The Sorrow of War

by Bao Ninh

  ‘Certain?’ he replied.

  She nodded. ‘Remember this rock. We’re near the track now,’ she said quietly.

  They headed off at an angle and found a lightly used track which led through a dry creekbed, and very soon they could smell and hear the fresh water of the Sa Thay. The atmosphere had changed; it was fresher, the jungle was greener there and they both regained their confidence. Hoa moved ahead through ponds and banks of shrubs blooming with red flowers.

  The track they were meant to follow was by now almost overgrown, but the sound of the river was all they needed to guide them from there. They came across an abandoned cassava field overgrown with elephant grass and found themselves looking down towards the river.

  ‘We needn’t go right down,’ he said. ‘The path is clear now. Let’s get back and bring them all over before dark.’

  ‘I’ve got to rest a bit first,’ she said.

  ‘Agreed. I’m exhausted,’ he said.

  They sat down out of sight looking over the fields and riverflats. Kien looked over at Hoa, his mood softening.

  ‘Like a smoke?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. But where’d you get them?’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I found a Salem packet. Had one left.’

  She took the crushed packet from her top pocket and lit up, taking a few puffs to get it started, then handed it to Kien.

  ‘The Americans are close, then,’ he said, looking at the packet.

  ‘Not always. We get hold of Salems, too. But we should’ve brought the AK,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. But I thought they’d need it if the Americans come across them. The wounded can’t run so they have to fight. We’re nearly out of ammunition, anyway. We have to avoid them, that’s all. That’s the only way we’re going to get the wounded safely across.’

  She nodded agreement, making a hand signal for a puff on the cigarette. Kien placed it between her lips.

  ‘I don’t usually smoke. But I want to share one with you. I don’t know why I’m so nervous,’ she said.

  ‘How long have you been down here?’

  ‘I came down south in 1966, two years ago, but I was in the Central Highlands most of the time so I don’t know this area at all. This is the worst time I’ve had. It’s really bad, isn’t it? I mean, the fighting’s going to go on for a long time, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think the real fighting’s just started. It’s like this everywhere now,’ he replied.

  A helicopter was heard. Then rifle fire.

  ‘Don’t forget the way,’ she whispered urgently.

  ‘But we both know it now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but you’ll shoot me if I make another mistake,’

  ‘Forget it, Hoa,’ he said. ‘I was angry with you then.’

  ‘No, I mean it. The jungle is alien to me. I’m from the coast, in Hai Hau. Until we saw the head-shaped rock I was totally lost.’

  Kien looked at her more closely. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nearly twenty. I joined when I was eighteen,’ she said. ‘But I’m still not used to it.’

  ‘No one gets used to it,’ he said, grinding the cigarette into the ground. ‘Wait for me here. I’ll go back and bring the others. You need the rest. We’ve still got a long way to go.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I’m the liaison guide, that’s my duty,’ she said. But she seemed nervous, and Kien studied her, until she looked up again.

  ‘I’m afraid to be alone,’ she admitted. ‘I want to be with you, Kien.’

  Kien moved to her and placed an arm around her shoulders in comfort. Gratefully, she leaned towards him, and they sat like that for some minutes, moving only when a spotter plane flew overhead, following the course of the river. Kien stood up slowly, and helped Hoa to her feet. She looked so young. He’d been about to shoot a teenage girl because she’d lost her way in unfamiliar jungle.

  By the time they had reached the foot of the Ngoc Bo Ray mountain again the sun was setting behind the peaks; it was late afternoon and despite the eerie silence they were both hurrying. There was an uneasy tension in the air, broken by the rustle of dry grass, and the crunch of twigs breaking. A cobra slid across the trail in front of them, fleeing from some other movement.

  They froze in their tracks, expectantly. They had just passed the turning point of the head-shaped rock and could smell the marshlands of Crocodile Lake.

