You will bring forth in pain
8
You will bring forth in pain
Ong Thong Hoeung
The day after the 1977 celebrations to mark 17 April, Bounnie, who had been suffering from chronic malaria since her return to Phnom Penh, felt her health deteriorate. Her face was very pale, as if all the blood had drained out of it. The attacks of malaria occurred more and more frequently. Every ten days, her temperature went up to 40-41 degrees. She trembled, had nightmares, cried out and wept. This state lasted about an hour and recurred several times a day. I covered her with everything we possessed: her blanket, mine, her clothes. Our friends came to ask after her, taking care not to attract attention. They demonstrated their solidarity discreetly, particularly those who were doctors. Although they were not allowed to practice their profession, they came to examine Bounnie whenever they could, giving advice and sometimes even some medicines they still had left. During the attacks, she was unable to walk and had no appetite. In view of her condition, she was sometimes allowed to stay in the cabin. She was also given special permission to request sugar cane or fruit, if ever she felt like any.
For the past month, the food rations in the camp had improved. The canteen served more or less normal rice, instead of soup. Everyone was entitled to a ration of uncooked rice corresponding to roughly half a tin of condensed milk. And, following the 17 April celebrations in 1977, we also received corn. We had almost enough to eat.
Unfortunately, Bounnie was stricken by fever, and we were powerless to help her. Each time, the cycle would repeat itself: for the first two days, her temperature rose. On the third day, it went down. On the fourth day, it disappeared. But Bounnie was left exhausted, as she had been unable to swallow anything since the beginning of the attack. She would convalesce until the seventh day, and would only be able to return to work in the fields the following day. On the ninth day, she would feel almost perfectly fit again and would work more or less like everyone else.
One day, after a period of convalescence, Bounnie went down to join her group, to help prepare the food. She went to get the vegetables with Khom. As they were picking aubergines, she suddenly felt weak.
“Why have you stopped talking?” asked her friend. “How pale you are! You look tired. Go and rest, quickly.”
“I don’t think I have really recovered, Khom. It’s always the same. If I’m not back in an hour, it means that I have a fever. You’ll tell our group leader, won’t you?”
“Don’t worry. Go and rest.”
Bounnie left. On her way back to the cabin, she stopped at the well to wash her hands and face. She knew that once she was lying down, it would be impossible for her to go and wash.
At about six o’clock in the evening, on that June day of 1977, as the sun was setting, turning the horizon crimson, everyone was returning from work with their tools over their shoulders. Some were whistling as they walked, some simply had a cheerful air, whilst others – the thinner ones – looked tired. Everyone went to their cabins before taking a shower at the well and changing. It would soon be time for the meal. In the sewing workshop in the centre of the camp, Bopha was folding the mended clothes.
“Are you alright, bâng?” she asked, seeing Bounnie come into the workshop.
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Have you got any pieces of fabric, please?”
“Yes, what do you need them for, bâng?”
As she spoke, she went to a plastic bag propped up against the wall, and began to rummage in it. Before Bounnie could answer, Bopha showed her a few small scraps of black fabric.
“Do you like this? Is this what you need to mend your blouses?”
“No, it’s not for mending my blouses, it’s…”
“Oh yes! I understand, I understand, so that’s what they’re for. Oh, I’m so happy for you! Take them! I hope they’ll serve the purpose.”
“Yes, they’re perfect, thank you very much, Bopha.”
As she put the pieces of black fabric in her pockets and left the workshop, Bounnie was pleased to have something to use as sanitary towels. She went back to her cabin, a smile on her lips, took the bits of fabric out and showed them to me.
“You’ll never manage to make a blouse out of all those little bits.”
“No, they’re not for making a blouse. They’re for me, for my periods. You have no idea how relieved I feel. I started my period today at mid-day. My periods have come back. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
It was here in the Red Land that, for the first time since we had got married, in other words in more than two years, Bounnie and I finally had the opportunity to live together for a prolonged period under the same roof and (almost) set up home together. Since our return, our lives had been subject to constant change, and nothing had seemed certain, until we had been sent to live in B18. On the day we were married, we had spent our wedding night in Fontainebleau, at the Hôtel Napoléon. It was Ros who had had the idea. Bounnie had continued her life at the Juliana Foundation, the ‘House of Holland’, at the university. For my part, I devoted all my time to the revolution. We saw each other once or twice a week. So we carried on living the way we had done before. Bounnie always used to repeat her mother’s words to me: “You know, a couple doesn’t know each other until they have had one or two children.” But we had yet to discover how true her words had been…
All seemed to be going well between us. There was no discord and nor, of course, were there any worries about money at the end of the month. And Bounnie was not automatically subject to kitchen duties, as was the normal tradition. After work, there was the meeting, and then we would go back to our cabin, ready to drop from exhaustion. Our life as a couple was thus non-existent. We had adapted to conditions in the camp. When Bounnie was ill, I had no worries about myself. After some time, all the cabins in the camp had to be divided into two. We had to share them with people from B17. So we had recently been living with another couple, elderly people. The husband was called Benla, a tall, thin man with completely white hair. When he walked, he looked like a candle flame dancing in the wind. His wife was tiny, and a bit chattier than him.
