“I was thinking perhaps outside.”
“Comrade, these patients are so drugged you could drive a truck over them and they’d smile at you.”
“Even so …”
“Look, it’s hot out there. This room’s twenty degrees cooler … and I’m on duty.” He annoyed her. She wanted him to get whatever it was over with and get the blazes out.
“Very well,” he said and walked into the room. Dtui stood with her arm crooked against her waist waiting for some lecture. But she noticed now that the head of security had apparently forgotten to put on his armor of arrogance. He seemed rather frail; almost, one could say, timid. He continued to hold himself upright but it wasn’t without effort: he seemed more like a wall hanging than a signpost. Dtui found his silence disconcerting.
“The sooner you start, the sooner I can get back to work,” she said. She was confused by the look of uncertainty on his face. He was gazing over her shoulder at some point on the wall beyond her.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s quite right. The plight of the downtrodden and oppressed takes precedence over the personal issues of us servants. The patients should quite rightly be our priority.”
“Good,” she said. “In that case I’ll go and look after the downtrodden. If you’ll excuse me.” She walked past him and headed for the door. There was something unnatural about the situation.
“But …”
She turned to him. “But?”
It was at this point he began his speech. It had obviously been written beforehand and memorized. But there was no doubt in Dtui’s mind that Comrade Lit had spent many hours composing, decomposing, rewriting, and practicing this recitation. Even with occasional lapses into engineering analogy, it was unquestionably the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her.
At school, she’d had what might possibly be termed boyfriends. At least there had been a culture of pairing up and going out. But the boys that she’d paired with had been well down the pecking order. They’d been more interested in her breasts than her soul. Thinking back on those disastrous dates, it had occurred to her once that her boys had all been the shades of fruit—the pale pink of lychee, the tan of sapodilla, the orange of sweet mango—and, like fruit, they’d all gone off in the hot season. As she listened to Lit make his presentation, like a fifth grader reciting the national creed, she plummeted instantly and hopelessly in love with his words. Once he’d finished, she could recall very few of them because she’d been too stunned to record any in her memory. But she knew there had been mention of his first impression of her on the day they’d unearthed the mummy. He’d confessed to thinking about her constantly and made some comparison between her eyes and stars. It might have been a line from a well-known song but she could forgive him for plagiarism. The fact that he’d even noticed she had eyes was enough for her. He had summarized his financial status and prospects, and, almost in the same breath, came straight out with his atomic bomb blast. He’d said he would be delighted if Nurse Dtui would be kind enough to be his wife—just like that, straight to the temple, without even a hint that he might like to sample the goods beforehand.
Something like that can have a profound effect on a woman, particularly one to whom such a proposition has never been made. A man—fully sighted and with a complete set of limbs—liked her sufficiently to commit his life to her. It was enough to momentarily erase all her negative thoughts of him. It was enough to make her knees wobble so violently she had to sit on the edge of a bed. She couldn’t bring herself to speak. He, for his part, had come to the end of his script, so the two of them remained, mute, in the dark room, with only the clicking of one old man’s unconscious tongue against his palate as an accompaniment.
At last, Dtui found her voice.“I—”
“You’ll probably need time to think about all this,” he interrupted. “So, I’ll leave it with you. If it helps, the regional Social Relations Committee has already given us the go-ahead for our engagement. It’s all signed and stamped. Right, then. I’ll see you later.” He didn’t actually salute before leaving, but it was a very military nod that he gave her before marching triumphantly out into the sunshine.
Few things in life could stop Nurse Dtui from speaking. It was her forte. She had smart responses for every situation—a witty comment to brighten even the most difficult of times. But for a full five minutes, she sat in the ward of the unconscious, and could think of nothing at all to say. She was as delirious as all the patients around her. She might have remained in that state for a good deal longer if Panoy hadn’t chosen that moment to come out of her coma. Dtui jumped up when she heard a sound. She turned to see Panoy sitting upright with her eyes staring directly at Dtui. Slowly, the little girl’s voice uttered a stream of Hmong language Dtui couldn’t understand. What was clear, however, was that her voice was not that of a child.
