Jake Fonko M.I.A. (13 page)

We stood in the middle of the room facing our inquisitors. Soh Soon addressed Angka, jabbering what I assumed to be an introduction. It went on for quite a while, provoking some pleased remarks and murmurs. Must have been buttering them up one side and down the other. Then she turned to me and said something incomprehensible. I looked at her left hand, which she held low, in front of her, out of sight to those at the table. Palm facing me, thumb and index finger close together—she wanted me to make a very short statement. Sound like English, but make no sense.

Now, genuine doubletalk is a difficult skill. It requires not only practice, but talent. Only a few professional comedians can do it convincingly. Rather than take a chance on screwing up, I worked out a routine I could manage. What would an Albanian accent sound like? The only Albanians I ever knew were John Belushi and Mother Teresa, and I met them both years too late. Besides, I doubt that Belushi’s old Saturday Night Live routine, “Cheesebourgie, cheesebourgie, cheeps, cheeps, pbepsi, pbepsi” would have taken me very far in that gig. Albanian, I decided, must be a cross between Peter Ustinov and Inspector Clouseau. I needed a basis for my speeches that would let me control the cadence without having to grope for what to say next. The best I could come up with was the party songs we used to sing toward the end of the keg at frat beer busts. I sucked in a deep breath and went for it: “Oh zhey hadda hgkarry Harry zhoo za ferry, zhey hadda sharry garry do da zhore.”

Soh Soon listened carefully, then paused, as if working it out. Then she relayed it to them. It touched off a swell of grunts and muttering from the table, and some of them nodded at me. Must have been my greeting to them. I prayed and smiled and bowed, and bowed, and bowed. Ha! Had them eating out of my hand. The old Fonko charm. Then Soh Soon had an exchange with a stocky fellow in the center of the group. He didn’t say much, but he had that unmistakable aura of command. She turned back to me and jabbered a sentence or two. Her hand indicated another statement, a little longer than the last one.

I put my voice down at the bottom of my throat and slurred out as heavily as I could: “Zha furts mets nhame wuz Morgan, my zhod he wass huh gorgon.” Soh Soon took a thoughtful moment, then jabbered something to Angka. Some looked incredulous. Some looked pleased. All looked around the table at each other. Then the woman at the table addressed Soh Soon sharply. All went quiet as the woman proceeded to chew her ass for quite a long time. Soh Soon alternatively downcast her eyes submissively, nodded agreement, and put her hands up prayer-style and bowed. When the scolding wound down, maybe ten minutes after it began, Soh Soon prayed and smiled and bowed enthusiastically, then turned to me and whispered: “She want you repeat what you say.”

Oh shit! It was one of the verses from “The Good Ship Venus,” but which one? Watching the squabble, I’d gotten distracted and forgotten what I’d said. And what did it mean? If that woman could understand English, we were done for, no matter what I said. My stomach headed for the floor, but damn the torpedoes, this was no time to hesitate: “Zha bozhun’s nem whiz Freeman, hah mash-dur-beet-hing demon,” I declared, hoping it would sound familiar. The woman seemed satisfied. Soh Soon prayed and smiled and bowed, then turned to the rest and jabbered something to them, glancing at the woman in acknowledgement.

Whereupon the fellow on the left of the stocky one jabbered triumphantly and launched into a fifteen minute speech. When he was through, the guy to the right of center issued a twenty minute rejoinder. Then the stocky guy in the middle softly spoke a few words, whereupon he looked back and forth at the people toward both ends of the row. They all nodded agreement in unison. Whereupon the one left of middle made an impassioned ten-minute plea, and looked to the ends of the row for support. They gave it enthusiastically. Whereupon the one right of center jabbered something at Soh Soon.

She exchanged a few words with him, then with the other two middle guys. Then she turned to me and jabbered at length. The back of her hand was to me, thumb and index finger close—a short question. “Whjoo zhat knoggink hat my door, zed zha fair yongk hmade-hin?” I asked. She translated it back to them, setting off a spirited debate. Twenty minutes later, she turned and jabbered something to me, holding her hand palm toward me, thumb and index finger spread wide: a long statement.

