The Girl in the Picture

by Denise Chong

  PHUONG ESCORTED PHUC BACK TO BONN. Until she left, almost three weeks later in the first week of September, she would stay in the Vietnamese compound. It was accepted practice among Vietnamese leaders, diplomats, workers and students traveling abroad to take extra weeks, even months, after official business (work or medical care or study) to “enjoy oneself”—more precisely, to shop. The obsession of traveling Vietnamese, who were typically on the state payroll or from the north, was to stuff cheap nylon bags with whatever imported goods they could get their hands on. Some profited blatantly. Airport authorities in Moscow once found one diplomatic bag in transit from a Vietnamese embassy in eastern Europe to contain eight hundred pairs of jeans and two thousand digital watches. One politburo member regularly counted his baggage by the number of lorries that pulled up to airplane cargo bays, unloading goods like mirrors, electric irons, pressure cookers, water pumps, replacement elements for hot plates, and sewing machines—anything in high demand at home.

  In Bonn, because it was in the West, only a northerner or a trusted revolutionary from the south would be permitted to go outside the compound without a minder. Assigned to Phuc was Quang, the driver. Phuc had no desire to spend her cache of German marks, nor did she feel up to going out. She had left the clinic in pain, which would worsen before it would get better, and she had come out thinner and weaker than she had gone in. Pain had sapped her appetite. Quang did the favor of going out to buy her painkillers and medicated cream. As she asked, he also purchased four cartons of “555” brand cigarettes, which she intended for her father and brothers.

  Most of Phuc’s time was spent idly in a staff room. Quang always kept her company. He was affected by her tears and sensitive to her needs, ready to massage her back when pain announced. He was as startled as Phuc when Phuong’s voice one day cut like a squall through the room: “Don’t cry! If you cry, you will be the stone that blocks other deserving victims from getting treatment!” Others at the office who told of Phuong’s connections at the highest levels did so with palpable fear. Phuc was more frightened of her than she had ever been of Tam in Tay Ninh. Later, as Phuc dabbed at her eyes, Quang offered comfort. “She’s bad to all of us,” he said. “We can do nothing. We are light-weights and have no power. But,” he added, “I feel better whenever I meet another person who is not like her.”

  As she languished inside the compound, Phuc was vaguely aware that, outside, her fame was growing. Staff had collected the German-language newspapers and magazines with stories of the arrival, stay and treatment of the “Napalm-Mädchen.” However, she had neither the energy nor interest to look at them. A few gifts—plush animals and fancy toiletries—came into the office, but Phuong took them away. “These are not for you,” she said to Phuc. “They are for others.” When one elderly German gentleman came to present her with a small gift-wrapped parcel, Phuong humiliated her: “Say thank you!”

  Kretz came from Hamburg to say goodbye. He took Phuong and Phuc for lunch. Phuong chose a restaurant on the terrace of a thirteenth-century castle on a promontory of the Rhine. After, at Kretz’s suggestion, they strolled along the promenade, and he bought Phuc an ice cream at the famed Capri soda shop. His parting gift was to send two women from Stern to take Phuc shopping. Phuong and two minders came along to the department store. “What would you like to have?” asked one of the Stern women as the six of them shopped from floor to floor. Phuc thought it too forward to reply.

  It was Phuong who finally found something. “This is good to buy for her,” she said, selecting a floor-length quilted bathrobe of purple silk. Phuc’s retort was trapped in her throat: I don’t need that—maybe people who live in Germany need that, but not people who live in the south of Vietnam. One of the women from Stern looked around for a cashier. Catching sight of a green hand mirror, Phuc pointed to it, and said aloud: “I need this. I like this.” The second woman took the entire toiletry set, which included a comb, soap dish and toothbrush holder, as well as a blue plush teddy bear that was part of the display, to the cash.

