Hilton Head Island: SHADOWS Part Three

    Below you will find Part Three of SHADOWS, which I know you have been eagerly awaiting.  Next Monday will see the ending and the suspense will be over.

    This past week I worked hard.

    The publisher of GANNET 6 sent me the edited version of the book.  Although he had expressed a desire to shorten it substantially because he has found that readers don't like books more than three hundred pages long--too bad Tolstoy--I am pleased that he cut very little.  Only a few thousand words.  It remains much longer than any of my other books.  However I found lots of errors and changes I find unacceptable.  One of the more amusing is that someone put a semicolon in a sentence:  'I don't like to sail boats I have not prepared myself.'    They put the semicolon after 'boats' so it now reads 'I don't like to sail boats;"   which is a rather odd thing for a man to say who has spent many years of his life doing that.

    Serendipitously Carol was in Chicago last week visiting friends because I worked twelve to fifteen hour days.  Actually days and nights, for I often wake up during the night and read for an hour.  Last week when I woke, I worked.

    I emailed the publisher my comments about needed corrections each morning Tuesday through Friday.  A total of about 10,000 words.  I have not yet received his response.

    

  

        Always there was war.  

   Five generations earlier Ancestor Ling had fled the land where the family had lived since the beginning of time because of a war between princes who wanted to become kings.  Ancestor Ling had sailed along the coast until he finally settled near the mouth of a tiny stream.  There was a bar across the entrance to the stream and the anchorage inside was not well protected.   When their fishing boats grounded in the breaking surf on the bar or a storm swept over the village, Ancestor Ling’s descendants often criticized his choice;  but Ancestor Ling had deliberately sought a backwater, a place so marginal that other men would not want to live there.  He knew that men would die in the surf.  He knew that storms would drive waves into the huts, no matter how high the stilts upon which they were built.  But Ancestor Ling, usually known as Great Ancestor Ling, had seen war and he knew that it is better to fight typhoons than men.

   In the almost two centuries since Great Ancestor Ling, a village had grown near the mouth of the stream.  It never consisted of more than two dozen huts, and often there were fewer, depending on the number of male children who survived to adulthood in a given generation and the intensity of storms.  Sons brought wives back from nearby villages; daughters left to live with husbands in nearby villages; and no one ever traveled more than a few miles inland from the spot where he or she was born, though the men sailed much farther than that out to sea, and twice a year one of the larger boats was sailed to a town a day up the coast to trade dried fish and live turtles for luxuries such as tea and wheat, which could not be grown near the village.

   These expeditions were great events, eagerly anticipated and afterwards long remembered and discussed.  Every member of the family got to the town once every year or so.  The trips were arranged after the most significant natural event of the year:  the change of the monsoon wind from northeast to southwest.  The southwest wind caused waves to break more heavily on the bar, but once clear of the river mouth, a boat could reach easily along the coast to the town and back, instead of having to beat against the wind, which was all right for the men and the children, but hard on the old women.

   The town was a strange place, both fascinating and frightening.  Everyone looked forward to the visits; everyone was glad when the visits were over and the village returned to normal.

   It was in the town, when some boys made fun of him for being a fisherman’s son, that Nhu first learned that he was poor and that everyone did not respect his father.  The boys said that a fisherman is as low as a butcher, for both take life.  Several days passed before Nhu was able to ask his father about this, and when he did, his father only replied that someone had to catch fish; his father had caught fish, and his father before him; the family had always been fishermen; it was obviously their destiny to be fishermen or why else would the gods have them be born in a fishing village?  He was really too busy trying to catch fish so the family would not starve to worry about the religious implications of fishing.

   Nhu accepted his father’s answer as he had to, but something in his mind remained troubled, and frequently he wandered down to the village temple, where he sat beneath what seemed to him a huge bell and tried to make sense of what he had been taught.

   There were no religious books or books or any kind in the village. No one in the family had ever been able to read.  And the bell was not huge.  It had been brought by Great Ancestor Ling, and according to village legend some warriors had once come and tried to take the bell away, but the gods caused their raft to capsize and the soldiers drowned and Nhu’s ancestors dove and retrieved the bell and returned it to the temple, though Nhu did not see how they could possibly have raised and moved such a massive  object.

   Religion came to Nhu from his father and his mother, and particularly from the old women, and from the occasional wandering holy man who came to the village and lived in the temple for a while.  It was a religion that shared with other religions an acceptance of Divine Will; and, despite all contrary evidence, belief in Divine benevolence and justice; and faith that goodness and proper behavior will ultimately be rewarded in another life, for even to true believers they are obviously not rewarded in this one.

   Life is but a bubble on the ocean’s surface, Nhu was told.  Life is not real, but a shadow.  We ourselves are not real, but merely shadows that pass as men.  The world is full of spirits.  Some are good; some evil; some are the spirits of ancestors.  There are Five Great Precepts.  It is forbidden to take life; to steal; to commit adultery; to lie; to drink intoxicants.  Everything is born and reborn.  Everything is directed toward reaching a lifeless, timeless state of bliss, in which the spirit knows no joy and no sorrow, but remains perpetually contemplating abstract truth, free finally from the cycle of recurring existences.

   Fishermen everywhere, subject to wind and wave, have a strong sense of fate and a stoic acceptance of its whims, so these beliefs, which are, as is the case in much of the East, a local adaption of several teachings, was suitable.

   Everything is fated.  Everything, however seemingly unjust, such as when Nhu’s baby sister had half her face bitten off by a monkey, is explained as punishment for evil performed during a previous existence.  Resignation and acceptance are the great virtues.  One can only accept whatever happens as being deserved and try to abide by the Five Great Precepts so that one will suffer less in succeeding lives.

   That was what troubled Nhu about fishing, once the town boys pointed it out to him.  The more he thought, the more they seemed to be right.  How could he hope, how could anyone in the village hope, to be reborn into a better life, when, no matter how purely they lived in other ways, they daily killed fish?  Yet it also seemed that his father must be right.  Surely it was their fate to be fishermen.  Born in that village there was nothing else they could be. The rice paddies were too small.  They would fish or starve.  Did the gods mean for them to starve?  Yet if the adults starved, no children would be born, and they were born, so the gods must not mean for them to starve.  This was too much for Nhu, and he left the shade of the bell and wandered into the jungle.

   Nhu was not supposed to go far, the accepted limit being the scattered stones from a pagoda that had been in ruins when Great Ancestor Ling first reached that shore.  Shadows moved through the jungle, as shadows moved through his mind.  Patches of sunlight and shade chased one another.  At times he did feel that he was only a shadow himself. Snakes and monkeys frequented the ruins.  Birds fluttered through tree tops high above.  Jasmine and sandalwood and decay filled the air.  From the direction of the village tiny bells tinkled in the wind, and from the rice paddies, bells clanged at the necks of water buffaloes.

 

   Several months passed before the gods sent an answer to Nhu’s doubts in the form of a holy man who tottered into the village and established himself in the pagoda hut, where he drowsed and meditated.

   Nhu made a raft by folding the edges of a palm frond, which he filled with flowers and a few grains of rice.  He carried the frond to the edge of the sea and waited until the outgoing tide floated the leaf away and he felt confident that the gods had accepted his offering before he went to talk to the holy man.

   The holy man was asleep.  He was dreaming of mountains.  He had been born near mountains and remembered as a child gazing at the snow and cloud covered peaks.  He had always wanted to go up into the mountains, but he never had.  Instead it was his destiny to wander south and spend his life in low, hot, humid lands.  He did not know why this was so.  Often he meditated on why he had been destined to walk a thousand miles south, instead of a few miles north.  The sweltering heat, the rank smells, the diseased people.  The holy man knew that he should not care; but the fact was that he had never liked the south.  And throughout his life, increasingly he longed for the coolness of the mountains.  Increasingly he found himself transfixed by imaging what it must be like to sit quietly among the clouds.  Yet he had never gone.  He had never felt he had the right to go.  Now that he knew that he was dying, or rather that he would soon be dead, for of course all of them, every living thing was dying from the moment of birth, it was proper for him to go north.  He knew that he should not care one way or the other, that if it was his fate to reach the mountains, he would; and if it wasn’t his fate to reach the mountains, he wouldn’t.  But he did care.  He could not prevent himself from hoping that a snake would not bite him or a tiger take him or his body fail too soon.  He also hoped that his longing was not so great a sin that it would cause him to be reborn into a lower form of existence.  In all humility the holy man calculated that he must be pretty far along the path of escaping from life.  He had not done much harm in this one and he had not felt much desire and he had spent most of this life in lands and among people he did not like.  Somehow he felt that the higher he could climb into the mountains before he died, the better, for it would mean that his spirit would have that much less distance to travel to escape this world.  Yet he knew this to be mere superstition.  Though it would be pleasant in the mountains.  So cool, so clear, so uncomplicated.

   Something disturbed him, and his weary spirit left the mountains and returned reluctantly to his body, and he awoke to find a small boy sitting nearby.

   Awkwardly the holy man sat upright and readjusted his ragged robe.  There was a familiar evil taste in his mouth.   He tried to speak, but no words came.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  He found his body ever more disgusting.  He had carried this miserable carcass around for all these years and now he just knew that it was going to fall apart too soon.  It was not fair.  Then he realized how stupid he was being and smiled.  All these years and sometimes it seemed to him that he had learned nothing.

   He bent from the waist and took a sip of water from a bowl that was sitting on the ground next to him.  The water cleared the worst of the taste from his mouth.  He tried again and found that now he could speak.

   “Good morning, Nhu.”

   “Good morning, teacher.  Are you well?”

   “As well as I am meant to be.”

   “Can I get anything for you?  Some more water?  Some fruit?”

   “Perhaps later.  You look very serious, Nhu.  Is something troubling you?”

   “You do not eat fish.”

   “You know that I do not.”

   “That is what is troubling me.”

   “That I do not eat fish?  But you know that I do not eat meat or fish or fowl.”  It was too early and he was too ill.  He was not up to this.

   “Not that you do not eat fish, but that my father and I when I help him and all of us here, kill fish, which is surely very bad.  Many of these fish must be our ancestors or other people’s ancestors.  The boy in the town told me that fishermen are the lowest of men.”

   Privately the holy man tended to agree with him, but the child was so serious and the holy man recalled how, many years earlier, the teacher who had been his master had answered the same question.  The wheel had turned and now the question had come to him.

   “When you become a man, Nhu, how will you live?”

   “I will be a fisherman.”

   “Do you ever consider living,” the holy man asked shyly, “as I do?”

   “I do not think I could, teacher.”  Nhu was surprised and flattered even that it should be suggested.

   “You seem in many ways to be suited for such a life; but if not, then there are many ways of looking at most things, including this fishing business.  Seen one way, fishermen are low because they kill fish, but seen another way they are noble because they sacrifice themselves by drawing this demerit in order to feed others.”

   “But if they are our ancestors?”

   “Then perhaps the fisherman is saving them from drowning.”

   “Saving fish from drowning?”

   “Not fish, but the spirits that inhabit them.  My own teacher, who was a very wise man, once said that.”

   It was so absurd that Nhu could not help but smile.  The more he thought about it, the more it pleased him. And for many years as caught fish flopped about the bottom of his father’s boat, gasping, he tried to see the spirits being released from scaly prisons.

 

   Nat , the word for spirit, meant ‘lord,’ for the spirit is the lord of the  body, and it also meant ‘overlord.’

   The battles between those foolish enough to want to be temporal overlords were fought in the plains beyond the jungle, and about once a generation an official would come to the village.  He would be accompanied by soldiers, hot, sweaty, dirty, thirsty, scratched, frightened by the jungle, and ill-tempered.  The official would proclaim that he was the representative of some new and most glorious king.  He and the soldiers would poke around, take a few of the villagers’ poor possessions to prove their power, and soon leave; and the village would not be bothered until a new glorious leader won a distant battle and sent his soldiers to loot what they could.  Not infrequently, the soldiers discarded in the jungle what they took, and the villagers were able to reclaim their mats and pots and turtle shells.

   However when Nhu’s grandfather was a boy, an inconceivable apparition appeared.  Rumors of strange new conquerors had reached the village, but were too grotesque to be believed.  One conqueror had always been indistinguishable from another.  So the villagers were completely unprepared for the red faced, sunburned, puffing, mustachioed, topee topped, khaki clad creature who emerged from the jungle one day.  He was accompanied by soldiers who looked as odd as he did, and who carried strange objects.  These creatures spoke gibberish among themselves.  Fortunately they had an interpreter who spoke properly and told the villagers that these were the new overlords, who would put an end to the constant cycle of wars and bring a modern era of prosperity to the people of the land.

   Not only in appearance were these new conquerors different.  They also stayed overnight in the village, something quite without precedent.  They used the strange objects they carried to kill animals noisily from a distance.  And they returned at intervals, often accompanied by priests, who taught a fierce religion, which, though it extolled the familiar virtues of acceptance and resignation, of not killing, or stealing, or lying, or committing adultery, was lenient about drinking, and described a shockingly cruel god, who tortured almost everyone, including his own son.  To villagers for whom the family was all important, such a god was inconceivable.

   The weapons of the new conquerors were so powerful that many people in the land concluded that their fierce god must be equally powerful, and converted to the new religion.  But no one in the village ever converted.  In fact, despite their weapons and their frequent visits and their priests, the new conquerors did not really change much in the century their rule lasted.

   Nhu’s grandfather grew old and died; Nhu’s father became middle aged; and Nhu himself was a boy, before these supposedly invincible foreigners were overthrown by men who were far more cruel and, despite appearances, far more foreign than the grey-pink men who called themselves white.

   These yellow men treated everyone with utter contempt.  

