Behind the Moon (24 page)

It is wonderful that my Tien is going to same school as
your son. Heaven is looking after her. I did not know you had
girlfriend when you were in Vietnam. I am happy for you
that you have found good wife and that you are blessed with
good son also. Mr Bob, you are doing very well!

I am also happy when you say that my brother Duong
looks after Tien so well. I am happy he sends her to your wife
for English lessons. I have had many English lessons from
Presbyterian minister here. I read English books all the time
to improve. I help him to teach English now. I teach other
Vietnamese people what they want to learn: asking questions
like, ‘Can you take me to Grand Central Station?’ or, ‘Where
is Empire State Building?’ or tell the taxi driver, ‘Mott Street,
Chinatown, please.’ Everybody wants to go to America.

Thank you for sending me Duong’s address. I will write
to him but I will not write to my father until I know whether
I can come to Australia. He is so old now. I do not want to
disappoint him again. He has been so disappointed in his life.

You ask me how I escape from Vietnam. It is long story. I
tried to escape twice. The first time in 1979, Mr Thieu
arranged it. I met his cousin in Bac Lieu and he brought me
to small boat. We were betrayed and arrested by the communists.
I was sent to prison in Bac Lieu. They kept me with political
prisoners. They were tied up all the time but it was not too
bad for me. Better than life in New Economic Zone because
the work not so hard and we had something to eat every day.

After six months they let me out. I had to sign the paper
promising not to escape again. I went back to Saigon to look
after Mr Thieu but he died while I was in prison. I was very
sad because I had no more links to the old life. Every year I
burn joss sticks for him and my mother and my poor baby
daughter on the festival of Vu Lan. I want to honour their
death anniversaries but everything is so confused. Sometimes
I don’t know what day or month it is. Sometimes I do not
remember when they died.

Life was very hard for me. I had nowhere to live because
people had moved into our old house. I did not mind very
much. I did not want to stay in Cholon anymore. Too many
bad memories for me there. Also, I do not have good reputation
because people remember that I was with Bucky during the
American war so they look down on me and point at me in the
streets now I have no father and Mr Thieu to protect me.

I went to Saigon and made little house for myself in poor
part of town near river. There, anybody can put up shelter
anywhere. Nobody says anything. The houses are built on
stilts. They jut over muddy little stream that goes into river.
When it rains heavily or tide comes in, then little stream
floods and we paddled up and down streets in small boats.
When it is dry season, there is no water, only mud with lots
of filthy rubbish and dung and very bad smell.

I had to let police know where I was living. At first they
came to visit me every few days. I was so scared. They made
me go to political meetings three nights a week. It was hard
for me to find work because I had black name since I tried to
escape. Also because of my black name, I had no ration card
for food. After few months I ran away because I was afraid I
would be sent to New Economic Zone again. You may guess
how I earned money. You were always kind to me when I was
a bar-girl in Vung Tau so I hope you will not despise me.
Please do not tell my family. You do not know the things I do
to survive. I feel I am not myself, Ho Ly-Linh, anymore. It is
somebody else do these things.

The second time I tried to escape, it was with some
friends I made in shanty town. Most of them tried to escape
before. They told me story of married man with six children
who tried to leave Vietnam four times but he was caught
every time and then he had to go to prison. His whole life
was just trying to escape and going to prison, then trying to
escape again.

This time we planned everything very well. We sent one
fisherman down Saigon River many times to see how often he
was stopped and to find out where were police checkpoints. We
were very careful. When we left in May, we sailed down river
in small cargo boat which carried manure. One engine was
very weak, the other strong. We only used small engine so that
nobody would think we had engine big enough to go out to
sea. We changed the look of the boat many times between
checkpoints. Sometimes we put up lots of clothes. Other times
we hanged out dried fish and put up canvas cover painted two
different colours on two sides so we could turn it over. There
were very many of us on the boat and we had to hide below
deck. It was very cramped.

I cannot tell you about our journey across the sea except
many people died when we were attacked by Thai pirates.
I cannot remember. I will tell you about this camp I am
at instead.

Camp is very crowded because all buildings perch on the
edge of island, near sea. Behind this small strip of land
are very steep hills, green like Vietnamese countryside. The
Presbyterian minister who runs English school says it is
outrageous because there are nearly twenty thousand of us
living in one square kilometre. But it is all right for me
because I grew up in Cholon.

Actually, it reminds me very much of home. People live
on top of each other, laundry is hanging out everywhere and
everybody has something to sell. There are all kinds of cooks
here. There are bakers and cakemakers, people who cook and
sell noodles and dumplings. There are hairdressers, barbers
and mechanics. There are tailors, pawnbrokers, watch
repairers, artists, and Chinese doctors and acupuncturists.
You can get anything on the black market if you have money.
They say that Malaysian fishermen swim out to the island at
night to make deals with Vietnamese ex-army men. Sometimes
we are quite afraid of them. Mr Bob, I am so tired of
being scared.