Once all the guests had vacated Guesthouse Number One and their belongings had been successfully pilfered, there was no longer a role for the guesthouse truck. The staff didn’t see any harm—as long as he put his own gasoline in the tank—if Siri borrowed it for the day. He’d heard there was a Vietnamese unit stationed up near Sop Hao, at the border. That same unit had been in Laos before the well-publicized but temporary Vietnamese troop pullout. It was the same unit to which Colonel Ha Hung had been attached. Siri decided it wouldn’t do any harm to visit the place.
He was enjoying the drive. Whereas the rest of the country was dying of thirst, the northeast still had enough rain to replenish the water in the hillside paddies. The late-morning sun reflected from them like broken pieces of a mirror stacked in jagged pyramids. Little girls, straight from their bath at the local pond, too young to feel shame, walked naked along the dusty roadside, wearing their sarongs as hats. A truck overtook his, carrying small pigs in light cane cages on their way to the abattoir. Their beady eyes streamed with tears.
The rice fields on either side were neatly laid out and well tended. Big spoon blossoms and itchy fruit lined the hedgerows. He passed a single temple, its doors padlocked. Hill tribe people carried baskets of twigs high on their backs and suspended from straps around their foreheads. Ponies with bells warned nobody in particular of their coming. A young man in the middle of nowhere hoisted a guitar over his shoulder. Without exception, every buffalo he passed looked up from its munching and watched the doctor’s progress. He felt happy to be surrounded by this unprecedented peace. He smiled to himself and his shoulders rocked to some unheard disco tune.
At one point he found himself driving along a newly laid road that suddenly stopped at a river. The bridge was five yards to the right. He had to leave the road to get to it. Once across, he had to drive along another dirt track to get back on the road. It was a fine bridge and the road was straight and level so this lack of coordination troubled him. He stopped to talk to the owner of the nearest shack, who explained that in Huaphan province, the Soviets were now responsible for bridge building. The Vietnamese had the road portfolio. Each resented the other. The Vietnamese weren’t the fastest of road builders, whereas the Russians had their bridges in place at exactly the contracted-for time. On roads that were merely being upgraded, this wasn’t a problem. But on new roads, the Vietnamese engineers sometimes arrived at a river with their road trailing behind them, only to find they’d missed the bridge by several yards. The Vietnamese refused to reroute the roads; the Russians had no intention of rebuilding the bridges. As Civilai often said, “The monk is in no position to return the alms if he doesn’t find them to his taste.”
By the time Siri had found the discreet, unsignposted unit of Vietnamese infantry it was already midafternoon. The Lao sentry at the turnoff swore on his grandmother’s grave there was nothing but trees at the end of the dirt drive he protected. Siri had the unit number and the exact kilometer marker, both provided by Central Command in Xam Neua, so he ignored the man and his shouldered rifle and turned into the drive. It was unlikely a solitary old doctor would be shot for attempting to i
nvade a compound of militia.
A mile farther on, he found the camp: a well-organized, tented expanse that clearly housed more than just the one unit. He was stopped by a real guard in uniform at a weighted red-and-white barrier. The soldier was sharp with the doctor and within a minute was yelling Siri’s ID information into his walkie-talkie. As he waited, Siri took in the sight in front of him: foreign troops on his native soil. He felt resentful. The war was over, won. Why were these Vietnamese still here? He’d trained in Vietnam and done most of his doctoring there. Yes, Laos had a debt of gratitude to repay. Yes, it was true, she probably wouldn’t have defeated the Royalists without Vietnamese help and the present administration wouldn’t be sitting where it was. But enough!
A reply crackled over the wireless. The guard pointed out the officers’ tent and raised the barrier to let him pass. He drove down a slope and then up the rise upon which the foreigners were billeted and noticed permanent buildings here and there in various stages of construction. As soon as he skidded to a stop on the loose gravel in front of the main tent, a captain strode out to meet him. Siri recognized him.
