by Laura Lam
Andrew contrasted markedly with most of the Western men I had known before. There was the way he spoke, for one thing – not only the charming and distinguished British accent but the complete and polished sentences! He had a cultivated, highly intelligent air.
Although he wasn’t conventionally good looking, I felt a strong physical attraction to him. He had curly auburn hair, eyes that suggested intellect and mischief at once, a handsome mouth with sensual lips. Though he had a stocky build, he moved and walked with grace and confidence. He wore a dark blue pinstripe suit that first time, and a shirt of an unusual shade of pink. Pink to me was a woman’s colour, yet this most masculine of men wore it with total insouciance. I also couldn’t help noticing that there was no wedding band on his fourth finger – a fact that intrigued me no end – and in the ensuing months I was unable to put him out of my mind.
In mid-December I sent Andrew a Christmas card. It was an excuse to re-open contact between us and I wasn’t sure he would write back. But to my pleasant surprise, three weeks after the holidays I received a letter from him. It began by addressing me formally by my surname and then continued:
How very kind of you to send a Christmas card. It was very nice to hear from you again.
We are now expecting to be in Saigon at the end of January, provisionally the week beginning January 27. I am waiting to hear from Professor Pho Ba Long and the Vietnam Management Association.
I shall certainly make a point of coming to pay my respects to you in person. We know so few people in Saigon it is nice to have a friendly contact. Perhaps we could have dinner at one of those magnificent French restaurants and you could tell me more about life in Vietnam…
I sent him a response the next day – telling him how delighted I was to have heard from him. And from that day on I was waiting anxiously for Andrew’s second visit.
A few days prior to his arrival I received another letter from Andrew, in which he revealed – to my great disappointment – that he was married. He wanted me to know this before his trip. On the other hand, he wrote, the fact that he was married ought not to prevent us from getting to know each other and becoming friends. That may have been his point of view but for me “getting to know each other and becoming friends” was a very complicated matter. I’d already done that once, and now the memories of Robert, my American lieutenant, came flooding back into my consciousness. On the one hand, I already knew in my heart that I preferred dating Western men. There were any number of striking differences between them and Asians, not the least of which, I had observed, was their solicitude toward women, their willingness to help without being asked, their politeness, even their deference.
But why, I asked in my naiveté and despair, did these men – these men of my dreams – come to me only when they were already married? Was this to be my lot always? If not, why was it now about to happen to me a second time, when all I really wanted was to love a worthy and single Westerner and to have a future with him?
* * *
Andrew arrived in Sai Gon in January, and he invited me to a French restaurant – the Aterbea – on the first evening. In my memory everything is still clear, from the watercress salad, the fresh strawberries and the candlelight, to how attentively he listened. I also remember, as we talked about the war and my desire to leave the country for a better future, how the tensions in me slowly ebbed away. Suddenly, in his presence, everything seemed possible. He too relaxed, and slowly, in the lovely chemistry of two people drawn to each other, we melted together. The next thing I remember was standing next to the window in his hotel room, his hand on my shoulder. Andrew turned me toward him, and we kissed for the first time. During the next two days we were inseparable. He would bring me to my office on Tu Do Street in the morning, come back to collect me at the end of my working day, and at night the overwhelming tides of love carried us both away.
From that point, Andrew worked frantically on a series of schemes to get me out of the country, but in the increasing confusion none of them could quite be finalized.
In the first attempt, a Cathay Pacific Airways’ purser would get me on a flight to Hong Kong for a proposed marriage. When that did not succeed, a Chinese friend of Andrew’s who had a nephew with a company in Sai Gon offered to make me an employee and transfer me. That did not work either. A few days later, I was notified that a New Zealander would enter a false marriage with me. Again, no success. A Frenchman then proposed to marry me in a mariage blanc. The complexity of the French bureaucracy did not, however, allow sufficient time for this to materialize. It was then arranged that I would marry a Chinese man who held a British passport. This plan too fell through. One of Andrew’s last resorts was for me to board a fishing boat and a cargo ship on the Sai Gon River, cross the South China Sea and eventually sail into Hong Kong harbour. Again, failure.
To Andrew’s efforts were added others of my own devising, each more desperate and foolhardy than the next. I had met a non-white American who promised to take me out of the country when he was evacuated. However, he demanded that I become intimate with him in exchange for my freedom. Reluctantly, but thinking there was no other choice, I entered the agreement, but after a few days I couldn’t stand it any longer and fled his apartment. Like many a Vietnamese young woman caught in the maelstrom of war, I did things that still shame me to tears when I remember them.
Meanwhile, all over downtown Sai Gon were the unmistakable signs of imminent disaster. Whole businesses were shutting down. Flights and sea passages were now cancelled more often than not and heartrending stories circulated about shipwrecks on the open seas, people starving to death, people being attacked by pirates and devoured by sharks. Key personnel vanished from the offices of the bureaucracies, leaving the embassies and consulates unable to cope. Even the mail service had become less and less reliable. Soon my own boss would stop coming to the office, leaving a surreal vacuum for those of us who continued to show up for work.