  There was more movement in the jungle near them. Birds, disturbed by some movement, flew out ahead of them, up and into the heat of the day before turning back into the cool to land on higher branches. As they began to move slowly forward Kien suddenly stopped, grabbing Hoa and pulling her down. An American patrol had emerged a few paces away from them, cutting a narrow path as they went. In another moment they would have stepped in front of them.

  What Kien had seen first was not a man, but a tracker dog as a big as a calf, an Alsatian.

  The dog was pulling at a strong leather leash which was held by a black soldier wearing a bullet-proof vest and steel helmet. Another black followed him, this one bare-chested except for a massive cartridge belt slung diagonally across his body. Following him a white American, also well muscled and naked from the waist up. Then a fourth… and there were others, fanned out behind the fourth. It was difficult to tell just how many, but they were quick and light-footed in the jungle and they moved relentlessly, like cunning wolves on a trail, in total silence.

  The dog stopped by a shrub where Kien was hiding and began sniffing. The dog-handler had flicked something onto the sight of his gun. Kien, shivering in fear a few feet away, looked at it. It was a piece of white bandage. He moved his hand down to his grenade, expecting the worst. He realised the Americans were following their earlier trail with the wounded to Crocodile Lake. What he didn’t realise was that Hoa had silently slipped away from where he was crouched.

  The American patrol were still moving along, following the eager tracker dog, following their trail of the day before. They were signalling and murmuring among themselves as they picked up the trail. We must have been obvious, thought Kien. Stretchers dragged by men, themselves probably wounded and exhausted, who were hardly likely to pay attention to bushcraft by covering their tracks.

  ‘Our wounded are at their mercy!’ He swore. A feeling of disgrace and helplessness was rising within him when suddenly, a pistol shot rang out.

  It was a small, brief report, but it shook the otherwise silent jungle and reverberated in the still afternoon air. A dog yelped in pain. He saw the American soldiers react instantaneously, dropping to the jungle floor and rolling as they fell. The lead dog-handler let free the leash on the wounded dog and rolled into protective cover.

  Then a second shot sounded, finding its mark on the same dog which yelped again and flew into a rage, and began charging for the source of its pain. Kien, now behind the patrol, was astonished to see little Hoa step from behind a clay ant-hill. She was a magnificent portrait of courage; she stood against the setting sun, her lovely slim body erect, arm outstretched firing at the dog, and the dog only. The final rays of the setting sun silhouetted her against the Crocodile Lakelands, tingeing her skin copper colour, giving it the appearance of a bronze statue. Her long hair swirled around her shoulders and below her shorts Kien saw that her legs were newly scratched and bleeding. The dog, which had never baulked at going for her, was finally dropped in his tracks by her last two shots.

  Hoa dropped her arm, then lifted it in a throwing action, hurling the pistol towards the Americans.

  The soldiers held their fire, but the point men ran towards her. Others, including one who almost trod on Kien’s hand, followed. Kien looked over to Hoa again and saw her sprint away, away from the trail the patrol was following. Although she ran quickly the soldiers were athletes and they caught her after only thirty metres, and held her, cheering as they did.

  Now left behind and relatively safe, Kien crawled to a safer position and tried to see what had happened to Hoa. He could have thrown his
grenade and scattered them, which was what he wanted to do as it became obvious what they were doing with her.

  Without losing their control, or lifting their voices, they set about stripping Hoa and, the dog-handler first, roughly fucking her. Some of them stayed back, but the way they had all come to a standstill, and with others waiting their turn, it appeared they would end their patrol with the rape.

  Kien, with a single hand-grenade to fight with, was almost totally powerless. Hoa had saved fifteen sick and wounded from certain death by first shooting the dog then diverting them from the trail which would have led directly to the sick and wounded troops, almost powerless to defend themselves against such a well-armed, fit patrol force.

  She gave herself to save me, too. With that thought he eased the grenade lever back to its safe position. As the almost silent but barbarous multiple rape of young Hoa continued on the small jungle clearing in the dying minutes of the harrowing day, Kien crept off, away from them, towards his wounded men.

  Kien that night followed Hoa’s trail to the river and made a successful crossing with the wounded.

