The Rainy Season Read online

  I sip the beer and stare vacantly around the café. There’s a dreadlocked boy at the next table, holding court. I’m reminded of how I once waited here so anxiously for Mick and Marcus to show, how important they seemed to my plans. I couldn’t conceive then of managing alone. But I am managing alone. I’m getting better at it every day.

  I eat my bowl of vegies and rice, pay, and on the way out I pause at Allan’s table and tell him, without sitting down, ‘It was my father. He was here in 1969.’

  It seems I can tell anyone now – I could tell the whole world. Last week I confessed to Hien about my father and it was okay, she didn’t seem to mind at all.

  Allan stiffens. ‘Poor sucker,’ he mutters after a while, then he rattles his paper as if I’m holding him up.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Poor you,’ he says, with a snarl of a smile.

  I sigh. ‘You’re never going to talk to me, are you?’

  He scowls, and I see his hands go into fists. He talks in a low, urgent voice, almost a whisper: ‘I’m not your damned father. You hear me? I’m sorry for your troubles. You’re a nice girl. It’s a tough world – all that. But I can’t help you, you understand? I don’t want to talk about Vietnam. You get that? Look at me: what do you see? A fucking war hero?’

  We stare at each other. The veins are popping out at his temples.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, quietly. My heart is racing. ‘I am. I’m really sorry.’

  He grunts. I walk out.

  I go back to my room, light the kerosene lamp and put a pirated Boney M CD on my little stereo, turn it up loud. I have a single, long swig of vodka then take up my skipping rope and skip non-stop for twenty minutes. Fuuuck! Afterwards, making tea, I notice the note Hien has left on the coffee table. Mum called again. I can’t put her off much longer.

  I sit down with the blue folder and start reading.

  It was Tim who started the dredging again, who swelled the blue folder to bursting; Tim who took things in hand, started making calls. Right from the beginning, when he caught a glimpse of the hungry grief inside of me, he pushed me to seek the truth, to ask the questions: How did the war ‘change’ my father? What was this Operation Hammersley? Why did a man who loved his daughter take off and never come back?

  We went first to the Victorian branch of the Vietnam vets and they put us onto the 8RAR Association. The men there were brusque and kind; they sent us wads of material. We learned that the battalion colour was slate grey and that they called themselves the Grey Eight, pronounced, with much hilarity, grrreeeatt! The majority of 8RAR were nashos, sent to Vietnam at threat of two years in jail if they refused. Most didn’t even know where Vietnam was.

  From the reams of papers we gleaned that the 8RAR pre-embarkation leave for Vietnam began on 15 October 1969, with the final walking-out parade at the month’s end. I would have been just a few months old. We managed to find out that my father was in 1 Platoon, A Company and that he was a section leader and flew over with the advance party instead of going by ship with the rest of the grunts.

  We read that the rubber trees at Nui Dat were fifty feet tall and stood in long straight lines, like corridors, and that during the rainy season the barracks were a sea of red clay mud – it covered everything. We learned of the constant stress of the heat and humidity, the monsoonal rains; the mould and smell of things rotting; the stench of human excrement. They ate powdered potatoes and grey gravy, and suffered from ringworm and chafing, tropical ulcers and venereal disease caught from the hookers in Vung Tau. We learned of the ceaseless terror and boredom of ambushes in the jungle in the pitch black of night, those upstanding young men, with the drip, drip of the water falling from the canopy overhead, the chatter of monkeys, the whir of cicadas; search and destroy missions where the prime directive was to kill, and success was measured by the body count on the daily scoreboard back at the base. And yet, there was no frontline, never any real sense of victory or progress, no area fully under their control. Most of the time they couldn’t pick the enemy from the civilians and so everyone became a threat, all the ‘noggies’.

  Apparently, they all dreamed of being bitten by a scorpion or catching malaria so they’d get an RTA – Return to Australia. Some of them broke their own legs just to get home. ‘We Gotta Get Outta This Place’ by The Animals was the soldiers’ anthem.

