The Eaves of Heaven Read online

  It was, in fact, the powerhouse of South Vietnam. Cho Lon Chinese controlled the vast majority of trading houses, which also handled the shipping and warehousing of every conceivable commodity for domestic consumption and export.

  The buses delivered us to a three-story hotel on a wide commercial street. Typical of the low-end Chinese establishments, it was a sad, dark, dingy place, manned by a humorless middle-age Chinese who couldn’t summon a greeting or a smile. The lobby was an eight-by-eight-foot space with a wooden bench and a board painted with the hotel rules in Chinese and Viet. It was devoid of decoration—not a single painting, poster, or potted plant. The windowless rooms were small and hot, with clumps of cobwebs in the corners. The ceiling fans did nothing but draw out the reek of mildew and cigarettes from the peeling walls. Stuffy air from the hallway oozed into the rooms through wooden screens above the doors. There was a communal bathroom on each floor. Surprisingly, there was one redeeming feature in the building: the toilet. It was a squat affair with a cast-iron water tank mounted up near the ceiling. Back in Hanoi, where there was no sewage system, we only had pit toilets filled with calcium oxide powder, the compost collected periodically by municipal workers using ox-drawn carts. A flush toilet, I thought, was surely a sign of civilization.

  But Saigon held little prospect for us to make a new life. The first week, Father roamed about town looking for work only to return well after dark empty-handed. With the Chinese manager patrolling the hall to keep people from cooking in the hotel, Stepmother made do with greasy Chinese fare and low-grade rice from street stalls. We gathered on the floor and ate the lukewarm food Stepmother laid on the straw mat.

  Father didn’t eat much. He sat slump-shouldered, shaking his head, talking in his quiet, defeated voice. “There’s nothing. It’s hopeless. They won’t hire me because I’m not Chinese.”

  Stepmother said, “Can you look elsewhere?”

  “The Chinese control everything; they own everything. Look around you; they even got the government contracts to house us northerners.” Father sighed. He had handled a fair amount of government transactions in Hanoi and knew how profitable it could be.

  But it was easy to forget our dire situation because the ultimate entertainment center in Saigon sat directly across the street from the hotel. It was an ugly, enigmatic compound the size of three city blocks enclosed by a tall, corrugated sheet-metal wall, looking very much like a giant construction site. There was not even a single billboard over the gate to hint at what was within. A policeman guarded the entrance and enforced a single rule: No shirt, no entry. Bare feet, body odor, and rags, however, were acceptable. Men, women, and children of all ages passed through at all hours. The place bustled during the day, but at night, it turned into a raging carnival.

  It was owned by Mr. Vien the Seventh, the biggest mafia boss in South Vietnam, who had his own army based in a forest between Saigon and Vung Tau. The establishment originally started as a casino, but it grew to provide every service, material good, and entertainment imaginable. It grew until it became true to its name—The Great World. Beneath the great span of its interlacing roofs were jewelers, gold dealers, pawnshops, clothing stores, exotic-medicine purveyors, herbalists, massage parlors, theater stages, private rooms for hourly rental, opium lounges, teahouses with hostesses, nice restaurants, little noodle stands, food stalls, candy shops, bakeries, and an amusement park with, among other rides, two merry-go-round carousels and our favorite, the bumper-car arena. It even had its own climate, controlled by fans and vents.

  Allowance in hands, we followed other refugees into the Great World. We lost ourselves in the crowd of gamblers, drinkers, opium users, whores, pimps, crooks, businessmen, and entertainers. While my brothers and I stayed close to the amusement park area, wasting most of our money on bumper cars, my cousin Tan ran off alone to the gambling tables.

  Even Father could not resist the draw of the Great World. Within a week, he abandoned his job search and surrendered himself to the familiar comfort of the pipe. Day after day, he woke up, got dressed as though he were going to an interview, and strolled across the street directly to the opium lounge inside the Great World.

