5
* * *
PREPARATION
MEANING? WHAT MEANING?
NEW YORK, 2005
Every Thursday morning I have coffee with the other parents before attending mass at Joosje’s school on East Ninety-first Street. One morning someone somehow mentions my story. Many of the parents don’t know about the crash; it just hasn’t come up. I don’t mind talking about it, but I do mind the overwhelming attention that comes with it, especially in a group. Like now.
“You have to make a movie!” “You have to write a book!” “You have to tell your story.”
“I will, I will,” I say, as I always do in an attempt to close the subject. “One day. First I have to go back to Vietnam, and writing a book is such a big mountain to climb.”
“Then I know the perfect guy for you,” one mother says. “He is a published writer looking for a new subject. He would be perfect, and you will really like him!”
I do like him—at first. He gets me thinking, writing even. To him. E-mail after e-mail. But he does not seem to get me. Nor do I get him. He comes to our apartment to get a sense of his potential subject. He tells me that he is overwhelmed by the strong European coffee and the flood of daylight coming through our big windows. He doesn’t ask me any questions, so I volunteer what has been going on in my life. I tell him that after I stopped working to take care of Maxi, Jaime lost his job. “Jaime and I are not in the best place now that we are both at home,” I confess. “But please don’t write about Jaime or our relationship. As interesting as it might be for the reader.” Or the writer, I think, as I look at his disappointed face. “For our family’s sake,” I add, “for their protection.” I try to make light of it: “Our kitchen is a bit small for the both of us. It gets too hot!”
The writer looks puzzled. And incredulous. “So you have an autistic son, no job, a failing marriage, yet you look as if you have no care in the world. How can you be so happy?”
“How can I not be happy?” I answer, gesturing at my surroundings—the family pictures on the piano with the Central Park reservoir and skyline visible from my window.
He looks at me in awe. I look back at him with irritation. “You sound like a romantic,” he says. “I am a realist. I don’t fixate on how things should be. I take things the way they are,” I say. Happiness is not having what you want but wanting what you have, I think. The writer still tries to figure me out—and my story. He says he needs to “translate.” Not translate from Dutch to English but “distill what it means and define its merits.”
I don’t quite get that. Why not just tell the story? Let the reader interpret. Doesn’t my story itself serve as a concrete example of life holding meaning even under the most miserable conditions? You don’t get meaning; you give life meaning.
Another point of friction is that I want him to write about Maxi. For me the crash turned out to be a stone thrown in the water. It definitely showed me depth, but the ripples have subsided and I have been able to go back to the surface. Maxi has a chronic condition; its ripples will never subside. It forces me to dive deep every so often.
“Nobody likes chronic,” the writer says. “People like accidents, a mourning process, and recovery. People want a solution.”
The solution is right in front of them, I think. There is beauty in every situation. Once you see the beauty, happiness will follow.
• • •
Soon after the writer’s visit, I find out I need surgery. I have to stay in bed for two weeks. To accommodate the writer, I decide to turn lemons into lemonade by finally writing everything down. How it was, not what it meant. I never could find the words to express what I had learned. Now the words find me.
POWER LUNCH
NEW YORK, 2005
I sit at a trendy downtown restaurant, flanked by a high-flying, A-type book editor, a reserved book agent, and the writer. The writer has turned my pages into a book proposal: Accidental Life. His proposal includes a trip with me to Vietnam, to climb my mountain. The editor and the agent are meeting me to assess whether the book may be a worthwhile investment.
The writer insisted there is no need to prep me for this meeting.
“Simply be yourself,” he said. I should have known better.
I’ve just returned from a summer in the Netherlands, where we buried my father. I am still a bit emotional and very much in Dutch mode: sarcastic and straightforward. What’s more, I have come here directly from Roosevelt Island, where I dropped off Maxi for his first day of school. It was a long struggle to get him inside on this hot September morning. Quite a different universe from the cool one I sit in now.
My hostess, the editor, is confidently dressed in black, her dark hair elaborately blown out. She knows the writer well, having edited one of his earlier books.
“She is one of the best,” he has told me. She behaves like she is. They chat about the Condé Nast Building, the Soho House, and the grooming needs of the writer’s wife, a senior editor at a prestigious fashion magazine. They talk about my looks and compare them with the agent’s. “Scandinavian,” they call it.
Suddenly, the editor turns to me: “So tell me, Annette, what did you learn out there in the jungle? What is it that you know that I don’t know?” I glance at the writer. I knew I should have come prepared! I can’t oblige her with an on-the-spot, profound summation of my experience in the jungle. I begin blurting out secondhand one-liners: That I had a mystical experience, that it had something to do with trust and surrender instead of fear and control. She looks disappointed.
I tell her that I really don’t know what to believe in, but that I have a strong feeling about going to Vietnam. That I always follow my intuition. That I believe in an extra dimension, and that I have entered it.
I can tell from the way they are looking at me that this is not at all what they want to hear. They want tragedy and recovery. No beyond.
Besides, if my story can be reduced to one line, what is the point of writing it? The cliché says fact is stranger than fiction, and I believe that’s true. So why do people who willingly take a journey with a fiction writer expect real-life storytellers to condense their story to one line? “What did you learn? How have you changed? What is the essence?”
