Goodbye, Vietnam (7 page)

“Someone is out there!” I shouted. The passengers scrambled to their feet and ran to the railing to see for themselves. The cabin door opened and we heard a roar. “What’s going on? You fools! Get back where
you belong. The whole boat is listing. We’ll capsize!” It was Captain Muoi. He was right. I could feel the boat tilting as everyone hung over the side to get a better view.

They made way for the captain. “Quickly,” someone called. “We’re drifting away. We have to turn the boat around and pick him up.”

“How can we turn the boat when there is no engine?” the captain shouted. He was pushing people back to their places. In the excitement Kim and I were overlooked. We hunched down out of sight and looked out over the railing at the distant figure floating in the sea.

“He will drown,” I whispered to Kim. I couldn’t take my eyes off the small shape bobbing in the water. Each time my eyes blinked the shape seemed to get smaller. Then the drift of the boat changed, and for a while we moved close enough to the wreckage so that we could hear the man’s cries. Then the boat changed course again, and the wreckage with the clinging figure became a speck on the sea. Kim and I were holding each other’s hands. I think it was because we couldn’t reach out to the man that we held on to each other.

A small rasping noise came from the cabin and grew louder. The boat began vibrating, and in a minute it was plowing through the sea toward the distant speck. Captain Muoi grumbled good-naturedly about the extra fuel and the lost time the rescue would cost, but even he was excited. We were all quiet, thankful that it had not been our boat that had been wrecked. It might have been us out there alone on the sea.

“What could have caused the wreck?” Kim asked. “There haven’t been any storms.”

And why only one person? I wondered. Where were all the others?

As the boat drew close, we were shocked to see that it was a boy, not much older than Kim and I. The boy was staring at our boat at though it might be a vision that would suddenly disappear, leaving him all alone again.

My father cast a rope overboard, calling to the boy to tie it around his waist, but the boy was either afraid to let go of the bit of wreckage to which he was clinging or he did not understand what my father said, for he only continued to stare at us with blank eyes.

A second rope was tied around my father and he was lowered into the water. I closed my eyes. The
sea was so large I didn’t trust it. My father began to swim toward the boy. When my father reached the boy and began to circle his waist with a rope, the boy suddenly let go of the wreckage and threw his arms around my father, nearly strangling him. They both disappeared below the water. I heard my mother cry out.

A moment later they bobbed to the surface, a tangle of arms and rope. The boy was flailing out at my father, who was trying to get the rope around him. I clutched at Kim, nearly as scared as the boy. My father finally got an arm loose and slapped the boy’s face so hard we heard the sound of it on the boat. The boy went limp and my father slipped the rope around him and began to swim back to the boat, an arm slung around the boy’s body.

Hands reached over the side to haul at the ropes. The boy was hoisted into the boat, followed by my father, who climbed aboard panting and spitting water but proud of his catch. He laid the boy onto a mat.

Everyone pushed close to get a look at him. Kim’s mother pleaded with them to keep back. The boy was shaking with fear.
Bac si
Hong ran practiced hands over the trembling boy and turned to the captain.
“There are no bones broken, but he’s badly sunburned and in shock. He’s also suffering from dehydration.”

Anh and Thant were sent to beg dry clothes for the boy. My mother handed him a cup from our ration of water. “Not too much at one time,” Kim’s mother cautioned.

Captain Muoi wanted to question the boy, but Kim’s mother said “No!” in so strong a voice that the captain retreated without another word. At last the boy fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep. Several times during the night he woke the whole boat with screams that sounded as if ten thousand devils were after him. We didn’t dare think about what nightmares he was having—or worse, that they might not be nightmares at all but memories.

8

I was awake early the next morning. The first thing I did was to look for the boy to be sure I hadn’t dreamed his rescue. He lay curled up on a mat, his arms crossed over his chest, his legs bent at the knees and pressed against his body as though he were trying to curl up into the smallest shape possible so that nothing could get at him. His face was badly sunburned, but even so, I thought his high cheekbones and the curve of his mouth quite beautiful.

