Behind the Moon (23 page)

‘Well, I hear that Mr Professor wants to escape to Paris,’ Mr Ho said slowly. ‘He knows a man with a boat. They will be leaving at the end of April. Perhaps we could join them.’

In separate groups of two and three, they loaded themselves with food and left for Cuu Long—the Mekong Delta. They hid among the long grass and low sweeping palm branches of a sheltered inlet for two days until a sampan came to collect the thirteen of them: Mr Thieu and Mr Ho, Duong, Ai-Van and their three daughters, Duc, Phi-Phuong and their two sons, and Linh and Tien. Oars dipped with gentle gulps into glimmering water and the boat eased slowly towards the mouth of the estuary. A few hours later, they pulled up beside a thirty-three metre fishing trawler which, they realised to their dismay, was already crammed with too many people. Torchlights flashed and in the sweep of the beams they saw, propped up against the engine room, a large hand-painted sign: ‘PLEASE HELP. WE WANT FREEDOM.’

A silhouette detached itself from the mass of humanity and straddled the edge of the boat, leaning down towards them. ‘Where’s the payment?’

‘It’s impossible,’ Mr Thieu said angrily. ‘This was not what we were promised. The boat will sink.’

‘Take it or leave it,’ the shadow shrugged. ‘Not everybody will make it, if you are worried about space. Some will die along the way. You had better decide quickly. If you are not coming on board, we will leave now.’

‘Uncle, we have no choice,’ Duc whispered to Mr Thieu. ‘Don’t make him angry. He might take it out on us during the voyage.
Cha
, please give him the gold.’

‘Very well then. Here is your payment.’ Mr Ho reached inside his shirt and pulled out a soft cloth bag, handing it up to the grasping fingers above him. They waited in silence while torchlight flickered over the bag and the man took out the gold taels and jewellery that they had brought. He gave a derisive laugh.

‘This is very funny. You are a bunch of jokers, yes? You think this will pay for the thirteen of you?’

‘It’s all we have,’ Mr Ho said apprehensively. ‘We sold everything we owned. There is nothing more.’

The man shook his head. ‘See these people on board? Do you know how much they paid? Twenty taels per person! You have enough here for nine people only. Four of you will have to return.’

‘That is impossible. We cannot split up.’

‘Then I cannot take any of you. But I will keep a few taels as a fee for all my trouble arranging this pick-up.’

It was pitch-black under the moonless night, the only light coming from the pinpricks of stars now that the man had clicked off his torch. Those on board the trawler huddled together and said nothing, listening passively to this exchange. On the sampan, the Hos and Mr Thieu grasped each other’s hands and felt panic coursing through their taut bodies. Seconds ticked by in agonising indecision. Ai-Van’s youngest daughter broke the silence with a wail. She hugged the child and put her hand over the toddler’s mouth, urgently ordering her silence.

‘Last chance,’ the man said. He lit a cigarette and they could see the orange tip glowing in the dark.

Mr Thieu spoke up. ‘You say we have enough only for nine people, but please consider that we are not all adults. There are six young children here. They won’t take up much space. If you won’t take us all, I myself will remain behind, but please take these others.’

‘Mr Professor, you cannot do this!’ Mr Ho turned to face his best friend, blindly reaching a hand out to him.

‘Trong, you have always respected me as a teacher and an elder brother. Do as I say now,’ Mr Thieu said in a low voice.

‘If anybody should board that boat, it must be you. This was all your plan.’

‘My four sons are buried in this country, and my wife also. What reason do I have for leaving? Paris? Paris is the dream of my youth, not the reality of my old age. But you, you have your family with you. Your sons and daughters and grandchildren. Go and make a new life for yourselves. Old Thieu will stay and keep faith with his family.’ He raised his voice and called out to the man on the boat. ‘Sir. Will you take six tiny children and six adults?’

‘Six children and five adults. That is all. You had better start climbing on board now if you are coming.’

Mr Ho touched Phi-Phuong’s shoulder. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Start climbing the ladder.’

‘Father, I’ll stay behind,’ Duong said. ‘It’s my duty as the eldest son.’

‘No. It’s precisely because you are the eldest son that you ought to go,’ Duc argued. ‘I’ll stay.’

