Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 6. Whole No. 511, December 1985

The will of heaven by Gary Alexander[6]

The Communists had swallowed Nguyen Van Thanh’s city, but they were unable to digest it. Ho Chi Minh City remained Saigon and the Saigonese remained Saigonese. Wall posters and shortages had not changed that.

Thanh sold food and drink from a wheeled cart, of which he was immensely proud. It was made of hardwood that he polished until it shone like silk. Mounted above to deflect the rains was a scrap-metal canopy, a canopy without a speck of rust. The Americans, in mocking tones, had called his cart a “Howard Johnson.” Thanh was not insulted — he neither knew nor cared what they meant.

Every day in the pre-dawn, Thanh trudged to the public market for his merchandise — dried fish, bread, sandwich makings, and pastries, whatever was available. Later in the day, he cooled bottles of soda in the lower compartment with chunks of ice bought from men who pedalled their wagons in a furious and hopeless race with the tropical sun.

Times were hard, but they had never been easy. Food and drink were scarce, customers with money even scarcer. The French were gone. The Americans were gone. The Russians, known unaffectionately as Americans without dollars, rarely stopped to buy. And Vietnamese with full pockets were reluctant to display their good fortune, as such behavior left one open to criticism.

Life had improved lately, though. Or so it seemed. Thanh had something new to sell: American cigarettes. Diplomats, journalists, and discreet Party officials would pay 200 dong for a single package. The teacher of Thanh’s grandchildren earned only 600 dong a month.

For the first time in ten years, Thanh could feed his family and still have a little money left over. He believed the cigarettes to be a blessing. That is, until the trouble.

Thanks to his newfound prosperity, Thanh was able to pay a few dong a week to a policeman for the privilege of parking his cart at a good location — a spot half a kilometer from his home but very near Catinet, the avenue of the rich.

The French had named the elegant strip of bars, restaurants, and hotels Rue Catinet. The government controlled by the Americans had renamed it Tu Do, or Freedom Street. Now it was Dong Khoi, the Street of Simultaneous Uprisings. But to Thanh and his fellow Saigonese, Catinet was Catinet, an unimaginable place where an evening of nightclub fun would cost an ordinary laborer three months’ wages.

Thanh worked at the side of a theater. The theater was closed, doors nailed shut, pictures of Sabu on the marquee plastered over with posters of Ho Chi Minh, but Thanh could see Catinet and potential customers could see his cart. It was there that Comrade Vo approached him.

“Comrade Thanh,” Vo said, extending a hand. “I am happy to finally meet you. People in the neighborhood told me where you are. I am happy that you are doing so well.”

Thanh took Vo’s hand, forcing a broad smile. Vo was the new neighborhood political cadre. He was a Northerner, from Hanoi, as foreign to Thanh as the tall, fleshy Caucasians. Vo was young and hard-eyed. He had moved into the home of Thanh’s friend Minh, a government clerk. There had been whispers about Vo, quiet fears spoken, but Thanh had avoided the stories as he avoided the cadre himself.

“I came to talk to you,” Vo went on, “because I’ve wondered why I do not see you at political discussion meetings.”

“I think I am too old to be of use,” Thanh answered nervously.

“You are too old for improvement?” Vo asked. “You have lived your many years under the boot of decadence and you cannot change your thinking through education and self-criticism?”

Thanh lowered his eyes. He was short among the short, stooped from age and the burden of pushing his cart. His teeth were blackened from chewing betal nut. On one cheek was a scar, a gift from a Japanese soldier in the first war Thanh could remember, the result of a rifle butt when he was too slow to obey a command in a language he did not know.

“How is your son?”

Thanh looked up. He began to speak, but maintained his silence. It hurt him to think of Pham, whose crime had been to be inducted into the former government’s Army. After Liberation, he had been sent away for re-education. Other soldiers of Thieu’s Army had been released. Pham had not.

“Your son fought bravely, but wrongly. Re-education cadre report that he is not receptive to new ideas.”

Thanh shrugged. “We receive letters. They say little and I do not understand politics.”

“Perhaps I can write his teachers,” Vo said. “I can inquire about his progress and tell them that if he were graduated, he would be coming home to a family with proper revolutionary attitudes.”

“His mother and I would be grateful,” Thanh said, growing suspicious. In Saigon, one did not offer gifts to a stranger without a reason, without a price.

“Thi, your daughter, concerns me, too,” Vo said.

Thanh felt a chill. Thi had been a typist in the MACV office. She had many American friends, spoke their language, read their books, and wore Western clothing. She had escaped on a helicopter that fled from the roof of the U.S. Embassy. She was now living in a city called San Francisco. Thi had recently married a man with a good job. She had money and it was from her that Thanh received the cigarettes — cartons and cartons of them.

“I do not often hear from her,” Thanh lied.

Vo smiled, looking through him. “Yes, of course. It is sad, not your fault at all, but she is probably ruined, and those with a mean spirit might think you are influenced by her cowardice and counterrevolutionary ideas.”

“I obey the laws,” Thanh said. “I harm no one.”

“I am told that your daughter provides help to you and your family,” Vo said, ignoring his answer. “You are respected by your friends and neighbors. You are old, with much experience in life. They value your wisdom. Your presence at our meetings—”

“I shall be honored to attend,” Thanh said.

“No, no,” Vo said, shaking his head. “You must attend of your own free choice. If you come because you feel you must, nothing would be gained.”

Having misjudged the cadre’s price, Thanh fell silent once more, Uncle Ho’s visage looming heavily above him.