  On the morning of her departure, Phuc was packing her small rattan suitcase. She was sorting what she had room to take of magazines and clothing that Kretz had sent from Hamburg—Phuc said she found the summer nights in Germany chilly, and he’d had his wife send something from her own closet. Phuong came in and stood over her. Phuc offered her the blue plush teddy for her young daughter. “If you have more than twenty kilograms of luggage, you will have to pay money,” Phuong warned. “You do not have money.” She picked up the quilted purple bathrobe. “In the south, it is hot. You wouldn’t usually use this. Give it to me, and when I return to Vietnam, I’ll give it to you.” At Phuc’s last lunch with the staff, Phuong summoned the cook before them. “You are such a bad cook!” she said, shoving the offending dish at him. “I can’t eat this!” Inwardly, Phuc wept. Why, why? She has a high position, she has everything. Just who are those others my gifts are for? Why is she so bad? Why are there people like that in the world?

  UNABLE TO ACCOMPANY PHUC HOME, KRETZ proposed that Stern route her on Air France, from Bonn through Paris to Ho Chi Minh City. “No security,” said Phuong. She had Quang and a minder drive Phuc to Berlin; from there she would fly to Hanoi. Phuc spent a week at Vietnam’s embassy in East Germany. Phuong’s husband was kind enough to treat her to an evening at a Berlin beer garden.Then, after seven weeks out of the country, on September 11, escorted by a returning “guest worker,” Phuc boarded a plane for Hanoi. She was unexcited about seeing for the first time the north of Vietnam; there were other countries she’d sooner visit.

  At Hanoi’s sleepy Noi Bai airport, Phuc presented her papers to the official. He recognized her immediately. “You are Kim Phuc coming from Germany,” he said. “I’ve seen you in the newspapers and on television.”

  “Really?” Phuc was flattered.

  A driver and minder picked her up. She was surprised at the airport’s rural setting; cows grazed in adjacent fields. Cyclists on the road appeared to have little knowledge of cars. The poverty was more desperate and harsher than anything Phuc had ever seen; she saw the roadside bamboo huts as hovels, what passed for clothing as rags. Even in central Hanoi, people walked listlessly. In the funereal silence of the moving cyclists, she sensed a knowledge of suffering, of sacrifice.

  Her minder took her to the Thong Nhut—the state named one hotel in every city “Reunification.” Formerly the Metropole and once a stunning example of a fin de siècle French colonial hotel, it was dingy and drab with neglect, shabbier than the unimpressive hotel in Ho Chi Minh City that Phuc had spent the night in on the way out. It had telltale Communist fittings, from the small Russian air conditioner in the window to the Chinese thermos bottle filled with hot boiled water on the floor beside the bed. The restaurant’s menu of northern cuisine offered little; most items were crossed out.

  Phuc’s stay there was not as quiet as she’d expected. Her arrival in Hanoi had coincided with the regime’s celebrations marking thirty years of liberation from the French. The minder from the foreign ministry in Hanoi repeatedly came to collect her and to bring her back to its offices for yet another interview with yet another journalist, Vietnamese or foreign.

  Foreign ministry officials believed that, since the university fall term did not begin until mid-October, Phuc was available until then. In her second week in Hanoi, Phuc moved into a private home belonging to the widow of a north Vietnamese army captain. The rotund woman was the mother of a friend of Quang’s, the driver in Bonn. As a favor to Quang, Phuc had carried a letter from him for the woman to keep for her son, Minh.

  Minh had been with a group playing volleyball in the compound of the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok, and Thach had interrupted their game to introduce Phuc. Minh was someone who made an impression: in his twenties, he had the brashness to go along with his movie-star looks. As he’d explained to Phuc then, he was in Bangkok “enjoying himself” on his way home to Hanoi from Manila, where the foreign ministry had sent him to study with a r
enowned Filipino healer. Minh was surprised that Phuc did not know of his own fame.

  In Hanoi, it was Minh’s mother who was surprised to receive a visitor as famous as Phuc. She showed Phuc a stack of Vietnamese newspapers and magazines with stories and photographs of her time in Germany. She asked solicitously after Phuc’s comfort at the hotel. Hearing her displeasure over the food in the restaurant and the rusty water that came from the taps, the widow arranged to have the foreign ministry pay her to house and feed Phuc instead.

