The woman looked to Moon more like a girl. A teenager, perhaps. She sat in the shade of a hut beside one of the houses with Lee sitting across from her. No one else was in sight. A peaceful scene. Moon remembered the pigs. Of course, someone would still be there. The owner of the tethered pigs would have heard their APC approaching this morning. Time enough to hide, but not to hide the pigs.
“Let’s go,” Moon said. He didn’t want to allow hope to revive. It was still impossible. But hope revived without permission.
Through the driver’s slit he could see Mr. Lee waiting beside the irrigation ditch, the girl standing at his side. Lee shouted something. Nguyen shouted an answer. They exchanged more shouts. Moon cut the ignition, stretched, forced himself to be patient for a dignified moment. Then he followed Osa and Nguyen out the rear ramp. Mr. Lee was expressing condolences and ‘Osa was accepting them with her usual grace.
“And you,” she said. “Did you find your kam taap?”
Mr. Lee’s tired old face developed a smile of such luminous joy that no other answer was necessary. But he said, “Yes! Yes!” And pressed his hands in front of his chest, and said “Yes!” again.
“And even more wonderful,” he said, turning toward Moon, “we have good news for Mr. Mathias too. I think we have found the child.”
But not quite yet.
The girl with Mr. Lee was Ta Le Vinh, who was twelve and a second cousin of Eleth Vinh. As Mr. Lee described her presence, a villager cleaning the ditch had seen the Khmer Rouge coming and had come running with the warning. A dozen people had headed for the woods without stopping for anything. Others had waited to collect food, or clothing, or valuables. They had been caught and marched away. Five of the villagers who made it to the woods had kept going, intending to cross the mountains and find refuge with relatives until the territory was safe again. Seven stayed behind, including Ta Le, her parents, and Daje Vinh, who was the mother of Eleth Vinh. And with Daje Vinh was Lila Vinh, the baby.
Mr. Lee was explaining this, with Ta Le listening intently. “After you drove away this morning, I went out there.” And Mr. Lee indicated a high meadow across the irrigation ditch. “I noticed how the arms of the hill enclosed it, giving it the proper slope. An excellent feng shui site. So I walked up there and found several shrines and several kam taap. Many of these, too, had been desecrated by the Khmers. They had shot them with their automatic rifles, breaking them to pieces. And one of them was the kam taap we have been seeking.”
“Wonderful,” Osa said. “They hadn’t broken it up?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Lee said, his smile undiminished. “Broken it up. But it doesn’t matter. I got a sack and picked everything up and brought it here.” He pointed to the house. “Another kam taap will be made. It is the bones that are important.” He looked at Moon for agreement. “There is where the spirit lives.”
“Right,” Moon said.
“Even then the good luck was already working. Miss Vinh and her family were watching me. They saw from what I was doing that I was a religious man. One who follows the teachings of the Lord Buddha could not be a Khmer Rouge. So Miss Vinh came out to learn who I was. She went back and told her family. But her parents said they would wait until the brother of Ricky Mathias came back in the vehicle so they could see him for themselves and be sure it was not a trick before they would come out of the woods.”
“That was sensible,” Moon said.
So Moon, Mr. Lee, and the Miss Vinh who was a second cousin of Eleth Vinh walked up into the meadow. Moon stood there in the hot afternoon sun, feeling foolish, sweat dripping from his nose, his eyebrows, trickling below his shoulder blades, feeling foolish and praying without words. Miss Vinh was pointing at him, shouting something toward the screen of trees. From the trees emerged a man, and just behind him a woman.
The woman carried a baby.
Moon realized he had not been breathing. He whooshed out a huge breath, inhaled another, and looked up at the sky. What is it that Muslims say? It came to him. God is good. God is good.
The adults proved to be the parents of Ta Le Vinh. The required courteous formalities of introduction were handled in an unusual hurry by Mr. Lee. The elder Vinhs were obviously nervous-not happy to be standing here in the open. It was said, they explained, that the Khmer Rouge followed a tactic of raiding a village, leaving just long enough for those who had escaped them to return, and then raiding it again. In another two days, they would return to their homes. Perhaps it would be safe then, and they had no place else to go.