  It had begun—his last, irrecoverable descent. At night, phantom ants crawled up his legs and kept him awake. We children took turns kneeling at his bedside to massage his limbs, kneading the atrophied flesh to ease his ruined nerves. Rigorous at first, then more softly in tiny, gradual increments. Slowly, gently. Slowly, gently. The addict’s lullaby. It was like putting a child to sleep.

  THE NORTH

  1942

  2. FATHER

  When I was seven, Father heard from the nanny that, unlike my cousins, I couldn’t swim. This was an acute sin for a child of the Red River Delta; after all, the entire province was practically submerged, the countryside riddled with rivers and creeks. The land was flat and low. People dug ponds for the earth needed to build the foundations of their homes. Our ancestral estate stood on dirt from four gigantic ponds, the largest of which was the size of a small lake.

  Father took me out to the carp pond one afternoon. It was a hot day. My brothers and cousins followed uninvited. They were in a parade mood, giggling and skipping along behind me. A bundle of towels in hands, Chau, the buffalo boy whose main duty was taking care of the livestock, brought up the rear. We marched down the brick-paved path, hugging the shade of the longan trees, overhead birds rioting in the branches.

  Father and I had just come back from one of our trips to Hanoi. My parents had a villa in the city where they often holidayed during the slow period between the planting and the harvest seasons. Father had brought me into Hanoi to enroll me in a prestigious French school. His plan to educate me in an urban setting was canceled when we, by chance, saw a Japanese sergeant draw his sword and chop off a boy’s hand for stealing rice cakes at the local market. In Father’s eyes, it was a clear sign of the cruelty to come, and he promptly took me back to Tong Xuyen. I was re-enrolled in our village’s one-room school and was taught by my father’s second cousin, Uncle Uc. I was ecstatic because I knew Father never stayed long in the countryside.

  A city man, Father was never comfortable at the estate, though he did try his best to fit the part of a country nobleman. Here at the family home, he preferred the traditional gown, the dignified attire of the educated. In the humid weather, it also was far more comfortable than the Western suits that filled his wardrobe in the city. Father struck a handsome figure in either traditional or Western dress. Our relatives said he got his oval face, height, and fair skin from his mother, just as his older brother Thuan took after their father with his square jaw, stockiness, and darker complexion.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” cried Hong. He was four years old, Father’s favorite. “I want to go on the boat.”

  “After your big brother learns how to swim.” Father smiled and picked him up. He carried Hong the rest of the way.

  “I want the big one!” Hong shouted, pointing at a rowboat the workers used to harvest water lilies. The carp pond was nearly a hundred yards wide.

  Father walked me out onto the little pier. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Go on, son. Jump in and swim.”

  “Yes, Father,” I said. “But I don’t know how to swim.”

  He frowned at my lack of faith and turned to my cousins and said, “Nephew Tan, do you know how to swim?”

  Tan quipped, “Of course, Uncle. I can swim all the way across the pond and back.”

  My cousin Tan was a natural athlete. He was precocious and bore a striking resemblance to his father. He was a month older than me, both of us born on the estate, delivered by the same doctor. Tan was Uncle Thuan’s first son from his first wife, so he was heir apparent to the bulk of our ancestral fortune. He grew up with certain privileges and expectations. This made him very sure of himself, even though he had lost his mother when he was two years old. Since her death, Tan was closer to my mother than he was to his two stepmothers.

  Father said, “Nephew L
ang, can you swim?”

  My cousin Lang just nodded and said, “Yes, Uncle.”

  Lang was a very good swimmer. It was the only thing he could do better than his half-brother Tan, but Lang wasn’t the type to boast. In fact, it probably never occurred to him that he was better than Tan in anything. Lang was a quiet and lonesome boy, his mother’s only child. Although he was technically Uncle Thuan’s first son, he was relegated to a secondary status because his mother was Uncle’s Thuan’s second wife. Lang was older than Tan and me by a year, but he was always content to follow our lead. People said he was not normal because the doctor had to pull him out of his mother’s womb with forceps, the marks still visible on his skull.

