The Chinaman (26 page)

He was picked up around lunchtime by a group of five teenage soldiers who prodded him with their guns and demanded his papers. He told them he'd been robbed two days earlier and they slapped him around the face and accused him of lying. They made him kneel on the ground, blindfolded him, handcuffed his hands behind his back and then dragged him roughly and threw him into the back of a truck. Throughout the day more men were thrown into the vehicle. All were blindfolded and manacled and told that if they spoke to each other they would be killed. When the truck was full they were driven for three days with just a handful of foul-smelling rice which they were forced to eat like animals, pushing their faces on to the floor to lick the grains up because their captors refused to unlock the handcuffs. Nguyen assumed they were being taken North and wondered why they bothered because the Communists now controlled the whole country. For a wild moment he thought that perhaps the NVA feared that the Americans would be back but in his heart he knew that could not be true. The evacuation of the embassy was not the action of an army planning to return.

He never discovered the name of the place he was taken to but there was no doubt that it was a prison, and had been for many years. He was thrown into a small cell, two paces by four paces, containing only a wooden bench and a bucket. They took off his blindfold and he saw that the bench was rubbed smooth from the bodies that had slept there over the years. It looked ages old and had obviously been used by the French to hold Vietnamese captives. The bench sloped so that any liquids would run off and there was a small drain hole at the bottom of one of the walls. There was no window in the cell, the only light came from the corridor through the open door and whenever it opened cockroaches ran for the dark corners. Nguyen was forced to lie on the bench and his feet were locked into a set of leg-irons which were fixed to the wall. They put the bucket within reach and took off his handcuffs and left without a word, locking the door behind them. They left him there for two weeks, opening the door only once a day to put down a handful of rice on a banana leaf along with a piece of stale bread. It was stifling hot in the cell and he was always thirsty but he was only given one earthenware jug of water to drink with his food. The cell stank of urine and sweat and decay. The cockroaches did not worry him, even when they ran over his body, but there were mosquitoes and he was covered in itching bites that made him want to scream. His legs were in pain too, rubbed raw by the metal leg-irons.

After two weeks of solitary confinement they dragged him out of his cell and into a room where he saw his first glimpse of the sun through a murky skylight. To the left of the skylight, set into the ceiling, was a large, rusty meat hook. Two NVA officers questioned him for an hour and then he was returned to the leg-irons and the darkness. A week later he was taken out and interrogated again. There was no violence, no threats, just a series of questions, almost identical to the ones he'd been asked on the first occasion, and he was sure that he gave the same answers. The same lies. He was a mechanic, he had never been in the army. He had no family. He had lost his papers. It was impossible to tell from the blank faces of his interrogators whether or not they believed him, and most of the time he could only look through squinting eyes because after the enforced darkness he found even the weak sunlight which managed to get through the dirt-encrusted glass blindingly bright.

They took him back to his cell and left him there for just three days before hauling him back to the interrogation room. By that stage he could barely walk and his gums were bleeding from malnutrition. He had diarrhoea and the backs of his legs and backside were a mass of sores. The older of his two interrogators, a kindly looking major with white hair, told him that they did not believe his story and that they would be grateful if he would tell them the truth this time. He insisted that he was not lying and they nodded, almost sadly. Four NVA soldiers came into the room, holding bamboo canes, and they beat him senseless. Then they threw a bucket of water over him to bring him round before beating him unconscious again and dragging him back to his cell.

For six days the process was repeated. They would ask him for the truth, he would stick to his story, the soldiers would beat him up.

On the seventh day, by which time he'd lost three of his teeth and they had broken four of his ribs, they changed their tactics. They took a long piece of rope and bound his wrists behind him and then wound it excruciatingly tightly around his arms before hauling him up on the meat hook. It was strange, but he could not remember much about the days they tortured him. He could remember that he had never in his life felt so much pain and he knew that at one point it had been so bad that he'd pleaded with them to kill him, but now, as he lay on the pine needles and looked up through the branches to the clear blue sky above, it seemed as if it had all happened to someone else and that they were borrowed memories. Only one thing had got him through – the images of his wife as he left and his two daughters, asleep with their heads touching. Of all the images that stuck in his mind, they were the strongest, because throughout the torture he'd concentrated on them. They were the reason they could not break him.

