The Infinite Plan (25 page)

When I awoke I had in my mind and my heart the resolutions that would determine my life in future years, although I didn't know it at the time. Now that I can look at the past from a certain perspective, I realize that in that instant I began to be the person I was for a long time, an arrogant, frivolous, and greedy man I always detested—a person it has cost me a lot to leave behind.

I stayed with my friends five days, without communicating with Samantha. They took turns sitting with me and patiently listening to me retell a thousand times the story of my nostalgia, despair, and grievances. On Friday I went to take my bar examination; I was free of anxiety because I had no illusions. I didn't care about the test and was, in fact, totally indifferent in regard to my future. Several months later, when I was on the opposite side of the globe, I was notified I had passed the bar on my first try, something that rarely happens in my tortuous profession. From the exam I had reported directly to the army. I should have trained for sixteen weeks, but the war was at its peak and the course had been reduced to twelve. In some ways, those three months were worse than the war itself, but I came out of it with a hundred and ninety-eight pounds of muscle and the endurance of a camel, a brute willing to destroy my own shadow had I been ordered to do so. Two days before I shipped out, the computer selected me for the Language Institute in Monterey. I suppose that having grown up in the Mexican barrio and having heard my mother's Russian and listened to her Italian operas had trained my ear. I was almost two months in a paradise of Victorian houses, picture-postcard sunsets, and sheer cliffs overlooking rocky shores where seals lazed in the sun; I studied Vietnamese round the clock with professors who rotated on the hour and threatened that if I didn't learn quickly I would be branded a traitor to my country. At the end of the course I spoke the language better than most of the other students. I left for Vietnam harboring the secret fantasy of dying so I would not have to face the drudgery and pain of living. But dying is much more difficult than staying alive.

PART THREE

Chapter Three

People.
War is people. The first word that comes to mind when I think about the war
is
people: us, my friends, my brothers, all united in the same desperate fraternity. My comrades. And the others, those tiny men and women with indecipherable faces whom I should hate but can't, because in these last weeks I have begun to know them. Here everything is black and white; there are no halftones or ambiguities; the manipulation is behind us, the hypocrisy, the deceit. Life or death. Kill or be killed. We're the good guys and they're the bad guys; without that conviction you're fucked for sure, and in a certain way such insane simplification is refreshing, it's one of the virtues of war. All kinds end up in this hole: blacks escaping poverty, poor farmers who still believe in the American Way of Life, a few Latins fired by the rage of centuries and aspiring to be heroes, psychopaths, and some like myself, running away from failure or guilt; in combat we're all equal, the past is irrelevant, a bullet is the great democratic experience. We must prove each day that we're not men, we're soldiers: endure, bear the pain and discomfort, never complain, kill, grit your teeth and don't think, don't ask questions, obey—that's why they broke us like horses, trained us with kicks, insults, and humiliation. We're not individuals, in this tragic theater of violence we're machines at the service of the motherfucking nation. You do anything to survive. I feel good when I've killed, because at least for now I'm still alive. I accept the lunacy and don't try to explain it; I simply hold on to my weapon and fire. Don't think, or you'll get confused and hesitate. If you think, you're dead—that is the one unequivocal law of war. The enemy has no face, he's not human, he's an animal, a monster, a demon: if I could believe that in the bottom of my heart, things would be easier, but Cyrus taught me to question everything, he forced me to call things by their names—kill, murder. I came here to shake off my indifference and to throw myself into something exhilarating, I came with a cynical attitude, ready to live recklessly, to give meaning to my life. I came because of Hemingway, in search of my manhood, the myth of the macho, the definition of masculinity, pride in the muscles and endurance I acquired during training, wanting to prove my valor because at heart I have always suspected I am a coward and to prove my fortitude because I was sick of being betrayed by my feelings. A late rite of passage. Who comes to such hell at twenty-eight? The first four months were like a life-and-death game, like placing bets against myself. I observed myself from a distance and with heavy irony sat in judgment of myself; I was haunted by the past, and pushed myself to the limits of risk and pain and exhaustion and brutality, and, when I reached those limits, found I couldn't take it. Drugs help. And then one day I woke up feeling alive, quintessentially alive, more alive than I had ever been, in love with this conflagration we call life. At that moment I faced my own mortality: I am an eggshell, a nothing that in an instant can turn to dust, leaving not so much as a memory. When the new contingents arrive I look the men over, I inspect them carefully; I have developed a sixth sense about reading the signs, I know which ones will die and which ones won't. The most courageous and daring will die first, because they believe they are invincible; these men are killed by pride. The most terrified will also die, because they are paralyzed or crazed by fear, they shoot blindly and sometimes hit a comrade; these you don't want near you, they're bad luck, you don't want them in your platoon. The best men keep their cool, they don't take unnecessary risks, they try not to attract or deserve attention, they have a strong will to live. I like the Latinos, they are surly and uncommunicative outside but dynamite inside: explosive, lethal, cool in the face of death. Not only are they brave; they're good buddies.

