The Man From Saigon (34 page)

She says she is making dinner
, Son reported.

The doctor glared at him. For a moment, she looked as though she would say something in anger, but she let it pass.
Well, praise God for that
, she said, exiting the room.

The little girls did not play with dolls but with toy helicopters, flying them around the lounge making
rat-a-tat-tat
noises. The room darkened with the sky. Dak Nhon had no electricity at night, not even for the hospital. That’s why the generator had been so important. There was only one small generator that worked at present, as well as a kerosene autoclave that sterilized the surgical instruments, but night was a difficult time for them. With so many people stuffed into its wards, with no light except that of hurricane lamps and candlelight, the doctor worried there would one day be a fire.

It’s just a matter of time
, she said. She told her this while they moved through the house lighting candles, some of which had been made by melting together a collection of slimmer ones, with wicks that needed scraping before lighting. There were dinner candles stuck into the glass mouths of beer bottles, stubby ends of pillar candles with hollow centers that a match could barely reach, a fat oval of green that gave off a medicinal smell and was said to help guard against mosquitoes.
It doesn’t appear too successful, however
, said the doctor. A few kerosene lamps and a battery-operated flashlight also helped illuminate the house. With sundown the temperature dropped so that goosebumps appeared on Susan’s arms.

They ate dinner off their laps, all of them sitting in the glow of the candle flames. There were crocheted quilts and a few rough blankets draped over the furniture. The staff pulled them down on to their shoulders, over their uniforms or habits or T-shirts or smocks. A few people fell asleep on the sofas, their dinner bowls still in their laps. One of the nurses had made a pillow of a Pfizer box. Jonas wore a rainbow-colored cover and slept for half an hour or more. Susan would have liked to ask them some questions about their lives outside the hospital, but it was too late for that now.

They are like children
, the doctor said, scanning the roomful of sleeping people.
Lights out, and they’re off to sleep.

When Jonas woke, he stood at once as though responding to an alarm.
I’m going back. Anyone else want to come?
he said, letting his rainbow cover slide to the floor.

Slowly, the sleeping figures came alive once more. Some left, some stayed. The house had the atmosphere of a train platform, with different people coming and going for reasons Susan could not discern.

Before the artillery begins
, the doctor explained.

So that was it. When the outgoing began, everyone stayed where they were. In the hospital, or the house, or wherever they were found.

Within an hour it had started. The blasts shook the house, making its shutters rattle on their hinges. Tracers hung over the sky. They listened to the explosions, the whine that told them it was going away. Another, and another. The children went to bed late because they had been sleeping during the day. The doctor played a game with them like ring-a-ring o’ roses but with different words and she and Son joined in. At some point, they were shown to a room with canvas cots (there weren’t any beds in any case. The notion of sharing one had truly been a joke). The room had a sink in it, not fixed against the wall but on the floor, awaiting repair. There were piles of paper and boxes, medical supplies stacked in wood crates up along the walls. The crates wobbled with each blast, but luckily the fire was not returned and the outgoing died down.

She wrote her article by a smoking lamp that needed its wick trimmed. Son stood in the shadows, changing the film in his camera. He could do this in complete darkness, could probably do it blindfolded with one hand. In fact, she’d once seen him replace a broken part of the camera’s interior with something he fashioned out of small pieces taken from the metal base of a lightbulb. But the night was not completely dark. She saw by starlight the white cotton taped over the hole on the inside of his elbow where they took blood from him that
morning. She had the same. As it turned out, they shared the same blood type.

How long are you going to work?

Until this ends
, she said, meaning the explosions.

It’s not close
—

She continued the thought for him,
Or aimed at us, or likely to fall short, but it still keeps me up.

She fell asleep anyway. When she woke again she found herself on one of the cots, a thin blanket over her. It must have been Son who’d moved her, or maybe she’d walked sleepily to where she could lie down. She couldn’t remember. She felt terribly thirsty. There was no water in the room and there was no toilet anywhere in the house. She was about to ask Son for the flashlight so that she could make her way outside when she heard a sound from across the room and realized that Son was singing. It was a quiet verse in Vietnamese; she had no idea what it meant. In another room there was a poker game going on. There was laughter, the occasional shuffling of cards, a round of betting. She could make out disparate comments:
You can tell how far south the VC have got by what strain of malaria the villagers come in with.
Or,
She named her daughter Ugly One so that the spirits wouldn’t think her worth taking.
Meanwhile, Son sang on, his song interrupted only when he took a drag from his cigarette. He blew the smoke upward from where he lay on his own cot, then began the tune once more, beginning again on the exact note where he left off. He seemed to know Susan was awake. From the dark corner where he lay came his voice. He said,
The cleaner does dressings. It infuriates the nurses, though it has to be said he does a good job.

A kind of jack-of-all-trades cleaner?

He wants to be a nurse.

Ah, well, I’m sure they can use more nurses.

Son said,
The children asked me if they can touch your hair.

Susan smiled.
My hair feels like straw. Tell me, what did the cook say?

Oh, the cook.

I heard you talking with her. After she saw the snake.

The cook says they are going to be overrun at any moment. That it has happened before, too. That she fears she will be killed.

Is she crazy? Like the doctor says?

No.

Is her husband really a VC province chief?

He was. She thinks he’s dead now.

She was completely awake now. It might have been due to the thought of the Montagnard hospital being overrun by the North Vietnamese. It might have been because Son seemed to have an awful lot of information from so brief an exchange. There was something amiss. She knew there was something amiss. She told herself it was the thought of the hospital coming under attack. She did not like to think of what would happen to them all—the families, the children, the doctor and her loyal staff, the German, Jonas. Who would defend them?

