Postcards From Nam

by Uyen Nicole Duong

  Many, many years ago in the hallway of the women’s public hospital, I had to run toward the window for a breath of fresh air and the sight of trees and flowers, in order to hear the imaginary lovebirds singing the hope for life. A beautiful life and not the wretched lives that spell human sufferings. That was the day I had to absorb the hard facts of womanhood while facing the critical condition of my mother and the loss of my baby brother. The ginseng box. There were sufferings, blood, birth, and death on that same day. And there was the memory of Nam’s almond eyes giving me the assurance that I desperately needed, and forever missed.

  Now I must look toward the window of this Vietnamese house for the same glimpse and breath of sunshine—innocent, transparent, well-defined sun rays, filling this earth with health and clarity, taking away the darkness and confusion that imprison and condemn humans into their feuds, those humans who hold secrets about a war that never ends. I must find those radiant Texas azaleas that Uncle Dien has painstakingly cared for, trimmed, watered, and cherished. Those flowers that marked his accomplishments in the peaceful neighborhood of suburban Houston. So far from Vietnam. So far from the angry sea and the unburied past.

  I begin to see the lonely lovebird peeping from those azaleas. It sings, Rashomon, Rashomon. The Rashomon story of Vietnam. It is looking at me with those tiny beads of peaceful eyes. Rashomon. Rashomon. Rashomon. Who is to tell the truth from lies? Who is to say for sure people’s lies are different from their own notion of truth?

  “You have cut yourself with the broken glass, Uncle Dien,” I say. “You should get a Band-Aid.”

  “It’s nothing, nothing at all,” he says, having taken his hand out of his mouth in order to tell me his version of the truth.

  “Uncle Dien,” I say gravely. “The little kid has grown up. He is alive and well today. When the boat finally sank, he held on to something and was rescued by an American oil rig crew. He is grateful to you for organizing the trip and never blames you for what happened.”

  His drooping eyes give no sign of relief. “Since you’ve looked into this matter, do you know what happened to all those men who went with the pirates?”

  I detect sincerity in his voice. “What do you think might have happened to them?” I ask.

  He does not answer me and looks away.

  “The older brother is also alive,” I tell him.

  He glances back at me and then looks over at the entertainment center where his photographs are displayed. I may be imagining it, but I think I have just seen a tear from the eye socket of the old man.

  He picks up pieces of the broken glass, stooping his back over the floor, an old man probing for the small, sparkling pieces of glass that blend into the brownish color of the old carpet. He almost crawls on the floor, feeling and searching.

  “I still have nightmares about them. Did they all get killed or what? You can’t write about this. We are Vietnamese men, descendants of a holy dragon and a fairy god. This thing about the pirates at sea taking our men is an insult. It’s shame. I don’t know why I even told you. And by the way, I didn’t take that much gold. You see, I had to bribe the Communists. Otherwise, how could I have organized those trips? Those people that I helped, they all dislike me now. Complaining I took too high a price. Too greedy. Not true, not true. I am a nice man. I will die one of these days, and I won’t be afraid of karma, qua bao. What comes around goes around. I did help everybody. They wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for me. Do you know some of them even took a rain check, and I let them? They said they’d pay me once they got to America since they had rich relatives here, and I never heard from or saw any rich relatives, and they never did pay me. It was a fraud.”

  The door opens. A healthy, young woman appears, speaking a bright and vibrant type of American English with a distinctive Texas drawl, and all of sudden things become normal again in the living room. Uncle Dien introduces Emile, his granddaughter, to me—a college girl, round-faced, unknowingly cheerful and healthy, with straight, shoulder-length, shiny black Asian hair and an all-American muscular body in blue jeans and T-shirt.

  “I am Emile,” the youth says, so confidently. “Grandpa, your sprinkler is far too strong.”

  Emile. Like in Rousseau’s Emile. The education of the young, I try to say to the lovebird outside. But it has flown away, carrying with it the Vietnamese Rashomon story.

  Things are back to normal now. With the presence of Emile, who has learned to make soybean milk the old Vietnamese way, in Texas.

