She Weeps Each Time You're Born

by Quan Barry

  On deck at the back of the boat the man with one sleeve ran his hand over the engine and closed his eyes. Great, said the engineer. A magician. After a while the man with one sleeve explained that he was going to take a look. Someone translated. How are you going to do that, said the engineer. We can’t even pull the engine up. Already Duc and Hai were headed for the pilothouse. The man with one sleeve was taking the remains of his shirt off and rubbing his arms as if to warm them up.

  Within minutes he was ready. There was still some light left. The other Cambodians scanned the water. They hadn’t seen any yet, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Tu stood holding a paddle. It was only as good as its length. The doctor and his wife bowed their heads. From his perch on the roof of the pilothouse, Son noticed the doctor’s wife cradling a necklace in her hands, her fingers working the beads.

  In his tattered shorts the Cambodian climbed onto the boat’s edge. Somehow he managed to keep smiling. He was still smiling even as he jumped in. Ba says he can do anything, whispered Rabbit. Son had also heard the stories through the window of the floating house in Ba Nuoc. How the old southern soldiers like his father had been given a choice. Fight the Cambodians or stay in the reeducation camps. He was unclear as to the rest of it, how An and Tu had found each other, eventually escaping with the Cambodians all the way downriver to Ba Nuoc. All he knew was that their fathers had once been enemies, his father fighting the north, Rabbit’s father siding with the Communists. Lying on his stomach on the roof of the pilothouse, Son had only one thing on his mind. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. The waters were dark and silent where the Cambodian had gone in. The way Son used to jump into the Mekong to hide from his mother, the river closing over him like a door. What he knew. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. You can only disappear off the earth for so long.

  The Cambodian came up for air three times. The sun was on the edge of the horizon. The third time he surfaced he swam for the boat and explained what had happened. They had run over an old fishing net, the thing tangled in the blades. Someone handed him a knife. He took it and put it in his teeth. As he dove under the boat, the blade cut the corners of his mouth. Instantly the blood went out in the water, a beacon calling them up from across the depths. Tu stood on deck with the paddle in his hands as if it would do any good.

  The man filled his lungs to the breaking point. The light was going. Duc had turned the boat so that the engine was on the side of the setting sun. The waves were only a few feet but getting higher. The man could feel the pressure in the rib he had cracked the last and final time the guards beat him. The pain was something from his past. He put it aside and continued. How the man was able to do it. How he was able to do anything. By living in the present. The deadly fields outside Phnom Penh had taught him that. In the present there was only the pain of the present. No more. A pain you could tolerate. Endless days in the sun working the land, at night the endless rounds of meetings, of checking oneself for faults. Brother, I cut the wood in ten strokes instead of seven. Sister, I thirsted too much and didn’t leave enough water for my neighbor. The Sunday speeches stretched most of the day, leaders up on the dais under a canopy and everyone else burning in the light. Even now he wasn’t sure how the leaders had gotten away with it. There were so few of them and so many of the man and his family. Maybe it happened because men like him let it happen. The children dying first, then his wife falling sick with hunger. The day he came back from the forest and no one would look him in the eye. Only the oldest child left and its days of usefulness numbered. They had to save bullets. They were told the Vietnamese were always making bullets. The Vietnamese had whole cities filled with scrap metal, factories churning out bullets designed for the sole purpose of stripping the Cambodian people of their sovereignty. And so Cambodia’s resources had to be allotted, rations given only to the strongest, the obedient. The herd had to be culled. Food reserved for the hardy, the weak left to perish. All for the benefit of the Kingdom of Kampuchea. Listen, brothers and sisters. We must strike the Vietnamese in their beds, crush the baby in the womb. This is our mandate. The Vietnamese are waiting to come pouring over the border, the way they have been ruling over us since the thirteenth century, effacing the great Khmer culture, which the Enlightened One brought to us through the channels of India and replacing it with their miscegenated cultural offerings dredged up from China. Using the French to annex our lands, then after the French, using our nation to stage war on themselves, the Americans bombing us without regard. Take up the hoe in your hand. The Vietnamese all look the same, the same sloping faces, the same mongoloid features. Aim for where the three plates meet at the back of the head. War a thousand years in the making. The very day after Saigon falls we will march to Phu Quoc Island when the enemy is at its weakest. We must hit them first and keep hitting them.

