Turbulence

by Annette Herfkens

  At ten a.m. the confirmation came. Again I drove over to my parents’ house. Again I asked if I could talk to them alone. The house was full of visitors, so I asked my parents to follow me upstairs. “No!” my mother said. “I am not going to. I can’t hear any more bad news! Has something happened to Marije? The boys? I won’t hear it!”

  “Well, then I won’t tell you!” I said, irritably. The constant presence of “strangers” was getting on my nerves. To me they seemed like the suitors in Odysseus’s palace.

  They did follow me up the stairs, to their bedroom, and sat down. Trembling. When I told them the news, my father broke down. He fell into my mother’s arms, sobbing, “Now you might get your granddaughter after all.”

  JAIME: It was Sunday evening when I finally arrived in Vietnam. Chris had sent two cars to the airport: one for Jasper and Miebeth, one for me. Once I was in the car by myself, the driver told me, in broken English: “I am not supposed to say anything, but you are going to hear very good news.” I felt confirmed in my confidence. I focused on getting used to being in a real developing country. I had not been in one since I had left my own: Mexico. I preferred traveling within the developed world.

  Chris was waiting in the restaurant of the hotel. He introduced himself quickly and asked the three of us to sit down. He did not beat about the bush. “Willem is dead,” he said to Jasper and Miebeth. Then he turned to me and said, “Annette is alive.” It was as if I had been awarded some morbid prize. I exchanged horrified looks with Jasper. Miebeth smiled at me through tears.

  I turned to Chris. “Where is she? I want to see her.”

  “I knew you were going to say that,” Chris answered. “We have been warned about you!” Then his tone became more urgent. “You cannot see her now, and I strongly advise you to accept that. This is a communist country. You will have to stay put until she comes to Ho Chi Minh City. Tomorrow morning she’ll be flown here on the first flight from Nha Trang. You will be able to see her then.”

  I was taken aback. “How is she?” I wanted to know.

  “There are different reports,” Chris answered. “From just a scratch to serious injuries. I am afraid we’ll just have to wait and see. You will not get permission to travel.”

  I first made a round of phone calls and then I stayed up the whole night with Jasper. I told him that was my specialty. Jasper talked about his sorrow. His truth. His version of his brother. I listened.

  MY FRIEND HELEN: After a week passed, I too had started to lose hope. Then literally on the eighth day, in the middle of the night, the phone right by my bed rang. I had no idea who would be calling at that time—maybe a broker who had forgotten about the time difference. On the other end of the phone was Jaime’s voice—quivering but loud—shouting, “She’s alive! She’s alive!” I could not believe my ears and cried for joy. Unbelievable. Jaime’s and our wish came true. He shared what information he knew, and said he was planning to go and see her as soon as possible. “Rescue her,” he said. If anyone could survive eight days in the jungle, it was my dear friend Annette. I still can’t believe she did it.

  With Helen on vacation, Morocco, July 1992

  MIEBETH: For me, that time was traumatic in more ways than one. The first thing, of course, was the sudden loss of my oldest brother. We had been close as kids, and with his amiable personality, he had played a central role in our family. How central only became clear when he was gone. My relationship with my mother had always been difficult. It originated from her relationship with her own mother, who she said had been extremely tough on her. In contrast, the sun rose and set on Willem. Literally—when he was gone she continued living only in the shrine she had built around his memory.

  That trip to Vietnam with Jasper and Jaime was surreal. We were suddenly drawn into this world that had nothing to do with our daily lives. It started with the journey from Amsterdam with Jaime. I had never met anyone like him: He looked like a rock star and acted like a businessman. On top of that, he was oozing charm and charisma.

  Once we were in Vietnam, I gradually realized that Willem had made this strange country his own. The office he had built and the kind of employer he had been to his staff showed us a side of him that we had never known. It doubled the culture shock that I was feeling.

  When I heard from Chris that Annette was still alive, I responded according to my own plan. I had considered what I would do if she survived and Willem didn’t, and I had decided that I would open my heart for her. That Annette would be the closest thing I had to Willem. He adored her, and she had been with him for thirteen years. They were a great couple. And I liked her, for her tolerance, her fashion sense, her nonconformism. She made me laugh.

