by Quan Barry
Возьми ее туда, Giang said. Some of the men jumped at the sound of her voice. You must take her there. Giang pointed at Rabbit. The men looked at the two women sitting on the sofa. On the TV a group of children were singing a patriotic song. Giang knew what the local people said about Rabbit and Qui, the people bringing them gifts and offerings in the hopes that the two of them might console the newly dead and ease their passing. If you want to know what happened, Giang repeated, take her.
Grischa lifted his eyebrows. What’s it to me, he said.
How do you prepare yourself when death is moving down the line? The man standing next to you and the man standing next to him and the man next to him all the way to the horizon. How you can see it coming but there’s nowhere to run. Trees falling in a ghastly forest. Blood mingling in the dirt.
THEY LEFT JUST AFTER SUNRISE. RABBIT GAVE QUI A SMALL wave. Qui was standing by the metal drum stoking the fire as the trucks started up. Her skin burned brighter than the flames themselves, her hair like snow. From a million miles away she probably looked like a star, Rabbit thought. A planet rising in the east of some long-distant world.
Son was sitting in the cinnamon tree watching the convoy drive away up Duong Khiem. The scratch on his face looked as if a drop of acid had rolled down his cheek and burned the skin. Rabbit felt something tighten in her chest. She thought of Levka somewhere sitting in the branches of a tree scanning the earth for her.
The trucks turned at the first intersection and rolled out of sight. Within minutes most of the men fell asleep. The air was dry, the first hint that summer was over. At the front of the truck up by the cab lay a pile of shovels and buckets. In one of the buckets something bloomed like a bouquet of flowers. The color was right, but the effect was wrong. Rabbit stared harder. They were orange flags with little black skulls and crossbones printed on both sides. The words were written in French. FAITES ATTENTION.
Overhead the metal ribs of the truck’s canvas roof shuddered with each turn. Rabbit tried to imagine Levka sitting in the very same spot where she herself was sitting, each morning the coldness of the metal floor seeping into his skin. Maybe each day on the drive out to the Nam Yum River he thought of her, their secret room in the moonlight, the taste of honey still in his mouth.
Giang had fallen asleep. She was still wearing her tiny yellow skirt and cheap plastic heels. Even in sleep there was something guarded in her face, as if somewhere in her dreams she were clutching her purse and closing herself off. Giang, Rabbit whispered. She wanted to know why her friend spoke Russian, but Giang didn’t stir. Somehow in her sleep she was moving herself even farther away.
On the other side of the truck Grischa was awake. He looked at Rabbit and nodded. She could feel his eyes on her as if he were trying to connect the freckles on her face and find a pattern. She wondered if he were worried about how they would sneak her out into the fields. Before they had even boarded the trucks, he had explained the situation to Giang. The Commandant has a house in the Russian quarter in Hoa Thien, Grischa said. He raised his eyebrows and held his hands up palms to the sky as if testing the air for rain. None of us have seen him in weeks. Giang looked at him, but Grischa simply nodded. I know I know, he said. Why go out there every day if no one is watching us? He lowered his hands and shrugged. We Russians and our suffering, he said.
Then Rabbit could feel them rising, the sound of the trucks switching gears. Out of the back she could see people walking downhill into town. She closed her eyes and imagined a young woman riding a bicycle, her long black hair streaming in the wind, the woman’s conical hat blowing off as she raced past a group of water buffalo. A young man standing in a ditch by the side of the road, watching the woman, the small red diamond staining his face, his heart flooding.
When Rabbit opened her eyes again, they were there. Two men helped her and Giang out of the truck. The sun was just over the hills, but overhead there was a three-quarters moon in the pale blue sky. In the daytime it was just a ghost of itself.
The Russians from the other trucks were already organizing themselves for the day. One man stood with headphones draped around his neck and a large metal machine by his side. She saw four other men with headsets, each one connected to the same kind of machine, each instrument long and cylindrical like the vacuum cleaners she’d seen once in a window in Hanoi.
