CATTLE CALL
LINH’S STORY
You couldn’t really blame Toan for letting success go to his head. What was he? Almost fifteen?
When you’re that age, and you get the kind of recognition from your own people that he got, it’s easy to lose your perspective.
He was the first Vietnamese actor — young or old — to score a starring role in a television series in Australia. Out of all the hopefuls, they’d chosen him. And the word spread quickly, until it was hard for him to walk through Cabramatta without someone noticing and saying hello. It was a source of pride that one of their own had made it.
And it was a source of pride for him that at fifteen he could help support the family and free his parents to build their business and our future.
By that time we’d moved into the house at Boundary Park, just fifteen minutes from my aunt and uncle’s store in Cabramatta. Talk about life moving in circles. Seven years of working two jobs and more hours than was good for the health, and they’d saved enough to set themselves up. They rented the house in Boundary Park and bought into a textile shop in John Street. Right in the middle of Cabramatta. The ultimate cliché.
I guess the difference was that they weren’t tied to the place. It was just where they went to work. Where we chose to live was right in the middle of the suburbs, with Italians on one side of us and Maltese on the other, and a street full of Assyrians, Filipinos, English, Germans, Chinese-Timorese and Serbians — but no Vietnamese except us.
They still worked long hours in the shop — we all had to put in some time — but there was a pride about them now. They were building something of their own, and the hours were an investment in the future. For them and for us.
Everything has a cost. And everything has results that no one could predict.
The cost of the future could be measured in the hours we spent alone together in the house, while they struggled to make it happen. Especially in the early days.
Of course, the twins and Phuong weren’t exactly kids, so it wasn’t like they were leaving Toan and me to fend for ourselves, but we did miss the comforting touches and the security of an adult presence — especially when the world got too much to handle.
Still, it did make us a pretty independent bunch. There wasn’t too much that we wouldn’t have a go at.
Like auditioning for a part in a television show, when you’d never acted a day in your life.
I remember the day Toan showed me the ad in the paper.
“What do you think?” I could tell he really wanted my opinion — not so unusual, I suppose; we’ve always been pretty close. No, it was more the way he asked. Like he was still making up his mind. Toan isn’t usually nervous about things. Either he does something or he doesn’t, but he never loses sleep over it.
“Think you can do it?” I asked. Always answer a question with a question; it gives you time to think of a real answer.
“I guess …” He wanted more. I struggled to work out exactly what.
Finally I smiled my most encouraging smile. “What’s the worst thing that could happen? You could do the audition and they could pick someone else. Wouldn’t exactly be the end of the world, would it?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about, Linh.” Now we were getting to it. “I’ve got this horrible feeling that they won’t pick someone else. That they’ll say yes, and I’ll be stuck doing something I don’t want to do.”
“You don’t want to?” I began. “Then why —?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to. I said I might not want to. Hell, I’ve never done anything like it. How would I know whether I’ll enjoy it?”
He could be the most frustrating person to have a conversation with!
“If you’re worried, you don’t have to call them, you know. No one’s forcing —”
“Too late.” He grinned. “I already did. I have an audition on Thursday.”
I didn’t hit him. Not hard, at least. Sometimes I’m amazed at my own patience.
“Then what are you asking me for?”
He sat down on the table, suddenly serious. “It’s not too late to cancel.”
The way he said it made it sound like an option, but I knew him better than he knew himself. He’d decided. He just wanted me to approve. To let him know it was okay to try. And fail.
On the surface, he was always so damned … confident, but deep down in the realm of feelings, I think sometimes he was scared. Of not achieving. Of not being the best. And now he was asking my permission.
“Have you told your mum and dad?”
He smiled again. “I thought I’d wait till I got the part.”
Suddenly, watching him, I knew he could do it.
*
TOAN’S STORY
Frank Anderson was sitting behind the desk in his office when I walked in, and he looked up as I closed the door behind me.
“Toan. Come in, sit down. I’m sorry you had to come all the way back again. How many times is that now? Three?”
I smiled. He knew how many times.
“Four. Counting the cattle-call at the casting agency.” I was picking up the jargon of the industry already.
He offered me one of the chocolates from the bowl on his desk, but I shook my head. I was too nervous to eat.
“Did your parents come this time?”
I shook my head again. “Too much work. There’d be no one to run the shop.”
I remembered how surprised the people at the casting agency had been the first time, when they found out I’d taken a bus and two trains — and two and a half hours — to get there. On my own.
To me, the north side of the city was like another world. Almost as alien as Sydney had be to a six-year-old from Rach Gia. The buildings, the cars, the people — even the clothes — spoke of a subtly different way of living.
But the people at the agency weren’t interested in all that. They weren’t particularly concerned with where I’d come from. At least, not at first.
I wouldn’t have told them at all, except that I was fifteen minutes late and I was scared they wouldn’t let me audition.