  When I arrived at the hospital, I was nervous that I would react differently, that I would not be so bighearted after all. That I would be resentful. Of course the thought Why her and not Willem? had crossed my mind. Or worse: Why Willem and not her? But then I saw her, among the rats and cockroaches, a miserable heap of bones. And she still wanted to tell me how Willem had died. “He had a little smile on his face,” she said. I hugged her bony shoulders, and then I saw something moving inside her chin. She had this big open wound, and a giant maggot was crawling around in it. I screamed, “Nurse!” The nurse was not startled at all. She just pulled the thing out with a cloth so dirty I wouldn’t use it to clean my kitchen floor.

  I looked at Annette and couldn’t believe how brave she was being. All that dirt and those creatures inside and around her. It was then that I took her in my heart forever.

  We still had an awful job to do: identifying Willem. Jasper and I went with Carola to a hangar on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. This was where the bodies of the plane crash victims were being kept. A Vietnamese official directed us inside. It was not refrigerated; the smell almost made me choke. Carola handed me a handkerchief sprayed with perfume: Chanel N°5. Another “fragrance” I will never forget. It only helped a bit.

  There were many people walking around, both Vietnamese and European. I recognized the Swedes from the hotel. They had told us that they had been in Vietnam the whole week waiting for news and that they were worried about their dwindling finances.

  The bodies were not covered. I hardly dared look, nearly closing my eyes. But through my eyelashes they did not seem recognizable at all. They all looked alike, faces without eyebrows. Even their skin tone had turned the same shade of gray. It was not scary, it was just . . . nothing.

  But then, suddenly, I saw these big calves. Unmistakably Willem’s “football calves,” as he proudly used to call them. “That is him,” I said. I was still two yards away from the body. “That must be him.”

  “You stay here,” Carola said. She looked. She nodded. “It does look like Willem’s build,” she said. I turned around and ran for the exit, retching. Carola caught up with me, and on our way out we met the Swedish and English families, with whom I exchanged condolences. We were in the same sickening boat.

  MY MOTHER: As soon as I heard the incredible news, I started packing our suitcases. She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive, I kept saying to myself.

  Willem’s employer arranged seats on the first flight to Vietnam for my husband and me. We decided that our other daughter, Eveline, should come as well. She had a lot of experience in dealing with developing countries. At the airport and throughout the flight, the airline’s personnel shared our joy. Actually, it felt as if the whole country did, as Annette’s survival had already been on the news. My husband happily drank the champagne and dug into the caviar that the cabin crew kept offering. The latest update we had was that Annette was completely unharmed. That she was only missing a few teeth. I had already made an appointment for her with my dentist, but I hardly dared believe that she had no other injuries. It seemed too good to be true. Anyhow, any happy thoughts I had were overshadowed by the loss of Willem. His life had been intertwined with Annette’s. He had been like a son to us. How was she supposed to go on? Carola was waiting for us at the ai
rport. It was nice to finally meet her. She had been so sweet and supportive all week. She told the driver to take us directly to Ho Chi Minh hospital. Once we were on the road, she turned to us with a serious look, and I knew it had all been too good to be true. “She really isn’t in a good way,” she said. “You need to prepare yourselves for that.” Oh, how that journey seemed to take forever. So much traffic. All those bikes! I wanted to get out and push our car through.

  When we finally got there, a team of doctors was waiting for us. They wanted to take us to a room to show us Annette’s X-rays first. I couldn’t believe it. “I want to see my daughter!” I exclaimed. “Where is she?” My husband gestured that he would stay behind. A timid-looking nurse took Eveline and me to Annette’s room. Walking through the corridors, I was horrified by the mess. There were people camping out everywhere, paint was peeling from the walls, bats were flying around a rusty staircase. Cockroaches.