Ta, ‘old man’, often complained: “I am exhausted. The food ration is not enough. It’s getting smaller. And I can’t eat fast enough. I haven’t many teeth left.” In the canteen, everyone received the same quantity of rice. However, sometimes there were the remains of the rice left in the pot, which we could eat afterwards. But of course it was first come, first served: you had to swallow your portion at top speed, and the old man was obviously at a disadvantage compared to the young men. “I can’t do anything to help you,” replied his wife, upset. “I’m hungry too, and tired. People think that working in the nursery isn’t so hard, but you see, at my age, so many children wear me out.”
On hearing them, Bounnie, who had just come in, pulled out of her pocket a piece of bay, rice crust, which she had managed to save in the kitchen. She divided it into two and gave me one bit. She took the other piece into the other room, where the old man was lying on his bed, looking up at the ceiling. “This is for you, ‘uncle’, eat it.”
He brightened, sat up and held out his right hand to take the little piece of rice crust. “Thank you, thank you very much, niece. May Buddha protect you!” Overcome by emotion, he had forgotten that Buddhism was forbidden and that you weren’t supposed to say ‘thank you’ outside criticism/self-criticism sessions.
“It’s nothing, uncle.”
“It means a lot to me. In this day and age… How generous you are! Thank you again.”
“Goodbye uncle, aunt.”
His wife, who was also sitting on the bed, said suddenly: “Don’t be in such a hurry. We are close neighbours. We have wanted to make your acquaintance for a long time. Let’s make the most of these moments now, if that’s alright with you.”
We were separated only by a corrugated iron partition two metres high. The elderly couple had arrived from Preah Vihear with a group of about forty people. They were all ‘guests’ of the local cooperatives. Benla was a member of the Phnom Penh middle class that had left the capital after the coup d’état on 18 March 1970, at the same time as Prince Phurissara, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs. Together with him, they had lived in re-education camps, like many others who had wanted to take part in the resistance. That had also been the case with Tourn Sok Phâllar, Nuon Khœun…
After this encounter, we got on very well with the old couple. Benla and his wife told us what had happened to them before they arrived in B18. When they found out that I was from Koh Thom, they told us that many people from there had died in Preah Vihear from starvation and disease. Although they spoke quite freely with me, they avoided referring to Angkar, other than speaking of it in positive terms. “The situation will get better,” said Benla to console Ravonn, one of his nephews who often came to see him.
One day, however, he seemed to abandon all caution.
“You know, Hu Nim said that the watchword ‘Let us plant, let us plant, until there is no more land to plant’ is ridiculous.”
And he added: “Dear nephew, do you know Phlek Chheut, Phlek Chhat’s brother?”
“Yes, I know him; he was my doctor in Phnom Penh.”
“They arrested him in Preah Vihear some time after the evacuation of Phnom Penh.”
“What did he do?”
“He said he wanted to escape to Thailand. They found him with lots of dollars in his possession.”
But Madame Benla cut her husband short and said to us, smiling: “I have never seen a couple that gets on as well as you do. Many couples drift apart in these times, but you…”
We only lived with them for three months. After that, they were sent to carry out their duty somewhere else. They left at the same time as many other people from the families of Prince Phurissara or his friends. I thought that maybe he needed them to work with him.
August 1977. It was very hot that day, with hardly a cloud in the sky. After the mid-day meal, I went back to my cabin to rest for a few moments with Bounnie, who was having another attack of malaria. “You know,” she said, “it’s your birthday today.” I hardly reacted, as if it made no difference to me. Then, cheering up, trying to appear more polite, I said: “And in a week’s time it’ll be yours.” Bounnie seemed to be absorbed in distant dreams. She sat on the bed and gazed out at the countryside stretching away into the distance as far as the eye could see. She looked sad and said little, other than to ask me to stay a bit longer with her in our cabin. Outside, everything was motionless. There was not a breath of wind. In the field in front of her, bordering on the forest to the left, little green bean plants were struggling to rise up out of the recently turned red soil; the earth looked like an enormous oriental carpet, rolled out all the way to the horizon to welcome guests.
