“Kelly! What the hell?”
“I missed you,” he said. I removed his hand from my hip and it stayed on the bed the rest of the night.
“The bus to Cui Chi leaves at nine right across the street. You got everything?”
“We don’t need much, just some water. I got money changed at the airport.”
“What do you think of the city?”
“Cross between Bangkok and India. Except India is worse. Crazy, crazy traffic, people following you around. Traffic here makes Bangkok look slow; it’s all the motorcycles. Food’s really good. Chicks are pretty cute,” he winks at me, crossing his legs, a sandal hanging off his toe.
The bus is already full when we arrive, so the driver pulls out seats that block the narrow aisle and stuffs us all in. Forty of us in a bus that comfortably seats twenty-five. Kelly and I are next to a couple from England, Matt and Lisa.
“What happens if we have to get out? Quickly? We can’t move in here. And it’s so bloody hot.” Matt complains.
“How do we get out? In an emergency?” Lisa wonders aloud.
“Slowly, I’d say. Slow as hell.”
“I hear it’s cooler there,” Lisa says hopefully, telling us that they are heading to Hanoi the next day. She is blonde, flushed cheeks, freckled arms. Acid coffee churns in my stomach and the oxygen seems to be all used up. As the bus pulls away from the curb, a group of skinny, beautiful kids kick a deflated soccer ball into traffic, their mothers call out in sharp, staccato voices, call out to passing tourists in loud, listless voices, carry on their chats that sound like arguments, caw of crows. Eyes weary, wary. Pots of soup and noodles at a tiny street café, plastic tables accompanied by tiny plastic stools like furniture from childhood tea parties. Customers slurp, chat, smoke. Wafts of charring meat mixes with exhaust.
The tour guide shuts the flapping doors as we lurch forward into traffic, grabs a crackling microphone as he clears his throat.
“Good…morning. My name is Thanh. It’s spelled T- H- A -N -H. It is pronounced ‘ton’. Like ton of fun!” He is tall and more solidly built than many other Vietnamese men I have seen, lustrous black hair cut short, slicked back with gel, unlike the usual parted on the side style. His white shirt has a blue and white name tag of the tour company with his name printed in black. T H A N H. Ton.
Sweaty heads bob and roll and panic, incited by claustrophobia, tingles up my spine. All I can think about is how do I get off the bus? Even if I could? Where would I go? Wander through the miles of back alleys, be chased by dogs, listen to the screech of karaoke from tiny cement living rooms?
“I spent two years living in America, in California, where I learned English,” Thanh continues. His pronunciation is slow but clear, like he is reading a well-practised script, “so I could come back to my country and talk to you.”
Kelly laughs beside me. “This Thanh guy is pretty funny.”
“I was born in Saigon, I am Saigonese. All people from here call Ho Chi Minh City Saigon. We are the workers. Saigon is a lifestyle city. We are going to a residence of war orphans on the way to Cui Chi. These people have lost their family. Or they have lost limbs, or are sick from the war. They are very talented artists.”
“How long are we going to be there?” someone asks from the front of the bus. “This stop wasn’t mentioned when we bought the tickets.”
We start and stop through the centre of the city, streets, sidewalks, alleys are swarming. A few of the sightseers on the bus are munching on sandwiches, the smell of fried eggs in the close heat is overpowering.
Thanh is quick. “Not long at all. They are very talented. We will be there one hour!” And he sits down.
“We will be expected to buy something,” Kelly says and Matt nods in agreement. After an hour of slow progress, city thins out, replaced by fields of skinny trees and rice paddies. Oxen pulling ploughs and dots of wide brimmed hats mark farmers, digging, pulling, pushing. When they stand up they still seem bent, like curved wire. Roads turn to gravel and a fine mist of dust floats through the open windows until finally we pull up to a field with a hangar-like building and a few sheds. We file out slow as hell, as Matt predicted, and follow Thanh to the entrance.
“This should be an interesting detour,” Kelly laughs. India has taught him to wait, he says. “I have to go every day to the factory or nothing will get done. They’re always happy to see me, make tea, chat. I ask how things are going with my clothes, ask to see things and they show me. And I come the next day. Same thing. But if I don’t go they will forget about me, not do anything. And I need my shipment by a certain time and they say they will make it for sure. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.”