She sat up. Often, in the middle of the night, she had more energy than she did the whole of the day. It was the heat, the clinging, stupefying, draining wet heat that depleted her. At night, she was free from it. The sound of the poker game made her think it could not be that late, that she ought to rise and do some work. But when she checked her watch she saw it was almost two in the morning. Even so, she would get up, she decided. She could organize her notes, fashion the first paragraph. It always helped if she framed the article before she wrote it out. She could do that now.

She crossed the room to Son, sitting on the floor next to him. She put two fingers out to ask for the cigarette, then fished out his water bottle from among his gear. They sat for a few minutes. In recent days he’d become oddly quiet, she thought. It might have been because of her own mood. Since she had
stopped seeing Marc she’d been less upbeat; she’d wanted to work longer and harder. It was the one way of feeling better, she discovered, and so she stayed in the field as much as possible. She wanted to be away from Saigon—not that Marc was often there anyway, but his hotel was there, the restaurants he favored, the bar at the Rex. The whole city felt to her as though it belonged to Marc. It was hard not to think of him when she was there.

There was the gentle lifting sound of crickets pulsing their music into the night. The laughter from the card game floated around them. She could see the glow of candlelight from the area beneath the door into their room.
We might be in an English country house
, she said.

England?
Son said. It made it sound far away, like Mars.

Well, not really.
She was cross-legged next to him. He was sitting up now, elbows on his knees, looking toward the poker game. She swatted a mosquito, then rubbed it off her palm on to her trousers.
There are hardly any insects there. In England. Compared to here, you’d say there were none at all.

Son smiled.
Your England
, he said,
sounds so very nice.

It’s not mine. It’s only my passport that is British.

They smoked and listened to the voices next door. Through the walls she heard,
I told them bring the baby
, and then a long explanation she could not detect. She heard,
You can’t persuade…

They don’t like me
, Son said.

She nodded.
I know. I can’t understand.

Because I am Vietnamese. We are against the Montagnards.

Oh well, just
—She was going to say ignore it. But hadn’t that been what he’d done all day? Ignored it?

It is true
, he concluded.

But not about
you.

He sang his song again, then stopped. It was too dark to discern his expression.
I don’t really care is the truth.

That’s not the same as being against.

It made her uncomfortable to hear this. It wasn’t any different from how the military often spoke of villagers. They not only didn’t care but seemed at times to completely loathe them. And anyone who knew the way the ARVN treated peasants knew they didn’t care one way or another for their welfare. But she didn’t like to hear this from Son. It surprised her. It made him seem brutal and unthinking. It made him seem like everybody else.

When they are overrun, I must remember that I don’t care at all
, he said.

They won’t be overrun. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, you’d care plenty.
He’d have to care. She knew he would; he was Son.

No, Susan, I won’t.

If it happens
—

It will
—

You don’t know that
—

—
and I won’t care at all
—

She found herself suddenly on her feet. There was a terrible pause and she felt awkward, standing there. It was as though she’d planned to storm out of the room and then discovered there was no place to go. She sighed. She couldn’t figure out what to do with herself now.
She would be pleased to think we were arguing
, she said.
The doctor, I mean.

Then we’ll stop arguing. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It would bother you.
He reached up his hand and tugged her gently down next to him.
Naturally, it would bother you
, he said.

She shook her head. She was upset and she had no idea why.
You can’t care about absolutely everything around here. I don’t suppose I do
really—

I hope you won’t think less of me now.

Don’t be silly
, she said.
You’re my friend, I love you
—It came
out so fast she could not stop it. She held her breath, waiting for his response. She wasn’t sure he would even understand what she meant; the Vietnamese have four different words for love, all of which relate to stages of love affairs, and none of them were accurate in this situation. What she meant was that they had adopted one another, just as the doctor had adopted her own daughters, that she trusted him. She knew he was not perfect. He didn’t have to be perfect.

He blew out a plume of smoke like a sigh.
Yêu quá
, he said, two words that translated into “so much love.” She thought he was talking not only about them but about the people in the next room. About the Montagnard nurse who brushed the dust from her skirt hem and brought the gourd to each patient in turn, about the cleaner who wished to learn to change dressings and who attended a little room at the back of the hospital with a broken door and two rusted chairs, where the head nurse gave lessons to those who wished to work with patients. About the broody German, about the doctor with her new children. About all of them who came to help others and who had come to need help themselves.

The military will not necessarily defend them when they come under attack
, Son said.
Not even Mike Force, or whoever they have ties with. Getting the mess officer to give you some steaks, that is one thing. That doesn’t need the support of the higher-ups.

They’ve probably already figured that out
—

They couldn’t even get a generator.
He shook his head. He suddenly looked tired.
They have no idea how vulnerable they are.

I’ll write that in my piece
, she said.

Son rubbed his forehead.
It won’t make any difference.

I’ll write it anyway.

Time swells and diminishes in Vietnam. She might imagine that all this happened years ago, in another time, to people
other than themselves. But, in fact, it was just over two weeks ago. She is sure of the date because she wrote the article, got on a chopper and cabled it the next morning from Danang. She knows when it ran and how many inches it was and which pictures they used. She knows exactly the date they sat in the doctor’s house, listening to the card game in the other room, that it was a Tuesday and that earlier in the evening the sun had spread its colors out so that the room became red with its light. She had written it all down on the thin lines of her notebook, setting the notebook on to a stack of others with the date across the front.