The Brothers K (67 page)

Peter, for the first two weeks of his Oriental
peregrinatio
, did all his traveling in the same teeming, slat-benched, open-windowed third-class train cars that his one and only political hero, Mahatma Gandhi, had once preferred. But in no time he discovered that a 6′2″ blond-braided American and the dark, diminutive Gandhi simply do not experience the same India, the same Indians, or the same third-class train cars. Gandhi, for example, had not contracted dysentery by merely inhaling the smoky air, and so had not been forced to pack up all his books and bags (lest they be stolen), jump train at every village depot, find the nearest abandoned ditch or alleyway, and void his churning bowels; nor had the Mahatma’s posterior shone like an enormous new baseball, inspiring crowds of Muslim and Hindu urchins to steal up and break into gales of laughter even before it began producing its abysmal sound effects; nor had Gandhi been followed back to the depot by these same gangs of kids, all shouting like town criers about “Sahib’s” explosive exploits in the back alley as bystanders stared and scowled and Sahib rushed his crimson face, queasy bowels, books and bags back to the train—to find four or five Indian gentlemen serenely seated upon the unreserved bench he’d just been forced to vacate.

It was while hunching, clammy-fleshed, with the animals and Untouchables in the aisles of these third-class train cars praying for nothing more transcendent than the strength to hold his anus shut that Peter felt driven to make his first compromise with Mother India: Gandhi or no Gandhi, he would henceforth do his traveling in first-class, glassed-in, air-conditioned train cars equipped with private, flush-toileted bathrooms.

Americanness, he was discovering, is not an easy quality to crucify—at least not without crucifying the entire American.

N
ot long after this first modification of the Gandhian ideals he now referred to in letters as “naïve preconceptions,” Peter took to purchasing expensive private sleeping compartments as well. The first time he did it he wrote in his diary that it was a one-shot deal: “I need the peace and the privacy, just this once, both to study and to ward off illness.”

The second time he did it his argument had gotten fancier: “Gandhi, for the sake of his work, traveled third-class in order to better know—in
his Indian bones—what the day-to-day experience of India’s people is. But my bones are American, my work here is scholarly, I need to stay healthy for the sake of the work, and by the standards of this pathetically Westernized body of mine, a first-class Indian train car is
already
third-class.”

But the third, fourth and fifth times he purchased sleeping berths his health was fine, he had no pressing work to do, and he had no ready arguments: he just wanted to be alone. He tried not to subject this deepening desire for cloistered travel to scrutiny, but introspection and honesty were old habits with Peter, and his inner debate soon made its way into his journal: “A scholar-monk traveling in the same style as all these well-to-do Hindu merchants may still be a scholar, but he is hardly a monk,” he wrote one day. On the other hand, “I’ve met Westerners whose health has been broken completely by trying to become ‘Indian’ too fast. It takes
time
to change a body. A careful transition is justified.”

Justified or not, to sleep and read one’s way through a foreign country in a private, air-conditioned cubicle is to be in no foreign country at all. That he might genuinely fear, at least physically, the very land whose literature and spiritual traditions he’d adored since childhood, that such a fear might imply a never to be assimilated core of foreignness—these kinds of thoughts did not yet occur to him. By reading and working ceaselessly, by emaciating himself physically and by increasing his theoretical knowledge of India even as he decreased his firsthand experience, he was able to continue feeling that he belonged where he was. But the strain had begun to show: “I am trying to live as a contemplative,” he wrote in his journal the last night he ever debated the Sleeper Compartment Issue, “and a contemplative’s work is to
renounce
worlds, not immerse himself in them.”

But it was not this emphatic statement that ended the debate. What ended it was rereading the statement—and hearing a distinctly derisive snicker rise from the part of his psyche that for seventeen years had shared a room with a tactlessly observant young rabble-rouser named Everett.

“I am weak!” Peter finally wrote, if only to silence the snicker.