  Uncle Dien wants to talk more about his good deeds, and he rambles on about how Vietnamese people have betrayed him, spreading unfounded rumors to smear his reputation. How this one Communist agent, the so-called Mr. Dat the writer-journalist, has spied and has smeared Uncle Dien’s good name as part the Communist mission. Those ungrateful, harmful fellow Vietnamese, Uncle Dien says.

  My face and hands are cold. Outside Uncle Dien’s window, his azaleas no longer appear bright and fresh. The lovebird is long gone.

  I ask for more soybean milk, unable to keep up my facade of fascination with Uncle Dien’s tales. I get no additional soybean milk. Finally, Uncle Dien—aging former bureaucrat, skilled intelligence officer, savvy businessman, Samaritan with who-knows-what-secrets-stored-in-his-heart—begins to sense my mood. No longer trusting me, he decides to show me to the door.

  “You can’t write about those men,” he says again.

  I give him my best assurance.

  On the drive back home, I keep wondering. Uncle Dien made five successful trips, sailing the refugees to their destination—an incredible task. What had he done with all the gold for those successful trips before he was robbed during the last escape?

  And that “Dat the writer-journalist” foe of his…Who is Dat?

  I call my mother later, to talk about the Rashomon story of Vietnam. She sighs, in her usual, comforting, motherly way.

  “This Dien-Dat feud. So many more like that. Never ending. It’s deadly. But, my dear girl, people like Uncle Dien and this Mr. Dat. Did they send you postcards?”

  She is right. I acknowledge the point. They did not send me postcards.

  Yet, in my search for Nam, I have looked and I have found them.

  “They have no need to send me postcards, Mother.” I am speaking to myself. “They have no need to have me find anything. While I am seeking my old alley that I shared with Nam, these people have created their own alley.”

  I am chilled by the thought.

  What they created is not the same alley of my childhood. It’s a different kind of ghetto of hoodlums that can kill. Words can kill. Memory can kill. The ghetto takes away all innocent beauty or the spirit of heroes.

  The Vietnamese Rashomon story will live on just like that.

  The chill stays with me, because that night, in reflecting the events of the day, I begin to realize what Dien-Dat, the combination of those two men’s names, means in English.

  It means Freedom of Speech.

  I have not kept a diary for a long time, but I start one that night. I write down on the first page:

  Postcards from Nam.

  There, I see Nam dancing on the angry waves, grimacing at Uncle Dien and Mr. Dat. The ocean parts, making a pathway for me. My legs turn into a mermaid’s tail, and I swim toward Nam.

  The waves become my force.

  My search for Nam.

  No, no, no, I will just have to write the phrase over and over again. This time, I will spell “Nam” without a capital n:

  Postcards from nam.

  The chill comes back to me as the ocean continues to part. Yet I can never reach out for my dancing Nam. Nam, wait for me, wait for me. He continues dancing right before my watery eyes but seems forever outside my reach. I am chilled away, as the ocean turns white. White like skeleton branches of a winter forest. The ocean turns into snow. Snow is everywhere. Like that first winter of mine in America. I was alone in the dorm. Alone on campus. Alone in the library. Alone in a deserted college town w
hen everybody else had gone home for Christmas. The studious teenager studied so hard for scholarships to get ahead, all alone. Oh, Mimi, Mimi, Mimi, I begin to cry in the middle of that snow ocean.

  But then, around me, in all that white snow, I see blooming tulips. Nam’s guileless dancing limbs have become vaulting, slender tulips. Beautiful tulips of all colors. Red, pink, lavender, purple, yellow, and pale blue turning into luscious bright orange. Better than the immense flower market of Amsterdam. Better than anything I have seen in picture books. I swim against the cold snow toward all that warmth of lofty blooming tulips. They fill my path. Nam has painted them. They have come alive as though he had planted them, so now they grow in the sea of winter snow. They grow in my America. Those beautiful tulips will be on the postcards Nam will send, some day, some day when my swim stops, and finally at the point of destination, I am allowed to rest…

  I find out, much, much later, from community gossip, that Uncle Dien’s grandson, Emile’s brother, is at Harvard Medical School. Perhaps that’s why the name Harvard carried its credible weight. For many years Uncle Dien has also generously helped his fellow Vietnamese men who came to America late, those who have paid for their crimes against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with years spent in those “reeducation camps”—the collective fate of South Vietnamese soldiers after the fall of Saigon.

