by David Bergen
“Of course, I remember.” Charles sat back. He said, “She’s still my daughter.”
“But older now.”
Charles didn’t answer. He realized that he still harbored a dislike for this beefy man who not only had money and confidence but seemed to take it for granted that success was his right.
But now, lying beside Tomas and listening to him breathe, Charles was enveloped in a sadness that went beyond his daughter and the man she had chosen. He had hoped, as he always did when he went on hunting trips, that the prospect of stalking a wolf or bear through the bush would carry him away. But more and more, this journey took him into a darker place. It would be after this particular trip, on the following Saturday, that Charles would drive down into Abbotsford and buy another ticket for Hanoi, via Bangkok.
In the morning they drove to see the outrigger, a friend of Charles’s. They set their route and rented an ATV to drive up into the woods. Charles handed Tomas the 300 Winchester and showed him how to load and fire. Wrapping his left hand around the barrel, he said, “This is a semiautomatic hunting rifle. It’s extremely accurate up to seven hundred yards and it’ll kill animals both big and small. Never aim it at anything that you don’t want to shoot.” He looked at Tomas and said, “And it’s got some good recoil. Here.” He patted his shoulder. “So hold on to it.”
They rode several hours that morning and saw quail and an eagle high above, and when they stopped for lunch, a fox crossed in front of them, lifted its nose, skipped sideways, and disappeared. Charles had to point this out to Tomas, who seemed incapable of seeing what was in front of him. Charles said, “Look for the shape of something, not the actual thing. An animal is in its natural habitat and has disguises. The only thing it can’t hide is its shape.”
Toward evening, they saw a wolf just above the tree line. It was cutting across the mountain with an easy lope. Without a word, before Charles could call out, Tomas raised his rifle, sighted, and fired. The wolf went down and got up immediately and continued running toward the tree line, where it disappeared. They rode for a day. Followed the tracks and the blood. Late that evening they came to a small stream into which the tracks disappeared. Charles crossed over and walked one bank while Tomas walked the other, looking for the place where the wolf had exited. The size of its paw prints indicated it was a large animal, bigger than anything Charles had ever seen, but he didn’t tell Tomas this. They walked for a mile and then, finding nothing, turned back.
The next morning, Charles woke early and climbed the trail above the camp. Reaching a point where he could look down on the camp, he sat on a rock and watched the smoke from the fire curl upward. He saw Tomas climb out of the tent, stand, and stretch and look around. Tomas called out, a faint “hello,” and Charles thought, in that moment, that the man was a fool. He sighted the scope of his Browning and laid the crosshair inside Tomas’s left ear. He felt nothing, just a slight breeze on his neck and the smoothness of the stock against his cheek.
Once, out hunting alone a few years earlier, Charles had felt like he was walking point again and he had heard a sharp crack and panicked and dropped and covered his head. When he’d looked up from the mulch of boughs and wet leaves, he saw a pheasant staring at him. It was shaped like a pear; one eye opened and closed sleepily. Charles had laughed, and the pheasant had thumped its wings and exploded upward.
Now, his back against the flat rock, Tomas’s ear in his scope, he was taken back, and he felt the easy power and the fear. He could shoot the man. He wanted, for a small moment, to shoot the man. But he didn’t. He swung his scope and sighted the ATV and the tent and then, further east, he located the trail they had descended the day before. Upwind, just at the edge of the trail, he saw the wolf. At first he thought it might be a grizzly, because of the size and silver fur at the neck, but then it began to limp down toward the camp and Charles recognized the long lope. He watched it approach the camp, sliding west and then east, favoring its right front leg. He imagined that the wolf had found their day-old scent but hadn’t yet caught wind of the camp. Tomas was moving around, laying out a larger fire, cooking.
Charles thought that as soon as the wolf heard Tomas or smelled him, it would retreat. Still, he watched through his scope. About two hundred yards from the camp the wolf stopped and smelled the air. Backed up slightly. Then it swiveled and slid through the brush and disappeared.
When Charles told Tomas about the wolf later, Tomas wanted to know why he hadn’t killed it. “Too far? Was that it?”
