Goodbye, Vietnam Read online

  Kim was shocked at this and started to answer my grandmother back, but her mother hushed her. “It is not a time for quarreling,” she said.

  For once our grandmother and Kim’s mother were working together. Quang had fallen sick. He could not speak and part of his body was paralyzed. His right leg would not support him, and his right arm lay useless at his side. There had been a question of who would attend him. Dao and her husband wanted Kim’s mother, but everyone knew that if the old man could speak he would have asked for the grandmother.

  The grandmother was too proud to push herself forward, but she watched with a skeptical eye as Kim’s mother examined Quang. When the examination was over, Kim’s mother bowed gracefully to our grandmother and indicated that she would be glad to have the grandmother do her own examination. Pretending to be indifferent, the grandmother bent over the old man. He lay with his eyes closed, his chest heaving. I found myself holding my breath, waiting for Quang’s next breath to come. When my grandmother was finished she and Kim’s mother looked at each other. My grandmother shook her head sadly. Kim’s mother nodded agreement.

  “There is nothing to be done,” the grandmother told Tho and Dao, “beyond prayer and incantations to insure the easy passage of his soul.”

  They turned to Kim’s mother. She agreed. “Beyond prayers, there is nothing that can be done.”

  Tho and Dao looked frightened. “If he should die at sea there would be no proper coffin and no burial ground,” Tho said. He pleaded with the grandmother and the bac si. The grandmother rubbed Quang’s useless arm and leg with some salve and repeated a number of incantations, explaining that if any of Quang’s three souls and nine vital spirits had departed from his body—as certainly they had—he could not live. Her incantations would beg the souls and spirits to return, but she was sure it was too late.

  Kim’s mother gave Quang some pills, which he was able to swallow only with great difficulty, but neither the pills nor the incantations helped. Quang slipped into a deeper sleep. He lay still as a statue. His breathing became so light you could not see his chest move unless you looked closely. In the evening he died. A great silence came over the boat, broken only by the sobbing and wailing of Tho and Dao.

  At first I was afraid to look at Quang. I had never been that near to a dead person. But he lay so close to us it was impossible not to see him. I was relieved to find that he appeared quite peaceful. Dao and my grandmother had carefully dressed him and wrapped his head in a turban. His thin face with the high cheekbones and the scraggly beard and the long thin body looked like the statues that lay upon the tombs of ancient emperors. I had seen pictures of such tombs in my history book.

  One by one the passengers came to offer their sympathy. Le Hung spared us a few grains of rice to put into Quang’s mouth so that he would not be hungry on the journey to his next life. But there was not enough rice or tea for the ritual offerings. Finally the captain came and with many apologies explained that it was time for the burial. With great dignity the body was wrapped in a tarpaulin and, with Dao and Tho leading the way, was carried the few feet to the boat’s edge and gently lowered into the sea. Tho recited five prayers that entreated the soul of his father to leave his grave in the sea and return to the altar of their ancestors.

  I thought this was the saddest part of all, for until Dao and Tho found a home, there would be no altar for Quang to return to, only the sea.

  After the burial, no one said much. I could see that many of the passengers were thinking of other burials. Everyone on the boat had lost relatives in the many years of the war and the new government. Kim would be thinking of her father. Loi? Who knew what sad thoughts must be going through Loi’s head? I could not even look at him. Then something more terrible occurred to me. Suppose we never found land? Our food and water were nearly gone. Would we all be slipped, one by one, into the shark-filled sea like old Quang?

  Others must have been thinking the same thing, for an argument was going on in the cabin over the direction the boat was taking. Loi wanted the captain to change the course of the boat. Loi insisted he was right because of the position of the stars and where the moon rose at night and the sun set and the way the winds blew. Most of the men believed Loi, for the journey was taking nearly three weeks, but Captain Muoi resented Loi’s interference. If the boy was right he, Captain Muoi, must be wrong. At last he agreed to try Loi’s course “for one night only.”

  I watched the moon rise. As it climbed, it left a trail of silver footprints on the water. Loi explained to Kim and me that each night the moon rose in a slightly different place and that you could predict where those places were. That seemed strange to me. In all the space of the sky, how did the moon know where it should be? What kept it from being like our boat, just drifting on the sea of sky?

  As I lay down to sleep, I noticed that there was a bit more space than usual. I didn’t have to curl my legs up quite as much. Grateful for the new comfort, I stretched out. Then I realized that the reason there was more room was because Quang had died. It was his empty space. Feeling guilty, I pulled up my legs. Suppose his spirit was still with us, floating aimlessly about until Tho and Dao found a home where they could prepare a proper altar for Quang and the rest of their ancestors?

  All night I lay in my cramped position, leaving Quang’s small space open.

  PART FOUR

  The Silver City

  11

  “Mai! Wake up!”

  I opened my eyes. My arms and legs were so cramped I could hardly move. My empty stomach ached. Even in the cool morning my throat was dry. I saw people crowding toward the railing.

  Kim was shaking me. “Mai! You can see buildings!”

