XUAN WAS WAITING at Clouds Motel when Maia returned from the sunrise. He leaned against the yellow chrysanthemum planter, his weight on his right side, and his left foot turned slightly in. He was clasping a small brass container close to his body. He shifted when he saw her and limped slowly forward, dragging his left foot. Closer, she saw a muscle quiver at the corner of his left eye.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked. He held out the brass container, an ancient imperial dragon. “Your father’s ashes,” he said. “It was placed at Ox Pagoda the morning we made our offerings before Vung Tau. I’ve retrieved it—a different urn, but your father’s ashes.”
She did not reach for it.
He continued to hold the dragon in mid-air, fingers gripping its raised camel-like head and curling ribbon tail. “If you wish, we can arrange another sea burial.”
She walked past him toward her room.
“Come back to Ho Chi Minh City,” Xuan said.
She glanced at the xích lô boy standing by the motel’s entrance. He would wait to take her to the Liên Tỉnh Express Bus Station for five thousand đồng.
“The Central Highlands are closed to foreigners,” Xuan said quietly, keeping a distance between them.
Out of nowhere, fat Pâté and Cross-eyed Lai reappeared, more robust than she remembered, but there was no sign of Comrade Ty. They flanked her and gripped her arms.
“Get your things. You must come with us.”
She tried to wiggle from them, ripping her shirt. They released their grips.
At the doorway, No-No meowed and lashed his tail.
Pâté and Lai paced around the chrysanthemums, the round buttons on their public security uniforms glaring under the sun.
Maia reached down and scratched the cat’s damp, sticky hair. Pâté and Lai stopped their pacing. She unlocked the door to an empty room and saw a note on her bed. She recognized the page torn from JP’s travel journal. Pâté and Lai were at the door. She slipped the note into her pants pocket.
When the men escorted her from Clouds Motel, the xích lô boy remained in his passenger seat, eyes hooded. A few feet behind, No-No trotted with tail curled upward, sniffing here and there along the path.
The public security station was a redbrick square near the open market. A hushed conversation about her affiliation ensued when they took her in. Xuan ordered the chief công an to lock her up. He limped from the room with the dragon clutched to his chest. Pâté and Lai followed.
“She with the group caught at the border?”
“They’re all dead.”
“Not all of them.”
“Well, this one entered through Tan Son Nhat. Why was she let go?”
“On Tết, a Vietnamese male carrying a U.S. passport was stopped at the airport.”
“An IVC member, wasn’t he? Whatever happened to him?”
“Shot by a firing squad of seven.”
“No, it was lethal injection. Didn’t even feel it.”
“With the three-drug protocol? Isn’t there a shortage with the trade ban?”
“They used domestic poisons.”
“Are those reliable?”
“Do you know what’s uncostly and unfailing? The guillotine.”
“The country would be filled with bloody ghosts demanding their heads. With lethal injection, the dead are pain-free and unmarked. The heart just stops.”
The men confiscated her bag and took her to a six-by-ten-foot cell, secured with a rusty padlock and chain. The inside was dark except for holes and slits of sunlight that fell through the cracks. A heavy musty smell of wet earth hung in the air. She groped for the only object against the far wall. The narrow plank bench creaked when she sat down. She saw outlines of passersby and their feet through the gaps in the door and space underneath—shiny black shoes of public security, ladies’ heels, baby sandals, flip-flops, and muddy bare feet. People stopped to peer in before continuing to the morning market.
She was troubled by the men’s exchange in the office and by Xuan and the urn. She almost believed him that it held her father’s ashes. She played on his respect for the dead and knew he would act his part. She sensed that he would not hurt her, but fat Pâté and Cross-eyed Lai were a different story. Was it possible that they were all in on it?
She waited. She told herself not to panic. JP and Na would come.
She remembered the note hours later when the sunlight faded into late afternoon and the surroundings were quiet. She retrieved the torn page from her pants pocket, unfolded it, and tried to make out JP’s scribble in the dark.
