War Baby

by Colin Falconer

  ‘Tell her I am a writer, a bao chi, from America. I would like the people in my country to know her story, and the story of the other Vietnamese people who were forced to flee her country. Tell her I would like to know what happened to her, so I can write it down.’

  Marquez translated this.

  The girl murmured something and Marquez interpreted. ‘She wants to know if you will take her with you to America.’

  It was a question they all asked at some time. He felt Garcia watching him, curious as to how he would answer. ‘Tell her I cannot make such a promise. Tell her eventually she will be resettled in another country but her fate is quite out of my hands.’

  She said something to Marquez.

  ‘She has asked me why she should help you, if you cannot help her.’

  Webb was a little startled by this reply, but he said: ‘Tell her there is no reason.’

  The little girl stared at him, as if deciding for herself whether he could be trusted. Finally she turned back to Marquez.

  ‘She asked me … if the American people realized what was happening in her country, would they try and stop it?’

  ‘Perhaps they will do more to help you and the other people in this camp,’ Webb said.

  This seemed to satisfy her. She held out her glass for more Coca-Cola.

  Webb explained to her about the voice recorded and put it on the table between them. Then he picked up his notepad and pen, and Phuong started to recite her story. ‘The first thing I remember,’ Marquez translated, ‘I was living with my mother in Cholon ...’

  * * *

  My mother was a very fine lady, very beautiful. Everyone loved her and respected her. She always wore very beautiful clothes, and she was very kind and gentle. My father was a big businessman with lots of money. We had a beautiful villa right in the middle of Saigon, with a beautiful garden, and green shutters on all the windows. My father drove everywhere in a big car and he was very, very important.

  He was also a very brave man and he decided to stay in Saigon when the communists came, to try and protect the people. But as soon as they took over the city they threw him in prison and used our fine house as a barracks for their soldiers. We never saw my father again.

  My mother and I were forced to live on the streets, begging for food.

  But the communists did not want people to live on the streets, everyone was supposed to have work in their new utopia, so we were sent to an SEZ, a Special Economic Zone, in the countryside. It was at a place called Le Minh Xuan and it was one of the first and largest of the SEZs, ten kilometers from Saigon. They made us dig irrigation canals, building mud into walls with our bare hands. The communists gave us nothing in return; no food and no shelter. We had to do everything for ourselves, starting from nothing. We had to build our own huts and grow our own food as best we could. If we were able to raise any pigs or chickens we had to sell them back to the state at a stupid low price. Life was very terrible. Those who did not starve were killed or maimed by unexploded mines while working in the fields.

  We survived there for two monsoons, but one night my mother whispered to me that we certainly would not survive another season. So like many others we returned to Saigon, once again sleeping in parks and on sidewalks, begging and stealing to survive.

  We learned to live as pavement hawkers. My mother would buy one packet of cigarettes on the black market, then sell the cigarettes one at a time to make a small profit. We squatted on the sidewalk from dawn to sunset every day, peddling cigarettes. But still we could not make enough money even to eat properly, so my mother finally sold her wedding ring. She had kept this hidden from the communists all the time we were in the SEZ, clinging to the hope that my father was still alive. But now she pawned it and used the money to buy a big bundle of old clothes from a Chinese woman in Cholon. Then we resold the items one by one on the pavement outside the Central Market. But it was very dangerous and we had to move on quickly if we saw police or soldiers.

  For a while everything was all right. But then one day the police arrested us and we were sent back to the Zones.

  This time it was the SEZ at Rach Gia. The camp was much worse even than Le Minh Xuan. It was run like an army regiment. The people were divided into five battalions of four companies, each consisting of one hundred people. A communist cadre was appointed to each ‘company’, and it was his job to interrogate everyone about their past. They were looking for people who had sympathized with the Americans.

  The worst thing about Rach Gia was that there was hardly any water. We could not irrigate the crops, and anything that did grow was eaten by insects. Most of the children suffered from malnutrition and many others died of disease.

  Fortunately it was not a very difficult camp to escape from - everyone who had been sent to Rach Gia zone eventually found their way back to the city. That’s what we did. We walked all the way back to Saigon, and went back to living on the street.

  My mother still had a little gold, some tiny ingots, which she had kept hidden. Do not ask me how, it is very private, how she did it. When we got back to Saigon she sold the gold bars and then we went back to Cholon, found the same old Chinese woman who had sold us the clothes. Now she was selling china plates and my mother bought a big box from her and again we went back to being hawkers, dodging the soldiers all the time. There was very big money doing this, as long as we did not get arrested. My mother sold the plates and I was the lookout.

  One day she told me we must escape from Vietnam, that our life was never going to get any better. The only way you could escape was by living near the sea where the boats were, but to move to another place you had to have the right papers. My mother used all the money we made selling the plates to bribe an official from the government. He forged the documents for us. The cadres made a lot of money doing this.

  My mother then paid two yaels to a man who had a boat and the next day we went to Vung Tau. But the boat never came. I remember my mother cried and cried. I had never seen her cry so much, even in the Zones. I was very frightened, I thought she was going to die from crying.