   When they forced Nhu’s father and the other fishermen to deliver almost all the fish they caught to the town along the coast, it seemed that at last war was reaching the village. But the natural repetitive cycle, the regular turning of the wheel of life, was reaffirmed one day when some of the new soldiers tried to carry the bell away to melt down into weapons.  Nhu, along with everyone else in the village, was greatly reassured when, just as in the legendary past, their raft capsized in surf and the soldiers drowned.  For a moment the village had teetered on an abyss.  But when Nhu’s father and the other men dove and raised the bell and carried it back to the hut that served as a pagoda, the familiar cycle was restored.  Or so it seemed.

 

   Generations of water buffalo pulling wooden plows.  Generations of trees.  Generations of fish.  Generations of wild orchids, of parrots, of monkeys, of snakes.  Generations of betel nut chewing old women with stained teeth.  Generations of acid green sprouts of young rice.  Generations of sunrises and sunsets.  Generations of storms.  Generations of festivals and dances.  Generations of ritually washing away on the first full moon of each new year the dirt of the past.  Generations of young girls walking with loads balanced on their heads.  Generations of men fishing.  Generations of shadows.

   What was surprising really was not that there was always war; but that Great Ancestor Ling had chosen so well that war did not find the village for so long.

 

2

   The helicopter swooped down to investigate Nhu.

   A year earlier Nhu had never seen a helicopter or any other airplane, except for a few passing so far overhead during the war when he was a child that they were mere specks which would, but for their sound, have been mistaken for birds.  But now he knew helicopters.  As it approached, he let go the line so the sail fluttered freely.  His first helicopter had capsized an outraged Nhu. 

   As the helicopter hovered, buffeting him with a fierce downdraft, Nhu held onto his conical straw hat with one hand and the tiller and line with the other.  Nhu stared up.  He could see the big man, inscrutable behind his helmet and goggles, staring down at him.  Nhu did not smile or wave.  He simply sat, waiting until the pilot had seen enough.  The gujong was an open boat.  There was no place to hide anything.  Nhu wanted to look as though he had nothing to hide.  Until two nights ago, he hadn’t.

   Its pilot satisfied, the helicopter sped off to join others heading for the shore.   Nhu pulled in on the line so that the patched sail filled.  As the outrigger resumed sailing, Nhu watched the helicopters sweep over the jungle a few miles inland.  He had been afraid that this time they were going to the village, that somehow they knew the men were there.  Sounds of the helicopters firing drifted out over the smooth blue sea.  If Duong is feeling better, thought Nhu, I will send him and Deng to bring in the bodies of whatever animals the helicopters have killed.  It had been a long night fishing and a poor catch.  He hoped the men would leave soon.  Feeding the extra mouths was a burden.

 

   By the time Nhu sailed to the beach, the helicopters had stopped firing and flown back to ships steaming along the horizon.  Nhu was disappointed to see that Duong was not waiting with the rest of his family.

   Ky, another fisherman, came in just after Nhu.  For several minutes his family and Nhu’s were busy pulling first one boat, then the other, up to the tree line, lowering masts, dismantling outriggers, unshipping rudders, removing fish.

   Nhu sensed that something was wrong, but he exchanged a few words with Ky about the poor fishing as they walked through the village.  Perhaps the fish were being disturbed by all the ships and aircraft.  They speculated on whether fish could hear airplanes.  Nhu thought how naturally he and Ky were talking about the airplanes, how in less than a year they had come to accept them as everyday occurrences.  There was something frightening in that.  But before he could consider it further, they were at Ky’s hut.  One of the men was staying there; another in Nhu’s hut; and the third at Madee’s.  With his head he gestured toward the hut.  “We will need more food.”

   “No,” said Siti, Ky’s wife.  “They left.”

   “Good.  Then perhaps there is no need to go out tonight to bring in whatever the helicopters killed.”

   Siti and Mai started to speak at the same time.  Then both stopped and fell silent.  Siti seemed uncomfortable.

   “What is it?”  asked Nhu.

   Mai said goodbye to Ky and Siti and turned toward their hut.  Nhu followed. They did not speak again until she lowered the basket of fish from her head.  Her voice was almost a whisper.   Nhu was tired.  He wanted to lie down, perhaps eat some rice and cold fish, and sleep.  He sounded harsher than he intended.  “Well?”  He glanced around.  “Where is Duong?”  Mai’s face crumpled, “He has gone.”

   “Where?”  But he knew.

   “With the men.”

   Nhu stared at her.

   “They convinced him that it is his duty to fight to free his country.”

   “Country?”  Nhu spit the word.  “We have no country.  We have the family and the village.  That is all we have ever had.  All we ever will have.  All we need.  By ‘country’ I suppose they mean the plains and the mountains beyond them.  Those men were from beyond even the mountains.  At least we can sometimes see the mountains.  But none of them mean anything to us.  They are as much strangers as the foreigners who fly the helicopters and those who live in the cities.”  Nhu had never been to the mountains or a city, but he had met people who had.  “Besides he is just a boy.”

   “Perhaps that is why he went.  Most of them are boys.”

   A horrifying thought came to Nhu.

   “Which way did they go?”

   Mai pointed toward where the helicopters had been firing.

   Nhu went into the hut.

   It would soon be dark, so he took the kerosene lantern used for night fishing, and, though his stomach was flogging like a torn sail, a ball of rice and a jug of water.  He also picked up a piece of heavy sacking.  He would need a way to carry the body, if there was a body.

   When he stepped back outside, Ky and Madee and most of the other men of the village were squatting a respectful distance away.  They all stood and followed him into the jungle.

   The sun set before they reached the killing ground.  Nhu did not like the jungle at night.  He never ventured very far into it even during the daytime.  He had always preferred the openness of the sea.  So as the darkness thickened, Madee, who knew the jungle best, took the lead.  Nhu walked numbly, trying to keep an image of his older son’s torn body from his mind.  Leaves, branches, weeds, sprang out of the darkness.  Sometimes he could not see the man ahead of him; sometimes he was bumped by the man behind.

   They had no difficulty in knowing when they reached the right place. Abruptly they entered a clearing where everything but the largest trees was flattened.  Only Madee’s lantern had been lit, but now all the fishermen lit their lanterns and fanned out.  By the pattern of flickering lights, Nhu saw how enormous the area of destruction was.  It would have been better to wait until dawn, but what if Duong was lying not dead but wounded?  If they did not find anything, he would search again in daylight.

   As Nhu walked through the battered vegetation, he wondered how the helicopter pilots had known the men were there.  Perhaps they hadn’t.  Perhaps they were simply making a routine patrol.  ‘Routine patrol.’  Those too were words he had not known a year ago.  Since then there had been many such patrols.  Helicopters had landed on the beach; foreign soldiers had come down the trail.  The village had been searched.  At other times the helicopters had fired inexplicably into the jungle.  Nhu had seen the corpses of wild pigs, tigers, snakes, birds, monkeys.  The villagers ate the slaughtered animals, when there was enough left to eat.

   In Nhu’s mind all those torn bodies became Duong.  While he was sailing home, observing the helicopters disinterestedly, thinking it had nothing to do with him, shells and bullets were seeking Duong.  For a moment he was angry and thought of how he would tell Duong that he should be ashamed for frightening them so.  Then he remembered and continued searching silently.  Babies and young children were so vulnerable.  There were so many diseases, so many creatures in the jungle and the sea that could harm them.  Even some of the jellyfish could kill a small child.  That he should die, or Mai, or the very young, was accepted; but he had thought Duong would be safe for a while.

   Some time passed before they found the body.  A shout went up from the far side of the devastation.  All the flickering lanterns converged.  Nhu walked slowly toward them, repeating to himself, “Life is but a bubble on the ocean’s surface.”

   The men stepped aside for Nhu, except for Ky, who had made the discovery.  Ky held his lantern over the object proprietarily.

   Nhu thought that he should probably be sickened, but it was difficult to know what he was looking at.  Was this his son?  The bloody mass did not look human.  Nhu was about to tell Ky that he had only found the remains of a large animal; but as he turned, he saw on the perimeter of the circle of yellow light, a severed human leg.  He was struck dumb by the leg, which had been chopped off cleanly and was otherwise undamaged.  The leg was so young and frail.  Nhu turned back and stared at the rest of the body.  Duong?  he asked it silently.  What was he looking at?  Was that the chest?  Where was the head?  How could he know if it was his son?

   The same thought occurred to the other men, who resumed searching nearby.  Nhu remained frozen.  Twenty yards away, a man grunted, stooped, lifted something from the ground, and brought it back.  Nhu’s legs began to tremble and he squatted down before he fell.  The man gingerly placed the head beside the other remains.  One side of the skull was smashed, exposing bone and brain, but enough of the face remained so that they could recognize the features of one of the boys from beyond the mountains.  Nhu told himself that he should not feel such relief, that if it had been meant to be Duong, it would have been; but he was very glad it was not.

   Some of the men continued to search further, but Nhu had had enough.  He remained by the body, and gradually, as the men tired, they came and squatted near him.         

 

   The gentle light of dawn hesitated, as though shocked, when it reached the killing ground.  Nhu had not seen many dawns in the jungle.  The trees on the edge of the devastation pressed in on him.  He missed the vast dawns of the sea.

   He pushed himself up.  His legs were stiff, but he was accustomed to squatting for long periods.  Some of the men had fallen asleep.  They were awakened by his movements, and in the daylight they all resumed searching the clearing and the nearby jungle to make certain that no one was lying there.  The only bloody trail leading into the jungle ended at the corpse of a wild boar.  At least they would not have to fish that day.

   While most of the men prepared to carry the boar back to the village, Nhu built a pyre for the dead boy.  The body could not be left for the boy’s confused spirit to linger over.

   The work went quickly.  The blackened earth had already been cleared by the bombardment.  Plenty of broken wood lay at hand.

   When the pyre was high enough, Nhu and Ky moved the remains to it.  Both of them had often been near the dead; but both hesitated to touch this bizarrely mutilated boy.  The leg and head went well enough, but the chest fell apart.  They scraped up gobbets of flesh and organs with sticks as best they could.

   Nhu opened his lantern and doused the pyre with kerosene.  Ky was ready to light a match, when Nhu remembered that he had not eaten his rice.  He placed it beside the body so that its spirit would have sustenance on its journey.

   As the flames ate wood and flesh, Nhu remembered a cremation he had seen years earlier when he was only a small boy.  It was his earliest memory.  A great golden tower carried through a village.  Food and tools and weapons placed beside a body in a white paper cow.  Flames leaping high into the air; sparks showering onto a festive crowd; smoke; monstrous images.  This pitiful pyre and ball of rice were not much, but he hoped that someone would do as much for Duong when his time came.  Just as this boy’s parents would never know what had happened to their son, Nhu suddenly realized that he would probably never know what happened to Duong.  He prayed it was not the gods’ will that Duong suffer too much.

 

   Before they reached the village, Madee ran ahead with word that the men were carrying a boar, less Mai see them from a distance and misunderstand.

 

3

   During the next few years, a new music filled the air.  Tinkling bells gave way to firing weapons.  Many of the displays were pretty, especially at night.  Exploding bombs and shells, tracer rounds, blossoming flowers of napalm.  Never again did Nhu watch them disinterestedly.  Never again did Nhu or Mai watch them without wondering and worrying about Duong.

   Where once visitors to the village had been rare, now outsiders used it in a complicated a game of hide and seek.  On one side there were men mostly from beyond the mountains, wraiths appearing silently from the jungle; on the other side were the big foreign men, who arrived noisily from the air.  Fortunately for the village, the two groups never quite met there.

   The men from beyond the mountains told the villagers that they should help in the struggle to free their country.  The foreign men, through interpreters, told the villagers they should help defend their freedom.  Nhu thought:  What country? What freedom?  The only freedom he wanted was the freedom to be left alone, and he had had that before this war started.  All he wanted now was that one side win, he did not care which, so that Duong, if he was still alive, would come home.

   None of the men had any word of Duong, though his ‘fellow countrymen’ told Nhu that Duong was a great hero for possessing the social consciousness to enter so early into the struggle.  Madee’s son, who was a friend of Duong’s, also went with a group of men who disappeared into the jungle; while Ky’s son, dazzled by the airplanes and promise of high pay, joined the foreign army.  Nhu was glad that Deng was too young to fight and that his other children were daughters.

 

   Li, Nhu’s older daughter, was a pretty girl of fourteen when the foreign men transformed the river and the village.

   One day a motor boat came in from a large ship steaming offshore and chugged busily about, crisscrossing the bar, then powering slowly up and down stream, before returning to the large ship.

   The next day the motor boat returned, accompanied by a tug towing a barge which was landed with some difficulty through the surf.  The foreign men waved to the villagers, who gathered to watch this unusual sight; and one of them came over and spoke to them in their own language, though with a ridiculous accent.  Still the villagers were impressed.  This was the first foreign soldier who did not use an interpreter. He gave chocolate to the children and cigarettes to the men.  He said that his men were going to make the entrance to the river safer by building breakwaters to prevent waves from reaching the shore and by dredging a channel through the bar.  They would also build a proper wharf so boats could land supplies more easily.  A few huts would have to be relocated, but new and better ones would be built for the villagers.  For that matter they would build new homes for everyone who was willing to move to a new town which was being established a few miles further up the coast.

   Naturally people were excited and upset.  Some told the foreign soldier that they did not want a wharf or a breakwater; some asked him questions.  Within the limitations of his ignorance and accent, the foreigner was courteous at first; but after a while he became impatient with the questions and said that the villagers had brought this on themselves by assisting the men from the other side.  It was common knowledge that the village was used as a refuge for insurgents.  This word did not translate easily into their language, and while the villagers were discussing its precise meaning, the soldier turned on his heel and marched back to his men.

   In a few weeks, in an amazing demonstration of energy and wealth, the foreign men accomplished what the villagers thought impossible.  Two overlapping breakwaters were constructed of huge interlocking chunks of concrete; a dredge spewed a mountain of mud onto the shore; concrete pilings were driven; a prefabricated wharf assembled overnight; sheds, a barracks, and huts for the displaced families erected the next day; lines of fire cleared.

