The Man From Saigon (33 page)

We get mostly orphans and young mothers
, said the doctor.
Nobody over the age of forty.

Why is that?
Susan asked.

The doctor wore an expression as though it was tiresome to explain.
Well, it isn’t because we refuse people over forty. I am over forty.
She looked up at the ceiling and sighed.
The life expectancy of a Montagnard is, let’s see, about half of an American’s, though not an American over here, I must say.

Was the doctor making a joke? Susan thought so at first, but this was not the case. The doctor’s gaze trailed a Montagnard nurse in a nun’s white habit, its hem dusty, the nurse’s hands dry and small. The nurse brought water to a patient, cradling the man’s head as he drank from a polished gourd. It made a nice photograph and Son framed the image in his lens, the doctor watching with a mildly disapproving look.

Do you not want him to take pictures?
Susan asked.

It isn’t that.

Then
…She wanted to say: Then what is the trouble?

You know what the Vietnamese call them, don’t you?
, the doctor said. She slapped at a mosquito, gave Son another dark look.

Call who?

The Montagnards. The people here. The ones in the damned beds. You know what they call them?

Susan shook her head.

Moi
, said the doctor.
Savages.

I see.

Do you think that’s right?
She was glaring at Susan as though examining her thoughts, which Susan reminded herself were unknowable to the doctor, however much she stared.

The doctor said,
What about your friend? Does he think that’s right?

Susan put her pen in her pocket and said,
You’d have to ask him.

The doctor leaned back against a wall now, looking down at Susan from what seemed a great height. Susan cleared her throat, about to speak.

She was interrupted by Son, who said in French,
Tell the lady doctor that it was the French who first spoke of them as Montagnards. They call themselves the Degar people, but mostly they refer only to their individual tribes.

What is he saying?
the doctor asked. She stepped toward Son.
Que vous dîtes?

I said thank you for allowing me to photograph your patients
, Son replied in English.

You might ask them!
the doctor shot back, then moved on so swiftly that Susan had to hurry after her through the crowded ward. The hospital smelled of disinfectant and urine warmed in the heat. There were other smells, too: camphor, stale sweat, the musty wetness of wounds, discarded dressings, iodine, salt. The doctor was regularly interrupted by the relatives of the sick as she walked her rounds, which made everything take twice
as long. Surrounded by relatives of the wounded—who wanted baby food, penicillin, injections, food, tablets of various kinds—she looked like Gulliver among the Lilliputians.

Pardon me
, Susan said, as she stepped over a child who might have belonged to a woman who sat at the bed of another girl (her daughter?) who had taken shrapnel to her face and neck, a few other children playing idly on the floor.

Dysentery, tuberculosis, malaria, injuries from mines (very common), injuries from burns
, the doctor was saying, calling out these ailments as Susan followed, trying not to step on the baskets and water bottles, piles of clothes and native blankets, the occasional dog.

We got some
mysterious
parasites that seem to kill within a few days
, the doctor said.
A fair bit of plague
—

Plague? Bubonic plague?

Yeah, bubonic. There’s a number of different strains. Not too hard to treat, if you get it in time.

A naked toddler wandered into Susan’s path and she stepped over him, nearly colliding with someone else. The child belonged to a family who sat on the floor beside one of the beds. The mother—Susan assumed it was the mother—was arranged over a fold-up metal chair, from which she leaned down over a mattress, asleep. An older child, perhaps seven years old, was in the bed. She did not look awake, or asleep; most of her face was obscured in an arrangement of bandages. Above her, an IV bottle perched precariously on the thin arm of a metal stand.

Burn victim.
The doctor shook her head.
I don’t like that one.