He never knew whether or not they believed him, or whether they simply gave up trying to break him, but eventually the torture stopped and he was transferred to a re-education camp where he worked in the fields for fifteen hours a day but where at least there was food. He was forced to write endless self-criticisms which were duly filed away and he spent two hours each day sitting cross-legged on the floor with other prisoners being lectured to on the merits and ideals of Communism and being beaten with sticks if they nodded off. There were other punishments, meted out for the most trivial of offences. Men were shackled upside down and left hanging for days until their legs were weeping with gangrene, locked into cramped steel boxes in the sun or buried up to their necks in the ground. Nguyen was there for three years. Three years of living a lie. Three wasted years.

When he was finally judged to be a good Communist he was released on probation and was assigned to work on an irrigation project to the west of Hanoi. He had to report to a political officer three times a week for further indoctrination. He was lucky, he knew that, because tens of thousands of South Vietnamese were kept in the camps for much longer.

He fled one night and managed to get to Hanoi where he stole identification papers and money and journeyed south to Saigon. He lived rough in the city for several weeks before he dared approach Xuan Phoung and when he did it was at night. He knocked timidly on her door and when she opened it it was clear from her bewildered face that she did not recognise him. It was hardly surprising because he had lost so much weight and appeared to have aged ten years, but she took him in her arms and cried softly. She ushered him into the room and sat him down, knelt in front of him and held him around his waist, crying all the time and whispering his name. He realised then that however badly he had suffered it could have been nothing compared with what his wife had been through. At least he had been able to look forward to returning to her and the children. She had had no way of knowing if he was even alive.

She made him green tea and while he was drinking it she went into the bedroom and brought out a tiny child. A girl. The daughter he had never seen, conceived on the night that the Americans abandoned Saigon and now almost three years old.

‘Kieu Trinh is her name,' said Xuan Phoung. ‘But we can change it if you don't like it.'

‘It's perfect,' said Nguyen. He held her in his arms and then his wife woke Thi Manh and Mai Phoung and brought them in to meet the father they barely remembered. He had been away for almost a quarter of their lives. Nguyen was so filled with happiness that he could barely speak, he just held all four of them. His family.

Before he could ask, Xuan Phoung said, ‘The gold is still here, and I know someone who can get us out.'

‘We must go soon,' he said, his voice thick with emotion.

‘I know,' she said. ‘We were only waiting for you.'

Nguyen and his wife and children travelled by night to a fishing port in Kien Giang province, all their valuables and papers in two canvas bags. They'd paid a deposit in gold to a middleman in Saigon and were told when and where they were to pay the rest.

They had to spend the night in a dirty hut that stank of fish, sleeping on small cots with another two families who were also waiting for the boat. During the night little Kieu Trinh developed a hacking cough and when Xuan Phoung put her hand on the child's forehead it was hot and wet. She got worse through the night and kept them all awake. Nguyen stayed by her side, wiping her forehead with a cloth dipped in water and wafting her with a piece of cardboard. She got worse during the day. It was Xuan Phoung who said it first, even though Nguyen had already reached the same conclusion: the child was in no condition for a sea voyage, especially in an unhygienic boat crammed to the gills with refugees. Xuan Phoung suggested they wait in the village until the child was well enough to travel, but Nguyen pointed out that if they did they'd lose their deposit. And it represented a big chunk of their hard-earned savings.

‘You must go ahead, with Thi Manh and Mai Phoung,' she said. ‘We will join you in Hong Kong.'