I carry amphetamines by the fistful, all mixed together, a kick in the stomach, a bitter taste in the mouth; I talk so fast I don't know what I'm saying, after a minute or two I can't talk at all, I chew gum to keep from biting my tongue, then I stupefy myself with alcohol and sleeping pills in order to get a little rest. I dream of rivers of blood, seas of flaming gasoline, gaping wounds—women's lips, vulvas—the dead stacked in piles, severed heads, children aflame in napalm, all those repugnant snapshots soldiers collect: red, nothing but red. I have learned to sleep in catnaps, five or ten minutes whenever I can, wherever I am, wrapped in my plastic poncho, always with my senses on alert. My hearing has grown sharper: I can hear an insect moving across the ground; my sense of smell is keener: I can smell the guerrillas from several yards away—they eat marinated fish, and when they're afraid and sweating, you can smell them. What do we smell of? Shaving lotion, probably, because we drink it like whiskey, it's forty percent alcohol. When I can sleep a couple of hours without nightmares I'm like new, but I can't always do that. If I'm not sending out the guard or on patrol, I spend the night in camp, shivering beneath a rain-soaked tarp in a tent stinking of urine, boots, mold, rotting rations, and sweat, and listening to the gnawing of busy rats and men on routine shitwork, with mosquitoes so thick they're even in my mouth. Sometimes I wake up crying like an idiot; how Juan José would laugh at me. I wonder how many times he led me to a corner of the schoolyard so the others wouldn't see me cry: Shut up, you gringo fairy, men don't cry. He would shake me, mad as hell, and as his threats didn't solve the problem but only made things worse, he finally would beg me please to shut up—For all you hold holy,
mano,
before they take us both for sissies and kick the shit out of us. To get going in the morning I take aspirins with coffee—cold, of course—smoke the first joint of the day, and before I go out gulp down the amphetamines. What I miss is a warm meal, a shower, a cold beer; I'm up to here with the rations they drop from the air in blue-and-yellow packets—ham and beans, and fruit salad. It's like being a kid again, being here; it's a strange sensation: there are no personal responsibilities, no questions, only obeying, although in fact that's hard for me; I'm better at giving orders, not blindly obeying them. I will never make a good soldier. It's easy to get by unnoticed, to fade into the shadows. Unless you do something really stupid, the days tick by one after the other, your only goal to survive; the terrible, invincible machine takes over everything, your superiors make the decisions, and you have to hope they know what they're doing; I have no worries, I can be invisible in the ranks, I'm like everyone else, a number without a face, a past, or a future. It's like going crazy: you float in the limbo of eternal time and warped space, and no one can hold you accountable for anything; all I have to do is my job, and as for the rest, I do whatever I damn well please. Nothing is more dangerous, though, than to feel you're superior; you're on your own, as lonely as your belly button, Juan José warned me that day on the beach, peering through the smoke of a reefer moistened in opium. The only thing that saves us is the obstinate brotherhood of the grunts. I feel overwhelming compassion, I want to weep for all the accumulated pain, mine and everyone else's, I want to grab a machine gun and go out and kill, howl until the whole universe shatters, I will have a wail stuck in my throat as long as I live. You're crazy,
mano;
you can't feel sorry about things during a war. Juan José and I ran into each other on the beach during a couple of days' leave, a miracle that among half a million servicemen we were in the same place at the same time. We hugged each other, unable to believe in such a coincidence: what fantastic luck to run into you,
mano,
and we clapped each other on the back and laughed, happy, for a minute forgetting where we were, and why. We tried to catch up on what had happened, an impossible task because we hadn't seen each other for ten years, ever since Juan José joined the army and was strutting around in his uniform while I was working for a buck and a half an hour. We had gone our own ways, he toward his destiny as a soldier and I to work for wetback's wages for a year, until Cyrus convinced me to leave the barrio. I don't intend to work forever in my papa's craphole of a garage,
mano,
Juan José had told me, my old man's a slave driver, the army's the best I can do; I'll serve in that fucker until I'm thirty-eight or forty and then retire with a good pension—and the world's mine,
mano.
What else am I gonna do with this Mexican skin and face? Besides, women love uniforms. We laughed like idiots on that beach. You remember the time we stole old Purple Pecker's cigarettes and Padre Larraguibel's wine? And the fights with horse dung? And when we shaved Oliver and painted him with Mercurochrome and took him to school and told everyone he had the bubonic plague?—Hey,
mano,
what the shit
is
the bubonic plague?—all with the old joking, offhanded affection, the rough language and good feelings we shared since we were boys. He told me he'd fallen in love with a Vietnamese girl, and when he showed me the photograph he kept in a plastic case in his wallet, he became serious, and his voice changed. It was an overexposed Polaroid snapshot, in which the woman's face looked like a pale moon framed by the shadows of her hair. I particularly noticed the eyes, but everything else looked like all the Asiatic faces I'd been seeing in recent months.

