A Southern Girl (59 page)

That evening, the evening we leave Allie in the care of San and Go Quan, Mr. Quan and I depart for Vietnam. He and his brother have been discussing the return since we arrived, but San steadfastly refuses to join us. He has never been back, and pledges never to go. I don’t think the younger Quan is surprised, only disappointed. And visibly apprehensive about the trip.

A flight attendant distributes blankets and pillows. At altitude, the cabin lights are extinguished, but here and there conical shafts of reading lights project from overhead. Mr. Quan’s light is on, although he has nothing on his tray table to read. He seems trance-like, meditative in the Zen sense, but without its peace. His chair-back is straight, his arms firmly on the rests with his hands cupped over their ends and no slouch to his body, as though he is about to be electrocuted. In the harsh illumination of the reading light, tears glisten on a path downward. Feigning sleep, I watch him closer, unsure of what response to make, if any. He is staring straight ahead, unblinking. A passing attendant pauses, then leans over me to him, whispering.

“Sir, may I do anything for you?”

“Yes,” he says quietly, not moving his eyes from their relentless stare forward. “Tea.”

The attendant returns, placing a cup on his tray table. He nods faintly. Seconds later he sips. As his eyes maintain their fix on the seat ahead, his face tenses. His brow, smooth enough for a man in his early fifties, meshes into a rutted plain, the muscles of his chin and jowls contract into a perceptible relief sharpened by the overhead lamp so that the entire effect is one of severe stress, advanced aging. Yes, that is it. Whatever storm rages within has transformed him into a man ten years older than the one who boarded the plane. A tear traversing this new landscape is diverted by a canted crevice, invisible before. So dramatic is this mask that I am seized with panic. His body is still, frozen in its rigid uprightness.

“How’s the tea?” I ask, sitting up. Nothing I can think of seems appropriate to say.

“Good,” he says solemnly, mechanically.

“Well, then,” I say with a meek attempt at cheer, “I think I’ll have one.” I hail an attendant, who seems visibly relieved to see me roused, as though I am a doctor arriving on the scene of an accident.

“Want to talk?” I ask.

“As I said, this trip holds dangers for me. But I have put it off too long.”

“Yes,” I say, fumbling my way toward him, “seeing so much change in what you left will be difficult. Do you have family other than your cousin and brother?”

For the first time since entering his catatonia, he turns to me, and deep within his eyes I see concentrated despair.

“No, no family now.” He brings his drink napkin up, wiping his face and for an instant seemingly surprised at the moisture that is there. The attendant returns with my tea.

“I … used your bathroom once when Allie and I came to your apartment. All those people in the photographs …”

“Yes,” he says softly. “That was my family.”

“And you in the picture with the bride?”

He nods, turning forward again. “Mi Chon was my bride. She was veddy beautiful. I never hoped for a wife as good as her.” His voice is weak, resigned, defeated. “For nineteen years she kept a perfect home, giving us children, seven children. Our culture is different. Our wives
accept our need for other women. Often I would go out to pleasures in Saigon. I stayed late, sometimes all night. In almost twenty years she never once, not a single time, got angry with me. She loved me that much. Can you believe that?”

I sip my tea. “Not like America, that’s for sure.”

“We had to get out. After the Americans left, I told my wife that the communists will come for us. I had done much to help our government, but there was no one left to help me. I planned escape.”

“How?”

“The only way. By boat. I could have gone by plane, possibly with my wife, but never with the children, my parents, aunts, uncles, nephews. Boat was the only way.”

“Did you have a boat?”

He shakes his head. “I bought one, near Vung Tau. That is a city on our coast. Many rivers intersect there.”

“Did it cost a lot of … what was your money called?”

“Gold. The currency was worth little to us and nothing to the communists.”

“You didn’t buy your boat from the communists.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. They knew about it. In those days, they knew everything. Everyone was trying to get in with them when the end came. You could trust no one. I paid a bribe to the communists to allow me to buy the boat, then to sail on it.

