by Tim O'Brien
Afterward, with the afternoon still cold and sunny, Oscar led them through the crowd to a stand-up bar on the far side of the plaza. The bar was noisy and crowded, everyone discussing the execution with wide gestures and reenactments.
They took a table near the windows and ordered drinks.
“So now we’ve seen it,” Doc sighed. “Domestic tranquillity, the keeping of the peace. A real treat, wasn’t it?”
Oscar Johnson had the sweats. He wiped his face with a napkin, then wiped his sunglasses. Behind him, a man Was making funny twitching motions with his nose. Other men were laughing.
“Wasn’t it a treat, Oscar?”
“It’s the price,” Oscar said. There was still a damp gloss on his forehead. “Sometimes there’s a price.”
“A murderer maybe,” said Stink Harris. “I wouldn’t doubt it. The kid’s eyes, I mean—just like Richard Widmark’s eyes. That real shiny look.”
“He had blue eyes, for Chrissake.”
“Who did?”
“Widmark. Widmark’s got blue eyes. That boy, though—his eyes were brown.”
“A murderer,” Stink said. “I’ll bet on it. You wanna bet, Doc?”
“No, I want to drink.”
“Let’s drink then.”
“A spectacle, all right. I told you it would be a spectacle, and wasn’t I right?”
The lieutenant’s face was crinkled up like old Kleenex. He didn’t drink. He sat facing the plaza, looking out at where the platform stood. The crowd was mostly gone now.
They drank until dusk, then they left the bar and walked back through the plaza and up a narrow cobbled street that was enclosed on all sides by banks and government offices. They were drunk. Their singing bounced off the buildings. “Clams,” Stink Harris kept saying. He wanted clams for supper, so they went in search of clams, but instead they were arrested.
Again, no warning.
Oscar blamed it on Eddie, and Eddie blamed it on Stink, who kept insisting on clams.
“Fuckin clams,” Eddie said on the ride to police headquarters. “Clams, you kept asking for. Isn’t that right? You wanted clams, so I asked where to find clams.”
“You asked a cop.”
“Who else? A man wants directions, he asks a cop. That’s all I did, I just asked.”
At police headquarters they were led into a small lounge. Curtains partly hid the barred windows. The furniture was upholstered, the carpets new and deep-piled. The room smelled vaguely of fish. “Clams,” Eddie muttered.
They waited ten minutes, then a tall, gaunt man with a neat moustache and deeply tanned skin entered the room. He shook hands with the lieutenant, smiled politely and asked them to be seated.
His name, he said, was Fahyi Rhallon, a captain in His Majesty’s Royal Fusiliers. A soldier, he had been recently transferred to temporary duty with the Savak.
“The what?” Oscar said.
The officer smiled again. His teeth were smoke-stained.
“Savak,” he said. “It is … how do you say it? Internal Security. Terrible duty for a man who would rather be killing Kurds.”
“Yeah,” Oscar said. “That’s always more fun, ain’t it?”
After dispatching an orderly for tea and sandwiches, the captain took out a pipe, filled it from a leather pouch, tamped it down and struck a match. As if embarrassed to begin, he made courtly inquiries about their stay in Tehran. Had they visited the lovely mosques along the river? The museums? The ARAMCO Institute? A splendid city, he said, if you knew what to look for.
“All of it,” Oscar said. “We seen it all.”
The captain nodded. “I am pleased. You are tourists, then.”
It was a statement, not a question, but the man stopped for a moment to study his pipe. Then he smiled again, crossing his legs the way women do.
“Tourists,” he said. “They have much to see in Tehran. In the mountains, too, if you wish to hunt the big Kopet Dagh ram. Do you hunt this ram?”
“No,” Doc said.
“You only tour?”
“That’s it,” Doc said. “Seeing the sights.”
