Eurasian

Goodbye my Golden Triangle

In the beginning

Two weeks had passed since the burn. The dreaded flying dragons had not been back. The smell lingered on, wafting by now and then. The smell was like a prowling beast, waiting for the perfect moment to assault my nostrils, each time I inhaled; it attacked.

‘Napalm!’ had poisoned every living thing. The lovely poppies garden lost their vibrant vivacity. The Golden Triangle had lost its sheen.

Today was cooler. A dry wind blowing down from China helped to dispel the smell and cleared away our anxiety. I breathed in the air but the aroma of death still hung around. Slightly less pungent but still very much present.

Our village in Northern Laos was in the middle of the Golden Triangle, but I never saw gold anywhere except the many fields of red, purple and pale pink flowers; now sadly brown and dying.

Night fell, mother closed the front door and the shutters and it was dark inside the house. The frogs loved a night like this. With the new pale moon rising. Their noisy- croaks soared higher and higher.

I laid my baby sister Marie Claude down and threw a padded cotton cover over her. She reached out and scratched my face and then curled up in the corner, as far away from me as possible.

Mother picked the knot out of the wick and the room immediately became brighter. Her black almond shaped eyes danced amid the flickering light of the lamp. Her hair cascaded down like black oil, thick and slick.

“Sit down, young lady”, she said, rapping hard on the wooden floor beside her. “Don’t be afraid you’ll dirty your new sinh. Sarong.” My new sinh, given to me this morning by Madame Cristina, was a true treasure. I had never worn silk, ever.

It was made of the finest silk and some gold threads were woven into the bottom of the skirt. It was the most beautiful thing I ever see except aunt Boun’s the electric light bulbs.

I shot a look at mother’s face and saw a green flash come out of her eyes like a snake ready to strike. I ignored the snaky-look, pretending to listen to the husky male laughter bursting out into the night instead. The aroma of fish and frog meat wafting between the slats of the closed windows penetrated our room.

“Why you accept the gift from her?” Mother snatched the hem of my skirt as she asked. Her slim-claw-like fingers dug into my flesh. “We are poor but we don’t need charity.”

In bed, I watched a distorted moon. From our slatted-window, it was all pale. It hung limp and paralyzed in the midst of all the bright stars. The dying beam frightened my soul. I turned over, away from mother, and wondered if:

’My family realized that we were trapped’.

“Pastor Valanant and his wife got his church in our village,” mother said during supper. “I think his preaching is suspect and shaky. Anyway, I don’t like a man with no eyes-lashes.”

She let us attend his school but not his church. On Sunday, we went to the pagoda.

The pastor’s wife’s name was Cristina- Montes.

“Have you said good morning to Jesus?” She asked, before beginning our English lesson. Her voice was so light and artificial as if she sang out the words to give herself courage.

I had supposed that in Cristina’s world hunger and belonging was never an issue but success might have been a different matter or might even be important. In my family, however, hunger was an everyday problem. Belonging was a puzzle to no one but me alone.

I asked her why aunty Boun said that my sisters and I are neither fish nor fowl. We don’t belong anywhere?

“There is nothing to worry about. You are the children of God and of the colony. It doesn’t matter where you come from in this life, only where you’re going” she said, laughing like a horse.

Five months later, on the way home from the Catholic college, I encountered my mother on the road. She looked at me strangely; I had never seen this furtive look before. Was she guilty of taking more rice from aunt Boun? I asked myself. As soon as we got in, mother proceeded to pack our meager belonging into a large bamboo basket.

“Are we not having supper? Is all the rice gone again?”

“Keep your clothes on and get your sisters.”

“Why?”

She said nothing for a while then her voice turned into a whine, “please Niccy, please. We have to go before night fall. On your way to collect your sisters, fetch our buffalo back from the paddy-field.”

Mother refused to say anymore, her jaws appeared locked but her body was like a windmill. I decided not to get upset with her mood change and worsen it, better comply for an easy life.

“Don’t move. Don’t cry. Hide.” Mother hissed through the thin bamboo wall of our old cart as she maneuvered it down the steep mountain slope. Around us were wild bamboos groves. The heat increased as we descended. The crickets sang. The monkeys shrieked.

It was the first week of October; the rain hovered hesitantly above the mountains before saying its farewell. I should have been back at college for the autumn term. Would anyone notice my absence?

“This is unbearable, I am seasick.” I moaned.

“You have never seen the sea, so how can you be seasick?” Lou Lou, the chilies queen piped up.

“One could die with this rocking motion, you know…And, in this heat, you see.” I told her.

All I could distinguish below us, in the heat-haze, was a confused mass of mountains and paddy fields. The houses were tiny shimmering dots. Dazzling flowers were hanging from the tall trees, exotic beauties.

