The Eaves of Heaven

by Andrew X. Pham

  Guided by American advisors, Diem overthrew his own emperor in a referendum and seized power for himself—the vilest of treasons that would have, in the previous generation, warranted the beheadings of Diem and his entire family. While the U.S. continued to provide Diem with generous military, financial, and organizational support, it placed no requirement on Diem to allow democratic development through freedom of speech and a multi-party system. Empowered and unfettered, Diem quickly eliminated his political rivals, silenced critics, and initiated a ruthless campaign to rid the South of opposition by branding all dissenters as Communists and imprisoning thousands regardless of political affiliation. Within five years, Diem became the dictator of a police state.

  The peasantry grew deeply resentful of Diem’s corrupt policies and cronyism. Persecuted for voicing their complaints, many farmers became Communist sympathizers, which, consequently, facilitated guerillas’ operations in the countryside. Insurgent activities grew more violent and frequent in the South. Even Diem’s own men turned against him, staging a coup that nearly toppled his regime.

  In December of 1960, Ho Chi Minh formed the National Liberation Front (NLF), which had its own armed forces called the People’s Armed Forces of Liberation (PAFL), which the Diem government and the Americans called Viet Cong. Although the South Vietnam government controlled the countryside during the daylight hours, at night the PAFL controlled vast areas of the Mekong Delta and parts of the Central Highlands. Throughout 1961, the Viet Cong launched large-scale assaults against the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN). As the conflict developed, the South became critically divided between the pro-Diem faction headed by the Nhan Vi party and the anti-Diem factions, which included suppressed religious and political groups as well as the Viet Cong.

  In 1962, I was living and teaching in Ben Tre, a reputed hotbed of Viet Cong insurgency. I had decided to drop out of the Institute of Administration and continue pursuing my degree in teaching. Anh and I were in love, but we couldn’t get married because of my father’s disapproval. A wedding without his blessing was unimaginable, so we simply moved in together.

  In Ben Tre, Anh and I rented a one-bedroom duplex in a government-worker complex. It was a modest unit without a kitchen, but it was the best home we had in four years of living together. The backyard had a guava tree with fruit big and sweet enough to sell at the market. Two large fish-egg trees with juicy pinkish-yellow berries shaded the front yard. Our next-door neighbor was a friendly widow who lived alone and took it upon herself to teach Anh the art of homemaking.

  Ben Tre was the best post I could find, given the recent glut of teachers. Even with good recommendations and experience, I had to commute half a day by bus and ferry for part-time work at two different places, a public school in Ben Tre and a private high school in Saigon. The situation had worsened with each passing year. With the intense competition for a limited number of jobs, it was inevitable that politics entered the workplace.

  At Ben Tre High School, many faculty members joined Diem’s Nhan Vi party; the more ambitious ones went as far as converting to Catholicism to advance their careers. The school principal had no qualms about showing his favoritism for Diem supporters. Despite my two-year seniority at the school, I was assigned the least desirable courses. The classes that I had been teaching for two years were given to new instructors, all Nhan Vi party members. I dared not lodge my grievances for fear of being branded a dissident, but I couldn’t keep my opinions to myself when my students asked about current events and the political situation.

  One evening after school, I had a visit from Khoa, one of my students who had helped me find our apartment two years prior. I enjoyed talking to Khoa and didn’t mind helping him with his studies. He often dropped by my house for visits during the weekends, bringing small gifts of fresh fruit from his family’s garden. This was the first time he showed up without notice. I was surprised to see Khoa looking rather nervous.

  Khoa greeted Anh and me, then promptly said, “Teacher, can we talk on the patio?”

  I agreed and Anh brought us tea and chilled sugarcane batons on the patio. It was unusual for Khoa to ask to speak in private. I waited for him to sip his tea before asking if he had problems at school.

  “No, Teacher. My classes are fine.” He paused and then looked directly at me. “I heard you were going to a meeting tonight.”

  “I’m meeting Tra later after dinner. I think he needs some help with his studies.”

  “Teacher, did you know Tra is a Communist recruiter?”

  I shook my head, stunned. Tra was one of my favorite students, diligent and very bright. Although Tra was shy and quiet in class, he often sought me out during lunch and recess breaks to talk about the fighting in the countryside. Many students were very worried about being drafted into the army, and it seemed normal to me that Tra was concerned about the brewing war. When I was his age in school, politics was all my friends and I could think about.

  “Tra and I are from the same village. His uncle was killed in a land dispute with the government, and Tra’s family lost the land the Viet Minh gave them. Tra has been a party member since he was thirteen,” he said. The way Khoa met my eyes squarely told me he was putting himself in danger by this revelation.

  “Tra is planning to introduce you to his superiors so they can judge your political affiliation.”

  “Are you serious? I’ve never shown any indication that I might want to join the Viet Cong.”

  “But when students asked you about the government’s policies and the country’s stability, you said the leaders were creating a privileged class for their party members. You were very pessimistic about the government pacification program. You said it would fail.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m a Communist sympathizer.”