  And then came Operation Hammersley in the Long Hai hills, just south of the ’Dat. We were given both the official and unofficial versions. No one liked to go into the Long Hais: they were the site of the NVA’s Minh Dam Secret Zone, an enemy stronghold that was heavily mined and booby-trapped; easy to defend and hard to attack. But on 15 February 1970, 8RAR 9 Platoon, just two months in-country, ambushed an NVA resupply route, setting in motion events that would escalate into a battalion-sized assault, and resulting in the NVA D445 Battalion fleeing their mountain headquarters.

  Hammersley was good on paper, a notable success: 8RAR were the first to infiltrate the area and the op resulted in forty-plus enemy KIA – possibly three times that going by blood trails. But many considered Hammersley a disaster. On 28 February, 1 Platoon from A company were working their way at one hundred metres per hour across a heavily mined site when a splinter team, there to defuse a booby trap, detonated an anti-personnel M-16 mine. Seven diggers were killed and thirteen wounded in the blast. It got worse. The digger guiding in the chopper for dust-off, to pick up all the jagged human pieces, activated yet another mine, killing two more of the platoon. It was the worst single day for Australian mine casualties in the whole bloody war. And my father was in it: it was his platoon.

  Just a few weeks after Operation Hammersley ended, the government decided not to replace 8RAR. According to some, the A company mine incident was the beginning of the end of the Australian involvement in Vietnam. The tide was turning: public opinion was now against the war, the carnage on the TV, the senseless bloodshed.

  We had found my father’s platoon. We had learned of the strife they encountered. But in the end we were not much closer. It was an outline again, with no colours, no smells, no warm skin or soft hair. And the men at 8RAR Association told us that, as far as they knew, my father hadn’t made contact with anyone from the Grey Eight since the war ended. They assured us this was normal.

  You have to talk to your mother, Tim urged in the lead-up to the trip. He must have been saying this as he started his affair with Lisa, as he quietly planned his departure. Who else is going to tell you what you need to know?

  I wasn’t listening. I’d given up talking to Mum years before. I said he didn’t understand. Why couldn’t we just put it all back in its bag?

  But now I get it – at last. Now I am listening and I know he was right.

  TWENTY-THREE

  On Friday it’s raining heavily. Minh comes to class wearing a new Pepsi sun visor under his plastic poncho; he says it keeps his face dry. He got it during a promotion at the zoo and he tells us, beaming, that Pepsi tastes ‘so delicious’. Pity it costs something like ten times the locally made cola.

  We have a chat about soft drink and then get on to advertising – the government is still trying to outlaw English-language billboards and yet none have come down. We discuss the repealing last week of the helmet law, which only lasted a few months. Now it is legal again to ride a motorbike in Saigon without a helmet. Everyone is very pleased. The helmets make your head hot and make it hard to hear.

  Then we get on to the article I’ve brought into class about a massive Taiwanese urban development project just given the green light by the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee. The first stage of the US$242 million project will entail the construction of a new highway connecting Nha Be and Binh Chanh districts. Saigon South, as it is dubbed, will comprise a metropolitan complex of five spanking new towns on six hundred hectares beside the new highway. Its developers boast it is destined to become Saigon’s ‘new city centre’. The new highway will also, neatly,
link Highway 1 with the new Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone, designed to house almost three hundred factories and a permanent workforce of eighty thousand.

  Hoa reads the article aloud to the class. She has a cold and stops a few times to sneeze. Chien offers her a packet of tissues. We work through the difficult vocabulary and then move into a more general conversation. The students feel, overall, that these new developments are positive but there are concerns. Lan raises the danger of a reliance on foreign funding – Vietnam must become economically independent. There is talk about the problem of corruption in the state sector and the need for greater efficiency. If it is too difficult for investors to make money, suggests Kim, from the pea pod, they might go away again. Co Ngoc worries these developments will only benefit a minority while most Vietnamese remain poor and hungry, especially those with the wrong politics or religion. It is the concern I hear most about Vietnam’s Renovation, the concern that is whispered only to those you trust.

