Flashback _ 51 Years Later
For Nguyễn Trùng Khánh
And then came what had been expected. The day of returning to Vietnam had definitely arrived. A few weeks ago several people had advised that I stay on. They said that if I wanted they would even help me escape to Canada. I had wavered ambivalently between two alternatives. On the one hand stood the appeal of a new way of life, free and comfortable; on the other, lay the deep longing for my grey-haired mother, for the breeze rustling through a bamboo grove, and for the delicately pungent smell of a bowl of pho, beef noodle soup – an indescribable, tender emotion. And above all, I was reminded of an utterance from the short dialogue between Doctor Rieux and Rambert in Camus' work The Plague: "There is no shame in preferring happiness, but there may be shame in choosing happiness for oneself alone.”
Ton Kan, The First-Lieutenant Marine M.D., an autobiography (Journal of Vietnamese Physicians in Canada, 1993), pp. 94-9
Seen against a misty background imprinted with the distant Golden Gate Bridge, tourist-packed and passengers spilling over its sides, the cable car announced itself with clinking sounds as it descended a steep hill. That sight seemed to Phan the hallmark of San Francisco, a sight which had not changed from its image on the postcard sent many years earlier from this refined and beautiful city. Fifteen years after mailing that postcard, Phan could not believe he had returned to this scenery. It all felt unreal to him, the unreality having its origins in evoked images of a journey taken during that time long past.
It was a journey through fifteen states during a short period, with a view to seeing first-hand the vastness of the new world with its opportunities for immigrants. Every place was an attraction, presenting Phan with a legitimate excuse not to go back to his country. Traveling with Phan was Chinh. Phan and Chinh had known each other from the time in Saigon they had both lodged together, as medical students, in the college dormitory on Minh Mang Street. Chinh was an excellent student, but unfortunately, by a weird twist of fate, he had passed his baccalaureate to graduate from high school with honors only, not with the high honors required of students seeking to study abroad, and this shattered his dream of pursuing higher education in a Western country. Subsequently, Chinh chose Medical School where he proved to be an excellent intern, and was recruited into the teaching staff and sent to America for specialized training.
Since before leaving Vietnam, and without soul searching, Chinh had entertained the thought of staying in the U.S.A. following his training. On this journey across America, while visiting Walter Reed Army Medical Center during the cherry blossom season in Washington, D.C., Phan met Chinh again. They subsequently became travel companions, as Chinh happened to be flying to many states for interviews for admission to internships at various hospitals. Their talk during the trip was centered largely on the issue of staying or going home. Chinh tried to persuade Phan to stay, citing countless "becauses" – because he did not accept the other side's communism, while at the same time he could not tolerate the corruption on this side; because sooner or later the U.S. would abandon South Vietnam. Wisely, and with determination, Chinh was making full use of his intelligence and available opportunities to build a comfortable life for himself in exile. Without judgment, Phan remained unruffled by the choice made by his friend. He even found good justification for Chinh's decision: given his intelligence and the range of opportunities in this foreign land, it would be no surprise if Chinh became an outstanding professor of medicine. Chinh's circumstances, as well as those of many other members among the teaching staff of Saigon University Medical School who had been sent abroad for further training, and who had decided not to return, fell within the phenomenon designated "brain drain", which was very common amongst countries all over the world. People often mentioned a frail Mother Teresa who sacrificed herself to the service of poor patients in India, but no one paid much attention to the tens of thousands of Indian doctors, quite a few superlative members among them, who continued to pour into America. Chinh was, after all, only a tiny drop added to the volume of water in a glass that apparently would never be filled.
Phan was then thirty. Earlier, in Vietnam, he had not left medical school for long, when, after a couple of years of hardship experienced as an Army doctor alongside combat soldiers, he found he had permanently departed from the mindset associated with a student's life without knowing exactly when this had occurred. Later, this impression was sharpened on weekend visits from San Francisco to the UC Berkeley campus, a higher educational establishment both contemporary and ancient in some way, where he attempted to blend into its ambience, only to realize more clearly than ever that he was but an outsider. There was a relatively large number of Vietnamese students living on campus. Most of them were children of influential people in South Vietnam, who ironically showed themselves to be more anti-war than American students. Not having set foot in a rural area all their lives, they nonetheless accommodated themselves to donning the VC uniform of black pajama tops when appearing on stage to sing the song "Hail to Quang Binh, Our Homeland" and to zealously raise funds in support of the NLF.