I have a lot of work to do here. In the daytime I help
doctor look after sick people. There are so many sick people
here, especially with skin trouble, influenza and dysentery.
Doctor teaches me many things. He says I make good nurse.
I like nursing. It makes me feel good about myself when I
help other people, like I pay back heaven a little bit. If I come
to Australia, I hope I can be nurse. In afternoon I help Presbyterian
minister teach English. He has lots of books. I don’t
know how he got them. He lets me read after English classes.
Lots of kind people here also.

I miss my daughter and my family very much but I glad
they don’t know what I do to survive. Maybe it is better they
don’t know I am alive. If they think of me, I want them to
remember the old Linh, not this stranger inside my skin.

You are the only one I tell about these things. You are my
only link to my old life in Saigon and with Bucky, and also
with the life I hope to have in Australia one day. I am so
grateful to you, Mr Bob. I hope I can repay you one day.

Sincere regards to you and your beautiful family,

Ho Ly-Linh

Father and Son

Pity the father facing his young child.

Looking at her, he bled and died within . . .

I would not mind the ax for these old bones,

but how can I endure my child’s ordeal?

Nguyen Du,
The Tale of Kieu

When Gibbo was a child, he used to shut himself in his bedroom after dinner and talk to himself. The window was usually open, the yellowing gauze curtains ghosting in the slight breeze. From far away came the sound of a backfiring car and the pock of a cricket ball connecting with a bat, followed by a child’s high-pitched voice calling, ‘Howzat!’

Bob passed by the bedroom one evening and was filled with irritation and pity as he heard his son talking to himself. Nigel should have been out there in the reserve playing with the neighbourhood kids, Bob thought. You had to play cricket or footy, or how could you get along with other kids?

‘Nobody wants to play with me at school,’ Gibbo confided to his favourite toy—a ragged dog missing a button eye and a floppy ear. ‘Ben tripped me on the asphalt today and I grazed my knees until they bled. He said I was a pansy when I cried, but I had to go to the sick bay.’

‘You don’t need them when you’ve got me,’ the dog barked back to Gibbo.

‘Yeah, we don’t need them,’ Gibbo repeated defiantly.

Bob felt pain bite his chest like a heart attack. He wanted to do something, but he was paralysed by awkwardness. He never knew what to say to this son of his. Clearing his throat loudly, he stepped into the doorway and flipped on the light switch. Gibbo flinched and blinked owlishly at him. It aggravated Bob immediately, his son’s fear, his gutlessness.

Sometimes he felt guilty about his reflexive contempt, but when he reached inside, he could no longer find the vestiges of whatever softness or patience had once existed. Resentment was sclerotic. He was a man accustomed to rehearsing the bitterness of his Vietnam experience and the disappointment his life and family had turned out to be. He had wanted so much more from life, once upon a time. Then he was sent to war and, unnerved by the constant face-to-face confrontation with death, he came home and got married as soon as possible in the delusion that he was returning to a normal life. After a few years of anaesthetised existence, he suddenly woke up to find himself middle-aged and trapped. He could not help venting his frustration on his spineless son.

‘What’re you doing sitting in the dark?’ Bob asked gruffly. ‘It’s still light outside. How about we go bowl a few overs?’

Gibbo scrubbed the back of his hand over his eyes and looked away, saying nothing. It was a mistake to have come in, Bob thought. He was just making things worse for the boy. He wasn’t welcome here, in his own son’s room. He turned away.

‘Ah, you’d best clean up your room,’ he ordered as he shut the door behind him. Out in the hallway, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, rubbing his fist against his chest.

Inside the room, Gibbo chanted over and over to his dog, ‘We don’t need nobody. We’ve got us.’

Nearly fifteen years later, Bob experienced a sense of déjà vu as he lurked indecisively in the corridor outside his son’s bedroom and listened to Gibbo’s ragged sobs. The feeling of inadequacy that pulled at his gut was all too familiar. He could not bear the sound of his son’s sorrow. He’d watched his son squirt out into the world, all wrinkled red and wriggling like a fish, and he’d started weaving the warm glow of father–son fantasies around them both. Even if none of that had come true, even if his son had disappointed his dreams and he couldn’t help flogging Gibbo with dead hopes, Bob wanted to protect him still. And then to see him come to this!

He wanted to whip up fierce anger against someone— anyone—to obliterate the pain he endured along with his son. It was treachery, Bob thought. His son had been betrayed by all those Asians. First, Justin had tried to hit on Gibbo, then Tien and Stanley had tried to sue Gillian, and now Linh had taken out an AVO against his son.

