by Tim O'Brien
His eyes were mostly gray, but the gray was changeable. His nose was straight. His lips were thin and tight. He was tall. A chain-smoker, his teeth had a color that nearly matched the shade of his hair, and even his wire-rimmed spectacles developed a smoky film. A theoretician, a pragmatist, Doc Peret believed deeply in science. But this meant many things. It meant a diagnosis of death by reason of fright, as in the case of Billy Boy Watkins, or it meant feeding M&Ms to Bernie Lynn, or it meant the rigorous verification of hypotheses by means of repeated empirical observation, which was the meaning whenever he engaged in debate with Jim Pederson or Frenchie Tucker. “The main thing,” Doc once said, “is to find what works. That’s real science—what works. Witchcraft, sorcery, I don’t care what name you give it, if it works, it’s good science.” And this was enough for almost everyone in the Third Squad. While Doc rarely discussed his personal history, he once told Paul Berlin that as a kid he’d been intrigued by thunderstorms and fire and machinery. “A really curious kid,” he’d said. “One day my old man brought home this new air conditioner—one of the early models, a huge thing—and I kept looking at the damned thing, this way, that way, trying to figure out where the cold came from. You know? I mean, I was just a kid. I figured there was a little box inside where all the cold was stored up. A real dumbo. So I got out a screwdriver and started taking the thing apart. The aluminum tubing and the motor and stuff I didn’t even know. The whole business … I tore out the damned guts. But no box. Couldn’t find the cold. My old man, he went buggy when he saw the mess. ‘You stupid so-and-so,’ he says, ‘there isn’t any box. It’s a machine, it makes the cold. But I still didn’t get it. I kept thinking there’s got to be a place inside where all the cold was. Kept thinking they had to put the cold in there. A real dunce. My old man never did get the thing put back together. Still talks about it. And I still tell him, I say, if he’d just let me alone I’d have found that damn—”
A few names were known in full, some in part, some not at all. No one cared. Except in clearly unreasonable cases, a soldier was generally called by the name he preferred, or by what he called himself, and no great effort was made to disentangle Christian names from surnames from nicknames. Stink Harris was known only as Stink Harris. If he had another name, no one knew it. Frenchie Tucker was Frenchie Tucker and nothing else. Some men came to the war with their names, others earned them. Buff won his name out of proven strength and patience and endurance. He had no first name and no last name, unless it was to call him Water Buffalo, a formality which was rare. Doc’s name was so natural it went unnoticed; no one knew his first name and no one asked. What they were called was in some ways a measure of who they were, in other ways a measure of who they preferred to be. Cacciato, for example, was content to go by his family name; it was complete. Certain men carried no nicknames for the reverse of reasons that others did: because they refused them, because the nicknames did not stick, because no one cared. Other men were known only by rank. Lieutenant Corson, who came to replace Lieutenant Sidney Martin, was referred to only as the lieutenant, or as the LT. It was the way he wanted it. Some men were called by their first names, some by their last. Paul Berlin was almost always called by both names, first and last together, which suited him fine. Names brought men together, true, but they could also put vast distances between them. Ready Mix. No one ever learned his real name. Certainly no one remembered it. An Instant NCO, a pimpled kid with sergeant’s stripes earned in three months of stateside schooling, Ready Mix was with them only twelve days. It was thought he would die quickly, and he did, and it was better not to know his full name. Easier to forget what happened, because, in a sense, it never did. Easier to talk about it: “Ready Mix? Cement City—gravestones.”
Twenty-three
Asylum on the Road to Paris
In Delhi, in the tiled lobby of the Hotel Phoenix, the old lieutenant fell madly in love.
They’d arrived at noon, changed their money, then quickly searched the railyard before taking a cab through the jammed lunchtime streets. It was the India that Paul Berlin had always believed in: children running in barefoot gangs, shrill voices, cattle browsing among bolts of cotton and madras. An awkward embrace, want clutched close by riches, but for Paul Berlin it was not unappealing. He wished he’d unpacked his Instamatic.
Then, at the Hotel Phoenix, the old man fell in love.
