Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor Page A

to make a choice: he could be loyal to his father or his wife, but not both.
    My brother was silent for a moment, listening. I thought he was at least going to apologize for what Nay Chhun had done.
    But all he said was, ‘I have come to bring Papa back.’
    ‘So your wife can finish killing him?’ I said. ‘I just came back from putting fifteen stitches in him at the hospital.’
    My brother turned quietly and went away.
    Inside, my father was lying on the couch, pale and old and tired. I could no longer hold back my jealousy and dislike of my brother. ‘Which of your sons is treating you well, now,
Father?’ I said. ‘After all these years, do you know which son really tries to help you and which son has the heart of stone?’
    ‘I know, I know,’ my father muttered. ‘But it is best not to speak about such things.’
    ‘You know now, Father, but it is too late. Do you remember when you beat me as a small child, when you thought I stole the box of playing cards? Do you know who really stole them? Do you
know who has been stealing from you ever since you bought the lumber mill?’
    My father turned his face to the wall. He knew.
    Pheng Huor’s and Nay Chhun’s fall from grace gave me an opportunity to do something I had long wanted, and that was to expose my brother’s embezzling from the lumber mill.
    I called a meeting of the senior family members, including uncles and cousins. They were all in Phnom Penh because of the war. They all showed up for the meeting and my father and my brother did
too. I read them the list of my father’s properties that my brother had put in his own name: five big gasoline delivery trucks, two buses, a Land-Rover and another house near the lumber mill
that my father rented to tenants. As I spoke I held the deeds for these properties right in my hand. How much cash my brother skimmed from the lumber mill wasn’t clear, I said, because my
brother still had the books.
    Next I raised the subject of my father’s estate. The inheritance was going to be large. Because I was making a living as a doctor, I didn’t need a share of it. Those who did, I said,
were our younger brothers and sisters. If their shares were guaranteed, Pheng Huor could have my share. He had done more for the mill’s success than anybody except than my father himself. He
could have my share if he signed all the stolen assets back to Father.
    I looked around the room at my relatives. They were nodding their heads in approval. I was betting on my brother’s greed to get him to admit that he had done wrong. But I underestimated
Pheng Huor.
    Asked why he had put the assets in his own name, he replied calmly, ‘I worked hard. I deserved them. And I needed to have something for my sons and daughters in case anything happened to
me.’
    ‘Did you think about other people who have sons and daughters?’ I said sarcastically.
    My brother folded his hands and shrugged. ‘Another reason was the government laws,’ he said. ‘Papa is Chinese, but he refused to carry a Chinese identity card. There were
certain kinds of contracts that it was easier for me to sign.’
    ‘That’s not true and you know it,’ I said. ‘I helped you do the paperwork. There are very few businesses the government does not allow Chinese to go into, with or without
an identity card. We may have racial problems in this country, but they have not gone that far.’
    ‘This is not a good time to talk about business affairs,’ said my brother. ‘I think we should just be glad that I was able to rescue Papa from the communists. Maybe he would
not be alive today if not for me.’
    Try as we could, none of us could get my brother to admit that he had done anything wrong. Each time he managed to turn the questions aside. He would not agree to sign the ownership of the
gasoline trucks and the other assets back over to Papa. He ignored my suggestion that he get my part of the inheritance.
    The meeting ended unresolved. My father didn’t