   Nhu ignored the foreigners as much as possible, silently sailing his gujong between the breakwaters and the dredge; but inwardly the power of these men made him fear for Duong and for the village.  For now, he thought, we have become a target.  For the first time Nhu considered the previously inconceivable:  he considered leaving the village.  But he did not know where they could go that would be better, and he did not think that Mai would leave without word from or of Duong.

   Not until the noise of construction ended did the villagers realize that it had obscured what they had come to accept as the normal sounds of war.  There was a kind of relief in the return of distant bombs and artillery and strafing.

   The heavy construction equipment was driven back onto barges, which, along with the barges carrying the pile drivers and the dredge, were towed out the new harbor entrance to some other pacification project.

   Later that day a small garrison took up permanent station in the village.

 

4

   Mai lifted the basket of dirty uniforms to her head.  The foreigners stank, but she could put up with the smell.  She had never before had a job.  She felt a new sense of importance; and the family was becoming wealthy, though what they would do with the money, she had no idea.  It was enough to know that on the next trip to the town, the money would be there.  Of more immediate value were the packages and cans of food she was also given.  There were cans of fruit, beef, vegetables, and some things she had never tasted before, like those noodles with balls of meat in red sauce.  Apparently there was a whole world of people who ate without growing or catching, just by opening cans.

   At her hut Mai lowered the basket to the ground and went off to gather wood.  When she had enough, she started a fire and then began to haul water from the nearby stream.  The bucket was galvanized metal as was the washtub, both given to her by the foreign soldiers so she could do their wash, though she was free to use them anytime she wanted.

   As the tub of clothes began to boil, Mai squatted beside the fire, occasionally adding a stick of wood or stirring the clothes.  While she squatted, she puffed contentedly on her pipe.  She could not admit it to Nhu, who ignored the soldiers when he was at home and who spent more and more time alone fishing, but she rather liked the foreign men.  Although she was not much older than some of them, they all called her “Grandmother.”  They had no concept of proper manners, which was only to be expected, but they made up for their poor upbringing by being friendly and good natured.  Though they were so big, they often looked lost and lonely and small.  Mai really did not understand why they were in the village or where they had come from.  They said they lived far away.  ‘Far’ to her was the sail to the town.  They said they lived farther than that.  She tried to imagine repeating the sail to town for several successive days.  Wherever they lived, from the cans of food and all the equipment, it must be a very rich and different place.

   A noise from behind her interrupted her reverie.  She turned her head and saw Li.

   “Where have you been?”

   “Cleaning the barracks.”

   ‘Barracks.’  So many new words, thought Mai.  “It took you so long?”

   “Yes.”

   Mai looked at her skeptically.  “Then you are very slow.”

   “I...Some of the men talk to me.”

   “How?”  Mai scoffed.  “Only the captain speaks our language.”

   “The others know a few words, and,” Li, who had been subdued, brightened, “They are teaching me theirs.”

   “You can speak their language?”

   “I am learning.”

   “Let me hear you.”

   Li said some words, which meant nothing to Mai, but which sounded right.  Despite herself Mai was impressed.  “That is all well and good, but come here now and watch the wash. I have been waiting for you.  I have other things to do.”

   

   A few days later, while she was sweeping the hut with a bundle of twigs, Mai found the radio beneath Li’s sleeping mat.  Li was at the barracks.  Fortunately Nhu was out fishing.

   As soon as Li came home, Mai confronted her.  “What is this?” she demanded.

   Li had never seen her mother so angry.

   “Well?”

   “It is a radio.”

   “I know it is a radio.  Don’t you think I have seen radios?  Why did you steal it?  Do you not realize that the soldiers will miss something so valuable and come looking for it and what will happen when they find it here?”

   “I did not steal it.  It is mine.”

   “Yours!  They gave it to you, I suppose.”

   “Yes.  They did.”  

   Li replied with such sincerity that Mai stood with her mouth open.

   “They gave you this?”

   “Yes.”

   “But why?”  But before Li could answer, Mai said, “No.  Never mind.”  And hurried from the hut in confusion.

   Mai spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze.  Habit carried her through.  She walked to the beach and helped Nhu unload his catch.  She cooked some vegetables, rice and a fish.  She served the meal, ate, and cleaned up afterwards.  She unrolled the sleeping mats, and after the others were asleep, lay down beside Nhu.

   All the time she was thinking about Li.  The girl was old enough.  There were no religious strictures against sex.  She herself had married at Li’s age.  They should have foreseen this.  No.  She should have foreseen this.  It was a woman’s problem.  Her responsibility, not Nhu’s.  He did not expect her to teach Duong and Deng how to fish.  But she had never expected this, had never even considered the possibility.  The foreign soldiers were too strange.  She tried to imagine what it would be like with one of them.  She wondered if they were big everywhere.  They would be too big, and Li was so small.  Was it even possible?  And they smelled so.  And they were so hairy, like animals.  It was disgusting.

   For the moment Mai forgot Li in a growing awareness of her own body.  They might call her “Grandmother”, but she was only thirty.  All this thinking about sex.  Her blouse was too tight.  She was wet between her legs.  Nhu turned in his sleep and rolled against her.  His breath was warm in her face.  He smelled familiarly of salt, the sea, and fish.  Mai knew he was tired, but she reached for him anyway.

   A few feet away, Li lay on her mat listening.

 

   “Let me see the radio.”

   A week had passed without Mai coming to any conclusion about what she should do.  She foresaw that Li would become pregnant.  Normally another mouth to feed would be a burden, but they had one less with Duong gone, and they had the extra cans of food.  Perhaps the father would see that they received extra rations.  ‘Rations.’  Where do all these new words keep coming from?  The worst thing Mai could imagine was that the father would want to marry Li and take her away to his country.  This was frighteningly beyond her imagination.  It would be worse than death.  Mai had experience with death.   But she would know that Li was still alive somewhere. It would be as though she had been taken by some creature living on the moon.

   Li lifted the corner of her sleeping mat and handed the radio to Mai, who took the black box nervously.  Now that she had it, she did not know what to do with it.  She had heard radios playing when she went to the barracks for the dirty clothes, but she had not seen how the noise was made.  She turned the thing in her hand.  She would never have believed that it was assembled by women very much like herself in a city not far from the place where Great Ancestor Ling had been born.  She thought that it must be a very valuable gift, but could not decide if this was good or bad.  Did it mean that the foreign soldier actually cared for her daughter or did it mean that Li was becoming a whore?

   Of course it had no strings.  It did not look or feel like other musical instruments, but then Mai had not expected it to, for she knew that it even made voices.  Once or twice during visits to the town, she had seen magicians perform.  She had not understood their tricks.  This must be something like that.  With relief she handed the thing back to Li.  “You can play it?” she asked.

   “Oh yes,” said Li.  “It is simple.  You just press the button.”

   Although Mai had expected noise, she jumped as a rock song blared out.  Hurriedly Li lowered the volume.  The music was horrible.  Mai had never actually listened to it before.  It had always just been in the background.  Now she concentrated on the sounds, trying to understand.  It was hopeless.  “You like that?”

   “Yes.”

   “You can stop it?”  Mai suddenly realized that the neighbors could hear.

   Li did something and mercifully the noise stopped.  “It is easy.  You just press here to start it and here to stop.  You can do it.”  And generously she started to hand the radio back to Mai.

   “No.  No.  I have work to do.”  Mai turned, then stopped to ask.  “Which of the soldiers gave this to you?”

   “The corporal.”

   “The corporal?”

   “The tall one with light hair.”

   Naturally, thought Mai, the oddest looking one of the lot.  A child of his would be a freak.  She was so flustered by the image of a blond haired grandchild that she did not hear Li shyly add, “The others give me gifts too.”

   When Mai only walked away, Li gained courage.  After all she had told her mother everything.

   A few days later she was daring enough to use the lipstick.

 

5

   The war was a fire onto which the gods capriciously threw new wood.  Sparks flew everywhere and caught and greater flames leapt up.

   Day and night the sky was full of airplanes.  Although most of the bombs fell on the plain and the mountains beyond the isolating strip of coastal jungle, seldom was there a moment when the village did not tremble with their distant impacts.

   The sea was full of ships.  A shallow draft gunboat was stationed in the village to patrol the river.  Between patrols it tied up to the new wharf.  Other gunboats, which climbed out of the water on legs and went incredibly fast, patrolled the coast.  Seldom did Nhu go fishing any longer without being stopped by one of these bizarre craft, which would come rushing from no where, slow and settle back into the water beside his gujong, and send men over in a rubber boat to search through his catch.  They never found anything.  

   The sailors who came awkwardly aboard his little boat were more abrupt and angry than those who had stopped him earlier in the war.  When they had pushed through whatever fish he had been fortunate enough to save from drowning, and more and more frequently the gods were presenting Nhu with fish that were already floating dead on the surface of the sea, the men would return to their strange craft, which would climb back up on its legs and roar out of sight.  Nhu never ceased to be amazed at ships on stilts.  He could see that the legs were something like the outriggers on his gujong, but a small wood sailboat was one thing, and a great heavy metal ship another.

   Though the land was full of soldiers, the village did not see them.  The gods and the generals had moved the fighting away from the jungle.  Toward the end of the dry season, all the firing, all the flames, all the noise, gradually drew toward one part of the plain near the mountains.  None of the villagers had ever been over there.  As the firing reached a crescendo, far beyond anything the villagers had known or ever imagined possible, each dawn the sea was covered with offerings being carried to the gods on the outgoing tide.

   One calm morning Nhu ghosted through this brave palm frond armada drifting on a silvery sea a few miles offshore.  The villagers were traditionally devout, but there seemed to be far more flowers than usual.  When Nhu found himself wondering if the offerings were made to reduce the suffering of those caught by the war or in gratitude that the flames were burning elsewhere, he realized that he was becoming cynical.

   The firing, the shuddering of the earth, the rumblings, the shrieks of aircraft and shells, doubled and redoubled.  When the wind was from the land, smoke and the smell of burning flesh filled the village, and at night the western sky was bright with flames.

   Although the battle had increased gradually, it ended abruptly.  Smoke continued to billow upward for several more days, but the noise and tremors ceased within the span of a single hour.  The village was too far away to hear sporadic small arms fire.

   Everyone in the village waited.  The soldiers in the barracks and the sailors on the gunboat tied to the wharf were very tense.  Everyone seemed to be holding his breath.  Then word came.  Nhu heard it from Mai, who said she had heard it from Li, who had heard it while cleaning the barracks.  The war was over.  The foreign soldiers had won a great victory.

   This was what Nhu expected.  Except for Duong, he did not care who won.  But how could it have been otherwise?  It was boys like Duong with nothing but their bare hands and sticks against men with all those powerful machines.  He knew that Mai too was thinking about Duong.  He took a step across the small hut and wrapped his arms around her.  He struggled to extinguish the hope that had reawakened with the report that the fighting had ended.  “We must accept whatever has happened.”  Nhu said.  He felt Mai’s body convulse in his arms.

   After a while, he looked around and asked, “Where Is Li?”

   Mai pulled back and straightened her blouse and sarong.  “I think she has gone to the barracks to get more information.”  She did not look at him.

   “She spends too much time there,” Nhu said.

6

   The coming of peace brought a few changes, but it did not bring word of Duong.

   Madee’s son, Gerip, returned with only one arm.  Although he had joined what called itself The People’s Army only a week after Duong, he had never seen him.  Once he met a boy who said that Duong was with a group operating from a cave in the mountains.

   Gerip claimed to be in constant pain.  He was useless for fishing and mostly lay about the village, unhappy that the only alcohol was at the barracks.  He talked Li into smuggling a can or two of beer out for him.  One morning he gathered his few possessions into a sack, told his parents he was going to live in town, and disappeared up the jungle track.  No one other than his parents missed him.  The lack of respect he had shown was shocking.

   Ky’s son, Sigit, returned wearing a baggy green uniform, onto which was pinned a medal.   Sigit was vague as to what the medal was for, and he was accompanied by an older man from the town and several soldiers, all of whom lived in nearby coastal villages.  The older man said that Sigit was a great hero.  He also said that an election was being held.  Of course no one knew what an election was.  The man explained that he was being elected to represent them in the assembly being created to advise the foreign colonial office during the transition to full democratic government now that the forces of freedom had won the war.

   The villagers had no idea what he was talking about.  They felt no need for a ‘representative,’ but if they had to have one, why should it be this man they had never seen before?  It should be someone from their own village they could trust.

   For a while the man tried to answer their questions, but he became irritable when they refused to understand why every tiny, insignificant village could not have its own representative, and told them just to make an ‘X’ on the blue pieces of paper the soldiers gave them and to put the pieces of paper into the box they carried.  Some of the villagers refused to do this.  And after Sigit said something to the older man, he declared that Madee’s family and Duong’s were not entitled to vote.

   Everyone, except Ky and his wife, were glad when the man and the soldiers, including Sigit, took the ballot box and left.  Sigit told his parents, who were hoping he was home for good, that he had decided to make a career of the army and did not know when he would be back.

   It was all too much.  ‘Representatives.’ ‘Ballots.’ ‘Democracy.’ ‘Career.’  For several days afterward small boys in the village greeted one another with a self-important, “I am going to make a career in fishing.”

 

7

   A few months later the garrison was withdrawn from the village and reassigned to a large base near the town.  Corporal Melford convinced Li to go with them.

   Li did not know how to tell her parents.   She knew her father would flatly declare that she could not go; but too much had changed for her to obey such an order blindly.  And she was in love.  Mark had promised to marry her as soon as he could obtain the necessary permission from his superior officers, though this was, he told her, a difficult and prolonged process.  And when they were married he would take her with him to his country, which was wonderful beyond imagining.  In the meantime, she already spoke their language well enough to find work easily in the town.  Mark was almost certain he could arrange a job for her on the military base.  Not just a cleaning job either, but a job in an office, where she would learn to use machines like the typewriter in the captain’s office there in the village.

