Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor Read Free Book Online Page B

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