Nong Tai cried out: “Here’s the forest. We made it alive.”
“Divine beings: please protect us. But we must go faster. Behind is empty space with an empty road. But if the horses of the outpost chase us, there is not much chance of escape.”
The two continued to head toward the forest, running fast. They looked at the sun as if it were some clock timing a race of life or death. Feeling tired, An slowed his pace, but Nong Tai said, “We can’t slow down now. The forest here is open, horses can run freely. We have to get to the heart of the forest where the path is large enough only for feet to hope to be out of danger.”
After speaking, he moved to walk ahead of An and set the pace, as if to encourage his companion. Walking in the shadow of trees, they grew less anxious. The two passed through a part of the wood that sloped downhill. Ten minutes beyond that, they arrived at a flatter part of the forest where it was full of vines. The path was now wide enough for only one person.
As he wiped the sweat off his face, Nong Tai said, “Not quite the heart of the forest, but horses will have a hard time because the vines here make a trap.”
“Yep, really lucky for us,” An replied as he glanced at the vines dangling overhead, the protruding arms of the trees looking like those of an octopus. Along the path a thick waterfall of small and large vines hung down, some long, some short, but each like a noose that would snare any horse entering the forest. It would be more difficult for a herd of horses. At the very least, someone would have to open the path with a machete, cutting down the vines in order for the horses to make any headway.
Nong Tai turned to tell An, “The jungle where we live does not have these vines.”
“Yes, but we have bigger trees.”
“The vines here have interesting colors. Look, the ones on our left are orange. And the one around the trunk of that tree is of an eggplant purple color.”
“Yes, different soil, different jungle, so the trees are different, too…” An replied as he continued to look up at the vines dangling among the scattered rays of light coming from the setting sun. Nong Tai did not say more, but walked quietly along. Suddenly, An heard a sound—thump—a low but heavy sound, followed by a terribly bad smell. That nasty smell brought back memories from past nights in the jungle around Xiu Village. Tiger!
Leaping forward three steps, An grabbed the trunk of the nearest big tree and climbed up with all the strength he had left in him. Scrambling up to a big branch near the top, he sat with his legs wrapped tightly around the branch, his arms around the trunk of the tree. Only then did he dare look down: the tiger, which had pinned Nong Tai under its forelegs, lifted its neck and looked up at him. Their eyes met. He felt cold sweat on his back. The eyes of this king of the forest widened, sending rays the color of hardened steel mixed with yellow straight into An’s eyes.
He thought, “That tiger knows there is a second prey. It will continue to watch until I fall down. Now I must be very calm to escape this danger.”
An tied his body to the tree with three loops of parachute cord, which he had in one of his pockets. He placed the revolver behind his back for easy access. Then he looked down to contest the animal in a hypnotic stare. Poor Nong Tai: he must have died from the fierce animal’s initial attack without being able to utter a cry. The tiger was clearly one that was used to eating people, one that had realized humans were top-quality prey. Meeting such a tiger automatically opens the door to hell.
The tiger looked to be about six feet long in An’s estimation. It couldn’t have been too old, as its fur was still yellow and its black stripes were precisely edged. An couldn’t stop looking at the animal, perhaps out of fear, or perhaps only out of curiosity. From the age of thirteen he had followed his uncle and the other hunters of Xiu Village into the forest. His uncle had killed many bears, horses, wild boars, buck deer, and more than a dozen tigers. An himself had never been so close to a tiger, nor able to observe how it eats its prey. Never.
The tiger put a foot on Nong Tai’s head and flipped it back and forth in the manner of a child playing with a ball. Then, suddenly, it opened its mouth wide and snapped once at the victim’s neck. An heard the sound of bones being crushed. The tiger took a second bite, severing Nong Tai’s head from his body, and pushed it away with its foot as one would flick away a little marble. An watched the bright red head of his companion roll several times before landing in a nearby bush. He couldn’t breathe; terror paralyzed his limbs. At the same time, a warm stream of water from somewhere ran down his rigid body. An realized that, without knowing it, he had wet his pants. The urine ran along his thighs and continued down to his feet.
