emanating from his suddenly excitable wife notwithstanding. Sen had a thing for Vietnamese women. It wasn’t because they were any more beautiful than Chinese females, he simply wanted them more because they were off-limits to him. If two women looked exactly the same but one was labeled Vietnamese and one Chinese, he would pick the Vietnamese one. It enraged him to think that such a good-looking, qualified dude as he was could be deterred from having sex with some hot Vietnamese chick by the vigilant alpha, beta and gamma males of Vietnamese society. He was determined to change this unnatural natural law. On the eighth day, he silently exited the house before dawn, got on his bicycle and pedaled away. He would never see Vinh Chau again.
Sen reached the ferry landing in the late afternoon and was astonished to see his car still parked on the other side. The hicks hadbeen too intimidated or honest to mess with it.
This is a great omen
, he thought. Inserting the key into the ignition, Sen became so giddy he actually burst into song. As he drove away, the hicks could clearly hear him singing in English, “I got you, babe!”
Kim Lan was giving Cun a bath at the back of the house when she heard someone rattling her steel gate and calling her name over and over. She knew who it was immediately because she had been thinking about him for over a week. Still she thought,
It cannot be him
. When she opened the steel gate and saw Sen standing there, smiling as usual, she pretended not to be shocked and happy. “What are you doing here, Sen?!”
“I came back because of you.”
“I thought you had left by boat.”
“How could I leave without you?”
12JAR GAMES
F rom 1975 to 1986, Saigon went through a dark age. Hundreds of thousands of people were sent off to concentration or labor camps. Food shortages became a fact of life. Rice, cooking oil, salt, sugar and MSG were rationed. Yam was served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Letters sent from overseas were often lost and packages stolen. Wine was made by fermenting the cores of pineapples. Jackfruit pits were boiled, peeled and eaten. Love songs, known as yellow music, were banned under penalty of imprisonment. Trinh Cong Son, Vietnam’s greatest songwriter, was sent to mine-strewn fields to plant cassava. Monks and priests disappeared, to be replaced by phony monks and priests. Nearly everyone was hungry nearly all the time. There were blackouts twenty-one days out of the month and water pressure plummeted. Yellow sorghum, a rice substitute, got stuck in everyone’s decaying teeth. Toothpaste became scarce and laundry detergent was used as shampoo. Head lice multiplied, leading to shorter haircuts, even among women. Fresh milk disappeared and condensed milk became a luxury item. Anything could be stolen by anyone at any moment. There was nothing to read and nothing to watch on television. Everyone conspired to escape by boat, but only a few succeeded. Among the boat people were former supporters of the National Liberation Front, now contrite and yearning for America.
One needed connections and careful planning to escape by boat. But above all, one needed money. To buy a place on a boat, one hadto pay about a thousand bucks, not a small sum in a bankrupt country. Some people tried a dozen times without success. Many made it to international water only to die of thirst, starvation or by drowning. The ones who headed toward Thailand—the land of smiles in tourist brochures—were often robbed and raped by Thai pirates. Neighbors who don’t speak the same language rarely make good friends. After arriving in a refugee camp, the boat people had to wait for years to go to a third country. Many were eventually sent back to Vietnam. The ones who persisted, those who had to get out at any cost, were often the best of South Vietnamese society: doctors, lawyers, engineers and intellectuals. Most Chinese merchants were also hounded into leaving. Though less radical than its
Sen reached the ferry landing in the late afternoon and was astonished to see his car still parked on the other side. The hicks hadbeen too intimidated or honest to mess with it.
This is a great omen
, he thought. Inserting the key into the ignition, Sen became so giddy he actually burst into song. As he drove away, the hicks could clearly hear him singing in English, “I got you, babe!”
Kim Lan was giving Cun a bath at the back of the house when she heard someone rattling her steel gate and calling her name over and over. She knew who it was immediately because she had been thinking about him for over a week. Still she thought,
It cannot be him
. When she opened the steel gate and saw Sen standing there, smiling as usual, she pretended not to be shocked and happy. “What are you doing here, Sen?!”
“I came back because of you.”
“I thought you had left by boat.”
“How could I leave without you?”
12JAR GAMES
F rom 1975 to 1986, Saigon went through a dark age. Hundreds of thousands of people were sent off to concentration or labor camps. Food shortages became a fact of life. Rice, cooking oil, salt, sugar and MSG were rationed. Yam was served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Letters sent from overseas were often lost and packages stolen. Wine was made by fermenting the cores of pineapples. Jackfruit pits were boiled, peeled and eaten. Love songs, known as yellow music, were banned under penalty of imprisonment. Trinh Cong Son, Vietnam’s greatest songwriter, was sent to mine-strewn fields to plant cassava. Monks and priests disappeared, to be replaced by phony monks and priests. Nearly everyone was hungry nearly all the time. There were blackouts twenty-one days out of the month and water pressure plummeted. Yellow sorghum, a rice substitute, got stuck in everyone’s decaying teeth. Toothpaste became scarce and laundry detergent was used as shampoo. Head lice multiplied, leading to shorter haircuts, even among women. Fresh milk disappeared and condensed milk became a luxury item. Anything could be stolen by anyone at any moment. There was nothing to read and nothing to watch on television. Everyone conspired to escape by boat, but only a few succeeded. Among the boat people were former supporters of the National Liberation Front, now contrite and yearning for America.
One needed connections and careful planning to escape by boat. But above all, one needed money. To buy a place on a boat, one hadto pay about a thousand bucks, not a small sum in a bankrupt country. Some people tried a dozen times without success. Many made it to international water only to die of thirst, starvation or by drowning. The ones who headed toward Thailand—the land of smiles in tourist brochures—were often robbed and raped by Thai pirates. Neighbors who don’t speak the same language rarely make good friends. After arriving in a refugee camp, the boat people had to wait for years to go to a third country. Many were eventually sent back to Vietnam. The ones who persisted, those who had to get out at any cost, were often the best of South Vietnamese society: doctors, lawyers, engineers and intellectuals. Most Chinese merchants were also hounded into leaving. Though less radical than its
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