He then slammed the diary shut, lay down on his bed, and let the train lull him into a cool but troubled sleep.

mydearkinkade

just because I’ve been ingesting a few of the small dometopped protuberances that last autumn so protuberated in a nearby cow meadow type ecology system do not for evevn onem oment assume I am in any wayless capable of the most lucid kinf og

well maybe typewritee operation isn’t so easy but do not the less youmagine such techicnal dfidculties implies me the least less trustworthy of being confided in in case tasha happens to have told why or better yet where she is/ //oh yeah/: =”!. = $these deals!&% + * cept I meant comm,a,, ,damn it,,i mean people do trust you kade, and sometimes write or maybe phone and say swear you’ll keep this secret, but if she did, kade pleaseyou’ve got to unswear
please

because she left me kade.

my tasha

she left mei don’t even know why be my valentine two days ago she says then didn’t
warn
me file a
complaint
give a
scowl
every time we made love stereo
orgasm
me babbling more and more wildly about effing
marriage
for christsake meaning every
word
with all my heart and her smiling so unbelieveable and saying and i quote
a love our size eventually demands that
THEN NOT TELLING ME A GODDAMN ANYTHING!?! just leaving me this NOTHING of a,this this FUCK, kade!just
look
at this farewell fucking nothing of a

scissored straight out of a 75 cent signet classic conversation between dumkopf and alleyoopa karamazov for godsake and like
hell
will she choke there she’s got her whole mom’s new golf ranch somewhere in the desert she never got around to telling me and probly fifty old boyfrinds and money and cars and diningclub citizenships and didn’t even leave a goddam phone or clue or frowarding address or the truth or why or anything!

except I guess, now I mention it, neither have i exactlly.

told the truth that is, so her it is:

i am actually not doing so good is the truth kade. like i for starters can’t believe how much less than death did us part and feel like a piece of week-old warmed-over lied-to dogshit and on top of that miss her so bad i want to die is the other worst part, because the other truth is i love her, man, big time, no lie, no way to hide from it or not feel it, and i’d have sworn she loved me too is the part that, how can you, how can I, how could she just walk off and about kill me like this, or try, till luckily i scored the shrooms, man, the mindnukes, the freeze-dried meadow nodules happening here instead and so started staving off the why o why o whys since i don’t know, nam, oops, except wow, man, did you never notice till now how nam backwards is man, man, because of how the men in nem are backwards too, man, which is I’m afriad the sort of noodlyheaded shit i now put my whole mind dick and soul into noticing, for survival purposes, nam, having never been in this position of suckered to the point of i’d have sworn to god tasha loved me, we loved each other, i
know
she did, so if it’s truth we’re talking, truthfully, sick, actually, to death, man, is how i feel at the,

how many of these canyou before you

sick, god sick, my new continent gone, nam sick

is how i

hey, that you kade?

found this on the floor what is it? three days later? real letter forthcoming instant i finish non-mycological efforts to recalculate what reality is. keep me posted on Winnie no matter what happens. sorry to lay this on you. thanks, man.

shit

Everett

You know how rain zuzzes when it hits the water? That soothing sound the surface makes? Well, that’s what I was hearing, just that zuzz and the drippling of leaves and trees, when it happened. But you wouldn’t believe, Kade, how little things like that, things like rain falling into the Mekong the same calm way it falls into the rivers back home, can stop your heart here. Because this river, remember, is warm as piss, and the air always smells wrong and the trees and vines feel like they’re watching and hating you and ready to kill you, and that’s tiring, understand? The fear here, and the wrongness feeling, they just wear you out. But with my poncho, see, I could block all the wrongness out and frame in this perfect little zuzzing piece of river surface. And soon as I did it slid me right on down by the Columbia, in late fall maybe, all brown and wide and floody, so that my one plan in all of life was to sit there as forever as possible.

And that’s when it happens. That’s when our point, Ducky Gelman, comes slithering through the brush, grabs Sergeant Felker, eases him all hushhush down beside me, parts vines, scopes in a tree just downriver. And by God, there he is. Victor. I see him bare-eyed myself. All in black. All alone. Hunched in plain sight in this big green tree overhanging the water.

Of course without even thinking we feel it’s a trap. You always feel this, even when it can’t be, since in the long run
everything
about being here’s a trap. Anyhow Gelman’s a big duckhunter back in Real Life, and always has these duckhunting strategies he applies to the situation, so what he more or less says is that the Cong in the tree is a decoy and that a thousand or so VC with 12-gauges are out there in duckblinds praying to the Gook God for us to shoot him and give our position away. While Felker thinks this over I scope Victor in. I can see him perfect. He’s only 150 yards off. I see the rifle in his lap, the radio on the limb behind him, the Chinese lettering on his rubber slipper soles. I even see his jaw working, and for a second think he’s singing. Then his hand goes to his mouth and I realize it’s food. It’s eating. He’s just staring at the water eating his damned Vietnamese lunch up there. So let’s go, is my feeling. Leave him his lunch and let’s scram. Then Felker whispers He’s no decoy. He’s recon, same as
us, watching for things moving up or down river. And with that he turns to me.