The captain’s pipe had gone out. Irritably, he put it down and lighted a cigarette. “That is for the better, anyway. The big ram, it goes very fast. Not so many now, and not so big. So, yes, it is better that you do not hunt the ram.” He shook his head apologetically. “Clearly it is a mistake, then. You are only touring. I will tell this to Sergeant Ulam.”
“Who?”
“Sergeant Ulam, the arresting officer. I will now tell him he is loco. He believes you are perhaps soldiers, American soldiers without passports, but now I will tell him you only tour. I say he is loco, yes?”
“Nutty,” Doc said.
“Nutty!” Captain Rhallon clapped his legs. “Very good word—nutty!” He laughed and coughed and clapped his leg again.
Then he smiled at Doc Peret. “So then it would not be an unsightly offense to see your passport? I do not wish to make offense, but rules—”
“It would be no offense,” Doc said.
“I am much relieved.”
“No offense in the least.” Doc spoke solemnly. “In fact, sir, to show our passports would be a singular honor.”
“I cannot say how gratified it makes me.”
“Likewise, sir.”
The officer smiled at each of them. “So many rules, you know. Rules and rules.”
“Of course.”
“So. You will honor me with passports?”
“Is it required?”
“Sadly.”
Doc smiled back at him. “It is shared sadness, sir. Because, you see, it will not be possible to show you passports.”
“It will not?”
“Unfortunately,” Doc sighed. He glanced over at the lieutenant, whose eyes were closed. “At present, I fear, we are without passports. Otherwise it would be an honor to present them. A distinct honor.”
Captain Fahyi Rhallon did not stop smiling. He gazed for a moment at the ash of his cigarette, then licked a fleck of tobacco from his upper lip.
“You are without passports?”
“Unfortunately.”
The man nodded, considering this. “I see. Entirely without passports?”
“That,” Doc said graciously, “is the unfortunate state of things.”
“Yes, I see.”
Doc cleared his throat. When he spoke his voice was confidential. “The truth of the matter is that we … how should I express it?… we are traveling under certain military regulations. Mutual military travel pacts. Hence passports are unnecessary.”
“Ah,” the captain said. “Then you are soldiers?”
“Touring soldiers.”
“Yes?”
“That’s right,” Doc said. His tone remained intimate, as if confiding a great secret. “Soldiers who tour, touring soldiers. In that sense, then, we are not strictly soldiers. There’s a big difference.”
“And passports are therefore unnecessary? Am I understanding correctly?”
“Perfectly,” Doc said.
“But you are soldiers?”
“Of a sort.”
“Soldiers on leave?”
Doc shrugged. “That’s close enough. Touring soldiers.”
Nodding, recrossing his legs, and leaning back, the captain seemed troubled. He was not a handsome man, but there was immense dignity in the way he carried himself.
“It might have been better,” he said slowly, “if you had explained this immediately.”
“A mistake,” Doc agreed. “We should have clarified the matter from the start.”
“It is no shame to be soldiers.”
“The contrary. Quite the contrary, sir—it is a privilege and honor.”
Again there was a clumsy pause, which was finally broken by an orderly who entered with a tray of tea and sandwiches. The captain seemed relieved. Getting up, he personally poured the tea and served the sandwiches on cloth napkins, smiling, scolding the orderly for forgetting cream and sugar, shaking his head
as if to say the help wasn’t what it used to be.
He watched with pleasure as Stink and Eddie and Oscar devoured the food.
“Your leader,” he said. “He does not wish to eat?”
The lieutenant seemed to be dozing. His eyes were closed and his head rested on Sarkin Aung Wan’s shoulder. She gently massaged his scalp.
“If he is ill,” the captain said, his mouth showing concern, “we shall immediately call for a doctor. Is your leader sick?”
“Homesick,” Doc said. “It happens to touring soldiers.”
“Of course.” The man sipped his tea, still looking at the lieutenant with a worried frown. “So then. You say you are without passports?”
“That’s the nub of it,” Doc said.
“And you say … you say you travel under the protection of certain regulations. Is that the understanding?”