  The widow gave generously of her time, taking Phuc sight-seeing on the back of a Japanese motorscooter. They walked around the legendary Hoan Kiem Lake in central Hanoi, named for a fifteenth-century warrior who had been enjoying a boat ride when a golden turtle rose from the water to retrieve and return to heaven the sword he’d used to drive out Chinese invaders. They visited Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. Like other historical sights, it held little interest for Phuc.

  The quiet atmosphere in the widow’s home was shattered when Minh returned. Everything about him was loud: the volume at which he played his music, the way he dressed—his pirated music cassettes and flashy cotton shirts and leather shoes were purchased in Bangkok—the way he partied. The entertainment changed: night after night, he took Phuc on the back of his motorscooter to the narrow alleys of old Hanoi, where they dined out at restaurants with his numerous friends. In addition to a power to heal, Minh claimed an ability to sense the presence of money or valuables on a person’s body or mind. He cajoled Phuc into giving him three of her four cartons of “555’”cigarettes, and managed to leave her each time with the restaurant tab—though he always found someone to change her German marks at favorable black market rates.

  As Phuc’s departure loomed with the opening day of the fall university term, Minh found a way to have her stay extended. A thyroid problem that she had had as a child flared up, showing up in an enlarged goiter on her neck. Minh received permission from the foreign ministry for Phuc to stay another week so that he could treat her. “Vietnam’s two most famous people getting together!” he said. Phuc dismissed Minh’s claims of healing powers, despite having witnessed the desperation of others who believed. Several strangers bearing gifts of rice and fruit had rung the bell at the gate of the compound. They would plead with Minh to heal their sons or daughter or relatives suffering from cancer. He rudely turned all away, anxious to entertain Phuc instead.

  Phuc herself was in no hurry to return to Ho Chi Minh City. Unbeknownst to anyone in Hanoi, nothing awaited her there. Eventually, what was left of her German marks would run out. I will be back to no schooling, no money and no rice, she told herself. As the last vestiges of the euphoria of her trip abroad faded, she wondered, how had God intended her trip to Germany to be a door opening on her future?

  The answer to her question was fashioned from comparisons of her own life with that of Minh and his family. The widow’s army pension and Minh’s state salary were low, yet this was a family who lived as if rich. Minh’s travel abroad gave him access to foreign-made goods and foreign currency: as proof, the family had three foreign-made motorscooters parked outside, and inside both houses a television and a stereo, and an electric fan in every room. What determined who suffered and who lived a comfortable life? Phuc understood: what separated one from the other were connections to others holding positions of power and privilege. Phuc saw her next move with clarity: I must tell the truth to somebody more powerful in Hanoi. Suddenly, she saw divine reasoning to her having been routed home through Hanoi instead of flying direct from Bonn to Ho Chi Minh City.

  Opportunity came with a reception at the foreign ministry held in her honor to meet visiting Japanese journalists, hosted by the senior Vietnamese official in the ministry responsible for receiving foreign journalists. In his mid-fifties, Minh (of no relation to the healer) had received Phuc earlier. She had noticed that he commanded respect from those who worked for him, that he wielded authority without menace. She had an instinct, again, that this was an official she could trust.

  She conspired to sit beside him while taking dessert and tea. In side-by-side comfortable armchairs, slipcovered in white, she hesitantly began a conversation. He interrupted: “Do you have something to tell me?”

  “Yes!”

  Minh was deeply perturbed by what he heard. “Nobody knows this,” he said. “This is wrong, very wrong.” At his instruction, she wrote a letter to prime minister Pham Van Dong, repeating what she had told Minh—that two and a half years earlier, Tay Ninh had removed her records from school in Ho Chi Minh City, that she was living there in limbo. Minh promised to personally deliver her letter into the prime minister’s hands. He told her to wait in Hanoi for a reply.

