The Lotus and the Storm

by Lan Cao

  Occasionally we indulged in a shot of snake liquor, the meanest drink in the country. I did not like it but Phong was a Northerner and snake liquor is a northern drink. His clan fled south in 1954 when the Communists consolidated the North. I wanted to indulge his nostalgia for his hometown, Le Mat, a village just north of Hanoi. Northerners go to Le Mat to drink snake whiskey. The Saigon version was less pungent but it would have to do.

  When Phong gave him the signal, Mr. Manh brought two glasses to our table, each half-filled with high-octane rice whiskey. The old man’s agility astounded me. I watched as he pinned a cobra to the ground, then grabbed its head from behind as his assistant gripped the tail, stretching out its body to leave the underbelly exposed. Mr. Manh swabbed the snake’s chin with alcohol, then, with a perfectly coordinated set of movements and a warrior’s calmness of mind, sliced open the sterilized area with a short blade. He deftly inserted a finger inside the cut, located the heart, and severed the main artery, allowing the blood to drain into our whiskey glasses. A pulsating, glassy heart, a potent aphrodisiac, was dropped into a shot glass. Phong tossed his head back and gulped the whiskey now swirling with bright red blood down his throat, heart and all.

  Mr. Manh opened another slit farther down the snake’s belly. He shoved several fingers into the slit, removed a gallbladder, and emptied the bile into my glass, turning it a luminous green. Removing the canvas sheath from a different knife, Mr. Manh then proceeded to slice off the cobra’s hooded head, tossing the body to a cook in the open-air kitchen. The meat was grilled, the skin battered and deep-fried, and the bones dropped into a pot for soup. We munched on snake meat in all its varieties: snake and leek soup, rice porridge with snake, snakeskin chips. Exhorted to take a swig, I obliged and shot the whiskey down my throat. A sharp rawness caught. My nose burned. Phong hooted, hooked his arm around my neck, then pounded my back for show. I sat ungracefully, my skin prickled with gooseflesh.

  Night after night we drank. We nursed our bouts of loneliness together, allowed ourselves the freedom to be unburdened. Phong confided his fears and then washed them away with a bottle of “33” beer or Johnnie Walker. He bemoaned the paucity of love. He had not yet met Thu. He was not yet married. He feared he would be left behind. Would the possibility of love ever edge its way into his life? Would he meander through life untouched by it, the extravagant, ravenous kind that altered and transformed your shape? He was looking to me for reassurance that he too would be seized by the phenomenon of love, as I already knew that sort of devotion. I had just recently met my wife.

  “You’re done with loneliness for good,” he said to me.

  I didn’t know how to respond. Agreeing smacked of self-congratulatory arrogance. And disagreeing seemed disloyal to Quy.

  The realization that what I had was what Phong most wished for both comforted and filled me with unease. What if that which I loved most disappeared one day? How could I, or anyone, ever recover from that sort of loss?

  How did I know, he asked, if I would love her forever. I did not answer the question. I did not know how I knew. I just did.

  “Of course,” he said, his voice lowered. “It is easy for you. You have her.” His face glowed with heat. He turned against the open window, hands cupped, striking the wheel of his lighter.

  Later, he paused after a drink and asked, “What are you most worried about?” as he leaned back and sucked a cigarette, blowing wisps of smoke that hung in the still air. From the ceiling, a naked bulb dangled from a bare wire, its bright light magnifying the sorrow on his face. He cupped his hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare.

  I had not expected such a question. Even a hypothetical heartache was too stinging to contemplate. I revealed a different sort of anxiety to him, confiding my fear that we would be ill-equipped to push back a Communist assault. While my reply was an avoidance of his question, it was not quite a lie. Not at all, as things turned out.

  • • •

  Before President Diem was assassinated, he had looked for other allies. Malaysia sent armored cars, jeeps, and shotguns to help us equip the Civil Guards. Sir Robert Thompson arrived in Saigon from England, bringing with him stacks of notes, sheaves of maps, and the accumulated experience and wisdom that came from years of directing Britain’s spectacularly successful antiguerrilla campaign in Malaysia. An ordnance delegation was dispatched to Japan to seek engineering help. President Diem wanted us to be beholden to no one. What happened to our plans? I couldn’t say. After that day in November, the country drifted. All backup plans were sidetracked.

  Even so, we did ask questions. Once in a while we pushed for a different strategy.

  Aware of our own backwardness, we asked for modern weapons. Again, I was in charge of the paperwork, which gave me an understanding, even then, of the swift diminishment of possibilities for us. My windowless office was hot. Sweat dripped down my back. Every day I sat facing the wall, trying to cut to the fundamentals that would convince the Americans to rethink their strategy. I worked late into the evening, engaged in the niggling business of negotiating for this and that weapon. There were moments when I could concoct hope and make myself believe in a jazzed-up version of American benevolence. Surely they would see things our way once they read my reports. I felt the sharp, muttering crack of the typewriter’s keys as a great source of hope. Each key was capable of producing a crisp, satisfied sound. Problem was juxtaposed against solution. We had been given M1 rifles that were no match against the Soviet AK-47, so we petitioned for the powerful M16. In a soldier’s hand, the M16 automatic was capable of firing between seven hundred and one thousand rounds per minute. We wanted F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers and F-104 fighter jets to counteract the advanced MiG-21s the Soviets gave the North Vietnamese. I typed out our case, paragraph by paragraph.

