John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

Quat mostly stayed out with his friends from the high school. He came home just before dinner, tried not to get in an argument with Father, and then went out again. Father was a quiet and gentle man but Quat always managed to make him angry. Quat did well in school but didn't like the priests. Quat would speak against the priests or the government at dinner and Father would remind him where he was. They would begin to shout and Xuan would cry and then they would stop speaking to each other. Your father has work to do, Father would say to them, and move to his desk facing the far wall. Your brother is going out, Quat would say to them, and he would leave, grabbing a few last bites of food.

When they were younger Quat would sit with Tan in the walled garden behind the house and tell her stories. He told of the wars with the Chinese, and the one Tan liked best was about the Trung sisters who rose up to fight the invaders on elephant-back. She felt very safe and very peaceful, sitting inside the garden behind their house in the Citadel of the walled city of Hue. The stories Quat told were often bloody and terrible, but the Chinese had been defeated long ago.

Father arranged to have Tan's teeth taken care of. Their own dentist had said there was nothing to be done, but Father went to the Americans.

The Americans were there to fight the country people. The Virgin Father had allowed them to come. They lived in a place beyond the walls and across the river and weren't allowed to come into Hue. Tan had seen people who weren't Vietnamese, like the French priests, but she hadn't ever seen an American. She had heard stories, though, and was scared of them.

Father worked with the Americans sometimes. Sometimes he did favors for them and they returned the favors. He said they were very strange people, always laughing, like children. Father did some favors and arranged for an American dentist to work on Tan's extra teeth.

Father went with her the first time. The American was a young man who laughed and made faces for her, like a child. He was so big she didn't know how his fingers would ever fit in her mouth. He gave her shots till she could no longer feel any of her face but her eyes. She was too scared to make a sound or move. She felt that if she closed her eyes she might disappear. Though she studied English in school the American mostly used a kind of sign language with her. He slipped tongue sticks under his lip for fangs and made a deep monkey growl. Ugly. Then he yanked them out with a pair of pliers and smiled, showing all his white teeth. Dep. Pretty. That was what he was going to do to Tan.

Tan lay back and watched the huge fingers work over her and tried to keep her eyes open.

When she came home that first time her lip and gums were so swollen that she looked more like a monkey than ever and Father let her stay home from school for two days. Quat had an argument with Father about the Americans. But on the third day most of the swelling had gone down and Father was very pleased. He told Tan that she would go back to school, and that she would go back to the American for follow-up treatments.

She got used to eating and talking again and the boys no longer called her monkey. The nuns said it was wonderful. Tan was not so sure. Looking in a mirror, all she recognized were her eyes. The American had taken her face.

It was after the last visit to the American that Tan saw the bonze. He was trying to sit on the sidewalk just outside of the gate to the American compound. American soldiers were forcing him to move away and a crowd had gathered around. There were three or four other bonzes in the crowd, sunlight flashing off their shaven heads. Tan rode closer on her bicycle. The monks scared her, scared her even more than her Catholic nuns did. Father said that the Buddhists would never get ahead, would never move into the twentieth century, and that the monks were traitors to their people. The bonze who was trying to sit was very young, no older than Quat. Tan could see that he had let the nails on his little fingers grow long. The American soldiers pushed gently with the sides of their rifles and the bonze and the other Vietnamese moved across the bridge.

Tan followed, pedaling slowly. The crowd grew as the bonze walked through the edge of the city, they whispered and kept their eyes on him. He walked solemnly, looking straight ahead.

The bonze tried to sit in front of a huge pagoda. The people inside came out to watch but government soldiers roared up in a truck and began to push them away. The soldiers jabbed and threatened with the barrels of their rifles, and soon the bonze had to get up and move again.

He was crying a little. The crowd began to drop away. He no longer looked straight ahead, 'he wandered in a wide arc looking about for a place to sit. The section of town was familiar, he was leading Tan home.

He finally settled by the Emperor's Gate. He sat and began to pray and the crowd ringed around him. Three of the other monks sat to pray a few feet away from him, while another placed a metal gallon can at his feet like an offering. The bonze finished praying and dumped the contents of the can over himself. The crowd stepped back a few paces, and Tan held her breath against the fumes. The young man burst into flame.

Tan watched. No one in the crowd spoke. The bonze was the black center of a sheet of flame, he began to rock forward, began to fall, then straightened and held himself upright, still praying. The only sound was the burning. Tan watched and wondered if it was a sin to watch. She smelled him, meat burning now and not gasoline. He fell over stiffly on his side, a crisp sound like a log shifting in a cooking fire, and as if a spell had been broken sirens came to life and the crowd moved away. Tan pedaled home as fast as she could. She didn't tell what she had seen. She fixed dinner but couldn't eat, saying that her teeth hurt from the American.

Shortly after that the Virgin Father and his brother Nhu were murdered in Saigon. People shouted in the streets, honking horns and raising banners and the nuns kept Tan's class inside all day and told them stories of King Herod. Father was put in jail. He was a loyal friend of the Ngo family. Some government soldiers came during dinner and drove him away for questioning. Quat tried to stop them but Father told him to sit and finish his meal. He would be back after the questioning. He told them all to pray for him. The soldiers took Father away. Quat sat at Father's desk, facing the wall, and cried.

One of the office doors opens and a doctor walks into the waiting room. He nods to the boy in the face harness. The boy closes his mouth tightly and shakes his head. His mother whispers to him. He won't go. The doctor leans down next to him, talking in calm, fatherly tones. The boy's face turns red, he presses his knees together and clamps his fingers to the edge of his chair. The mother whispers through her teeth, the doctor takes hold of the boy's arm and squeezes. The boy goes with the doctor, looking to his mother like he'll never see her again.

The sergeant major darts after the Moorish idol, seeming to nip at its tail. They shoot through the tank in jumps and spurts till finally the bigger idol turns and chases the sergeant major all the way back under the shelter of the Golden Gate.

When Tan was sixteen she lived in the Phu Cam section of the right bank with Dr. Co, one of Mother's brothers. He didn't allow Tan and Quat and the other to call him Uncle. Always Dr. Co. He was older than Father. Father died in the jail from tuberculosis. A man came from the government and said that was what happened. Father was buried in the Catholic cemetery.

Most of the Catholics in Hue lived in Phu Cam. Dr. Co was political chief of their ward. He had eight children of his own and now five of his sister's to care for. The house was very crowded. Sometimes Tan rode her bicycle back into the center of town, to their old house in the Citadel. She would watch it from across the street until she saw someone moving around in it. Everything had to be sold or left behind, there wasn't even room for the family altar. Dr. Co kept Father's desk.