Saigon River (2)
Tan Guhong lay on the bed, curled up beneath the blanket, carefully studying the layout of the room while her hands beneath the blanket worked desperately to use the shard of glass she had hidden earlier to cut through the ropes.
It was not a simple task. Her position was awkward, the ropes were sturdy, and she could not see what she was doing. She could feel several cuts already opening across her hands. Blood and sweat made her fingertips unbearably slippery, and she could barely keep hold of the shard, yet the ropes remained completely unmoved.
But she had no other choice. She could only be patient, adjusting the angle little by little and continuing to saw at the ropes.
She did not know how long had passed. Only when she was utterly exhausted and drenched in sweat did she finally let out a nearly imperceptible sigh of relief. The rope had been cut through.
Then she curled her body up even tighter and tried to cut through the ropes around her feet.
This time it went much faster. Before long, the ropes came free. But she still arranged them back into their original position for show, relaxed her body slightly, and began to wait patiently.
Nguyen Thi Thuy did not intend to starve her to death. It was not long before someone entered the room to bring her food.
It was a young woman wearing a brightly colored red spaghetti-strap dress, her face covered in heavy makeup. She placed a plate of food heavily on the bedside table and barked in very stiff Chinese:
“Eat!”
Tan Guhong struggled to sit up and raised her bound hands, indicating that she could not feed herself.
The woman glared fiercely at her, pulled over a stool, and sat down. Reluctantly, she began feeding her with a spoon.
After only a few bites, Tan Guhong choked. In the midst of her violent coughing, she knocked the plate onto the floor, spilling the food everywhere.
The woman grew furious. She raised her hand and slapped Tan Guhong hard across the head, cursed something in Vietnamese, then bent down to pick up the plate.
Seizing the opportunity, Tan Guhong reached for the bronze table lamp on the bedside table and brought it down hard against the back of her head.
She had not been very confident this would work either. Fortunately, unbelievably fortunately, after being struck, the woman collapsed limply to the floor without making a sound.
She had succeeded.
Tan Guhong quickly jumped off the bed and searched the woman, stripping off the dress she was wearing. Unfortunately, there was no phone.
Then she picked up the clothes and walked toward the window...
……
The two guards outside had already begun to grow suspicious when the woman who had brought the food failed to come out for so long. They were just about to go inside and check when they suddenly heard a loud crash from within.
The two rushed into the room and found the stool overturned, the woman who had brought the food unconscious on the floor, and the window wide open. Their expressions changed. One stayed to guard the room while the other hurried off to report.
A moment later, Nguyen Thi Thuy and Luo Qingyang hurried over. Seeing the scene inside, their expressions turned grim, and they ordered their men to go after her immediately.
Luo Qingyang said, “There are mountains behind here. She can’t have gotten far. Send more people!”
Nguyen Thi Thuy shot him a cold glare. “I don’t need you to teach me what to do!”
She carefully searched the cabinets and underneath the bed, making sure no one was hiding there. Then she glanced at the naked woman on the floor and asked:
“What was A-Jiao wearing?”
The guard at the door answered, “I think it was a red dress.”
“Tell everyone outside and everyone in the club to search the entire place. Focus on finding a short-haired woman wearing a red dress!”
“Yes.”
……
Everything was quietly taken in by Tan Guhong, who was hiding inside the ventilation opening in the corner of the ceiling.
Although she could not understand what they were saying, she could tell from their expressions and movements that Nguyen Thi Thuy was not a fool after all. She had not been completely fooled.
Outside the window was a desolate stretch of wilderness, with only mountains, forests, and a stream. It was unsuitable for hiding, and if she escaped outside, she would only be walking into a dead end. But the red dress had merely been a decoy. After all, the color was conspicuous.
The ventilation opening was far too narrow. Even standing on the stool on the bed, it had taken her tremendous effort to squeeze inside. At the final moment, she had kicked the stool away, luring the others in.
Once most of the people below had left, Tan Guhong slowly crawled away along the ventilation duct.