Maia—Where are you? Na & I waited but we had to leave early for the dock to take a ferry to the Swift Isle. Tonight, we’ll be at Love City Café. We were there last night while you were sleeping. Guess who we ran into? Xuan and the Public Security Trio, except they’re no longer a trio—Comrade Ty is no more. Pâté and Lai sang backup for Na, and the café’s owner wanted them back for a group audition. He liked the harmony of their distinctive voices. I suggested they call themselves “Na and the Hi-Los.” The café was swarmed with American vets, Taiwanese businessmen, and local government officials. Everyone wanted to feel Na’s big hair and touch her smooth lineless palms. If we don’t catch up earlier, see you at Love City? By the way, did you know that the Camel-less Troupe is also in town? Apparently, we all caught the same Reunification Express.—JP
Na and JP wouldn’t miss her tonight. Maybe Xuan would come. How did he know she was going to the Central Highlands? If he’d suspected, wouldn’t he have stopped her earlier? He’d asked her to return to Ho Chi Minh City.
Perhaps at a different time and place, they’d head south on a daytime train, or ride it northbound on the brim of the South China Sea, as JP said Theroux did in The Great Railway Bazaar. They wouldn’t stop at the capital but cross the Red River into China at Lang Son. They’d ride to Beijing, to Manchuria, where at Harbin, they’d go east into the former U.S.S.R. They’d catch the Trans-Siberian Express at Ussurijsk, north to Chabarovsk, then westbound for France. In France, Xuan would perfect his French and meet a Parisian girl of Vietnamese descent. He’d use his middle name, Vinh, for honor and glory, or he might just keep Xuan—spring in Paris.
Around dinnertime, a young girl came with a bowl of rice and leafy green rau muống stir-fried in fermented bean curd. She did not step into the cell but placed the bowl and a pair of chopsticks on the ground. As she chained and padlocked the door, No-No slid in. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose at the stir-fried greens and then came up to Maia. He arched his back and rubbed against her legs a few seconds. He strutted toward the door and squeezed through underneath. That night he came back and curled up next to her, smelling both familiar and strange. He left before daybreak, leaving sandy paw prints on the bench.
On the second day, the girl brought her bag and a needle and yellow thread for the tear in Maia’s shirt. Everything was still inside: wallet, Swiss Army knife, toiletry, first-aid kit, pen, and a pouch of dried leaves, berries, and barks.
“You’ll be transferred tomorrow,” the girl whispered and left quickly.
JP and Na did not come, nor did Xuan. That evening No-No did not slip in with the girl delivering dinner. Maia let the rice and silverfish sit untouched on the bench. It had been a day and a half and her stomach was churning, filling her mouth with a sour, bitter taste. She needed to clear her mind. She had not slept for thirty-six hours. Sleep. She needed sleep.
She reached for the pouch of dried herbs from the Isle Pagoda. Xuan and the Public Security Trio didn’t know it was mixed in their tea, but she didn’t get away, and they’d caught up with her. A pinch for a restful night, the old woman had instructed. More than a pinch and you’ll rest forever. Comrade Ty got his dose, Maia thought to herself. He no longer carries the burden. Fatty and Cross-eyed got a good night’s sleep, but Xuan was limping and twitchy.
She nibbled on a dry leaf that had a bitter aftertaste. She crumbled a pinch of leaves and berries like furikake over the rice and took a bite of the fried fishtail before swallowing a mouthful of rice. The salt and oil in the fish cut the bitterness. After the third bite, she began to feel better. Her stomach calmed, and the flavor of crispy fried silverfish filled her mouth. The dried leaves and berries tasted tangy and bittersweet like an unripe fruit.
She listened to the evening sounds of the nearby open market—no longer the morning buzz of early shoppers, the lull of afternoon nap, or the closing-up cacophony of bamboo brooms sweeping wet garbage into sewers, a stench that passed into the cell with the breeze. Nightfall came with the laughter of teenage boys, the roar of a motorcycle down an alley, the murmuring of lovers, the marching rhythm of a revolutionary song, sometimes a lullaby. As the human commotion came and went, leaving the rustle of leaves and chirping of crickets, she thought of her mother, of her letter from prison, of words she did not understand.
I am free, perhaps one of the happiest times of my life.