“This wretched malaria is getting on my nerves,” Bounnie suddenly said. “I’m on my own the whole time. This is harder to put up with than going to work, I can tell you. I think incessantly. I think of my parents, and my brothers and sisters, who were living in Phnom Penh. Where are they? What has become of them? I think of my father, and worry about his high blood pressure. He always had to take half a pill to regulate his blood circulation. What will he do without his medicine? When we were in Paris, my sister and I used to send him his medicine before 17 April 1975. And how will my mother be able to cope with life in these conditions? She used to love talking to us, that was the way she brought us up. And my little sister, who so loved tranquillity? Were they evacuated from Phnom Penh together, or did they get separated?”
I let her speak without interrupting her. What could I say? Bounnie became more and more distant, lost in her thoughts, and didn’t hear the footsteps coming towards our cabin. It was her older sister, Sy, who came in.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re talking.”
“But sister, what’s the matter with you? Has the fever come back?”
Bounnie shook her head. And added: “Not for the moment.”
“Why are you looking so sad, then?”
“I’m thinking about our family.”
Sy fell quiet and her face darkened. She too seemed to be absorbed in her memories. Then Bounnie spoke again: “Do you still remember that telegram from our little sister, Bun Thèn, who was studying pharmacy, and from Dèt, our nephew, who was studying medicine, telling us they would be leaving Phnom Penh on 16 April 1975? They were out of luck.”
Sy looked even sadder. “I’m not sure, you know. Once they’d arrived in Paris, they would probably have decided to go back, like us.” She turned to me with a sigh:
“And you, do you think about your family too?”
“Yes, I do think about them, but what can I do? I don’t know where my family is either.”
Sy turned back to Bounnie, as if to change the subject.
“Have you got your periods now?”
“Yes, fortunately.”
She paused a moment, before clearly stating the purpose of her visit.
“In my opinion, if you want a child, now is the right moment. Especially for you, Bounnie. If you really want one, don’t wait too long. I know life is hard at the moment. But you’ll soon be over thirty. There’s a risk that the delivery might be more complicated.”
“I read that too, in a book that Sovann lent me.”
As she spoke, she pulled a book out from under her pillow, entitled I am expecting a baby. “It hasn’t left my side since I fell ill.”
Sy couldn’t believe her eyes.
“How did Sovann manage to keep a book for this long? You must be very careful. You risk getting into trouble.”
“When I read it, I always put my mosquito net up. What am I supposed to do all day on my own?”
“But you must be very careful,” Sy repeated.
To stop her sister from worrying, Bounnie carried on: “Our pregnant friends are treated better than the others. They get an extra food ration: a small piece of prahoc and a soup spoon of sugar every week.” Then she looked at me. “Yes, I think it’s time we gave the matter some thought, don’t you?” I drew back. “Can’t you see that we have enough problems ourselves? How can you think about having a child at a time like this? What future would it have? Anyway, you’re ill, you need to get better first. I can’t see the point of bringing another being into existence to suffer, it would only add to our own burden of suffering.” But Sy had to stick her oar in: “It’s up to you two to think it over. I personally think it’s the right time.” And with these words, the bell rang. It was time to leave Bounnie to her dreams of a child and go back to my work group.
As the year progressed, Bounnie’s health continued to deteriorate. Some of our friends collected medicine in secret – there were many people in the camp who hoped to save her, and they demonstrated their solidarity by discreetly giving her quinine, antibiotics and tonics which they had managed to hide up until then. They were making a huge sacrifice, because they all needed those remedies themselves. We were very grateful to them. By sharing life in ‘re-education through labour’ camps, we had got to know each other and there had been a resurgence in solidarity and the ties of friendship, much threatened at the beginning by the manoeuvres of the Angkar cadres. Our friends realised that we were being crushed by the Khmer Rouge to whom we had given everything, receiving nothing but humiliation and misery in return. “They’re constantly looking for ways to divide us. They don’t keep their promises. They don’t work any better than us. They are exploiting us. They make us work, to get rid of our energy: planting coconut palms in the dry season, building reservoirs that serve no purpose, digging rice fields in chalky soil… All pointless tasks.” These were the views we sometimes heard, while the camp leaders would tell us off, repeating the same old words until our ears rang: “You lot are incapable of feeding yourselves!”