The dogs looked anxious. Their handlers stood a few feet away poring over a map. The dogs kept their eyes on the men. One of the smaller dogs passed too closely to another. The bigger dog let out a deep growl and bared its teeth. The smaller dog quickly moved out of the way, its tail between its legs. Rabbit could see a scar on the smaller dog’s muzzle, a spot where the fur no longer grew. Something about it reminded her of Son. She looked around but didn’t see him anywhere.
For all the climbing the trucks had done out on Highway 19, the land was surprisingly flat, as if they were standing in the bottom of a bowl. In the distance the mountains and rolling hills looked like turrets. She wondered why anyone had ever chosen to fight there. Whoever had the highlands would hold the advantage. If you were down in the bottomlands, it would only be a matter of time. Even she could tell that.
After a while the various groups began to move off. Each man had his task. There were close to a hundred of them in all. Some carried shovels and buckets, some with metal detectors, which they carried on their shoulders, some straining to hold the dogs back. At the front of each group a man walked holding only a map, the responsibility evident in the slowness of his movements.
Grischa came over and spoke with Giang. He had one of the dogs with him. Rabbit offered it her hand, but the dog growled and flattened its ears. Laika, barked Grischa, tugging the leash. Giang looked at Rabbit. You ready, she said. Rabbit nodded. With her hands Giang twisted her loose hair up into a knot. Rabbit could see a small mark on Giang’s neck, the mark as if someone had bitten her. Grischa says stay single file, Giang said. No matter what, stay in line. Rabbit pushed her hat back out of her eyes and took a deep breath.
It was a thirty-minute walk to the trenches of Anne-Marie. They walked on the airstrip, the asphalt long decayed and overgrown by shoulder-tall plants with small green berries gleaming in clusters. Grischa yelled something over his shoulder. Coffee beans, Giang said. To the east the land was dotted with orange flags. The Russians had been working different areas for the last year, looking for the French dead. The Vietnamese government was eager to normalize relations with their former colonizer, bodies offered up as a sign of goodwill. Repatriation was one step in a long process.
Their group was small, just six of them plus the dog. One man carried the metal detector. Two other soldiers were toting shovels. They looked like boys, barely teenagers, their skin ruddy and somewhat blemished. A few orange flags poked out of their pockets. Grischa was still holding the leash, Laika trotting by his side. Rabbit could see something rolled up tight and tucked under Grischa’s other arm, the thing shiny and black. In her mind a memory floated up of a black bag lying on the ground under a sugar-apple tree, beside it a hole growing in the earth. There was a body zipped up in the bag. She knew there was a body inside the body.
As they walked Grischa explained procedures to Giang, who translated intermittently. In each sector they would first sweep the land for unexploded ordnance. Afterward they would detonate the larger bombs, only defusing things when it was absolutely necessary. There was so much left in the ground that they would mark the smaller incidents with flags and leave them be. Once an area had been marked, they would come through with the dogs. If the dogs scented something, then they would begin digging.
The two women walked along, everywhere cicadas buzzing like invisible engines in the grass. At one point Giang stopped to tip a pebble out of one of her shoes. Rabbit stood waiting for her to begin moving again. Why do you speak Russian, she said.
For a moment Giang stood studying her heel. I grew up in Russia, she said. I was born in Stalingrad. Rabbit waited for her to say more, but
she put her shoe back on and started walking again.
Soon they were beyond the airstrip. The grass was a dull brown from years of chemicals leaching into the soil. My father was a party leader, Giang suddenly said. When I was twelve, my parents were killed in a car accident. Rabbit remembered the faint voices rising off Giang’s skin when she had held her hand back in the dorm. So I came back to Vietnam, she said. After my grandmother died, I was on my own. She turned and smiled at Rabbit. At least I’m keeping up my Russian. She laughed, but Rabbit could see the effort it cost her.
Now that she knew the circumstances Rabbit could put it all together. The voices she had heard as she held Giang’s hand had been crying out for acknowledgment. Giang’s father closing his eyes as he pushed down on the gas, steering the car into a guardrail. His wife sleeping beside him, only rousing herself at the last moment, her eyes shocked open. In the husband’s mind the desperation and the feeling that there was nothing left to do. The wife didn’t think he knew, but he knew. He had always known about all of them. The low-ranking Russian colonel just the latest in her endless string of lovers.