  I sat up. Anh, who was curled up next to me, awakened and looked around as if the buildings might be right in the boat. Our mother hurried after Thant, who was hanging over the railing. Anh and I followed Kim. The passengers were cheering. A few were silent, just looking and looking as though they could not get enough of what they saw. Kim pointed to the horizon, where I saw the silver city just as it was on Diep Van Tien’s postcard. I had never quite believed there could be such a place, but there it was. Hundreds of buildings rose out of the sea and stretched unbelievably high into the air. “How do people get to the top?” I asked Kim.

  She gave me a surprised look. “Why, they have elevators,” she said. But that meant nothing to me.

  Kim’s mother put an arm around Kim. Our father sat Thant on his shoulders so that Thant could see better. Dao was bouncing the baby and chattering excitedly to Tho. My grandmother was on her knees offering thanks to the spirits that had kept us from drowning. I couldn’t stop staring at the buildings. They looked as if they had been created at that very moment out of thin air.

  Captain Muoi was taking all the credit for getting us to Hong Kong, but I saw my father wink at Loi. There was so much commotion, no one spoke of our hunger pains or how thirsty we were. It had been two days since we had eaten, but my father said there would soon be food for everyone. When I looked at all the buildings towering into the sky, I was not sure. Where were all the farms that grew the food?

  As we drew closer to shore, we saw boats of all sorts and sizes, some as big as our whole village. There were sampans and junks and lots of beautiful white boats ten times larger than our boat. “They are yachts,” Kim’s mother said, “and they belong to just one person.” One person for all that boat, and we had forty people crowded onto ours!

  The sampans and junks were all around us, hundreds and hundreds of them. “Look,” Anh said, “they have little houses on the boats.”

  “And chickens,” said Thant hungrily.

  It was true. There were gardens growing on the decks and dogs and chickens and children running around. The water was almost covered with boats. We heard music, and there was the delicious odor of food being cooked. Some of the people on the boats waved to us, calling friendly words, but others waved their fists and shouted, “Go back where you came from. You are not w
anted here.” Some of those who shouted angry words shouted in our own language.

  We drew back from the railing of the boat, for the angry words were flung at us like stones and hurt us after our long, hard trip. I saw the bac si tighten her lips, as I had seen her do before when she was angry. She said, “Some of those people came here just as we did, and now that they are safe they don’t want others to come.”

  “Will we have to go back?” Dao asked Tho in a shaky voice.

  “Never,” he said. “I will never go back.”

  We steered our way through the crowded maze of boats. The closer we came to the shore the taller the buildings grew, until I had to bend my head back to find the tops. Now we could see cars and people on the shore, more cars and people than I could have imagined.

  Kim was not looking at the shore but at a barge that was approaching us. On it were men in uniform. “Policemen,” Kim said in a frightened voice. I tried to convince her not to worry. “Policemen here,” I said, “will not be like the policemen in Vietnam.”

  The barge signaled to us to throw them a line and they would tow us to shore. “It is only that they want to help us,” my father said, but his voice was unsure.

  I thought there would be the same rush to get off the boat as there was to get on. Instead, after saying goodbye to Captain Muoi, who appeared sad to see us leave, we all climbed onto the wharf in an orderly fashion. “I told you I would get you here safely,” the captain called after us.

  A woman from our own country welcomed us. “I am Binh,” she said, “and I am here to help you.” But behind the polite woman were several officers who indicated that we were to get onto a bus that waited for us. I saw one of the passengers try to slip into the crowds on the wharves, but two officers quickly brought him back.

  “They have a bus to meet us,” our mother said, trying to make it sound as though it were a courtesy.

  The grandmother whimpered. “They are not meeting us,” she said. “They are taking us prisoner.”

  “Hush,” our father said. “You don’t know what you are saying. There are authorities here as everywhere. Would you have a country with no rules? We must hear their rules and then they will let us go.”

  Kim’s mother shook her head. “I am afraid one of the rules will be that they will not let us go.”

  At first I thought my father was right, for the officers and the woman were very kind to us, smiling and helping the older ones and the children onto the bus. But when the bus door snapped shut, I felt for a moment as though I were one of the little mice my mother trapped to keep them from eating our rice.

  As the bus traveled through the city, I forgot my worries, for there was so much to see that I had never seen before. I sat next to Kim and could not help grabbing her arm. “Look at all the food!” On both sides of the streets were shops. A row of ducks dangled inside one shop. Crates of live chickens and geese were stacked in another. There were neat piles of strange fruits and pyramids of bright-colored vegetables—red tomatoes, purple eggplants, green and yellow peppers. There were cucumbers that looked nearly as tall as Thant. A sigh went through the bus of hungry passengers. “There’s enough for everyone,” I said.

  “You have to have money to buy those things,” Kim told me.

  After the food streets there were streets of furniture and streets of clothes. There was one shop full of only blue jeans. Kim smiled at me. After a while the bus left the streets of shops and passed through streets of large square brick buildings with no windows. Men were carrying heavy boxes from the buildings and loading them onto huge trucks. “Those buildings are warehouses,” Kim said.

  “What are warehouses?” I asked.

  “They are big buildings where people store things until they are needed,” Kim told me.

