The first time I noticed him was the night we all tossed and turned, unable to sleep because of the sultry heat. A voice drawled across the shack, “Bless you if you were born with a father and a mother who were there to see you grow up. I wasn’t born with a father. Never knew him. Even Mother didn’t know him. She only guessed that he must be one of the fishermen who bottom-fished, for one night she awoke in her riverside shack and somebody was on top of her. He smelled of mud and river silt, and he overpowered her until he satisfied his lust.”

I ran into him again a day later. The meal break at noon was over, but there had been no sound of a gong to send us back out to the work sites where we harvested manioc tubers. Every one of us reform inmates stayed put in our shacks, listening. Then out on the baked courtyard appeared a man. Cao—our eccentric shack mate. He stood hatless, surveying the camp. No guards in the watchtower; not a soul in the camp’s personnel quarters. “They’ve left.” He raised his voice, heading toward our shack. “Let’s pack our gear, gentlemen, and get ready to work for our transitional government. I’ll assign tasks to each of you.” We cringed. Someone stepped out and called to him, “Get back in here, you fool! They’re due back soon.”

I looked at Cao, who was still standing in the sun like a general, deluding himself into another reality—a reality where he was empowered to lead a new government. Was he really insane as many of us had thought last night?

*

Another day at noon, after my midday meal, I went out to the latrine and saw Cao stalking the camp dog, the chief warden’s dog. He had a broom in his hand, but he had stopped sweeping, man and dog moving silently across the bright courtyard. The dog had, in its jaw, a manioc tuber it must have picked up from the kitchen. Cao swung his broom and the dog slunk off, dropping the tuber on the ground. He picked up the tuber and sat down in the shade of a tree. I believed the tuber was what he was after. The dog was known to have eaten our human waste in the morning. But I had seen worse.

When I came out of the latrine, a warden was standing over Cao. He seemed impervious to the warden. I could hear him talking to himself. “Eagle, this is Tiger calling. Permission to bring down thunders. Level it. We take full responsibility. Over.”

The warden raised his voice. “Who were you talking to?”

“Who else?” Cao did not even look up. “My artillery support. I’ve got the coordinates of this camp. You just watch.”

The other inmates were coming out of their shacks for roll call before our afternoon labor trip. Cao pointed at them. “I know who you are. You disguised CIA goons!” The men looked off. He continued to rant. “I know you. You’ve been on CIA payroll since before 1975. You’ve been selling information to the CIA.”

The warden grimaced. Just the word CIA startled these commies.

*

A few days later, I happened upon him in the meeting hall. The afternoon heat quivered and the camp was in siesta. He was alone in the dim, cool hall, his hands folded behind his back, gazing at Uncle Hồ’s framed photograph on the wall. He saw me and asked casually, “How much does it cost, that picture?”

“It’s not for sale,” I said. “Not like those pocket pictures they sold in Saigon in seventy-five.” Back then, the victor’s Military Administrative Committee had issued a decree that every urban house hang a yellow-star red flag and Uncle’s picture side by side.

“I know what his picture cost back then,” he said, nodding. “I asked this woman vendor and she said ‘Twenty piasters’ and I said ‘This tiny print? Why so expensive? A wee piece of crap paper with this goateed man? How about ten?’ and she said ‘Done. Take him away. I left my home in the North to go to the South just because of this goat, and now here he is again, right in the South!’”

Alarmed, I put a finger to my lips. “Tone it down!”

“There’s nobody here,” he said, grinning. His glasses glinted. “My wife visited me just last week. She told me a local security cadre came into our house to inspect our altar. He ordered her to put Uncle’s picture on the top tier, which she’d always reserved for our ancestors. What did he say to her? ‘Have any of these folks done anything more revolutionary, nobler and grander than Uncle? Why then is Uncle’s picture on the lower tier? Re-arrange it to show your political attitude, your respect toward Uncle and the Revolution. I shall be back next week for re-inspection.’ My wife pondered this quandary for a whole night. The next day, she put Uncle’s picture on the top tier. She moved her parents’ pictures—her father was denounced as a feudal landlord during Land Reform and buried alive; her mother died of grief—to the lower tier. But every night, she put this goateed man’s picture in the kitchen near the chicken coop.”

