A Thousand Tiny Truths Page 15

  She is finally back in her room, having been reassured by Kiyomi over the telephone, a warm sea of mother words. A light left on in the hallway.

  Tomorrow I’ll keep her home. I find I miss her when she leaves the flat. When she’s out I repeatedly check the clock, counting down the hours and minutes; I put down my pen and pace, refill the kettle, water the ficus, cut more paper on the guillotine. I create stacks and stacks of blank rectangles. I gaze at the white page before me and put off the job of starting an assignment I no longer want.

  I am almost certain that Iris has never felt regret—those tiny fish that dart like small shadows beneath the surface of even the bluest water. I hope she stays like that.

  BECAUSE IT WAS ONCE A STATELY HOME with a domestic staff, as I said, the house at Copers Cope still had a complicated bell system with pulleys, wires and chains buried in ceilings and wall cavities. When anyone rang the big brass doorbell, the sound zigzagged up to the former servant quarters in the attic, reverberating along the spine and skin of the house. It didn’t ring often, but the clarity of the sound always surprised me. Ding. Dong. It sounded like glass and sea and church all wrapped up together.

  I was sitting at my desk with a sheet of paper and a horde of pens one Saturday when I heard the bell. A few minutes later there was a knock on the attic door.

  “Who is it?” I asked, tapping my pen on my desk, staring out the window at the branches of a tree.

  The door clicked open.

  I set down my pen and turned around.

  It was Stasha, dressed in a white jacket with puff sleeves and pouchy pockets. She looked like an actor playing the part of a cloud.

  I stood up, instantly fearful. “Is everything all right? Where’s Pippa?”

  “Come on, Marcel,” she said. “Come give me a hug.”

  I walked over and held her lightly, not wanting to spoil her nice jacket. But she pulled me in closer, tighter.

  “Pippa is fine,” she murmured above my head. “She’s taking a bit of a holiday.”

  When she let go, she walked over to the map on my wall. For a few seconds, she hesitated, searching, and finally placed a finger on the “S” that was Vietnam.

  She pulled a letter from one of her pockets.

  “Has Pippa tracked down my mother?” I asked, suddenly hopeful.

  It took her a moment to understand what I meant. “No. But almost as good,” she said with a smile.

  Oliver had finally sent for me. His letter explained that he would wire money to Stasha and that she should buy an airline ticket (London–Tokyo–Saigon); a departure date of late May would be ideal. It also said she was not to worry about my safety. Saigon was more tranquil than London. As for Vietnam more generally, it was just a bit of crackling kindling, a few isolated spots of conflict. Hardly a war.

  What the letter did not say was that Vilma had telephoned Oliver and requested that he make other arrangements for me. Vilma, who had wanted me gone, had answered my prayers.

  “I’m going, just like that?” I asked Stasha.

  “Just like that,” she said. “We have two weeks to get ready.”

  I hadn’t realized how numb I had been until that moment. At last, with a shudder of relief, I began to cry.

  Everything seemed to happen very quickly. I told everyone at school that I was going to join my father. I was brimming with pride. The headmaster agreed to hold my place at Bright House Primary School with the understanding I would be back sometime in the fall. Stasha took me to the doctor, who prepared shots for cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and dengue fever. If anyone had any doubts or misgivings about shipping me halfway across the world to spend my days with a group of alcoholic war correspondents, these remained unspoken.

  At Copers Cope, it was business as usual. Mrs. Bowne worked on crosswords. Mr. Bowne reminisced. Ramon made a cream sauce. Vilma washed her hands until they cracked and bled.

  A week before I left for Vietnam I was sitting on a climbing structure at school with Chris and James. It was a drizzly day and we were all wearing our V-neck jumpers, watching Malcolm throw sticks at another boy’s head in an effort to knock his cap off.

  “Oughtn’t you to study a little before you go?” said Chris, swinging his legs back and forth. “Maybe learn a few phrases. You know, get a pocket guide or something.”

  “No point,” said James. “Those Berlitz books are a complete waste of time. My dad had one for Spanish and it was full of bits like: How many horses died in Cambodia last year? Total bullshit. Anyway, I don’t see why Marcel needs to learn anything. He’ll probably have his head shot off within a day of arriving.”

