Lucky Ticket

by Joey Bui

  ‘We ran. No one, not even the corporal, took charge, no orders. They were using B40s, B41s, the rifles with bullets this big, and long like this, that could blow up a whole Jeep in one go. They probably thought there were more of us. And they started moving up, see, I might have been some five, six metres away from them. Two of our soldiers were shot dead. Right there.

  ‘I crawled over to the bank and rolled down into a rice paddy. I started crawling through the water, then lay down still. When they came in, they ran along the path right past me. I could have waved an arm and touched a VC! It is enough to make you piss your pants. Lộc had come out with me and he was lying on the other side of this branch of the ô rô tree, you know the kind that only grows in water?

  ‘I looked at Lộc. We had dead calm faces, because we knew if we got worked up they would kill us on the spot. We lay there in the water, not moving, for a long time, after the last VC had gone. I lay there until my stomach felt all right again. We needed time to get from fear to love for our lives and our good fortune. I’ve always been lucky like that. I always come out with my life.

  ‘When I looked at Lộc’s face again, it was his love for life that I saw. And I felt it too, all over my skin. It tingled, you see. Being alive is so sweet, but I don’t always remember it like that. You keep forgetting things like that when you are as old as I am. Not the details—I remember all the details. But the truth, oh, it slips and slips and slips all the time. I get so distracted.’

  I’m telling you almost exactly as I told them.

  I remembered all of this so well because I had suddenly seen Lộc’s face again in his son’s and, now that I come to think of it, Lộc’s face was so important to me in the war. It was the face I saw at all the important moments.

  The Việt Kiềus were moved by my story. Lộc’s son Phước beamed the whole way through, even during the bad moments, when the two kids in our squad died.

  ‘Why are you still here, uncle? Why didn’t you take the H1 visa with all the other Cộng Hòa soldiers and go to America?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t. I could never have done that.’

  ‘Why? Your life must be so hard here,’ he said with emotion.

  ‘I couldn’t leave, no. I’m not the kind of person to do that.’

  He looked affronted. ‘What kind of…What do you mean?’ A flash of impatience crossed his face.

  ‘That’s not what I mean, son.’ He had already called me uncle, which I accepted. ‘I have nothing against the Việt Kiều. Please believe me. What I mean is…’

  Phước looked like he really needed to know, so I thought long and hard.

  ‘The truth is that I’m a fearful old man. I had already lost my legs when the war ended and I was so, so tired all the time. It was so hard for me to move anywhere, and the strain of having to ask people to help me get places…And it was not a good time for anyone to help anyone else. The Americans had just left; all the people in the South had to decide how to take care of their families, especially with all the Cộng Hòa soldiers leaving as well. We didn’t know what the VC would do to us.

  ‘Asking for somebody’s help…When I feel something, I feel it with my whole body. I can feel a question with my whole body, and I could not, could not ask for help anymore. Everyone was too worried about other things. Everyone was leaving. There was an offer of H1 paperwork at some point, but I couldn’t do it. And they didn’t want me for the re-education camps; they didn’t bother taking the cripples. Everything just moved on.’

  Then I didn’t really want to talk to them anymore—it was getting too hard, and Phước was upset.

  ‘But, uncle, would it have been different if my father had seen you like this? Have other soldiers come to Vietnam and seen you?’ asked Phước.

  ‘I was recognised once, but it is so long ago now.’

  ‘It could be so different for you.’

  The women had finished their shopping and come outside. Phước introduced them to me.

  ‘This is Uncle Kiệt. He was a friend of my father’s in the war.’ The muscles in Phước’s face seemed to contract all of a sudden. Those hollow cheeks now made him look as though he was about to yell.

  The women fussed a little and asked some questions. Then they all bought a lot of tickets from me and left.

  So many people pass me on the street. How can I explain myself to each one? I have been alive so long like this, it isn’t good for me to ask myself, ‘What if things were different?’

  Two days later, as I sat on my corner, Phước came to see me again. At first I felt annoyed because the last time had left a stale taste in my mouth.

  He walked around me frantically, as though deciding where he should stand. Then he knelt down.

  ‘Uncle Kiệt,’ he said.

  ‘Phước, have you come here just to see me?’

