Only the Heart

by Brian Caswell

  I touched her face as she slept and felt the wet warmth on my cheeks. I was alone with her and it was safe to cry.

  Even if Linh never did.

  They let Miro out a couple of weeks after the accident, but by that time the real story was out. At least within the family. They still weren’t happy, but they did talk to him. And they let him visit the invalid.

  The hospital had moved her downstairs as soon as she was conscious and out of danger, and Miro spent half of every day in Linh’s hospital room. But something was different. I watched them together and he seemed lost. There was a distance there that I’d never seen between them, and it wasn’t coming from his side. He looked at me at times with a question in his eyes, but I was at a loss too. This was a Linh I didn’t know; or one I hadn’t seen since the first weeks after her mother’s death, ten years before.

  It was like she was cutting herself off again. Retreating into the safety of her protective isolation. I should have seen what was coming, but I guess I didn’t want any of it to be happening, and I managed to convince myself that I was imagining it. That she’d get over the shock and come around.

  So when it finally happened, it was too late to do anything.

  She told Miro it was over. That she didn’t want to see him any more.

  No fight. No build-up. Just the kiss-off.

  The poor guy was shattered. He tried arguing with her, but I could have told him it was useless. She had a look in her eye that reminded me of Aunt Mai. Stubborn. Strong. Resigned.

  I saw it in her that afternoon and it scared me.

  I’d tried to argue with her about it and she’d cut me dead. But for once I pushed through.

  “You can’t just … switch off everything you two had, like it never happened. It’s not your decision to make. Not alone …” I stood in front of her, looking down, but she just stared back at me, unblinking. “He’s hurting —”

  “Don’t you think I know that? But I won’t have him waking up one day realising he’s handcuffed to a cripple. Better for him to hate me now. It has to be my decision. I’m the only one who can make it.”

  She turned the wheelchair around and stared out of the window.

  The discussion was over.

  I left the room and didn’t speak to her about it again. I was out of my depth.

  *

  LINH’S STORY

  I lay there with my legs in a cage, propped up by the pillows and the back support. My eyes were closed but I was wide awake. And I wasn’t alone.

  The intruder had been motionless just inside the door for over a minute. Just standing. Silently.

  I waited.

  Slowly a figure materialised from the shadows near the door.

  Kieu moved into my line of sight and stopped. She was scared, her eyes darting nervously.

  “I didn’t know if I should come, but …” The words trailed off. “If they knew I was here, they’d …”

  My gaze was too much for her. She turned away, staring at the picture on the wall at the foot of the bed. She was close to tears, and her hands were twisting a small white handkerchief into knots.

  I watched her in silence, waiting, but she was beyond speaking.

  I hit the button on the handset beside the bed, and the back support emitted an electronic whine as it raised me into a sitting position.

  Kieu dropped her head. Then, in a tiny voice, “I couldn’t stop them, Linh. I tried, but I couldn’t … Tang listens to no one. Not when he is angry.”

  I waited. After a few seconds she continued: “It wasn’t easy for me to come here. I just needed to see … To tell you …”

  Finally she looked up. There were tears in her eyes and on her face.

  I indicated the chair beside the bed with a movement of my head.

  She sat down, brushing the hair away from her scarred cheek. But it fell back like a silk curtain. A shield that she could hide behind.

  Suddenly I realised that she was talking again.

  “Tang is …” she hesitated. “I met him at school. Two years ago. I was fourteen. I was new … and I was scared. He was sixteen, and he was’t scared of anything. He was already involved with the Triple K, but I didn’t know it then. Not until it was too late. Not until we were … involved.”

  I waited and she went on.

  “He isn’t always like … that. At least, he didn’t used to be … It was hard enough in Melbourne, but I’d been there since I was six. I’d started school there, and the kids I went through with had known me so long that my … appearance didn’t mean all that much.” She stared down at the handkerchief in her hands. “Here, I was new. I had no friends. My brother and Quyen were working all the time … Tang accepted me. He looked at me and he didn’t see the scar. Or he saw it and he didn’t care. Maybe he knew what it was like to be on the outside. I don’t know. But to me he was … kind. Like a big brother. And with his reputation, no one was about to say anything to me …”

  She was leaning forward in the chair. I reached out and brushed the hair away from her face, the way my mother used to do. Then I touched her cheek gently with the tips of my fingers …

  When Toan arrived two hours later we were still talking.

  He came through the door, and stopped like he’d just walked into a glass wall.

  Kieu turned, and for a moment the look on her face reminded me of how jealous I used to feel when we were kids in the camp and I saw them together.

  He wasn’t sure how to react to her being there, and she didn’t know what to say, so it was up to me.

  “Kieu was just telling me how much she hates basketball.”

  It was the most irrelevant thing I could think of to say on the spur of the moment, and it had the desired effect. They both looked at me as if I was totally mad, then I smiled. A real smile, for the first time in … well, it seemed like forever.

  Kieu caught on and relaxed a touch.

  Toan just looked confused. After everything that had happened, the last thing he would have expected was to arrive and find the two of us so cosy. I guess it was bizarre, but so is life.