All his life he’d had to contend with his father’s virulent antagonism towards Asians. Bob had only to shut his eyes and tilt his head to one side to hear the late Gordon Gibson’s voice hissing hatred in his ear: dirty chinks, fishbreathed gooks, bloody slopes. Can’t trust them. Commie bastards, all of them. And yet the child Bob had been confused because his father, for all his professed hatred of the Yellow Peril, had made him visit the Yipsoons several times a year, particularly at Chinese new year, and he had maintained a sullen respect towards old Mrs Yipsoon.

‘They’re different, that’s why,’ Gordon Gibson said brusquely when Bob ventured to question him. ‘They’ve been here since the gold rushes. They’re practically Australian. They’re the exception that proves the rule.’

Old Mrs Yipsoon just said, ‘You ought to remember where you come from and who your people are. You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

Gordon Gibson looked as if he could have struck her down at that moment. He clenched his jaw and reined in his temper like a good man.

To the young Bob, his father was a man’s man. Every cliché in the book was true about Gordon Gibson. Tough as old boots, he loved his country, did his stern duty in war and never failed to provide for his family. He was a man made for wearing an Akubra, slitted eyes squinting out to the hard blue heat of the horizon, striding tall and confident along the rusty flats of the landscape, even though he’d lived in the city all his life. He was harsh but fair to his kids. He disciplined them and instilled in them the self-respect to transcend their working-class roots and scramble into the ranks of the professions. There was nobody Bob admired more. Outright approval was always withheld by the old man, but in all his life he’d only expressed disappointment once: when Bob married a leftleaning hippie, Gillian Armitage, a year after he returned from Vietnam. His father wanted him to marry a sensible Australian woman, not a ten-pound Pom with women’s lib ideas. ‘Least she’s not an Eye-talian or Asian, I suppose,’ Gordon Gibson grumbled. Bob had looked away uneasily, ashamed of the tug of attraction he’d once felt towards Linh and other Vietnamese women.

When Bob was sent to Vietnam, he did his duty like his father before him even though he couldn’t see the point of saving people like the Vietnamese. Why bother? The events of 1975 proved his point. The waste of Aussie lives for a people who couldn’t be bothered to fight for freedom. And yet he hadn’t been able to resist the gamin grins of valiant kids whose cheerful resilience never ceased to amaze him, whose wide-eyed awe never failed to flatter him. He became friends with Linh and, because of her and Bucky and Madame Catinat, he met the Ho family. The reality of the Asian family in Asia was different from anything he’d been led to expect. The cleanliness, for one thing. However dirty the streets might be, the meticulous washing, scrubbing, sweeping and cleaning of the interior of the home was daunting. He unlaced his boots before he stepped into the house and felt self-conscious about his big smelly feet and sweat-stained socks.

His intitial suspicions and prejudice were allayed by their hospitality. He knew that as professionals and intellectuals, the Hos had suffered greatly from the massive inflation created by the American war. They were not wealthy people. Mr Ho had to send his daughter out to earn her own living and the shame of it was crippling the old man. Yet when Madame Catinat and Mr Thieu brought him to visit the Hos that first time, they invited him to join them for a meal. He noticed that they themselves ate little but steamed rice and vegetables, piling all the meat into his bowl. ‘We already ate plenty,’ Duong insisted cheerfully. Mrs Ho, who held the purse-strings of the family—as did most Vietnamese wives—gave Duc some money they could ill afford and instructed him to run downstairs to buy a beer for Bob. He was touched by their generosity.

But then there was the rudeness. Sometimes they slid their eyes away and chattered in Vietnamese to each other and he couldn’t understand what they were saying. He was suspicious when they laughed because he knew they must be laughing at him. One moment he felt welcomed and he liked them immensely, then he felt out of place and resentful. He didn’t trust them. He didn’t know what he felt about these people after all. Because apart from them, there were also the ARVN soldiers whom he was taught to despise. They seemed too small in stature to occupy their own country, except there were so damn many of them, and they were, in the end, part of the same race of ‘noggies’ the Aussies had gone there to fight. There was also the dirt in the streets and the casual, careless expectoration of phlegm in public places, the stink of garlic and fish sauce and urine, the corruption of certain South Vietnamese officials, the tawdry brothels, massage parlours and prostitutes openly soliciting and, above all, the VC, who just didn’t fight fair and how could you respect them for that?

