The Eaves of Heaven (28 page)

I was nineteen and had begun to wish for the ordinary. The cosmopolitan faces of the city, its French villas, bistros, nouvelle gadgets, and fineries, no longer impressed me. I would have given anything for carefree days in the fields, the sun on my face, paddy mud between my toes, a fishing pole in my hand. Perhaps someday I would meet my love somewhere out there on a creekside beneath a full moon. I would serenade her at the Mid-Autumn Festival. I was a man-child, waiting for that first kiss.

It was difficult to breathe. The city had become a vacuum. I pedaled down the wide avenues, gasping. The mist was burning away. Sunlight tumbled between the tree boughs. Strangely, there was a scent of guavas. There were no birds in the branches.

I came to the lake outside the city, dropped my bike on the pier, and climbed into a boat. I put my back into the oars, my legs, arms, my whole body. In mighty strokes, I sculled across the glassy water, gliding to escape velocity. I could not see where I was going, but I saw what I was leaving behind. Marvelous, inexhaustible youth. There was so much of it to burn. Incandescent.

Pull-exhale, glide-inhale; pull-exhale, glide-inhale. Lap after lap after lap. The water could go on forever and it wouldn’t be long enough.

Far from every shore, I lay down at the bottom of the boat. Spent, nothing left in my limbs. In the womb of the lake, the world faded away. Above my face, a blue ceiling; lazy, puffy clouds; a caressing breeze. It was like being held. I felt my mother’s spirit there at the center of the universe.

THE SOUTH
1975

34. R
EEDUCATION

T
in said, “Surround him. Careful, he’s poisonous!”

“The bush!” Tung shouted as the snake slithered toward me.

I slammed my shovel into the ground in front of the snake. It coiled up, hissing.

“Cobra! Cobra!” someone shouted.

Tung and I stepped around to block its retreat into the paddy, our shovels ready. It was more than four feet long and as thick as a man’s wrist. Tin had found it under the brambles we were clearing. Within moments, half a dozen other inmates converged to help. There was no way we’d let that much meat escape us.

Tin lured the snake to him with a stick. A machete was poised high over his head. The snake struck at the stick. Tin swung and missed.

I came from behind and pinned the snake with my shovel. It squirmed violently to get loose. Tin brought the machete down and severed its head. The body writhed, flopping and gushing blood.

Tung reached for the snakehead, but Tin batted his hand away. “You don’t want to do that. It can still bite and pump you full of poison.”

As was the custom, Tin dug a hole, scooped up the snakehead with the shovel, put it in the hole, and filled it with dirt. We all went back to work, grinning. More often than not, we considered ourselves lucky to get mice or frogs. A snake this big meant that there would be a few bites to go around. A year ago, I would never consider tasting the snake meat that was offered as a delicacy in the top Chinese restaurants, but now a cobra looked as tasty as a rope of sausages.

I picked up my shovel and rejoined the crew in the irrigation trench. The sky was blue, the day just beginning to broil. We were outside working in the fresh air, waist-deep in creamy mud. I felt very lucky to be here.

I had thought my life was over when the guards took me from the cell that night in Rach Gia. But instead of putting us on trial as they normally did, they loaded us into a tarp-covered truck bed and drove us out of the city. We had expected to be executed at a mass grave in the woods. The truck bounced over the rutted road for half an hour and delivered us to Minh Luong Reeducation Camp.

Our new home was an old South Vietnam military training site. It was where the Viet Cong kept “low-grade” traitors like South Vietnamese regional soldiers and former low-level officials. Compared to Rach Gia and other prisons where they sent the “high-grade” traitors, Minh Luong was a resort. The doors of our cells were not locked and we were free to move around within the compound. We worked outside daily and had opportunities to scavenge in the fields and streams.

Forgotten diversions of my countryside childhood came back to me. I remembered how to snatch grasshoppers from rice leaves, how to flood crickets from their burrows, how to spear frogs in the ponds. Fellow prisoners taught me how to catch mice, snakes, small fish, and small blue paddy crabs. We picked wild berries, greens, herbs, yams, onions, morning glories, and sour leaves. Some things we pocketed to be cooked later, others we popped in our mouths like candy treats. My favorites were crunchy termites and buttery sparrow eggs.

