The Boat

by NAM LE

  The path of wind and rain is yours to take,

  While mine does mourn an empty room and bed;

  We reach to touch each other, but instead...

  Her mother, who had waited each time her husband went to sea, again when he left to fight the Communists, and then – five years later – when he left once more, to report for reeducation camp. That was supposed to have been the last time. He was supposed to have been gone for ten days – the prescribed sentence for low-ranked soldiers. Mai remembered: on the eleventh day the streets were swept, washed, festooned with lanterns – women in their best and brightest outfits. The war had been lost, their husbands and fathers were coming home. Mai and Loc wore clothes their mother had borrowed. All through the afternoon they'd waited, through the night, too, the lanterns growing more and more dazzling, the congee and suckling pig cold, congealed. The next morning Mai's mother sent for word but received none. What could she – could any of them – do?

  Overcome with feeling, Mai wanted to ask Quyen to stop singing – not to stop singing. Never to stop. How could she explain it all? Afterward, she had seen her mother caught on that cruel grade of time, growing old, aging more in months than she had in years – and yet she had given no comfort to her. She had been a daughter selfish with her own loss. From that day on, she never again heard her mother sing.

  Squatting down, Mai dried her eyes with her sleeves. The song continued. With a shock, Mai realized Quyen's mouth was not moving. She was asleep. The singing cut off as Truong lifted, turned his head, staring at Mai with large obsidian eyes. Stunned, she said nothing. She looked back at his pale face, the slight, girlish curve beneath his nose to his lips. The intentness of his gaze. Then, slowly, she felt whatever turmoil broke and banked inside her becoming still. Watching her the whole time, Truong opened his mouth and took a deep breath:

  You took my love southeast before I asked

  Whereto you went, and when you should return;

  Oh warring soul! through bitter years you learned

  To treat your sacred life like leaves of grass.

  Quyen stirred. Her eyelids still closed, she murmured, "Yes, you miss your father too. Don't you, my prince?"

  He stopped singing. Shadows sifted in the darkness.

  ***

  HERE WAS HOW IT BEGAN: her mother brought her through the dim kitchen into the yard. Her father had been released, three months prior, from reeducation camp, and immediately admitted into the hospital in Vinh Long. He had gone blind. The doctors were baffled because they could identify no physical abnormality, no root cause. His reeducation had blinded him. Mai, in the meantime, continued trundling every day from corner to corner, selling cut tobacco to supplement their family income. Her father's sickness was not unlike the war: something always happening elsewhere while she was forced on with her daily routine.

  That day had been a slow one and she'd come home early. In the yard, beneath branches of mastic and white storax flowers, next to the deciduated hibiscus hedge, her mother had hooked her fingers under her waistband and handed her a damp bundle of money. The ink faded from the sweat of counting and recounting.

  "Child can spend it however Child likes but try to keep, nha?"

  Knowing her mother's usual frugality, Mai struggled to respond but her mother said nothing more, wiping her hands stiffly on her pajama pants and turning back into the house.

  Two days later she told Mai to go visit her father at the hospital.

  "Child is a good child," he told her after a long silence, his eyes fixed on some invisible locus in the air. He'd barely reacted when she came in and greeted him – it was only her second visit since he'd returned from reeducation camp. What had they done to him there? She remembered him being gaunt three months ago, when he'd first returned, but now his whole face was sunken – as though its foundation had finally disintegrated, leaving his features to their slow inward collapse. His eyes extruded from their deep-set sockets like black stones.

  "How is Ba?"

  "Ba is unwell," he said, rubbing his stubbled chin. He spoke to her as if to a servant. He didn't even look in her direction.

  Mai hesitated. "Can Ba see?"

  He didn't seem blind to her. She'd always imagined blindness to be a blacking out – but what if it wasn't? What if he could see – his eyes seemed outwardly unchanged – but had now chosen not to? What if his eyes were already looking elsewhere?

  She said, "Ba will get better."