The more he talked, the more nervous I became. I cut him off. “What were you doing in here at this hour?”

“What are you?” he asked me.

“I thought it’d be cooler in here for a nap.” Looking at him I did not detect anything out of sync; his faculties seemed sound. “Did your wife bring any good news from back home?”

“Yeah,” he said, calm yet irked. “She hasn’t been asked to move to the New Economic Zone. Not yet. But if your husband is in a reform camp and you have a house, they’ll hound you until you move out of it. Like evicting a tenant. You see, everyone tries to keep a low profile now, down to their attire. No more bright, colorful garments. Just drab brown or gray. Like those in the North. If you’re in the street, keep your head down, talk to no one. They also changed many street names to names they brought from where they came. I wish I had the time and means to look up their names. To see what each of them has done for this country and its people, so that I can show my respect properly without being tendentious.”

I left the hall unsure what to think of his behavior.

*

Cao bought a hen from a guard who told him to let the kitchen tend it. Behind the kitchen was a pen, and the staff took turns feeding the fowls they raised.

Cao worked around the camp instead of the usual work sites. It had taken but one incident on a work site: the warden caught him creeping up behind another inmate, an axe in his hand. As he was poised to strike, the warden rushed up to seize his arm. “You dimwit,” the warden yelled. “Why? Why?” Cao looked at him serenely and said, “There’s a gnat on the back of his head.” He pointed, but the gnat must have disappeared. “Gnats are bloodsuckers.” After that, he was given lighter duties, mostly working on his own.

Of late I had not seen much of him. He would be gone in the morning and return mid-afternoon, often in the company of guards and cadres whose jobs were to sell the camp’s produce or barter for goods at the commune. I heard that he was used as a coolie, hauling and loading heavy bags of rice, peanuts, beans; sometimes sugar and salt. He was quick and accurate with arithmetic; more than once, the warden would double-check his figures and always conclude that all was well. Occasionally the warden would allow a quick exchange of goods—produce we had grown in the camp—for money, and give him petty cash. He would bring back sugar and wild tobacco, and the sight of our general returning to the shack was always a good omen for the evening.

Once, we were building a shack for the incoming cadres and we ran out of nails. I rode with the warden on his bicycle to get some, followed by a guard and Cao. I knew how to sit on the rear saddle of a bicycle, both feet to one side being the norm for bicycle passengers in the North. When I looked back, I saw Cao straddling the seat behind the guard. We were coming into the market. Some women vendors were pointing at us, laughing. Old black-turbaned women with snaggled, black-lacquered teeth. The guard soon glanced back and shouted at Cao, “Devil you!” He braked, swerving. “Both feet to one side! How uncivilized you are!”

It had been two years since that night when I first noticed him. Because he frequently left and returned to the camp with the guards and cadres, he had become a familiar face to the folks in the neighboring areas. Then came the idea of escape. He told me he had explored the area and talked with these folks. Names of hamlets and villages he mentioned all sounded alien to me.

“Didn’t they discriminate against you because you’re a ngụy element?” I asked him. “You even speak with a southern accent.”

“None of that,” he said, blinking behind his never-wiped glasses. “I’ve been giving them foodstuff. Those that’d cost them a fortune at the commune.” He handed me a pack of cigarettes, still unopened. It was a Điện Biên brand, unfiltered, its pack illustrated with green figures of the bộ đội flying a victory flag on top of the French commanding bunker. I politely declined because I did not smoke. He squinted at me. “I saw you smoke with Mr. Thạch.”

“That was wild tobacco. And only during social hours.”

“I’ve heard that he’s a chess master.”

“Yes. I could never beat him. Not even close.”

“Ask him if he wants to play with me.”