“No, I could have shot it,” Charles said. Then he said, “Could have shot you too.”
Tomas looked up. His head turned and one eyelid fluttered and he put a finger up to stop it. “You’re crazy,” he said.
“I didn’t shoot you, though, did I? You’re still sitting here, eating bacon, drinking coffee.”
Tomas didn’t speak.
“That’s what happens,” Charles said. “We make certain decisions and the decision takes on a story and the story has a history of its own and the history becomes fact. Might be warped, but it’s fact. Not a whole lot different than luck.”
For two more days they tracked the big silver-backed wolf. At one point they came across a fresh kill, a young doe that had been hauled down by another animal, and they sighted a few black bear that were too young to shoot.
On the last night of the trip, after a few drinks of whiskey and a quiet evening around the fire, Charles climbed into the tent and fell asleep to the crack of the wood burning and the rustle of Tomas moving about the campsite. During the night he woke from a dream in which he had come face-to-face with the wolf and shot it between the eyes. He lay on his back in the dark, his hands clutching the sleeping bag. In the dream, just before he killed the wolf, it had called out in a language that was mournful and ancient.
WHEN JIMMY POE HAD SENT CHARLES THE BOOK, CHARLES HAD read it over the period of a day and a night, and then, almost immediately, he had begun to read it again. In some ways he was like a man who had lost something of value years ago and had just now become aware of that loss. At the end of the novel Kiet has just come back from the war to a city that is ghostly and alien. He wanders the streets, calling out for a lost lover. He suffers from nightmares and takes solace in sleeping with a woman who lives near him. There is the gray light, the rubble in the streets, the green of a tree growing out of a bomb crater, the scent of a light rain dusting the street.
Charles imagined himself falling out of the sky and landing in that place. He did not see the impracticality of that. And so in October, twenty-eight years after leaving Vietnam as a young soldier, Charles made the return trip, thinking that in some way he might conclude an event in his life that had consumed and shaped him. He was not entirely hopeful; in fact, because of this lack of hope, he cheerfully told his children that he would be traveling as a tourist. There would be no real intent, he said.
In Hanoi, upon first arriving in Vietnam, he found a room in a run-down hotel with uneven stairs and cold-water showers. For the first two days he suffered from jet lag; he slept during the day and at night he looked out through dirty windows to the neighbor’s balcony and beyond into a badly lit room where a man was reading. One evening, late, he left his hotel and walked down to Hoan Kiem Lake. He remembered, in Dang Tho’s novel, that there were scenes in and around this lake. However, the description of the city and the lake was different from what he was seeing now. In the book, the city was harder and dirtier. It had just survived massive bombing, and people wandered around in a waste-land.
His third morning in Hanoi he bought a train ticket for Danang, and then he spent the remainder of the day wandering the old city. At a sidewalk restaurant he ate a soup with things he didn’t recognize floating in it, and the hawkers called out to him as he passed them by. Once, out of curiosity, he had his shoes shined and he found himself mesmerized by the quick hands and the dark head of the young boy working at his shoes. A girl wearing a gray felt hat rode by on her bicycle, in her basket a
bundle of pink flowers. The light was dusty. The air was cool. He sat in a coffee shop and drank iced coffee. In his bag he had the novel. He took it out, and on one of the blank pages at the back he wrote down that day’s date and beneath it he wrote “Hanoi.” He looked up and saw a woman in a red ao dai hang laundry off her balcony. He wrote down what he saw, describing the woman’s fluid movements and the color of the sky. He wrote that the blank page was daunting and whatever he chose to write would seem unimportant. Later, he bought three postcards and sent them to his children, saying that never had he seen so much activity and that everyone, except for him, seemed to move hastily and with great purpose.
He left Hanoi by train and traveled through the night, riding second-class. At each stop, girls with platters of sticky rice and sweet treats passed through the car or called out from beneath the open windows. Candles were mounted on the platters and so the effect was sacred; the flames waved and beckoned and in some cases died, and then were instantly reborn.
