Sand in the Wind (43 page)

“Yes,” he answered, while thinking, ‘No, but I want to hear you talk about it.’

Not believing his answer, but now curious about him, she began describing the Seine and the broad avenues. Her words were lost to him as he watched the faraway expression on her face, staring at her dark eyes which had lost their hardness as soon as she began speaking. This hardness soon returned, and by the time she had finished, her eyes were again focused on him in a cold stare.

It was now Kramer’s face that possessed the faraway look, and he said, “They say it’s the most beautiful city in the world.” She shook her head slowly in disagreement. Surprised at this, Kramer asked, “What is, Saigon?”

She met his question with calm arrogance. “Saigon is ugly.”

His face indicating weak apology, Kramer said, “I thought maybe you were born there.” She shook her head. “Where were you born?”

“Hanoi.”

“How did you come to Da Nang?”

“My father worked for the government, the French. When they divided the country, we fled the Communists.”

“You came to Da Nang?”

She shook her head. “No, Hue. My mother did not want to leave Hanoi. Hue is closer.”

“You must have been very young.”

She looked questioningly at Kramer, then answered, “Sixteen.”

“How
old
are you?”

“You think I am very young. I am thirty.” Kramer stared at her in disbelief, and she asked, “How old did you think I was?”

Still surprised, he lied, “Twenty-four, twenty-five, like me.”

“Now you think I am an old woman.”

Kramer studied her face. She seemed even more striking than before. “No, a beautiful woman is most beautiful when she’s thirty.”

While Kramer judged his own comment as childish, she replied, “I think you are right.”

There was a pause before Kramer asked, “So it’s Hanoi you think is more beautiful than Paris?”

“They are very much alike. Perhaps I liked Paris because it reminded me of Hanoi.
  
.
 
.
 
. The French liked Hanoi more than any other city in Vietnam.”

“You sound like you want to go back.” She slowly shook her head. “If it’s so beautiful, why don’t you want to see it again?”

“I like Hanoi, but it is very French.” A proud and distant expression appeared on her face. “Hue is the most beautiful city in the world. When we left Hanoi, I was very sad. My father told me Hue was more beautiful. I did not think this was possible. When I first saw Hue, it appeared more beautiful than even my father had said. Much of Hanoi was built by the French. Hue is Vietnamese, very old and beautiful. It was the ancient capital of Vietnam, and it made me very proud.”

She paused, and Kramer said, “But Saigon is the capital now.”

“It is ugly, like pictures I have seen of the United States. The buildings are American, not Vietnamese, like New York.”

Amused by the inappropriateness of the comparison, Kramer refrained from commenting on it.

Before, she had been content to speak French and let him struggle to understand her, but now as she talked about Hue, she felt a sudden need to make herself understood. She abandoned French, and instead spoke in perfectly understandable English. Though there was an urgency beneath her words, it remained hidden and she retained the same proud, calm tone. “Hue, it is the ancient capital of Vietnam. The buildings are very old and beautiful. At first, when I walk among them, it seems I am in the past, before the French have come — hundreds of years. All the stories I have heard of the ancient empire seem to be living. I see them in my mind and believe them. Then I know all the French have bring is nothing.” She noticed a slight smile on Kramer’s face and immediately paused, thinking that he was laughing at her. Irritated and sorry she had begun talking to him, she said with a calm assertiveness, “Is true. I never hear one person say is not.
  
.
 
.
 
. Everyone who see Hue say is the most beautiful city in the world. When I go to Paris, I think I will see things more beautiful. But I never see them. Paris, is beautiful, yes; but like Hanoi, only very dirty. I go to the Versailles Palace, and I like it very much; but for me the Imperial Palace in Hue is even more beautiful.”

She told him of her house less than a mile away from the Imperial Palace, how it stood upon a corner of the Square of the Four Dragons. Each side of the square was guarded by a bronze dragon upon a marble base, and they all looked inwards towards a huge, stone Buddha. The Buddha faced towards the south, and around it were concentric squares of brightly colored flowers. She told him how she would sometimes wait before dawn, looking out her window as the sun’s light increased in intensity allowing each flower to gain its natural brilliance.

