The Eaves of Heaven (6 page)

THE NORTH
1941–1943

9. C
RICKET
F
IGHT

F
rom the time of the Japanese invasion to the onset of the Great Famine, the country reeled through a period of escalating turmoil. A pervading lawlessness spread across the land. Opportunists thrived in the cities, availing themselves of monopolies and commissions—the largess that once was the sole purview of the French. Bandits plagued the highways. Peasant uprisings were common in the countryside. Underground, Communists and Nationalists were vying for power. The former gained popularity among the commoners. The latter had promoted the Japanese promise of liberating Vietnam, but the Japanese proved themselves even crueler masters than the French. The populace staggered under new taxes and outrageous rice requisitions. Young men found themselves conscripted and taken away to work as coolies. In its drive to conquer Asia, the Japanese army was quickly draining the country’s resources and setting the stage for a famine that would decimate a fifth of the population.

It was the grand prelude to disaster and, for me, the happiest years of my life.

I had the blessings of a privileged childhood, though, naturally, I was not oblivious to war. I’d seen guns and soldiers and heard of battles—it was all the adults ever talked about. But these things served as mere passing curiosities and random facts, because I was at that early age of boyhood ruled by binary simplicities: daylight and nightfall, school hours and free time, boredom and fun. It was that age where clouds had animal shapes and the seam of heaven and earth appeared as real and solid as the stitching on my shirt. Time had a spacious quality in which life unrolled as a series of unconnected events. I looked at soldiers marching through our village and saw only their impressive guns and uniforms, not the suffering they brought. I looked at a poorly seeded paddy and saw only the tadpoles to be caught, not the season of hunger to come.

My cousin Tan and I reveled in this intermediate age of uselessness and early independence, too young to be harnessed for chores, too big to be confined to the playgrounds. We had escaped adult supervision. The days were ours to squander. We roamed and played in the sea of rice paddies. We had the occasional guidance of the buffalo boys, who were essentially older versions of ourselves, stretched out and filled up though still shirtless, barefoot, and sunned as brown as syrup.

Our favorite buffalo boy was Chau, the widow cook’s only son. He was thirteen, which was effectively an eon older than us. For a few brief months, he went to school and sat with us in our village’s single classroom taught by my once-removed Uncle Uc. Soon after Chau learned how to write his name, he thanked our mothers for giving him the opportunity to learn and asked for their permission to quit. His mother kept his white short-sleeved shirt, sandals, and writing tablet with hopes that Chau would come to his senses. The moon-faced boy with the lotus grin had given up the classroom for the bright sky and naps on the back of a buffalo. Oh, how we envied him. He had chosen to be a lord of the fields, whose days were freedom itself; whose head was rich with outdoor intrigues; whose hands were capable of crafting kites, slingshots, fishing poles, bird traps, toy kilns, bamboo flutes, and countless small marvels. He knew where the tart berries grew and could find spicy wild onions on any riverbank. He gave us the secret of honey-grass: A fragrant fistful of it stuffed in the pillow kept the nightmare away. He was the finest of our childhood tutors.

Armed with slingshots and fishing lines, we barefooted across the summer days with the village children. We built tiny earthen ovens and baked catfish and snakehead fish encased in clay or wrapped in banana leaves. We had everything we needed: giant hay bales for hide-and-seek; cool, slimy ponds for splashing; and wind for our kites. We climbed trees and, perching like birds, gorged ourselves on longans, tangerines, and guavas plucked from branches. We lived to wage valiant battles on the lakeshore. Magic wands and enchanted swords. Bamboo popguns and watermelon rinds. We were bandits, legionnaires, French commanders. We were the native heroes who expelled the invaders.

Of all the boyhood diversions, cricket fighting stood out as the singularly superlative game that captured our imagination and endured fondly in our memories even when we had long outgrown it. It was a game that consigned boys and girls alike to countless hours scouring gardens and fields for crickets. At any time of day, we could be seen tiptoeing in the grass, ears cocked to the cricket songs. We flooded them out of their burrows, the large unpredictable browns, the ferocious reds, the swift blacks. We kept them like jewels in exquisitely crafted matchboxes, equipped with cellophane windows for viewing. We lived, ate, slept, and went to school with our beloved pets. It drove Teacher Uc crazy, the chorus of crickets that rang out suddenly in the middle of his lessons.

