by Bao Ninh
Phuong, now kneeling near the door, had the look of a mad-woman. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she screamed as he came over, the sailor’s blood dripping from his hands.
He wiped the blood on his trousers. ‘Stand up. We’re going,’ he said calmly and quietly.
He flung the door open wide, looked up into the sky and, seeing no aircraft, bent down and lifted her up, then dropped her outside. ‘Let me go,’ she shouted angrily. But she was already down and he was beside her.
The station had been razed, like a demolition site. Kien took hold of Phuong’s wrist and firmly led her over bent rail tracks and debris towards a path out.
They had not gone far when Kien dropped to the earth and pulled Phuong with him. ‘Down!’ he shouted, as a jet screamed in on a long dive, strafing the train. And among the tracer bullets he could detect something else; a silver napalm canister, glittering in the sunlight, its long shiny sides giving off a gleam, as it came in at horrifying speed. Then another, and another. They hit the engine and the station almost soundlessly. Kien saw a black cloud, then the air cracked like broken glass and the earth seemed to be heaving under them, then falling again. Then another raid, another bomb. Explosions punched into their faces and several times Kien was certain these were his last moments. Pressure waves shuddered through them as they lay there, helpless to defend themselves. Kien grasped Phuong’s hand and their cold, quivering fingers intermingled.
Swiftly, as though coming to her senses, Phuong rolled clear then jumped up and ran for the station. A break in the bombing allowed her to get clear of the lines safely, with Kien in hot pursuit. A breeze was carrying locomotive smoke into their faces. When the smoke cleared they saw the up-line train for Hanoi was still intact, and beginning to make a run for it away from the station, a locomotive at each end, one pulling, one pushing. In the foreground their own train, completely destroyed, was just a pile of smoking ashes.
‘Phuong!’ he shouted, taking hold of her.
She turned to him, her eyes burning with pain and bitterness. A pent-up scream began to surface, but no sound came.
The train sped up, heading north, but as it did so four A-A batteries started firing and Kien knew instinctively the jets were back. Phuong used the chance to rip herself clear of him and she ran off once again. And once again he ran her down, trapping her and deliberately landing on top of her to keep her pinned down.
Bomb after bomb exploded, darkening the day. One series behind them, one in front of them and one right on target, hitting the rear locomotive – a direct hit. It blew up with tremendous force and for a long time it rained burning charcoal and hot water. Another jet emerged from the cloudless sky and emptied its cannon into the railcars, setting most of them on fire. The next one was for them, thought Kien, already astounded they could have lived so long, through two bombing raids.
Kien hugged Phuong closely, despite her struggles. She fought crazily, like a woman possessed, and as the raid continued he lost his temper, pressing into the back of her neck and holding her in an armlock. Then he embedded his ten fingers deeply into the flesh of her shoulder to keep her down. They were both terrified now, numb, and gasping, like animals wrestling.
Their frenzied fighting lasted only a few seconds more; then one last bomb came. It was the explosion to end all explosions that day. With the rear locomotive already blasted away the jets now attacked the centre of the train. The last bomb scored a direct hit, lifting the railcars high into the air and splitting the train in two. Half the train, pulled by the one remaining loco, kept moving north. The second half of the train, which had already lost its rear loco, now lost its entrails.
During the explosions Kien wondered which of the freight cars the sailor’s body was in. Had he been incinerated by napalm? Or just ripped to pieces by the strafing?
Who cared? No one had any time for others at times like these, with an immense roaring enveloping them, and thick white smoke and fire. There was little charity or mercy in moments like these.
Unsteadily, Kien helped Phuong to stand, surprising himself with his remaining strength. He slung her onto his back and began clumping away from the heat of the burning ruins. He put her down and they leaned on each other to grope their way through more thick smoke near what remained of the station building. There were cries for help from various directions but at first they saw only corpses.