“Dr. Siri.” The soldier smiled and shook his hand warmly.
As always, Siri’s Vietnamese took a while to warm up. “Captain Vo Chi. They didn’t tell me you were here. How have you been?”
“Alive and well, thanks to you, my good friend. I thought you’d have been put out to pasture a long time ago.”
“I was there, Comrade. I smelled the daisies. I could almost taste the grass. Then I felt the lariat around my neck and I was hauled back to the knacker’s yard.”
In the mess tent, they ate and reminisced over the year or so Siri had traveled with Vo Chi’s division as its head field surgeon. But Siri wasn’t there to indulge in nostalgia. He had a long drive back and a lot of information to gather before he started. Siri gave Vo the name of the man he was interested in. Vo confessed he’d only vaguely heard of the colonel but recalled there was an old sergeant major at the base who had been with the commander for much of the campaign. Vo sent an officer to find him and bring him to the mess tent.
Although Siri was unable to place the face of Sergeant Major Giap, the old warrior recognized the doctor as soon as he entered the tent. He even remembered his name. There had been many battles, many units, many transfers, and so many men. Siri could hardly be expected to recall all of them. He got straight to the point.
“How did the colonel die?”
“In a Hmong ambush, Doctor.” The sergeant major replied directly but Siri noticed him cast a glance toward his captain. He wondered whether this was the official account of the colonel’s demise.
“When Colonel Ha Hung was stationed in Vieng Xai,” Siri continued, “I believe his family was with him.”
The sergeant major seemed much more relaxed about answering this second question. “Yes, Comrade. His wife and daughter.”
“No one else?”
“No. Well … they had a moi maid who came over with them.” Moi was the derogatory term for the montagnards. They were to the Vietnamese what the Hmong were to the Lao: minority, ill treated, unloved. Siri noted in the timbre of the sergeant major’s voice that he had no respect for them.
“And you met the wife and daughter?” Siri asked.
“Oh, yes. Certainly. It was a long-term posting. We had the option of bringing our families along. My old lady was here at the time, too.”
“What was the daughter like?”
“Gorgeous. Hong Lan, her name was—Pink Orchid. She must have been about, I don’t know, seventeen at the time. She had more troops after her than the Hmong did. A little cracker.”
Siri’s fingertips tingled. “And did anyone catch her?”
Again, Giap glanced at his captain. “The colonel and his wife were very strict with her. Very possessive, the colonel was. He made it clear early on that he’d shoot any man who laid a hand on her. And he was scary when he got mad. He frightened me lots of times, I don’t mind admitting.”
“And do you believe he would actually have killed anyone who touched her?”
“How can you tell a thing like that, Doctor?” He turned and smiled at the captain, whose face remained blank.
“Right,” Siri said. “Of course. So, as far as you know, nobody made any official—I mean, appropriate—advances directly to the colonel?”
“I don’t think anyone dared, except for …”
“For whom?”
“Well, there were rumors. But I’m sure you aren’t interested in camp gossip, are you, sir?”
“I’ll take anything I can get right now.”
“All right. There was a time when the girl got very sick. I mean, very sick. Some woman’s thing, I heard it was, and they had her in the hospital for a couple of months. A Vietnamese doctor operated on her. The colonel wouldn’t let any of them foreign doctors anywhere near h—Oh, sorry. No offense to you, Doctor.”
“That’s all right. Not every day you get the chance to be called an alien in your own country. So, she was in the hospital at Kilometer 8?”
“Correct. And she pulled through, much to the relief of her parents. But she had to have—what do you call it?—convalescence. They couldn’t move her for quite a time. And while she was up there in the caves—and this is where the rumor starts—she got friendly with one of them interns. Cuban fellow he was. Don’t know whether he stuck his old fellow in her there in the hospital or—”
To his own amazement, Siri lunged across the table in the direction of the sergeant major and sent cups and plates flying. He seemed intent on striking the old soldier. Both soldiers jumped to their feet and stood looking down at the doctor in shock. It was no less a surprise to Siri.
