Only the Heart

by Brian Caswell

  Youngest to oldest. The circle turns.

  “May you be granted long life and health … “He pronounces the words precisely and formally, then breathes out with relief when the ordeal is over. She smiles and inclines her head slightly.

  “Good boy, Toan.” She reaches out, touching his head, and from the table beside her she picks up the small envelope — red, for luck. The boy smiles in anticipation, and she hands it to him. His eyes register pleasure and he turns away. Then she looks towards his brothers, who stand a few steps away watching the ritual.

  “Son … Hoang … Are you going to wish an old lady a few more years of health?”

  The twins step forward, the words are spoken and the gift received.

  But when they leave, Toan lingers.

  “Can’t you come with us?”

  She touches his cheek with the backs of her fingers, and notices how ancient they look. As if they are the fingers of an old and fragile woman. How fast the years have slipped by …

  “Your Aunt Loan will stay with me.”

  “But the celebrations … The firecrackers …”

  “I have seen firecrackers, child. And dragon dancing. And streets full of people. There is plenty to see from my window. Nobody wants an old woman slowing them down.”

  He looks at her for a moment, holding her gaze. He touches her hand.

  “I do,” he says, then turns and runs from the room, holding her small gift out in front of him.

  For a few seconds she stares at the empty doorway. Then slowly she turns towards the corner of the room.

  On a simple shelf, halfway up the wall, a candle bums, and three sticks of incense smoke lazily. She moves across to stare at the picture of her husband. The last one, taken when he turned seventy. It stands beside the statue of Quan Yin, and she acknowledges the goddess with a slight movement of her head, before she speaks to him.

  “He’s still a baby, Chau. He doesn’t know what they have planned for him. He doesn’t understand.” From behind the glass of the frame, her husband’s face looks out at her, his eyes less tired, somehow, than she remembers them.

  “He’s so young.”

  Quan Yin looks on, her porcelain face gentle and impassive …

  Later, she stands and watches as her family walks away. She waves slightly, but her son is lost in thoughts of his own and Hoa, his wife, stares straight ahead, her tension betrayed, as always, l1y the stiffness in her neck.

  Of the three boys, only Toan turns around to return her wave. He is smiling and excited by the New Year celebrations. Oblivious to what the next week will hold for him. For them all.

  The old woman shakes her head.

  Vựỏt biên. The two words that they have be waiting for. The code that tells them the escape is on.

  Two days ago a young man arrived at the shop asking for directions to Ha Hiep, and in return for the information, he bought a small bag of fruit, paying with a note of the old currency.

  It was the sign.

  Sure enough, folded inside the note was a slip of paper, with two words written on it.

  Vựỏt biên … Crossing the borders …

  The phrase that has been spoken in whispers around the house for months, and shouted in the street just once, l1y children who knew no better, but soon learned to regret it. Two words that mean she might never see her son again. Or her eldest daughter. Or five of her grandchildren.

  Secret notes. Codes and passwords. It is all so … desperate.

  Turning, she makes her way back inside, and climbs the stairs to the top of the house. From there, she can follow their progress for a minute or so longer.

  Standing at the window, she watches until the distance eats them up, but she does not turn away. This room has always be her favourite. How often has she sat here and watched the children playing in the street below?

  From the roof, the speaker throws out a tuneless noise, and the walls shake to the sound of a government announcement.

  The Party wishes all citizens good fortune during this New Year period …

  She feels as empty of emotion and goodwill as the message.

  *

  26 February 1977

  Ho Chi Minh City

  LINH’S STORY

  The day before the New Year celebrations were due to begin, we arrived in the capital, on the bus. It was designed to hold about thirty people, but of course it was overcrowded. And it smelled of diesel fumes. I spent most of the journey leaning sideways against the back window, with my eyes closed, trying to fight my motion-sickness.

  It was better when we arrived at the terminus and got out. We had a half-hour walk to my uncle’s house, but at least I could breathe without wanting to throw up, and the queasy feeling in my stomach eased slowly to a dull ache. Besides, I was interested in what was going on around me, and that took the edge off what I might have been feeling.

  The first thing I noticed as we made our way into the centre of the city was the way the place had changed since the ending of the war. There were still soldiers on the streets, of course, but they were soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, not Americans.

  I remembered the dark skin of the negroes, and the strange, white faces of the other GIs. I had never understood what they were doing there, and no one had ever offered any explanations, except that they were our allies, and that we needed them.

  This time they were no longer around, and I missed them. I couldn’t tell you why; I guess it was just that I’d never seen the capital without them being there as an important part of it. But whatever the reason, the place didn’t seem as alive or exciting. It just wasn’t the same.

  And there was a … quietness about it. Things still bustled, of course; it was an overcrowded city, after all. It was just … I don’t know … something in the way everyone went about their everyday business. The way they moved and spoke. Carefully. Uncertainly.

