The Sorrow of War (26 page)

There was another raid, more screams from American jets, but this time far away, down the valley.

He heard distant sirens echoing, but they were safe now, well away from the railway station, and the road was clearer. Kien stopped by an A-shaped air-raid shelter along the side

of the road. The earth began to rumble again and instantly the anti-aircraft guns in Ham Rong opened up.

Kien laid the bicycle down on the ground, then helped Phuong to the shelter. All around him people were stoically going about their everyday lives. Few bothered with the shelters, public or individual. The bombs were too far away. The people paid no attention to possible threats up in the bright sunny sky, or to Kien and Phuong. These were the new times. Two young people, bruised and bleeding, filthy from smoke and coal, their clothes ripped and in disarray, attracted no special attention.

An old man with a walking-stick came along. He carried a small bag made from braided bulrush leaves and held his hand out, begging for rice. Kien shook his head in disbelief that anyone would approach him looking as he did. The old man was not deterred. He prattled on, saying he had been living in a house near the station but that was now destroyed. His relatives and his friends were dead. Everything was burned. He had no house, no food, no relatives. Why Heaven had allowed him to live he would never understand. He wondered aloud if he could walk all the way to a distant relative's place. He said everyone was now certain to die. Kien just listened to him silently, as did Phuong.The old man, having spoken his piece, moved on, starting another identical speech, this time to an unseen audience.

Kien and Phuong sat in the shelter, motionless. They had no words, for they had no thoughts. They paid no attention to the distant aircraft, or to those evacuating the hamlet around them, carrying children and belongings and their wounded. Miserable, pitiful scenes surrounded them.

They seemed determined not to speak to each other, nor even look at each other. They maintained their silent rage; not even their terrible thirst or their hunger intruded.

In later years Kien experienced several similar, even identical moments, long periods of withdrawal. Like the dead, one felt no fear, no enthusiasm, no joy, no sadness, no feelings for anything. No concerns and no hopes. One was totally devoid of feeling and had no regard for the clever or the stupid, the brave or the cowardly, commanders or privates, friend or foe, life or death, happiness or sadness. It was all the same; it amounted to nothing.

A little later something else quite extraordinary occurred. A small, middle-aged man with a very thin face, carrying a fat woman on his back, stopped in front of them. The woman, whose legs were bandaged, was asleep.

Kien's bicycle had attracted the man's attention. He grew excited, asking repeatedly if they wanted to sell the bike. Phuong and Kien, both still in shock, failed to reply. All three of them were staring at the bike as the woman on the man's back slept blissfully on.

The man's foot went out and deftly, using his toes, he lifted the bike up and carefully transferred the sleeping woman onto the back carrier seat. As the man took the wobbling bicycle to lean it against a shelter, the woman moaned and held on to him.

He freed himself and returned, lifted the sack from the bicycle and placed it beside Phuong, then began searching for money in his pockets. When he found some banknotes he fished them out, counted a certain amount, then placed them on the top of the sack.

He muttered a few words in the local dialect, swung onto the seat of the bike, and rode off with the fat woman still asleep. This astonishing, simple exchange had all taken less than a minute, yet the macabre humor of it all endured for years in Kien's memories of war.

So, the man had bought the bicycle, whose real owner was a napalmed corpse near the station. Bombs were still

dropping, aircraft were still roaring in the distant sky, and anti-aircraft fire cracked loudly on this hot, almost suffocatingly hot day. And amid all this one of the strangest transactions had taken place. It snapped them from their silence.

Kien absently pocketed the banknotes, then picked up the sack and opened it. It contained dry rations called BA70, a flashlight, a water canister, a hammock, and a K59 pistol. Phuong quickly looked at it from under thick lashes. Kien said, "Let's eat something. We've got water, too."

"Eat, maybe," she said listlessly.

Kien opened the canister, took a sip, then passed it to her. The bag of dry food also contained green tea and sugar and some yellow-colored cake, which had a delicious taste.

Phuong sat quietly, eating casually as though nothing had happened. Kien would like to have seen her eating with more appreciation. After all, the food had been snatched from the jaws of blood and death.

Perhaps it wasn't necessary to have such a vivid imagination, to be concerned at the source of the food and the entire circumstances they found themselves in. Kien supposed nothing was terribly wrong with eating and drinking normally to help recover after such a catastrophe. But on the other hand, watching how easily she ate and drank, he recognized that there was in Phuong, besides hunger and thirst, an unusual reserve of strength and resilience.

He ate almost nothing himself, studying her as she ate. Then he began to realize just how badly injured she was. His own clothes were dirty and torn but Phuong's clothes were almost in shreds. Through the tatters her normally white skin was bruised, scratched and bleeding. Her face was black with smoke, her lips were swollen, and her eyes were flat and sullen. A small trickle of blood continued to run down the inside of one leg, though the bleeding was

greatly reduced. When she uncrossed her legs to change position and stretch her legs on the grass, he noticed more blood on a knee. This reminded him: this wasn't blood from a wound. It came from those tumultuous hours in the railcars.

Phuong ate only half her cake."Finish it, Phuong," Kien said. "We'll need all the energy we can muster to get back to Hanoi."

But she sat on, shaking her head and staring. He was about to suggest she wipe the blood away, but decided not to. He said quietly, "Let's go to that hamlet over there. You need a place to lie down. When we've recovered we'll find our way home."

But she didn't even raise her eyes.

Kien noticed a small field on the other side of the road. Some bushes grew there, possibly a kitchen garden, for behind it were some small thatched houses. "Come on, it's not far. Can you walk it?"

Phuong nodded sullenly.

Kien unbuttoned his shirt. "Put this on, at least."

