The Lotus and the Storm

by Lan Cao

  I cringe but he places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “It is fine. Good,” he says. “Wait here while I get your parents.” Father enters the room with a newspaper tucked under his arm. Mother is next to him, with a pen and a notebook in her hand. They both stop at a respectful distance from the thay phap. He explains to them what he has seen.

  I hear his normal speaking voice for the first time. It is pleasant, and comforting, and I wish he could stay and just talk. He reaches over and takes my hand. I feel the knuckles and knobs protruding from a fragility of skin.

  “It will take time to heal,” he declares. “But it is doable.”

  My parents nod in unison.

  “I have searched my list of evil beings and I know the right formulas to call them forth.” He glances over at the window, as if they might be reflected there against the shiny glass.

  Mother’s eyes widen. “Evil beings?”

  “Yes. Negative energy. I don’t know yet what provoked them. But it is undoubtedly negative.”

  Maleficent spirits. Ghosts. Devils.

  I feel that strange presence hunched tight inside me.

  Instinctively a thought enters my head: Not Cecile. It was Cecile Galileo must have played with. She is a child, Galileo’s playmate.

  “For those types, I need to use sacred lyrics,” he explains earnestly.

  An uneasy silence prevails among all four of us.

  “It is not your fault,” the thay phap hastens to add, looking straight at me. He is overly kind. “These are floating souls that are angry. Perhaps they have been wronged sometime, somewhere. Perhaps they had difficult lives. They will have their ups and downs, their moods. They are homeless, and just like a snail that needs to look for a shell to house itself, these spirits are tired of wandering and are merely looking for a place to stay. And they found you!”

  I am myself and not myself at the same time. I am trying to understand what it all means. An untamed and temperamental spirit has yoked itself to me. I imagine something somehow standing beside me, as my ghost or spirit self. I give the thay phap a questioning look, but he continues talking.

  “There are hundreds of spirits of all kinds,” he explains. “There are those who guide and those who harass, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. I will work to exorcise the malevolent ones,” he declares.

  “Tru ma,” Mother says with almost mystical reverence, for she believes. Father is willing to try anything. He listens but does not speak.

  “An evil wind could have blown them in,” the thay phap says. And then suddenly, he mulls the possibilities out loud. “I wonder if you have had a death in the family recently.”

  My parents freeze in a quiet fury. A strange sensation prickles my skin and excites inchoate images inside my head. An equipoise has been disturbed. I remember the elegies, the laments, the slow, sliding sadness that followed my sister’s death. Here, then, is the irreversible silence, bursting open.

  “Because a death can be an opening for other spirits to enter your home, maybe through the smallest person in the household,” the thay phap continues. “And once a spirit enters you it may stay and make you not yourself.”

  I hear other words thrown experimentally about. “Mat hon.” Lost soul. If I take the unanswerable question my parents are posing and extend it to its furthest possibility, what answer will I get? I hear the thay phap’s reply. Imagine losing your soul. Another soul comes in and takes over. It erases your name and gives you a new one.

  I stand still and watch our house. Perhaps it is besieged. It is now inhabited by spirits and their collected memories. And one in particular has taken hold of me. A blossoming silence courses through us all. I watch as Mother politely but quickly changes the subject.

  “How long will it all take?” she asks.

  The thay phap shakes his head and says, “There is no way to tell. It takes time to identify the spirits that cause these fainting spells and then it takes time to find the correct remedy. We will go through all the possibilities, conciliation, and even threats if needed.”

  The thay phap smiles benevolently at me. After a polite passing of time, Mother ushers him out. Dates are made for his subsequent return. He leaves but not before reiterating to my parents that I am possessed by a spirit self that wishes to exercise dominion over me.

  14

  Tet on the Perfume River

  MR. MINH, 2006, 1968

  I lock onto Mai’s longan-black eyes, round pupils that linger on my face. A charged current runs through me. That is all it takes, a pair of wide, inquisitive eyes. My child, I declare silently, a sharp hope rising erratically in my chest.