  “Never mind him,” Chris said to me. “He’s just upset that you’re leaving.”

  “Nah,” said James. “I couldn’t care less. Let him rot.”

  Chris turned to James. “Why do you have to be so morbid? Why can’t you ever say what you’re really feeling?” Then to me, he said, “We’re going to miss you.”

  “Thanks, Chris,” I said, placing my hand on his leg to stop him from falling off the bars and dropping to the ground.

  “Oliver says it’s safe, right?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “He thinks it’s an auspicious time for me to go.”

  “An auspicious time for me to go,” James imitated with a snort. “Cocksucker. Do you have any idea how you sound to the rest of the world?”

  The three of us sat quietly. James pretended he was asleep, snoring.

  “You better bring some Panadol,” Chris offered.

  I knew that Vietnam was a long, curvy country, more than double the size of England and sharing borders with China, Laos and Cambodia. I knew that it was once considered part of something called Indochina but that Indochina was not really a place, neither India nor China, but something the French colonizers considered in-between—a moggy place. I read that after the French were finally kicked out, the country was split into two, with a Communist government in the north led by a skinny, bearded man named Ho Chi Minh and an anti-communist government in the south run by a rich, stocky man named President Diem.

  The reason Oliver was there was the conflict, the long and short of which was that North Vietnam didn’t like the Americans supporting South Vietnam (why have yet another foreign power running things?) and wanted to put the north and south back together into a single country. The United States and the South Vietnamese army didn’t like this idea and were trying to stop the North. That’s about as much as I could understand.

  Beyond that, I knew that Vietnam had a rainy season and swampy lowlands and tended to be very hot and humid. Hanoi was the capital of the north, and Saigon, where I was heading, was the capital of the south. I made sure I knew the capitals.

  Five days before my departure, my passport and visa arrived. Ramon and Stasha arranged a surprise tea party, the highlight of which was a visit from Kiyomi. Dorothy popped in and Chris came too, but Pippa could not attend, which both hurt and relieved me. We sat at the table eating miniature cakes and crustless sandwiches prepared by Ramon, laughing at Kiyomi’s stories of her European adventures, which included a description of seeing a chamber group perform Beethoven while seated on actual chamberpots. We ignored Mr. Bowne, whose withering looks were meant to silence us. (“Spooky,” whispered Kiyomi.) Mrs. Bowne chewed a hazelnut biscuit carefully, making granular crunching sounds with her jaw, brushing the crumbs off her blouse and the table. Kiyomi tugged her skirt to hide the fact that the seat of her woollen tights had fallen to her knees.

  At the end of the afternoon, after Dorothy had left and I had said goodbye to Chris, I led Kiyomi to the now overgrown conservatory, stepping into the thick, earthy heat. We both took a deep breath, inhaling the thick flower smells. In Mr. Bowne’s absence, the plants had grown chaotically from their clay pots. Everywhere I looked there were leggy stalks, tangles of vine. I noticed that two ivy plants had knitted themselves together.

  “Oh, Mish. It’s like a tropical forest,” said Kiyomi, peeling off her tights. “I love
it here.”

  Sunlight filtered through the grimy glass. The one long table at the centre of the space, an item of laboratory furniture procured by Ramon through his chemistry connections, was littered with garden implements and bulbs that resembled black onions.

  While Kiyomi walked around, deadheading a few faded flowers, shuffling an immense fern closer to the window, I opened the hutch and brought out the rabbit, releasing a pungent smell of wet wool and urine. I eased the rabbit onto the table, and fed it a few pieces of wilted lettuce I had brought from the house.

  A few minutes later, I was staring at the conservatory door when Kiyomi said, “Is something wrong, Marcel?”

  “I was just thinking,” I said, pointing at the rabbit, now cradled across her chest, then at the door. “Do you think it would be cruel?” I paused. “I mean, once I’m gone the rabbit won’t have anyone. Do you think it could survive out there?”

