Lost Soldiers

by Lost Soldiers (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  The gathered crowd waved and cheered them on as the cyclos rattled and clattered away from Dzung’s house. The men at their tables and the women in the doorways in the next road were no longer surprised by their presence, offering them friendly but perfunctory waves as they passed. The small shops and eating places of the side street seemed tamer, more cosmopolitan after the narrow alleyways in the heart of the district. Nguyen Tat Thanh Street and even the cluttered ugliness of the bridge that took them back into District One offered a measure of openness and hope. And the busy boulevard of Nguyen Hue Street with its mix of ferment and growth might just as well have been Manhattan.

  Muir was quiet and ponderous on the way back, even seeming to relax into the bouncing cyclo seat. Condley was lost in his own reverie, a deep frustration fed by the stark image of Dzung’s new child, rash-covered and too frail to cry. Along Nguyen Hue Street the two rode side by side. Finally Muir reached some resolution. He called to Condley over the noise of the traffic.

  ‘We can’t save everyone, Brandon.’

  ‘We can’t save anyone.’

  ‘Then why did you take me back there?’

  ‘They needed a good laugh, Professor. They never saw an orange luau shirt before.’

  ‘You’re a rogue, Brandon, but in a way you’re a saint.’

  ‘Don’t get carried away. I’ve killed a lot of people.’

  ‘More than you’ve saved?’

  ‘Give me a few minutes. I haven’t done the balance sheets on that one.’

  ‘Well, let me answer for you.’

  ‘Be careful, Professor, you’ve never seen me in action.’

  ‘I just did. And it was brilliant. Almost Christ-like in its power and simple humility, Brandon. Brilliant.’

  Muir eyed him carefully, letting that thought sink in. Finally he slapped the side rails of the cyclo as if they were the arms of his desk chair back in Hawaii. ‘You’re on a mission. I can see why this is so much more than bones to you.’

  ‘I’m going to get Dzung out of there,’ said Condley. ‘I’m buying a car, and I’m making him my driver. And then we’re going to start a little business. When he’s not driving me, I’m going to let him hire the car out and drive other people. He’ll start making some real money, then he can ask for a better place to live.’

  ‘You make me feel quite humble.’

  Condley grinned. ‘Then I guess it’s the perfect time to ask you for a loan?’

  ‘Talk to my accountant,’ laughed the rotund scientist. He grew serious as they neared the Rex Hotel. ‘May I ask you a question? I admit to being somewhat confused, Brandon. Clearly, you hate what happened to Dzung, and yet you have no problem with Colonel Pham, who as we know is out there playing golf while these people suffer. Or – shall I be blunt? Possibly making love to his daughter?’

  Condley thought for a moment, his mind buried in the past that had caught him up all those years ago and forever changed him. Then he shrugged casually. ‘I believe in God. Does that surprise you? And so I ask myself, why did He take me on this journey? Why did I wander through Asia for all those years, never fitting back in with my own people, never at ease with them anymore, in those false little kingdoms where they spend their days clutching their fragile idols of money and false power? And why was I led back here – simply to be swallowed up in bitterness, or to again become obsessed with death? I don’t think so. Maybe something good was supposed to come out of it. Something new. A birth? Maybe a birth that looks like a death. The death of the old, and the birth of the new. I have a certain power, Professor. Let’s call it the power of the uninvolved. I can talk to both sides, and both sides can talk to me.’

  ‘It seems to me you’re very involved.’

  ‘Not when it comes to payback. If you’re not Vietnamese they don’t really keep you on their score sheet.’ They had reached the hotel. Professor Muir watched Condley with a stunned respect as he climbed down from the cyclo. ‘I’ve never heard you speak so profoundly, Brandon. It’s almost scary to know you’ve been hiding that kind of intelligence from me for so long.’

  Condley waved goodbye to Dzung as they crossed the street and walked toward the hotel’s entrance, then he turned to Muir. ‘People talk a lot more freely in front of you when they think you’re dumb.’

  ‘What about Salt and Pepper?’