  I also find out that Uncle Dien, in his seventies, has picked up a new profession—as a professional gardener and CEO of the first Vietnamese-owned lawn mowing service. He has taught his South Vietnamese men, the former political prisoners of Vietnam, how to mow yards and cut shrubs for money, charging much less than their American or Mexican counterparts. These old Vietnamese men are now Uncle Dien’s employees. They are all grateful, praising and honoring him, their former compatriot and current employer, at their various monthly and annual South Vietnamese Alumni meetings in Southwest Houston.

  To them and to many other first-generation Vietnamese, Uncle Dien is a good man. A good South Vietnamese. A good boss. A good friend. An honorable man who has been defamed by his own people.

  How about “that miserable Mr. Dat the writer-journalist”? I find out that he has settled in California and has started a magazine that specializes in the verbal persecution of Vietnamese living in America. Under a column called “Demon of Justice,” the magazine often condemns those Vietnamese “traitors” who have committed “crimes against the culture.” These traitors are either pro-Chinese, pro-Russian, pro-American, or pro-French, as the magazine calls them. The magazine spares no Vietnamese soul so long as that soul is well-known in the exile community. No one dares to sue the magazine because of the Vietnamese saying “don’t mess with lepers,” and further, litigation just costs too much over something as imprecise as the defamatory meaning of these terms. Occasionally, there is a victim who responds in print, only to occasion further massacre of reputation and name-calling. The magazine proudly hosts this “pen fight,” ennobled by other “first-generation intellectuals” joining the “debate.” The controversy, of course, creates more copy sales. First-generation Vietnamese buy copies to follow the fierce name-calling and secret-life discovery. The most intense debate is always about who is a Communist and who is not. The faceless “Demon of Justice” columnist, who admits that she is a woman, often has the final say, always declaring herself to be the sentencing judge speaking on behalf of the Vietnamese culture.

  I also find out that there is only one way out for those who are fearful of the Demon of Justice and Mr. Dat’s magazine enterprise. To avoid being brought down by this columnist, the victim or victim-to-be typically pays hefty sums to become an advertiser in the magazine.

  What happens next? Some of the popular Vietnamese lawyers who practice exclusively for first-generation Vietnamese also advertise in the magazine, especially PI lawyers who chase ambulances and so-called criminal defense attorneys who make a career by threatening their clients into pleading guilty for a quick bargain with the DA’s office to avoid a trial. The magazine calls these lawyers “great barristers.” The county judges learn to like these lawyers as Vietnamese VIPs, who can help the judges get reelected by gathering the Vietnamese ethnic votes.

  After the lawyers come the plastic surgeons, targeting their advertisements to those Vietnamese women who want to westernize their appearances. The magazine calls them “lifesavers” and “miracle doctors.”

  I pick up a copy of Mr. Dat’s magazine from the Vietnamese gift shop one day. There, in large print, on the first page, appears a statement of philosophy: “This magazine condemns everything that has anything to do with Vietnamese Communism. Our publication is committed to the fight for freedom, especially freedom of speech. We will one day march home, a country free of Commies!”

  As I plunge myself into my renewed search for Nam, coordinating and giving information to David Daugherty’s NGO staff across the Pacific Ocean, one day my mother calls to let me know that Mr. Dat’s magazine has abruptly ceased publication. The gossip in California has travelled quickly to Texas. It is Demon of Justice who has set fire to the editorial office of the magazine, located in the heart of Little Saigon in Orange County. Allegedly she has been known to have been in love with Mr. Dat for decades, and has used her divorce settlement to finance the magazine. Recently, some younger Vietnamese singer who wore a miniskirt came to the editorial office to ask for Mr. Dat. The young woman ran into Demon of Justice instead. The following week, a fire broke out in the editorial office, and all furniture, equipment, old copies, new copies of the magazine, everything, went up in smoke. Mr. Dat’s enterprise is over. According to community gossipers, Demon of Justice reportedly has left California to join a religious sect, or she might have gone back to school to obtain her PhD.

