by Nancy Young
“Eh, look here, I will bring the guitar out and show you. There’s nothing to be afraid of. There is no radio or spying device. I do not work for the French or the U.S. government. It just plays its own music when it feels like it. I didn’t think you could hear it. Most people cannot.”
The two stood fast and eyed their prisoner sheepishly without a word. Philippe felt lightheaded and nearly vomited, but he steadied himself and sat for another few minutes. He noticed in the corner of his eye that neither of his captors raised their guns as he slowly gathered himself up and lumbered toward his tent. He lifted the canvas flap and peered in. The guitar was in the farthest corner where he had laid it last night in the dark. He fumbled with the clasp. It fell open and he was able to draw out the instrument with his one free hand while the other continued applying pressure to his head. When he exited the tent, the morning was well and truly upon them and in the light of day everything seemed calm and less frightening.
His captors were mere boys, probably a year or so younger than he, and they stood now rather cowed and shaken. Neither one of them had ever beaten anyone. They had each fired a gun twice during training — anything more and it would have been considered a waste of bullets. Several times they had seen bruises and blackened eyes when a boy was misbehaving and one of the camp leaders had to punish him, but they had not seen so much blood pouring from a wound, much less from a foreigner’s head. They were frightened that they might have killed him with the single blow which would have caused an international crisis. Even they knew it would have been a major incident.
Philippe approached them now with the shining guitar in one hand and the blood-soaked shirt in the other, and they both began to see the levity of the situation. They had been alarmed by a simple musical instrument and had barely slept because of it. Philippe found a tree stump and crouched down on it with the guitar, plucking out a slow melody as he did it. It was a Jacques Brel tune from a movie that might have recently shown in a cinema in Vientiane. But both boys were from the countryside and movies would have been a luxury they never enjoyed. Philippe now gestured for them to approach him — without the guns. Before long, he was playing by ear and picking out tunes from their childhood that they sang or hummed for him, songs their mothers and grandmothers sang to them when they were very young, before all this war, before a gun was ever strapped over their shoulders. Always they shuddered when they heard the sound of gunfire in the far distance and the occasional explosion.
“Have you heard of that terrible bomb? Called ‘na-palm’?” Analu asked calmly.
“No,” Philippe answered. “What is it?”
“It is worst kind of bomb. It makes you burn, choke and die. Sometime even make terrible windstorms up to 100 kilometers an hour. They drop them from airplanes. If you hear an airplane flying too low, you run into that hole and you stay there for four days.” He pointed to a large metal plate on the ground. “Do not come out or you will die.” Philippe looked ominously at the plate and imagined himself in a coffin for four days. It was the first time that he felt un-heroic. Analu and Thao laughed nervously at the sudden somber air their new comrade invoked. They themselves had experimented with staying in the underground cellar with the gas-masks on, but were only able to withstand less than two days.
•
With fists clenched tight Joël sat impassively on the seat of the military cargo plane ascending slowly above the jungle on the northern edge of what had been known for nearly a century as the Golden Triangle. The opium trade continued to churn mightily like the roiling waters of the Mekong River delta here, and at this ancient crossroads the fringe elements of the black market trade gave rise to independent gun-runners — another black market that fomented revolutionary zeal, fueled the endless fighting, and financed the mercenaries paid to do their worst. Night was falling fast and quickly blackening the orange and navy hues of the setting sun through the small window of the aircraft. Not far below was his only son, whom he’d left with two unknown and questionable guerrilla soldiers who could easily have executed him without hesitation in this wild jungle. Joël had marveled at the young man’s complete lack of fear or sense. He was so adamant that he stay and learn the lessons of the jungle.
“I am required to learn the life of the revolutionary,” Philippe had argued. “What good am I to come this far and not take the opportunity to live the life and learn what needs to be learned?”
“What is it you hope to learn?”
“How to show my true worth in all this change that needs to happen! I must, if only for a few days or weeks, learn to fight and be a man.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“I am not a cool-headed diplomat like you, mon père. I cannot simply stand back and hold my toe in place always behind the Party line like you. It matters not to you whether that line is Conservative, Fascist, or Communist!”
“That is enough. You will come as I say, Philippe. This war is not ours to fight. Neither France nor the United Nations sanctions this rebellion, and I will not let you sacrifice your life to this wretched fighting — no matter how stubborn or naive you are. Your mother, first of all, would never forgive me.”
“Please leave Maman out of this. No, actually she would be on my side. She was resistant at first when she knew I was attending the rallies and organizing meetings back in Paris, but soon she realized that for me to take a stance and work for something I believed in would be more valuable than any diploma I could earn at University. I am a doer, Father. I need to use my hands and my heart to do what is right. I cannot stand by passively while others fight for change and struggle for the rights of the workers.”
