by David Rabe
But what of me? thinks Whitaker.
Trousers, a shirt, a tie, and socks are arranged upon a straight-backed chair near the foot of the bed. Softly Whitaker strides across the room. Close enough to hear Bob and Sharon’s breathing, which draws his own into their rhythm, he pats Bob’s trouser pockets. He rummages for Bob’s billfold. Inside are two twenties, five tens, two fives, four ones. He takes a one, a five, two tens, one twenty. From his pocket, he draws out his handkerchief with which he wipes clean the leather before returning it to the trousers. Her perfect body is the body of a perfect toy. He does not want to leave her to this other, and wonders suddenly, glimpsing a steeple out the window, is there anyone out there now at the monument where he was, the monument to Washington, or at the mall or reflecting pool? If he were to go there now, would he be the only marcher or would there be others sickened with some protest, some soundless howling? Thinking this, the words melting and slowly transferring into emotion, he feels he has joined in a movement with thousands and thousands of other people.
Outside, he sits awhile in the park.
10
Of the two movies, Lan found the second more pleasing and intriguing, a story named after the event of people going into a forest with food and drink, everybody sharing everything in a party. In the story the people who are old tried to change the young girl into someone as old as they were. Then a boy who was nearly a giant, and very beautiful, came among them. There was lovely dancing amid colored lights and paper decorations on a barge in a river shining like the wet sides of a fish, the girl and boy dancing, she in her thin blue dress, filmy as air, and he with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. They loved each other, truly. In the end, he ran from her through weeds as high as his waist, pursuing a big train pulling many boxes of different colors, while the young girl among the old people waited until she could no longer, and she ran to find him.
Now Lan is standing beside the Lambretta driver who brought her home. They linger before the narrow alleyway that leads to the tiny hut in which she lives. Having ridden with Kim out of Bien Hoa as far as Tan Mai, she walked with Kim to her home. Kim’s mother offered tea, and asked about the movies. Lan sat for a while, then waved down the scooter that took her to the highway and off and down a dirt road of ruts to the village of An Duc To. The driver, having been paid, sits astride his scooter, chatting for a moment before smiling and stepping to the ground to turn his vehicle about.
Streaking suddenly up from the fields to their left, the flare startles them, hissing, shedding sparks; then it pops and hangs in silence above the weeds, the logs, a pulse of drifting light over the flat, wavering land that leads to the jungle facing the bunker. They stand transfixed until the machine gun in the bunker begins to chatter; the muzzle flashes, pauses, then shakes again; the bursts are short, repetitive; the tracer rounds flee like greenish sticks of fire down the dark. Lan, having ducked to take the thin protection of a tree, has a moment’s vision of the men behind that weapon peering into a wilderness of rustling, threatening forms. The silence goes on. The flare, beneath its shadow of silk, lessens. The dark thickens. The speed of the flare’s descent doubles. As it nears the ground, the lines that hold it aloft are threads of light. With wind, it sways. The gun, having received no fire in response, is silent. The flare, sputtering, goes out.
“Nothing,” he says.
“No. It happens all the time and they always shoot”—she gestures to indicate the inky wall of foliage—“that way. No one ever shoots back.”
“Good,” he says, and grins. “You should be happy.”
“Oh, yes.” Lan smiles. “But I don’t know why they do it.”
“They think the trees move.”
“What?”
“They lay out there all night, they think the trees move. They shoot at the trees. They get bored, they shoot at trees.” He is elderly, his face like leather, with a wisp of beard and white eyebrows as thick as silkworms. He shakes his head, smiling, before nodding good night and driving off. The red speck of the taillight of his machine dissolves slowly in the dark. For a moment more she watches, and then, feeling tired, humming quietly, she turns into the alleyway.
