by Tatjana Soli
"She picked you."
He bent his face into Helen's lap. "She picked me."
"That's a beautiful story." She caressed his shoulder and neck lightly with her fingers. "How did you and Darrow meet?"
"I went to Gary for a job. He needed an assistant for Darrow."
"Amazing."
"He flew me to Angkor the same day."
"That's when he fell in love with the place?"
"Gary said no one else would work with him."
Helen laughed. "I'm glad you stuck it out."
Linh stood up and excused himself. Helen had almost fallen asleep when he came back in, dripping water.
"Did you go for a swim?"
He shook his head. "I met him once before."
"Darrow?"
Linh nodded. "He came to photograph a joint movement with my SVA regiment and American advisers."
"Oh."
Pulling away, Linh told the story he had been unable to tell, the only story that mattered. Wide-awake now, Helen shivered, knees drawn up, face cupped in her folded arm. Without thought, Linh grabbed both her ankles as anchor, one in each hand, fingers tight around the sharp knobs of bone, grounding himself or her, he did not know which.
Danger that after the telling he would not be able to stand being with her any longer, the wound too deep to share, but her tears fed him. His anguish had grown skeletal in its solitude. He wished it didn't have to be so, that one could ingest pain and keep it from others, but instead it seemed one could only lessen it by inflicting little cuts and bruises of it on another.
"Forgive me," he whispered.
A miracle how she appeared beneath him, how she unfolded and folded him into the wings of her arms and legs. He kissed the bony globe of her knee before descending.
Our company had been near the paddy fields settling in for the night when scouts ran into a camp of VC. Quickly, we pulled back toward my village while the American advisers stood alone in the field, yelling at us to stay put. But we abandoned our positions, and the Americans, cursing, called firepower in to target the adjoining forest. Planes came, bombs dropped that shook the earth many kilometers away, so powerful the villagers sent up prayers that the world would not end.
After a shaky perimeter guard had been set up, I slipped away to see my family and reassure them.
My mother and father were bundling belongings, ready to flee with Mai, my older sister, Nha, with her baby, and my brothers, Toan and Ca. My mother was more weary than frightened. She cried that she had been leaving one home after another since she was a young girl in the North. Tears ran down Mai's face, and she held the sides of her belly as if it pained her. She shook like an animal sensing the approach of the hatchet. Begging me to take them away to someplace safe. To her sister, Thao's, home. "Please, take us. Take me away."
"I can't." For a brief moment, Mai's selfishness angered me. For all her girlish charm, if I had to pick again I would have chosen the practical Thao. My mother had worried that Mai would be too fragile, too high-strung, to make a good wife.
"You promised to take me to Saigon," she said.
"My company knows I'm here."
"Doesn't matter." Mai shook her head, her eyes wild and glittering, not seeing me. "I'll go anyway. Alone."
Nha, listening, turned away, embarrassed for her sister-in-law. Her own baby whimpered in her arms, still feverish after a cold. Nha, as homely as Mai was lovely, took comfort in her virtue and self-sacrifice.
I promised that the bombs were to protect us, that the VC would have retreated by now, nothing to fear, trying out the words in my mouth as I said them, not knowing myself if they were believable. "I met an American. I don't know why, but they are helping us."
"The eyes and ears in the trees see soldiers retreat here," my father said, shaking his head.
My family was still frightened, but as the air grew quiet, nerves calmed. My mother built a small fire and boiled tea and fresh rice for a meal. When Mai offered to help, she slapped away her hand. "I remember in Hanoi, the servants made a full meal, even mang tay nau cua, asparagus and crab soup, as the Communists rolled into the city. No matter what, one must eat."
Mai rolled her eyes, a steady private complaint that the old woman turned everything into a story of her former wealth.
"Wouldn't it be nice to have some asparagus and crab now?" my mother went on.
Incense was burned for the ancestors. A bowl of rice held out as an offering. I bowed my head to the ground three times at the altar. We ate in silence.
"Did you notice," Mai said, "during the play, at the song--"
"Please," said Toan. "Stupid girl, can't you think of anything more important than that wretched play?"
