The Shadow of Arms

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “I don’t think I can say.”

  Pham Minh had to give an ambiguous answer. The question was overwhelming. Minh realized how hideously foolish he had been. He, who had walked voluntarily into the jaws of death, had not even once thought of dying. He thought of his fallen comrade, the former teacher, with curly hair and nice, even teeth. At that point no one could have found their way back to the ridge where they had left his dead body. In the tangle of trees and dense vegetation, they could not even say with certainty where in Vietnam they had been. Unless the corpse got up and walked away, it would disappear on that forgotten ridge, among scavenging lizards and swarms of flies. It was not the same as being bombarded and dying surrounded by the wails of family members. After all, isn’t a guerrilla one with no name, no identity, no past, not even a face? Thanh continued:

  “It doesn’t matter if you can’t answer. Our death is dedicated to the national liberation of Vietnam. So there’s only one place you should want notice of your death sent. The National Liberation Front. Nothing is more wretched than death without conviction.”

  At first, Pham Minh was jarred and invigorated as from a thorn prick, but gradually the sensation faded. Thanh did not seem to be talking to him at all, but shouting aloud to himself, with all of his thoughts focused obsessively on a single object.

  “Your mother is a mother,” said Pham Minh, “she is not Vietnam. I was just asking if you wouldn’t like to see your mother.”

  “You’ve seen how bananas are fried. When you put a lump of lard in the frying pan, it melts slowly, losing its shape. Then it gets watery and spreads out evenly on the bottom of the pan. The same is true of my mother. I know what you’re trying to say. I’m too much a formalist, that’s what you mean. You’re saying I don’t understand life.”

  Thanh paused for a while and hung his head. When he raised it again, Pham Minh, seeing his cheeks wet, felt like he was choking.

  “Listen, Pham Minh, of all the new recruits starting out from Suanmai Military School, Tanh Hoa Teachers College, and my alma mater, Dong Hoi Military School, almost a quarter drop dead from malaria or heatstroke or something as they march down the endless road on the Laotian border. They die even before they reach the battlefields where bombs rain down like a hailstorm. Most who make it into battle die within two years. It’s been only a year and a half since I started with the guerrillas. Already most of the comrades I started with are dead. In this business of warfare against a gigantic nation like the US, you have no other means but to endure, holding out to the end while exchanging human lives for things. And now why do you think I should distinguish my mother from Vietnam when I think of her? Mother has already melted away, shapeless like the lard, soaked into every corner of this torn land of ours.”

  Thanh shook his head violently and fell silent for a moment. Pham Minh took out two cigarettes and put one in Thanh’s mouth.

  Thanh said in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry, I’ve been babbling, swept away by emotions.”

  He took a deep puff, gazing at Pham Minh’s exhausted face. Thanh tugged Minh’s tender cheek and went on softly.

  “Listen to me, you child. Shoan will be graduating soon, won’t she? If she wants to go on studying she’ll have to go to Hue or Saigon, but in wartime I don’t think her parents will let her. Then, what next? You know what rich parents in the city do with their daughters, don’t you? If they can’t send them abroad, they’ll hurry to marry them off. To an old man, or to an officer in the military, or to a landlord’s heir loafing about at home while supposedly on reserve duty with the navy or the air force.”

  Pham Minh glared at Thanh. “What are you saying?”

  “I’ll tell you a little tale. It’s a bit superstitious. There’s nothing so heartbreaking as a love story in these times. But heartbreaking emotions weaken us and warp our minds. There’s a saying that a fighter who carries a photo of his lover with him will be killed without fail. It applies to our enemies as well. The grim reaper must love snatching the lives of lovers.”

  Pham Minh tossed away his cigarette butt and got to his feet. Thanh did the same.

  “Don’t be angry, Pham Minh, it’s very important to talk this over. Unless you’re exceptionally strong, you can’t avoid the hundreds of coincidences out there. I have to go.”

  The two looked at each other. Pham Minh awkwardly said, “The reason I came . . . I myself was surprised. I still don’t know whether joining was the right thing to do.”

  “You’ll do fine. You’re not a weakling, my friend. Now I really have to go.”

  Pham Minh felt like crying. It had not been this bad when he slipped away from the bomb shelter behind Uncle Trinh’s house, leaving Shoan. The changes in Thanh, his childhood friend, and his words of zealotry had confused him. All those vague passions he had felt back in school now seemed vain and empty like a summer night’s dream. From now everything in his past was gone. After robbing Minh of his nostalgia, Thanh was already off to places unknown. When Pham Minh took a few steps forward to grasp him by the shoulders, Thanh held out his hand, “Chao ong, Pham Minh.”

  In the confusion of the moment, Pham Minh took his hand limply. Thanh shook it and turned to go.

  Pham Minh opened Hoc Tap again.

  “The history of peoples’ wars is the universal law of the development of the class struggle, the unfolding of the revolutionary capacity of the people, which in the beginning is weak, but which grows strong, clearly proves through the evidence of history that a people’s war develops in accordance with that universal law. In this process of development, the people’s war inevitably must pass through many difficulties and undulations, reversals and retreats, but no power can alter the general trend of marching ever forward on the road to victory.”

