Father Pierre leaned heavily on his cane. His gaze took in the fountain and the concrete benches now overgrown with weeds. Weeds often grew where memory said grass should grow. His eyes, unfocused, peered into the past, also seeing Pete and Mhai together. He signed at length.
“After the battle at the hotel,” he said, “I am not seeing Lt. Pete for more than two weeks. The next time I am seeing him, it ees late in the evening. Mhai had left in the morning and not returned. Lt. Pete storms into the mission. He seemed in a terrible way, both in a rage and like he ees in great pain. That ees when he carries all the oil paintings he has made of her into the garden and builds of them a bonfire. Then he burns her clothing and everything else he could find that once ees belonging to her. It ees almost as though he wants to erase all signs of her existence on earth. I am never forgetting how his face looked. It ees the same day as the occurrences at Vam Tho—“
“Yes,” I interrupted before he could go on.
The priest’s tired eyes regarded me. “You are aware of Vam Tho, Monsieur Kazmarek?”
He knew. I was almost sure he knew. But it had been such a long time ago. I felt my heart pounding.
“I know about...” I couldn’t say the name, not even after the passage of so many years.
“…Vam Tho,” Father Pierre supplied, watching me.
“Yes.”
“Are you ill, monsieur? Would you like an iced tea?”
“I’m all right.”
He let himself down on one of the concrete benches with his dragon cane. I sat down next to him. The old man sucked in a quavering breath so long and of such rattling volume that it must have filled every hollow in his thread-like body. Then he exhaled, just as slowly and just as noisily, and it was like I watched his soul leaving. It occurred to me that he was slowly dying day by day. Soon there would be nothing left of him except the crucifix around his neck and the long faded black robe. Man arrived on earth and then he was gone and the entire process in the grander scheme of things all happened in the beat of a heart, the snap of fingers, the flash of lightning. Mystery lay before birth, and mystery lay after death.
I wondered if Father Pierre ever had doubts about God and heaven. No matter how much a man believed, he could not keep from having his doubts. I wondered what doubts Pete had had.
I had my doubts. Was there really reward and punishment in the afterlife? I always told myself it wasn’t death and its aftermath I feared so much as it was the inevitability of death and what came after. The older you got, the more inevitable it became. Each of us started dying the day we were born. Each day we died a little more. There were some days when we died more than on other days. Sometimes, foolishly, I wanted to stand up and shout at God: It ain’t fair! It just ain’t fair!
Suddenly, I felt an urge to get out of here before the priest expired before my eyes. Joints popped and cracked as I rose from the concrete bench. I arched my back to loosen the stiffness.
“Whatever happened to Mhai?” I asked.
Father Pierre’s eyes slowly focused. “I never saw either of them again. Neither Mhai nor Lt. Pete.”
I thought there must be more. Surely he had heard something. But if he had, he chose for some reason of his own not to go any further. As far as he was concerned, the story of Pete and Mhai ended on that day after they both left the mission never to return.
“’The present is the funeral of the past, “ he quoted mysteriously,
“’And man the living sepulchre of life. “
One last time I climbed the worn stone steps to the antechamber that had been Mhai’s cell more than thirty years ago. I stood before Pete’s oil of her on the bare wall. We looked at each other, she with those sad dark eyes that would never change, me with my eyes ageing. For Pete, for me, for the priest, Mhai would never grow old.
I walked out of the mission and didn’t look back. I think Father Pierre was happy to see me go. Reaching into the past had taken much out of him. Van waited for me outside the walls in his red taxi. I got in, slammed the door, and watched a kid in khaki shorts ride a black water buffalo down the street.
“Where to now, boss? Back to Ho Chi Minh City?”
I watched two women in Western clothing—jeans and tops—stop to talk to each other. One of them balanced a basket of laundry on her head.
“What is it you want to do now, boss?”