  Condley now laughed coldly, his sky-like eyes growing molten once again. ‘That’s different, Professor. They killed Marines. That’s the American score sheet. And it’s all about payback.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Across from the Rex Hotel, Dzung sat comfortably in his cyclo seat, smoking a cigarette and finishing his newspaper. Cong Ly and his friend had departed very early in the morning, saying only that they were travelling to the north. It was always like that with Cong Ly, mused the wiry cyclo driver as he flipped a page and continued to read. The American would disappear for a week or sometimes longer, never clearly saying where he was going or even what he was doing, and then return just as abruptly, filled with such a mix of exuberance and pathos that he could not help but touch Dzung’s heart.

  Twenty yards away, across the street and down the sidewalk, a younger man braked his Honda to a halt and parked it among a long row of motorbikes. With his uncanny antenna, Dzung immediately sensed that the younger man was watching him as he took a ticket stub from the attendant who looked after the parked motorbikes. The unsmiling younger man pocketed the ticket stub and began walking toward Dzung. He had piercing eyes and a thin, gangster-like mustache that drooped along the sides of his mouth. He was well-dressed, in dark gray slacks and a white shirt. And he was wearing leather shoes instead of sandals, which told Dzung that he was either a government official or a businessman.

  The younger man crossed the street and stopped near Dzung’s cyclo. He lit a cigarette, surveying Dzung with an increasing arrogance, as if he were preparing to make an attack. A sudden, knowing tension filled Dzung as he rested under the younger man’s gaze. He ignored the man, continuing to read his newspaper, but every instinct in his body told him that for some reason he was in trouble.

  Finally the man flicked his cigarette butt so that it bounced off the rear wheel of Dzung’s cyclo. Dzung looked down at the still-burning cigarette, which had landed near his feet. Then he looked over at the man. Their eyes locked for several seconds. Dzung’s expression did not change, but his insides were now humming with anticipation, as if he were just about to walk into an ambush during the war.

  Dzung was not alone in his quick trepidation. The mood among all the usual hawkers, peddlers, and drivers across from the Rex had changed abruptly in the space of a few seconds. The two cyclo drivers who had been lounging next to Dzung jumped nervously from their seats and walked into the park behind them. Others watched from a careful distance. Feeling their stares, Dzung knew that he had only one choice, unless he were to become a pitiful beggar in front of his friends after all these years of insult and abuse. He climbed out of his cab and picked up the cigarette butt. Then he examined it as if it were a relic, or perhaps a piece of evidence.

  ‘You are a very wasteful man,’ said Dzung.

  ‘Wasteful?’ The man snorted, his chin lowered onto his chest like a dog protecting its throat.

  ‘You wasted half a cigarette,’ continued Dzung. ‘Maybe you have so much money that you can burn it.’

  ‘Like the Americans?’ The man folded his arms, his eyes hot.

  ‘Here, finish it.’ Dzung tossed the cigarette back at the man. It landed at his feet. ‘You don’t like Americans? Maybe you think the Russians were better.’

  ‘I hate them all,’ said the man. ‘I don’t need them. I make good money from Vietnamese.’

  ‘That’s how you and I are different,’ shrugged Dzung. ‘You, with your new motorbike and your fancy leather shoes. I don’t make good money from Vietnamese.’

  ‘You worked for the Americans before. You fought for them.’ It was an accusation, even a damnation.<
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  ‘You know a lot about me already,’ said Dzung. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Nghiem Le Manh,’ he answered. ‘That’s all you need to know for now.’

  ‘Well, Manh, I didn’t work for the Americans before,’ said Dzung. ‘I fought for my country.’

  ‘Nguy.’ Manh spat the word out. It was a slur used by the communists against the people who had supported the old Sai Gon government. ‘Phan quoc,’ he continued, calling Dzung a traitor to his country.

  The words were sadly familiar to Dzung, echoing like a jail gong through his memory, bringing with them the smell of jungle camps and the sounds of people slowly, slowly dying. He shrugged nonchalantly, now knowing with certainty that Manh worked for the government and that for some reason the younger man had been sent to harass or threaten or even arrest him.

  ‘What do you even know about it?’ mused Dzung, flicking the end of his own cigarette into the street. ‘It was a very long time ago, Manh. Were you even born then?’

