Only the Heart

by Brian Caswell

  *

  PHUONG

  It is a relief to be above deck, even for a few minutes. Even if it is just to go to the toilet. The “facilities’ are primitive, hidden from the gaze of the crew by a make-shift curtain, which blows in the wind and offers no protection at all for a girl’s modesty.

  But what does it matter? The conditions in the hold have made a joke of modesty already. Three cramped spaces, each holding about twenty people, fighting the overpowering stench, struggling to keep their feet above the filthy soup of bilge-water, diesel and vomit which washes back and forth with the movement of the boat as it lurches from wave to wave, turning the contents of your stomach over and over until it can no longer be held in. Linh suffers terribly. Linh, to whom even a harmless bus-ride was always an ordeal. But there can be no relief.

  Except on deck. And such escapes must be kept to a minimum.

  She stands and looks out over the rear of the boat. The sea is grey under the rolling clouds — a bleak, depressing sight, but at least it is not raining. Not yet. She thinks about the days of the journey which still remain, and what awaits them at the start of their new life, and it is a few moments before the voices of the crew break through the barrier of her thoughts.

  There is agitation and a sudden flurry of activity. But mostly fear.

  And as she forces her attention back from the horizon and looks around, she sees the cause of their unease. 1Wo vessels, each larger and faster than their own, are closing in, one from each side. She wonders how they could have come so close without her being aware of them. But then the larger of the boats sounds a horn and the question becomes irrelevant. Beneath her feet the deck ceases its vibration as the motor slows to an idle. If these vessels are friendly, it is stupid to flee. If they are pirates, it is pointless.

  Time stretches and the vessels drift closer. All eyes are fixed outboard, and no one yet has noticed her standing there behind the billowing curtain, watching the scene unfold. Then her uncle moves across to stand beside the trap-door to the central storage space, the one which holds his family. He leans down, slightly, and whispers something, but he makes no other movement. Then his eyes shift and he catches sight of her. And a sudden fear flashes across his expression.

  With a slight movement of his head, he calls her to him. There is an urgency in his eyes that sends an icy chill through her, and slowly she moves to obey.

  Now that the engine is quiet, the boat is at the mercy of the swell, an irregular tossing which makes walking difficult. She is halfway to the hold when she stumbles slightly, grabbing hold of a stranchion for support. Instinctively her eyes stray to the deck of the nearest boat, which is now quite close.

  And she realises that he is staring at her; sees the cold smile that begins to spread upwards from his lips. She tears her gaze away but it is too late and she knows it. He has seen her and nothing will change the fact.

  She reaches the hatch just as the man speaks, his voice clear, even over the sound of the wind and the waves. “We have come to help you,” he says. But the mocking edge to his voice seems to be at odds with the words.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind if we come aboard …”

  The words are lost as she makes her way below, but the memory of that cold smile remains fresh …

  *

  MAI

  Slowly Mai becomes aware of voices speaking their fear on the deck above. Then the rattle of the engine slows and the hull is still. Within the cramped space, the sudden silence is like a shout. The boat rolls and pitches on the waves, and no one speaks. Twenty people staring in silence at the single small square of light above their heads.

  She stands and moves awkwardly towards the hatch, intending to look outside, but the way is suddenly blocked.

  “Ngôi yên!” Stay still! The words are hissed. Minh, her brother, stands at the top of the steps. His face is pale and his eyes are wide. He does not need to say more.

  Pirates.

  She looks back into the cramped space behind her. The adults are awake and watching. Most of the children are asleep. Except for Linh. She sits silently, her feet drawn up out of the filthy water, staring at her mother.

  For a moment the scene is frozen.

  Then Phuong makes her way down the steps. She says nothing, but the expression on her face is eloquent. She touches her mother’s shoulder gently as she passes, and moves across to sit beside Linh.

  Crossing the space between them, Mai takes her youngest daughter by both hands, and draws her gently to her feet. She brushes the hair away from the girl’s eyes, and turns towards the light, as if to shield the child from what is coming.

  While no one speaks a word.

  But Linh is eight years old, no longer a baby to push aside.

  For a moment she resists, forcing her way past her mother’s hip to look up, and the familiar stubborn look ghosts across her face, but something in her mother’s expression drives away resistance, and she bows her head, stepping back.

  Still, if she angles her head just so …

  Time slows, and she is reminded of swimming under water; the lightheadedness and the eerie silence are the same. But then she hears someone breathing nearby. She holds her breath, the sound stops, and she realises that the someone is herself. She can feel her heartbeat pulsing in her head, and she closes her eyes momentarily.

  The hold has come alive, but it is a strange sort of wakefulness. A few muffled whispers and no movement. She moves her head slightly, trying to shift her field of vision, but the view through the trapdoor reveals only sky. Her mother remains unmoving, staring fixedly at the open hatch.

  Something heavy thumps against the hull behind her and she hears the footsteps on the deck above her head. Suddenly she is aware of voices. Harsh words in a foreign language and screamed instructions in her own. Someone in the dark space behind her starts to cry, and a young child begins a low, keening whine.