A
T
lunch, the guards let us build a little fire. Tin tossed the snake onto the flames. The smell of burnt meat soon drew in the crowd. He gave everyone a small piece. We ate it with our tin of rice.

Tin, Tung, and I sat downwind from a cow grazing the grass on the side of the dirt road. It smelled so sweet and milky that the snake meat tasted just like steak in my mouth. Tung said he could sit here breathing cow-scent all day long. Tin and I laughed at the thought of Tung pining after the cows like a lovesick puppy. Tin and Tung were my two closest friends at Minh Luong. Tung was an army corporal, married with a son. Tin was in his early thirties and single. A recent arrival at Minh Luong, he said he was a government official in Saigon. I suspected he was hiding something because he was very intent on finding a way to escape. He discussed his plans with us, trying to convince us to go with him. Of all his plans only one had any chance of success, but it was such an obvious route that every prisoner already knew about it. I had noticed it my first day inside.

Situated on a rice plain, Minh Luong Camp was enclosed by two layers of barbed-wire fences. The back side of the camp had a creek about three hundred yards from the rear fence. One of our first tasks as inmates was to clear the minefields surrounding the prison, so if a prisoner could get past the fence and stayed unnoticed by the guards, he could reach the creek and float away for miles. It was as clear as an open door. It left me wondering why our jailers hadn’t bothered to erect some sort of barrier.

“The ground is very wet and soft. We can dig just enough space to crawl under the fence and then swim down the creek with the current,” Tin said quietly. “We would have at least six or seven hours before they mounted a search party.”

Tung shook his head. “It’s a trap. It’s just too easy.”

“Do you have someone nearby who can help? You can’t go far without money,” I said. The new government had issued a new currency.

“I know some people in Rach Gia,” Tin said.

Tung was not convinced. “Do you really have to go?”

Tin seemed on the verge of saying something, but thought better of it. I was relieved. I didn’t want the responsibility of someone else’s secret. We recently heard that the Viet Cong had captured the entire data file of the South Vietnam army, containing hundreds of thousands of personnel service records. Countless men would suffer because the bureaucrats who manned the personnel offices had fled without destroying the files. I had heard two of my team leaders in the RD program had been arrested and executed. I suspected that, like me, Tin had been less than forthright on his confession. It was simply a matter of time before they investigated our service records.

“You know you can’t go home. That’ll be the first place they look,” Tung said.

I nodded. “There’s no place to hide. Where can you go?”

The country was practically under martial law. People needed permits to leave their hometowns. Each neighborhood had its own party member representative—and spies who knew every resident.

“Cross the border into Cambodia,” said Tung.

I looked at Tin; he had already arrived at this conclusion. He grew up in the countryside and was very resourceful in the wilderness. If anyone had a chance crossing the jungle alive, it was Tin.

He had every reason to flee. If I were Tin, a man without a wife or children, I would have been gone yesterday. He was still healthy and strong, as fresh as I had been six months ago. The longer he waited, the greater the chance he would become one of us sickly inmates.

Life in Minh Luong was harsh. Every day we woke in darkness. They marched us out of the compound to work at the crack of dawn. We cleared minefields, exploded charges, cleared brambles, dug irrigation ditches, and repaired roads. Our first meal of the day came at noon with an hour of rest. We labored until dusk. We had two hours to bathe and eat dinner. Some nights they held trials and sentenced those of us whom they claimed had discrepancies in our confessions. Other nights, they sat us down for three hours of reeducation where a party official lectured us about their battle victories; the struggles of the Vietnamese, first against the French Colonialists and later against the American Imperialists; and the ideals and advances of communism. On special evenings, we watched propaganda movies about VC heroes, battles, Ho Chi Minh, and the success of socialism in Russia and China.

Occasionally, they summoned us from the field, a dozen at a time in the middle of the day, and put us through investigation sessions. We filled out scores of repetitive questionnaires about our family, friends, colleagues, jobs, social views, and political inclinations. We wrote detailed essays on our lives and thoughts. The more we answered, the more precarious our situations became.

“P
HAM
Van Thong. Come to the door!” the guard shouted.