As I sat there staring at him, thinking it was surely a miracle that in all that sea our boat had found him, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. Quickly I looked away, embarrassed to have him catch me staring. But the boy did not seem to mind. He sat up. At first he appeared quite calm and looked around the boat as though he had been there for days and everything was familiar. The next moment a look came over his face of such terrible fear I could not bear to watch. He began to wail and scream, beating his hands and head against the deck.

Everyone was awake by then and scrambling to see what had happened. Captain Muoi ran from the cabin, stepping on a dozen people in his rush to get to the boy. Kim’s mother had taken something out of her bag and I saw her jab a needle into the boy’s arm. It wasn’t long before his screaming stopped and the boy fell back onto the mat, silent and asleep.

Kim and I sat beside him all day, wanting him to awaken and tell us who he was but afraid that when he did awaken we would have to hear more of the terrible screams. We tried to guess what dreadful thing might have happened to him. The grandmother was sure the
ma da
, the ghosts of the water, had been after the boy and that even now they might have followed him and be all around us waiting to take us into the sea. At this, Anh began to cry and my mother had to beg the grandmother not to frighten her.

It was nearly evening when the boy awoke again. He was drowsy from the injection, but he no longer trembled and he seemed to know where he was. My mother offered him a little rice gruel, which he ate at once.

“Can you tell us your name?” Kim’s mother asked gently.

“Vu Loi,” the boy answered.

“What happened to you, Loi?” Kim’s mother’s voice was soft. “Should we look for other survivors?”

Everyone waited, hardly daring to breathe. Loi shook his head. “No. There are none.” Tears fell from his eyes, but he seemed unaware of them, letting them fall on his chest and arms, making no effort to brush them away. “We were on a boat,” he said in a lifeless voice, “not so large as this. My uncle’s fishing boat. We were ten people, all escaping from the same village. For many months my uncle and father planned the trip. Every week for many weeks they put aside a little gasoline. They couldn’t buy too much gasoline at one time or the government would be suspicious. They had to buy some on the black market and were afraid they would be found out. But finally we had enough.

“Some of us hid in the boxes where the fish were kept, and they put a piece of wood over us and ice on top as though they were going out for several days to fish. It was very cold, but we could not leave the chest until we were out at sea. Then we came on deck.

“When we were three days out we saw another boat. We thought they were people like us trying to escape. So we waved to them. When the boat came close, we saw that the men had long hair and axes and guns. We knew they were pirates. We tried to get away, but they rammed into our boat.” Loi’s hands began to tremble and his voice was only a whisper.

Kim’s mother put a hand on his arm to let him know he did not have to continue, but now that he had begun it seemed he could not stop.

“They climbed into our boat and wanted gold, but we didn’t have any. We were only fishermen. We tried to explain, but they were angry and began to chop holes in the boat. They took all our food and left us to drown. When the boat sank, we clung to what bits of wood we could find. We tried to stay together but …” He couldn’t bring himself to say what had happened to everyone else. He hid his face in his arms.

As Loi told his story, the others had crept close to hear what he was saying. Now everyone was silent. We did not dare look into one another’s faces. We had heard tales of the pirates who preyed on boats, but we had pretended not to believe them. We all slipped
back to our places on the boat, trying to keep our eyes from the great empty stretch of water around us.

My grandmother rocked back and forth moaning softly to herself. “They will come and find us,” she cried. “They are waiting out there for us. We are lost.”

Kim thought the grandmother meant the pirates, but I knew she was speaking of the
ma da
, the ghosts of those who drowned on Loi’s boat and who would not find peace until they had lured other victims to drown in the sea and take their place.

9

I was sure Loi would never want to look at the sea again, but it was not so. The next day he was feeling much stronger and he begged Kim’s mother to let him move to a part of the deck where he could look out at the water. At first I thought he was hoping to see someone else from his boat, but it was really just the empty sea he was staring at.

Kim, who wasn’t as shy with Loi as I was, asked him, “Doesn’t the sea frighten you now?”

Loi said, “The sea is my home. I’ve lived all my life on a fishing boat. Someday I will have my own fishing boat. What happened was not the fault of the sea.”