Everyone was genuinely worried about Bounnie’s poor state of health. In spite of the medicine, she was not getting better. The malaria would not leave her, and the fever relentlessly pursued its ten-day cycle. Bounnie bravely struggled on, come what may. She hadn’t had her period since October and I was worried. What if by chance she was expecting a baby?
One morning she told me of a ‘marvellous’ dream: “Last night I dreamt that a woman of about forty was offering me a diamond ring as a gift. I refused, saying that I liked it but couldn’t accept such a gift. In any case, what use was a ring to me nowadays, as we can’t wear rings? Angkar doesn’t allow us to wear jewellery. But the lady insisted: “If you can’t use it now, it will be useful later, just accept it.””
“And what did you do?”
“I accepted it. What do you think?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Well what am I supposed to say? If you want to accept it, accept it then. Do as you please.”
“Oh, you don’t understand a thing! That’s not what I’m asking you! It was a dream, and I’d like to know if you understand what it means.”
“Bounnie, you know very well that I don’t understand a thing about dreams. Perhaps it means that you’re going to get well…”
“Honestly, you’re just saying anything! That’s not what it’s about, it means that I’m expecting a baby and, according to the omens, it’ll be a girl.”
“Do you realise what you’re saying? You’re still sick!”
But she wasn’t wrong. Her dream was true. And the truth left me speechless. In addition to the ordeal of the malaria, now there was daily vomiting, nausea, dizziness…
At the end of 1977, it was back and forth, non-stop, between the cabin and the ‘hospital’, which was one and a half kilometres away. Bounnie was very thin and couldn’t walk. Every ten days the young girls from the mobile group carried her in a hammock. In January 1978 she was put in the dormitory for girls, which also housed twenty children aged between three and thirteen years who laughed, cried and played. In the evening of 6 January, she felt another attack of malaria coming on. She had all the usual symptom: headache, shivering and a high temperature. Gathering all the strength she had left, Bounnie put up her mosquito net so that she could be left in ‘peace’ when she began to cry in a short while. But a few minutes later, terrible noises and screams emerged from beneath her mosquito net.
“Bâng Bounnie, whatever’s the matter with you? Can you hear me? Answer me!” called Thea, from the next bed. But Bounnie did not reply, other than in incomprehensible groans. Thea opened the mosquito net and found her unconscious and foaming at the mouth… She had stopped moving.
“Help! Help! Bâng Bounnie is going to die!” shouted Thea at the top of her voice.
The younger children sharing the same dormitory woke up and started to cry. The five Angkar doctors arrived, one after the other. Bounnie was still unconscious, but she was crying out. They massaged her, gave her injections, put her on a drip… Bounnie came round again an hour later.
It rained that night, and the pattering of the raindrops on the roof frightened her. The sound of ghosts, she thought…
The next morning, the camp president summoned me.
“Listen, Ta (old man), you’re going to have to choose between the life of bâng neary (Bounnie) and that of the child. In any case, according to our doctors, after all the medicine she has taken, the child will not be normal. It will be handicapped. Normally, with quinine and antibiotics she should already have miscarried some time ago. Do you want to save the mother’s life or the baby’s? There’s no other solution, it’s either one or the other.”
“Save the mother’s life, then, bâng,” I said, choked with emotion.
“Alright, then, when she’s strong enough we’ll give her an abortion.”
Ten days later, another attack of malaria. Less violent, this time. “Now she really has to rest,” Rom, the doctor, told me. “She must regain her strength because we are going to make a hole in the foetus’ head to make it come out.” But the cycle of malaria continued, without the slightest respite.
In March 1978, the pregnancy was in its fifth month. A new attack of malaria began, a particularly violent one. Bounnie’s temperature was very high. The situation was so serious that one of the doctors told me: “Big sister Bounnie will not survive unless we give her an abortion now. We must do it now, or it will be too late.” Another doctor contradicted him: “We must wait until her health improves.”
“Look, I don’t see how she can improve. The longer we wait, the greater the risk.”
Bounnie didn’t know what to say. When the doctors had left and we were alone, she asked me: “ Have you any idea what they are going to do to me? What will they use to make a hole in our baby’s head?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. As ‘he’ is weakening you, it is very important that you make an effort to get stronger. Otherwise, you’ll never get through this. Think of your own health first.”