  She struggles to prop me up, one arm behind my neck, the other under my knees, returning me to a more upright position.

  In a low voice, she says, “I am grateful you are able to help Aunt An, but where does the money come from?” She stares at me with an expression both imploring and suspicious.

  “I can’t tell you but it’s okay. It’s nothing wrong or illegal.”

  “I don’t understand why it should be such a secret, then.”

  “I won’t let her default,” I assure Mai, who continues to eye me with a degree of uncertainty.

  She sighs and leaves a basket of subscription meals she ordered for me on the table before kissing me good-bye.

  The day is darkening. Thick clouds hang ponderously above the evergreens that I can see from my window. Mrs. An has finished her shift early. I am eager to have her with me. For many months now, my life has been defined by a sense of continuing emergency. By some mysterious combination of fate and plain old cussedness, I have somehow survived the vicissitudes of war and life. I see the horizon ahead. I don’t share this with Mrs. An or with my daughter. It seems private somehow, this dawning realization that life is short and the days are dwindling. What I want is to make sure that Mrs. An knows about Tet. It marked the moment we began to lose the war, even though we’d won the battles. More important to me, Tet also marked the moment life split and splintered for us. I am tormented and beset by the fear that the truth about my child won’t be fully known. I want Mrs. An to know so she can understand Mai and tend to her. To understand Mai, you have to understand Tet.

  Many of our forces had been given home leave. It had been understood through the course of the war that a temporary peace would be sanctified to celebrate Tet. The Vietcong had called for a scrupulous observance of the holiday. In October, North Vietnam announced that it too would adhere to a seven-day truce from January 27 to February 3, 1968.

  Still, I was uneasy. Last week, as usual, Phong dominated the weekly officers’ meeting held at military headquarters. “I want to bring your attention to the latest reconnaissance report,” he said officiously. “The number of trucks observed going south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail has increased from an average of four hundred eighty per month to more than a thousand in October and almost to four thousand in November, then six thousand in December. An astounding increase.”

  He passed a manila envelope across the table. Reconnaissance photographs revealed flecks and streaks of movement and a grayish discoloration that signified motion. There was a murmur of agreement among the field commanders.

  “Whatever they’re planning,” Phong said, “we need troop reinforcements at the border to counter their plans. The battles of Loc Ninh, Song Be, Con Thien, have all been bloody ones. We are spread too thinly up there,” he continued. “We need to pay more attention to the northern border regions.” His eyes rested on the large strategy map pinned on the wall.

  One of the corps commanders objected. “Those battles seem pointless and isolated. What is the point of the northern buildup in that region? There is no tactical advantage,” he said sharply. “I would oppose moving additional troops to such a remote area.”

  Phong responded with authority. “Anytime a base is attacked, it is our duty to respond and not
just to respond, but to further reinforce that area, as a show of force. It doesn’t matter if it is in a remote region or in Saigon itself.” Phong paused, uncrossed his legs, and looked straight at me. He removed a cigarette from a pack and tapped its end several times on the table before inserting it in the now-familiar gold cigarette holder. “When attacked, the South must react promptly and vigorously.” By the ocher glow of light, his face looked grim and almost ashen.

  A vigorous discussion ensued as different positions were articulated and defended. A boom of voices filled the room. Phong struck a match and sucked on his cigarette as he lowered it to the flame. He bludgeoned his way through the debate, reiterating the same point about the importance of not appearing weak. I felt the need to state my position. I had just led an operation into Cambodia and had been wounded. I was not worried about being viewed as weak or meek. I took a deep breath and said, “Of course we need to defend any base and any region when it is attacked, but that doesn’t mean we need a tactical reorientation of troops especially to areas that are far-flung and carry little strategic value.” To soften the tone, because I did not want him to take my position as a personal affront, I added, “You are right, Phong, to be concerned about increased movements on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In fact, I would favor our deploying troops there rather than the border region up north.” My dissenting views provided the opening others needed to counter Phong’s position. I heard the low but continuous rumble of assent even as Phong leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head.