Mai's lips puckered, and I refused to look her in the face, certain she would burst into tears again. She struggled to her feet, unable to stand until Nha came over and lifted her under her arms. Mai went outside with her bowl. I could say nothing because Toan was my older brother, bitter at his own unmarried state, but nothing would have pleased me more than to talk about the play. Anything to forget the present fear.
Because they had no choice, they tried to share my faith that the Americans were different. I knew I should report back to the company but couldn't. After a year's absence, what could one more night matter?
By midnight everyone fell into a fitful sleep in the communal room, within touch of one another. Later, I would remember dreading the coming morning, when I would be alone again. I woke and heard the suck of Nha's baby. I wished, and was ashamed to wish, that I could be alone with Mai one last time before our separation. Was Mai right? Should we have escaped when we could to Saigon? The thought of desertion was always present, like uncooked dough in my stomach.
A terrible howling noise. Like a roar from inside the earth. We woke, disoriented, in the middle of the night. Outside, mortars bit at the edge of the village, shards of fire and metal and earth flying. Palm trees, thatched roofs of houses, in fl ames. I could hear screams, could hear Mai's shrill sob rise up, her breath catching, and then another sob. Where had the mortars come from? Which side? A sound, pull, puff, and then another three mortars landed all around the hut. Plumes of earth rising more than double the height of the tallest palm. Soldiers from my company ran by, abandoning their camp and leaving the village exposed. The enemy attacking from close by if not from inside the village itself.
"Quick," I yelled. "We must leave."
Now the Americans would call in airpower and raze the village. My father, still in the vigor of middle age, ran and brought back a long rope that he used to tie our buffalo to the plow. It was stiff and heavy, the fibers scratched. Parts of it thinned and softened from rubbing against the wood stays, other parts caked in mud and manure. He cut off part of it and tied each member of the family together, each person's left wrist becoming communal, no longer one's own, a sacrifice so that we wouldn't get lost or separated, so that in a panic the weak would not get left behind.
Nha refused the rope, saying she had to hold her baby. She swayed in indecision. I said I would carry him, but she only looked down. "Things have to be looked after," she whispered.
"No."
"The baby's fever..." She shook her head. "A rope?" She let out a sad laugh and turned away. Father said we would return for her. As we escaped through the front gate of the village, a woman came asking for help to lift a sack of rice into her cart. Although he had not been in a classroom in over ten years, had spent more time buried in paddies than in books, Father still felt the obligation to set an example. He untied himself.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
His jaw was braced. "Toan, come with me."
"No," I said as Toan undid the rope from his wrist. "It's too late."
Father and brother left. Minutes passed. The whistling of shells came more rapidly. Earth and flesh being ripped like paper. Fire fed and burned on fire. Bullets flew like hot, sharp insects. People we had spent our whole lives with pushed past like strangers.
Although we might die standing in place, I didn't dare disobey. "Should we leave?" I asked Ca, but he remained silent.
"There," Ca said and pointed to Father and Toan jogging toward us. They retied themselves, and we had begun our walk on the path when a mortar screamed over our heads, striking two huts on the other side of the village, the thatch blazing up in a hiss of fire like a match. As quick as a bolt of lightning. Father wanted to turn back again, both of us sensing where it had landed, but I held his eye, shook my head. Move quickly. Save what is left.
We ran in the dark, confused by sounds all around, following in the wake of my fleeing company, who would stop to take random shots behind them, imagining that would stop an enemy they couldn't see. Many of the wild bullets struck villagers seeking them for safety. A family ahead of us was struck by a grenade, all five scattered like dolls in the field. I worried about my mother and Mai, but they were dazed, in shock, stumbling forward. I recognized this from being with soldiers in battle, how the mind shuts down and there is only instinct.