  Presently in the water the man is floating under the engine, a cosmonaut suspended in the blue. As he disentangles the old fishing net, his blood wafts away in the currents, one part per million, ten miles away the smell of a single drop like a woman’s perfume aerating a room. The man can’t see what he is doing, but there is no need to see. What he has learned the hard way. Life is suffering. Desire is suffering. Attachment is suffering. He doesn’t think about what is riding on his work, the broken boat left drifting at the mercy of pirates, every man, woman, and child’s tongue gradually growing black and parched from lack of water, tongues hardening as if with scales. No future, no past. No sharks knifing toward him out of the darkness. No hunger, no fear, the stomach beginning to eat itself. Everything just present tense, this moment of floating in the sea, cutting the netting out of the motor’s blades, the boat rocking in the water, the silence and the cold and the darkness and the heart beating in the chest.

  On the roof of the pilothouse the children spot something speeding over the waves. Uncle, Son calls, his finger pointing to a spot in the future. With his knuckles Duc begins rapping on the bottom of the boat. The black knife skates toward them, the animal with its own sense of the present.

  The man resurfaced with the last shreds of the net, blood dripping from his mouth. On board the people waved him on, Sang in her red ao dai, the long sleeves flapping like a flag. Hands were already over the side waiting to pull him up. In the present, the danger of the great dark fin doesn’t register until he sees it. The man turns in the waves and spots the animal cutting straight for him. He claps his hands together in delight and shouts something. Someone translates. Arun says if we hook it in the eye, we could catch it.

  A wave sweeps Arun toward the boat. Someone gets a hand on him. Later the others will explain that the thing was too large, its black eyes big as plates. Even if they speared it in the brain, the residual instinct could take over. They didn’t have the space or the proper equipment. There were stories of men losing hands hours after a shark had been hung up by the gills, the massive head tolling in the air, then the sudden snapping of the jaws even after brain death. They were also afraid the shark’s blood would attract more, the waters teeming with teeth. Arun will listen to his friends explain why they let the shark go. When they are done explaining, he will smile and nod the way he does with everything.

  Duc climbed back up into the pilothouse as Hai stood winding the cord. There was no guarantee the fishing net hadn’t damaged the engine. There was no way of knowing how long they’d been burning oil. When he was ready, Duc gave the signal. Hai pulled the cord. The first few pulls nothing happened. The doctor’s wife busied herself with her prayer beads. After the third try, Arun took the cord from Hai and laced it up. All eyes were on the engine. Only Rabbit on the pilothouse could see a series of black clouds massing on the horizon. Arun’s grin was almost maniacal. He pulled, the muscles standing out all over his chest. No day but this. The engine kicked on. In the distance the black clouds were already sparking, their underbellies ravenous and flashing.

  When a reversal of fortune arrives while traveling on water, do not turn back but continue on. There is nothing to be don
e. Water is the trickster element. The way it allows you to float, how it seems to carry you along, your physical form brimming with it. Do not be fooled. Water bears the prince as well as the man in rags.

  THE FOUR OF THEM WERE SITTING ON TOP OF THE PILOTHOUSE. From time to time a few fat drops fell, but it wasn’t enough to make them come down. Everywhere black clouds whipped over the moon. Tu thought they had another hour before the weather hit. It was the first extended period of time either of them had spent with their children—An on the end with his arm around Son, the scratch on his face still angry and red, Rabbit on the other side of Son with her steely expression, the constellation of freckles on her nose and cheeks. It felt like only yesterday that Tu had pulled her up out of the earth like a carrot, something you harvested from the dirt, the full rabbit moon keeping watch, the scent of honey perfuming the night.

  What do you want to know, said An. The clouds were beginning to win. He almost had to shout over the clamoring of the waves, each one tipped with silver. It was bearable, but soon it wouldn’t be. Everything, said Son.

