“Yes,” Kim said. “Sometimes we would go to the movies or to a restaurant for dinner. Or we would just walk along the boulevards. But that was before my father died.” She looked away. I saw that there were as many sorrows in the city as there were in the country.
The motion of the boat changed. Instead of the gentle roll that had lulled me to sleep the night before, now the boat pitched and tossed as though it were climbing a hill only to fall down the other side. Anh began to whimper. “My stomach feels funny,” she told our mother. She was not the only one.
An old man who sat on the other side of my mother had bowed to us and introduced himself as Pham Van Quang. “This is my son, Pham Van Tho, and Dao, the wife of my son,” he said. Dao sat quietly with all their possessions heaped around her as though she were eager to hide a fact that could not be hidden. She was soon going to have a baby.
Quang was looking anxiously at his daughter-in-law Dao, whose face was pale and whose arms were wrapped tightly about her body. From time to time she made little moaning noises. The old man apologized to us. “It is the rolling of the boat now that we are out at sea.” He added softly, “And her condition.”
Late in the afternoon we watched Le Hung start a fire in the oil drum that he used as a stove. A big pot of rice was put on to boil. Cheers went up. Most of the passengers had not eaten in more than a day.
But when Hung threw large handfuls of green kale into a pan and the strong smell of the kale spread over the deck, the passengers began stumbling over one another on their way to lean over the sides of the boat. The sound of their retching sickened others and soon half the passengers were crowded at the railing.
Captain Muoi shouted, “Hung, they haven’t even tasted your dinner and already they are ill. You will save us a lot of food.” His loud laughter only made the sick passengers feel worse.
Dao made two trips to the boat’s railing. Anh had gone once with our mother. I found that if I sat very still and thought hard about something besides food I could keep myself from being sick. Kim’s mother was handing out pills. She offered one to my mother and to Anh. “This will take away the sickness,” she explained. Our grandmother snatched the pill from Mother and held it in her hand, studying it. I knew she was embarrassed not to have her own remedy to offer. But our village was far from the sea and there had been no need for the grandmother to cure such an illness.
After turning the small pill about in her hand, regarding it all the while with great suspicion, she gave it to my mother. “You may take it,” she said, “but it is doubtful that there is any power in it. I would put together some of my own medicines, but this seasickness is a small thing and not worth my time.”
“You are a healer?” Kim’s mother asked.
“She’s the best one in our village,” I answered proudly.
“Then we are in the same profession,” Bac si Hong told my grandmother. My grandmother looked to see if the bac si was poking fun at her, but Kim’s mother was only trying to be friendly. My grandmother bowed.
All day long the sun beat down on us. The men took off their shirts and rolled up their trousers. The women wore as little as was decent. Any breeze that blew was like the fiery breath of a dragon. People were too hot to move. We wore our straw hats, but the sun glanced off the water and came at us from all sides. The water ration was small, and we were always thirsty. Old Pham Van Quang gave much of his water ration to his daughter-in-law Dao. The grandmother coaxed Le Hung to give her a bit of extra water for the duck with the promise that on Tet he would have a share of the meat.
The few clothes we wore were stained with sweat and stuck to our bodies. The sea spray dried on our skin, leaving a sticky white crust. Worst of all was the crowding. You could not stick out your legs or arms without bumping into someone else. If you tried to move to another part of the boat it was nearly impossible not to step on someone. When you stood up, your legs were so cramped and weak from not being used, they hardly supported you.
At first people spoke only to members of their families or to those who were huddled next to them. But the seasickness brought us closer. You could not stumble back and forth to the railing of the boat without making many apologies. There were words of sympathy between mothers whose children were ill, and there was good-natured joking among the men, who taunted one another for being seasick.
Everyone had tales of misery to exchange: sons and husbands sent off and never seen again, houses and lands taken by the government. For the first time these things could be spoken aloud. For the first time there was no one to fear. Even if the voyage was dangerous and uncomfortable, even if we were crowded together in a tiny rotting boat in the middle of the sea with little water and food and a crazy captain, at least we could speak our thoughts aloud.
Although it tempted the spirits to take our safety for granted, we could not help talking of the good things that would be ahead for us. Mother showed the postcard that our uncle Tien had sent from Hong Kong, and everyone exclaimed at the beauty and size of the city. It was known that even if we all survived the voyage, refugees were not always welcome in Hong Kong, but we told ourselves if we traveled so far and sacrificed so much they must take us in. From Hong Kong it was thought possible to move to other countries. Some of the passengers boasted of relatives in Australia and Europe and even America, where Uncle Tien had hoped to go. Scraps of paper with the names and addresses of relatives in these strangesounding places were proudly displayed.
“Would you want to go to America?” I asked Kim. It seemed so far.
“Yes, only we don’t know anyone there. But we speak English. That may help.”
I thought of a country where everyone went about in the handsome blue jeans that Kim wore. “Would you teach me English?” I asked.
I learned from Kim the English words you use for greeting people and words for getting food. The strange words sounded flat and unmusical.