  ‘I thought about you, uncle, and I wanted to give you this.’ He took a white envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  It would have been rude for me to look inside.

  ‘It’s a…it’s something to help you a little,’ he said. ‘You could get a chair.’

  He looked so uncomfortable, I wasn’t sure if he had given me too much or too little. Việt Kiều are usually such big spenders. Some have paid 50,000 đồng for a ticket. I never pester anyone. I always ask once, and I stop working when I have enough for the day. I am never greedy.

  He stared at me, as if wanting something from me, but I did not know what it was. Eventually he stood up.

  ‘Take care, uncle. Perhaps I will come by and see you another time.’

  Would you believe it? There was ten million đồng in that envelope. I had never held 500,000-đồng notes in my life. When he left and I finally opened the envelope, in front of Điện Phú Electronics, I immediately felt in danger. But, of course, I also felt joy! There would be good meals and things to buy and keep. But it was dangerous to walk around with ten million in your hands. I tensed up in fear, because it was a new experience to have something that other people wanted.

  I decided to keep it in my pocket. If my body wasn’t safe, there would be little use for the money anyway.

  Nothing happened for a while, all the activity on my street seemed the same and I felt all right. I had time to think about what a large amount of money it was. And I had to think about how it was that good fortune was coming to me.

  Do you remember all the good things in your life? Did they not come suddenly from nowhere, so that it frightened you and it hardly seemed like fortune then because it was yours? I’m trying to make you understand, because you are young and it is easy to miss many things when you are young. The money came suddenly into my life, so suddenly that it did not belong to me. Money does not belong to anyone. It is for passing on.

  Only a day after I had this money—one day!—somebody came chasing after it. I was sitting on my corner, thinking about how to use it to change my life, when a large woman approached me, closer and closer, until she had her large, ruddy face right down in front of mine. I was shocked, especially by the way her eyes strained, as if trying to leave their sockets.

  She was middle-aged and wore a bright-blue floral blouse that puffed out at her waist. Her hair was pulled tight and bunched at the back like the market women’s hair.

  ‘Aaah,’ she moaned, her head shaking. ‘Aaah.’

  It was as if we had been in a long conversation, at the end of which something puzzling had been made clear to her. She shook her head violently.

  ‘Aaah, do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?’ she cried. She stomped her right foot, and I looked down at the cartoon cat on her red rubber slipper. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I looked back up at her face and was struck by fear. I had never seen her before. Why was she putting on such a show?

  ‘Lâm Hùng Kiệt,’ she said. ‘Lâm Hùng Kiệt, I am your daughter.’ She stared at me wildly.

  ‘No, I don’t know you.’

  ‘It’s true! Yes, yes.’ S
he smiled broadly, her one-lidded eyes puffy. ‘My name is Vy. Lâm Nhật Vy. Yes, yes, Nhật. I am Nhật’s daughter,’ she said. Now she was sobbing furiously. ‘Thank the heavens I have found you at last. I am sorry it took so long. But oh, has it been hard for you? You look like you have suffered. But I am so happy to find you.’

  She stared at me through her tears.

  ‘Why don’t you say something?’ she cried out indignantly.

  ‘I don’t know you!’

  ‘You don’t know me yet. You were already in the army when I was born. But I am your daughter!’

  She hiccupped violently and her enormous body shook. Bent over, her right knee on the ground, she lost her balance and slumped sideways.

  ‘Father—’

  ‘No! I don’t know you.’

  She lunged at me, and I fell back in terror.

  ‘Please! Please, I don’t know you.’

  ‘What? What did you say? I’m Nhật’s daughter. Nhật, your wife!’ Her crying intensified. ‘How could you not? I’m your daughter!’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  Her theatrics were so overwhelming that it took me until that moment to realise that the stranger was after my money.

  ‘How has it come to this!’ she cried out. To my surprise, she struck her own face with the flat of her hand. She wailed and struck her face again and again. Then she stopped to stare at me. ‘What suffering, I can’t bear it! It breaks my heart to see you like this.’

  She sounded possessed, clutching her chest as she shrieked, her purple-painted nails garish against her pale skin.

