by Quan Barry
The sack Phuong had carried on board was lying in a corner. Voices emanated from it in a thick chorus. Then Rabbit understood why she couldn’t hear the dead man’s voice. The man had transcended. The Cambodian had broken the endless cycle of life and death and was at peace, the sweetness of Qui’s milk in his mouth. He didn’t need Rabbit. He wasn’t ever coming back. He was free.
By mid-afternoon it was foggy. The strange boat that had been following them was lost in the haze. The fog hung thick and mysterious, the world revealing itself in pieces. The children were playing near the back—Son, Rabbit, and the doctor’s daughter. Their tongues were starting to itch, though they didn’t talk about it. When she wasn’t looking, Son would sometimes poke the little girl’s boot just to see what it felt like. She pretended not to notice. They were performing a funeral for an imaginary corpse, the little girl playing the part of the grieving widow. In their lethargy the adults were indifferent to the children’s fun. Without warning the little girl wilted, falling to her knees. For a moment Son and Rabbit thought it was part of the game. The doctor and his wife were down in the hold. Hey, Duc called from the pilothouse. Bring her here. He nodded the children in. Son picked up the little girl and carried her over.
Hai stood smoking behind the wheel. He had pilfered all his used cigarettes for their last shreds of tobacco and stood smoking what he’d been able to roll together. Duc pulled a flask out of one of the cupboards. He sloshed it around before unscrewing the cap. What is it, said Son. Duc held the flask up to the little girl’s lips. Buddha water. Some of it spilled down her chin. Rabbit could tell it was regular water. The voice she’d heard before in the pilothouse started up again inside her head. She winced. Take whatever you want. Just don’t hurt me, the voice wailed. What is it, said Duc, but she didn’t say anything.
With one last swallow of water the little girl perked up. All better, asked Duc. How did you get this boat, Rabbit said. He stared at her, her eyes blacker than any he’d ever seen. He remembered her looking him right in the face the day they’d gone to hunt otters at the Dragon’s Head, her freckled face so stony it made him afraid. The doctor bought it, Duc said. Rabbit looked confused. She closed her eyes as if calculating an equation. Yes, there was something almost surgical in the way the knife punctured the throat, the efficiency of the thrusts, the aim exacting. The voice apologizing over and over as the air hissed out. Saying I’m sorry. I won’t say anything. I promise.
What do you know about this boat, said Duc. Rabbit opened her eyes. It was a long time before either of them spoke. Then Duc said in a small voice what they say about you is true, isn’t it? Rabbit thought of Phuong’s sack down in the hold, the thing constantly babbling. She wondered how many people’s bones were in it. The entire Dinh family tree uprooted and being carried across the sea. She looked out over the water. Fog and more fog, the sun a blur in the west. Well fuck all, said Hai from behind the wheel. I told you he didn’t buy it. Someone was calling from the back by the engine. The children raced out, the little girl limping along. Already they could see them needling in and out of the fog.
A whole school was swimming off the portside. The water plumed up out of the tops of their heads. The pod came right up by the boat. Dolphins. They’re saying hello, said the little girl. For the first time any of them could remember Arun stopped smiling, the urgency apparent in his voice. What, said Son. Even the Cambodians seemed confused. What is it, repeated Son. One of the men translated. He says they’re warning us.
Just then the other boat came racing out of the fog. One minute there was nothing and then it was right behind them. Hai and Duc were busy yelling at the doctor in the pilothouse, An and Tu standing between them. You lied to us, the brothers said. We were each supposed to put in a third. The doctor was wailing that he had to get out of Vietnam. My brothers and sisters got out, he said. There is nothing left here for me.
The other boat was less than a hundred feet away. Clouds of fog passed in front of it as if it were flying through the sky. Rabbit could see someone standing on deck holding a gun. One minute the man was there, and the next he was gone, lost in the fog, then he was back again with another man at his side. I was going to pay, but he wanted more or he said he’d tell the police, sobbed the doctor. Arun was tugging An’s arm and pointing. Hai took a swing at the doctor. He hit him in the face. The doctor fell on his knees. They all looked to where Arun was pointing. Beyond the little girl in the strange black shoe a boat was racing toward them. The man at the wheel of the other boat stood with a knife in his teeth.