  Kiyomi thought for a moment, looking down at the rabbit in her arms. Then she nodded. “I say we let him go.”

  Moments later we were standing outside watching the rabbit hop away across the garden.

  “Goodbye, rabbit,” I said.

  “Bye-bye, cute bunny,” said Kiyomi.

  Knowing our time together was drawing to a close, we made our way to my room in the attic.

  “Shall we lie down, dear husband?” said Kiyomi, closing the door and looping her arm through mine.

  We squished up close on the bed, face to face. Kiyomi gave me a quick kiss on the nose, then on the lips. We didn’t speak. I noticed the faint smell of rabbit on her.

  I was concentrating on her eyelashes when Kiyomi slid her soft hands up inside my shirt and began gently rubbing my skin. Her touch and voice made me feel relaxed and sleepy. She asked if she could have a few of the ink drawings I had done of her. She said she’d pin them to a clothesline and think of me as she watched them blow about in the wind and rain. She said that if I missed England, she would fold the sky up neatly into squares, slip it into an envelope and mail it to me. “I’ll make sure it’s not a grey and damp day.” She told me she had brought me a new felt-tip pen so I would remember: “Never stop drawing, Mish. It’s what you do.”

  I closed my eyes and imagined us married one day. We were twenty, forty, sixty, eighty. As we lay there, I worked up the courage to tell her about Pippa’s last letter. The information had been weighing on me all week.

  “I think my mother fell to pieces at some point. I don’t know what brought it on, but I don’t think she ever recovered.”

  The words were so hard for me to say, and after I said them, I curled up in a ball. Kiyomi used her hands to gently straighten me. Then she hooked her feet around mine to prevent me from re-curling. Her breathing slowed. Mine slowed to match hers. I watched her eyelids. Open. Close.

  “Poor husband,” she whispered finally, protectively. She nudged in closer and kissed me on the mouth again.

  This time I felt a warm shiver pass from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes. A warm rising between my legs. Years later, she would say she remembered that kiss as the moment I became hers and she became mine.

  The next morning, Stasha arrived to take me to the airport.

  Book Two

  CHAPTER 5

  A Thousand Tiny Shooting Stars

  THE PLANE LIFTED ME HIGH above the English Channel through layers of mist and cloud. It roared with deafening purpose. Suddenly, my life had a beautiful arcing trajectory.

  By the time the plane had crossed over France, the cabin was filled with a blue fog of cigarette smoke. I sat in an aisle seat close to the front (following Oliver’s emergency preparedness instructions). I practised tilting my chair forward and back, clicking my seat belt open and closed. I reviewed the cardboard flight instructions on how to don a life-vest and assume crash position in the event of disaster, and adjusted the name tag I had been given to wear because I was underage and travelling alone. Between brief stopovers in Rome and Singapore and Tokyo, I ate two meals, read my favourite Peanuts comic, flipped through an old copy of Time and listened to random light music offerings through a stethoscopic pair of headphones. I thought of Oliver waiting for me.

  In Tokyo, I was led to another plane and my be-bunned British Airways hostess, Rachel, was replaced by a be-bunned All Nippon Airways hostess, Hiroko, who brought me colouring books and wax crayons, not realizing I was too old for that. She gave me extra blankets and a small pillow to rest my head. When it was time for takeoff, she made sure my belt was tightened before taking her own seat at the front of the plane. The airplane bumped and rumbled along the airport strip. Near the front of the cabin, an oxygen mask fell down and swung around until another flight attendant hurried to put it away. Once we reached cruising altitude, I fell asleep.

  I awoke several hours later to the ping of a seat-belt sign and an announcement asking passengers to remain seated. The plane was shuddering. It dipped. It dipped again. It tossed and pitched. I looked around anxiously. My coins were rolling along the aisle. They were the ones Mrs. Bowne had given me and they must have slipped from my trousers pocket. I smiled apologetically at a vexed priest seated behind me.

  The plane was descending through rising sun. While I gripped the armrests, Hiroko came by and crouched down beside me. “Just imagine. In a short time you’ll see your father.” She gave my hand a gentle squeeze: “Are you excited?”

