A River in May

by Edward Wilson

  The staff at the Vietnamese Army hospital didn’t drill out Dieu’s wound; they made no attempt to debride it at all. Maybe they didn’t know how, maybe they didn’t have the equipment. In fact, they did nothing but paint the surfaces of the wound with antiseptic and then put a dressing on it. Septicemia set in, and then they didn’t give him enough penicillin – if it was penicillin at all (the Harry Limes of the medical supply corps were selling it on the black market where Viet Cong agents paid excellent prices). Then gangrene set in and they amputated his leg just below the knee – but not high enough. So now they had to amputate again, leaving just enough thigh to fit an artificial limb.

  While Carson was flying back to Nui Hoa Den, clutching the whisky he had wanted to give his friend and hoping that no one could see his tears, Lopez was drinking pastis on the balcony of Le Grand Hôtel in the old port quarter of Da Nang. He was waiting for Mr Chou. As he drank, Lopez fantasized that he was back in France. The illusion was helped by the presence of the only other customer, a tall dapper Frenchman wearing wraparound sunglasses and a white linen suit. The Frenchman sat a discreet two tables away, drinking a café crème and reading the financial pages of Le Figaro.

  The balcony of the hotel was screened, not against terrorist grenades like other restaurants, but merely because of the mosquitoes which rose from the river which ran parallel to the street. Le Grand Hôtel didn’t need anti-grenade mesh on its windows – the management paid protection money.

  There were few Americans in Da Nang. The city had been declared off limits after two pilots, who went off to find girls, found their throats cut instead. Their bodies later turned up on a rubbish tip with their hands bound and their amputated sex organs shoved down their throats. Lopez wasn’t worried – the pilots had just been unlucky, and maybe careless too. Still, he wished that he were wearing a white suit like the Frenchman instead of a green US army uniform. Then he could ask him about the latest rubber prices on the bourse and everyone would think that – with his skin – he was, say, from Marseilles and had an Algerian mother.

  Lopez liked sitting on the balcony amid all the fading elegance of peeling shutters and Art Nouveau ironwork, watching beads of sweat form on the ice-water jug and listening to the music of the street and river. A world, a civilized world, away from Boca and the Americans.

  Lopez was too preoccupied to notice Chou’s arrival. The merchant was wearing a white shirt, light blue trousers and the sort of smart white canvas shoes worn by 1930s yachtsmen. Chou bragged about being the last in a line of Chinese merchants who first arrived in Da Nang in the 1890s. The rest of his extended family had long since moved on to Singapore, Malaysia, the Persian Gulf, Canada. Chou alone had remained in Vietnam, and now he realized it was almost time to go. He knew that one day the Americans were going to leave and that, no matter which Vietnamese won, that his carrottes, as the French used to say, would be cooked. So he had to pile up lots of loot, an escape fund for bribes, exit visas and the cost of setting up again in whichever backwater of the Pacific he could buy himself an entrance ticket.

  Chou immediately spotted Lopez on the hotel balcony and introduced himself. The merchant ordered a round of drinks. There was half an hour of small talk before Chou started the process of negotiation and bribery. They drank another round of pastis before they left the hotel. Their first destination was a jeweler. His shop was full of stuff other than jewelry, weird things which had mysteriously found their way there from all over the world. On the wall hung an English bowler hat and a rolled umbrella. Lopez, unable to imagine how it had got there, took the hat down, blew the dust off it and looked inside; it had apparently belonged to a P.W. Long, Esq., and had been supplied by Medler and Gower, Gentlemen’s Outfitters, of Norwich.

  Chou asked what the lieutenant would like for his wife. Lopez said there wasn’t one. Chou then asked who was the most important woman in his life. Lopez felt the pain come back, sharp, sudden, in the center of his being.

  ‘Your mother? A sister, perhaps?’

  Lopez thought of Quentin. He wondered if the girl from the Auvergne had learned that her lover was dead – or if it mattered. ‘A Frenchwoman,’ he said.

  ‘Not an American? How interesting.’

  ‘No, not one of them.’

  ‘What is her name?’

  Quentin hadn’t said. Lopez picked the first French name that came to mind. ‘Sophie.’

  ‘Is she blonde and fair?’

