The Sorrow of War

by Bao Ninh

  There was nothing to say. The two childhood friends were now in completely different situations in post-war life. After so many years of fighting they were able to speak to each other wordlessly, using the language of their hearts.

  Kien saw Sinh back to his ward and said goodbye. He hugged him and kissed his cold thin cheeks.

  ‘Come and see me, some time,’ Sinh called after Kien as he left.

  ‘Please,’ he had said, beginning to sob in a rare bout of self-pity. ‘Sometimes I wish I could kill myself and end everything quickly. War has robbed me of the liberty I deserve. Now, I’m a slave…’

  And now, as he sat near the dying Sinh in his bedroom, Kien was choked with emotion. He buried his face in his hands, unable to bear it. He then got up and ran from the half-bedroom, half-mortuary, without even saying goodbye to the sister-in-law.

  Back in his room, his muddy jacket and shoes still on, he lay on his bed and stared at the cracked and yellowing ceiling, his hands behind his head. Hot and painful tears silently ran down his cheeks.

  What was to be done? What could be done? He coughed, wanting to moan out loud to ease the pain.

  In truth he had been deliriously happy to return home to Hanoi when the war ended. He had spent more than three days travelling on the trans-Vietnam ‘Unification’ troop train after the fall of Saigon. It was a happy feeling and some soldiers now regarded it as the best days of their army life. Still, there had been some pain, even then.

  The train was packed with wounded, demobilised soldiers. Knapsacks were jammed together on the luggage racks and in every corner. Hammocks were strung vertically and horizontally all over the compartments, making them look a little like resting stations in the jungle.

  At the start, there had been a common emotion of bitterness. There had been no trumpets for the victorious soldiers, no drums, no music. That might have been tolerated, but not the disrespect shown them. The general population just didn’t care about them. Nor did their own authorities.

  The railway station scenes were just like afternoon markets, chaotic and noisy.

  The authorities checked the soldiers time after time, searching them for loot. Every pocket of their knapsacks had been searched as though the mountain of property that had been looted and hidden after the takeover of the South had been taken only by soldiers.

  At every station the loudspeakers blared, blasting the ears of the wounded, the sick, the blind, the mutilated, the white-eyed, grey-lipped malarial troops. Into their ears poured an endless stream of the most ironic of teachings, urging them to ignore the spirit of reconciliation, to beware of the ‘bullets’ coated with sugar, to ignore the warmth and passions among the remnants of this fallen, luxurious society of the South. And especially to guard against the idea of the South having fought valiantly or been meritorious in any way.

  But we ‘meritorious’ and victorious soldiers knew how to defend ourselves against this barrage of nonsense. We made fun of the loudspeakers’ admonishments, turning their speeches into jokes, ridiculing them.

  By the time we reached the northern Red River Delta areas, where the roads were running alongside us showing the way home to Hanoi, we were all deliriously happy. All the dreams and wishes that had so long been pent up inside suddenly burst from us.

  Even the most conservative among us expressed wildly passionate ideas of how they would launch into their new civilian, peacetime lives.

  Kien had befriended Hien, a girl soldier from Zone 9 battlefield in the south. She had travelled south in 1966 and been badly wounded in battle. Although her native home was Nam Dinh she had a Ha Tien provincial accent. At night, Kien had carried her to his hammock and they had spent the night together. The rocking of the train set the hammock swinging and despite the cheerful teasing from the soldiers around them they had hugged each other and slept together, awakened together, dreamed together and hugged some more. They had kissed hurriedly, sharing the last moments of their uniformed lives, the last kilometres of their battlefield of youth, in passionate embrace.

  When the train stopped at her station, Kien helped Hien down from the train. He told her he wanted to leave the train there and take her home, but she had laughed and refused.

  ‘That’s enough. Let our stories become ashes now,’ she had said. ‘You need to get home, too. Go home as quickly as possible and take care of your house. See if there’s anyone or anything left for you to live for. Maybe someone’s expecting you.’

  ‘Won’t we see each other again?’ he had asked.