  "Child is a big girl now. How old is Child now?"

  "Sixteen."

  "Heavens," he cried. Then jokingly, "So Child has a boyfriend, ha?"

  Mai blushed and her father's hand searched for her head, patted it. Instinctively she twisted her cheek up into his rough palm. She'd come with so much to say – so much to ask – but he might as well have been deaf as blind. He laughed humorlessly. "At sixteen, Ba had to look after Ba's whole family."

  Mai didn't reply. She felt insolent looking at his face when he didn't look back.

  "Look after your mother," he said.

  Look at me, she wanted to say. She considered moving into his fixed line of sight but didn't dare. Just once, she thought. Just look at me once, Ba, and I'll do anything you say.

  "And obey her, nha?"

  "Yes, Ba."

  He gave a single nod, then smiled, but it was nothing more than a flexing of his lips.

  "Obey your mother. Promise, nha?"

  "Yes, Ba."

  "Child." His voice lowered conspiratorially and, her breath quickening, Mai stooped down closer to him. He was going to talk to her. Once, that had been her whole life. He smelt like rusted pipes. "Stop it," he whispered. She held her breath, watching his eyes. They were still locked in midair. "Stop crying, Child."

  She held herself still as he patted her head again.

  "Good girl," he said.

  The next day her mother put her on a bus to Rach Gia. It was a five-hour trip, she was told. Here was a plastic bag for motion sickness. In the market she would be picked up by an uncle she had never met. "Give this to him," her mother said, and pressed a fold of paper, torn from an exercise book, into her confused hands. Just before she got on the bus, her little brother, Loc, tugged at her shirt and asked if she minded if he used her bicycle.

  "Use your own bicycle."

  She boarded. Watched the two of them through the scuffed, stained window. Then, on the street, her mother raised one hand from her thigh in a hesitant motion, as though halfway hailing a cyclo.

  "Ma?"

  Mai pushed through the scree of indifferent bodies and rushed out to her mother. She stood there, breathing hard, sensing the larger finality in their parting. Her mother asked if she still had the money. Yes. Remember not to let anybody see it. Yes. Her mother smiled abstractedly, then brought her hand onto Mai's head and eased down, combing hair between her fingers.

  "Child," she said softly, "remember, nha? Put your hat on when Child gets off."

  Mai stammered, "Child hasn't said good-bye to Ba."

  Her mother's hand followed the contours of her skull down into the inlet of her neck, a single motion. "Don't worry," she said. "Ma will say. For Child."

  As the bus pulled out, a residue of memory surfaced in Mai's mind. Seeing her father off the first time – seven years ago, when he left for the war – her mother had clung fast to his elbow, her body turned completely into his, her face creased as though it were having trouble holding together a coherent emotion. But the second time – five years later, at the end of the war – her face had completely smoothed itself over. It had learned how to be expressionless.

  Mai looked out of the back window-searching for her mother's face-but the street, like a wound, had closed over the space where it had been.

  ***

  AFTER HEARING HIM SING, Mai caught herself, time and time again, searching for Truong. She was most at ease sitting in the shade of the hatch door, facing the prow, watching him with the other children. The only structure on the foredeck was th
e pilothouse and the children played in a small clearing behind it – a concession of territory from the adults teeming all around. Many of the children were twice Truong's age. He played with them laconically, indifferently, often leaving a game halfway through when he was bored, inevitably pulling a small group along – eager for him to dictate a new game.

  Unlike the others he didn't constantly look around to find his family. He lived in a space of his own absorption. Quyen, too, seemed content to let him be. Hemmed in always by dozens of other sweaty, salt-gritted bodies, Mai watched him, stealing solace, marveling at how he could be in the sun all day and remain so pale.

  It seemed impossible she'd known him only a few days.

  According to Quyen, Truong's father – her husband – had already made his escape. She told Mai that he had arrived safely in Pulau Bidong, one of the larger Malaysian refugee camps, eight months ago. He was waiting for them there.

