The Zenith (73 page)

“We are old comrades-in-arms…You go ahead, I will look for you later. We will assemble with our units after the performance.”

“Agreed.”

“Let me borrow your flashlight; mine is about to go out.”

“Be careful using it. We still have a long way to go.”

“OK.”

The other guy disappears in a flash. An stays in the dark for a couple of seconds before he walks out and faces Ma Ly.

“Let’s see the show together. I have many questions for you.”

“Agreed.”

They both join Battalion 209 to get closer to the stage, for, as guests, the 209 guys have been given half of the left side facing the stage, making the other soldiers green with envy. An and Ma Ly sit down together.

An looks at his watch then says, “I can only watch until nine fifteen. After that I have to stand guard.”

“You have to do it yourself?”

“My company is in charge. As its commander I do not have the right to sit here and watch while the younger soldiers have to leave and go on patrol.”

“You’re always the model soldier. I haven’t forgotten that. Ever since…we have known each other.”

“It’s not just me. In every division the cadres must act that way.”

After a moment of silence, Ma Ly asks, “Is this a dangerous place? I have heard that this is our rear area, like the ‘safe zones’ before.”

An laughs. “True, we are far from the battlefield. But there is no lack of enemy recon probes. That’s why we had to wait three years before we could have tonight’s entertainment. The soldiers, though, still have to go on patrol.”

“The enemy dares to venture even this far?”

“Are you joking? This is not like the Ha Tay boot camp twelve years ago. We are at war now. Do you think they are all just flabby pots of flesh or only wooden puppets?”

Ma Ly is quiet for a moment then asks: “You have given that many years and have only made it to company commander?”

“Do you forget that I was pursued so that I had to change my name? How about you?”

“I, too, am a company commander. I am told by higher-ups that should things develop well, next quarter I may be upgraded. A Meo who is especially loyal to the revolution and really courageous in battle.”

“Congratulations…”

“Oh-oh, the girls are coming out…” Ma Ly says, pointing to the stage.

They watch as the red curtains rise and a girl walks to the mike to give a very graceful bow as the master of ceremonies. She is dressed in a green
four-piece tunic with one shoulder piece in red and another in purple over a chicken-fat-colored pair of pants, and the soldiers began to clap as if they have lost their regular minds. Then the music arises in all its splendor and excitement. The whole division has been waiting for this moment of happiness! But An no longer hears anything, no longer sees anything except the sweat-drenched face of his old comrade-in-arms. Ma Ly is giving all his attention to the MC.

“How will he behave?” An wonders to himself. “Perhaps he will stay mum because he is a friend, because I was the first one to help him understand the most elementary things about people living downstream. I also recommended him for a rise in rank, then helped him with some money so he could go home and take care of his father’s funeral. Or will he accuse me so as to show loyalty to his superiors and get a very special promotion? How can one predict all the tricky ways people behave?”

Twelve years have gone by but this fellow seems hardly changed. Still it is impossible to read those small and deep-set eyes. Hoang An quietly watches Ma Ly. The Meo must be in agony because he is in heat, yearning for a woman. His eyes are wet with longing. His breath is heavy and he constantly licks his lips. Randy people, whether men or women, can never resist this gesture. An recalls the time in the old unit when Ma Ly had been desperate, looking for a woman. And even though he was a full-blooded Meo, freshly come to the lowlands, he had been clever enough to find a half-nutty gal in the village who could take care of his pressing need. Now he is open-mouthed, looking at the fairies all dressed so gorgeously on the stage, dancing the Lamp Dance.

“How do you like it? Is it better or not as good as the Conical Hat Dance of the Thai people?” An asks.

“Better, much better,” Ma Ly answers without taking his eyes off the stage.

“Do you like the
khen
dance of the Meo people?”

“No,” Ma Ly responds emphatically, which surprises An. The Meo explains: “The Meo people don’t have a very sophisticated dance. The best dancers are the people in the central highlands, whether they are Rhade, Bahnar, or any other group.”

With that, he suddenly exclaims: “Oops, it’s over.”