  ‘Who knows? In peacetime anything can happen. Now there’s no war and we’re not soldiers we needn’t make promises to each other. Maybe we’ll meet again, by chance.’

  Alone, Hien had turned away from him, dragging herself along on crutches, her badly wounded leg swinging uselessly. Her slim body swung from one side to the other gracefully as she moved along, her shoulders raised by the crutches. Just before she went through the crowded platform gate she turned to look at Kien for a last time. Her eyes were sad, but misting over. She staggered a little, nearly losing her balance, then swung determinedly around and went through the gate and out of view.

  From there to Hanoi the train’s siren seemed to sound continuously, saying ‘good times, good times, good times,’ and the wagon wheels clipping over the rail joints replied, ‘happy days, happy days, happy days.’ As they neared beautiful old Hanoi Kien was intoxicated by the excitement, as though he’d been lifted to a higher level on a fragrant cloud. Swept up in the fever of anticipation of returning home, his eyes blurred over with tears for a homeward journey he had never dreamed possible.

  It was already dark when he arrived at his old home after walking through quiet dark streets from the Hang Co railway station. He stopped and looked at the old building which itself was also strangely dark; perhaps the families were all asleep. He entered the front yard cautiously, then approached the front door. Perhaps someone had waited up for him, he thought, for the door was unlatched. Surely no one would wait for me. How would they know? But as he began to climb the stairs he felt a dark sense of urgency and his heart tightened in foreboding.

  A pale light shone from a yellowish lamp on the first landing, throwing a dim glow down the corridor. The door to the rooms where he and his father lived was still the same, with the bronze plaque bearing his father’s name. His hands began to shake, then his body, and tears of joy welled up inside him. He stood, swaying gently, fixed to the spot before the door.

  Suddenly, another door down the corridor opened and a tall, slim woman wearing a nightgown appeared in the hallway. She stared directly at him, a mute cry in her eyes. Phuong!

  He was transfixed, confused.

  ‘Kien!’

  She stepped gently forward, leaning into his arms.

  Kien responded, gradually coming to his senses, and bent a little as her smooth arms tightened around his neck.

  ‘Phuong, my darling,’ he murmured, as he began kissing her, kisses for ten long years. An unforgettable embrace for each of them, from one heart to the other, an embrace they would remember forever, for nothing so wondrous had touched their lives in those lost years apart.

  She gently rubbed her cheek on his lips, then his collar, then his rough army shirt. They whispered urgently to each other. ‘It’s been ten years. Ten years. I was sure I’d never see you again.’

  ‘We’ve each been ghosts in the other’s mind,’ he said.

  She continued to murmur, ‘But from this moment on we’ll never be apart, will we darling?’

  Kien tensed a little. A feeling of deep embarrassment began to creep over him, a shadow of concern intruding into his happiness, a feeling of uneasiness that seemed to stem from the supple body he held in his arms.

  He tensed. He could hear padded footsteps. Someone was watching them in their embrace.

  Phuong, oblivious, began undoing the top button of her blouse, from which she took a shiny key, slung like a necklace. His eyes blurring, Kien unlocked his door and went in.
The air, stagnant for several years, flowed out, emerging like a dying gasp.

  Kien turned and grasped Phuong’s arm and began pulling her into his room. He had seen a shadow inside the door of her room and had suddenly become brusque. She had not been alone.

  Phuong turned pale, her gaze defensive. Kien reached down in front of her and picked up his knapsack, then, letting her go, stepped into his room alone and closed the door in her face.

  So this was what the peace and happiness would be! The glorious, bright rays of victory, his grand, long-awaited return. So much for his naive faith in the future. He swore: ‘Wretched man that I am!’

  And every time after that when he recalled the first night home of his new post-war life, his heart was wrenched in anguish and bitterness and he would involuntarily moan.