However, it was not to witness such a performance that drew Phan to Berkeley one particular evening. He had his own personal reason in the form of Phuong Nghi, the sister of one of his colleagues. Intelligent, innocent, young and of a fragile beauty, she was possibly no more than a manifest image of his dreams about marriage, a lifetime commitment. How could he have the heart to take that fragility back to Vietnam to share with him a stormy life full of danger and hardship? They met and, until late into the night, Phan and Phuong Nghi walked through small streets frequented only by students. When they parted, neither of them uttered a word of farewell, but Phan had the strong impression that it would be the last time they would see each other.
Beautiful sunshine embraced the morning. The Golden Gate Bridge was saturated with a glorious hue of rose. Above Letterman Hospital, however, where Phan had been posted as a military doctor for further training, the misty sky seemed to remain obscured by fog. Standing on the deck of a tour boat, basking in warm sunlight, Phan still felt the chill brought by gusts of wind blowing deep into the bay. Without further thought and with a determined gesture, Phan threw his camera and rolls of film into the water where they sank to the bottom of the bay. This act was so abrupt he thought it went unnoticed.
Nonetheless, an elderly American woman, her eyes bright and cheerful, approached him. "It seems you accidentally dropped your camera into the sea," she said.
Instead of an uneasy answer, Phan offered a polite salutation and remarked, "Dear lady, the wind is so strong now."
One beautiful hand holding the collar together, the other sweeping back a lock of blond hair glittering with sunlight, the woman agreed, "That's true. Why, my feather hat was blown away just now down to the surface of the water!"
She proceeded with friendly conversation. "Are you from Vietnam? I think you're Vietnamese, and truly I'd like to ask you about the situation over there. Following the nightly news on CBS, I've grown confused. All I see everyday are scenes of American soldiers setting fire to Vietnamese peasants' houses. Then came the incident of the massacre at My Lai. Up until now I still don't understand why my son has to be there…"
Since Phan showed no enthusiasm for the discussion, the woman, still with a gentle smile, walked away toward other travelers gathering on the prow of the boat. Phan imagined that in her old age, traveling helped her escape from the emptiness of her large house devoid of her son's presence. Her situation was but a tiny example of how remarkable it was that the little country named Vietnam, more than half a world away, had begun to imprint deep emotional marks on this new young continent. Phan recalled the day he had visited Stanford University in Palo Alto. Like other big campuses across America, this university was embroiled in Sit-ins and Teach-ins as active expressions of the movement against the Vietnam War. Flag burning, draft card burning, and draft dodging by escape to other countries, culminating in a case of self-immolation in Washington, D.C.: all this highlighted the dark reality that American society was experiencing extreme division at the height of the war, a war that had widened to encompass all of Indochina. Subsequent to monk Thich Quang Duc's famous act of setting himself on fire in the streets of Saigon as a powerful gesture against suppression of Buddhism in the early '60s, self-immolation was no longer a non-violent way of protest confined to Buddhists; rather, it had also become a protest method adopted by American students. Phan had been fully advised to neither wear a uniform nor display military insignia if he hoped to avoid being attacked or having his vehicle burned. On the same day he had visited Stanford, a group of American students placed themselves across railroad tracks to prevent movement of trains carrying weaponry and ammunition to the Port of Oakland for shipment to Vietnam. Farewell, San Francisco, he decided. Untroubled, light-hearted, free of happy and sad attachments, though facing an unknown future, he was determined to go back to his old mother and his fellows in arms, back to fields rich with fragrant rice stalks. It was not San Francisco but Saigon where his heart had been left. He wished his homeland could have the life of plenty the American people enjoyed, a materially prosperous life he believed his own people could build by their own labor and inherent industriousness.