They are waiting for her, the two GIs. She sees them and halts in the shadows before they know she is there. Each holding a bottle of Ba Moi Ba beer, they rest against her neighbor’s wall, while Pham Van Doan, a Lambretta driver she does not like and who she is certain brought them, squats near a jeep that must be theirs. His elbows are on his knees, his hands under his chin. Moonlight touches them all. Here, beyond the first of the little streets, stand numerous homes with figures visible all about the yards—people sitting, resting, sharing conversation. Le Xuan Thuc, a farmer from near Dong Xoai who lost his land and family in the fighting there, is some twenty yards away at work before a lantern. An old man of great seriousness, he lives now with his sister and carves, with extreme concern and caution, figurines of animals in wood. At a juncture in the pathways, an open welding shop shows young men laboring within a clanging celebration of sparks; they are bright with sweat, hammers swinging in their hands.
She steps from her concealment and the three men stir in recognition of her arrival. Pham Van Doan hastens to inform her that he brought the GIs, How much will she pay him for helping her business? Fifty, she says, knowing the GIs will have already paid him something. He yells in protest, demanding more. “Too little, too little.” She shuts her eyes, but does not tell him that he annoys her, that she is tired, that she does not like him. She puts the money in his hand and he dumps it to the ground. She shrugs and goes on. She hears him call her a slut, a vile perfume, a dead flower. Without looking back, she senses him bend to the money, then run off to wherever he left his taxi.
One of the two GIs is a black man of slight build; the other is larger and white and both are dressed in their work clothes, the green uniforms that bear their names and insignias. The larger, the white, winking, gestures a greeting.
She nods. “Hello, GI,” she says. “Hello, pretty. You come see Lan, huh?”
“That’s right, Girl. You got it; me and Sissler here.”
She studies the other one, the black one, concentrating on his nametag and thinking about what she just heard. “Okay, Sissler.”
“The two of us,” Sissler says; his eyes are large. He rubs his fingers on the bumps and stubble of his chin. “Ryan, I got to say she don’t look like a lotta fun.”
“Fun. Sure,” she says. “You want short-time, Lan, huh?”
“I tole you,” Ryan says. “I tole you I was bringin’ you to the right place. Man, I know my way.”
“You can do short-time?” Sissler says.
“No sweat.”
“Two men. Two men.”
“Okay. I know.”
“Do short-time one man, fini him, do short-time second man,” he says, raising his first and second fingers to show her. “Two men.”
“I know,” she says, grinning. “I ’stand.”
“Whatcha say?”
“Can do. Can do number one. I show you. House me.”
“How much?” Sissler says.
“House me,” she tells them. “C’mon.” With a small copper key, she pops open the flimsy lock on the door of corrugated tin nailed to a rough wood frame. Shadows, as they enter, wash over her. She closes and hooks shut the door.
“Palatial,” Sissler says. “Really number one.”
“What time is it?”
“What?”
“What time is it?” Ryan says.
“I can’t see my watch. But we got time.”
“Let’s goooo, girl.” He is singing the words.
“Okay,” Lan says. She is bowed over, rummaging about in a chest in the corner.
“This place’s the pits, man,” Sissler says. “We in the bottom of the barrel.”
Ryan halfway sings, “ ‘Love is not a gadget, love is not a toy.’ ”
From the chest in the corner, she returns with a lantern along with a match, t
he head of which, pressed and scraped beneath the cardboard cover, puffs into fire. Tipped to the lantern wick, it touches the room with a trembling yellow. She smiles, walking proudly before them. “Number one, huh?”
“GE,” Ryan says. “How much?” He puffs on a cigarette while Sissler paces the perimeter of the room.
“Tomorrow house me more good,” she tells them. “I fini house tonight.”
“I know that,” Sissler says. “I know that. How much?”
“Short-time? Two men, seven hundred okay?” She smiles, nodding.
“Get outta here,” Ryan yells. “Four hundred.”
“Oh, no can do. Xin loi. No can do four hundred.”
Ryan springs at her and his hands take her waist between them, making her cry aloud. “No hurt me,” she says, “no hurt me,” as he flings her upward and holds her poised above his grinning face cut with shadow. “Four hundred,” he tells her. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I mean, we really don’t have to give you nothin’, do we, slope? Do we?”
“I don’t know.”
“No. We don’t, because you’re a stupid goddamn whore. Ain’t that what you are? Why don’t you answer me? We ain’t leavin’ here without gettin’ some anyway, so why all the sweat? Don’t you know that?”
