Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

  * * *

  I’d been having strange and frightening dreams. I couldn’t stop thinking of him surrounded by increasing danger. In one dream, we were being detained in the jungle, mired in mud and it was raining heavily. Our clothes were torn. He held me in his arms and kissed my breasts. My body was as cold and passive as a corpse. We floated away on a powerful current and disappeared into a silent river where dead men floated by in batches. The water was sticky and gruesome, like spilled blood.

  In reality, the theme of death was all around us. I can still summon the sad and mournful voice of one of the nuns after everyone had retired to the dormitory. In the dark and still night we heard her haunting lament wafting on the chilly wind. She sang out several war-poems, including one by the poet Nguyen Du about foreign soldiers, who never returned home.

  Sad for them, souls of the lost thousands

  They must set forth for unknown shores

  They are the ones for whom no incense burns

  Desolate, they must wander night after night

  To me, the thousands of lost souls were Americans who had lost their lives in my homeland.

  Though I was in love with Robert, I felt he should be out of the country and the sooner the better. Like the majority of Vietnamese, I felt the Americans were not likely to win their “Vietnam War” and the risk for them was too high. Firstly, most fighting took place in farms, homes, and villages, with guerrilla aggression on one side and “search and destroy” missions on the other. There were very few large pitched battles clear of civilian areas, and never a clearly defined front line dividing the combatants. Often more innocent civilians were killed than members of the guerrilla army. Secondly, the Nationalist forces were fighting with a strong sense of mission – ready to sacrifice their own lives to defend their homeland. Thirdly, they had thorough knowledge of and familiarity with local climate and terrain, which the American troops found threatening. Lastly, the Americans could never be absolutely certain that they really held the territory they had fought to possess. They were never really sure of their enemy’s identity or location. Frustrated aggression would easily turn friends or neutrals into enemies.

  Viet Nam’s countryside was filled with Americans in military uniforms. They did not know the country’s background, the culture, or the way of life of the Vietnamese. Whenever the peasants saw an NLF soldier tied up and followed by American soldiers holding guns and bayonets, their sympathies certainly ran with the captive.

  In a “cordon and search” mission, where shooting and destruction were rife, a US Marine described, “Their homes had been wrecked, their children killed, their rice confiscated, and if they weren’t pro- Viet Cong before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left.”

  Carrying a thirty-kilogram pack in intense heat and humidity, often through swamps or dense jungles, harassed by insects and leeches and snakes, and in fear of booby traps or sudden enemy fire, the American experience on the ground often sparked anger and violence.

  An ARVN soldier during the late sixties revealed his own ambiguity and frustration while fighting alongside American troops:

  You, my friends, have come to Viet Nam

  You, my friends, have drunk the water of this tiny nation

  But, you, my friends, have not understood the soul of its people.

  You have not been willing to see their burning desire

  You are not deaf, my friends, and you are not blind

  Then why do you keep on fighting?

  Oh, my US soldier friends Haven’t you asked yourself?

  With all the corpses of your comrades

  With all the wealth of your nation

  With all the modern weapons that you use

  Why haven’t you achieved victory?

  Letters found on dead American soldiers in remote mountains and jungles often conveyed the distress of their situation in this foreign land. Here are some examples:

  “It was an unbelievably large group – the Viet Cong. We were attacked by them and already lost a few battles…When we raided an area there was no sign of them, but as soon as we went past, so many of them appeared all of a sudden and attacked us from behind… ”

  “Our troops are fighting against many small armies hiding themselves in jungles and mountains. They have already inflicted huge casualties on our forces… ”

  “We are wondering about the meaning of this war and our own sacrifice. So far it has been such useless effort to win over the enemy.”

  “The local people are so fearful of us. Whenever they see us they run away, as if we are carrying deadly and contagious diseases to them.”

  “One day when we have our children we will make certain that they will not be sent to this horrible country.”

  When members of the Nationalist army found unsent letters of dead American soldiers, someone who knew English would read them. Out of respect for the deceased, each letter would be buried with the body. Very often the finder inserted the letter into a container found nearby, such as an empty coke or beer can, or a bottle, and placed it next to the body in the grave. Vietnamese culture holds that once somebody is dead, the burial must be treated with a certain level of respect, if circumstances allow, regardless whether the deceased is a friend or an enemy. The dead are on a level above the living. One time a returning nun described how a friend had tried to preserve a letter by wrapping it with a small plastic sheet. She placed the letter on the chest of the American before burying him.

  I was stirred up with my own anxiety and asked the nuns, “Why didn’t the Viet Cong give those letters to their superior so they could be mailed to the men’s home country?”

  The nuns gave me a surprised look. One of them said, “They couldn’t do that, Little Sister.” “Why couldn’t they?” I insisted. “It was important for the men’s relatives in America to receive the letters.”

  But the nuns went on, “Just think of the costs to mail those letters, dear! Where would they get the money to buy stamps? They couldn’t even obtain enough food to survive themselves. And what a hardship to guard the letters and transport them from such remote areas to the outside world?”