There was a spot between the village and the estate where we gathered to play. I only remembered it as a timeless place infused with a tender, silky light; an island in the silvery sheen of paddy water, speckled with fluorescent green rice shoots. There was a fishpond and an old, sleepy tamarind tree on a rocky patch of soil near where the village road joined the provincial highway that led to the city and the world beyond.

We met there, a rabble of boys and girls, to barter and trade crickets, marbles, cellophane papers, empty cookie tins, sweets, and playing cards. Someone was always gnawing on a length of sugarcane, and we passed it around like a communal lollipop. We showed off our pets and traded the ones we didn’t want.

My best friend Hoi gave me a tiny chestnut-brown cricket. It had a peculiar keening song. I gave him a coconut candy and a sheet of cellophane paper. Hoi’s grin grew until his eyes squinted shut.

“Oy, Thong! Come look at Binh’s cricket,” Tan shouted. “It’s the sorriest looking bug I’ve ever seen. Its mother must have been a cockroach.”

It was a pretty cricket with a reddish coloring on the belly and wings like lacquered rosewood. Binh didn’t respond to the insult, a sign that he was not eager to risk his cricket.

“Look at his limp feelers. He’s scared,” Tan said to the group. This was a rite of cricket fights, open to players and spectators alike—the trading of slurs and insults until a challenge materialized. “He’s scared just like his owner.”

It was the cue for the audience chorus: “Just like his owner! Just like his owner!”

“Thong’s cricket will eat yours like peanut brittle,” Tan mocked.

“Ha!” Binh had taken the bait. He puffed up to his full height. “Mine will snap yours in half first!”

I leaned into him. “Oh, your mouth is so big, I bet your mother keeps chickens in there!”

The crowd shrieked in delight: “Chickenshit mouth! Chickenshit mouth!”

They laughed and quickly divided into two bands, each giving allegiance for one boy and his cricket. Volleys of taunts and jeers slung round and round, and there was no way either Binh or I could back down without being called a coward or a sissy.

“What’s the bet?” I yelled, holding up my hands for silence.

“Ear boxing,” Binh said.

Pig-bellied Chung, the class clown, squeaked and scurried around, fingers fluttering like a timid sand crab. Everybody laughed. The prize for winning a cricket fight had always been the pleasure of inflicting pain on the loser in one of several creative methods. Binh had made a cheap bet.

“Kick,” I said.

Hoi shouted, “He’ll never pay up!”

A cackle ran through the group. Binh blushed. We all remembered the time Binh lost and refused to be kicked by a boy half his size. After that, no one, not even the girls, would accept his challenges. Being ostracized from the game proved unbearable, and a mere week later, Binh apologized and took the little boy’s foot to his bottom like a good loser.

“Kick! Kick! Kick!” chanted the merciless choir. Everyone, except the boy getting a hard foot in the rear, was a winner.

“Five kicks,” Tan suggested.

“Ten kicks!” cried another, splaying digits to a roar of laughter.

Binh ignored them. “Same as before then: one kick.”

“One kick!” Chung quieted the rabble, playing the part of the ringmaster. “Reds from the stable of Binh against Blackie from the stable of Thong.”

Chung placed a large glass pickling jar on the ground, and the kids quickly gathered around the miniature stadium, packing four-deep, squatting, crouching, piling on top of each other, vying for a good view. Binh carefully opened his matchbox, shook the cricket into his cupped palm, and then placed it in the jar. I put mine in. They were the same size, as evenly matched as one could hope for.

Binh tapped the jar to agitate the crickets. They squared off, hesitating. Left on their own, crickets rarely fought. In most encounters, the hierarchy was immediately established with the weaker cricket submitting to the dominant one by turning away, baring his flank, and fleeing.

I could feel my face reddening. If my cricket was a coward, they’d mock me too. I wished I had kept my cricket safe in his box. Chung dropped a small brown female cricket into the jar and guaranteed a fight.

