Tree of Smoke (51 page)

“Didn’t I get a letter from you a year ago? A long time after the priest, the business there, the drowning.”

“It took a while, but I finally figured it out: liars aren’t worth talking to.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I appreciated the letters.”

This seemed to give her pause. “You never really answered. Cards don’t count.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to lie.” True, but not truly the reason for his silence. He’d thought her letters crazy. “Or, well, no—letters are hard. That’s closer to the truth.”

“A phony Canadian talking about truth. Incidentally, what name do you go by?”

“Skip.”

“Skip who?”

“Benét. But mostly Skip. Still Skip.”

“Alias Benét wants to talk about truth!”

“We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves. As you once said to me yourself.”

“I don’t remember ever saying that, but it’s certainly true when it comes to somebody like you, it’s certainly true in your case.”

“So then—you’ll stay awhile.”

She glared, eyes watering. Her wrath went out of her in a gusty sigh, and he could tell she was glad to see him.

As for the spy, he was thrilled, his hands shook with joy. He found Mrs. Diu and asked for tea, fruit, bread, returned to his guest to say, “Just two minutes,” and went back to hang around the kitchen, terrified of facing Kathy without things to eat and drink, while Mrs. Diu prepared them. He brought the tray himself.

She too appeared suddenly shy. “This dog,” she said, “just wanders all around.”

“That’s Docteur Bouquet. He used to own the place.”

“He acts like he still does.”

“He’s reincarnated.”

“Really. He sure picked the wrong country to be born a dog in.”

“But I’d say just the right household.”

“He’ll end up in somebody’s chopsticks.”

“I think he’s too old now.”

He started to scratch the dog and realized it would dirty his fingers. “Hey,” he said, “I can’t really ask you to stay. I’m not in a position to entertain. Not at all. Not these days. Buried under work.”

“What?”

“Well,
that’s
insane.”

“Yeah. It is. I mean to say—”

“I thought I was rolling with it, but I guess I’m in a panic here.”

“Do you want me to stay, or do you want me to go?”

“I want you to stay.”

He fumbled and dropped a small baguette, and Docteur Bouquet trotted off with it. He watched it go, a man without graceful reflexes. “I’ve been calling him Docteur Bouquet, but I think it should be ‘Monsieur.’ His degree wouldn’t stay with him into the next life, would it? What are you doing up here in Cao Quyen?”

“What am I doing here?”

“Yes. More or less.”

“I’m with WCS now. No more ICRE.”

“WCS?”

“World Children’s Services is a network of nearly sixty agencies around the world, providing social services to children and their families since 1934.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Adoption assistance is the core service of WCS. In several districts, including this one, we’re doing what we can to coordinate efforts on behalf of children without families.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“Stop it. So I was visiting the missionary family in Bac Se, and they told me about you. The Thomases.”

“I never met them. Never heard of them.”

“They heard about you from a priest.”

“Thong Nhat—Père Patrice.”

“I wouldn’t know. I just know I came out of my way to say hi to a fellow Canadian, and instead I find you. The Quiet American.”

“Oh, well,” he said, “thanks for not calling me Ugly.”

“You wouldn’t hear it anyway. You’re deaf. We all know that about you by now, all but you Americans yourselves.”

“It seemed like we were getting along there for a second.”

“Sorry.”

She ran out of things to say and gazed at him pitiably.

“Qué pasa?”

“‘Qué pasa’? You talk like a GI.”

“I know. Qué pasa?”

“I’m all worn out.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“I mean—I’m the ugly one. It’s worn me down, hasn’t it?”

“Look,” he said, “I’m so glad you came. I’m so happy, Kathy.”

“Really?”

“Do I have to make a fool of myself?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said.

Fortunately, the dog was back for more. Skip roughed his fur and fed him bites of mango. “And you’re here about orphans, I guess. For WCS.”

She nodded her head, slice of mango speared on a fork and upheld like a flag, mouth full of bread roll. Swallowed the bread, the mango, almost the fork too.

“Now it’s me who’s sorry. I wasn’t thinking—do you want a regular meal?”

She shook her head, still chewing. “No, thanks. Yes—I mean, yes, adoption. We’re an umbrella organization for adoption agencies.”

