‘You trust the people you’re supposed to trust and you fight the people you’re supposed to fight. And if you show no fear you’re the king.’
‘King of what? This? Brandon, you’re irresponsible.’ Muir mulled that, then let it go without further thought. He stared out at the chaotic clutter of renewal and decay existing side by side along the streets and at the river of traffic that surrounded them. They reached a major intersection and his head continually turned this way and that, registering his amazement as a blend of trucks, cars, motorbikes, motorised platforms, bicycles, and cyclos mixed together at vastly different speeds, not even always heading in the same direction. The two cyclo drivers deftly maneuvered them through the mass, managing a slow left turn as they picked up the road to District Four.
Professor Muir put a hand over his nose, trying not to breathe the mix of dust and exhaust fumes that had enveloped them. ‘I feel like I’m going to be sick. Do you actually think this is fun?’
Condley leaned back, glorying in it. ‘It’s more than fun. It’s life.’
Muir touched his clothes where the dust was settling on his sweat. ‘Not my life, Brandon! Fun is an evening at the Outrigger restaurant with good friends, having a wonderful wine, watching the most beautiful hula dancer in the world, with Waikiki Beach as my personal backdrop. That’s fun. This is… this is unnecessary! Unlike our little trip to Ninh Phuoc, which was a service to our country. It’s voyeuristic! It’s meddling in someone else’s catastrophe! I don’t need it.’
‘Yeah, you do. You need it.’
‘I didn’t come to Sai Gon for this.’
Condley shook his head with false concern. ‘Relax, I’m going to introduce you to some women.’
Muir looked ahead toward a decaying bridge choked with slow-moving traffic. ‘Do you know what my wife would think if I were killed in some Sai Gon bordello?’
Condley pointed back at Dzung, who was pedaling up the slight hill with a steady, pendulum-like rhythm that informed his hidden strength. ‘You’re not going to get hurt. This is one tough little guy. I guarantee.’
‘What’s in it for him?’ Muir leaned toward Condley, speaking softly, almost conspiratorially. ‘They could take us down by the river and strip us clean and leave us dead. No one would ever know the difference.’
‘Oh,’ laughed Condley, enjoying himself immensely. ‘Now you’re worried about it! I thought you said it would never happen in Sai Gon.’
‘OK, I lied.’
District Four was an island, separated from Sai Gon by a few tawdry bridges. In 1975 the victorious communists had relocated thousands of former South Vietnamese soldiers and their families into the district, reasoning that if they ever tried to revolt they could be quickly contained by putting soldiers on the bridges. Over the years the population inside the district had swollen, even as basics such as water and electricity had slowly been allowed to atrophy.
‘Welcome to District Four, Professor.’
The crumbling sidewalks on the Nguyen Tat Thanh bridge were crowded with human effluvium from the district on the other side. Small unwashed children played in the dirt behind tiny stalls. Women sat listlessly on straw mats at the stalls, selling drips of gasoline from glass bottles, cigarettes from little display cases, soft drinks, stale bread, whatever might work to whomever might care. The water below was stagnant, choked with waste and trash. On the far end of the bridge, a gathering of patched-plywood shanties spilled out on poles above the water. The morning’s attempt at laundry hung below the eaves of tin and canvas rooftops that were held unconvincingly in place by loose slats of wood and thin old bicycle tires. Near the shanties a few small boats with roofs and walls of straw were moored in the mud, home to those who could not afford a shack.
Muir gulped as they finished crossing the bridge, staring into District Four and swallowing back his fear. ‘What’s here?’
‘The people we left behind.’
Nguyen Tat Thanh Street teemed with heavy traffic. It actually cut through the district, past Sai Gon’s main port, off to the left a few hundred meters in front of them, and over another bridge that headed south out of Sai Gon. Nguyen Tat Thanh was Ho Chi Minh’s true name, the one he had used when he had sailed from the port for France, hoping for a position in the colonial civil service and ending up a revolutionary. The unending slums of the district itself bordered the road on the right.
Dzung leaned over to Condley. ‘Anh muon di dau?’ he asked. Where to?
Condley answered in Vietnamese, not wanting Muir to understand. ‘Into the district. On a smaller road,’ he said.