  Our bus pulled up to one of the warehouses. “Perhaps they are going to get some things for us,” I said. Instead we were told to get off the bus. Binh led us through a door into the warehouse. We were taken to a room where we were given water and rice while we waited. Then one by one we went in to see a woman. Kim’s mother said the woman was a nurse.

  “They want to be sure we have no diseases that we might give to the other refugees,” she said. When the nurse heard that Kim’s mother was a doctor, she hurried out to greet her.

  “I only wish that you could help us,” the nurse said. “We have hundreds who are sick and not enough doctors to take care of them.”

  “Of course I will help,” the bac si said.

  “You don’t understand,” the nurse told her. “Vietnamese doctors are not allowed to help. It is forbidden in Hong Kong.” The bac si said nothing, but I saw her tighten her lips. There was a look in her eyes that made me think she would do as she pleased.

  When we had all been fed and examined, a man talked to each family to ask why we had come to Hong Kong. At last we were led through a large door into a room. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The room was as large as a rice field, and it was full of people. Hundreds and hundreds of people. Small platforms were lined up row after row and even stacked one above the other into triple decks. The platforms were only as wide as I was tall and about twice as long. On each of the platforms was a family. Frightened, I turned to Kim. “You didn’t say they kept people in the warehouses.” But Kim had left me and was holding on to her mother.

  Pham Van Tho was speaking angrily to Binh. “You cannot put us here. This is not why we came to Hong Kong. Let us go. We want to work and earn our living. If you don’t want us in your city, then send us to another country.”

  Binh shook her head and looked as though she did not want to say what she was going to say. “There are thousands like you who have come here from Vietnam,” she told Tho. “We have no place for you. There are no houses and no jobs, and other countries can take only a few of you. This is the best we can do. You will be fed here, and we will see what we can do to help you, but it will take time.” The worst thing about what she said was that she sounded as though she had said it to many people many times before.

  We wanted to stay with our friends from the boat, but we had to go where there were empty platforms. We were directed to a top one. We climbed a small ladder. The grandmother had to be helped up it. Thant climbed up like a little monkey. He thought it was fun to live on what he called “the roof.” When our family was together, our mother said in a frightened whisper, “We have no privacy here.” And it was true. The first and second layers of platforms had roofs and little curtains, but the top decks had no place for curtains.

  “But we have the light,” my father said. The lower platforms were darker because of their roofs and curtains. The man on the top platform next to us called a welcome. “I am Nguyen,” he said, “and this is my wife, Ly. Where do you come from?” We exchanged the names of our villages, but theirs was in the north and ours in the south. Still, they were very friendly and eager to hear about our voyage and even more eager to tell us about theirs. They had come to Hong Kong because Ly’s father had been arrested by the government. They had worried that they, too, might be arrested.

  “The food is not bad,” Nguyen said. “Certainly it is better than in Vietnam. And here there is always the chance that another country may take you in.”

  “What about the family who had this platform before we came?” Father asked.

  Nguyen was about to answer when his wife nudged him and shook her head. He was quiet for a moment and then he said, “No, it is better that they know everything so they will be prepared. The family that had your platform has been sent back to Vietnam. Several families were put on a plane and flown back.”

  Thant, who had been listening with wide eyes and an open mouth, now said, “I want to go back so I can ride on a plane.”

  Father was angry with Thant. “You don’t know what you are saying. Just think what we have gone through to come here so that we may keep from starving and so that your grandmother and I are not put in prison. You are a stupid boy to think of giving up freedom for a ride on a plane
.” He turned to Nguyen. “Can they make you go back?”

  “For some families it is difficult to stay here. After you live like this for many weeks and with no chance of going to another country you become discouraged. Also, they give you money to go back. This family received one hundred twenty-eight dollars in American money.”

  At this the grandmother sighed. “That is more money than I have seen in my whole life,” she said. “For that I might go back.”

  “I am surrounded by fools,” Father said. After that he sat without saying a word, his head bowed. The grandmother was silenced by his sad look. Thant crept close to Father and looked up at him with tears in his eyes. He knew he had said something to make Father angry, but he didn’t know exactly what. Father took a deep breath and said, “We must be thankful that we have arrived safely. Now let’s go and find the others.”

  Mother and the grandmother stayed to unpack our mats and our few clothes. Thant and Anh also stayed. I think they were afraid of going among so many people. But I was eager to see Kim—and Loi. We found Tho and Dao and their baby only a few rows from us. Dao was unhappy. “It is so noisy in here, worse than on the boat. The baby frets and won’t sleep, and the people underneath us are complaining because of his crying.” She tried to appear more cheerful. “At least I have food to give the baby.”

  Tho added, “The people beneath us have been here for many weeks. They are elderly and have little chance of going to another country, and they are not wanted here in Hong Kong. They complain about the baby because they are unhappy and who can blame them?”

  Loi came running up. “I am over there,” he said, pointing to a platform a few rows away. There were three boys on the platform. One of them was Loi’s age, the others a little older. “They are my new friends,” he said. “One of them is a fisherman like me, and the other two come from Ho Chi Minh City. They know how to get extra food, and each boy has two pairs of blue jeans for himself. They said if I stay with them and do what they say, they will get me some, too.”