Aperture on the East

by Meris Lee

  The sun was setting behind the hotels and the apartment buildings as Ana looked toward the ocean, marveling at the sky, feathery streaks of pink orange painted on a grayish blue canvas. The locals were gathering again to socialize as the tourists left. There was a playground, and children were laughing and shouting at one another as they took turns to go on the slide and the swings. Ana inhaled the soft breeze that was blowing in from the sea. In her heart, a small flame of hope kept burning, and the wind, rather than extinguish it, amplified it.

  As she walked, she began to notice a figure approaching her from the other direction. When she recognized who it was, her buoyant mood was elevated even more.

  “Hi, Vo,” said Ana with a smile.

  Vo was wearing blue jeans with a white button-down shirt half tucked. He was also smiling at Ana.

  “Ana, not taking any photos?” He looked around her as if trying to locate her camera.

  Ana was not carrying anything at all. She said, “I’m just taking in the scenery here.” She pointed to her head.

  “Yes, it’s important to look through the lenses you were born with sometimes,” said Vo. They both laughed.

  “Mind if I walked with you a bit?” said Vo.

  “Not at all,” said Ana, “but you were walking in the other direction.”

  “I was not going anywhere in particular,” said Vo.

  They started walking in the direction that Ana was going.

  “You and I have met several times,” said Vo, “but we haven’t really gotten to know each other.”

  “That’s true. What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I do know a few things about you because McKenzie has been talking about you so much. He likes you a lot.”

  “It means that he only tells you the good things about me, right?”

  “Are there any bad things about you?” said Vo.

  Ana didn’t say anything back.

  “How long are you staying in Nha Trang?” said Vo.

  “Originally,” said Ana, “I planned to stay here for a year. I have fallen in love with Nha Trang, however, and I am thinking about living here indefinitely.”

  Ana thought that she saw a satisfied grin on Vo’s face before he went on to ask Ana why she had decided to move to Nha Trang.

  “Long story short, I was suffocating in my hometown for personal reasons, and I was tired of the climate. I saw a travel brochure about Nha Trang, and I took the chance.”

  “That was a very brave thing to do,” said Vo.

  “What about you? You grew up in the United States. What made you come back?”

  “Ah, I was also suffocating in my hometown for personal reasons.”

  Ana raised an eyebrow, as if accusing Vo of mocking her.

  “For real, but I sense that you don’t want to talk about your long story, and I don’t, either. Temperature wise, New Orleans is not bad. We have great food and music.”

  “I’d like to visit New Orleans in the future,” said Ana. “I had not visited another country before I came to Nha Trang. As a matter of fact, other than my honeymoon to Anapa by the Black Sea, I had not been outside of my hometown of Novosibirsk my entire life. How about you? Have you travelled much?”

  “I was fortunate in that regard,” said Vo. “After high school I went on a long backpacking trip. I worked as a deckhand on cargo ships in order to move among continents and islands. And then when I got into marine biology, my research took me just about all over the world.”

  “I envy you,” said Ana.

  A moment of silence later, Vo said, “You went on a honeymoon, but you are here alone.”

  “I’m not exactly alone. My kids came with me. My daughter will turn seventeen soon, and my son is eleven,” said Ana.

  “And the husband?”

  “We are divorced,” said Ana in a low voice.

  “I see,” said Vo.

  Ana took a deep breath and said, “So, I heard that you are to marry soon. Kim’s father is a big investor of Quan Bien Dong, and my boss Mr. Tran talks of you two just about every day.”

  Vo laughed and said, “My mother is trying to set us up. Kim’s mother and my mother used to go to school together before my family left in 1975. Kim’s father became a businessman a decade later when the Vietnamese government pushed for the economic reform, and he made money brokering deals between fishermen and boat manufacturers. Now he owns quite a few restaurants and hotels, too.”

  “Sounds like a good match,” said Ana, looking away.

