A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (21 page)

This happened in the central highlands, not far from the city of An Khê in the year 1971. One day in late spring a Vietnamese Army major named Trung visited his mistress in the city and they spent the afternoon in a garden and the early evening in her bed, where they made love with the pollen of the flowers still clinging to their faces and arms. Afterward, the room was full of a pale light and they fell asleep. But when the major awoke, it was very dark. He had slept much too long and he leaped from the bed cursing and sweating and he threw on his clothes. He was stationed in a base camp on the other side of the mountains and he had a meeting with the base commander first thing in the morning. The major had to return to the camp now, in the middle of the night. His lover was very frightened for him. In the daylight the road through the mountain belonged to the Republic. But at night the communists could come out of the forests whenever they wished, making this trip very dangerous. Nevertheless, the major had no choice. He kissed his lover good-bye and went out to his car.

He was frightened, but he was a serious officer in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, a very brave man, and before he opened the door to his car, he held his hands out in front of him and he vowed to master the tiny tremor in them. He would not leave until both his hands were absolutely still. The moon was very bright, but there were many clouds and they passed over the moon and the major could not see his hands. But he waited patiently until the clouds parted and he could clearly observe that his hands had become motionless before him. Then he got into the car and drove away, not even looking back to the window of his lover’s house, where her face could be seen weeping.

The major drove very fast and he was soon on the road that wound up into the tops of the mountains, and whenever the moon was free of the clouds, the major, in fear of the communists, turned off his headlights and leaned forward to follow the twisting road by the silver light. This light of the moon that would have been very bright to show the bodies of two lovers entwined was only barely bright enough to guide him through the mountains. But the major knew what danger he was in, and when the moon disappeared and the road could not be distinguished from the deep chasms just beyond, it was only with great reluctance that he turned on his headlights.

He drove on like this, turning and twisting up and up and at each turn his hands tightened on the steering wheel for fear of a roadblock, a hundred rifles pointed at him, beginning to fire, shattering glass, the end of his life. But he finally reached what he knew was the highest point of the mountains. He saw a white road marker in the beam of his headlights, a jagged stone sitting at the turning of the road, and then he was in a pass with the road leveling off for a time, the trees mounting darkly on both sides of him, and the only chasm for the moment being the darkness before him, beyond the reach of his lights. The road began to descend, though gently for now, and he followed a turn to the right and something flashed before him in the light, his heart seized up, but it was a rabbit dashing across the road. He could see the final high kick of the long hind legs as the animal leaped into the darkness of the trees, and the major even laughed aloud, in relief but also in scorn at his own moment of fear.

The road turned sharply to the left and the moon appeared in a break in the clouds, but its light was snagged and slivered by the surrounding trees. The major knew that in a mile or so he would be through the pass and the road would cling once again to the side of the mountain and wind its way down, with a chasm on one side. He glanced at the tree-striped face of the moon, and when he brought his eyes back before him, a woman appeared in his lights, standing in his lane of the road and he was rushing toward her and he could hardly believe she was there, a slim young woman in a beautiful white aó dài, and she raised her hand to him, a clear gesture telling him to stop, and all of this happened in a few seconds, but as this lovely woman held her ground, her hand raised, and the major rushed toward her, he thought of the Viet Cong and their tricks and he would not stop his car in this mountain at night for anyone and he swerved sharply, his tires crying out on the pavement, and he went around her, the wheel heavy in his hands, and he yanked at it and he was back in his lane and there was nothing in his lights but the road.

A trick, he thought, a trick, using a local girl to lure me into a trap. And then she was before him again, or another girl, perhaps a sister—how could it be the same girl? he was hurtling along the road, leaving her behind—but a beautiful young woman in a white aó dài was before him and she raised her hand and this time he could see her face, for some reason her face was very clear—round, smooth skinned, a thin nose as if she had French blood, and her mouth was wide. Pleasing at first glance but the mouth grew wider, the mouth widened even as he watched it in his headlights and his hands prepared to swerve around the girl—it was the same girl as before, he was sure of it—but the mouth was growing wider and wider, a great crack in this beautiful round face, and the mouth opened, gaping wide, like the chasm of the mountainside, and a tongue came out, huge, bloating as it came, swelling as wide as her face, as wide as her shoulders, undulating forward from her mouth, red and soft and as wide as the road now, and the monstrous tongue licked at the car and the car lifted up, and the major’s eyes and his head were filled with a vision of the tongue and then all was darkness.