The moment Reds and Blackie noticed the female, they lunged at each other and grappled. They used their front legs like arms and kicked with their large hind legs. The dagger-like spurs on the hind legs were sharp enough to cut through their armor. The female cricket stayed clear of the combatants. Blackie mounted Reds from behind and bit off a feeler. Reds jumped, launching the both of them across the jar. They struck the glass and tumbled apart. A detached limb twitched on the floor. It was one of Reds’s forelegs. Blackie came forward and took a kick that spun him sideways. Then they engaged in the deadly clinch, clawing away at each other.

We crowded around the mini-stadium, yelling, cheering, locked in the momentary eternity of mortal combat. The crickets separated and, as abruptly as it began, it was over. Reds had his belly slashed open, yellowish entrails showing. He was also missing a feeler and both front legs. Blackie fluttered his wings in a feeble victory dance. He had lost a foreleg. He would not fight again.

The crowd sighed with satisfaction. I scooped my cricket back into the matchbox to be released back to the garden where I’d caught him. Chung reclaimed the female and chucked the red cricket and the broken pieces into the pond for the fish.

The children giggled and moved back to form a circle for us. Binh knew the strategy: Every time you win, you must kick the other boy with all your strength because next time, his cricket might win and he might kick you even harder. Binh had done exactly that to me three times in a row, so he knew he had it coming. Bending over, he braced himself, hands on knees. He didn’t see that I had taken a few steps back. I bounded forward and, in a running kick, unleashed the blow with all my weight behind it. Binh grunted and pitched forward onto the ground, red-faced, eyes in the back of his head, hands clenched between his thighs.

In my eagerness, I had missed and kicked him in the groin.

All the boys and girls laughed so hard they forgot whose turn was next.

In the irrigation ditches, small silvery fish darted, tadpoles lingering along the edges. Way off, a cock crowed. On the breeze rode the scents of a countryside childhood, paddy water, black earth, and honey-grass. Across the fields, the buffalo boys flew their singing kites. Butterfly-shaped wings of red and yellow swooped and climbed, making wistful looping melodies in a bright blue sky.

Some joys were so simple as to be incorruptible in memory, untouchable, neither by distance nor by tragedy. It remained unfathomable to me throughout the bridging decades, how things could abruptly change within a brief span of seasons, not enough time for a child to become a man, or for an orchard to take root. Laughing children of the rice paddies, many of us would not live out our teenage years. None came through unscathed.

We all would fight battles not of our choosing. We would be fierce crickets.

THE SOUTH
1962

10. T
HE
R
ECRUITER

T
he stage was set for war. Within months of splitting the country into North and South, it became apparent that the U.S. would renege on the most important stipulation of the Geneva Accord: It would not allow a free and democratic election to reunite Vietnam. In a single stroke, millions of displaced people, northerners who had migrated south and southerners who had followed the Communists north, would never see their homes again.

On July 7, 1954, the Americans selected Ngo Dinh Diem, a former mandarin and a Catholic, as their choice for prime minister of a Buddhist country. U.S. President Eisenhower gave aid directly to Vietnam, bypassing the French and sending a clear message that France’s time in Vietnam was over. Without hope of regaining control, the French withdrew their remaining troops in South Vietnam and stopped supporting the Vietnamese factions that had sided with them.

Guided by American advisors, Diem overthrew his own emperor in a referendum and seized power for himself—the vilest of treasons that would have, in the previous generation, warranted the beheadings of Diem and his entire family. While the U.S. continued to provide Diem with generous military, financial, and organizational support, it placed no requirement on Diem to allow democratic development through freedom of speech and a multi-party system. Empowered and unfettered, Diem quickly eliminated his political rivals, silenced critics, and initiated a ruthless campaign to rid the South of opposition by branding all dissenters as Communists and imprisoning thousands regardless of political affiliation. Within five years, Diem became the dictator of a police state.

