The Man from Saigon

by Marti Leimbach

  You get ground down to powder, then you get greased, that’s what a GI told her once, his summation of the life of an infantryman. He was missing two teeth, knocked out when he dove during an attack on a firebase that was nearly overrun. He struggled with the gap in his mouth, his tongue escaping so that he developed an unwelcome lisp. Then you get greathed, he said. You thtart getting religion. You thtart wanting God.

  She understands now what he meant. It was this right here. Her feet ache. Her hands are scratched so that the blood beads against the skin, attracting flies. She watches the soldier with the long hair, the one in front, and wishes he’d trip a wire and leave nothing left of himself bigger than a stone. Then, just as she has this thought, the soldier gestures behind him, putting Son up front to act as his personal bomb squad to clear the path ahead. It bothers her to see Son there, a rifle trained on his back. She notices with relief when the guard lets the rifle drop once more. It is not difficult to imagine the soldiers getting bored with prisoners, shooting them for convenience’s sake, bringing their bodies to the river. It is unfortunate, she thinks, that she has such an imagination that she can envision the execution, or, as she walks the narrow, difficult path, almost see a booby-trap exploding. To be brave, she thinks, you need to be right here, right now, with no sense of what might happen in a few hours or days. To be very brave you need never to imagine consequences or sudden turns of events. You need, really, to have no imagination whatsoever, which is why (she concludes) good writers are not usually good combat reporters. Wrong temperament. Like bringing a race horse to a rock concert.

  They rest, squatting on the jungle floor, sitting on their ankles in the fashion of the Vietnamese. The one with the narrow head, who was carving bamboo earlier, lays the shavings in a pile and then rubs two pieces back and forth, strikes a spark with a flint and makes a fire. The flames shoot up unexpectedly and he jumps back as though something live has sprung at him. This sends the others into giggles, their grubby faces smiling in a manner that seems genuinely warm. They are friends, Susan can see that. She observes them the way she might a herd of exotic animals with their own unknowable social order. A part of her understands they may be like her and Son, who have traveled together so long that they have become a kind of family, but she doesn’t dwell on this. Instead, she tells herself they are killers—all soldiers are killers—but she hopes they are not yet completely dead inside.

  The flame is for bits of fish and rice produced from a bag. The fish are old, dried, and yet her hunger makes it smell delicious. She longs to eat. She longs to talk to Son. They have bound her wrists with green wire. She does not understand at first why they find it necessary to tie her now, after so many hours without, until she sees that once they have tied her and Son’s wrists they can put away their weapons, lie down, relax. One of them stretches out on a rock; another makes a seat out of a log, then rushes back when he is attacked by ants. The soldier who lit the fire makes up the meal and brings it to the others. The soldiers eat, chatting as they do. They drink from their canteens and make jokes, particularly the smallest of the three, the one with the sword. He lies on his back, his sword above him, splicing the air with the dark blade, commenting in a manner that occasionally brings chuckles from the other two. They might have been friends together on a camping trip. When finally they have finished eating they offer some fish to her and Son, getting out cigarettes and smoking while she and Son eat awkwardly with their hands bound.

  A few minutes later they turn, all at once, and stare at her. She would be startled, but she is too tired to be startled. All movement has been made slow by her exhaustion and the heat. It takes more than a tough look to raise her heartbeat, but it feels as though a pack of wolves has just woken up to her presence.

  “What?” she says in English.

  The thin one, the one who clubbed Son with his rifle, is the first to speak. He has a soft, high-pitched voice that is difficult to take seriously. “How long you work for American imperialists?” he asks in French.

  To her it sounds like a line out of a propaganda leaflet. She ignores it at first, but the soldier repeats the question.

  She looks to Son for guidance. He meets her gaze, then looks away.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” she begins, and the question is repeated, same as before.

  “I don’t work for them so much as explain to American women what is happening over here.”

  He looks confused, probably because she said “women,” so she answers once more. “I describe the war for Americans in their own country. So that they know what is going on,” she says.

  She thinks she should put up some sort of resistance, that at least she should refuse to answer certain questions. There would be dignity in opposing their efforts. Instead she answers casually, as though she is answering questions for a stranger on a bus, or when introduced to somebody at a party, rather than being interrogated. She would like to be the unyielding, self-possessed prisoner that Son is. He looks away from them, or straight through them. He answers nothing or shrugs. It makes no difference if they tie his hands or not; he behaves as though he is their superior in every way, speaking only when he wishes and refusing to be bullied. Even the food, which he picked at as though it were something he might discard at any moment, did not appear to interest him.

  But there are no questions that require her silence. They interrogate her in a half-hearted way, mostly asking again and again whether she works for the American army—No. Whether she helps the American officers—No. Whether she knows of the atrocities committed by the Americans. What atrocities? The napalm, the killing of civilians. Yes, of course, I know about that. What do you think? I think it is bad. You are American? No. My mother is English. From England. I was born in Buckinghamshire. She does not tell them that it was on an RAF base, that she grew up eating Raisin Bran and peanut butter as often as Weetabix and marmalade, that she has lived in the US for almost the whole of her adult life. She does not say that the clearest memory she has of Buckinghamshire is an awful boarding school in which girls were not allowed blue jeans or tampons, the use of which was tantamount to declaring oneself a slut. The Vietcong soldiers confer for a moment. Then they say, But you look like an American! All white people look alike, she replies. The small one laughs. He is missing a front tooth; she can see a centimeter of curled pink tongue in the gap of the cage of his teeth, a snail in a shell. The missing tooth makes him look even younger. They’ve been captured by evil children, she thinks.

