Postcards From Nam

by Uyen Nicole Duong

  The typed notes dance at the corners of my eyes, and I can hear the ticktack noise of an old typewriter, tapping rhythmically against a symphony of background sounds—the sound of the sea and the wind accompanying an old man’s voice, speaking a clipping, tonal Southeast Asian language:

  Subject, called “Old Kiki” by villagers, reported the following. There had been a terrible storm lasting for days…After the storm was over, the following day, subject went out for an early catch and got carried away. So he just went with the wind, toward the direction of Phiphi Island and Phukett. The sky was clear, waves peaceful. Typical after-storm tranquility. Found abandoned boat, quite battered, floating at sea. At first he thought there was no one on the boat, and he was going to drag it back to shore to reuse the wood. Did not expect another case of Vietnamese refugee rescue. Found unexpectedly a feeble, skinny, young boy squatting on a ripped blanket in the battered boat. Looked about fifteen, although could be older. Hard to judge real age. Could not see much of the boy from afar until subject got on board. The boy sat still, stone-faced, lifeless eyes riveted into space, unable to move. He had another blanket over him and some sort of a plastic cover, which he wrapped around himself. The plastic cover must have helped counter the thermo-hypodermic effect of the cold air and freezing waves and hence kept the boy alive. Subject moved the plastic cover and found the boy almost naked underneath. The boy had on a badly torn shirt and no pants. The blanket had dried blood, much dried blood. The fabric had turned black, sticking on to the boy’s skin. Wasn’t easy to take the blanket off him. He was still bleeding somewhat. His whole midsection was covered with dried blood. He screamed when subject tried to move him onto his fishing boat, but that was the only sound he made. From that point on, the boy did not utter even one single word. Subject sailed back to an adjacent fishing village and got more help. Tried to wash the boy in a wooden basin with hot water, and then put healing herbs on him to stop the bleeding. Subject remembered the boy’s sphincter muscles and tissues were badly torn. Took the boy to the nearest infirmary. The boy remained mute and emotionless, and subject guessed the boy was a Vietnamese refugee.

  I thumb through the pages to skip details of medical reports and infirmary care, and resume reading at the end of the file:

  The following are follow-up notes of interviews conducted with old “Kiki” at the request of Mr. David Daugherty of the US Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights based in Washington, DC. Subject, old “Kiki,” now over 80 years of age, was found in the same fishing village, still alive and well. Stated he could never forget the sight of a pale young boy sitting alone in a battered boat, in dried and fresh blood. Even after so many years, subject still remembered the incident. It was obvious to old Kiki that the Vietnamese boy had been held captive and repeatedly assaulted by savage pirates. Subject had heard that these things happened but the villagers rarely talked about them. Said he could not explain how the boy could have survived the storm or why the pirates did not kill the boy. The waves and wind of the storm could have shattered the small boat into pieces and the boy could have drowned. Attributed the boy’s survival to a miracle worked by Buddha. Subject concluded the interview with his two hands together in the middle of his chest. In this Buddhist worshipping gesture, subject made the following comments in his dialect, roughly translated, paraphrased, and interpreted by the interviewer as follows:

  “When I found him he was in bad shape, almost a ghastly sight. Wasn’t pretty to look at but somehow I could see the boy was beautiful. There was this beauty about him. The beauty was so obvious it transcended the harm done to the physical being. That good bone and delicate skin. Those long, slender fingers. The contours of his back and calves and arms. And those dark eyes and brows, even though the eyes appeared lifeless when I found him. Looking at him then, I kind of understood why they did not kill him.

  “You see, I don’t know how to say this because I am just a fisherman and I never go to school, and I don’t know how to talk, and even when I pray to Buddha, I can’t articulate well what I want to say to the Supreme Enlightened. But I will try.

  “It kind of works like this.

  “I have been working the rough sea all my life and I destroy many things as well as saving them. I just have to, you see, working with nature. But once in a while, I was building or repairing a boat or so on the beach, and I found a piece of a rare pearl, perhaps, small yet sparkling under the sun, on that white sand. It was so radiantly beautiful and lofty in its small, helpless way that no matter how busy I was, working intensely and all, how rough I got, how impatient and irritated I became, I just couldn’t break or step on the small pearl. I just had to stop whatever I was doing, take the time to pick up the raw pearl and save it. So throughout the years I kept a jar to store those rare, beautiful, little things I found on the beach, in the sand. And it has been so many, many years but the jar is not yet full. You see, it is so rare that a rough hand like me would find a beautiful thing out of nowhere. Those little beautiful things, they rarely come your way.

  “On the day I found this poor boy abandoned at sea, I recognized that same beauty in the battered boy. And as I am sitting here in my old age thinking back, it must have been that rare-gem beauty that saved him from being killed. You see, even the foulest of beasts, at times, don’t have the heart or the courage to crush a pearl, step on a rose, or break a dainty piece of intricate jewelry. And I really think that’s what happened. They couldn’t kill him even if they tried. So, I guess, I could only guess. Even the beasts became awed by sheer beauty. They couldn’t face their crime. So they had to put him on an abandoned boat and let it float at sea.