  The words in the text were shimmering and the meaning was slow to be absorbed into Pham Minh’s head. He suddenly realized that he had read the same lines three times. He shut the book and lay down, folding his arms behind his head. Raindrops running off the leaves felt cold on his toes. All around he could see volunteers lying here and there or sitting in small clusters and talking.

  There were about fifty men who had come from the Second and Third Special Districts. The First Special District, Saigon, had three special action units numbered 159, 65, and 67. A special action unit normally had between one hundred and two hundred fifty members. Urban guerrillas usually consisted of students, laborers, teachers, office staff, merchants, military deserters, and so on. Most of them had made contact with lower level operations agents before being screened by the NLF district committees and the People’s Revolutionary Party.

  Once the list of volunteers’ names was received, they had to pass a thorough investigation of their past and were under surveillance for a certain period. Then they would be sent to the provisional schools in the border region for military training and special education to become urban guerrillas. At intervals of two or three months, the groups that passed through the screening arrived at the assembly points.

  They were not allowed to talk to each other about their birthplaces or their occupations, nor were they allowed to mix with those in earlier or later training groups. Since the people now undergoing training at this place were to be assigned to various places scattered around Hue and Da Nang, in most cases they would only get to know about ten others who fell into the same group. It seemed that all the volunteers expected had arrived, and they would soon depart from Maram, the assembly point, for the training facility in the Atwat Mountains. An officer in the regular khaki uniform of the Viet Cong had arrived the day before. The ten common huts that housed volunteers were about half-empty. In each were people in black Vietnamese clothing, in one hut all the occupants were women. Most of the women were quite young and a few still had the long hair characteristic of schoolgirls. Pham Minh was startled by the thought that Shoan might be among them.

  “Even on stormy days, time goes on.”
r />   Pham Minh thought of those words from Uncle Trinh, who had been lying on his back smoking opium.

  “Minh, a shooting star!”

  He could still hear Shoan’s surprised voice as she held his hand tightly in hers. The inside of the bomb shelter behind Uncle Trinh’s house was very cozy. The cement ceiling was a bit damp and the blanket on the ground was wet, but there was no barricade and no guards anywhere nearby. Through the square ventilation hole overhead you could see the night sky. When you took a deep breath, the fragrance of roses and cannas and chrysanthemums seemed to penetrate all the way into your lungs. The relentless pounding of cannon and the rattle of automatic weapons in the distance also had gradually subsided as daybreak approached. The flares could no longer rip open the sky. Shoan kept on trembling. But it was because of the chill of dawn sneaking into her thin ahozai, and she was calm and unashamed when Pham Minh undressed her. As the morning sun rose on the far horizon, they heard the chirping of the birds as they soared up in the air for the sake of that fleeting and precious dawn. Shoan’s face was bluish white from the chill and the sorrow of parting.

  As the sunlight broke into the shelter, Pham Minh could see the ugly hills of Dong Dao standing under the patch of sky. Trenches and barbed wire and sandbags were strewn everywhere you looked. American soldiers with blackened cheeks were clambering down the side of the mountains. Shoan’s lips were cold and parched.

  Footnote:

  7 Army of the Republic of Vietnam

  8

  Krapensky was talking to Captain Kim.

  “We’ve got trouble. War supplies have started circulating in the market. For the last couple of weeks, enough combat rations to feed two whole companies have leaked out. We’re keeping an eye on the situation. If this stuff sells out there in the market, that means the Vietnamese are eating it. The National Liberation Front is Vietnamese too.”

  “What about arms?”

  “I was only talking about rations.”

  “So, you suspect Korean soldiers are dealing?” asked Captain Kim, his brows furrowed with irritation.

  “Not so fast. All the supplies come from the US Army. We’re allies fighting together, so we have to stop this together. If it were luxury goods out of the PX, it’d be different. These are combat supplies.”

  As he finished speaking, Krapensky held out a document.

  “A vehicle log?”

  “Yeah. It’s a record of the Korean vehicles that passed through all the checkpoints on the outskirts of Da Nang. I’m asking you to use this as a starting point for an investigation.”

  “We can investigate who’s been traveling the routes leading from the supply warehouse to the market, but it won’t be enough for an arrest. Vehicles can go everywhere, you know.”

  “It’ll help with investigations that may lead to an arrest. You can set up a watch at particular points frequented by suspicious vehicles.”

  “Laying traps is an option, but we’re short of manpower.”

  “Withdraw some PX personnel and start a full-scale investigation.”

  “I can’t pull people out of the PX, but I’ll find a way somehow.”

  “Please do.”

  Krapensky, in full dress uniform and hat, checked his watch and hurried out. Captain Kim clasped his hands behind his back and peered out the window, lost in thought. An outflow of combat rations was something not too difficult to track.

  “Those sons of bitches at the recreation center . . .”

  He was fully aware that matters concerning the Da Nang supply warehouse had top priority. It was the heart of his control region. His detachment and the recreation center both were attached to the logistics battalion. It was the unit that oversaw the entire distribution system of goods for the Korean forces, but the recreation center had its own separate requisition channels, which made it impossible to do an exact check on their inventories. All he could get his hands on was a supply ledger and a record of an inspection of ration stores. “Bribed but not bought” was part of CID’s unwritten code. He started examining the vehicle log.