Smacking his lips and shaking his head in regret, Hoang An laughs. “I didn’t know that you were so in love with these performances.”

“Are you thinking to denigrate us by suggesting that we Meo do not know how to appreciate art and literature?”

“No, I didn’t mean that. This kind of appreciation is a personal matter, it doesn’t have anything to do with an ethnic group. In my village we are all Tay but some of us love the flute so much that we can stay up the whole night playing it, while others know only how to drink wine until they collapse into slumber.”

“I am passionate about these things,” Ma Ly responds, then after a minute of hesitation, adds, “But I only care for dances with the women. I don’t like to watch men dance and sing.”

As he says that, the curtain again rises. An keeps quiet, as he does not want to disturb this Meo. It looks as if his entire mind is turning around and around under the stage lights. And that is how things go until 9:15. An raises his wrist to note the time, then says:

“Time to change the guard. I’m going.”

“Yes. We’ll see each other.”

“Agreed. After the performance, please try to wait for me.”

“Rest assured. I’ll wait for you.”

Hoang An retires toward the back. After gaining some distance from the crowd, he goes deeper into the forest and finds a good observation spot where he can entirely wrap himself in the darkness. Before him is a black immensity; where Ma Ly once had been is lost to him entirely. Ma Ly is of small stature like the majority of Meo men, normally about the height of their wives’ shoulders. It is said that when a Meo couple embrace, they look just like a big frog hanging on to a cucumber. The curtains keep rising and falling as one performance follows another. The watch shows twenty to ten. An feels his breathing starting to come more easily.

“Maybe he is not wicked enough to report me. Maybe he hasn’t forgotten the good memories of the past.”

But just as a sense of optimism returns, he notices the small silhouette of a man standing up and distancing himself from the crowded spectators in the dark. The silhouette finds its way between the ranks of soldiers and continues walking toward the stage where the division command officers are sitting in the front rows next to the commanding officers of Battalion 209.

“So, what I suspected is now inevitable,” An thinks as he watches the man. He feels a little bitter, a little sad, but at the same time his heart resumes its normal beat. The doubt he felt and the thin expectation he had are now burned to ashes. A mood of frozen chilliness invades his soul, and his brain is now vacant and transparent.

“That’s something that had to happen. Now is no time for hesitation;
only action counts. I didn’t want this to happen but it did. So: I must be ready for any eventuality.”

He puts out his hand and touches the submachine gun by his side, the way a farmer touches the back of a buffalo before stepping down behind the plow or a rider smoothes out the mane of a horse before getting it to gallop. This had been a habit of his ever since the age of thirteen, when he followed an uncle out to the woods in search of game. When An’s fingers touched the cold iron of the gun, a strong wave of emotion spread throughout his body, reaching all the way up to his brain and bringing along a sense of power, faith, and iron will all at the same time. The chill of the weapon passed a torch through him. Touching it was like the people of old touching the tablet to make an oath, it made him feel quite at ease. To An, the weapon was like a faithful warhorse or hunting dog. It was no longer an inanimate object but had become part of his own body and will.

In the dark, a twisted smile crosses An’s face.

“I don’t want this! I absolutely do not relish this hunt. But now that I am hunted, I must become the hunter.”

He watches Ma Ly sit down with the commanding officers. No doubt he is reporting briefly on the situation and suggesting that the division chief watch An because of “a military secret of national import.” So An guesses silently. As it turns out, a moment later, Ma Ly stands up together with the division commander, and both of them begin to move along the front edge of the stage to go toward the back.

An cannot figure out where they are heading. If they are going toward the back of the stage, then it will become extremely inconvenient for him because the engineering team running the generator will be right there. But this presupposition is probably incorrect because it would be too hard to reveal a big secret given the noise of the generator and the curious stares of the electricians. Will they go into the deep woods surrounding the clearing? But should they do so they might run into the patrolling soldiers. On the other hand, with the division commander having a very loud voice, perhaps he will take the Meo to the stream, where his voice will be carried away by the noisy falls and thus not heard by anyone. Fortunately, that will be the most favorable spot for handling the situation because on the other side of the stream is what is called a “death zone,” a cliff wall that goes straight up, and on that huge wall not a single bush can push its way out into the air. That is why not only men, but even antelopes, dare not climb it. It was not the northern soldiers but actually the military recon troops of the South Vietnamese that gave the region the name Death Mountain.