Down below, the tiger was tearing up Nong Tai’s clothes and beginning its feast. An couldn’t look.
“Oh, Nong Tai: we ran away from one death but another was waiting here. Just when you thought you had walked through the door of life, it turned into a door of death. Please forgive me because I did not have enough strength to protect you. Please forgive me because I did not do my duty as your guide. I should have gone first, not you. But your fate or just bad luck has taken you to death. From now on, your death will burden my shoulders as well as your loved ones.”
It had been a short friendship, one that had lasted no longer than two days and one night. Still, it had been a real friendship because it had led them to cross the porous boundary separating the fields of life from the shores of death; such a bond will last forever.
Through the forest’s leaves, the sun’s rays were no longer yellow, but the lighter color of a ripe lime. Night would come in no time. He had to escape this forest before then. An began to rub his hands vigorously to make the blood flow. When he put them to his cheeks, he felt them as warm as usual. Then he pulled the revolver from behind his back and cocked it. The target was close at hand but difficult to pinpoint because the tiger was busy eating, so its neck and head moved around constantly. Only its back and hips pointed toward An, but those were not the parts where a bullet could put the animal in mortal danger.
Suddenly an idea flashed in his mind: “Why do I have to kill it? If the border defense guards find the tiger’s carcass, they will chase me all the way to Laos. The best thing is to let the animal escape, and to pretend that I, myself, have also been chewed up by the tiger’s jaws. That would be the most certain escape under the circumstances.”
An aimed at the hip closest to the gun barrel and squeezed. With a terrifying roar, the animal turned in his direction. Its eyes shone straight at his with rays of mad anger. It let go of its prey, turned around, and jumped up. As An had calculated, the animal couldn’t reach where he sat. Not able to grab its prey and wounded, the tiger walked unsteadily around the tree for a few steps, then backed up, roared a second time, then jumped again. The gun in An’s hand fell to the ground, bounced, and fired another bullet. The animal turned sharply, and leaped toward its small, strangely shaped enemy, biting with all its strength and flowing fury. Then it roared weakly from the pain of biting on the steel. Looking up at the tiny prey in the tree with a surprised gaze, it darted into the bush and disappeared. Waiting for a long while to make sure that the tiger did not return, An untied the parachute cord and climbed down. Something was sticking to his butt. Then he realized that he not only had wet his pants but had pooped in them, too.
“Yes, people say that you shit from fear, and that’s true all right.”
An took off his shirt and tore it into many pieces to dab the smeared blood under Nong Tai’s head, then he placed the head in a thick and thorny bush so that no hunting dog, wild fox, or boar could go in after it. Then he threw his blood-soaked, tattered shirt over Nong Tai’s headless body and threw his gun close to that of his companion. Looking at this terrifying sight one last time, he turned around and ran straight ahead, toward the sound of a running stream. Kneeling down by it, he wanted to clean up but a strong urge to vomit overcame him, and a green liquid residue mixed with yellow came up, followed by black bile as from a fish. It felt like his gut had be
en cut with an invisible knife; pain curved his body as if it were a shrimp cooking in boiling water. He put his face on the grass, then lay down on his side. At that moment, a stream of feces came out unexpectedly. He had no control at all over his body. He waited for the terrifying illness to pass. When there was nothing left in his bowels, he began to shake from cold.
Reaching to open his pack, he pulled out a blanket that Nang Dong had meticulously sewn stitch by stitch for him from a parachute taken as a trophy during the battle for Dien Bien. He covered himself with it. Closing his eyes, he took long breaths and waited for his body to warm up.