   The night before she was to leave, Li sat on one of the breakwaters, looking out to sea.  Her father was out fishing.  She would be gone before he returned.  Fondly she pictured him sailing though the night in his small boat.  I do not mean to be disrespectful, Father, but I must go.  It is my destiny.  She concentrated very hard on the image of her father and prayed that somehow her thoughts would reach him and he would understand.

   She climbed down from the breakwater and walked home, where she was surprised to discover her mother beside a cooking fire.

   “What are you doing?”

   Mai looked up from the pot she was stirring.  “I am preparing nasam.”  These were Li’s favorite cakes of coconut and fruit.

   “But why?  What is the occasion?”

   “Did you not think I would notice your clothes?”

   Li hung her head.  “I do not mean to be disrespectful.”

   “I know.  I know.  You have always been a good child.  There is no way for you to tell your father.  But are you sure he will treat you well, the corporal, I mean? It is the corporal, isn’t it?”

   “Oh yes.  I am sure.  We love each other very much.  He is going to marry me.”

   “And where will you live?”

   “In his country.”  Li said proudly.

   Her worst fear realized, a small moan escaped from Mai, who sought to cover her emotion by stooping to stir the nasam.  “When do you go?”

   “At first light I will walk to the road beyond the jungle, where there will be trucks.  Mark said I can ride in one of the trucks with the men.”

   Mai turned to face her daughter.  She tried to tell herself that Li was a woman.  Here in the village, she might be; but in the town, where Mai herself often felt like a child?  It was in the hands of the gods.  “You know that whatever happens, Li, you can always return home?”

   “Yes, Mother.  Thank you.” 

   But they both knew that she would not return.

   “Try to get some sleep.  I will put the nasam next to your mat.  I am making enough for you to share with Mark and the others.”  Almost as an afterthought, she added, “I will tell your father.”

8

   The eyes painted on each bow so the gujong could see and avoid evil stared sightlessly down at reflected eyes that stared sightlessly up.  Red, yellow, blue, green, orange:  every detail of the boat was painted with a different color bought cheaply from merchants in the town who paid boys to collect the dregs from discarded cans of paint.  Now that the garrison was gone, the villagers would have to resume the twice yearly voyages to the town.  Nhu realized that he was thinking of this as a chore, when in only the recent past it had been a great event to be looked forward to.  He realized too that he had come to accept as normal the transition into smooth water inside the breakwaters, rather than the dangerous passage through the surf on his return to the village.  He would gladly give up the breakwaters, if he could erase the past few years.

   He looked at the low green coast.  In this heat it seemed to float in the air, disconnected from the sea.  He turned to scan the horizon. Not a breath of wind anywhere.  His fishing lines hung straight down in the water.  When he leaned over the side of the gujong and stared downward, sunlight separated into shafts that converged toward some point hidden in the depths.  Even as he looked, shadowy shapes darted and glided, disappearing between the dangling lines and the reflected gujong.

   He tried to understand.  

   He assessed his life and could not find justification for his suffering.  Killing fish simply was not enough to warrant the loss of two of his children.  What had happened to Duong?  What was happening to Li?  He felt as though a fish hook were being torn from his guts.  He must have been very evil in his past lives. He was almost beginning to doubt that there was a pattern.  At times it seemed as though he and Mai and Duong and Li, everyone in the village were like those shadows swimming innocently beneath the boat, until they were suddenly hooked and pulled about by distant god-like powers.  Do the fish make offerings to fishermen that I do not see, as perhaps the gods do not see the offerings we make to them?  Or perhaps the gods are not themselves free even if they do see our offerings, any more than I am free not to catch fish.

   Until a light wind reached the boat and filled the sail, Nhu continued to try to understand.  Except for those moments when he was very busy, he seldom thought of anything else.  A lifetime of fishing had given him as much time for meditation as any monk.  His only conclusion was that he should have become a wondering holy man instead of marrying Mai and having children.  That had really been his only choice.  And he did not regret his decision.  Or he did not want to regret it.  He loved Mai and he loved his children.

   ‘Life is but a bubble on the surface of the ocean.’  Nhu stared down and watched the bubbles in the gujongs’ wake swirl and burst.

9

   The crowd giggled with anticipation as the monkey dancer, who they all knew was really a prince transformed into a monkey by the evil goddess, Hram, fell to the ground with stylized grace.  Although the festival had not been held for several years because of the war, most of the spectators from half a dozen villages had seen the dance many times.  It was the Damastrata and was, like all the traditional dances, a combination of morality play, depicting the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil, and a broad sexual farce.

   The giggles increased with each step the old maidservant, who had kicked the monkey out the palace window, took toward his supine body.  When on cue, the monkey’s tail rose slowly erect between his legs and the old woman leapt back in astonishment, laughter filled the jungle.

   The old woman moved forward to investigate this interesting development.  The erect tail sank.  She turned away and it rose.  Children called to the maidservant from the audience.  She pretended she could not understand them and moved further away.  The suggestive tail grew taller.  When at last she heard the children and turned back, the tail deflated.

   Back and forth, up and down, went the old woman and the monkey’s tail, milking the ancient joke, until finally, with the connivance of the crowd, who called goodbye to her as though she were leaving, the maidservant snuck close enough to give the offending tail a whack with her broom, at which the monkey dancer howled in pain, leapt up and ran, pursued by the boom wielding woman, from the stage.

   The dance continued for another hour.  The elaborate costumes were the most expensive of the villagers’ possessions and were passed on, and whenever possible enhanced, from generation to generation.  

   By the time Kew stood on one foot and and bent her other leg and her arms into acute angles to indicate her surprise as the monkey was transformed back into a prince, she could feel her leg trembling with exhaustion, until at last the prince came to her and the play ended.  Although at twelve she was old to dance the part of the princess, she thought, ‘I don’t know if I would have been strong enough last year.’

   She smiled happily at her mother, who was waiting near the hut that served as a dressing room.  She could not possibly get out of the costume by herself.  Behind them music resumed as another village entered the clearing to perform.

   “You were wonderful,” Mai said.  “I have never seen anyone dance better.”

   “Not even--” Kew stopped when she decided not to mention Li.

   “What?” asked Mai over the noise.

   “Nothing.”

   When they had the costume carefully folded and wrapped and had removed Kew’s makeup, they went back to where Nhu and Deng were waiting near one of the food stalls.

   The festival was country fair and carnival, as well as a religious celebration.

   Stalls where the villagers sold one another food, clothing, baskets, jewelry and tools, circled the perimeter of the clearing.

   Nhu’s and Mai’s village specialized in combs and jewelry and other implements made from sea turtle shells.

   Everyone, young and old, who could move or be carried, was at the festival.  Among a people who never considered corporal punishment, the most effective threat a parent could make to a misbehaving child was that he or she would not be allowed to attend the festival.  Dancing would go on far into the night, with each village performing a different dance within the epic cycle of myth and history.

   As they walked along, looking into the colorfully decorated stalls, nibbling on bamboo sticks of grilled meat dipped in peanut sauce, hearing the music and the reactions of the crowd, each member of the family, even Nhu, was as content as he and she had been recently.  There was comfort, a fundamental rightness, in the resumption of the festival, a linking with the past in which gods and goddesses and kings and queens had walked this very earth, a reassurance that the age-old rhythms and traditions of their way of life were enduring.

   What really matters, thought and felt Nhu, is the flow of life.  For hundreds, for more than a thousand years, the dances have been danced the same way, villagers like us have danced them, have come here to watch them young and old, have had children who dance them after us.  Nothing, not all the wars, has stopped that.  Nothing, not even this last terrible war, can change that.  His heart swelled and he stopped right there and took a grateful Mai and his startled children in his arms and pulled them to him.

 

10

   Mai was afraid of what she would find in the town.

   Nhu refused to come, so she and Kew and Deng sailed with several other families in one of the large boats belonging to the village. 

   They were amazed to discover that during the years of the war, when it was unsafe and, because of all the things brought to the village by the soldiers, unnecessary to make the voyage along the coast, the town had changed beyond recognition.  

   Even from far offshore, it was a sprawling, chaotic city.  And its once quiet harbor was now full of ships.   

   Naval vessels and huge freighters were anchored everywhere.  The wood pier where they used to tie up had been replaced by a concrete wharf, covered with containers and trucks.  Miles of jungle had vanished. Circular storage tanks connected by pipes were clustered near a second wharf.  A steady procession of aircraft ascended and descended inland.

   Ky, at the tiller of the sailboat, was obviously shaken and uncertain what to do.  When the wind was blocked by the huge ships and the sails fell limp, two men took oars, and Ky continued to steer toward the new wharf.  As they came alongside, the structure dwarfed them.  Someone managed to get a line around a concrete piling, but then they swung helplessly in its shadow.  Men and boys could climb the piling, but there was no way women and young children could possibly get to the wharf, which was higher even than the top of their boat’s mast.  Even as they stood on deck, trying to decide what to do, a face appeared above them and shouted something in the foreigners’ language.

   The villagers turned to Mai questioningly, but she knew only a few words and could not help.  Li had been the one to speak to foreigners.

   The face became angry and disappeared, leaving the villagers even more confused and frightened. There was a shout.  Everyone looked around.  Out in the harbor a ship was moving toward them.

   The face reappeared, now accompanied by the face of one of their own people, who yelled down, “You can’t stay there.”

   Plaintively Ky called up, “Where can we go?”

   “Row around the ship in front of you.  There is a ladder.  But you can’t stay there either.  It is only permitted to stop briefly.  You will have to go out and anchor and come back to pick up your people when they return from town.”

   All the villagers began talking at once.  The man called down.  “You don’t have all day.  That ship needs this space.”

   Hurriedly they untied the bow line and rowed away before they would be crushed.

   There was more confusion when they reached the ladder.  Normally only one man remained aboard the boat while everyone else went ashore, but now three men would have to stay, one to steer, two to row.  By the time shopping lists were rearranged, instructions given, and Mai and the others made the dizzying climb up the ladder, everyone was out of sorts.  Already this visit had become an ordeal.

   When the straggling group of villagers reached the shore end of the wharf, after constantly dodging trucks which seemed intent on running them down, they found a wire fence and several soldiers on guard beside a gate.  As they waited in line, Mai said to Siti, “You are sure you do not mind taking Kew and Deng with you and doing my shopping?”

   “Of course I do not mind.  I do not have much to buy myself.”

   Mai whispered, “After we get through the gate, I will give you the money.”  A small leather pouch hung around her neck.  She recalled the pleasure of putting each coin and note into the pouch, anticipating this moment and the special gifts she would buy for every member of the family when they next visited the town, and now she was giving the money and the pleasure of shopping to Siti.

   The soldiers handed each villager a card with some words printed on it and told them not to lose it because they would not be permitted back through the gate without the card.  The soldiers knew that this was not true. Too many people lost their passes for regulations to be enforced, but they were not supposed to say so.

   A bored soldier handed Mai her card without looking at her.  It would be so easy to say nothing and just walk on with the others, but she forced herself to speak.  “Please.  We had soldiers in our village.  Can you tell me where I will find them?”

   The man looked at her blankly and repeated, “Soldiers?  In your village?”

   “Yes.”  He speaks as though he has never heard of such a thing, Mai thought; yet he is a boy Duong’s age, or the age Duong would have been, and probably recently from a village himself.

   “I..I do not know.  I will have to ask.”

   The line of people stopped behind Mai while the boy went into a shack and returned with an older soldier, who said, “You are looking for someone?”

   “Yes.”  Mai replied meekly.

   “Your son?”

   “No.”  The man waited.  In shame she lowered her already quiet voice.  “My daughter.”

   The sergeant had seen too many village parents come looking for their children.

   “How old is she?”

   “Fifteen.”

   “I do not think you will find her, Mother.  I do not think you will want to find her.”

   That was already Mai’s fear.  “I must try.”

   The sergeant knew that his advice would not be heeded.  “Then you need to go to the main camp.  Do you have any money?”

   “Yes.”

   “Let me see.”

   Mai expected the soldier would take some of her money, as soldiers had always taken from the villagers, but as she pulled the leather thong over her head, she hoped he would not take it all.

   The soldier opened the pouch and removed one red note from it.

   Is that all he is going to take or all he is going to leave me? Mai wondered.

   He handed her the note and said, “Show this to one of the taxi drivers on the street outside.  Tell him to take you to the headquarters gate and wait to bring you back again.  It is on the far side of the city.  Tell him I said you are not to give him any more than this and that you are not to pay him until you return.  You understand?”

   “Yes.”

   “And keep the rest of this safe.”  And to her surprise he handed the pouch back to Mai.

   “Oh, I will.  Thank you.”  She turned and immediately gave the pouch to Siti, keeping only the red note and a few coins and the card clutched in her hand.

   Before he went back into the guard shack, the man said, “I hope this turns out well for you, Mother.”

   Mai said, “Thank you,” again, and to Siti, “Not all the people here are bad.”

   The crowd behind them, grown restive, pushed them rudely through the gate, where the others from their villager were waiting.

   After giving Kew and Deng some coins and a hug, Mai approached the line of taxis with pride and fear.  She had never ridden in an automobile before.  She knew the others were watching her.  None of them had ridden in an automobile either.

   The city was full of boys who reminded her of Duong.  At first the driver of the taxi at the head of the line did too.  He was sitting in the battered taxi, smoking a cigarette and listening to loud foreign music on a radio.  He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt with a picture of a beer bottle and some foreign words on it.  A pack of cigarettes was rolled in the sleeve. Below the cigarettes his skinny arm was covered by a tattoo of a naked female body whose head was a grinning skull.  Although she was certain he had seen her approach, he ignored Mai when she spoke.

   Mai was afraid of taxis, but she was not afraid of taxi drivers.  Had his parents not taught him to respect his elders?  Or was this something that went with the changes in the town?  She moved to where he could not help but see her and stood silently until finally he turned down the music and asked what she wanted.