At first Kramer had merely wanted to hear her voice; but as she continued speaking, he began to picture the things she described. He could see the vaunted grandeur of Emperor Khai Dinh’s Tomb. Each of its details appeared before him, her very words illuminating them like rays of light cast within a shadow-darkened room. Her voice came to him as if he were actually standing within the timeless marble halls she described. The light of a thousand candles reflected upon columns of smooth, patterned stone. Gentle smells of hidden incense hinted of forbidden temples. Shards of brightly colored porcelain swirled in intricate frescos upon the walls that surrounded him — telling the story of her people, their suffering and their triumph. And above it all, a gilt bronze likeness of Emperor Khai Dinh himself passively surveyed his vain, self-justified compromise with death.

She told him of the Imperial Palace. Its roof of orange tile curved gracefully against the sky, each corner protected by a huge stone dragon. He stood amidst the sacred urns of brass and porcelain. Ancient teak columns cast their shadows upon floors of brightly painted tile. The surrounding gardens and ponds added to the still grandeur of the palace itself. And the solemn beauty of all she described stood eternalized by an encircling wall seven feet in thickness, this wall in turn protected by an emerald-hued moat.

As Kramer listened, he realized that however beautiful these things she described, much of this beauty would have been lost to his own eyes. He knew that it stemmed as much from the way she was able to see things as from the objects themselves. Her eyes were directed towards him, yet he knew she was not seeing him. He was fascinated by the way she held her chin, giving herself a quiet pride, now with no sense of haughtiness. Her lips moved slowly and with an assurance that somehow lent her words an aloof intimacy. But it was her eyes that astonished him, possessing a soft, black depth he could not make himself believe existed. He tried to tell himself their appearance was due to the lighting in the bar. Never darting, they moved with a slow scanning motion, seeming not to focus, yet capable of piercing all that surrounded them. He imagined them to be seeing so much more than his own eyes, and he felt blind in her presence.

When she stopped speaking, Kramer remained silent, hoping to again hear her voice, remembering its proud yet sad quality. But she remained silent, looking directly at yet through him. A long moment passed without words before Kramer spoke the one coherent thought in his mind. “You never told me your name.”

“Tuyen,” she answered, then hesitated before asking in the manner of an afterthought, “Your name is?”

“David.”

For the first time that night, something close to a smile appeared on her face. “I know him.” Kramer looked at her questioningly. “He is in the Bible. We read it in school.
  
.
 
.
 
. Is a lesson. I have to.”

“Oh,” he answered, wanting to hear her voice, not his own.

“I really like him,” she said, trilling the
l
’s in “really.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He sings and plays music and writes poems. He is good, and yet he kills a man to get his wife. He seem real, not like the others.”

Again Kramer became intrigued by her way of looking at things; to be told something about his own name that he’d never realized before, something so obviously true as to amaze him with his ignorance of it. ‘Maybe she’s a Catholic,’ he thought. ‘They fled the Communists.’ “Are you Buddhist?”

She shook her head. “I am —” she paused while trying to think of the right word “— atheist.”

Again he waited for her to speak, wanting to hear her voice and yet unable to think of any questions. Finally she said, “I think I should go home.”

This was the last thing he wanted to hear, yet there was never any question in his mind of trying to get her to stay. He followed her to the door and watched as she padlocked it. Kramer had no intention of walking with her, but she started in the direction of the hospital and he followed. He now realized for the first time, that since her description of Hue, she had been speaking English. “I thought you couldn’t speak English.”

“I say I do not speak English.”

“Why not?”

“Is ugly.”

“Why do you say that?”

She looked at him as if to ask, “What is there to explain?” then said, “Is an ugly language, like German.”

They were no longer walking between the disheveled shacks of the bar district, but instead along a street of drab concrete buildings, “American buildings,” she told him. Tuyen stopped in front of a door to one of them. “This is where I live.” He made no effort to leave. “I think you should go.”

“Go where?”

“Wherever you should go.
  
.
 
.
 
. I am tired.”

