by Peter May
Elliot laughed till the laughter caught in his throat and he choked, and lapsed into a fit of coughing that pulled and hurt his shoulder. But the pain didn’t matter. He had forgotten how good it felt to laugh. He saw McCue still grinning as he pushed past Serey to the outer cabin. Her face showed no understanding.
The sampan rolled as McCue clambered out to sit up back. Elliot’s smile faded. Serey turned away. ‘Wait,’ he said. She hesitated, still holding back the curtain. ‘Why are you doing this? You’d have been safe if you’d stayed in Phnom Penh.’
She took a long time to answer. ‘After four years under the Khmer Rouge, I’d forgotten I was still a human being. I just remembered, that’s all.’ And she dropped the curtain and was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Long Xuyen lay in the heart of the delta. Nature had been generous here. It was the richest, most productive area of Vietnam, the rice bowl of south-east Asia. Its comparative wealth had been almost shocking to the conquerors from the north. It had also been the breeding ground for revolt. The Viet Cong and their cadres had worked tirelessly among the peasants, to turn them against the puppet regime of the Americans. There had been little to choose, back then, between the corruption of capitalism and the harsh and unforgiving dogmas of communism. But the communists possessed the more effective weapon. Fear. And they used it to good effect.
Life had changed little for the people since 1975. They worked in the paddies as long and as hard as before – for as little return. There were more rules and regulations. Enterprise and initiative were frowned upon. What little education existed had been replaced by re-education and indoctrination. The new religion was the atheist state but, as the French had failed to establish Catholicism, so the communists could not exorcize the Buddha, or the dozens of other schisms and sects. The history and essence of the East lay too deeply in the hearts of the people.
Here, as elsewhere in the world, racism and bigotry had always existed. But now it had the blessing of the state. As the Asians in Africa and Europe, and the Jews in Europe and America, are the object of jealousy and hatred, so the ethnic Chinese in south-east Asia are envied and despised – for their flair in commerce and trade, their stubborn refusal to discard an ancient heritage many generations removed. Now, under the communist authorities in Vietnam, hatred of the Chinese had been institutionalized. The Chinese community was harassed and persecuted. They were blamed for the country’s economic ills, driven from their businesses and their homes. Four years after the war had ended, fear still stalked many streets.
Tran Van Heng was one such ethnic Chinese, driven in late middle age to the very edge of despair. It was from this man that McCue hoped to receive help.
The American squatted just beneath the cover of the rush matting, fear fluttering in his belly like butterflies caught in a net. He had exchanged his ragged black pyjamas for a pair of neatly pressed dark trousers and a white, short-sleeved shirt. He had shaved, and his face felt strangely naked. Serey and Ny had returned with the clothes from a market in town shortly before dark. Now they sat in the cabin behind him, boiling up rice over a small stove. But he wasn’t hungry.
They had arrived at Long Xuyen in the late afternoon and berthed near the harbour among dozens of other sampans upon which hundreds of Vietnamese ate and slept, lived and died in a floating ghetto. Their presence there was unremarkable, and went virtually unnoticed. During the last hours of daylight, McCue had stayed out of sight, sitting with Elliot in the rear half of the cabin, waiting, hoping, for Serey and Ny to return.
Lights from the gently bobbing flotilla were reflected now on the dark waters. The smell of cooking rose like hope above the stink of human waste. The murmur of voices and the tinny scratch of transistor radios drifted gently through the night. From the direction of the harbour, the persistent twang of Vietnamese pop music blared from some waterside café. McCue felt a hand touch his arm. He turned to find Ny crouched beside him.
‘When you go?’
‘When I finish this cigarette.’ It was the third he had smoked since he’d made himself the promise.
‘You scared?’
He nodded. ‘Sure am.’ He glanced beyond the sleeping figure of Hau in the bottom of the boat to where Serey was dishing out bowls of rice. Her face bore a serenity, as if she knew that after everything she had been through nothing could harm her now. ‘I wish I was brave like your Mamma.’
Ny smiled. ‘You brave, too. You eat later.’