I told him that I would.

*

Two nights later, we gathered around Mr. Thạch’s cot—he was a fellow inmate, an ex-communist hardliner who had been incarcerated for his radical thoughts against the Party’s vision—to watch him play chess against Cao. It was a cold night. In the center of the shack, a metal drum burned with firewood, smelling foul. I sat on a cot next to Mr. Thạch’s, wrapped in my blanket. The old commie, too, was bundled in two layers of shirts and a quilted jacket. Only Cao was sparse in his clothing. It was the first time I saw him put on the camp shirt buttoned up to the neck. He sat on the floor, wrapped in a burlap sack. He looked like a cormorant at rest.

The match started after the final gong that signaled bedtime. The men who huddled around the cot talked in small voices. The board became clear of most of the chess pieces, the red belonging to the general, the black to Mr. Thạch. Cao drank his tea from his own cup, tea Mr. Thạch had brewed. I noticed Cao only took three sips before abandoning the cup on the floor. The two players said not a word, taking a moment to ponder each move, brisk and resolute. I counted the pieces on the board. With seven pieces left, Mr. Thạch was attacking.

Cao had nine pieces deployed on both sides of the river. The next move Mr. Thạch made was to buy time by advancing his cannon one square. I could tell that his plan, after Cao’s move, was to jump his horse in front of his cannon to checkmate.

Cao scratched his head. It was the only time he did. The whole night he had sat immobile, meditating on the board. He moved one of his chariots, anticipating Mr. Thạch’s next move, to take out his opponent’s horse when it jumped. Mr. Thạch moved his other cannon to align for the next strike. He was one step too late. Cao, with his last move of the chariot, jumped his horse to checkmate. Now the board became clear.

With his pawn already on the edge of Mr. Thạch’s king palace, the horse move to checkmate finalized the game. It was midnight. Mr. Thạch shook hands with the man who had just beaten him—perhaps the only man in a long time to have done so.

*

One afternoon, too hot to nap before going back to the work site, I sat outside under the thatched eave and opened my wallet and looked at the picture of my baby girl and my wife. Opening my wallet always made me nostalgic for the days back home. In those days, none of us had thin wallets. There would be a healthy sheaf of banknotes, family photographs, bank cards, membership cards, prescription cards, business cards. Now my wallet was thin and worn. Its contents had been registered and held under care of the bursar.

I was gazing at the picture, imagining what my baby girl now looked like, when someone sat down beside me. He put his finger on the picture and I looked at him. Cao, our General.

“You know her too?” He pressed his finger on my wife’s face.

“Of course.”

“Since when?”

“Since I married her.”

“Good for her. I thought she’d never marry after sleeping with me and my buddies in our unit.”

It must be the heat that wreaked havoc on the man’s brain. During wintertime he seemed more at peace. I put my wallet away. To test his faculties, I pointed toward the freshly sculpted bust of Hồ Chí Minh that the camp had recently installed outside the meeting hall.

“You know who that is?” I asked him.

“Who else but that nitwit again!” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Individualism is morally harmful to the Revolution and socialism. That’s what these commies believe. Tell me, why this halfwit’s bust? Why do people have to bow to him? I knew him. I was drafted and graduated to an officer rank. He failed. Just an imbecile.”

“You realize who you’re talking about?”

“Yeah. The same goateed slimeball hung on the wall in the meeting hall.”

He rose then and headed toward the infirmary, bareheaded and barefooted as always. I followed him, curious to see what he was up to. He stopped outside the sick bay, picked up a broken branch from the ground, and, using it as a cane, entered the shack. There were sick inmates on every cot, napping. Cao kept jabbing his stick at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong with the stick?” the nurse asked.

“What’s wrong with Heaven?” Cao asked in return. “I was questioning Him.”

“About what?”

“Why he picked Trường Chinh instead of me to succeed Lê Duẩn.”

“That’s our General Secretary you’re blaspheming,” the nurse hissed. “Shut your trap.”