She looked across at him and said sharply, "At least! At least what? Do I look that horrible? Keep your shirt. Don't worry about me any more. Your duty is to catch up with your unit. Don't worry yourself about where I go next."

Kien stopped unbuttoning his shirt. Embarrassed, he tried to explain himself: "You misunderstand me. If we don't care for each other, who's going to care? As far as what's happened, forget it, please. As far as I'm concerned . . ."

She interrupted sharply."If you want to bury a memory then just don't mention it. Secondly, you'd better ensure that no one else talks about certain memories, either."

He had never seen her as cold and calculating as this.

"Of course," he said, giving her his hand. "Now, let's go."

"Yes," she sighed, giving him her hand to puLl herself up.

They walked hand in hand, their shadows foreshortened by the overhead sun. The midafternoon heat was heavy on their backs. They looked like two very lonely souls drying themselves in the sun. The few passers-by could not avoid looking at them, especially at Phuong. Such a lovely young girl, but so dirty and tattered, and strangely casual.

"What a nice couple, look!" someone said, trying to lift their spirits.

They crossed the road and took a narrow dirt path which led to the kitchen garden they had seen. But the garden was empty and dried-up, the earth pitted with craters from bomb shrapnel. The hot wind blew across them languidly, adding to the desolation. Perhaps no one lived there now. The thatched houses which Kien had seen from far away had led him to identify it as a small village or hamlet, but in reality the buildings were an abandoned primary school, far from any village.

Trenches had been cut across the yard and wild grass grew between them. The classrooms now looked like artillery entrenchments, covered with thick layers of earth. Phuong and Kien went into one of the former classrooms where a few desks and broken benches remained. The teacher's desk was empty, the blackboard had dropped to the floor, and in the middle of the room was a heap of ashes, the remnants of a campfire which had been fueled by wood from desks and chairs. The roof was ruined. Inside it was almost as light as out in the yard.

The scene of devastation tightened Kien's heart. "Look at this," he said to Phuong. "How could anyone destroy a school? Don't they respect life any more?"

"Maybe it was our soldiers," she replied. "Soldiers do this sort of thing. War does this, war smashes and destroys."

In her later life that tone would get her into some trouble, but Kien was so depressed he hardly noticed the cynicism.

It occurred to him that she was by now suffering from shock, some nervous disorder. He prepared a place for her to lie down. At least here they would not be disturbed by authorities wanting to question them and check their story. In addition there were enough bits and pieces here to make a bed and shelter.

"Try to get some sleep, darling," he said.

She sat down beside him. "You'll sleep too?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Why don't you sling the hammock?" "Not a good idea. Belongs to a dead person." "So what! Why should that bother you?" "Enough. Don't talk like that."

"But if you don't sling the hammock where will you sleep? You'll feel horrible lying next to me," she said sarcastically.

Kien shook his head mechanically.

She lay down, putting her hands under her head, and faced up, making room for Kien to lie beside her. But Kien remained immobile.

"I wish there were some water somewhere near here so I could bathe," she whispered.

"Let me check.You sleep," he said.

"Don't go. Stay with me. I'm talking just to be talking. I wish that I could look nicer before we say good-bye and we could sleep next to each other for the last time. But then again even if I do bathe, even if I peel my entire skin away, I'll be just as unclean. That's destiny. Too bad."

Kien looked at her. "You're saying some rather funny things. What's all this talk about 'last time' and 'good-bye'?"

"Let it go. I meant we may not see each other again, but that prediction may or may not be true. I'm just making conversation," she said.

"There are things we must ensure come true, such as my survival and return. This isn't home, it's a battlefield, it's war. We have to have confidence in ourselves," he said.

Phuong talked on dreamily, her attitude gloomy and pessimistic. "We were born pure and innocent. Look how innocent we are now," she mumbled. He could hardly miss the allusion to their new status as multiple-rape victim and brutal murderer. "Don't worry about tomorrow," she droned on. "Don't torture yourself, what's the point? You go your way, I'll go mine. We had such a beautiful life. You and me, my love for you, your love for me. My mother and your dad, and I would have been your wife, no doubt. That was in the past. Now we have a new future, a new fate. We had no choice in the new circumstances, it was an unlucky coincidence. Now I'm like this, you go your way, I'll go mine."

She didn't finish her semidelirious ramblings. Her head dropped back and she fell asleep. Kien sat staring at her.

Before his eyes she had metamorphosed. Once pure and beautiful, she had spoken like a callous, uncaring pessimist, ready to bury anything tender in their past. Finally he stroked her, lifted her head, and removed her shredded blouse, replacing it with his shirt. He wiped her neck and face and her bruised body. Then he gently removed her silk slacks and wiped the streaks of blood from her thighs, trembling as he looked at the bruises.

He placed his own trousers over her legs, then slung his hammock close to her, climbed in, and fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke in the late afternoon, she was gone.

Under his head, like a pillow, he found his own trousers and shirt. The smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air and there were fresh cigarette-ends on the floor near her torn clothes.

Kien dressed, put the pistol from the sack in his belt, and began searching for her, without calling her name. In some of the other classrooms he noticed for the first time other soldiers, also sitting in hammocks. Others were sitting playing cards.

He followed a dirt track to the garden plot they'd seen earlier, but she wasn't there. He went into the overgrown garden, but after pushing through shrubs and past some trees it was obvious to him she was not there either. Two trucks, well camouflaged, were parked nearby under a stand of trees. He approached them with apprehension, calling her name, but got no reply. A little farther on he came to a marsh, with very clear water. On the far bank of the marsh was an asphalt road. It looked like Highway
I,
to Hanoi. He stared at the road for a while, then started slowly back to the schoolroom. He'd even forgotten her need to bathe in the fresh, clear water.