The Sorrow of War (16 page)

Kien and Phuong became inseparable, like a body and its shadow. They clung to each other as if there were no tomorrow, as if there were no time to lose and every moment should be spent together. At nights, in bed, they tapped Morse code messages to each other on their dividing wall and dreamed of the natural progression of their love, the ultimate intimacy.

Then came that wonderful April afternoon, with the cicadas singing and the flame trees in full flower, a day made for reckless abandon. Although ah students were to dig trenches across the schoolyard that day, Phuong had come to school deliberately wearing her concealed swimsuit. When the formal ceremonies for the dedication of the trenches were about to start Phuong had whispered to Kien, "Let's go. Leave the straw heroes to their slogans. I've got a really pretty swimsuit on, so let's test it."

They both swam out far from the shore, not turning back until dusk. Exhausted and weary, Phuong clung to Kien. Night fell quickly and bright scattered stars lit the sky. Kien carried Phuong in his arms, water dripping from her, and placed her gently on the fresh, cool grass. He lay down beside her, stimulated by the swim, bursting with health.

"I'm exhausted," she said invitingly. "I just want to lie here forever." They lay side by side on the soft grass, hand in hand. A red streak appeared on the horizon, leaving a threadlike line down to the horizon. They whispered to each other as they watched it. "A sunrise in the west? A flare? If it's a flare, it could be an alert. Didn't hear the siren." Then, complete darkness and silence.

Over twenty years have passed since the evening on the lake. In that time almost everything around the lake has changed, yet the spirit of it lives on, unchanged. Immense, looming, leisurely romantic.

Kien had never returned to the school. Nor had he been back to the lakeside pavilion or along the little path at the back of the schoolyard. He had looked from afar, unwilling to retrace old tracks.

The lake became a symbol of Phuong in her beautiful youth, symbol of the marvels and grief of youth, of love and

lost opportunities. On many occasions he sat by the lake where he and Phuong had been together twenty years ago, lingering until the last trace of red had left the same sky.

They had lain together under the star-scattered sky, unwilling to move despite the cold setting in. He seemed unwilling ever to leave their special place and she sensed this, saying softly, "The school gate's closed. Stay here."

"Aren't you cold?" he asked, hoarsely.

"I'm . . ." Phuong moved to embrace Kien, pulling him close to her. He trembled in the embrace, first uneasily; then as he relaxed he felt a powerful, uncontrollable urge burn within him and he began tightening his grasp. He closed his eyes and buried himself in her soft, fragrant embraces, and she responded passionately.

As he kissed, a sudden sharp pang struck within him and he breathed in sharply, withdrawing. A sudden, darkly powerful sense of guilt had struck home; he responded prudishly, tearing himself from her arms. Astonished, Phuong reacted with fright, shame, and confusion, rolling herself away and buttoning her blouse over the swimsuit.

During a long silence neither of them moved. The lake waters lapped against the shore and far away they saw an anti-aircraft gun on a pontoon in the water. From even farther away a gong sounded.

"You're afraid, aren't you?" Phuong said, suddenly breaking the silence between them. "Me too. But just realizing it makes me more keen."

"I just think we shouldn't," he blethered. "I'll be going off to war. I'll be going away soon," he said unconvincingly. "Better not."

"Okay," she sighed. "But there'll never be another time like now."

"I'll come back," he said urgently.

"When? A thousand years from now?You'll be changed and so will I. Hanoi will be different. So will this West Lake."

"Our feelings won't change, that's the most important thing," he said.

She remained silent for a moment, then said, "I can see what's going to happen. War, ruin, destruction."

"Maybe. But we'll rebuild."

"You're a simpleton; your father was different, he saw it coming," she said.

"I'm different," he said defensively.

"You didn't love him, did you?" she asked. "Don't be angry at the question, just answer me."

Kien simply stared at her.

"Did you ever really talk to him?"

"Of course," he said. "We talked about lots of things. What a question!"

"So did he tell you why he destroyed all his paintings, why he lost the will to live?" she asked.

"No, he talked about other things. Why did he destroy them? I don't understand."

"You knew nothing about it. But I did. He confided in me. We were closer to each other than to you. When he burned the paintings I could see the future through the flames. He was burning my life as well as his own," she said.

"What are you saying?" he shouted. "Are you mad?"

Kien had no understanding of her emotions. Suddenly she was a stranger to him. The whole strange evening seemed to concern something in the distant future, nothing to do with his imminent departure to the battlefront or their forced parting.

When Phuong next began speaking she spoke so softly it was almost to herself. "Since your father's death I've often

wondered why I loved you so passionately. I'm a free spirit, a rebel out of step in these warring times. You're perfectly suited to them. Despite these great differences we loved each other, regardless of everything else.You understand me, don't you?"

"Let's go home," he said, fear in his voice. "We're talking nonsense.What do you mean, you're a rebel?" But he knew she was right.

Phuong continued softly, "Had your father been you I would have loved him even more than I love you."

"I see that now," she said, placing a finger on his lips to seal any response. "You had little in common with your father and as you grew you resembled him less and less.You didn't love your father or your mother.You loved the idea of going to war; you were headstrong, you wanted to remain pure and loyal to your ideals. I don't want to sound disdainful, but there's nothing original in all that," she said.

Kien grew uncomfortably sad. He was unable to understand everything she said, but as he listened to her, sounding like a medium telling incredible fortunes, he knew that although she sounded like someone high on magic mushrooms, he would long remember everything she had said.