  Having stepped into the room and unslung his knapsack he began pacing the room to make sense of the second presence with Phuong. So, the divine war had paid him for all his suffering and losses with more suffering and loss at home. Throughout his years at the front he had dreamed – when he had dreamed of home at all – of little else but the magic moments of return and Phuong, seeing them both in a Utopian dream. He sat down. A succession of images passed through his mind.

  Phuong had returned to him later that same night saying the man she was living with, who had asked her to marry him, had left immediately afterwards, because Kien had returned.

  How blind they had been, back then. Though now he often drowned himself in alcohol, though hundreds of times he pleaded with his inner self to calm down, he was constantly torn with pain recalling the post-war times with Phuong. His life, after ten destructive years of war, had then been punctured by the sharp thorns of love.

  Kien’s new life with Phuong had broken both their hearts. In hindsight, it was a love doomed from the start, doomed from the time he had heard those soft footfalls in her room.

  It had ended recently, abruptly, after a fight outside a tavern where Kien had beaten up Phuong’s former lover, mauling him badly. The police had been called and Kien had been described by witnesses as ‘a madman’. He had returned home from the police station and met Phuong. He was speechless and distraught.

  As Phuong was preparing to leave him she spoke: ‘We’re prisoners to our shared memories of wonderful times together. Those memories won’t release us. But we’ve made a big mistake; I thought we would face just a few small hurdles. But they aren’t small, they’re as big as mountains.’

  She reflected: ‘I should have died that day ten years ago when our train was attacked. At least you’d have remembered me as pure and beautiful. As it is, even though I’m alive, I am a dark chapter in your life. I’m right, aren’t I?’ Kien remained silent. As she passed out of his life again he made no attempt to stop her.

  He had thought then it was for the best, but preserving that attitude was more difficult than he’d imagined. A week went by, then two, then a month. He became increasingly restless, unable to concentrate, or even to turn up at the university. He sat uncomfortably, unable to relax or plan his days properly.

  He lived on the razor’s edge. Whenever he heard high heels tapping on the stairs his heart would stop. But it was never her.

  Kien took to staring out of his window for hours on end, then walking the dark streets, now and then looking back in hope. On bad nights he would lose control altogether and break down, sobbing into his pillow. Yet he knew that if she returned to him both of them would suffer again.

  His room began to get colder as the winter pressed in. He stood by the window one cold night, missing Phuong as usual, as he watched the slow drizzling rain, slanting with the north-east wind. Scenes from the northern battlefront began forming before him and he saw once again the Ngoc Bo Ray peak and the woods of the Screaming Souls. Then each man in his platoon reappeared before him in the room. By what magic was this happening to him? After the horrible slaughter which had wiped out his battalion, how could he see them all again? The air in his room felt strange, vibrating with images of the past. Then it shook, shuddering under waves of hundreds of artillery shells pouring into the Screaming Souls Jungle and the walls of the room shook noisily as the jets howled in on their bombing runs. Startled, Kien jumped back from the window.

  Bewildered, confused, deeply troubled, he began to pace around the room away from the window. The memories flared up, again and again. He lurched over to his desk and picked up his pen then almost mechanically began to write.

  All through the night he wrote, a lone figure in this untidy, littered room where the walls peeled, where books and newspapers and rubbish packed shelves and corners of the floor, where empty bottles were strewn and where the broken wardrobe was now cockroach-infested. Even the bed with its torn mosquito net and blanket was a mess. In this derelict room he wrote frantically, non-stop, with a sort of divine inspiration, knowing this might be the only time he would feel this urge.

  He wrote, cruelly reviving the images of his comrades, of the mortal combat in the jungle that became the Screaming Souls, where his battalion had met its tragic end. He wrote with hands numbed by the cold, trembling with the fury of his endeavour, his lungs suffocating with cigarette smoke, his mouth dry and his breath foul, as all around him the men fought and fell, one by one, falling with loud painful screams, amidst loud, exploding shells, among thunderclaps from the rockets pouring down from the helicopter gunships.

  One by one they fell in that battle in that room, until the greatest hero of them all, a soldier who had stayed behind enemy lines to harass the enemy’s withdrawal, was blown into a small tattered pile of humanity on the edge of a trench.