  Vo stopped walking and said, “Are you hungry?”

  “A little,” said Ana. It was dark now, and Ana had been walking for quite some time. She was more than a little hungry.

  “My motorcycle is right here.” Vo pointed to the curb of the promenade where a row of motorcycles were parked. “Have you been to Lac Canh?”

  Ana shook her head.

  “Then, you are missing out on a local tradition,” said Vo. “Let’s rectify it.”

  Ana donned the helmet and hopped on the backseat of the motorcycle with both legs dangling to one side.

  “You’d better hold on to me. I don’t want you to fall off,” said Vo.

  After some deliberation, Ana had no choice but to put her arms around Vo’s waist. Vo took off and they fell into the bustle of the city traffic. Ana could feel the heat emanating from Vo’s body, and smell the slight saltiness in his shirt. Although she felt a little nervous, and her heart was pounding like it did every time she was around Vo, she was somehow at ease. It seemed natural to be riding on Vo’s motorcycle, her face taking in the cool air from the sea.

  They were seated on a table next to the sidewalk when they got to the restaurant Lac Canh. The waiter set down a clay stove filled with burning coal in front of them. Vo ordered a plate with slices of raw beef, chicken, squid and whole shrimp in shells, and promptly grilled them on the stove over a wire mesh. The sizzling smoke with the aroma of the marinade rose in front of Ana and made both her eyes and mouth water. The restaurant was packed with locals as well as a few tourists. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the food and all engaged in excited chatters.

  Ana started eating eagerly as soon as Vo took the meat off the grill. Ana did not even try to eat like a lady as convention had dictated.

  “Slow down, Ana,” said Vo. “You are going to choke. You want something to wash it down with?”

  Before Ana could answer, Vo had said something to the waiter, who quickly brought over two bottles of chilled Saigon Beer.

  Vo set a bottle down in front of Ana and raised his bottle. “Don’t tell me you don’t drink.”

  Ana hesitated for a few seconds, and thought that she had better turn it down. But she was feeling so good, so happy, the company was wonderful, and she was thirsty.

  Ana bit her lower lip, then raised her bottle and tapped it on Vo’s. “Za zdarovje! As we say in Russia.”

  They both took a drink of the cold beer. Ana was instantly satisfied. The beer was necessary to enhance, and at the same time balance, the bold flavors of the barbeque. This was a pleasure she hadn’t experienced for quite a while, and yet it felt so familiar, so intimate, and so potent.

  “That was really, really good,” said Ana, somewhat tipsy, more from the atmosphere and overall sense of wellbeing than from the sip of beer.

  “Do you want to go out on the sea with me on your next day off?” said Vo. “I know a great little island with white sand beach and water as clear as glass. We can go on my boat.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Ana felt like she would do anything Vo asked her to do at this point. She remembered the fiancée, but decided not to bring that up. She was having a good time, and she was just going to let it roll.

  Chapter 18

  Lan Nguyen was in her late sixties. Her black hair with a few streaks of gray was tied up in a bun. There were a few wrinkles on her face, but no liver spots or sagging skin to give away her age. She wore a light green linen pant suit with well-cushioned brown leather sand
als. Her suitcase was tucked away in the trunk of the taxi, and her large shoulder bag was lying on her lap. She had just been picked up from the Cam Ranh Airport, and was headed toward Nha Trang. This was the first time she had ever visited Vietnam since she left nearly four decades ago.