What I wanted was to go home. Or at least go back to the empty house that served as home next door to Pete’s empty house. I had no business returning to Vietnam in the first place. It was a foolish undertaking, a stupid quest made all the more stupid by the disturbing realization, as yet not fully admitted, that I returned as much for my own sake as for Pete’s, as much to place my own demons at rest as to confront Pete’s.
I admonished myself that it was better simply to let sleeping pratas lie. Both Pete’s and mine. Everything seemed to be leading to Vam Tho—and Vam Tho was the ultimate last place to which I needed to return, either in memory or in person. I had blocked it out of my conscious mind for over three decades, so that when it returned it was always through the subconscious in the middle of sweaty nights.
I almost ordered Van to drive straight to the airport. Do not stop at go. Go now.
Instead, I hesitated and in the hesitation lost momentum. I couldn’t stop now, in spite of the demons lurking ahead. Mhai’s eyes would haunt me for the rest of the short years I had left on earth. Her story wasn’t finished. I still hadn’t uncovered the thing between Pete and her that had haunted him for the rest of his life.
I steeled myself and got out of the taxi.
“Van, I need to walk. Do you remember the brick-building orphanage down the streets? We passed it on the way in.”
“The hotel Father Pierre spoke of. The Safe Harbor for Children?”
“Is that the English translation? Meet me there.”
Lump Adkins remembered C. C. Cochran becoming a doctor after the war and returning to Vietnam to marry a Vietnamese nationalist. That was probably Bonnie My. According to Father Pierre, Bonnie sold her hotel to Austrian missionaries, who turned it into the present home for displaced and homeless children. Bonnie My seemed my next logical step. Perhaps someone at the orphanage could provide a lead on where I might locate her.
A neat white fence now surrounded what was formerly Bonnie My’s hotel, whorehouse and orphanage. The building had been given a thorough face-lift to cover up all the bullet holes I recalled pockmarking it the day Third Platoon marched into Dong Tam and ended up hauling off VC corpses. Ironical, I thought, how Pete Brauer was navy and had trained in the SEALs for unconventional warfare and the guerrilla tactics common in Vietnam. I was regular army and trained to take hills and hold terrain and kick ass. Pete ended up fighting conventional set-piece battles with the enemy; I ended up in a guerrilla war in which I seldom if ever met the enemy face to face.
Laughing, playing children ran and hopped and chased on the playground into which the surrounding square had been converted. They wore uniforms of blue and white. Several little girls held hands and shyly followed me to the door. An attractive Eurasian girl answered my knock.
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak Vietnamese,” I apologized, motioning for Van sitting in his taxi to come act as interpreter.
The girl waved him back, saying, “There is no need for an interpreter. I speak good English.”
She was slender and tall for a Vietnamese, with the lovely, almond-shaped eyes marking mixed parentage. Her hair was brunette and wavy, indicating dominance by her European side. She appeared to be in her late twenties, but could have been a little older. She had an aristocrat’s walk and demeanor as she escorted me inside and led the way down a short hallway to her office.
“We do not see many foreigners these days,” she explained. “When one comes to Dong Tam, the news spreads quickly. Co Ly who stays here when she is not working at the mission for Father Pierre says you remained overnight asking questions about the war. I am Connie Nhu, the headmistress a
t Safe Harbor.”
She served a hot bitter tea. While I sweetened it with sugar, I looked around the cubbyhole office where file cabinets, a table and the desk were all neatly arranged. A framed snapshot on the wall behind the headmistress’s desk caught my eye. I gave a start. I rose quickly to get a better look. The photo had yellowed from age, but the subjects in it were still recognizable. It was a picture of a much-younger Pete Brauer standing next to Mhai in front of the hotel. They had their arms around each other and were laughing into the camera.
“These two people,” I exclaimed eagerly, “are the reason I am here. You must know the woman in the picture. Her name is Mhai.”
“The picture was here when I arrived,” Connie Nhu evaded. “I liked it, so I kept it. It shows the hotel as it was then.”
Her expression looked guarded.
