Hungry ghosts, p.19
Hungry Ghosts, page 19
‘I got delayed,’ he said.
‘You’re so unreliable. I never have any idea what you’re up to,’ she said.
He leant forward and peered at her. ‘Come on, don’t cut off your nose. I’m here now.’
‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said.
‘I had a work meeting,’ he whispered.
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘I told you the truth, Ruth, trust me. I’m fine. I’ve come to see you and James. I’m fine. Just fine.’
Despite his conciliatory words, she could feel the worm of suspicion crawling in her guts. She didn’t believe anything he said anymore.
He staggered towards her, until he was right up in her face. ‘Where’s James?’ he demanded.
She stood in silence as he shoved his way past her and wobbled down the hallway.
‘James! James!’ he shouted. ‘Where are you? I’m here.’
Before he could get very far, she turned, caught up with him and gripped his arm. ‘Stop right there, Vic. You’ll scare him.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’s my son.’
James appeared at the end of the long corridor that led to the kitchen. ‘What’s going on? I heard shouting,’ he said.
‘Here I am, son,’ called Vic.
‘You’ve been drinking,’ said James.
‘No, on my oath, I haven’t.’
Vic wrapped his arms around James’s chest and held fast. James stamped on his father’s foot, and Vic released his grip.
‘Get off me! You said you’d be here an hour ago and you’re drunk as a skunk,’ said James as he pushed his father away.
‘No, no, I swear. Well, okay, so I had the one, but that’s all.’
Ruth pushed past Vic and stood between him and James. ‘I think you should go,’ she said.
‘I’ve come to see my son and I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I’m going to call the police!’ shouted James.
As Vic pushed past Ruth, she fell to the floor.
James stepped forward and poked him in the eye.
‘Jeez. That hurt,’ cried Vic as he bent over double, his right hand held over his left eye. He stood up, fragile and unstable, seemingly not quite of this world and yet painfully existing in it.
James looked weary and shell-shocked, bemused and frightened, his face as pale as a morning cloud, and yet his eyes blazed defiance.
‘Get out! Just get the hell out of here and never come back. You buggered off before so you can bugger off again. Leave me and Mum alone. We don’t need you. We don’t want you. I’m just your bloody accident anyway!’ screamed James.
From that day on, James refused to meet his father.
‘That man abandoned us,’ he said to Ruth. ‘He doesn’t deserve us. He’ll get from me what he gives, which is nothing. You can’t trust that man, not as far you can throw the bastard. Don’t get sucked in by him again, Mum. He’ll chew you up and spit you out like you are rubbish; the rubbish he must think we are. But I’m no sucker. I won’t fall for that bullshit ever again.’
‘He’s still your dad.’
‘He was never any kind of dad to me,’ said James, his anger visibly growing. ‘He never gave a toss about us. All that man cares about is his stupid self.’
‘I’m sure he loves you, Jimmy,’ said Ruth. ‘Do you remember that birthday when we dressed you up as a wizard in a cloak with crescent moons and silver stars and you were so proud of it that you played in it for weeks?’
‘All your work, Mum, as I recall. Always your work.’
‘And your dad bought you a guitar and you were so happy. I have this picture of you in my mind strumming chords with a smile as big as Big Ben stretched across your face.’
‘I remember the guitar, but I always thought you bought it.’
‘We said it was from us, of course, but actually it was him.’
‘That man couldn’t love anyone, Mum. Maybe he’s conned you, like he cons everyone before he sells them down the river. But he’s not conning me.’
Chapter 24
Vic toiled as a journeyman photographer for many years, and his pictures featured not only in The Times but in international newspapers, notably in France and the United States. His big, global breakthrough, which elevated him from craftsman to celebrity, came as the Vietnam War gained worldwide attention, and he was in the right place at the right time.