At midday there was soup in wooden bowls, fed to the patients with hand-carved spoons. The soup was either brought in by the families, or prepared on the hospital grounds over wood fires. Perhaps it was just as well that relatives helped provide meals, because there did not seem to be enough, not
for the patients, not for the staff. Susan and Son were offered some weak coffee but nothing to eat. She grew hungry. Son had the habit of stuffing boiled eggs into his pack, and she thought about how she might make an excuse and go find one now. Her stomach rumbled and she coughed, trying to hide it.

What’s the matter?
said the doctor.
Lunch reservations cancelled?

She might have disliked the woman more, but the doctor attended to the sick with inexhaustible patience and concern. She did not berate them, as Susan had seen army doctors do when setting up field operations for peasants, telling them with frank disgust that they needed to keep their children
clean
, that they needed to feed their babies
more.
This doctor, by contrast, seemed to understand there was never enough of anything. Food or water, soap, medicine, medics, milk—the list was endless. There didn’t even seem to be sufficient bandages to change the dressings as often as she would like, and she was cross when the filthy bandages could not be replaced. The nurses could be seen scraping the residue off old dressings and reusing what was left of the cotton, a practice that the doctor seemed to object to even as she helped.
That one is finished
, she said of one of the dressings.
Throw it away. But here, this one is okay. Tape it back on. Who is working in Supply? Tell them to get some more dressings over here!

I hear there’s no blood bank
, Susan said.
What happens when you have a lot of surgeries?

We trade with the military, liquor for blood.

Susan smiled.
I would have thought they had a lot more liquor than you.

The doctor laughed.
They do
—
a lot more liquor. But they also have more blood.

When Susan’s stomach rumbled again, the doctor said,
There’s bread in the supply room. There might even be some butter, if you are very lucky.

A baby died. She walked into a hall area where the parents were being told the news, their heads bent to their chests, their arms slack, saying nothing other than to thank the staff. The staff were always thanked, no matter the outcome. The baby was lying listless as dough in a package of pale cloth. She could not bear to see, but neither could she move her eyes from the couple.

What will happen now?
she asked the doctor.

What happens all the time
, was the reply.

She walked miles, it seemed, following the doctor from patient to patient, listening to the steady stream of information from the older woman, who did not take a coffee break, let alone a lunch break. Around sunset, they were corralled with a number of others into the ambulance once more, this time to the doctor’s house for dinner. This was a normal practice, not a special dinner because journalists had arrived.
We’re going
, Jonas said by way of invitation. He was in the same dark mood he’d been in before, a permanent condition it had to be assumed, his blond hair wagging as he moved with heavy steps toward the ambulance. He’d taken off his doctor’s coat and wore a green T-shirt, same as the army wore. He had a long torso, strong legs. He might have been a soldier, except for the hair.

They took off beneath a blazing red and orange sky. The road was cratered so that the drive felt like a carnival ride. She and Son sat in the area meant for casualties, ducking their heads beneath the ambulance roof as they bumped along. In the front passenger’s seat, the doctor held herself against the rocking motion of the vehicle, looking uncomfortable, exhausted. She hung her cigarette out the window and occasionally took an unsteady drag between the jarrings of the road. Something must have been paining her because she winced over the really big bumps. Susan tried to guess her age—forty-five? She had sallow skin and one of those lean faces that could
be any age, a few creases that ran the length of her cheeks. Not yet fifty, Susan thought. Fifty seemed incredibly old in Vietnam.

We
do
need all four of these tires
, the doctor told Jonas.

I can do nothing about the road
, he replied. He began again to talk about all the things they needed—this was apparently a set speech for him. It was a long list and the doctor rolled her eyes. Susan caught her expression in the rear-view mirror, and it made her laugh. The doctor smiled, then looked away. Jonas said,
What? Is this so funny?

The doctor touched him lightly on the arm in a maternal, tender way.
Right about now is shut-up time
, she said.

The doctor’s house served as a canteen and supply store, a temporary home for new employees, a place for meetings and rest. It was surrounded by bougainvillea and a climbing frangipani that was so successful it threatened to invade the roof. The house appeared to have various outbuildings, one of which was missing a wall.