  ‘It’s not your place to question me,’ answered Manh. ‘I am not the one on trial.’

  On trial. The world closed around Dzung as he stood staring at this young man who had appeared from nowhere. The sky descended and the street rose up and the buildings pressed toward him until he seemed to be peering at Manh from inside a box, or maybe a cage. Yes, thought Dzung, a cage. He knew this drill. He sighed, yielding to it. Nothing could change it, nothing at all.

  ‘What do you want, Manh?’

  Manh handed him a business card. ‘Report to this address. I will talk to you there.’ He wheeled back around, crossing the street and paying two thousand dong to the fierce, ugly man who had tended his motorbike. And then he sped off into the morning traffic.

  * * *

  Dzung walked slowly up dozens of wide stone steps, looking into the cavern of the ancient headquarters built by French colonialists a century before. The steps were worn in the middle, rounded at their edges from a million such journeys that had preceded him, step by agonizing step. He reached the top and opened a heavy door, walking slowly inside. As the door closed behind him, he found himself in a dank, dark lobby, sealed off from the energy and motion of Sai Gon’s mad streets as if he had just entered a tomb. He could not remember the last time the world had gone so quiet.

  He stood motionless in the high-ceilinged old lobby, squinching his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. Finally he noticed a uniformed guard sitting at a desk in the center of the room. The guard waved him over without saying a word. Dzung just as silently handed the guard his government identity card, along with the card that Nghiem Le Manh had given him. There was no need to converse. Both of them knew the drill.

  ‘Room 212,’ the guard finally said, pointing lazily toward a nearby stairwell and then ignoring him.

  He began climbing the steps toward Room 212. The flopping of his sandals echoed in the silence. The building emanated an odor that itself was foreign, a mix of dust and mildew, as if the closed-windowed, European structure had been slowly conquered over the years by Sai Gon’s ferment and humidity and rot. The walls and ceiling were a dull, ugly greenish-blue, the paint so old that the dirt and mold on the walls was palpable.

  The second floor seemed empty, just as eerily quiet as the lobby. Each office door was shut. No one moved along the hallways. He could hear no voices behind the office doors. No telephones were ringing. The only sound that broke the silence as he searched for Room 212 was the occasional whirring of an air conditioner. He had not felt an air conditioner in at least twenty-five years, other than the occasional gusts from the doorways of the Rex Hotel. He was already beginning to tremble slightly from the cold.

  He reached Room 212 and stood before the door for several seconds, composing himself. Finally he took a deep breath and walked inside. Manh was alone in the small, stark room, waiting for him, sitting behind a cluttered desk. On the wall just behind him were three pictures of the ruins of Angkor Wat, no doubt a souvenir of Manh’s military service during the decade that the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia. Other than the three pictures, the room was as barren as a prison cell.

  ‘You are late,’ said Manh, lighting a cigarette. He held his cigarette all the way down between his first two fingers next to the palm, and pushed his palm against his chin when he took a drag. He looked as though he had copied his smoking style from the villain in an old movie, in order to make him look mysterious.

  ‘I had a customer,’ answered Dzung blandly. ‘One hour, one dollar. I needed the money.’

  ‘When you are summoned by the Interior Ministry you are expected to report immediately,’ said Manh. ‘Or maybe you think your time is more valuable than mine?’

  ‘You are paid a salary either way,’ shrugged Dzung. ‘What else do you have planned today, other than interrogating me?’

  Manh’s eyebrows lifted, as if he were confirming an unspoken suspicion. ‘Your records from the camps indicate that you are frequently insolent.’

  ‘It was only an hour,’ sighed Dzung, knowing what was coming. ‘I made ten thousand dong. Not even a dollar, actually. Not enough to buy shoelaces for your pretty leather shoes.’

  Manh stiffened in his chair, an indication that the formalities were over. ‘You should not be speaking to me like this!’ He touched the telephone on his desk, a threat. ‘Your attitude disturbs me. It indicates that you learned very little in the camps. I can have you sent back with one phone call. Do you doubt that?’