  He knew it was by then unlikely they would meet another patrol, especially at night, but he kept his hand on the grenade for hours, and the clasp felt warm. Not one of them asked about Hoa. At first he found it disagreeably strange. Then, with its acceptance he, too, began to forget about her. Was it that such sacrifices were now an everyday occurrence? Or that they were expected, even of such young people? Or worse, that they were too concerned worrying about their own safety to bother with others?

  It was many years later that Kien, in the MIA team, returned to Crocodile Lake. Hoa’s image came to him the moment he arrived and he set off to find the old trail to the river bank, where they had smoked the Salem together, and he had apologised for wanting to shoot her. It all seemed so long ago, and because he couldn’t even find the head-shaped rock – it had been blown apart or washed away – it seemed a touch unlikely that it had ever happened. Of course it had, but not even finding the clearing where he had last seen her allowed him that escape into such possibilities.

  What remained was sorrow, the immense sorrow, the sorrow of having survived. The sorrow of war.

  But for Hoa and countless other loved comrades, nameless ordinary soldiers, those who sacrificed for others and for their Vietnam, raising the name of Vietnam high and proud, creating a spiritual beauty in the horrors of conflict, the war would have been another brutal, sadistic exercise.

  Kien himself would have been dead long ago if it had not been for the sacrifice of others; he might even have killed himself to escape the psychological burden of killing others. He had not done that, choosing instead to live the life of an ant-like soldier, carrying the burden of every underling.

  After 1975, all that had quieted. The wind of war had stopped. The branches of conflict had stopped rustling. As we had won, Kien thought, then that meant justice had won; that had been some consolation. Or had it? Think carefully; look at your own existence. Look carefully now at the peace we have, painful, bitter and sad. And look at who won the war.

  To win, martyrs had sacrificed their lives in order that others might survive. Not a new phenomenon, true. But for those still living to know that the kindest, most worthy people have all fallen away, or even been tortured, humiliated before being killed, or buried and wiped away by the machinery of war, then this beautiful landscape of calm and peace is an appalling paradox. Justice may have won, but cruelty, death and inhuman violence had also won.

  Just look and think: it is the truth.

  Losses can be made good, damage can be repaired and wounds will heal in time. But the psychological scars of the war will remain forever.

  The light which had been left on in Phuong’s apartment has now finally been turned off. It now seems to Kien that he has finally lost her. His days on this earth also seem numbered, and his existence seems meaningless. But in the light of day that, too, is melodramatic. He has to finish his novel and life cannot be ended until the writing is done.

  Magazines buy his articles and he makes ends meet with small editing jobs. They occupy very little of his time and require no serious concentration and his by-lines in the magazines ensure he earns at least enough to cover costs.

  The manuscript, meanwhile, grows longer and longer. The drinking continues, but the work continues, too. By night he goes to an all-night café on the lake, orders coffee, lights a cigarette and buys the morning newspaper. If he goes in the afternoon heat, when it is crowded and the streets still dusty, he is often approached: How’s the writing going? they ask.

  ‘Fairly boring,’ he replies.

  ‘That’s the famous author who lives on our block,’ he hears them say.

  One afternoon he walks past a man selling cobras on the sidewalk. The snakes look as if they’re dead, exhausted by the demands of a hectic life and wishing to return to that other, safer jungle.

  On the opposite side of the street, children gather around a blind man who sells colourful balloons.

  Around the lake the homeless sleep on stone benches. Autumn leaves fall and make a soft carpet on the grass. The city is crowded, but sad. One day he set out to go to an office to work, but when he got to the street he turned round and went back, going upstairs and closing the door behind him.

  Picture postcards from his writing life.

  His friends live so far away from him now. They don’t write. Why don’t they write? He doesn’t write to them. He doesn’t speak to anyone much these days, just the mute lady who lives in the attic. His father’s old studio. ‘And then only when I’m pissed,’ he reminds himself.