  “It’s enough to make Tra think that you might be. But he’s not sure—that’s why he’s bringing you to his superiors. If they think you’re sympathetic to the Communist cause, they’ll try to recruit you. By doing that, they will expose themselves. So you must join. Otherwise they will consider you a danger to their organization. They’ll find a way to eliminate you.”

  I was shocked. All this time I thought I was safe in Ben Tre by keeping a low profile and focusing on my work. I never took part in teachers’ rallies and I was very careful of saying anything critical of the government to any of the faculty.

  “Teacher, from now on, please be careful about what you say to the students. Half of them are Communist sympathizers and party members.”

  “Why aren’t you a member?”

  Looking at the lines in his palms, Khoa sighed. “My father was a devout Buddhist. Before he died, he made me promise to remain neutral as long as I could. Besides, who would take care of my mother and sister if I got killed in this war?”

  I asked him, “Did your family lose land?”

  “My father was a carpenter. The Viet Minh only gave land to farmers and sharecroppers, so we gained nothing from the Viet Minh and lost nothing in the government’s reparation program.”

  I KNEW about the land reforms and remembered the troubles the government had with the peasants, but I had no idea how entrenched the problem had become in the southern countryside. During the first few years in the South, my family was engrossed in our own struggles in Saigon. We didn’t pay much attention to what was happening in the provinces.

  Khoa said many of his classmates had seen their fathers jailed and their lands confiscated.

  During the war, the Viet Minh had decreed a land reform in the South, where the majority of the land was owned by a small number of plantation families who had prospered under French rule. The Viet Minh redistributed the land to sharecroppers and small-plot farmers. The French could not control the countryside, so the reform went smoothly. For nearly ten years until the French’s surrender, the peasants owned, tilled, and invested in their land. Following the conditions of the Geneva Accord, the Communist forces, including Viet Minh soldiers from South Viet
nam, were regrouped to the North and left the South to a government newly formed and backed by the Americans. In 1955, the South Vietnam government invalidated the Viet Minh’s land reform and restored the land to the original owners. The peasants staged violent protests and refused to vacate their homes. The rich landlords reclaimed their properties with the help of the government, the newly formed Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN), and the police. In the chaos that ensued, there were accusations of land grabbing and abuse of power. Farmers were killed during the riots. Others were murdered in their homes. Tens of thousands of peasants were branded as Communists, jailed, or sent to reeducation camps.

  AFTER Khoa left, Anh came out and sat down next to me. Dinner was ready, laid out on a mat in the front room. I could smell the claypot catfish and sour cabbage soup with pork short ribs. Under our neighbor’s tutelage, Anh was developing into a marvelous cook. She could make a feast from market scraps.

  Anh put her head on my shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You’re scowling at the air.”

  I chuckled, adoring her in every way. At times like this, when she knew me so well, I didn’t care one bit that my father did not approve of her or of our living together. He had said having a girlfriend would distract me from my studies. I was still young enough to fool myself that it was possible to hold two jobs and still pursue my degree at Saigon University.

  Anh said, “If you don’t join the Nhan Vi party, you might not have your job next term. And you can’t avoid the Communist recruiters for long. This is Ben Tre. You can’t straddle the fence. If one side doesn’t shoot you, the other will.”

  “It is never wise to choose the lesser of two evils.”

  Suddenly, I felt very sad. I thought of my friend Hoi, my cousin Quyen, Uncle Uc, and so many people from my childhood. We had gone nowhere. These were the same choices my friends had had to make a decade ago between the Resistance and the French.

  Anh said, “Then we must find a new home.”

  I looked at her to see if she understood the import of that decision. After two years of moving from one hovel to another, this was the first apartment where we had our own toilet. Our home sat beside a lake. We had enough money to live. We were happy here. We had been saving prodigiously so that someday we could afford a proper wedding. Anh was pregnant. Moving house would use up everything we had.

  “Are you sure?”

  Anh smiled, placed my hand on her belly, and said, “I think it’s a girl. We’re going to be a family. I’ll follow you wherever.”

  THE NORTH

  JUNE 1944

  11. HOI AND I

  Hoi whispered, “Look! A muong grasshopper to your left.”

  It was a big one, light green, the exact shade of young rice leaves, with black sesame seed eyes. Clinging to the underside of the leaf, it had its wings folded back, hind legs cranked high, poised to spring.

  I hushed him and tiptoed around the plant. Muong grasshoppers were very skittish. You had to come at them from their blind side. I cupped my palms and clapped my hands over the grasshopper.

  It jumped.

  Hoi wailed, “Oh, you let it escape!”

  “I didn’t let it escape! It’s just too fast.” I was as disappointed as he was. Muong were the prettiest and the tastiest of all grasshoppers. They were also the hardest to catch.

  It fluttered a short way on white wings and settled back into the field. Hoi slunk past me, eyes fixed at the point where the grasshopper had vanished into the green. He took slow, careful steps, one hand steadying the bamboo basket slung at his waist.

  I was hot and tired, and I wanted to quit. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky or a shade tree in sight. We had prowled the fields the whole blistering afternoon and all we found was grasshoppers. Hoi carried his crab basket, even though neither of us had seen a single crab in weeks. We had our lines with us, but the Walkers’ camps crowded the riverbanks at every fishing hole. Folks said Walkers ate babies and small kids, and blamed them for missing vegetables, poultry, and pets. Although we were too old to believe that, we knew Walkers were very thorough scavengers and would eat just about anything they could get their hands on. We wouldn’t find anything on the land they had covered.

