Tun’s gaze flitted again to the soldier kneeling on the crossing over the stream. There was something devotional to his posture, his arms together in front of him, as if in prayer, hands tucked between his knees. No one paid attention to the figure, and for a moment Tun wondered if he was looking at a mirage. He blinked, but the soldier remained where he was, head bowed, his entire being expectant, waiting. Despite the temporary stillness, Tun suspected at any moment they would all pick up and leave, taking whatever supplies they could carry, leaving the rest to be swallowed by the seething, tangled mass of vines and undergrowth. And for the first time he was grateful that his daughter was not with him. Once or twice during his travels he wondered if it had been a fatal mistake not to bring her along. He knew of others who had gone underground with their family members in tow. Had he demanded it of Om Paan, she would’ve packed up Sita and come with him. But after all they’d been through, he could not uproot them again, take away the home and stability they both so cherished. Besides, if all proceeded as planned, he would go back to Phnom Penh to fetch them in a year’s time, and by then he would’ve seen for himself what he was asking them to abandon their life for. Presently, there was only this forest and the battle-gutted landscape he’d traversed to arrive.
In Kompong Cham, in a district known as “Jewels of the Bees,” where he’d parted ways with Comrade Nuon and the two others, Tun had walked through a village like the surface of the moon. Huge bomb craters transformed by the rains into ponds where children swam and hunted for frogs among colossal chunks of shrapnel. Hillocks sliced by rocket-propelled grenades, their tips half plunged into the earth like banana flower heads pitched from a great height by some immortal strength. Inundated rice paddies harboring overturned tanks and armored personnel carriers that resembled the carapaces of gargantuan crabs. In another district, he’d charged through a burning village caught in the crossfire. A mother, running from the village, pausing to collect pieces of meat from the carcass of a water buffalo blown up by a hand grenade, salvaging what food she could to later feed her children. A father screaming for someone to shoot him, cursing soldiers on all sides, his dead boy in his outstretched arms. Why don’t you kill me too?—Kill me, you cowards!
After what he’d seen, Tun felt the encampment was a kind of sanctuary, however imposing the forest might appear. He wondered where the others had ended up, if they’d arrived at places as untamable, as concealed. They were separated so no permanent bond would form among the four of them, as tended to happen with traveling companions. From the start, they had all understood that there was to be no friendship, only camaraderie; no loyalty, except to the Organization. Loyalty was absolute, secrecy paramount. These were the most palpable fortifications—aside from the jungle itself—surrounding the encampment. He’d been shocked to observe that the soldiers, most of them rangy and underfed, would confine themselves to sharing a single burnt wild root, or even forgo food altogether, while the supplies of rice and canned goods gathered layers of twigs and leaves and dirt. What he’d understood as ideological rhetoric—We do not take from the communal pile; we eat when our brothers eat—appeared to command inviolable allegiance, restraining them from siphoning a can here, a can there. On top of this, Tun did not know where he was, and he imagined the same was true of the others.
In the final leg of his journey, under the dawn’s drizzle, he’d been driven blindfolded in a partially covered oxcart, and when he alighted a short while later, landing unsteadily on soft earth cushioned with tiny scaly leaves, the black cloth removed from his eyes by fingers as weightless as feathers, he found himself kneeling under a thick dome of overgrown bamboo, the rain replaced by bright morning light filtering through the sieve-like canopy, the oxcart disappearing through a narrow opening in the forest, the squeaks and moans of its wheels growing more distant with each rotation. Tun had blinked in confusion, thinking himself inside an enormous cage, an aviary one might encounter in a myth or dream, as sparrows hopped from branch to branch all around him. Had he been captured? Was his enemy a giant?
A young boy had stepped from behind him and stood off to one side, waiting and watching, the black cloth that had been Tun’s blindfold now dangling in his small hand, an AK47 cradled across his stomach in that intimate way a peasant boy might hold a newborn calf. Tun recalled the lightness of the boy’s fingers when he’d untied the blindfold, and now it was obvious to him that these fingers, long and agile, were more suited to a musical instrument and its intricate choreography of notes than the monotonous dissonance of the battlefield. He suddenly regretted not having brought with him at least a simple bamboo flute. Yet, he couldn’t imagine playing any of those instruments from home without the presence of his daughter, for she’d made them her own, addressing each like a beloved sibling. To the sralai, the tiny ivory oboe he’d brought her from Ratanakiri, he’d once heard her ask: “Sralai srey oun somlanh—you little one I love—what song will you sing me today?” This memory alone nearly knocked him off balance again.
The boy nodded for Tun to get up and follow. Without further exchange, they pushed deeper into the canopy, tracing its curve and narrowing cavity, until the bamboo gave way to hardwood trees, a forest dominated by ancient teaks, and, in the midst of it, the encampment.
Finally, Tun felt safe to ask where he was, and in reply the soldier mumbled some letters and numbers designating the region and zone, but nothing more. Silence appeared to be the boy’s native tongue. Tun had decided then it was best to observe, take in as much as he could. Things would become clear soon enough. So he’d hoped.