  At least, that’s how I remember it. Maybe that’s just how I was feeling. Maybe I’m reading more into the experience than was actually there. What we remember isn’t always exactly the way it was, in spite of what people might like you to believe, and everything we went through in the year or so that followed — and everything I’ve done or heard or learned since — must have coloured the way I remember that short trip through what was once a familiar and well-loved city.

  One thing I do remember clearly is the banners that hung down from some of the bigger buildings.

  It was the lead-up to New Year, and the traditional decorations had sprung up everywhere of course, but along with the red lanterns and good-luck streamers, and the messages of goodwill, were the flags. Red too, but with the golden star prominent in the centre.

  And the faces. Huge, unsmiling, hanging from the sides of government buildings and from wires strung across the street.

  Ho Chi Minh I recognised, but there were others too. Though I doubt they were actual people. Looking back, I think they were most likely just pictures of what the artist thought soldiers of the People’s Army should look like. I would have asked who they were, but I was too busy forcing my feet to keep up with the rest of my body. My mother could be quite sympathetic, at times, but only when she deemed it necessary. And youngest daughter ‘s travel-sickness didn’t rate.

  When we got to my uncle’s house, I went straight to bed without eating.

  A couple of hours later my mother and sister came in. They were talking quietly, so of course I was interested in what they were saying. I was still feeling sick, but I didn’t make a sound. Partly because I was never really interested in sympathy, but mainly because I knew it would stop them talking if I did.

  I didn’t moan much as a kid, and I think they must have thought I’d drifted off to sleep, because they began talking about things they’d never have mentioned if they’d realised I was there listening.

  Phuong, my sister, was thirteen, and beautiful, and since our father had disappeared, she had been my mother’s main support. She helped keep me under control, wor
ked in the shop, and generally acted five years older than she was. So, my mother treated her like an adult.

  And I guess that was why she finally told her what was going on.

  Between November and February, twenty-five boats had been stopped attempting to car people to freedom out of Rach Gia. It was becoming harder to slip away unnoticed — or rather, the bribes were getting more expensive. But a couple of days earlier the word had come down. It was time to escape. We were to use the New Year celebrations as a cover, sneaking out along the river while everyone’s attention was on the festivities.

  Unfortunately, the price for a place on the boat had gone up, and the gold which Uncle Minh had given my mother to pay for the three of us was no longer enough. He’d had to find the extra gold to cover the five of them, and there just wasn’t enough to go round. Not if we were going to have anything left to start our new life with.

  At the last minute my father’s older brother had offered to help. He had never really got on with my mother, even before my father disappeared, but family was family, and if his brother’s children could be helped …

  We had come to the city to pick up the gold.

  It might sound strange that my mother would bring us both along on such a mission, but you have to understand her thinking. When half the country makes a living out of watching the other half, everything comes down to appearance. A mother taking her daughters to the capital to visit her husband’s relatives before New Year raised fewer suspicions than a woman making the journey on her own.

  So, we came to Saigon for the first time since the war had ended.

  And for the last time.

  The following day, on our return to Rach Gia, my mother explained, we would go home briefly, before making our way to the house of the Nguyens, my mother’s friends, who lived beside the river. It being New Year, no one would be likely to question our movements, as they might at any other time. Families and friends often spent the days of the festival together, sharing in the celebrations.

  From there, it would be much easier to sneak away in the early hours — a few at a time, in the tiny dinghy which would take us to the old fishing boat, moored out in the bay.

  Toan’ s father had already spent some time on the main boat, learning to look and act like a fisherman.

  Looking back, in my whole childhood I could never remember spending any other night in my uncle’s home. It was small but comfortable, and I could see why he was reluctant to leave it. My aunt had never been able to have children, and they had built their lives around their business and their friends.

  In 1979, when the business was closed down, and many of their friends had left the city to chase the dangerous dream of a new life, my aunt and uncle bought a passage of their own. They left from Rach Gia as we had done, sailing out in the dead of night.

  The boat was never seen again.

  *

  27 February 1977

  Rach Gia

  GRANDMA

  11pm. Outside, the street explodes with the sound of gunfire, and for a moment she freezes. Then around the corner the brightly painted dragon winds into view.

  Firecrackers.

  She breathes again, and moves away from the window.

  Slowly she lowers herself to the floor in front of the shrine, and bows forward until her forehead is touching the ground. She repeats the movement three times, raising her eyes occasionally to the face of the statue, and sounding the prayer inside her mind.

  Passing the door, Loan stops to watch her mother, but she says nothing. There is nothing to say. The die is cast. The tide is rising. She pauses a moment longer, then moves on.

  The room is warm, and the candle casts a flickering shadow across the wall, so that the pictures seem alive.

  Her husband, his old eyes staring straight into the cameralens; eyes that follow you wherever you move in the room.

  And Hung; first son, first buried. And Chi …

  The pictures tell the story of a life. Love and loss. Dreams and death. Yin and yang.

  Spread out on the floor in front of her lie eight photographs. She touches each one in turn, closing her eyes and waiting for a sign. But the vision is silent.

