Lost Soldiers

by Lost Soldiers (retail) (epub)

  To be invited to the Phams’ house at such a time had a deeply personal meaning. And from the colonel’s parting comments, Condley sensed that Van herself had played a role in his invitation. Twice Condley had attempted to ask Dzung’s advice about visiting Pham’s house during chap ma, and both times Dzung had declined to give it, telling him only that each family was different and that Condley should watch and listen to Mrs. Pham.

  Condley had known Dzung might be offended by this visit, but he was surprised at the depth of his friend’s resistance. He decided on a different tack as a way to reassure Dzung of his loyalty, something he had been thinking about for some time.

  ‘Dzung,’ he said as they left the madness of Dien Bien Phu and took a narrow, quieter street. ‘I’m thinking about buying a car.’

  Dzung seemed startled at first. He wiped sweat off his face with a casual, practiced move of one shoulder pushing his shirt into his eyes. Then he regained the smile that had become his lifelong, post-war mask, the face that saved his face.

  ‘Very good, sir. The street too loud, too hot for you!’

  ‘Too slow,’ said Condley as they pushed along toward yet another side street.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Dzung, swaying side to side as he navigated old potholes. ‘I am very slow. Cham qua. And you are a very important man now.’

  ‘Some days I need to go to Bien Hoa. And then maybe after that Thanh Da or even Vung Tau. I can’t do that in a cyclo.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Dzung’s eyes were faraway, lost for a moment in the memory of a village outside Bien Hoa where he had brought gifts of a dog and a scarf and helped Tu’s father rethatch a roof before asking for his blessing on their marriage. The concrete well on the packed dirt pathway outside their home brought the whole village as much water as it could use. Her family had grown rice and manioc and mangoes in the lush, flat fields. It was a good life. He had taken that from her, to the squalor of District Four. And now even this was going to disappear.

  ‘Maybe sometime you still need me,’ he said hopefully. ‘I still take you, maybe at night?’

  ‘I want you to drive,’ said Condley.

  ‘Drive, sir?’ asked Dzung, looking quickly at the road in front of them. ‘I am driving, sir. Drive where?’

  ‘I want you to drive my car!’

  A car? Dzung’s face went flush with the thought of it. ‘Oh, thank you, sir, but they will not give me a license.’

  ‘You drove before ’75, right?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I drove jeep, truck, no problem. But I am old Cong Hoa.’

  Condley looked up to him, smiling with delight. ‘I will take care of it.’

  Dzung could not believe it. ‘The government will not allow it, sir. I know that.’

  ‘I’ll call in a chit with Colonel Pham.’

  ‘Call in a chit?’

  ‘I will get the car, maybe soon. After that I will take you on driving lessons. Then you’ll be my driver.’

  ‘You are sure of this?’

  ‘Yes!’

  A surge of pride and anticipation lifted Dzung in his chair, empowering his tired legs. A car. ‘Thank you, Cong Ly. I will do good work for you.’

  Dzung turned onto a smaller street. Nearby, the sun cooked the juices of a pile of garbage, filling Condley’s senses with the odor of decaying bananas, making him think in an odd way of Manila. Then suddenly in the laughing scream of a young boy he remembered the naked children of Guadalcanal, brown as raisins, their frizzed hair bleached with streaks of blond, calling to him in a village that had no electricity and no road. Such cycles were his karma, just as in Manila and Guadalcanal he had never stopped thinking of Viet Nam.

  They made false turns, hit dead ends, maneuvered around randomly parked cars, piles of sand and gravel in front of old walled homes. Crowds of young kids were playing soccer or throwing their plastic flip-flop shoes at cola cans as they laughed and chattered in the street. Old Sai Gon, District Three, block after block of small villas and upscale homes left over from the French and then the Americans, confiscated from the wealthier Vietnamese who fled more than two decades before, taken over as the spoils of war by those who had served the other side.

  Home to Colonel Pham. But enemy territory to a man like Dzung.

