The Shadow of Arms (20 page)

Her voice was growing shrill, so Yong Kyu raised his head. For a moment he thought her eyes were getting moist, then immediately tears started streaming down her face. He had touched a wound. He quietly stood up and gave her space. She quickly pulled herself together, taking a handkerchief from her purse and cleaning her face.

“This is why I hate running into you people here. Who do you think you are, anyway? You're no brother of mine. Once I found a Korean girl, a dancer, dead drunk and crying her eyes out. Some bastard, one of our recruits, had thrown a bottle at her on stage for taking her clothes off in front of American GIs. Crazy bastards. Who do they think they are—they themselves are licking asses for a lousy few US dollars a month? Don't make me laugh!”

There was an element of truth in what the woman said.

“I'm sorry,” Yong Kyu mumbled under his breath, “I didn't mean to insult you.” Then, in spite of himself, he blurted out, “Seeing you come out of that dark room, awakened from sleep . . . I felt sorry for you somehow . . . We're in a war zone.”

The woman softened a bit and then replied in a lighter tone, “Well, I appreciate the compassion.”

Toi came back in, holding the typed report out to Yong Kyu. He checked it for errors and then said to the woman, “Read this, and if it's all true, sign it.”

She read through the report, then carefully signed it and tossed down the ballpoint pen.

“Are you done with me?”

“Yes, you can go now.”

Yong Kyu also put his signature at the bottom. Then with a smile he said, “Sorry for the trouble. The exit is over there. You know the way, don't you? It's not far. It will take you just a few minutes to walk back to the Thanh Thanh from here.”

The woman looked uneasily at the report Yong Kyu was putting away.

“Mr. Ahn Yong Kyu, what are you planning to do?”

Yong Kyu was startled, as though it was the first time he ever heard a woman call his name.

“Don't worry,” he said.

He looked over at Toi. Unable to understand anything of what they had been saying, Toi had a vacant look on his face.

“We'll probably consult with Major Pham Quyen. He'll be able to come up with a satisfactory solution,” said Yong Kyu.

The woman rose and walked toward the door, then stopped. She turned back and said to Yong Kyu, “Your concern, I really do appreciate it.”

 

 

14

Pham Quyen had gone home during the afternoon siesta. That morning just after he arrived at work his sister had called him, saying his mother was sick. Only two days before his mother had been in good spirits, singing as she cleaned the house, and then, all of a sudden, she had taken ill for no apparent reason. He knew his mother well. She had used that same ploy as long as he could remember, feigning sickness to make his father rush home from business trips. His father would walk into the house with a hearty laugh and a “Where's my poor sick baby?” In his hand there would be some Coty perfume or some fancy chocolate from Hanoi, and his mother's sham illness was miraculously cured before her husband had time to take his hat off.

Everyone told Quyen that he took after his father. He knew for certain that his mother was expecting him to play the father's role. When he got out of the car, nobody came out of the house to greet him. As he walked in the living room, his sister emerged from the kitchen. There was a bowl of Chinese medicine on the tray she carried. It had to be the concoction made from boiled cinnamon and poppy oil that his mother was in the habit of taking when she suffered from nerves or from a sudden cold.

“What's she complaining about?”

His sister's eyes were bloodshot. She set the tray down on the table and grabbed his wrist as she spoke. “Something terrible has happened, Quyen. Your little brother's disappeared.”

“Minh? When?”

“I don't know. Mother's been worrying about him. She wrote to his school and to Uncle in Hue a while back. She asked me not to tell you, but Uncle's reply came this morning.”

“Let me see the letter.”

His sister rummaged through a drawer and produced the letter. Pham Quyen read it: “Dear Sister-in-law, upon receiving your letter, I checked Minh's attendance with the university office. I found he hasn't been attending school for the last two months. This means that when he came to stay here with us, he already had stopped going to classes. Last month he said he was headed home for a visit. Since there was no word from him, I assumed he would stay home and take a semester off. I do not, however, worry about him. He is a prudent young man. He will not act lightly. Since he's a student with a draft deferment, if anything had happened to him, the family would have been notified. Don't be too worried, and let us wait quietly and patiently, following the example of many other families these days. I'll find time to visit you as soon as the road conditions improve.”

Quyen put the letter back into the envelope. Without saying a word to his sister, he sat down at the table.

“Would you like some green tea?” she asked.

