Whack-a-mole

Concrete dust coats every low-lying leaf, transforming them from shades of green to the same dull greyish colour. I feel sorry for the trees of Hà Nội as I stare out the car window, the urban landscape unfolding before my eyes. The original inhabitants on this ancient land are only just surviving between the gaps in the city’s pavements.

A week out from Tết, trees are central to the celebrations, a temporary reprieve from neglect. Darting in and out of the traffic I see sweet blossom and kumquat trees attached onto motorbikes with expertly tied ropes. It’s a marvel to witness how much can be carried on the back of a motorbike through a delicate balancing act.

In the hotel lobby there had been a tree weighed down with hundreds of decorations, but unlike these ones it’s so large it could fill the back of a small truck. That morning I had taken time to examine the ornate gold calligraphy on the miniature red scrolls adorning the tree, reminiscent of the decorations of my childhood. The only one I understood simply stated ‘chúc mừng năm mới’: good wishes for the new year. The other phrases were arcane greetings beyond my comprehension, reminding me how unschooled I was in my mother tongue.

More than half an hour later, the car is still crawling along the streets of Hà Nội. The Communist soldier had said ‘nửa tiếng’, but it had been well over an hour by now. Perhaps I misunderstood Dzũng over the crackle of the unreliable internet connection, his Northern accent difficult to decipher with my Southern ears.

The taxi driver senses my anxiety and distracts me with the usual small talk I’ve become accustomed to: where are you from, how old are you, do you have children? When I respond Australia, reveal my age and answer in the negative, he nods. ‘Chị dân có học.’ Sister, you’re an educated person. I don’t know what it is that betrays my bookishness, but somehow taxi drivers pick it without fail. As I look at him, I feel an irresistible compulsion to break silences here, and it occurs to me that he’s probably younger, so I ask if he has children. Yes, he confirms. I have two.

At the café in a bustling part of the old quarter, I had ordered cà phê sữa đá, while Hạnh had ordered the opposite, hot and black. A mutual friend had connected us and from the start we spoke in English rather than tiếng Việt because it was easier – and more neutral as well. ‘My father was in the army,’ she said. ‘He was also a well-known poet.’ I felt ignorant, not knowing the name of any soldier-poets, from any side at all. We didn’t otherwise reference the war; it had ended more than 40 years ago, after all, before either of us was even born. But somehow the memory of it still hovered in the air, invisible particles we breathed in and out as we spoke.

I explained to Hạnh that one of my reasons for coming to Hà Nội was to learn more about ‘da cam’. ‘There was a factory near my home that once manufactured Agent Orange. When I found out, I needed to learn more.’ She didn’t seem to think it was at all strange I was on some kind of mission to seek answers about the past, agreeing to help me without hesitation.

A few months earlier I had searched for photos of planes spraying the noxious defoliant, coming across a series of aerial photographs online. But alongside those infamous photos were ghastly images of deformed children, which served to confirm the limits of what could be gleaned from just scrolling on my phone. I needed to witness the consequences for myself.

Our home was a war room, long after the war itself had ended. Far from the former front, our suburban outpost was occupied by just us three, a modest brick home large enough to house multiple generations. Within those four walls I was routinely subjected to Father’s grotesque stories that tested the limits of my imagination. You have no idea how you are being raised in heaven, he’d say. I grew up in a kind of hell.

Father was fond of recounting proverbs as well as prophecies, old world knowledge I was unable to absorb, the uncommon words and complex expressions beyond my grasp. All these years later, there is only one prophecy I can even recall the outline of, though not the specific words: how the Communist victory was ordained because it would force the snakes to slither out from hiding. Father would ask, how else can we whack their heads if we can’t see who they are? Though it wasn’t a question so much as a statement.

I could imagine the insults Father would hurl at me now if he found out who I was seeking out while in Hà Nội. ‘Con phản bội.’ You’re a traitor. He’d likely declare he’d never speak to me again. I’ve heard him say the same for less, let alone my first real act of betrayal.

