The Eaves of Heaven Read Free Page A

originally started as a casino, but it grew to provide every service, material good, and entertainment imaginable. It grew until it became true to its name—The Great World. Beneath the great span of its interlacing roofs were jewelers, gold dealers, pawnshops, clothing stores, exotic-medicine purveyors, herbalists, massage parlors, theater stages, private rooms for hourly rental, opium lounges, teahouses with hostesses, nice restaurants, little noodle stands, food stalls, candy shops, bakeries, and an amusement park with, among other rides, two merry-go-round carousels and our favorite, the bumper-car arena. It even had its own climate, controlled by fans and vents.
    Allowance in hands, we followed other refugees into the Great World. We lost ourselves in the crowd of gamblers, drinkers, opium users, whores, pimps, crooks, businessmen, and entertainers. While my brothers and I stayed close to the amusement park area, wasting most of our money on bumper cars, my cousin Tan ran off alone to the gambling tables.
    Even Father could not resist the draw of the Great World. Within a week, he abandoned his job search and surrendered himself to the familiar comfort of the pipe. Day after day, he woke up, got dressed as though he were going to an interview, and strolled across the street directly to the opium lounge inside the Great World.
    It had begun—his last, irrecoverable descent. At night, phantom ants crawled up his legs and kept him awake. We children took turns kneeling at his bedside to massage his limbs, kneading the atrophied flesh to ease his ruined nerves. Rigorous at first, then more softly in tiny, gradual increments. Slowly, gently. Slowly, gently. The addict’s lullaby. It was like putting a child to sleep.

THE NORTH
1942
    2. F ATHER
    W hen I was seven, Father heard from the nanny that, unlike my cousins, I couldn’t swim. This was an acute sin for a child of the Red River Delta; after all, the entire province was practically submerged, the countryside riddled with rivers and creeks. The land was flat and low. People dug ponds for the earth needed to build the foundations of their homes. Our ancestral estate stood on dirt from four gigantic ponds, the largest of which was the size of a small lake.
    Father took me out to the carp pond one afternoon. It was a hot day. My brothers and cousins followed uninvited. They were in a parade mood, giggling and skipping along behind me. A bundle of towels in hands, Chau, the buffalo boy whose main duty was taking care of the livestock, brought up the rear. We marched down the brick-paved path, hugging the shade of the longan trees, overhead birds rioting in the branches.
    Father and I had just come back from one of our trips to Hanoi. My parents had a villa in the city where they often holidayed during the slow period between the planting and the harvest seasons. Father had brought me into Hanoi to enroll me in a prestigious French school. His plan to educate me in an urban setting was canceled when we, by chance, saw a Japanese sergeant draw his sword and chop off a boy’s hand for stealing rice cakes at the local market. In Father’s eyes, it was a clear sign of the cruelty to come, and he promptly took me back to Tong Xuyen. I was re-enrolled in our village’s one-room school and was taught by my father’s second cousin, Uncle Uc. I was ecstatic because I knew Father never stayed long in the countryside.
    A city man, Father was never comfortable at the estate, though he did try his best to fit the part of a country nobleman. Here at the family home, he preferred the traditional gown, the dignified attire of the educated. In the humid weather, it also was far more comfortable than the Western suits that filled his wardrobe in the city. Father struck a handsome figure in either traditional or Western dress. Our relatives said he got his oval face, height, and fair skin from his mother, just as his older brother Thuan took after their father with his square jaw,