Dzung laughed again, his way of telling Condley that he was both nervous and excited. He stretched high in his seat as he looked for an opening in the traffic and chattered back and forth with Luong. Then they turned right, onto a narrower road.
The whole world slowed down in the time it took them to turn the corner. Cars and trucks immediately all but disappeared, giving way to bicycles, motorbikes, cyclos, and square carts filled with bricks or wood pulled along the road by sweating, bare-chested men on foot. Just off the curbs dozens of cyclo drivers sat idly in their vehicles, baking in the sun and watching with careful eyes as they passed. Tiny shops lined the sidewalks, little businesses with houses overhead that offered bicycle repairs, meals of rice or the staple soups chao and pho, spare parts salvaged from dead vehicles and appliances, rolls of fabric for making clothes at home.
Along one stretch a small market had gathered, offering food that would not have made the quality cut at better places such as the Ben Thanh market in District One. Dozens of women squatted in the road behind open baskets of rice, piles of dragonfruit, mangoes, durians, and custard apples, clumps of tiny overripe bananas, small wire cages containing dazed-looking puppies and bird-size chickens, metal trays piled high with crab and other shellfish, rows of fresh fish laid along the pavement, a dozen white ducks huddled in a circle around a water bowl. The road was potholed and rough, wet with spilled juices. Flies swarmed from the raw fish up to their faces. The stench was overwhelming.
‘That’s rather picturesque,’ said Muir bravely, swatting away flies and swallowing back his revulsion at the odor. ‘I should have brought my camera.’
Condley turned back to Dzung, speaking again in Vietnamese. ‘A smaller road.’
Dzung turned, into what appeared to be an alley. The world changed again, growing instantly more remote. The two-story buildings closed off the sun, pressing toward them from both sides like weeds on a jungle trail. Groups of older men sat next to the street on their plastic chairs underneath small umbrellas that announced their definition of a sidewalk cafe. They drank their tea or beer, smoked their cigarettes, and stared with surprise as the two Americans passed them.
Condley relaxed into it, overwhelmed by memories. This was his Viet Nam, as real as the villages in the countryside, and free of the hustling, false-faced striving of District One. Sad, whining music rode the stagnant air from a half dozen different windows, competing for their melancholy embrace. The odors of cook-pot steam and cigarette smoke, the brack of old food and human waste, the sweet perfume of joss sticks burning at someone’s family altar, all mixed together with the smell of his own sweat until he was inside it, carried away by it, a part of it.
Barefoot children ran in and out of darkened homes, watching them and calling excitedly to one another. Women stood idly in the doorways, gazing at them with piqued curiosity, many smiling through the gauzy filter of old memories. Young men stiffened, some smiling, others raising their chins, their eyes growing hot with undefinable defiance, a sense of invasion. They were all near enough to feel, close enough to reach out and touch, and in many of their faces Condley could see the temptation to do just that.
A shirtless, ageless man in shorts and plastic sandals smiled at Dzung from one little table, where he was nursing a glass of tea and dragging on a cigarette. Deep red burn scars covered half his face and much of his chest. Shrapnel had cupped away part of one calf mu
scle. Old scratches of tattoos garnished his forearms. He waved comfortably to Dzung. Dzung called to him and waved back, then leaned forward to Condley.
‘My friend. Airborne soldier, very good! He fight for my father, five years.’
The cyclos shook and clattered along the broken concrete road. It was so narrow that they could no longer travel side by side. Condley heard Muir call nervously from behind him.
‘Brandon, honestly, I have to call Hawaii before the office closes. Shouldn’t we be getting back?’
Children were following them, some calling out to them. ‘Hello! Hello! What’s your name?’ Condley waved back, to their delight answering in Vietnamese. They had become a chattering, laughing entourage.
Condley turned back to Dzung. ‘Is your house far away?’
Dzung smiled, moved by the honor Condley was about to bring to his family. ‘Close.’ He hesitated for a moment, knowing that in the tradition he should offer but afraid of losing face if he had misunderstood Condley’s intentions. ‘Cong Ly, you come my house? I show you my new baby.’
‘Duoc,’ answered Condley. ‘I would like that.’