I do not worry. My fate is in another’s hands.
Something did not feel right. She was weakened with nausea and spat out the half-eaten food that left her mouth salty and bitter. She was reminded of a quote she had copied in neat cursive in her high school journal—clear handwriting, round and resolute.
destiny is not a matter of chance
it is a matter of choice
it is not a thing to be waited for
it is a thing to be achieved14
She could not sleep the night away. She could not wait for something to happen. Words from Old Seeker came to her: Compose life, guess its riddles, and redeem its coincidences. If she were to not fear the same life recurring but at its end shout, “from the beginning!” she must act.
Her eyes had become adjusted to the dull silvery light from the quarter moon that entered through the holes and cracks of the cell. Like the night, No-No slithered beneath the door and came to her. The cat sidled up for a belly rub, and her fingers began on his head, chin, and chest. Tonight, he smelled of Hawaiian Tropic and the briny sea, but there was something else, and then she remembered the evening air in the River of Nine Dragons when the travelers had a brew of sweet spices over the bonfire.
No-No purred, turning on his back, four paws in the air. She scratched his belly and he chortled. His navel seemed more swollen and warm. “Umbilical hernia,” JP had said—his final diagnosis. “A protrusion of the stomach’s stuff through the abdominal wall opening that would normally close, but it looks like the little fella has a delayed closure of the abdominal ring. Not a serious surgical operation. An American vet could repair it. Cut him open, push the bulge in, and sew him up. He’d go home the same day.”
“The cat’s going to America?” Na had asked JP.
“To the U.S. of A.,” he had replied.
Umbilical hernia. Surgical operation. In the U.S. of A. And a plan came to Maia: Cut him open. Push the bulge in. Sew him up. Cutting things did not faze her. She had dissected an earthworm in ninth grade, a frog in tenth, a guinea pig in eleventh, and a tomcat in her senior year. She wanted to be a coroner or an astronaut, an idea that came about after a space shuttle’s explosion, a burst of flames across the sky. She was obsessed with death—her own and others’.
Her mind was already composing a letter to slip into No-No’s belly.
She set her tools on the bench: hydrogen peroxide wipe, razor, Swiss Army knife, needle and thread, and bandage. She crumbled more leaves and berries onto the rice and placed the bowl under the cat’s nose, clicking her tongue. “Come, boy,” she cooed. “Come, boy—you’ll sleep like a kitten.” She forced a few crumbs through his clenched teeth. He hissed, bit her, and leapt from the bench. He settled in a far corner, licking himself and staring back.
The idea of being transferred in the morning began to sink in. She had heard stories of torture and recalled the warnings at a war crimes exhibition in Ho Chi Minh City.
Punish and Smash All Crimes and Criminals
to Protect Vietnam’s Independence,
Social Order, Safety, and Territorial Integrity.
She sat up, knocked the rice bowl onto the dirt, and staggered to the door, screaming into the silent night. “No! No! No!”
Dogs barked, someone cursed, but no one came.
She slumped on the ground.
Scurrying. Wrestling. Loud squeaks.
The cat leapt from the corner and pounced on something in the tipped rice bowl—a rat, a baby, its belly full of fish and rice. After a brief struggle, the rat went limp under No-No’s paws; the victor gnawed at his captive.
The back of JP’s note was blank. Torn from his journal, the five-by-eight-inch sheet could be folded in quarters, rolled tight like a joint, and wrapped in plastic. It’d be waterproof and almost indiscernible under the belly skin.
The silver moon through circles and slits provided enough light for her to make out the boundary of the paper’s whiteness against the darkness. Soundless and stone-still, the cell began to feel tomblike. She steadied the pen between her quivering fingers and pressed its tip onto the blank page. She saw each word and space in her mind’s eye—words imprinted from the briefings with the Coalition before her departure.
She had memorized the list of indictments: Communist Vietnam does not have peace and freedom but repression and fear. People’s lives have not improved but worsened. They are living in poverty while Party members enjoy privileges they grant themselves for the years they sacrificed fighting. Vietnam is now run by men whose only experience is from fighting, not governing a country. Party members prosper; the masses live in destitution.