  Lan last saw Nha Trang a few weeks before Saigon fell in 1975. Her husband was in the South Vietnamese Navy at the time. When the word came that it was time to leave, Lan was at home with four children, ages ranging from nine months to nine years. She had not received any communication from her husband in a few weeks, and no one knew whether he was dead or alive. She had to pack up a few valuables and personal items in a hurry, as there was barely any time to prepare for the evacuation. The North Vietnamese forces were sweeping south at an astonishing speed. Lan wasn’t hopeful that she and her children would be able to evacuate, as there were so many people in the same situation who were trying to leave, and some of those had more influence in terms of money or power to get in the front of the line. She had to try anyway. She couldn’t just wait and see what was going to happen when the new government took hold. Her husband had inherited a piece of farm land just north of Nha Trang. She was helping to manage it while her husband was away, overseeing two farm hands that produced enough rice and vegetables to allow for a relatively comfortable living for the family. Furthermore, they were Catholics. She had heard about the persecution, and even execution, of landowners and Catholics up north, and she wasn’t going to be a sitting duck.

  The two older children walked on their own, each carrying a small sack of food and water for the family. Lan tied the then nine-month-old to her back using a large piece of cloth, and held the three-year-old in her arms with a large, heavy bag hanging from one shoulder. They tried to walk as fast as they could to the air base, but they ended up almost running as thousands of other countrymen were also heading in the same direction, rushing to get on the planes. Cars and motorcycles clogged the streets, and at times it was impossible to move forward. Surprisingly, the children did not fuss under such stressful atmosphere. They made it to the air base just as the last helicopter took to the air. Lan, along with a mass of other civilians, waited until it was clear that no aircraft was returning that day. The horde started to move south, and Lan commanded her children to follow.

  The port of Nha Trang was a sight to behold. All the American civilians had long been ferried off to the aircraft carriers about twenty miles off the coast. A dozen American soldiers, carrying semi-automatic rifles, remained on land in an attempt to guide the Vietnamese evacuees on to the last two U.S. Navy ships with some kind of order, but people were climbing aboard in all sorts of manners out of desperation. Others took to the local fishing boats and cargo ships, which were all overloaded with refugees already. Lan and her children tried to push their way out to the front of the crowd, but others pushed them back. Lan was sweating from carrying two toddlers and the heavy bag, and her heart was pounding in anxiety. She looked around, trying to find a way to get onto any of the vessels.

  “Lan! Lan!”

  Someone was shouting her name, and she looked toward the source of the sound, peering over the heads of what seemed like a million people. She saw someone waving at her, someone who was about to step on the gangway to one of the U.S. Navy ships. It was Dr. Dat Nguyen, a medical doctor who lived on her street, and who had treated her family for many years.

  She saw Dr. Nguyen talk to an American soldier, cupping his hands to filter out the noise. Then, the American soldier came and gestured for her and her children to follow him. The other refugees wanted to go along, but the soldier pushed them back with his rifle. When they got to the gangway, Dr. Nguyen told them to get on board. Lan did not stop to question, and she quickly herded her children onto the ship.

  Dr. Nguyen talked to Lan briefly before he went off to look for his family members. He had been given priority to board so that he could care for the large number of refugees who were bound to have illness during the whole process of evacuation and resettlement. When he was about to step on the gangway he had decided to take a last look of his beloved country while his feet were still on his motherland. He saw Lan, and immediately decided to try and help her and her children get on board. He had told the American soldier that she was his sister and that the children were his nieces and nephew. They had the same last name, so if the soldier wanted to verify their identification cards they could still pull it through, given that no official was going to investigate any further under the circumstances. Whether the soldier believed Dr. Nguyen’s statement, no one ever knew, and he did not ask for their identification cards.

  Lan saw Dr. Nguyen one last time when they got off the ship to board a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier headed for Guam. Lan tried to look for Dr. Nguyen during the week at sea, but he was apparently too busy taking care of patients to spare time for anything else. Lan herself was seasick, as she had never been out at sea for such a long period of time. The stressful condition on board with limited resources for such a large number of evacuees did not help. Both babies and their mothers cried, and men wept quietly. A few people moaned day and night, hurting both physically and mentally.