He, our General Cao, was indeed up to date with recent political events, I could tell. Now he stood, leaning on his stick, watching as the middle-aged nurse who acted as the camp’s official doctor picked up a syringe. She tapped the syringe a few times and held it in midair to inspect for any bubbles left inside. Cao shook his head and said, “Your hand shakes like a rat’s tail. How can you hold the syringe steady to finish your job? I’ll have you handcuffed once you’re done.” 

*

Someone from our shack came back and told us that the Hanoi radio broadcast had announced that inmates were being released. He must have caught the news in our proctor committee’s office where he was carpentering. Then he added, “It also said those who owe a blood debt to the people and are considered incorrigible won’t be released.” I recalled my meeting with the administrator of Cổng Trời camp, that black-inked word stamped on a sheet in my personal file: “Incorrigible.”

The day after I heard the news, I ran into Cao. Past noon, the heat was sultry, the air still, shimmering. He was lying in a crude hammock made from rice sacks and hung between two trees.

I could see that he was reading a magazine. It was the Communist Review, a monthly government journal featuring articles on political theory and, sometimes, economic and cultural developments. He must have gained enough trust from the camp officials to borrow this type of journal.

“What’re you reading?” I asked, sitting down by his hammock.

“Here, let me read to you a quote by Hồ Chí Minh,” he said, adjusting his glasses.

I stopped him. “Are you sure it’s from him?”

“Are you sure all the wise Buddha’s quotes actually come from the Buddha?”

“What did Uncle say?” I said.

“He said, ‘It is well known that the black race is the most oppressed and most exploited of the human family. It is well known that the spread of capitalism and the discovery of the New World led to, as an immediate result, the rebirth of slavery which was, for centuries, a scourge for the Negroes and a bitter disgrace for mankind. What everyone does not perhaps know, is that after sixty-five years of so-called emancipation, American Negroes still endure atrocious moral and material sufferings, of which the most cruel and horrible is the custom of lynching.’ Tell me, brother, isn’t this what they’re doing to us? Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to have now? Emancipation?”

For one moment I did not see him as being cuckoo at all. I leaned in and said, “There’s news that they’re going to set many of us free.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

That was what I thought too, knowing these commies. He took out a lighter, a rare commodity among us. He flicked it on, hovering the orange flame over the pages he was reading.

“Be careful with that lighter,” I said warily.

“I only want to model myself after our great leaders. They’re great arsonists.”

“Take it easy. Don’t you ever wish to be out of here and be somewhere else?”

“Then who’ll be here to rebuild our country? You must burn everything to the ground and build it back up. Two stages. We’re at stage one now. Do you believe evil has morality?”

“Where’re you heading with this?”

“To find out what evil truly is, you must burn everything to the ground. Our great leaders are doing just that. Great men can’t be judged on morality.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you really crazy?”

“Imagine all the fires burning.” He flicked his lighter and watched the tiny flame. “Beautiful.”

*

It was mealtime at midday. Everyone looked forward to having their naps. I sat outside with my Guigoz can filled with sweetened lemonade and saw Cao wandering by himself in the sun-baked courtyard. He looked up at the guard tower and back at the inmates’ shacks.

“I lost my hen yesterday, a hen with white flecks on her head. Whoever stole it, if you’re one of those from our shacks, your next three generations shall be slaves; if you’re one of those from the camp, you shall live in the jungles and mate with monkeys for the rest of your life . . .”

Startled, I watched him. I had seen him feed his hen behind the kitchen. He fed it with cooked rice grains. A luxury. He let it drink water from his cupped hands.

Then someone from his shack ran out and pulled on his arm. “Get back in, will you?” he pleaded with Cao. “Your hen’s gone. All feathers and gizzards. Don’t waste your breath.”