  Father patted my brother Hung’s head. “Even your little brother Hung can swim. Don’t be afraid. Just get into the water. It’ll come naturally.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  I took off my shirt and inched toward the edge, shaking because I had never jumped into deep water. Minnows darted under the shadow of the pier. The water looked cold and dark, the deep bottom thick with moss. All my cousins and younger brothers were watching me. I took a deep breath, pinched my nose, and jumped. The chilly pond swallowed me and then popped me back up.

  “Stop splashing!” Father yelled. “Kick your legs back and forth. Paddle your hands like a dog.”

  I kicked and clawed, fighting furiously. It was no good. I kept going under. A flurry of churning limbs raised my head above the surface. Gasps of air and then under again. Tan and Lang hopped in and began treading water next to me.

  “Don’t touch him,” Father said.

  Lang shouted, “Kick your legs and paddle like this! Like this!”

  I tried, but the water pushed me down. The harder I thrashed, the faster I sank. Water was drawn up my nose. I screamed and went under.

  Chau, the buffalo boy, got into the water and pushed me up back onto the pier. I lay on the hot planks, coughing water out of my lungs, too scared to look at Father. He didn’t say a word, his disappointment radiating in waves. My cousins were paddling about the ponds like ducks.

  “Try again,” Father said.

  “Yes, Father.” I jumped in.

  I floundered, too exhausted to fight. Chau fished me out again. Ears ringing, I heaved water out of my stomach. The pond, the sky, Father had all gone woozy around me.

  I understood Father must have expected a lot from me because I was his first son and someday I would inherit his fortune and carry on his line. Somehow, somewhere from my very beginning, I must have disappointed him. Since I could remember, I was always terrified of him. I was left-handed, and it annoyed him immensely. And I was naturally absentminded and clumsy. I often wore my shoes on the wrong feet. Mother regularly caught me going to school with my shirt on inside out. Food spontaneously spilled from my bowl. Things magically got knocked over whenever I came near. Every minor failure ignited Father’s temper like a stick on a hornet’s nest. I became so nervous in front of him, I moved like a wooden puppet, incapable of walking, talking, or eating like a normal boy.

  “Try harder.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  I went in once more. The water had turned as ominous and dark as pitch. Against my limbs, it was as light as air. I flapped my arms, but fell into the depths. My lungs burned. Looking up from below, the sunlight was gentle, the sky luminous, forgiving. I felt Chau’s hand on my arm. We were rising. Then I was flopped onto the pier, gasping, vomiting. I blinked the water from my eyes.

  Father was already walking away. He couldn’t bear to look in my direction.

  THE SOUTH

  1956

  3. PHAN THIET

  My days in Phan Thiet had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. I lived alone in a second-floor flat as bare and simple as a fresh canvas. Nothing on the walls, no curtains on the windows; only a table, a small dresser, an oil lamp, two chairs, and a narrow divan with a straw mat for a bed. The plank floor was worn smooth, the plastered walls veined with cracks. My apartment was a studio of light: one window opened to the north, the front balcony faced west to the town center three blocks away, and the back balcony looked out to the sea and the sunrise. Two alleys of single-level houses lay between the rear balcony and the beach. From my vantage, most houses were hidden by fruit trees and coconut palms. It was like looking at the sea over a huge garden.

  I taught mathematics and physics at three morning classes, four days a week. The subjects were easy, the students docile. I always left school before lunch, and I didn’t socialize with the faculty because they were all much older and married. They knew I would be leaving at the end of the summer. On the home front, my landlady and her two children, who lived below me on the first floor, were very nice but kept their distance, waiting to see if I had any bizarre habits. Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t had so much free time since childhood. I found that I spoke very little outside of class since there was no one to talk to. I also discovered that I didn’t need to talk. The quietness descended on me as a novelty.