Longer speeches were risky, but I had one that I was pretty sure would meet specs, all verse and no chorus: “Zhe shailor tuld hmee before he died, hi dunt gknow whezzher zha bashtard lied…” Halfway into the second verse, Soh Soon snuck me the cutoff sign. If she ever made her way to Hollywood, a director’s job awaited that gal. Her translation touched off a half-hour debate among the three middle guys. When it concluded, Soh Soon jabbered a sentence and signaled me for a short statement. “Gatz hon zha roob-top, gatz hon zha tiles,” I declared with feeling.

Soh Soon dutifully translated it to our inquisitors. Angka gave me a round of murmurs and mutters. “Done,” Soh Soon whispered to me. “Time to go.” Praying, smiling and firing off bows in all directions, I backed out of the room and all the way to the front stoop. Soh Soon assembled her guys and marched me back to the building where they were keeping me. She came into my quarters and shut the door.

“How’d we do?” I whispered.

“Know by tomorrow,” she answered softly. “They debate it now. Sound hopeful. Much worried about starvation. Khieu Samphan happy because plan same like his thesis. He left side one, got so excited. Problem is Ieng Sary, right side one. If Khieu Samphan like plan, always Ieng Sary no like. Middle one, Saloth Sar, happy with anything as long as he get last word.”

“What about the others?”

“As long as they agree, no problem for them. Nobody care what they think.”

“What about that woman who wanted me to repeat?”

“That Ieng Sary wife, Khieu Thirith. She get diploma about English guy, Shakespeare, in Paris. So, if she no understand you, she lose face. She tell me I translate wrong, tell me how to do it right. Then, when you repeat, I use her translation, she happy. Why you no say same thing second time?”

“I thought I did.”

“Sound different to me. Never mind. She no understand any of it. Anyhow, it better if she tell me what they want to hear. Make it easier for me.”

“So, how do our chances look?”

“If this no work, try something else,” she said. If she was worried, it didn’t show. But then, nothing ever showed on that face. After she left it occurred to me that “something else” might not necessarily include me. Well, it was out of my hands now. If Angka didn’t like bawdy songs, we might as well kiss old Jake goodbye. 

She showed up
mid-morning the next day. “Good news, Jake,” she said. “Angka okay your agricultural plan. Another meeting tomorrow morning. They want go over details with you.”

“What did you tell them? What kind of plan?”

“Only plan that make any sense. Won’t give farmers land. No more water buffalo for plow paddies. Won’t buy equipment. Everything collectivized. So all can do is put everybody straight to work. Rebuild irrigation system before rain come. Then plant whatever can. No equipment, so do all by hand. Horrible. But no reason with crazy people. Maybe plan do some good, maybe not, anyhow can’t make things worse. Important thing is, maybe get us inspection trip.”

“So they all agreed on it after the meeting?”

“No right away. Khieu Samphan all in favor, say was exactly same as thesis. Ieng Sary, say didn’t like, but go ahead, but if go wrong, he not to blame. Saloth Sar say his idea in first place, but if go wrong, Samphan thesis to blame. Others all say yes. Anyhow, Angka no have better idea, and must do something pretty quick. Now we have to work it so get inspection tour.”

“How soon?”

“Two, maybe three days, depends. Anyhow, you no stay here longer. Move you to Angka villa. Khieu Samphan send you this, say you need for your work.” She handed me a neat bundle of black cloth—a newly minted set of black pajamas with a breast pocket. It was folded around a fresh pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals. A checked scarf and a Chinese-style cap rested on the pajamas, and a shiny red ball-point pen topped it all off. Hot damn! I’d made the starting team!

6

It is truly
remarkable, the difference that a simple little thing like a ball point pen can make in a man’s life. Upon promotion to one-pen rank, my rice ration increased to the point where hunger pangs no longer gnawed at me day and night. In addition I qualified for tea, rather than boiled water, and meals included enough slivers of vegetable and fish to keep terminal vitamin deficiencies on hold. Well, the black pajamas were short in the arms and legs and a little tight across the chest, and the straps on the Ho Chi Minh sandals tended to rub my insteps raw… but who’s complaining?

