Venom, page 8
They were mostly Americans in the café. There was only one Corsican at the pavement tables, a tough- looking man in a white tropical suit, drinking Pernod. At the next table was a bony crew cut man in an MACV uniform devouring a plate of grilled fish and rice. He watched, hypnotized.
The waiter saw him and shooed him away as if he were a dog.
Michel made to go, but when the waiter moved off to serve another customer, he came back again. He had to eat. He had to have food.
The American leaped to his feet to greet a Vietnamese girl in a silk ao-dai. Michel knew it was his chance.
He hopped across the little border of potted plants that divided the footpath from the tables and snatched the American’s plate off the table. Then he leapt back into the street and started to run.
‘Wait! You!’
He knew someone was chasing him, but he didn't look back. If he could slip into the maze of alleyways off the Tu Do he would be safe. As he ran he stuffed the remains of the fish, whole, into his mouth.
Something hit him hard in the chest and he dropped onto his back, choking on the food. The plate clattered into the street and even before he could get his breath someone grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to his feet.
He looked up. A policeman. He must have run straight into him. He tried to squirm away, but the flic took a firm hold of his arm and he yelled out in pain.
The American ran up, panting. His face was flushed. ‘That's him! That's the thieving little cocksucker!’ The slap caught him hard across the side of the face. His eyes watered and blood leaked from his injured nose. Michel howled, not with pain, but with frustration. The force of the slap had knocked the rest of the fish out of his mouth before he could swallow it.
A bottle-green police jeep pulled up. Michel was bundled into the back. The policeman said something to the American which seemed to mollify him. A policeman sat in the back of the jeep with a boot on his neck. Michel gave up struggling. He hoped, wherever they were taking him, they might think to give him some rice.
♦ ♦ ♦
The children's prison was on the outskirts of the city, on Cach Mang, the main highway to Tan Son Nhut airport. It was a two-story red brick building, originally built by the French a decade before. If was surrounded by seven-foot-high walls, surmounted with barbed wire and broken glass.
Michel was bundled out of the jeep and marched across the boiling yard into the chief warden's office.
Pham Chi Thien was a hollow-cheeked ex-army officer with graying hair and a neat black moustache. Michel was shoved across the room towards his desk.
Thien stared at him, his hands folded neatly on the desk top, the long fingers restless as butterflies.
‘What's this one here for?’ Thien said. His voice was thin, high-pitched.
‘He tried to steal food from a café,’ the policeman said. ‘Be careful. He tried to bite my hand.’
Thien got up and walked around the desk. He smiled like a kindly uncle, revealing two gold teeth.
‘Leave us,’ Thien said to the man who had brought him in.
Thien put his hands on his hips. He towered over Michel. ‘What is your name?’
‘Michel Christian.’
‘Ah, a métis. A Frenchman's bastard.’
Michel said nothing. Thien lit a cigarette. ‘You have a choice. Your stay here can be very easy or very hard. You must understand. No one cares what happens to you. Nobody. You are dust. If you die, no one cares. Do you understand?’
Michel understood this part perfectly. This was not news.
Thien gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘If you are nice to me, I will be nice to you.’
Michel didn't know what Thien meant, even when the warden started to unbutton the front of his khaki drill pants. ‘In this place I am God. You should always do everything you can to make God pleased with you.’
Michel hawked the bile from deep in the back of his throat and spat, expertly, in Thien's face. The globule of saliva tracked down Thien's cheek.
For a moment Thien's eyes blazed. Then, unexpectedly, he giggled again. ‘You choose that way, then? All right, then, little métis. I don’t mind. Either way, I will enjoy myself.’
♦ ♦ ♦
There were no windows in the room and the walls were bare concrete. In the corner a chain had been suspended from a hook in the ceiling. Michel hung upside-down, his feet manacled to the chain, his arms cuffed behind his back. He was naked.
Michel saw Thien's grinning face swing in and out of his vision. His body jerked at the end of the chain.
‘It is pointless to struggle,’ Thien said. ‘It will only make it worse.’
Michel closed his eyes and concentrated on the pain. The heavy metal cuffs on his wrists strained his arms almost out of their sockets but he bit his lip and willed himself not to cry out. Whatever happened he would not give Thien the satisfaction.
Thien unfastened the clasp of his belt. It was leather, with a solid silver clasp. ‘Now I will show you how we treat thieves here at Van Trang.’
He wrapped the two loops of the leather around his palm so that the silver buckle dangled loose by the side of his leg, twitching like a snake. He swung Michel around on the end of the chain, so that his back and buttocks were towards him.
Michel heard the belt whistle through the air and then it was as if someone had taken a knife and slashed cleanly through the muscles of his back down to the bone. The spasmodic contraction of his ribs forced a sob through his lips.
I won't scream, he promised himself. I won't scream.
He waited for the next stroke, but it did not come. Thien was too clever. He allowed the little boy to twitch and groan on the end of the chain for almost a minute before the belt sliced through the air once again.
Michel heard the wet slap of the buckle against his skin and this time he bit down hard on his tongue to keep from crying out. He tasted his own blood in his mouth. It felt as if his whole body were on fire. He realized with despair that if Thien hit him again he would not be able to keep silent.