The peasantry grew deeply resentful of Diem’s corrupt policies and cronyism. Persecuted for voicing their complaints, many farmers became Communist sympathizers, which, consequently, facilitated guerillas’ operations in the countryside. Insurgent activities grew more violent and frequent in the South. Even Diem’s own men turned against him, staging a coup that nearly toppled his regime.

In December of 1960, Ho Chi Minh formed the National Liberation Front (NLF), which had its own armed forces called the People’s Armed Forces of Liberation (PAFL), which the Diem government and the Americans called Viet Cong. Although the South Vietnam government controlled the countryside during the daylight hours, at night the PAFL controlled vast areas of the Mekong Delta and parts of the Central Highlands. Throughout 1961, the Viet Cong launched large-scale assaults against the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN). As the conflict developed, the South became critically divided between the pro-Diem faction headed by the Nhan Vi party and the anti-Diem factions, which included suppressed religious and political groups as well as the Viet Cong.

In 1962, I was living and teaching in Ben Tre, a reputed hotbed of Viet Cong insurgency. I had decided to drop out of the Institute of Administration and continue pursuing my degree in teaching. Anh and I were in love, but we couldn’t get married because of my father’s disapproval. A wedding without his blessing was unimaginable, so we simply moved in together.

In Ben Tre, Anh and I rented a one-bedroom duplex in a government-worker complex. It was a modest unit without a kitchen, but it was the best home we had in four years of living together. The backyard had a guava tree with fruit big and sweet enough to sell at the market. Two large fish-egg trees with juicy pinkish-yellow berries shaded the front yard. Our next-door neighbor was a friendly widow who lived alone and took it upon herself to teach Anh the art of homemaking.

Ben Tre was the best post I could find, given the recent glut of teachers. Even with good recommendations and experience, I had to commute half a day by bus and ferry for part-time work at two different places, a public school in Ben Tre and a private high school in Saigon. The situation had worsened with each passing year. With the intense competition for a limited number of jobs, it was inevitable that politics entered the workplace.

At Ben Tre High School, many faculty members joined Diem’s Nhan Vi party; the more ambitious ones went as far as converting to Catholicism to advance their careers. The school principal had no qualms about showing his favoritism for Diem supporters. Despite my two-year seniority at the school, I was assigned the least desirable courses. The classes that I had been teaching for two years were given to new instructors, all Nhan Vi party members. I dared not lodge my grievances for fear of being branded a dissident, but I couldn’t keep my opinions to myself when my students asked about current events and the political situation.

One evening after school, I had a visit from Khoa, one of my students who had helped me find our apartment two years prior. I enjoyed talking to Khoa and didn’t mind helping him with his studies. He often dropped by my house for visits during the weekends, bringing small gifts of fresh fruit from his family’s garden. This was the first time he showed up without notice. I was surprised to see Khoa looking rather nervous.

Khoa greeted Anh and me, then promptly said, “Teacher, can we talk on the patio?”

I agreed and Anh brought us tea and chilled sugarcane batons on the patio. It was unusual for Khoa to ask to speak in private. I waited for him to sip his tea before asking if he had problems at school.

“No, Teacher. My classes are fine.” He paused and then looked directly at me. “I heard you were going to a meeting tonight.”

“I’m meeting Tra later after dinner. I think he needs some help with his studies.”

“Teacher, did you know Tra is a Communist recruiter?”

I shook my head, stunned. Tra was one of my favorite students, diligent and very bright. Although Tra was shy and quiet in class, he often sought me out during lunch and recess breaks to talk about the fighting in the countryside. Many students were very worried about being drafted into the army, and it seemed normal to me that Tra was concerned about the brewing war. When I was his age in school, politics was all my friends and I could think about.

“Tra and I are from the same village. His uncle was killed in a land dispute with the government, and Tra’s family lost the land the Viet Minh gave them. Tra has been a party member since he was thirteen,” he said. The way Khoa met my eyes squarely told me he was putting himself in danger by this revelation.

“Tra is planning to introduce you to his superiors so they can judge your political affiliation.”

“Are you serious? I’ve never shown any indication that I might want to join the Viet Cong.”

“But when students asked you about the government’s policies and the country’s stability, you said the leaders were creating a privileged class for their party members. You were very pessimistic about the government pacification program. You said it would fail.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m a Communist sympathizer.”