“Why do you keep going back?”
“I don’t know. It’s the way it is.”
Hangar is cool, fans swish swish from the ceiling to bring us back to life. The ground and plywood walls are covered with pearl inlaid Vietnamese women, elegant in their ao dai, riding bicycles, white fabric flowing, waves of black hair. Young men and women are bent over, sanding wood, painting frames. Some look up and smile at us, hopeful, others completely ignore us. Shelves of black and apple-red lacquered bowls gleam and when I pick them up they seem to float in my hand. Wall hangings dashed with Chinese characters, women crossing a bridge, iconic cone hats.
We file out and Thanh herds us back to the bus. Some of the travellers carry packages wrapped in newspaper.
“Cramming back in our sardine can,” Matt says under his breath.
Mosquito Lake
We wake to the sound of rat-a-tat choppers, searchlights beam through sloped tent like some war movie. Nigel thought he was in Vietnam leaving killing fields, wounded hero going home. Clutched guts scrunched fists to his sides, breathed through it. Toby whispers, “Take it easy, Nigel” cold hands on flushed arms. “Choppers will take you to Rupert. Your appendix burst, don’t move. You were yelling,” Toby says, “you wouldn’t stop.”
“I saw Lucy drag bodies from the lake,” Nigel whispers, “wading through flaming arrows untouched somehow. I called her name from shore but I couldn’t move. Marauders threw axes, trees screamed, kept missing her.Canoes capsized, flinging bodies, lake red with blood.”
“Don’t worry,” Toby says. “Lucy saves the lake.”
Vietnam
Instead of a movie, Thanh gives a presentation in a square room with scraping wooden chairs that reminds me of Auschwitz, with the exception of whirring fans and the dripping heat. Swish swish. Thanh stands beside a diagram of the tunnels, which look like the elaborate paths of ants corkscrewing into the ground. Halls and meeting rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. An entire community subsumed. Through an open door the jungle beckons, thin trees, hillocks, screech of cicadas. Air free of fumes from exhaust, salt and tang of food. Stillness. Thanh uses a pointer that reminds me of my grade two teacher, Mrs. Benner, firm diction, frequent eye contact with the class but with Thanh’s distinctive, forceful voice.
“The Viet Cong planned their attacks here.” He points to a conference room, square shaped and separate from the other spaces that are round and hovel-like. Expansive heart of the underground village, where all the men met, the soldiers and commanders and generals, drinking, smoking, planning. “People carried on their entire lives underground.” Swish swish. Part of our group is nodding off to Thanh’s tone. Though distinct, it lacks cadence to rouse us from the heat. “They cooked. Raised their children. They even got married. And had a honeymoon. Underground!” He points to a small roundish blob at the far reaches of the community, a private space. “This is where the happy couple spent the first few weeks of their marriage, alone together. They didn’t have to work.” They were allowed to be happy together before rising to the surface and continuing with life, with the war. But they were fortified, according to Thanh’s tone, by love.
He went on some more, said a few things about the Tet Attack, which was planned here as well. But my mind wanders, trying to imagine a life underground. I cannot. But I cannot im
agine a war going on above me either. Would I have escaped? Left my home? But to where? War was all around. The Vietnamese dug in, they stood their ground underground, coming up from the depths to maraud in the night like ghosts, like the Terracotta Warriors standing at attention in the ground in China. Except they were alive and fighting, planning, getting married in the dark earth.
Dene
Na’kwoel grew to be so old that his snow-white hair turned yellowish, his knees and elbows were covered with scales that looked like moss. His hearing failed him, and his eyelids drooped until his eyes disappeared. His limbs knotty and swollen, his heart hardening to stone, the earth taking root, claiming him through the soles of his feet. Basking in the sun on a rock or emerging from the shallow water, he would howl in rage at seeing himself ravaged and powerless against time. But he would fight back, exclaiming: Ah, here I am, a young man again!
He was constantly smarting under the pain caused by the untimely death of his eldest son. Though he was now well advanced in years, he used to visit Chichanit’s lodge and reproach Chalh’tas with her crime, in which case blows would generally follow words, to all of which she had to submit, though the blows stoked her own rage.