“I must escape. I must live at all costs,” he told himself. That resolve kept repeating without pause, like a breeze blowing gusts into a charcoal stove. Repeating this mantra over and over, his frigid body finally began to warm up; after almost twenty minutes, he could feel his heartbeat return to normal. Pulling the blanket aside, he sat up and went to the stream to clean up. He washed his soiled clothes and wrapped them in a raincoat, which he tucked carefully back inside the duffel bag. Then, after crossing over to the other side of the stream in his clean clothes, he resumed running. It was getting late; in another ten minutes he had to take out his flashlight. From then on, his life had only the forest trees for protection. He had to be frugal with each flash of light. He also had to be frugal with each piece of dry cake still left until he could find shelter. Dizziness forced him to stop. Reaching inside his pack, he pulled out a piece of cane sugar and put it in his mouth. The sweetness penetrated his tongue and made him less shaky on his feet. Later the sugar melted down and even revived his empty and damaged stomach, and he was able to move with more confidence. He continued along the dark path, but an hour later, he suddenly heard the rushing galloping of horses mixed with screams. “Why do the galloping horses sound so close? Have I ended up getting lost or turned around? Is this worn path taking me back to where Nong Tai was eaten by the tiger?”
He turned off the flashlight and crawled into a thick bush, knowing that when one is not sure of an escape route, it is best to sit tight in the dark. It was less dangerous than making squishing noises and revealing his location with the flashlight. Indeed, the sounds were getting closer and the wind brought the cursing of the soldiers to his ears:
“Slow down! Your mare bumped into my horse.”
“I can’t help it—it’s so dark.”
“We have to wait for them to cross the road before we can move forward. Don’t push your horse.”
“I did not. It just jumped on its own.”
A voice intervened, surely from the fort’s captain: “Enough, you guys. Don’t fight with each other. When we return, there will be a pot of chicken soup to fill us up.”
The soldiers kept quiet.
The captain again said, “Let’s speed up a little. Don’t forget that these hill people know the forest ways a thousand times better than us. They are born with the forest trees.”
“Reporting, Captain: we are really trying but there are too many vines. This stretch of road is a bitch.”
“Because it’s a bitch, we need your professional skill with a knife. Try hard. I think we are almost there. No matter what they do, they cannot be faster than the horses.”
The sounds of their movements mixing with the hissing of the horses became even clearer. Soldiers in the front slashed at the vines, preparing a way for the horses to advance. Since the sun had set they had been under orders to chase down An and Nong Tai, but their horses had been blocked from entering the forest. If the worn trail had not been covered tightly by the hanging green vines, the soldiers would have already caught him when he was lying under the blanket next to the stream, in the most compromising situation imaginable.
“Now I have regained my composure, and if we do clash I can still take out some guys before I die.”
That thought was a consolation to An. An insect bit his neck; the pain was so excruciating he almost cried out. Reaching back with his hand, he seized a toxic ant the size of a black bean. He squeezed it to death but the ant still managed to bite the tip of his forefinger, which started to burn from the acid pain. At the same moment, a scream was heard:
“Tiger! Tiger!”
A hail of bullets erupted right after the terrifying scream.
An smiled to himself: “Those are too many rounds to deal with the king of the jungle.”
After the firing ended, An clearly heard the captain’s voice:
“Do you see it?”
“No. Reporting, Captain: right by the horse’s foot I saw a bunch of bones from a torso with the flesh all eaten.”
“Where?”
Then he heard the outpost commander shout: “Dismount. Bring the electric lantern over here.”
There were footsteps running; talking to horses; the slapping of riding crops on backs; then silence. Perhaps the soldiers were tiptoeing around Nong Tai’s headless body and bones. Then the captain spoke in a tremulous voice:
“Two guns? This tiger finished both of them?”
“Yes. It must be a big one.”
“I never heard of a tiger eating two people at the same time.”
“Reporting, Captain: tigers do not kill two people at one time because when a tiger catches one victim, the other one has time to run or shoot. But it can carry a cow on its back and still run swiftly. This time, perhaps the two highlanders met their last call; perhaps they sat and rested; perhaps they walked close together. They may be woodsmen but they underestimated these forests.”