  I pointed to the spare seat.

  “Sit down, will you? I get jealous watching people standing around.”

  A joke! Not a very good one, but a joke all the same.

  Toan sat down next to Kieu, and I caught the look he gave her. But I couldn’t read it.

  20

  THE MAN

  TOAN’S STORY

  The next time I saw Kieu was a few days later. She was just leaving the hospital.

  She’d been to see Linh of course; I guess she went most days. I passed her in the foyer and called out to her.

  Five minutes later we were sitting in the coffee-shop talking.

  “You’ll only get yourself in deeper, Toan,” she said. “Don’t you understand?”

  No, I didn’t understand. The place was crawling with people, but all I could see was a beautiful girl who was throwing away everything that she could be because she wasn’t willing to fight.

  “Tang isn’t rational, and he’s … I don’t know him any more. Even when he was at school he was bitter, but at least there was … something. Now it’s different. He’s violent. And unpredictable. I don’t even know if Hai can control him.”

  “Hai …?”

  “Hai Nguyen …? The leader of the Triple K? He was one of Cang’s boys when we were on Pulau Bisa. He’s totally ruthless. Even so … I don’t know if he scares Tang any more. I don’t know if anything does.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Sit by and do nothing? Let him get away with what he’s done?”

  “He has got away with it, Toan. Face the fact.” There was a desperate edge to her voice that was matched by something in her eyes. “Even if you had the evidence to hang him with, the gang looks out for its own. Tang may be trouble, but he’s their trouble. And he will be protected. They don’t care what happened with your cousin and her boyfriend. That wasn’t gang business. But mess with him, or talk to the police,
and it becomes gang business.”

  “And what about you? Are you gang business too?”

  As I spoke I reached across the table and took hold of her hand. She tensed, but she didn’t pull away. And I realised it was the first time in over ten years that I’d actually touched her. She looked into my eyes, brushing the hair from her face.

  “I never forgot you,” she said. “In all those years …”

  Then, before I knew what was happening, she leaned over and kissed me. As softly as a memory.

  I would have said something, but by the time I’d recovered from the shock, she’d turned and I was watching her walk out of the shop.

  I didn’t call out to her. I knew better.

  I got the call from Linh early on Saturday morning.

  “Busy?”

  “No …” I was lying in bed, half-reading next week’s script, so it wasn’t exactly a lie.

  “Good. We need to talk. Phuong will pick you up in fifteen minutes. Be ready.”

  I would have asked her what we needed to talk about, but she’d already hung up.

  Half an hour later we were walking in through the door of her room.

  “About time! What did you do, walk here?”

  Her wheelchair was next to the window, but she was looking towards the door as we came in.

  Phuong moved across and planted a kiss on the top of her sister’s head, then began stroking her hair gently.

  “Good morning to you too, baby sister. Sleep well?”

  Linh smiled and covered her sister’s hand with her own.

  “Not really. I was thinking.”

  “That was what I was afraid of.” I dropped into one of the seats beside the bed, and put my feet up on the white bedspread. Linh looked across and saw me.

  “I’d get my feet down if I were you. Sister catches you, she’ll cut them off with a contaminated scalpel.”

  I let them slide to the floor. “Okay, I’ll play. What were you thinking about?”

  Phuong moved across to occupy the other seat and Linh manoeuvred the chair so that she faced both of us.

  “Kieu, mostly. And the Triple K.” She paused, but neither of us spoke. So she continued. “You don’t just walk away from the K. Not if you know as much as she does. And even if she could, there’s still Tang …”

  She looked down at her useless legs to emphasise her point.

  “There’s no way we can fight them. And we can’t go to the cops. Not without hard evidence, and anyway there’s the family to think about. No one would be safe. AuntHoa, Uncle Minh. The shop … None of us. But there is one person we can go to.”

  “Who? Rambo?” I was only half joking. Linh wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking about all this. Only my fantasies revolved around meeting Tang in a dark alley with a loaded gun.

  She looked up for a moment. Straight into her sister’s eyes.

  “Hai Nguyen …”

  I saw a look of recognition — and pain — dawning in Phuong’s eyes.

  She was remembering.

  *

  LINH’S STORY

  When I outlined my plan to them. Phuong told me I was mad. No surprise there. Toan, on the other hand, didn’t say a word, which I took as a positive sign. He was thinking about it.

  I really didn’t want to ask Phuong, but I needed her.

  I needed a way to get to Hai Nguyen, “the man”. To get under his guard. Someone who’d known him, however briefly, in another life.

  I knew she’d object, but there wasn’t much she would ever refuse me, so I figured I could talk her around. Toan I knew would support me.

  I’d seen the way he looked at Kieu.

  Toan and my sister weren’t my concern. It was Kieu herself. I didn’t know which way she would jump. After living so long without hope, I wasn’t sure if she could act to save herself.

  But she surprised me. Later that afternoon, when I sounded her out, I watched her. For a moment a frown ghosted her features, then she straightened.

  “Okay,” she said. “When?”