At last a letter came from Andrew instructing me to get ready for a cargo ship to Hong Kong. I was to make myself as ugly and careworn as possible, and I would have to contrive to speak Cantonese in order to disguise myself as a Chinese passenger when the ship entered Hong Kong waters. A new Chinese identity card would be given to me while on the ship. My ugly appearance was to help prevent a possible rape, a common-enough event during such a journey. The arrangement would cost twenty-five hundred American dollars; Andrew would pay. A Chinese man was going to come to my office and escort me to the ship. I would know him because he would call me by the code name, “Rabbit,” the affectionate name Andrew had given me when we fell in love.
Although I had learned to read and write Chinese, I was out of practice. I found a tutor who gave me intensive lessons and then practiced it with my two neighbours – Mrs Buoi and Mrs Troi. Married to Chinese men, they spoke fluent Cantonese. Out of curiosity, they asked me, “Why are you suddenly interested in speaking Chinese, Hoa Lai?”
I told them, “Aunties, I am going to work for a Chinese-owned business in Cho Lon, I will tell you more about it later”.
Meanwhile, I decided to make a cheongsam – the Chinese national dress with a high collar – in black cotton. I hid it in my desk drawer at the office. With the leftover fabric, I made a small sack to wear around my waist, inside my clothing. I would keep a small quantity of American dollars and my few pieces of precious jewellery in the sack. I needed a scarf too, but the ones at the Grands Magasins near my office were far too chic and I went instead to the Ben Thanh central market, where I found a huge black nylon scarf, ugly enough to suit my purpose.
A telegram arrived from Andrew, confirming the arrangements and giving me the name of the Chinese man, Mr Law Keung. Excited and anxious, I nevertheless concealed what was transpiring from everyone, even my family. There was a story on the official news about a boat carrying more than a hundred Vietnamese passengers that had been caught entering Hong Kong waters. The illegal immigrants had already been sent back to Sai Gon, where the
y were immediately imprisoned by the South Vietnamese authorities and classified as political prisoners. If that happened to me, I would jump into the sea and drown sooner than be jailed. Meanwhile, I decided not to take a bath in the remaining days, not to wash my hair, and to stop wearing makeup – all this to look unappealing by the time I reached the boat that would take me away.
The night before departure, I did everything as usual when I got home from work, but after my brothers went to bed, I went into my parents’ room. “Mother,” I called softly, standing by their bed, “there’s something I have to talk to you and Father about.”
Perhaps it was my tone; perhaps they had guessed. My mother immediately rose, lifted the white mosquito netting and came out. She sat at the edge of the wooden bed lined with a reed mat. My father did the same.
Neither of them spoke. They waited for me: this mother with whom I’d had such a turbulent, at times violent, relationship; this father whom I adored, but who had so long remained a mysterious, shadowy figure in my life.
I held my breath. Then, as calmly as possible, told them, “I am going away. It is rather risky. I will ask Quan Yin and Grandmother’s spirit to follow me to safety.”
“Going away?” my mother asked. “Where? How are you going to do that? Who will take you? Whom are you going with?”
I told them a friend had helped me, and about the Chinese man and the boat to Hong Kong. Even knowing that much could get them into trouble but in the event anything might happen to me, they would at least have a chance of finding out.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” This was my father’s quiet voice.
When I confirmed that it was, he said to me, “Dear child! You are an adult and I respect your decision.”
Still, tears welled in his eyes. I watched him quietly wipe them away with the sleeve of his pyjamas.
My mother broke down then, until I reminded her softly, “Mother! Your crying may wake up the children.”
She stood up and went into the kitchen, where she scooped water from the water tank and washed her face. Then she came back to sit on the edge of the bed with my father. He asked me if I had sufficient money for the journey, adding that my mother would give me more if needed.
“It is crucially important that you have plenty of cash with you,” he said.
“I do have some cash,” I assured him, “and I am also taking a few pieces of jewellery and one tael of gold with me. I think that is plenty.”
I then gave him Andrew’s address in Hong Kong on a piece of paper.
We fell silent. I said good night and quietly went up to my attic room. I returned five minutes later; more needed to be said.
“I will be safe, Mother,” I assured her, “and I will write home as soon as I get to Hong Kong.”
My mother by this time had regained her composure, but my father looked more distressed. I said to him, “I will take care of myself, Father. I believe that Quan Yin will guide me to safety.”
I’d always been his favourite child and loved him very dearly. My grandmother – his mother – used to sing my praises to him when I was little, saying I was the most affectionate and sensitive child she had ever known, and every time she did so it brought tears to his eyes. He also knew he’d never spent enough time with me when I was growing up and that I’d suffered from it, particularly at the hands of my mother. But that evening neither he nor I was able to express our feelings openly. This was partly our culture, which taught us constantly to suppress our emotions, partly the strange circumstances of his life, but it was also because of my mother’s presence.
