Survival in the Killing Fields (6 page)

‘So if you put carbon, hydrogen and oxygen together to make sugar, how will they combine?’ I heard myself saying. I called on the girls for the answer. One of the Kam girls looked in
her notes in confusion. The other had the wrong answer.

Chang My Huoy raised her eyes directly to me and said in her quiet voice, ‘It would be C
₁₂
H
₂₂
0
₁₁
,
luk
teacher, for sugars like glucose and
sucrose.

‘Correct,’ I said, ‘though those three elements also combine with others to form an entire class of organic compounds, the carbohydrates. Most edible plants, like cabbages and
yams, are composed of carbohydrates along with proteins and minerals. If you burn these vegetables, the same thing happens as when you burn sugar. You drive off the oxygen and hydrogen, and what is
left is carbon.’ I found myself babbling on like that without quite knowing why. Who cared about chemistry? I didn’t. They didn’t care either. I wished there were a way to take
better advantage of being in a room with three attractive young women. I had learned something about women in Phnom Penh, though probably not enough.

Of these three in the class, My Huoy was the most conscientious. She was also the most shy. She never said an extra word, but she phrased what she said precisely, while her two cousins whispered
and giggled. She wore Chinese-style pajamas. Ordinary house clothes. Her pajamas – Huoy’s, I mean-were white with a tiny pink floral pattern. Though her cousins were pretty, Huoy, with
her light, flawless skin and large, round eyes, had something special about her, a grace and gentleness, and something else I couldn’t put a name to, though I tried to, late at night, unable
to sleep, in my room under the monk’s quarters. During the break halfway through the class, she asked if I wanted more tea, and at the end of class she brought oranges for all of us from the
kitchen, while her cousins chattered. The other girls were no match for her.

The classes came to an end as the exams approached. Chang My Huoy was going to return to Kampot. After the last class I lingered for a few minutes in the doorway, holding the pay envelope in my
hand. The family had treated me well. I wasn’t in a hurry to go. In Phnom Penh, I had nobody to go to.

At last I pedalled off through the warm, quiet streets. A Honda 90 motorcycle passed me, pulling a trailer with a cargo of firewood, the noise of the sputtering engine gradually trailing off in
the distance. There were few cars. I stopped by a roadside vendor, bought a piece of peeled sugar cane and sat down to chew it.

From a nearby restaurant came the shouting of a high-pitched and unmistakable voice. It was the Royal Father, Sihanouk, giving a speech on the radio. He was a familiar presence. Several times a
week he took the microphone of the government radio and talked about whatever was on his mind. Once he started he went on excitedly for hours about the honour and the role of the country.

Tonight the Royal Father was telling us about the dangers of the war in Vietnam. He said Cambodia mustn’t get caught between the American imperialists and the Vietnamese communists.
Cambodia must remain politically neutral, he said, an island of peace and prosperity. An ‘island of peace’ – that’s what he always called it.

Cambodia was the envy of its neighbours, he went on, a highly advanced country. Famous throughout the world. We Cambodians were too intelligent to get involved in the Vietnam war. We were a
superior race, better than the Vietnamese and the Thais. After all, he shouted, we were the descendants of the builders of the mighty Angkor Wat, the most beautiful monument in the ancient world!
We were fortunate to live in such a marvellous country, one of the most enlightened and progressive countries in all Asia!

All of a sudden in the middle of his speech the streetlights went out. The light bulbs inside houses and the strings of coloured bulbs decorating the restaurants went out too, all at the same
time. Another power failure. They happened all the time, and we were used to them. Because of the unreliable power, most radios were battery run, and the radio station generated its own electrical
supply. So the Royal Father’s voice continued without a break.

He went on shouting in the darkness, but I stopped paying attention. Soon the dim yellow glow of lanterns and candles appeared in the houses. A sputtering of motors gave way to a steady throb as
the large restaurants started their private generators, and their coloured lights shone once again.