Dzung again called to Luong, his voice now electric with excitement. In less than a block they turned once more, the trail of children merrily following them, and were on the broken concrete lane that led to Dzung’s home. After another thirty yards Dzung suddenly stopped, dismounting from his cyclo.
‘My house,’ he said, smiling shyly and gesturing to Condley’s left toward a dark entranceway that held no door.
Condley climbed out of his seat and tested his legs after the jouncing ride. He pushed through a flock of chattering children, making his way to Muir, twenty feet behind. An even larger crowd was gathering as Dzung’s whole neighbourhood poured into the narrow alleyway. The older people with memories of the past stared incredulously, as if Condley and Muir had washed up on an isolated beach.
Muir clung to the rails of his cyclo, viewing the crowd as a dangerous mob. Condley reached him, pulling an arm and patting him on the shoulder.
‘Easy, big fellow. These are our people.’
‘I feel very alone,’ said Muir warily, succumbing to Condley’s pressure and beginning to climb down from the cyclo.
Dzung stepped forward. He had read Muir’s fear and also the curiosity in the eyes of many of his neighbours. Now he waved his hands into the air, calming them. ‘Di choi,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Choi, choi, an thua gi,’ meaning that the two had come for pleasure, not politics or other life-threatening pastimes.
‘Nguoi My? Nguoi My?’ they kept asking, daring to believe but still unsure whether the two were Americans.
‘Yes, we’re Americans,’ Condley answered in Vietnamese, drawing an explosion of laughter and praise for speaking their language.
The older people were even more excited than the children. The two frail old women who lived across from Dzung made their way to Muir’s side. They were twin-like, dressed almost identically in worn cotton blouses and black silk slacks. Their gray-white hair was pulled back tightly into similar buns. They smoked from the same pack of cigarettes. Their rheumy eyes held mutual memories from American visits of long ago.
‘Lau qua!’ one fairly screamed. Her wide smile revealed blackened, betel-nut-stained teeth as she uttered the traditional Vietnamese greeting of Too much time has passed. Her exuberance caused the crowd again to laugh and cheer.
Her housemate, not to be outdone, now moved against Muir and embraced him. He stood stiffly, transfixed by confusion as the crowd cheered her on. ‘Co vo Viet Nam chua?’ she asked, rubbing his arm up and down fondly as the others laughed merrily.
‘Roi, roi,’ answered Condley, causing them to laugh and cheer some more.
Muir towered like Gulliver above the boisterous crowd, fighting back his fear. ‘What did she say?’
‘She asked if you have a Vietnamese wife yet,’ said Condley nonchalantly. Two children were pulling softly at the hairs on his arm, examining their length and colour. ‘See? I told you I’d introduce you to some Vietnamese women!’
Dzung stood at the doorway to his house, filled with pride, gesturing as he invited them in. Muir appeared stranded. The two old women kept fawning over him. A half dozen children were examining him, pulling at his arms and even experimentally touching the leather on his shoes. Condley called to Dzung, pointing at the old women.
‘Are they the oldest, Dzung?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Dzung answered, his nodding smile showing that he knew what was to follow.
Condley reached into the bag he had been carrying since leaving the Rex’s restaurant and gave each of them a loaf of French bread. ‘I’m sorry, it is really nothing,’ he said with the humility expected when giving a gift in Viet Nam. They clutched the bread as if it were treasure, immediately abandoning the hapless Muir. Then Condley followed Dzung through the doorway into his home.
A tall, wide wooden shelf broke the entrance to the shack, the equivalent of both door and wall that offered Dzung’s family some privacy from the street. On top of the shelf was a sand bowl with a half dozen burnt joss sticks sticking up like spent candles on a tiny cake. Around the bowl were nine pictures, most of them young men, some in military uniforms. At the center of this family shrine were old pictures of a man and woman. They sat formally next to each other in traditional ao dais, staring at the camera with dignified, solemn expressions. Condley knew from his earlier conversations that the pictures around the shrine were all that was left of Dzung’s family.
‘Cha, me,’ said Dzung with quiet pride as he pointed to the older pictures, indicating they were of his mother and father.