“No sweat.”
“You make me sick, all the sweat you put a man through.”
“No sweat, GI. Fini hold me, okay? No hold me.”
“How much?” he says.
“What you want—I don’t know.”
“Three hundred.”
“I no like hold me, hurt me.”
“Three hundred. Just remember we come all the way over here to help you in this shitty-assed country.”
“You fini!”
“Two men. Three hundred.”
“No sweat.”
“For how many times?”
“Okay, okay.”
“For how many times?”
“I no ’stand!”
“One, two, three, four—each man, how many?”
“I don’t know.”
He embraces her, squeezing hard. “That’s good,” he says. “You got it. Now just drop your drawers; we think we love you.”
“We pretty sure.”
She nods; her throat hurts, and on the bed behind her, Sissler sits undressing in the changing light as Ryan crosses before the lantern.
“I don’t know why you do me bad, GI, I don’t know.” She is pulling off the tops of her pajamas before carefully folding them. Sissler, behind her, is unhooking the catch of her bra.
“Sissler,” Ryan says.
“Yeah.”
“That Sergeant Koopman don’t get off my case, I am going to do something insane.”
“You got to ignore the fuckhead.”
“You see how he treats me.”
“You got to pay him no mind.”
“You see how he hassles me.”
“Yeah.” He hands Lan the bra. “But you got to ignore him.”
After placing the bra at the foot of the bed, she returns to him to sit slantwise across his knees.
“I got to get back to the world is what I got to do.”
“We here now,” Sissler says.
“Why him do me bad, Sissler?” Her gaze is genuine upon him; she wants to know.
“’Cause he’s crazy,” Sissler says. “’Cause he’s crazy ofay Georgia trash and that’s why.”
Ryan laughs loudly; he stomps his feet, waves his arms.
“You laugh; do me bad, I no like. You come, talk me short-time, I say, ‘Okay, no sweat.’ Why do me bad?” And with Sissler so near, she turns to him for an answer, and that makes him put his mouth to her throat. “One man all night, GI. You, okay?” Sissler smiles; she feels the smile against her throat. “No sweat; no money,” she says. “You want all night? Fini two men, then one man all night. Sleep all night, GI.” He smiles again, looking at her, a peculiar smile, mostly in his eyes, barely altering his expression.
“Sure,” he says.
“Can do, huh?” She is nodding eagerly. His hands are on her buttocks, moving; his fingers tug at the elastic of the waist of the pajamas. “No … sweat,” she says while touching one finger gently to his temple.
“See you later, Ryan,” he says.
“I got your smokes, Sis. I’m gonna wait outside.”
“I fini clothes … no sweat,” she whispers and hastens to get out of the pajama bottoms, before lying back on the matting of woven straw over planks in the uneasy gleam of the lantern, her thighs parting to calm him, it takes no effort, she knows what it all is, and when he is replaced by Ryan, her only sense of the difference is weight, a greater heaviness, a heavier rhythm, as she lies unmoving in the ice of her thoughts. Then a gecko high in the rafters unleashes a moment of its eerie chatter and misery startles her, one long knife of it that snakes her arms around him who is over her, Ryan, white, thick, angry Ryan so close to her now, and she is stammering and crying aloud. He falters, surprised at her frenzy, and then he watches whatever is happening to her happen, grinning and looking and calling out, “I think I made her come,” to Sissler, who calls back through the thin metal wall, “Just hurry up.”
11
Her eyes are ancient; they are strange and exact as olives. She is alone. The GIs are gone; they have been gone for some time, and she doesn’t know for how long, nor does she know of the place to which they have gone; they appeared and disappeared; it could have mattered. Recollection of her agitated voice asking the one to stay puzzles and insults her. Now she’s glad both are gone. Maybe she was frightened of the one and sought protection from the other. She feels cramped and thick in her middle, in her stomach and back, a faint ache on the right side; she will bleed soon; perhaps tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then the next day; the bleeding will keep her from work.