The bodies lay scattered all round. Then some people emerged, running mindlessly, falling into more debris. Kien began stepping through the bodies as though it were an everyday event for him. This was his new-found strength, to stay cool under fire. No one really knew: they could suspect, but would never really know until they faced the real test. Scores of bodies lay in all imaginable twisted positions; there was nothing to scream or take fright about. To him, in his hardened state, it seemed perfectly normal.
He was about to put Phuong down for a rest when he spotted a bicycle lying by the roadside. As he picked it up he noticed it was an old but top-quality Phoenix, in remarkably good condition. Astonishingly, it had good tyres, chain, pedals, even brakes and a bell. A black sack, nearly full, hung from the handlebars. Kien guessed the bike’s owner was one of the corpses lying nearby on his back or his belly, burnt and stripped naked by napalm.
Kien got on and tried the bell. A light refined tinkling sounded, the only elegant noise in the air now crackling with frying flesh and little obscene popping noises. Then he rode it slowly for a test. Phuong, almost catatonic the whole time, uttered not a word. When he stopped beside her she offered no resistance, slipping onto the bike’s rear carrier seat as skilfully as she’d done in her schooldays when they’d ridden to school together.
Kien zig-zagged through burning houses and wrecked buildings, fallen trees and power lines. There were bomb craters right down the middle of the road so every now and then he had to stop and walk the bike through. Phuong sat silently on the back all through the strange journey.
As the station receded the settled, steady pedalling action suddenly reminded him that only twelve hours earlier he’d been giving Phuong a ride in a stolen cyclo pedicab. Surely that had been one of the most dramatic entrances imaginable into the theatre of war.
There was another raid, more screams from American jets, but this time far away, down the valley.
He heard distant sirens echoing, but they were safe now, well away from the railway station and the road was clearer. Kien stopped by an A-shaped air-raid shelter along the side of the road. The earth began to rumble again and instantly the anti-aircraft guns in Ham Rong opened up.
Kien laid the bicycle down on the ground, then helped Phuong to the shelter. All round him people were stoically going about their everyday lives. Few bothered with the shelters, public or individual. The bombs were too far away. The people paid no attention to possible threats up in the bright sunny sky, or to Kien and Phuong. These were the new times. Two young people, bruised and bleeding, filthy from smoke and coal, their clothes ripped and in disarray, attracted no special attention.
An old man with a walking-stick came along. He carried a small bag made from braided bulrush leaves, and held his hand out begging for rice. Kien shook his head in disbelief that anyone would approach him looking as he did. The old man was not deterred. He prattled on, saying he had been living in a house near a station but that was now destroyed. His relatives and his friends were dead. Everything was burnt. He had no house, no food, no relatives. Why heaven had allowed him to live he would never understand. He wondered aloud if he could walk all the way to a distant relative’s place. He said everyone was now certain to die. Kien just listened to him silently, as did Phuong. The old man, having spoken his piece, moved on, starting another identical speech, this time to an unseen audience.
Kien and Phuong sat in the shelter, motionless. They had no words, for they had no thoughts. They paid no attention to the distant aircraft, or to those evacuating the hamlet around them, carrying children and belongings, and their wounded. Miserable, pitiful scenes
surrounded them.
They seemed determined not to speak to each other, nor even look at each other. They maintained their silent rage; not even their terrible thirst or their hunger intruded.
In later years Kien experienced several similar identical moments, long periods of withdrawal. Like the dead, one felt no fear, no enthusiasm, no joy, no sadness, no feelings for anything. No concerns and no hopes. One was totally devoid of feeling, and had no regard for the clever or the stupid, the brave or the cowardly, commanders or privates, friend or foe, life or death, happiness or sadness. It was all the same; it amounted to nothing.
A little later something else quite extraordinary occurred. A small, middle-aged man with a very thin face, carrying a fat woman on his back, stopped in front of them. The woman, whose legs were bandaged, was asleep.