Finally, the doctors decided to wait until Bounnie’s health improved before inducing the death of our child. But Bounnie stayed stuck in bed, with no appetite, overcome with faintness, dizziness and violent bouts of vomiting. She could swallow no more than two or three spoons of rice each day. Every time she heard the sound of dishes, she retched. People murmured that she was doomed, that there was no way she could pull through. Naturally she was entitled to a special ration: in addition to the soup served daily in the canteen, she was given a piece of fish every now and then. But it was to no avail, she could eat virtually nothing. I was mostly the one to benefit. I felt ashamed, but the fish was so good that I ate it readily, disobeying the rules.
“But what have I done against Buddha?” Bounnie asked herself, realising that the malaria was not leaving her. Neither her secret prayers, nor the quinine, nor the antibiotics seemed to have the least effect. Despite her distress when she was asked her opinion on the question of ‘making a hole in the baby’s head’, she preferred to remain silent. I insisted: “But do you agree? Tell me.”
“My life is entirely in the hands of the doctors who are caring for me. I’ll let them decide. I don’t want to make the choice. I don’t have enough strength for it.”
She did not want to take on this responsibility, even though everyone was asking her to. The child she was carrying in her belly was her child. They could oblige her to get rid of it, but she made it clear: “Don’t expect the decision to come from me.”
At the end of the sixth month, the situation hadn’t changed. Rom, the young woman in charge of the ‘hospital’, came to Bounnie to tell her: “It’s too late for the abortion. The conditions required in order to ‘make a hole in the brain of the foetus’ cannot be met. You are too exhausted. We cannot do anything. This baby is very stubborn. Normally, with all the quinine pills and antibiotics you’ve taken, it should have died and been miscarried a long time ago. But the baby is firmly resisting. As that’s the way things are, from today on I will give you tonics. I am no longer going to try to make you lose it.”
The next day, Rom brought her five or six little bottles of syrup, which were actually intended for the children and which had long since passed their expiry date. They were western tonics. “It’s to give you iron,” she said.
After that the malaria was less aggressive. The bouts of fever didn’t disappear completely, but her temperature no longer rose above 40 degrees. And Bounnie, who was used to it by now, no longer lost consciousness. She complained that she was immensely tired and couldn’t speak without pausing for breath in the middle of each sentence. She did not leave her bed, because as soon as she stood up, she felt dizzy. But that did not stop her from encouraging me to touch her belly when the baby moved. “It’s moving, look, it’s moving a lot,” she said proudly.
In the eighth and ninth months, her health improved noticeably. Little by little, she began to get up and go outside the cabin. She felt more hopeful and put on a bit of weight. For several weeks, she had been boiling the roots and leaves of certain plants, following traditional prescriptions. She drank nothing but this decoction, as it was supposed to aid childbirth. She still lacked appetite, and had to struggle to stay alive at any cost, even though everyone considered her as good as lost. I myself did not believe she would come through the delivery. I could not see by what miracle she could possibly survive it, and prepared myself for the worst.
Bounnie refused to lose heart, and Angkar left her in peace, thinking that this was just a temporary reprieve. In the camp, however, the struggle against individualistic tendencies was intensifying. Up until then, people who were seriously ill, pregnant women or women who had just given birth were authorised to have a small personal ‘kitchen’ next to their cabins, where they could boil water. From now on, these privileges were withdrawn in order to combat anything ‘private’. According to the new rules, it was forbidden to prepare anything at all outside the communal kitchen. However, the camp leaders made an exception in the case of Bounnie. “If you want to eat fruit or vegetables, you can ask us. There’s no problem for you.” Now that she could walk, she took part as required in the daily meeting as well as the group meetings every ten days.
In the evening of 5 July, during the group meeting, Bounnie felt unwell. She returned to the cabin. It had just stopped raining. She walked slowly, taking care not to slip and watching out for any snakes, as they liked to come out after a downpour. All of a sudden, she felt a strange sensation. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I all wet?” When she got to the cabin, she lit the oil lamp and looked to see if there was anything in her urine. One hour later, I asked her if she wanted me to go and tell the doctors. “Oh no, it’s not worth it. My belly isn’t hurting. It’s late now, we’d better get some sleep.”
The next morning, I awoke very early, as usual. I asked after Bounnie’s health before I went to work.
“I’m fine, I feel better,” she replied.
“You feel no pain in your belly?”
“No, but I feel a bit strange. I feel anxious, but you’d better go. If anything happens, they’ll let you know,” she said, putting on her black sampot.