For years after returning to Vietnam from San Francisco, Phan resumed the life of an average military physician. Though the income of an army officer did not provide him with the comfortable life he would wish to have, all the while constantly devoting much time and energy to the care of soldiers and their families, he nonetheless felt at peace. By nature not one who lived with ideas, neither was Phan heavily committed to the self-sacrificial morality of Catholic nuns – though he was no less sensitive, guided often by intuition. Having to work in circumstances of inadequacy, short of the necessary medical facilities, as was typical of the general condition of the whole country, Phan still tried to find the best possible solution for any medical case, imagining each patient as a member of his own beloved family. Having not much ambition, particularly with regard to politics – which he defined as the very embodiment of opportunism and falsehood – Phan found himself useful through ordinary daily efforts in healing the sick, and that was happiness to him. Compared to this humble existence, the days he had spent in America appeared to belong to a remote alien world.
Then came the critical last few days of April, 1975. During this period, Phan was on leave for one day in Saigon where he found people extremely agitated with the inflammatory question of leaving the country before the communists overran their territory, or staying behind. This was the second time he came to the same decision, one that changed the direction of his life. The discarded camera and rolls of film lying somewhere at the bottom of San Francisco bay haunted like a vow which prevented him from entertaining the thought of going back to that city. In retrospect, could he call the act of tossing the camera a fateful mistake? Around him, when Saigon, the last stronghold, showed no hope of standing firm, people began to depart in confusion, running for this or that sea shore, rushing to ports and airports in search of escape from the imminent disaster all knew awaited the losers. Two days before Phan's arrival in Saigon, the VC guerrillas had openly started to check all traffic moving on the roads leading to Vung Tau and Rach Gia, and most warships and naval forces had left the Port of Saigon in combat formation, heavily bombarding the river banks on their way to the sea. Only Tan Son Nhat airport, though being shelled off and on, was still open to limited outgoing traffic, even as the last civil aircraft had had to turn back to Hongkong. In spite of the fact that the number of military aircraft progressively decreased, the quantity of people pouring into the airport rose steadily. The heavy-handed blocking off by military police did not stem the tide. Now, two days later, only a vehicle guided by an official agent holding a manifest for a plane was allowed to go through the check point at the entrance to the flight terminal. This was a golden opportunity for middle-level workers at the American embassy – mostly through their Vietnamese wives' mediation – to freely abuse their authority for personal gain: without having to show evidence of close connection with the American government or the American embassy, all one needed was to pay dollars or gold to have one's name added to the list of passengers for a given available airplane.
More than once, the American press had labeled this country a culture of corruption. Such a culture had quickly taught the Americans numerous forms of depraved behavior like smuggling goods from Tan Son Nhat airbase to the rubbish dumps where arranged sales often transpired, the goods being of all kinds, including weapons and items intended for Post Exchanges. And now, as the war was drawing to an end, for the last departing airplanes, Americans coolly set prices for tickets. Those tickets might not be for a journey to paradise, but at least they promised to liberate from fear of imprisonment or even death.
As arranged, Phan, his wife and little daughter, together with several other families, each adult carrying a light travel bag, packed tightly into a van that had been waiting for them in the grounds behind a hotel near the center of the city. By getting into the vehicle, each person took the last step of a fair deal. By some way unknown to him, perhaps through her parents' family, Phan's wife had managed to have their three names entered on a flight manifest. Understanding only too well by sheer female intuition Phan's state of mind, his wife skillfully found a way to deposit the little girl on his lap. In that way, she was perhaps assured of his company at least until they were inside the airport. Even though there were children among them, the atmosphere in the van was dead quiet and depressing. Silently, the vehicle ran fast through agitated streets. A small crowd, huddled together on a sidewalk, pointed and followed with their eyes the passing van. Phan was sure they knew it was heading toward the airport. When they were near the Joint General Staff compound, he noted that a few soldiers were still standing guard – standing guard on an empty headquarters. Without having to set foot outside the gate, the remaining generals had left the compound by the last available helicopters. The little daughter wet her pants, the warm flow of urine permeating the trousers covering his thigh. Phan attempted to hand the girl back to his wife. As if by presentiment, the child fiercely clung to her father, and burst out crying when she was finally transferred into her mother's arms. When the van stopped at the checkpoint, Phan opened the door and stepped out, prompted by a quick decision that had been formulated unawares some time before.
"I'll see you two later," he said to his wife, avoiding her eyes, eyes that would undoubtedly soften his firm decision on such a separation at this critical juncture.
Just before noon on April 30th, over national radio, General Big Minh appealed to the ARVN to lay down their weapons. Confusion, bewilderment, then stupefied pain pierced the hearts of many. The order to surrender was "a mercy shot” for those units determined to fight to the death with their remaining last bullets.