  I nodded and closed my eyes to the plunging sensation in my chest, a tumble of heart. I leaned to my left, felt inside my trouser pocket and discovered one remaining coin. I held it at the centre of my damp palm, made it lucky.

  We touched down at Tan Son Nhat airport a few minutes later. The plane taxied along the potholed runway, slowing as we passed an area of American planes, a heap of sandbags and a row of Vietnamese soldiers in oversized uniforms. Then it came to a stop, the doors opened and humid air came pouring in.

  In unison, a plane-full of seat belts clicked open. Through the window, I saw the horizon with its distant row of swaying trees. In the heat, the signs on the tarmac were floating, the print lifting up and down as if bobbing on an invisible ocean. I gathered what coins I could find scattered around the cabin, and clutched my satchel in my hands as I disembarked.

  Outside, the sun was a sizzling pancake, a burning yellow dot on a blue pan. Everyone was peeling off vests, tossing jackets over their bags and hurrying out of the airplane. I stood by the exit, waiting for Hiroko to escort me to the terminal.

  As I waited at the top of the stair ramp, I noticed a police officer in a white uniform down below and waved at him. He had a nice face with friendly eyes; he waved back. Then I watched him turn his head in the direction of a helicopter, which was just landing on a bare patch in the middle of an adjoining field. The lawn was rippling and the blown grass kept changing direction.

  Something caught the police officer’s attention and, gripping his holster, he began walking quickly towards the field. A boy and a soldier were standing in the middle of the grass. The boy was covering his eyes with his hands as if he were scared or trying to remember something. Behind him, the helicopter was preparing to corkscrew back up into the sky. I could see the blades starting to spin, the boy’s black hair whipping in the air, his shirt ballooning then deflating. I noticed that he was barefoot.

  As the helicopter lifted, the wind sculpted a column of spiralling dust, rising nearly a hundred feet off the ground. From a distance, it looked solid. Then, just as suddenly, the column collapsed. The air cleared and the boy uncovered his eyes, and that’s when I saw that his hands were tied. The police officer, who had reached him by this point, placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder, nodded at the soldier and began roughly directing the boy towards the terminal. I watched, hardly believing, as the officer pushed and slapped and even kicked the boy, who did nothing to resist.

  Hiroko had freshened up, with a red ruffle of scarf, creamy nose and pink lips. She was holding a hand-drawn cardboard sign that said Marcel in black letters. Su
n-dazzled and nervous, I allowed myself to forget the boy I had just seen. As I followed her down the ramp, Hiroko held the sign aloft, even though it was just the two of us at the far end of the long tarmac. I imagined that I was a famous statesman, a member of The Beatles, a cardinal with the Vatican. I pictured crowds of fans, friends, paparazzi waiting to greet us, when, in reality, there was no one.

  The shuttle bus had left without us so we walked for a long time. Hiroko managed quick short steps in her high heels and tight pencil skirt, dodging dips and holes in the ground. The international jets gave way to domestic jets, gave way to camouflaged American warplanes, gave way to cargo aircraft. Trucks sped here and there across our path. A huge aircraft unloaded military trucks at what looked to be a large steel hut.

  It was only as we neared the terminal that I spotted him. He was standing in profile, almost skeletal from a distance.

  Finally he turned. His gaze swept past me, scanning the distance, not seeing immediately. Then he stopped moving. Now he was smiling, straightening himself for me. His long arm was raised, waving.

  We walked towards each other. I watched him undulate like a genie as he moved through a shimmer of heat.

  “You’re here,” he said, when we finally stood face to face. He gave me a quick once-over, took in the striped boatneck shirt Stasha had bought me. “Nice,” he said. “Very nautical. Very French.”

  I reached out a hand, waiting for a handshake. But he surprised me by stepping forward to give me a hug.

  I couldn’t believe how much Oliver had changed. In a good way. He looked years younger than the last time I had seen him, almost boyish. He was clean and lightly tanned. His hair had grown past his ears and was wheat coloured from the sun. It was combed to the side in a way that suggested he had taken extra care and consulted the mirror that morning. My hair, in contrast, was bushy from the humidity.