The belt sliced and hissed.
Michel screamed.
But it was not the cry of a small boy. It was a bellowing roar that filled his own ears, drowning out all his other senses. He screamed again and again and again, and his screams continued to echo around the stone walls long after Thien had finally tired of his game and left him hanging alone in the cell.
‘ADRIENNE!’
‘MAMAN!’
‘ADRIEEEEEENNNNNEEEE!!!’
Chapter 8
The moon-faced boy knelt over him, and grinned. ‘He beat you, huh?’
Michel opened his eyes. He was lying on the stone floor of a narrow cell. He tried to sit up but the sudden slash of pain across his back and buttocks made him gasp. Instead he eased himself carefully onto his side and looked around. There were four other boys in the cell. One of them lay on his back, his eyes rolled back in his head. There were needle tracks along the veins of his arms and legs. There were flecks of foam on his lips.
The boy opposite him was asleep, his legs splayed, skeletal and useless. Polio, Michel decided.
The other two boys were both older. They sat against the far wall, staring at him with casual indifference.
The moon-faced boy shoved a metal pannikin into his chest. ‘I saved you some rice. You can pay me back tomorrow, out of your ration.’ Michel snatched the bowl from him and fisted the rice into his mouth.
‘You've got a pretty face,’ the boy said. ‘Thien likes the ones with pretty faces. That's what got you into this mess.’
‘Number ten motherfucking bastard,’ Michel grunted, using the worst words he knew.
‘They call me No Name. What about you, huh?’
‘Michel.’
‘French, huh? A Round Eye. That's where you got the pretty nose, huh?’
‘My mother was French. Number ten whore.’
‘She dead, huh?’
No Name was a cherub-faced Tonkinese with bronze crab-apple cheeks and quick, darting eyes. His hair was shaved close to his scalp. ‘What did you do?’
‘I stole an American's dinner.’ Michel shoveled the last few grains of rice into his mouth.
Michel put his fingers gingerly underneath his shirt, felt the swollen and raised wheals on his back, and the crusts of blood where the buckle had ripped his flesh.
‘Don't worry about that. He always beats the new kids. Especially the ones who won't play little woman games with him.’
‘What is this place?’
‘Van Trang. It's the kids' prison.’
‘How long will they keep us here?’
‘Long as they want. How old are you, huh?’
‘I don't know. How old are you?’
‘Nine maybe. How long you been on the street?’
Michel toyed with a lie. He decided on the truth. ‘Three days.’
‘Shit. A virgin.’ He put his hand on Michel's shoulder. ‘It's all right, Round Eye. I'll look after you.’
♦ ♦ ♦
Michel had his hair shaved for lice and then they gave him a metal bowl and a tin cup. Twice a day he stood in line for his rice ration and a small piece of salty, bony fish. It was barely edible and even when he managed to force it down, he got a rash on his body which itched unbearably. After a few days Michel, like most of the other boys, threw away the fish and just ate the rice.
He found out that the women who cooked the food in the prison kitchens received a weekly allowance to buy food for the inmates of Van Trang. They always bought the cheapest rice and never bothered to clean or scale the fish. They pocketed the extra money themselves.
The daily rations, meager enough for the Vietnamese children, was barely enough to keep him alive. He grew even thinner. The wounds on his back became infected and began to ooze.
At night he slept on the hard stone floor in his cell, listening to the maddening whine of the mosquitoes, trying to stay awake. He had woken up that first night and found himself staring at the whiskered maw of what he had thought was a small, grey kitten. He reached out for it and it scampered away. It was only then that he realized it was a rat, almost a foot long.
There were plenty of others just like him at Van Trang. At night they would come skittering out of the drains to gnaw at toes and shins.
And every day there was drill. Thien stood them in line and paraded them like soldiers in the hot midday sun. The drill would continue until at least a dozen boys had fainted. These were earmarked for further duty in the afternoon, cleaning out the kitchens and the toilets. Thien said he was teaching them discipline.
Michel never fainted, although there were times when the sky and the buildings and the ground swam in his vision in a gelatin blur. If it was discipline, then he learned it well. He stumbled many times, but he never fell.
It made no difference. Thien never forgave Michel for that mouthful of spit. Once every two or three days the guards came to Michel's cell, dragged him down the corridor to Thien's office, and beat him with bamboo sticks while Thien watched, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.
Discipline.
The days and weeks and months blurred to a nightmare of pain and hunger and despair.
♦ ♦ ♦
Then two things happened very suddenly that changed the routine of life at Van Trang.
It began with a long, piercing scream from Thien's office. It was a hot, oppressive afternoon, the rains beating on the roof and raising steam from the asphalt on the drill ground. As they cowered in their cells the boys heard footsteps running up and down the corridor, heard Thien's panicked shouts. Much later there was the clang of the ambulance bell.
No Name unraveled the mystery for them.
‘Thien had a new boy in there this afternoon,’ he told them that night, his eyes shining with excitement, ‘another pretty one like Michel, huh.’
‘What happened to him?’ Michel said.