He nodded and said, “When's Lei coming?”

“Soon. Her morning classes should be over by now.”

Pham Quyen fell into thought. His sister took the bowl of medicine into her mother's room and shortly afterwards returned.

“Did you tell mother I was here?”

“She was about to fall asleep, so I didn't tell her.”

“Good.”

He went back to thinking. What he had been fearing had at last happened. As he grew older, Minh had become more and more argumentative with him, but lately he talked less and less. In the past, when Minh shouted at him with a foul look on his face Quyen could at least get a vague idea of what he was thinking, but ever since Minh stopped talking it was impossible to guess what was on his mind, what he was planning.

When Minh had defied him, calling him a running dog of the imperialists, Quyen slapped him hard across the face. But at their last meeting, during the monsoon holidays, Minh had said not a word to him until late one night when Quyen had come home drunk. Minh had grabbed him by the shoulders, whispering: “Brother, I don't want to be a doctor. I'll never be able to cure what ails you, my brother, my poor sick brother, Quyen.” Even in his drunken stupor, he had found Minh's voice so calm and affectionate that it seemed to melt right into his spine. Quyen had pretended to pass out and let Minh help him into bed. The next morning when he got up to go to work, Pham Minh already was gone.

“Drink your tea.”

Quyen drank his tea. Yes, his little brother had gone into the jungle. He would not be able to come back. The Liberation Front did everything they could to conceal their military strength. If he died in action, the family would not even be notified. If Minh had not joined the government forces, his family might at most receive the official NLF document sealed with a yellow star that some other families received.

Pham Quyen buried his face in his hands: If only I had known . . . I could have stopped him, even if I had to shoot him in the arm or the foot. If Minh had only waited a little longer, I could have sent him to Europe. For ten thousand dollars, I can easily get anybody's son to France by way of Cambodia. The going rate to get someone out to another Southeast Asian country was only three or four thousand. Minh could have lived with his wife in a cheery, one-story house annexed to a private clinic, watering the flowerpots in his living room. I could take a drive over to visit him.

Just then something exploded. He imagined shattered windows and bloody corpses lying everywhere. Quyen jerked his head up. Yes, Minh had disappeared, throwing a plastic bomb at all those hopes and dreams. They never should have sent him to his uncle's in Hue. Uncle was a feeble old man, but he might have influenced the boy with his extreme ideologies. He had probably started reading classics like Proudhon and Bakunin. And then he would have graduated to Lenin and Mao. And on to those innumerable pamphlets, beginning with the theses of Ho Chi Minh and from there to the strategic doctrines and political speeches of Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong . . . .

If it is absolutely impossible for you to produce anything useful, or if you refuse to be a producer, then live in isolation as a hermit or invalid. If we have abundance enough to supply your daily necessities, then we will gladly give them to you. For you are a human being and have the right to live. But if you leave the masses, wishing to live in conditions of privilege, it is only natural that you should suffer the consequences in your daily relationships with other citizens. You will be regarded as a ghost of the bourgeoisie, unless your friends discover some remarkable gift in you, and by carrying out all necessary labor on your behalf, kindly free you from your moral obligations.

Pham Quyen remembered those lines well. At the sound of a bicycle bell outside, he raised his head with a jolt. Lei could be seen through the open door. With her hat hanging behind her head, she walked her bicycle into the front yard and left it propped against the wall. When she came inside, she started at the unexpected sight of Quyen.

“Come here and sit down.”

Lei politely sat down across the table from her brother, wiping her face with her handkerchief.

“You have to answer everything I ask you. Leave nothing out.”

His elder sister, Mi, came over to Lei with a concerned look on her face and asked if the young girl was hungry.

“Just get out of the way!” Quyen unleashed his anger, and Mi, intimidated, rushed into the kitchen.

“What's wrong, Big Brother?” Lei asked in a pleading tone, her voice already clouding up to rain tears. But Pham Quyen showed no mercy.

“You must know. Where has Minh gone?”

“He is in Hue,” Lei said, her face blue with fear.

“Don't play the innocent with me. I know. When was he last here?”

“I don't know, I don't know, really.” Lei began to cry.

Behind him, his elder sister timidly said, “Please, not so loud, you'll wake up Mother.”

Quyen swung around and pointed his finger at her, saying, “Mi, you're just as guilty. All of you are in this.”

“Why . . . I can't believe you'd speak to me that way.”