“If every family in North America adopts one Vietnamese, we win the war.”

“Something like that. I wouldn’t mind clearing the country out and just leaving it to the killers.”

“Are you guys as hard up as ICRE?”

“Oh, sure—relative to the size of our effort we are. But as I once heard Mayor Luis say—‘We will find the money, we will kneel to many people.’”

“You’re good. You sound just like him.”

“Have you been in touch?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“Let’s get back to the other thing,” he suggested. “Where you said you wouldn’t mind if I made a fool of myself.”

“Let me eat first.”

In a few minutes he showed her to the upper rooms. From what he could see, climbing behind her up the stairwell, she’d kept a little weight in her hips and thighs, but she’d called it right, the life had worn her down. He himself had gone the other way. He didn’t have a scale, but his bathing trunks fit him tighter and he wore them lower, beneath the belly roll. No scale, but he’d been provided a stethoscope and a blood-pressure gauge. A dozen rolls of bandage, no adhesive tape. Wartime supplies were like that—all cocked up. These were the thoughts that ravaged him as he tried to figure out how to deal with his overwhelming happiness and lust, his buzzing fingertips, clenched heart, dizziness. Not that he thought she’d mind a pass, but she was nuts—at the very least complicated—hidden-wounded, phony-cynical, overpassionate. Definitely angry. And all of it inflamed him. And she was the last woman he’d slept with, one of five in thirty-odd years of life. Men with graceful reflexes don’t interrogate their opportunities. Men without them should stop the questions. And of the five, she was the only one he’d slept with more than once. He led the way into his bed suite, turned to her, and—nothing. No reflexes.

“I said I wouldn’t mind,” she said, and they commenced with an awkward kiss.

“Mr. Benét, do you have any wine?”

“I do. Thank God, I do. And half a fifth of Bushmills.”

“Sounds like a party,” she said, and laid two fingers lightly on his forearm. Taking the fingers in his hand, he led her to the double-sized bed, where he put to use what he’d learned from Henry Miller’s daring passages, from small obscene photographs, dorm-room bull sessions. As in the time in Damulog, they didn’t speak. Everything they did was a secret, especially from each other. As she’d said, she didn’t mind, and at the very last part she gazed upward at something on the ceiling and cried out. And for an instant he thought, I am James Bond, before he dropped again into gray doubting—Artaud and Cioran, the dog, the weather, the point of it all, waiting for contact with a supposed double agent, the thing he’d been brought here nearly two years ago to accomplish. And it was folly. The wild-card operation and the war itself—folly on folly. And this woman beside him with whom he’d just made love, perspiring like a handball player.

There was a little contest, then, it seemed to him, as to who was going to talk first.

“It takes a fire to make hot water,” he said, “but if you want a shower—”

“Oh, come on! I’ll take it cold.”

“I’ll pee,” he said. “And then you can have the shower, okay?”

While she showered he wiped himself down with the bedsheet and got back into his bathing trunks. He thought he might look at a book, but the weather was ominous and he had only the rumored, greenish daylight from storm clouds to see by. All the books, he thought, are downstairs. There’s nothing to do, he thought. Nothing to be done. He sat at the little tea table staring at his knees, his bare feet.

She came back with a towel wrapped around her and her hair slicked back, the high pinks visible even in her sun-browned cheeks. She had sad, pouched knees. Holding the towel to her breast she stretched, extending only her left arm, keeping the towel close. Across from him was a chair, but she sat on the bed. “Those look like the first clothes I ever saw you in. You were wearing an odd sort of bathing suit, just like that, with pockets.”

“The very same pair, actually. They’re sturdy as hell.”

“What about your wild Bermuda shorts?”

“They fell apart, I guess.”

“There was a storm then too.”

“The first time you saw me I wore pants. That restaurant in Malaybalay, remember?”

“I refuse to remember.”

She’d come at just the right time. This was her atmosphere. This was the light for her, for sad, pale skin below the tanned neck and above the rough elbows, for a virgin martyr’s poise, for her unexpectant waiting—her right calf, rather thick and like a peasant’s, dangling from the bed and the foot plunged into shadow near the floor, which was of old wood, the other leg akimbo and the sole of its foot against the other knee, making a number 4 with her legs as she lay back on the bed, her hand across her breasts, the other behind her head—pond-light, church-light. Had she known how he stared, she’d never have allowed it. But she turned her eyes to him and looked at him full on as if he didn’t matter, without any change of her expression. She wasn’t, herself, beautiful. Her moments were beautiful.