"Why speak of my father now?" he asked. "I know you often talked to him.You must know he had such wrong-headed notions. He had no comprehension of our modern values and ideals; he clung to old-fashioned values."

"I speak now because there may be no other night like this, no time like the present. Because when you've gone your way, I'll go my own way too," she replied.

In his naivety he had not quite understood her. "But where will you be going? You have university exams in three weeks. Then you'll be going to the university. And as for me, well, I'll be back soon."

"You're strange," she said, almost giving up on him. "War, peace, university, joining the army. What's the difference? What's good, what's bad? To volunteer for the army at seventeen is nobler than going to the university, isn't it? I won't bother taking the entrance exams, if that's so."

"Where would you go?" he asked.

"To the war. See what it's like," she replied.

"It might be horrible."

"And it might be death. A long, permanent sleep. Still, we've only one death, haven't we? Just what makes you crave so much for that one death? It seems so attractive to you that I think I'll go along too."

"What!" He was astonished, incredulous.

Phuong started laughing, pulling him down closer to her again, caressing his hair, pushing his face into her breasts. She said softly, "There's no other night like this. You're offering your life for a cause so I've decided to waste mine too.This year we're both seventeen. Let's plan to meet each other again somewhere at some future point. See if we still love each other as much as we do now."

She gently lifted his face, softly kissing his eyelids, then his lips, then again buried his face in her breasts."I love you. I've loved you since we were children. I've loved your mother and your father, as I would have if I'd been your sister or brother. From now on I'll be your wife. I'll go with you. I'll see you to the gate of the battlefront, just to see what it's like. I'll stay until we're forced to part. That moment will be with us very soon.

"But for tonight, be with me. We're here together, alone. It's here your heroic journey to the front starts. Don't be scared, of me or of anything else. From now on I'll be a lover and a wife to you; I'll never be angry at you, and remember, I'm not taking leave of my senses. Not yet."

Kien trembled. The fresh cool air chilled a film of sweat on his forehead and over his back. He was both frozen with fear and brimming with love for her. He took hold of her waist, but felt weak and confused.

He couldn't. He dared not.

Phuong lay down before him, gently pulling him over to her. He placed his head inside her arm, as a little boy would. She sighed, not in anger but in resignation. She comforted him with soft words about his father, about his paintings, about herself, and about them, words about anything and nothing, and he fell into a reverie, looking at the dark moon through a curtain of beautiful long hair which almost covered his face.

As she talked on so softly he fell into a peaceful, warm dreamlike state, and he began unbuttoning her blouse, uncovering her beautiful pale breasts which rose between his eyes and the dark sky. He moved gently and began suckling her, softly at first, then with a strong passion, holding her breasts between both hands and tasting her, young and sweet.

But he dared not accept her challenge to make love to her.

The next day, they were back in class. Their last class. Then the tenth-formers, including Phuong, were allowed to go home early to prepare for their university entrance exams.

All except Kien, who got orders to report immediately to the army recruiting office. His time had come.

Kien remembers that distant night by the lake as though it were yesterday, despite the many intervening years. He

needs only a little help from a dark moon and a balmy West Lake breeze, and his imagination stirs. At the front, among the dead and surrounded by suffering, he often dreamed of and really felt her warm flesh again and tasted her virgin milk; in his dreams it was that which had given him the magical vitality to become the strongest, the luckiest, the greatest survivor of the war.

The dreams that brought her back to him were all at night. By day, strangely, Kien actually thought little of Phuong and missed her hardly at all. Certainly not as much as he missed her in later years, after she had left him for the second time. His soldier's self-defense mechanisms were working well for him in those days, especially when he was in the Central Highlands.

Perhaps that's why he developed such a fervent and disciplined attitude towards sleep. Once he was asleep, nothing could disturb him. In sleep you slept. In battle you fought. When planning you planned, thinking of what was behind as well as ahead of you, waiting at the next turn or on the other side of the pass.

By day, for some, old memories did return and persist, but only for those who were wounded or exhausted or in a permanently wretched condition or starving, and it usually meant one was facing further decline. In normal situations one could keep them at bay.

Kien recalled just three occasions in ten years when he had acutely missed Phuong during daylight hours, and he was haunted by those memories.

The first time was when he was struck down by malaria in a march across Laos. Fever gripped him for weeks and he thought of her in his feverish state, half-imagining she was there.

The second time was when he lay wounded at Clinic 8, his regiment's code name for a divisional hospital across the border in the safety of Cambodia. His wounds stank and he flitted between dream and reality, awaiting death yet hanging on to his flickering life. Some features of his nurse resembled Phuong's, and every now and then when she passed he would fall to thinking of Phuong, the intensity of his emotions ebbing and flowing like a fever.

The third time was when he was with his scout platoon on what was officially called "State Farm Number 3," the regiment's headquarters. The scout platoon was idle; they were on the perimeter of the Screaming Souls Jungle, playing cards and getting high on
rosa canina,
when he heard news of the three jungle girls from his scouts who had been the girls' lovers.

The three farm girls had disappeared on the other side of the mountain. He then dreamed of Phuong every night throughout this tragic episode. He had conveniendy ignored the wild, romantic escapades of the three girls with their three lovers from his platoon because they reminded him of his romance with Phuong. Every night they had slipped out of their huts and into the jungle, secretly crossing streams and creeping along jungle paths to get to their girlfriends in their little house by the stream at the foot of the mountain. Kien had lived their loves with them by proxy, using Phuong as his own jungle girl, conjuring up intense and passionately romantic dreams. Sadly, the dreams were often tinged with painful forebodings of disaster, as his romance with Phuong had been.