A few minutes after I had left, she lost some more water. The camp was deserted. Everyone was at work. It was past nine o’clock when Khom, another young woman who was also pregnant, called by. She was very active and good at managing, and had called by to visit Bounnie before going to get the vegetables.
“How are you?”
“Oh, my belly doesn’t hurt, Khom, not in the slightest. But I don’t understand why I keep losing water the whole time. I’ve already changed sampot.”
“What’s that, you’re losing the waters? Have you already told the doctors?”
“Not yet…”
“How foolish of you! Don’t move! I’m going to tell Rom.”
She returned half an hour later, disappointed.
“It’s impossible to find her. They told me she’s gone to care for the sick people in B17, in the cadres’ section.”
“Never mind,” said Bounnie reassuringly. “The contractions haven’t started yet.”
Rom arrived an hour later.
“How do you feel, sister?”
“My belly doesn’t hurt yet, but the waters have broken.”
“When did it start?”
“Last night.”
The young woman stared at the wall, without saying anything. She seemed to be thinking.
At about one o’clock, Bounnie began to feel the long-awaited contractions, every two or three minutes. Then everything went calm again and there were no more contractions for another hour. By six o’clock, she was in more and more pain. There was a lot of activity in the cabin: four or five experienced women were there, two of them midwives. In addition to the camp’s medical staff, Sy and a few others were also given permission to stay with Bounnie, who was suffering more and more. I had to stay outside, with my friends, and wait for news. But I could hear her long groans at each contraction. To reassure her, Rom hung her hammock beside her. Bounnie was allowed two spoons of sugar cane. “Take it, it’ll make you stronger!” said the women around her. But she couldn’t.
Nine o’clock. She was exhausted. She wanted to get out of bed, to go to the toilet. She was sweating and the contractions were making her cry out. Rom examined the opening of the uterus again. “It’s starting to open a little bit! Be brave, bâng! I’ll give you an injection to make it open faster.”
By ten o’clock, the cervix was completely open. “I can see it’s head,” said Rom. “It’s coming!” The pain was more and more intense. “Push, push! The baby must come out!” shouted all the women. “It hurts, I can’t manage any more,” implored Bounnie. She thought of her mother and called out for her, saying that it would hurt less if she were there.
Midnight passed. Still no improvement. On the contrary, Bounnie’s state was getting worse. Rom announced, to encourage her: “The baby will come out at two o’clock in the morning.” But at three o’clock, still nothing had happened. And Bounnie hadn’t slept for a single second.
“Well, bâng, how are you feeling now? “
“Just the same.”
“In that case, I have to leave you for a few minutes. I’ll be right back, don’t worry.”
The cervix had been open since ten o’clock in the evening. From the doorway, I could see the baby’s head, with its jet-black hair, but it was stuck where it was. That was the head that Rom had planned to ‘make a hole’ in. “But it’s too late now,” she had said. Bounnie was still calling for her mother, in spite of the fact that her older sister was there. It was true that in my village, when women gave birth, their mothers were always present. I was tormented with worry and didn’t know what to do. They told me to go and ‘rest’ in a nearby cabin. There wasn’t a breath of air, I was sweating and I couldn’t lie down. I listened closely to the noises around me. I was tired, so tired. I couldn’t keep going any more…
When Rom returned, a quarter of an hour later, the camp leader, Théng, who had succeeded Rim when he left, summoned me. In the presence of the young female doctor, he asked me: “Do you consent to a Caesarean section? It’s very risky, I’m warning you. But there’s no other choice. We’ll do everything we can to save the mother. There’s very little chance that the baby will survive. In any case, it won’t be a normal baby. We don’t hold out much hope even for the mother.” And Rom added: “I must tell you straight away, bâng, that she’s very weak. So do you agree to a Caesarean?”
“If you say that there’s no other choice, you must do what you think best.”
In the cabin, Bounnie asked where Rom was. “She left,” her sister told her. “Why did she leave?” Everyone looked at her, hesitating to answer. Finally, one of the women spoke: “Rom went to get the things for the operation.”
“Are they going to operate?”
Right up to the very last minute, Bounnie wanted to believe that her baby would come out normally. But it was already four thirty in the morning. The situation was still the same. The bell rang, calling people for work. When she heard it, Bounnie realised that the day had broken and the baby still hadn’t arrived. “What shall I tell my friends when they come to ask for news?”
