Twilight Territory

by Andrew X. Pham

The stream gurgled, rippling over smooth black rocks, flushing clear as fluid glass through calm pools where emerald dragonflies with ruby eyes skimmed over spearweed and butter lilies. Anh pointed out the dragonflies to her brother, saying that the previous night she had ridden them in her dream. The boy groaned enviously.

The sun was dancing in the stream like so many jewels, there for the taking, none for the keeping. His heart brimmed as he embraced his children. The joys of family and fatherhood had come to him most unexpectedly in this strange, impoverished place.

When they had a basket full of mushrooms and young bamboo shoots, they went home to a light breakfast of the previous evening’s rice with leftover clay-pot catfish. They played in the orchard, picked guavas. For lunch, he made an onion omelet with freshly steamed rice topped with morning glory.

“What can they do to an old woman?” Shushing her, he took the medicine basket from the shelf and knelt at her feet beside the divan. Anh brought him a tin basin of water, Hoang towels. He told the children to go outside and mind the soup pot. He began cleaning and dressing Coi’s wounds. It was the first time he had seen cuts on her thickly calloused soles. She tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t have it. “Auntie, you’re not an old woman. You have half my strength but twice my stamina and the heart of ten men.”

“I beg you, monsieur. Please, don’t do this. I’m married with children.” “Hush, my little dove.” He laughed, lifting Tuyet off her feet as if she were a child. He embraced her, his face close to hers. In a flash, she took in his startling blue eyes as he tried to put his lips on her mouth. She twisted away. When he pressed his beard into her face, she bit his chin. A mouthful of hair, oil, ash, and tobacco. He yelped, releasing her.

He was twice her size, but she wasn’t thinking. Survival instinct took over. His first blow, open-handed, was a crack across her face. It spun her backward. Light exploded over her vision. She was on her side, on the ground, the taste of blood in her mouth. She crawled away on hands and knees, ears ringing. He hauled her up by her hair. She slapped at his arm. His meaty palm slapped against her face. Stunned, her legs buck led, and she dangled like a doll by her hair. He swiped the tabletop, pushing papers, maps, cups, and plates onto the floor.

With all her strength, she dug her nails into his face, clawing deep into the flesh. Four long gashes opened on his cheek. Blood ran down his chin. He roared. His arms rose and fell like pistons, pummeling her with mechanical savagery. Fists rained punches on her body. She curled up into a ball, protected her head with her arms. The blows banged like wooden mallets on her head, shoulders, and arms, beating her into numbness. His fists found her head. Her left eye was a crimson orb. Her nose and lips were bleeding. Her vision blurred white.

The hounds were baying in chorus. Darkness hardened on the rice plain. An owl sailed across a blade of moon. A lifetime of light drained from her.

Nhung quoted the Resistance party line: “The French have ruled this land for three generations. They believe Indochina belongs to them and we are subhuman.” Suong added, “Worse, the Viet troops tell everyone that coolies are Resistance sympathizers and forced labor is their punishment.” “People believe that?” “Oi, people believe anything that spares them the same fate,” Nhung snapped.

Second Sister explained, “A lieutenant raped her. She fought back and he beat her badly. The medic said she has some broken ribs. She’ll live, but it will be sometime before she can move without pain.” Coi wailed, jamming her fists into her mouth to stifle the cries pushing against her throat. Tears ran down her face.

“Most of them don’t rape, but they don’t stop the ones that do either. The Africans say rape was one of the methods the colonizers used to control the natives.”

It had been a very difficult seven months since Tuyet’s conscription. After her niece had returned home injured and pregnant, Coi had been running the entire household, including the shop they had decided to operate and the orchard, by herself. Tuyet had been bedridden the first month, broken in body and spirit. She had barely eaten and had spoken little. She had told Takeshi that she had been beaten and raped at the garrison, but she had refused to talk about it.

“Has Tuyet been meditating?” Coi nodded. “Yes, since her second trimester. She meditates in the morning and before going to bed. She does it whenever her mood spirals.” “Has she talked to you about adoption?” “No, I’m afraid to ask her. It might push her toward a dark place. I don’t think she’s able to discuss it yet.” “She’s a dream-walker. The time will come.” “You’ve seen it?” Mother Nam nodded but would not say more.