Most likely the pirates were Thai, but they could have been from anywhere. The occasional Vietnamese word floated across the water. Stop. You can’t escape. The other boat wasn’t as good, but it had fewer people on board and probably more fuel. Arun ran down below and got the last of the chicken fat. Duc opened up the throttle. They could keep the pirates off for now, maybe a whole day, but eventually they’d run out of gas. The best they could hope for was another storm or dense fog or a commercial ship passing by or land, but even land wasn’t a guarantee of anything.
When the doctor got his senses back, he stood up and limped down into the hold. What is it, said his wife. What’s happened? From a worn black medical bag he pulled out an old handgun and some bullets. Lord God, she said, crossing herself. Then he pulled out a bundle of raggedy towels. Husband, what’s going on? Slowly he worked his way to the center like a surgeon removing someone’s bandages. His wife crossed herself. It was a foot-tall ceramic crucifix, the thing cream colored, though the drops of blood adorning His head and hands were painted a deep red, the scarlet tears running down His ribs like falling petals. The doctor kissed it before screwing it onto a metal pole. He handed it to his wife. There was blood trickling out of his nose. Together they crawled through the filth in the hold and came back upstairs hand in hand. Hai eyed them as they made their way to the back of the boat.
Duc wanted the doctor to shoot, but An said the pirates might shoot back and the doctor only had four bullets. He told Sang to round up the children and keep them below deck along with the other women. Son didn’t want to go, but his sister had him by the neck, her grip like iron. Down in the hold he could smell joss burning. Phuong had set up a small altar with a bowl of hardened rice ruined by seawater and a few small portraits. It was too dark to make out any of the details in the faces. Son could just see the poses. Men and women looking head-on into the camera, their faces frozen and unsmiling.
The sack was lying on the floor at Phuong’s feet. Make an offering to the spirits, she said. Son knelt beside his mother. Though he wanted to be on deck with his father and the other men, he knew now wasn’t the time. Phuong handed him a joss stick. He clapped it in his hands. Smoke clouded the air. The scratch on his face started to itch. Rabbit could hear one of the voices in the sack wailing that the mandarin was just a man. Who will look out for us, the earth’s meek, the voice said. Above deck the doctor and his wife stood waving the dead figure of their god at the enemy. Below Phuong called on Quan Am, the many-armed Goddess of Compassion, to hear them.
Nobody heard the shot over the incessant roar of the waves. In the fog, the gun’s flash was barely perceptible. From below deck they could hear the doctor’s wife screaming and feet pounding the boards as someone ran toward her. In her red wedding dress Sang gathered the little girl Minh in her arms. It’s all right, Sang said. Just hold on to me.
The doctor and his wife had been standing on the starboard side, the wife waving the crucifix in the air. The other boat was close enough they could see two men leering at the front. One of them was holding a whip. The second man held the gun, steadying it with both hands. His shoulder jerked back as he pulled the trigger. Then the doctor crumpled. The wife dropped the crucifix. It shattered on the deck. Her screams brought some of the Cambodians. When Arun saw the blood pooling under the doctor, he put his hands over his eyes.
They all knew what would happen if the pirates boarded them. The pirates would ransack their p
ossessions, taking all of their valuables. The marauders would beat and kill some of the men. Sang in her red ao dai would be passed around. Qui would be kept alive as a slave. The pirates would take everything and leave the survivors adrift to die at sea. Even Huyen might be raped.
The pirates pulled up alongside. They stood on board holding ropes with grappling hooks. There were less than twenty feet between the boats. One of them was swinging his rope. He threw it, the hook glinting in the light, but when it landed, An threw it overboard. All the while the doctor’s wife was screaming, her body prostrate over her husband’s. Nobody could tell if he was alive or dead. Pieces of the shattered crucifix lay in his blood.
Then it happened. They heard it down in the hold, though they didn’t know what it was. One minute the other boat was chasing them down, and the next it was engulfed in flames. A man ran on deck on fire, arms flapping like a bird. The explosion sent pieces of flaming debris onto their own deck. Even before they could sort out what had happened, the Cambodians were running around throwing the burning pieces into the sea.