“We cannot locate the heads.”
“Tigers never eat the head; only foxes and wild boars. Foxes do not eat at one place; they normally fight each other and take their prey far away. I believe foxes have dragged one body and both heads. It must have been one big pack of foxes.”
“That’s right. Only foxes and wild boars could clean it up this fast. I believe the round of bullets we shot chased them away. Looking at the pile of ribs, we know they were really famished.”
Another moment of silence passed, then a soldier said, “Captain, let’s return. Here the blood stinks.”
“Pick up the two guns,” the captain ordered. “Our mission has been accomplished without wasting one drop of our blood. Those who betrayed the nation and are foreign spies have been punished by wild animals instead of a people’s court.”
An heard repeated coughing from a soldier; it must have been the unlucky one who had to pick up the two guns smeared with dried blood. After that: the sound of horses being mounted, the whipping of crops, whispering, and, at last, galloping horses. Then the sounds grew fainter and fainter.
Waiting for the noise of the running horses to completely subside, An came out of the bushes, knelt down, and reflected:
“Oh you, King of the Jungle—you saved my life!”
From that year on he lived in an isolated hamlet of the Van tribe, so remote that not even Lao would set foot there. Two years passed in the belief that he would never see his country again. His country was no longer Vietnam, because that name only evoked rage in him. On the back side of propaganda pamphlets that he would pick up in a tiny market in a Lao village, he wrote out with a bit of pencil the sordid story of his family. In the third year, he began to understand that he must return to the hostile territory that was once his homeland, to Hanoi, a city hell he thought he would never see again. In the middle of these mountains, among a people who spoke another language and lived a different culture, he could write thousands of pages that no one would ever care to read, and thus his escape would become pointless. He had prolonged his life to vent his rage, but, in the end, this longer life had sunk him in useless darkness.
He realized that he had left so that, someday, he could return. He must now return to that very place where cruelty had spilled forth; where the souls of his loved ones were waiting for him. Back then, just to stay alive, he had left any way he could. Now, similarly, to get revenge, he must return in any way he could. Return, return, return!
So decide
d, it still took five more years before he could find a way. It happened when scores of the first North Vietnamese soldiers began to pass through the Truong Son Mountains in preparation for the fierce war to liberate Saigon and, after that, to expand Vietnam’s border all the way to Siem Reap in Cambodia. It was the year of the cat, the springtime of that year. The previous fall, enemy planes had started hunting down frontline soldiers in the forests of the Truong Son Mountains. Bombs started falling in areas marked on maps as unknown or as having North Vietnamese soldiers working away, hidden under camouflage. Because America was a great munitions warehouse, the Saigon army could drop bombs generously, like the Bac Lieu gentlemen throwing money into gambling under the ancien regime. Thanks to that development, he encountered a group of soldiers killed by bombs and thus rejoined the North Vietnamese army with a stolen military identity card: First Lieutenant Hoang An of the infantry, ethnic Tay, from the city of Dong Mo in Lang Son.
He was placed in a new unit made up entirely of survivors from battalions, companies, and platoons that had taken so many casualties that they had been stricken from the order of battle. Hiding under the name of someone already dead, he understood that his life now had only one purpose. That day, he swore before heaven:
“Nong Van Thanh has died for eternity.
“So has Chi Van Thanh.
“Only one name, Hoang An, is left on this earth.”
FINAL SUPPLICATIONS
1
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk…
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk…
The steel panel hanging from the tree oscillates wildly. A large, awkward, and mean-looking fellow, most likely recently selected from the rock pile or the sawmill, swings a huge hammer against the panel to announce breakfast. This rudimentary instrument appears to be effective, as its long-lasting sound resonates all over the hospital compound, almost as loud as a fire truck’s claxon.
The Zenith Page 60