  The next morning rays from the first day of spring shone through to the darkest corner of his room.

  Kien arose, wearily trudging away from the house and out along the pavement, a lonely-looking soul wandering in the beautiful sunshine. The tensions of the tumultuous night had left him yet still he felt unbalanced, an eerie feeling identical to that which beset him after being wounded for the first time.

  Coming around after losing consciousness he had found himself in the middle of the battlefield, bleeding profusely. But this was the beautiful, calm Nguyen Du Street, and there was the familiar Thuyen Quang lake from his childhood. Familiar, but not quite the same, for after that long, mystical night, everything now seemed changed. Even his own soul; he felt a stranger unto himself. Even the clouds floating in from the north-east seemed to be dyed a different colour, and just below the skyline Hanoi’s old grey roofs seemed to sparkle in the sunshine as though just sprinkled with water.

  For that whole Sunday Kien wandered the streets in a trance, feeling a melancholy joy, like dawn mixed with dusk. He believed he had been born again, and the bitterness of his recent post-war years faded. Born again into the pre-war years, to resurrect the deep past within him, and this would continue until he had relived a succession of his life and times; the first new life was to be that of his distant past. His lost youth, before the sorrow of war.

  He went to a park that afternoon, ambling along uneven rocky paths lined with grass and flowers, brushing past shrubs still wet with rain. Coming to an empty bench near a lovers’ lane, he sat for hours just listening to the quiet wind blowing over the lake as he gazed into the distance, far beyond the horizons of thought to the harmonious fields of the dead and living, of unhappiness and happiness, of regret and hope. The immense sky, the pungent perfume from the beautiful new spring and a melodic sadness that seemed to play on the waves of the lake combined to conjure up within his spiritual space images of a past, previously inexplicable life.

  He saw himself in a long-ago distant landscape, and from that other images and memories revived and he sat silently reviewing his past.

  Memories of a midday in the dry season in beautiful sunshine, flowers in radiant blossom in the tiny forest clearing; memories also of a difficult rainy day by the flooded Sa Thay river, when he had to go into the jungle collecting bamboo-shoots and wild turnips. Memories of r
iverbanks, wild grass plots, deserted villages, beloved but unknown female figures who gave rise to tender nostalgia and the pain of love. An accumulation of old memories, of silent pictures as sharp as a mountain profile and as dense as deep jungle. That afternoon, not feeling the rising evening wind, he had sat and allowed his soul to take off on its flight to his eternal past.

  Months passed. The novel seemed to have its own logic, its own flow. It seemed from then on to structure itself, to take its own time, to make its own detours. As for Kien, he was just the writer; the novel seemed to be in charge and he meekly accepted that, mixing his own fate with that of his heroes, passively letting the stream of his novel flow as it would, following the course of some mystical logic set by his memory or imagination.

  From that winter’s night when he began to write, the flames of memory led Kien deeply into a labyrinth, through circuitous paths and back out again into primitive jungles of the past. Again, seeing the Sa Thay river, Ascension Pass, the Screaming Souls Jungle, Crocodile Lake, like dim names from hell. Then the novel drifted towards the MIA team, gathering the remains, making a long trail linking the soldiers’ graves scattered all over the mountains of the north and Central Highlands; this process of recalling his work in gathering remains had breathed new energy into each page of his novel.

  And into the stories went also the atmosphere of the dark jungle with its noxious scents, and legends and myths about the lives of the ordinary soldiers, whose very deaths provided the rhythm for his writing.

  Yet only a few of his heroes would live from the opening scenes through to the final pages, for he witnessed and then described them trapped in murderous firefights, in fighting so horrible that everyone involved prays to heaven they’ll never have to experience any such terror again. Where death lay in wait, then hunted and ambushed them. Dying and surviving were separated by a thin line; they were killed one at a time, or all together; they were killed instantly, or were wounded and bled to death in agony; they could live but suffer the nightmares of white blasts which destroyed their souls and stripped their personalities bare.