  Kien is back in his apartment in Hanoi as usual, his mind tumbling over when the story he starts to write emerges as boring, heavy and senseless. He had intended to write one thing but his pen took another direction, displaying a mind of its own. He is pondering whether to leave the page or to erase it when he recalls another story. A ridiculous story of a ridiculous wound he got at Dac To. ‘The South strikes again!’ he mused. ‘Now they’re using pretty agents!’ he laughed.

  Wound? That’s what they called it. It was VD. He was in a military clinic when another soldier was brought in. Kien himself thought nothing of it. He found it hilarious that the commander of the garrison which later occupied Saigon chose Kien to help police his troops at night. So many of them were sneaking away to find girls near the airport. But the other soldier in the clinic was outraged, and afraid. He cried, agonised and bemoaned his luck.

  Kien admonished him. ‘Surely this is nothing compared to your other wounds?’ he asked. He turned on Kien, telling him he was a fool. ‘This is worse than being blinded,’ he said dramatically.

  He took it so seriously! Kien imagined him drumming up a little club of soldiers who got clap in the war, then discovering how insignificant his ‘wound’ was.

  He lay back on his bed, his hands behind his head, contemplating his present state, the condition of the heart. He looked forward to the day when his health and normal zeal would be restored, and along with it his normal sexual desires; he could be quite happy trying to relive his youth. That would help him rid himself of his burdensome past and reduce his melancholia. On the other hand, there were certain important differences in his life now.

  He had discovered he was happier when looking into the past; his path in life, which he had once assumed would be towards a beautiful future, had done a U-turn and taken him backwards into the murky darkness of the hard times his homeland had experienced.

  Happiness seemed to lie in the past; the older he grew the rosier the past looked to him. Life before going south as a teenage soldier now seemed to him to have been one long, beautiful day.

  In one of his more peaceful moments he reviewed the new lives his colleagues had settled into after the war. Some had stayed south, for the warmer climate, or better economic opportunities, or perhaps they had just reached the end of their march in life. Others had stayed in the Central Highlands. Perhaps they
wished to avoid returning north to a boring life.

  Many of those who returned to the Highlands after the fighting now enjoyed healthy, outdoor, free living. They were farming pasture-lands or working in the jungles, or in new villages created along the Poco, Sa Thay, Serepoc or Ya-Mo rivers. The hells of yesteryear were now the scenes of peaceful rural tranquillity. In the dim past a political commissar had lectured him on his post-war life. He’d forgotten which commissar, but his advice went like this: ‘You’ve been in action in the south for several years. You have suffered hardships, and stained your hands with blood. From now on, you’d do better to live close to nature and be closer to ordinary working people. That will ease your suffering and bring you happiness.’

  Kien imagined his old mates working on the land, slashing and burning in the dry season, weeding in the wet. Going to the jungle in the wet season to pick mushrooms and cut bamboo shoots. Catching fish and hunting animals, delivering crops. Hardening calloused hands, broadening muscled backs.

  The sacks of salt and rice, the cassavas, the sweat of hard labour, would they have generated in him the joys in life which seemed to have forever forsaken him?

  There was one rural scene which frequently returned to Kien now. It was a symbol of paradise lost.

  In the southern sector of the Central Highlands his units in Division 10 were making a rapid march from the Ngoan Muc pass, crossing Don Duong and Duc Trong, along Road 20 to Di Linh.

  For the first time in his life he felt truly at home in the country. His heart surged with desire to quit the violence, killing and destruction and settle in the peaceful surrounds of that corner of the Highlands under a calm, peaceful sky. From that point in time he used that pastoral scene both as a measuring-stick for other rural areas, and as a symbol of what could have been.

  One afternoon, Kien and his scout team were taking a jeep along Road 20 when they decided to turn off and look at a coffee plantation. There was a neatly kept gravel road running between densely planted crops leading to a nicely built house on stilts set well back from the road. They drove up carefully to the front of the pretty plantation house and parked the jeep, which had a machine-gun mounted just behind the driver and looked threatening. They politely climbed out and walked up the steps, preparing to ask for water and a place to rest.