We came to a rice paddy and plunged into the cold mud, crouching, bewildered, going on. Mud squelched around our feet. The rope, soaked in water, grew heavy. No matter which way we turned, a spitting wall of gunfire from every direction. We had taken the wrong way, straight into a fire field. I cursed myself for not being a real soldier, for only pretending, for not taking control. More frightening for me not to be among my fellow soldiers. Instead, exposed with my family, who had no expectation except for obedience to my poor, blind father. My hand groped emptiness at my side, and I was defeated by the realization that I had left my gun behind in the hut during our hurried escape. What kind of soldier forgets his gun? Courage emptied from me again. I could barely lift my legs. Our progress was slow, the women slipping, falling in the mud, dragging the men's arms down till we stood bent in half. The only hope to get on the other side of my panicked company, but the soldiers, unburdened, moved away faster than we could approach them. The rope chafed and tore my wrist.
I always wondered what if--What if I had taken charge, turned left, not right... What if I had taken them to hide in the forest and not in the paddy--but in the middle of that night, fear itself hunted us. Because I was not sure, I did nothing.
It was while we were in the paddy bordered by trees that Toan was shot in the throat. The noise around was so deafening, the darkness broken only here and there by the ghost light of a fl are, that we noticed only because of the inert weight on the rope. Mai in front of him pulled down on her knees. My mother crouched in the mud, trying to sop up blood with a piece of cloth. Toan, whose favorite sport was catching frogs in the paddy as a boy and dressing them in crowns of palm husk. Toan, my brother, who was afraid of the dark. Father untied him, and I saw ten years of age suddenly line his face. No choice but to leave the body half-submerged in its gentle blanket of mud, his head propped up on a dike.
Time stopped or raced on. Minutes or eternities spent lost, running. Rain trembled in the air, drops coming at first lightly, then pounding on our backs. Our feet wore heavy boots of mud, stretching already bruise-weary muscles. A bullet punched its way into Ca's chest with a small ripe sound like an arrow hitting the heartwood of a tree. Ca, whose greatest joy was bringing sweets to Mai. His body jerked backward as if blown by a hard wind, dragging Mother onto the ground. Father groaned, grief squeezing his chest. He fumbled with the long, slippery rope, losing his knife in the mud. He bowed his head, face aged to that of an ancient man, and said to me, "You must take over now."
I ordered the women to turn away and took my knife, cutting the rope that bound us. I paused, then moved to each family member and cut through the knot on each wrist. If we survived, it would be each alone. The rope fell in pieces to the ground like a serpent.
Mai moaned and pulled at her hair in fistfuls, crouching in the mud. "Get up, Mai." She shook her head. I lifted her to her feet, her belly large and hard and jutting, but she buckled her knees and went down again. "Please, my love." She moaned louder, eyes on Ca, hands pressing against her sides. I pulled her up and slapped her across the mouth. "Enough! You will walk." My first harsh words to her since we married. She nodded, chastened, took one somber step and then another. We did not look back.
This is the way one learned to survive.
Two hours later, the fighting was more sporadic, only sniper bullets and the occasional faraway thump of mortars as they drummed into the earth. The rain had stopped; our bodies soaked and cold and tired. Easier to move without the rope, but I felt its loss like a missing limb.
Mai let out a soft cry and sat down hard on the ground, leaning against a splintered tree, heavy pear belly listing toward the earth like a magnet. In the dark night, her blood black as it poured from between her legs. She squeezed her legs together and remembered aloud how we had laughed only that morning at Ca mimicking her dance. "How long ago it seems." A deep, dragging ache pulled at her. She had been wrong, she said, had selfishly prayed for her own and my happiness, even to the point of secreting away money to buy a gold necklace for the baby. She had angered fate. "I wanted us to go to Saigon so you could see... I am not a useless wife."
I rubbed her feet, frozen hard like small river stones. "We'll go now."
Mother whispered with Mai, laid a hand on her belly. She took a blouse out of her bag and told Mai to press it up between her legs, stop the baby coming out on such a night. Mai was calm and quiet, suddenly matured from girl to woman, nodding wisely. So unlike her I worried.
"We are going to Saigon," I said louder, and began to make a sling with the remaining coil of rope across my chest like a pack animal.
Father came and touched my shoulder. "We must return to the village."
"You can't."
"Better for you two to go on alone. Maybe later, with Nha..."