  My reports became repetitious. In the end, we received no offensive weapons from the Americans. With a sympathetic half-smile, an American adviser said to me, “That’s what the U.S. Air Force is for if you need us.” He was not the one making the decision. The rules of this war would be decided elsewhere.

  For our war, the Americans had designed a purely defensive strategy, dragging everything out for years until they were fed up with it and with us. There would be fierce, vicious, and deadly battles and then there would be time in between, a moody, fractured time that we wistfully hoped could be translated into surrender on the part of the enemy. Year after year, the war was fought in this intense, prolonged twilight of surges and shudders.

  Soon it was obvious to us that real power lay in the North Vietnamese Army, not the Vietcong insurgents fighting in the South. At one of the many meetings held at military headquarters, General Khanh, the general who ousted the mutinous junta, solemnly pushed his chair back, stood up, and pointed to the map of Vietnam on the wall. The energy in the room was dense, tightly coiled. General Khanh took up his position on the right side of the map. I watched the pointer, tightly gripped, migrate above the demilitarized zone that divided North and South. Its tip sat above the 17th parallel. There it stayed, 17 degrees north of the equatorial plane. Immediately I tensed up. I knew what was going to be discussed because I had experimented with the idea myself. Of course it was an audacious approach—taking the war to the North. The deployment of the pointer above the 17th parallel said it all.

  “I want all options on the table,” the general declared. And then, looking straight at me, he said, “Colonel Minh, I know you’ve looked into this possibility. Could you summarize your main ideas for us? We will take each proposal on its own merits.”

  I stood up and offered my presentation. “We could send several divisions to fortify a zone along the seventeenth parallel, from Dong Ha to Savannakhet, to prevent infiltration from the North. That would be step one.”

  Encouraged by murmurs of approval, I continued. “The next step might be a landing operation at Vinh. Maybe Ha Tinh, north of the eighteenth parallel, so we can cut
their front off from their rear.”

  I leaned against the high-backed chair. It was beyond doubt a brazen plan, one that went against the prevailing orthodoxy that emphasized defense at the expense of offense. But for all its difficulties, it was still feasible, from a military standpoint.

  With barely a pause, other commanders weighed in. The marines could be used here, the airborne divisions there, the air force could provide support. I was surprised by the avalanche of not just tolerant but positive responses and concerned that the surge and swoon of euphoria would leave little room for restraint. I resisted the momentary temptation to insert a bit of doubt and ambiguity into my own plan, an urge I disguised as a quick cough. General Khanh was nodding. His facial muscles were tensed up, the eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “Which division can be moved from Saigon and redeployed?”

  Several hands went up. I hesitated, but my hand shot upward, almost by its own volition, as I looked for a way to slow the moment down. Other options should be considered, complications assessed, I suggested. At that moment, Phong cleared his throat and, with a tone that bordered on flippant, lobbed a devastating appraisal of our situation. “This has to be approved by the Americans, doesn’t it?”

  There was a moment of suffocating silence. I wasn’t sure whether I felt relieved that a counterargument had been proffered or angry that Phong was the one who had done it. Phong, who was more knowledgeable in the ways of politics, had, with one sentence, reeled us back into this brand-new world we found ourselves in.

  The general paused. Without irony, he said, “I will find the right moment to bring it up with them.”

  The meeting continued but Phong’s question served as a powerful call for restraint. He glanced at me and smiled. If I hadn’t seen that smile many times before, I could almost have mistaken it for mockery.

  When the meeting was adjourned, General Khanh stood up and solemnly said, presumably to Phong but in a voice all of us could hear, “Thank you. That was good of you to inject a necessary dose of political reality into our plan. Military strategies cannot be isolated from politics.”

  Even though a part of me agreed with this assessment, its articulation nonetheless was irksome. The political situation was clear: The Americans had to approve all plans. But the United States was like a giant tree with shallow roots and a heavy top. A storm could topple it.

  Phong began to plunge headlong into the realm of politics. He met Thu and got married. I was not sure if he was in love or just wanted to partake in the grandness of its experience. When the newlyweds first visited, I wondered if he had, with a sigh of relief, collapsed into love at long last. Had his desires finally attached themselves to another? Had he finally accomplished what he had so desperately sought?

  My wife liked Thu immediately. They both came from large landowning families. Phong’s wife was a slender willow, poised, graceful, and eager to please. When she drank tea, she wrapped her hands around the steaming cup and held it before her chest, as if she were performing a bow. In bringing her to our house, he was including her in our fold. But at that moment it felt as if he were seeking our permission, even our approval. I saw his eyes watching me with an expression that was at once imploring and nervous.

  Later when I walked with him to the door, I squeezed his hand and said, “You have found love.”

  He let a moment pass and then he said, “I have found Thu.”

