For the Life of Thi Lin Klein

by Jack Twist

  Chapter 15

  That the baby would be next to go should not have surprised me. She was one of millions and not the hospital’s concern. We all had our priorities. Our programs to follow.

  Abbie had told the nurse that she would be back as soon as possible to see how the baby was going. The nurse smiled as she considered the possibility, and didn’t like Abbie’s chances. “I don’t know that it’ll be up to her, the way they came shooting over here to get her.”

  I hated her. She was young but had a plain face.

  “Feeling better after your shower?”

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  With Lieutenant Jefferies’ body, as far as I knew, lying undiscovered, in a patch of long grass in Bien Hoa, my professional priority at that moment, was immediate contact with my headquarters. I was two days late reporting in. But I wasn’t thinking straight. I was tired and distressed, and suspected the girl might have gone forever. And of course the nurse could be wrong. I’d seen how Abbie could set her mind to things.

  “Would it be okay if I waited here for a while? Just in case the girl comes back, before too long?”

  “Well, I guess. I’ll have to see what the doctor says and he’s very busy this morning.”

  I waited in the staffroom, for permission to wait in the staffroom, watching the baby, wishing now that she would cry, make a sound, any sound.

  And then the nurse had her hand on my shoulder, shaking gently.

  She offered me their only spare bed while I was waiting, in what she called the ‘head ward’, which I hoped meant the chief and therefore most comfortable ward. But I arrived there with the nurse to find that most of the patients had their heads bandaged. I asked her to wake me if the girl came back.

  When I awoke about an hour later it was gradual and disturbing and not only because I didn’t know where I was. The man in the bed beside me was crying. He sobbed without restraint, like a distressed child.

  I sat up, struggled to collect my bearings, and felt intensely lonely. Here I was again at the mercy of strangers. I decided that if Abbie had not returned I would check on the baby and then see about using the phone. I was a soldier after all, with, as the lieutenant would have said, a job to do.

  The nurse was sitting at the staffroom table with a cup of coffee. She was writing in a large book and she looked up and greeted me with a questioning look.

  “Where’s the baby?”

  “At an orphanage.”

  “Has Abbie been?”

  “No.”

  “Then who took the baby to an orphanage?”

  “Her aunt.”

  I sat down, confused and resentful, struggling not to swear at the nurse. “What? What aunt?”

  “The baby’s aunt. She said she was here to take her sister’s baby. She told us that the mother had died in childbirth, like the girl said. She knew about the girl’s father with the oil company. Someone Klein, in Bung Toe is it? She described the girl. And you.”

  “But ... you were supposed to wait for Abbie.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. This woman’s English wasn’t too good but she was very concerned for the baby. That was clear. And she’s her aunt and she knew of an orphanage that would take her. We told your friend from the start, when she arrived here making demands, we’re not a children’s hospital.”

  “Is the baby okay? I mean for an orphanage.”

  “Well, they take babies from birth. I’m afraid we’ve done all we could.”

  “What’s the orphanage called?”

  “She said the name but I’ve forgotten it. I find their language so weird and I was called away. We are very busy.”

  I wanted to grab her diary, presuming it was one, and write, Today I had a very sick baby to look after. But I didn’t.“Can’t you … Can you tell me anything about the orphanage?”

  “The aunt said something about a marketplace near here.”

  “Marketplace?”

  “Yes. There’s a small one nearby. She said you, well, the father that is, should go to the orphanage to get the baby.”

  “But you can’t … you can’t give us the name!”

  She looked at me, indignant more than concerned at my tone. “No. I didn’t think it mattered. The aunt can take you both to see her, can’t she? The girl said she’s a sister or something. I thought you’d be happy that the baby’s aunt is looking after her.”

  “What did she look like, the aunt?”

  “Oh, thin. And tall. Tall for a local woman. Don’t you know her? She knows both of you.”

  “No. I don’t. Did she give her name?”

  “No. And it was a little strange.”

  “What was?”

  “Well, I guess she was just caught up with what to do for the baby, but when I asked her name she ignored me. I thought she might be shy but it was strange the way she hid her face behind her shawl. But then when she bent to pick up the baby I’m sure I saw a scar across the side of her face, near her left eye. I think she’d been hiding it. She wasn’t comfortable, but she wasn’t afraid either. And she was worried about the baby. She was very genuine about that, even if a little strange in the way she wouldn’t tell me her name.”

  Fatigued now more than angry, overcome with a sense of helplessness, I turned away from her. If Abbie didn’t come back perhaps her father would. Or someone would be sent and the baby found through Lin’s sister at Muc Thap.

  I wanted to be at the hospital in case Abbie came back soon, to see what was to be done. And just to see Abbie. But I had no way of knowing when she might return and there was nothing I could do about the baby’s whereabouts on my own. And I’d waited far too long already.

