The Eaves of Heaven
Page 21
We were standing beside the fountain, grasping each other’s forearms. There was no need to say more. I had missed him. Time had swung away from us. We were closer than brothers. Our roots were entwined since birth. As boys, we had shared the same bed, eaten from the same bowl, gone to the same school. Our adolescent fears, shames, and thrills came from the same page. Between us lay all the secrets and pains that were ours alone. It was a profound comfort to know Tan was alive and well.
“We should go somewhere for a drink and celebrate,” Anh said.
Tan turned to her and grinned. “My apartment is just around the corner from here. Would you like to see it? I’ve got a small bar.”
It was getting dark. The streetlights came on. People emerged to stroll in the cool evening air. Couples lingered around the little squares, chatting and laughing. Vendors selling snacks, drinks, barbecued meats, and noodles lined the sidewalk.
Tan lived in a new luxurious high-rise. We took the elevator up to the seventh floor, well above the treetops. His modern one-bedroom apartment was as spacious as a top-notch hotel suite. Anh squeaked with delight. One of her wonderful qualities was that she was always genuinely happy to see someone else succeed. She peered out one window after another, telling Tan what gorgeous views he had. She skipped around the apartment, excited as though it were ours. Beaming with pleasure, he recounted every feature of his lavishly furnished home. He showed her his brand-new hi-fi stereo system and television. There was everything a man could want in a bachelor’s pad.
It occurred to me then that perhaps his life was rather lonely. Our paths had diverged. Tan had amassed a life of material comfort and pleasures. I had created a family for myself. He had known, possibly, hundreds of women. I’d been with only one. The influences from our formative years, like minor deflections at the beginning of a long trajectory, had borne significant consequences.
Tan opened his refrigerator. The shelves were stacked tightly with Coca-Cola and Budweiser. Anh went outside and brought up some street-foods: stir-fried cubed steak, sweet-smoked fish, peanuts, and ice cream. Tan asked about the family. I was surprised he hadn’t visited them more often. Somehow, through all these years, I believe he still considered himself an orphan. Being around the family only made him lonelier.
I told him the family had never been better. Hung and Hong had both graduated from college. Hung was a high school teacher, Hong a department manager of the Forestry Service. Hoang was in the police academy, and Hien was in his last year of high school. The three sisters, Huong, Hang, and Hanh, were in school. They kept things going smoothly at home and took good care of Father. My youngest stepbrother, Hau, was the same age as my first son, An. After selling lottery tickets on the street corner under the full brunt of the sun, Stepmother finally had her own ticket kiosk and was doing well. Hung, Hong, and I had rebuilt the house for them. Father, however, had never made the slightest attempt to free himself from opium.
Inevitably, the conversation strayed to the good old days: the foods we ate in Hanoi, the playground fights, our youthful games and pranks. We ran out the evening on only the pleasant memories. When it was late, Anh took the car key and went home to relieve the nanny. Tan poured us another round of beer. He reached out and squeezed my shoulder, grinning. The view from his sofa was spectacular, Saigon spreading out like a big garden; city lights and neon signs winking through the tree boughs.
From here, it was easy to discount the bad news in the papers, the rising anti-American sentiments in the countryside, the reports about American bombing campaigns indiscriminately wiping out whole villages, and the wanton spraying of dangerous Agent Orange that was poisoning the peasants and their land. Just a few hundred miles north of Saigon, huge tracts of lush land—thousands of acres—had been reduced to parched scrub plains in order to deprive the VC of cover. It was unimaginable to read in the newspapers that Vietnam, the rice basket of Asia, had to import rice from America to feed its people. All that seemed far away from us. Perhaps we didn’t want to believe it. I had worked indirectly for USAID, and Tan worked for the Americans. We were too intent on our own survival, eager to at last have a chance to live and plan our lives.
“Do you plan to go back to school?” Tan asked.