They were only a few hundred feet from the spot where Levka was last seen when Rabbit stepped on one. She felt the air rush out of her lungs. Someone’s here, she said, rubbing her ears. Giang let out a sharp whistle. The Russians turned around and came back. Giang tapped the ground with her foot. Здесь кто-то есть. The men huddled and talked among themselves. Impossible, Grischa said. He pointed to a spot up the trail. They were up by that grove when we last saw them. Giang kept tapping the ground. Grischa sighed and said something to the dog. Laika sniffed around, then squatted and urinated. The other men laughed. Please, said Rabbit, but nobody moved.
Giang reached over and grabbed a shovel from one of the boys. Without another word she began digging. Grischa pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He struck a match along the bottom of his work boot. The flame burst forth with a loud hiss. The men sat down on the ground. The man carrying the metal detector said something to one of the other soldiers and sniggered.
Less than two feet down Giang hit something. It was as if a leather glove had disintegrated, the desiccated skin hanging in shreds on the bone. Grischa ordered one of the boys to help. After another twenty minutes they could see that the body had fallen backward with both hands shielding its face, a small clean hole through the front of the skull. A large ragged hole gaped at the back.
They spent all morning going from spot to spot, Rabbit walking between the orange flags. After the first one, the noise was deafening, the whole field groaning. I hear you, she said. Be patient. At one point the Russians marked the earth with their shovels for later, the places they would come back to and dig up. It was as if they’d hit a vein of ore, a river of bodies snaking north-south. Each one with the same trauma to the face, the same holes in the skull.
They’re Black Tai, aren’t they, said Giang. In hole after hole the fabric was in tatters but still evident, tibia and femurs draped in indigo rags. Rabbit nodded. The Black Tai were one of the ethnic minorities who lived along the Black River and had sided with the French. Rabbit could hear the terror in their voices. As the battle raged, the men deciding one by one and then collectively to stay in the trenches and lay down their guns. To abandon the French. It wasn’t our fight, said one of the voices. Overhead the daytime moon hung in the sky like a whisper.
They shot them, said Rabbit. Who, said Giang. Rabbit closed her eyes. The French. Then she could see it. As night fell the killers came back, the Foreign Legion and the tirailleurs. It was a small group, ten at the most. The French soldiers were acting on their own without orders, thinking they could persuade the Black Tai to come out and fight for them if the ethnics woke in the morning and found some of their comrades dead, presumably at the hands of the Vietnamese. The French soldiers assumed the Black Tai, hungry for revenge, would pick up their guns again and rejoin the battle. Instead when the fog lifted, the French looked out over the bodies of the fifteen or so Black Tai they had killed in the trenches of Anne-Marie and saw that the remaining Black Tai had fled.
The Russians were marking up their map. Rabbit was sitting stroking the dog when Laika’s ears twitched. Rabbit had heard it too. She got up and began walking toward the voice. The dog trotted by her side. Giang was back with the men marveling over the number of bodies they had uncovered.
Fifty feet up the trail Rabbit and the dog came to an open pit. Laika lay down flat on her belly and began to whine. My lion, Rabbit said. On the ground something winked in the sunlight. She imagined bending down into an open grave and kissing a bright yellow bead on the tip of a dead woman’s finger, the sudden taste of honey. Then she could see Levka and the other two men reaching down into the earth, a belt of old hand grenades lying underneath the corpse which the soldier had been wearing when he was killed. As the three men gingerly lifted the body out, the belt exploding. Tenfold. Twentyfold. Infinity. Lastochka, my little swallow, Levka said, his mouth on her as the wave crested in her body. I hear you, she said. Something glinted in the grass beside the pit. She stooped and picked it up. It was his ring. She kissed it, but it didn’t taste like anything.