She passed several rooms along the way. Either they were empty, or there were men and women tangled up together, making it impossible for her to make a move. Finally, she came to another room above. It was a KTV private room, and the two men and two women inside had already drunk themselves into a stupor, sprawled about completely unconscious.
Tan Guhong lifted the ventilation cover and carefully climbed down. She landed with a jump, and her vision blurred. The buzzing in her ears grew even louder.
Gritting her teeth, she got to her feet and searched the four people. She found three phones. Two had lock-screen passwords, while the remaining one used fingerprint recognition. Carefully, she used the person’s finger to unlock the screen.
Before she even had time to breathe a sigh of relief, she discovered that the phone’s interface was in Vietnamese.
It was a no-name knockoff phone, so its operation was somewhat different from that of ordinary branded phones. She tried for quite a while but still could not change it to Chinese.
What should she do next? Call the police? She had absolutely no idea what the Vietnamese police emergency number was. Besides, Nguyen Thi Thuy had confidently claimed that she called all the shots along the Saigon River. There was no guarantee that she was not in collusion with the Vietnamese police.
Call her family in Beijing? Help from far away could not solve an immediate problem. It would only make them worry for nothing.
Call Huo Sixuan or Old Master Liang? Unfortunately, she could not remember their numbers.
After thinking it over again and again, calling Luo Jingming was actually the only choice.
She took a deep breath and dialed the familiar number.
Unfortunately, the call did not go through. A mechanical female voice replied with a string of incomprehensible Vietnamese. She had no idea whether the phone was switched off or out of service.
She tried calling several more times, but it was the same every time.
Tan Guhong could not help but curse viciously. Stumbling through the menus, she switched to the text messaging interface and typed in English: she had escaped and would get in touch again once she reached a safe place. If they saw the message, they were to reply as soon as possible!
After doing that, she looked around. The four people on the sofa showed no signs of waking anytime soon. But this place was not safe. Nguyen Thi Thuy had already begun searching for her everywhere, and it was only a matter of time before she was found.
After a brief moment of thought, she began stripping the clothes off another woman nearby who was about the same height as her.
She herself was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and canvas shoes, which made her far too conspicuous. After changing into the woman's spaghetti-strap top, hot pants, fishnet stockings, and high heels, she took a deep breath, forced herself to remain calm, and walked out of the private room.
Just as she had guessed, this really was a nightclub. After leaving the room, she walked expressionlessly through the men and women filling the corridors, enveloped in clouds of smoke and reeking of alcohol, already impatient to get down to business, while quietly searching for an exit.
She had not gone far when several burly men came toward her, carrying wooden clubs and long knives. Their eyes swept around as they searched, and any woman they found alone was dragged over for a closer look.
Just as they were about to reach her, Tan Guhong acted on impulse and pulled over a man leaning against the wall nearby, white powder still around his nose and mouth, his eyes vacant and his mind hazy, pretending to be intimate with him.
The few heart-stopping seconds passed. The men's gazes lingered on her for a moment before they stopped paying attention and continued forward with their search.
Tan Guhong slowly breathed a sigh of relief. She simply pulled over the man, who was high out of his mind from snorting powder, draped his arm over her shoulder, and supported him as she walked forward openly.
When they reached the nightclub's entrance, several thugs standing guard there seemed to know the man beside Tan Guhong. They even called out to him and joked with him, apparently mocking him for getting himself so wasted on drugs again.
Tan Guhong smiled and nodded at them in greeting, then naturally supported the man as she walked out.
The nightclub was located in an area somewhat like the outskirts between the city and countryside. The roads were narrow, there were no streetlights or passing vehicles, and streams and waterways crisscrossed the surrounding area. In the distance, the faint outlines of rice paddies could be seen.
After taking all the money and valuables off the man, Tan Guhong dumped him in a secluded spot by the roadside and ran off into the distance along the riverbank.
In the pitch-black night, there were only scattered stars in the sky and faint ripples of light shimmering across the surface of the stream. She did not know how long she had been running before a broad expanse of water finally appeared before her, along with a row of small one-story houses built along the bank, their weak lights glowing here and there.