It was a warm, humid evening in Saigon 1965, and the bars were filling with the sounds of music and chatter as newly arrived US combat soldiers gathered for a night of partying. Vic was strolling along the street when a young boy cycled up to a café on the opposite side of the road with a large parcel balanced on his handlebars. Just another delivery boy, he thought. And then – bang! All hell let loose. The boy must have died instantly, along with five patrons of the café, or so he was told, while at least twenty others were injured in the mayhem.
Luck, and a fine-tuned instinct for drama, prompted Vic to reach for his camera at exactly the right moment, and he bagged the first of his Vietnam photographs to gain major attention in the Western media. In the image, a human torso flies legless through the void, enveloped in fragments of wood and splintered glass. Flames fan like an exploding star behind the boy, creating a wall of fire and debris. To the right, in the background, a young girl watches on, stunned and expressionless.
Later, he wrote in his autobiography, World on Fire:
So many images from this period of my work are filled with fire. Fields on fire, ships on fire, trucks on fire, planes on fire, homes on fire, people on fire. There was always the whiff of smoke and flame in the air: napalm and burning bodies; bombing raids and exploding bars; a fierce, out-of-control fire rampaging through the jungle. I witnessed homes on fire with children trapped inside, and I saw the charred remains of bodies laid out in the hospitals and morgues. The world engulfed in a sea of fire.
While the delivery boy died that day, and others were maimed, Vic suffered no visible injury.
‘You’re charmed, Vic,’ said his mate, Micky, an American freelance journalist. ‘Must be that lucky coin of yours.’
He repeated the phrase a year later, after a landmine took out three American journalists as their truck sped past Vic en route to the battlefront.
‘I guess the ancient gods kept me alive for their own warped purposes,’ he said.
Over and over, a question arose in his mind, like a bad dream, or a Zen riddle: after we have seen the horror, how do we go on?
He didn’t know. But go on he did.
Later that year, Vic became interested in a group of young Buddhists who were causing a bit of a stir with their peace protests. They were unwilling to take sides in the war and had devoted themselves to helping the poor and seeking an end to the fighting. It appeared that both the South Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong had it in for them. The rebels said they were pro-American, and the Saigon government said they were communists. He had heard reports of monks disappearing or being found dead in the countryside after having been dumped by the roadside or in the bush, with bullet wounds to the back of the head. No one could – or would – say who the perpetrators were. He reckoned there might be a good story in it, and so he paid a visit to their temple.
It was early morning, and the sun was floating over the horizon like a red planet. He could feel the heat building; it was going to be another hot and sweaty day in Saigon. As he surveyed the scene from across the square – some fifty metres from the temple steps – he watched a young, brown-robed nun standing on the terrace in front of the entrance, decorating a statue of the Buddha with a garland of bright flowers. She reached down and picked up a box, or was it a watering can? He couldn’t work it out. She seemed to be watering the floorboards and then she was watering herself. She sat down cross-legged, lotus-style, in front of the statue, and displayed a small, handwritten poster that read, in English, “Stop the War”. She slipped her hand underneath her robes and extracted a small silver object. The next moment, a spark appeared and, in a flash – literally – she was consumed by a ball of orange flame and black smoke. Vic was stunned by her capacity for serenity at the heart of catastrophe as she sat impossibly immobile in the face of her inevitable death and in what he could only imagine was agonising pain.
A young monk rushed out of the monastery and tried to extinguish the flames, beating them with the head of a long-handled brush. He couldn’t get near enough to save her, though, and with his face glowing red, he was forced to retreat and snuff out the fire on his own robes.
Vic ran towards her and got maybe six or seven clean shots before her face disappeared. He never knew human beings could burn so fast, and her dead eyes were seared for eternity into his mind. The photograph appeared on the front page of The Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and was syndicated around the world. In World on Fire, he wrote:
Critics argued that I should have intervened. Always the bystander, they said, never the actor. Surely her life meant more than a mere photograph. But I could not save her: it all happened too fast, and the flames were too fierce. Besides, there is more than one way to make a difference. My job was to immortalise her brave sacrifice. Her purpose was to make the world pay attention to the horror unfolding in her country, and I believe that is what I achieved. The photograph has been seen around the world and shocked many people, especially in the United States, into examining the nature of the war in Vietnam and its atrocious absurdity. I think that was worthwhile. Don’t you?