He drifted into consciousness and he felt himself lying on the ground. He opened his eyes and gasped, for the young woman’s face was before him, bending over him, and there was moonlight on the face and he stared at her mouth, a wide mouth but a human mouth, and it opened and no great tongue came out, only words. “Major Trung,” she said, and her voice was very soft, softer than his lover’s kiss, even when his lover touched his tongue with hers. The young woman said, “You must sleep for a time now. There is an ambush ahead. I am Nguy
n th
Linh of the street called Lotus in An Khê. You will see me again. I wish for you to be alive.” The major tried to answer, but he could not speak. The darkness rushed back upon him and he fell unconscious.

When the major woke for the second time, the road was still dark, though there was a faint silver glow in the air. He raised himself onto his elbows and looked around. He was lying beside the road, and his car, which he expected to find crashed into the trees, was sitting just off the road, as if it had been carefully parked there. The major stood up and he was surprised to find not a single pain in his body, no bruises, no scratches, nothing whatever to show that he had crashed his car and had been thrown out. He looked at his watch and found that he’d been unconscious for two hours. He decided that he’d had a hallucination. The strain of the drive through the mountains, the pleasures of the afternoon, the flower pollen—perhaps one of the flowers was a rare thing, producing a drug that worked on him so that he had parked his car and had gotten out and slept and dreamt all of the rest about the girl in the white aó dài, this girl Nguy
n thi Linh of the street called Lotus. That was it. A kind of lotus had affected him and had named itself in the very dream it provoked.

So the major got into his car and drove on. He still had time to make it back to the base by dawn, and he smiled at this strange narcotic fantasy that he’d experienced. But he did not go a mile before he found a terrible Sight. Along the road were the bodies of many men, dead soldiers strewn from the forest and down the slope and across the highway. He pulled his car over and stepped out into the stench of blood and cordite. He needed to take only a few steps until he recognized a man’s face twisted upward from the ground in the agony of a death two hours old. This was the wreckage of one of the major’s own night patrols, clearly ambushed and destroyed in this spot, just as the young woman had warned in the major’s dream. But now he was not so sure it was a dream. Just in case, he bowed low and spoke aloud his thanks to the woman in his vision. Then he got back into his car and returned safely to the base.

This is a simple enough ghost story, and if you have turned your face to the bus window while I spoke and if it is clear to me that I have been boring you, as I can do to people—my daughter’s American husband, for instance—then I will stop right there and let that be the story for you. But there is more. If you’ve looked at me while I’ve spoken and there is a light in your eyes and no condescension, then I will tell you more, for I know this story to be true.

The next week, when the major returned to An Khê, he did not go directly to his lover’s house. First of all he went to the street called Lotus. It was a narrow street at the edge of the city on a little rise so that it looked out over the tops of banana trees, across a plain, to the mountains. The street was very quiet, though the sun was not yet high. The major heard the sound of the wind and the muttering of chickens and that was all. He faced a stretch of modest wooden houses with slate roofs and he thought he would knock on the nearest door and ask about the girl.

But then a young man came around the side of a house on a bicycle and drove past and the major hailed him. The young man stopped and the major said, “Do you know a girl named Nguy
n thi Linh?”

The boy’s reaction was surprising to the major. He gave a short little sneering laugh. “I know the girl, to my regret. But I will not speak ill of the dead.”

The major’s breath stopped and he felt a chill, like a winter wind, at the news that Linh was dead. Somehow, though, he was not surprised. He knew that no living person could project her spirit in such a way as he had encountered. The chill soon passed, but his breath was just as hard to draw as he grew furious with the boy for his disrespectful words about this beautiful girl who had saved his life. The major very nearly stepped forward to strike the young man, but suddenly a calmness came over him. This was merely a jealous boy, one who had seen Miss Linh’s beauty and desired it and who was rejected by her. The major knew this as surely as if Miss Linh had suddenly bent near him and whispered the facts of the case into his ear.

The major said, “And do her parents live in this street?”