After Tuyet’s escape, the family had joined the Resistance’s underground supply network to support the fight against the French. From the beginning, the Resistance mountain base had been in dire need of antibiotics, morphine, and other medical supplies due to the colonial government’s restrictions on the sale of medicines, especially penicillin, intended to cripple the Resistance.

The couple had been to the shrine to request fertility blessings. Mother Nam read their fortunes and advised them to adopt “a blighted one” to prove their good hearts and worthiness. The Lady Buddha would bless them with not one but three children of their own. She urged them to take time to consider well their reply as the baby would be of mixed race, conceived in violence. Three days later, they had returned and confirmed their decision to adopt.

One day in the final month of her pregnancy, Tuyet told her aunt that in her dream, she had seen a happy young couple playing with her baby boy.

A soldier loped across the road to report that the hound had found an underground hideout behind the farmhouse. “Excellent! The captain will be happy if we bag a cache of Viet Minh weapons.” “No, no!” Tuyet cried. “They’re just farmers. They have three small children.” “Farmers don’t have underground shelters,” the man scoffed. Tuyet had no reply. She had not known her neighbors had a secret hiding place.

The legionnaire, a tall, stiff man, stood facing the crevice, his back to them. Tuyet heard him counting down. Three. Two. One. The men backed away from him. Suddenly, she saw a grenade in his hand. He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade into the hole. Coi screamed. A soldier saw her and scooped both her and Anh into his arms, forcing them down to the ground with him. The crevice exploded outward in a cloud of smoke and debris. Tuyet sank to her knees. Her son hid behind her. Coi wailed. Anh froze in shock.

The legionnaire tossed a flashlight to the scrawniest man in the squad and pointed him into the cavern. The soldier sighed, wrapping a piece of cloth around his nose and mouth. He crawled in. A minute later, he backed out, covered in blood and mud, ashen-faced, shaking his head. There had been no weapons in the cavern. He had counted five dead, one man, one woman, and three children.

Men went into the forest to cut firewood for the pyre. Women cooked food for the spirits and cleaned the house for the ceremony. The headman and his deputy crawled into the tunnel and brought out the remains of the family, one by one: the thirty-three-year-old father, the twenty-nine-year-old mother, the eleven-year-old daughter, and the ten-year-old son. Villagers laid garlands of wildflowers on the bodies, now wrapped in white sheets and resting on freshly cut palm fronds. They lit incense and prayed.

Most people sympathized with the Resistance and believed in the Cause, but the constant fighting resulted in numerous civilian casualties. Farming, a marginal livelihood at best, became even more precarious as people had to work the land without getting caught in the crossfire. Productivity and crop yields plummeted.

“This place is cursed,” he mumbled, staring at the ceiling. “I am cursed. I did everything I could. I tried my best.” “I never blamed you for anything, but I wish you had listened to me and had left the past behind us. I wish you hadn’t attacked the garrison,” she said, turning to him with reproachful eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “I knew what you would have said.” “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” He flinched. The Confucian proverb stung. Then, slowly, the full horror of their loss, her double tragedy, struck him. He gulped to keep down the bile. He wanted to reach out to her, but he couldn’t. He felt unworthy.

“You are no different from Xuan and his men. You’re blind to the people’s sufferings.” “Never tell a soldier he doesn’t know the cost of war.” “I think you know now.” “It was a matter of honor.” “Honor,” she groaned. “That’s who I am.” “It is, isn’t it?” “You know this.” “I know we are marked by our choices.” “I cannot go against my code.” “I am glad you have been able to be true to yourself.”

“I’m sorry it offends you.” “Do you have any idea how selfish that is?” He stared at her, open-mouthed. She said, “I will become whatever, whoever I must for our family. I gave away the baby to save us, to save our family.” “I never asked you to give him away.” “Can you look at that child and not see his father?” He averted his eyes. She gritted her teeth. “Tell me about how the rapist soiled your honor. How did you suffer? Were you beaten?”

He whispered, “I would have changed places with you.” “But you couldn’t, could you?” He swallowed. A void opened between them. “In your world, there is little room for me or what I might want.” “I’m sorry. Sometimes, a black rage comes over me and I want to burn e...

