Before he could reply Phuong spoke, her voice soft but steady.
“Cang always said there was no such thing as personal business; not when it affected the good of the group.”
He smiled. “You listened well. For a child.”
“I was two years younger than you. And less … headstrong.” This was a Phuong I had rarely seen. Strong. Controlled. Like her mother. “But Cang was not always right. He said you would never be strong enough to lead.”
Deliberately she picked up the pot and poured herself a cup and took a sip. All without releasing his gaze.
Finally he turned to address Linh.
“I will speak to him.”
It was enough.
The meeting was over. As we made our way into the sunshine, I saw the two gang-members move back to the table, and Kim carry out the next course. But as I turned away I noticed Phuong. She looked back, just briefly, and a tiny smile touched her lips. Then it was gone.
Hai watched her until she disappeared, then he bent to his food.
22
ENDGAME
LINH’S STORY
Most Wednesdays, Thanh Tran comes over for dinner, and he and my uncle usually spend the night playing chess on the covered veranda at the back of the house. The chess is an excuse, of course. What he comes for is the conversation and the company. And sometimes to read my father a new poem. We’re about all the family he’s got.
You see, in nineteen-eighty, while he was still in re-education, Thanh’s wife Hang and their three children made their bid for freedom. And disappeared …
For a while after the accident I couldn’t see any point in going on. I even considered finishing the job Tang and his goons had started.
But you grow out of everything, even despair. Sure, there’s a certain satisfaction to be got out of feeling bitter, butit hurts people, especially the people you love, and you can’t keep doing it. Either you let it destroy you, or you start doing drugs or booze, which is about the same thing. Or you shake the crap out and get on with what’s left of your life.
I don’t know when it finally happened for me, when that piece of earth-shattering wisdom finally fell on my head. Probably it was a gradual thing, the result of long talks with Grandma, my aunt and uncle, and Thanh.
Especially Thanh, I think. Because although he could still walk, he’d probably lost at least as much as I had. Maybe more. But it hadn’t killed him. Or his poetry.
Bitterness kills, I learned that.
I just wish Tang had …
*
26 May 1986
Boundary Park
TANG
The noise of breaking glass is masked by the music, thumping from the stereo in the lounge-room.
In the corner Linh lifts a knight and places it at the centre of the board. Toan studies the move and frowns. He is beaten and he knows it. He looks across to where Kieu sits reading. As if by some secret chemistry, she looks up and smiles. He smiles back and returns his attention to the game.
With a final echoing chord the record ends. The stereo falls silent and Kieu gets up to change it.
But she doesn’t reach the machine.
Before she can even scream, a hand snakes out from behind the archway that leads into the dining room. It covers her mouth and she can feel it bruising her cheek. She senses the touch of metal against the skin of her throat, and she hears the voice, a hoarse whisper in her ear.
“Hello, Kieu. Miss me?”
At the sound of his voice Toan looks up. Suddenly the pieces are scattering across the tiled floor, as he stands, upsetting the small chess-table.
Linh spins the chair to face the intruder.
“I guess not … Hai say you not come with me, but he didn’t say why. He sending me to Melbourne.” He laughs. “Cut out the disease. But you know that, didn’t you, baby? What kind deal you cook up between you? Didn’t think I know, eh … Street-talk, babe. No secrets on street. I still got friend. Maybe more than you think … Don’t move!”
Toan retreats the step he had taken, and Kieu screams as the blade at her throat presses closer.
He drags her towards the door. His breath smells of alcohol. “ ‘You gone too far, Tang.’ That’s what he say. Too far! He goin’ soft. What’d you tell him? Must bin powerful stuff … No matter. I still got friends. Leader shouldn’t sell out his own people. Got to have loyalty …”
“Not loyalty, Tang. Obedience.” The word cuts the air and Tang spins around, dragging Kieu with him like a doll. A sharp pain, and she feels the blood run down her neck as the knife cuts in. Not deep, but the nerves scream, and she bites her lip to stop from crying out.
Standing in the archway Hai Nguyen is flanked by four gang-members, standing two each side of him, but a step behind.
“You …!” The word is a curse, and Tang tightens his grip on the girl.
“Melbourne, Tang. I gave you an order.” The gang-leader’s voice is level. And cold.