I jumped, startled. Other prisoners gestured for me to hurry. I came to the door in my boxer shorts. The guard, a young fanatic with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, stood next to an old man dressed in the ascetic pajama slacks and black cotton jacket of the revolutionaries. I could tell by the deference the guard showed to the stranger that he was a high-ranking party member. The man was in his mid-sixties with hair streaked with white. He was wiry and straight-backed. He had calm eyes.

He introduced himself as my wife’s uncle, and I immediately saw the resemblance. Although we had never met, I was well acquainted with my wife’s family history. Uncle Ha was my mother-in-law’s cousin. During the Great Famine, Anh’s entire extended family fled south. When the French came back to Vietnam, Uncle Ha joined the Resistance to fight the French. After the Geneva Accord, he regrouped to the North with the Resistance forces. Uncle Ha returned home after the Liberation to see his family for the first time in twenty years. His mother had always maintained that her son was first and foremost a patriot. Their reunion was a godsend for me.

“You should try to eat more vegetables,” he said.

“Vegetables?” I was confused. Prisoners did not get enough food.

“You have beriberi. I’ve seen many cases. It was a common condition for our Resistance fighters. Unless you get more vitamins, your face and legs will keep swelling, then your vital organs will break down.”

I thanked him for the advice. “How is my wife? Is she well? The children?”

“They are all doing well.”

“Did Anh come with you?”

“She’s at the inn. Spouses are not allowed visitation. You know that.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I forgot.”

I realized he was telling me to be cautious. Even though he was probably one of the highest-ranking party members the locals had met, Uncle Ha was careful not to show any impropriety and had not requested to meet me privately without the proctor. These walls had ears. Perhaps he was afraid that I was foolish enough to blurt out something dangerous.

“Your wife asked me to explain to the local authority that you are a good citizen, and that you fled Saigon because you were afraid. You had no intention of leaving the country.”

He was saying that I must stick to my original confession, harp along that line in every interrogation, and never deviate. I nodded and said, “Thank you, Uncle. Please tell my wife that the comrades here are treating me well and teaching me the importance of socialism. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn.”

Uncle Ha wished me good luck and good health. Then without another word, he turned and left. I was touched because I knew he had a reputation of integrity and high morals. I wondered what made him decide to help me. My mother-in-law and I believe that Uncle Ha, like many fighters of his generation who joined Viet Minh, was more a patriot than a Communist. Many high-ranking officials and party members of his age were not hardcore Communists. They had joined Ho’s government to defeat a common enemy. They relinquished their political ideology until it was too late to do anything but become reluctant Communists.

When Uncle Ha went north, he left his mother and eldest daughter, Nga, behind in the care of my mother-in-law. Nga grew up and married a South Vietnamese lieutenant in the Special Forces. He was a decorated soldier who lost an eye in the war and was sent to a reeducation camp after the fall of Saigon. Upon seeing Nga, who could not remember her long-absent father, Uncle Ha mobilized his considerable power and secured the release of his once-enemy son-in-law.

I thought of Aunt Thao’s husband, my cousin Quyen, Uncle Ti, my adopted brother Vi, my best friend Hoi, and schoolmates from my village. Every person I knew had brothers, sons, cousins, or uncles on opposite sides of both wars: first the French, then the American. It was a conflict between brothers. No matter which side won, the family lost.

F
OR
several nights after Tin made his intention known, I stayed awake, eyes and ears trained on the dark spot where he lay ten feet from me. Night after night, he tossed and turned, but never left his sleeping mat. When I had thought his courage had surely deserted him, he vanished. I rose early one morning to go the latrine. Tin’s place was vacant. Climbing up to the latrine set over the pond, I knew he was gone. I was the first one up, the only person at the latrine.

We never heard from Tin again. The guards made no announcements about their single escapee. They neither questioned nor punished us for his disappearance. From time to time, his name would come up in conversation, and someone would quip, “I bet Tin is in Thailand by now, drinking whisky and eating roast pork.” It would stir up a round of chuckles and more speculations of marvelous things Tin could be doing at that very moment.

One by one, we fell victim to illness, accidents in the minefields, or the Viet Cong’s trials. Some were pulled from our ranks without explanation. We never knew if they were released, sent to crueler camps, or executed. After they took Tung away, I often found myself looking to the creek. I could follow Tin to the Cambodian border, but I couldn’t leave my family behind.