  “I really believe, after all these years fighting typhoons and storms and hurricanes and sharks and sea snakes, I have been protected all the time by my Buddha, and I truly think that in the worst of beasts, there is still a human side, since we all walk on two legs, you know, and in that human side resides my Buddha. And maybe, just maybe, in facing this rare beauty in the boy, that human side revived and the beasts could not kill.

  “After all, the boy was also very strong, you see, despite all that frailty. You should see the way he clutched onto his blanket and plastic cover, tugging himself under it. When I moved him to my boat, he was still holding on to his cover. I could feel all that will to live, all that life force. When we took him to shore, it took three men to take the blanket and plastic cover off him.

  “So yes I believed it. He survived the storm.

  “But maybe the young boy would have been better off dying. Oh good Heaven, my Lord Buddha, no imagination could be possible to describe what they had done to that young boy, their lust and savagery, and how that poor skinny little thing would, in days to come, survive the memory.”

  8. THE REFUGE OF ART

  I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share.

  Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

  I close Nam’s file.

  Outside it is still dark.

  I open the French doors and step out to the balcony. I stand pressing my stomach against the cold railing, inhaling into my lungs the air of a fresh night. I am on bare feet.

  I remember the night I boarded the cargo plane to leave a panicked Saigon for good, one early summer night in April 1975. I had dropped my shoes along the way, so I rushed onto the airport runway, onto the cargo plane on bare feet. The chill went from my heels to my spine.

  Now I feel distinctively the same ghastly coldness under my heels.

  No chill runs down my spine now. Instead, a sense of resolution takes hold of my being. This time, my bare feet hold firm to the cold ground of the balcony. I know I have finished one journey and am ready to start a new one, also on bare feet.

  I stand there for a long time.

  The first bit of sunshine hits the railing.

  As the warmth of the first sunray of dawn touches my face, the words of my manuscript, yet to be wr
itten, take form in my head.

  I once thought destiny was whatever we made of it. I know now we all swim in the river of life. At times we swim on, only seeing the currents that become our course. At times, we manage to get out of the water, standing by the riverbank, watching the currents like an observer, seeing past the river that spells our journey. At times, we go upstream. At times, we float downstream. To think we can sever the river is to fool ourselves. Our past, present, and future all flow into that river. One cannot take a knife and sever a river from its source or cut it into pieces. Hence, one can never sever the past from the present or the future. Nor can one shape water to fit one’s purposes, since water takes on the shape of its container. When someone changes the container, water changes its shape. It means the swimmer inside the container has no control over the shape she has become. After all, in the flow of the river—in that continuous journey of ours—we can never escape being the creatures of our past.

  I have only one task to do—the recording of memory.

  I begin to see past the stream of bee-like traffic moving on Westheimer Street, signaling the beginning of a busy workday for Houstonians. I see past the tiny tip of the pinkish sun emerging against the blue-white horizon, all languorously turning into the glorious display of early-morning gold light and red heat.

  Against the bright sun, I see my tulips. They have grown east.

  I am in a trance. And I keep seeing. Before me, dawn in an early summer day has turned into an immense sea. On that immense sea, I can see all kinds of shapes and forms—those that appear on Nam’s postcards. To the postcards I begin my monologue.

  Dearest Nam,

  I should have seen these scenes a long time ago, with your very first postcard. I should have put together the pieces of what you have desperately wanted to paint for me. There is a point we both yearn to reach, and at which we can reunite. I am speaking of words and colors that dance, pigments and parodies that laugh and so lovingly embrace us, frames and pages that preserve. In the refuge of expression we will both submerge, and that is where we will find and share, despite the loss of evergreen childhood, our eternal protection from all haunts, hells, and human breakage.

  I know so clearly what I must do, Nam.

  I am prepared to go back inside, begin the arduous process of typing and retyping. I am ready to change a chronology of lives into our journey homeward. Into our point of unity. I will be reconstructing all burned postcards. I want to set free two lovebirds who sing, tell, and cry the tales of Vietnamese immigrants. My tale and your tale will meet in the peace of destination for travelers in exile.

  Oh Nam, words are all I have, just as lines and strokes are all you have. So in the dawn of a beautiful day, in a place so far removed from our alley of childhood, I will start telling your tale.

  Oh Nam, I am seeing your sea. Somewhere you are standing in all that wind, a small creature, a fragile frame, ivory skin and fluttering slanting almond eyes, a beautiful unlucky being standing before God against the swallowing tides of the angry sea. That sapphire-blue sea where dragons mate with fairies and give birth to a race of people.

  You are standing on the flank of a flimsy fishing boat and the savages are all around you. They grab you with their callous hands and devour you with their red eyes, hungry mouths, and sharp teeth. They are tearing your clothes, and you stand naked, your young body shivering as you face the beasts and your sea.