One day, when she was stripping willow bark with a small stone knife, her father-in-law became so violent that, unable to stand his abuse any longer, she grabbed him by the hair, and, throwing him to the ground, stabbed him in the neck. Her knife broke in the old man’s collarbone before it could inflict serious injury, and Na’kwoel’s screams of pain brought Chichanit running, and he killed Chalh’tas on the spot with his bow point.
Na’kwoel could feel his end coming and he told his people that at the time of his death the mountain Na’kal, which rose on the eastern shore of Stuart Lake, would dance in his honour. It was an agreement he made with the mountain for his long life. A spur of the mountain fell into the water just as he himself fell to the earth.
Vietnam
Finally Thanh leads us to the jungle. There are dark stains under his arms and the line above his lip is beaded. We are guzzling water.
“Do you have more?” Kelly asks.
“Yeah, in my pack.” He reaches in and hauls out a warm bottle as we walk. Birds are singing, small black sparrows that hop lightly in front of us. Gunshots ring in the distance. Rat a tat tat staccato sounds. We stop at a deep hole in the earth and gather round, looking down at thick pointed bamboo poles waist high, embedded like jaws.
“This is a booby trap!” Thanh proclaims loudly. Air smells like earth, mineral like dried blood. Birds chirp. “This hole would be covered by leaves in the night. And boom. An American soldier would fall in. And he would scream in pain. The goal of the Viet Cong was not to kill but to maim, to cause pain. Then the other soldiers would hear their friend’s cries and come to the rescue and bam. The Viet Cong would be waiting in the dark. And they would kill all the soldier’s friends that came to help. The plan was to inflict pain, to inflict fear of the night in the American soldiers. They did not know the jungle the way we do.” There is pride in Thanh’s voice and his eyes flash as he stands there. Gunshots continue, get louder as we follow him.
“What is that?” asks one of the travellers, an edge of nervousness in his voice. He is tall and dark. I hadn’t noticed him on the bus. “Oh. There is a shooting range near the canteen. You can shoot machine guns after if you want. AK-47’s!”
“Holy shit!” a girl says behind me. Her accent is American, I think. “Guns?”
“Yeah. It’s creepy,” Kelly replies, turning to check her out. Dirty dog. Stinky smelly Kelly with the jiggly jelly belly.
“God, I need a beer,” the tall dark traveller says and the group titters, a little wave of welcome laughter. Unrelenting sun blasting through the thin branches and the meagre dusty leaves. The next booby trap is above ground, a huge net made of fishing line lies dormant on the ground. Once we gather around obediently, Thanh covers the net with leaves, crunchy and dry, mottled green and brown. A few thin vines connect the net to branches overhead, like veins connecting to flesh. From behind a shrub he hauls out a mannequin, a bald plastic sexless body, loose and jangly. He tosses it in a casual heap on the net and WHOOSH the body and net boomerang up to the sky, where it bounces and flails, simulating what would happen to an unsuspecting soldier wandering in the jungle, on the alert for the enemy. Rattle of guns getting closer.
“You see. Another booby trap. American soldier would scream when he got caught and his friends would come. Another ambush. Viet Cong strategy.” I am hoping he notices that we are in need of a break, sustenance. Rat a tat tat. “God it’s hot,” another girl, English, complains. She is covering her freckled shoulders, which are a raw red, with a scarf.
“Now we will go to the tunnels!” Thanh declares, unflagging in the heat, and we follow him single file through a knot of trees to a clearing with a small hole with a ladder on the edge. Again, we gather around like sheep and it slowly becomes apparent that this tiny aperture is the entrance to the underground world.
“Any volunteers!”
Stunned silence.
“I will.” A young man with blond dreads in a blue headband steps forward. I can’t place his accent. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, long jean shorts and skater shoes.
“Go down and walk through the tunnel to the end,” Thanh points to another ladder in the ground, a few hundred feet away. Ground is hard and packed and golden like brown sugar. “What’s your name?”
“Chuck!” he calls out, and impossibly disappears down the hole, his hand shoots up as if to surrender.
“The tunnels have been widened for tourists who are taller and bigger than Vietnamese. But you still have to bend over, crouch a little and follow the light to the end.”
“There’s no way I’m doing this.” Panic waves from the soles of my feet, nipping along my thighs, sweat of my spine to the flushed nape of my neck, watching the procession of travellers going down, down into the pit.