  Then I saw her. She looked so tiny! Such a little hollow face. And it seemed like she didn’t have any teeth! The thought of false teeth flashed through my mind. Her eyes lit up when she saw me. “Did you come all the way here to see me?” she said. “Pasje is dead.” I threw my arms around her. A little heap of bones, flushed with fever. I could feel that the sheets were soaking wet.

  “Would you please change these?” I asked the nurse in French. When I turned back the sheet, I saw the terrible wounds. Gaping, black wounds. The bone was showing through. How brave she was! Just moving the sheet made her cringe with pain. My husband joined us. He was very emotional. They had hung up all of Annette’s X-rays and shown him her collapsed lung and the multitude of factures. In her jaw, her hips, and her legs. “Her pelvis looked like a broken kerstkransje,” he said. (A kerstkransje is a Christmas cookie shaped like a little wreath.) Broken in pieces. Also, her jaw was split in two: she still had all her teeth!

  Personally, I was most worried about the wounds. I knew that the gangrene would kill her if it got into her bloodstream. In fact, any infection would kill her. Had no one seen the pile of dirty potties, covered with flies, in the bathroom? How could a hospital be so filthy? There were rats! We had to get her out of there, out of Vietnam, as soon as possible. We knew that SOS, an emergency medical assistance organization, had a plane at the airport, waiting to fly her to Singapore, where she could get the best medical treatment. But the Vietnamese authorities would not allow it. “She can be treated perfectly here” was their patriotic opinion.

  “With that collapsed lung, leaving the country would be more dangerous.” Pigheaded patriotism, and that was putting it gently. My daughter Eveline, who had originally insisted that the medical facilities in Vietnam were better than in other third world countries, became more and more convinced that the Vietnamese authorities did not really want Annette to survive this. That they would prefer it if she didn’t live to tell her story, because of the growing tourism industry.

  Thankfully my husband, who had grown up in the Dutch Indies, was more accustomed to patient negotiation. He and Chris talked for hours with the officials in charge, some army colonels. It was like a slow game of chess. They came up with one elegant argument after another, for instance, “Annette’s French is so rusty; she would feel much more comfortable in an English-speaking place, like Singapore.” Finally, it was decided that Annette could leave if she would have an operation whereby a tube would be put in her chest to stabilize her collapsed lung. All subject, though, to the final approval of the vice minister of health, who was flying in from Hanoi.

  On the way to the operating room, she could only moan. She woke up when we were already at the airport, on the tarmac. Her ambulance was parked right next to a little plane, two doctors inside, ready to take off. Waiting endlessly. We didn’t know why. For the vice minister to arrive, maybe? There was quite a crowd: officials, soldiers, reporters, I don’t know. It made me anxious that they would change their minds again. The more publicity, the more they would want to save face.

  Annette stayed in the ambulance slipping in and out of consciousness. We were not allowed to go inside it, but we could talk to her through a little window at the back to calm her down. Annette was visibly scared and claustrophobic when she was awake, and we still had to get her into that tiny little plane! The window was too high for me, and I couldn’t manage to stay on my toes for long. Eveline took over. “Hang in there, little sister; hang in there just a bit longer.” At some point I really had to go to the bathroom. Two soldiers accompanied me all the way back to the main terminal. One on each side of me. They took up positions outside the bathroom as I went in. What did they think I was up to?

  Finally the vice minister of health arrived. An older woman. When she was about to sign off on the trip, Annette’s lung appeared to have collapsed again. At least that’s what they told us. Again Chris showed his negotiating skills, now together with one of the SOS doctors. Right there on the runway, they managed to talk us out of there. I was the only one allowed to accompany Annette. My husband, Eveline, and Jaime would have to take a commercial flight. When I was about to go on board, the vice minister came over to say her final good-bye. “I hope you will come back to Vietnam one day and see it under happier circumstances,” she said. Then she hugged me and whispered in my ear: “I am a mother myself. If it would be my daughter, I would want her to leave too.”

  And then, finally, we were in the air. I saw Eveline on the runway getting smaller and smaller. Then one of the doctors demanded my attention. “Annette’s blood pressure is dropping steeply,” he said. “You have to talk to her now, keep her awake, otherwise you’ll lose her.”

