The Eaves of Heaven

by Andrew X. Pham

  News trickled in from the provinces. Hung, Hong, and Huong were safe. Anh and the kids were fine. The VC attacks were focused on the opposite side of town from our house. Phan Thiet’s downtown market had been burned to the ground. Thousands of Americans, ARVN troops, and civilians had died, but it wasn’t finished. The fighting would continue for two more months. The official death toll would be staggering: 3,895 Americans; 4,954 ARVN troops; and 14,300 South Vietnamese civilians. And the VC would lose 58,373 men and women.

  On the fifth day, the order came over the radio: All decommissioned officers and veterans were recalled for duty. My four-month-old life as a civilian was over.

  THE NORTH

  1948

  24. THE EXECUTIONER

  The last time I saw Vi, he knew he would not be coming back to visit us for a long time. He said the fighting was heavy where he was going. There was a high probability that he would be killed, but that did not factor into his perspective. He had become more fearless than ever.

  We were sitting—Tan, Vi, and I—side by side on the grass at the edge of the carp pond. Fireflies skimmed low over the dark water. A tiny breeze rolled through the sweetening longan orchard; the sky was awash with stars. It was late. Everyone had already gone to bed. Vi was in a solemn mood. Something big was afoot; our mothers had the servants load a cart full of rice, salted pork, dried fish, and various supplies. On all his previous visits, Vi had never taken more than money and two rucksacks of food as contribution to his troops.

  “Why do you have to leave?” my cousin Tan asked.

  “Our work is considered done here. We have a new assignment in another province.”

  “Is it the same work as what you’ve been doing?” I asked. In all his previous visits, no matter how often we pestered him to tell us about his work, Vi always put us off by saying, “Someday when the time is right.”

  “The same. I’ve been in this task force ever since my last battle.”

  “You like your job?”

  “It’s an exciting way to contribute to our just cause.”

  His reply sounded like a line from one of the rousing Viet Minh speeches we’d heard in the village. “Just cause” was the Resistance’s current catchphrase. People were asked to sacrifice, to join or send their children to the armed forces, to offer their belongings, all for the just cause of fighting the French and defending our independence.

  “But what’s so exciting about it?” Tan asked.

  I said, “You promised to tell us, but tomorrow you’ll be gone for a long time.”

  He thought about it for a few moments and then said, “I’ll tell you two, but you must swear not to tell anyone else.”

  “We swear!” Tan and I replied in unison.

  Vi reached inside his shirt and pulled out a knife from the sheath that was tied to his body. He handed it to Tan.

  “This is a rice-leaf knife, the weapon of our trade. Every member of our task force was given one when he was accepted into the group.”

  It was a six-inch, double-edged blade as slender as a rice leaf, polished to a gleam. The wooden handle was stained dark. It looked sinister. I didn’t want to hold it.

  Tan slashed the air with it. He was very intrigued. “What do you do with it?”

  Vi put the knife away, then stretched out on the grass, arms folded behind his head. “I belong to a special squad. We eliminate traitors.”

  “You kill them?” Tan blurted.

  “Everyone in my task force does.”

  “How can you tell someone is a traitor?”

  “Our intelligence people report on collaborators and spies who work for the French. Our commander gives us orders to catch and investigate suspects.”

  Tan said, “What if the traitor is your friend?”

  “Then he is no longer my friend.”

  I glanced at Tan. I knew he was thinking the same thing: What if someone had reported our mothers and aunts?

  “How many guys have you caught so far?” I asked.

  “Ten.”

  “How many guys did you release?” Tan asked.

  “None.”

  I gasped, “Why?”

  Vi glanced sideways at me and grinned. “They were all guilty.”

  “All of them?” I couldn’t believe it.

  Vi smiled, his teeth glowing in the moonlight. He said, “Let me give you an example.”

  “Yes!” Tan said.

  “Do you remember the teacher they found in the river last March?”

  “Teacher Uc,” Tan said.

  “He was my father’s second cousin,” I added. Something seemed uneven. Then it came to me. “You came back after he disappeared.”

  “You killed him…” Tan muttered.

  I had goose bumps rising all over me.

  “I could not avoid it,” he said nonchalantly. “We took turns doing the jobs, and it was my turn.”

  “Poor Uncle Uc. He was a good man. I can’t believe he was a traitor.”

  Uncle Uc had been our only teacher from the time we first started school, right until he disappeared a few months ago. He had always been a good teacher, patient and fair to both of us. Everyone in the village liked Uncle Uc and was very anxious when he disappeared. When a fisherman found his body, people thought it was an accidental drowning. The whole village attended his funeral.

  “Do you want to know what happened?” Vi asked us, but he looked at me.

  Despite myself, I nodded.

  “Last year our intelligence people suspected your teacher could be an informant for the French. Many of our party members in this area were captured and killed by the French patrols. Two of them were in your teacher’s village.”

  “Mr. Nhi was killed by Mohammed. Was he a party member?”