Condley heard the uncertain wails of a tiny infant from behind the wall and followed Dzung inside. The home was dark, narrow, cluttered. Its ceiling was so low that Condley had to bend his head once inside. Other than three wooden beds, its furnishings included only two small stools. On one bed a little boy was sleeping in the stifling heat, curled into the fetal position. Just behind the wall itself, underneath a drab mosquito net, lay Dzung’s wife and newest child.
‘My wife,’ said Dzung almost hopefully. His eyes moved constantly behind his smile, studying Condley and then Muir for clues. ‘Baby.’
‘How many children do you have?’ asked Muir, his head moving this way and that as he absorbed the surroundings of Dzung’s home. Despite its squalor, Muir seemed to view the tiny room as an oasis, a refuge from the turmoil outside.
‘Five already,’ smiled Dzung. He looked over at his wife and then quietly added a personal, secret boast. ‘I am very good fucker.’
Even Professor Muir laughed at that, although his eyes betrayed a slight discomfort with Dzung’s crudity.
The heat was oppressive, making the air dank and moldy. Condley walked slowly to the bed. Dzung’s wife, Tu, was smiling bravely, but he could feel her exhaustion as certainly as he felt the heat. She slowly lifted the mosquito net, holding her newest child up for him to see. He touched the baby’s head, stroking it and smiling back to her. The smile required conscious effort, a quiet repudiation of his anger. The baby was naked, thin and listless, covered with a mild rash. He looked as if he might die at any moment.
As he stroked the baby’s tiny head, its dark, listless eyes watched him, and in the fastness of their gaze its struggle came alive. It was as if an electric current had run between them, causing him to feel the infant’s hopeless and fading energy. All the tragedies of the war and its aftermath grabbed him fiercely at that moment, up from the past, in from these paltry surroundings, out like a lion from his heart. He felt angry and helpless.
‘Dzung!’ he finally said. ‘This baby needs to be in a hospital. I will help you. I don’t care what it costs.’
‘He was there, Cong Ly.’ Dzung was smiling but his eyes showed his own unease. ‘They gave me pills for him. He just sick.’
‘He’s very sick. We need to do something.’
‘Cong Ly. This is Viet Nam. We give him the pills.’
; Despite his misgivings Condley knew that Dzung was right. There was nothing else that could be done, and to say anything further would cause his friend to lose face. The best he could do was to self-consciously reach into his paper bag and offer Tu the last three pieces of bread.
‘Dzung does very good work for me,’ he told her in Vietnamese.
She was gracious, and when her eyes lit up Condley could understand what Dzung had meant when he boasted of her beauty. ‘You are his good friend,’ she said, taking the bread slowly, her movements exaggerated by her weariness. ‘Cam on ong, cam on rat nhieu.’
Condley straightened back up and discovered Muir standing just next to him. Muir seemed even more addled than before, as if he were struggling with what he was seeing but not wanting even to see it.
‘Classic cultural regression,’ pronounced Muir, as if standing before a college lecture hall. ‘Socio-economic inversion, actually. Not a rare phenomenon when revolutions occur. We saw it in the Soviet Union, obviously, with the disappearance of royalty after 1917 and the doing away of the upper classes. Here the communists did it to those who had any connections with the French or the Americans. They were at the top until the war was lost, and suddenly they had nothing. This is a largely Buddhist land and consequently I hesitate to quote the Bible, but shall we merely say that the last shall be first and the first shall be last?’
‘Stop it, Professor. I really don’t need one of those “I just found a pile of bones” kind of speeches.’ Condley grabbed the professor’s shoulders, speaking quietly from only a few inches away. ‘How do we help them? I’m no fucking politician. What do we do, Professor? What do we do?’
Dzung approached them. ‘Phai di,’ he said to Condley, a note of urgency in his recommendation that they now leave.
Condley nudged Muir toward the doorway. ‘If we don’t get out of here there’s going to be a riot outside.’
‘Troublemakers?’ Muir hedged, facing the overwhelming crowd that now was peering curiously into Dzung’s house.
‘No.’ Condley stepped in front of Muir and pushed his way toward the cyclo. ‘They’re too happy.’
Lost Soldiers Page 16