Maybe some of his former comrades would go further, branding me a Communist whore. Though in Father’s eyes, these hypocritical brothers-in-arms had lost the right to brand anyone once they started revisiting the old country. Only the steadfast ones who never returned, like him, were entitled to the moral high ground. However, most of these men had become diminished figures, expending their abundant spare time at local cafés, playing chess with willing passers-by.

In the early years of resettlement, a group of malcontents were geed up to return to Việt Nam to fight the Communists, in what they no doubt imagined to be a glorious re-match. I heard Father claim more than once that if he didn’t have a wife and kid, he would’ve gone with them. Instead, burdened with unwelcome domestic responsibilities, he devoted himself to raising money to back them instead, enough to fly a small group of men home.

Once they left Australia, however, no one ever heard from those men again.

Hạnh messaged me the contact number for Dzũng: He’s happy to talk to you. I laboriously compose a text message in tiếng Việt, checking the spelling of every word using an online dictionary before pressing send.

My phone rings back straightaway.

“Chào Bác Dzũng.” I greet him with the appropriate honorific, assuming he is older than Father. He tells me where to meet him and as he speaks I have the uneasy feeling I am being conscripted into a cause, even though I was the one who had sought him out. Presumably Dzũng did this all the time now, talk to anyone willing to listen to him relay the true horrors of the war. After all, he was still living with the consequences. But weren’t we all?

Bác Dzũng knew nothing about me but that I am Việt Kiều. America, Australia, France—it was all the same to him. I could see why he probably felt this though, because those places did seem so much blurrier being in the thousand-year-old city of Hà Nội. I felt both my smallness and my recentness; I really could be from anywhere, a not-quite-foreigner visiting a not-quite-foreign land.

I stare out the window of the taxi as we finally leave the choke of the city and feel the freedom of speeding down the asphalt of a brand new highway with hardly any other cars flanking us. It’s as though we’re flying to a destination unknown and the verdant fields and rice paddies are all the more mesmerising after the constant greyness of the city. As I stared out the car window, the bucolic scenes are punctuated by the odd water buffalo and lone workers wearing nón lá, hunched over and knee deep in water.

Father was obsessed with death, relishing the daily tragedies splayed out in the news, especially unsolved crimes. But I didn’t need to watch tv to understand how terrifying the world was. The war regularly re-enacted at home was more violent than anything I ever saw outside.

If I had been a general, Father would say, I would have killed myself when we lost. The ones who didn’t and escaped to America are cowards. Yet whenever he said this, I found myself identifying with the cowards, given how prone I was to plotting my own escape.

The truth is, I stopped believing in his version of reality a long time ago. I was afraid of God, Father and ghosts—in that order—but when I stopped believing in God, my fears dissipated one by one, along with Father’s power. I started to see him in a different light; displaced and embittered, like so many of his generation.

Bitterness has its purpose though. Khổ qua with its bumpy, green skin is eaten to mark the start of every new year, as though it were ancient medicine that can heal the past. When you’re a child, the taste is overpowering, disgusting even. But over time you begin to value the bitterness, especially because it has been prepared by the loving hands of Mother who hollows it out and stuffs it with minced pork, bún tào and shredded nấm mèo to soften its flavour.

Last time I was in Sài Gòn I arrived on 30 April. It was a coincidence to fly in on that day, of all days. Every year, Father would travel down to Canberra on that anniversary to attend the annual protest outside the Vietnamese embassy. It became a ritual to mark the loss of country. Meanwhile, in Sài Gòn it was a celebration—at least, that’s what the official banners would proclaim.

I had dragged myself to the War Remnants Museum even though I knew there would be no pleasure in the experience. When I first set eyes on the building, I was struck by how beautiful it was, how evocative it was of a more glamorous time. But I was nervous about what lay behind the façade. Half-truths, probably; yet truths all the same.

As I walked up the stairs at the entrance, my eyes were drawn to a small, deformed figure, unmistakably a victim of Agent Orange. I glanced over at the table where he crafted trinkets for tourists. His workstation was placed in a spot that was impossible for anyone to miss.