With my mother things were more complicated, riddled with ambiguities, and in truth I could never bring myself to love her. As a child growing up in our village I had been largely defenseless before her rages and even as a teenager in high school I continued to suffer physical and mental abuse at her hands. For years, despite my innocence, she had referred to me as “the whore” and until I got my office job she would say out loud, whenever she became angry with me, that whoredom was the only profession suitable to me.
Since I had begun to bring money home, however, her attitude had shifted. Our house no longer had an earthen floor and mud walls. My father had had them replaced with a white and yellow French tile floor and stuccoed the walls a few years after we moved in. In early 1974 a second storey was added with money from my savings, and this money also paid to pave our alley. To celebrate that event, Mrs Troi, our neighbour, had made her famous rainbow cakes and we feasted on roasted ducks and chickens. To the delight of my family, I also had electricity and running water installed the same year and later purchased new furniture.
My mother stopped calling me “whore” then but she was still unable to show me any affection. What all but broke my heart this night was that she cried over me – the first time she had ever done so – just as I was about to leave the family home for good.
Later, in the attic, I lay in bed, eyes wide open. I called it an “attic” but actually it was the full second storey of the house. When it was rebuilt, I had wanted two windows, one facing the house of the former pirate Bay Ca and his family, the other facing the bamboo grove. Nearly everything in it was green – green walls, green curtains, green bed cover, and numerous house plants. Next to the bed was a metal desk, and on the opposite wall a wardrobe made four years earlier by a carpenter in our neighbourhood and painted a soft yellow. It contained my clothes – including the many white dresses and gowns Robert had bought for me. He had been my greatest love, but now, on the shipboard journey I was about to undertake, I would be abandoning his rich and beautiful gifts to assume the role of a poor and ugly Chinese widow.
Some time that night, I got up and tiptoed to the balcony overlooking the roof of Bay Ca’s house. I had a red rosebush there, with several buds about to open. I thought of my four-year-old sister, Hong, and how she would enjoy their scent when they opened. She was asleep downstairs in my parents’ bed. The cool breeze touched my skin. I went back to bed and half-asleep, half-awake, heard the gentle sound of the bamboo leaves stirring on the edge of the cemetery.
At five the next morning, I got up and went downstairs. My parents were already awake; perhaps they hadn’t slept either. Once again they sat on the edge of their bed, my mother’s long hair hanging loose, not in the tight bun she always rolled it into every morning. She was wearing a lavender blouse and black trousers. My father, next to her, wore his usual blue striped pyjamas and behind them, in the bed, my little sister, Hong, lay sleeping.
Neither of them spoke. Perhaps they didn’t know what to say. Neither did I. Finally, my father said, “You must look after yourself over the long journey, child!”
“Have you packed everything you need?” My mother cut in. “What about some bread and a few fruits?”
“I’ve got enough until I get to Hong Kong. I can buy some bread and fruits on my way to the office.”
On Andrew’s advice, I wasn’t taking a suitcase but only a small travel bag.
In my mind I was fighting back the strange, yet plausible conviction that I was seeing my parents for the last time. What would become of them? And my brothers and little sister?
“Mother! Please tell the children that I’ve gone overseas to work. But I will return one day with a lot more money for the family.”
And that was all.
* * *
When I got to Tu Do Street that morning it was still not seven thirty and the office wouldn’t open for another hour. All the shops and businesses were still closed, with the exception of the French café, but I was too agitated to enter and went for a walk instead along Le Loi Boulevard, past the imposing offices of Viet Nam Airlines. How impossible it was for an ordinary person like me to get on an airplane to go anywhere! But I was going now. I was going, not by air but by sea. And for all I knew, I was seeing the centre of Sai Gon for the last time.
I made a turn onto Rue Dr Calmette, and walked toward the waterfront. At the channel from Ben Van Don, kno
wn previously as Quai de la Marne, I wondered where my ship was. Two ferries, carrying passengers from the opposite side of the river, were docking, and several fishing boats, large and small, and a few ships approached at further distance, half hidden in the early morning mist.
Turning along the riverbank, I found a little bench and made myself sit there for as long as I could stand it. Again I wondered what type of ship Mr Law Keung was going to take me to. Soon, I was on my feet again, going down Nguyen Hue Boulevard to the Hôtel de Ville landmark. I stood below its ornate, pale-yellow façade, gazing upward. One evening just before the last Lunar New Year, after visiting the Flower Market with my brothers and little sister, we had gone to the Hôtel de Ville to watch the famous geckos feasting happily on the abundant insects. Almost every evening its exterior under the neon light was covered with several thousands of these small hungry lizards, who would offer an evening concert with their high-pitched chirping sounds. I thought of Hong and my brothers at home, imagining them eating their breakfast. Perhaps my parents were already telling them that I’d left for Hong Kong.
When I reached Tu Do Street again, the office still hadn’t opened for the day so I went into the Brodard café across the way, ordered some fruit juice and a croissant, but my stomach was churning and I couldn’t eat. Staring at the traffic going past without really seeing it, I realized that what I’d been doing, in the past hour, was saying goodbye to Sai Gon.