Joël’s patience was truly tested at these last words and he felt the blood vessels at his temples throb and threaten to burst. But he eventually capitulated because of his own desire to imminently flee the scene. He was also honor-bound to allow his son to become a man — it was true that this young man had all the traits of a leader, and not a follower — the traits, he had to silently admit, of an officer or warrior, unlike him. After the endless wait for the delayed airplane, Joël had let his humiliation creep beneath his skin and scorch his very pride. It was the impossibility of the son’s demand that made the diplomat feel both surreally detached and incensed at the same time. He had never felt so ambivalent and out of his depth during his entire career.
As he boarded the plane for Bangkok, he knew his rash decision would have consequences at some point. But he was a man in a hurry to make headway. As he sat down on his small cushioned seat, he pulled from his pocket the picture of Mae Anh at the entrance of the University standing proud next to her hero-like husband. In that picture he imagined his own features on the face behind the wire-rimmed spectacles. The professor’s shoulders were as square as his own, but he was not nearly as well dressed, and his heart dropped ever so slightly.
Just prior to departure there had been a quickly worded follow-up cable from Paris about Dr. Anh. Apparently, it was now Mae who was in jeopardy. She was under arrest by Communist soldiers near the Hanoi General Hospital because of her connection with the very project for which he was here in the former colony. It did not come as a surprise to him that she was somehow involved. Their lives had been intertwined from the very start. He would find a way to get word to her that he was here in her country now to both secure her freedom and to ensure her efforts were not in vain.
Then all at once the plane shuddered with a violent rumble as if it were a truck hitting a rut in a pocked backcountry road. As it began to pitch and roll, Joël gripped the arm of his seat and called out to the pilot, who was now frantically reaching across his instrument panel with both hands hitting switches in a vain effort to regain control of the craft.
“What was that?” he called, straining toward the cockpit as smoke began to waft up from its under-carriage. “What’s happening?” he demanded.
“I’m not sure,” the
pilot called back. “Everything was normal just now.” Abruptly, another round of enemy fire hit its target and the plane dipped precipitously on its right wing in mid-air. “Sir, that could only be gunfire from below in the jungle. I think I saw flashes just then. We are losing altitude quickly!”
“But we are a diplomatic plane,” Joël replied impertinently, too exasperated to be afraid. “We should be immune from enemy fire! Get me on the radio to base — now!”
The tops of the trees were already within striking range before the radio dispatch could be sent and there would have been little that the base command could do even if they were reached. As the plane continued to plummet both men signed the holy cross before them and braced for the inevitable.
•
Mae Anh heard the news from a prison guard one morning three months into her captivity and she refused to believe what she heard. She had been held as a prisoner with no outside contact, served a small ration of rice and old vegetables three times a day, and allowed no exercise or access to any news or information. Thin and weak from starvation, she offered little resistance to the guards who kept her there only because they heard no further instruction. She was considered a counter-revolutionary of the worst kind, locked in a windowless room, and only given permission twice a day to use the toilet or to freshen herself in a small basin. She pleaded with them to allow her to at least use her skills as a doctor to administer to the wounded back at her operating hospital during the day, but even that rationale made little difference. They kept her hostage and tortured her with inactivity. But one morning a new guard who had replaced her usual one came to release her to the bathroom and quietly commented, “The French government is demanding that you be released in exchange for the persons who shot down the airplane.”
“What airplane?” she demanded, surprised by this sudden piece of news. “What airplane? Did someone shoot down a French airplane?”
“Oh, haven’t you heard? The Vietnam government they say they found the fighters responsible for shooting down the foreigner’s plane in Laos, across the border from Chiang Rai. One French official and a Thai pilot were killed — everybody very tense for the past two and half weeks. No one told you?”
“No, they have kept me here like an animal in a cage for three months. I demand my right as a citizen! Let me go!”
“Whoa, whoa, sister, stay calm! I am only doing what I am told. They demanded your release, but my leaders they say they don’t want the shooter. They say probably one of those drug smugglers — protecting their territory. Not one of ours. Those French have no right coming here anyway to interfere with our movement. Those doctors should stay in their own country and mind their own business!”
“The French doctors are here to do what our own doctors will not … or cannot do!” she fired back. “Our people and the people of Thailand have lost their way. This revolution is a big mistake and will be the end of Vietnam!” At this last cry, the soldier’s dark hand flew up and struck the doctor across the left side of her face as he shoved her forcefully back into her prison.
“Shut up! The Revolution is all about getting rid of stains like you, who don’t care about the People. You and your fancy doctor title! Don’t you think the People know that doctors are just as dangerous as those fancy professors who only try to tell one side of history and make Vietnam look weak and poor? I hear your husband was one of those they sent out to the countryside and committed suicide … so weak. The People will make Vietnam strong again. Not doctors or professors like you.”