  “Could I use a telephone, please?”

  Obtaining the number of the Australian HQ was a struggle. Kangaroos and Yvonne Goolagong were helpful.

  “Oh, sure. I know. A journalist unit, is it?”

  “No. We’re allies in this war.”

  “Is that so? The things you learn on the telephone, huh? Tell you what, buddy. You could’ve picked a better war. This one sucks.”

  I made two more phone calls - my only comfort being that Abbie might return during the process - when I was greeted with the reassuring sound of something like, “Ostrine heck orders.” He sounded relieved that I was okay and promised to get a vehicle over there asap. I asked the nurse to take the phone to give directions, neglecting to say what had happened to the lieutenant.

  Back in the lobby area I recovered my rifle and waited for my ride to arrive, and for Abbie to return. I imagined her disappointment. There might have been a hundred orphanages in Saigon. The guards at the front told me which direction the woman with the baby had gone, with open reluctance.

  I waited there nearly half an hour when a dapper looking lance corporal with a well-groomed moustache and dark blue Service Corps beret tilted perfectly, arrived outside suddenly, stepped out of a well-kept Land Rover and slammed the door importantly. I took up my rifle and went to the gates.

  With my ID established I told him about the lieutenant. The brightness left him, the moustache drooping dramatically.

  “What happened? They’ve been looking down in Bien Hoa but I’m sure they haven’t found any body.”

  I gave the first of my numerous accounts of the death of Lieutenant Jefferies, that one the shortest.

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed the neatly dressed driver. “You got any gear to get? We better get going.”

  He didn’t introduce himself. Maintaining what I instinctively felt was an uncharacteristic silence, he charged the Land Rover down the busy street. We headed off in the same direction that Lin’s sister had taken and I was keeping a look out. But I had to get a grip of the door when he turned a corner. His driving was as reckless as his uniform was tidy.

  He looked at me, shook his head and was about to speak, I’m sure, when I called out, “Heh! Just a minute! Can you stop here a minute?”

  He slammed on the brakes. “What is it?”

  “You
couldn’t reverse up, for a minute?”

  He leant on the horn, put the vehicle in reverse and his foot to the floor. People and bikes behind us scrambled for safety.

  When I told him to stop, the vehicle came to a jolting halt. I stood up on the seat.

  “What’s up?”

  “See that kid on the bike?”

  “You’re jokin’, mate. Must be a dozen of them.”

  “The little girl, over to the side. She’s a sister of the baby I told you about.”

  I was sure it was Mai. She had come out of a nondescript, sand coloured building with no windows and as she vanished in the crowd on her bike I searched for a tallish woman in a grey shawl. But if Lin’s sister was around I couldn’t see her. The scarred, windowless building from which Mai had emerged had a sign over the door but my driver said he couldn’t ‘read nog’. The place was a little bigger than most houses in the street. It looked too dirty and uninviting for an orphanage but I had no way of telling.

  I thanked the driver for stopping and asked if he knew the street.

  “No. Not by name.”

  “Could you direct someone here, if you had to?”

  “I’m hopeless with street names in this town but if they knew the market nearby I think I could.”

  “Market?”

  “Yeh. That’s the only way I found the hospital. They said near the little market place not far from the American Embassy. I took a punt that’d be the Canh Co Market. From there I just drove around lookin’ for the guards at the gate.”

  I looked around, familiarising myself with the surroundings as much as I could. “And this isn’t far from the hospital. Okay. Sorry to hold you up.”

  “That’s okay.” He scattered the immediate general populace in front of us. “Heh? You’ve seen some fuckin’ war, heh, on the way up here?” He swore again. He was a driver like me. We weren’t supposed to see any war.

  He had no fear of crashing his vehicle though. I wanted to sit back, enjoy for the moment, the relief of being back in the safe hands of my employer, the Australian Army, but I had to hold on to the door again as he took a corner almost on two wheels.

  But his confidence was contagious. I found myself smiling as he forced approaching motorbikes out of his way and yelled at them. “Wrong side of the road, Nigel!” In Saigon there was hardly a right side of the road.

  I sat back, felt more relaxed than I had in two days. “Is it possible to get booked for speeding in Saigon?”

  He grinned at me. “Yeh. But the MPs leave me alone and the local cops have got no chance. I s’pose you guys have gotta be more careful, heh, in convoy, out on the highways?”

  “Yeh. Or we get shot at.” He glanced at me incredulously. “Well, it happened once. A guy didn’t stop at a check-point in time. Local cops opened fire.”

  At least we thought that was what happened. And Barry Love finished up with a set of bullet holes along the side of his truck.

  My driver shook his head. “You can have that, mate. All on your own. Makes me glad I’m serving my time in this city. Mad as it is.”