His sister dropped her head and retreated back to the kitchen. Quyen pounded on the table.

“I'm the head of this family. I would do anything for you. It's my responsibility to keep you safe and happy. Go outside and see. Everywhere people are dying, starving, barely staying alive. I play the role of father and struggle to protect you from falling into such misery. And this is the thanks I get? My little brother defies me, my little sister lies to me, and all of you are turning away from me.”

Lei glared at her big brother and said, “Brother Minh has joined the National Liberation Front.”

Dumbfounded, Quyen looked at Lei, not believing his ears.

“What, what did you say?!”

“NLF. Can you hear me now? Satisfied?”

Quyen had nothing more to say. Lei pushed her chair back, got up and went into the kitchen to see her sister Mi. The two were probably sobbing in each other's arms, he thought. Quyen leaned back in his chair, feeling completely drained. He stood up, opened the kitchen door and without looking at his sisters, said, “I'll speak to Mother, but you both watch what you say outside the house. Especially you, Lei! Be careful what you say to your friends at school!”

Pham Quyen went to his mother's room and quietly pushed the door open. Had he come late or been unable to come at all that evening, and if his sisters had made a slip of the tongue, that would have been the end of all tranquility in the house. There was no telling what his mother would demand that he do, pestering him relentlessly. If she knew Minh had gone into the jungle, she would lose her wits and plead with Quyen to organize a special commando team to go out and bring him back.

His mother slowly opened her eyes and stared up at him. The lines of her mouth began to twitch in a contorted tick.

“Quyen, you've heard, haven't you? Our Minh is missing. What can we do? You take after your father, so gutsy and clever that I never worry about you, but I've always worried about your little brother. Not knowing whether he's dead or alive . . . shouldn't we've heard some news of him?”

Pham Quyen forced a smile.

“The truth is, Mother, Minh's joined the army. I sent him, Mother.”

The old woman sat up, straightening her backbone.

“He got a draft deferment, so why should he join the army?”

“He has to, if we are sending him to France to study. He has to finish military service first. If I get him into the medical corps, he'll be out in eighteen months.”

“Well why did you wait until now to tell me and make me go through all this?”

Then his mother frowned again.

“So, where's he stationed now? He's not by any chance with the paratroopers or the rangers or the black leopards, or whatever they call them, is he?”

“No, Mother. I sent him to the Navy. He's been in the orderly corps since dropping out of medical school. He's wearing a white gown and working as an orderly on a hospital ship of a neutral country.”

“I see. So he's nursing people. I suppose there's not much to worry about then. I thought I would burn up inside.”

“Don't worry, Mother. Just rest.”

As Quyen turned to leave the room his mother called out to him, “Why do you have that look on your face? Are you angry because I was so anxious?”

“No, Mother. I'm just a little tired.”

“Come home early tonight. We'll have a family offering.”

“I'm very busy, Mother. You see, the general is going to Saigon. Even if I were ten people I wouldn't be able to finish all the work that needs to be done. Now, just don't worry about Minh anymore.”

“Wait . . . you're not lying to me just to put your mother's mind at ease, are you?”

Pham Quyen suppressed an urge to shout at the top of his lungs: “You've been a lucky woman, Mother, your husband passed away without pain as he slept in a bath; even if you lose one of your children, even if Minh was dead, you'd still be luckier than all the other old mothers of Vietnam.” But he gave his mother a wide smile.

“I'll bring you his enlistment papers in a few days. You'll be getting a letter from him before long, I bet.”

“Yes, yes, I'm fine now.”

Mi, who had been eavesdropping, grabbed his hand as he came out of the room.

“Well done. I'm glad she didn't press harder. And don't scold Lei too much, please.”

Without replying to her, Quyen walked on into the living room to look for Lei. Judging from the clinks from the kitchen, she was in there eating. He started to say something, caught himself, and walked outside. Mi followed him out of the house.

“Are you coming home tonight?”

“I don't know. I might be late.”

He drove back to the provincial government offices in a savage mood. Before going in he bought a
bánh mì
from a vendor out front. As he walked in the door, a lieutenant with a freshly washed face spoke to him.

“A telephone call came for you just now, sir. From the Thanh Thanh.”

Chewing on the
bánh mì
, Major Pham said to the lieutenant, “Bring me a cup of coffee from downstairs.”

As soon as he left, Quyen picked up the phone.