died of the blood in their lungs, of the rot in their intestines, of septic shock and suicide and starvation. Hng did what he could to keep himself and his neighbours alive, turning over rubble in search of snails, digging for earthworms, boiling and reboiling rank water and making a weak green broth from the lichen he scraped off rocks.
Though Hng no longer spoke to Lan, he would not let her go hungry. If she did not appear among those survivors who gathered for one of his neighbourhood suppers, he would simply wrap a portion of his share in a banana leaf and leave it on her doorstep in the middle of the night. He did this throughout the years of the war.
In April of 1975, black vans drove throughout the city, announcing the withdrawal of American troops. The Liberation of Saigon was imminent and victory would belong to the People’s Army. The puppets of the South would be crushed.
“Rise up, comrades,” Party spokesmen shouted through the windows of the vans, “for the homeland will soon be unified in the name of the revolutionary father. There will be new life in the new dawn. New light.”
They had been waiting more than twenty years for this moment.
The skin of a fruit, discarded; a skinless fruit
, Ðạo had once written of his divided country. Hng has not since had the heart to abandon an orange peel, or even the useless dull-red rind of a lychee. Because of Ðạo’s words, Hng’s life has been governed as much by metaphor as economics.
How Hng wished Ðạo could have been there to see it. A future united. Whole fruit.
Of course, the deception of whole fruit is the rot that can be concealed beneath its skin. The victory of 1975 was tainted, as victory always is, by opportunists. Smugglers of uncertain origin came to the squatter settlement on the edge of the pond. A team of sharply dressed men and women walked past the shacks, luring people into the light with shouts of “Who wants a future for their children? Who wants relief from suffering?” The Americans are crazy for Vietnamese children, they said, they are scooping up all the orphans in Saigon and giving them medicines and making them strong. Sell yours to us and we will take them south and get them onto the planes and they will grow up rich.
Hng was struck numb as he watched one young woman after another pass a swaddled newborn into the arms of an uncertain future. Where the young woman could not do it herself, her mother or mother- in-law stepped in. Whatever their feelings about the war, they must not have hated the thought of their children growing up rich in America. Perhaps they simply felt they had no choice. They were starving and the smugglers were waving money before their eyes. In less than a week, all the baby girls were gone.
The shantytown throbbed with the ache of loss, and those who had not sold babies because they had none to sell seethed with anger and refused to speak to those who had, calling them traitors of the worst possible kind—worse than the Catholics and the selfish cowards who had fled south.
A good nine months of silence passed before the tension began to ease. New baby girls were born, and many of these new arrivals were named after their sisters who were growing up rich in America.
Hng has only once seen an American, at least someone he was sure was an American, and even that was from a distance. This manwas lying on the shore of Trúc Bạch Lake draped in parachute silk. He’d been dragged to shore by men just like Hng, poor men fishing farther along the shore, fishing despite the danger, because when bombs fell, fish rose—dead, not always intact, but in good numbers nevertheless.
Now, having met Miss Maggie, Hng is able to picture who one of those babies of the shantytown might have become. A strong, educated young woman with a good job who speaks with confidence and does not lower her eyes when she meets a stranger. He thinks of all those babies, women now, their
áo dài
s flapping in American winds,
Though Hng no longer spoke to Lan, he would not let her go hungry. If she did not appear among those survivors who gathered for one of his neighbourhood suppers, he would simply wrap a portion of his share in a banana leaf and leave it on her doorstep in the middle of the night. He did this throughout the years of the war.
In April of 1975, black vans drove throughout the city, announcing the withdrawal of American troops. The Liberation of Saigon was imminent and victory would belong to the People’s Army. The puppets of the South would be crushed.
“Rise up, comrades,” Party spokesmen shouted through the windows of the vans, “for the homeland will soon be unified in the name of the revolutionary father. There will be new life in the new dawn. New light.”
They had been waiting more than twenty years for this moment.
The skin of a fruit, discarded; a skinless fruit
, Ðạo had once written of his divided country. Hng has not since had the heart to abandon an orange peel, or even the useless dull-red rind of a lychee. Because of Ðạo’s words, Hng’s life has been governed as much by metaphor as economics.
How Hng wished Ðạo could have been there to see it. A future united. Whole fruit.
Of course, the deception of whole fruit is the rot that can be concealed beneath its skin. The victory of 1975 was tainted, as victory always is, by opportunists. Smugglers of uncertain origin came to the squatter settlement on the edge of the pond. A team of sharply dressed men and women walked past the shacks, luring people into the light with shouts of “Who wants a future for their children? Who wants relief from suffering?” The Americans are crazy for Vietnamese children, they said, they are scooping up all the orphans in Saigon and giving them medicines and making them strong. Sell yours to us and we will take them south and get them onto the planes and they will grow up rich.
Hng was struck numb as he watched one young woman after another pass a swaddled newborn into the arms of an uncertain future. Where the young woman could not do it herself, her mother or mother- in-law stepped in. Whatever their feelings about the war, they must not have hated the thought of their children growing up rich in America. Perhaps they simply felt they had no choice. They were starving and the smugglers were waving money before their eyes. In less than a week, all the baby girls were gone.
The shantytown throbbed with the ache of loss, and those who had not sold babies because they had none to sell seethed with anger and refused to speak to those who had, calling them traitors of the worst possible kind—worse than the Catholics and the selfish cowards who had fled south.
A good nine months of silence passed before the tension began to ease. New baby girls were born, and many of these new arrivals were named after their sisters who were growing up rich in America.
Hng has only once seen an American, at least someone he was sure was an American, and even that was from a distance. This manwas lying on the shore of Trúc Bạch Lake draped in parachute silk. He’d been dragged to shore by men just like Hng, poor men fishing farther along the shore, fishing despite the danger, because when bombs fell, fish rose—dead, not always intact, but in good numbers nevertheless.
Now, having met Miss Maggie, Hng is able to picture who one of those babies of the shantytown might have become. A strong, educated young woman with a good job who speaks with confidence and does not lower her eyes when she meets a stranger. He thinks of all those babies, women now, their
áo dài
s flapping in American winds,
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