  “He wasn’t. Whenever something like that happens, we get a big wave of new recruits.” Vi sounded pleased. “Last December, my task force leader received an order to investigate your teacher. The preliminary report was over twenty pages. It listed all the names of your teacher’s family and friends. It listed many people he talked with—people we knew were not totally supportive of the just cause, people who had connections with the French. Your teacher also talked with the French patrols whenever they came to your school.”

  “They asked him questions. He had to answer. We were there,” I said.

  “He could have passed them information on a piece of paper. You can never tell,” Vi replied dismissively. “We watched him for two weeks. We were worried that he might become suspicious and flee into the French-controlled areas. I suggested to my team that we capture him on a Friday afternoon on his way home,” Vi said with a half-grin, “because I remembered he always came here for tea with Auntie every Friday.”

  His words slipped into me like cold poison. I felt nauseous. We had brought a snake into our home. I lay down in the grass to hide my revulsion. Vi lay not two feet from me, this boy-man who was once a living skeleton we found in the barn. A nameless orphan without a past with a dark mole in the middle of his forehead.

  That moonlit night by the carp pond, for the first time since he came into our lives, Vi revealed himself to us, his two closest adoptive brothers. Vi told the story that haunted my entire adolescence.

  YOUR teacher seemed happy riding his bicycle home that Friday. He was whistling. Three of us had been waiting for him behind a bush. We wore farmers’ pajamas like the locals. It was near sunset when we spotted him. My team leader stepped out onto the road and waved for him to stop while I and another comrade stayed hidden. Your teacher wore khaki pants and a white shirt, very clean and neat. He didn’t suspect anything.

  He got off his bicycle. Do you need something?

  My other comrade and I stepped out and approached him from behind.

  He looked around and realized he was surrounded. What do you want?

  Shut up and stand still! My team leader ordered.

  Startled, he stepped back, still holding his bike. What do you want? I don’t have any money.

/>   My team leader raised the pistol. Stand still!

  His face changed then. He was terrified. Who are you? What do you want from me?

  Shut up and put your hands behind you, I said.

  You’ve made a mistake. I am a good citizen. He realized we were not ordinary robbers.

  My comrade and I seized his arms. Our leader jerked the bike away from him and shoved it off the side of the road. We tied his wrists behind his back.

  I am a good citizen. I swear to God I didn’t do anything wrong.

  We don’t believe in God, I said.

  There is no God, my comrade joined in.

  He took a second look at my face. Oy, Vi! It’s me, Uncle Uc! What’s going on? I just visited your aunt at the estate.

  I was both surprised and annoyed that your teacher recognized me. He had never talked to me when I lived here.

  Vi, tell them, I am just a teacher. I don’t know anything.

  Please be quiet, Uncle. Just follow us and we’ll sort all this out.

  Our leader tried to calm him, Don’t worry, we just want to ask you few questions.

  Where are you taking me?

  A place near here.

  What about my bicycle?

  Leave it here. Your family will come for it tomorrow. The team leader picked up Teacher Uc’s book bag. There might be proof that he was a traitor.

  Can I take my hat? His faded khaki colonial hat hung on the handle bar.

  You don’t need it.

  He hesitated, but he knew he had no choice but to go with us. He followed my leader, but kept looking back at his bike lying on the side of the road. Since it was almost dark, we were not concerned about people seeing us. Farmers had already left the fields. After a few minutes, he asked us if we were with the army.

  My comrade said, Are you in a position to ask questions?

  That shut him up, and from then on he walked in silence, hunched over, staring down at the dirt road. I sensed that he was very scared and that made me feel very powerful. Catching him was my duty to the party.

  When we got close to our hideout, we blindfolded your teacher. He started dragging his feet and whimpering, begging us not to shoot him. My leader said it was only a precaution. We had to make sure he couldn’t tell anyone our position when he went home. Captives cooperated better when we gave them a little hope. He calmed down, but didn’t stop whining about his family.

  Our place was a small cottage just outside a village not far from here. It belonged to a young man who joined the army after two French legionnaires raped and killed his wife. He had left the cottage in the care of a party member in the village.

  The four of us had spent two weeks digging an underground chamber inside the cottage. We dug during the day and spread the dirt in the fields at night. We were careful not to raise suspicions among the villagers. The chamber was a square, six by six feet, just big enough to hold one person. We vented the cell into the cottage with four bamboo pipes. The only access to the cell was through a secure trapdoor inside the cottage.

  In all, we held seven traitors in that hut. Your teacher was the fourth.

  After three hours of walking, we came to our place. We gave your teacher some food, but he didn’t eat it. We locked him in the chamber with a bundle of straw for bedding and a clay pot for a toilet. We didn’t interrogate him that night or the day after, to keep him confused and scared.

  The next day we did not give him food or water. He called out several times in the afternoon, but we ignored him. He tried prying the trapdoor from below. He asked for water and begged to come up. He said he was ready to answer any question. After calling for several hours without result, he broke down and sobbed about his innocence.

  I knew it was very difficult to be locked in that cell. I had tried staying in there for a day, but I lasted only a few hours. The cell was hot and completely dark. You couldn’t see your own hands. You could lie down, but you couldn’t stand up straight to stretch your back. You never felt like you got enough air. It was like breathing dirt, like being buried alive.