  But my mother was a strong person, she was never sad for long. She said we would just have to sell more dishes and make back all the money we had lost.

  And that is what we did. One day my mother told me she had met a man who had a boat and it would take us away, to freedom, to America. We did not have quite enough money but my mother said the man who owned the boat was very kind and he was taking some people even though they could not pay.

  So we went back to Vung Tau.

  We got on the boat late one night. I remember there were a lot of people and the boat was very small. No one had any food, and I was very hungry. But I did not mind so much anymore. I was very happy because my mother said we were going to America and we would have a fine house and a nice car and live a good and happy life. She was very excited and I was very excited too.

  When we set off the sea was rough and everyone was very sick so it did not matter there was no food. But then we ran out of water. The man who was in charge of the boat got lost I think and a week went by and we still could not see land. Some people went crazy with thirst and threw themselves in the sea and we never saw them again.

  Then one night there was a terrible storm. Our little boat tossed on the sea like an angry water buffalo. I heard screaming. Some people had fallen out of the boat.

  My mother held on to me very tight but I could feel her trembling and I knew she was as afraid as I was. When the morning came the sky was still very dark and our boat was lying over on its side. Another big wave crashed over us and I was sure we were all going to die.

  Then someone cried out that they could see land. We thought we were saved But then there was a jolt and a terrible noise came from underneath the boat. Everyone started screaming again. There was another big wave and it was like a giant dog was shaking us in its teeth. Then the deck pitched right over and I fell in the water. I reached out for my mother but she was not there.
<
br />   I cannot swim. I felt myself go under and my mouth filled up with water. Then someone grabbed me and held my head above the waves. I was still shouting for my mother. I could see the hull of the boat turned right over on top of the water and heads bobbing up and down in the sea. But my mother was gone.

  I saw a big piece of wood and wrapped my arms around it. I clung on as tight as I could. The person who was holding on to me - I don’t know who it was - let me go. I never even thanked them for saving my life. I had no thought of anything else, I just held onto the wood and screamed for my mother.

  The waves dragged me over some coral. The pain was very bad but there was nothing I could do. Suddenly the sea became much calmer and I saw a tiny island. I realized the water was shallow and that I could stand up.

  When I reached the shore I walked up and down the beach all day, and the next, looking for my mother. Some other people were washed up on the sand too but they were all dead. Bits and pieces from the boat were thrown up by the waves and I found some bits of canvas and draped them over bushes to make some shade. There was also a big tin drum. That night there was another storm and the drum filled up with rain. If it was not for this drum I would not have survived.

  Then finally I found my mother, lying face down in the shallows. I dragged her up on to the sand and I sat next to her all that day, talking to her, hoping she will come alive. But then the smell of her body, and of all the other bodies, is too bad and I have to go and sit on another part of the island.

  And that is how I lived until the fishermen found me.

  Chapter 46

  When she had finished the three men sat for a long time in shuffling silence.

  The girl looked perfectly composed, as if she had just recited her favorite bedtime story. There was something wrong here, Webb thought, something that didn’t quite make sense. The little girl had round eyes, she was Eurasian, yet she had claimed that both her parents were Vietnamese. Also, there was something about her home as she had described it. A child would surely remember how it looked from the inside; the toys, the garden, the smells. Phuong had described only what someone might see form the outside.

  ‘Thank her for telling me her story,’ he said to Marquez. ‘Tell her I am very sad she has suffered so much. Then please ask her which of her parents had round eyes.’

  The lieutenant looked uncomfortable, but he dutifully translated Webb’s question. He watched the girl’s reaction, and he knew immediately that his suspicions were correct.

  She looked down at her lap and refused to answer.

  There were tens of thousands of round-eye children left behind by American servicemen during the war; the bui doi, the dust of life that the new republic of Vietnam did not want. The chances of finding her again were slim. And yet: he had visited so many refugee camps in the last few months, the odds were no longer that long. Or did he just need to see that woman and that child wherever he went?

  ‘Do you know her mother’s name?’ he asked Garcia.

  Garcia consulted the file in his lap. ‘Ngai Dieu-Quynh. It is a very common name.’ He arched one eyebrow in curiosity. ‘Should this be important?’

  ‘No, it’s not important.’ No, because this could not be that Phuong. That Phuong and her mother had been killed by rocket fire in Saigon on 28 April 1975.

  He leaned forward again. ‘Lieutenant Marquez, will you ask her again what nationality her father was, please?’

  Marquez shrugged his shoulders and translated the question.

  The little girl shook her head. ‘She says she would like to go now.’

  Webb wanted to shake her. Tell me the truth! This, after all, was what he had been looking for all along. The book was the logical sequel to Goodnight, Saigon and his publishers thought it would sell well. But the real reason he was writing it, he knew, was it gave him cause for one last vain search. What if they had survived the rocket attack? What if they were still alive?

  ‘You wish to talk to this girl anymore?’ Garcia asked him.

  Webb shook his head. He thanked her in her own language, but she did not reply. She stood up and left, without a word. He knew that he had shamed her; it was not the Asian way to expose a lie so baldly. She had lost face.