Someone has locked the door. Or imagine yourself at the bottom of a mile-long well, the wooden cover on tight so that you are forced to rely on your memory to conjure up images of what is on the other side. Then for the briefest instant the wooden cover that keeps the world out is lifted, the opening like an oculus but from a mile away the opening no bigger than a distant star. This is your chance to be heard. Say only what needs to be said. Someone is lying. Someone doesn’t want you to be found because you’ll ruin the whole effect.
WHEN THE WOMAN ENTERED THE COURTYARD, CHILDSIZED shoes in hand, the female parakeet sitting in the lemon tree began to cry. For the past few years mourners had been coming to Hang Giay straight from the funeral procession. Most times the hearse would park out front with the six-foot-tall portrait of the deceased still draped with flowers. Then the widow would float through the grand wooden doors and on into the garden, one son at each shoulder, everyone in white like a battery of moths. Invariably joss sticks burned between the widow’s fingers, her hands as if on fire.
But today was different. That night the moon would be full, the moon like a white hole on the waters of Hoan Kiem Lake. It was the full moon of the fifth month, the day the Buddha died, the unluckiest day of the year. The streets were empty. People stayed indoors, waiting for the day to be over.
All afternoon the three of them had been sitting in the courtyard shielding themselves from the June sun. The lemon trees were adorned with fruit. Linh was just coming out of the house with a pitcher of drinks made from fresh mango and milk. Despite her angelic face something about Linh reminded Rabbit of herself at that age. There was a steeliness to the child, the way the girl would slip in and out of rooms without anyone noticing. The way she too could stare down a grown man. Rabbit and Qui had taken Linh in just after they’d moved onto Hang Giay. She had been one of a group of street children sent out each day to beg for money from the western tourists. Once the girl was inside the great wooden doors of the house on Hang Giay, Qui had cut Linh’s hair into the same shapeless bowl Rabbit had worn at that age, but on Linh the haircut looked feminine, her delicate features emphasized, cheeks dimpled and pink, her mouth pursed like a cat’s. Sometimes when she lay sleeping Rabbit had to reach out and touch the child’s warm cheek; Linh looked so much like a doll, her perfectly upturned nose like something an artist would sculpt in wood.
Rabbit and Qui couldn’t be sure how old Linh was. Between malnourishment and the slightness of most Vietnamese girls, she could be anywhere from eight to twelve. For all the years she’d been with them it was as if she hadn’t grown an inch. She seemed frozen in time, like Son, the scratch forking down his face as permanent a feature as his nose or mouth. The two women had decided that when Linh began bleeding, they would officially declare her thirteen in the modern system of reckoning. Each day both women
eyed her for the first signs of change, but each day there were none.
Qui sat by the fountain nursing another baby from the foreign orphanage that had recently returned to Vietnam after more than twenty years. Each morning Linh went out to bring back a baby for Qui. Today Linh had left the wooden doors unlocked after returning from the orphanage. At the sound of the great doors opening, Rabbit sat upright, the hinges creaking like swollen joints. In the air something hummed imperceptibly. Like a needle drawing blood from a skull.
The woman didn’t even knock. She simply pushed open the doors and stepped over the threshold, her sandals in her hands, the sound of the hinges like a body in pain. There was usually a policeman at the door to keep the curious away. People were eager to contact their loved ones or even just to catch a glimpse of Rabbit. But on the unluckiest day of the year the chief of police had decided it wasn’t necessary to station a guard at the door.
As the woman entered, Rabbit felt something tighten in her stomach. The woman clapped her hands together in front of her face, a cigarette burning between her fingers. I have no money, the stranger said. The baby at Qui’s breast let out a small sigh. Overhead the male parakeet turned to his weeping mate and softly clucked remember this, remember. Linh came back outside with a clean glass and poured some of the mango and milk into it before handing the glass to their guest. Rabbit hadn’t even noticed Linh get up.
Why would you travel on this day of all days, said Linh, offering the woman a chair. The woman didn’t put out her cigarette. She took a long drink, finishing the whole glass at once. Nothing fazes me anymore, she said, setting the glass back down and taking a deep drag, the cigarette suddenly half as long. Not even the death of our lord, asked Linh. Not even, said the woman.