  No one attempts to keep it quiet. There is no point.

  Phuong has moved across to stand beside her mother, and they both look towards the open hatch. Neither of them shows fear. Their shoulders are squared, and for the first time Linh notices how alike they look.

  And yet, how different.

  The noises on deck grow louder — footsteps, shouting. And a single burst of gunfire. Terrifyingly loud at such close range, it is punctuated by a short scream of pain and moments later by a barely audible splash. In the stinking half-dark the room holds its breath.

  Linh shifts her gaze from her own family, looking for Toan. He is standing wrapped in his mother’s arms a few metres away, but he is not looking towards the hatch. He is staring at her.

  He attempts a weak smile, but Jails.

  Suddenly the light from the hatch is blocked and he looks away. She follows the line of his gaze and in that instant she is staring into the eyes of death …

  TOAN’S STORY

  All I remember about him is how big he was. And those eyes.

  He filled the hatchway, and with the light shining in behind him he was like … a monstrous silhouette — except for his eyes. I don’t know how, but even with his face in shadow they seemed to catch whatever light there was below deck, and focus it. At least, that’s how it seems to me now.

  Just how many times I saw those eyes in my nightmares, I couldn’t count. I never ask Linh about them — or about anything else to do with that morning. I brought it up once or twice as we were growing up, but she just froze me cold, and I learned to avoid the subject.

  Whatever …

  He made his way slowly down the steps and stood in front of us. No one spoke, and for a long while he just stared. A couple of his men came down and joined him, but no one even looked at them. It was obvious who the leader was — even to a six-year-old.

  Then he just nodded and the men went to work, rifling through the possessions of everyone on board, looking for gold and jewellery and anything else of value. One man tried to resist, and they clubbed him to the ground, kicking him until he sli
d down into the filthy water and stopped moving. One of the pirates took hold of the man’s hair, dragged him to his knees and placed the muzzle of his gun against his victim’s temple. Then, without even changing expression, he squeezed the trigger.

  The hammer clicked harmlessly on an empty chamber.

  Twice more he squeezed — with the same result. The leader said something in a language I could not understand and the man looked angry. He reloaded the empty gun, checked the chamber and took aim again. My mother tried to shield me, but my eyes were drawn to the scene being played out barely three metres from where we stood.

  On the floor the injured man raised his bloody head and stared into the eyes of the leader, holding his gaze defiantly. He didn’t even blink.

  The whole incident could have taken no more than a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch forever. I saw the man’s eyes and I saw the face of the pirate leader. And I waited for the explosion that would end it. But it never arrived.

  An expression passed over that arrogant face, which at the time I couldn’t read. I think now that it was probably respect. But perhaps he just enjoyed demonstrating his power.

  As the silence stretched, and no one breathed, he uttered one word. Not a shout; barely more than a whisper, really. But the authority in his voice stopped the execution. The man with the gun paused with the trigger half-depressed, and turned to face his leader. Nothing more was said, but a slight movement of those eyes and the man stepped back.

  I felt my mother’s fingers digging into my shoulders, and I realised that she had probably been gripping me like that for some time. I just hadn’t noticed. I shifted slightly and the pressure eased, but she didn’t let go.

  The two pirates continued their search, pushing people around and striking them if they were too slow to respond to orders they didn’t really understand, but the leader had lost interest. He was looking towards Aunt Mai.

  And Phuong.

  Though she was only thirteen, Phuong had always been the most beautiful girl in the street. She was never vain about it, but it was a fact.

  And in the middle of the ocean, when the only law is the law of the gun …

  *

  MAI

  “Very pretty!” The big man speaks Vietnamese with a Thai accent, and his eyes are fixed on the girl.

  Phuong tries to look away, but his gaze is demanding, and all she can manage is to lower her eyes. He reaches out to touch her, and she flinches as his fingertips linger on her breast.

  “Very nice …”

  And suddenly his hand is knocked away.

  Black anger flares in his eyes and he grabs the offending wrist, but Mai holds his gaze. For the second time in as many minutes he sees defiance, but this time his reaction is different. With his free hand he delivers a stinging blow that snaps her head to the side. She stumbles backwards half a pace but does not fall, and her eyes remain fixed on his.

  “She is just a child.” The words are a plea, but there is no weakness there.

  After a moment the big man smiles. A cruel curving of the lips without a trace of humour.

  “But soon she will be a woman … “His eyes stray back to the girl. “Very soon.” He reaches out again and takes some of the child’s long hair between his fingers, watching it slip through. “It would be a shame not to … experience such beauty.”

  He holds the child’s face in one of his huge hands and studies her.

  “Take me.” Mai’s voice is steady. The words hang in the air between them, as he turns to face her. “Leave her and take me.”

  Before he can answer, an urgent shout drifts down from the deck above. He listens then smiles again.

  “We have company.”

  He looks up momentarily towards the open hatch. Then his gaze returns to Mai.

  “And why should I be interested in this … exchange?”

  “She is just a child. I am … experienced. What I can give —”

  “What you can give? I think you are in no position to make deals. I think it might be … interesting to take you both. Experience and …” He studies the child, and leaves the sentence unfinished. He is enjoying the game, though his men look nervously towards the hatchway.