Then the writer joins in the grilling. And I thought he was on my side! He looks at me meaningfully and asks, “Where does this passion to return to Vietnam come from? Why do you need to go back to the place of your misfortune?”
Misfortune. I let the word sink in. Again, my reasons are so different from what they seem to expect. I am not going back for closure, but for a different kind of coming-to-terms. An opening. For the realization of what love is. To see that place of beauty with today’s eyes, after all I have lived through and learned. About loss and love. Loss by loss. Layer by layer.
“Why now?” the writer urges.
Because it is time. After the accident, I spent most of my energy on becoming and appearing “the same.” The same as my old self, as well as the same as my peers. Perhaps I did this to comfort others, perhaps to comfort myself. I wanted to be as “normal” as possible. So I kept the jungle to myself and worked hard to blend in and make the world forget the survivor part of my identity. I just brushed it off. Not only did I try to hide my physical and emotional pain, I also hid my spiritual gain. I had seen the secret, but I kept it a secret.
Until my father became ill. Until he was dying. For more than two years, he and I read our way through all kinds of spiritual books. He had always been interested in quantum physics and its link to spirituality. When I joined him in that quest, I realized that I had actually experienced what those books try to describe. That perhaps I should try to translate in my head what my heart already understood from my jungle experience. In German they call it an aha erlebnis—an aha experience. I realized that the jungle had given me a treasure—a story to tell. That perhaps it was just a matter of finding the right words.
“It was like an orgasm,” I blurt out. “You can
compare my experience in the jungle to an orgasm.” Seeing their flabbergasted reactions, I add quickly, “In my head, I mean. I had this near-death experience.”
Never mind. Their real question was, Why should anyone give you fifteen minutes on a talk show? Definitely not to make the host blush.
The next day the writer calls to tell me that the project has been canceled. The editor feels that I am not yet quite able to articulate what it all means. She might have a point.
Reflection: Going Back
I always knew I was going to go back. Back to Vietnam. Back to the jungle. Back to my mountain. Fearful or not, it was only a matter of when.
I also knew I had to tell my story. About surviving and surrendering. Surrendering to the ultimate—the ultimate beauty, the ultimate end, and the ultimate beginning.
But for me to tell my story to the world, everything has to be objectively true. As a rational Dutch citizen, I have to check it out first. See it with my own eyes to understand what I have gone through. See that place in Vietnam where I experienced the worst and the most beautiful at the same time, ending life as I knew it.
It is difficult to go back into that little body when you have seen and been the universe. That tiny little body with that small and limited mind that cannot possibly behold all knowledge. A now-broken, wounded body with a hole in my heart for being on my own. Never mind how little my old self was: I needed to find it to go on with my old life. To go back to the survival of the fittest, albeit a whole less fit.
In the thirteen years that have passed, sometimes it seems a dream drowned by the drumbeat of daily life. Sometimes it seems like the ultimate vehicle for understanding. Understanding how to deal with Maxi. With life. To observe, not judge. To focus on what is in front of me and accept what is real. To overcome my little self. And to connect.
Now I need to connect to my story. Own it. Go back.
• • •
I am terrified. Ironically, while the jungle taught me not to fear death, the accident made me fear life. I’m afraid to travel, afraid to be hospitalized, afraid for people even. Fear closes off the mind. I want to go back to confront and connect with the object of my fear, to see my fears in perspective, and most of all, to let go of fear itself. I’ve raised my children to face their fears and insecurities—and to connect. Now I have to practice what I preach to them.
It will be more than just a mental challenge. The accident has some physical repercussions as well. The nerves in my right foot have never recovered, and my hips are tilted, leaving my right leg more than an inch shorter than the left one. I am used to the continuous pain this causes, but climbing a mountain will be a challenge. If I can manage that, crash injuries aside, it will be a sure kick in the face to my middle age.
On the upside, I have learned to meditate at will and I have let love become my drive. And curiosity. All these years I have held on to those lingering questions: Who was the orange man? Did he exist? Who were my rescuers? Why did it take eight days to find us? And where are they now?
Now let’s see whether I can face the answers. And that little plane.
JACK
NEW YORK, 2005
The first thing I do is contact Jack. He is the father of the British victim we accidently buried in the Netherlands. He has been on a mission for years to find out what happened. Why the plane crashed, why it took so long to find us, and what the Vietnamese authorities tried to cover up. The postmortem of his son’s body, after it was returned to the UK, suggested his son had had a prolonged period of survival. Several days. That he did not necessarily die of his injuries, but rather from severe dehydration. In Jack’s mind, his son could and should have been saved. Jack’s member of parliament submitted questions to the Vietnamese authorities. After much delay, they finally invited Jack to visit Vietnam and check things out for himself. It is in Jack’s footsteps that I hope to find my way back to the wreckage.
