Sand in the Wind (42 page)

Still smiling, Kramer finally turned and said, “I’ll stick around a while.’

“What for?” Donaldson demanded. When he saw no answer coming, he pulled a few bills out of his pocket. “
Here,
this is for the drinks. See you,
pal."

Kramer’s eyes shifted back and forth between the woman and his drink as he thought about what had happened. She stood with the same distant, superior stare on her face, seeming not to notice him. ‘Big, tough Marine,’ he thought, remembering how Donaldson had been humiliated by a stare. ‘
Quite
a bitch.’

Kramer remained at the bar for another half hour hoping something would happen to enable him to speak to her. He felt ridiculous at not being able to merely start a conversation, telling himself, ‘What have I got to lose?’ and berating himself for acting ‘like some high school kid.’ He tried to figure out why he was afraid, as he had never been before, knowing that one of the reasons was the sense that she was somehow superior to himself as well as Donaldson, and also knowing that this couldn’t be the only reason.

The bar girls started asking people to finish their drinks. He’d have to do something fast or forget about it. Kramer made up his mind to say something, and for the next few minutes he mulled over different lines. None of them seemed right. While he hesitated, she walked away. Furious with himself, and at the same time furious about ‘giving a damn,’ Kramer knew that it was too late. He decided he should have merely apologized for Donaldson’s behavior — it seemed so obvious now. He sat regretting his failure to do so, wondering what she would have been like, until only one other Marine besides himself remained in the bar.

A bar girl eyed Kramer impatiently. He finished his drink and walked towards the door. Disgusted with himself, he almost bumped into one of the girls on his way out. As he stepped back to let her pass, he was stunned to see that it was her. She stopped, seemingly staring right through him. A jaunty expression came across his face as he started to apologize about Donaldson. Before he could speak, she turned away and he blurted out, “I —” To his surprise, she turned back towards him. “Listen, I’m —”

She looked right through him.

“— I’m sorry about what happened.”

Kramer stood amazed at the feebleness of his own words until she answered, “I do not speak English.”

Her words were cold, yet there was a sad quality about them that caught him off guard. Knowing he’d have to say something immediately or she’d walk away, he blurted out, “Sounds all right to me.”

“I do not speak English.”

Wanting one more chance, ready to say anything he could think of:

“
Parlez-vous français?
” She gave an almost imperceptible nod. Trying to remember his high school French, Kramer clumsily apologized for Donaldson’s behavior.

She seemed anxious to get away from him and said in French, “He’s an American.” Realizing her slight had cut Kramer, she assumed the wrong reason. Her cold stare softened a little, and she said in French, “It’s all right.”

Encouraged by the change in her look, Kramer was again at a loss for words. He finally asked, “Where did you learn to speak French?”

“In school,” she answered. Kramer told her that that was also where he had learned. With no coldness in her tone, she replied in perfect French that he hadn’t learned very well. Amused and a little embarrassed, Kramer agreed with her. She said she had to clean up and started to walk away. He began to apologize again.

She politely cut him short, repeating, “It’s all right,” then turned and walked towards the rear of the bar — now looking no different than any of a hundred Vietnamese women Kramer had seen that night. But she had been different. By the time he reached the hospital, he wasn’t even sure exactly what she had looked like. Her features blurred and changed within his memory. This shouldn’t have mattered. He’d never see her again anyway. But it did matter.

The next morning Kramer awoke with the same thoughts that had kept him awake the night before. After breakfast, his thinking became more practical and he tried to figure out a way to stay in Da Nang one more night. He was almost resigned to the impossibility of this when the doctor told him there was still a piece of shrapnel in his neck. They’d remove it that afternoon, and he’d
have
to stay one more night.