‘He bit it off,’ No Name slapped the floor with the palms of his hands in excitement. ‘Thien took his pants down and the boy put it in his mouth and bit it off!’
The other boys clapped and cheered. All except Michel. ‘What's the matter with you, huh?’ No Name asked him.
‘I wanted to hurt him myself,’ Michel said. ‘I wanted to see him scream. Not just hear it.’
They never found out what happened to the new boy. Ever.
♦ ♦ ♦
When the new chief warden arrived, the gratuitous beatings stopped. A Round Eye nurse from Saigon Hospital was allowed to visit them every few days and she handed out clothes and soap and medicines. When Phuong, one the boys in Michel's cell, got diarrhea and started vomiting, Michel asked the nurse to come and look at him.
She was from a place called Australia, a country Michel had never heard of. She was tall with long bony arms and legs and pale, freckled skin. She spoke some French, but her voice had a curious accent that Michel could not understand. It was like a duck quacking.
Michel and No Name watched as she bent down to examine Phuong, her long fingers probing his abdomen, then feeling for the pulse at his wrist. She put a little silver thermometer under his tongue and when she took it out again she shook her head in concern. She frowned at the festering sores from the rat bites on his ankles and at the dirt encrusted in his hair and on his face.
When she stood up she said something to the new warden who shrugged and shook his head. Half an hour later one of the guards carried Phuong out of the cell. From the barred window they watched him being put in the white nurse's battered Peugeot.
‘They're taking him to the hospital!’ No Name whispered.
Michel smiled. Phuong had just showed him the way out of Van Trang.
♦ ♦ ♦
‘Thien's coming back,’ No Name whispered. They were on their hands and knees in the corridor outside the warden's office, scrubbing the stone floor with stiff wire brushes. They had a bucket of water and a bar of thick soap between them.
‘How do you know?’
‘One of the guards told me. He said: 'If you think he had a squeaky voice before, you should hear him now!' No Name laughed. He seemed to think this was funny.
Michel was horrified. ‘If he's coming back we have to get out of here. That vicious bastard will take it out on all of us.’
‘Especially you, huh?’
Michel did not need to be reminded. After the new warden had taken over at the prison he had been happy enough to remain here. At least they were fed, even if the rations were meager. He did not know if he could survive back on the street.
But if Thien was coming back, he had to get away.
‘If I get out of here, will you come with me?’
‘How will you survive without me, huh?’
Michel reached into the bucket and took out the soap. He broke it in half and gave one piece to No Name. Then he put his half in his mouth and started to chew. ‘Eat it,’ he said.
‘Are you fucking crazy?’
‘Eat it.’
‘This stuff will make you sick.’
Michel forced himself to swallow the first mouthful. ‘Yes, it will make us sick. If we have enough, it will make us sick enough for them to send for the Round Eye nurse.’
No Name understood. He hesitated, then put the hard lye soap in his mouth. He gagged once but managed to keep himself from vomiting. Then he swallowed.
After they had eaten the soap they went to one of the guards and told him they needed more soap. He took them to the storeroom. They went inside, and No Name collected another bar of soap and while the guard was not looking Michel slipped another two bars into the pockets of his shorts.
Then they went back to their work, scrubbing the floors while they slowly chewed their way through the three bars of lye soap.
♦ ♦ ♦
Michel rolled on to his side and dry-retched. He had long ago emptied the contents of his stomach and all that was left was bile. His own stench filled his nostrils. The Australian nurse touched his forehead with her cool, moist hand and then slipped the little silver thermometer under his tongue.
No Name lay doubled over on the other side of the cell. His face was knotted in agony from the cramps. ‘Fuck you, Round Eye,’ he whispered. ‘You're fucking crazy!’
‘Shut up!’ Michel hissed. ‘It's working!’
‘We're going to die!’
The nurse got up and left the cell. A few minutes later she came back in, followed by the warden.
He could not understand much of what she said but he recognized the two words he wanted to hear most of all:
Saigon Hospital.
♦ ♦ ♦
The hospital was in the city center near the market, and it was the poorest and most crowded in Saigon. The entrance hall served as the emergency room and consisted of just half a dozen stretchers on wooden stands. When the stretchers were full, patients needing treatment were left to lie on the floor.
When they arrived, there were just two nurses and a young, fresh-faced medical student on duty. The doctors had all gone home. The student and nurses were crowded around one of the stretchers where an old man lay heaving and choking, clawing at the empty air like he was drowning.
The Round Eye nurse squatted beside them on the floor and watched. Then the young Vietnamese medic said something to her in English and she got up to help him.
Michel twisted his head around. No Name lay on the stretcher beside him, his face white with pain. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I just want to die. How about you?’
Michel nodded. ‘Think you can move?’
‘Now?’
‘Why not?’
Michel raised himself on one elbow, fought back a wave of nausea and looked around for the nurse. She was busy, bent over the stretcher doing something to the old man's chest. Michel got on his knees and crawled to the door. No Name followed.
Michel stumbled to his feet. He immediately broke out in a cold sweat and he had to close his eyes and hold onto the wall as the world spun and dipped around him. Finally the nausea passed. He felt light-headed, but he knew he could make it to the gates. He turned to No Name.
