TABOO TALES(erotica)

On Thursday evening, Jamie and I spoke to this bloke in Toronto that Limbu, his contact in Singapore, had given him, a Sergeant Louis D’Herault, a man who’s spent the last 15 years tracking down illegally adopted children funnelled into Canada from Asia, the former Russian hegemony, and South America. This man seemed to think we had a good chance of tracking Hu’e as there were indications that one of the crooked adoption agencies he’d made it his business to close down may have been the one that handled the sale of the child. My blood was boiling by the end of the conversation.

The Asian policemen we’d talked to, like prod-noses everywhere, had been reluctant to use that word ‘sale’; ‘traffic’ was the closest they’d allowed themselves. This man was under no illusions as to the transaction that took place, and employed no euphemisms; as far as he was concerned, it was a human being, a child, who’d been put up for sale, like a can of beans or a sack of onions. We talked for almost an hour, and afterwards, Jamie and I had decided; we needed to go to Toronto, there was a good chance we could pick up the trail there and follow it through to the end.

This was always supposing we were actually following Hu’e’s trail; I tried not to think of the other possible fates she might have endured; I could only manage to fit my head around the possibility that she’d been adopted and brought up by a good family. To think otherwise would lead me to something I can’t even begin to consider; the possibility of her death years before, or life as a sex-slave or prostitute in some hell-hole. Either one of those possibilities can’t be allowed into my head; to entertain them is to despair, and I still have hope, as does Jamie, darling, brave, caring Polar Bear that he is. As long as I believe that Hu’e had and is having a good life, I can keep on searching for her; to even consider any other possibility is to lose heart and quit, and I won’t do that, not while hope remains.

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JamieText content © NôvelDrama.Org.

Yesterday evening, Nia and I had a long and interesting chat with this French-Canadian guy, a real, live Mountie, working with the Toronto Organised Crime Squad, together with the Special Victims Unit of the Sex Crimes Unit, of all things, digging into babies-for-cash adoption rackets, both recent and historical, and he mentioned that he may have possibly located Hu’e and the family who adopted her. He mentioned the information Limbu had sent him, and, in conjunction with the collated data from the stuff I’d brought back with me from Da Nang, hinted he was almost positive he had the right child, right age and gender, right timeframe, and was waiting for confirmation of some things from the US State Department.

He also mentioned that had been receiving some encouraging feedback from various overseas and foreign adoption advisory bodies in the United States, as well as some unofficial but very helpful intelligence from the FBI. He finished by stating that we could do worse than look over the information and files he had, and invited us over to do just that. That was all I was waiting for, so this morning Nia trotted over to the Canadian High Commission in Grosvenor Square, a short walk from Bond Street tube station, to get our visa status confirmed. Luckily, UK citizens don’t need visa’s, so I was in the throes of sorting out flights for us to go to Toronto.

Nia was excited at travelling to Canada, and keyed-up at the prospect of possibly tracking down her sister, our sister, in the next few days. I didn’t want to burst her bubble by telling her how unlikely and unrealistic her expectations were; she needed this, she needed to feel as if she was making headway against 28 years of silence and conspiracy in the disappearance of her older sister.

Last night the reality of what had happened to Hu’e finally seemed to have hit home, kicked-off in part by this Mountie bloke’s refusal to use the term ‘trafficking’ in relation to the baby trade; he preferred to be blunt, and told Nia that her sister had been bought and sold, like so many hundreds of thousands of children spirited away from their families, a commodity with a cash value. She spent a good part of last night crying as that truth finally came home to her.

I managed to get us two standby seats for Toronto from Gatwick on Sunday morning, so Nia packed a couple of flight bags while I booked us a cab for the trip to Victoria so w could get the Gatwick Express train — driving to Gatwick was always an unrewarding experience, especially if the M25 motorway was playing its usual ‘world’s biggest Car-Park’ game.

I went to see mum while Nia was out doing some last minute shopping, I popped over to give her a hug, and get one in return; I was starting to feel the strain here; I wanted to get this over with, but at the same time I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. There were just too many long-shots to hope for here, and even Nia’s breezy confidence, her ‘million-to-one shots come-up nine times out of ten’ attitude was starting to grate on me.