“The road to socialism is a hard and arduous one,” Vo said. “The end of the journey will not be reached until everyone is equal. In Ho Chi Minh City, that has proven a difficult task. The people cling to their decadent ways. However, sacrifice does not mean that all pleasures must be shunned.”

In the word “pleasures” did Thanh first sense a link between him and this Northerner, this alien.

“Our friends meet to learn of socialism after long days of work,” Vo went on. “They are tired and tense. They are skeptical of new teachings and cannot relax.”

Thanh now knew. He reached inside a compartment and took out two packages of cigarettes. He gave them to Vo, saying, “If these are given to the people, perhaps they will be more relaxed, more able to learn.” As Vo accepted the cigarettes, Thanh studied his face for an expression of surprise. There was none.

Thanh lived in a two-room house with his wife, Pham’s wife, and their three children. They had a toilet in the rear, a small cookstove, and a radio and television left behind by Thi. Thanh felt content there. Others endured with much less.

Until today, he had not been bothered by the authorities since a month after Liberation, when soldiers confiscated Thi’s counterrevolutionary belongings — her typewriter, her phonograph and Western records, and some of her books. Despite Thanh’s protests, Lin had hidden Thi’s favorite books — not because of the risk, but because she had the notion that Thi would one day come home.

That evening, Thanh sent his daughter-in-law and grandchildren on an errand and told Lin about Comrade Vo’s visit.

“Minh’s wife complains about Vo,” his wife said. “He pays nothing for his food. Others also talk. Quoc the tailor mended trousers for Vo and Vo did not pay him, either. I am afraid he will take cigarettes from you again and again. If you refuse, he will have you arrested for being against the government.”

“I know,” Thanh said wearily.

“Is there nothing we can do?” she asked. “We will soon be as poor as we were before.”

“There is nothing,” Thanh said. “Nothing for now. There has always been a Vo, there have always been governments that tell us what to do and how to behave — it is the will of Heaven. We can no more change these events than we can change the direction of the wind. It would be foolish to try.”

Thanh’s wife nodded in agreement, but added, “This is a foul-smelling wind.”

Vo did take more cigarettes from Thanh, three times a week. He never demanded them, but somehow Thanh always offered, usually after mention of Pham and Thi. The cadre was indeed clever and it was this cleverness that frustrated Thanh most of all.

Vo frustrated Thanh s neighbors, too, so much that they came to his home one night after dark, sneaking inside like thieves.

Minh, the government clerk, was the first to speak. “Thanh, we have come to you for advice because of your age and wisdom. Vo pays us nothing to live at our home and he eats like two men. When I hint of payment, he tells me that revolutionary joy is sufficient payment and that we all must sacrifice — the same stupid things he says at meetings I am afraid not to attend. He reminds me that I was a clerk for the Thieu regime, too. Then he tells me that my cooperation may earn me a promotion. He threatens me and promises things in a single breath. I am confused.”

Quoc, the tailor, said, “He does that to all of us. I repair his clothes and am now sewing him a new shirt. He knows that before Liberation I altered Army uniforms and sewed insignia on them. He tells me that I have been poisoned by the Thieu government and their American running dogs. When I agree to his demands, he promises to talk to officials about getting my cloth ration increased.”

Phu, the mechanic, was next. “Thanh, when Saigon was filled with cars and motorbikes, I fixed them and sold parts. Vo says I was a prostitute of the bourgeois. My customers have only bicycles now. I gave Vo tires for his because he said they were worn out and he could not use it to get around on important Party business. He lied. His tires are good. I know he sold them. You must stand in lines and pay many dong to buy a tire at a government store. He says he knows somebody who can supply me with all the tires and tubes I need. I have not yet seen them.”

Then Thanh told his story. His friends were sympathetic.

“You have the most to win or to lose,” Quoc said. “Comrade Vo has power over us, but he claims to have power over Pham, too. Is this true? Can he persuade them to release your son from the reeducation camp?”

“How can I know?” Thanh said. “How can I risk defying him?”

Minh said angrily, “Having him in my home is unbearable. We must do something.”

“We cannot,” Thanh told them. “Vo is but a strand of hair on the monster. If we pluck it another will grow in its place, one that might be even coarser.”

“Remember Loc, Vo’s predecessor before he was sent home to Hanoi,” Phu argued. “He preached socialism to us and asked us to spy on our friends. But he did not take bread from our mouths. If Vo is replaced, maybe the new cadre will be a finer hair.”

Finally Thanh said, thinking, staring at Lin: “I see your point. If a river swollen by the monsoons rises, we may, by digging a trench with our bare hands, divert a small trickle that is enough to prevent the river from raging over us.”

The men agreed unanimously.

A certain telepathy exists between a man and woman who have been married over forty years. Without a word, Lin excused herself and left the room. She returned in a moment with a dusty bundle wrapped in paper and string. Her eyes were glassy with tears.

Thanh took it from her and said that he had a possible solution, addressing his suggestions primarily to Minh.

The day after the next, Vo was escorted from Minh’s home by two soldiers. Everybody in the neighborhood observed them as they walked — Vo talkative, gesturing with his hands, the soldiers impassive. If Vo or the soldiers had looked back, all eyes would have quickly averted.

But they did not look back. Thanh saw that one soldier carried Thi’s precious books, the books Minh had secreted in Vo’s belongings before notifying the authorities.

Thanh did not understand the contents of the books — one of which was the life story of an American patriot named Lincoln, another a schoolbook devoted to the study of the U.S. government. There was a Christian Bible, a text of the English language, several volumes of poetry, and a thick series of essays defending the American involvement in Vietnam.

Thanh did understand that they were counterrevolutionary. Maybe soon, he thought, Vo would meet Pham. In his next letter, he would have to ask.