Rom came back at five o’clock in the morning. “Well, bâng, still nothing?” And she carried on immediately: “She has to be taken to the hospital. Quickly, we have no time to lose.” Some of the women went to get a hammock, while others took Bounnie’s blanket and clothes. “Aren’t you going to bring the baby’s blanket and clothes too?” Bounnie gently asked one of the ladies. Bounnie was carried in the hammock, one young girl in front and another behind. Sy and I were allowed to accompany her. The sun rose slowly above the forest, but sadness and anguish were visible in every face.
“If you need blood, I can give mine because it’s the same as Bounnie’s,” said her sister.
“We’ll see,” said Rom.
On the way, our friends left us to go to work. They cast a last glance at Bounnie, full of compassion, for none of them thought it was possible to carry out surgery on a person so seriously ill with malaria. They asked each other: “What will they use to operate with? If at least there was oxygen, blood… But there’s nothing at all, here. This is madness…”
The ‘hospital’ was a house on stilts, built recently on the same model as the houses for the cadres. It had a veranda and two rooms. There was no kitchen and no bedroom. We climbed the stairs. Bounnie was laid on a bed inside the house. The doctors got ready. All they had was a box of cotton wool, some knives and pairs of scissors and a homemade pump to suck up the blood. There was no oxygen… Anyone who, like me, had seen a modern operating theatre had good reason to be afraid. The place looked more like an abattoir.
I was gripped by an immense sense of anguish, and I could feel the sobs welling in my throat. I thought of the delivery room where Bounnie would be lying contentedly, had we not made the crazy mistake of returning to Cambodia. I imagined a room, in a pleasant clinic, cheerful, with everything you needed for a first birth, not forgetting the flowers – roses – that Bounnie loved so much. This room, as I had seen it on television, took over my mind as if it were real. Bounnie would not have the slightest fear of dying. No one would fear for her life; by the end of the twentieth century, people no longer talked of death in childbirth, but of ‘painless childbirth’. A man, still young, would be standing beside her, optimistic, smiling, looking at her tenderly. That man was me. In flesh and blood, happy to be about to have a child. And soon, they would put a baby in a nice clean cradle next to the bed, the baby that would be mine, ours, our child, wrapped in pure white linen. Our parents, outside the delivery room, would be waiting for the birth of their descendant. And Bounnie would be smiling. We would admire our sleeping child.
But it was just a dream, which vanished brutally. The truth was there before me, hard as stone. Sinister. This was a universe without human warmth, love, heart. Sy and I looked at each other in silence. Bounnie was in tears. At times, she was in the throes of such painful contractions that she could not stop herself from groaning. Drops of sweat appeared on her face. Rom turned to San, one of the other doctors. “Do you want to try one last time?” The two women disliked each other. San had been in charge of pregnancies and deliveries before Rom arrived. Since then, she had only looked after children.
San said to Bounnie: “Lie back, bâng. Relax. Bend your legs. Lift your head up. Like that. Open your legs and relax them. Like that. Very good. Now, try again. Push! Again! Again! You’re nearly there. I saw its head. It’s got black hair. Push just a little bit more.” As she spoke, San put both her feet on Bounnie’s hips and pushed. “Push very hard, and again, even harder. Again, again, bâng. One more try.” San tried once, twice, three times… five times… But the baby’s head was stuck in the pelvic girdle. It was already eleven o’clock. There was no hope left that the baby would come out the normal way. Bounnie was still groaning quietly. Her face grew paler and paler. She was completely and utterly exhausted.
“You see, there’s nothing to be done,” said Rom, in a state of great tension. “I know it’s very risky, extremely risky. But we can’t leave her like this any longer. If we operate, we might be able to save her. But if we leave her like that, she’ll die in a short while.”
The ‘health’ group’, made up of five people and the camp leaders, asked Sy and myself once again to take the final decision. “Do as you think best. I want you to save the mother’s life, at least.” That was all I had the strength to say. “We’ll try,” replied Rom, simply.
It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon. In order for Rom to operate, Bounnie’s bed was taken out on to the veranda because there was more light. They got ready. Bounnie was placed in a lying position, with her head slightly raised. Serum drips, ‘made in China’, were inserted into each of her arms and attached to the sides of the bed with a piece of string. Rom opened Bounnie’s pyjamas, revealing her enormous belly. Sy went closer. “I have the same blood group as my sister. If you need any blood, I’m here,” she said. Rom gave Bounnie an anaesthetic injection which she called thnam sanlâp. Then, using a piece of cotton wool soaked in alcohol, she cleaned Bounnie’s belly. Bounnie’s eyes were slowly closing. She could see nothing but a cloud, far away in the distance, and then everything went black and she lost consciousness.