  He thought about the bombed out apartment in Cholon after the rocket attack, the woman dying among the charred ruins, he and Crosby searching the hospitals. What if she had survived?

  * * *

  He spoke to four other refugees that afternoon, more flotsam thrown up on the Filipino beaches eight years after the war; there was a woman, almost catatonic, who had seen her two sons drown in front of her eyes; an old man who had lost his sons, his daughters, his wife and his grandchildren, one by one, first to the war, then to the Zones and finally to the sea; a young boy hoping to find his sister in Australia; another young girl, around the same age as Phuong, whose parents had fallen from their leaking boat during a storm, leaving her orphaned and alone.

  So many tales of misery and unimaginable grief, equally as harrowing as Phuong’s. Yet when he flew back to Manila later that afternoon all he could think about was a bony little girl in a ragged Russian Olympics T-shirt.

  A week later he was back in New York and an insane idea insinuated itself into his mind. Finally he picked up the phone and dialed the number of the Philippines Embassy in Washington to ask for sponsorship forms. The chances that the girl he had interviewed was her no longer mattered.

  The point was it that it could be her. He could no longer stand to one side and take photographs of other men’s wars. He could take photographs so that the world would start to care, but the world didn’t care. It was down to him. He finally had to get involved.

  Chapter 47

  Phuong was flown to a place called Camp Pendleton where white soldiers sprinkled DDT powder on her head, and men in uniforms gave her a form that said she was a refugee with parole status. From there she was put on another plane.

  She was given food on a plastic tray. She put some into her mouth but promptly spat it out. It was inedible. She looked at the magazine in the pocket in front of her; there were glossy photographs of animals she had never seen before, from a place called Africa. The advertisements astonished her, all the expensive watches, cameras and motor cars. Is that how everyone in America lived?

  A middle-aged American businessman sitting in the seat next to her gave her a book. On the front cover was a picture of a man with a beard standing on top of a very tall building. The American told her the man’s name was Jesus. Phuong remembered this name. Her mother had told her that Jesus was God. The American said that he spoke to Jesus every day and that if she did this as well the man with the beard would help her with anything she needed, anything at all.

  Perhaps this is why they all have expensive watches and cameras and motor cars in America, Phuong thought. All they have to do is ask Jesus for one. But then why didn’t they get Jesus to help them beat the communists in Saigon?

  The man asked her for some money to give to Jesus and she gave him the ten United States dollars that Commander Garcia had given her when she left Puerto Princesa.

  They flew into a storm and she hid under her seat. Jesus’s good friend vomited noisily in a bag. A lady in a uniform came and coaxed Phuong from the floor and buckled her back into her seat. Then she held her hand until they were out of the storm again. When it was over Phuong felt ashamed to have been so frightened. It was not anywhere near as bad as being on the boat.

  When they landed, the lady in the uniform took her to another plane. She said she was going to a place called JFK in New York. She asked her if JFK was in America. She said that it was.

  She wished her mother was with her. This was where she had always wanted to go.

  * * *

  She emerged from the arrivals hall wearing the same Mishka the Bear T-shirt she had been wearing the day he first saw her on Puerto Princesa. Her bell-bottom jeans were tom and frayed at the cuffs. She was holding a copy of Watchtower in her right hand, and she w
as shivering with cold. Everything she possessed was zipped into the flight bag draped over her shoulder.

  He crouched down. ‘Hello, Phuong,’ he said.

  She did not answer. He had been told she had been learning English at the school at Puerto Princesa and that she had proved an exceptional student. Perhaps she simply did not know how to address him. He could not ask her to call him Father. And calling him by his first name would be considered impolite by a Vietnamese. ‘You can call me Uncle,’ he said.

  She nodded, grateful for his guidance. ‘Hello, Uncle, how do you do today?’

  He embraced her and felt her stiffen. The wrong thing to do.

  ‘Are you cold?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it is cold today,’ Phuong said. ‘I think it may rain.’

  He took off his leather jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said.

  Chapter 48

  A watery April sun hung low over the fields. Phuong sat quietly in the passenger seat, gaping at the cars and the flat, empty fields. They turned on to the Lincoln Cove turnpike and ten minutes later they were in the main street.

  Lincoln Cove was an old whaling village, now mostly a tourist town. It was still early in the season and there were just a handful of tourists on the sidewalks, braving the cold in shorts and sweatshirts that bore the ubiquitous Lincoln Cove cartoon whale.

  Webb drove with the window down. A salt wind jangled the halyards of the yachts in the marina, and he heard laughter from the Whalers Hotel where a group of yachtsmen were drinking beer in bentwood rockers. He turned down a narrow lane towards Bayberry Cove and pulled over a hundred yards from the point.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said.

  There was a mailbox with ‘Webb’ hand-painted on the tin. An old cedar shaded an unkempt lawn. He opened a creaking gate and she followed him up the shell-grit path. The house was white clapboard, with cedar shingles on the roof. The tangle of mimosa that grew over the veranda was just coming into bloom.