“I … I’m terribly sorry,” he said, groping for an explanation. “I … I have this nervous tic. It does that sometimes. Please forgive me.” He began to gather the Bakelite cups from the floor.
The sergeant major laughed. “That’s all right. Frightened the life out of me, though. Thought you must be squeamish about sex or something.”
“Are you all right?” Vo asked.
“Just fine,” Siri told him, weaving his fingers together on his lap. Odon had to be controlled. “Please go on, Sergeant Major.”
“Right, then. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, this ‘thing’ happened with the intern and I suppose the guy thinks all his birthdays have come at once. He meets a pretty Vietnamese girl, knows they make the best wives in the world, so he decides he wants her. He goes up to the colonel—had to have balls like coconuts to do that—and he asks for the colonel’s permission to go out with his daughter. The colonel couldn’t believe his ears.”
“Why not? It sounds like the correct thing to do.”
“Why not? I’ll tell you why not, Doctor. This intern was black, wasn’t he? Black as a monkey’s asshole”—Siri fought down his hands—“black as a …”
“Yes, I get it. He was black.”
“You know how it is. One of them fair-weather communists from the Caribbean. Natives that join whatever army pays best. And the way the story goes, the colonel laughed in his face. But the blackie just sat there. Colonel told him to get out but he didn’t budge. So the colonel took a switch of bamboo to him. He still couldn’t get the bastard out of his office. It took a dozen men with coshes in the end.”
Siri was developing a strong dislike for Giap and his tale. “And what happened?”
Giap hesitated. “I guess that was it. They took the girl away from the caves and put her in a place where the nurses were women and wouldn’t do any twiddling about while she was unconscious. I hear she got better.”
“And she didn’t see the Cuban again?”
“Don’t imagine so. If she had, he’d be dead by now.”
Siri wondered whether that might indeed be the case. “How did they communicate?”
“Say what?”
“The intern and the girl. What language did they use?”
“No idea, Doctor. But she was a smart g
irl. I know she understood Russian. She might have spoken African for all I know.”
The interview continued for another half hour. There were several other things the sergeant major was ignorant about. But, most important, he didn’t know what had happened to the mother and daughter after the colonel’s death. Siri began asking a series of mundane, unnecessary questions and waited for Vo to lose interest. But the only time Vo left them alone was when he paid a brief visit to the latrine. Then Siri pounced.
“Listen, brother. I promise you this information will never get back to your superiors. Please trust me. I need to know exactly what happened at the ambush. How did Colonel Ha Hung die?”
Giap looked at the tent flap, considered the question for a few seconds, then leaned across the table toward Siri. “He went instantaneously insane, Doctor. Really. We were there in a valley. Our outriders were butchered but we were in armored trucks. We could have held out for days. What usually happened was, the Hmong would pin a convoy down for a few hours, pick off whoever they could, then run off into the jungle to boast about it. The Yanks had deserted them by then so they didn’t have unlimited ammo to throw at us. We could have waited them out.”
“But?”
“But”—he lowered his voice—“something came over the colonel that I’d never seen in him before. He was always Colonel Cool in battle. Never saw him lose it. But this particular day he says something like, ‘You deserve this!’ A deep scary voice he used. He takes out his handgun and jumps down off the armored car. Just leaps out, like a cowboy. And he shouts ‘Charge!’ Now, I tell you, there wasn’t one of us dumb enough to charge in a situation like that. But he wasn’t really expecting us to. He headed off across the clearing by himself. He hadn’t gone but ten steps before they got him. He swatted off the first couple of hits but I bet them Hmong were singing up there in the trees. A uniformed officer? I bet that got ’em some points. They peppered him.”
Siri was astounded. “So, in your professional opinion, that wasn’t the action of a man in control of his own faculties?”
Disco for the Departed Page 12