I never got tired of looking at Loi’s face. Some faces are ugly when they are sad, but his was beautiful. I was careful, though, that he didn’t catch me at it. I wished I could speak as easily with Loi as Kim could. But I didn’t dare to. My grandmother muttered under her breath that a well-brought-up girl would never look a boy in the face and speak boldly with him as
Kim did. I thought that Kim was lucky and that her mother would probably let Kim marry anyone she pleased, while my parents would tell me whom I ought to marry. A hundred times I had heard my grandmother say, “Children must sit where their parents place them.”

That afternoon everyone was still talking about Loi and what had happened to him when we were shocked to see my grandmother clutch her duck’s neck and wring it. The squawks of the poor duck were terrible to hear. At first I thought all the food had run out. For several days the passengers had looked hungrily at the duck and begged my grandmother to kill it so they might all have a taste of meat or a bit of broth from the bones. They resented the rice it took to keep the duck alive, even though it came from my grandmother’s small ration.

When I heard the duck’s squawks I was frightened, but my mother had a smile on her face, the first one I had seen in a long time. “Don’t you know what day it is?” she asked me.

Kim and I looked at each other, but we couldn’t guess. It seemed like just another day of floating on the endless sea under a hot sun. My mother opened
her basket. Anh and Thant pushed close. We had all wondered what she had in her basket. She reached inside and took out a small package, which she asked to have passed along to Captain Muoi.

At first Captain Muoi looked impatient, as though one more puzzle had been put into his hand. When he saw what it was, his frown disappeared. He reached into his pocket, and while everyone watched, he took out a packet of matches. A moment later there was an explosion overhead and the sky was filled with sparks. Firecrackers! Everyone on the boat began to call to one another in their excitement. We knew what the firecrackers meant. It was the first day of the lunar new year. The festival of Tet! That was why the duck had been killed. We would all have a taste of delicious meat—the first meat we had tasted since the trip began. My mouth watered hungrily as I thought of all the good food I had had on other Tet celebrations: pickled bean sprouts and sweet soybean soup and once a taste of bacon.

Everything in the boat changed. Neighbors who had been quarreling over a bit of space or a portion of rice made courteous apologies to one another. You never carried bad feelings into the new year. All debts and
all arguments had to be settled. An angry word spoken on Tet would bring bad luck for the whole year.

Mother told us we had to clean ourselves up and wear the best clothes we had. The whole boat came alive. Le Hung plucked the duck. Feathers flew every which way over the railing and out onto the sea, where they rode the water like tiny boats. People called to one another with invitations to be the first visitor. The first visitor to your home on Tet must be someone who is well respected. My mother and grandmother were whispering together and I could tell they were trying to decide whom to ask. My grandmother was carefully avoiding looking at Kim’s mother for fear she would be the one to give us our first Tet greeting. Finally they invited old Quang. He made a great ceremony of stepping the few inches from his own mat onto one of ours.

Not everyone felt about Kim’s mother the way my grandmother did. One of the passengers whose son had been cured of a bad case of dysentery by
Bac si
Hong invited her to give them their first greeting. Our grandmother was scandalized that a woman would be chosen as the first visitor.

The captain with the help of my father was raising
a
cay neu
, a tall bamboo pole that was meant to look like a tree. If we had been back in our village a
cay neu
would have stood in front of every house. My grandmother gave a precious betel nut to go into a basket attached to the top of the pole as a gift to the god of the new year.

The duck was cooking on the stove, and the smell of the roasting bird was delicious. With the bamboo pole up and the duck roasting, it was time for
the giao thua
, the welcoming ceremony. The god of the old year was sent on his way and the god of the new year was welcomed.

Pleased to be the center of attention, my grandmother called out noisy instructions to Le Hung on how to divide the duck. Father and Thant were each to have an entire wing for themselves. A bit of skin and a morsel of meat were to go to me, to Anh and our mother, to Quang and his family, and to Captain Muoi and Loi. I knew my grandmother was in a good mood because she allowed Kim and even Kim’s mother bits of skin and a morsel of meat—although they were to be smaller portions than ours. Le Hung was to have the same “and whatever he could lick from his fingers,” the grandmother said.