  With room and board included with the position, I didn’t require much money and sent most of my salary home, keeping just enough pocket cash for small pleasures: fried seafood noodles at a kiosk near the park, an icy pickled lemonade on the beach, excellent dim sum by the movie theater in the town center. There was not much else to spend money on, nothing to buy, and that was the most pleasant thing about my new home. Phan Thiet was quaint, lush with coconut palms and fruit trees, drowsy with the drone of the sea. It had a lack-adaisical loveliness that I had never seen before. The whole town was steeped in idyllic lethargy; it could not be bothered to take interest in anything, certainly not in a young teacher wandering aimlessly.

  Phan Thiet was a walking town. There were few bicycles. I saw no privately owned cars or motorcycles. There was no pedal-cyclo, only rickshaws. Most everyone walked, and so I developed a habit of strolling for hours from one end of town to the other, moseying down alley after alley, and combing the beach for shells that I never kept. Although I left my camera in Saigon, I couldn’t help but search for good shots and imagine how I might have caught them on film. Down near the quay, sun-charred men packed fish into great wooden barrels to make fish sauce, the salt on their arms like snow. Above, a deep blue sky that would have translated into a three-quarter gray on black-and-white prints. By the salt flats, the air stung the nostrils. It was a little difficult to breathe. Small-boned women raked sea salt into gleaming white hills. They wore peasant palm hats with fabric chin-straps pulled up over their noses, looking like bandits, eyes glittering in the blinding glare. I always find myself drawn to the water. I was enamored with the beach, its great scimitar sweep of sand sown with slender fishing boats, their warlike bowsprits to the trees.

  I felt every part a stranger in this exotic land, and so took great pleasure in observing the locals. Phan Thiet people were poor, but they knew how to relax. Being fisher-folk, they also possessed the distracted ease of those who kept one eye on the ocean. They worked mostly during the cool morning, napped in the afternoon, and nibbled like birds all day long.

  Their favorite snack was a rice dumpling called banh cang—a local specialty. Late in the afternoon, a few houses in each neighborhood set up tiny tea-tables at their front doors. For about an hour or so, at around 4:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon, they steam-baked round dumplings in clay molds over tabletop coal burners. The clam-shaped dumplings were slightly crusty on the outside and creamily gooey on the inside, garnished with a sprinkle of sautéed scallions. They were served with one of two sauces: a fiery garlic-lime-chili fish sauce or a dark gravy made from a pungent and mildly sweet sardine stew.

  My neighbors, who had a mom-and-pop sundries store, weren’t from Phan Thiet. They were real southerners from the Mekong Delta, even more genial than the local coastal people. Every evening after supper, they invited friends and neighbors to gather on a few wooden benches in front of their home to drink beer and nibble dried squid or fish with bits of pickled vegetables. The women didn�
��t drink, but enjoyed the gathering all the same. It was always a casual affair, often with a guitar present. They took turns singing southern Vietnamese folks songs called vong co. The lyrics were composed in six lines that were both sang and read. In the middle, there was one word the singer emphasized by modulating the tone and dragging the syllable out as long as possible. The longer he held the note, the louder the applause. I had seen girls titter and swoon over singers with bottomless lungs.

  I often wanted to go down and join them, but I was shy by nature. These were the only times when I felt lonely. It wasn’t because I was alone, but rather because I missed Tan. Since we were kids, I had relied on him to befriend strangers. It was much easier for me to just follow his lead into any gathering. Sometimes it was still a shock to me that he left home so soon. I had always expected we would go to college together.

  TAN first showed his unhappiness with our family situation two years ago, right after the government relocated us from the hotel in Chinatown to the refugee camp on the outskirts of Saigon. There was no casino to relieve his boredom. In fact, there were no restaurants, cafés, shops, or any other sort of comfort whatsoever at the refugee site. It was a bizarre settlement of canvas tents on a vast dirt field, set back a quarter of a mile from the interprovincial road between Cu Chi and Saigon. The surrounding scrubland was the most desolate country I had ever seen. It didn’t appear to support anything more than a few sparrows and finches. The parched air was unusually bright. An errant cigarette would surely be enough for the arid landscape to burst into flames