  Two days later, an aide from the office of Pham Van Dong came to the widow’s house with a message for Phuc: the prime minister wished to invite Kim Phuc to dine with him at his villa that evening.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IN CENTRAL HANOI, NOT FAR FROM HO Chi Minh’s mausoleum, were several compounds composed of elegant nineteenth-century villas, painted ochre with green-shuttered windows, set in spacious gardens of bougainvillea and dahlias. They were home to members of the Vietnamese politburo, along with their aides, guards and domestic staff. The house that had once belonged to France’s colonial governor was now occupied by Pham Van Dong. His wife, who was under the care of nurses, was housed in a separate building in his compound. Their grown son, Duong, had a career in the army and lived on his own in Hanoi.

  In the eyes of the Vietnamese people, the seventy-eight-year-old Dong, along with the brilliant general Vo Nguyen Giap, who created the Viet Minh fighting force that defeated the French in Dien Bien Phu and commanded forces against the Americans, were their link to the thought and traditions of Ho Chi Minh. Though Dong and Giap were more than a decade and a half younger than Ho, the triumvirate had been loyal and close. All three had been educated in French at the National Academy in Hue and had been together at the founding of the Indochinese Communist Party in the late 1920s. All three had survived imprisonment on Poulo Condore (the uninhabited island in the South China Sea that the French turned into a penal colony for political prisoners) and years of a guerrilla life.

  Dong emerged from years of Communist Party work in south China to become one of Ho’s top lieutenants in the Second World War. He gained international prominence as Ho’s foreign minister when he represented the Viet Minh in the Geneva talks that settled the war with the French. One year later, in 1955, Ho made him prime minister, a position he still held. Dong’s reputation was as a conciliator, and an able, if cautious, administrator, but he was most respected for the moral authority he commanded—that is, when he had the will to exercise it, and where the rigid system left room for such considerations.

  His personal life set a moral example in the Party. The long fight for independence had separated cadres like him from their wives for years, and divorce and remarriage were common. Dong had lived apart from his wife since the early 1950s, but he refused to divorce her. Many older cadres remembered her as the beautiful teenage girl who worked at the Zephyr ice cream parlor across from the restaurant pavilion on the banks of Hoan Kiem Lake. Upon marriage, she had joined Hanoi’s underground movement against the French, and Dong had returned to a life in hiding. Shortly after the birth of their son, she was stricken with severe headaches that marked the onset of mental illness, which would leave her incapacitated. Dong had to send their son to Saigon to be raised by his southern relatives.

  Dong differed in other ways from his colleagues in the politburo. Where they were gray, austere and aloof, he was warm and affectionate. Passionate about his country, he was known to become emotional when talking about the wartime fate of its women and children. Suffering from diminishing eyesight in his later years, he enjoyed listening to the radio, or having someone read aloud to him from the works of Victor Hugo or Anatole France. Every evening, he had Duong join him for dinner, and on Saturdays, his wife joined them as well.

 
On the evening that Phuc came for dinner, the prime minister’s personal aide showed her in and Duong received her. His father greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks. After dinner, Duong left and would not reappear until the end of the evening, to give her a ride home on the back of his motorscooter. In a sitting room, fragrant with cut dahlias, Dong and Phuc had their private chat.

  Dong took her hands in his and addressed himself to her plight. He wanted to hear, in detail, of the pain she had suffered as a consequence of the napalm bombing, and of her treatment in Germany. He asked about the pain that still bothered her. Except for her mother, never before had Phuc so freely confided in anyone. She saw in Dong’s physical demeanor the image of an angel. Tall for a Vietnamese, he had intense, deep-set eyes which were set off by a high forehead and thick white hair. In his manner, she sensed empathy, and in the way he spoke of her injury, a long knowledge of her picture. He asked to see her burns, and when he felt the angry ridges of scar tissue, his tears fell freely.

  I can see that he is a great man, Phuc told herself.

  She felt compelled to explain why she had told the lie that she was a medical student to journalist after journalist. “I am scared. I don’t want a conflict. So, I say nothing,” she said. “When the journalists are gone, I just cry at what has happened to me.”

  In conclusion, Dong asked what she wanted to study. She recounted the advice of the doctor in Germany to give up medicine for a career less demanding. “I recognize that I cannot work hard,” Phuc admitted. “But in my heart, my wish is to help people. I cannot give up that dream.”