“It’s what you came for. Come on!” Kelly laughs, giving me a flustered look. “At least try.”
I am the last one in line.
Thanh notices my blanched face. “It’s okay.”
I climb quivering down the stairs and the bird-sounds of the jungle muffle. It’s cool. Voices ricochet down the length of the tunnel. Light is immediately eclipsed by the shadow of ground. I make it to the bottom, which is a small enclosure, a mini cloakroom, with four others waiting to enter.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I say to no one, to all of them.
“Yeah, it’s pretty freaky down here,” says the comforting voice of a young girl. I can’t make out her face, just the outline of her curls. Smells of earth, metallic fear in my mouth. Anxiety claws, ready to tear. At least try. Bodies are clearing out and soon I am the next one to enter the tunnel. I hunch over, make myself into a comma, crunch in and as I move through the walls squeeze. Just keep going. No air, can’t breathe. Bodies moving ahead of me, muffled voices make it hard to see the light at the end. What if I can’t make it? No one’s behind me, I can turn around. Stop for a second. Breathe. Breathe. High-pitched thrum and then nothing. Nothing. Just close your eyes and go. But I don’t. I lie down very still and wait for the wave to pass and soon there is no sound at all, just cool air, dirt against my cheek. Heart slows breathing silence. All the people that have passed through here, running, screaming, crying, stealthy, maybe some of them crawled out like I did, hands and knees, hands and knees towards the light.
When I finally haul myself up, Thanh is standing there. I am the last one, he has been waiting. “You did it. Yay!” he cheers, beaming at me. Everyone else is standing around, drinking water, laughing, lively again. We did what we came for, made it through the tunnel and how awful. In three minutes I combusted to the pressure of fear. Sound floods in and I recover to full, quaking height. Kelly is chatting with Matt and Lisa. I stagger up to them.
“You okay?” Kelly questions, alarmed.
“Yeah.”
�
�Pretty fucking crazy, heh?” Matt explodes. “Can you imagine living down there? Unbelievable. Like little bugs scurrying around.”
I gather myself together, bit by bit, picking up missing pieces, visible only to me. As we walk towards the canteen, the dummy American GI is lying in the dirt, limbs splayed, its blank face watching our slow procession. I can see the tourists standing in a row, firing at bulls-eye targets through a clearing up ahead. Not so long ago those were soldiers in a jungle with the Vietnamese talking, smoking, planning in the ground, living like rodents. Invisible during the day. At night, cunning marauders.
Japan
After a year in Osaka, I have learned the basics of Japanese from my teacher, Yuki. I started lessons with her when the US invaded Baghdad. I still remember watching the first bombs being dropped, looking up from my notebook, tracing the lines of hiragana over and over again, slowly sounding them out. I know how to navigate the myriad train stations by the time I go to Hiroshima. I want to see everything, go everywhere. The exhilaration of learning a new language makes me feel like I am in grade one, shy and insecure, counting numbers with my fingers under the desk. Train travel in Japan is efficient, a smooth ride through the monotonous suburb that is Honshu, bumps of mountains, occasional glimpse of a temple, bright orange gates of a Shinto shrine, cement embanked rivers. Farms, but no animals. I ask my students, “Where are the animals?”
They laugh. “They are inside!”
Shannon and I go with her parents, who are visiting from Canada. They are exhausted from the flight over but want to get to Hiroshima as they are only in Japan for a week, so we take the shinkansen the day after they arrive. My students tell me I will love Hiroshima. It is so beautiful. You must go to Miyajima too, Adrienne san. Floating torii in the sea is very beautiful. Shannon does not look like her mother. She is small with fine dark curly hair that she has been trying to grow; it swirls in ringlets, popping like corkscrews. Her mother is voluptuous, blonde, worried. What time are we arriving? Is the hotel near the museum? Shannon assures, placates. We eat bento boxes we bought at the station, carefully packaged, perfect piles of rice, pickles, thin grilled fish. Salt smell of miso, soya sauce. Train conductor in official blue with white gloves and blue brimmed cap walks calmly through our car, turns around and bows slightly before he moves on to the next car, where he bows again before walking through. Aisles are immaculate, windows shine and we move at the speed of a plane gearing up for takeoff.
The Earth Remembers Everything Page 4