Living amongst the Angka elders, I soon discovered that they ate even better—sumptuously, really. Now that the Khmer Rouge had taken over, trade moved once again along the roads and the Mekong. No way could they procure enough food for the entire population; but it doesn’t take much to keep a claque of a few dozen people in sleek luxury. A steady stream of trucks and cars, most of them driven by Chinese, called at the villa daily. I asked Soh Soon how Angka paid for the goods, since they’d abolished money. She said they traded for them with loot from the empty city. Departing citizens left behind whatever they couldn’t carry on their backs, so plenty of treasure remained to barter off to the Chinese traders. In fact, she told me, her cadres had stumbled onto me during a routine foraging party. They’d been moving systematically down that row of shophouses and had quickly realized the shop held nothing worth stealing. However, my tripwire aroused their curiosity, so they thought maybe they should give upstairs a look. Hearing that relieved me on two counts: I hadn’t somehow screwed up and given myself away, as I’d feared I’d done; and my gear was still safely stowed. That could be mighty handy, should our combination field inspection trip and breakout come through as hoped.

And I had every reason to think it would. We’d met once more with the Angka Inner Circle, Soh Soon translating my party song gibberish into the Secret Albanian Agricultural Plan—it acronymed to SAAP, which struck me as appropriate. But what other plan could they float? Rationally, they could easily solve the food problem by sending the people back to their villages, putting the village elders in charge once again, and letting everybody resume doing what they’d mastered through centuries of practice—growing rice. Angka could then set the army to repairing the dikes and canals, and the next planting season would see the country back on its feet. But the Inner Circle wasn’t rational, they were power-mad. The first task on their agenda was to destroy all authority in the country that might interfere with their own, which of course meant the priests and village elders. That left them one option only—have the cadres herd the peasants out into the paddies, and hope to get at least some of the irrigation system up and running before the rainy season. That done, they might be able to plant and harvest enough rice to avert mass starvation. Survival in the meantime depended on catching enough fish to keep the people alive once the rivers rose.

Sadly for Cambodia, Angka itself posed the major barrier to survival. Their only claims to expertise were in jungle warfare, terrorism and speech-making. They spouted pious claptrap about the nobility of the simple, unspoiled peasant, but in fact they held in utmost contempt people who actually worked and produced useful things. Getting them to go along with even our half-baked plan often required working around their resistance to aspects of it that had some outside chance of succeeding.

Of course, Soh Soon had to explain all this to me, because I flew blind. Our meetings with Angka continued to feature me uttering, on Soh Soon’s cues, occasional bursts of Albanian pigeon-English, which touched off half-hour debates among Saloth Sar, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan. Thank goodness for party songs—easy and unforgettable lyrics. My presentations to Angka went on for several days, and I dredged up song after song to feed Soh Soon’s charade. Lucky for us, the Inner Circle were such hidebound intellectual prigs that they could never have heard any of them. Had I spouted Shakespeare, Ieng Sary’s wife, Khieu Thirith, might have nailed our scam immediately.

Between meetings I walked on eggs. They no longer locked my door on me, but that didn’t mean they’d turned me free to roam. Ballpoint pen or not, like every member of the Khmer Rouge, I lived under perpetual suspicion and constant surveillance, with a pre-purchased death sentence ready should I infract any rules. The Inner Circle maintained a personal squad of select goons, same as any other war lords. I felt their eyes tracking my every movement as I wandered around the villa. Straying off the grounds would have drawn gunfire, had I been fool enough to try it. So I played the humble, faithful Albanian servant of Angka, however with a twist. By now I’d grown a good start on a beard. I put my standard Chinese cap and checkered scarf aside in favor of a battered straw coolie hat with a tattered piece of cloth tacked around the back, havelock-style (more functional, actually—kept that brutal sun off my neck). I found a threadbare umbrella, which I put to use as a walking stick. I did everyday things in the strangest, most awkward ways I could think of, for example eating rice off the blade of a knife. I hailed from Albania, and what did they know about Albania? People expect foreigners to act weird, and who am I to disappoint?