Too exhausted to argue, I nodded. Mai sat wearily in the saddle of the rope sideways across my back, leaning her head on my shoulder. As I made my way off, Mother and Father remained standing by the splintered tree, and even now, in my mind's eye, that is where I still imagine them.
"Forgive me," Mai whispered, "my foolishness." But I didn't listen. I started the walk south, in the direction of the army and safety, the direction of illusion.
I lost track of time, but during the night Mai laid her fingers along my neck, my only comfort, my only goad.
I walked through the night. I lost my sandals in the mud, walked on blisters, and then on bloodied, raw feet, not daring to stop even when I grew thirsty, until my throat cracked like a riverbed with dryness, but still I kept walking. I would die walking. During the night, Mai fell asleep, her hand falling away.
And then like an angel, a bodhisattva of compassion, the sky lightened to a pearl gray in the east, and the great tired face of the sun appeared. As if the day itself were shamed to light the earth. So quiet that I heard the singing of a single bird in a tree as I passed, a miracle that day could follow such a night, and I reached the highway south, joining a throng of refugees like ourselves draining from the countryside. I murmured, throat like an open wound, over my shoulder, "We are close now."
I walked until I felt a tug at my sleeve and looked into the wrinkled face of an old grandmother. She shook her head sharply, as if shrugging off a ghost. I could not make out her words, so tired I simply noticed her sunken lips and the few blackened, betel-stained teeth in her mouth. She motioned with her hands to lie down, and the idea of sleep was suddenly overwhelming. I would have walked till I dropped over. I struggled to the tall grass at the side of the road, and only as I worked to loosen the knot of rope around my chest did I notice the cold heaviness of Mai's body, and as I slowly knelt down to let her off I realized I had felt no movement all night long, no warm breath, and now as I laid her in the long, lilac-tinted grass, and as her long hair draped down to the earth, I saw that she had the pearl gray pallor of death, and I knew, as the grandmother shook her head, quick as a bird, and handed me a small spray of yellow paper flowers before she
turned away, that I had carried a corpse the whole night through, but somehow Mai's spirit had saved me.
This is how the world ends in one instant and begins again the next.
I crouched in the grass and saw that we were both covered in blood, that she had bled to death with our child. I looked up and down the highway, saw other bodies fallen by the side, and when I looked into the faces of the people, I saw we were all the living dead, no one had escaped.
I bowed my head, the spray of flowers still gripped in my fingers. The paper ones the poor bought to place on family altars. Petals faded yellow and dusty from long use, the paper crumpled in places where the old woman had clutched them. But when I brought the spray to my face, I smelled the fresh orange blossoms of Mai's hair. And so I buried my wife, Mai, under the tree the bird sang in, placing the spray of flowers in her mouth. The blossoms were paper, yellow faded, already dusty from mourning, but they were all I had left to give.
EIGHTEEN
Cat Cai Dau
Cut Off the Head
The next morning Linh sought out Mrs. Xuan, who was feeding garbage to the catfish in the large village pond.
"We need a lacquered box of betel and areca. And gold earrings. Can you prepare a small feast--at least six dishes--for the entire village?" he asked.
He was pleased to see Mrs. Xuan's eyebrows shoot up, her gossip suddenly gone stale. She chewed on her lips as Linh gave her dollar bills. "For when?"
"Soon. A day or two at most. We must return to Saigon."
"Too soon," she said, figuring that time would allow her to dole out the information to Mr. Bao for greater profit.
He knew the old woman would not give up the tidy sum she would make. "Then we'll have the ceremony in Saigon instead. She prefers it--"
"No, no. Hungry bridegrooms. So impatient." Mrs. Xuan scrunched up her eyes in a failed effort to appear good-natured, quickly withdrawing her hand filled with dollar bills.
When Linh told Helen of his plans for a ceremony, she was quiet. The implications of their time together had not sunk in for her, yet after hearing his story, she knew that he was dead serious. Only Americans thought that Vietnam was as permissive as the brothels and G.I. bars in Saigon. The society was conservative, a relationship outside marriage unheard-of. At times Linh seemed even more foreign now that he was her lover than before when they had been only friends. "Does this have something to do with Mr. Bao? Will he be angry when he finds out?"