  Why hadn't they traveled together?

  "We are going to America," Quyen continued, passing over Mai's question. "My husband has already rejected one offer from Canada. He says he has made friends in the Red Crescent."

  "Red Crescent?"

  "Do you have any family there?"

  After a while Quyen, misreading Mai's silence, continued, "You are probably going to Australia, no? Many people are going there now."

  "No. I don't know."

  "You don't know?" She pursed her lips in mock decision: "Then Mai will come with us."

  "Thoi," started Mai uncertainly.

  "You must come. That one likes you," Quyen said, gesturing at Truong. "He talks about you all the time."

  Mai flushed with pleasure, not fully understanding why – as she knew Quyen was lying. "He is very good," she said. "Very patient."

  "Yes," Quyen replied. She reflected for a moment. "Like his father."

  "And who has ever heard of a young boy who can sing like that? It's a miracle. He will make you rich one day."

  "Thoi, don't joke."

  She looked at her friend, surprised. "I am not joking."

  Together they turned toward him. He stood skinny and erect, his clothes hanging from his limbs as though from a denuded tree's branches. His hands directing the ragtag crew to throw their sandals into a pile. Mai wondered briefly if it made Quyen proud – seeing all those children scrambling to obey her son. The game was one her brother used to play. Relaxing her mind, Mai could almost fool herself into thinking he was there, little Loc, springing away as the designated dragon swung around to protect his treasure hoard. He was about the same age as Truong. Her thoughts started to drift back to her last meeting with her father, at the hospital, when Quyen interrupted:

  "That one was an accident."

  Mai immediately blushed, said nothing.

  "He slid out in the middle of the war."

  How could she could joke about such a thing? Mai still remembered her father's photo on the altar those five years, the incense and prayer, the hurt daily refreshing in her mother.

  "You must miss him," said Mai. "Truong's father."

  Quyen nodded.

  "When were you married?"

  "Nineteen seventy-two," Quyen answered, "in the middle of everything." For a moment her expression emptied out, making her seem younger. "I was your age then."

  "Maybe more accidents will happen," Mai said, swallowing quickly through her words, "when you see him again. When we reach land."

  Quyen snorted, then started laughing. Her face had recom-posed itself now – was again knowing, shrewd, self-aware. She was pretty when she laughed. "Maybe," she said. She prodded Mai. "And what about you?"

  But the mention of land – coming even from her own mouth – canceled out any joke for Mai. She had been trying not to think about it. From every quarter everyone now discussed, obsessively, their situation: they were on a broken-down junk, stranded in the Eastern Sea – here, or maybe here – an easy target for pirates – everyone knew about the pirates, had heard stories of boats being robbed and then rammed, of women being taken, used, dumped. On top of that they were starving, some of them beginning to get sick. No one, however, gave voice to the main fear: that they might not make it.

  Mai pushed the dread down. Desperate to change the subject, she said the first thing that came to mind. "Wasn't it dangerous to escape," she asked, "with Truong so young?"

  Her laughter subsiding, Quyen settled into a smile. "It was because of him," she said at last, "that I decided to escape." The smile hardened on her mouth.

  They both turned toward him again. It had been three days. Watching him – letting in the thought of another day, and after that, another – Mai realized that Quyen's determination, as much as she tried to take part in it, felt increasingly superficial to her. She studied the boy's face. Above his awkward body it remained as stony and impassive as ever.

  ***

  IN RACH GIA, IN THE MILLING MARKET, Mai had been met by a man with a skewed look who talked to a spot behind her shoulder. He called her name by the coriander-selling place. She was waiting for him, her hat on, next to a grease stand, petrols and oils and lubricants spread out like lunch condiments.

  "Mai," she heard, "Mai, ha?" and, still sick from the lurching bus trip-it had been her first ride in an automobile-she was swept up by this man who hugged her, turning her this way and that.

  "Child has the letter?" he grunted into her ear.

  She was confused. He said it again, thrust her out at arm's length and glared straight at her for the first time. She tried hard not to cry.