Cao turned away. He raised his face to the watchtower where a guard was watching him. He raved on. “I curse you so you’ll remember, eh? I curse you so you’ll change, eh? Prick up your ears and listen, eh? Stand up in a straight line. You up there, get down here on the ground. You in your cool shacks, get out here and kneel.. Go sleep on the bare ground for three months and ten days. Fast. Bring all your kin, your mother’s kin, your father’s kin, boys and girls, men and women, your living and your dead. Bring them here, eh? You from Hell, put on your hats and be here, eh? You from Heaven put on your dresses and be in line, eh? If you’re hungry, I shall feed you, eh? If you’re thirsty, I shall hydrate you, eh? All of you, your pathetic lot, your barefaced lot, your depraved lot, you can’t fool me.”

Watching him moving in circles like a true madman, I did feel for him. Perhaps one of those guards had thieved his hen. It was much harder for us inmates to steal a fowl and make a meal out of it.

*

Toward the end of April, the heat made our outdoor labor much harder. The only respite we received from the camp was on Reunification Day, April 30, the anniversary of the day our South fell to communism. Ironically, on this day all of us rejoiced. Banks and government offices and schools closed; in Hanoi people would visit Uncle’s mausoleum. The kitchen told us we would have meat, a treat for those already ravaged by year-round physical hardship. We had meat on other major holidays such as Tết, International Workers’ Day, Uncle’s Birthday, and National Day. Not only did we get meat on those celebrated holidays, we also got rice.

The night before the celebration, all the shacks were in a festive mood. We could sleep late and did not have to rise at the first gong at dawn. I spent the evening in Mr. Thạch’s shack. There, I saw Cao again. He was carousing with the men. They were telling jokes and smoking wild tobacco. Cao never smoked it. He did not even smoke cigarettes. He sat among them, the only bespectacled one, with the camp shirt on and a fresh haircut.

One man was telling a story. “The Pacific Ocean froze that extreme winter of 1972 after a run of US bombing in the North. There was a ship stranded off-coast that could be seen from San Francisco Bay. The ship carried a North Vietnamese delegate whose head had a fear of flying; their mission was to seek settlement with the US.”

His tall tale had everyone laughing. Cao piped up, “Legends do exaggerate. But in those elaborate untruths, there’s always a grain of truth.”

The men turned and appraised him with questioning stares. He shrugged. “Are you in a mood for another tall tale?”

It took a brief moment before some men nodded, while some just shook their heads.

“You all have seen Uncle Hồ’s goatee? Haven’t you?” asked Cao.

Many of the men nodded. None said a word. Beware of the snitch was the motto.

“Did you know that each of his goatee strands is priceless?” Cao scanned the faces and they all looked impassive. “Did you know that a tiger’s whisker is priceless too?”

At last, someone volunteered an answer. “Folklore says you can make poison out of it. Not sure if it’s true though.”

“True or untrue,” Cao said, cackling. “Stick that whisker into a bamboo shoot and weeks later it turns into a black worm, and its excretion is poisonous. Drop a speck of it into a water tank like the one we draw water from every day, and you can kill this whole camp, or any fool who drinks that water. Now—” He paused and cleared his throat. “Some personal aide of Uncle Hồ was curious to find out what a priceless strand of goatee from our most revered Uncle could do compared to the effect of a tiger’s whisker. So one morning, from the wash pan Uncle used to clean his face, the aide found a goatee strand. Lo and behold, he got hold of a bamboo shoot and… you know the rest . . .” This drew blank looks from all the faces around him.

“What happened?” A man grinned at him. “I don’t know what the rest means. Any of you here?”

Cao took a healthy sip of tea from his goz then put it down. “What came out of the bamboo sprout was a blood-red worm. The curious aide decided to keep it in a jar with a broken neck. He cut his finger on it one day and blood dripped into the jar. That seemed to excite the worm out of its dormant state. Soon, there was no trace of blood left in the jar. The aide experimented with the worm and came to the conclusion that it was a bloodsucker. Word got to Uncle and he ordered his aide to surrender the bloodworm.”

Cao said nothing after that, asking for the wild-tobacco pipe and taking one deep hit. That was the first time I saw him smoke wild tobacco. Then he lay down, closing his eyes.