He slept and when he wasn’t sleeping he watched his companions. Across from him there was a young couple with a newborn. The baby was silent and at one point Charles thought it might be dead. But the mother, a girl of shocking beauty, held a bottle against the baby’s mouth and it stirred and sucked and the girl raised her eyes, caught Charles watching, and looked away. The husband slept and woke occasionally, only to rise and stand by the open doors, at the back of the car, and smoke. When he returned, he ate an orange and then slept some more. He had a perfectly groomed mustache and he wore shoes of brown leather and dark slacks that were badly pressed.
It was a slow trip south with numerous stops. Charles dreamed on and off. They were surprising dreams, in that they were neither dark nor troubling. Laughter figured in some, and singing. In one dream he was young and marrying a girl with red hair and the girl was not Sara but she said his name, Charlie, as Sara had. They danced while a violin played a jig and at the end of the dance the girl turned to him and said his name again and she kissed his chest, just below the throat. Then the train stopped and he woke. The mother across from him was sleeping. She had placed the baby between herself and her husband and she had curled up her legs to stop the infant from rolling onto the floor. It was awkward and impossible, but still, she slept.
The couple with the baby left the train at a midmorning stop. They were replaced by a grandmother and a child of about twelve, who was carrying a bamboo cage with two birds. The child talked quickly and the grandma told her to shush. The child stuck a finger through the bamboo and the birds went wild and pecked at the girl and she laughed. Her black eyes sought out Charles and she said, “Hello, how are you?”
Charles said he was fine and asked, “How are you?”
“I am fine,” the girl announced, and she giggled.
Later, at the request of her grandma, she put a brightly colored cloth over the cage and the sound of the birds disappeared.
At the station in Hue, Charles bought an iced coffee from a boy passing through the train. It was in a glass, and the boy disappeared and then returned to retrieve the glass just before the train left. Coming down through the pass beyond Hue, Charles saw the mountains falling away into the ocean and he could not remember such magnificence. Sometimes, their train passed another passenger train going in the opposite direction, and through the windows he caught flashes of families and children and groups of men dressed in army uniforms and old women smoking homemade cigars. The girl across from him played a game with two sticks. She talked to herself as she played. At one stop Charles bought her a yellowish candy that looked like peanut brittle. She took it and turned to her grandma, who was sleeping. Then she nodded and sucked on the candy.
When they arrived in Danang, he took a room at the Binh Duong Hotel. It offered a view of the river and the harbor and at night he sometimes woke to the desolate call of a ship. When he couldn’t sleep, he stood by the open window of his fifth-floor room and he watched the city and listened to the noise of the traffic and he saw the lights of the boats far out at sea. He took his meals in small restaurants, usually eating dinner late and then walking back to the hotel. Sometimes he stopped close to the tennis courts on Quang Trung Street and smoked and watched the prostitutes. He wasn’t lonely, but he thought that if he ever was, he would come back and hire the girl in black stockings.
Then one day, he met an American couple, Jack and Elaine Gouds. They found him; talked to him in a restaurant one evening and invited him to join their table. He agreed. There was Jack and Elaine and their daughter, Jane, and their son, Sammy, who thumped his fists against the table and called for noodles. He was introduced to Vo Van Thanh, a translator who was sitting with them. Charles explained that he was visiting Danang because this was where he had been stationed during the war. “I’m one of those burdened ex-soldiers, I guess.” He lit a cigarette, blew the smoke to the ceiling, and shrugged. He held out the pack of cigarettes. Thanh waved a hand. Jack shook his head. Elaine looked at Charles, and then away, bending toward Sammy. She was brusque; when Jack asked her a question, she ignored him or answered curtly. She had a lovely neck, and when she looked up from Sammy’s furrowed brow, Charles saw the pulsing of a vein. Her daughter, Jane, was more like the father, softer.
Jack said that Thanh would be a good man to hire if Charles needed a guide. “He’s experienced. Knows the temperament of the West. Understands nuance. Isn’t that right, Thanh?”
Thanh deferred. He shook his head and said, “Not right.”
“See?” Jack laughed. Put a hand on Thanh’s shoulder.