  ‘What we have lost. What has been spoiled. Oh, oh, oh! How I have failed you. I will be punished for letting you live like this, my father, oh, my father. We have all been punished.’ ‘Enough!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you know that you cannot go on any longer? Enough!’

  She clutched at my shirt. ‘Will you not believe me? Will you come with me even if you do not believe me?’ she said, subdued now. She sniffed loudly and wiped her face. ‘I can take care of you. Let me take care of you. You can rest.’

  ‘No, no, enough.’ I backed away, so her hands could no longer reach me.

  She was lying on the pavement, sobbing quietly. There was nothing to be done. I headed off.

  I admit it took me a long time to be rid of the shock and discomfort of the encounter. I kept walking and walking, my knuckles aching, afraid she might follow me. I walked until I felt all right again. I walked until I realised that if I forgot the whole incident, it could not touch me anymore. I walked until the fear was gone.

  The wealthiest beggars in Vietnam put on the best theatrics. It is very common. Babies are rented out to ambitious beggars. A whole troupe is very compelling—mother, baby, and young children. Especially a little girl, if she has a pretty face. And if she has wild stories to tell, and is good at crying and wailing.

  I have never meddled in that business. No, I am content selling tickets because it is not dishonest. It is an exchange. Any man or woman who buys a lucky ticket for 7000 đồng from me may win the fifteen billion prize. Perhaps the woman was sent to me, right after Phước gave me the envelope, to remind me of my place and keep me humble. Money does not belong to anyone.

  It was as though I had to be taught the lesson over and over again. Nothing sinks in. Wasn’t that what I was telling you? The truths are so hard to remember. They slip all the time. There is nothing to be figured out, no mystery to fathom. The truth is all the time trying to explain itself to us, and we insist on forgetting. In school, we are made to remember and recite the lessons, but that is because it is so hard for us to hold onto them. How many times have I gone astray and been put back on my path?

  I became angry at myself. I’m an old man, but I have made the same mistake, chasing after dumb fortunes, over and over, like a child.

  I’m telling you because people don’t listen to me, but they might listen to you. Can you tell everyone, the Việt Kiều where you live, not to forget people like me? Don’t forget what we did and how we stayed behind.

  My theory is that we all get our turn in the end. Look at how young you are, and the way you got to grow up. Look how pretty you are. I wonder how much you will pay for that. Or how much you have already paid for it. Me, I have nothing to be afraid of. Hahaha! Nothing at all. Right here I’m safe.

  Did you get everything you need? Shall we stop here? You can always find me here if you need me. If I’m alive, I’m here, every day. If I’m not here, you’ll know that I’m dead. Ha!

  It’s so hot—could you please reduce the heat from the fire a little? I would do it myself, but I see you are good with the logs and the twigs.

  I believe that a person’s soul is revealed in their hands. Do you agree? I think so when I see your hands touching the bark, rolling it so that the logs collapse just right, as though you know the grooves of each piece and how they should fit together. Look at your hands, pulling out that log now as it spits glowing coals, flipping it onto the sand. What a lovely way to spend a night in the Vietnamese countryside.

  One day you might see the soul emerge when I play a piano. You have never seen a piano, but they have them in the cafés of Sài Gòn. Grand cafés with live music at night and always a woman singer, with long hair, singing slow songs. Last week I was in such a café, down a side street not far from Dinh Độc Lập, the Independence Palace. The street was full of alleyways, bars with loud music, and street food.

  Listen to me rattling on. Why don’t you recline in this hammock opposite mine, and I shall call my old aunt to bring us some wine and squid to roast over the fire? Her husband, your boss, was sitting with me, but he is an inexperienced drinker and went to bed after two cups of wine. But you look like a sturdier man, with an excellent round stomach. Stay put and I will be right back with our food and drink.

  Let us toast—what shall we toast to? Let us toast to this beautiful country! You must drink it all in one go. Look, it is not so hard. This is top-quality squid from Đà Nẵng. Shall we stick it onto some skewers? I suppose we can just leave them to cook on this log jutting out here. Or will they get covered in ash? Never mind, I will eat anything, I have a strong stomach. I have no qualms about eating the street food here. Many of my ngoại quốc, ‘overseas Vietnamese’, friends would feel queasy at the thought of those street dishes. I would happily eat the plates of fried flour cakes with the minced pork, squid sauce, carrots, and fried onion on top. I have an old female friend from high school, who wakes up early to cook the breakfast and lunch fare for commuters. She sells from six to nine in the morning, on the side of the street just before the turn-off to the highway. Little bags of rice and braised vegetables. Very convenient.