The doctor was still alive. Across the water the man on fire screamed as he leaped into the ocean. The sound like the end of the world, skin crackling like a burning log. Thy will be done, the doctor said weakly. His wife helped him make the sign of the cross. Then he died.
It took a long time to realize what had happened. The pirates had hit a mine. There were minefields all over the South China Sea. Governments ringing their waters with them, some governments to keep refugees out, others to keep their own people in.
On deck they stood watching the pirates’ boat sink in the distance. For the moment they forgot their own hunger and thirst. Black smoke raged up into the air. After a while only a faint glow was left illuminating the haze. Duc only told Hai. Hai had already been thinking the same thing. Where there’s one, there’s many, Duc said.
Less than fifteen minutes later they threw the doctor over the side. The shards of the crucifix were tied around his neck. With the little girl standing in her black boot beside her mother, there was no attempt to keep the other children away. Rabbit could hear the doctor searching through the darkness. Ora pro nobis peccatoribus. For the briefest instant the body was sailing into the fog. Pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death. She didn’t even see it hit the water. As if he were flying off a stage. All around them the waters were eerily smooth. For the first time since they’d entered it, the South China Sea was calm as if made of glass. What were you arguing about, said his widow in a quiet voice. Her face like the face of her god, long and impassive, all attachment severed. Duc and Hai looked at each other. Nothing, said Hai. At the front of the boat Tu asked Qui to watch the widow. He was afraid she might throw herself and the little girl overboard. Briefly he touched Qui’s cheek with his hand. Her sorrow is deep, he said. All around them the fog was starting to lift. Just as he said it, he felt himself flying through the air. Please, he thought, only I deserve this, and then everything went black.
The poets say the rabbit on the moon pounds the medicine in vain. Some say it is the elixir of life she is grinding in her stone mortar, others that the rabbit mills rice for mooncakes. Along the Silk Road there are triadic images of three hares with only two ears between them. Among the Reindeer People there is a tale of the rabbit who had nothing to give the wanderer-god but the flesh of her own body and so threw herself into the fire and was immortalized on the face of the moon.
IT WAS A FULL MONTH BEFORE THE RUSSIAN STOPPED TO ASK for a lemon. Rabbit saw him standing by the iron gate. Farther up the boulevard the sun rose over the distant yellow hills. The other Russians were headed for the trucks that would take them out to the Nam Yum, the river often iridescent with run-off, pearly. She wondered what they did out there at the old battleground. With each trip they trucked the equipment back and forth to prevent the locals from scavenging and selling off the metal. Some of the more daring locals remained undeterred. They would come out at night after the Russians had left and begin tapping the ground with sticks, at times digging with nothing but their own bare hands.
Even among the Russians who drove out to the Nam Yum each morning he was like nothing Rabbit had ever seen. A long scar braided the side of his neck, twisting down his throat in three sections as if someone had taken an iron to the skin and kissed it here, here, and here. She remembered the first time she’d ever seen him. She had been boiling water for the Vietnamese laborers building the school across the street. From out of the crowd a pair of icy eyes trained on her. She thought of Bà on the rubber plantation and the man with the milky-white palms sitting cross-legged under the cashew tree, Bà’s heart flooding. Rabbit could feel the heat gathering in her own blood. The heart flooding maybe once in a lifetime.
Through the days and weeks she had come to notice a silver ring on one of the Russian’s fingers. The ring face was flat but embossed with a flowery creature shaped like a dragon. Mornings he would wander up the dusty boulevard toward the trucks, the sound of the ring clanking on the metal as he ran his hand along the iron fence. For a long time afterward she could hear a soft ringing hanging in the air.
At the end of the government’s third five-year plan the Russians were everywhere. Rabbit couldn’t remember when they began appearing. One day the streets were simply filled with men pale as milk, bodies like mountains, even the women big as trees, and the men with hair blanketing their faces, not the sparse wiry hairs of the Vietnamese men, boys her own age searching their chins for just one, the mark of wisdom, these men with their entire throats furred like wild animals. There was talk that their whole bodies were like that, their torsos like pelts, the dark hair growing coarser as it moved down their forms.