Vic continued to work amidst terror and revulsion: over and over, he observed killing at close quarters. He saw it in the jungle, and he saw it in the fields. He saw it in the city, and he saw it in the hospitals. He watched in horror as a young Vietnamese woman ran through the burning huts of a jungle village, her clothes alight, flames wrapped around her body like a blistering cloak. Her head had lost its hair, and her scalp was black as charcoal. In front of her, dead bodies piled up to form a grisly funeral pyre. But he had seen so much death that it didn’t feel like killing anymore.
‘I don’t know how you do it, buddy,’ said Micky over a beer in a Saigon café. ‘Must be that British stiff upper lip. Me, I’ve had enough. Too much sorrow and fear and longing and anger. Too much disappointment and regret. Time for me to go home. Before I’ve seen so much that I can’t forget. Another drink?’
‘Thanks, yeah, I’ll have another.’
While Micky headed for the bar, Vic reflected on all the killing that he had seen over the years. It made him think, oh, so I’m going to die, how best shall I live? What truly matters in life when death approaches? Death demanded that he make every act, every day, count for something. It mocked his self-importance and self-pity. It placed his petty preoccupations in perspective. Compared to the fate of that nun, his fate was small change.
Micky returned with beers and sat opposite him.
‘A penny for them. That’s what you English say, isn’t it? You looked wrapped up in worry, man,’ he said.
‘Not at all. I was thinking how life is a strange miracle. How, in order to better appreciate being alive, we should walk with death at our shoulder. It helps me stay calm.’
‘Are you sure, buddy? Are you sure you’re not just burying your feelings in a fireproof box deep down, so you don’t have to face it all? Are you sure you’re not just dodging what you can’t handle?’
‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure about anything.’
A week later, Vic accompanied a South Vietnamese army unit on patrol as they penetrated deep into the jungle. Nothing much happened for a couple of hours until, just before five o’clock, Vic heard the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire. He threw himself to the ground and crawled behind a tree. The ugly sounds of battle lasted for a mere ten minutes, and then it was over. The Viet Cong took no prisoners, except for Vic. He was wearing civilian clothes and a large British press badge, which he believed saved his life. Technically, the British were not involved in the war, and that’s the only reason he could think of as to why he was still alive. That and the warped character of fate.
He endured a terrifying month imprisoned in a bamboo hut the size of a garden shed. He might have been doomed, except that he developed a survival system. He said to himself, Vic, you know what life is worth – don’t waste it. You’ve been through much worse. You can get through this. Face whatever comes and accept it.
The day after he’d been captured, Vic discovered a pencil hidden in his jacket pocket and set about drawing on anything he could get his hands on: a scrap of khaki shirt, a strip of bamboo and any old bit of paper he could find or nick. He sketched faces and scenes he remembered from his past and hid them under a pile of rocks at the back of the hut. It was something he needed to do. He believed that drawing prevented him from giving up the ghost. Remembering those he loved gave him a purpose, a reason to live, a way to get through it.
Every day, he calculated his odds of survival as poor, and yet survive he did.
There were a dozen other civilians held prisoner in that jungle camp, and most of them couldn’t take it. Vic watched them wither away, mentally as well as physically, and feared a similar fate for himself. But providence offered him inspiration in the form of Eddie, an Aussie journalist who was never quite as bent and battered as the others. Eddie washed his clothes and himself whenever he could, and he organised games to keep them all amused. Vic once watched Eddie spend the whole day cleaning his buggered-up boots with spit and an old rag. They were busted full of holes, hardly more than scraps, but he kept them spick and span. Some guys step up, while others give up, thought Vic.
‘Really, you need to have three things, mate,’ said Eddie. ‘You must keep your bloody head, hang onto your sense of humour and don’t panic. Just like an ape or an ant, everybody wants to survive, although to this day, I’m not sure why. I mean really, what a life! What a world! So much suffering, it is beyond belief.’
