time. Almost four o’clock.

‘I have to go, sweet,’ I said to Huoy, but our neighbour from the longhouse overheard me.

‘You are leaving too soon, Samnang. You don’t want to stay here, to slap gnats and cuss at the soldiers?’

They knew me as a prankster, a comedian, and I obliged them. ‘Please,’ I replied. ‘If you would be so kind, turn away, so I can kiss my wife good-bye.’

To them I was a man who had accepted his fate but makes jokes about it. And why not? Everybody was so tired that nothing seemed to matter. Work mattered least of all. If the King of Death wanted
to take us we could not stop him, but he could not stop us from laughing until then.

The responses came in the darkness:

– ‘Can’t I look when you kiss her? I haven’t seen anything like that in a long time.’

– ‘You can kiss me, if you don’t mind,’ said a giggling woman’s voice. ‘I’m so horny I don’t know what to do.’

– ‘Why should we turn away? You two are always hugging and kissing.’

‘And please,’ I told them, ‘close your ears so I can tell her how much I love her too.’

– ‘. . . Aaaee! What a lover . . .’

– ‘Tell her, Samnang.’

‘I’m going now, sweet,’ I said quietly to Huoy, who had half-turned away in embarrassment. ‘I’ll see you the same time tonight.’ And I touched her lightly on
the shoulder.

I went back to the longhouse to wake Som, who was asleep. We set out along the dirt road, taking the short route back to our work site, knowing that at this hour we would not meet any
soldiers.

The sky was growing light in the east by the time Som and I got back to our work site. I climbed up the stairs of a half-built house and fell asleep on the bare floor. The bell rang at 5.30 a.m.
We were supposed to go to work then, but I pounded the floor to imitate hammering and stole a few extra minutes of sleep.

Looking back, it seems clear that 1977 was the year the regime began to crack. The Khmer Rouge had tried to reorganize the nation too quickly and radically for the structure to
hold. The leaders themselves developed internal feuds, and the people at the bottom showed signs of discontent and even open rebellion.

At the time, however, I didn’t notice the changes as much as the unbearably slow passing of the days. The work was dull. In spite of Som’s English lessons I could feel my brain
slowing down. It was hard to think about anything. The situation in the countryside seemed permanent. Bells controlled the schedule. Workers crisscrossed the landscape wearily, in single file. The
revolutionary songs blaring out from the loudspeakers and the speeches at the meetings never changed. At meals we gathered in circles near the common kitchen and looked on with jealous eyes as our
portions of rice gruel were ladled into rusty bowls.