  I was reluctant to ask more questions. I didn’t really want to know more.

  One night I overheard a conversation between one of the nuns and an invalid woman asylum seeker. The woman said something about captured Americans being subjected to “paying” with their deaths when the rural villages were bombed. I learned that often the Viet- namese spy networks aided the Nationalists with information about the date of an air raid – from a few hours to a few days or weeks or months. They would send a few American prisoners to the targeted zone -- to be killed by their own fire. In North Viet Nam, where American aircraft started bombing in 1964 and where it was intensified under Nixon’s order in 1972, every time the Americans launched another merciless bombing mission, a number of American prisoners would be taken out – hand cuffed and legs tied to a tree or a pole – and left to die under the pouring bombs. The prisoners, mostly pilots, had been kept in Son Tay and Ap Lo compounds, a remote forested area northwest of Ha Noi. When the Nationalist intelligence informed the Ha Noi government that the Pentagon would conduct an air raid to rescue the prisoners in November 1970, the captive Americans were moved to another secret location.

  * * *

  The pressure from my mother seemed to have eased. A few days after I returned from the temple my father arranged an interview for me at the Ministry of Transportation. I was accepted into the accounting department, to start work the following month. The salary was small, but I would be pleased to be away from home all day. And naturally it was much better to have an office job than do manual labour.

  Robert was again sent to a war zone. American soldiers were dying in large numbers, or missing, and he never told me where he was going or where he had been after he came back.

  After he left I became ill with a high fever, a severe headache, and nearly lost my voice. Although we had planned to meet after he r
eturned to Sai Gon, I was too ill to see him. We had no telephone at home so it was impossible for me to contact him.

  A week went by. I knew he must be back. The fever and headache were fading and my voice was nearly back to normal. I would go to the BOQ the next day.

  That afternoon, to my great surprise, he suddenly appeared in front of our house. I’d written my home address in his address book months earlier but had not expected him to find it. I was lying in bed when he arrived. Seeing Robert in full army uniform standing at the door, I nearly stopped breathing. It was absolutely insane of him to be wandering alone in my neighbourhood, especially in an army uniform.

  My mother was surprisingly hospitable to him. I translated for them. She made him a huge glass of fresh lemonade. Robert and I kept smiling at each other, although my level of inner discomfort was as intense as when I had first gone to the army restaurant the previous summer. We lived in such different worlds and he had never before been inside a place like mine, in all its simplicity.

  I made sure his visit was short and asked Nghia to take him back to the main road. I wanted badly to go with him, but I couldn’t bear the idea of the neighbours’ eyes following us with disapproval and criticism. My little brother returned, very pleased, with a five-dollar bill.

  The entire neighbourhood began to gossip about me and the American. In the evening I overheard my mother saying to my father, “That young man is very polite. And he is good looking and manly. It’s a good thing. There is no use dating a coward.”

  I’d often in the past heard my mother hinting that my father wasn’t manly enough. In praising Robert, she was also insinuating criticism of her husband. But my father showed no sign of being upset. With a serene smile, he said to my mother how sorry he was to have missed Robert, and that he hoped he would have another chance to meet him.

  I recovered from my illness – was it the shock from Robert’s visit? I went to see him the next day. He took me into his arms and squeezed me so hard that I felt I might condense to nothing. He said he’d missed me terribly while he was away and when there was no sign of me on his return, he had become so anxious he had to find me.

  He’d gone shopping in the city centre. He’d searched through all the fashionable fabric shops on Tu Do Street and bought me a piece of white silk, three metres long. The texture of the silk was exceptional and it contained a delicate misty-white floral pattern. I had an ao dai made and wore it to the Guillaume Tell restaurant. That was the first time that I’d gone to a French restaurant. The experience was all the more notable since I was going with a foreigner. I was now willing to go out with him to places I’d been reluctant to go before, including a few reputable Vietnamese restaurants. Still, every time someone stared at us I could feel disapproval.

  Robert bought lots of white fabric for me, so much that I teased him about it, saying that he was the “clearing-house” for all the white silk, cotton and linen in Sai Gon. I had two white shirts made for him by a tailor, and I hand-embroidered his initials on each of them. I also made a dozen white handkerchiefs, with his initials at one corner. In my most private thoughts he was like a cherished husband.

  One day he surprised me with a very attractive purple raincoat and matching floral umbrella. The raincoat fit me perfectly; he commented that I was a “perfect 10.” He had not been able to find a white raincoat but thought the purple one was pretty and would look good on me. Two weeks before, he had asked me, “Sweetheart, can you please tell me why you wear only white?”

  It was a difficult question to answer, but I told him, “White helps me to feel physically calm and to maintain some peace within myself.” There were other reasons but I couldn’t tell him. One day, as we were having a drink at the hospital’s cafeteria, he plucked up the courage to ask, “Can I buy some bathing suits for you?”

  The words “bathing suits” coming from his mouth made me a little embarrassed. I concealed my reaction with a quick answer, “Snoproblem!”

  “Say it again!” he said pretending not to understand.