  I can see all too clearly now, my precious Nam, my beautiful Nam. You keep struggling and maneuvering to save your baby brother. And then you stand tall like a young bamboo tree, calmly facing the terror before you. The beasts are dragging you on, hands and feet are pounding on you, they throw you over to their boat, and you can no longer stand. Yet you are afraid of nothing because deep inside your artistic soul you know they cannot kill you. You have become your art—the transcending beauty that some old, wise, compassionate fisherman in Southeast Asia, the true inhabitant of your sea, has seen in you.

  So in that moment of chaos on a pirates’ boat—the beginning of the human hell on earth, you still manage to turn around, speaking to your baby brother, as the child is trembling with fear on the other boat, your voice echoing against the immense sea:

  “Don’t worry about me. Get to America, and I’ll send you postcards. Plenty of postcards.”

  THE END

  POSTSCRIPT: A TRIBUTE TO MIMI

  The novelist’s journey and the burden of cultures: I got to know Mimi when her creator was struggling with an epic manuscript that was far too long. Mimi was born in the classic subconscious journey of novel writing that Robert Olen Butler advocates in his creative writing class. She was not planned or structured. She emerges as her creator submerges. Nowadays, no one writes like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which, in today’s standards, would not be successful or even readable. Not to mention the fact that the attention span of readers of the twenty-first century is measured by the size of the computer screen and how quickly links can be clicked and browsed.

  Yet, in the end, Postcards from Nam became a novella of fewer than one hundred typed pages, double-spaced. It is truly a novella in the count of words. Yet, it tells stories that are epic in the Vietnam experience: from lives in a small alley of pre-Communist Saigon in the 1960s, to the very unique and contrasting personal characteristics of a young boy and a young girl of that era, all the way to the 1975 life-about-face and a harsh, gruesome escape at sea, the sufferings of Vietnamese Boat People, to the contemporary life of a female lawyer in the Capital City of America and her search homeward, embedding the conflicts in the lives of first-generation immigrants unknown to outsiders—all the complication of human beings spanning over a century.

  The first question I ask is why the novella begins with a very detailed description of where Mimi lives. The Parc Royale? How is it relevant or even necessary to what we are about to see? In novel writing, one either narrates, describes, or interprets. I suppose this speaks for the three fundamental methods of story writing: narration, description, and interpretation. Butler, the novelist-teacher, would certainly tell us that the key to effective creative writing lies not in narration but in description. “Showing, not telling” is our motto.

  Roland Barthes and perhaps even Michel Foucault, the incomprehensible theorists that no one is supposed to understand, tell us something else (perhaps what we think they may be telling us, because they are supposed to be not so understandable): self-interpretation is a taboo, because the author is supposed to be dead, in order for readers to be born.

  Yet, in the end, our Mimi narrated and interpreted. Mimi’s creator did all three tasks to give us the story in fewer than one hundred pages. A story within a story within a story in the novella form.

  Parc Royale is important to Mimi in her journey to re-meet her “Nam,” such that the descriptive method has to be up for grabs, because what we see at Parc Royale becomes the textual backdrop upon which we find our Mimi. Parc Royale is the constructed work of an architect, who purposely creates an illusion. The apartment complex is supposed to be an imitation of the South of France, yet it lies in the heart of hot and humid Houston, Texas. We know then at the beginning of the novella that nothing in Mimi’s world has been real. It is all an imitation of something else, very far removed from her authentic Vietnamese childhood. The postcards become the linkage between fragments of lives that have been broken, segregated, and separated into compartments, drawers, and blanket folds (as Mimi tells us). Nothing that is so disconnected can be real, just like the phoniness of Parc Royale. The postcards, therefore, constitute the only reality, if reality means continuation and re-connection of many pieces of life. The need to be back in touch with that reality—the only reality against the artificial Parc Royale scenery—foreshadows our Mimi’s return to her search for Nam.

  The detailed (almost boring) intricacy of Parc Royale description may remind her Vietnamese readers of what has been seen in Vo Phien’s prose, Mimi’s creator told me after she finished the manuscrip
t in 1999.

  Did Mimi’s creator mean to do this, to “describe Parc Royale a la Vo Phien style”? (This phrase was used by the author in her conversation with me, and I asked her to explain.) I venture to say no, the author did not write her English prose with the Vietnamese writer Vo Phien in mind, because novel writing is all about the subconscious. The progression of storytelling just turns out that way, with Parc Royale description in detail, and it is my job to think about why, to put my own creativity into the process of interpretation and understanding. This Vietnamese writer, Vo Phien, came about in our discussion because Mimi’s creator took herself off the authorship to become the reader herself, in order to rediscover her Vo Phien. (Interestingly, later, Mimi’s creator departed completely from description in order to “narrate” the summary of Nam’s escape all in a shorthand fashion like a journalist.)

  In my view, the subconscious approach to writing has placed Uyen Nicole Duong very much under the influence of Bob Butler’s creative discourse in his classroom, even if Uyen has never taken any of Bob’s classes. Yet, very painfully, in chapter seven, Uyen strained to interpret the complexity of her character Uncle Dien and his world and motivations, via a process of rationalization and editorialization about the Vietnamese Rashomon. Interestingly, the exploration and exposition of Uncle Dien occurred all in dialogues. There is no better way to accomplish this purpose than telling by dialogues.