“Of course, after we’ve settled down a bit. I have five kids, the youngest barely a year old.”
Tan nodded. “That’s good, because I don’t think you’ll be happy as a high school teacher.”
His disappointment was palpable. Tan knew how much I wanted to be a professor. He did not expect me to end up as a second-tier high school teacher.
“You’re right. I haven’t had much time to think about a career. Eight years in the army with a family to care for, you don’t think of much else other than getting out alive.”
Sensing my discomfort, he changed the subject. “Do you think there will be peace soon?”
It struck me as comical that this had become our lifelong concern. When will we have peace? I chuckled. “It’s never for us to decide, is it?”
Tan leaned back into the sofa and cocked his feet on the coffee table. I noticed that his posture had been Americanized, as had his taste for décor. There was more of a swagger and bigness about him. It suited Tan. I was happy for him. Someday he would become a judge like his father. Uncle Thuan would have been proud of his son.
He said, “The Americans I work with think the peace negotiations might bring some changes to the South Vietnam regime. The Communists are drained after their Tet Offensive. They’re willing to negotiate now. There could be peace soon.”
“If Minh wins, I think we will have peace. Even my father supports Minh and, you know, my father hasn’t said a single good thing about Diem, Thieu, Ky, or their cronies.”
Duong Van Minh was a famous figure who had led the junta that overthrew Diem in 1963. He had the support of powerful Buddhist and Catholic leaders. People saw him as an honorable man, a character capable of negotiating a peaceful end to the war. The NLF even mobilized a campaign to get out the vote for Minh and made him very popular in the countryside. However, Henry Kissinger, the American Secretary of Defense, distrusted Minh.
Tan grimaced. “If the Americans allow a fair election, Minh will win. But I don’t think that will happen. Thieu used the Americans to eliminate Ky from the race.”
With the help of the CIA and the U.S. embassy, Thieu had already rigged the election by bribing the legislature with CIA money to pass a law effectively barring Ky’s candidacy.
I sighed. “Minh has to win. It’s the only peaceful way.”
“I hope you’re right.”
WE never got the chance to vote for Minh.
After discovering Thieu’s plot with the province chiefs to defraud the electoral process, Minh went to the U.S. embassy seeking assurances that the Americans would follow through on their promise of forcing their man, Thieu, to allow a “reasonably” open election. The embassy refused, and Minh withdrew his candidacy.
Faced with the embarrassment of having their candidate running in a “democratic” one-man race, the Americans offered Minh millions to stay in the election, but he declined to lend his name to the charade. The Americans convinced Thieu to reverse the rules and allow Ky to run in the election, but Ky refused.
So Thieu ran alone and took 94.3 percent of the vote.
Although talks were held, Hanoi never made another serious attempt at the peace negotiation. Vietnam had lost its best chance for peace. The war would continue, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the sufferings of millions of Vietnamese.
AS ordinary citizens, we were oblivious to the details of high-level machinations. But as we had expected with Thieu entrenched in the presidency, there was more fighting. Life did not get any easier. Unemployment and inflation worsened rapidly. Over the next two years, Tan and I kept in touch. We were nervous about the future.
I often came to Tan’s apartment to find out what his American colleagues were saying. As usual, we sat in his sofa and drank Budweiser, star
ing out his panoramic window. We talked about a recent newspaper story about how the salary of an ARVN soldier wasn’t enough to support a family of four for half a month.
“What’s happening to the economy? I’m getting poorer by the month,” I said. My teaching salary, once adequate for supporting my family, now could only cover a small fraction of our budget. Inflation was outstripping workers’ wages.
Tan said, “Whatever it is, our own leaders know about it. Don’t you see every single one of them trying to steal and rob the country as much as he can, as quickly as he can?”
I shrugged, having grown indifferent to politics and corruption—they had become synonymous to me. “Corruption has been a disease since Diem’s regime. I don’t see much change.”