If the Royal Father said Cambodia was an advanced country, I supposed he was right. If he said we were lucky to be Cambodian, he was undoubtedly right about that too. But tonight the issues of
national pride seemed remote and unimportant. I hadn’t said an extra word to Chang My Huoy. She hadn’t said an extra word to me. When she wore her hair up, it lay coiled over the nape
of her neck. When she let her hair down, it fell thick and soft to her waist.

We had been teacher and pupil. Very correct.

It was a year before I saw her again, and then only by coincidence. She was walking along the waterfront by the confluence of the rivers with an armful of books. ‘Hello,
luk
teacher,’ she said shyly, her face lighting up with a smile. I got off my bicycle and walked beside her.

In her home province, Huoy had passed the exam for which I had tutored her. Then she moved back to Phnom Penh to begin training to become a teacher herself. Just now she was returning from a
meeting in the Chadomukh conference hall near the Royal Palace. She said maybe I could help her with an assignment, since I was in medical school. She was supposed to make some drawings of human
anatomy to use as teaching aids. I said I would help her. Did she have drawing paper? She said she did, in the apartment she shared with her mother.

When we got outside her house, I asked if her mother would mind if I came upstairs. Huoy hesitated. For a man to visit a woman in her house, even for the most innocent reason, had implications.
She looked away from me for perhaps half a minute, staring across the street. I watched her closely. Finally she said she would introduce me to her mother.

We climbed up the stairs to the third floor and into their tiny apartment. The mother and daughter had the same light Chinese complexion and large round Khmer eyes. Their surname, Chang, was
Chinese. I wondered whether to bow my head to Huoy’s mother in Chinese style or
sompeah.
I took a chance and raised my palms together in the
sompeah.
She did the same to me, and
I knew they were like me, a mixture of both races and both cultures.

From a glance at their apartment it was clear they were poor. They had a couple of chairs, a dining table, one bed for both of them and a small side table with a statue of Buddha. That was all
their furniture. On the wall hung a photograph of Angkor Wat, the pride of the nation, built in the twelfth century, its enormous stone corncob-like towers rising in the air. Very Cambodian. The
apartment was very clean. Not just clean but well cared for and comfortable. We began a peaceful and gentle conversation.

An hour passed before I knew it. Huoy’s mother invited me to stay for dinner. With classes to teach that evening, the answer had to be no, but she asked me to come back when I could, and I
accepted for a few evenings later. On my way out Huoy reminded me about the anatomical drawings, which I had forgotten about completely.

When I came back I was struck once again by how simple and yet how pleasant the apartment was. There were fresh flowers on the dining table and orchids in a vase next to the statue of Buddha.
Huoy’s mother, whom I politely called ‘Older Aunt,’ was even more shy than her daughter. She excused herself so that we two young people could eat together. She served stir-fried
beef with ginger, snow peas with water chestnuts and several other dishes to go with the rice. After dinner Huoy and I practised copying drawings from an anatomy textbook. We didn’t flirt.
That is, there was nothing we said or did that we couldn’t have claimed was perfectly innocent, if we had needed to. But we established an unspoken understanding.

I came back the next evening, and the next evening and the next. Before long I was a regular presence in their apartment. It was the most natural thing, and yet it surprised me. Nothing like it
had ever happened to me before. My previous relationships with girls were the kind best not described in public. My friendships with men were based on sports, jokes and quarrels. I was a raw young
man. Yet here were two very shy and gentle women who put me on my best behaviour.

It was hard to understand. I was hotheaded and stubborn, the kind of person who never changed his mind once he got in an argument, even if he was wrong.

Perhaps the explanation lies in a game that children play in Cambodia; it is played around the world. The two opposing children make their hands into the shape of scissors, paper or rock and
show the shapes at the same time to see who wins. Scissors defeats paper, rock defeats scissors and paper defeats rock. I was a tough guy, a rock. My father was another rock. Two rocks cannot
defeat each other. My father and I were always battling and neither of us could win. But these two women were soft. They wrapped and cushioned me until hitting had no effect. The rock could not
hurt anyone. Sometimes life is like that child’s game. Sometimes soft and gentle people win.