Christ, life is hard to predict, Kade. I didn’t use to worry about it. God provides, I thought, so try your best and don’t worry. So I never worried, back in Boot, how high scores in target-shooting would translate to a place like Nam. I just didn’t see the day coming when some big scary mother like Felker would whisper like he was doing me some huge favor: Okay, Chance. Pop him good and let’s scratch gravel. He can’t be as lonesome as he looks.

It was true, what Felker said. Ducky’s nuts from being on point, too much duckhunting and all, but the Delta really is a place where a hundred of them can jump out of anywhere anytime. And there were six of us. And this scared me right out of my head, Kade. It scared me clean out of remembering who I am. Or was. Just do it and run, I tell myself. You didn’t make the world, I tell myself. Left shoulder blade, Felker whispers, and I think, Don’t shake or he’ll suffer; think, Sorry, Victor, but your time is up; think, Jesus forgive me—if you can believe that. Then I start squeezing. The gun is very quiet in the rain. It sounds like a toy. But the guy in the tree, our nation’s enemy, Victor flips around sideways, crashes down through the branches and ends up on his back on a wide leafy limb. His rifle splashes into the river. So does whatever he was eating. Gelman and Felker disappear, which is what I should do too of course. But I just stand there. I never shot even an animal before, so it interests me. It interests me especially since he was just sitting there same as me, and could of seen and shot me first. Or we could of gone happily on not seeing each other, not shooting each other, enjoying the same zuzz as forever as possible.

Then I notice something else interesting. He isn’t dead. He’s hanging on to a limb with one hand, has a leg hooked over another, and neither the hand or the leg are letting go. I see blood all over his chest though the bullet entered his back, so I know it’s torn clear through him. The blood’s running wet and black out of him, down through the leaves, dripping off his calves and feet, off his hair, off his elbows. He can’t lift himself, he has no idea where the shot came from, he’s not a VC anymore, not a Commie anymore, not a dink, not a threat, not an enemy. He’s just this ruined little person whose body doesn’t want to die any more than mine does. So he won’t let go.

From the bushes somewhere Felker tells me come the fuck on, his friends are probably coming. He’s still alive, I tell him. Then deal with it and come, he says, and I hear them moving out, and know I can’t
find my way through ten yards’ worth of this jungle alone. So can you believe it? I do what he says. I deal with it. But I’m sick and shaking this time and don’t know where I hit him, and when he falls another few feet and lands on another big limb he holds on to this one too. And now, I have to tell you Kade, now I hate him. I hate him so bad for scaring me like this and not dying like this that, God damn me to hell, I shoot him again, twice more, in the back or buttocks, I don’t know where, and knock him lower each time. But still he keeps landing on things, clutching at things, grabbing things. He’s on the last limb above the river now, blood all down through the tree, and the limb is sinking, the current’s pulling him hard, his fist is slipping down a thorn vine that must be ripping his palm to shreds, and all this time I’m scoping him, hating him, waiting for some good part of him to show so I can squeeze a round into it too. But then the current spins him, and all I see is mouth. And it’s wide open, Kade, gasping for air, and full of unharmed teeth and a small pink tongue with unchewed bits of lunch still on it. And after all I’ve done to him, when I see this, I can’t do more. So I just watch. I watch his fist run out of vine, watch the limb, flinging blood, sway back up in the tree, watch to see what he does with nothing but water and air to clutch at. But when the current takes him and his head spins under, leaving nothing but that quiet zuzz, something in me spins under too, and I think
Sparkle
. Because remember the time, that little dog out of the Washougal? Because how in Christ’s Name, Kade, even as a soldier, can I not do for a man what I once did for a damned dog? So I drop my weapon. I drop it and start running to save the same guy I’ve just murdered, and for ten or twelve seconds it’s the most wonderful feeling! For ten or twelve seconds I’m me again, Kade, tearing along like it’s football, doing the first clear and good and hundred and ten percent right thing I’ve done since joining this fucking Army. But I don’t make it sixty yards before I hit jungle thicker than our laurel hedge, which knocks me down, slows me to a crawl, makes me snake toward the river thinking
Swim for him then!
But near the edge I hit thorn-vines where the harder you fight the harder you stick, and when I finally reach water and break free enough to see, my God, he’s so far downriver. And moving so fast. And I’ve shot him so bad, over and over and over.