Along Cong Ly street, from the direction of Tan Son Nhat airport, Warrant Officer Ngo and his squad walked in single file and complete silence toward Independence Palace. For many days, his unit and other elements of several paratroop battalions had day and night resolutely held the area extending from Ba Queo four-way intersection to Phi Long gate – thus presenting a solid obstruction of access to Saigon by maintaining a protective belt around the airport. The dark-skinned sergeant had a thin bony face. His sparkling eyes wore a sad expression. A revolver hugging his hip and a small stick in his hand, he led a squad of twelve equally dark-skinned soldiers in frayed and faded camouflage fatigues covered with dust. Unaffected by the terrified faces of people in a city in turmoil, the soldiers marched on evenly, following in the footsteps of their leader, rucksacks over their shoulders with the muzzles of their rifles pointing downward. They must have been bound to something very intimate and sacred, which helped them triumph over all fear in the relentless tension between life and death. Theirs was a peculiar parade which boasted no drum, no gong, no flag. Entirely absent were important generals arrayed on a review stand, resplendent in combat uniforms, medals covering chests. Theirs was a parade with only a Non-commissioned Officer Ngo, followed by his nameless fellow fighters, those who, with the courage displayed while calmly approaching a zone of fire, advanced under strict military discipline, marched past scattered big and small groups of people huddling together on the streets of a dying Saigon.
Many years had passed since that dark day, during which time the vicissitudes of life were too many to count and too tragic to forget. While Phan was in a communist re-education prison camp, the remembered image that most came to mind was never a great military parade in full colors and uproarious sounds on Armed Forces Day of pre-75 South Vietnam. Instead, the ingrained memory enfolded the quiet marching footsteps of an unknown squad during the last hours of the city of Saigon, before it lost its name. No one knew the whereabouts of that warrant officer – in what re-education camp, alive or dead; nor was known the fate of those courageous common soldiers who upheld military discipline until the last moment. Is there a few lines in some unfinished military history dedicated to the extraordinary march of that lowly group of military personnel, which embodied the magnanimity of the armed forces in the last hours before the whole army disintegrated?
Coming to this land of opportunities the second time, fifteen years after his first experience of it, Phan, now in his middle forties with salt-and-pepper hair, was no longer young. A physician, at the moment turned a recipient of care, he stood amongst a mixed crowd of refugees from which he had thought he would have been able to separate himself by now. He and the group were led by several social workers from the airplane to a reception station. The station was an empty and immense hangar right within the airport compound, decorated singly with a huge flag of bright stars and stripes in three colors: red, blue and white. Subsequently, like everybody else, Phan waited for his name to be called before he joined the line to have his papers processed, to receive a sweater of a uniform brown color, and to be guided through the first step of assimilation into American society. The social worker in charge of guidance was very lively and articulate, talking non-stop in a Northern Vietnamese accent which could not entirely mask his original Hue tone.
With humor, the man concluded his first civic lesson, "Please remember that you all are no longer in Vietnam. You now live in the United States where you can enjoy complete freedom, including the freedom to criticize the President or the Congress. But," he paused a second and produced a gratified smile, as if to congratulate himself on his own wittiness, "you have no freedom to evade income tax. In America, tax evasion will land you in jail because it's considered one of the most serious offenses."
Phan wondered why the issue of income tax evasion should have been so emphatically drawn to the attention of the newly-arrived refugees whose immediate income would be no more than the amount received from welfare checks. Around him, Chinese-Vietnamese men from Cho Lon, or Chinatown in the Saigon municipality, seemed all ears and quite serious in receiving this first civic lesson.
Shaking his head lightly, Phan thought of the image of a knife above a heart, the Chinese character representing the word for resignation, the value of which he had learned during those long days, useless and wasteful days, in the re-education camp. At this very moment, there was no room for a feeling of weariness and sadness, not even for an aftertaste of bitterness. As though from force of habit, Phan smiled to himself without reason. More than ever before, he fully appreciated the position of one who has not yet obtained an "identity card” to enter a new life.
The gap of fifteen years all of a sudden was obliterated. Was it not by some predestined bond that Phan found himself again in San Francisco, as if he had never said farewell to this city?
NGÔ THẾ VINH