‘No, Duong, Duc. You should both go with your wives and children. I’m ordering you. I will stay back with Mr Professor. We’re just two old men. All of you are young with your lives ahead of you.’

Linh laid her hand on her father’s arm, and he said at once, ‘Don’t challenge me on this. I forbid you to speak. Get on board that boat right now.’

He tried to push her roughly towards the rope, but she handed her child to Phi-Phuong and slid closer to her father, wrapping her arms around him. She whispered:

‘If moved by love you won’t let go of me,

I fear a storm will blow and blast our home.

You’d better sacrifice just me—one flower

will turn to shreds, but green will stay the leaves.

Whatever lot befalls me I accept—’

‘No,’ her father said violently. ‘Stop it. Don’t you dare quote
Kieu
at me. Not at such a time. I won’t listen to you.’

He threw off her hand and stuck his fingers in his ears like a stubborn frightened child. She leaned forward, kissed the back of his hand and tugged it away from his ear.

Still she quoted: ‘What is she worth, a stripling of a girl who’s not repaid one whit a daughter’s debts?’

He was weeping now, his thin shoulders shuddering under the gentle grip of her fingers. She had never seen her father shed a tear before. She slid her hands down his arms until she held his gnarled hands. He turned his own palms under hers and clasped her fingers. He laid his wrinkled wet cheek against hers. ‘There is no debt. Don’t you understand? No debt! Only love from the moment you drew your first breath. I don’t care what the poets and the teachers say.’

‘I have to do this. I know the shame I brought on the family, the gossip and the loss of face you endured because of my actions. I need to do this now, for you and for the family, but most of all for myself. Let me regain a little selfrespect and repay my debt to heaven.’

‘Not in this way,’ he pleaded. ‘Make it up some other way. Think about your daughter. She needs you now.’

‘I need to do this,’ she repeated. ‘I won’t get on that boat. Don’t worry; I’ll follow you.’

He drew his daughter to him and held her close, stroking her slim back, running his fingers lovingly down the thick braid of her hair. Then he eased away from her and looked at Mr Thieu. ‘Dear Mr Professor,’ he said. ‘How can I ever repay—’

‘There is no debt,’ the other man echoed. ‘You’d better go now. Linh is doing the right thing. Let your daughter follow the righteous path.’

Mr Ho hugged Linh one last time. She rubbed away the tears from his face with her fingers, then she sat calmly in the rocking sampan with Mr Thieu as her father, the last to board, grasped the lowest rung of the rope ladder and hauled himself up the trawler. He scissored his legs over the side of the boat and climbed in. He looked down at her and there were no words to convey what he wanted to say. His gut twisted in anguish and he felt as though he would vomit grief. He shook his head abruptly, for he knew that he had made a terrible mistake in giving in to her will. He reached out his hand to her and said, ‘No, it mustn’t be this way.’

The engine of the trawler roared into life. The fishing boat drew away from the sampan and sputtered towards the open sea.

Three years later, Linh sat in a listing boat and watched as a man called Binh, wearing nothing but his underwear, bailed water. The boat had been damaged in the second pirate attack and now the engine was disabled. The women coiled into each other’s near-nakedness and closed their eyes. They did not know how many men and children were still alive and how many wounded. As the deck sank closer to the skin of the sea, swollen corpses nudged the creaking sides. A gentle visitation from the dead.

‘We’re sinking,’ Binh snapped. ‘Don’t just sit there. Do something. Give me your clothes to stuff into this hole.’

Out of the darkness a voice said, ‘We have no clothes.’

Linh ducked down into the cargo hold and emerged with pots and woks. She put a hand on a woman’s shoulder and felt bare flesh shrinking away from her touch.

‘We must help Binh or the boat will sink and we’ll all drown,’ she said urgently.

‘We may as well drown,’ the woman said. She buried her face on her raised knees, hugging herself into a tight ball and keening hysterically. Linh slapped her hard and she stopped.

‘Where’s your kindness?’ she demanded tearfully.

‘It’s all used up,’ Linh said flatly. She turned away and clambered over to Binh. She took the largest pot and started bailing. Some of the other men and women followed suit. They bailed water for hours. Or it could have been a few minutes. The reality of their lives microscoped into the mechanical motions of dunking vessels, scooping water and tossing their brimming loads back into the sea. Fingers wrinkled, arched spines ached and prickled with pain.