An “expert” is just an ordinary man, fifty miles from home, and home was a lot farther away than that. To buttress my portrayal as a rice expert, I acted the total rice nerd. At every meal I’d pick single grains of it out of my bowl and carefully examine them, holding them up to the light, turning them this way and that, dissecting them minutely with my knife, and smearing them with a finger across the palm of my hand and inhaling the aroma, then writing down indecipherable notes with my ballpoint pen. I’d go delirious with enthusiasm, or else furious with disgust, over a knife full of rice, forcing samples on curious on-lookers to prove my point. That convinced them I must be the world champ rice connoisseur: I was having fits, but they couldn’t tell any difference between the rice I gave them and any other rice they’d ever eaten. I couldn’t either, of course—it was just a game I’d learned from Evanston’s wine snob friends back home in Pacific Palisades. Had I spoken Khmer, I’d have been waxing eloquent on the nuances of body, texture, undertones and bouquet.

I’d go among the cooks and take samples of uncooked grains, which before their astonished eyes I’d rub between my fingers, drop on plates to observe the bounce, and flick across the room with a fingernail, then go and retrieve—writing down notes, of course. Out in the villa grounds I’d shuffle slowly along, eyes fixed on the ground, twiddling my chin whiskers and poking at spots on the ground with the tip of my umbrella. Every now and then I’d stop, bend over from the waist (the locals squatted down on their haunches) and stick my finger into the dirt, then smell it and appear to taste it with my tongue. I’d carefully investigate patches of grass, leaves on bushes, and plants that caught my fancy. I’d sit sniffing the breeze and taking readings on clouds in the skies, using my fingers as a photographer will do when he frames shots. Every so often I’d scrawl strange diagrams in the dust with my umbrella tip—football plays. That never failed to draw a crowd of cadres—they huddled up to look as soon as I wandered away. One that especially fascinated them had got me 28 yards from scrimmage against the Stanford frosh, rescuing a drive from third and long yardage. The goon squad spent an hour analyzing, discussing and debating it. I guess they’d never seen a tailback reverse off a single wing before. Throughout the charade I never spoke a word to anyone, but prayed, smiled and bowed at any and all I encountered.

Never did Angka allow anyone a full night’s sleep. Some nights, the members of the inner circle provided the evening’s entertainment with passionate, long-winded speeches from eight until well after midnight. Other nights party members and cadres held marathon self-confession sessions. And no evening could be called complete without several rounds of enthusiastic slogan chanting. I never understood a word of it. My major challenge was keeping myself awake and looking alert as the evening hours ground on. I didn’t want to find out the hard way the consequences of nodding off during one of Ieng Sary’s orations.

Meanwhile, between our conferences with the inner circle, Soh Soon carried on as an interrogator at Tuol Sleng, the torture center where I’d first made her acquaintance. “It so stupid!” she whispered to me one time. “We pull out fingernails and they confess whatever we tell them. Then cadres take them away and die them. What point to it?” I’d wondered the same thing a time or two during interrogations of suspected Viet Cong collaborators in the villages back when I was a LRRP. We never pulled out fingernails, of course—just bashed them around a bit. And some other procedures, if that didn’t set their mouths in motion.

Aside from the fact that any wrong move could cost my life, my stay in the Angka villa was no worse than a low-budget vacation in downtown Barstow. After a few days of rest, relaxation and semi-decent food, I could feel my energy returning. Other bodily functions revived as well. Soh Soon was sitting on the bed in my room (one pen qualified me for furniture) one evening, reviewing the meeting we’d had with Angka earlier in the day. Sitting on the floor beside her, I noticed one of her firm, slender thighs staring me in the face, so I ran a tentative finger along the top of it. She sprang away from me to the opposite wall. I haven’t seen a human being move that fast since Bruce Lee died. She glared at me, her face white. “You crazy, Jake?” she hissed. “You want die us?”

“What’s the problem?” I whispered.

“Problem is,” she explained in a hushed voice as she slipped back over to the bed, “that Angka very strict on hanky-panky. All Khmers now devoted to Angka, not to family. Unmarried guys and girls no supposed to talk. No married, no touch. Even husband and wife no talk too much, and no too much kiss either. Angka say who get married. Anybody see you touch me, they report to Angka and that’s it. All right if we talk, because we do Angka work. But, many people so jealous, looking for chance to denounce me. If you want out of here alive, mind your manners!” One more thing to watch out for. Disappointing, but okay, hands to myself from now on.