  “Sai,” one ventures. “The ship …”But the warning is swallowed as his leader’s gaze slides dangerously over him.

  As if the interruption had never happened, he waits for her reply.

  Her face is unreadable as she moves across to place a protective arm around her daughter’s shoulder, positioning her body between them. ‘The … exchange is for what I can offer … freely. Not for what you can take.” The pause is almost imperceptible, but there is a sudden coldness in her eyes. And in the words which follow. “And you must know that if you touched her, I would eventually find a way to kill you.”

  “What is to stop me from simply killing you now?” Slowly he draws a pistol from his belt and holds it up to her face. She refuses to look at it, holding his eyes with the power of her gaze.

  “Nothing. But then I would be dead … And you would always wonder what you might have missed.”

  Another shout, and for the first time a faint sense of urgency flashes in his eyes. The moment of truth. No more time for mind-games. She holds her breath.

  Again his gaze flicks to Phuong, who has not moved. He licks his lips and touches her cheek.

  “Your mother loves you, child. Remember that. Always …”

  He draws his eyes away and looks around the shadowy space at the silent group, fixing his gaze for a moment on the bleeding man still kneeling on the boards with his bare feet in the water.

  Then turning towards the hatch he takes hold of the woman’s arm. “Fair exchange.”

  She turns without a word and allows herself to be guided up the steps. But at the top she pulls free, turns and looks back. For a long moment she drowns in her eldest daughter’s tears, then she shifts her gaze and stares steadily at her youngest child. She closes her eyes briefly in a silent gesture of farewell.

  Then she is gone.

  *

  TOAN’S STORY

  The ship that had scared them off was a container vessel out of Singapore, but the raiders were long gone before it changed direction and pulled alongside.

  With Tan dead, the boat was common property, but we were in no shape to make it as far as Malaysia. The pirates had damaged the steering gear when they came aboard, and they had left us with no food and very little water. If the Hang Soo had ignored our signal — seventy pairs of arms waving, and a fire made from deck-timbers and a large piece of weathered canvas — we would have been forced to drift in the middle of the sea until a storm finished us or until we died of hunger and thirst.

  But they did stop, and as well as helping repair the steering they left us with enough supplies to finish the trip, at least as far as the first landfall.

  Not that any of that registered with Linh or Phuong. Or with my parents.

  My mother had watched the whole ordeal in silence, and I think that was the hardest thing for her — watching Aunt Mai standing there resisting, while she said nothing, afraid that to offer support was to place herself and her children at risk.

  “I was never brave,” she said once.

  She was talking to my father, and she didn’t realise I was listening. It was years later, and that was what made me realise just how much the incident had affected her. She never spoke of it to any of us, even though it must have been eating at her.

  My father had been up on deck the whole time, trying to come to terms with the cold-blooded execution of Tan.

  And worse, he’d had to stand there helpless and watch them take his sister with them when they left.

  But what could he have done? Made the grand heroic gesture and ended up floating face down in the middle of the South China Sea? It wouldn’t have helped Aunt Mai. Besides, he had a family to think about. A family, and her last words to him.

  “Take care of them, Minh.”

  It was not a request. It was
an order. To the last, she was the eldest sister. He told me once that she stepped aboard that pirate vessel with her head up and didn’t once look back. And all the time, her eyes were dry.

  *

  3 March 1977

  South China Sea

  8°N, 102°E

  MAI

  Dawn. Sai Rakdee sleeps facing the cabin wall and she watches him.

  Fair exchange … That was what he called it. And he is happy with the bargain. And though she shudders at the thought of his touch, and the memory of his animal hands, she feels no shame.

  Even the nauseous ache in the pit of her stomach is bearable. She looks through the window at the endless expanse of ocean, then back at the man on the bed.

  Then back at the ocean.

  Somewhere out there they are safe. Perhaps they are crying; Phuong, anyway. But they are safe. And that, at least, is a fair trade.

  From the inside pocket of her coat she draws the secret that she carries with her. One last possession from a life of possessions that the war and the bribes and now this man have stripped from her one by one.

  One last possession that fits into the palm of her hand, its razor-sharp blade hidden and waiting.

  Slowly, silently, she pulls open her husband’s pocket-knife and examines the cutting edge in the light from the window. She tests it on her thumb, drawing it hard across the skin and watching the blood well from deep inside. For a moment she feels nothing, then the cut begins to sting. She sucks it absently and turns towards the man on the bed, who stirs in his sleep but does not wake.

  Without a sound she places the blade against his throat and holds it there for a few seconds, watching him sleep, hating him. The blood from her thumb is dripping onto the bed-shet, and she allows it to pour, slowly soaking into the man’s filthy shirt.

  Then she lays the open knife on the bed next to him and moves across to the mirror, smearing a last message in blood across the glass, and without looking back she walks from the cabin.

  At the railing she pauses for just a moment to look out across the sea. It is calm. Green-blue and patient. And welcoming, as she opens her arms to it, and plunges from the deck in a graceful arcing dive.