What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (most important books to read txt) 📗

the months of secret negotiations on getting his savings out and then the dangers of talking to the wrong people about their departure. Had he hesitated a moment too long or a second too short in all these phases of the planning, and had that hesitation pushed events off-centre? He was only too aware of how important it was to have the right weight of objects, the correct angle of alignment for a stable structure. So too with events. To be able to stop when seeing danger, is knowledge. It was all dangerous, but he had not been able somehow to measure the danger, to apprehend the most crucial moment like the weakest point in a structure. Guard the home you have, and regret vanishes. This is what in his outward demeanour he strove for. Keep the order of the household—when people in the home are strict, it is auspicious to be conscientious and diligent. The household was strictly committed to these mantras. But, still, neither of them, Cam nor Tuan, could find a cure for their alertness.

She paced, he drew.

Tuyen learned to draw from her father. She had imitated his posture and the movement of his drawing hand since she was a child unaware of what he was actually doing. Amused by her mimicry, Tuan gave her pieces of paper and a ruler and they both sat creating drawings of boxes, bridges, pipelines, buildings. Tuyen’s drawings quivered on the fantastic, first because she was a child and her lines would become wavy, or as her mind wandered she would include a face here and a kite there, but as she grew older these inclusions became more deliberate. Her father’s annoyance only spurred her to perfect the fabulous as a practice. A head growing out of a drainpipe, a river flowing through the roof of a house. Gradually Tuan became used to it, convinced by then that she would not, as he had hoped, become an engineer like himself. Architectural school, perhaps, then. There she could express that creativity. Even with this, though, she had dropped out, and Tuan was at a loss to figure out how to control her. He had in his estimation lost control of his family since the night in the bay. All his efforts were to hold together the constantly slipping limbs.

It was inevitable that Tuyen would apprehend the seepages in her family’s life. There was always in the house the double life, the triple images. Not to mention the outside world, which was threatening and which was the engine behind the manufacture of still more fantasies. Tuyen’s love of the unexplainable was inevitable. Her parents became for her subjects for observation and intuition. In art school, which she went to next, she discovered Remedios Varo. Remedios Varo’s father was a hydraulics engineer. He trained Remedios to draw by having her copy his diagrams and drawings. From imitating him, she learned depth and detail. Added to which, they say, she had a rich dream life that leaked into her own drawings and paintings. Tuyen discovered this coincidence with her own life at art school, and her brief stay there, if it was good for anything, awakened her at least to this.

When Tuyen had found her father at home in the middle of the day in his pyjamas, she knew that meant he had spent the night awake drawing, and that meant a paralysis had overtaken him. Her mother, too, must have been awake pacing, as she had done over the last many years. Pacing or writing an endless stream of letters to authorities in every Southeast Asian country, searching for Quy. Terrified of returning to that part of the world herself, Cam had become involved with a network of officials, charlatans, magicians, crooks, and other distraught parents like herself in her search. Tuyen had once happened on a collection of these letters, whose duplicates her mother kept for easy referral and follow-up, and hope.

Dearest Mr. Bowles, UNCHR,

Please excuse my bad English but my state of distress is great. I believe that you can help find my Quy and know where he is. I have no sleep since he disappear from me and my husband. Enclose is a photo of him. If in your list of lost boys, please to find him, and his mother and father is awaiting at Refugee Settlement House, Toronto.

   Please do your best.

Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

Dearest Mr. Chao, Hong Kong,

I am sending the money here which will pay for your investigation. I’m happy that you are close to finding our boy and eager for his return. Whatever is necessary we will do. We left Chi Ma Wan Camp on September 29, 1980, at 1 P.M.

Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

July 7, 1985

Dearest Mr. Thieu,

I was sent your name as a person who could help us find our son Quy. He will be ten years old now. Enclosed is a laminated picture of him. He will not be much changed. Here is a laminated picture of my family so you can know what he would look like. Also money is in close to.

Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

April 25, 1986

Dearest Sir, Mr. Chao,

I’m happy that you think you have found Vu Quy. The money is coming for his passage to us. You brought me so much joy.

Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

October 19, 1991

Dear Editor, Thai Daily,

Please post this ad in your newspaper: Reward of Canadian dollars for information as to the whereabouts of Vu Quy, last seen at bay on March 28, 1980. If you were at that place and have any information about this person, please write to Vu Cam, 5713 Meadow Way, Richmond Hill …

January 15, 1991

Dear Ms. Ebhard, UNCHR,

Please also to forgive my English. Your Mr. Bowles has sent me to you. Our boy is lost now few years. We hear of a list of lost people and we ask for it. If in any of your travels you have seen him. Here is a laminated photograph of my family to help you searching.

Sincerely, Vu