Charles learned that the Goudses were in Danang because of Jack. He had taken a year off work as a salesman to live in Danang, where he said the average man had no idea who God was. He said that the Vietnamese authorities saw him as a teacher of English, but this was simply a way to obtain visas. “We have work to do,” he said, and as he spoke he looked down into his glass of beer and then he lifted his head and said, “I love this country. But it is aimless.”
Elaine said, “Jack has a mission.” She shook her head as if the four words she had just uttered were the engine that was pulling the family to some unforeseen and terrible doom. Jane was eating ice cream out of a small glass bowl. She was watching her father and mother. Her face was round and morose.
Thanh listened to the conversation without any expression. He drank slowly, and his eyes moved from Jack to Elaine to Charles. He had a high forehead and what hair he had left was dark. Charles wanted to ask him questions but didn’t.
When they left the restaurant, Elaine paused at the entrance and told Thanh to bring Charles over the next day. “Okay?” She said to Charles, “He’ll pick you up and show you where we live. Come by for a glass of wine or something to eat.” And then she left, as if she were used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
Thanh rode Charles back to his hotel. It was warm. The tail-lights of many motorcycles lit up the streets. Close to the hotel Thanh stopped at a kiosk and an old woman poured a whiskey bottle of gasoline into his tank. He stood beside his motorcycle, a small man wearing gray slacks and a white shirt with short sleeves. His shoes were worn and scuffed.
The next morning Thanh did as Elaine had asked. He took Charles to the Gouds’s house. They sat on the balcony and looked out over the smoke of a misty morning. After a while Jack stood up and said that he and Thanh had to run some errands. When they had gone, Elaine served Charles coffee. She drank juice and chased it with coffee. She was wearing a loose-fitting black dress of a light material that fell to just above her knees. She was barefoot, her legs were bare as well, the dress was sleeveless; her mouth went up on one side in a sort of half smile.
She said, “Jane and Sammy are out at the market with the nanny.”
Charles sat in a wicker chair with a soft cushion. He was surprised by the comfort and the amenities and he called the surroundings lavish. Elaine laughed and said that opulence was relative. There was a brief silence, not awkward, and then Elaine asked Charles why he
was there and where he came from.
Charles talked about his children and about his life in Canada and as he spoke he saw how easily history could be related as both unblemished and inconsequential. He said, “Because I was a soldier here when I was young, I have memories and other things to settle. So, you see.”
And she did seem to see. She was not as harsh as he had initially believed. When he smoked, she touched his arm and asked for a cigarette, bending toward his proffered light almost clandestinely, explaining that Jack disliked her smoking, and of course, she didn’t want the kids to know.
There was something wistful about her. During his subsequent visits, he found himself drawn to her, to the oddity of her gestures and her habit of throwing her hands in the air as if she could not believe her circumstances. “Stupid country,” she said, and her hands went up. Or at dinner, after several glasses of wine and an argument with Jack, she turned to Charles and whispered, “Jack be nimble.” And her hands went up.
One Friday, late afternoon, he called on the family and she was alone; Jack had taken the children to the roller rink. She was on the balcony, sitting in her usual chair. Her bare legs, the half full glass of wine, the magazine in her lap—he noted and found pleasure in these things. She’d cut her hair. He mentioned this.
“Do you like it? Sort of flapper.”
It was. The bangs highlighted her green eyes. He nodded and sat. He said that he was lost.
THAT DAY, HE HAD RENTED A CAR AND DRIVER AND ARRANGED TO go with Thanh down the Number One Highway, south into Quang Ngai Province. About an hour out of Danang they had turned onto a side road and had driven toward the mountains until they came to a small village. They got out of the car. There were a few houses made of wood and corrugated tin. A crowd gathered. Dogs and women and old men and young children. The children pulled at Charles’s pants. Thanh pushed them away and spoke sharply, but no one listened to him. During the walk through the village the children kept pushing against Charles, and at one point a young boy wearing only shorts tried to put his hand in Charles’s pocket. Charles grabbed his shoulder and said, “No.”
