The Darkest Little Room (17 page)

I took my revolver out of my coat and Quy raised his eyebrows.

‘But you are ahead of me.'

I stared at the pocket pistol.

‘What market do you think exists for that thing out here?'

Minh Quy eyed me.

‘Hunting of course. What else would you want a close-range concealable gun for?'

‘I wish you had bought it back in Saigon.'

‘Why? Have you ever heard of a Saigon pistol shooters' club? The uses are the same.'

‘The men who use them up here are more serious.'

‘And no one has ever been shot in Saigon.'

‘Keep walking.'

We went higher into the woods. We looked for cut and broken branches that might indicate the path of men. Now the rain came down in sheets and a wind rose in the north and blew the rain into our faces and we could see nothing but rain and the path we had set out on was washed away.

Working up the face of the mountain into the rain with no trail and my tiredness at a great depth I thought of Thanh Hoa and that night beneath the street lamp on the dark road with wheel ruts. How she tripped on one of those ruts and fell into my arms and how I did not know then about the floods and the great poverty they made and the dangers on the dark back roads of villages to a girl who could walk into a nightclub in New York or Paris and make people drop their drinks. And when I returned that night six months later her mother was crying in the corner of her house that suddenly seemed very large and empty and cold where before it had been close and warm and the woman's brothers were with her and they alone for her husband was dead five years already and she lit a joss stick at the shrine to the dead father where I had lit one and prayed with the family those months before and she put another photograph up in the shrine but I refused to light a candle because there was no proof of it, no proof that it was needed, and I walked the starlit paddies that night, along the ridges between them and walked far away so the mother would not hear and I cried her name up to the stars and across and to the dim shapes of mountains in the north that signalled the wild and desolate places of southern China and I fell down in filthy water with a heart broken …

The stream we had followed dropped over a granite ledge and we trod along the edge of a river bank. We followed the quick-running water back up to the headwaters and came to a denuded plateau where we stumbled over the rocks of a dead fire and a rice wine bottle and Minh Quy pointed ahead to the shed of stone and wood.

‘A wartime prison camp.'

We crawled now. Even through the rain there was a faint smell of burnt flesh. A brown kite made short circles a little way ahead of us and we followed and I sighed relief when we fell over a dead barking deer, its hind leg caught in a snare. The deer had swollen to near twice its living size. It had been gut shot and meat had been hacked off the hindquarters. The badly butchered deer gave the impression of great barbarity.

We crouched watching the shed from a fringe of trees but nothing moved in the windows. We stood up and walked. There was no lock on the door. We went inside and saw stalls where prisoners had been tied. Joists with metal pins in the timber boards.

‘Is this a processing house?'

‘I think so.'

There were fresh boot marks on the floor. Rubbish and clothes. Girls' underwear was kicked into a corner and the room stank of urine and rice wine.

‘Whoever was here is not long gone,' I said.

‘Going by that deer they were here last night. Maybe even this morning. But we have no way of knowing that these are the men who have Thuy.'

‘No. But they may be going to the same place.'

Quy nodded. I hoped to God what I said was true.

‘Do you think an auction would happen here?'

‘It's possible,' said Quy, ‘but I doubt it. It's too inaccessible. This might be a transfer point. A place of handover from the amateurs to the professionals. There would be issuing of identities for China, that sort of thing. They would not have stayed here long. The longer a trader holds a girl, the greater the chance he'll get picked up by authorities. If there was dealing here it would have been for scraps. Kidnappers make quick deals on these borders, for next to nothing unless the deal has been pre-arranged – a girl can sell for as little as fifty dollars.'

There were no lights of any kind and walking in the dark of that old prison-cum-slave house you felt a gunman might be leaning against the wall of any dark room you walked into. In one of the rooms was a set of wet pyjamas, the kind little girls in the provinces wore.

We were out of earshot of the river. There was only one twenty-gallon water bottle and no evidence of food.