  I talked and talked to her. I gave it everything I had. “Please, Annette, please don’t leave me. Don’t leave me now, after all you have been through.” I talked and begged throughout the two-hour flight. And she made it. Just about.

  “Very good job,” the doctor said when we arrived in Singapore, where an ambulance was waiting for us. “Without you she would have died. You have given her life for the second time.”

  My bruised face, Singapore, December 3, 1992

  Put back together, Singapore, December 3, 1992

  Singaporean newspaper, November, 1992

  THE REAL WORLD

  I am in Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. The room feels like a good hotel. Large, nice wood, and my own refrigerator. There are flowers everywhere. My mother, my father, my sister, and Jaime are constantly moving around. And I cry. I cry for Pasje. I cannot stop crying. I sob convulsively. I cry and ask for water. I cry more and ask for more water. They all jump up when I ask.

  My father keeps on saying that he loves me. Nice but weird; we don’t say that in Holland. I am very happy he is here. He keeps on bumping into my toes, though. I scream with pain. How can toes be so sensitive? My mother. Oh, my mother! Her dear face switches from sheer happiness to worry to pain. She feels what I feel. Pasje . . .

  Doctors are coming in and out. A triumphant Indian, who operated on my wounds, a dedicated Jewish American, who worked on my fractures and lungs, and a lovely Chinese woman, Myra. She has fixed my jaw, with screws. She insists that I eat soft food. Lots of soft food. She reminds me of my half-Indonesian aunt who has recently died. Nice, round, and very smart. She keeps on bringing more and more food. She is worried because I keep on losing weight no matter how much I eat. No matter how much cream I drink. Myra has suggested getting a few electronic gadgets in Singapore to distract myself. There are so many medical procedures yet to come. My sister gets me a Game Boy. With Tetris. I was the unbeaten master at that game in the office. I used to play it while I was trading. When I was a mistress of the universe. When I was carefree. Blissfully so.

  What a chicken I have turned into. I am frantic when they wheel me through the hall. Frantic if I don’t have water with me. Frantic when they leave me alone in a room on a bench to take another X-ray. How long are they going to leave me here? I hold on to my little water bottle with panicky obsession.

  Of course, I am sociabl
e. I laugh with others, make jokes, read all the faxes and letters out loud, enjoy the plentiful food. And I drink liters of Dutch Lady. But my heart is so heavy. Or is it light? Is there a hole, or a weight? My Pasje! I see his friendly face, his soft, brown eyes, his strong and muscled body. I see him smiling, I hear him laughing, I see him dead, I see him alive, I see him all the time. I cry. I wail. Don’t think of Pasje. Don’t think of him dead. Don’t think of the future, I think. But I do. I do think of him. All the time. Drink water.

  They all move around my bed. My oldest brother has flown in as well. He is the doctor of the family, but both my sister, Eveline, and Jaime feel at their best when they are in control, making decisions. There they go again, discussing the next decision to be made. About me. Now they decide that I need somebody to sleep with me at night. At all times. I think of the jungle. How peaceful my jungle was.

  Perspectives,

  SINGAPORE, DECEMBER 1, 1992

  MY SISTER, EVELINE: Today I got a glimpse of the old Annette. She begged me for a cigarette, and when I resisted, she kept repeating that if I really loved her I would not hesitate to give her one.

  My heart broke, but how could I, with all those oxygen tanks and other mysterious medical devices around her? And as far as smoking bans are concerned, Singapore is at least a decade ahead of the rest. Hard enough for nicotine addicts like Jaime and me; we can only have a quick furtive draw on the way back to the hotel.

  Amazingly enough, during the long hours spent at Annette’s bedside, I haven’t cared. And that bedside is where I have been all week, to look after her and deal with the press. Since we left Vietnam a week ago, Annette’s survival has become world news. We have been anxious to keep the press out. Reporters from the Dutch gossip papers are trying hard to get a shot or a quote from the family. It isn’t my first and probably won’t be my last encounter with paparazzi. I know how to outsmart them. We have been sneaking in and out of the hospital and the hotel through back entrances and fire escapes.