   “I want to go to the headquarters gate of the army camp.”  She noticed that the boy had more tattoos on his face, but she recognized these as the traditional marks of the hill people, so this rude boy wasn’t from the city either.

   “A thousand seis.”

   Mai showed him the red note.

   “No.  A thousand.”  For a moment Mai was flustered.  She knew coins, which were of different sizes and metals, and the old notes, but she did not know these new notes so well.  The boy suspected as much and said impatiently, “Two of those.  Or a blue one.”  With this, Mai’s fear vanished.  She was accustomed to haggling.  Shopkeepers in the town always tried to cheat villagers.  This was no different.  She noticed how a man got in the taxi behind her.  She reached for the door handle and pulled down as he had.  The door opened.  As calmly as though she had done it every day of her life, she climbed into the back seat.  “This is enough.  You are to take me to the camp and you are to wait to bring me back here.”

   The boy turned around in his seat.  “I need at least seven hundred.”

         “Let us go now, or I will report you to the soldiers.  I have many things to do today and no time to waste.”

   In apparent anger the boy faced forward.  The radio resumed blaring and, with a jerk, they were underway so quickly that Mai forgot to wave to Kew and Deng and the others.

   The initial burst of speed lasted for only a few blocks before they became bogged down in the city’s perpetual traffic jam of too many cars, trucks, bicycles, pedestrians, ox carts, and hand carts.  Shouting, honking the horn, and with general bad behavior, the boy worked the taxi along the main street.  Mai had never realized how bad the fumes were.   Her head was starting to ache when the boy abruptly turned into an alleyway, almost hitting children playing in the mud, and emerged onto a new wide street in a part of the city unfamiliar to Mai.

   As the taxi headed inland, Mai had to grab onto the seat to keep from being thrown around.  She caught only glimpses of the outside world.  Riding in a taxi was not what she had expected.  It had no dignity.

   Despite her grip, Mai was thrown forward when the taxi braked behind a truck.  For a few minutes they inched forward in fits and starts.  The boy said, “You can walk faster then this.  It will save time if I pull over and wait for you.  The gate is only a few blocks directly ahead.”

   The exhaust fumes were again bothering Mai.  No wonder the boy was rude.  She would be rude too if she had to do this everyday.  “Where will you be?”

   He pointed at a food stand on the other side of the road.  “If you will give me the money, I will get something to eat and wait there.”

   “The soldier said I was not to pay you until we are back at the wharf.”

   “But you are my first rider today and I am hungry.  Please.  At least give me half.  You can trust me, Mother.”

   Mai thought that she should not do it, but he did look hungry.  “You will stay right here?”

   “Yes, Mother.”

   “All right.  But I will report you if you leave.”  And Mai handed the red note to him.  But then she could not get the door to open.

   The boy reached back and did something to the door.  “There.  Take your time, Mother.”

   She smiled at him.  So he did have some manners.  “Thank you.”  As she reached the footpath, she watched until the taxi pulled across the road and stopped in front of the stand.

   The boy was right.  She was able to walk faster than the traffic was moving.  There on the outskirts of the city only a few food stalls stood between the road and open fields.,  Mai was thirsty, but she wanted to get her business over with.  She would treat herself to a drink later.

   A few hundred yards along the road, she came to a concrete wall and a gate guarded by more soldiers.  Through the gate Mai saw the scorched and pitted side of a whitewashed concrete block building.   She was surprised that the fighting had reached even here.

   The country had been quiet since the last great battle, suspiciously so some thought, but the soldiers were relaxed and friendly.  One of them asked Mai what she wanted.

   “I am looking for my daughter, Li.”

   “Does she work here?”

   “I don’t know.  I think so.  She came with the soldiers who were in our village.  She is going to marry one.  Corporal Melford.”  She stumbled over his name.  “Mark.”

   The soldier began to look uncomfortable.  He spoke to one of the other men, who went away and then returned and told her to follow him.

   After a short walk Mai found herself standing in front of a counter in an office like the one in the village garrison, but much bigger.  She waited while the soldier said something in the foreign language to a foreign soldier behind the counter.  Then he asked her, “What unit was in your village?”

   Mai had known that something like this would happen, that they would ask her questions she could not answer.  Apologetically she said, “I do not understand this ‘unit’.”

   “Then what is the name of your village?”

   At least that Mai knew, but her hope that it would do any good soon fell, when it was obvious the men had never heard of her village.

   “Where is it?  Here, show me on the map.”  He pointed at a large incomprehensible drawing on the wall.

   When Mai just stood there, the man thought for a moment.  “How did you get here?”

   “I came in a taxi.”

   “From your village?”

   He seemed to be trying to be helpful, but how could he be so stupid?  “No.  Of course not.  We sailed from the village the way we always do.  I only took the taxi from the wharf.”

   “How long did you sail?”

   “One day.”

   “Was the wind on the right side of the boat or the left?”

   “The left.”

   Mai did not see the point of all these questions, but the soldier smiled and nodded as though she had done something clever.  He and the other man stood close to the drawing on the wall.  Then the other man went and thumbed through books. 

   For a few minutes the soldiers were so caught up in solving the riddle that they forgot that they already knew the final answer.  Their faces changed when they remembered.  The soldier said to her, “That would have been part of the Fifty-fifth.  They’ve already gone home.”

   “Home?  Oh, you mean their home.  Li must already be there then.”  As though observing someone else, Mai noted her own relief.  What had once been her greatest fear for Li had been replaced by another.  Now Li was beyond her, in the hands of the gods, far away in the foreign land.

   “No.”  The soldier did not want to be unkind, but he did not want to deceive the woman either.

   “No?”

   “No dependents have been sent yet.  The first will not leave for a few more weeks.  And, well, there is no record of application being made for your daughter, or for anyone claiming to be a dependent of a soldier named Melford, or any name close to that, from the Fifty-fifth.  I am sorry, Mother.”

   Mai’s eyes widened as her fears returned.  “Where is she then?”

   Although the soldier knew where most of the village girls ended up, he only shrugged.

   Blindly Mai followed him back to the gate.  He said something that did not penetrate her confused thoughts.  She thanked him and found herself outside the wall.  She shook her head as though she were awakening.

   She crossed the street and walked slowly toward the food stand.  Even from this distance she could see that the taxi was not there.  That boy had never intended to wait.  It was all right.  Mai did not mind walking.  In fact under the circumstances she preferred to walk.  The taxi ride.  The city.  Nhu was right not to want to come to the city.  She did not want to visit the city anymore herself.  It had all grown hateful.  She could not wait to be home again. Thirst forgotten, she walked determinedly past the food stand.

   Mai had noticed little from the taxi, but as she walked she saw many signs of recent fighting.  Cratered fields being plowed by small figures leading water buffalo gave way to shacks constructed of shell casings and parts of wrecked vehicles and oil drums, which were in turn replaced as she reached the old town, by more substantial rubble of stone and brick.  Even in the heart of the city, she saw gutted buildings and evidence of explosions and gunfire.  She had no idea that such fierce fighting had taken place in the city.  If it is this bad here, she thought, what can be left of the capital?

   Somewhere in the city Mai became lost when she missed the alleyway the taxi driver had taken, and the main road she was following turned away from the shore.  She was not worried, for she knew that she had only to reach the waterfront to regain her bearings, and so took the next street to her left.

   For the first block, the narrow street was lined with carpenters.  Wood chips and sawdust spilled out onto the cobblestones.  The shop fronts were all opened and the familiar smell of teak reassured Mai.  But the carpentry shops ended at the corner, and the next block was full of bars and nightclubs.  At midday the place was asleep.  Only a few men and girls were sitting in the dark rooms.  Mai lowered her eyes and hurried along.  From beneath the wide brim of her straw hat, she did not see the girl stagger around the corner.  They collided and Mai’s heart stopped.  The girl was wearing foreign clothes, high heeled shoes and a dress so short and cut so low she might as well have been naked.  Her face was smeared with heavy make-up.  The girl snarled something about peasants not watching where they are going, but when her bleary eyes managed to focus on Mai, she mumbled, “I am sorry, Mother.  I thought it was a man.  Are you all right?”   

   The next few blocks were interminable, but at last the horrible street ended and Mai found herself in the part of the city she knew.  She walked toward a nearby temple.  She was confused.  Was it that girl’s destiny to be in those bars?   And she forced herself to wonder, was it Li’s?  Should she wait and go back there tonight to try to find Li?

   The golden roof of the temple rose serenely above the clutter of ugly buildings.  Mai was about to climb the steps, when a group of saffron robed priests came down from the temple and reverently placed flowers in a circle around a black smudge on the pavement.  Mai turned to a man who had stopped and was also watching the priests.  “Why are they doing that?”  she asked.

   He looked at her. “You are from the countryside?”

   “Yes.”

   “During the war, a priest sacrificed himself on that spot.  Doused himself with petrol and set himself ablaze.  It is said that he did not make a sound as the flames consumed him.  They revere his holiness.”

   “But why?”

   “As a protest against the corruption of the government.”

   Mai had had enough.  Without entering the temple, she hurried directly to the wharf.  She had forgotten that the boat was at anchor.

   As she squatted at the end of the wharf, as far from the city as possible, waiting for the others to return, an ocean swell lapped at the pilings and Mai understood the consolation of water.

 

 

11

   Peace had never lasted, but gradually people came to expect that this peace would last, at least for many years, if for no other reason than that after the enormous casualties suffered by the People’s Army in the fighting at the capital, there seemed to be no one left to oppose the colonial government.

   From the moment the fighting ended not a single incidence of violence, not a single act of sabotage or terrorism troubled the country.  

   This was wrongly interpreted by the colonial political and military authorities as proof of their absolute victory, when it was actually proof of the absolute discipline and will of the nationalists.  As General Vo explained in an interview some years later with a sympathetic Western journalist, when it became obvious that he was losing the war, that the People’s Army, which had failed to gain the support of the people, was being destroyed by attrition, he sought to gain time to regroup by staging the attack on the capital which he knew would fail.  Sending so many fine young men and women to certain death was the most difficult and painful decision of his career, he said, yet his resolve was stiffened by the justness and purity of his motives and by his confidence in the ultimate consequence of those heroic sacrifices.  The imperialists’ temporary victory had enabled him to prepare the final assault, had caused the colonial government to send some of their troops home, as General Vo, educated in the West, had known their voters would demand once peace seemed to be firmly established, and had lulled the remaining troops into a false sense of security which inevitably led to laxness.

   So for two years the country lived in this peace that seemed destined to last indefinitely, as in fact, after one quick turn of the wheel, it did.  

   The dry monsoon was followed by the wet monsoon, which was followed by the dry monsoon again.  

   For all the thousands of years that people had lived in that part of the East, wars were fought only during the dry season.  During the wet, large scale troop movement was impossible.  As the world now knows, during the second wet monsoon after the fighting ended at the capital, General Vo and his men did the impossible, moved not just men but heavy artillery through jungles and over mountains, and simultaneously struck every provincial capital in the land.

   To Nhu and Mai and villagers everywhere in the countryside, at first the explosions were only more distant thunder.  The skies were low and leaden as they had been for months.  Heavy rain poured down on the muddy earth.  The jungle was saturated.  The rivers were high and brown and turbid.   People were tired of the monotony of the rain and of keeping to their huts, which were sodden too.  Every monsoon was the same.  When the clouds first broke, farmers and fishermen welcomed the imposed respite from the heat and their labor; but long before the rains ended, they were anxious to return to that labor.

   The noise continued.  Nhu was standing at the opening to the hut, staring out at the jungle barely visible through the downpour, when the first tremors reached the village.  Mai and Kew and Deng came and pressed into the doorway beside him. The tremors became continuous.  A figure holding a piece of canvas over its head darted toward them from the next hut, and they stepped aside to let Ky come in.

   “What do you think it is?”  Ky asked breathlessly.

   “I think the war has started again.”

   “But that is impossible.  Sigit...”  He stopped.  Sigit would be in the midst of the fighting.

   “Nevertheless, it is happening.”

   They stood listening to the distant sounds for a few minutes, before Ky ran back through the rain to his own hut.

   That night the overcast sky inland glowed red.

 

   Sounds and tremors and flashes continued for five days and nights.  Aircraft were heard, flying above the clouds, but not as many as in earlier years.  Even to the villagers it was obvious that aircraft were of limited use in such weather, and Nhu began to understand, as did many others in the country and the world, that whoever planned this attack was very clever.  

   From seaward came sounds of ships firing big guns, followed by the shriek of shells passing overhead.  But no human sound reached the village.  No screams, no desperate cries for help, no hysterical radio messages as positions were overrun.  Ky and Siti worried about Sigit.  Other parents worried about other children.  Although they did not speak of it, both Nhu and Mai thought to themselves:  if something as unlikely as this attack can happen, perhaps something so unlikely as Duong still being alive can happen.  And they both worried about Li.  Nhu even almost asked Mai about her.

   On the sixth day, the distant sounds and tremors and flashes ended.  The villagers waited, listened, stared inland.  But nothing more came through the wall of rain.

 

   The monsoon lasted late that year.   And when the steady, inexorable, imperturbable rain continued to pour down day after day, it began to seem to the villagers that there never had been anything but rain.  The distant sounds and tremors and flashes were diluted, washed away, lost.  The villagers began to wonder if they had been real or imaged or perhaps only dreamed.  They began to wonder, as they always did in the monsoon, if there ever would be anything but rain.

12

   When the rain finally ended, the villagers emerged from their huts like half blind moles.  The blue sky was dazzling. The warm sun exquisite on clammy skin.  People walked around, stretched, talked; and then they began to work.