‘No shackles, no chains, no lockable doors.'

‘No need for shackles if a girl is weak enough.' Minh Quy took up a piece of girl's underwear on the barrel of his revolver. ‘They break them in, too. And besides, it would be difficult for a girl to go far from here at night. It will be difficult for us now.'

Again the rain came down in sheets and there was no visibility and it was impossible to walk on.

Minh Quy offered me one of his bitter Vietnamese cigarettes. I lit and drew on it and I saw dholes out in the timber through gaps the wind made in the sheets of rain.

‘They might be coming up for the deer,' said Quy.

‘They won't eat dead meat.'

Quy raised his eyebrows.

‘Who told you that?'

‘A professor of culture in Saigon.'

‘Keep your gun handy. They are wild dogs. And if they are here there may be tigers too.'

The dholes wailed and I was unnerved but reminded myself that it was better having them out there than a tiger and I wished we had had shovels to bury that deer.

It became too cold to rest and we made a fire near the steps with my flint and chips we took from the building's walls. We watched the dholes glide silently through the forest to the deer carcass. There were four. Three grey. The fourth, a large red, came tentatively to within ten feet of us once it had finished with the deer. Minh Quy took out his revolver and pulled back the hammer. One of the greys drew close enough for us to see his bright-yellow eyes even in the scant light that was draining away over the top of the mountain. Minh Quy aimed. The dhole stood staring at us for a minute then turned and vanished with the others.

‘These are old battle grounds,' Quy said. ‘There are dogs in the mountains that may remember having eaten the flesh of men in wartime,' and he pointed at the prison with his gun, ‘if they need memories that long.'

‘How can people get away with this – a place such as this – so close to the town. The police–'

‘You unfairly lay all the blame on the police.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Who knows this country better than anyone?'

‘The locals.'

‘And do you remember your talk with the woman back at Lao Cai?'

‘Yes.'

‘And when you asked her who knew about the trafficking up here, what did she say?'

‘Do I get a prize if I get all these right?'

‘It is a terrible thing and will never make the glossy photographic magazines but the tribes people slip easily into crime. Certainly they are marginalised, and that is perhaps why it happens. But who better to slip across borders with girls, drugs and guns then men who do not need to have papers and who speak the language of the mountains regardless of where governments in Saigon and Beijing draw lines on their maps.'

‘Then it goes both ways. How easy for a child without a birth certificate and who need not be at school to vanish into the underworld. These people pay in kind for their sins.'

‘That is true.'

The rain was easing but a heavy mist still hung about the trees. I lay down by the fire and smelled the wet pine smell of the forest and heard a bird cry in the distance. I watched my phone though there was no reception up here, only watched the blue screen light, knowing there would be no news. For an hour I slept.

27

I woke and we walked down to the Hong He. On the near bank was a pile of rags that became a man.

He stood up when we approached, grimaced with discomfort and shook with cold.

‘Chào bạn,'
said Minh Quy and offered him a cigarette.

The man nodded gingerly. Behind him was a small beached sampan that looked like it could carry four or five people along with the man. On the far bank was a cluster of huts and behind those a white concrete building that may have been a hotel.

I was tired and cold and hungry and could not be patient like Minh Quy.

‘What are you doing here?'

The man tried hard to make a superior grin but he looked sick.

‘
Tại sao hỏi?…
Why do you ask?'

‘Did girls come over this stream last night accompanied by men?'

The man shrugged.

‘We are serious men,' I said. ‘And we are looking for a girl.'

I showed him the photograph. I thought he stared at it for too long for it to have meant nothing to him. I hoped that.

‘
Tại sao tìm cho cô ấy?
… Why do you seek this girl?'

‘She was stolen from someone who loved her.'

The man nodded. He gave back the photograph. Minh Quy gave him a 100 000đ note.