As much as he had hoped for it, Kramer found this “bad” news hard to believe. He spent the rest of the day thinking about how to make the most of his luck — how to get her attention again, and what to say afterwards. He felt childish, yet he enjoyed the feeling, as if he were trying to recapture a time or experience that had somehow evaded him. He even spent an hour in what was referred to as the hospital library, fruitlessly searching for a French dictionary. He did so just as much as a means to kill time as in hopes of finding one.

After what seemed like his longest day in Vietnam, Kramer left the hospital. It wasn’t until he neared the bar where she worked that he began debating to himself whether to go through with his plans. He felt as if he’d been acting like a fool, and berated himself for the fantasizing and scheming he’d been doing all day. As he approached the door of the bar, he became increasingly hesitant. Only the rationalization that nothing would come of it and that by trying and failing he would at least get her off his mind enabled him to finally enter and take a seat at the bar.

She was nowhere to be seen. Instead of being disappointed he became relaxed, knowing that he’d at least made an effort and there would be no chance to second-guess himself. The fact that she wasn’t there seemed only logical, his good luck in being held over in Da Nang now counterbalanced by his inability to take advantage of it.

Kramer felt no desire to leave, as if his presence affirmed something he’d always believed and found necessary to continually prove to himself. A faceless girl brought him a drink, and then another. He drank slowly, savoring the flavor of the Scotch as he was rarely able to do. Within the glass he could see the reflections of his thoughts — the walk down the dusty road to the landing pad at Ninth Motors, the wait beneath a glaring sun for a helicopter, the sight of Hill 65 beneath him, and the walk across the hill to rejoin his platoon.

Kramer quickly finished his drink. He started to place the glass down on the bar, but his hand froze a few inches from the surface. She was there, a few feet in front of him, as if she had always been there and he’d refused to see her. Her face carved with that same coldly superior expression, she stared across the room, seemingly unconscious of him. Thoughts raced through his mind. Had she seen him, and if so, why did she refuse to look at him? He decided to leave, but instead sat staring at her face, trying to take it apart feature by feature, wondering what he saw in her that he’d never seen before. Unable to explain her effect on him, he tried to dismiss it by telling himself that she was ‘just another bitch.’ But then an old realization returned — bitches had always attracted him, often instilling a hatred, yet always keeping their attraction. For the first time he began to feel superior to her, looking at her as some frustrated object to satisfy a man’s, a certain type of man’s, sexual desire.

But as he continued to stare at her face, he attributed to it a mysterious type of intelligence, a knowledge of something of which he felt ignorant. He’d
rip
it away from her. Rip
what
away? ‘Nothing! She’s just another bitch.’ But not like any bitch he had ever known. Her face —
what was there about it?
Baffled by the intensity of his own reaction, he knew that no other face had ever affected him as hers had, and unlike any other he had ever seen — ‘For
some goddamn reason
’ — it would refuse to fade within his memory. Unless — he’d
change
it, within his mind, see it helpless, pathetically helpless. And there was only one way this could happen. ‘If I could —
I will!
I’ll fuck the living shit out of her and walk away.’

She continued to gaze across the room. It seemed to him that this was a cold refusal to see him, to admit that he was there. He mulled over the different ways he had planned to get her attention, the things he had decided to say to her. But the immature excitement that had been connected with these thoughts during the day was now absent. Instead, he schemed with a destructive determination that ruled out any kind of results except sadistic relief, its object being to leave her in his wake, forgotten, reft of all mystery.

He pushed his glass towards the edge of the bar indicating he wanted another drink. The only other girl behind the bar was standing a few feet away talking to a customer. His eyes returned to the woman standing in front of him. This was his chance. She still seemed unaware of him, but to his surprise she slowly turned towards the bar girl, spoke her name, and then indicated without saying a word that Kramer wanted another drink. As the bar girl walked away with his empty glass, Kramer nodded to the woman to thank her. She returned his nod with an almost imperceptible nod of her own. Sitting with the drink in his hand, Kramer found it impossible to merely call her over. Instead he kept staring at her. At first she gave no indication that she realized he wanted to speak to her, but she soon stepped forward and stood against the bar.