  Condley sat in the cyclo, searching house numbers painted on the outer walls. Finally he found it. As Dzung halted the cyclo he stiffened, setting his face in an unmovable stubbornness, his voice for the first time in Condley’s memory growing hard and even bitter.

  ‘This place no good. I don’t wait here, Cong Ly.’

  ‘You want to come back later?’

  ‘I go see my baby. I don’t wait here, I don’t come back.’

  Dzung’s normally impassive face grew taut and even more lined as he glanced toward Colonel Pham’s home. The war, his lost family, the misery of the camps, the future he might have had, the different country he might have had a hand in leading, all flickered like dim explosions in the twitching of his eyes. ‘Xin loi, Cong Ly, I very sorry. VC, khong thich, number ten. I know, I know. No good. I go now.’

  ‘Hieu,’ said Condley. I understand. He gave Dzung ten thousand dong. ‘You bring your baby something from me.’

  He was very nervous as he approached the closed yard of the old villa. Mrs. Pham was waiting on the front terrace, dressed in a black ao dai. She turned sharply as he creaked open the gate and stepped inside, betraying her own nervousness. He smiled gamely, walking to her and offering a bouquet of flowers.

  ‘Chao Ba Tho.’

  ‘Da, chao Ong.’

  She melted a bit, smiling her thanks and immediately looking around for a vase in which to put them. Then she opened the front door, bowing slightly and welcoming him inside.

  It was cool inside, quiet except for the sound of children playing on the street, unlit except by sunlight through the open windows. The ceramic tiles on the floor were still damp from the morning’s sudden rain. A portrait of Ho Chi Minh hung prominently on the living-room wall. On either side were several citations, military awards given to Colonel Pham. The house smelled of musk and food, but over their odors he caught a whiff of perfume. The perfume made him think of Van and then, oddly, of Francois.

  The merchant of aromas. He gives her nice things.

  Mrs. Pham led him to a small table. At the table he sat in a wooden chair. She sat across from him and poured some tea. A quiet tension passed between them. She had a way of watching him without fully looking at him. Every movement of his hands and feet was being evaluated, as was every bodily shift, even the way he drank his tea. He avoided staring at her as he sipped the tea, allowing her to inspect him.

  Finally he set the teacup back onto its saucer and smiled again to her. She smiled back, warm and real, revealing blackened teeth. Somehow he had passed her test. Looking fully at her for the first time he could see the beauty that had carried over into Van and the strength that had no doubt held the family together through the years of war. Her eyes twinkled. Her skin was still smooth and unblemished. When she closed her full lips to self-consciously cover her betel-nut-stained teeth, he could peer so far into her face that he saw all the moments of her life mixed together. And he knew that she was kind.

  ‘You have been very busy,’ she finally said in Vietnamese.

  ‘My boss needed me,’ he answered, struggling for a moment to find the right Vietnamese words. ‘I was in Hawaii until last night.’ He smiled self-consciously, knowing somehow that he could speak to her from his heart. ‘You make me feel very shy.’

  She gave off an immediate, involuntary, girlish giggle, straightening in her chair and waving a hand at him, as if it had never occurred to her that she might have held this power over his emotions. ‘You’re so strong,’ she said. ‘I’m only an old woman.’

  ‘I am nervous to be at your family altar,’ he answered.

  Her face warmed with genuine affection. She stood and offered him her hand. ‘You are a very special guest,’ she said. ‘We ar
e honored.’

  He took her hand and she grasped his, firmly and without hesitation, removing any doubts that she had fully accepted him. They walked together around a corner to another wall. The wall and a table in front of it were covered with pictures. At the center of the table was a hand-painted porcelain jar filled with sand.

  She began explaining the pictures, introducing him to the ancestors, beginning with the oldest. An eerie calm crept over him as he saw the faces of her and Colonel Pham’s grandparents, parents, sisters, and brothers. In the often stoic poses of old black and white photographs and the changing styles of clothes he saw the grief-racked journey of an unbending people. Without industry, their thousand-year love of education suppressed by French colonials, their people then starved and bludgeoned by the Japanese, who could fault the lust for independence that launched them on another thirty years of war? Condley knew that he and Colonel Pham would never agree on the exact reasons the war had been fought. But the faces on the wall told him that somehow it had been inevitable.