I pointed to a little red plastic flower with green leaves, speaking in English so as to not give myself away. Somehow its gaudiness made it feel Vietnamese and it reminded me of Mother. He handed me the flower without comment after I handed him some notes. As I pinned it on my shirt, I wondered if anything I saw in the museum would be as ghastly as what I had just witnessed.

As we pull up to the front of a large complex, I immediately spot Bác Dzũng. At a glance he reminds me of Father with his bespectacled round face and receding hairline. At this moment, Father was likely tending to his garden in the late-afternoon heat, a rigidly ordered sanctuary. Few plants flourished between the pavement cracks given the way he used weedkiller with abandon. Dzũng, meanwhile, was standing at the edge of a vast concrete courtyard because a chemical defoliant had annihilated entire jungles. I assumed the grass still grew in spite of it all.

Gathering my bags from the car boot, I double-check the driver won’t leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere. I’ll be here, he says. Don’t worry. It was a risk to travel so far out of Hà Nội with no other way of returning. I have no choice but to take him at his word.

Come up to my office, says Bác Dzũng, extending his hand. As we walk slowly up the stairs I ask, where are all the children? He points to the other side of the courtyard. That’s where they all live.

A small tray with a floral-patterned thermos and porcelain teacups rests on the glass-topped coffee table in the middle of his office. I sit down on an unyielding rosewood chair, a fixture in homes and offices in Việt Nam, thinking how in Australia, soft lounges often have an exorbitant number of cushions that are decorative rather than functional. Whereas here, where they might provide comfort, there is a dearth.

Bác Dzũng sits down and pours me a cup, which I accept with both hands. The jasmine tea is hot and fragrant, as though freshly brewed. He stands up again and walks over to his desk to pick up a thick volume. Do you know this book? he asks. It’s by a famous author from the West. It’s all about dioxin. He hands me the heavy tome: it’s a book by L. Ron Hubbard, translated into tiếng Việt. I suppress a laugh, thinking about all the times I’d given free stress tests on George Street a wide berth. No, I haven’t read this book but I’ve heard of the author, I say, handing back the book. You should read it, he says. It’s very good.

I ask if I can record our conversation, not knowing what I’ll do with the recording. But over time I had developed a habit of collating people’s accounts about the war, even though I didn’t know how to best use them. Perhaps the act of collecting was the point in itself.

Bác Dzũng waits for me to begin recording before launching into his well-rehearsed account. I’m from Thái Bình, he begins, stating the bare facts of his life, quickly arriving at the punchline. Many of us who fought against the Americans came from my province. When we returned home we seemed fine… we had no idea we’d been poisoned.

You weren’t just fighting against the Americans, I want to add, but stay silent as he describes his wife’s miscarriages and the birth of their children. He speaks dispassionately about how the first died from cancer at the age of 5, while the others were alive but in a vegetative state. At least they can move around, he says. Unlike some of the other children here. I recall how these unnamed children are living not far from where we are sitting right now, not only ghosts in the story but a presence in the here and now.

Us soldiers were judged as bad people who had brought it on ourselves, says Bác Dzũng. Some women I knew did not have children at all and chose a monastic life, becoming nuns. He speaks in a sombre tone, about how the people around them believed that children born with deformities were a form of karmic retribution, that disabilities were punishments for past sins. But all children are our children. Look at Hồ Chí Minh—he pauses. He didn’t have a wife but the country’s children were his nephews and nieces. I’m the same; I value all children, they’re like my own.

He looks at me and I’m unsure how to respond. ‘Bác có khỏe không?’ I finally ask, asking about his health.

I’m very sick, he says, I have a lot of illnesses: diabetes, high blood pressure, problems with my heart and lungs, a lot of diseases in my body related to the toxins. But I need to keep looking after all of this. He holds a tea cup in his right hand and gestures with his left to the complex he had built and still ran. I would like to retire and rest though.

We sit in silence a few more moments as there is no need to talk further; it is the right place to end. There is more I want to know but we had revisited enough of the horror for one day. As I stood up to thank Bác Dzũng for sharing his story, I wished I could tell him how I finally understood that Father’s prophecy would never be fulfilled.

The war would eventually end because there were no heads left to whack.

Image: flickr