Tan Guhong quietly approached. She was not sure whether the residents here were good or bad, so she picked a house at random and hid outside the window, quietly observing.
The smell of rice wafted out through the window, along with a child's babbling and the halting voice of a young girl reading English as she chopped vegetables.
She waited a little longer, confirming that there did not seem to be any danger, then circled around to the other end of the house, facing the river and the direction of the open-air kitchen.
Sure enough, a pot of rice was cooking on a primitive wood-burning stove. The rice was almost done when a girl of about fourteen or fifteen came out to turn off the heat. She was startled when she saw Tan Guhong and instinctively opened her mouth to scream.
Tan Guhong hurried forward and wrapped her arms around her, covering her mouth. Under the girl's terrified gaze, she pointed to the wounds on her hands and forehead, then pulled out a stack of money and held it before her. Word by word, she said softly:
“Help me, please!”
She had heard the girl reading those words just now, so she thought she should understand what they meant.
The girl was frightened and startled, but in the end she still nodded hesitantly.
Tan Guhong slowly let go of her. The girl accepted the money and led her inside.
It was a very old and simple home, with only a few basic wooden furnishings. Apart from a crying baby in a hanging cradle, there was no one else.
Tan Guhong asked her in English, “Where's your father?” The girl pointed to the memorial tablet in the corner of the room. She asked, “What about your mother?” The girl pointed to a pile of gaudy, revealing clothes and high heels nearby. The clothes looked very similar to what Tan Guhong was wearing...
Tan Guhong guessed that perhaps the girl's mother worked at the nightclub she had just escaped from.
Although this place could hardly be considered safe either, at least she could rest here for the time being. Tan Guhong sat down at the table and let out a long breath.
The phone still would not connect to Luo Jingming. She sent another text telling him roughly where she was, then lowered her head and saw a steaming bowl of rice on the table, with a small salted fish on top.
The girl timidly pushed the bowl toward her, signaling for her to eat.
Something softened inside Tan Guhong, and she gave her a friendly smile.
The girl smiled shyly in return. She was very small and thin, with ordinary features, but she had a pair of exceptionally bright, large eyes. She pointed to herself and said:
“My name is Mei.”
“A-Mei?”
The girl nodded. Tan Guhong smiled and reached out to pat her lightly on the head. A-Mei's face flushed red, and she turned and ran off to soothe her little brother.
Tan Guhong noticed the uniform-like outfit hanging on the girl's wall, with a bright red Young Pioneers' scarf tied around it, and suddenly felt a thousand emotions well up inside her.
After eating, A-Mei tried to take her to bed, but Tan Guhong refused, telling her not to worry about her.
She could not sleep now. Nguyen Thi Thuy and Luo Qingyang's people could arrive at any moment, and she needed to remain vigilant.
But sleep was not something she could control. After the harrowing ordeal just now, she had merely been forcing herself to hold on by sheer willpower. Now that she had relaxed even slightly, the exhaustion and pain throughout her body surged over her like a tide. Before long, her consciousness began to grow hazy.
At that moment, she still did not know that because of a casual remark from a security guard at the nightclub entrance, saying that that kid A-Long had beaten a woman until she was covered in injuries again, Nguyen Thi Thuy had taken notice, and the search had already begun spreading in this direction.
✦
A Long-Overdue Film Recommendation:
The Lover (1992, France)
Location: Vietnam
Synopsis: This film tells the poignant and moving love story of a young French girl and a wealthy Chinese young man in Saigon.
Recommendation: The film is adapted from Marguerite Duras's autobiographical novel The Lover, and tells of an episode from the author's youth. Vietnam in the 1920s was still a French colony. The Mekong River shimmered in the sunlight, vivid and bright palm trees swayed in the heat, and the air was filled with a stifling restlessness. A young, inexperienced girl and a mature man, unable to tell whether it was desire or instinct, a transaction or genuine affection. A moment of falling in love was enough to change an entire life.
✦
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