It took me months to work up the courage for the next stage, which was inviting the two of them to a movie. When I finally asked, Huoy’s mother excused herself and sent Huoy and me off
together. Huoy’s mother was a widow. A burglar had killed her husband shortly after Huoy was born. Easily frightened and withdrawn from society, she had sheltered Huoy, her only child, but
now that Huoy was a young woman her mother wanted her to see something of the world.

Huoy and I had tea in the cafe on the ground floor of her building. We strolled through the smooth evening air down the boulevard to the Angkor Theatre. We saw a sentimental love story filmed in
Chinese with a Khmer sound track dubbed in. I didn’t touch her.

We had begun our romance. We moved slowly, with exquisite and agonizing decorum. Both of us were shy. If we had anything important to say, we didn’t say it. We sent messages by allowing
our glances to linger, and by sprinkling our conversations with clues for the other person to interpret for hidden significance.

In Cambodia romance is always like that. In our traditional
romvong
dance, men and women move around each other without touching, gracefully waving their hands in the air to the music.
Men and women don’t demonstrate their affection in public. Even if Huoy and I saw one another every day, we couldn’t have held hands on her street without shocking her neighbours and
giving rise to sensational gossip.

Most Asian societies are chaste and prudish in their public behaviour. The women don’t provoke men as much as they do in the West. In Phnom Penh the women wore blouses with ruffles on the
front; they weren’t trying to show off their breasts. But they could dress modestly and still be attractive. A sarong, wrapped around the waist and covering the legs down to the ankles, or a
sampot,
which is a fancier version of a sarong, shows how a woman is built. Huoy wore a
sampot
most days. I was a normal, healthy young male. I couldn’t help sneaking glances at
her, imagining what she looked like underneath.

Of course, other men watched Huoy too, and that was the problem. When she walked along the sidewalk by herself, calmly and slowly in the afternoon heat, there was something about her that would
have made any sane man want to walk up to her and start a conversation. I began to watch her, from far away, just in case.

I discovered that Huoy did not talk to any other man regularly; she dropped her eyes and found a polite but determined way to walk on alone. But I was young and impatient and I needed to know
what was in her heart. I was also tired of behaving well. So perhaps six months after going to her apartment for the first time, we had our first quarrel. I accused her of walking home with another
man, even though she hadn’t. I itemized the details of his appearance, the colour of his shirt and trousers, his glasses. Huoy said it wasn’t true but I said I knew it was. ‘Is he
your boyfriend, or what?’ I said sarcastically. ‘If he is, congratulations. He is very handsome. If you get married to him, it will be very good. Congratulations.’

Huoy began crying. She had grown up without the teasing and arguing of brothers and sisters, and she had no defenses against the kind of game I was playing. She was very soft. Tears came to her
eyes quicker than anyone I have ever known.

I said, ‘Okay, tonight I have to go teach a class, so I won’t be back.’ I stayed away that evening and the two following.

On the third day Huoy went to the hospital to see me. She arrived at nine in the morning. I was polite to her but let her know by my expression that I was angry and jealous. I let her wait. At
ten I summoned her to my tiny office. She was crying again.

‘My mother has invited you to the house tonight,’ said Huoy. ‘She wonders why you haven’t come the last few nights.’ It was Cambodian style to be indirect like
that, using other people’s causes to advance our own.

I answered, ‘Why aren’t you in class today?’ Huoy was still taking university classes to get her teaching degree.

‘I skipped classes today because I wanted to talk to you. Why weren’t you at my house?’

‘I wanted to go but I was busy. You know, with the patients and all the work at the hospital and the lectures. Please excuse me, I have a lot to do.’

Huoy held up her hand as if taking an oath. ‘Believe me. I have no boyfriend.’

I said, ‘I believe it.’

‘If you believe it why don’t you go to my house? Come tonight. Don’t let my mother be sad.’

When I went to her apartment that night the food was ready on the table. Huoy gave me a hurt smile. I pretended that everything was normal. When Huoy’s mother asked me why I had stayed
away, I said I had been busy. She pretended to believe me but she gave me a wise, sidelong look.