My grandmother did not like my learning English words. She complained to my mother that such knowledge was foolishness and dangerous besides, but my mother was too worried about Anh to listen to the grandmother’s grumblings.
Anh, who always had so much to say, had grown silent and tearful. She hung on to me and to my mother as well. Bac si Hong examined Anh, much to my grandmother’s disgust. “Physically, I can find nothing wrong with her,” Kim’s mother said. “Perhaps too much has happened these last few days and she doesn’t know what to make of it all.”
It was not until early evening and the hot sun was burning low on the horizon like a great fire and Kim played her flute that Anh seemed herself again. I think it was the flute. Its sound was like the ringing of silver bells or cool water poured out of a clear glass. No one on the boat spoke while Kim played. After the music ended, people lay down quietly, ready for sleep
Lying there squeezed into as small a shape as possible, I thought about Kim’s music. I had never heard such sounds. They were a puzzle. How could something speak to you so well without words? Then I thought, There are many things that do that: the fragrance of rice when you knew the harvest was near, the taste of ripe mangoes from the tree in our yard. For some things words were not needed.
The next day there were many sick passengers. An old couple from the city, unused to the heat, developed bad cases of sunstroke. There was dysentery, and the tiny space at the back of the boat, curtained off for a toilet, was always in use. Kim’s mother had ordered the drinking water boiled, but no one paid attention to her order. It was too much trouble, Le Hung said, and there was not enough fuel for the stove. Bac si Hong told us to drink nothing but tea.
Some of the sick people came to Kim’s mother, who gave them medicine. Some asked my grandmother to help them. Kim watched open-mouthed as the grandmother made small cuts on the back of one sick man and put little rubber cups on the cuts to take some of the blood. I had often seen my grandmother treat sick people in that way and thought nothing of it.
Every hour or two Captain Muoi popped out of the cabin.
“You are lucky people,” he would tell us. “Yesterday we made excellent time. It is only a matter of a few days before we reach Hong Kong. You are fortunate to be in the capable hands of Captain Muoi.”
I knew from our father, who joined us for our morning and evening meals, that things were not going as well as Captain Muoi said. The engine had broken down twice. Without power we drifted for hours. Afterward there had been arguments as to our course. Some said the captain’s compass was not working and we were going in the wrong direction.
My father carried Thant off with him to keep him company while he worked on the engine. “It is not too soon to learn a trade for our new country,” he told Thant. When Thant returned he had grease on his face and hands and Captain Muoi’s hat on his head, and he boasted of how the captain let him steer the boat.
“Ha,” said Quang, “a six-year-old can do a better job than that fool captain.”
To pass the time I begged Kim to tell me about the movies. Kim said she had seen lots of movies with American cowboys on horses. You did not even have to go to the movies to see such things, she said. “We had a television set right in our own house, and you could turn it on and see things that were happening all over the world.”
That seemed a magic beyond believing to me. “Where is the television set now?” I asked. I was sorry she had not brought it with her.
“That was five years ago,” she said, “before my father was taken away. He taught at a university, but he would not teach what the government wanted him to, and he was sent to work in the fields. He wasn’t used to such work and he became very sick. They sent him home, but my mother’s medicines couldn’t help him and he died.” When Kim finished her story she took up her flute and played such sad music that even Captain Muoi, who had come out to make one of his cheerful speeches, stood half bent over in the cabin door staring at Kim. When the music ended he went back into the cabin without saying a word.
7
At the start of our voyage the grandmother had cast a horoscope for Dao’s baby, naming two auspicious days for its birth. When the first lucky day went by and the baby didn’t come, Quang shook his head in disappointment, but on the second auspicious day Dao started making sharp little grunting noises and Quang became hopeful. By late afternoon Dao’s little grunts became louder. Sweat poured down her face. She held on to her husband Tho’s hand, and Tho gave her little sips of water. My mother had borrowed clothing to make a curtained area around Dao. Everyone was excited at the thought of a baby being born on our boat. Everyone except Captain Muoi. The captain told Tho, “If I had known the baby was expected so soon, you would never have been allowed on board my ship.”
It was suppertime before the baby decided to be born. I had been home with my mother when she had Anh and Thant. I had even helped my grandmother. I knew that Dao’s cries sounded scary, but that most of the noise was just to help bring the baby into the world, like groaning and grunting when you carry a heavy pail of water up a hill. But Kim, who had never seen a baby being born, was frightened.
It seemed strange to me that Kim, whose mother was a doctor, knew so little about babies. “But she delivered babies in the hospital, not at home,” Kim said. I thought that was a funny way to put it. If there was any “delivering,” it was the mother who did it, not the doctor.
Kim’s mother had offered her help to Dao, and Dao had looked hopefully at Tho for his permission to accept the bac si’s offer, but old Quang with great dignity had refused. Instead he invited our grandmother to attend Dao. The grandmother’s harsh commands to Dao to “push” could be heard all over the boat. Tho was not allowed into the little enclosure with Dao and the grandmother. He sat miserably by himself, biting his lip and trying not to hear the jokes the men around him called out about the making of the baby.