‘Sure. Later.’ He threw his cigarette into the dark and heard its brief hiss as it hit the water. The last thing he felt, before he clambered across several boats to the wooden landing stage, was the gentle squeeze of her hand on his arm. He carried the touch with him like a lover’s last kiss, not knowing when, or if, he might feel it again.
He felt acutely vulnerable. Unarmed and alone, a strange face in a land where his countrymen had suffered a humiliating defeat. Curious eyes fell upon him as he walked through the lit area of the harbour, then flickered away in feigned indifference. Curiosity was not encouraged by the authorities. Cafés and some shops were still open, their yellow lights burning harshly in the dark. He hurried away from the lights of the harbour, seeking the dim anonymity of the backstreets.
It was nearly ten years since he had last been here, and yet little seemed to have changed. The crumbling French colonial homes with their peeling shutters and broken balconies; the jumble of market stalls and cavernous dark shops; the rusted iron gates and dilapidated signs painted with extravagant Chinese characters; all remained much as memory had preserved them. The narrow streets of broken pavings and pitted tarmac, the evil smells that rose from cracks in the sidewalk. All appeared to have ignored the passage of time. He passed the terrace of a café where three men in his unit had been blown apart when a bomb planted by a shoeshine boy had exploded. It was in darkness now, closed for the day. And although its windows had long since been replaced and its terrace patched, the walls still bore the scars of the explosion.
In the main square the Catholic cathedral still stood, a poignant reminder of another age. In the streets off it, the homeless still slept in doorways and huddled against walls. Sullen-faced boys, and clusters of pasty-faced teenage girls clutching babies, called to him, jostling him as he went by, arms outstretched, begging for alms. A straggling rank of idle trishaw drivers grew suddenly animated, squabbling and fighting among themselves for his business. He shook his head and pushed quickly through, not wishing to attract attention. But suddenly he stopped, reigniting hope of a fare, and the drivers clustered around. Two uniformed and armed policemen stood under a light at the far end of the street. They had seen him, and were looking his way. With no streets off, he could not avoid them without turning back. In his alarm he turned to the nearest of the trishaw drivers. ‘You speak English?’
‘Yes, yes, speak English,’ he said eagerly. ‘You Russian?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes. Can you take me to Chinatown?’
‘Sure. Chinatown. No problem.’
McCue climbed in the back of the trishaw to a cacophony of complaint from the other drivers. His driver just pushed them aside and mounted his cycle. He began pedalling towards the policemen at the end of the street. As the trishaw approached, one of them stepped out with his hand raised. The driver braked and drew up alongside. The policeman looked suspiciously at McCue, then rattled off a series of questions at his driver. Perhaps fearing the loss of his fare, the driver began to argue, waving his arms. There was a lengthy exchange between them before the second policeman, losing patience, stepped up to McCue and spoke to him directly. His eyes were hostile and suspicious.
McCue looked at his watch and shrugged. ‘Skajitay pojalsta gdyeh astanavlivayetsya avtobus numer adin,’ he said with as much authority as he could muster. The policeman looked back at him blankly. For a brief, irrational moment, McCue feared he might be directed to the main square, and told that the number on
e bus left on the hour every hour. He leaned forward to tap his driver on the shoulder and wave him on. ‘Da svedanya, da svedanya!’ The driver remounted his bike and pedalled away, leaving the two policemen to watch them go, resigned to their impotence. Even the police were afraid of a higher authority. McCue breathed a sigh of relief.
In spite of the persecution, Long Xuyen’s Chinese quarter was still thriving, just coming to life it seemed, as the rest of this provincial town prepared for sleep. The streets were choked with people and traffic – trucks and bicycles – while the alleys spilled over with street markets selling everything from shoelaces to Peking duck. Ancient Confucian and Buddhist temples jostled with down-at-heel cinemas and seedy bars.
‘Let me off here,’ McCue called to his driver. The man, his wiry body sweating in shorts and singlet, drew his trishaw into the pavement and turned, grinning expectantly. McCue took off his watch and held it out. ‘Rolex,’ he said. ‘Best there is. Okay?’
The driver took the watch and examined it gravely. Then his face opened up in a grin, and he nodded vigorously. ‘Okay.’