“We left Saigon after dark. It was important that no one see us go. There were forty-one of us in my family. The boat held sixty, so I arranged with another family to take space and help pay. My wife consulted our calendar. The stars told her of great danger. It was not a good time for a trip. She begged me to put it off, but I could not. The men I had bribed to let us leave were about to be transferred north and I would have to pay another large sum to the new guards.

“The other family, I forget their name, met us at the boat. The boat was not quite finished as had been promised but again, time was short and we had no choice. We put everything we had carried from Saigon on the boat. You must remember, we were leaving our homes after many generations and we did not expect to return ever. Mostly, we took clothes but some furniture and prized possessions like photographs.”

“The ones I saw in your apartment.”

“No,” he says. “Not those. When the boat was loaded I had to settle my account with the guards. We had paid substantial gold earlier to get this far and now the rest was due.”

“Expensive, I assume,” and he nods.

“Yes,” he says grimly, “veddy expensive. The guard, his name was Dong, called it ‘half-go, half-stay.’ That was his formula. His demands were veddy specific. We were to put all our gold in a box where it could be counted. Anything with gold in it, even wedding rings, had to be placed in this box. He warned of a search before the boat left; if he or his men found any gold hidden they would arrest us but keep the gold. We were required to fill this box and show him its contents. Our gold required two boxes. We had been saving it a long time for just such an emergency. Dong was veddy pleased. He divided out his half, quite fairly, and carried it to shore. Then his men searched the boat and everyone on it. They were thorough. With the women, they were more thorough. They found nothing.”

“Could Dong be trusted?” I ask.

“In the weeks before I dealt with him, seven families from my region had escaped this way. I had a friend near Vung Tau, and he confirmed that the boats left with these families on board. It appeared Dong was reliable.

“At midnight we poled out of a river near Vung Tau. There is a great hill behind the beaches. Years before, the Americans built a giant concrete Christ. His arms spread to the sea. As we left the shore behind, I remember saying a prayer, though I am not a Christian. I hoped it would cancel out the bad news told by the stars.

“One of Dong’s men guided us through the channels. When we reached open water, a small boat came alongside and took him off. He left us a chart. We must stay on that course, he said, because patrol boats along the way had also been bribed to expect us and let us pass. In three days we would reach Malaysia.”

“Were you happy to leave?”

“There was no joy on the boat that night. We were leaving everything to save each other; to save our family. No one slept except my youngest daughter, Mihn, only three years old. My wife cried although it upset the children. She always obeyed the calendar, and she felt sure we would wreck in a storm or be boarded by the pirates that waited for those like us.

“Near dawn, we passed two patrol boats but, as the guard predicted, they made no move to stop us. The sun came up and the water was calm. We had worried over this because it was a season for storms. I steered but have little experience in boats. I was happy not to have to navigate in rough weather.

“Soon the women fixed breakfast. My wife brought me hot food that tasted good for these conditions. My family began to mingle with members of the other family and by mid-morning both families were singing songs of thanks to Buddha for our escape. Mihn awoke and came to sit on my knee as I steered. Everyone seemed in good spirits except my mother, who was seasick, and my wife, who thought the worst.

“I began to feel relief. As head of the family it had been my decision to risk escape. I began to look ahead to Malaysia, to our time in the resettlement camp. My wife came to me and tried to smile despite her fears. We talked about America and what our life might be like there. The sun rose steadily, the water remained calm, and there were no boats in sight. Mihn grew restless, leaning over the stern to wet her small hands in the cool water. My wife worried about her falling overboard so she carried her forward where the singing grew louder. Later, my father came to reassure me. He knew I had worried greatly about taking the family from the land of our ancestors. ‘We will return in my lifetime,’ he predicted. He was fifty-four.”

He pauses. For several seconds it is as though he has forgotten a detail he is now struggling to recall. His eyebrows knit over the bridge of his nose. Then, something in his manner signals a shift within, an internal debate resolved. He takes a deep breath, exhales, and fingers the empty cup between his thumb and forefinger. He is fighting for control.

“So long ago,” he says, with a finality that seems to end his account. I wait, and with another deep breath he resumes.