“His name is Pete,” I said, pointing at the picture, hoping to jog her memory. “Navy Lieutenant Peter B. Brauer. He fell in love with Mhai, the girl with him.”
“You know him! He is a friend of yours?”
Her control seemed to slip. She rose quickly from the desk and stood next to me, both of us looking at the picture. I had a feeling she knew more than she was letting on.
“It was during the war,” I said. “He had a room in this hotel. Mhai stayed at the mission.”
Her lips tightened and she looked pale. ‘Where is he now?” she asked in a strained voice.
I faced her. “You couldn’t have known him,” I said. “You’re too young. But you knew her!”
She turned away, obviously fighting for composure. She walked to the window and looked out at the playing children, keeping her back to me.
“Where is your Lt. Peter B. Brauer?” she demanded in the same strained voice.
“He died not quite a month ago.”
Her shoulders seemed to slump. I waited.
Finally, she said, “I cannot help you, Mr. Kasm—“ She stumbled over the name.
“Kazmarek. Jack Kazmarek.”
“You were her during the war, Mr. Kazmarek?”
“I was stationed at the Dong Tam army base. Please, Miss Nhu? This may sound foolish, but all I want to do is talk to Mhai if you know where she is.”
I watched her shoulders stiffen. When she turned back around, her face was set.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kazmarek. I can’t help you. That was a long time ago. I wasn’t even born then—so how could I have known either of them?”
I could read nothing in her face this time. I tried a different approach.
“Maybe the former owner can help. Her name is Bonnie My. She may have married an American.”
“I’m sure Father Pierre must have told you. She left many years ago and has never returned.”
“Maybe the Austrians who bought the hotel from her--?”
“They have also left. I am now the owner, along with my brother Bay, Father Pierre and other contributors.”
This was going nowhere. If Connie Nhu possessed any information, she was going to keep it to herself. On my way out the door, she said, “I wish you luck in your pursuit, Mr. Kazmarek.”
“If you change your mind,” I said in a final attempt, “I’ll be staying at the Continental Hotel in...” I started to say Saigon. “... in Ho Chi Minh City.”
Connie Nhu smiled. “It is still Saigon to most South Vietnamese. However, Mr. Kazmarek, if I may offer a suggestion...”
“Yes?”
“Give this up and go back home. Little can be gained in disturbing the pratas of the past. Sometimes it is not wise. It can be dangerous to dig into old graves.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I sat quietly as Van threaded his taxi through traffic out of Dong Tam on the way back to Saigon, preoccupied with my own thoughts, disappointed that the trail that began with Mhai’s portrait in Pete’s Florida Room was ending so anticlimactically in Dong Tam. Mission failure. I was also a bit troubled by Connie Nhu’s evasiveness and parting remark. It had sounded like a veiled warning. Get out of town while you can. But why would I be warned about something that happened over thirty years ago?
“Do you wish to go to Vam Tho first?” Van inquired so unexpectedly that it were as though I had sat on a live electrical wire.
“What?”
“I ask if you wish to tour Vam Tho before we return to hotel? It is not far out of our way.”
“Why would I want to go there?”
“Very big attraction. They hear about it at Harvard. I think you must like to see war monument dedicated to village when—“
“I don’t! Take me to Saigon.”
He drove in rebuked silence.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you, Van,” I apologized presently.
I got to thinking about Ensign C.C. Cochran as we drove. This was a communist country. Commie governments were notoriously paranoid about foreigners. If Cochran were residing in Vietnam, surely there was paperwork on him somewhere. It was only a matter of accessing it.
“Van, how would I locate a foreigner living in Vietnam? An American?”
Van became all smiles in his eagerness to once more be of service. “It is difficult, but it is not so difficult for a Harvard man if he knows whom to contact properly. If you wish, I will try. Spread around some money. What you call ‘grease’ in Chicago. All foreigners who reside in Peoples Republic must register name, address, and occupations. Who is it you need to find?”
I backed down. “It was only a thought,” I said.