  “She is lovely,” I said.

  He nodded. “She is entirely so.”

  That night, as I got myself ready for bed, I found myself thinking that Phong was still a man who yearned and craved.

  7

  A Great Silence Overcomes Me

  MAI, 1967

  It is a day like any other summer day. But it will not end like any other.

  I know there is a war on because our father is in it, but the war is a distant presence for us. The windows of our dining room face the garden and are covered with a material thick enough to shield us from the harshest light but sheer enough to allow faint glimpses of tree trunks and branches outside. My sister and I eat a breakfast of French bread buttered and dusted with a light sprinkle of sugar. Our mother eats fruit—whatever is in season, although she prefers the tart succulence of a ripe mangosteen. I watch her press a knife into the reddish-brown rind and twist it in a circular motion, paring the fruit in half. She puts her lips to it and inhales its fragrance. She scoops the white segmented pulp into her mouth, savoring the softness of its flesh. Holding up the rind against the light, she admires out loud its inky hue.

  Our father has a bowl of rice congee before he rushes off to work. Because it is soupy, our father can eat it quickly. Our mother tries to keep him at the table, adding minced beef and vegetables to his bowl even as he waves her chopsticks away. Our mother is not in a far-off, hard-to-reach mood today but our father is. This morning they have changed places—usually it is our mother who is preoccupied and it is our father who tries to get her attention. Today, her face shines and she holds on to his hand. I smile as I see their fingers interweave. Leaning in toward him, Mother whispers something in his ear. Her flashing eyes suggest conspiracy. Our father looks at his watch and murmurs a reply. She averts her eyes. She is resplendent as she presses her face against his cheek when he stands up. It is early morning. He has just shaved and so I imagine that she would not be feeling the sandpaper roughness of his cheeks yet.

  We know our mother will be visited by her many business partners. Older Aunt Number Three the Pharmacist will inevitably leave mentholated oil or cough drop candy for us. My sister and I have the rest of the day to fill. Summer vacation has just begun. She prevails upon me to stretch my limits, to be adventurous. She believes that my natural timidity and aversion to risk might dissolve at any moment. I might even become bold and fearless if I allow it.

  The outside world beckons.

  Banh cuon! Baaaannnhhhh cuuuoooon! The steamed crepe vendor hawks her specialty in a musical drawl. Our mother calls her in to buy several plates for her Chinese business friends. A hash of minced pork, mushrooms, and prawns bulges from the soft rolls of rice wrapping. When served with sliced cucumber, fresh mint, and deep-fried shallots, it acquires a crunchiness that one does not expect from the soft folds of the crepes. A revelation of contrasting textures.

  My sister takes my hand and leads me out of our front door toward the back part of our house where a wholly different neighborhood waits. There, a confounding mass of crooked, unmarked streets wind and eventually merge seamlessly into one another. Our Chinese grandmother is with us of course and, I can tell, has been coddled into accommodating my sister’s desire. Tightly huddled houses on these dense, indecipherable streets are all inhabited by Chinese speakers and that makes the police nervous. It might be the perfect environment for an undetectable Vietcong hideout. Several times a day, soldiers and military police make their rounds through the neighborhood, some in plainclothes, trying to make sense of the confluence of good and evil that lurks behind closed doors, the difference between paranoia and true danger.

  I stand back and wait, cautiously contemplating my options. My sister continues onward in a blithe display of self-assurance. She turns back toward me once she realizes I remain far behind. “Come on,” she says. I am afraid and equally excited. I think my sister might lead me into danger but will, I am sure, also lead me out.

  “Once you see it, you’ll be astonished,” she promises.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s something Mother never lets us see.”

  I try to decide if the promise of being able to do what our mother forbids is enough to coax me forward.

  “Just follow me,” my sister calls out.

  And to my surprise, I do.

  “The orphanage is nearby,” she adds. “James will be finished there and coming to meet us.”

  We make our way through the fecund heat, amid
the squat gray shadows of corrugated tin shacks. Rust bleeds from the walls. Lizards and water bugs scurry under our feet, among flat tires and broken spokes. Of course our mother would not allow us here. The air is full of snores, cries, sawing and hammering, the chants of peddlers, the constant jangle of domestic activities spilling from the insides of houses into the open air of sidewalks. Children shriek and pour buckets of water over one another as they wash themselves near gray, gritty rivulets. Old men nap on makeshift cots tied to lampposts and utility poles. Perching on the sidewalk, women do the wash, scrubbing and pounding dirty clothes, reciting the ordinary heartbreaks of their lives as they work. They flex their muscles and wring the clothes, hanging them on frayed clotheslines to dry. Our Chinese grandmother directs our attention to the deep ruts cut into the road and warns us to be careful. Men covered in black grease work wrenches and pliers, adjusting the chains and brakes of broken-down bicycles. The smell of charcoal and kerosene lingers in the air. As we approach an open area, surrounded by only a few houses, I hear the screech of animals, chickens perhaps, and the guttural snorts of fat-bellied pigs. There is a wild fluttering of wings as feathers swirl and float in the air. I smell calamity in the vicinity.