The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham Page A

studies. He often dropped by my house for visits during the weekends, bringing small gifts of fresh fruit from his family’s garden. This was the first time he showed up without notice. I was surprised to see Khoa looking rather nervous.
    Khoa greeted Anh and me, then promptly said, “Teacher, can we talk on the patio?”
    I agreed and Anh brought us tea and chilled sugarcane batons on the patio. It was unusual for Khoa to ask to speak in private. I waited for him to sip his tea before asking if he had problems at school.
    “No, Teacher. My classes are fine.” He paused and then looked directly at me. “I heard you were going to a meeting tonight.”
    “I’m meeting Tra later after dinner. I think he needs some help with his studies.”
    “Teacher, did you know Tra is a Communist recruiter?”
    I shook my head, stunned. Tra was one of my favorite students, diligent and very bright. Although Tra was shy and quiet in class, he often sought me out during lunch and recess breaks to talk about the fighting in the countryside. Many students were very worried about being drafted into the army, and it seemed normal to me that Tra was concerned about the brewing war. When I was his age in school, politics was all my friends and I could think about.
    “Tra and I are from the same village. His uncle was killed in a land dispute with the government, and Tra’s family lost the land the Viet Minh gave them. Tra has been a party member since he was thirteen,” he said. The way Khoa met my eyes squarely told me he was putting himself in danger by this revelation.
    “Tra is planning to introduce you to his superiors so they can judge your political affiliation.”
    “Are you serious? I’ve never shown any indication that I might want to join the Viet Cong.”
    “But when students asked you about the government’s policies and the country’s stability, you said the leaders were creating a privileged class for their party members. You were very pessimistic about the government pacification program. You said it would fail.”
    “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m a Communist sympathizer.”
    “It’s enough to make Tra think that you might be. But he’s not sure—that’s why he’s bringing you to his superiors. If they think you’re sympathetic to the Communist cause, they’ll try to recruit you. By doing that, they will expose themselves. So you must join. Otherwise they will consider you a danger to their organization. They’ll find a way to eliminate you.”
    I was shocked. All this time I thought I was safe in Ben Tre by keeping a low profile and focusing on my work. I never took part in teachers’ rallies and I was very careful of saying anything critical of the government to any of the faculty.
    “Teacher, from now on, please be careful about what you say to the students. Half of them are Communist sympathizers and party members.”
    “Why aren’t you a member?”
    Looking at the lines in his palms, Khoa sighed. “My father was a devout Buddhist. Before he died, he made me promise to remain neutral as long as I could. Besides, who would take care of my mother and sister if I got killed in this war?”
    I asked him, “Did your family lose land?”
    “My father was a carpenter. The Viet Minh only gave land to farmers and sharecroppers, so we gained nothing from the Viet Minh and lost nothing in the government’s reparation program.”
             
    I KNEW about the land reforms and remembered the troubles the government had with the peasants, but I had no idea how entrenched the problem had become in the southern countryside. During the first few years in the South, my family was engrossed in our own struggles in Saigon. We didn’t pay much attention to what was happening in the provinces.
    Khoa said many of his classmates had seen their fathers jailed and their lands confiscated.
    During the war, the Viet Minh had decreed a land reform in the South, where the majority of the land was owned by a small