   Women and girls moved moldy clothing and sleeping mats outside to dry.  Men and boys, who once would have turned to their boats, now first went to the anchorage.  In recent years they had discovered that the breakwaters were as successful at keeping debris washed down by the rains inside the anchorage as they were in keeping ocean waves out.  Leaves, branches, trees, parts of huts, the corpses of drowned animals, even bodies of people, all were found inside the anchorage, along with a vast quantity of silt, which was rapidly choking the harbor.  The gujongs drew only a few inches, but bigger boats were being restricted to an ever narrower channel.

   As always at the end of the wet monsoon, the stream had flooded and the village was an island.  As always too, there was no wind.  Until the muddy flood waters receded and the jungle trails dried or until the wind returned, the village was isolated.  This troubled only those like Ky and Siti who had sons in the army.  For most of the villagers, there was more than enough to keep them busy.  They were curious to know what had happened inland, but not overly concerned.  They would learn soon enough.  For the present it was fine just to be outside again.

13

   The first that anyone knew everything had changed was when Deng came running from the jungle shouting, “Soldiers are coming.”

   Nhu and Madee and Ky and the other fishermen were sitting in the center of the village repairing sails.  Traditionally sails were made from cotton sacks and lasted only one season; but along with the questionable breakwaters, the foreign soldiers had brought new sacks made of shiny material which was lighter and lasted longer than cotton.  Nhu had yet to make up his mind about this new material.  Despite some advantages, it did not feel right and was difficult to stitch.  He and Madee were working on a seam when Deng ran up.

   “So there are soldiers coming,” Nhu said.  “Down the trail or through the jungle?”

   “Down the trail.”  

   “Foreign soldiers then.”

   “No.”  Deng was beside himself with excitement.  “That is what I am trying to tell you.”

   Nhu and Madee stopped sewing and looked at one another uncertainly.  By the time they stood and took a few hesitant steps in the direction of the trail, a dozen men carrying weapons marched into the village.  They wore the baggy shirts and pants, conical straw hats, and rubber sandals of the People’s Army; but what then were they doing coming openly down the trail in broad daylight?  One of them greeted Nhu and Madee.  “Hello, brothers.  We have great news.”

   “What has happened?”

   “We have won the war.  Surely you heard the fighting.  We surprised the imperialists and their running dogs and have taken many prisoners.  Tens of thousands.  To get them back, the foreign government is withdrawing.  We have won!  The country belongs to the people!  But my enthusiasm is carrying me away.  Gather everyone so I can tell it but once.”

   When the villagers had all assembled nervously in the clearing, afraid of being implicated in something for which they would be punished when the foreign soldiers returned, the man told them about the victory and that they now had their own country.  He called them brothers and sisters and comrades.  He said that the yoke of foreign exploitation had been lifted from their shoulders; that they had a new flag, which was being carried by the soldiers and would be left to fly over the village.

   One of the villagers interrupted to ask if the foreign soldiers would not tear the flag down.

   The soldier looked at him with consternation.  “No.  No.  You don’t understand.  There are no more foreign soldiers, except in prison camps.  Foreign soldiers will never bother you again.  You are free.”

   He studied their faces.  He was young, but he had already fought for many years and seen most of his friends die in a cause which he believed to be just.  Now he was discovering that he had never understood the people for whom he thought he was fighting.  It had been like this in every other village.  He would have to learn to be more patient.

   As the new multicolored flag was raised on the pole outside the abandoned barracks, now used by the villagers to store nets and floats, the soldier explained what each of the colors meant.  Yellow was for all the people.  Green for the land worked by the farmers.  Blue for the fisherman’s sea.  Black for the factory workers.  Red for the dawn of hope.

   He told them that the capital city had been renamed for the great general who was the father of their country, and would henceforth be known as Votein.

   He said that great times had come, great changes would be made.  The war was only the first phase of the People’s Revolution.  But he cut his speech short when it became evident that the villagers did not understand or care about any of this and that he did not have information about what they did care about:  he did not know what had become of their children.

14

   Nhu returned from fishing one afternoon to find the village in uproar.  No one came down to the harbor to help him, so he pulled the gujong as far up the beach as he could by himself, and walked toward Ky’s hut, from where he heard voices and a woman crying.

   As Nhu neared the hut, he saw Ky siting on the ground.  Ky was staring in disbelief at his bloody hand.  More blood poured from a gash on his forehead.  Siti was crying as she tried to staunch the flow with her sleeve.  Two soldiers stood over them.  A third soldier, who had only one arm, stood nearby.  When she saw Nhu, Siti appealed to him between sobs.  “Can you believe it?  Gerip hit him with a rifle?  He marches up and tells us we have to go to a “reeducation center,’ whatever that is, in the town.  The whole family.  Leave everything.  Now.  Today.  This minute.  Gerip.  A mere boy.”

   The one armed soldier laughed.  “I am not a mere boy, Siti.  You are going to have to get that through your thick heads.  The old days are gone.  I am the Village Political Advisor of the Revolutionary People’s Party.  And all who collaborated with the imperialists are going to be reeducated for your own good and the good of the people.”

   “But what will we do in the town?” Siti wailed.  “What will we do about our home, our boat, our possessions?”

   “That is the first lesson.  They are not your possessions.  There is no private property.  It is not your hut.  It is not your boat.  They belong to the people, and they will be used for the greatest good of the people.

   “In the city you will work in a factory and learn social consciousness and responsibility. Later you will be sent to the countryside to work in the fields.  And while you are there, laborers and farmers will be here working as fishermen.  This way all the people will become one.  We will all understand one another’s ways of life and problems.  We will all share one another’s burdens.  We will all be cleansed of the imperialist conceit of private property.  The sea, the sky, the rivers, the jungle, the land, cannot be owned by one.  They belong to all.  So too the means of production:  factories, water buffalo, plows, gujongs, belong to all.  The old ways must and will be swept away.  The Revolution is the wave of the future.”

   The fervor in his voice shocked the villagers into silence, which was broken only when Nhu quietly asked what they had all been thinking.  “Where did you learn such nonsense?”

   Gerip turned on him angrily.  “Be careful, Nhu.  You can be sent to be reeducated too.  Your wife worked for the foreign dogs.  Your daughter was their whore.  She is already being reeducated.”

   Mai cried out,  “You know where Li is?  Where is she?  Is she well?”

   This was the day Gerip had been waiting for during years of pain from his improperly treated wound and pity as a one-armed cripple.  He despised pity.

   “She works on a farm in the north and she is taken to various reeducation centers to testify how she was exploited by the foreigners and their running dogs and was saved by the Revolution from a life of degradation. I am told she is quite effective.  She has no desire to return here, and would not be permitted to do so even if she wanted to.  Only Duong’s heroic sacrifice prevents your entire family from being reeducated now.  And may not do so forever.  You are on trial.”  His voice rose.  “You are all on trial.  Everyone in the village.  Everyone in the country.  Your social consciousness is being evaluated.”

   Nhu stepped back from such unexpected vehemence.  He wanted to ask what ‘social consciousness’ is.  He really had no idea, but was wise enough to say nothing.

   Gerip glanced down at Ky and Siti.  “He has stopped bleeding.  Get him to his feet and gather what you can carry.  No more.  You have ten minutes.”

 

15

   Deng sat watching a spider for signs of movement.  

   A few days earlier he had decided the spider must be ill or old or perhaps even dead.  The web stretching between a stone and a vine was irregular and tattered, and the spider did not move when Deng brushed the web aside.  But the next time Deng returned to the ruins in the jungle, the web had been exactly rebuilt.  Deng tried to understand the purpose of the irregular design, but soon gave up.  Presumably the spider knew more about webs than he did.

   As often as he could Deng came to the solitude of the ruined temple, as many others had before him through the centuries, including his father.  The ruins were the only part of the village to escape the People’s Revolution.  Two years of peace had changed the village more than centuries of war.  The huts might look the same, Deng thought, but nothing in them is the same.

   Gerip, as Political Advisor, controlled every aspect of everyone’s life, particularly since some had fled in boats to other lands.  

   Less than a third of the families who had lived in the village at Independence were still there.  Most had been relocated.  Few of those who replaced them became fishermen.  Though they tried, they were afraid of the sea; they had no feel for the wind; and they were constantly seasick.  At the daily Hour of Social Adjustment, Gerip increasingly castigated everyone:  the newcomers for failing to learn; the experienced fishermen for failing to teach.  

   The quota of fish to be carried through the jungle to the road where it was trucked to feed the city remained constant; and as catches dropped, the villagers were often short of food themselves.  Little rice and few vegetables made their way from the fields, where harvests were down, presumably because relocated fishermen made as poor farmers as relocated farmers made fishermen.

   Inside his hut, Nhu complained that he did not know how to teach these people.  He had taught his own sons how to sail and fish, as his father had taught him, simply by having them with him.  These city people and farmers knew nothing; they knew worse than nothing:  they knew the wrong things.  There was no ‘deliberate sabotage’ as was claimed, and here Nhu showed an unexpected talent for mimicking Gerip’s strident voice.  He tried.  They all tried.  Did Gerip think they liked going hungry?  It was hopeless.  Anyone who had eyes could see that The Great Experiment was a mad failure.  Anyone who had an empty stomach did not even need eyes.

   The only good to come from The Great Experiment was that it carried within itself a hope of escape.  Many of the families which had been relocated from the cities, particularly that of Kiang, who was from the capital, Votein, were wealthy before the Revolution.  This was a greater puzzle to Deng than the spider web, for these families were among the most inept at village life.  The men were the worst fishermen and their wives the worst at domestic tasks.  He knew for a fact that his mother practically kept Kiang’s family alive until their youngest daughter learned how to cook.  How such people could have been successful in the city was beyond him, but they had been.  Kiang had traveled abroad.  He knew the world.  And Kiang was the one, away from Gerip and the handful of soldiers who lived in the barracks and those people who were suspected of being Gerip’s spies, who first suggested to the remaining experienced fishermen that they take a boat and sail to another land.  

   Kiang spoke of countries where everyone was free and rich beyond imagining.  None of the fishermen believed this, but they did believe that there must be some place where they could at least live as they had before the Revolution, where at least they would be able to keep enough of the fish they caught so they and their families would not be hungry, and where they would not have to endure Gerip’s tirades. Either monsoon would take them to freedom, promised Kiang.  A week or two running east before the southwest monsoon, or west before the northeast monsoon, would change their lives.

   To the formerly wealthy, who had journeyed to these lands as pampered passengers on ocean liners or airplanes, the distances were nothing; but to the fishermen, who had never traveled more than one day’s sail along the coast but who had been touched by the immensity and power of the sea, the prospect of sailing blindly for a week or more was daunting.  None of them could navigate far out of sight of land.  None of the boats even had a compass.

   This did not matter, argued Kiang.  All we have to do is keep sailing toward the sunrise or the sunset.  It does not matter where we fetch up.  Once we get even one day away from this coast, we will be safe and can stop any ship we see.  The captain will take us on board, or at least give us supplies and directions.  It is highly unlikely we will have to sail even one entire week.  All we have to do is get in one of the larger boats.  In as little as five or six hours we can all be safe and comfortable aboard a steamer bound for true freedom and opportunity.

   Nhu refused to be persuaded; but some of the other fishermen agreed, and one moonless night five families took one of the larger boats and slipped quietly between the breakwaters .

   When they and the boat were discovered missing the following morning, Gerip was furious.  He assembled the villagers.  He questioned them.   He declared that it was impossible the traitors had left without some of the other villagers knowing of their plan, which of course was true.  He screamed that they had all betrayed the Revolution.  He threatened them.  And in fact about half the people in the village were sent elsewhere in the next few weeks; and the size of the garrison was doubled from four solders to eight; and a guard was posted on the beach at night.  And the fishing quota was increased, which meant that those few remaining experienced fishermen like Nhu had to work even harder to survive.

   No word of those who had escaped ever reached the village.  Anything might have happened to them.  But Deng liked to imagine that at that very moment, while he was sitting in the jungle, they were all safe and happy on some foreign shore, as happy as he seemed to remember his family was before Duong went away to be a soldier.

   Deng knew that he couldn’t really imagine what a foreign land was like.  He had seen only a few villages and the city along the coast.  In his fantasies he pictured them all living in a place something like a city having a perpetual festival, but nicer.  It did not really matter, almost any other place would be better than continuing to live here.  It was as though all color had been washed from life, all color and all joy, leaving only a succession of bleak gray days reaching endlessly into the future.  And not only was there absolutely nothing to look forward to, for him life would soon actually become worse.  In a few months he would have to go into the army, where men like Gerip would order him about day and night.  He wished very much that his father had chosen to go with the families who escaped.  But Nhu said that as bad as life was for them now, the village was their home.  And though things could be better, they could also be worse.  Deng thought of Kiang’s and the other families being safe and happy and free at that very moment.  He ached to be with them.

   Then he had an unexpected insight.  All at once he understood how Kiang had been successful in the city.  Kiang had been in the village, longing to escape, just as Deng was.  Perhaps he had sat on this very stone in the jungle and thought the very thoughts Deng was thinking, felt the same despair.  But Kiang was not able to handle a boat himself, so he used other men to achieve his ends.  Undoubtedly this was the secret of his former wealth.  His talent was not in being able to do things himself; it was in persuading others to do them for him.  It was just a matter of finding a way.

   He, Deng, was still just a boy.  He did not believe he could sail a boat alone across the sea, and he did not want to do so even if he could.  He wanted a new life for them all:  for his mother and father and Kew.  Even for Li and Duong were that possible.  Like Kiang, he would have to persuade others to sail the boat.  It was just a matter of finding a way.

 

16

   Dawn caught them off the southernmost point of land.  As the sky lightened, the spirits of those in the boat fell.  A cluster of palm tress was clearly visible a mile or two away.  They felt naked sitting there, gilding slowly westward before a distressingly light breeze.  The next few hours, they all thought erroneously, would be the most dangerous.  If somehow they could just avoid being seen until nightfall, they would be all right.