  An sat with his memories of the past four years. As soon as he’d heard Buon Me Thuot had fallen, he had walked home through the panicking crowds from the base in Qui Nhon. He took off his uniform along the way, shedding it piece by piece like a snake molting its skin. How he’d left it lying on a low brick wall, first making sure the pockets were empty and there were no identifying marks anywhere on it. As if he could shrug it all off just like that.

  The first few weeks after reunification he’d stayed hidden, never leaving home. His neighbors knew, but he’d always been the best of them, the one willing to help someone in need—An always fixing a flat, lending someone money for medicine or schooling, An giving someone the last ripe mango from the fruit bowl beside the altar. There was no fear they’d give him away.

  When the posters came out blanketing the city, Phuong saw his name. An had been a captain. Before the Americans had retreated, he’d worked on an American base. The posters said things like TRANSFORMATION and FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY. Report with ten days’ worth of food to the old army base to be evaluated. The expectation was that it would be for no more than two weeks. The government didn’t have the resources for mass imprisonments. Phuong packed his bag. Ten days, she said. We are lucky the government recognizes that a boy needs his father. An nodded. There had been talk of blood running in the streets, but it hadn’t happened, and it didn’t look likely now.

  He arrived an hour before the main gate opened. There were others already waiting. On base the lines were endless. He was surprised so many had shown up. There was a feeling of optimism in the air. Ten days and they could be done with it, the last half-century. They could finally be a country of brothers. Maybe he had been wrong to oppose the north. Inside he moved from line to line as he was moved up the chain. Each time the official on the other side of the table asked him in a friendly manner if he wanted to be a good citizen. More than you know, he said. An could feel the officers trying not to stare at his mismatched eyes. Toward late afternoon an official passed him a legal pad. Not unkindly, he was told to write out what he’d done during the war, where he’d served, what he’d been in charge of. The more detailed the better, the official said. Dates, names, places, strategies employed.

  When his turn came, he was led into an empty room. He was told to sit down and wait. The guard took the legal pad with his account handwritten over seven pages. The only names he’d listed were names everyone knew, generals and such. On page five he admitted he had once shaken hands with McNamara. He was off duty, wearing tennis whites on his way to a match, when the Secretary just happened to be passing by. The American An worked with in Transport and Logistics, a Colonel Wallace, had pointed him out to the Secretary. This is Captain Nguyen. Pleased to meet you, said the Secretary, extending his hand. The Secretary’s grip was beyond perfect, not too hard, not too soft. Afterward An told Phuong there was no way the U.S. wouldn’t win.

  The room was windowless. He knew it was one the Americans had used for debriefings. When the fighter pilots came back from their bombing runs, they would come into this room and tell what they had seen, if there had been any new bridges thrown up overnight, any supply routes made obvious by the defoliation. There had been maps and aerial photos taped to these walls. Someone had even hung a photo of Ho Chi Minh on the back of the door with the eyes X-ed out.

  The official who entered the room was middle-aged. Comrade Do was clean shaven, his cheeks sunken like most of the northerners. An noticed he had cuffed his left sleeve higher than the right, presumably to show off his new wristwatch. The northern soldiers were buying everything in sight—watches and refrigerators and TVs and radios, motorbikes, even cars, things they had never been allowed to own in the north. Secretly some of them felt betrayed. All these years, decades really, they’d been told that in the south only the top echelons of the corrupt capitalistic swine owned such items and now to come all the way down here only to discover that even middle-class families had gas stoves!

  Comrade Do smiled. Overhead the light began to flicker. You want to be a good citizen, don’t you, he asked. Of course. An said it before the comrade had even finished the question. With his left hand Comrade Do slid the yellow legal pad with An’s account on it across the table. The watch flashed on his wrist. An realized the man was left-handed and that he didn’t know that one wears a watch on the opposite wrist.

  The new government wanted names. It wanted secrets. It wanted even the littlest things like who took out the trash and on which day of the week. An knew he could never tell enough. It wasn’t in his nature to harm others. He closed his eyes and thought of his children. At five, Son had the face of an old man. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Somewhere he could hear a door closing, hinges creaking as it blew shut.