  Your teacher was like every prisoner we had; he spent the first day pleading, complaining, and whining. It was bothersome to hear, so most of us stayed outside. I usually napped on a hammock under the mango trees. We interrogated prisoners at night. It was safer. The villagers went to bed very early, and there was no risk of a passing French patrol.

  That night, we brought him up to our cottage right after dark. Your teacher was so happy to be allowed out, he couldn’t stop thanking us. He said he couldn’t breathe down in the hole. We gave him a bowl of water and a bowl of plain rice with nothing on it. We untied his hands so he could eat. We made him sit on the ground while three of us sat on chairs in front of him. Our fourth comrade stood guard outside. My task force leader started by telling your teacher that we knew all about him and his family, and the only way he could go home was to tell the truth. Your teacher swore he would tell the truth, and that he did not have anything to hide. We took turns talking very fast to him to keep him off balance.

  My leader said, We want you to write down everything you did in the last two years. Anything you said or did with anyone outside of your immediate family, especially your interactions with the French, their VN soldiers, the legionnaires, and people in the Nationalist party.

  I will try, but I am afraid I may have forgotten things.

  Forgetting is just an excuse to hide something.

  Remember that we have been watching you for a long time. We’ll know if you tell the whole truth or not.

  Write down all the activities you engaged in. Who you met and when and how many times. What you discussed.

  We know you’re a schoolteacher. We know you talked with the French patrols when they stopped at your school. It’s best if you try hard to remember.

  They asked questions, but I didn’t know anything. I’m just a teacher. I teach children! Vi, tell them. You’ve known me a long time.

  My leader shouted, Shut up! Write your confession. The sooner you finish the report the sooner you can go home.

  He stopped eating and put down the bowl unfinished. I will try to remember and write everything down. I’m innocent of any wrongdoings.

  We sat your teacher down at a table in the corner of the room and gave him a booklet of paper and a pencil. After a few hours, he handed us his completed report, and we put him back down in the cell.

  The routine was the same for all our prisoners. We fed them twice a day, once in the early morning and once at night when we brought them up for interrogation. These were also the only two times we raised the trapdoor to air out the cell. They might have suffocated had we not done so. The prisoners never got to go outside of the hut and never saw daylight the whole time we kept them. When people were afraid, they sweat differently and became very smelly in a short time. We gave each a set of pajamas. We washed the pajamas for them every few days; otherwise, it would be very unpleasant for us to interrogate them.

  All the next day, your teacher kept asking if we had read his report. We ignored him. That third night, we brought him up and told him his account was inadequate and inaccurate. We told him to rewrite his report. We did that three more times, each time giving him some events he participated in but did not mention in his report. He apologized for forgetting, but he wouldn’t admit that he was a member of the Nationalist party.

  Finally, it was time to torture him. No matter what he confessed, we were going to torture him anyway. It was part of the program. Every night we brought him up, gagged him, and bound him to a chair. We put fire ants on him. We burned his eyelids and fingertips with cigarettes. Besides hitting and whipping, there were many, many ways to torture a prisoner, and we had plenty of time to try various techniques on him. You never knew which one would crack a prisoner. They all reacted differently. Your teacher was really terrified when we made him go on our submarine. We tied his hands, hung him upside down, and put his head into a barrel of water.

  I didn’t have any proble
m with torture. I knew we must do it to get information. And to have a thorough investigation, we must hurt the prisoner. Torture was necessary to achieve our goal. What I learned was that everyone begged and cried when enough pain was applied.

  Your teacher was one of the toughest prisoners I’d seen. After two weeks of torture, the only thing we got out of him was that he was a sympathizer of the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD) party. We believed that he was a real party member, just too tough to crack. We tortured him another four days. When my task force leader decided that we couldn’t get any more information out of him, we sat down to discuss how we should write our investigation report. Only one of my comrades thought that your teacher could be innocent. The rest of us thought your teacher was just too tough.

  My comrade said, He did not admit he was a VNQDD sympathizer until we tortured him for a long time, so he was obviously not truthful from the beginning.

  The task force leader said, Two of our party members in his village were killed by the French, and we have no suspect other than this teacher.

  We came to the conclusion that we should eliminate your teacher, to be safe. We submitted our report and recommendation the next day and received the approval from our commander two days later. It was in the middle of February. We didn’t want to execute your teacher in the moonlight, so we waited another week.

  As the big day neared, I practiced the execution with my comrades. I wasn’t comfortable because it had been nearly three months since my first execution. It was a difficult maneuver. If I did not do it right, it would be very messy. There would be a lot of blood spilled or maybe even a struggle with the dying man. If I stabbed too high, he would spring upward. The movement wouldn’t be violent, and he might still remain sitting. If I stabbed too low, near the stomach, he would bend forward. In both cases, he would be conscious enough to cry out. But if I stabbed him in the heart, he would jerk up, and fall straight backward, dead without a sound.

  The night of the execution we gave your teacher a good meal of rice with a fried fish, two boiled eggs, and steamed vegetables. He was surprised and became very concerned. Our leader said, We believe your confessions, and we have orders to take you home tonight.