She wrapped his lunch in banana leaves, put the bundle in his rucksack with a flask of rainwater, and handed them to him. He put on his peasant hat and left without a word of parting, not even a nod. She stared at the floor, willing herself to remain strong as he crossed the threshold. They never said goodbye. People said evil winds always listened for tearful farewells.

The heartbreak on her face wrenched him. He couldn’t help himself glancing back again and again. With piercing clarity, he saw that her capacity for love and forgiveness outweighed all that he had thought honorable and holy. He chewed the inside of his cheeks, wanting to shout out something but lacking the words, wanting to enfold her in his arms, absorb her pain, take away her grim memories.

He cast a melancholy glance back, hopeful, for what he did not know. A change of heart, perhaps, a hand raised in parting. Tall weeds seemed to swallow the house. Tuyet had remained at the door, a solitary figure. Their glances met across the field, two people caught at the crossroads of diverging fates.

Looking down at her hands, she saw the line of destiny on her palm in a pattern of congealed blood. Something awoke within her, lifting the year-old fog that had that ruled her life since the rape. Now, she sensed the path ahead, her purpose in life. All of it had all been leading up to this. The inevitable had arrived. The uncertainty of waiting was gone. She was ready. She had been ready a long time.

Tuyet said, “I’ll cooperate if you let her go. She’s just a hired courier. She’s a widow with no one to support her. She had to take the job to survive.” “That’s not for me to decide.” “Then I will tell you nothing.” He slapped her savagely across the face. “Then you will tell it to the interrogator!” The legionnaire ordered his men to confiscate everything and torch the house.

They ransacked the bedrooms and tore apart the dressers. They pocketed the little pieces of jewelry Tuyet kept in a box behind the mirror and took Aunt Coi’s stash of money hidden inside her pillow. One soldier tossed Mimi’s body into the well to ruin the water. They doused the house in kerosene and set it on fire. One by one, the barn, the tool shed, and the outhouse were put to the torch.

Addressing the crowd, the sergeant shouted, “Let this be a lesson to traitors! If anyone has information about Viet Minh collaborators, come to the garrison. You’ll be rewarded.” As the truck lurched onto the road, Tuyet recalled her son’s cremation, how the fire had devoured her entire world. His urn had stood on the altar in the house. Ashes to ashes. All she treasured was now locked away in the chamber of her mind.

Phan Thiet Penitentiary was a group of rectangular buildings within a high brick wall and guard towers at the corners. The main entrance was through heavy steel-reinforced doors. Inside the compound, several smaller buildings housed the main prisoner population. There were two separate courtyards, one for assembly and visitation, the other for bathing and washing. Male inmates outnumbered female, by four to one. Women were kept to a single building at the far end of the complex.

She struck up a conversation with some older women and learned that there were three visiting days per week. Each prisoner was allowed only one visitor a week.

A ray of light passed under the door, a subterranean glimmer. The stagnant air was sour, fetid with human waste, but Tuyet no longer noticed the stench. She lay in filth, curled up on the wet stone floor by the overturned toilet bucket. Her clothes were now rags, encrusted with blood and salt. Her body was a cage of pain. On her legs and arms, open sores oozed pus. Her ribs broken, she drew shallow breaths, taking in the hot air in small gasps. Her face was discolored, misshapen with bruises, mouth open, lips blistered. Fever burned in her throat, raw from days of screaming.

In the cluttered office full of aromatic cigar smoke, a thin, bearded man introduced himself as Warden Cadart and another man as Inspector Renier. At Cadart’s urging, Nguyen detailed Tuyet’s condition and made recommendations for her care. They questioned him about the adoption of her half-French baby. Cadart asked, “Did you know she was part of a supply chain for the Viet Minh?” “No, I had no idea. She would not have told me that. Believe me.” “She did not name you as a sympathizer.”

He asked, “Are you going to take the baby?” Cadart turned to Renier, who stood at the window, lost in thought as though he hadn’t heard. At last, he replied, “No, his father is dead, and his mother has given him to you. Unless someone comes forward to contest your parental rights, he is yours to keep. It is out of kindness that you are giving the child a home, Doctor. Thank you for your effort today. You may go.”