  ‘It is very early in Vietnam’s new way,’ Hoa points out. ‘There is many thing to learn, to make better.’

  Yes, others concur, this is true, these are early days.

  But Mr Trung frowns, folding his arms across his chest. ‘No. Not new, not new. Vietnam is very old country. It must keep old knowledge or it will become weak.’

  After a pause, Chien agrees. ‘Yes, old knowledge is very important.’ There is much thoughtful nodding as the students pack up their pens and paper, rain pouring down outside the window making us cosy inside.

  Class is over. I promise my students a grammar test for next week and wish them all a good weekend. I mutter to Minh that Pepsi burns holes in your stomach. He looks alarmed and I just smile mischievously.

  On the way out I see Miss Jenny talking with Oanh. I duck past when her back is turned. I don’t have an answer for her yet.

  Back at the hotel, Hien is painting her nails. I sit down and she paints mine too, a lovely plum red.

  ‘Hien, how is the family?’

  ‘My family very well.’

  ‘Would you please send my regards to Chau?’

  She nods then clears her throat. ‘Next week, I would like to invite Miss Ella come my house for dinner.’

  ‘Really? I would love to!’

  She frowns. ‘My house very small, not good.’

  ‘Hien, I don’t care how big your house is. I would love to come. You know, I have been waiting for an invitation.’

  She smiles, a rare delight. ‘My children practise their English.’

  ‘Of course.’

  We watch TV while our nails dry. Hien pours tea and from her drawer appears a box of candied fruit. It is almost like having a housemate.

  ‘Oh, I forget, your mother call again,’ she says. ‘She call too many time! Why you not call her?’

  I exhale. ‘What did you tell her?’

  She frowns, puzzled. ‘I say you go out.’

  I nod. So at least she knows I am still alive.

  In the evening I go to the Hammock Bar on the Saigon River to meet Suze and Dave and some Dutch journalist called René, who is new in town. Suze is wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Lift the embargo’ – cultural relic in the making. We drink silly fruit cocktails. Suze and Dave are in the middle of a conversation about American politics so I sit quietly and listen, feel the bar rocking gently on the water.

  ‘Suze says you are a teacher.’ René passes me a joint.

  ‘So it seems.’

  He smiles and for an instant I notice he is attractive and it makes me alert, as if he has a neon sign above his head: ‘Way Out’. But just as quickly the feeling passes. While Dave and Suze are telling René all about life in Saigon, I finish my Strawberry Dawn and say goodnight.

  I’m in bed sober at eleven on a Friday night. I whisper a thank you to the nuns. I close my eyes and curl up on my right side, heart free. Man, is this bed comfortable! As I start to drift off, I have an image of Ariel stepping naked from the shower – broad shoulders, wet curls – singing in his French bass. I can almost hear him. I smile. I run my hands sleepily over my body. It feels clean and soft. I imagine Ariel’s hands on me – my breasts, my thighs. I think of how he refused to make me empty promises, and the tender curiosity in his big brown eyes. I imagine making love to him and it doesn’t make me cry.

  Over the weekend I plan lessons, eat cha ca with Hugh and get a pedicure, but it all seems to be happening at a remove and ordinary things appear portentous, as if I am moving in slow motion towards some unavoidable collision. My tooth throbs; I take painkillers and ignore it.

  Sometimes, when I’m in my room, I pick up the photos of my father from the coffee table and study them. He would be forty-eight now – if he is still alive. I think about Hugh’s story of his mother. Do I even want to take my father out of his little drawstring bag? If I take him out there might be no going back. And yet, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life chasing his ghost.

  More than once, I have a dark, secret thought: it may have been easier if he had gone MIA. Maybe one day his remains could have come home to us in a little wooden box. At least then there would be something to mourn.

  On Monday morning Suze and I go to check out the public pool. The entrance foyer is dappled with black mould and a skinny dog is sniffing about but there is a reassuring fog of chlorine. We pay a couple of thousand dong and are directed to a grimy change room. I climb into a new pair of sunflower togs from the Ben Thanh market. Suze dons a red bikini and a ’60s bathing cap with blue bobbles. All we need is Archie and Jughead.