“What the hell?” someone sneered. “Is that it?”

“What happened to the worm?” someone else asked mockingly. “Did Uncle kill it?”

Cao opened his eyes slowly. “That would’ve been a lifesaver. He chose to keep it and nourish it.”

“How?” said the man who just laughed. “With his own blood?”

“Are you stupid?” Cao scowled. “He’s got millions of people he can draw blood from.”

The men looked at one another; none showed any emotion, none laughed. Cao finally nodded toward them. “Look at me. My wife’s left me, my older son died at sea during a boat escape, and my youngest son, only twelve, begs on the streets, barred from school due to his father’s record. Keep feeding that worm with our blood, and we’ll all rot in here eventually.”

Cao must know that at least one of the listeners was a snitch, I thought. But the thing I did not know, I would find out the next morning.

*

There was a bustling air toward noon the next day. I stood outside the meeting hall, watching the carpentry team bring in the last table they had finished the night before. One then two of them pointed at a banner on the wall, before motioning for the guards. Then curses and shouts ensued, and guards rushed in to take the banner down.

During the night, some saboteur had altered the sacred message on the banner. The red banner, lettered in yellow, had read: “The Great President Hồ Lives Forever in Our Lifetime.” Someone had blotched the word “Lives” with soot and written “Dies” above it.

Commotion broke out after another guard came upon the altar on which rested the sculpted head of Uncle. Someone had placed on the altar a chipped bowl of manioc tubers cooked with rice. Glued to Uncle’s brow with rice paste was a stained piece of brown paper, and on it was a scribble:

Best farewell wishes to the ravenous Party

And to Uncle, my only bowl of manioc-mixed rice!

For the next few hours we could sense the eyes and ears of the camp’s sneaks wherever we went.

During the bustling celebration later that day came the news that Cao had disappeared. That was the word the wardens used. They would not admit his escape. Nor did they mention the Citroën DS-19 that had disappeared with him. The camp had sent him to the commune to pick up several items for the Unification Day celebration. I recalled having seen him leaving the camp in the morning by himself. In the car. He was wearing a clean shirt and a clean pair of shoes. He waved at me and some other men in the courtyard, and I remembered he’d once told me that he saved his shirt and shoes for a special occasion. “To honor the victory and the surrender,” he said as he departed, grinning like a devil. If his fellow inmates felt insulted, the camp overseers would be gleeful. That was my last remembrance of him.

The camp overseers now paid a dear price for slighting Cao. They would be held accountable for his disappearance; yet no one questioned or interrogated us afterward. We understood. Why admit your fatuity by exposing it under the sun?

*

Shortly after he’d lost his hen, I’d happened upon Cao standing hatless in the courtyard, gazing at a banner that hung over the gate. It read: Không Có Gì Quý Hơn Độc Lập Tự Do. “Nothing Is More Precious Than Freedom and Independence.” He was mumbling. Then he pointed at the banner. “It should read ‘Không Có Gì Qúy Bằng Độc Lập Tự Do. Nothing Is As Precious As Freedom and Independence’,” he said. “Every time I read that line, I can’t help remembering another line I saw on the door of a brothel in Saigon: Không Có Gì Qúy Hơn Tiết Trinh. Nothing Is More Precious Than Virginity.”

I glanced up at the watchtower. The guard had withdrawn because of the heat. Cao, without looking at me, continued, “The way they phrase it, freedom and independence are ultimate, if we understand these words to mean the absence of external impediments and the ability to decide for oneself. But there are other qualities a human is born for, with or without freedom. The inviolate family unit, for example; one’s human rights. These things are absolute but not ultimate. Not even independence can be ultimate, only absolute among other absolutes.”

Months later, on April 30, Unification Day, the day the camp sent him to town by himself to fetch supplies for the celebration and he put on that clean shirt and pair of shoes, Cao drove out through the gate over which that banner hung. He never returned.