  Dzung forced a conciliatory smile. The Game had begun, and he was very adept at playing it. ‘Then let me apologize, Manh. I know that if I were to show you disrespect I would be insulting the revolution. And I have come to terms with the revolution.’

  Manh seemed immediately pleased. He stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray, then lit another one as he flipped through the hundreds of pages that Dzung knew made up his own personal file.

  ‘You are smart,’ said Manh, indulging Dzung. ‘You went to college.’

  ‘Da Lat,’ smiled Dzung with small irony. His face lit up with a passion that was more a remembrance than an actual emotion, a dim light from long ago. ‘It was an excellent education. Very good training. Tactics. Leadership. Engineering. English. That’s why I make such a good cyclo driver.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Manh, knowing Dzung was being sarcastic. Da Lat had produced the old regime’s best military leaders. Its graduates were despised by the communist government. ‘So we are both very smart. And after reading your file I am even willing to admit this, Dzung. You are probably smarter than I am.’

  A pulse of defiance charged through Dzung, despite his position of forced humility. He couldn’t hold it back. He smiled. ‘How would I know, Manh? Perhaps you should show me your file. But you know that many people on the street believe those who work for the government are stupid.’

  ‘A predictable answer, given your history,’ said Manh, fighting to hold back his anger. ‘That is your problem. So much intelligence, and so little common sense.’

  ‘I had common sense or I would not have survived in combat,’ answered Dzung. ‘Then for almost four years your interrogators kept repeating that I had been stupid to oppose the revolution, and they re-educated me. So maybe all the lectures by the stupid propagandists took away my common sense.’

  ‘Be careful,’ warned Manh, tapping the phone.

  Dzung was still smiling, but he spoke without a trace of sarcasm as he watched the Interior Ministry official’s face. ‘Oh, it was a wonderful education, Manh! Nothing like the boring classrooms of Da Lat! Clearing minefields by hand and planting thousands of trees out in the wilderness. Eating bugs because there was no meat. Living in the mountains like we were some lost and hopeless tribe, never hearing a radio or reading a newspaper or seeing the people we loved, until most of the people we loved were either dead or had disappeared. Four years, listening to the gong man, the pit-bull man, the gun man, the propaganda man, the loudspeaker man, until my brain was so overloaded with nonsense that it emptied
all the garbage out into the jungle, just the way you vomit when you have eaten too much food. All of it, left behind me in the camps. That is what happened to my second education, the education that was supposed to erase my education. But it helped me become more intelligent. It cleansed my mind and focused it, don’t you see?’

  ‘You must speak more carefully,’ warned Manh. ‘I am trying to help you when I say this. You should be showing me respect. If you knew how quickly I could lock you up you would be very afraid of the things you are saying.’

  ‘Afraid of what? You are a powerful man, so maybe you know fear, but do you know what courage is?’ Memories washed over Dzung until the calm in his face resonated, penetrating even the depths of Manh’s dark threat. ‘Courage and honor, respect and even pity, justice and, yes, you may not like for me to say it, but let me use the word – love? Do you know these words, Manh? A love for your children, so deep that you would die for them? Or maybe a love of justice, so pure that it demands that you speak out? These are the feelings that push the world forward. And what are they to you but words? What have you learned in the government schools that taught you how to hate and to interrogate? The honor of defending a failed revolution? Justice measured by a bribe? The love of retribution? Sometimes I pity you, and then I wish I could show you what could have been. Or what might have been. Or even what could be.’

  ‘I have lost my patience with you,’ answered Manh, repulsed by Dzung’s rhetoric and looking to regain control of the interrogation. ‘You end up talking nonsense that no normal Vietnamese can understand. You are dangerous.’

  ‘Maybe I read too much, or perhaps I simply think too much,’ said Dzung. He had lost his smile. He knew that he had certainly said too much and that Manh would very likely make him pay for his careless words. But there was no point in stopping without finishing his thought. ‘Or maybe I have been through too much. But this I know: Courage did not save us, and fear will not protect us. So you’re wrong to think I would ever be afraid, not anymore. The truth is, I’ve lost all my fear. But I’ve lost all my hate too. I’ve lost them both. Can you understand that, Manh?’