He finally asked her in French what she was looking at. Instead of answering the question, she asked where his friend was. He looked up and said that Donaldson had been bad, so he had put him to bed early. She remained silent, giving no indication that she saw any humor in his reply. He asked her if she owned the bar. Still refusing to look at him, she answered with a nod. In poor French, he tried to ask her if owning a bar was what they had taught her to do in school. As he finished speaking, Kramer realized that she might take this question as an insult. Her tone gave no indication she had, but her reply did. She told him they had taught her to speak French.

Kramer found the remark more amusing than cutting. “I need more practice.”

“Then you should be in France, not Vietnam,” she replied in French.

He chose to ignore her implication. “I’ve always wanted to go to France.” His purpose in saying this was to get her to look at him. It would be a sort of victory over her.

“Then you should go,” she answered, implying that he should not only leave Vietnam, but also her bar.

Her bitchiness began to irritate him, but he sluffed it off by asking, “How can I?”

“Fight with the French.”

He realized her words had been intended as an insult, but there was so obviously a sad quality in the way she had said them that he felt as if he had been the one insulting her. His guilt caused him to try and picture the expression on her face when she had spoken. He continued to want her to look at him, but no longer as a symbol of his will conquering hers. His desire to see her face was now founded upon a compelling curiosity about her. He spoke again, not to make conversation, but merely to receive an answer. Had he been aware of the feeble sincerity of his words, he would have regretted speaking them. “Did you ever want to go to France?”

Aware of his change in tone, she was surprised enough by it to finally look down at him. It was Kramer’s eyes that were now turned away, staring blankly at the glass between his hands. “A long time ago,” she answered slowly.

At first her words were meaningless to him, but he then recalled them and his mind translated what she had said into English. He raised his eyes to meet hers. There was no coldness in her look. But gradually, as if by reflex, her stare hardened. He suddenly felt weak in comparison to her, and only by a conscious effort was he able to harden his gaze. “Why a long time ago?”

“I will never go back.”

Kramer noticed that she had seemed weaker when she had spoken, her stare less piercing, and for this reason he desired her to speak again. “You were in France?
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
How long were you there?”

She was looking directly at him, but while she spoke her mind seemed far away. “Almost a year.
  
.
 
.
 
. I went to the Sorbonne.” Before he could ask her another question, she turned and walked slowly to the end of the bar.

Only two other Marines were left in the bar. Kramer sat nursing his drink. ‘Wouldn’t you know it?
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
Guess every fucking whore and barmaid in Vietnam spends a year at Sorbonne.’ Kramer laughed to himself, knowing that as much as he’d like to, he wouldn’t be able to laugh her off so easily. Believing and surprised by her words, Kramer refused to admit to himself that he wanted her somehow to be different; wanted to hear things such as he’d just heard. There was no question of his leaving without trying to speak to her again, but she refused to walk near him. The bar would be closing soon. He ordered another drink, first gulping down the liquor still in his glass. Scotch was now the last thing he wanted, and he had trouble swallowing it.

Soon he was the only Marine left in the bar. One of the girls came over and told him they were closing. He nodded as if agreeing to leave, but continued to sit nursing his drink. When only one bar girl remained a naval officer walked in to pick her up. The woman nodded to her, leaving herself and Kramer alone in the bar.

She was standing a few feet away from him when she said softly in French, “We are closed.”

Kramer wanted to say, “I’d like to talk to you,” but was unable to.

“I have to go home.”

He began speaking with a jaunty air, but by the time he finished the sentence his voice trailed off into a self-conscious request. “I thought maybe you could tell me about Paris.”

She came very close to laughing in his face, but for some reason caught herself. “I cannot tell you. You have to see.
  
.
 
.
 
. It is a beautiful city.”

“You could tell me about it.”

There was a calculating expression on her face as she looked down at him and asked, “Is this what you want, to hear about Paris?”