  Two young men stared at him with lifted chins and proud eyes, wearing military uniforms. ‘Bo doi,’ she said. It was his former enemy’s word for what he and others simply had called Viet Cong. ‘My brother, Pham’s brother.’

  Another young man smiled from an old school photograph, not allowed a military uniform even at his family altar. She pointed to the picture, glancing hesitantly at Condley as if she were trying to choose new words. ‘Anh trai.’ My older brother. ‘Nguy,’ she said at first, using the word for traitor. Then she relented, calling him the more respected term the South Vietnamese Army had used for its soldiers. ‘Bo binh, Viet Nam Cong Hoa.’

  Her three dead children looked up from the table, next to the jar of sand. It was a group picture. Two doe-eyed little girls were hugging each other on what looked like a beach. They were laughing as a mischievous older boy grabbed them from behind, squeezing them into each other. She pointed, then said nothing.

  Condley found that his arm was on her shoulder. For one elongated second he squeezed her into his chest and pressed his face into the top of her head. She smelled like soap and pho, an oddly moving combination of the present and the past.

  He had brought a dozen joss sticks. He gave her half. Automatically she held them in a bundle with both hands, in front of her chest. He struck a large match, holding it under her joss sticks until they began to glow, then held his own sticks in one hand over the flame until they also were lit.

  They stood silently side by side, holding the joss sticks in their palms just below their chins, their shoulders touching but separate now, repeating a ceremony that dated thousands of years, communing only with the ancestors. Outside on the street, the children called to one another again. Behind him he thought he heard scraping on concrete stairs. The sweet smoke from the joss sticks curled into the air, their odors invading his memory. He bowed once to the altar, then moved the joss sticks six times in his flattened hands, four long movements, down to his waist, then two short ones just underneath his chin. And then he placed the still-burning sticks into the sand-filled jar.

  She had done likewise. They stood silently now, surrounded by the curling smoke and the presence of the dead, communicating with the spirits, listening to them. He went dreamy in his mind, not the least bit embarrassed as he spoke without words to her ancestors. He hoped they were at peace, that they would protect their family and bring peace to other families. He remembered Mai and asked them to make peace with her and her family.

  Through the heavy joss smoke he smelled the perfume again. When he turned around, Van and her father were standing behind him. She smiled at him, looking stunning in a pair of blue jeans and a bright red pull-over blouse. The old colonel was staring intently at Condley with a totally different look than his jaunty teasing at the golf course. He was fighting back his emotions, as if it were too much to comprehend that Condley’s presence had brought such tranquillity to the face of his own wife.

  Finally he stepped forward and stuck out his thick paw of a hand, nodding brusquely. ‘Chao Ong, Cong Ly.’

  ‘We’ll go to temple with you,’ said Van, her eyes thanking him more than he deserved. ‘If it’s OK?’

  Chapter Eleven

  They took two motorbikes. Colonel Pham drove his wife. Behind them, Condley rode on the back of Van’s new Honda. She wove expertly through the obstacles in the side streets. He teased her for wearing a pair of elbow-length white gloves and a yellow handkerchief over her face to protect her skin from the bad air and the sun. The insides of his thighs pressed against her hips as he struggled to stay on the motorbike through pothole bumps and weaving turns. When they reached a wider road and picked up speed, her hair whipped and caressed his face. People on the sidewalks and in the traffic stared at him and Van with curiosity and faint disapproval. But she was alive, laughing and turning against him as she maneuvered the motorbike, teasing him for not trusting her driving. And by the time they reached the temple his hands felt like they belonged on her waist.

  The temple sat back from the street, behind a yellow plaster wall. Old banyan trees and crumbling sidewalks marked its outer yard. Its gates were closed. Van drove through a narrow break in the wall meant for pedestrians and parked her motorbike in the yard itself. The temple seemed ancient, the curling dragons on its rooftops derivative of Chinese architecture, while the Buddhist symbols and several gargoyles were reminiscent of parts of India. This intermingling of the two grand Asian cultures here at the very seat of their beliefs reminded him again why Viet Nam had once been labeled Indochina.