  "Heavens," he said, hastily letting go of her and stepping back. His face spread in an open, unnatural smile before he walked away. All at once Mai remembered her mother's instructions. The folded paper. She ran after him and pressed it into his hand. He read it, furtively, refolded it into a tiny square, and then he was Uncle again.

  ***

  The first hiding place was behind a house by the river. Uncle told her to climb to the top of a plank bed and stay there, don't go anywhere. She lay with the corrugated aluminium roof just a few thumbs above her head, and in the middle of the day the heat was unbearable. The wooden boards beneath her became darkened and tender with her sweat.

  A few days later Uncle came to get her – it was after the worst of the afternoon heat – and made her memorize a name and address in Rach Gia in case anyone asked her questions. She felt light-headed standing up.

  "When Child reaches land," he told her, "write to Child's mother. She will say what to do next." She nodded dumbly. It was the first and final confirmation of her life's new plan: she was leaving on a boat. He looked at her and sighed. "She said nothing for Child's own protection." He gave her another abbreviated hug. "Does Child understand?" He wasn't, in all likelihood, her real uncle – she knew that now – but still, when he left, she felt in her stomach a deep-seated fluster. It was the last she saw of him.

  The second hiding place was a boat anchored beneath a bridge on the Loc Thang river. Mai stayed down below deck for days and days, with sixty people maybe, among cargo sacks of sweet potatoes. No one talked; every sound in the dark was rat-made. She caught herself whimpering and covered her mouth. Once in a while the owner brought a few kilos of rice and they cooked it with potatoes over low kerosene flames and ate, salting their bit, chewing quietly. People coughed into their sleeves to muffle the sound. Parents fed their babies sleeping pills.

  One night the owner appeared with another man who came in and tapped her on the shoulder. He tapped five other people as well. They all followed him out of the boat into the hot dark strange openness. A rower waited nearby and after some hesitation and muted dissent they climbed into his canoe, sitting one behind the other, Mai in the middle. The new man – the guide – instructed the rower to cross to the other side of the river. But he didn't, he kept on paddling downstream for what seemed to Mai like hours and hours. At one point she found herself falling asleep. She woke to the sound of wood tapping hollowly against wood. They were pushing into th
e midst of a dark cluster of houseboats. The rower stopped, secured a lanyard to one of the boats and leapt aboard. He lit a small lantern and began passing large drums reeking of diesel into the canoe. Moments later they moored against the riverbank. The rower crept onshore with a hoe and exhumed something long and gray from beneath a coconut grove.

  "Detachable sail," someone whispered.

  Mai turned around. The speaker was a young woman. She sounded as though she might have been pointing out bad produce at a market stall.

  "It's a detachable sail," the woman repeated.

  Mai began asking her what that was when the rower turned, silencing them both with a glare. A moment later Mai felt a cupped hand against her ear.

  "My name is Chi Quyen." The woman used the word Chi, for "older sister." She reclined, smiling grimly but not unkindly, then leaned forward again, "Chi too is by herself."

  Mai nodded. Shyly, she lifted a finger and crossed her lips.

  For a long time they glided soundlessly, close to shore, and then they entered a thick bed of reeds. They stopped. The rower turned around, shook his heavy head and made the sign for no talking. It was dark. He struck a match and lit an incense stick and planted it in the front tip of the canoe. After a while Mai became confused. No one else seemed to be praying. When the stick burned down the guide asked the rower, in a low voice, to light another one. At least an hour passed. Occasionally Mai made out the rower's profile, hard and somber. She took the dark smell of sandalwood into her body.

  The canoe swayed. "Maybe they're waiting," a new voice whispered gruffly. "Move out of the reeds so they can see the signal." "Keep your head down!" the rower spat.

  At that moment Mai realized the incense stick – its dim glow, its smoke, perhaps – was their signal.

  Someone else said, "They won't wait."

  "Move out of the reeds," the man repeated.