  The normally idyllic island of Guam was suddenly overcrowded, and the beaches were polluted with human waste. Lan and her children stayed in Guam for over a month before they were selected to go to the United States. They were flown to the refugee camp at Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania. There Lan met other refugees who were Catholics, and made friends with people from other Vietnamese cities and villages that she had never heard of. They all spoke Vietnamese, but Lan could hear the regional differences in their accents and choice of words. Ironically, the first cultural shock she experienced was not from associating with Americans, but from reconciling with the various customs and habits of her own people. Luckily, the war was a great equalizer, and the national patriotism was much stronger than any regional rivalry that might have existed.

  A friend, Hong Tran, from the village of Phuc Tinh, southeast of Saigon, told Lan one day that she had gotten a Catholic family in New Orleans to sponsor her resettlement there with her husband and three children. Hong wanted to know if Lan was interested in moving to New Orleans as well, because Hong’s sponsor was looking to take on a second family. Lan did not hesitate. She didn’t know where New Orleans was or what it looked like, but she was ready to leave the refugee camp.

  A week later Lan and her children boarded another airplane with Hong’s family and they flew south to the city at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Their sponsor family helped them settle into the Versailles Arms apartment complex in Village de L’Est. They were welcomed into a local Catholic church, and many Sunday afternoons were passed with luncheons where the Vietnamese brought traditional dishes that they made as well as they could with local ingredients, and the Americans brought their gumbo and crawfish etouffee. The bond was formed instantly with the common denominator of the French connection from a not so distant past.

  One night, the doorbell rang, and Lan hesitated to answer it. She was still not quite sure of the people around her, even though they were mostly all Vietnamese. She peeped out of the small hole in the door, and saw a man with a full beard and a baseball cap on. She couldn’t tell if this was a neighbor.

  “Lan. Open the door. It’s your husband, Quan. I am home!” shouted the man outside the door.

  Lan couldn’t believe her ears, but the voice sounded familiar. She opened the door, and the man picked her up off the floor and held her tightly in his arms.

  “Lan, Lan.” That was all he could manage to say. Lan’s sponsor family had located Quan, who had been evacuated via a completely different route, having gone through the Philippines and then Camp Pendleton in California. Lan couldn’t say a word. Their tears were all the conversation that took place for the rest of that night.

  Quan resumed his pre-war job as a fisherman, and Lan started selling eggrolls, bánh mì, and phở out of her apartment. They eventually saved up enough money to
open a small restaurant, and moved out of Versailles Arms into a three-bedroom house a few blocks away. Their children made friends with people of different ethnic backgrounds, something they could never contemplate when they were children themselves, as they had not known of a bigger world outside of Nha Trang. All of their children later obtained university degrees and were now secured in respectable careers. They had been truly free from want. When Lan went to bed at night, she often compared her new dwelling to her ancestral home in Nha Trang; both sat in the fertile floodplain of a vital river. The River Cai and the East Sea had provided for her ancestors much like how the grand Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico now provided for her family. When she mused over this, she would smile, thinking that the Virgin Mary had indeed been watching over her after all.

  Lan married off her first three children, but had a difficult time with her youngest, Vo, who chose career over the woman that he loved until it was too late. Quan died of a heart attack a few years ago, and Lan made it a personal mission to secure Vo’s marriage. She was angry when Colette called off the wedding, but the anger was more than replaced by a great sadness when Colette was killed in a car crash. She didn’t let the sadness occupy her mind for very long, however, before she started consulting the matchmakers. Vo had escaped to Nha Trang after Colette’s death, so she broadened the search to Vietnam. An old friend, Thi Pham, found Lan through the same matchmaking agency they both used in Nha Trang. Thi had also been looking for a match for her daughter, Kim. Lan was beyond ecstatic when she got the letter from Thi. It was destiny, Lan thought, that Vo should return to the place where he was born and marry the daughter of Lan’s childhood best friend.

  Lan couldn’t help but smile when she pondered over this fateful event. She let out a chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” said Vidal, who was sitting to her left in the backseat of the taxi.