  ‘No; au contraire, she has thick black hair and smooth olive skin.’

  ‘Then gold would suit her. Is she of the town?’

  ‘No, the country. Her father is a herder in the Cantal, the highest mountains of the Auvergne. In the winter, she has to get up two hours before dawn to milk the goats and to break the ice in their water troughs.’

  Chou lit another Gitane. ‘She sounds a most extraordinary young woman.’

  ‘She certainly is. Her passion is music. She plays the cello – so much concentration, her eyes become bottomless dark pools. A man could drown in them.’

  The jeweler meanwhile kept fetching trays of rings, bracelets and anklets, all of which Chou waved away as not being worthy of the Trung Uy’s ‘shepherdess’. Lopez found the jewelry on offer flashy and vulgar, but after twenty trays of tat there was one piece – diffident and almost inconspicuous amid the brassy brooches and necklaces – that caught his eye. It was an antique hair clip made from Vietnamese gold. Chou congratulated Lopez on his good taste. The hair clip was a beautiful piece, simple but elegant and engraved with the Chinese symbols for happiness and long life. Lopez tried to imagine what it would look like in the thick black tresses of his imaginary girl from the Auvergne. He tried not to imagine what it would have looked like on Ianthe.

  While the jeweler wrapped the hair clip, Chou asked Lopez what he would like for his favorite concubine. When he explained there was no concubine, Chou became distraught. He looked so upset that Lopez was tempted to invent a second woman.

  That evening they went back to Le Grand Hotel for dinner. There was fish followed by roast duckling and braised pigeons. Chou ordered the most expensive white Burgundy on the list. He restricted himself to a glass of beer and insisted that Lopez finish the wine on his own. As his honored guest, Chou offered Lopez the heads of the birds. Chinese etiquette meant that Lopez had to suck out the brains, which he did.

  After coffee and liqueurs, Chou drove Lopez to a house on Trung Trac Street where he had arranged an appointment with the beautiful concubine of a Vietnamese general, who had learned to be entrepreneurial in his absence. She did to Lopez – only with consummate skill and subtlety – what he had done to the duck and pigeons.

  The next morning Lopez watched the most remarkable monsoon rain squall he had ever seen sweep in from the South China Sea. The rain came in solid sheets at a forty-five degree angle, the surf was being pounded so hard that it was simmering over the beach like boiling milk, the sand had turned into wet pastry. The rain made Lopez think about Sergeant-major Dieu: it was as if his ancestral spirits were foaming out of the void to greet him.

  Lopez knew that it was going to be his last visit to the hospital. This time there weren’t even sheets. Dieu’s stump bandage was stained with dark fluids. Lopez found the stench of gangrene putrefaction overpowering. Dieu already knew the truth, he knew that he was going to die. Lopez asked him if he wanted morphine.

  ‘No.’ His voice was soft and faint, almost like a child’s.

  ‘You’ve always been a Communist cadre, haven’t you?’

  Dieu’s eyes were fixed on a lone fly buzzing above his face. It wasn’t envy, just regret that the fly was still going to be alive when he was dead. The fly, drawn to the smells coming from the stump, disappeared to the other end of the bed.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Lopez, ‘it was the right path to follow.’

  ‘Some water, please.’ Lopez held the cup to Dieu’s lips. He drank. ‘You ask me these questions even when I’m dying.’

  ‘Because now we can�
��t hurt you: you can tell the truth.’

  For a long time Dieu stared into nothingness. He was so still and quiet Lopez wondered if he was already dead.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Lopez, not knowing whether the man he was speaking to was alive or dead, ‘maybe, I want to follow that path too. Tell me how.’

  Dieu stirred with all the strength and anger of death, and turned his eyes on Lopez. ‘You want their names, so you can torture them to find out more names, so you can kill them.’

  ‘No, I would never hurt them. I might help them. Trust me.’

  ‘Trung Uy Lopez, when an interrogator says “trust me” he really means “fuck you”.’

  Lopez reached under the sheets and touched Dieu’s arm; it was hot and dry, like a kindling twig. ‘For months I protected you, for months Redhorn and Boca wanted you arrested. They knew all about you.’