“Look, lovely orchids.” Mother halted her chariot and stare, Te Te, our black water buffalo snorted.

“Watch out,” I warned, “you are in danger of letting us fall.”

The familiar sight of grandmother’s village made me forget my fear and anxiety.

“We are here.” Mother announced with relief.

“What happened?” mother asked as soon as our old lady came down.

“Such is the sorrow of war,” grandma swallowed, wiping her eyes with her black cotton shawl.

“Oh! Mae Tao Granny, I could smell burning.” And I hugged her bony body.

“The elders said the nasty odor came from the explosion of cluster bombs. The ‘bombies’ dropped from the sky, exploded on the ground and burned everything.”

“It‘s an atrocity,” mother remarked flatly, detaching from her own words and acting as if she was on automatic.

She secured our Buffalo to a tamarind tree then unloaded Marie-Claude and the basket. Granny took the baby from mother: “You are so ugly!” she said to ward off a jealous spirit and Marie-Claude laughed.

Air, our brother came down, jumping from the verandah, ignoring the wooden steps. Mother cried out and took him in the arms; she hadn’t seen him in a long while.

“You little monkey,” she said.

The lingering strong rotting smell reminded of a funeral pyre. I hold my breath in, only letting it out in spurts.

“Many people had fled in terror into the deep jungle,” Grandma told us as she prepared our dinner. “It was a small thing if one person or one house should be burned but the whole village...”

Mother hushed her, “Children have ears. We’ll talk once they sleep.”

It had not rained that morning but the sky was darkly pregnant. The powerful gush of hot wind came fast and furious. The world was about to give birth to all the rain-clouds, emptying the womb before the dry season struck.

Grand-mother filled two oblong earthen jars with coffee beans and other black berries from the jungle. Pouring hot water into them and calling out for us. I had Marie-Claude tied up to me, native-style.

“Test the water Niccy; it shouldn’t be too hot,” granny advised and told Lou Lou and Marie-Claude to go into one Jar and me in the other.

Mother came in with a pair of scissor and a razor-blade. She took hold of the baby’s head and started to cut and shave her hair off. When it was my turn, I protested but to no avail.

“Stay put until I can come to take you out,” granny said and with the last look at me, she went out and I wondered how long we had to soak in this horrid water to look like the native.

Chapter 2

The tangible beginning

The foreign medical team came to Thakhek in the year of the Pig. I was sixteen years old and I was employed by the team as their interpreter.

It was impossible to say how or when I changed from being a humble interpreter to a cunning and successful interrogator. Maybe it was the hurt-tattooed in my heart, which had grown too large.

I had a strong desire to make a dent in the colonial power. As my aspiration increased, my ambition changed. I was desperate to leave Laos and its ‘secret war’.

I had become by default, an interrogator. I couldn’t differentiate which was which? What had been a true translation and what was not? I sat on my desk, staring out at the fast approaching twilight.

Black clouds were sprouting ominously behind the indigo moon. The dark clouds were flying fast and low toward my open window. I brooded, dark thoughts. I fretted.

To most nineteen-year-old young women image was very important, but for me, it was literally life or death. Launay worked for a secret agent (I suspected), Suky, an assassin (I presumed) but it was I who charmed and lured men to them.

Working in medicine had helped to gain the men’s confidence and for them to confide in me. My beauty had played a part in that too.

My interrogation method, as taught by our handler, was emotional, psychical but not physical.

“Niccy is a cock-teaser par excellent,” Magi, teased. “She could probably get a confession of infidelity from a Nun!”

+

Today, the monsoons’ storm had stopped. The steady ten days of fighting ceased; everything changed. I changed.

The red dawn had arrived in our town. The clouds were chased away by the bright red sun. Captain Slavin was more and more confident. He strutted around ordering the troops to hunt for a big house. He put out Launay’s grandma from her colonial mansion and moved in.

The Captain, who was also the town’s mayor, then asked us to report the number of the injured and the dead to him by sundown. Launay made an excuse that she has a stomach ached and went to bed.

“Shit, shit, shit” Suky muttered. She had the job of counting the dead. I had to organize and translate all the paper work. Magi had a terrible job of allocating people and vehicles to their chosen sites.

I rapidly began translating every document-and I meant I had to be fast. Too fast.

“Just get on with it, Niccy.” Madame Boudin, my head translator/handler said. Truth seemed to matter only to me, alone, I mused.

I believed she was doing everything she can to rewrite history. She used people to give her half-brother, the captain, a positive position to be a future President of Laos.

This morning, I woke up with low mood. In a moment of self-pity, I thought I was a useless interpreter, and convinced myself that my beauty was a curse. I got on my creaked bike and pedaled hard to meet up with Launay.