  They started arriving after the last harvest, when the Japanese forces imposed a massive rice requisition to feed their armies. At first the men came, alone or in small groups, mostly sharecroppers and tradesmen. They all walked, too poor for any other means of travel. You could tell they were either related or at least from the same village by the way they stayed close to each other, shared food, and let the eldest ones speak for the rest. They carried bedding, cooking pots, and the tools of their trade. Clearly, they were not beggars. Even though they worked for food, there wasn’t enough rice in the village to feed them all, and eventually they moved on to the larger towns.

  The next wave brought women, and now there were children as well. Our village was overrun with strangers. The stronger ones still made their way toward Hanoi, but those too famished to continue camped down by our creek. They begged at the market and came to my family’s estate for the free soup Uncle Thuan offered twice daily.

  At first, I didn’t understand the turmoil around me. I disliked these strangers invading our village. When I refused to help serve in the soup line, my mother said it was the responsibility of the rich to care for the poor. Heaven would not look kindly on us if we turned our backs on these people. She said that with the Japanese army’s relentless rice requisitions, most villagers did not even have enough food for their own families. We should not be afraid of these transients; they were only farmers who lost their rice stocks as well as their seeds. They took to the road because there was no hope in waiting for the next season when they had nothing to sow into the land.

  Hoi halted and stood completely still, his eyes roving about. He didn’t move for a long while. I almost told him to give up when he raised a hand to warn me. Hoi crouched down and snaked his right arm slowly between the rice plants. His hand shot out and grabbed the top bud of one plant.

  “Did you catch it?”

  “Of course.” He giggled with a squinty-eyed grin. He had the fastest hands of any boy I knew. Hoi was half a head shorter than me. I was better than he was at studying, flying kites, and running, but he was better at things important to nine-year-old boys: fishing, hunting crickets, making flutes, and throwing rocks. Hoi showed me the grasshopper. It was as big as a thumb.

  “Hey, kids!” A woman shouted from the dike separating the fields.

  She wore faded black clothes, pants rolled high up her pale, bony legs. The afternoon sun clawed through her tattered peasant hat of palm leaves, making tiger-stripes on her face. She was as weathered and thin as the scarecrow in our garden. I thought she was a Walker.

  She shook a long pair of bamboo tongs at us. “Don’t step on the rice plants!”

  We stood in the middle of the field. Like many paddies that season, it was so sparsely seeded that we hadn’t stepped on a single plant.

  Hoi waved. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Cau. Did you find a lot of feces today?”

  “Not a lot, not a lot at all. Not enough food to eat, not enough feces to find,” she replied in a sing-song tone. “Not enough feces to find, not enough fertilizer for the crop. Not enough fertilizer for the crop: Not enough food to eat!”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t step on rice plants.”

  “You’d better not. It’s bad enough with the Japanese devils stealing rice right out of our mouths, we don’t need kids trampling the crop as well…,” she said, her words trailing off. Abruptly, she turned and walked away with the basket on her hip, her tongs moving side to side, skimming the top of the grass, searching.

  “Poor Mrs. Cau,” said Hoi. “She’s a widow with no children. She has to collect shit every day to make a living.”

  “That’s enough to make a living?” I asked.

  Hoi shrugged. “Lots of village peop
le go out to the fields to shit. We are not like rich people with outhouses.”

  “So? At least you don’t have to put up with the smell of the latrine! Don’t complain.”

  “I’m not, I just said she got enough.”

  “She trades it with someone for rice?”

  “No, she mixes it with ashes from burnt straw and grass and sells it as fertilizer. She goes out twice every day: once very early in the morning when the dogs haven’t already run out, otherwise they would eat most of the shits, and once in the afternoon after lunch.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Her place is at the end of the village. My mom makes me go there to buy fertilizer.”

  “I want to go there with you next time.” I had a rich kid’s curiosity about poverty.

  “Why? Her shed smelled so bad, I thought I’d fallen into a giant pile of shit whenever I went there!”

  We laughed, but I still wanted to go. Besides, there wasn’t much else to do. We used to play games, but ever since the last harvest, all Hoi wanted to do was fish or hunt for edible critters. It had been weeks since we were in school. Teacher Uc had not been paid in months and only half of the students made it to class. The older kids had already dropped out to help their families in the fields. Most of our friends had fathers or brothers who had been conscripted as coolies for the Japanese army. Those who came to school couldn’t hear the teacher over their own growling stomachs. It wasn’t long before Teacher Uc, who happened to be my father’s second cousin, decided to disband the classes.

  Hoi asked me, “When do you think we’ll have classes again?”

  I shrugged. I knew his parents were very proud that Hoi was the first in the family to attend school. Hoi was the family’s only son, and his parents treated him like a prince, the family’s treasure and salvation. Regardless of a man’s prestige and fortune, not having a son to carry on the family line was the biggest failure of a man’s life, an unforgivable sin against his ancestors.