But now, after two weeks of auditions, I was getting worried that maybe they thought my parents were going to be a problem. If they were willing to let a fourteen-year-old kid travel that sort of distance alone, if they couldn’t even take the time off to come with him, what kind of support could he expect when the demands of a tv career began to hit? It might be enough to make them decide against me.
The truth was, I still hadn’t told Mum and Dad that I was trying out for the part. I had a list of excuses for where I was disappearing to, but I rarely had to use them. They were working so hard at the shop that we spent most of the time at home alone anyway. I wanted it to be a surprise if I got it. And if I didn’t, I wanted no one — except Linh, of course — to know I’d even tried out.
At the beginning, I never really expected that there would be more than one audition. I was new to the game, and I didn’t realise it was like a knock-out competition.
They started with maybe fifty hopefuls, interviewed them, and gave them a chance to impress.
Some chance!
Saying your lines cold to a man behind a desk.
Steven Nicholl … He looked about as interested as a head-banger at an Abba revival concert. Or like someone who had something he’d much rather be doing. Like having a tooth drilled.
I figured I’d blown it right there. But when he came out after the last kid had done his stuff, he read out a list of names, about ten of them — including mine.
Round two.
It’s funny. You’d think you’d be less nervous each time you did it, but it doesn’t work that way. It’s like … Well, the first time, you don’t know what you’re up against, and you don’t really expect too much. But getting through to the next stage, you start to think that maybe you really have a chance, and suddenly the idea of messing up and losing that chance begins to eat away at your confidence.
And when you ge
t down to the final four, it’s almost close enough to taste. That was when Frank Anderson appeared.
As director, he’d let the casting people do the weeding out. But the final say was his, and he ran us through the full screen-test. Close-ups and everything. And if I’d thought Steven Nicholl was cold, he was a roaring fire compared to staring into the lens of a rolling camera. Even bored disinterest is better than … nothing. A camera gives nothing back, and after I’d finished I knew I’d blown it.
Which is why I was so surprised when I got the call back. Two of us left, and no more auditioning. Just a sit-down “chat” with Frank himself.
The end of the line. Pass or fail.
I was always good at exams, but this time I had no idea of which questions I would be asked. Or what the right answers were.
Or even if there were any right answers.
He leaned back in his seat. “Okay, Toan. Tell me why I should choose you …”
That was it.
Half an hour later I was Binh — the runaway who arrives on Sanctuary Island in the first scene of episode one. And stays for all fifty-two episodes.
They sent me home in a cab. Couldn’t have their tv star travelling on the train …
Star …
It’s a great word. But it doesn’t describe what you are. I guess it’s more a word for how you feel. If you really are one.
I certainly didn’t feel like one on my first day.
We were doing location shots on one of the North Queensland islands, and they’d flown me up the day before, with Frank and some of the other cast-members. I’d met them before, of course, and they were very nice to me, but my mind wasn’t on conversation. It was only my second time ever on a plane, and this time, like the last time, I was flying into the unknown.
The next morning the crew was already set up when they collected me from the hotel and drove me to the location. And suddenly, as the car pulled up, I felt my stomach begin to turn over.
You watch television or a movie and the action unfolds in front of you. One or two people and a boat, or the sea stretching away to the horizon and an empty beach. What the screen doesn’t show you is that there are thirty or forty technical people crowding around, often within inches of those characters, with about thirty tonnes of equipment, from cameras and lights, to clapper-boards, make-up kits, reflectors … you name it.
And none of them has time to worry about you. Or the fact that this is all totally new to you. It’s a professional business, and you’re just expected to be … professional.
Which is bad enough, but then you look around and see the crowd of locals lined up behind the barriers, excited by the unusual activity and the glamour of having the crew in their back-yard. And waiting for something to happen …
I felt like every one of those eyes was looking directly at me. And I realised that I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do.
Frank took me aside and explained the action of the scene and where I was supposed to move, but then the people from wardrobe and make-up kidnapped me, and he went away to do the important things that a director has to do, and I was alone in a crowd of strangers, who saw me as a piece of meat to be prepared and served up to the waiting cameras.
At least, that’s how I felt.
My first scene was simple. I had to run up a plank that stretched between the wharf and the boat and hide under a tarp on the deck, then poke my face out and look frightened.
No words to speak. Thank god. The way I was trembling, I don’t think I could have said anything.
It took three takes. The first time, I stumbled as I stepped onto the boat and moved out of the line of the shot, the second time, the sound recordist had a problem and Frank called out. But the third time, it went like clockwork; I slid under the tarp, and when I looked. out I knew that the expression was just right.
Then Frank Anderson moved across and put an arm around my shoulder. He was smiling and I knew without any words being spoken that he was pleased with me. And with himself.
Frank was the ultimate professional, and later, when I thought about it, I realised what had been on his mind that day.
A new kid. First day on set. Give him a scene with no words to say, where he just has to look scared. Considering how I was feeling, it would have been a miracle if I hadn’t got the expression just right.