Suddenly there was another cry, but it was not Dao. It was the strong squall of a baby, and the grandmother shouted, “A boy!” All over the boat people cheered. I remembered when Thant was born how pleased my father was to have a boy after having two girls. Even though I understood how important it was to have a son to carry on the family name and to venerate our ancestors, I was jealous of the attention Thant got. I had noticed that Kim’s mother never seemed disappointed that Kim was not a boy.
I stole a look at Kim’s mother to see if she was jealous because it was my grandmother and not her who helped Dao, but the bac si was grinning. “There is still hope,” she said to my mother in a voice so soft I could barely hear the words.
The baby might have arrived on an auspicious day, but the day that followed brought bad luck. Early in the morning the boat sprung a leak and began to take on water. It was necessary to move some of the people in the hold to the deck, making things even more crowded than they had been before. We had to sit with our knees pressed against our chests and our arms clasped around our knees. A chain of men was organized to bail the boat out. Pails of water were passed up from the hold and dumped over the sides of the boat.
The “hold” people were happy to be on the deck, even in the hot sun. There were rats below, they said. At night the rats came out and scrambled over you as you slept. Sometimes you could see their eyes glowing in the darkness like two points of fire. Lice had spread among the people in the hold and would now undoubtedly spread all over the boat.
But worse was to come. Around noon the engine stopped and the boat began to drift silently on the sea. The other times the motor had stopped my father had been able to get it started in a short while. There would be a few coughs and sputters and it would be working again. Captain Muoi would come out and reassure everyone that his boat was the best little boat in the world.
The engine failed at the hottest time of day. People sat as still as statues under any bits of shade they could find. The least movement brought you in contact with someone’s hot sweaty body, and sometimes there were cross words. The new baby fretted and cried in the heat. Anh, who could not take her eyes off the baby, begged to be allowed to fan him gently with her straw hat. It was easier to put up with the heat and crowding when you knew the boat was going someplace. But the silence of the engine and the drift of the boat made you feel hopeless.
The sun slipped halfway down to the horizon before word was passed through the boat that a part in the engine had worn out and a new one was being made by my father from scraps of metal. No one knew whether the new part would work. As the news spread, there was a buzz of voices, but soon after that, silence, as though everyone were concentrating on my father being successful.
Kim and I were restless. I didn’t think I could sit still for another minute. My mother spoke sharply to me. “When you squirm like that, Mai, you make it unpleasant for everyone around you.”
“Let me get up for a little while,” I pleaded. “Kim and I want to look out at the sea.”
Each day we were allowed to pick our way over the tight rows of passengers to make our way to the boat railing. Once we had seen a school of porpoises rolling along one after the other in the wake of the boat. Another time we had been amazed to see sailfish leaping into the air and flying about. The strange flying fish made me think the whole world was upside down. More often there was nothing but the endless stretch of water.
“Go ahead, but try not to disturb too many people.” I knew my mother’s voice was impatient because she was afraid for my father. The lives of everyone in the boat depended on him.
No one in the boat was in a good mood, and there were many complaints as Kim and I made our way over the tangle of arms and legs to the boat railing. Each day, each hour, the color of the water changed. This afternoon it was a deep green. “Almost like grass,” Kim said. I guessed she was thinking of how nice it would be to see land.
Suddenly Kim grabbed my arm and pointed. “Look!”
I looked in the direction Kim was pointing and saw a bit of timber floating on the water with something perched on top of it. Whatever it was moved. An animal? Something blowing in the late afternoon breeze? Then we heard a f
aint cry and saw the distant figure move as though an arm were waving to us.
“Someone is out there!” I shouted. The passengers scrambled to their feet and ran to the railing to see for themselves. The cabin door opened and we heard a roar. “What’s going on? You fools! Get back where you belong. The whole boat is listing. We’ll capsize!” It was Captain Muoi. He was right. I could feel the boat tilting as everyone hung over the side to get a better view.
They made way for the captain. “Quickly,” someone called. “We’re drifting away. We have to turn the boat around and pick him up.”
“How can we turn the boat when there is no engine?” the captain shouted. He was pushing people back to their places. In the excitement Kim and I were overlooked. We hunched down out of sight and looked out over the railing at the distant figure floating in the sea.
“He will drown,” I whispered to Kim. I couldn’t take my eyes off the small shape bobbing in the water. Each time my eyes blinked the shape seemed to get smaller. Then the drift of the boat changed, and for a while we moved close enough to the wreckage so that we could hear the man’s cries. Then the boat changed course again, and the wreckage with the clinging figure became a speck on the sea. Kim and I were holding each other’s hands. I think it was because we couldn’t reach out to the man that we held on to each other.
A small rasping noise came from the cabin and grew louder. The boat began vibrating, and in a minute it was plowing through the sea toward the distant speck. Captain Muoi grumbled good-naturedly about the extra fuel and the lost time the rescue would cost, but even he was excited. We were all quiet, thankful that it had not been our boat that had been wrecked. It might have been us out there alone on the sea.
“What could have caused the wreck?” Kim asked. “There haven’t been any storms.”