“Her name's Thui,” he told me.

“That's the name of a fairy princess.”

“It means water.”

I had heard rumors about my friend; soldiers talk, whispers fly through the ranks. He confirmed what I'd heard through the grapevine: he was on a difficult mission, the officer in charge of the platoon was new, they saw they were surrounded, the firing began, five were hit, and the officer ordered them to retreat without taking their wounded. The guy was a fuckup,
mano,
how could we leave them there? Imagine if it was you: I wouldn't leave you to the enemy; that's what I tried to explain to him, but the dickhead sonofabitch was crazy,
mano,
he drew his pistol and threatened us, and he was yelling and waving his arms, I mean, out of control. I couldn't wait for him to calm down, there wasn't time, so I shot him, point-blank. He went down without knowing what hit him. We got the hell out of there—with our wounded, like you should,
mano.
We saved all of them but one who was too far gone; they'd shot out his guts. Poor bastard, he was holding his intestines in his hands and looking at me, wild. Don't leave me alive, Lucky Star, don't leave me; he was beggin'. I had to shoot him in the head, may God forgive me. What a fucking mess this is,
mano.

Bodies were supposed to be placed in bags, with the names neatly on tags, but there wasn't always time for formalities—not enough time or not enough bags. You pick them up by the wrists and ankles and throw them into the helicopters, or tie them up like packages in their own ponchos, swarming with flies. In a few hours the corpses are swollen, bloated, infested with maggots, a bubbling broth of putrefaction. The helicopters are windbirds; they land in a tornado, swirling dust, garbage, and befouled clay for thirty yards around. When the dead have been lying for hours in the heat or rain, bits of flesh tear loose in the whirlwind and, if you're standing too close, hit you in the face. On the mountain I refused to load bodies. I helped the wounded, but afterward I turned to stone and no one dared give me orders; I was beyond life and death, operating on a different plane. A crisis of nerves, a psychotic breakdown—I forget what name they gave it. They wash down the choppers with a hose, but they can't get rid of the stench. Or the echoes of the screams; the dead aren't really gone. I'm not crying, it's the damned allergies or the smoke, who knows; it's no wonder my eyes are irritated: you live breathing in filth. Every time, I give thanks I'm not one of the ones leaving in a body bag, or even worse, one of the others, the ones loaded on with their chest slit open like a piece of fruit, red stumps where legs or arms should be, but still alive, maybe for years, dogged forever by intolerable memories. Thank you, God, I'm still alive, I shouted in English there on the mountain, O Guardian Angel,
dulce compañía,
watch over me by night and by day, I added in Spanish, but no one heard me; between the fire of the battle and screams of the wounded, I couldn't even hear myself. Fucking-Holy-Mother-of-God, get me out of this alive, I cried out; I had the scapulary of the Virgin of Guadalupe around my neck, a scrap of cloth stiff and black from the dried blood of Juan José. A chaplain had given it to me several weeks after my brother was killed. He was the one who had closed his eyes; he told me that Juan José was already as gray as a ghost when he took off the scapulary and asked the chaplain to give it to me for luck, to see if it would help me get out alive. What were his last words? was all I could think to ask the chaplain. Hold me,
Padre,
I'm falling. Hold me, it's so dark down there, was the last thing you said,
mano,
and I wasn't there to hear you or hold you tight and yank you back from death. Oh, shit. Oh, bloody shit! What good was the damn scapulary,
mano
! You lose your faith here, but you get superstitious and begin to see fatal omens everywhere: Tuesdays are bad luck, it's been exactly a week since something happened, it's the calm before the storm, the planes always go down in threes, and two were shot down today. . . . You'll live to be an old man, Greg, Olga swore to me, you'll have time to make a lot of mistakes, to be sorry for some and suffer like hell; it won't be an easy life, but I guarantee it'll be a long one, it's written here on your palm and in the tarot cards. But she could have made it up, she doesn't know anything, she's a worse fake than my father, worse than all the people who tell fortunes and sell amulets in this whole godforsaken country. She told Juan José Morales the same thing, and he believed it; what a stupid bastard you were,
mano.
You were sure of your good luck, that's why you weren't more careful; your confidence was so contagious that two guys from your squad did everything they could to stick close to you: they were sure they'd be safe there. Now none of you can go to Olga and get your money back.