Moon was shown the infant. He looked, hoping to see a family resemblance, perhaps to Victoria Mathias. He saw just another baby. Between one and two, he guessed, but small. Perhaps Ricky’s eyes.
The baby examined Moon with the same results, showing no sign she was particularly impressed.
“Ask them if the child’s grandmother is here,” Moon said to Mr. Lee. “The mother of Eleth Vinh. Is she here?”
Mr. Lee asked a short question. The answer was long and involved pointing. When translated it said that the elder Mrs. Vinh had been one of two refugees shot as they ran into the woods. Mrs. Vinh had been hit twice in the back. She had died last night.
The transaction was completed. Moon was handed the baby, who resisted the transfer by kicking and crying. Mr. Lee was handed a bundle of the supplies that go with babies. The Vinhs were told that the sacks of rice used as mine protection in the APC would be left behind for them. Farewells were said. The Vinhs disappeared into the woods. Moon and Mr. Lee plodded across the meadow, heading for the APC, with Nguyen Nung perched behind its.50, waiting for trouble, with Osa leaning against it, watching them.
Zero for three had turned into two for three.
Now he could go home. If he could get there. But where was the joy he should be feeling?
CAMBODIAN REDS ARE UPROOTING MILLIONS AS THEY IMPOSE A “PEASANT REVOLUTION”
– New York Times, MAY 9, 1975
The Twenty-Seventh Day
May 9, 1975
THE DINING ROOM OF THE Hotel Maynila was cool in the way refrigerated air cools places in a humid climate. Despite the clammy dampness, Moon luxuriated in it. The last time he recalled being really cool was the morning he’d sat at this very table waiting for Osa to arrive. That was about three weeks ago. Or a lifetime, depending on how you looked at it. Actually, a lifetime minus a few hours, which was how long it would be before he’d have to say good-bye to her unless he tried to do something about it. And maybe even if he did.
He’d already said his good-byes to Lum Lee. Mr. Lee was staying with what he called a “family connection” elsewhere in Manila. But he’d called from the lobby, and Moon had come down to receive his thanks and hear him declare himself in Moon’s perpetual debt. He reported that he’d dealt with the problem of the Glory of the Sea. He’d arranged a radio message to Captain Teele to explain what had prevented them from meeting him. Next he’d asked Moon if he’d seen Osa today. Moon said he hadn’t.
Mr. Lee had remarked that Osa was “feeling very sad.” Moon had said that the death of a brother was a terrible blow. Mr. Lee then said that wasn’t exactly what he meant. He said he’d called Osa to bid her farewell and to tell her of the woman who came to Buddha for help because she could not stop grieving the loss of a loved one. Buddha had told the woman to collect five poppy seeds from homes that had never suffered such a loss. And of course she could find no such home, and that was the lesson. But, Mr. Lee had said, she’d told him she wasn’t grieving for Damon. Then why did she sound so sad? And she had said, Not only death causes sorrow. Did Moon know what she meant by that?
And Moon had said no, he didn’t.
There had been a moment of silence and Mr. Lee had asked if Moon would see Osa today, and he’d said perhaps, but he was extremely busy finishing the paperwork to fly Lila back to the States.
“I, too, have been busy,” Mr. Lee had said. “Even though Lord Buddha taught us that we who busy ourselves picking stones from the path cannot see
the gold beside us.”
Moon had said he guessed that was true.
“And Osa too has been busy. She said she wanted to tell you good-bye but there had been much to do.”
And Moon had said, Well, she’d had to call her mother to tell her about Damon.
Instead of commenting on that, Mr. Lee had told him another of his Buddhist parables. A bird with two heads lived in a desert where it often had to go without water. Thus each of the heads became proud of its ability to endure thirst. The rains came. A pool formed below the bird’s nesting place, but each of the heads was too proud to take the first drink and so it died of thirst.
“Think of the wisdom in that teaching,” Mr. Lee said.