Each indictment could be authenticated by a personal tragedy. But the words left her with mixed emotions. There was something evolving at the edge, beyond her mission—a connectedness with others in the here and now. She grasped to pinpoint those feelings that made her less alone, that grounded her in relationships in a community.
She began her letter to JP Boyden.
The ballpoint rested on the space where she left off. Sitting upright on the bench, she slept and dreamed of the operation.
No-No, anesthetized and unconscious, sleeps with eyes halfopen.
His belly’s taut, the navel lump enormous. He seems to stare at her, but he’s out, his back on the bench and four paws in the air. The double-bladed Gillette slides smoothly over wet tummy hair. She wipes the shaved rectangle with hydrogen peroxide. An inch above his navel, she punctures the skin lightly with the Swiss Army knife. Dark fluid oozes. He yowls loudly several times. She puts a finger over the cut to stop the flow. The liquid seeps under her finger and drenches the orange hair, dribbling over the bench onto the ground.
His eyes bother her. When her fingers move to close them, his eyelids shoot back up, and she drops the Swiss Army knife. Avoiding his stare, she retrieves the knife and makes a lengthwise two-inch incision over the navel. Warm liquid gushes over the bench and onto the ground, pooling around her ankles. She peels the skin back, separating it slightly from the stomach muscles. She’s relieved. Just like chicken, she says to herself, but with chicken, there’s not the pulsating liquid, not so much liquid beating with life.
Something moves beneath the abdominal wall. Umbilical hernia. A protrusion of the stomach’s stuff, but JP didn’t say it’d move as if it were alive. She makes a deeper incision where she’s made the first and something bursts, oozing more dark fluid, and a feathered tail pokes out. She tugs at the tail. A sparrow slowly emerges, peeping softly. Soaking wet but invigorated by the release, the bird chirps louder, and from No-No’s tummy, a flock of birds rises, beating their wings, slowly lifting from the throbbing slime that oozes from the belly over the bench and onto the floor, dark liquid surging to her knees, up to her chin.
She stands on the bench. The birds circle above. The cat floats to the surface, four legs spread eagle, and out of its stomach a woman backstrokes, the handles of a red basket looped around her shoulder. She treads in place in the pulsating ocean.
“Don’t play with knives.”
“It’s an assignment, an operation.”
“Your hair, do something.” The woman gathers her own tresses that flow outward and knots them into a loose bun, all the while her legs pedaling as if on a bicycle. “I should visit a beauty salon myself,” she says. “But today, off to the market for catfish soup.” She floats on her back, then turns and dives through the opening beneath the door. Her hair unravels like seaweed.
“Liên Tỉnh Express Bus Station for ten đồng,” a voice whispered. Padlock and chain rattled.
“Five,” she replied. “Five đồng.”
“Five đồng from Clouds Motel. It’s farther from here. Ten đồng for two.”
“Two?” She sat up and reached for No-No, but he was not there.
Scraping, a click, metal chain rattling, the door creaked open. Pale morning light passed into the cell. The xích lô boy stood at the door. “I borrowed the key from my sister.”
Maia squinted past the boy at his xích lô. In the passenger seat sat a tall figure in dark peasant pants, a large woven basket in his lap. A straw cone hat hid his face.
“JP!” She rushed outside.
The neighborhood dogs, agitated by the sudden commotion, let out several yelps before falling back to sleep in the yards nearby. A rooster crowed in the distance as the ashen sky turned rosy on the eastern horizon. When the boy retrieved her bag and was about to lock the door, she stopped him and ran back inside to look for No-No.
“Hurry, Maia!” JP called. “He’ll find his way.”
“JP,” she said, “you can’t come with me.”
The seaside town became visible under the gray morning light. The noises of early traffic and metal gates being rolled up filled the silence. The boy had already climbed onto his backseat, his hand resting on the thin rod that with a slight pull would release the brake.
“You’ll stick out and draw attention.”
“I’m heading for the Central Highlands,” JP replied, “and you’re returning to your birthplace, aren’t you?” He grabbed her hand, and with a strong pull, she was next to him. “Besides, you’ll be safer with me.”