   At the tiller, which he had tucked beneath one arm, Nhu felt the despair of exhaustion.  They did not have a chance.  It was less than twenty-four hours since Deng brought word that the families of all the remaining original villagers were to be relocated.  Of course it was mad.  There would be no one left who could catch fish; but no one doubted that it was true.  Madness had become the norm since the Revolution, since the last war.  

   Nhu had long decided that he would never leave the sea.  He was not romantic about the sea.  He did not love the sea, and thought that only a fool would love something so utterly indifferent; but the sea and fishing were his life.  He would not become a farmer or a factory worker just because some official told him to. He would not live surrounded by the cramped horizons of the land or in a claustrophobic city.  Kiang’s words and example had prepared the way.  Nhu’s only worry was the night guards on the beach.  He had never killed anything other than fish, and he did not know if he could.  Most certainly he did not want to.  In the end it was not a problem.  The two boys on guard duty that night were eager to come with them.

   By now their absence would have been noticed in the village.  The land people don’t need to worry about those palm trees, thought Nhu.  Anyone who knows the sea knows where to look for us.  They will already have radioed from the barracks.  The first airplane could be taking off.  Patrol boats could be underway.  Nhu wondered what the officials would do to them.  Would he be imprisoned?  Might they actually shoot him?   At the very least, he would be relocated so far inland that he would never even sniff the sea again.

   The boat was packed.  People sprawled on the deck, in the deckhouse, even in the cockpit.  Nhu did not have enough room to straighten out his legs. He did not know how many had come with him.  Word had simply spread.  This had been in other minds as well.  People took what food and clothing and small valuables they could carry and came in a shared belief that life in the village had become so bad that any unknown must be an improvement.

   The weight of all the people made the boat sit low in the water, which was not helping her in this light breeze.  The lateen sail hug limp, yet Nhu could feel the boat making some headway, gliding slowly across a glassy sea, creating gentle music with her wake.

   The sun warmed Nhu’s back and, despite everything, he began to wonder what the new land would be like.

----

   It was difficult to decide whether the gods were with or against them.

   The wind remained light, and all day they sailed very slowly, waiting for an airplane to come roaring out of nowhere and suddenly be above them or for a speck on the horizon to become a patrol boat.

   The palm trees slipped slowly astern, and the boat people were alone on a great smooth sea.  The farmers and those who had lived in cities felt dwarfed by the featureless immensity.  Not a wave, not a single ripple, other than their own slight wake; and only a few clouds in the sky; and a great inhuman silence.

   To Nhu this was relief.  He had never sailed here before, but this part of the ocean was just like that off the village.  Perhaps making a long voyage would simply be a matter of crossing a succession of similar bits of water, and the sea everywhere was the same.  He wondered that he had never thought to sail to new lands before.  The possibility had always existed.  It seemed the limitations had been only in his own mind.  This is what Great Ancestor Ling had done.  But Ancestor Ling had never before seemed quite real. He was a legendary figure, at one with the gods and goddesses and kings and queens of the traditional dances.  Now for the first time Nhu saw Ling not as “Great Ancestor,” but as a man like himself.  Perhaps Ling had only reluctantly left his homeland too.  It occurred to Nhu that what he was doing would always be remembered by the family. He smiled at the prospect of a boy a hundred years from now thinking with awe of “Great Ancestor Nhu.”    There was a further implication.  If Great Ancestor Ling were just a man like himself, what of the gods and goddesses, the kings and queens?  But he was too tired to pursue this.

   In those light conditions anyone could steer, and Nhu exchanged places with Buan and lay down on the deck.  He would save himself for the night; that is, he reminded himself, if we reach the night.

   Everyone watched the sun melt across the sea.  “It is like a broken egg,” said one of the children.

   All day the wind had remained light and the boat had sailed slowly.  But no one came after them.  They did not see any other boats, and there were just two airplanes, both far away to the north over the land.  It almost seemed as though the officials had decided to let them go.  It seemed too good to be true.  Particularly after Gerip’s rage when the first boatload escaped.  But stranger things had happened since the Revolution.

   Mai and some of the other women passed around balls of cold rice and fish.  Nhu washed his down with a few sips of water.  Hot tea would have been better, but there was not enough room to light a cooking fire.  With the coming of darkness, he began to think seriously of the voyage ahead.  Kiang had said they would almost certainly be sighted by a ship once they were away from the coast, but what if they were not?  What if they took a week or even more to reach land?  Did they have enough food and enough water?

   That morning capture had seemed so certain that Nhu had not even bothered to count the number of people aboard.  He tried to do so now and counted thirty-one.  Even though several of these were small children, the total was startling.  And he was not certain that he saw all those huddled in the deck house.  Tomorrow he would check the provisions.  They would plan for fourteen days and began rationing. 

   Some clouds off to the south might bring wind.  As the sun set Nhu noted the stars which appeared in its place.  He pointed them out to the man at the tiller.  The moon would rise too late to be of much use.  Throughout the night they would steer toward a succession of setting stars.

----

   Stronger wind reached them a few hours after midnight and the overladen boat began to sail faster.  For some aboard this was a mixed blessing.  They might reach their unknown destination sooner, but the motion was distressing and water began to splash aboard.  People rearranged themselves on the heeling deck.  Although the wind was on the beam and the sea far from rough, the landsmen felt queasy and a few were seasick,

----

   That night and the following day were the happiest of Nhu’s life.  

   Nhu had never had time to be happy.

   Before Duong left, Nhu had been content with Mai and the children and his gujong.  He expected to spend his life living as his father and grandfather lived before him.   But now that this voyage had been forced upon him, he found it exciting and fulfilling.  He was the oldest and most experienced fisherman aboard.  By common consent he was the captain.  He began to see the voyage as destiny.  Perhaps everything that had happened, the loss of Duong and Li, the return of the intolerable Gerip, the insanity of The Great Experiment, had been intended to bring him, all of them, to this; for nothing less could have.  They were meant to sail to a new life in a new land.  And he was meant to lead them.  Perhaps “Great Ancestor Nhu” was not so fanciful after all.

----

   They sighted a ship the next day.  But steaming steadily, indifferently west, it did not sight them.  Some of the people shouted and waved.  Nhu remained outwardly impassive, but inwardly he was pleased when the ship disappeared from view.

   All of those like Kiang, who had been truly rich and had led soft lives, escaped in the first boat.  The monsoon change had come since then, so the first group had undoubtedly sailed east and Nhu would never see them again.  But he would like to.  He would like Kiang to know that finally he had followed his advice and braved the unknown.

   All of those aboard what Nhu now thought of as his boat had always been poor and were accustomed to hardship, even if they were not all accustomed to the sea.  They were used to hunger.  They were used to sleeping on mats spread on hard earth, so mats spread on a hard, if moving deck, were not much different.   What none of them was used to was such complete idleness.  Even during the rains, they had work to do inside, something to repair or build, meals to prepare, clothes to make or mend.  Now, except for the seasick, who clung retching to the side of the deck, there was nothing for most of those aboard to do except enjoy an imposed holiday.  Nhu kept an experienced man near the mast, where he could let go the halyard to lower the sail in an emergency; another at the sheet controlling the single lateen sail; and a third on the tiller.  During the day he let some of the landsmen gain experience steering, but at night either he or one of the other fishermen steered.

   The sun was warm and the wind held.  Nhu altered their course slightly to the north, so that the waves came from just behind the beam, easing the motion for those who were seasick.  Whenever he remembered being happy during those first days of the voyage, he also always wondered what would have happened if he had not made that small, well-intentioned change.

   As the boat sailed steadily westward, people who had never been out of sight of land were fascinated by the endless waves, by the diving sea birds, by occasional shoals of flying fish scattering before their bow like silver spray flung into the air.  They no longer feared capture; they had no idea where they were going; they had no concept of the risks.  They did have blind faith in Nhu.

   However, by sunset some of them were already bored with the sea, whose grandeur is monotonous and repetitive, and with their own inactivity, and asked Nhu if they would reach land the following day.  Nhu admitted that he did not now.  He did not admit that he did not even know if land was to be found everywhere ahead of them.  He thought that it was, that it must be, but he only had Kiang’s word for that; and it was always possible that there were gaps in the land, channels so wide that they might sail between islands without sighting land at all.  Kiang had said they would be picked up by a ship as soon as they got offshore, but they were not.  Kiang had said they would reach land within a week no matter which way they steered, but Kiang had no idea how slowly a laden boat sailed.  Or what could happen in a storm.

   Nhu saw no reason to worry the others as they began the third night at sea.   They still had enough food and water to last another week.

----

   Clouds obliterated the stars, and the wind and waves increased, and more people became seasick.  Nhu steered most of the night, maintaining course by sensing the angle of unseen waves.  A gray dawn proved that they were still sailing away from the rising sun.

   The third full day at sea was one of rising discontent.  Most of the adults were bored, tired, hungry or seasick, dirty, cramped, wet and cold.  They glared at the sea with malice and they bickered with one another.  “Before the day is out,” Mai murmured to Nhu, as he wedged his way down beside her on the bottom of the cockpit to try to sleep, “Someone will say that we should never have left.”  And before the day was out, several people did.  Only the children remained happy.

   Deng and Kew and the two soldiers, Phong and Biem, who were younger than Deng and whose parents had sent them to join the army, sat on the windward side of the deck, sometimes holding onto part of the rigging and dangling their legs over the side of the hull.  Phong and Diem still wore their uniforms, but they had left their rifles in the cabin.

   The boys were all about the same height and Kew only an inch or two shorter.  The waves were now as tall as they were. As they watched the water rushing past the hull, the boat seemed to be moving very fast.  Phong said, “I get dizzy looking down at the water.  I have never gone so fast.”

   “Not even on land?”  asked Deng.  “Have you never ridden in a car or truck in the army?”

   “Have you?”

   “No.  But my mother did once.  She took a taxi in the city.”

   “It is too bad she did not take you with her.”

   “Oh, she was on important business, seeing some official about--.”  Deng almost said ‘my sister,’ but realized in time where that would lead and changed to, “My brother.  He was one of the first to join General Vo.”  When the other boys were suitably impressed, he continued, with the moral superiority of one whose mother has once ridden in a taxi.  “This is nothing.  They,” and he did not need to indicate to the three of them who were all feeling well who ‘they’ were, “are lucky the sea has not been rougher or the wind swung around ahead of us.  It gets much, much worse out here.”

   Kew nudged him with a bare foot and giggled.  “But you have never been out here before.  None of us has.  None even father.”

   Phong and Biem, who were glad to be able to side with her in anything, quickly joined her laughter.  To regain his advantage, Deng almost blurted out his secret.  He wanted to tell someone.  Several times already he had almost told Kew.  But it was not necessary.  He would save it until they were safely ashore.  He looked at Kew.  Her long black hair was blowing in the wind, her face smiling, her fine bare legs bent gracefully.  He loved her.  He loved everyone.  He had a beautiful sister.  A strong father.   A good mother.  They were all sailing to a new land and a great future.  And he had made it happen.  For the present it was enough that he alone knew.  So he said, “You know the sea gets rougher.  I have been in worse with father just off our village.”

   Kew was only teasing him and did not answer.  She too felt the world and life opening before her in unexpected ways.  Life was like one of those exotic flowers she sometimes discovered in the jungle, just beginning to spread its petals, permitting her a glimpse of wondrous beauty that she knew would soon be revealed.  Phong and Biem were nice boys, farmers’ sons, but just like the boys in the fishing village.  In another year or two she would have married someone like them, and soon have children of her own, and grown old like her mother.  Since the Revolution there had been no radios and, of course, no foreign soldiers in the village, but Kew understood why Li had left.  Now she too was leaving, but in a much better way.  She did not know what lay ahead of her.  Perhaps in a new land she could be a dancer.  Perhaps they would have new dances there she could learn.  Perhaps she might even meet and fall in love with the handsome son of a rich man. Whatever, whoever, was ahead, surely it was not the son of a fisherman or farmer.

   They all sat in silence for a while, feeling the boat slide down the faces of waves, then slow until she almost seemed to slide backwards as the waves passed.  White foam hissed from the bow.  They were all thinking, as were all of those aboard who were old enough to understand, about what lay ahead.  Deng and Kew confidently saw opportunity.  Phong and Biem felt only that it would be better than being in the army.

   “When do you think we will get there?”  asked Phong.

   “I do not know,” replied Deng.  “No one does.  We are in the hands of the gods.”  He liked that.  It sounded portentous.

----

   The little boat sailed on.  Wave after wave rolled beneath her.  The wind filled her handmade sail.

   The world around her had long been surveyed and charted.  A few miles south of her, huge ships passed, carrying transmitters with which their captains communicated with corporate headquarters on the far side of the planet and Global Positioning System units which received signals from satellites orbiting 10,000 miles overhead and continuously updated the ships’ positions to within a few yards.  Other machines aboard those ships recorded everything from the depth and temperature of the largely unseen and unfelt oceans through which great engines drove them, to the fuel consumption of those engines.  Their crews seldom ventured on deck, seldom felt the wind on their faces, and almost never got wet except in hot showers.  They were button pushing, meter reading sailors.  And when they were not performing their routine duties, they watched video movies or satellite transmissions of sporting events taking place thousands of miles away.  All the ships under the flag of one of those distant lands had recently been kept in port by a work stoppage until they were fitted with separate sauna baths for the use of the crew in addition to those for officers.

   Yet the villagers continued sailing in what was for them an absolute unknown.  What was odd was that the villagers and the men encapsulated like insects within the monstrous machines plying the shipping route south of them were as similar as their craft were not.  Sustained by the same hopes and the same necessary illusions, all crews voyaged between the same mysteries.  Technology only increased speed and insulation and precise knowledge of superficial data.

----

   They came upon the trawler the next day.

   Nhu was asleep when a voice shouted.  For a moment he could not understand what was happening or even where he was or why all these other people were around him.

   “Something ahead.”

   “What?”

   “Ahead.  Something.  A boat.”  

   The voice was much too loud.  “I am only asleep.  Not deaf.  Where?”