“Then the engine sputtered. Although the boat was new, it was an old diesel and I had feared its reliability. I turned to inspect it. Suddenly, the deck collapsed beneath my feet. Everything went white, then black. I woke up in the water, dazed. I was twenty-five meters from the boat. It was in flames. I could hear screams but I thought I was dreaming and did nothing. Then I swam as close as I could but the heat was too much. Before I could think clearly, the boat went down.”

His head bows slightly, casting his face into shadow from the light above. I cannot take my eyes off him.

“I am a poor swimmer. I searched for something to cling to. As the boat sank, several loose boards stayed on the surface and I managed to reach one. It was large and I pulled myself on. Then I passed out. When I woke, it was afternoon and my face was blistered from lying in one position exposed to the sun. I was not near anything, the wreckage or the oil slick or anything. I tried to figure out what had happened. I decided the fuel tank had exploded and blown me clear of the boat.” He pauses here, lowering his head as if suddenly seized with overwhelming fatigue. “They were all gone. All lost.”

“I’m so sorry,” I mutter ruefully, more to myself than to him. “The stars were correct.”

“Yes, but I was not. The fuel tank was not the cause. That afternoon, I heard the sounds of a powerful motor. I thought at first the boat in the distance was my salvation, although just then living and dying were the same to me. I was about to wave my arm to attract its attention when I saw the yellow star, the communist flag. Suddenly, a new fear took hold of me. I slid into the water, holding the board, and watched as the boat slowed, then stopped.

“The first man to emerge from the cabin was Dong. I recognized him at once and my fear grew larger. Then, two men came up in wetsuits and scuba gear. They dived overboard, and in that instant I knew what had happened. A bomb planted in the boat had been timed to go off when we were out of sight of land. Dong’s divers were below the oil slick, collecting the rest of the gold he had so fairly let us remove from the country.” His voice is a whisper now, and over the incessant hum of the jets, his words are difficult to discern.

“I was going to kill him. I started swimming to his boat to do what I could when I realized how foolish it was. They would shoot me in the water like a shark or a porpoise. And, I remembered something else. More families from my region would follow us. Unless I reached shore, no one would know what became of the Quans. That, of course, is why Dong let us leave instead of demanding all the gold on shore. Spies would report to others like us that we had escaped and Dong’s business would flourish.”

“How were you saved?” I ask.

“A fishing boat two days later. I was delirious until we reached land. They put in at Can Tho, where I recovered from sunburn and dehydration.”

Throughout his account his eyes have strayed only briefly from forward, as though the entire horror were running on a small screen mounted on the back of the seat before him. Watching those eyes, dark and blank, has been like standing on the end of a pier gazing out into night. But now, with the chronology of his rescue behind, a light appears, a glint, as though, from that same pier, distant running lights signal a seaward approach. His eyes narrow, and the running lights draw nearer. His voice firms.

“I returned to Saigon. Another family was preparing to leave. The head of that family I knew. I told him what had happened and that I wished to go with them. He would have cancelled their escape but I told him no, we could succeed. I was to be smuggled aboard his boat in a large basket under some clothes. This was to avoid the risk that Dong would recognize me. While he dealt with Dong, I would search for the bomb. There was confusion on deck with thirty or forty people moving back and forth to unload possessions so below I could be thorough.

“I found it almost at once, near the fuel tank where I assumed it would be placed. It was crude but effective, made of material stolen or captured from the Americans. I loosened it and put it in my shirt.”

Involuntarily I draw back a fraction, as though distancing myself from the explosive he once carried. His glint has hardened, dropping the temperature within to a point near absolute zero.

“By agreement, my friend began a dispute with Dong over the split of the gold. His attention was diverted. I left the boat and hurried into the shack by the river that Dong and his men used as a headquarters. There, I planted the bomb under a sofa, well hidden. It took only a minute. I returned to the boat as Dong was insisting in a loud voice that the division was fair. He threatened to shoot my friend and have his family arrested. Minutes later, we sailed.”