He went home deeply confused and troubled, but he put it all behind him when he married Gillian and his son was born. Then Duong wrote to him from the refugee camp in Manila and, when he remembered the openhearted generosity of the Hos towards him, he wanted to do whatever he could to help them. The Hos were the exception that proved the rule, he repeated to himself firmly. They were worthy people. He wrote letters. He met with politicians on their behalf. He did his best to ensure that they were comfortably settled in a housing commission apartment. All this he did without anyone’s knowledge, for he did not want his own father to know that he had gone soft where Asians were concerned. After Gordon Gibson died, there was no reason to say anything. It would only have made everybody uncomfortable, him most of all.

How surprised and disconcerted he’d been when his son became friends with Linh Ho’s daughter and brought her home for Gillian to tutor. When he met Tien for the first time, he looked into her face and saw Linh’s eyes staring out of Bucky’s features. For the sake of her parents, he would treat her like his own daughter, he decided. In time he grew closer to her than to his own son. Acceptance was easier when it wasn’t your own kid, when she was a girl who did not have to live up to the impossible ideals of Australian masculinity laid down by Gordon Gibson—the ideals that even Bob himself failed to fulfil.

And then Tien had to go and reject everything that he stood for. She had assimilated so well—he’d seen to that; he’d tried to help her fit in, taught her to speak like an Aussie—and then she threw it all away and announced her solidarity with Asianness as if she were declaring war on him. She distanced herself from him and his son. She embraced a culture that wasn’t even hers—Cantopop! She didn’t even speak their language. Only in a Western country could a half-Vietnamese, half-black American girl take one look at the dizzying permutations of intermingling Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Indians, Sri Lankans, Filipinos and Japanese around her and define herself as generically, if not genetically, Asian.

When she went to university, she shook the dust of the western suburbs—both Anglo and Asian—off her feet. On the rare occasions when she came over for a meal, she used the hyphenated jargon of fine dining (sun-dried, pan-fried, honey-glazed, wok-seared, oven-roasted, truffleinfused— and everything just so bloody more-ish) to demonstrate her effortless cultural chameleonism; to show Bob that he might belong to the old Australia where she’d had to have the rules explained to her, but the tables had turned and now she fitted right in to the new cosmopolitan culture in which he was just a gawky tourist visiting the big smoke.

Then she married that tosser Stan, moved to California and kicked away the country that had sheltered her and the man who’d made her a true-blue Aussie. Where was the gratitude in that? Bob couldn’t help but feel bewildered by what had happened to this society, to the kids he once knew. And under his hurt and confusion there was a growing need to strike back and stake out his own territory, otherwise how was he ever going to feel at home again in the very place he’d lived all his life?

Bob realised people found him hard to take and he was perversely proud of that. But he also knew he was a good man. Fair. He was fair because he was able to set aside his father’s prejudice and help people, even if they were Asians. He’d helped Linh because he had been a little infatuated with her—not that he would admit it even to himself—and he’d helped Tien because she was Linh’s daughter and simply because, dammit, he just plain liked her. How did they repay him? They’d summoned Nigel to court and the magistrate looked down at his son, saw a stalker, and slapped out an AVO. Nigel wouldn’t have a criminal record, they explained, not unless he breached the conditions and was charged and found guilty. But still it was there. On the police system. Nigel Gibson, stalker. Linh and Tien had done this to his son. Bob grieved because they’d proved that his father had been right all along when he’d wanted to believe otherwise. You just couldn’t trust these Asians.

Gibbo stared in stunned disbelief at the AVO. He read it over and over again, bewildered by what it meant. He didn’t fully understand its implications until he faced the magistrate. Then feeling returned, swamping him in a backwash of pain. He read the AVO again and his sense of himself dissolved.

This was what it felt like: he was stumbling through a maze of mirrors in a fun park when suddenly someone stepped up from behind and collared him, grabbing his hair and yanking it back violently, jerking up his chin and forcing his watering eyes to look into a mirror and face a reflection that might or might not have been his own. How could he possibly know what was true?

In his mind he was a lover. He had proved himself faithful through Linh’s moody silence, doubts and absence. How could she—how could
anyone
—not see and appreciate his devotion? He loved the age-honed beauty of her features, her skin slightly slackened but still uncreased, protected from the sun by a weird assemblage of hats, gloves and long-sleeved shirts. He loved the neat petiteness of her, the way her sturdy body was beginning to pear out into rounded hips. It wasn’t just that he wanted to make love to her, even though his penis stirred and twitched when he indulged in fantasies of sex with an older woman: the eroticism of her experience; the deliciously terrifying thrill of being straddled and used by a woman confident enough to please herself; the irresistible superiority of feeling that he was a man who looked beyond toned muscles and unwrinkled skin for sensuality. He was set apart from the usual run of lovers by his own discriminating taste for the subtly layered beauty of an ageing woman. He longed to be enfolded by her, to feel her unfurling around him. Safe.