  “No problem!” I said giggling. “But” – hesitating – “it may not be a good idea”.

  “Why?”

  “I may not wear them.”

  His face fell, so, after a few moments of awkward silence I said to him, “Yes, I’d like to have some bathing suits.”

  “What colours would you like?”

  “White. But I don’t think they make them. You decide.”

  It took me nearly five months to agree on a trip to Vung Tau. But we enjoyed our trip very much and didn’t hesitate to go again.

  Vung Tau had been known under the French as Cap Saint Jacques, located on the South China Sea, some one hundred and twenty kilometres southeast of Sai Gon. We would get there before noon and stroll along the seashore, climb up into the nearby hills, or visit a pagoda. We had lunch at a seafood restaurant specializing in crabs roasted with sea salt and giant prawns sautéed in fresh garlic. My favourite drink was always fresh coconut juice. Robert liked Vietnamese food but chopsticks defied all his efforts to hold them properly.

  In the afternoon we would go to the Back Beach, a long stretch of sand under hot sun. Robert went into the water and took a quick swim while I got ready. I would run into the water, jump over the big waves until I reached him and fall into his arms. He used to duck me in the water. He swam very well but I preferred to stay close to the shore. He would come in from time to time to carry me out further into the sea. I loved to stand in the deep water with him, our bare skin really touching. He would kiss me differently then. When this happened the first time, I recorded:

  The way you kissed me today was different

  It was sharp like silver and hot like fire

  Now you stir up my mind and unsettle my heart

  Oh dear Lieutenant! You have just become a devil

  Afterwards, we lay side by side on the golden sand under the sun. Once I fell asleep and woke up to find his arm so stiff it could hardly move. It had become numb from the weight of my head. He told me, “I didn’t want to wake you up my sweetheart.” “Next time I will bring along a little pillow!” I said, at which he held me closer to him and whispered, “There’s no need for a pillow.”

  These rare moments of closeness gave me much happiness but also a deep sadness. Vietnamese women were raised to suppress themselves sexually in order to preserve their chastity until marriage. In my grandmother’s generation, it was even worse. A woman was strongly discouraged from remarrying after her husband died. When I was in high school, all the girls had to learn the Family Training Ode (Gia Huan Ca) in literature class, and we had to recite such poems and learn them by heart, supposedly for the rest of our lives.

  Behold virtuous women of chastity

  Whose iron will shields them from lustful fire

  A pious, gentle daughter gives her parents peace of mind

  Brings praise to her family to last a thousand years

  It was a very hot and humid day. I put on a thin short-sleeved white cotton dress. After I had arrived at the BOQ, Robert took me to the army restaurant for dinner. We went to the restaurant’s roof terrace afterwards. Sitting at our usual table, we started my English lesson, then we discussed a book that I was reading. In a moment of playfulness I put my feet over his knees under the table. Soon his hands were caressing my ankles. I felt a burning sensation. Embarrassed, I tried to withdraw my feet but he wouldn’t let me. I blushed. He seemed to enjoy watching me struggle. Whenever I had blushed before, he would gaze at my face with amusement. This time his look was different, more serious. At that moment, I couldn’t help but feel physically drawn to him. I really wanted to be touched by him, from my face down to my neck, where he had already caressed and show- ered me with kisses. But I wanted him to be at my breasts, and even closer, so our bodies could feel pleasure. A deep instinct caused me to check myself. I felt the sharp pain inside my chest.

  I could not bring myself to look at him. I lowered my head to the table. He got up and walked to
the balcony, his eyes staring at the city buildings below. I left the table and went to his side. He was dreaming and faraway, as if no longer living in the real world. He turned, gazed into my eyes. He was close to tears.

  “You know I love you very much, Jasmine. And I always will. I never want to upset or hurt you.”

  * * *

  I started my job in the Ministry of Transportation, reporting to the head of the accounting department, who in turn reported to a Frencheducated Vietnamese director. I had to work each Saturday morning like the rest of the employees. There wasn’t any annual vacation for the staff. Robert and I would spend the rest of Saturday together, meet on Sunday. Sometimes we shared an evening at a restaurant.

  The Vietnamese director, my father’s immediate supervisor, was more French than Vietnamese, with an extravagant life style. Soon I would learn about the conflicts between him and the American Advisory Unit and the rampant corruption. My English had improved substantially and I could understand the Americans much better. Eventually I would be caught in the middle of their conflicts, and would change from being the young woman Robert knew and loved. A huge trauma was waiting for me.

  Robert gave me a beautiful Swiss watch for my twentieth birthday. In the Western horoscope my sign was Pisces and he had remembered it. He fastened the watch to my wrist. I put my arms around his neck to thank him. He kissed me and wished me a happy birthday. I had often dreamed of kissing him and making love to him but in real life I was too shy to kiss a man on the lips. Maybe one day when we were lying in bed together it would be different. I didn’t believe that day would ever come. I loved him and there were times when I thought of giving up my virginity. He never said how he felt about these things, but I knew he was making a huge sacrifice for me.