Kien’s bicycle had attracted the man’s attention. He grew excited, asking repeatedly if they wanted to sell the bike. Phuong and Kien, both still in shock, failed to reply. All three of them were staring at the bike, as the woman on the man’s back slept blissfully on.
The man’s foot went out and deftly, using his toes, he lifted the bike up and carefully transferred the sleeping woman onto the back carrier seat. As the man took the wobbling bicycle to lean it against a shelter the woman moaned and held on to him.
He freed himself and returned, lifted the sack from the bicycle and placed it beside Phuong, then began searching for money in his pockets. When he found some banknotes he fished them out, counted a certain amount, then placed them on the top of the sack.
He muttered a few words in the local dialect, swung onto the seat of the bike, and rode off with the fat woman still asleep. This astonishing, simple exchange had all taken less than a minute, yet the macabre humour of it all endured for years in Kien’s memories of war.
So, the man had bought the bicycle, whose real owner was a napalmed corpse near the station. Bombs were still dropping, aircraft were still roaring in the distant sky and A-A fire cracked loudly on this hot, almost suffocatingly hot day. And amid all this one of the strangest transactions had taken place. It snapped them from their silence.
Kien absently pocketed the banknotes, then picked up the sack and opened it. It contained dry rations called BA70, a torch, a water canister, a hammock and a K59 pistol. Phuong quickly looked at it from under thick lashes. Kien said, ‘Let’s eat something. We’ve got water, too.’
‘Eat, maybe,’ she said listlessly.
Kien opened the canister, took a sip, then passed it to her. The bag of dry food also contained green tea and sugar and some yellow-coloured cake, which had a delicious taste.
Phuong sat quietly, eating casually as though nothing had happened. Kien would like to have seen her eating with more appreciation. After all, the food had been snatched from the jaws of blood and death.
Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to have such a vivid imagination, to be concerned at the source of the food and the entire circumstances they found themselves in. Kien supposed nothing was terribly wrong with eating and drinking normally to help recover after such a catastrophe. But on the other hand, watching how easily she ate and drank, he recognised that there was in Phuong, besides hunger and thirst, an unusual reserve of strength and resilience.
He ate almost nothing himself, studying her as she ate. Then he began to realise just how badly injured she was. His own clothes were dirty and torn but Phuong’s clothes were almost in shreds. Through the tatters her normally white skin was bruised, scratched and bleeding. Her face was black with smoke, her lips were swollen and her eyes were flat and sullen. A small trickle of blood continued to run down the inside of one leg, though the bleeding was greatly reduced. When she uncrossed her legs to change position and stretch her legs on the grass he noticed more blood on a knee. This reminded him: this wasn’t blood from a wound. It came from those tumultuous hours in the railcars.
Phuong ate only half her cake. ‘Finish it, Phuong,’ Kien said, ‘we’ll need all the energy we can muster to get back to Hanoi.’
But she sat on, shaking her head and staring. He was about to suggest she wipe the blood away, but decided not to. He said quietly: ‘Let’s go to that hamlet over there. You need a place to lie down. When we’ve recovered we’ll find our way home.’
But she didn’t even raise her eyes.
Kien noticed a small field on the other side of the road. Some bushes grew there, possibly a kitchen garden, for behind it were some small thatched houses. ‘Come on, it’s not far. Can you walk it?’
Phuong nodded sullenly.
Kien unbuttoned his shirt. ‘Put this on, at least.’
She looked across at him and said sharply, ‘At least! At least what? Do I look that horrible? Keep your shirt. Don’t worry about me any more. Your duty is to catch up with your unit. Don’t worry yourself about where I go next.’
Kien stopped unbuttoning his shirt. Embarrassed, he tried to explain himself: ‘You misunderstand me. If we don’t care for each other who’s going to care? As far as what’s happened, forget it, please. As far as I’m concerned…’
She interrupted sharply. ‘If you want to bury a memory then just don’t mention it. Secondly, you’d better ensure that no one else talks about certain memories, either.’