“Are you blind? It has gotten much worse lately. Before they were just milking the cow and stealing the cream. Now, they’re butchering it.”
“Yes, I know, but that doesn’t mean something big is going to happen. This is the most peace Saigon has had in years.”
Tan shook his head morosely, staring out the window. “It makes me nervous seeing the top leaders blatantly ransacking the country. They don’t seem worried about their political careers. They must know something we don’t.”
It had been a long time, but I still recognized that anxious, piercing look on his face. It was disconcerting. Tan had the premonitions of a survivor. Orphaned as a child, he had become a keen observer of the world. He could discern patterns where I found none. I had often resented that and accused him of being a pessimist, but looking back, I realized he had been right all along, from the very beginning when we fled from Tong Xuyen.
THE NORTH
1949
29. CROSSING THE FRENCH LINE
“Our village is no longer a safe place for the family,” Father said. “We must cross the front line and go into Hanoi and wait until the war is over.”
The French had withdrawn from Tong Xuyen. The Resistance was gaining considerable strength. Fighting in the Red River Delta became more fierce and more frequent. Soon every man, woman, and child would be required to join the Resistance and fight the French. Anyone who refused would be considered a traitor.
We were sitting with Father in his study. It was the first time he explained his intentions to Tan and me. Father had been home less than a week and was still reeling from the shock of Mother’s death. He hadn’t spoken much about his year of servitude in the French regiments.
“Viet Minh have left us alone because your aunts and Mother helped them when the French were stronger in our domain. Now they will demand more material and financial support, but I haven’t found where your Mother hid our family’s treasury. It may take me months or years of digging up the entire estate before I find it. By then we may run out of money to contribute to the Viet Minh.”
“Father, we don’t have any enemies in the village. Do you think they will rise against us?”
“War changes people, son. Even if they like us, they can’t refuse an order from the Viet Minh. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the Communists kill me. I will leave tonight to find a way to cross the French line. When it’s safe, I will send for you and your siblings.” Father turned to Tan. “Nephew, you can choose to stay with your stepmother, but I think it’s best if you come with us.”
“I’d like to go, Uncle,” Tan replied without hesitation.
THE next morning, Father was already gone, having departed quietly during the night. A week later a messenger arrived from Hung Yen province with news that Father was at Uncle Loc’s house, which was half a day’s walk from the province seat. Aunt Thuan instructed our old guard Khi, Tan, and me that we were to leave the next day. I had picked out a few items to take along, but Khi said not to take anything expensive. Traveling as peasants, we would have no way to explain owning something of value.
At the first crow of the rooster, we set off without breakfast or good-byes. There were five children in our group: baby Huong, Hong, Hung, Tan, and me. We were accompanied by three adults: Khi, Noui, and Vien. Khi led our little expedition. Noui, a man in his early twenties, was an adopted member of our extended family. He knew the back roads to Hung Yen. Nanny Vien was a young widow whose baby had died prematurely. She had been hired to nurse Huong.
Under the cover of darkness, we left the estate through a secret gap in the bamboo hedge. A mist hovered over the fields and obscured the footpath on top of the dikes separating the paddies. Nuoi led us in single file. Vien followed behind him with baby Huong in a fabric sling across her chest. Hung and Hong trailed behind her. Tan and I came behind the boys to keep an eye on them. Khi brought up the rear. It was difficult to see my own feet, but Noui pressed onward at a fast clip. We needed to get clear of the local fields before the peasants started coming out at dawn to work. There was always the chance of being recognized by the villagers. Eight-year-old Hong tired after half an hour, and Noui carried him on his back. Hung was ten and didn’t last much longer than his younger brother. He soon rode on Khi’s back.
Stumbling along behind Tan, I kept wondering if I had done the right thing by leaving the champagne bottle behind. What if someone dug it up? Would he sell it or give it back to us? At last, I decided that I would never know if someone took it, so in my mind the bottle would always stay safely buried in Mother’s garden. I could hold on to it forever this way.