“You don’t give me no more orders. Gone soft … Selling out your own …” He turns his gaze to the others. “You take orders from someone sells out his own? We don’t have to. One against five. He can’t do nothing, not on his own. He don’t deserve give orders …”
For a moment there is silence, then there is a slight movement from one of the men behind Hai. He looks into his leader’s eyes, then across at Tang, and without a word he crosses the floor to stand beside the younger man, with his hands in his pockets, his feet slightly apart. Another one follows. Three facing three across a few metres of floor.
In the corner Toan stands motionless, watching a trickle of blood soaking into Kieu’s white blouse. The patch is spreading slowly down across her shoulder. Linh has not moved and her gaze remains fixed on the man with the knife.
Time has stopped, as the two opponents stare at each other. Then Hai looks across at one of the men facing him. It is a look of … regret.
“You see, Hai. No respect. Where’s your obedience now?”
But Hai is still staring at the man, who moves to stand closer to the rebel.
Hai allows a sigh to leak out and his shoulders slump slightly. Then he nods. Slowly, deliberately.
Without any warning the man draws a knife from his pocket and almost casually drives it into the side of Tang’s chest, while the other men grabs the arm holding the knife and pulls it sharply away from Kieu’s throat.
In the moment before the pain strikes, Tang looks down and sees the blood pouring from his chest. The expression on his face is one of puzzled surprised. Then, with a sudden spasm, he grimaces and at his side.
He opens his mouth a few times, but no words come. Then he looks at Kieu, who has moved a couple of paces away.
“Slut …” he whispers. “I … gave you …”
The words falter, and he stumbles forward a pace. Toan moves to stand beside her, but the danger is over. Tang’s mouth falls open, his eyes roll and his knees give way, but before he collapses, two pairs of hands grasp his arms and drag him out through the archway towards the back of the house. The way he came in.
Hai looks at the three teenagers.
“We had him followed.” He shake his head. “Pity …”
Standing with her hand to her throat, Kieu looks down at the bloodstain on the carpet a few paces away.
“I’m sorry about the mess. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
And without another word he leads the remaining gang-members away.
For a long time no one moves.
*
LINH’S STORY
Chess is a game. It has rules, and if you break them the game is forfeited. It would be nice to believe that life was like that. I guess sometimes it even is.
They never found Tang’s body and there was no mention of his disappearance — on the news or on the streets.
I don’t know how much Hai Nguyen’s actions on that night were a result of him honouring his end of our “bargain”, and how much it was just “gang business”. Maybe it was a
little of both. Or maybe he just decided it was time to ditch his loose cannon before it did any more damage.
We’ll never know. I only saw him once more, about six months after Tang’s death. He was standing in the street, just across from my uncle’s store, with two or three of his goons. They weren’t looking my way, and I wasn’t in any hurry to attract their attention. I turned the chair around and went back inside.
A couple of weeks later the papers reported that they’d found his body in a car, somewhere out near Narellan, and that the police were treating the death as “suspicious”.
The Triple K were a spent force. Other gangs were moving in on their turf and they didn’t have the leadership to hold their ground.
I don’t know why the gangs have to be a part of a community which is almost obsessively law-abiding. It just doesn’t seem to make any sense.
My grandmother would probably see it in terms of balance. Good and evil, light and dark, the yin and the yang.
Me, I don’t think the universe is organised quite so neatly.
EPILOGUE
ONLY
THE HEART …
6 July 1996
Ho Chi Minh City
Socialist Republic of Vietnam
TOAN’S STORY
Twenty years.
The heat is like a wall as I step through the doors of the arrival lounge and look out on the country of my birth for the first time in all those years.
It’s strange. I mean, I guess I expected to feel … something. But apart from the heat, and the knot in my stomach which has been there since we flew out of Sydney, nothing has changed.
I’m not pushing the baggage trolley. That isn’t my role in this production.
My only burden is a small urn, not much bigger than a coffee mug. But it holds a precious cargo, just the same.
An old woman’s final wish is law, so it became my duty to bring her home.
After ten years in exile, Grandma is finally making the trip that was denied her in life.