  As it turned out, we didn’t have to decide. We were subjected to multiple attacks simultaneously and each attacked town had to be defended without regard to our own strategic orientation. The Americans moved several airborne battalions and then an entire airborne brigade to an area around Dak To to sweep the jungle-covered mountains. I ordered my beloved Fifth and Eighth Airborne battalions to support the Americans in Operation Greeley. The Eighth was the same battalion I had led into battle at the Cambodian border.

  Cliff was the Eighth Battalion’s senior American adviser and he insisted on going with them. From military headquarters in Saigon, I followed the progress of their operation. There it was, Dak To, on a map hanging from the wall of our headquarters. Although Dak To lies on a flat valley floor, it is flanked by long, elevated ridges that soar as high as four thousand feet, converging toward the region where South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia meet. Double- and triple-canopy forests loomed over the area. It was impossible to construct landing zones in that terrain. The troops would have to trudge all that distance on foot. Cliff had only recently recovered from his injuries. Naturally, I worried. When I turned to my wife for commiseration one morning over breakfast, when I told her he was in Dak To, the corners of her mouth turned. My wife’s lips were full and curved. She flashed me one of her demure but unhappy looks. My wife was intuitive. She knew the dangers without even knowing the terrain. Heroism, minor or not, did not appeal to her.

  I saw her eyes and wondered. Her concern for Cliff felt somehow different from mine.

  The enemy was still occupying several hills overlooking our base camp below. I received reports that our troops were showered with mortar from above. One day in mid-November, a North Vietnamese mortar barrage landed directly in our ammunition and fuel storage areas in Dak To. It was an immense explosion, a belligerent fireball that rolled through the folds and ridges of the valley. Our immediate mission had to shift. The Americans were to fight their way up Hill 1228 to prevent another mortar barrage. I issued the orders for our elite, all-volunteer Third and Ninth Airborne battalions to take Hill 1416. Each time the Third and the Ninth advanced, enemy machine gunners decimated them. Enemy infantry lobbed small arms and grenades. Our men called for air strikes and artillery fire for support but the dense foliage made it futile.

  It took them four days to push the enemy out of Dak To.

  Eventually the North Vietnamese retreated into Laos.

  At the time, we saw Dak To as a military success, a significant one. My wife wanted Phong and his wife to come to our house to celebrate, the way they used to.

  That evening, my wife smiled shyly at Phong. It had been a long, long while. An awkwardness had crept in. Our child’s death changed everything. Phong stood nearby, generously allowing my wife whatever space she needed. His wife, Thu, was her usual cheery self, eager to engage my wife in conversation. I felt a twinge of rancor. The treachery and insinuations from the November 1963 coup had stayed with me. I could not shake the memory—the sight of Phong next to the coup generals as they plotted the president’s death. I lit a cigarette so I could hold something in my hand, although I was not a smoker. I realized that despite our long history, I could not command myself to like Phong. Something moved uneasily inside me, an antipathy I could barely suppress. I watched every move he made as if to confirm an old notion.

  He is my friend. How could I not like him?

  We tried to celebrate Dak To. My wife embarked on a series of questions as we sat down to dinner. “Why is it always the same units that are sent to the most difficult battles?” “When are the troops returning?” “Will the order come down soon?”

  Phong raised his glass in an almost ceremonial manner. “Quy, your husband should know all the answers to these questions. Tell her,” he said, addressing me. “She wants to know when Cleeff is returning.” He snickered, stretching out Cliff’s name for emphasis.

  I flashed Phong a look. “Cliff will soon return,” I said flatly. “The Battle of Dak To is practically over.” I smiled and added, “He should be back any minute. I too have missed the many dinners we’ve had with him here.” The last sentence was inserted to make a point, that I fully welcomed cliff into our fold; that we were having dinners with Cliff as we once did with Phong—before the coup changed everything for me, before our friendship exploded in a firefight of accusations. Now when I looked at him, I could see only the face of a man who took money from the CIA.