She was behind the registration desk, riding an Exer-Bike. Dressed in blue jeans and a gauze muslin blouse, the woman instantly reminded Paul Berlin of his own mother. It was an immediate thing, a total presence. Eyebrows plucked and repainted, bright carmine lipstick, streaks of auburn deftly folded into black hair.
“Americans!” she cried.
Smiling, panting a bit, she dismounted the Exer-Bike and signed them in.
She was breathless. “Americans!” she kept saying. Her eyes brushed over each of them before settling on the lieutenant. “Americans! Honestly, I had a feeling about today. A premonition, if you will. I honestly did. When I woke up this morning I looked outside and thought to myself, I said, today the Americans will come. Didn’t I say that? Didn’t I?”
She gazed at the lieutenant, who nodded and gazed back. He was in love even before dropping his rucksack.
Her name was Hamijolli Chand, which she spelled out on a postcard. Americans always called her Jolly.
That evening over cocktails she explained that she’d spent two years in Baltimore, studying hostelry under a scholarship at Johns Hopkins. The loveliest period of her entire life, she said. Memories of sailing ships, department stores and shopping malls, Fort McHenry, the Block, and Little Italy. America rang in her head like the golden bells of Masjid-i-Sulaiman.
“Corrupted,” she said brightly. “That’s what my husband contends—corrupted by hamburgers and french fries and Winston One Hundreds.”
“You’re a married lady?”
Jolly Chand nodded in a way that again reminded Paul Berlin of his mother, a way of acknowledging facts too painful for words.
Evening now, and they sat in an open courtyard tiled with mosaics of broad-winged birds on the ascent. Crickets chirped mildly in the grass beneath neem trees.
Relaxing, drinking from pewter mugs, they listened while Jolly Chand talked happily about her time in America.
“A land of genius and invention,” she said. “Television, for example. You simply can’t appreciate it. Television, it’s one of those magnificent American inventions—and it is an American invention, I don’t care what they say—an invention that, well, brings a country together.”
She crossed her legs, lit a long cigarette, and smiled at the lieutenant. Her eyebrows had been freshly drawn into great mobile vaults; her fingernails and lips glowed soft pink in the dusk.
“Yes,” she said, “television is one of those unique products of the American genius. A means of keeping a complex country intact. Just as America begins to explode every which way, riches and opportunity and complexity, just then along comes the TV to bring it all together. Rich and poor, black and white—they share the same heroes, Matt Dillon and Paladin. In January the talk is of Superbowl. In October, baseball. Say what you will, but only Americans could so skillfully build instant bridges among the classes, bind together diversity.”
The lieutenant, who had listened carefully, nodded at Doc Peret.
“That,” he said gravely, “is one classy woman.”
“Pass the gin,” Stink said.
“Please.” The lieutenant glared at him. “Pass the fuckin gin, please.”
Later, Jolly Chand led them into the dining room, where, as promised, the main course was blood-rare roast beef, a dish she fondly called “the sacred cow.” Her husband served. He was a small man, barely half her height. When the food was served he disappeared behind a gauze curtain.
“Haques, I fear, disapproves of this.” She gestured at the wine and beef. “In America—God bless it—one eats what one pleases, yes? Tradition be hanged. But here a simple hamburger
becomes a criminal offense. It’s all so sad.” As they began to eat, she explained how it was necessary to smuggle in beef from Ahmadabad at a hefty price and at great danger.
“A brave woman,” Lieutenant Corson said. He had a habit of folding his arms when he was serious. “You’re a brave, remarkable woman.”
“Haques—my husband—he says I’m hopelessly corrupt,”
“Yes?”
“Impure, he says. Tainted.”
It was a long, extravagant meal, and Jolly Chand was charming. Over chilled herring, she questioned Doc about the future of socialized medicine, listening attentively as he discussed health-delivery systems and doctor-patient ratios, Medicare versus Medicaid. Over soup and salad, she complimented Oscar on his sunglasses and new hat, demanded to see snapshots of Stink’s four sisters, listened with immense pleasure as Eddie recounted the final episodes of The Fugitive, clapped explosively to learn that Kimble had at last tracked down the one-armed man. Mostly, though, she concentrated on the lieutenant. Gently, using flattery as a probe, she urged him to talk about his life as a soldier, the places he’d been and things he’d seen. The old man was fast becoming drunk.