It’s cold in their country, said Giang, who walked out through the unlatched gate of the foreign workers’ dormitory every morning before the sun came up, her scarlet lipstick long faded. In the dark Giang would hand Rabbit five hundred dong and watch the honey run into the cup. It’s so cold, sometimes the sky freezes and falls to earth, Giang knowingly said.
Then the trucks were pulling away. Their black exhaust stained the air. Each one could hold as many as fifty men. The Russians would be back long after sundown, their instruments caked with clay. The men would be tired and dirty but glad to be alive after toiling in the minefields of the old French battleground. Rabbit had heard that the Russians preferred the sea. Down south between Danang and the clear waters of Nha Trang, there were accommodations built just for them, small furnished rooms that would cost the average Vietnamese six months’ wages for a single night. Everywhere they went in Hoa Thien the locals would sidle up on the muddy streets to buy whatever the Russians had on them—clothes, sunglasses, tennis rackets, sneakers—anything that could be sold on the black market. The policemen who escorted them through town would often listen as the illicit buyers named a price, the police sometimes translating, telling the Russians yes, comrade, it is fair, then taking a cut for themselves and leaving them to trudge back to their hotels in their socks.
Ever since China’s month-long invasion of the northern border at the end of the decade, ties between Russia and Vietnam had strengthened. Workers came from all over the union, the republics and satellites as well. The government in Hanoi needed them and their scientific know-how, their rubles that kept the economy afloat. The country was still in the first year of Doi Moi. Renovation. The end of collectivization, the government starting to reform. Some of the Russian soldiers who looked for mines out at the Nam Yum had been reassigned out of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. The soldiers came and let their beards grow wild. They did what they were told to do, which was easy compared to what they’d done.
In the east the sky was growing light. The brighter the morning, the harder the rain to come. Rabbit looked at the sun. Qui was late again coming back from the early market. It meant they would have to wait for the midday break to make back the money they’d spent on supplies. Overhead, Son was sitting on the highest limb of the only tree left
on Duong Khiem. It was a cinnamon tree. The branch was gray and leafless, but he looked so much like his old self, sitting in the cinnamon tree staring out over Duong Khiem, that Rabbit didn’t say anything.
Across the street the Vietnamese laborers were already at work building the school for foreign children. A group of men stood in a clay pit mixing concrete with their feet to keep it from setting. The men moved as if dancing, the sweat beginning to bead on their foreheads. Van was among them, the muscles in his legs striated from hours in the pit, his mangled hand hidden at his side. At lunch the laborers would shuffle across the street with their rumpled bills. Most of them couldn’t afford the hundred dong, but they still came just to gaze at Qui, her unearthly beauty still intact.
Under her conical hat Rabbit herself was far from beautiful, but she had a presence that made men look twice. The fearless little tomboy was gone. In her place was a demure young woman on the cusp of adulthood, her straight black hair falling to her shoulders. In adolescence the handful of freckles sprinkled along the bridge of her nose and cheeks had taken on an exotic air. People often stared. Freckles were a rarity among them. Sometimes Rabbit could hear people whispering, the locals speculating that she had foreign blood in her. She was fifteen years old in the ancient system of reckoning, older than Qui had been when Qui started nursing her. She was almost the same age as her grandmother when Bà took the dragon fruit from the untainted hands of the medicine man on the fecund grounds of Terres Noires.
By the dormitory gate Rabbit sat watching the laborers mix the concrete. She could see their bodies glistening in the sun, hips twisting in the sludge. Within minutes she spotted Qui pedaling up Duong Khiem, the basket perched on her handlebars. Qui’s hair spilled down her back. It was so long it could have easily gotten tangled in the spokes, but it never did. Sometimes Rabbit didn’t recognize her. There were moments when from a distance Rabbit found herself thinking who is this old woman coming toward me? Then the moment would pass and Qui would emerge from the crowd with her stained black shirt and big western eyes, her exquisitely structured face. It still startled Rabbit. Qui’s hair no longer night-black, each strand white as pearl and as luminous.