“Exactly. That’s exactly it. We travel under certain mutual military agreements.”
“Which do not require passports?”
“Exactly.”
“I am stupid,” the officer said. He tapped his skull. “I am a good soldier, and I study all regulations, but I fear I am stupid. I admit ignorance of these particular agreements.”
“It’s no dishonor,” Doc said.
“But I should have known. My stupidity is embarrassing.”
Stink Harris giggled and reached for another sandwich. He’d taken off his boots.
Doc glared at him, then turned back to the officer: “Again, sir, there are so many regulations. It’s impossible to keep track. But, I assure you, the treaties exist and are presently honored by all signatories. The Mutual Military Travel Pact of 1965.”
“Yes?”
“Ratified in 1956, reaffirmed in 1965. In Geneva.”
“Geneva,” the man murmured. He jotted this down on a piece of yellow paper. Then, stroking his moustache, he sighed. “Rules and more rules. Again, I am a stupid soldier who would rather be off fighting in the east. Rules! I study hard for the Savak. My wife tells me I am a bore. I study and study, but there are always more rules to study, and I am stupid. But yes, it is certainly a sensible treaty and I am ignorant not to know it.”
“No harm.”
“Harm? Oh, but it is always harm to detain the innocent. My stupidity, it has caused great harm and I must apologize.” He struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. Then he looked at Sarkin Aung Wan. “And the young lady. She is also a soldier?”
“No,” Doc said. “The young lady, you might say, is under temporary escort—a matter of some delicacy. But of course she’s subject to the same rules and privileges. It’s covered in the treaties.”
“Without question,” said the captain. “In fact, I now begin to recall the regulation. Geneva, yes?”
“That’s the one, all right.”
“Yes, I begin to remember. Regulations! They are like smoke in my stupid head, but yes, I think I remember now. Geneva, 1965. I shall find this regulation and study it so that next time I do not let my stupidity cause pain. Rules and rules. Red tape like a pit of snakes! It is a genuine miracle that armies ever find their way to battle.”
“True enough,” Doc sighed. “A work of God.”
The officer stood up and clapped his hands.
“So then. It is settled.”
“We can go?”
“By all means! But I wonder—” The officer paused. “I wonder if I might apologize for this unseemly error. Yes? Perhaps I might make amends?”
“Not necessary, man.”
“But I insist. My stupidity must be paid for! No arguments. I shall buy drinks as penance for my ignorance. You will allow this?”
Doc shrugged. “An honor.”
There was a short delay while the captain attended to his paperwork. Then he put on a high-peaked cap, buttoned his pockets, and led them out of the station. It was night now. Cold winds flushed the streets, driving huge drifts of snow up against the walls and windows of dark buildings. For a moment, Paul Berlin had a sense of being whisked backward in history: deserted streets, lampless and desolate and cruel. He remembered the beheading. The fly—dead of winter. He shivered and took Sarkin Aung Wan’s arm.
Passing through a gloomy archway, the captain explained that a curfew had been recently imposed due to certain incidents of terrorism and sabotage. “No problem, though,” he said, patting Doc’s shoulder. “As soldiers we are exempt. In fact, it is our solemn duty to enforce the curfew. One of the pleasures of soldiering, yes? We shall drink and enforce curfew till dawn.”
He led them into a bleak back street, through a series of alleys and archways, then down into a basement grotto. No lights or signs announced the place, but inside it was crowded with people dancing and singing and talking and drinking. The crowd was equally divided between soldiers and students. The students danced. The soldiers sat at tables along the walls.
“Now we enforce curfew,” the officer said. He had to shout against the hard American music.
Waving at friends, he escorted them to a large round table near the bandstand and called for beer.
Over the sound of drums and guitars Captain Fahyi Rhallon spoke passionately of the fraternity and community of a field soldier’s life, how battle made a man appreciate peace, how love and even God himself could be found in the meanest foxhole. This sort of talk never impressed Paul Berlin. He looked out at the students dancing fast to fast music. Flashing lights made the dancers look like fish darting about in an aquarium. Along the walls, watching but pretending not to watch, many soldiers sat with their caps neatly folded in their laps. They, too, were enforcing curfew.