‘Đêm qua đã có ba cô gái
… There were three girls here last night. The girls were without coats. There were three men with them. One about forty, a younger man and a very old man. An old soldier who was sick. Perhaps he was a guide.'

‘And you let them through?'

‘Hãy nhìn tôi
… Look at me! They threatened me. Threatened to kill me. Clearly you do not know the habits of such men.'

‘And you do not know me,' I said drawing the revolver and pulling back the hammer.

The man put his hands up.

‘Chờ, chờ!…
Wait, wait!' he grinned. ‘That girl looks familiar.'

‘Where did they go? What is across the river?'

‘Ngoại thành He Kou
… The outskirts of He Kou.'

‘We will go there. Get your pole.'

‘This is a border crossing,' the man grinned feebly. ‘Show me your papers!'

‘Do not joke with me.' I held up the revolver. ‘Here are my papers! Get your pole. We cross.'

The sampan drifted downstream and the man sat with his back on the tiller.

‘Put us on the track you put the men on last night or I will shoot you and kick you into the river and no one will ever know.'

He cursed us in a dialect that I could not understand.

‘What is he saying?' I asked Minh Quy.

‘Something nice about you.'

Then he spoke common Vietnamese. ‘
Vợ tôi đã đi ăn xin
… You know, my wife had to beg.' He was talking to himself now. His tone was very bitter and there were tears in his eyes – of rage or shame or sadness, I did not know. ‘She had to go door to door in Lao Cai. She was fourteen years old when the war began. We were married and then came the war and then she was begging. Remember that, you filthy foreign cunt. You do not understand this country.'

‘
Tất cả mọi người nói với tôi
… So everyone tells me.'

‘Bây giờ vợ tôi ở Hànội
… Now my wife is in Hanoi. I need money to go and find her. As a young man I had many dreams. My father broke his back working in the mountains gathering mushrooms for pigs. Do you two know what that is like?'

‘Xin lỗi tôi không nghe
… Sorry I was not listening. Have you arrived at the part where you ferry slaves across borders for gangsters?'

‘I will kick you off this boat, you–'

‘He makes a poor joke,' Minh Quy said. ‘He is foolish.'

I eyed Quy and he shook his head.

The man swore and spat and now his voice shook with emotion.

‘Do either of you know what it is to spend every coin you have along with every coin your mother has on a wedding dress for your bride and to have her leave you a year later because you are so poor you cannot keep her?'

He was looking at Minh Quy's camera again.

‘Are you police or reporters?'

‘I am a reporter. He is an investigator.'

I might as well have said we were a pair of travelling priests as the man broke down in contrite tears. I could hardly tell if they were genuine; I did not care either way.

‘Oh, what a man I have become.'

Having a revolver aimed at him had affected him more than he had shown at first.

‘You will not find that girl,' he whimpered. I brought another investigator across this river once. He too had a picture of a girl. The girl's family had paid him to find her.'

‘What happened?'

‘I do not know. But he did not come back. And the man he would have had to overcome if he was to retrieve the girl is still very much alive.' The bargeman shook his head. ‘You will not find her. These girls are guarded by demons from hell.'

Hell is vast,
I heard her say.

‘You have hazel eyes,' I spoke to her under my breath in English, as though in prayer. ‘Eyes like the Ma River. I will find you.'

The sentry snivelled.

‘Nói gì?
… What do you say?'

‘Nothing. Go on.'

‘I have brought babies across this river. The villagers say the babies are dead. They get doctors to write certificates. And then they bring them down here to me to take across the border for adoption in China. I had taken rifles and drugs across, even a dead tiger. I thought the babies would be simple.'

‘Where do they go?'

‘I do not know. Not the same place as the girls.' He stared at the water. ‘Guangzhou … Shanghai perhaps … One died. I had to keep it here on the river for two nights waiting for a pick-up when it was already sick and hungry. Late in the second night it died. I tried to feed it. The weather was so very cold. The pick-up did not come and then–'