Rom set to work, knife in hand. She made a cut in the middle of the belly, from top to bottom, as if she were carving a chicken. The blood spurted out, bright red. Pet Chiep was in charge of pumping it.
Several veins had been cut. The manual pump wasn’t working properly. “Faster!” ordered Rom. “Faster! Give me the scissors. Check the pulse. Faster, pump faster! That’s it. I’ve got to the baby.”
As she spoke, she moved faster and pulled out the baby, covered in blood, its body turning a purple colour. It was a girl… She gave it to San, continuing to soak cotton wool in the open belly to absorb the blood, as the pump had broken down.
The baby didn’t cry. “Give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” Rom commanded. San placed her lips over the baby’s as if she was trying to save someone who was drowning. She sucked out the blood and spat it on the floor. Once, twice. The baby still didn’t react. San carried on, three times, four times. And that was it, at last the baby cried! It was alive. “Give it an injection of camphor solution!”
San did this immediately, then wrapped the baby in a blanket and put it in a corner. No one paid any attention to it. Everyone turned to Bounnie, who had already lost an enormous amount of blood.
Outside, the sun beat down. It was very hot, 37 degrees. People were arriving, more and more of them. Rom took two pieces of cotton wool, all that was left, to mop up the blood. She wrung them out, like cloths, soaked them again and repeated the operation for another fifteen minutes.
Her mouth half-open, Bounnie groaned lugubriously. The situation seemed desperate, but Rom busied herself. “Give her another injection,” she said, pouring penicillin on the wound before sewing it up. They had to top up the anaesthetic. At a quarter to three, the Caesarean was over and Rom was joking: “Oh! I left the scissors in her belly!”
One hour later, Bounnie regained consciousness. She was given some thick soup to build up her strength. The operation had been a success. We were all relieved. No one could believe it, and they praised the superiority of revolutionary medicine over western medicine. In spite of the lack of adequate medical instruments, they had managed to operate. It was a shining example of Angkar’s approach: “Rely on your own strength.” In order to celebrate this victory fittingly, the camp leader ordered a pig to be killed the next day. As for Rom, she was overjoyed with her achievement, and we all thanked her from the bottom of our hearts. Our friends Sopa and Ketha, both professional midwives, were complimented by the camp cadres.
As for the baby – my daughter, just one hour old – she fell asleep peacefully, after crying at the top of her lungs. No one had taken any more notice of her, as we were all so worried about her mother. When we finally realised that the worst danger had been averted, we turned to the child. She was so quiet, her eyes closed as if she refused to face the world, now that she had been separated from her mother. Perhaps her eyes wouldn’t open because of the blood she had been soaked in. Rom told them to put some lemon drops on her eyelids.
I studied this tiny life that had come from my own, not without apprehension. I was afraid of being disappointed… I looked at her eyes first, when they finally opened. Could she see? And her ears. There was nothing missing from her face: a nose, two eyes, two ears. Everything was normal. I couldn’t see her arms or legs, they were covered up beneath the blanket she had been wrapped in. That would have to wait for later.
It was the first time I had been present at a delivery. And what a delivery! A birth surrounded by blood, malaria… How symbolic! A little being that had not wanted to be expelled from its mother’s belly: the ‘tunnel’ had been so narrow. How could one not be afraid of the unknown in this incomprehensible world? How could one come into the world in the midst of such horror? The gateway to life was so small and so painful. Why had we conceived and brought into existence another unfortunate being in this world of misery?
They washed the newborn baby. A sturdy little girl weighing three kilos, with all her organs, just like any normal human being. And how many times had they told us the opposite? At the top of her back was a four-centimetre wound, caused by Rom’s knife. The baby could have been killed before they got it out of its mother’s belly. As the mother was for the time being unable to breastfeed, they soaked a little piece of cotton in a glass of sugared water. Her very first meal in this world.
Bounnie’s pain seemed to have subsided. Her eyes were half-shut, and she was no longer groaning. The leaden sun continued to beat down, as if to punish this terrible world. As if it had decided to dry up the human heart forever, to make it become as hard as iron. In contrast to the ‘hospital’, a short distance away the children were singing We, the children, we love Angkar beyond all limits, as they gathered leaves from the jack trees under the watchful eye of a mê komar. They were made to sing this song all the time, and they were so used to it that they ended up singing it instinctively.
Traduite par Jane Hughes