  After Dak To, there were many more attacks. Khe Sanh was next. Ten days before Tet. The American firebases there were assaulted in the predawn hours by three North Vietnamese divisions totaling twenty thousand troops. I knew Khe Sanh had to be defended. Its strategic importance lay in its proximity to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Our attention was on Khe Sanh, the seemingly obvious target of the enormous truck movement and buildup along the Trail for the past few months. The North Vietnamese unleashed a concentrated barrage of artillery and moved their troops into entrenched positions from which to attack Khe Sanh’s outer defenses. Two of the North Vietnamese divisions were the same 325th and 304th that had fought at Dien Bien Phu, the battle that the French lost in 1954. Surely, Hanoi wanted the comparisons to be made. The specter of Dien Bien Phu had to loom, beguile, and taunt the Americans. Lyndon Johnson understood the historical parallel. With Khe Sanh facing a full siege, by January 1968, even the American president took a personal interest in the fate of the base. President Johnson sought written reassurances from his commanders that Khe Sanh would not be overrun, that it would be held whatever the cost. Under no circumstances could there be a repeat of Dien Bien Phu, the battle that spelled the coup de grâce for the French.

  And then again, the enemy’s emphasis mysteriously shifted. At midnight, January 30, the first day of Tet itself, they attacked Qui Nhon City along the coastal area. Communist commandos then launched attacks in a series of coordinated moves all across the country. Were Khe Sanh and all those other fronts diversions? Were they part of a dummy campaign to draw American units out of the urban areas and toward the borders?

  The next day, the first attacks on Saigon initially went unnoticed. We were too busy celebrating the New Year. The sky simmered, then exploded with fireworks. We did not hear gunfire. Cliff, my wife, my daughter, and I were taking our evening drive in the Peugeot. Once the car was parked, we meandered among the flower markets on Nguyen Hue Street. My wife steered Cliff by the elbow. The air smelled of firecracker
s. Roving vendors sang. The hoa mai apricot trees exploded with celebratory bursts of yellow.

  Sentries and army trucks patrolled the street. But we did not think about war, or battles, or offensives when Tet beckoned.

  On a night like that, as rockets shot spectacularly into the air and unleashed an outcropping of yellow blossoms, coloring the sky in a wash of profligate gold, it was easy to be indulged by the sanctity of Tet; it was easy to believe in the power and the beauty of a Tet truce. Peace would prevail for seven days and the people could take a deep breath.

  It soon became clear that the North had never intended to honor the truce.

  But we believed in the truce. So on the eve of Tet, we had only one full-strength airborne battalion to defend Saigon. And only twenty-five of the army’s three hundred MPs were on duty. Against that calculated advantage, more than eighty thousand enemy troops assaulted our cities. Nha Trang, Ban Me Thuot, Kon Tum, Hoi An, Pleiku, Quang Tri City, Tam Ky, Hue, Tuy Hoa, Phan Thiet. And of course Saigon.

  Saigon found itself in a diminishing space as it was attacked by thirty-five North Vietnamese battalions. All over the city, the crisp, rattling bursts of AK-47s could be heard. What firepower did we have to return? Single shots of old-fashioned Garands and carbines.

  The enemy counted on American forces being stretched to the limit at Khe Sanh, Dak To, and other far-flung posts. They counted on our forces being on leave. And most of all they counted on what they termed a General Uprising—the Communists believed the South Vietnamese would join them in a revolt.

  I was asleep at home when I received a call from an aide. It was one-thirty in the morning on January 31, 1968. There was a stricken silence, then panic on the line. The Presidential Palace had been hit, not by our own plotting, rebellious generals this time but by the enemy. The enemy’s Sapper Battalion was also spearheading assaults against our Joint General Staff headquarters, the national radio station, the American Embassy, and Tan Son Nhat Airport.