They were asked if they were hungry, thirsty, if they wanted to share a bed. This last question was meant to be ironic, as if they could never have wanted such a thing. The doctor spoke the words with a cunning air, tinged with disapproval. It inflamed Susan the way she said it like that, especially as the doctor knew that Son spoke English. For a moment she thought of saying yes, she did want to share a bed with Son, just to surprise the woman. She would have respected that, Susan thought. She seemed like the sort of person who held in regard those who were willing to break the rules. Who knows, she might even have thrown a polite word in Son’s direction. But there was no time to reply. They were interrupted by two little girls who came running into the room, Montagnard children who it turned out the doctor had adopted after their mother was killed. Susan watched the doctor gather them up in her arms, her smile newly rekindled.

You both
stink! she said, nuzzling her face in their necks.

There were a few nurses, an administrative assistant, some
others Susan wasn’t sure about, plus Jonas, who was no more relaxed here at the doctor’s house than he had been at the hospital. He was going to eat quickly and return to work, he declared, speaking to no one in particular.
That’s a good boy
, said the doctor, then went to sit in a big armchair over which was draped a macramé throw, her girls crawling over her. That seemed to be a cue for the others and they all dropped into the cluttered sofas and boxes that served as seats in the main room. There was beer on a table made from a discarded crate, big jugs of water, peanut butter, some saltines in a jumbo-sized box. These things were passed around, as were a number of cigarette packs, and some photographs taken at a party. Then, suddenly, the doctor was called outside because the cook had seen a snake. The cook was terrified of snakes. The doctor watched the grass as the creature slithered slowly away from the house.
We should eat it
, she said. Everyone laughed, except the cook, who looked sullen and said nothing.

The cook was Vietnamese. Jonas told Susan that her husband was a VC province chief, but when Susan asked about her parents, where she was from, how many brothers and sisters, she wouldn’t say anything at all. Either she did not understand Susan’s French or she was reluctant to admit even what was for dinner that night. Clearly, there would be no answers. The cook went about performing her kitchen duties as though there was nobody else in the room.

She’s always a little strange after she sees a snake
, the doctor said.
And you can take it from me who her husband is. If I could find another cook, I’d hire her. But I can’t. She’s only a little crazy, so she stays.

She said this in English, speaking over the cook’s head. The cook was mashing spices in a bowl beside a small stack of yams with muddy roots. She didn’t look up. She had a wide, low forehead, small eyes, a bewildered, piggy expression. Her appearance made her seem vacuous, like a rather dull, ugly sister
destined never to leave home. She had a nervous disposition, and did everything in a flurry. On the floor and the coarse wooden table at which she worked there was evidence of many spillages; some of the fallen spices stuck to Susan’s shoes. The air steamed from a pot of boiling water into which nothing, at present, had been added.

Son leaned against a wall and said,
Have you met the husband?

The doctor glared at him.
No, of course I haven’t met the damned husband.

Son spoke in Vietnamese to the cook, who turned away from him but replied even so. He spoke again, and the girl responded in kind. She had a pretty voice, like a little bird. It contrasted with the rest of her appearance. She never once looked up but stared into the bowl in which she mashed and churned, speaking so quickly it was impossible to tell when one sentence ended and another began.

What did she say?
, the doctor asked.

She said she is busy
, said Son.

That’s not what she said. Tell me what she really said. She was talking about her husband
—
I got that much.

Son spoke again to the cook. This time there was a longer explanation, again spoken rapidly. Then she paused, her eyes darting from under a swatch of dark hair that had come loose from its tie, meeting Son’s for a brief instant. Son nodded, indicating that he understood, and she continued in the same manner, speaking breathlessly in whispered chirpings that meant nothing to Susan. The language was confounding, the cook another example of people she could not know. Finally, the cook moved to another place in the kitchen, bringing the conversation to a close.