It had been a strange conversation from a strange man. Moon had thought about the teaching. Then he’d picked up the telephone and called Osa at her hotel. She sounded subdued, tired. But she said yes, she could have dinner with him. She wanted to hear how the baby was doing and they should tell each other good-bye. She would meet him at the Maynila.
He sat in the lobby, twenty minutes early, freshly shaven, cleaned and pressed, and with a new Manila haircut that looked an awful lot like the government-issue cuts they’d seen on the crewmen of the aircraft carrier.
The carrier had been quite an experience-a ferryboat for a motley collection of refugees. Its flight deck bad resembled a floating flea market when the U.S.S. Pillsbury had delivered them, and it had become more and more crowded as other frigates arrived to dump off the desperate people they were fishing from the South China Sea. The crowding became their good fortune. Somebody ordered helicopters to shuttle the surplus over to the Subic Bay Naval Base outside Manila. Their little party had made it onto the second flight.
Osa was walking across the carpet toward him, smiling.
Moon caught his breath. An almost-white skirt, a blouse with just a touch of blue in it here and there, her dark hair soft around her face.
Moon stood. “Wow,” he said.
She rewarded that with a wider smile. “Wow to you too. Isn’t it good to feel clean again? And have something done with your hair?”
“Or something done to it,” Moon said, rubbing his hand across what was left of his.
She laughed. “I think you found Nguyen’s barber,” she said, and sat in the chair across from him.
“Someone told me that time cures bad haircuts. Probably it was Mr. Lee.”
“Not tattoos, though,” she said. “I worry about that. What will Nguyen do about that awful tattoo when he has to go back to Vietnam?”
“Nguyen will be all right,” Moon said. “The navy takes care of its own.” Nguyen had been lucky. In fact, they’d all been lucky. Their only really tense moment had come at the Cambodian border checkpoint. The tanks were still there, and now so were the Khmer Rouge. But they had expected no trouble from their rear. He’d kept the APC in normal speed and rolled it right down the trail with Khmer Rouge troopers staring and Nguyen waving happily. He’d held his breath until they were past the tanks. He’d doubted Pol Pot’s citizen soldiers would know how to operate them, and he’d drained their fuel tanks onto the ground, but just seeing them there made him nervous.
Needless nerves. By the time the Khmers realized they weren’t stopping and the shouting and shooting began, they were out of range of anything that could dent the APC. The rest of it was travel through a public celebration. The only armed men they saw were Vietcong jubilantly returning Nguyen’s flag-waving. The only explosions they heard were fireworks.
The PBR had made it down the Mekong, mingling with such a swarm of refugee boats that the country’s new rulers had not a hope of stopping the flood even if they’d wanted to. They made it out past the brown water and into the choppy blue of the Gulf of Siam, hoping the Glory of the Sea might have arrived a day early. Instead they’d seen the little frigate Pillsbury, patrolling the river mouth for lives to save. The red-haired lieutenant peering down into their boat had shouted, “Hey, Gwen. You too damn mean to die?” And Nguyen had shouted something which included “son-a-bitch” and provoked some more yelling and laughter.
The lieutenant’s name was Eldon, and Nguyen had been his gunner when Eldon was an ensign running a Swift Boat up the Mekong back in 1969. And before the Pillsbury had turned them over to the carrier, Eldon had written a letter on official navy stationery expounding Nguyen’s daring deeds and his claims for special treatment as a political refugee. “I doubt if he’ll go back,” Moon said. “He has no family left.”
“But how about a job?” she said. “I taught him some more English on the ship and he learned fast. But still-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Moon said. “He’ll have a job.”
He told her about the office Ricky had opened at Caloocan City, and about the potential business. “I talked to Tom Brock this morning. We already have two copters in the hangar there. The general Ricky was dealing with told him to mark them off as unrepairable and keep them instead of paying the repair bills.”
Osa had no comment.
“Does that sound sort of dishonest to you?”
“It sounds like Asia. How about you?” Osa said. “Did your embassy get all the paperwork done for Lila?”
“Yeah,” Moon said. “Less hassle than I expected.”
