Only the Heart (5 page)

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 wasn'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.

Just as there would be no choice for Minh, except to go along. How many other families had been split by such inescapable decisions?

A child begins to cry, its distress muffled by the intervening deck. Below, out of sight, fifty-five people huddle in silence. They began arriving in small, frightened groups a little after midnight, in the boats which Tan is using to ferry the refugees the kilometre and a half from a number of pre-arranged staging posts — like the riverside house of Van Nguyen, who is taking the risk in return for a reduced passage-cost for his family.

For the hundredth time, Minh strains to catch the sound of the dinghy's two-stroke motor, and he peers into the blackness of the harbour night. The buildings of Rach Gia line the shore; solid lumps of shadow against the lighter shading of the sky, but the black skyline is dotted with the glow of the lights that still illuminate the occasional all-night gathering.

From time to time odd sounds carry across the water. Another baby, crying faintly in the distance. The tin-can insect-rumbling of a lone scooter, heading home.

And soft music …

Lòng me nhù biên Thái Bi
n
h Dùòng …

A mother's love is as large as the Pacific Ocean …

Somewhere close a fish jumps, slapping the water-surface with its body as it disappears.

The sounds of a new year.

He listens with the ears of a man about to start a new life …

5

RISING TIDE

TOAN'S STORY

Linh hates the water and boats.

We planned a trip to the zoo once, and we had to drive across the bridge and all the way around the harbour because she refused to go on the ferry, and no matter how much my mum and dad pleaded and threatened, she wouldn't budge. She was ten or eleven at the time, but she was quite willing to spend the whole day in the car on her own rather than step on board anything that had to travel across water deeper than a bath-tub.

It's not like she was always scared of water. After all, we were born in a sea-port, and we'd all learned to swim early in the river and the sea. We even went fishing from the rocks, or from small boats in the bay. I'm not sure that she's so much scared of the water even now. I think it goes a whole lot deeper than fear.

She certainly wasn't afraid on the night we finally made our move to leave.

It was a little after two in the morning, and we'd been woken up and dressed in warm clothes. Then we'd sat on the deck out back of Van Nguyen's house, waiting. I was asking questions and getting no answers, but Linh just sat there patiently, as if she knew exactly what was going on. Which, of course, she did.

She wasn't nervous or upset; she didn't even look tired.

My mother looked all three, as she fussed around her three sons, making sure that we were wrapped up and comfortable.

Aunt Mai just sat there quietly with Phuong on one side of her and Linh on the other and didn't say a word. I remember my mother had a statue of the three wise monkeys on a shelf at home, and my cousins and their mother looked so much like them that I started to giggle. Until my mother snapped at me and told me to be quiet.

Something in the way she said it made me realise the seriousness of the strange situation, more than the fact that we were up and dressed and waiting for a boat at two o'clock in the morning.

As a kid, I guess I was a bit of a slow learner …

*

28 February 1977
Rach Gia

HOA

2.45 am.
Somewhere in the near-distance she picks up the sound of the motor, a soft throbbing pulse that signals the small boat's approach.

No one on the wooden veranda behind her has heard it yet. Perhaps they are not listening as carefully. Perhaps what her mother always said is true after all, and she does indeed have the ears of a mouse …

It seems strange that she should think of her mother now, after all these years. Now, when she is on the point of leaving her whole life behind.

Time heals the bleeding soul …

A dozen years of regrets and anger, sitting undigested in the pit of her stomach; the choice that tore her heart, but made her strong.

Sitting on the deck, waiting for the boat to arrive, she finds the time to pity an old woman. One who should have known the happiness of her only daughter's children before she died. Who could have shared the years of war and hardship with a family that cared for her.

If only she had been less proud …

“Your father's family can trace its history back four hundred years, and you would throw your heritage away on this … grandson of a dirt-farmer. On this son of a peasant storekeeper!”

Nineteen sixty-five, and already the old ways were dying. But her mother was too proud to let them go. Too proud to accept her daughter's choice.

Just as her daughter was too proud to bow to a mother's will, as it was her duty to do.

Twelve years, and the pain still lingers. But it is a night for putting off the past, and as the sound of the approaching motor grows gradually louder, finally she finds the words to speak inside her head. A plea for understanding, a prayer of forgiveness. A silent, sad farewell.

Then the boat scrapes the side of the deck. It is long and not very wide, with room for perhaps three adults and a child to lie, side by side in the bottom, beneath the boards that Tan's man is now removing. He looks up and hisses instructions. A family of three; a man, his wife and their small child. They step aboard, and lie down at the front of the boat.

The sailor fixes her with his gaze, then nods toward Hoang.

“Him too. Come on. We don't have all night here. ”

Hoang looks at her, and she nods. Then he steps into the boat and squeezes down next to the man and his family. He looks up at her, his face showing no emotion, as Tan's man replaces the boards, hiding them from view.

“You and the two boys.” He is removing the boards covering the rear section of the boat.

They move to the edge and step down into the rocking boat one at a time, Son first. She stumbles slightly as she takes her turn, and the boat moves under her weight, but then she steadies, and reaches up to help Toan. He looks so small standing there on the edge, and she wonders what he must make of all this.

Then he is in the boat, and lying beside his brother.

Mai and the girls have not moved. They are waiting for the second boat. Before the sailor growls again Hoa sneaks a look at her husband's sister.