McCue looked around him, ignoring the stares of the local Chinese. It all looked and smelled so familiar. Somewhere, further down the street, was the House of a Hundred Girls, the brothel he had frequented during his stay here eight years before. But perhaps, in the new morality, it would no longer be there. He took a left, pushing through the crowds of straw-hatted shoppers patronizing one of the less salubrious street markets. A food stall selling sweet buns was crawling with cockroaches. At the far end of the alley he took a right, turning into a quiet, cobbled street. Here the shops, and the factories that contrived to reproduce the vital parts of foreign-made motorcycles, were closed and shuttered.
Halfway down, a light burned above the door to a private apartment. It was a door McCue had passed through many times. But as he stood before it now, he hesitated. What if Heng no longer lived here? He might have moved away, or been put in prison. He could be dead. McCue wiped the sweat from his palms and knocked on the door.
He waited almost a full minute, and was about to knock again when the door opened a crack, and a sliver of light fell out into the street. Dark eyes in a wrinkled, yellow face peered out at him, wisps of silver hair scraped across an otherwise bald pate. ‘Hello, Heng,’ McCue grinned. ‘Is there a game tonight?’ There were several moments of stunned silence before the door opened a little wider, and astonishment shone out from Heng’s shrewd old face.
‘Billee?’ he said.
*
A ring of curious faces hovered around the edge of the pale light cast by an oil lamp on the table. They watched in grave silence as McCue ate hungrily, washing down rice and fried chicken with warmed rice wine; two boys and a girl, the children of Heng’s younger brother, Lee, Lee’s wife Tuyen, and Heng’s wife Kim. A wizened, white-haired old crone, Kim’s mother, sat somewhere beyond the reach of the light, rocking slowly back and forth, muttering inward imprecations. She no longer existed in their world. From time to time, McCue glanced up to meet Heng’s eye and nod as the old Chinaman exercised his rusted English.
‘For time after seventy-five, Billee, they let us carry on; shop, private trader, factory. Then last year they start clampdown. Many Chinese and Vietnamese taken from town to work in New Economic Zone.’ His chuckle contained no humour. ‘’Nother name for labour camp. Working in field. I lucky. They take my shop, everything I got, and they make me work in co-operative making wheat noodle.’
‘Sounds real lucky, Heng.’
‘Lucky for sure, Billee. I too old to work in field. I die there, maybe. Then war with Cambodia, and now they say China ’bout to invade in the north. Things get real bad for Hoa then.’
McCue nodded. The Hoa was the name the Vietnamese gave to ethnic Chinese living outside China. He knew that if China sent troops into Vietnam’s northern provinces, all Hoa in Vietnam would be regarded as potential fifth columnists.
‘They even start draft for Chinese boys. You know what is draft, Billee?’
‘Heng, I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for the goddam draft.’ McCue finished his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘My grandfather used say to us, “China is our home. Vietnam is only our second home.” We Chinese don’t want to fight Chinese. And we hate communist, we don’t want to fight for communist.’
‘Shit, the Chinese are communists, too, Heng.’
‘Yes, Billee, but they still Chinese. Is different.’
Billy shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. If the Vietnamese are frightened of a war with China, why would they enlist Chinese in the army?’
‘Because they want rid of Chinese in Vietnam, Billee. They want us killed. Putting our boys in army is one way. I spend twenty taels of gold in last year keeping my boy out of army. You know – bribe. That more than six thousand dollar. It cost nearly three thousand dollar just to live.’ He shrugged. ‘Food very expensive on black market. I no can afford carry on much longer. My son in hiding now.’
‘Where the hell d’you get the money?’
Heng spread his lips in a wide grin, revealing his three remaining front teeth, like tombstones crumbling in a graveyard. ‘Money all in gold, Billee. They no find my gold.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Oh, we got to leave Vietnam, if we gonna stay alive.’
‘When?’