“Good,” Osa said.
“There’ll be more of it when I get her back to the States, though. All kinds of forms to fill out. Getting a birth certificate. So forth.”
“I can imagine,” Osa said. “Where’s Lila now?”
“This hotel has a nursery service, complete with nannies,” he said. “She’s probably being taught how to speak Tagalog. And how about your documents? You all right?”
“Fine,” Osa said.
“You have dual citizenship, don’t you? Didn’t you tell me you had a Dutch passport as well as the Federation of Malaysia?”
Osa looked surprised. “Yes,” she said. “Why are you asking?”
“There are too many important things I don’t know,” Moon said. “Like whether you enjoy walking.”
“I do,” Osa said.
“Then I think we should take a walk.”
“In the dark?” Osa asked. But she got up.
“The moon will be up,” Moon said. “And I will take you on the only walk I know in Manila-down past the yacht basin and along the waterfront. And if we keep walking long enough there’s a restaurant I passed called My Father’s Mustache. We could have dinner.”
The moon was indeed up, but barely and far from full.
“Did you call your mother again? Is she-”
“She was asleep. But the nurse said everything was fine. Her leg is sore where they took the vein for the bypass surgery, but that’s usually the worst of it. They said they could discharge her tomorrow, but I asked them to wait until I can be there to take her back to Florida.”
“She’ll be so happy to see you,” Osa said.
“Funny thing,” Moon said. “When I told her we’d found Ricky’s daughter, I told her I hadn’t been calling because we had to go all the way into Cambodia to get the baby. I told her why it took so long. About the trouble we had in the Philippines. And getting to Cambodia. But it was just like she’d taken it for granted. No surprise at all.”
“What did she say?”
“She said something like, ‘Well, you already told me the baby didn’t get to Manila and you thought maybe she’d still be in Vietnam.’ So she had known it would take me a little longer.” He shrugged, made a wry face. “Can you believe that? ‘Take me a little longer!’”
He waited for Osa’s surprised response, but Osa was walking along beside him. He glanced at her. She looked amused.
Moon shrugged again. He didn’t seem to understand anyone anymore.
“What else did she say?”
“Oh, was I all right? And all about the baby. Is she healthy? Does she look like Ricky? How old is she? What does she weigh? How many words can she say?”
“What did you expect her
to say?”
“I don’t know,” Moon said. “I just thought she’d be-you know, amazed that I actually got the job done.”
Osa put her hand on his hand. “Why? Ricky wouldn’t have been surprised either. Ricky’s friends wouldn’t have been surprised. I had just heard about you from other people, but I wasn’t surprised. Remember, I came to you with my trouble because I had heard about the kind of man you are.”
Moon felt himself flushing. “Oh, sure,” he said. “All that brotherly stuff from Ricky.”
“You think your brother didn’t know you? Your mother certainly knew you.”
“She knows me all too well. That’s why I thought she’d be amazed.”
Osa removed her hand from his hand. “Why do you say that?” she said. “Why do you always have bad things to say about yourself?”
Time to change the subject. “Since we’re getting personal,” Moon said, “I have a question for you. In fact, two questions.”
“Answer mine first. And then I have another one. Does what you told me at the hotel just now about Caloocan City mean you are going to run the business?”
“I’m going to try,” Moon said. “But there’s been too much talking about me already. Listen carefully.
Question one: Mr. Lee told me that when he called you this morning to say good-bye you seemed very sad. He thought it was because of Damon. And you said it was another loss.”
Moon stopped, swallowed. There was no way to say it that wasn’t rude, intrusive, presumptuous. Osa was looking at him, attentive, waiting, lips slightly parted, amusement fading into something very serious. Beautiful. Waiting. For what, the Moon of Durance to chicken out or the super-Moon of Ricky’s legend to demand a solution to this little oddity?
“I remember,” Osa said.
“He asked me if I understood what you meant. I said I didn’t.” He hesitated again. But to hell with it. Otherwise he was losing her anyway. “But I hoped I did understand. I hoped you meant me.”
Finding Moon Page 27