Free Monsoon by Di Morrissey Page A

get up there? Surely we don’t have to climb up from the grotto?’
    Hung gave a slight smile. ‘No one uses the grotto; it was once a place for . . .’ he struggled to find the right word and finally Sandy attempted to help.
    â€˜Smugglers? Pirates? Shipwrecks? Bandits?’
    Hung nodded. ‘Yes, very many bad men sailed all around South-East Asia in old times. Also when rich Chinese refugees left Vietnam after the American war they too were robbed.’
    â€˜And so were some very poor people,’ added Sandy.
    After lunch Hung took them across the bay in the Harvest Moon ’s motorised rubber ducky. At the base of the outcrop Hung jumped into the water and dragged the boat onto the beach. Then Hung, a small bag slung across his back, led the way over the rocky foreshore to where the track began.
    They threaded their way between boulders, the cliff face bare and windswept, until the track curved upward and there were suddenly straggly, struggling trees. It seemed they were walking in corkscrew fashion, slowly ascending, watching carefully where they stepped.
    Eventually Hung paused and pointed at the view through a break in the high rocks beside the track. They took a breather and leaned on the rocks for a view of the bay spread out below. Tom took more photographs, murmuring repeatedly, ‘Great shot.’
    Within minutes they were in a thicket of old trees that had weathered years of wind and sun, sinking roots between cracks in the rock in search of soil and water. Then, through the trees, they glimpsed the small pagoda, its red and gold paint cracked and faded. Hung hurried ahead to alert the elderly nun of their arrival.
    As they stood admiring the incongruity of what Sandy had instantly christened the Temple of Nowhere, Tom announced that he would take a look at the pagoda from the other angles on a path that seemed to circle it. ‘Bound to find something worth shooting.’ He took off, and Sandy and Anna answered Hung’s wave and walked up the steps to the pagoda.
    There was a small cobbled courtyard of beach stones in front of a stone arch etched with Vietnamese letters and religious symbols. They left their shoes at the open doors and stepped inside the dim cool room with its large decorated altar. Incense was burning; candles flickered next to a small offering of rice and nuts. To one side of the main shrine were smaller carvings and a doorway through which they heard Hung’s voice.
    He came into the main room, leading a tiny woman in a simple brown robe. Her head was shaven and she walked carefully as if she knew rather than saw the way.
    Hung made the introductions as Tom joined them. Sandy touched the woman’s hands, speaking quietly, and the nun smiled and led them to wooden seats in the courtyard.
    â€˜She says it is good to feel the soft hands of a woman,’ said Sandy.
    Hung wandered off as Sandy translated questions from Tom and Anna, piecing together the story of the nun, who had been raped and bashed, yet spared when others with her died. Since she had left Dien Bien Phu, where the French had made their last stand against the communist forces, she had prayed each day and observed the rituals of her faith.
    Sandy told them how the little nun came to this bay and was told of the deserted temple and how she’d asked to be brought here to thank the ancestral spirits who had watched over her. Local people came on feast days and ceremonial occasions to pray and make offerings at the temple on the hill, and gradually word spread and it became something of a pilgrimage to visit the nun living simply in a small hut beside the old pagoda. Visitors came away enriched by the woman’s piety and faith for she had suffered so much adversity and seen so much horror but remained serene.
    When Sandy asked her about her blindness. She told them in a mixture of French, English and Vietnamese. ‘I do not miss seeing very well. I see shapes, a little