The dancers and the music made Paul Berlin think of home. He took Sarkin Aung Wan’s hand under the table, squeezed it, and tried not to think.
“It is good to discuss these matters with the American soldier,” said Captain Rhallon when the music ended. “One soldier can always learn from other soldiers, yes? But alas, sometimes I talk so much that I learn nothing. I must listen now. I will listen while you tell me things.”
“What things?” Eddie said. “Rain and lice?”
“No, no! The war. I will listen while you tell me about your war.”
Eddie laughed. “It was swell.”
“You are fooling me.”
“Honest. It was such a wonderful war they should make it a movie.”
“A wonderful, wet war,” Stink Harris said.
“I am being fooled. I see that.”
“Just a war,” Doc said. “There’s nothing new to tell.”
Captain Fahyi Rhallon smiled. “Not to contradict, but I must disagree.”
“An honor.”
“Each soldier, he has a different war. Even if it is the same war, it is a different war. Do you see this?”
“Perceptual set,” Doc Peret said.
The captain nodded. He was leaning forward over the table. His eyes were brilliant black. “Perceptual set! Yes, that is it. In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a war is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.”
Doc Peret waited a moment. He glanced at Paul Berlin, then arranged his face in an expression of sober reflection. It was the way he looked before engaging in debate with Jim Pederson or Frenchie Tucker.
“I’ll buy most of it,” Doc said. “We’re made differently, we see differently, we remember differently.”
“Precisely.”
“Right, and I guess I can accept most of that. Except for this: The war itself has an identity separate from perception.”
“You are a realist.” Captain Rhallon smiled. “An unpopular position.”
Doc m
ade a modest gesture with his hand. “Unpopularity is the price a good analyst pays. But anyway. The point is that war is war no matter how it’s perceived. War has its own reality. War kills and maims and rips up the land and makes orphans and widows. These are the things of war. Any war. So when I say that there’s nothing new to tell about Nam, I’m saying it was just a war like every war. Politics be damned. Sociology be damned. It pisses me off to hear everybody say how special Nam is, how it’s a big aberration in the history of American wars—how for the soldier it’s somehow different from Korea or World War Two. Follow me? I’m saying that the feel of war is the same in Nam or Okinawa—the emotions are the same, the same fundamental stuff is seen and remembered. That’s what I’m saying.”
“And what about purpose?” the captain said.
“Purpose? Same-same. The purposes are always the same.”
“But … but I understand that one difficulty for you has been a lack of purpose. Is that not the case? An absence of aim and purpose, so that, the foot soldier is left without the moral imperatives to fight hard and winningly. Am I mistaken in this understanding?”
Doc Peret picked up his empty mug and filled it from the pitcher. The musicians were moving back to the stage now. Students were getting up and moving to the dance floor.
“You’re right,” Doc said slowly, “and you’re wrong. True, it’s sometimes hard to figure out what the hell’s going on, but I’ll wager that troops at Hastings or the Bulge had the same problem. I mean, if they stopped to think about it—what the fuck am I fighting for?—if they did that, I’ll bet they came up as confused and muddleheaded as anybody in Nam. And what about all the millions of soldiers who have fought bravely on behalf of bad purposes, evil aims? The Nazis, the Japs. They fought damned well.”
“And they lost,” said Captain Rhallon.
The lieutenant suddenly sat erect. “Tell him!” he said.
“You are feeling better, sir?”
“Better! Just tell him.”
The noise was building again. Doc Peret turned and glared at the musicians.
“Okay,” Doc said. “Sure, they lost. But was it because they fought poorly? Hell, no. They lost because they couldn’t build enough planes and trains and bullets and bombs. It wasn’t purpose that lost it for them, it was matériel. They couldn’t produce enough matériel.”