Only the Heart Read Free Page A

a little scared.
    But I can’t be certain. Sometimes, we construct our memories from what we learn later.
    My father tells me that he came into our bedroom that night and held his three sons for a long time. I should remember that. It isn’t something he did very often. Perhaps he was saying goodbye. Just in case.
    As it was, it took them a few months to track him down. Most of the paperwork had been shredded or burnt in the capital, and the interrogations and the betrayals were a slow process.
    He’d had the chance to prepare himself for the day they knocked on his door.
    For the inevitable.
    He was ready, and it was no one’s fault. Least of all mine.
    But that’s not the way it seems to a five-year-old when he watches his father being marched out of the house under guard.
    While the whole street looks on in silence.
    As they pushed him into the jeep, I remember he looked at me. The family were all standing on the street, outside the door of my grandfather’s shop, unable to find the words to say, or the movements that might make the two officials change their minds. But my father didn’t look at them. Not right away. He looked at me. And he smiled.
    I think he must have known what I was feeling, because he spoke, just loudly enough for me to hear.
    â€œ Không sao ààu con ,” he said. Don’t worry, son …
    There was no time for him to say anything else. The door slammed closed, and the older of the two officials put the jeep in gear. As it began to roll, I saw my father look back at my mother.
    She was crying, but he just shook his head and smiled gently, as if it was all a big mistake, and he would be back for the evening meal.
    It was six months before we saw him again.
    *
    27 October 1976
Long Xuyen Re-education Camp
    MINH
    Through the wire of the fence the view is depressing. Not because the scenery is bleak, but precisely because it is not.
    Barely half a kilometre away, across a stretch of cleared land, the river curves gently around a wooded outcrop, and across the water the rice fields stretch into the distance, rising in tiers; a patchwork, covering the land, as far as the eye can follow.
    Somehow, a bleak, empty landscape would be easier to take.
    As he stands with his fingers entwined in the links of the inner fence, the peace of the scene fills him with a longing that drains the power from his anger and leaves him passionless.
    â€œMinh?” Thanh’s voice. Standing a few metres away, his friend speaks his name.
    He turns slowly — because he recognises the voice, and because without the need for words its tone conveys the news that he has dreaded.
    He nods his understanding sadly, and for a moment they stare at each other in silence.
    â€œDid he wake at all?”
    A slight shake of the head. “He was peaceful. He slipped away in his sleep, like … smoke on the breeze.”
    Thanh, the poet. Thanh, who fills the dust of the exercise yard with images of peace and beauty, for the prisoners — and the guards — to read. Or trample under foot. Even Thanh struggles for a satisfying image to mark such a passing, such a useless death.
    â€œHe should never have been sent here. He was an old man. He could have done them no harm. They could have let him be …”
    Suddenly he realises that he has been griping the wire of the fence so hard that his fingers are bleeding. The blood is warm and sticky on the skin of his palm.
    Thanh is shaking his head.
    â€œNo. They couldn’t. He was too high up. Too responsible — even if he never actually pulled a trigger or dropped a bomb. He knew that, but he stayed anyway. Maybe he felt responsible … Did you know, the Americans offered him a seat on the last plane out? He could have taken it, but I think he was just too tired.”
    Minh shakes his head. The damaged skin of his fingers is beginning to sting. He licks the blood absently and stares at his friend.
    â€œWhat harm