“How do you feel, Toan?” he asked.
We were standing on the wharf and the crew was setting up for the next shot. I wasn’t sure of the correct response, so I just shrugged.
“Nerves gone?” he continued.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Good.” He was laughing at me. With me.
The crowd was still there, watching from behind the barriers, but for the moment I’d forgotten about them …
17
CABRAMATTA
14 April 1986
Boundary Park, Australia
GRANDMA
11.50 am. The old woman lights the sticks of incense and steps back, watching the thin wisps of smoke spiralling slowly into the air of the room.
For a moment she closes her eyes. Then a look of concern ghosts across her face. Downstairs, the front door is closing, and she hears voices: Linh, laughing, Toan talking too fast and too loud for her to make out his meaning in the foreign tongue of this new land. And the boy, Miroslav.
Such a strange name, Miroslav.
Slowly she makes her way across to the window, and looks down. Toan is already at the gate, making for the car which stands beside the kerb. The car of Miroslav’s father. So strange … To live in a country where even the children drive. Where something so precious is entrusted to someone so …
But here it is not so precious. And they are not so young, are they?
You are an old woman, Tuyet, she chides herself.
Below, beside the gate, Linh reaches out to take the young man’s hand, and something in the way he responds — the expression on his face, perhaps, or the tilt of his head — makes the old woman smile.
No, they are not so young …
The old woman reaches behind her and feels for the chair which stands beside the window. She lowers herself into it, without taking her eyes from the car as it moves slowly away from the kerb.
As it reaches the corner, indicator flashing, and disappears from view, Vo Kim Tuyet turns her head to look at her granddaughter’s picture on the wall above the bed.
*
TOAN’S STORY
I’ve always had mixed feelings when I walk through Cabramatta.
It’s the place that most of the refugees were sent in the years after the war — where they’re still being sent. And apart from signs of the prosperity that comes with living in a developed country, it has taken on the feeling of old Vietnam: the shops with their overcrowded jumble of merchandise, and the constant bustling atmosphere of the marketplace, the restaurants, with their simple furnishings and their menus of phò and còm tàm, even the shop signs, turning the western-style awnings into something out of pre-war Saigon.
Part of me feels at home there. Comfortable. Like there is a place where I can blend in, be myself, look the way I look. Speak my birth language confidently in the street without watching for the inevitable reaction.
That is the strength of the place, but it’s also its weakness.
And then, of course, it has the gangs …
*
14 April 1986
Cabramatta, Australia
LINH
12.15 pm. The car glides to a halt in the bus-zone outside the station. In the back seat Toan struggles to undo the seat-belt. Miro checks for parking police, and shifts the transmission into neutral.
“What are your plans?” He speaks the words into the rearview mirror, catching Toan’s eye.
“I don’t know yet … I’ve got a bit to do at the library, then I’ll probably try and scratch up a game of two-on-two at Police Boys’.”
Miro nods. “I’ll pick you up outside at about four-thirty.” He
looks at Linh and smiles. “We might go get some lunch.”
Toan closes the door behind him as he leaves, and for a moment neither of them moves. Then Linh looks at Miro and smiles.
“Lunch? Is that what they call it now?”
He smiles back, then leans across to kiss her, but Linh pulls away slightly, holding his gaze.
“I love you, you know.” It is not something she often says, and for a moment there is silence.
He brushes the dark hair away from her face and runs the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “I know.”
Then she closes her eyes and leans towards him.
A minute later, as he clicks the T-bar into drive and waits for the traffic, he turns slightly in his seat.
“We’ve got over four hours. We probably do have time for a bowl of phò for lunch.”
She stares at him for a few seconds, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue, then smiles again.
“A late lunch …”
There is a break in the line of cars. He touches her hand, then accelerates into the gap.
18
DO OR DIE …
LINH’S STORY
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My cheeks were still a bit flushed, but otherwise …
Slowly I ran my hands down over my breasts and across my body and felt a lingering echo of the feeling.
A slow smile grew on the face that looked back at me from behind the glass. It seemed oddly familiar, and for the first time in years I remembered my mother and the way my father had always made her smile. And I finally understood why the smiles had stopped when he died. The smiles — and the tears.
I shrugged and made my way back into Miro’s bedroom.
“It’s almost three,” I began. “If we’re going to get some lunch before we pick Toan up —”
“Oh, so now we’re hungry, are we?” He was lying on the bed. He’d managed to find a pair of Lakers shorts among the pile of clothes on the floor beside him, but he looked in no hurry to get dressed.
I sat down on the bed. “You could say that.” Then I leaned across and kissed him. I could feel him respond, and I teased his tongue just slightly before pulling away. Then I lay down on my side, supporting myself on one elbow, daring him to look away. And I undid the top button of my shirt again. “Of course, if you’re up to round two, I might be persuaded …”
Only the Heart Page 15