From: Jack Emerson
To: Annette Herfkens
Date: 1/11/2005
Dear Annette,
Thank you for contacting me again; I needed a kick-start to continue the quest. I enclose a copy of what I sent to a
friend after my visit, which gives an idea of the site, the walk in, and the accommodation that we were given at To Hap, the administration center for the commune and only two miles from the road’s end, passing the hospital on the way. I shall also attempt to send a picture of the prayer flag (more like a tapestry) and myself at the site. I have more photos that I could send if you would like them. Does the ground look familiar? The trees may have grown since. To the left was a tower over which the aircraft had come bringing the trees with it, leaving a gap that may have been where you are reported to have seen a man at some time. To the right was a sort of overhung cave (where the woodcutters appear to work now) with a steep rock slab beyond. Please let me know your reactions to the enclosed, and ask any questions you wish.
Delighted to resume communications,
Regards,
Jack
I was delighted too, but did not recognize any of his pictures, and much of the following correspondence was Greek to me, for all the technical terms. To some, Jack might seem obsessed, even creating a website for his mission, but I enjoy his tough sense of humor as he cynically cheers me on.
THE GUARDIAN
NEW YORK, 2005
“If you go to Vietnam you have to involve Chris,” Jaime says. “He saved your life then; I am sure he wouldn’t mind helping you now. He has the contacts.”
I guess he is right. I am already exchanging e-mails with the Dutch ambassador to Vietnam. The embassy reopened shortly after the plane crash. The ambassador has promised his support and has told me he will keep all correspondence in a secret file called “Pilgrimage.”
Chris is Jaime’s hero. Jaime speaks with reverence about Chris when recalling his input at the time of the accident. Still, I have never contacted him. Mrs. van der Pas has. She has monopolized that relationship the same way she has everything else that was Pasje’s. I have not minded in Chris’s case; I don’t know him. Nor do I have any emotional ties to Vietnam. Which just makes it stranger to seek contact with Chris now. What should I say? “Hi there, I have been told that you saved my life. Sorry that you have not heard from me for thirteen years, but I am planning to come to Vietnam now, so would you be so kind as to help me again, please?”
“Chris will not mind,” Jaime says, almost solemnly. “Just e-mail him.”
Chris doesn’t mind. He e-mails me back right away, sounding extremely nice and wise indeed. And to the point: “I will do all for you short of climbing that mountain,” he writes. “I smoke.”
Again he is a savior. He coordinates the contacts with the Dutch embassy and Vietnam Airlines. He puts my mind at ease; he seems to find the right tone and words in every e-mail. He obviously cares. He even worries about the accompanying writer’s motive. Then I write to him that the players have changed. And changed again. Another writer has backed out, as well as a journalist/filmmaker. They were both enthusiastic until they read Jack’s description of the climb and its hardships. Chris is apparently so worried I will suggest yet another journalist who “might take advantage of my story,” he tells me he plans “to climb that bloody mountain after all.”
FEARING FEAR
NEW YORK, 2006
The ball is rolling. My trip to Vietnam is set. Chris, Vietnam Airlines (from Singapore only), the Dutch ambassador—they are all counting on my return.
I have booked my flight for March. I really wanted to go last November, on the thirteenth anniversary, but the plan and the players kept on changing. Perhaps it is for the best. November is the monsoon month. I should know. The flights could be canceled; the mountain might be too wet too climb. Better not push my luck again.
I have to prepare myself, both physically and mentally. To manage that horrible climb. Jack says I really need to “build up endurance.” Yoga once, maybe twice a week will not cut it in the jungle. The c
rash site happens to be at the top of the mountain. “Six hours straight up, in the sweltering heat,” he writes.
I start by running around the reservoir in Central Park with a friend. She makes sure I finish at least one lap without stopping. I walk up the stairs to my apartment on the twenty-first floor every day. At first I am breathing heavily and my heart is pounding by the eighth floor, but eventually I am walking up to the fortieth, and then back down. Then Jack scares me more. “You should run up, walk down, run up again—and put some stones on your back.”
And then there is the mental part. “Mind over matter,” Jack says. I keep on telling myself I don’t need to make it to the top. Reaching the foot of the mountain—“my mountain”—is already an accomplishment. Just getting there, claustrophobic as I am. I am facing a twenty-hour flight to Singapore. Then a Vietnam Airlines flight to Ho Chi Minh City. Then a domestic flight to Nha Trang. In the same-size plane I crashed in. It won’t be Russian-made this time, but still. Then a van—another confined space—to the guesthouse. “It has running water and electricity, some of the time,” Jack wrote. I need to stay the night there in order to leave at five the next morning for the jungle. “Our van broke down and we had to wait hours for a new one to come,” Jack says.
I am dying a thousand deaths. I am afraid to be afraid, to finally get that posttraumatic stress syndrome everyone always warns me about. Even seasoned mountaineers suffer from it when they go back to the location of an accident.
I try hypnosis. Magdalena Agabs. I got her number on the train to Roosevelt Island, while taking Maxi to school. A crowded train that goes under the water. A double confinement. I asked the lady next to me if I could borrow her Metro newspaper, to distract my phobic thoughts. She gave it to me and told me how Magdalena had hypnotized her son’s fears away. When I got up, she handed me the phone number. “We met for a reason,” she said. So I had to follow up.
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