Perhaps around midnight, the bright lights of a huge ship surged over the horizon and bathed them in radiance. They wondered without much hope whether salvation was at hand. The silhouettes that emerged over the ship’s edge scarcely seemed human, ringed as they were with a halo of light. Binh shouted up to the ship. After a quarter of an hour, a bundle was lowered over the ship’s side. Binh caught it and unknotted the rope. He opened a sack of clothes, food, water, motor oil, mechanical tools, and about 200 Philippine pesos.

The deck of the ship was plunged abruptly into darkness. The engines rumbled loudly and the ship began to move away, the powerful thrust of its forward motion sending the rocking waves surging over the sides so that they had to bail twice as hard to stay afloat. They watched until the ship disappeared into darkness and they could see and hear nothing but the ocean. The night appeared blacker than before. Their boat had not seemed so frail, survival so impossible, until they had looked up and seen the towering steel mass of the ship looming far above them.

The women continued to bail water while two men accompanied Binh to the engine room. When they heard the engine coughing to life, they were neither astonished nor relieved. The boat began to push feebly against the weight of water. On the deck they bent, scooped, straightened, tossed. Bent, scooped, straightened and tossed for an eternity.

Drifting southwards, they raised their eyes and saw fire flaming the sky like a dragon’s angry roar. Nothing could surprise them now. Instinctively, they headed towards the light. As they drew closer, the air was heavy with the stench of crude oil and rotten eggs, and they realised that they were looking at the massive pilot light of an offshore petroleum rig. Binh steered the boat towards it. Smaller lights perforated the side of the pontoons under the main barge and the whole contraption looked like a massive seaborne city elevated on ten steel piles. They sputtered fitfully towards the production rig and, when they drew up by one of the steel piles, Binh cut out the engine and tied the boat to an offshore supply vessel moored alongside the pile.

‘Get out,’ he said to them. ‘I’m going to sink the boat. We can’t travel any further in this leaking thing.’

They began to climb onto the OSV but a guard lurched out onto the deck and chased them off.

‘Climb onto the pile,’ Binh ordered. He was already taking a hammer to the wooden deck of the boat. Grasping hold of any strut that they could reach on the trussed pile, they hauled themselves up to the first platform, then to the second platform. When Binh saw them perching safely there, he hammered a larger hole through the side of the boat that had been rammed by Thai pirates. Water surged in and it began to sink. He sprang from the deck and began to climb the steel pile.

The guard on board the OSV had alerted the production platform by now. Lights flared and men shouted down at them to get off the rig. It started to rain, huge fat drops plopping onto the sea. They were drenched within minutes. Thunder cracked and the sky was shattered with violent light. Below them, the ocean churned and spat.

‘We should climb higher,’ Linh said, looking down fearfully at the boiling waves. Slowly, for the steel framework was now slippery, they climbed to the platform just under the pontoons, where they could go no further. They huddled together for warmth and comfort against the clubbing thunder and the lashing quills of rain. They gripped each other’s hands but nobody said a word. Bone- drenched, they suddenly saw a huge nylon sheet descending, warping wildly in the wind.

‘Go on and catch hold of it,’ one of the workers on the deck above hollered down to them. ‘Cover yourselves.’

They clutched at the sheet until they could drag it in safely without losing their balance and falling off the platform. They tucked the tarp around themselves and anchored it by sitting on the edges. There was nothing else to do but wait. By dawn, the storm had worn out its rage. The sea below was grey and flecked with foam. An hour later, a worker descended to the platform in a tugger. He opened the cage door and helped a few of the women to climb in, then the crane hauled it back up to the production platform. It took several trips before they were all winched up to safety.

‘We’ve radioed our boss,’ the worker said. ‘We’ve got permission to take you to Malaysia in the OSV when it leaves in a couple of days. It’s okay. You guys are safe now.’

Pulau Bidong refugee camp, Malaysia

Dear Mr Bob Gibson,

It is an honour to hear from you. I was surprised. Thank you
for your letter and your encouraging news. It is very kind of
you to write to UNHCR and Australian government for me.
You are always kind to me.

I have only one wish now. I want to see my family again,
especially my daughter Tien. They are all I think of now.