But it is her home. It is no longer mine. I look around me and I taste the air. I am like a stranger here, a traveller in a foreign land. I never expected to feel this way, but there is no sense of loss. Only a confirmation of who I am. Who I have become.
My Aunt Chi and her family are standing in the huge hall, shouting with excitement. Seven children, eight grandchildren, and she stills looks slim, and far too young for such a part. I think she has my father’s eyes.
I stop to wait for Kieu and Cassie. None of the waiting crowd has seen them, except in photographs, and I want to be the one to introduce my family to … my family. Finally they come through the doors, Kieu pushing the trolley, Cassie riding, as excited as any five-year-old.
They catch up and my daughter jumps off, running to wrap her arms around my leg. Not exactly the solemn procession that might be expected for the return of a grandparent’s ashes, but I don’t think Grandma would mind. She loved Cassie and spoiled her completely.
I guess we all do. Me, because she’s my only daughter and I’m an easy mark. Kieu, because I do, and she doesn’t want to be the ogre. Linh, because Cass is the nearest thing she’ll ever have to a daughter of her own, so she intends to make the most of it. And my parents, because they believe it’s a grandparent’s inalienable right to pay their children back for years of abuse by turning the next generation into spoiled brats who will make their life hell.
Since the stroke, my father hasn’t been able to travel — except the weekly trip to the hospital for therapy. Otherwise he would have been the one carg his mother’s ashes. Of course, my mother never leaves him alone for more than an hour at a time. And with Diem and Quyen virtually rung the business, she doesn’t have to.
We pass the barrier, the crowd converges, and Cassie is whisked away. But she doesn’t cry. All relatives are potential conquests, and no one is immune to her charms. She still believes in fairies too.
I return kisses and match smile for smile, but my eyes are on the doors. Finally they open and Linh’s wheelchair emerges. Miro stops pushing for a moment and looks around. It is his first time out of Australia and he wants to drink it all in.
But my cousin’s patience hasn’t improved with age. She works the wheels with ten years’ experience and drives the chair towards the knot of relatives, shouting a warning but making no attempt to slow down.
And Miro is left alone, standing there inside the doors. Just as he’s always left alone in the end.
I know she’ll never give in and marry him, and in spite of his objections she’ll never stop trying to “set him up” with one “hot” date after another. She’s stubborn — what can I say?
But he seems happy enough with the arrangement.
Just friends …
I guess there are plenty of marriages with less than that going for them.
Then we make our way outside and the tin-can sound of a scooter rises above the noise of the crowd. It moves like a memory across my path and for a moment the years drop away. But only for a moment. I am tired from the trip and I can feel the sweat on my hands. I grip the urn more lightly.
Not long now.
Soon she will lie next to my grandfather, and I will say the words to give her spirit rest. Though a medium of Quan Yin should have no need of words to give her peace.
Thanh has written a poem of farewell, and he asks that I read it to her when she is at her final resting place. He’s printed it out for me; I’ve got it folded up in the pocket of my shirt.
But it isn’t really necessary. I know it by heart.
To Vo Kim Tuyet, 1919-1996
Our years, like leaves,
Drift and fall away;
Piling up, memory upon memory,
Joy upon sadness,
Until the smile and the tear
Become One
And the One becomes All.
Our dreams, like children,
Grow from a song of the heart;
We know the melody,
But we cannot tie it down
To sounds the ear can taste.
And yet it lives within us
Through our dreams,
Through our children.
And the words are the years,
Drifting like leaves;
And the rhythm is a pulse,
The beat of life and death.
For the song is the journey,
And the journey is a song
That only the heart can sing …
First published 1997 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
Reprinted 1997 (twice), 1998 (thrice), 1999, 2000 (twice), 2001, 2002 (twice), 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013
www.uqp.com.au
© Brian Caswell
© David Chiem
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any foram or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Typeset by University of Queensland Press
Cataloguing in Publication Data
National Library of Australia
Caswell, Brian
Only The Heart
For secondary school students.
I. Chiem, David Phu An. II. Title (Series: UQP Young Adult Fiction)
A823.3
ISBN 9780702229275 (pbk)
ISBN 9780702256639 (pdf)
ISBN 9780702256646 (epub)
ISBN 9780702256653 (kindle)
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