  And we were ready to go.

  21

  GAMBIT

  TOAN’S STORY

  Linh came out of hospital on the thirteenth. On the fourteenth we started looking for Hai.

  It wasn’t like you could just phone him up and make an appointment, and even Kieu didn’t know where he actually lived — or if he lived in any one place. Secrecy is a survival trait. And Hai was a survivor.

  But she did know where he liked to eat. So we spent a few days staking out his favourite restaurants.

  I don’t know how many times I’d been to The Old Saigon — a few dozen, at least. But this time it seemed strange. Like it was the first time I’d set eyes on it.

  Kim looked surprised as we entered, but she controlled it. I watched her talking to Linh without looking at her legs, without mentioning the accident. The word was on the streets about what had happened, but some things just aren’t talked about — even among friends.

  The conversation was strained. We were tight and nervous. After four days of wasted time, you’d think the nerves would have eased — through boredom, if nothing else. But the opposite happened. Every day, every minute that passed brought us closer to the inevitable confrontation, and we were like prisoners on death row, knowing what was in store, but not knowing when.

  Phuong played absent-mindedly with one of her chopsticks, rolling it over and over between her fingers, like a tiny baton, while her eyes were fixed on the picture of a dragon on the wall calender. Kieu sat staring at the table in front of her, and I could feel my breakfast doing laps in my stomach.

  Only Linh seemed calm, answering Kim’s questions patiently and smiling at times.

  Then Hai Nguyen walked in and all questions ceased. Kim retreated to the kitchen, muttering to herself.

  He had a couple of his goons with him and they took their seats at a table near the back of the shop.

  Kieu was sitting facing them, but still with her head down. She knew he was there, but she was like the rest of us. It’s fine sitting in a hospital room, planning what you’ll do, what you’ll say. But reality has a way of changing things.

  We all sat there, each of us waiting for someone else to make the first move. Hai had walked past us like we weren’t there, and now he was sitting at his table, with one of his men on each side of him, staring out of the window, ignoring our presence like we were beneath his notice.

  I watched Kim return. She placed a pot of tea on the table in front of Hai and left again. A few minutes later Chien brought out the bowls of noodle soup, and Hai began to eat, leaning over his food without looking up.

  I wanted to move, to stand and walk over to him, but I was frozen. Then I felt the wheels of Linh’s chair move. Just slightly. She backed it away from the table and began to turn it towards the rear of the restaurant. It was all I needed. Suddenly the lock was broken. I stood up, took hold of the handles and began to push my cousin across to where he sat, bent over and eating.

  Behind me, I sensed Phuong moving to join us, but Kieu remained frozen in her seat. She knew him far better than we did. Maybe she knew enough to be smart.

  I made my way across the room, guiding the chair around obstacles until we were standing opposite him.

  Still he made no effort to look up.

  The man on his right stared at me, then at Linh.

  “What do you want?”

  That was when Linh finally found her voice. And the tone was cold.

  “Nothing from you. We came to speak to Hai.”

  Still bent over his bowl, Hai stopped eating. Slowly he raised his head and stared at Linh. Measuring her. She stared back, unblinking.

  “Why me?”

  This time it was Phuong who answered.

  “We thought that someone who had shared our ordeal at Pulau Bisa might feel inclined to offer his assistance in our present … situation.”

  He studied Phuong closely for a few seconds before recognition dawned, and I realised
why Linh had insisted on bringing her along.

  “You are still beautiful.” He allowed his eyes to travel slowly over her. “I always thought so, but Cang …” He paused returning his gaze to her face. “You know, if you’d been any older, he would probably —”

  “We are not here to discuss that.” Phuong reddened as she cut him off.

  Hai nodded and placed his hands on the table in front of him. “Of course.” His eyes swept over her again. “What are we here for?”

  He addressed his question to Linh. But she didn’t answer immediately.

  The men flanking him had returned to their food. We were no threat, and the noodles were getting cold.

  Linh looked at each of them in turn, then back at Hai. She said nothing, but the message was clear. He considered for a moment, then with a word he sent his two companions away.

  They sat down at another table and continued eating.

  Hai looked at her legs for the first time. She waited until his eyes met hers again before speaking.

  “We are not here to seek justice … or revenge. We need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “Tang.” She reached across and picked up the tea-pot, pouring first Hai then herself a cup. He sipped his and she did the same. There was an air of ritual about her actions.

  Then she placed the cup on the table in front of her and cleared her throat.

  “You lived in the camp. So you understand the … bond which grows between people there. How it survives time and distance.”

  She allowed her eyes to drift across the room to where the girl sat, still looking down, her face shrouded by the black curtain of her hair.

  Hai followed the line of her gaze, then looked back at her as she continued: “Kieu was like family to us, and now that we have found her again … You understand. But Tang doesn’t. He doesn’t understand how a person’s feelings can change. If you could just … speak with him. Make him understand. And reassure him that his secrets” — now she stared right at him — “and those of his friends … would be safe. As safe as the truth about the … accident on the highway. We … Well, we were sure he would listen to you.”