We turned onto a smaller road and suddenly the hackles rose on the back of my neck. This was the place where Uncle Thuan had fallen. The sky was shifting to a deep shade of lavender. The air took on a heavy swampy odor. The big tree loomed like a monstrous shadow at the bend of the road.
Tan paused, staring at the tree. We had come here together once after his father’s assassination. Tan looked at me. He was visibly shaken. His life had been changed irrevocably in this place by a single bullet. I shuddered as we passed the spot where his father had laid. I muttered a prayer to Uncle Thuan and Mother to safeguard us on this journey.
After sunrise, Khi slackened the pace, but didn’t let us rest for another hour. We sat behind some bushes and ate rice balls with a sweet powder of sesame seeds, peanuts, and sugar. Later in the morning, a group of Resistance fighters stopped us on the road and asked Khi where we were going. Khi said we were a peasant family going to live with our relatives in a village outside the province seat. At the time, there were many peasants on the roads displaced by intense fighting so they found our answer credible and allowed us to go on our way.
We skirted several villages, taking mostly footpaths through endless, unchanging miles of rice paddies. I had never walked so far. My feet blistered. Khi pushed us steadily onward. We reached Uncle Loc’s house by sunset.
Uncle Loc was my mother’s youngest brother. As the family’s only son, he inherited the majority of his family fortune, which included his countryside manor. He was married and had five daughters and one son. He was one of the last relatives on my mother’s side to remain in the countryside, most having moved to Hanoi a year ago.
Khi went back to the estate the next day. The rest of us stayed with Father at Uncle Loc’s house. Early in the morning of our third day, a guide arrived at the manor. He took all nine of us by foot on the main road toward the province seat. Hung Yen at the time was a twilight territory much like our village had been a year ago. The French controlled the countryside during the day, the Resistance during the night. We stayed on the well-patrolled highway, avoiding back roads that were watched by the Resistance. The Viet Minh considered people crossing over to the French area as traitors and regularly executed them as such. Our guide knew the French troops at each checkpoint and was able to bribe our crossing all the way through to the province seat, where he again helped us to buy French papers that allowed us to travel.
The passage was surreal. It happened in a blur of exhaustion and confusion. Before I realized it, we were sitting on a bus rolling toward Hanoi. I opened my burlap bag and took out the flute Hoi had given me the day before we left home.
Hoi was still skinny and half a head shorter than me. His teeth had grown in unevenly. Sometimes I found it incredible that my shy, undersized friend, who was always the last boy to be picked for soccer teams, had become the most respected teenager in the village and the leader of the local chapter of Uncle Ho’s Youth Brigade. The boy who could never recite his lessons in front of class without tripping up a dozen times could now give rousing lectures about the evils of colonialism.
“I heard your father was released by the French,” Hoi said.
Surprised, I said nothing. My family had kept it a secret.
“Those long-nosed thugs! You must avenge…” Hoi sighed, looking away. He had asked me to join Uncle Ho’s Youth Brigade many times.
Since the French withdrew from our domain, Hoi’s family had emerged as the chief Resistance organizers of our village. In this new sphere, his family was more powerful than ours. Only recently did I realize the small considerations that my family had shown his over the years were what kept us safe while elsewhere in other domains, wealthy families were targeted for retaliation by the peasantry. Hoi never mentioned it, but I knew he kept the other boys at school from bullying me when I avoided joining their Youth Brigade.
It was strange to see that we were at opposite sides of a sudden chasm, though it did not feel that way, not between us.
I wanted to give him my school supplies and books, but he had no use for them now that he was an important Youth Leader destined for greater things. I handed him a compass on a lanyard. I could tell he liked it by the way the grin grew across his face.
Hoi gave me a bamboo flute he’d fashioned. When I saw the two words he had seared onto the barrel with a hot iron, I knew that he knew we were leaving. Friends Forever.