  There was nothing else to do. He threw himself on the shoals. Said he’d worked with the Americans, that he had little involvement with the Vietnamese. Comrade Do licked the face of his watch a few times and began shining it with his elbow. The Americans left in ’72, he said. What did you do after that? Something about the way the comrade licked the watch, the slowness of his movements, like a cat licking its paws after a kill. An sat back in his chair. He realized everything about his case had already been decided. He didn’t say another word. It was out of his hands. A river sweeping him onward toward wherever it would bear him.

  After three nights crammed in a holding cell, he was taken by truck five hours into the highlands. Back in the day the holding cell had been used to keep drunk American soldiers under lock and key until they sobered up. For three nights it housed more than thirty men. Each hour they rotated positions. Three men at a time were allowed to lie down. The rest of them stayed standing, the air by the wall like being smothered alive. At the front of the cell the ventilation was the freshest, though it meant you were mashed up against the iron bars. Men stepped away from the rungs with marks running the length of their faces.

  Those first days there was a Buddhist monk in the cell. His orange robe shone like a sunbeam, head smooth as a globe. Somehow he spent three days kneeling. Even when the monk’s eyes were open, An could tell he wasn’t there, all earthly attachments severed. He never saw the monk take any of the paltry food and water they were handed once a day in two wooden bowls for the entire cell. The monk simply knelt by the plastic bucket they relieved themselves in, the bucket with a hairline crack spidering down the side of it, which someone had tried to stop up with gum, urine and waste slowing leaking from the crack, the monk’s robe soiling in the seepage. Time dripping on into more time. The monk didn’t blink when men squatted to defecate right by his head.

  At mealtime on the third day the guard read a list of names. An and ten others were called. They were told to prepare their things and leave without eating. None of them had anything to prepare. All their things had been confiscated the first day they came on base. By the time they got to the trucks, there were other prisoners alre
ady waiting inside along with two guards with old guns. The guards sat smoking and tossing their butts wherever, the ends still burning faintly, smoke curling off the tips. After an hour one man surreptitiously picked one up and took a drag. When the guard saw the smoke slowing forking out of the man’s nose, he went over to where the man was sitting and hit him savagely in the shoulder with his gun. Then the guard lit a fresh cigarette and placed it in the center of the truck bed. They all sat watching as it burned down. Time burning on into more time. All the men with a cigarette habit squirmed in their seats, the men teased like dogs with pieces of meat. It was only the beginning. The guards didn’t even laugh.

  When the prisoners got off the trucks, there was nothing but jungle in every direction. They had to hike several hours. Sometimes it seemed like the guards didn’t know where they were going. Under the canopy the heat felt like a blast furnace, even in the shade of the broad serrated leaves. The first few men through the path were quickly adorned with leeches on their necks, one of them as big as a plum and as dark. The very first man in line hacked at the brush with a machete, then after fifteen minutes he would hand it off to the next man and sink to the back of the line. The path was a trail animals used, scat everywhere, dried and fresh. An didn’t know places like this still existed, miles and miles that had never been bombed. Places where things would still grow.

  After a few hours they were told to stop. They were eighty men standing in the jungle. All around them stood a ring of men with guns, some of the guards just boys, their uniforms too big or obviously borrowed. The prisoners were told their job was to clear the land, harvest the trees, build their own shelters, grow their own food, find any mines that might still be present, prove their loyalty, redeem themselves, regain their citizenship, keep an eye out for those among them unable to be rehabilitated, realize the error of their ways.

  The first few nights they slept out in the open. Each morning their mosquito bites were so bad they looked like carriers of the pox. An’s unit consisted of twenty men. There was a colonel who refused to do any work, but the others covered for him at first until they didn’t. Each week new trucks would arrive filled with men expecting to stay ten days. Every time the trucks pulled up, An could see the situation reflected in the new arrivals’ horrified faces. How fast a man physically deteriorates. The first month he lost twenty pounds.