The room darkened and gusts carried voices from the ville and the rattle of things shaken, though just before the rain the wind let off, and what came down might have fallen any summer’s day in New England.

“You’re really staring.”

“You are a goddamn relief. You’re making everything go away.”

“Everything such as?”

“Boredom. Boredom. And too much thinking. Cabin fever.”

“Oh, we know all about cabin fever in Manitoba. Come spring, guys jump in their trucks and drive a hundred miles for a shot of whiskey.”

“Speak of the devil. You want some Bushmills?”

“We forgot! For gosh sakes—what are you staring at?”

“Isn’t that allowed?”

“Not when it’s me. I’m an old crone. This sun roasts you like a marshmallow. I’m all beat-up.”

“You just wear the badge of your adventures.”

“Malarkey.”

“No.”

“You think this place is an adventure?”

“Sure.”

“It isn’t fun, though. It’s an adventure, but an adventure isn’t fun till it’s over. If then.”

This impressed him as a truth. He poured two shots of lukewarm Bushmills and brought them to the bed. Scooting back against the wall, she held the small glass in both hands and sipped.

“Do Seventh-Day Adventists usually drink?”

“Some do, some don’t. Here in this mess I’d say all of us do when we get the chance.”

“Where were you? On the delta.”

“A ville called Sa Dec. But I had to leave. It’s different around there since Tet. Everything’s chewed up by big American bullets. Everybody has to be careful. Disaster’s just around the corner. For a lot of people it’s already here. It’s a terrible, terrible situation. You get used to it and plod along, then one day you wake up and you’re not used to it anymore. Then after a while you get used to it all over again.”

“So you’re here looking for orphans?”

“We don’t have to look.”

“Right. Right.”

“We’re just liaisoning with missionaries. If we can, we want to get something going, something better. Bigger. The existing facilities are terrible, every one of them.” At the moment terrible things didn’t interest him. As she spoke he studied her head and wondered what Rembrandt might have tried in such lackluster, truthful illumination.

Kathy said, “And your camera.”

“Camera.”

“I remember you had a camera. Do you still have it around?”

“I gave it up. No more photographs. It turns the world into a museum.”

“Instead of?”

“Instead of a crazy circus.”

He kept photographs in his dresser drawer, next to the Beretta pistol he’d never used. “Look here.” He handed her a dozen or so.

“Emeterio D. Luis!”

“Not a single one of you.”

“A jeepney! I miss those things.”

“Nearly fifty people riding on it.”

“No wonder the tire popped.”

A knock. Mrs. Diu asked admittance. “We’ll be down for supper,” Skip called through the door.

“I have the incense. You want?”

“All right.”

She came in with three sticks fuming sweetly in her hand and said, “Yes, good evening,” and placed them in their holder on a high shelf across the room. “Okay. Supper later. I will tell you,” she said, and went out closing the door softly behind her.

The rain had stopped. Through the screened view, in the two minutes of dusk before black nightfall, he watched Tho ascending one of the papaya trees behind the villa. Because they jutted over the bank and the creek the old man couldn’t simply knock the papayas down, but had to walk up to them on the flats of his splayed bare feet with a kitchen knife in his teeth, clinging to the trunk with both hands, cutting one of the fruit away one-handed and clutching it under his arm, descending backward, and taking the last two feet in a weightless hop to the earth.

“Can I have another drink?”

“By all means, comrade.”

“Just a wee splash.”

Skip felt a little irritated, suddenly, that Kathy had first wrung apologies from him—though he’d made jokes, belittling his atonement—and she’d now forgotten it all. And it occurred to him that the months of solitude had taught him to read himself, to parse himself like a scholar; that one person on this earth had become known to him.

It rained again, and then it was night. She couldn’t return now to the missionaries in Bac Se. They slept together side by side, without sheets, she in one of his rough hand-washed T-shirts and he in boxer under-shorts. Following breakfast the next morning she left for Bac Se on her black bicycle, and Skip never saw her again.