The old Hoa shook his head sadly. ‘Is not so easy, Billee. My cousin work on boat at Rach Gia for six month. We all give him money and he buy gasoline and keep it safe for trip. But not so easy now. At first many people leave Vietnam by boat, and government no worry. Now they make it hard. Shoot you if you try leave. We must wait for good weather, then two day only on South China Sea and we get to Malaysia.’
‘We’re just coming into the better weather now, aren’t we?’
‘Sure. But it cost much money. Many people need pay for boat. Not easy organize such thing.’
‘We got money, Heng. Dollars, gold, some diamonds.’
Heng’s brow furrowed doubtfully. ‘Dangerous try take foreigner, Billee. Take time, too.’
McCue reached across suddenly and grabbed Heng’s bony wrist. It was an act not intended to threaten, but one born of desperation. ‘We haven’t got time, Heng! We can’t tie up in that harbour indefinitely without someone getting curious, sooner or later. They find us, we’re dead, man!’ His eyes burned fiercely into the old Chinaman’s. Then, conscious that he had crossed the line beyond polite Chinese etiquette, he released Heng’s wrist. ‘I’m sorry.’
The Hoa rubbed the bruised flesh on his arm and stared back thoughtfully at McCue. ‘You got gun?’
‘Sure we got guns. Four automatic rifles, two pistols.’ He grinned nervously. ‘Awesome, huh?’
‘Crossing dangerous,’ Heng said. ‘Many pirate.’
‘Pirates?’
‘Thai fishermen. They attack boat people. Steal their money, rape their women, kill many men. Plenty bad story ’bout Thai pirate.’
McCue’s optimism rose like the smoke from the oil lamp. ‘Then you’re going to need us along for protection.’
Heng nodded solemnly. ‘Sure Billee.’ He paused. ‘How much money you got?’
*
The sampans rose and fell silently in the dark, like the shallow breathing of sleeping bodies. There were no lights anywhere along the harbour. McCue stepped carefully across the boats. From one of them, the muffled voice of a man cursed him for disturbing his sleep. Ny’s face appeared in the shadowed margin of the mat roof above their sampan, one half of her face caught pale in the moonlight. McCue crouched down, pushing past her to enter the cabin. He saw pinpoints of light reflected in Serey’s eyes, and a movement behind her told him the boy was awake, too.
‘What happen?’ Ny whispered.
‘Is Elliot awake?’
‘He is
awake.’ Serey’s voice seemed strained and brittle.
McCue pulled back the curtain and saw the glow from Elliot’s cigarette.
‘You want food now?’ Ny asked, and he felt a stab of guilt. He had eaten and drunk well, and they had made do with rice and dried fish.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Well?’ There was impatience in Elliot’s tone that annoyed McCue.
‘They was going anyway,’ he said. ‘His family and some others. They’ve got a boat at Rach Gia and they been saving fuel.’
‘When?’ It was Serey’s voice this time that carried a hint of impatience.
‘Not for another month.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Elliot hissed. ‘We can’t hang about here for a month!’
‘I talked them into going early.’
‘How long?’
‘A week – at the most. Someone’ll come for us.’
He heard Elliot expelling air through his teeth.
‘Even that’s pushing it, Billy.’
McCue was angry. ‘Fuck sake, Elliot, what d’you want – club-class tickets on the first flight out?’
‘That’ll do nicely.’
Serey’s hand touched McCue’s arm. He turned towards her. ‘How much?’ she asked.
He hesitated. ‘A lot. Probably just about everything we . . . everything you got.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The winter sun washed the room with its pale morning light. Outside a cold wind rattled the empty branches of the trees. Lisa sat in front of the mirror on the dressing table, and raised an arm slowly to brush her hair. Despite the heavy strapping, the pain from her broken ribs was still intense. It hurt just to breathe. The worst of the swelling on her face had subsided, bruises faded to the colour of jaundice yellow. The red slash of her lips heightened the chalky white of her skin. She looked ugly and tired. She felt like death.
After four days in the hospital in Hong Kong, and the thirteen-hour flight home, she had been exhausted and slept for eighteen hours, waking to a strange bed and a numbing disorientation. Only when a drawn-looking Blair had come in with a cup of tea did she remember where she was. The strain of his concern showed around his eyes.