At our fourth meeting with the inner circle, Soh Soon persuaded them I couldn’t possibly complete my agricultural plan until I inspected the rice fields. Angka, staunch believers in the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre and Karl Marx, could fathom no reason why anyone would want to go and actually 
look
 at what he was making plans for. She told them it was a peculiar Albanian custom, and she convinced them that with the rainy season starting any day we daren’t waste even a minute. Saloth Sar fell for it and cleared us for a field inspection tour the next morning. As far as we were concerned, it was our trial run, to locate problems we might face and iron out procedures for the real thing. Her father’s place lay about 150 miles to the east, as the crow flies, so we’d escape in that direction. We’d take the shakedown cruise in the opposite direction and inspect the sector north of Phnom Penh, toward the west side of the great lake, Tonle Sap. It saved us having to explain why we needed to inspect the same area twice.

After breakfast we assembled behind the villa, where our transportation awaited—a 1950’s Volkswagen Beetle in distressed condition, prime dune buggy material back home. Our party included Soh Soon, me and two weasel-eyed cadres from the Inner Circle goon squad. They came along to shoot me if I made a break for it. Soh Soon had packed a day’s field rations—a tub of cooked rice, some dried fish and a jug of water. The task of driving fell to me, as none of the others had a clue. The boys squeezed in back with their AK-47s. Riding in a car was high living for them, but it would take more than that to stretch a smile across those sinister, watchful faces.

I’ve run many a dune buggy, but it wouldn’t be seemly for an Albanian rice advisor to come on too slick about automobiles. Therefore I first warily circled around it. I took the food from Soh Soon and opened the rear compartment as if to stow it in there. Then I acted surprised and puzzled—what’s a spare engine doing in the trunk? The boys, working hard to suppress amusement, pointed at the front end. Finally I figured it out and stashed the food up front, also feigning surprise at finding the gasoline fill pipe there. I opened it, affecting curiosity and suspicion, and was pleased to see liquid lapping the top of the tank. I screwed the cap back on, shaking my head in bewilderment.

I got in and made a show of searching out the ignition. I started it, dropped it into reverse, pointed forward and popped the clutch. We jolted backward, killing the engine. Muttering dire Albanian curses, I restarted it. This time I put it into third gear and got it lurching forward. Faking bad driving didn’t need much effort, because the engine was badly out of tune. Every part that could be adjusted, should have been, but Cambodians have little interest in maintenance. I suppose when you use wooden plows, if something happens to one, you just carve out another. And water buffalo don’t need routine oil changes. I didn’t think it would be wise for me to get under the hood with screwdriver and socket wrench, however. What would an Albanian rice advisor know about the mysteries of carburetor adjustment and distributor timing? And I had a feeling that demonstrating too much mechanical competence would not endear me to Angka.

Our drive through Phonm Penh to Highway 5, going north toward Battambang, was my first good look at the city since the Khmer Rouge had rolled in. As we chugged toward the outskirts I discovered what forced evacuation of a city involved. Words can hardly describe my reaction—horror, disgust, fear, and despair would be a beginning. A ghostly quiet shrouded the empty streets, with few signs of life apart from patrolling cadres and circling vultures. Belongings discarded by the shuffling hordes littered the roadside, increasing in amount as we left the central district. Roadside jetsam reached a crescendo a few miles out of town, where tropical-heat-induced fatigue, possibly augmented by Khmer Rouge orders, had dictated en masse lightening of loads. Then, as we passed into the countryside, roadside corpses, by now rag-wrapped, fly-covered mounds of rotting ex-people, came more frequently. These peaked a few miles further, then dwindled as we continued on. All along the way, abandoned cars and trucks, and burnt-out tanks and personnel carriers, clogged the margins. At twenty miles from town, litter, debris and corpses were no longer so thick. Neither did we see any living people. The villages we passed showed no signs of life. Wherever the Khmer Rouge had driven the population, it wasn’t along the main drag.