  The twenty-five-metre pool is heated and streaked with more mould. A couple of old men wallow at the shallow end and some children are playing but no one is swimming. I push off into a slow breaststroke then move, after a few laps, into freestyle. After just ten lengths I’m so tired I can barely reach the wall but I keep going until I break through and by the time I’ve passed forty I feel like I could go on forever. I had forgotten this feeling. It gives me hope.

  I find Suze smoking in the change room.

  ‘That was good,’ I say, buzzing all over, legs like jelly.

  She laughs hoarsely. ‘It wasn’t bad.’

  We find a Chinese vegetarian restaurant around the corner and order rice and a ‘casserole of eight treasures’. We drink tea instead of beer. It is nice to be in a new place, a new street. A young girl with a harelip is sitting at the next table shaping carrots into roses with a paring knife.

  ‘What’s happening with Hoang?’

  Suze grins. ‘It’s truly over and I’ve got to tell you, honey, I feel free as a bird. I’m working on a piece for a paper back home about the role of returned American Vietnamese, Viet Kieu, in rebuilding the local economy. And I’m planning a trip to Cambodia with my sister. I feel like I’m waking up, you know, and remembering why I came here in the first place.’

  The casserole comes and it is full of delicious unidentifiable objects. We eat and chat about her piece. I suggest she might want to interview Hugh, though I’m not sure he’d be willing.

  I tell her I can’t decide whether to stay in Saigon another six months or go back home. I think about it and just draw a big blank.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ she asks. ‘Stay and enjoy it for a while. You’re turning things around. You love your students. We could go swimming twice a week!’

  I shrug. Why can’t I make up my mind? What’s it going to take? A shiver goes through me on this hot, damp day, like little snowmen abseiling down my spine. ‘Hey, could I use your phone tomorrow to call home?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Mum’s been phoning. I have to call her back. I don’t want to do it from the post office with the ladies listening in.’ I can feel the grimace on my face. ‘I want to ask her a few things about my dad.’

  She nods slowly then squeezes my hand. ‘I’ll leave the key under the mat. Help yourself to everything. And remember I’ll be here to pick up the pieces.’

  I wake early on Wandering Souls Day – Trung Nguyen. Afte
r Tet, it’s the second biggest festival of the year. Co Ngoc explained that people visit the pagoda today to make offerings of food and incense to the lost and hungry souls who wander the spirit world without descendants to pray for them, to call them home. I think of all the MIAs on both sides of the war whose spirits still roam this ravaged land. I make a silent prayer to them then get up and shower and dress, take painkillers for my tooth, and head downstairs.

  Hien is reading the paper. I sit down opposite her. ‘I have to go and call my mother,’ I say. ‘I need to speak to her.’

  She nods without interest.

  I look around the foyer. Everything seems to carry an air of inevitability, like I’m seeing it all for the last time – the shimmer of the pond under the stairs, Hien’s blue polyester blouse with lace trim, the marble ashtray on the desk, the transistor radio.

  Hien pours tea for us both, offers me a banana, then goes on with her paperwork, ignoring me. It is comforting to think that when I get back here again, after the call, Hien will be just the same.

  I drink my tea then stand up and stretch, yawn, as if it were any other day, but my gut is churning. I unlock my bike, say goodbye and start out towards Suze’s apartment. The traffic is dense but seamless; it is a quick, easy ride.

  Suze has left the key under the mat as per our arrangement, and, inside by the phone, is a note: Hey, honey, remember, sticks and stones and all that. You’re a tough lady. Good luck.

  I light a cigarette and pace the room, pick things up and put them down: a framed photo of Dave and his sister, a small antique bronze tiger. I still have this lingering sense that if I could just grab hold of something – someone – solid this could all be avoided. But I guess that hasn’t worked. I wander into Suze’s bedroom and then into Dave’s. I even go into the bathroom and look at the shampoo and face creams. I run out of things to examine. I am humming Hawaii Five-O. Da da dada daa daa, da da dada daa …