An follows the two men—now his prey—hiding behind trees as he goes along. As he thought, the division commander is taking the Meo to the bank of the stream. Since it is quite a distance, the music fades to be replaced by the increasingly loud rumbling of the waterfall. Like a leopard An follows them. He does not realize that the wind has changed direction, turning the leaves backward, making the forest move so that the steps of the prey as well as those of the hunter become lost in the overall symphony of the leaves. After about ten minutes, they arrive at the bathing spot, almost exactly where An had been sitting earlier in the afternoon. An idea flashes by, like a lightning shaft through the air:

“Could it be that a few hours earlier, I hesitated to bathe in this stream because I would have to take care of them in this very spot?”

He does not have time to think much more, because the conversation has begun, with every word quite audible:

“Dear commander, we Meo are absolutely loyal to the revolution, that is why I think I am duty-bound to report this to you. An extremely important affair.”

So Ma Ly begins in a trembling voice. Maybe he is not quite himself. Maybe he hesitates between his own fear and the fear of his conscience, “the conscience of someone loyal to the party and government”…Or perhaps he is in a quandary, caught between his fear of An, one who has already escaped from an entire army, someone to be feared, and his own thirst for power. Or maybe he instinctively feels the danger to him lurking in this game. An cannot figure out the reason but there is no mistaking Ma Ly’s trembling voice and his shortness of breath.

An curses him with deep contempt. “Son of a bitch…You shake as you fuck…”

At this point, the division commander’s voice can be heard firmly saying, “All of us are duty-bound to be loyal to the revolution. It’s good that you spell out your thoughts clearly like that. I am ready to hear you out.”

“Commander…”

Ma Ly begins again, his voice no longer so shaky: “Commander, isn’t that true that in the division there is a company commander named Hoang An, a Tay from Cao Bang who is fighting directly under your command?”

“Correct! Company Commander Hoang An is a bold, clever, and promising leader. It can be said that he is the right-hand man of Battalion Commander Dinh Quang Nha…But his native village is in Dong Mo, Lang Son, not in Cao Bang. I know by heart the bio of Commander An, the way I know the CVs of all the battalion commanders in my division.”

“I report to you, Commander, that Hoang An’s native village is actually Xiu in That Khe district, Cao Bang province. He used to be the third company leader of Company 1, Battalion 109, a unit with special assignments stationed in Ha Dong in 1957. At that time I was deputy squad leader in his company. His real name is Chi Van Thanh. He was recruited as a Party member after he joined the army, in September 1951, three years before the liberation of the capital.”

“What did you say? He has been a Party member before?”

An notes how the division commander’s voice has grown louder as he posed those questions. When he had joined the division under the name of Hoang An, he had used the papers of a dead comrade who was not a Party member. And he had been newly recruited into the Party exactly two years ago. It was the division commander himself who had ordered that he be recruited into the Party on the spot after a series of combat successes achieved by An’s unit. An now hears Ma Ly laugh ironically; after a moment of silence, Ma Ly goes on:

“When I joined the army, Chi Van Thanh had already been a Party member for six years. He was recruited right in the Viet Bac resistance zone.”

“OK, then. Go ahead and tell me more. I am listening.”

“Chi Van Thanh motivated me to join the Party and proposed that I become deputy squad leader.”

“Then?”

“Then, one day he simply disappeared, saying he had a chance to visit Hanoi. The command did not know the reason for his departure and ordered that he be found, but without result. After about a week, the command staff sent someone down to officially report that Chi Van Thanh was a spy planted by the puppet army in our ranks so as to sabotage us from within. Because his identity was about to be revealed, they had reported, he had fled together with another spy in the guards. Both of them are Tay from Cao Bang and natives of That Khe district. Border defense soldiers went in pursuit, even crossing the Viet-Lao border, but all they could find was two tiger-eaten corpses and two abandoned rifles.”