+

Launay was waiting in our favorite coffee shop, the Old Hue cafe. She sat on the bamboo table beside large pots of bamboo plants. The plants and she stood out, vibrant and verdant against the shop the decayed background.

The smell of coffee bathed the whole place. There was a large number of ‘Falang’. Foreigners inside the shop and the natives were sitting outside. The foreigners ate the croissants with their coffees and the local ate noodle soups.

“Normal life has resumed,” I noted. Launay coughed, her eyes darted about the room.

The owner, a bald Vietnamese man produced two large white cups, foaming with ‘cafe Au lait’ (White coffee) on our table, eyeing Launay.

“Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much”, Launay was rolling out her language’s skill. The old man trembled with excitement.

“Damn it, Niccy, my coffee got cold.” Launay complaint, the owner came running to top her cup up, happily apologetic.

‘She is in a flirting mood,’ I felt sorry for bald-headed one, but we were celebrating so I allowed my friend to enjoy herself, after a while, she said:

“Saturday, was roughed, wasn’t it?”

“‘Carp-Diem,” I said

Coffee cups in hands, we reminisced and sighed. I thought about last Saturday, which happened one whole week before the real fighting started.

We had two so-called volunteers from the American embassy with us, going into the jungle at Kilometer five. The task was to do a reconnaissance exercise.

“Maybe the boys will use the exercise to lure us into trouble,” Launay whispered to me at the edge of the forest.

“They are foolish if they do. I know every nook and cranny of this place. My male cousins and I roamed this place, playing Tarzan.” I whispered back in our Lao language.

“Speak English, you girls!” Said the one called John.

“Okay, here John, come here and I shall show you how to tie down a person with this vine,”

Oh, fab!” John was getting really excited, just like a school boy, “I like playing Tarzan.” He chirped.

“It’s erotic,” said Dick, “a real turned on,” and then he begged Launay to the same to him.

“Lie down, spread your arms out to touch the small sapling at either side of you,” Launay ordered, giggling and pretending she likes it too. Dick was going red in the face.

“Nice game,” he said. “Exciting,” he breathed out like a low whistle through his nose. Launay tied his hands to the small trunks and his feet on the bamboo stumps. He lied there expectantly with a smile on his face and we notice his erection rising.

Launay doubled up, hands covering her mouth that was when the idea came. It was as if my ‘nark’ (water serpent) side was taking over.

John almost helped me tying him down. He was like a toddler lying down obediently when his mother said: ‘be a good boy now, mummy is going to change your nappy,’ John was like that little boy, helping me (his mummy) by lifting his buttock up and smiling into my eyes, almost with adoration and submission. It was easy...

And then we took their guns away.

“What the fuck...” both volunteered- boys yelled. You bitch.”

“No one to hear you, baby, there are only four of us here.” They looked around the jungle clearing nervously, eyes wide with real terror.

“You won’t hurt me will you?” John asked and I said, feeling awful now with a bitter taste in my mouth.

“You don’t know for sure, neither do I,” I said. Dick thrashed his head from side to side. Launay standing over him, straighten up to all of her 5feet 2inches, and, pointing the gun at him.

“Time to go home, leave us to fight our own war,” we told them.

“We are volunteers. We are American Aid workers” John said,

“We came here to help you,” Dick stopped thrashing and shouted at us. Launay looked at him with utter disgust.

“Should I shoot him?” She snarled.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Dick whispered.

“Yes, she would,” I shouted, getting really worked up. “We would be getting away with it too. You tried to rape us.”

“Hey, you can’t...”

They were afraid of what we might do or what our intention was. Their fists bunched up and they put a great effort into trying to free themselves.

“Are those vines going to hold?” Launay whispered in Lao. I wasn’t so sure but said nothing.

I saw a dark patch on their groin area. I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure if they had ejaculated or pee themselves. Both of them had lost their hard on, ages ago.

“We will free you if you agreed to find out where Suky was taken. Talk to your people. A reluctant grin of admiration had dawned on John’s face.

“I will, I swear,” John promised, and Dick nodded his head vigorously. It was euphoric.

“I am counting on you and I know you will keep your mouth shut,” I said, trying to hide my jubilant beam.

“They say dead man tell no tales...” Launay said, still holding her gun and pointing it at them.

Then we both said:

“Goodbye honey,” as we turned to leave.

“We will come back tomorrow. Think it over in the night.” I said,

“Sleep on it,” said Launay and as I looked at her for confirmation, she nodded, putting her gun away.

We ran. We didn’t look back, covering our ears to shut out their screams.

“The vines won’t hold,” I told Launay as we ran. She didn’t hear me.

We lied; we did something, maybe abnormal things because we cared. Importantly, I would find out soon where they put Suky. But, the next day our chief handler sent us up to the North to be interpreter for Bidenger, the ex-legionnaire and Captain Slavin.