Mae Anh remained on her right hip on the floor where she had fallen and stayed there bruised and stunned while her captor slammed the door and turned the key. She felt sick to her stomach and vomited until she could no more. Her temperature soared for the rest of the week and she could eat nothing. On the fifth day, the French government again demanded her release and at last her captors agreed to release her to be delivered to a nearby hospital. As she was being transported Mae Anh learned the name of the diplomat who had coordinated the refugee camps. The attending doctors assumed it was dehydration that made her lose consciousness. After nearly three days she regained consciousness only to be overcome with tears and delirious with grief for nearly four days.
•
Philippe became worried only after the military plane failed to return after one week past due. His father had said he would send for him in a week’s time and after the extra week passed, he began to wonder what had befallen him. Food and supplies had been delivered earlier that week and he had hidden himself well inside the interior of the jungle while the drop was being coordinated. Thao and Analu acted as nonchalantly as they could under the circumstances. Thao, however, did ask casually as the pilot was checking the plane’s landing gear after its rough touchdown whether there was any news about the diplomat who visited with his son a fortnight ago.
“Haven’t you heard the plane was shot down on the way back from here? Don’t know if it was one of ours or an opium runner. No one has claimed the deed. Right now the French government is blockading any food, guns, or supplies being brought into this country and the Thai government is about to join them. We may not be able to continue to drop the food here any longer.”
“Is that so? Then we would like to return home.” Thao and Analu looked into the older man’s eyes and saluted. “Can we ask, Comrade, that you take us back on this plane?”
“Well, with this food and both of you, the plane will not take off.”
“Then, let’s leave the food behind. The animals will eat it.”
“No, they wouldn’t!” The older man laughed. “Even monkeys have better taste than for these hard loaves and dried meat! Okay, help me unload these sacks and then get your things; we will leave while there is still light.”
Philippe heard the airplane take off shortly after it arrived and he stayed hidden until the sound of its propellers faded with the dying light. When he returned to the camp it was in near complete darkness and he knew immediately that his comrades had deserted him. He scanned every corner of the camp with his torch and found only a large sack of food provisions left in a heap beside the tin shack. In the bag he found a quickly scrawled and rather cryptic note from Thao or Analu, with no explanation for their sudden disappearance, but the terrible news that his father was dead. Philippe’s heart sank deep into his soul. He reared from the note, as if some invisible fist pummeled him in the chest. In a daze he pitched his tent by the dimly lit glimmer of dusk above the canopy of the jungle, and fumbled with the flint until he lit a small fire. The haunting cries of the monkeys in the distance were no comfort.
He never in his young life felt so utterly alone. His head throbbed with the shock of his father’s death as he paced back and forth from his tent to the fire, to the shack where his former campmates had slept, and back to his tent again, repeating this route for nearly three hours, remembering his father fearless and strong, mostly at odds with him but always fair. He found he could not eat. With the last bit of his flagging energy, he finally sank down beside the flickering embers of the dying fire and wept until he fell into a deep undisturbed sleep devoid even of the strains of the music from within that usually burnished his slumber with their gentle melody.
•
Lorraine felt the panic in her heart as soon as she received the telegram from the French embassy in Québec. She had sensed that her husband and son were somehow in danger several days before the message arrived. The heaviness in her heart was palpable. It had been less than a fortnight since she had returned and she was only just beginning to enjoy the old familiar rhythms of the city. At the residential hotel in the heart of Old Town where she was staying, she had begun to get her bearings again. She was starting to make plans to find a large property in the countryside on the edge of the city where she could move her elderly parents to be closer to her. Glen and Sylvie-Marie were now in their mid-eighties and not so sure on t
heir feet. The old rambling house where they still lived was drafty and the shop had been sold to a young entrepreneur several years ago before it was taken over by Les Marchands. The daughter’s entreaties to uproot them were met with great opposition. Not a week after Lorraine’s return, however, Sylvie-Marie slipped in the backyard while hanging out the laundry and broke her hip. That, they all knew, was the beginning of the downward slide.
Her mother was still in the hospital when Lorraine received the telegram from Paris saying she must pack her bags immediately, and a limousine would be at her hotel the following morning to take her to the airport where she was expected on the official state flight to Thailand. When she landed in Chiang Rai and alighted from the empty plane, she knew it was going to be the most difficult day of her life. She realized something terrible had happened but no one was willing to apprise her of the situation; neither the limousine driver nor the air staff seemed to have any news, and the telegram itself was uninformative.
Now she was sitting at a long table with a small cohort of French officials who had flown in themselves only a few days prior. When Lorraine entered the room directly from the tarmac, all the men stood up, but none would look up to meet her eyes. She recognized an older gentleman amongst their ranks, Mr. Henri Dansereau, one of Joël’s superiors from the Paris desk. She had met him several times at official functions and now he was moving toward her as she arose from her chair.
“Condoléances,” he began. “Je suis trop désolé, Madame … ”
“Please, Henri, what has happened to Joël? What has happened to my husband? Where is my son?”
“Your husband, I am afraid, is dead.”