“I thought maybe we could talk awhile,” Kramer suggested, and this was exactly what he had in mind, nothing more.

“Is late,” she said coldly.

“I’m going back to An Hoa tomorrow.” She shrugged her shoulders indicating this meant nothing to her. “Maybe I could come in for a few minutes,” he suggested with no hope of her agreeing.

Without answering him, Tuyen unlocked the door and stepped inside. As he followed her in, she said, “For a minute.”

Tuyen walked towards the center of the room and pulled the cord to a rice paper-shaded lamp hanging from the ceiling. Kramer’s eyes scanned the sparsely furnished room. The concrete floor was highly polished and immaculate. A red silk bedspread covered a thin mattress and the pallet it lay upon. The room’s only window was curtained with this same material. A narrow, silk-screen painting hung on each of the walls. In the corner stood a carved, black enamel dresser. On the opposite side of the room was a small table with two pictures on top of it. In front of the pictures lay a pack of Salem cigarettes and a candle. Kramer noticed Tuyen take a quick glance at the table before saying, “Is late. Maybe you should go.” He remained silent, so she walked to the door and held it open for him. As he walked through it, he made no effort to hide his disappointment.

Turning in the doorway, he said, “I’d like to talk to you some time.” She made no reply, nor did her face give any indication that this would be agreeable to her. He stepped out into the quiet deserted street and headed towards the hospital. Her face remained in his thoughts as clearly as if it were before him; and he wondered why. It never occurred to him to wonder why she had spoken to him at all, or about the things she had chosen to tell him. Knowing that he would never see her again and that now she was even more of a mystery, he regretted the entire evening. When he reached the hospital, Kramer was irritated to find himself repeating her name.

Childs and Hamilton were walking along the orange dirt road back to Ninth Motors. They had spent their second day in Da Nang at Freedom Hill, the huge PX complex wandering through and around it while eating hamburgers, french fries, and carrying Cokes in their hands. That night they had slept at the Marine Air Wing facility, and they were now heading towards the helicopter landing pad to get a ride back to Hill 65. Childs was in an unusually good mood, and he asked Hamilton, “Aren’t you glad I talked you into this?” Hamilton, walking with his head down, made no reply. “What the hell’s wrong with you? This was almost as good as an R and R, wasn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Hamilton answered sullenly. It wasn’t Da Nang that he was thinking about. Now that they were heading back to Hill 65, Hamilton’s thoughts returned to what had happened under the canopy. All during the time they had been in Da Nang, these memories had been forgotten. Only now did he relive that scene, and he did so with no sense of horror. What had happened did trouble him; but only because he had so easily accepted it, and this seemed vitally wrong. Something told him that he should be horrified by the memories of what had happened; and yet it was merely the absence of this guilt that bothered him. Hamilton kept reminding himself that only Pablo and Tony 5 had refused, but this seemed more a reason for guilt than an excuse against it. He remembered how the men had been purposely avoiding each other’s eyes on Hill 65, and sensed that it was each other’s knowledge of the act that was painful, not the act itself. Only Chalice had been greatly affected, had acted the way it seemed all of them should be acting; but this merely suggested that he was somehow weaker than the rest of them.

Hamilton now refused to let himself again forget the act. It seemed his responsibility to keep thinking about it until these thoughts brought on a feeling of guilt. Without really being conscious of it, he sensed a deep incongruity in his reaction — either he should feel guilty or he should search out the hidden flaw in his consciousness that misled him into thinking that he should. He was only able to state this idea to himself in the simplest of terms — ‘Something is wrong, fucked up, really fucked up.’ He walked along in silence, pondering the problem without results or even the hope for any, sure that he hadn’t really understood what had happened, that the eating of human flesh must be something more than merely that, something horrible. For the first time he felt a need to talk about it; to have his guilt explained to him. As of yet he had not heard anyone else mention what had happened, and this made him hesitant to do so. He realized that the fact that no one even dared to joke about it was of even greater import. When he finally spoke, Hamilton found no significance in his own choice of words or the guiltless tone that he used. “Childs, do you remember when we ate part of that Gook up on Charlie Rid—”