And suddenly she blinks, jolted by the memory of her dead father’s hands. The thought has come for no reason. The air has eyes, it seems, generations of her curious ancestors. It makes her lie in perfect stillness for a time. In three days it will be the day she goes to Saigon to see her brother and give him money. Maybe she can also buy a new dress. Her brother needs the money to pay for certain papers without which he would be immediately taken into the army. Some time ago, after serving six months, he was given a temporary release because of consumption. The papers he paid for said the illness remained in him. He doesn’t know if it does or if it doesn’t. Still, she lies unmoving and naked in a continuing silence, her clothing tossed wherever they threw it. Bugs of varied shells and instincts bat about the lantern, the queer configurations of their bodies magnified in shadow on the walls. One glides to her knee, and prowls a moment before settling upon a cut in the skin. With feathery extensions jutting from its shoulders, it probes the wound. She swallows, her cheeks growing large with breathing, while the tentacles seek the openness of the sore, and her eyes, in weariness, close. Then slowly, with care and determination, she forces herself to stand, fit her feet into slippers, and walk to the chest in the corner. Opening the lid, she draws forth a robe of purple silk patterned with large and delicate flowers. After covering herself and tying the belt of the robe at her waist, she locates a metal box bound by cord, and taking up from the bed the 300 piastres the GIs left and the 550 Madame Lieu paid her, she deposits it all in the box with her paper money, red and green, a mix of silverish and copper-colored coins. She secures the cord, returns the box to the chest, and covers it with a square of folded silk. There is a book, The Tale of Kieu, with ink-drawn figures of Kieu and Kim faintly occupying the cover. Under it lies a Playboy magazine that she took from Madame Lieu’s, the glossy pages bent open to reveal Miss August. She places them both on top of the silk, then closes and locks the lid of the chest. She picks the two prophylactics from the floor and drops them into a paper sack, which she places beside the door. And there, crouched in the corner gloom, waits a rat the size of a small child. She goes rigid; the eyes are bright and intereste
d, looking at her with an unnatural glint. And then something happens; it happens deep in the brain behind the eyes of that rat and she sees it: the animal knows her.
With a basin and towel snatched up from a table near the bed, she goes sideways into the night in which the sky is cloudless. There is an icy edge to the air and Le Xuan Thuc remains at his workbench in the small yard before his house, having endured even into this late hour. It stops her to see him. The tiny body of a tiger rests in his hands; the liquid he uses on his knife as he works shimmers in a jar at his feet. He seems worried and somber, quietly working. His hands are exacting, his breathing a secretive whisper. The eyes in the head of the tiger are as smooth as bulbs of glass. Possessed of precision and detail, they are set in rims of fine sockets. He dips the blade of the knife in the jar. Carefully, he puts the point to the paw. For a moment she watches, waiting till the knife is safely withdrawn from its task before she says softly, “Good evening,” to him and when he looks up in acknowledgment, she explains that she was going out to wash. He returns to his work. She wonders if she might stay to watch his hands performing movements so intricate, but then turns to go. She is tired; she will wash and sleep. She walks swiftly, traveling through swaths of moonlight and shadow until she arrives at a tree and the well. From a low branch she hangs the towel, and bending, sets the pan on a flatness of rock. Unfastening the bucket of wood from its hook, she lowers it into the ringing depths and for the length of one moment gazes into the loveliness of the walls spiraling down to the bucket swaying and the blackness shimmering. Then the rope runs from her fingers. The splash seems in another world. The well changes into a dark hole falling away beneath her. Hand over hand she hauls up her burden of water. With soap she lathers and washes, and with the towel carefully dries. She is thinking, and it seems new knowledge has come to her in her day. If you moved when they were in you, they liked it better; if you moved and made sounds with your breathing. How strange Heaven is, she thinks, recalling Madame Lieu’s car wash and the other girls there, her companions in misery. The Tale of Kieu is right. Heaven gives them rosy-cheeked youth and beauty, but then He banishes them to the windblown dust of the world, where they must live in dishonor before gaining His mercy. As she dresses under the watchful black sky, she feels the truth of the great poem written long ago, but born, it seems, of her life. Several wary paces into the forest, she empties the water onto the leaves and brittleness of a branch.