  There is a happy ending to Mr. Dat’s magazine enterprise. Another story has been floating around in the close-knit community of Vietnamese in America. Rumors have it that Mr. Dat had just purchased insurance about a week before the fire. The insurance company conducted an investigation, but no Vietnamese wanted to testify in court how the fire had started, and the investigator couldn’t tell heads from tails from elliptical answers given by all those Vietnamese speakers.

  Mr. Dat has since disappeared from the exile community. Rumors continue that on his sixty-fifth birthday, he returned to his former Saigon—now Ho Chi Minh City—to live a good life, as the Communist government is now encouraging Vietnamese expatriates to return home. He has even got remarried, this time to a young Vietnamese girl, about twenty years of age, the age of Emile.

  7. RARE PEARL ON WHITE SAND

  The file arrives from Thailand, sent directly to me by human rights and international relief workers based in Southeast Asia. I stay up all night to read.

  The file, assembled through David’s arrangement, concerns an injured young Vietnamese male, cared for in an infirmary, transferred to a hospital near Phukett, and finally moved into a refugee camp set up for Vietnamese Boat People in Thailand. The file consists of notes taken by United Nations and relief workers of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) assigned to the camp, various nurses at the infirmary and the hospital, and a special section prepared by international workers assigned by David Daugherty to the task of reopening and investigating an old case, as a special favor for me. The special section includes notes on interviews of the inhabitants of the fishing villages along the coast between the Gulf of Thailand, the territorial waters of Indonesia, and the Philippines, where the young man was found.

  I scan the medical files, skipping the administrative details and stopping at random to scrutinize more descriptive notes. The medical attention given at the local infirmary was barely at the first-aid and survival level. Not much detail was given then.

  My eyes stop at notes taken by a Filipino Catholic nun named Maria Theresa. “Per station nurses: Health improved. Patient spent days drawing. Asked for pencils and chalks. Beautiful pencil and chalk sketches of chaotic images. Refused to speak. Melancholy. Withdrawn. Transferred
to camp.”

  I flip to the back of the file to the special section prepared at David Daugherty’s request. The typed notes of the Catholic Church and Red Cross volunteers and United Nations workers appear on the page in the rounded font of a manual typewriter, impersonal like the monotonous voices of disinterested eyewitnesses. Yet the typed words draw pictures in my head. I finally find Nam. I see my friend. Back to the time before all the postcards were sent.

  Interview with K.K. Ruan, a 70-year-old fisherman. Subject is known as KiKi in his village. No longer goes out to sea these days. Stays home to make dried fish and to take care of grandchildren. Recalls several incidents when he found Vietnamese refugees abandoned at sea. Subject is Buddhist and believes in saving lives. Subject has clear mind and memory, but does not know how to write. Has been fishing and sailing all his life.

  Subject states some time between the late seventies and early eighties, the refugee boats kept coming, and he helped as many people as he could. Sometimes it was beyond his capacity and he was not able to help much. Sometimes he just gave them supplies and they moved on. Subject took interviewer to a rock wall in a small bay, where he kept counts of the number of Vietnamese Boat People he had helped. We went there and the rock wall was full of carved sticks. He lost track of counting them.

  Subject recalls vividly the case of the young man abandoned in a small boat. One of the worst cases of abuse and assault he has found.

  The typed notes from the file paint images before me, and the movie camera inside my head begins to roll. I taste salt in the air and hear the distant, windy sound of the stormy ocean and its angry waves. I see the clear, calming sky brightened with the early morning sun. I see the Southeast Asian version of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, some old fisherman named Kiki, rocking himself in a reclining chair behind a hanging fish net, among baskets of aromatic dried fish, against a background of the pacifying, elegant slopes of pure sparkling white salt and dull sand hills. In unadorned, elliptical phrases, to his dozens of grandchildren gathering at his cracked feet, the old man tells the story of one Vietnamese young man stranded at sea.