“It’s enough to make Tra think that you might be. But he’s not sure—that’s why he’s bringing you to his superiors. If they think you’re sympathetic to the Communist cause, they’ll try to recruit you. By doing that, they will expose themselves. So you must join. Otherwise they will consider you a danger to their organization. They’ll find a way to eliminate you.”

I was shocked. All this time I thought I was safe in Ben Tre by keeping a low profile and focusing on my work. I never took part in teachers’ rallies and I was very careful of saying anything critical of the government to any of the faculty.

“Teacher, from now on, please be careful about what you say to the students. Half of them are Communist sympathizers and party members.”

“Why aren’t you a member?”

Looking at the lines in his palms, Khoa sighed. “My father was a devout Buddhist. Before he died, he made me promise to remain neutral as long as I could. Besides, who would take care of my mother and sister if I got killed in this war?”

I asked him, “Did your family lose land?”

“My father was a carpenter. The Viet Minh only gave land to farmers and sharecroppers, so we gained nothing from the Viet Minh and lost nothing in the government’s reparation program.”

I
KNEW
about the land reforms and remembered the troubles the government had with the peasants, but I had no idea how entrenched the problem had become in the southern countryside. During the first few years in the South, my family was engrossed in our own struggles in Saigon. We didn’t pay much attention to what was happening in the provinces.

Khoa said many of his classmates had seen their fathers jailed and their lands confiscated.

During the war, the Viet Minh had decreed a land reform in the South, where the majority of the land was owned by a small number of plantation families who had prospered under French rule. The Viet Minh redistributed the land to sharecroppers and small-plot farmers. The French could not control the countryside, so the reform went smoothly. For nearly ten years until the French’s surrender, the peasants owned, tilled, and invested in their land. Following the conditions of the Geneva Accord, the Communist forces, including Viet Minh soldiers from South Vietnam, were regrouped to the North and left the South to a government newly formed and backed by the Americans. In 1955, the South Vietnam government invalidated the Viet Minh’s land reform and restored the land to the original owners. The peasants staged violent protests and refused to vacate their homes. The rich landlords reclaimed their properties with the help of the government, the newly formed Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN), and the police. In the chaos that ensued, there were accusations of land grabbing and abuse of power. Farmers were killed during the riots. Others were murdered in their homes. Tens of thousands of peasants were branded as Communists, jailed, or sent to reeducation camps.

A
FTER
Khoa left, Anh came out and sat down next to me. Dinner was ready, laid out on a mat in the front room. I could smell the claypot catfish and sour cabbage soup with pork short ribs. Under our neighbor’s tutelage, Anh was developing into a marvelous cook. She could make a feast from market scraps.

Anh put her head on my shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

“What makes you think that?”

“You’re scowling at the air.”

I chuckled, adoring her in every way. At times like this, when she knew me so well, I didn’t care one bit that my father did not approve of her or of our living together. He had said having a girlfriend would distract me from my studies. I was still young enough to fool myself that it was possible to hold two jobs and still pursue my degree at Saigon University.

Anh said, “If you don’t join the Nhan Vi party, you might not have your job next term. And you can’t avoid the Communist recruiters for long. This is Ben Tre. You can’t straddle the fence. If one side doesn’t shoot you, the other will.”

“It is never wise to choose the lesser of two evils.”

Suddenly, I felt very sad. I thought of my friend Hoi, my cousin Quyen, Uncle Uc, and so many people from my childhood. We had gone nowhere. These were the same choices my friends had had to make a decade ago between the Resistance and the French.

Anh said, “Then we must find a new home.”

I looked at her to see if she understood the import of that decision. After two years of moving from one hovel to another, this was the first apartment where we had our own toilet. Our home sat beside a lake. We had enough money to live. We were happy here. We had been saving prodigiously so that someday we could afford a proper wedding. Anh was pregnant. Moving house would use up everything we had.

“Are you sure?”

Anh smiled, placed my hand on her belly, and said, “I think it’s a girl. We’re going to be a family. I’ll follow you wherever.”