Only once, during dessert, did the woman’s husband reappear. He was dressed in white, head wrapped in a turban, leggings to his knees. He stood quietly for a moment. Then without a word he turned and vanished through the gauze curtain.
The lieutenant hadn’t noticed.
In Korea, he was telling Jolly Chand, “… In Korea, by God, the people liked us. Know what I mean? They liked us. Respect, that’s what it was. And it was a decent war. Regular battle lines, no back-stabbing crap. You won some, you lost some, but what the heck, it was a war.”
He spilled some wine and stared down at it dispassionately.
“The trouble’s this,” he said slowly. “In Nam, you know what the real trouble is? You know? The trouble’s this: Nobody likes nobody.”
Slowly, shaking his head, he began wiping the spilt wine with a napkin.
“That’s the trouble, all right. That’s the difference. In Nam there’s no respect for nothing. No heart. Nobody’s got his heart in it, you know? Doves on their helmets. Faking ambushes. That’s the real difference. No heart.”
Jolly Chand touched his arm. Clucking, she led him out to the garden for brandy. The others followed.
The night was like felt. Olive-scented champac, crickets, neem trees, and roses. Beyond the garden Paul Berlin could hear the far-off hum of traffic. They sat on wicker benches and soon a young boy brought out the brandy and glasses. They drank quietly.
Around midnight Doc went up to bed. Twenty minutes later Eddie and Stink and Oscar went inside for a game of billiards.
It was peaceful. Paul Berlin sat with his hand resting on Sarkin Aung Wan’s lap. For a time he was blank, just sitting, then things began to tumble. The brandy, maybe. He sat straight until the slipping feeling subsided. He ran brandy across his teeth, letting it burn, letting the last drops evaporate in the hollow of his tongue.
“Heart,” the lieutenant was mumbling. “Heart, that’s one thing that shouldn’t change. In Korea … In Korea there was heart. People liked people. Discipline and respect.” He was drunk. His voice was quiet and sad. “What happened? What went wrong?”
Jolly Chand helped him up.
“Heart,” the lieutenant said. “What happened to heart?”
As they left the garden the old man was sobbing.
Neither the lieutenant nor Jolly Chand came down for breakfast the next morning. It was all a little embarrassing. Sullen and tired-looking, the woman’s husband served tea and bread in the small dining area overlooking the garden. He did not look up. He poured the tea, waited a moment, then slipped away.
Eddie eyed the food suspiciously. “You think it’s safe?”
“Arsenic, I’d guess.” Doc tested his tea, then shrugged. “But, hell, I wouldn’t blame the poor guy. The LT should know better.”
“Phony.”
“Say again?”
“She’s a phony.” Oscar folded his arms. “All that crap last night ‘bout TV an’ shopping malls. You ever hear such crap? The old man, he should take some lessons in phoniness. Learn to recognize it.”
“Puppy love,” Eddie said, and grinned. “It makes me tingle all over.”
Afterward, while the others went out to see the city, Paul Berlin found a stuffed chair in the lobby and sat down to write postcards. It was hard to find the right words. He pictured his mother’s face. All is well, he wrote. Delhi is crowded and beautiful. I’m healthy. War’s over and I’m heading home. On the second card he said he’d met a girl, a young refugee, and with luck they’d be in Paris by spring.
Upstairs, Sarkin Aung Wan was still sleeping.
He found his camera, kissed her, then went out alone to mail the cards. It was still early but already the streets swirled with traffic and livestock and the smell of spices. A soft white dust seemed to cover everything.
After finding a mailbox, he wandered up through the bazaars of Chandi Chowk, stopping often to snap pictures of those things he might want to remember when it was over. Bloodstones, snake charmers, old men in their turbans and white shorts. A slide show: lights out in the living room, mom and dad in their chairs. Let the pictures explain.
He turned into a brick street that led to a younger, richer part of the city.
A residential area. Shade trees, broad green lawns, wooden shingles imprinted in English with names and addresses. The houses were modern and neatly painted. It was all familiar. Sundays in summer—his mother tending the garden up to her elbows, sprinklers and birdbaths and stone patios and trimmed hedges, a lawn mower buzzing in someone’s backyard.