He had never seen her as cold and calculating as this.
‘Of course,’ he said, giving her his hand. ‘Now, let’s go.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed, giving him her hand to pull herself up.
They walked hand-in-hand, their shadows foreshortened by the overhead sun. The mid-afternoon heat was heavy on their backs. They looked like two very lonely souls drying themselves in the sun. The few passers-by could not avoid looking at them, especially at Phuong. Such a lovely young girl, but so dirty and tattered, and strangely casual.
‘What a nice couple, look!’ someone said, trying to lift their spirits.
They crossed the road and took a narrow dirt path which led to the kitchen garden they had seen. But the garden was empty and dried-up, the earth pitted with craters from bomb shrapnel. The hot wind blew across them languidly, adding to the desolation. Perhaps no one lived there now. The thatched houses which Kien had seen from far away had led him to identify it as a small village or hamlet, but in reality the buildings were an abandoned primary school, far from any village.
Trenches had been cut across the yard and wild grass grew between them. The classrooms now looked like artillery entrenchments, covered with thick layers of earth. Phuong and Kien went into one of the former classrooms where a few desks and broken benches remained. The teacher’s desk was empty, the blackboard had dropped to the floor and in the middle of the room was a heap of ashes, the remnants of a camp-fire which had been fuelled by wood from desks and chairs. The roof was ruined. Inside it was almost as light as out in the yard.
The scene of devastation tightened Kien’s heart. ‘Look at this,’ he said to Phuong. ‘How could anyone destroy a school? Don’t they respect life any more?’
‘Maybe it was our soldiers,’ she replied. ‘Soldiers do this sort of thing. War does this, war smashes and destroys.’
In her later life that tone would get her into some trouble, but Kien was so depressed he hardly noticed the cynicism.
It occurred to him that she was by now suffering from shock, some nervous disorder. He prepared a place for her to lie down. At least here they would not be disturbed by authorities wanting to question them and check their story. In addition there were enough bits and pieces here to make a bed and shelter.
‘Try to get some sleep, darling,’ he said.
She sat down beside him. ‘You’ll sleep too?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t you sling the hammock?’
‘Not a good idea. Belongs to a dead person.’
‘So what! Why should that bother you?’
‘Enough. Don’t talk like that.’
‘But if you don’t sling the hammock where will you sleep? You’ll feel horrible lyi
ng next to me,’ she said sarcastically.
Kien shook his head mechanically.
She lay down, putting her hands under her head, and faced up, making room for Kien to lie beside her. But Kien remained immobile.
‘I wish there were some water somewhere near here so I could bathe,’ she whispered.
‘Let me check. You sleep,’ he said.
‘Don’t go. Stay with me. I talk just to talk. I wish that I could look nicer before we say goodbye and we sleep next to each other for the last time. But then again even if I do bathe, even if I peel my entire skin away, I’ll be just as unclean. That’s destiny. Too bad.’
Kien looked at her. ‘You’re saying some rather funny things. What’s all this talk about “last time” and “goodbye”?’
‘Let it go. I meant we may not see each other again, but that prediction may or may not be true. I’m just making conversation,’ she said.
‘There are things we must ensure come true, such as my survival and return. This isn’t home, it’s a battlefield, it’s war. We have to have confidence in ourselves,’ he said.
Phuong talked on dreamily, her attitude gloomy and pessimistic. ‘We were born pure and innocent. Look how innocent we are now,’ she mumbled. He could hardly miss the allusion to their new status as multiple rape victim and brutal murderer. ‘Don’t worry about tomorrow,’ she droned on. ‘Don’t torture yourself, what’s the point? You go your way, I’ll go mine. We had such a beautiful life. You and me, my love for you, your love for me. My mother and your dad, and I would have been your wife, no doubt. That was in the past. Now we have a new future, a new fate. We had no choice in the new circumstances, it was an unlucky coincidence. Now I’m like this, you go your way, I’ll go mine.’