Renier turned to the warden and said, “Clean her up and put her with the main prison population. She is not to be harmed.” “We’re not done with her yet,” Cadart protested, flustered, for he was a stickler for rules. “Did I ask for your opinion?” Renier snapped. “Forgive me, Inspector,” Cadart replied obsequiously. “May I ask what you intend to do with her?” “I need her to catch a bigger fish.”

One by one, the farming families, including her neighbors, the Sangs, gave up and moved away. They had learned to adapt to the ebb and flow of war, but they were unprepared for the sudden rise of savage bandits roaming the Twilight Territory like packs of wild dogs, robbing and raping with impunity. Day after day, French patrols marched by toward the mountains, passing Coi’s shelter without even noticing it. At night, Viet Minh fighters moved silently through her orchard in the direction of the garrison.

Even as the fighting swept through her village, none of it touched Coi. She lived in solitary silence, days at a time without speaking a single word. She lived like a field mouse, careful, quiet, resourceful.

Coi thought she was dreaming, but she knew that voice. In the predawn glow, she crawled out from her shelter and made her way through the debris to the three figures standing by the road. “Is that you, Anh?” “Auntie!” Anh shouted and ran into her arms.

He knelt on the grass by his son’s memorial stone. Poor Auntie, bless her for scrounging up enough money to carve Hoang’s initials. He traced the letters: K for Kei, jubilation; H-H for Huy Hoang, glorious. It was true: the boy had been a miracle, speaking in complete sentences at two years old, writing his name at three, and doing simple math at four.

Smiling, he thought, You’ve got a cat, Kei. They have always liked you. He sighed deeply. The loss ached like a mortal wound. His karma, his fault. He had tried to bury his grief in the war. It kept him busy and kept him from home but not from his demons. Once in a while, sometimes in the middle of the day, out of nowhere, he would remember the weight of his boy riding on his shoulders as they strolled in the woods. Soft little hands pulling his ears. He hummed an old Edo lullaby.

At the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, he froze, scanning the darkness. The garden was sunk in shadows; moonlight glowed through the trees. To his left, figures silhouetted on the pale gravel. They passed in front of the shrine toward the pond. Something moved close behind him, too heavy to be cats. Hackles rose at the back of his neck. Adrenaline surged through him.

A twig snapped behind him. He rolled away and came to his feet running by the edge of the pond. Footsteps crashed through the bushes behind him. He made for the rear gate. A flashlight caught his face, blinding him. Someone shouted, “He’s running!” He veered away and fell into a rosebush. Thorns ripped his shirt and drew blood. A hand grabbed his ankle.

As he rounded the corner of the house, a huge figure, a bearded Frenchman, stepped into his path and drove a fist like a sledgehammer into his belly. He crumpled. His eyes caught the merest glimpse of a truncheon descending on his head. All went black.

Is he dead?” he asked. Victor nudged the limp body with his foot. “No, but he’ll wish he were.” The old caretaker stepped out from the shadow. She jutted her catfish mouth at them and said in French, “Monsieur Boisson, this is your man, no?” “Well done.” Boisson tossed her a roll of money and dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

Takeshi asked Renier, “Where is your boss, Monsieur Feraud?” “In heaven, God rest his soul.” Renier crossed himself, glancing upward. “What happened?” “He passed away peacefully in his sleep,” Renier replied. “Men plan their lives, God their deaths.”

The bullet had plowed through his left shoulder, from back to front. He lay on his back, at the bottom of the coracle, legs bent sideways. His breath rattled in his throat. Blood oozed from the wound, trickled down his chest, and dripped off his ribs. He fingered the hole in his shirt, the mangled skin and flesh underneath. His hand came away coated crimson. So much blood. He groaned, lacking the strength even to curse himself.

A lone seagull circled high above, spiraling toward the cotton bowl of the sky. He watched it in irrational fear of plummeting upward. No way to swim through that, no way home. He felt light. He felt himself rising, his senses expanding. He saw the world as though from a great height, riding the thermals like a bird. A blue gap opened in the clouds. Sunlight poured through it like gossamer threads, turning a ribbon of sea turquoise, catching a coracle with a man, curled up in a brilliant pool of blood. All around, the sea was streaked with white.