  She watches her hands. As if they move with a will of their own they begin to arrange the pictures. Minh and Hoa, with the boys in a line beneath them. Linh and Phuong, and above them, Mai …

  As she touches the images of her eldest daughter’s face, a cold breeze touches her. She looks up, but the curtain is still.

  And then the room is gone, and she is floating, and rocking with the motion of waves. And the sky is light above her: light blue and flecked with clouds, and touched with the colour of sunrise. She floats, but she is dry. For the vision is beyond touching. Beyond hearing.

  But not beyond understanding.

  Slowly the sky turns green, then a deeper green, then black. And the motion of the waves grows still.

  Her vision clears, and she is staring at the picture in her hand. Her daughter’s face; not smiling, not sad.

  Slowly she shifts her gaze to the statue on the shelf above her head.

  But Quan Yin remains inscrutable …

  *

  TOAN’S STORY

  I didn’t often get really mad with Linh, but on that night I did. Typical of her, she’d decided that being older than I was meant that she didn’t need to share what she’d learned on her trip to the capital. So I ended up with a pocketful of money that I couldn’t use — that I would have been able to use the day before, to buy sweets or my favourite delicacies or something, if I’d known what she knew.

  Now I’m sure there are much more important things I should have been worrying about on what was probably the most important night of my life, but seeing as how nobody was telling me anything about what really was going on, I guess I had to make do with getting mad with Linh for something I could understand.

  Besides, everyone else seemed to be doing such a great job of worrying that there was nothing left for a six-year old to contribute.

  I think that’s what put me in such a bad mood to start with.

  The three days of New Year are supposed to be fun. But this one wasn’t.

  We went through all the forms, of course; it was important not to behave any differently than usual. For us kids, it meant dressing up and paying our respects to the elders of the surrounding houses, wishing them good fortune and long lives-and receiving in return little red envelopes of money. It’s one of the traditions of Chinese New Year Year, and I suppose it sounds a bit like “trick or treat”, except that it’s a lot more civilised, and there’s no “tricks” involved.

  And then there were the compulsory firecrackers, and the dragon-dance.

  It should have been fun. But no one in the house over eight years old seemed to remember that. My father had disappeared earlier in the afternoon, and my mother looked like she would burst into tears if anyone looked at her the wrong way.

  As for Aunt Mai, she fussed around like a constipated chicken, which was so unlike her that even I noticed.

  So, we went through the motions, and I built up a small fortune, which I extracted from the little red envelopes and shoved into my pants pocket, planning a raid on the New Year street stalls the next day.

  It didn’t enter my head that by the next day we would be a million miles away from those street stalls, and from everything I thought of as familiar, heading out across the sea, looking back at the distant coastline of the country that was no longer my home.

  It didn’t enter my head, because no one had felt it necessary-or smart-to tell me. Not even Linh.

  That was why I was so mad with her.

  If she’d just let me in on the secret, I could have hit the street stalls a day earlier, and run away with my pockets full of lollies instead of money that I’d never be able to spend.

  But that was later. The thing that ruined things for me on that last evening was the fact that my father was missing everything. New Year is a family time, and it w
asn’t fair that he was nowhere around. It made me think that that’s how it would be for Linh every year, and that made me sad for her.

  I didn’t know enough yet to be mad with her …

  *

  28 February 1977

  Rach Gia Bay

  MINH

  2 am. The tide is rising.

  He hears the lap and hiss of the tiny ripples against the waterlogged wood of the hull, and he smells the sea turning. The breeze is onshore, and as it blows in over the bow, it carries with it the taste of salt and the distant memory of days spent harvesting seaweed. Back in a time when life was simple.

  But the time for dwelling on the past is gone. The point of no return was passed weeks ago, and what is to come is as unstoppable as the rising tide.

  He stands leaning on the rail, with his back to the trap-door which forms the entrance to the central storage hold. The boat is a fishing boat, not big, and certainly not designed for the role it is about to play in the lives of almost seventy desperate people. The three holds are little more than holes in the deck, through which the catch is usually thrown. Below, there is no seating; no floor even. The wood of the hull curves beneath your feet and the water washes through the bilge with every movement of the vessel on the waves. The smell of .fish and diesel is over powering.

  Walls of stained planking divide the area below into three roughly equal compartments, each served by its own trap-door, and it is in one of these cramped and stinking spaces that his family will travel. Three nights and two days of filth and inactivity — if they are lucky and the winds and tides are kind.

  On the steering deck Tan looks tense. He prowls like a caged cat, scanning the black sea in all directions and whispering orders to his crew. The last minutes are the hardest, and looking back at the man, Minh fights to force down the knowledge that eats like acid at his throat.

  The knowledge that if anything should look like going wrong Tan would order them to sea without a second thought. Without waiting for those who had not yet arrived. For the owner of a boat carrying such contraband, discovery meant the loss of everything. They would take his boat and his house. And his days of freedom would be nothing but a bitter memory, for nothing could be farther from the open sea than the barren yard of a re-education camp. It was no dift for the desperate families waiting below deck, but they were not in charge. Tan was. And if there should be a threat, he would leave. There would be no other choice.