  ‘Tactics, not protection. You wanted to see where the thread would lead.’ He closed his eyes and lay back breathing deeply. After what seemed a long while and many thoughts Dieu reached out and took Lopez’s hand. ‘But – but – I will give you one name and no more.’ Passion and madness had begun to glow in his eyes, he drew Lopez to him and whispered a name in his ear, the name of his wife.

  ‘Whatever you think, I won’t betray her. It is our secret.’

  Dieu’s whisper was barely audible. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Why her? Why expose her and not the others?’

  Dieu used all his strength to raise himself on his elbow; his voice was full of bitterness. ‘Is she here? Is she here now?’

  A week after Dieu’s death Lopez went back to Da Nang so he could pay his condolences to the widow. She was known as Madame Nguyen Thi Binh – Lopez wondered why she hadn’t taken her husband’s name. He found Madame Binh’s house by turning off Doc Lap Street into a dingy alley where there was a bicycle repair shop. Someone, probably Ky, had told him that Madame Binh owned the lease. There were three greasy hard-looking men in the bike shop who stared at Lopez as if trying to intimidate. The alley then opened unexpectedly into a small sunny courtyard with a fountain and miniature trees; Madame Binh’s house was on the left.

  She greeted Lopez with poise, dignity and a limp handshake. Madame Binh was an imposing full-breasted woman of about forty. Lopez found it difficult to imagine her and Dieu rolling around in the sack together; she seemed too stately for his tastes. The widow was wearing a formal ao dai with a high stiff collar, and her hair was pulled back into a bun revealing delicate ears pierced with small jade earrings.

  She placed Lopez in a small stuffy room next to the entrance hall and left him there while she went to arrange tea. On one wall was an out of date Bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai calendar with a color photograph of a modern bustling harbor, all gleaming cranes and container ships. The only other decorations were two silk screen prints depicting lonely mountain crags with a bird or two clinging to weather-blasted branches. There was also a live bird in an ornamental cage.

  A servant girl in her teens brought the tea. She was slight and pretty except for a damaged and blind eye that was shriveled to the size of a pea. Conversation with Madame Binh was difficult because every time Lopez tried to speak, the bird – a type of canary – burst into a song so melancholy and beautiful that interrupting would be ill mannered. Meanwhile, Madame Binh seemed so detached that Lopez wondered if she had forgotten that he was there. When she did speak Lopez wasn’t certain whether she was talking to him or to the bird – and sometimes she seemed to be speaking to both of them or to no one at all. There were many silences. Finally, Madame Binh caressed the birdcage, cooed at its inmate and then explained to Lopez that the bird sang so much because it had lost its mate. She then looked at the floor and added, ‘The bird and I, Lieutenant Lopez, are very much the same: we have both lost our mates.’

  Lopez started to tell her how much he had admired and respected Sergeant-major Dieu. She stopped him from saying more – ‘Not him, not him.’ Lopez wondered what to say next; he decided to keep quiet. Madame Binh looked at the floor. Lopez looked at the floor too, waiting for the passage of minutes to dilute the embarrassment. After a while, when he realized that he could spend the rest of the day studying the cracks in Madame Binh’s floor tiles, he said, ‘War and lost love are very sad things.’

  Madame Binh said nothing – she merely moved her head slowly from side to side, very slowly. She was in a different world, in an almost catatonic trance.

  A minute later she snapped out it, poured more tea and told Lopez that she and her friend often went to see movies at the Institut Français on Bach Dang Street. The last one she had seen was L’Annèe Derniére à Marienbad – she had found the story difficult to understand. Her favorite movies were Singin’ in the Rain – which made her feel happy – and Brief Encounter which, despite having to read the French subtitles, she had seen four times.

  When Lopez rose to leave Madame Binh shook hands again and said, ‘When you return to Nui Hoa Den, please give my best wishes to Nguyen Van Kim.’ For a second or two Lopez was surprised that she knew Mr Kim. Then something jogged his memory. Was it an unguarded remark or a facial expression? Things were connecting.

  When Lopez went back to his jeep the bicycle shop gang stopped work once again so they could stare. They watched Lopez as he crawled underneath the jeep to check for booby traps. He could hear them laughing. His final check was inside the fuel tank. The Viet Cong sometimes used young boys to slip grenades wrapped in surgical tape into the gas tanks of American vehicles: after a time the solvent property of the gasoline dissolved the adhesive, allowing the tape to unwind and release the arming lever of the grenade. The resulting fireball would turn the driver into a human torch. Lopez thought the jeep seemed clean, but the grins from the bike shop worried him and made him check again.