I lived in a world of certainties and cautious gambles based on an informed understanding of the variables involved and the risk/benefit ratio. It was a predictable world, and to be suddenly catapulted into a course of action with no predictable outcome worried me, and for a very good reason; I could see how emotionally invested Nia had become in this quest of hers, how much she believed in the happy ending as an inevitable consequence of our efforts; but what would happen if it all came to nothing, if Hu’e had indeed been swallowed up and destroyed by this whole thing years ago, or become one of those faceless women haunting the meat-rack alleys and side streets of London, Paris, Tokyo, Odessa, Sao Paolo? What would happen to Nia then? What kind of a fall was she heading for? That was my fear; that was what was keeping me awake at nights. That was why I needed mum, right now.

Mum was fatalistic about our success or failure; like me, she was more concerned about the effect this whole thing was having on both Nia and on us as a couple. Mum completely approved of our relationship, and to be truthful, I had almost completely forgotten that Nia, quite apart from being the absolute centre of my world, was also my younger sister, but now a very big-brotherly concern was building in me, and I needed to share it with mum. She was pragmatic, but caring, and, as usual, managed to give me a measure of calm and rebalanced perspective.

“Little boy, you worry too much about how I feeling about this. If you want my blessing, I give it, but this thing you both have decided to do, it is for Nguye’t, not for me. I am grateful and pleased my children want to help me find my baby, but she gone a long time ago, I have other babies here, now, and I worried about them, what this doing to them. Nguye’t have strong passions, that is good, she will be good, strong mother one day, but passion need to be… balanced? yes, balanced, with other parts of life, otherwise become obsession, that not good. This is where my little boy must help her. If she not find Hu’e, or find out she is gone, that is when she will need Huyn’h, she will need your strength.”

“If you not find Hu’e, she must learn to understand, then, and you must help her, little boy, that I have not really lost Hu’e; every time I see Nguye’t, I also see Hu’e, so she still here, a small part of her, in Nguye’t, and I see her very day. This is what Nguye’t need to understand, this is what little boy can help her to see; that both my daughters are still here, they both have same part of me, and so I see them both every day, just like I look at my little boy and see my sister every day. No-one ever really leave, it just how you look for them that count. I not have separate place in heart for each of my children, all of them live there together, so little girl not really gone, for me she will always be in my heart, maybe best place for her, yes?”

I was far too big to lean on mum now, like I used to when I was small, but I really needed to huddle up against her right now and whisper how scared I was, like I did when I was little, but grown men can’t do that. She sensed what I was feeling though, so she leaned on me instead, her arm around my waist and my arm around her shoulder, still comforting, still my mum. I sat in silence, not knowing how to tell her what was wrong, but of course she knew she knew something was bugging me; she’d been reading my mind for years, after all. She’d also perfected the art of the pointed silence years ago, and now she was pointing it at me, forcing me to say what was really on my mind. Finally I couldn’t hold out any longer.

“I’m still worried about Nia, mum. She’s become this focussed, driven thing, she’s forgotten about the job she wanted so much, everything in her is pointing at what we’re doing to find Hu’e. I sometimes wish we’d never started this, because if it comes out any way other than us finding her alive and well and happy, it will destroy Nia, and I can’t allow that. Talk to her, please, mum, get her to damp it down a bit, make her see that this may not have a happy ending, because I don’t know how to!”

I was nearly in tears over this. Nia was worrying me no end with this task she’d thrown herself into, this quest I’d that I’d promised I’d see through with her. The problem is, she couldn’t see that sometimes things don’t end the way you want them to, and if you invest all your time, and effort, and heart in them, where do you go if they collapse and fail?

Mum patted me on the chest, her favourite comfort gesture.

“Little boy not have to worry, Nguye’t coming here from shopping, I talk to her. You go home, calm down, make sure you have everything you need for trip, I make daughter see what she doing, not to worry!”