  Somebody shook Yong Kyu awake.

  “Hey, get up! Know what time it is?”

  The gunnery sergeant yanked his blanket off. Yong Kyu sat up slowly without opening his eyes. He had a splitting headache.

  “Can’t handle a few glasses of whisky? Hurry up and get ready to go on duty . . . drop by company HQ.”

  Yong Kyu had been out drinking with the same sergeant, so the reprimand wasn’t serious. If the laggard had been one of the five men bunking in the next room, the sergeant would have kicked him out of bed in a second even if he was dead from an all-night “Hit the Dirt” exercise. In these quarters Yong Kyu was the senior blue jacket. His bunk was directly facing the gunnery sergeant’s. As soon as Blue Jacket Kang had left for home, Yong Kyu had taken it over. To celebrate yesterday’s successful launch of the beer business, Yong Kyu and the sergeant had gone drinking at the Bamboo and then bought themselves a couple of women. Like Kang had warned, Yong Kyu was already finding himself stuck between the captain and the gunnery sergeant and forced to choose one or the other. He yawned and shook his head.

  “Drop by at company?”

  “Pointer just called asking for you. He told us to go get you if you were already out on duty.”

  Slowly Yong Kyu got up. As he walked to the bathroom, the sergeant spoke to his back through the open door.

  “Seems Pointer smells something.” His voice was uneasy.

  “Fuck it, I’ll just tell him what my esteemed sergeant ordered me to do, no problem, sir.”

  “You bastard, are you fucking kidding?”

  Yong Kyu turned on the shower. The cold water woke him up. He had watched how Blue Jacket Kang handled this sergeant: In general do favors for him, but always remind him of the fact that you’ve got guts by picking at his weak points. For every three favors you do him, get one in return, to maintain a balance, so to speak.

  “Hey . . . you sure you don’t know what this is about?” asked the sergeant, holding the door open.

  “Sir, how could a lowly soldier like me know something even the sergeant doesn’t? He caught wind of it, maybe?”

  “What do you mean? Caught wind of what?”

  “The beer trading, sir.”

  Yong Kyu stepped out of the bathroom in a towel.

  “You may be right.”

  The sergeant sat down on the edge of his bed. He did not look very worried, though. It was just that if the business were discovered it was bound to slip through his fingers. Once it fell into the captain’s hands he’d be out. But Yong Kyu did not care which of the two men won the battle. All he had to do was keep out of the waterlogged trenches and wait for the days to pass. He was never coming back to Vietnam. The palm trees and ahozais and even the sun overhead were nothing more than extensions of the military camp. He put on a T-shirt and a pair of pants. Then he stuck the revolver he had picked up in the market a while ago into his back pocket. It was a police special, a shiny new .38 snubnosed model.

  “If he asks, just flat out deny knowing anything about it.”

  “And if he already knows everything in detail before he starts questioning me?”

  “No way he could know in detail. It would mean losing a lot of money for the Hong Kong Group and the PX chief and Pointer.”

  “Let’s get rid of the Hong Kong Group,” Yong Kyu said.

  “Nah, that won’t work. You can’t traipse around the city in a military vehicle; besides we should stay behind the scenes, not go out in the open.”

  “Why not get a Vietnamese middleman?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  The gunnery sergeant was not about to open up to Yong Kyu. The same was true of Yong Kyu, who by this time had sensed that duty in CID was in a disorganized mess. With the sergeant in collusion with the civilians, it
was impossible to use the rules to control them. Looking at the man’s disconcerted face, Yong Kyu said in his head: You’ll probably be reassigned to the main body; you’ve spent what power you had and you’ve got nothing left; you’re clinging tight to my boots but I’m going to kick you off; you were in such a big hurry that the Hong Kong kids got you by the neck; I won’t go on being your hands and legs once your shoulders are weak; you already lost it all by the time Blue Jacket Kang left for home.

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “Look, I still have three months to go before I head for home.”

  “Well, I’ve got about half a year left, and when I go back I’ll be a civilian.”

  As Yong Kyu turned away the sergeant tried one last time to take him down.

  “Corporal Ahn, you and I are in the same boat, we sink or float together. Don’t ever forget that.”

  Yong Kyu turned back around. He pulled his CID identification from his pocket, tapped the card on his palm, and in a soft voice said, “All I did was show my ID to pass the vehicle through. As the gunnery sergeant ordered . . . and three times I’ve been given ten dollars for beer money . . . right?” He continued, “I’m just going to be diligent and do my duty as I’m told. Anyway, when I see the captain I’ll do my best.”

  He slammed the door behind him. Once outside the hotel, he decided to walk to Puohung Street. It looked like he ought to learn to drive, after all, even if it meant paying for the aftermath with C-rations, as Kang had done. It was still morning but sweat began pouring down his face as he walked. He went up to a row of vendors along the curb to buy a pack of cigarettes. All the tobacco peddlers got their merchandise from the black market, so the price was about three times what the PX charged. He held out a hundred-piaster note.