“I am Harvard man,” Van pointed out proudly.
I gazed out the window in the direction of Vam Tho. The countryside looked familiar. Third Herd had humped all over these boonies looking for Charlie. Bravo Company eagleflighted over this same terrain on the different day.
“I’m thinking of returning home tomorrow,” I said.
Van’s eyebrows sprung into arches.
“Don’t worry. I’ve hired you for a week—so you’ll get paid for a week whether I stay or not.”
“Have you found what you returned to Vietnam to discover?”
“Not completely,” I confessed.
“Will finding the foreigner help in your discovery?”
I kept looking out the window. Every step seemed to lead me nearer Vam Tho. I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t know if I would ever be ready. Still, maybe I owed it to Pete to continue. Maybe I owed it to myself to look for the peace Pete had never found after the war. The shrink the army sent me to before I retired said the only way to resolve conflict from the past was to confront the repressed trauma. But what the fuck did shrinks know?
The issue remained unresolved when Van dropped me off at the Continental Hotel, where the staff greeted me like old friends. Van insisted on carrying my bag inside for me.
“I’ll let you know my plans tomorrow morning,” I hedged.
But as Van started to leave, a sudden impulse made me detain him. On a piece of hotel stationery I block-printed the name C. C. Cochran. I gave him a handful of piasters for “grease.” What harm could it do?
“I will see about what I can find,” Van gravely promised.
I went upstairs to my room to take a nap before dinner. I lay on my back in bed staring at the rotating ceiling fan a long time before I dozed off. Immediately, the nightmares came. Lieutenant Kazmarek-k-k-k.. Lieutenant Kazmarek-k—k-k-k.. I’m tellin you, Lieutenant Kazmarek-k-k-k.. Today is a different day...
I snapped upright in bed, screaming, “Shut the fuck up, Bugs!
CHAPTER FORTY
I had to change before going downstairs to the restaurant. My clothing was soaked with sweat.
During dinner I had the uneasy impression that one of my fellow diners at a far table in the corner was inspecting me with more than the usual curiosity locals displayed toward an easily distinguishable stranger. This man was studying me. It was like his intense dark eyes were taking me apart piece by piece. I caught him watching me every time I glanced up.
He was of mixed Vietnamese-European heritage. A
rather tall man, in his sixties perhaps, but very distinguished-looking in a dark Western suit and tie. His thick hair was black and only lightly flecked with gray.
Although his scrutiny made me uncomfortable, I ignored him and employed myself with eating. I had ordered the chicken, trying to remain as close to my regular diet as possible. Ulcers and the finicky stomach of an old man required it. When I looked up again, he was gone. Perhaps I only imagined his interest in me. A bit of remaining paranoia from a war in which you suspected any Viet who looked at you more than once of being the enemy waiting for the opportunity to blow you away. To waste you, in the vernacular of the time,
Some veterans never got over the paranoia and the hate that accompanied it. Years ago, I attended a reunion in Virginia of Colonel Hackman’s Hardcore Recondo Battalion. The Colonel wasn’t there, of course. He had shot himself years before. I had no idea of why I even attended. Curiosity, perhaps. After what happened at Vam Tho, Hackman had scattered the members of Third Platoon to the winds. I didn’t expect any of them to be there. Most of us likely couldn’t look the others straight in the eyes again after that day.
To my surprise, two of the old platoon showed up—Sgt, Holtzauer, looking paunchy and red-veined like the alkie he became, and a much-older-looking Mad Dog Carter with the bitterness like acid eating out his soul. We had dinner together, the three of us, and skirted carefully around what happened that day. Mad Dog was the one who finally brought it up.
“They were fuckin VC,” he said.
That’s where the topic died.
Sgt. Holtzauer drank too much, which seemed his regular routine, and I kept my eyes averted and my expression neutral. All I wanted was for it to be over and to get out of there. Bad humor covered the three of us like stench on a corpse.
The Return: A Novel of Vietnam Page 18