Mai, who rarely smiles any more. Who never laughs.

And seeing the three of them in the dim light which hangs above the back door of the house, she notices, perhaps for the first time, how different her two nieces are.

Phuong, beautiful and delicate, who wears her emotions on her face for the world to see and know. Who cries when she hurts, and smiles most of the time.

And Linh.

Eight years old, and already so much like her mother, she watches the world without comment, hiding a child's hurts behind an old woman's mask; neutral and impassive, allowing nothing out — and nothing in.

Hard as granite. Or brittle as old glass? Only time will tell. The thought takes less than a moment, and she realises that the man is speaking.

“The girl.” He points toward Linh. “She'll fit.”

For a moment it seems that Mai will resist. Anything could go wrong. Maybe the boat will not come for them, and they will be …

But then she makes her decision. Her gaze shifts from the man's face to the face of her brother's wife, and Hoa answers the silent question with the slightest movement of her head.

She will be safe with me …

The child steps down and takes her place beside Toan. And as she moves to lie down next to them, Hoa comes face to face with her niece. She smiles encouragement, but the child's mask is in place; fixed and unreadable.

As the boards close over them, and she feels the boat move away from the river's edge, she watches the sky through the gaps in the wood.

And slowly she becomes aware of the girl's small hand finding hers. Not a grip of fear, but a touch. Soft. Drawing wordless comfort from the contact.

On the deck behind Van Nguyen's house, eight people remain, waiting for the boat which will carry them away. Down the river, across the bay. The first stage of their journey to a new world.

They watch Tan's man as he ferries the boat into the middle of the stream, and they look further off in the direction from which their ride will come. No one speaks. There is no point.

Sitting apart from the others, Mai places a hand on her daughter's shoulder. Phuong turns to look at her mother, and finds herself staring into the blank depths of eyes whose pupils scan the stars, but whose gaze is turned inwards.

She lays her head gently against her mother's breast, and lets her lids drift together …

*

TOAN'S STORY

3 am.
It was cold, lying there in the bottom of the boat. With the boards a couple of centimetres from your face, the whole experience was … claustrophobic, I guess. like floating along the river in a coffin. The sound of the motor, the drip of the spray which fell onto the boards and sought out the gaps between them. And the sky through the cracks; purple-black and scattered with stars.

No one made a sound. The others because they knew what was at stake; me because I was confused and more than a little scared.

By raising my head to the boards, and placing my eye next to the crack, I could look right and left, and even a little way ahead. On both sides of the river the buildings loomed like physical threats, dark in the cold night, and up ahead the old wooden bridge arched over the water, black against the skyline.

I heard my mother gasp and felt her stiffen as she looked up. We were maybe fifteen metres from the bridge, just moving into its moonshadow, when I caught the movement in the corner of my eye and the red glow of a cigarette. Two soldiers, standing on the bridge, leaning over the railing, straight down at us. My mother reached across and gripped my arm tightly, hurting me, but I knew better than to complain.

Son, of course, knew what was going on, and I felt him shrink with fear, his muscles tense against me.

As the dinghy slid beneath the old wooden structure, just before the soldiers passed from view, one of them raised his hand from the railing and waved to the man sitting in the boat above us, and I felt Son's tension drain away.

I looked up as we passed into the blackness beneath the bridge, watching the lighter dark of the night sky through the holes in its wooden deck. The structure smelled old a combination of damp and rotting wood and urine. Suddenly I sensed a slight movement. With a chittering squeak, a huge rat darted out from behind one of the pylons and along the beam. I watched until it moved beyond my line of sight and disappeared. Moments later, close by, I heard a faint splash.

Then we were out of the shadow again and I could smell the sea-breeze.

My last memory of Rach Gia is the sound of music. As we passed from the river mouth into the wider bay, it drifted out across the water. It was gentle and soothing, but I can't remember what the song was …

*

PHUONG

3.15 am.
She begins to cough.

The wind has grown stronger since they entered the bay, and the tiny ripples have grown to small white-caps, which strike the point of the bow and turn into a fine spray that drifts back over them as the boat heads directly into the rising tide.

Her mother places an arm around her shoulder, drawing her close, sharing her body-warmth, while her other arm she gently massages her daughter's back. The child has always had a slight chest problem, and the cold night and the onshore breeze are exactly the sort of conditions she has been taught to avoid.

Slowly the shape of Tan's boat begins to materialise out of the darkness, as the dinghy closes the gap. It looks just like any other fishing boat preparing to sail. The small crew is busy and the decks are clear. The rest of the “cargo” is already below decks, and this boat contains the final few items.

As they climb aboard, the girl recognises a couple of the crew. Her uncle stands nearby as they are herded below. Tan is a businessman. The less real crew he has to employ, the more paying passengers he can squeeze on.

A few moments later she feels the hull shudder as the engines cough into life. On deck the crew is busy preparing for sea, and she can hear the scrape of the anchor as it drags across the side of the boat.

Then they begin to move.

She watches her Aunt Hoa praying. She has her eyes closed, and she sits leaning against the boards of the hull with her legs drawn up to her chest, rocking slightly, with a movement that has nothing to do with the motion of the boat.

Her mother sits staring at the sky through the open hatch. The moon is setting near the horizon, and though it is out of view the clouds shine with its reflected light. Much later she will wonder what thoughts occupied her mother's mind as the boat began its journey.

But some things about her mother she will never know …