Home, he thought.
Beyond the houses was a wooden park. Beyond the park were tenements, and beyond the tenements were the shanties.
He did not go to the shanties.
It was late afternoon when he got back to the hotel. Jolly Chand and the lieutenant sat alone in the garden. He did not disturb them. At the desk was a note from Sarkin Aung Wan. It was composed in clean block letters and said: “Spec Four Darling. Went shopping for soap and creams. Others on ghastly bus tour. What ails Americans?”
He felt sad. He couldn’t understand it.
He went to the room and showered and then lay on the bed. Home, he kept thinking. It seemed a long way off. He wondered if they would understand. It wasn’t running away. Not exactly. It was more than that. He thought about his father building houses, and his mother, and the town. He thought about how young he was.
Twenty-four
Calling Home
In August, after two months in the bush, the platoon returned to Chu Lai for a week’s stand-down.
They swam, played mini-golf in the sand, drank and wrote letters and slept late in the mornings. At night there were floor shows. There was singing and stripteasing and dancing, and afterward there was homesickness. It was neither a good time nor a bad time. The war was all around them.
On the final day, Oscar and Eddie and Doc and Paul Berlin hiked down to the 82nd Commo Detachment. Recently the outfit had installed a radio-telephone hookup with the States.
“It’s called MARS,” said a young PFC at the reception desk. “Stands for Military Affiliate Radio System.” He was a friendly, deeply tanned redhead without freckles. On each wrist was a gold watch, and the boy kept glancing at them as if to correlate time. He seemed a little nervous.
While they waited to place their calls, the PFC explained how the system worked. A series of radio relays fed the signal across the Pacific to a telephone exchange in downtown Honolulu, where it was sent by regular undersea cable to San Francisco and from there to any telephone in America. “Real wizardry,” the boy said. “Depends a lot on the weather, but wow, sometimes it’s like talkin’ to the guy next door. You’d swear you was there in the same room.”
They waited nearly an hour. Relay problems, the PFC explained. He grinned and gestured at Oscar’s boots. �
�You guys are legs, I guess. Grunts.”
“I guess so,” Oscar said.
The boy nodded solemnly. He started to say something but then shook his head. “Legs,” he murmured.
Eddie’s call went through first.
The PFC led him into a small soundproof booth and had him sit behind a console equipped with speakers and a microphone and two pairs of headsets. Paul Berlin watched through a plastic window. For a time nothing happened. Then a red light blinked on and the PFC handed Eddie one of the headsets. Eddie began rocking in his chair. He held the microphone with one hand, squeezing it, leaning slightly forward. It was hard to see his eyes.
He was in the booth a long time. When he came out his face was bright red. He sat beside Oscar. He yawned, then immediately covered his eyes, rubbed them, then stretched and blinked and lit a cigarette.
“Jeez,” he said softly.
Then he laughed. It was a strange, scratchy laugh. He cleared his throat and smiled and kept blinking. He pulled viciously on the cigarette.
“Jeez,” he said.
“What—”
Eddie giggled. “It was … You shoulda heard her. ‘Who?’ she goes. Like that—‘Who?’ just like that.”
He took out a handkerchief, blew his nose, shook his head. His eyes were shiny.
“Just like that—‘Who?’ ‘Eddie,’ I say, and Ma says, ‘Eddie who?’ and I say, ‘Who do you think Eddie?’ She almost passes out. Almost falls down or something. She gets this call from Nam and thinks maybe I been shot. ‘Where you at?’ she says, like maybe I’m callin’ from Graves Registration or something, and—”
“That’s great,” Doc said. “That’s really great, man.”
“Yeah. It’s—”
“Really great.”
Eddie shook his head as though trying to clear stopped-up ears. He was quiet a time. Then he laughed.
“Honest, you had to hear it. ‘Who?’ she keeps saying. ‘Who?’ Real clear. Like in the next … And Petie! He’s in fuckin high school, you believe that? My brother. Can’t even call him Petie no more. ‘Pete,’ he says. Real deep voice, just like that guy on Lawrence Welk—‘Pete, not Petie,’ he goes. You believe that?”