   “Ahead.”

   He was certainly not going to get more sleep until he looked.  He sat up.  Except for the helmsman, the cockpit was empty.  Everyone was forward.  The bow was almost beneath the water.  “What are you doing?  Have you no sense?  Do you want us to sink? Come aft.  At least some of you.”

   Most of the villagers ignored him, but a few did move.  Enough so that he could see the other boat.  The helmsman had already altered course.  They were closing rapidly.  The vessel was not more than a mile or two away.  “Watch out for a net,” Nhu told the helmsman.  “They are fishing.  Steer away for a bit and then come up to her side, rather than approach from directly astern.”

   The other boat was one of the thousands of steel trawlers sixty to ninety feet long, thrown together as quickly and cheaply as possible throughout the East and then sent in fleets to plunder the oceans, until they fall apart and sink, get caught in rough weather, in which they have a known tendency to turn turtle and sink, or are steered negligently or deliberately onto land.  Within those oceans bounded by Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americans, there are few rocks and reefs too small or too remote not to be graced by their rusting skeletons.  Because the trawlers have no individual character and are manned by men who uniformly hate them, they are given only numbers rather than names.  Life aboard is brutal.  The trawlers of several nations are manned by convicted criminals who usually come to regret the decision to serve reduced sentences in what are to all who work aboard them inescapable prisons during the long grim months spent in dangerous labor continuously at sea.

   As the villagers neared the trawler, men working in the stern stopped to watch.  Immediately an old man shouted from the wheelhouse and the men resumed shoveling fish into the hold.  The man, presumably the captain, gestured for the villagers to come alongside.

   Nhu had taken the helm himself and gave the order for the sail to be lowered.  The sailboat glided up to the trawler’s buckled and rusty hull.  Lines were passed from bow and stern and tightened until only a small gap separated the two vessels.  The wind held the sailboat away from the trawler, and as the two craft rose and fell irregularly their hulls touched.

   The trawler captain came down to the deck, but was still above the sailboat.  He said something to those nearest him.  A dozen voices clamored back.  Nhu left the tiller and went forward.

   “We have left our home.  How far away is land?”

   The man answered, but Nhu did not understand him.  “Be quiet.”  Nhu told the other villagers.  “He cannot answer us all.”

   The trawler captain was a small man with amazingly wrinkled  skin, wearing a dirty t-shirt and shorts.  When he spoke again, Nhu still only understood part of what he said.  Most of the words were familiar, but his accent was not.  Gradually, the more the man spoke, the better Nhu could follow him.  “Did you say land is two days ahead?”

   “For you it depends on the wind, doesn’t it?  If it remains like this, yes, you should reach land in two or three days.”

   “Straight ahead?”

   The man laughed unpleasantly.  “You cannot miss it.  Land is all around you.”

   Nhu was excited by this verification of what Kiang had told him.  He asked several other questions of the old man about the land:  whether the shore ahead was high or low, if there were any off lying dangers, where they would find villages or towns, how they would be received.  As the man answered , Nhu noticed that his eyes moved constantly, pausing only when he saw the two boys in uniform and again on one or two of the girls, including Kew.  

   For some reason he made Nhu uncomfortable, and when he stopped speaking, Nhu thanked him and prepared to get underway, though he sensed that most of the villagers were reluctant to leave the comforting proximity of the larger vessel.  The man surprised him by asking if they needed any food or water.  

   Although he could not say why, Nhu did not want to accept anything from the man.  He wanted to escape again into the emptiness of the sea.

   “We have enough to reach land.  Will you cast off our lines?”

   One of the villagers protested.  The captain smiled at Nhu, in whom panic was inexplicably rising. “Are you sure?”

  The tone was mocking. Nhu did not understand what was happening to him, but they had to get away.  He started to untie the stern line himself. 

         “There is no need to do that.”  And the wrinkled old man called over his shoulder.  Two of his crew wordlessly untied the lines and tossed them onto the sailboat.  

   As the wind pushed the boats apart, Nhu ordered the sail raised.  The captain called to them, “Good sailing,” and waved.

   Nhu was confused.  The other man had not said or done anything he should not have.  It was not strange that his eyes should linger on Kew.  She was a pretty girl.  And they had not lingered long.  Nhu was only certain that as the sail filled and was trimmed and the sailboat gathered way and the space between the vessels widened, his fear diminished. 

   For a mile, two miles, nothing happened.  And then, just as the trawler vanished astern and Nhu felt safe, someone called out.  Nhu stared forward.  There was another ship.

----

   All day they sailed through a vast fishing fleet, seldom without at least one trawler in view, and usually with several.  

   They did not go alongside any of these ships or even approach any closely, but the ships were always there.  Once when Nhu was fishing off the village, a school of black, whale like fish, each about ten feet long, swam silently past the gujong.  They were an almost solid mass, a living river.  It took more than an hour for them all to pass, and when they had done so, no one from the village caught a fish for days. Nhu felt now as he had then.  He found it difficult to imagine that there were enough fish in the entire world to keep so many boats busy. Yet they all were active; their crews setting or winching in nets, shoveling fish into holds, off loading catches to one of several larger ships, which Nhu concluded would go in to the canneries while the trawlers remained at sea.

----

   During the middle of the day the sun broke through the clouds, but late in the afternoon the clouds returned.   The wind held and the previousu bickering was forgotten.  The villagers’ spirits were lifted by the verification that land was not far ahead and by the presence of other boats.  To those who were not sailors, the ocean did not seem so dangerous with other men around.  They no longer felt that they were sailing alone into the unknown.  And even though the trawlers varied only in the pattern of the rust stains on their hulls, it was more interesting to look at them than at the monotonous sea.

   As sunset neared, the sailboat was still not clear of the fishing fleet.  Nhu was settling in for a long worrisome night when he became aware of a trawler rapidly overtaking them.  In the dying twilight, the boat rose on the wave crests and disappeared into deep shadowy troughs.  She was taking the waves on her beam and coming toward them as though up a tunnel.  Nhu thought she might be the same boat they had spoken to in the morning, but it was impossible to tell.  The trawler was moving much faster than any they had seen during the day, and she was heading directly for them.  

   Nhu tried to think of a reasonable explanation.  The trawler could not be steaming back to her home port, which would be north and they were steering west.  None of the mother ships was ahead.  Perhaps she was just coming to offer them some fish. Or perhaps there was some important news.  A typhoon warning?  Nhu glanced at the sky and did not think so.  

   The fear he had experienced earlier returned.  The other villagers were watching the approaching ship only with curiosity.  None of them was worried. Nhu started to shout for Phong and Biem to get their rifles, but he stopped to wonder what was wrong with him.  The other boat was almost alongside.  Nhu stared across at the old man standing beside the wheelhouse, exactly as he had that morning, and he knew that it was too late for Phong’s and Biem’s rifles to make any difference.

   Over the noise of the trawler’s clanking engine, Nhu called, “What do you want?”

   The returning voice did not carry.  “Lower...sail...we have...”

   “What?”

   The two boats continued side by side, though more slowly as the trawler deliberately blocked the wind from the sail.  The side of the trawler’s hull extended to the level of the old man’s waist. He was gauging the narrow ribbon of ocean swirling between the two boats.  Nhu suddenly wondered where the rest of the crew was.  The only other man visible was in the wheelhouse.  Nhu grabbed the tiller from the hand of the startled helmsmen and pushed it hard over.  The sailboat swung away from the trawler and her speed increased as she emerged for the larger boat’s wind shadow.

   Some of the villagers looked questioningly at Nhu, not understanding what he was doing.  He did not fully understand himself and kept staring at the old man, who merely watched him impassively.  For a moment Nhu thought that he was going to let them go; but then the old man shrugged his shoulders.  His mouth moved.   Men who had been hidden by bulwarks stood.  Nhu saw that they all had guns.  He watched the old man’s arm point at him, and something struck his chest and lifted him from his feet.

   Nhu was on his back.  Above him a great wing flapped against a bleeding sky.  He did not feel anything.  No, he felt numb, which he decided was itself a feeling.  Distant noises.  Somewhere people were screaming and there were coughing sounds.  He wondered if he should see what was the cause of the screaming.  But there was a terrible shock of pain when he tried to turn his head.  He was relieved.  The screaming did not matter.  He half suspected that he might have screamed himself.  He lay quietly, afraid of more pain.  He concentrated on the wing above him and the pain went away.  But something odd was happening to the wing.   Holes were appearing in it.  And now it was ripping.  Tattered ribbons of wing were snapping in the wind.  He wondered what kind of bird it had been.

   Nhu became aware of horrible smells.  There was another jolt and more pain.  Where was he anyway?  What were these people doing?  Didn’t they know where to go to shit?   He did not like it here.

   A face appeared in the sky.  Some woman.  She looked familiar, but he could not place her.  She said something, but he could not hear her.  Why was she crying?

   The woman’s face disappeared, like a mask snatched away, and was replaced by another, this one an old wrinkled man.  This too seemed familiar.  Perhaps they were one face.  Yes, that was it.  Nhu was pleased with his cleverness.  The old man had just been wearing a woman’s mask.  At least this face did not talk.  He wanted all of the faces to go away and leave him alone.  He wanted to sleep.  He closed his eyes.

----

   A bright light and a loud noise woke him.  He was flying.  There was something about a wing.  Had he become a bird?  He looked to see if he had wings.  Curiously he did not.  How then could he be flying?  He hit something hard.   The pain was unbearable.  He opened his mouth to scream, but something poured in.  He was cold.  He had been flying and now he was sinking.  He could not breathe.  He was tired of this.  What was he:  a flying fish?  Nhu tried to laugh.  He liked that.  Yes, a flying fish.  He had died and been reincarnated as a flying fish.  Well, you would think they would have taught him how to breathe underwater, or did he have to breathe air?  Was that why flying fish flew?  Something was lifting him.  Perhaps he had been caught.  This was becoming quite interesting.  His punishment for being a fisherman was to be reincarnated as a fish.  Now that Nhu understood, he admired the elegance of his punishment.  The gods are witty as well as just.  But still there was this breathing business.  Or is this to be only a very brief reincarnation?  Nhu wondered what he would come back as next.  He did not know if he had been a good flying fish; but surely he could not have done much evil in so short a life.  What evil could a flying fish do anyway?  The next life should definitely be a step upward toward nirvana.

   Air against his face.  Not water.  I must be going to fly again.  I will have to observe how I do it this time.  At least I seem to know how to breathe air.  But I don’t seem to be flying.   He was disappointed, but not excessively.  Now that he was not in pain nothing really mattered.  I am really getting quite close to nirvana, he thought.  Mostly he was just curious to see what would happen next.  Rebirth was quite entertaining.

   His patience was infinite.  Finally something, presumably the gods, pulled him from the water.  No, only part way from the water.  They were clumsy, as it was beginning to seem gods usually are, and they hurt him.  He was going to tell them so, but speaking was too much trouble.  He was lying on something.  His back was wet.  Above him were stars.  He could hear one of the gods moving nearby; but he was unable to turn his head far enough to see him.  He waited for something else to happen.  When nothing did, he went to sleep.

 

17

   Rebirth was agony.

   Nhu opened his eyes and found himself on a piece of wreckage floating on the sea.  The sky was light blue and, he noted as a sailor will, the wind had decreased.  From the angle of the sun it was either mid-morning or mid-afternoon.  His chest was on fire.  Every shallow breath was excruciating.  Yet his mind was clear.  He remembered and understood everything that had happened, except how he came to be here.  He made the mistake of turning his head and passed out from pain. 

   When he regained consciousness he saw Deng sprawled beside him.  A rope tied around Deng’s waist disappeared from Nhu’s field of vision.  He expected the other end was probably tied around his own body, but he could not feel it.  Deng’s head was thrown back and his mouth was open.  Nhu watched his chest for signs of breathing.  The wreckage, which Nhu recognized as part of the fishing boat’s cabin, was rising and falling on low swells; water swirled around Deng’s body.  Nhu gathered his courage and tried to speak.  “Deng?” he croaked.  He was grateful the word did not substantially increase his pain.  “Deng?” he repeated.  The boy’s eyes opened and he sat up.  He looked at Nhu anxiously.  “Did you speak, Father?’

   Deng’s movement bobbled the splintered planks.  Nhu grimaced.  When the pain again became bearable, he said, “Please don’t move unless you have to.”  Words exhausted him.  “Where are the others?”

   Deng started to throw up his hands in despair, but stopped in time.  “Gone.”

   “Where?”

   “Drowned.  Shot.  Blown up.”

   “Mai and Kew? “

   Deng hesitated.  “They were taken, all the women, even the oldest, aboard the trawler, along with whatever they wanted from the cabin, before they blew us up.”

   Nhu recalled the trawler captain’s old eyes lingering on Kew.  Fishermen months continuously at sea.  They were all a part of it.  The foreigners who corrupted Li and killed Duong.  General Vo and his People’s Army who had taken Duong to be killed for their revolution and sent Gerip to drive them from their home.  The trawler captain .  The despicable gods.  They were all one and he hated them all.  “How long ago?”

   Deng was uncertain.  The explosion and the shock of his own sense of being responsible.  He remembered screams during the night the trawler drifted nearby, and splashes as the oldest women were thrown overboard.  “Two nights.  I think this is the third day.”

   “Water?”

   “No.  No food either.”

   Food did not matter.  Nhu was thirsty, not hungry.  Swallowing would probably hurt too much anyway.  He noticed a white crust of salt on Deng’s face and blisters.  For a moment Nhu started to scold Deng for not wearing a hat.  He stopped.  Amazing that such inconsequential things had ever seemed important.  He closed his eyes.

   Deng studied the empty horizon and then leaned back and closed his eyes too. There was nothing else to do.  He felt that he deserved to die.

----

   The wind died away for a few hours, leaving them drifting on a flat sea.  And then the wind filled in from the north and blew the wreckage toward the shipping lane.