  Because they have no idea what to do with her, or what to ask her, it seems, they move to questions about how people get engaged in America, and other odd questions about sex and marriage. American brides are not virgins, they say. Doesn’t the husband feel cheated? No. They don’t believe it. And perhaps because they don’t believe it, they go back to their original questions: Are you working for Americans? No. Do you help the American military? No. Do American girls sleep with several men before they get married?

  They can’t speak English; their French is awful, a tangle of words beneath a heavy accent that itself would make communication difficult. They must think her French is terrible, too, because they wince and shake their heads and ask her to repeat everything. Moi no compris pas toi parler, they say, which means me not understood you to speak and is unlike any French she has heard. It appears no more refined language is possible between them unless Son acts as a translator, which at the moment he appears reluctant to do.

  Finally, the one with the long hair says, “What does your father do for a job?”

  “He’s dead,” she tells them. It is true. He died of an aneurism last year. She thinks, with some regret, that he’d never have approved of her working in a war zone, that he’d have done everything possible to prevent her from going.

  “Dead?” He studies her carefully “In the war?”

  “No. He was too old for this war. He was sixty—” This is too much information. She doubts these soldiers know how old they themselves are, what
day they were born, let alone how old their fathers are. She repeats, “Mort. Il est mort long-time.”

  They nod, satisfied. Their fathers are probably dead, too, she concludes.

  Apparently, the green wire that held her wrists during their meal is necessary also for this period of interrogation. Afterwards, they free her and ask her to take photographs of them with Son’s camera. They want her to take the pictures but only when the barrel is pointed her way, and only as they appear to be taking aim. She asks to stop—again, her imagination is too fertile for this game—for what if they thought it would be amusing to have her take a photograph as they pulled the trigger? She tells herself to stop thinking so much and tries to take comfort in the fact that it is only through the frame of her camera that she sees them training their rifles on her. She comes to this realization—that they’ve relaxed their guard, that they don’t seem the least interested in killing—and it serves as a tonic to calm her. Even so, she asks them to please allow her to put the camera down. She does not want to take any more pictures, she explains. She’d like to give back the camera now.

  They appear mildly disappointed. The thin one spits, then turns away abruptly. The one with the long hair gives orders for them to carry on marching. Their new manner is to carry their weapons with the absent constancy with which small children carry their favorite teddies. The guns are there, are always there, but they have all grown accustomed to the guns, herself included, so that they seem almost as though they aren’t real, or are never fired, or contain no bullets.

  “That’s an interesting sword,” she tells the soldier with the sword. He holds it up, smiling at it as though it were something he has made himself. It’s an ugly sickle with a crude handle, but he presents it now to her as though it is a work of art birthed from his own genius.

  “This is from an automobile spring,” he tells her, running his finger along the air above the blade. “And see this handle? From a howitzer.”

  She nods, amazed. So he did make it. Seeing it as a composite of its many parts, she has to admit there is genius involved.

  A soldier’s relationship to his weapon is complicated. She recalls the time a platoon she was with fired continuously in a “mad minute” because they heard a branch snap among the trees. The noise came from every direction, even from the ground, rising up through her feet, her legs. It passed through her and she felt her body as a thin veil, a kind of skin through which sound pulsed. There was no real reason for the explosion of fire. It was only that they’d been carrying so much ammunition; they were tired of hauling it all. Afterwards, she could not hear properly. She sat on a stack of ration boxes and wrote messages on a steno pad to Marc, who was with her. Smoking, listening to that single sound eeeeeeeee e spinning in her mind like an insect, her writing pad out, her water bottle almost empty, she felt suddenly exhausted, running only on nervous energy. She might have curled up next to Marc but it was too hot for that and, anyway, she would never have shown him any affection in front of the soldiers.

  I keep thinking that somebody is just there, or there, she wrote, then indicated the treeline, watching us and deciding exactly when to shoot and which one of us to shoot first.

  Marc sat with his legs folded, knees bent, his shirt loose around his neck. His utilities had a tear in the pocket from overstuffing them with TV batteries and cables. Through the hole, she could see the white skin of his thigh, a strong contrast to the brown of his arms, his hands. He shook his head, dismissing her fear.

  It’s like a movie in my head, she wrote. How do I make it stop?

  He got her to play a game in which he wrote a line from a song and she had to guess the song. Then another game in which you filled up boxes on a hand-sketched grid. He drew her away from her thoughts. He wrote, You’re beautiful.

  They played hangman and he wrote out PEACE.

  She thinks how far away he seems now, belonging to another time. She recalls his face, his dark hair with a crown in front so that if he cuts it too short it sticks straight up. The war had produced a few early gray hairs that clustered by his temples, some new lines by his eyes from squinting in the sun. She has known him six months and in six months he has become far too important to her. She blames the tide of her affections on the war, too. It seemed to transform everything to extremes.