Inspired by Eddie, who reminded him of his old mate Charlie, Vic developed tricks to get him through the ordeal. He would lie on the floor and picture himself perched high in the branches of the elm tree in the park near his childhood home. It was a single splash of green enclosed by miles and miles of narrow streets lined with terraced brick houses. Or he would conjure a vision of Amelia sitting at the clapped-out old piano in her front room and drew what he recalled. She played sweetly, and her face was so radiant and beautiful that he felt her music flow through him like a calming river. Vic talked to Milly every single day that he spent in that God-awful camp. He knew she would have wanted him to live, and that belief breathed hope into him each and every morning.
A month after his capture, Vic awoke to the roar of planes overhead and, before long, yellow smoke filled the hut, and he struggled to breathe. He and Eddie took a risk. They kicked down the door to the hut and sprinted away. Everywhere, Viet Cong soldiers were dashing about with cloths over their mouths. Vic had no idea what was happening. He just kept running into the jungle, not knowing what fate had in store or which way Eddie had gone. They hadn’t made a plan; they just took a chance.
During the long, lonesome shuffle through the jungle, he slept only fleetingly and was soon covered in insect bites. He reluctantly picked berries and leaves to eat, not knowing what they were or what they might do to him. And he drank rainwater or dew that had gathered on fallen leaves. Eventually, three days later, he stumbled upon a village where he hoped he would be welcome. He believed that he was heading in the direction of Saigon, but he wasn’t sure, and besides, you could never be certain whether Viet Gong soldiers might be hiding in one of the bamboo huts. It happened, frequently, or so he had been told.
He hesitated before entering the village, just in case, though in the end, he had no choice but to cross his fingers and hope for the best. The Viet Cong might kill him, but he would surely die alone if he remained in the jungle. After three days of stumbling through the rainforest, his thighs were as red as rump steak and his balls were on fire. He was so weak with hunger and exhaustion that he could barely walk. But oh, Lady Luck was with him again. The villagers embraced him and offered him food. He sipped a little soup and slept for twelve hours. He dreamed of a table covered with roast chickens and salads, roast potatoes and pumpkin, steamed kale and boiled carrots. He saw a nun before him holding a small brass bell with a long handle. She rang the bell and spoke:
‘For the meal we are about to eat, for those who made it possible and for those with whom we are about to share it, we are thankful. Dear earth who gives us this food, dear sun who makes it ripe and good; to the sun above and earth below, we offer our loving thanks. May this meal bring us strength and health.’
And then her face burst into flame and her body crumbled into dust.
He woke up with a start, cold and sweaty; he wondered which was worse, being asleep or being awake.
The next day, he was discovered by an American patrol and airlifted back to Saigon, where he recuperated in a military hospital. He lay staring at the ceiling fan, drifting in and out of sleep and delirium. He never found out what had happened to Eddie, or the others. He prayed that they got away. Endure. Keep your head. Wait for tomorrow. That’s what he said he’d learned.
A week later, he assured everyone that he was fine, and in defiance of his doctor’s advice, he checked himself out of the hospital and went back to work. His optimism was short-lived and ill-advised. Soon after he had discharged himself, he collapsed in the field from exhaustion and journalist friends carted him off to a monastery, where the monks cared for him for well over three months.
Vic believed that those monks saved his life, and that he owed them a huge debt of gratitude. They offered him a bed, sat with him when he was delirious and coaxed him back to life. And when he was well enough to listen and understand, they taught him their philosophy and practices. He passed many hours meditating, chanting and working in the fields. It was tough, but he derived a sense of joy from living a simple life, and he developed a huge admiration for those guys: quiet, calm, serene people. Men. A bit different from your average English bloke, he thought. They struck a chord with him: he saw something powerful in them, something deep and strong and solid at their core; like a tall tree anchored to the earth by powerful roots, they weathered the storms that swept over and around them.