He'd refused at first, but eventually realised that what she said made sense. If he went with the two teenage girls, he was sure the captain could be persuaded to accept the deposits of all five of them towards the cost of the trip, leaving more than enough money for Xuan Phoung and Kieu Trinh to buy their passage when the child was well again. When the captain came for them later that evening, Nguyen explained what had happened and eventually he agreed that the five deposits could go towards the three fares, albeit with an extra ounce of gold thrown in. For another ounce he agreed to bring in a doctor to tend to the child.

When Nguyen saw the vessel that was supposed to take them across the South China Sea to Hong Kong, he almost had second thoughts. The boat was about fifteen metres long, its hull rotting and repaired in many places. There were already thirty or so refugees sitting or squatting on its deck and Nguyen and his two children and the two families that had shared the hut had to squeeze between them to find space. The boat was worryingly low in the water.

The captain was joined by a crew of three, men barely out of their teens in ragged T-shirts and cut-off trousers. It took half an hour of patient coaxing to get the engine started and it chugged uneasily out to sea as the huge orange sun sat low in the sky.

There was a hatchway in the deck leading to a hold containing a dozen camp beds where the refugees took it in turns to sleep. There was a small stove there and the women cooked what little food the crew had brought with them: some rice, strips of dried fish and a sack of green vegetables. Some of the men rigged up fishing lines and from time to time pulled in fresh fish to supplement the meagre rations, but mainly they fished to fight the boredom. Most of the days were spent cross-legged on the deck, watching the horizon and hoping that the boat would stay afloat.

Water was rationed and they were each given just a cupful every four hours, carefully meted out by a crewman using stained tin mugs. A blanket had been stretched out from a mast and tied down with ropes to provide some shade during the day and shelter from the occasional rain storm. Conditions were so grim that Nguyen was glad that Kieu Trinh had stayed behind.

They were three days out from Vietnam when they met the fishing boats. There were three of them painted in identical colours as if part of the same fleet. The decks were painted red and piled high with plastic barrels and coils of rope, and the wheel-houses were white. The hulls were pale green and there were lines of white Thai writing on the bows. The crews seemed friendly enough, smiling and waving as they drew close, and they shouted to the captain that they had water and ice to sell. The captain waved them away but a few of the refugees shouted to him that they would pay for it. Nguyen could see that the captain was uneasy and he whispered to the refugees to keep quiet, that the Thais could be trouble, but they ignored him and began calling over to the fishermen. The captain shouted at the man who was on the wheel and the old boat started to turn away but even Nguyen who had little sailing experience knew that there was no way they could outrun the fishing boats if they gave chase. He stood up and as he did he saw one of the Thais produce a rifle and put it to his shoulder. Nguyen yelled a warning but he was too late, there was a loud bang and the captain took the bullet in his chest. More rifles were produced and the wheel-house was riddled with bullets, killing the two crewmen inside. The refugees began to scream as the boat drifted aimlessly. Nguyen frantically looked around for a weapon, but there was nothing at hand. One of the Thai boats drew up alongside and the fishermen used poles with hooks on the end to secure the boats together.

The refugees moved away to the opposite side like cattle shying away from a snake and the boat tilted alarmingly. Women and children were crying, the men shouting, wanting to put up a fight but not knowing how to, not when all they had were their fists and the Thais had guns and hatchets and hammers. Nguyen found himself separated from his daughters, unable to move closer to them because of the crush.

A second boat cut across their bow and half a dozen menacing Thais jumped across, stocky men toughened by years at sea, their faces and bodies darkened by the sun and scarred from fights and accidents with the nets and ropes.

They moved through the refugees, separating the men from the women and the children, killing anyone who protested or tried to stop them. One of the Thais, a swarthy, thickset man with a huge tiger tattoo across his chest, looked down into the hatch. He shouted down in bad Vietnamese that all the women and children were to come up. There were screams and sobs from down below but no one appeared so a fisherman with a rifle jumped over from the boat alongside and fired twice into the hold. There were more screams and shouting and then three women and a young girl came up. One of the women was in her sixties and the fisherman cursed her in Vietnamese and stabbed her in the stomach, twisting the knife right and left before kicking her back down into the hold.