  Lopez turned left into Bach Dang Street – he had decided to make a detour to see what was on at the Institut Français. As soon as he completed the turn, a white-canopied Japanese jeep swerved in front of him and made him stop. How, thought Lopez, did he know where to find me? He must have his own spy network. Mr Chou got out of his jeep and feigned surprise: ‘Ha, ha. Is it not funny, Lieutenant Lopez, that we meet again so soon? But I am so glad.’ Lopez felt his elbow clamped by a bony tentacle of a hand. ‘Only yesterday I was thinking: Lieutenant Lopez needs a new wristwatch; that one’s good enough for a soldier but not for an officer …’

  It soon became evident that the canteen deal had been a success and that Chou wanted to show his gratitude. Lopez was escorted to another jeweler where an officer’s Rolex replaced his soldierly Seiko. Afterwards there was lunch at the Club Select where Chou asked Lopez if he knew anything about the canteen franchise at Lang Khe. The merchant had heard that the concession was still open for bidding. Probably, thought Lopez, because the camp was under siege. In any case, he promised to help. Chou showed his gratitude by buying Lopez another blow-job (not as good as the general’s concubine) and ‘souveniring’ him a bottle of Pernod.

  Lopez averted his eyes from the I Corps mortuary as he drove past on his way back to China Beach, but couldn’t block his ears to the funereal hum from the Graves Reg refrigeration condensers. After all, they had to keep the boys nice and fresh. Lopez remembered that he still had to pick up December’s pay for the CIDG, and was annoyed with himself for forgetting to ask Madame Binh if she had received the death gratuity for Sergeant-major Dieu.

  Christmas passed unobserved and unlamented at the C-team HQ. They had been spared Bob Hope, but were visited by a famous actress in her mid-fifties who, owing to her status as a reserve colonel in the Nursing Corps, was dressed in full combat gear. Lopez was drunk when she arrived unannounced in the officers’ club bar, and he found the whole thing surreal. The last time he had seen the woman was on film – in a flag-waver Second World War movie playing a nurse trying to cheer up battle wearied troops somewhere in the Pacific – and now here she was doing the same thing all over again. He wondered where the cameras wer
e.

  It got more bizarre still. When she had finished her comedy routine, she started hugging and kissing. Lopez got a bit of tongue. The actress told him, ‘You Latino boys are the greatest lovers.’ Travis got her to autograph his underpants. She ordered drinks all around, downed a double whiskey, and said that she loved them all ‘to bits’, but apologized for not being able to do more. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘if I fuck one of you, I’ll have to fuck all of you and a bunch of studs like you would be too much for an old girl like me.’ A second later she was gone, blowing kisses like crazy, on her way to visit some ‘fly boys’. Lopez thought he could still smell her perfume clinging to his combat blouse. Later, Travis and Lopez got even more drunk. Stinking drunk. Travis had just been discharged from the hospital at Monkey Mountain – he had managed to get shot through the hand during an altercation with his Vietnamese counterpart. In order to save face all around, Travis been re-assigned to Lang Khe, the northernmost camp, the one that was ‘truly in the shit’, and where Chou wanted a canteen concession.

  When he got really drunk – ‘hawg-whimperin’ assholed’ – Travis stripped off his bandages and flourished his wounded hand. ‘This here, you guys, is a gen-u-wine stigmata. I want you all to know – it appeared the day I renounced sexual sin.’ Later, after even more drink, he started claiming to be ‘Jee-sus Christ, crucified and risen from the daid.’ Lopez was surprised how many officers found his behavior offensive. Maybe there were more closet Christians in the unit than Lopez had supposed.

  The next morning, while Travis was trying to sober up, Lopez sat on the side of his bunk and started to tell him about Mr Chou and his interest in Lang Khe. Travis said he didn’t give a fuck who got the franchise. ‘The only thing I want,’ he buried his head in the pillow, ‘is to stop that sledgehammer wrecking what’s left of my brain.’