  “Here, look! Look, you!” It is the soldier with the sword. He is frustrated because her thoughts have drifted. He commands her attention again as a pesky younger brother might. A younger armed brother, she reminds herself, and nods quickly at the soldier and his sword, indicating she is paying attention. “This is very sharp,” he says, and holds the dark sharp edge near her palm. He wants her to admire the blade, which he has honed to a thin, lethal plane; the handle which allows a strong grip. She looks down at it, but will not touch it. It is how Marc would behave, unimpressed, a little bored. Along with the sprinkling of gray hair, Marc has also acquired here in Vietnam a bold, incautious wit that she is able to assume at times, as though having been with him so much she has assimilated this part of him.

  “What you think?” says the soldier. He looks proudly at the sword, holding it up in front of him.

  “I think you could use it to shave,” she says. “That is, if you ever needed to.”

  The soldier nods, unsure of her meaning.

  In Saigon she had become accustomed to sudden violence, expected but nonetheless surprising. People speculated; there wouldn’t be anything today, or this week, or until such-and-such a time. She walked the streets with reporters in tiger suits—their canteens and cameras and tape recorders strapped on to them, some holstering pistols—and just in front of them would be civilian women on their way to a tennis game, looking sporty and white, like women in country clubs all over America. The expats ate lavishly, whatever else was going on; the best restaurants were run by Corsicans, the best clubs by Vietnamese women. A restaurant on the Binh Loi Bridge was blown up—partially blown up—not once, but three different times and still they gathered there because of its position along the river and because it was built on stilts and was therefore irresistible for at least a single visit. Once, while between courses at another restaurant near by, she pointed out the window to where she swore she saw a VC soldier. Her companion, Marc’s cameraman, Don Locke, said, Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me, and asked the waiter for more fish sauce for his chiko rolls. She tried not to worry. The magazine liked her stories; they wanted more. Her editor cabled her to tell her she could sell her combat pieces elsewhere if they couldn’t use them. Locke ate his chiko rolls. She thought, Maybe I’m just seeing things.

  And (mostly) she did not worry. Few reporters were wounded, fewer killed. What were the chances? The tennis players rode in their air-conditioned elevators; French women sunbathed at the sports club, lying on their backs and squinting up at the F-100s soaring overhead. The helicopters dove low so that they could see the bathers, who rolled on to their backs and waved with their fingers. These women weren’t afraid. They pointed their breasts to the unseen pilots above, smiling as though to a friend. Vietnamese officers’ wives had grand social schedules. For them, Saigon was one big party. She became friendly with a girl named Nicola, who was having a longstanding affair with a lieutenant colonel who’d re-upped twice just to stay near her, and who frequently flew her to his base for parties. Hippies traveled from around the world just to check the place out. No one thought they were taking risks. And when they went home they told their stories, exaggerating all the dangers that they never themselves truly believed.

  “Son, I’m so scared,” she whispers now. She is in a hammock, he is on the ground. Even at night the jungle smells like a stagnant pond. Tonight, the world around her is so black she cannot tell if her eyes are open or shut. It is difficult to assume a relaxed expression or focus her gaze normally. Her vision seeks a destination and she finds herself straining to see in the darkness so that she has to blindfold herself with her hands. She wonders if they will kill them in their sleep, why they haven
’t killed them already, why they haven’t let them go. She doesn’t know anything, she despairs, not even if her eyes are closed. It seems unfair, all this confusion.

  The guards take turns sleeping. The one on duty sits as though in a trance and may be asleep; he has not moved in at least an hour, though time is distorted now and she cannot honestly tell. He has not moved anyway.

  Nothing makes sense. In the morning they will either be killed or get up and march. She doesn’t know why she should die, or why they are marching, because she has no idea where they are heading anyway. Perhaps the Vietcong soldiers are lost. They certainly seem unable to find their unit. They are as stranded and alone as she and Son, but it is they who have the weapons.

  “I’ve had enough,” she says now, a phrase she might have used about a bad phone line, no seat on the bus.

  From Son comes a whining noise, like that of a dog, and when she hears it she realizes he has, indeed, been listening, noticing, that he has not been nearly so removed as he appeared all day. She feels his hand on her back through the thin material of the hammock, and with that touch she becomes calmer, more solid in herself. He rubs his palm in a short circular motion, then leaves it still for a long time. She cannot remember anything being so comforting. She’d like to reach to him, but dares not. It is the first time—the only time—he has touched her.

  She met Son in a hospital in Pleiku about a week after her arrival in the country. He’d come in from the bush with a bunch of soldiers from the 4th Division, his lip cut, the blood all down his shirt, making the green cotton black. The lip looked awful, swollen so that he appeared to be pushing it out like a pouting child. It was the end of the day now and he was arguing with a nurse that he didn’t need any stitches, just give him a needle and thread; he’d do it himself. He claimed he’d stitched himself before in the field and it hadn’t even gotten infected. Please, he said as the nurse clasped his chin. Ah do it!