  Now that we are comfortable and the squid is smoking nicely, what questions do you have for me? I know you must have questions, because it is not often that you meet a man like me in a small village like this. Are there any ngoại quốc in your family? I thought not. I am only here for a few days to pay my respects to my old aunt and uncle, which I am happy to do, of course. I have a very high regard for family. And I enjoy helping however I can. For example, yesterday I bought thirty sacks of rice to give to families in the village neighbourhood. What I mean to say is—let me pour some more wine for you—this little fishing town is not a common spot for visitors and I can open up the world for people like you.

  Can you please reduce the heat of the fire a little more? Thank you. Let me tell you about my home in Paris, in the 13th arrondissement. I can show you where it is on my phone. If I my pinch my fingers like so, we can see deep into Paris, to the very streets and small parks. This is my apartment, on Rue Damesme, right there. There are five apartments to a floor here. It is not very big, but that does not make it less valuable. Property in Paris is more about location than space and we are in a very good location. We are right by the hospital and the Parc de Choisy. There is even a phở restaurant nearby, called Ba Miền. The French enjoy phở very much. In fact Ba Miền is often full
of white people! It shows that my Paris is a very generous society and, like I told you, my French friends think that I may as well be one of them.

  I also own a property in the suburbs in Vitry-sur-Seine. It is a real house, free-standing, and I rent it out because that’s a very smart way to make money. You have to be smart like this. The immigrant must not be lazy, as I sometimes see the local youths are here, loitering and begging on the streets. It is a symbol of the decline of our country. I’ve seen it coming a long time. It is insulting to see my people living idle lives, lying around in hammocks, expecting somebody else to feed them. And the rich youths too, who will never do anything of value because of their corrupt fathers and grandfathers, who work for the government. I spit on the Communist dogs. What? Do you think the Việt Cộng are hiding behind the banks of that irrigation stream, which is dry and full of dead fish? You should be so lucky.

  Nobody works anymore. Only the Americans. They build those KFCs, with their fried chicken and white tiles, in our country, and the rich kids are there on the second floor, eating American chicken as though their mothers never had chicken at home. I want to know what they put in the American chickens that are turning everybody fat and lazy. But what choice do we have? The Chinese chickens are even worse. They are stuffed with bits of plastic. I read it in a newspaper once. What about the Vietnamese chickens, I ask you? Where are they? I suppose there are a million Vietnamese chickens running all over the country and nobody wants to eat them.

  Are you sure you don’t want more wine? I see you are not used to the taste. Wine is something you have to learn, like numbers, like words. It has to be understood. But it isn’t the wine. I can see in your eyes what is the matter. You think I do not know, but I know. I am just like you, my brother. We are bitter. Not long ago, I was living in a small, dirty village like this one.

  Although my family, as you know, is better than yours. So I made myself study and I was accepted into a sports-coaching course at the university in Sài Gòn. There I was, studying with other young people. But the war ended, the Communists won, and I had to leave my country, my family and friends, my home and my life—everything—and escape by sea. I didn’t know where I was going. Maybe I was hoping to go to America. But the French humanitarian boats picked us up and soon I was living in the housing projects in Clichysous-Bois. Tiny, cramped rooms and a communal bathroom I shared with other refugee men. I worked in a meat-smoking factory, on my feet all day, operating the mixer with my hands. But I am not complaining. No, I am proud of that work. Me, I always have a goal and I am always working. But it was not easy. On my first day, the supervisor took me through the factory. He showed me a big pile of sawdust and asked me to wait next to it, while he went away, returning with a shovel in one hand and lots of sacks in the other. He just pointed to the pile and said something in French that I did not understand. Of course, I guessed that he wanted me to shovel the sawdust and fill the sacks. After hours of labour, my whole body was wet with sweat, as if I had been working under a shower. My glasses had fogged with the steam.