  He and Van walked together toward the temple’s door, where her parents already were waiting. Her nearness, and the long minutes he had spent with his arms around her as they rode along the city streets, made this journey seem somehow symbolic: the temple, high and yellow and ornate; her parents, waiting at its doors; she herself, dressed modern but striding slowly with an eternal grace toward an ancient task.

  A monk in a flowing brown robe met them at the temple door, accompanied by a gray-robed nun. Each of their heads had been shaved bald. The nun seemed old enough to have been Colonel Pham’s mother. She pressed her hands together in front of her face when they entered the temple, greeting them, and then walked away toward one side of the altar, where a large cymbal hung from the ceiling.

  They followed the monk to the altar, standing just behind him. A huge gold Buddha towered over them, flanked by flowers, brass bowls, and plates filled with fresh fruit. The monk lit another bundle of joss sticks. Then he moved them up and down, just as Condley and Mrs. Pham had done at the family altar, and placed them in a larger jar at the Buddha’s feet. The monk stood for a long time at the altar, praying to the Buddha. Then he walked off to their left, kneeling on the floor in front of a hollow wooden drum.

  Colonel Pham stepped forward, bowing his head before the Buddha. Condley, Van, and Mrs. Pham remained just behind him. It was now their time to pray. He found himself at first talking to Mai, telling her that he was sorry for everything, even for loving her, but especially for having been away when they came to kill her, that he had killed them back for her and had refused to love anyone else, but that it might be different now if she would only help him. Then he talked to his friends, Vietnamese and American, those who had died alongside him, the others who had died because he had left. Then finally he talked to the six years’ worth of people he had killed.

  His hand brushed against Van’s leg. She reached out without looking and took it, wrapping a fist around one finger. He looked over at her hand, and then up to her face. She was done praying. And she smiled.

  Colonel Pham finished last, stepping back to join Condley and the two women. Condley had no doubt the old soldier had prayed through a much longer list. They all sat cross-legged on the cool tile floor. The nun banged the cymbal with a mallet, two short gongs and then a long, lingering one that ran through Condley like the aching sadness of the past. Off to one side the monk began striking the wooden drum, t
he go mo, in a quick insistent rhythm that was soon matched by his high-pitched chanting.

  They joined him, chanting the kinh cau sieu, a prayer asking peace for the dead, reading with him from booklets on the floor. Joss smoke wound its way like morning fog down from the altar. The go mo struck a hollow, haunting cadence that seemed to echo from inside Condley’s heart. They chanted together, their words blending until they were at one with each other, inseparable, linked to the go mo and the altar and the millions whose spirits swarmed among them, dead by bombs and guns and man.

  And then it was over. Condley embraced Mrs. Pham. Colonel Pham came to him and shook his hand. They gave their thanks to the monk, who spoke rapidly to them about their spiritual duties, and to the nun, who folded her hands once more underneath her chin and bowed. Within minutes the colonel and his wife had gone.

  Condley lingered for a moment outside the temple, then dropped twenty dollars through the slit in a contribution box. It was supposed to be a secret, his own personal expression of thanks, but Van was waiting at the bottom of the temple steps and she saw.

  ‘Why do you care so much, Cong Ly?’

  Her question surprised him, because in truth he had never thought about it. ‘Because it gives me peace,’ he finally said.

  ‘Can I take you back?’

  ‘That’s OK,’ he answered. ‘I’ll find a cyclo.’

  She laughed merrily, as if he confused her. ‘You’re the only American in Sai Gon who still uses a cyclo.’

  ‘I’m not in a hurry. And they need the money.’

  ‘So, give one of them the money and ride with me.’

  He could not trust the openness in her delicious, smiling face. She was unlike the other Vietnamese women with whom he had flirted and played since his return, deeper and yet somehow more free. There were no games in her smile, and yet there was no promise either. She clearly did not need him. And so he remained merely confused. ‘Where’s Francois?’