Going After Cacciato (14 page)

He tried for stillness. He counted aloud, passing time. He listened to the river. He tried to distinguish, as his father could, the river sounds from those of the moving grass and trees. Darkness grew on itself. Well after midnight a warm fog groveled down the river, a great softness that drenched and covered him.

He dreamed of basketball.

When he awoke he heard Cacciato in the next hole over,
bouncing the ball. After a time the bouncing stopped and again there was quiet.

Crouching deeper into a corner of his hole, Paul Berlin bowed his head and closed his eyes and listened hard. But there was nothing. Not the wind or the grass, not even the river now.

A bad place, Buff had said. Bad place, bad time. He tried not to think about it, which started him thinking. In the morning they would cross the river and enter the ville and search it, that was what Sidney Martin said, and … and still the quiet. The nerveless quiet. It was in his head now. Silence that wasn’t silence. And in the morning they would cross the river and enter the ville and … He thought about basketball. Winning, that was the sweetest part. The moves and fakes and tactics were all fine, but winning was what made him warm. Warm where the silence hurt, that was where the winning felt so good. Right there, the same place exactly. Bad places and good places. Winning—you knew the score, you knew what it would take to win, to come from behind, you knew exactly. The odds could be figured. Winning was the purpose, nothing else. A basket to shoot at, a target, and sometimes you scored and sometimes you didn’t, but you had a true thing to aim at, you always knew, and you could count on the numbers. And in the morning …

The fog rose.

The quiet was in his head now. It was swollen there, pushing out. It was all in his head.

Morning came and the men climbed from their holes, had breakfast, rolled up their ponchos.

Buff kept shaking his head. Stink Harris grinned, and Cacciato packed away the basketball, and Frenchie Tucker complained about his blood pressure. Paul Berlin felt it in his head.

They doused the breakfast fires.

When the gear was packed, Lieutenant Sidney Martin raised a hand and led them across the river. The water was warm. It warmed the legs and belly.

Then they were out of the water, regrouping, moving up the
clay path into Trinh Son 2. Paul Berlin’s head roared with quiet. Splitting—but he moved into the dark village. When Rudy Chassler hit the mine, the noise was muffled, almost fragile, but it was a relief for all of them.

S
o, yes, Sarkin Aung Wan led them through the westward tunnels. And then they were wading in sewage, through deepening sludge, and the tunnels gradually inclined upward, and they marched faster, pinching their noses, breathing through their mouths. The walls expanded and turned to cement, the ceilings rose. They waded past pipe terminals and pumping machinery and clogged filters and slime.

And at last they came upon a steel-runged ladder bolted to stone.

Sarkin Aung Wan led them up. They climbed fast, coming soon to an iron lid. Sarkin Aung Wan heaved up on it. There was the sound of grating iron; the manhole cover opened to show a deep night sky. They climbed out into the streets of Mandalay.

Three deft syllables trilling on the tip of his brain as he hurried after Sarkin Aung Wan. Mandalay, even the name was musical. He imagined it clearly: museums and golden statues, hansoms drawn by white stallions in braid, white-coated waiters serving fancy food, flowers everywhere, and a clean soft bed.

Mandalay, he thought, and almost said.

They walked fast along a dirt road that wound through city smells, past rows of mud shanties that soon gave way to concrete tenements. No people yet, but all the signs. Cats and chickens battling in alleyways, gutters wet with matted trash, a faint hum, the sound of traffic. The road was lined with palmyra and toddy palms. Dogs roamed everywhere: lean and hungry dogs rummaging through garbage, chewing their tails, howling.

“Detroit,” Oscar whispered. “Leave it to Cacciato. He’ll take a body home.”

They passed through an arcade that opened into a market square. The place was deserted. They crossed the bazaar and turned down a cobbled street winding past shops fronted by steel slide-guards. Paul Berlin kept hearing a hum. He couldn’t place it but he knew it. No single name, no single sound. A hum.

The streets widened. The garbage smells turned to spice smells. The humming sound suddenly exploded, and he knew its name.

The street became a wide boulevard.

Yellow gas lamps. Fountains spraying colored water. Children romping on trimmed grass, old men on park benches and lovers hand in hand, women pushing baby carriages, people lingering, people chatting and laughing, bikes and Hondas and carts and buses and donkeys, date trees in neat rows, hedges trimmed and cut square.

“Civilization,” Paul Berlin said.

   The trolley rattled toward center city. Crowded with Burmese and their dogs and children and chickens, no handholds, the car lurched and jiggled and pressed them together. Sealed windows,
blinking lights, no air conditioning. Paul Berlin could not stop smiling. He smiled and watched old women fanning themselves with bits of cardboard, men singing, men cheering and shaking hands, men drinking rice wine from goatskins. The trolley rounded a curve into the bright city, jerked to a stop, doors sweeping open, fresh city air, honking horns and traffic and motion. Outside, the night was silky under a huge red moon.

They were directed to the Hotel Minneapolis.

“Not the Hilton,” Oscar grumbled. “The Hotel Minneapolis.”

It was a teetering three-story clapboard building, leaning leeward, locked and dark. Oscar hammered until the doors were opened by a woman in leather sandals and a greasy brown robe and a moustache. The woman led them in. “Cheap-cheap,” she said. “Number-One cheap-cheap hotel.” A dozen children sat naked on the stairs and desk and floors. One, a brave little boy, touched Oscar’s weapon. Then he touched Oscar’s hand. Oscar knelt, and the boy touched his face. “Nigger,” Oscar said. The boy lit up. “Nigger!” said the boy. The other children giggled and the woman shushed them. She lit candles and beckoned the lieutenant to follow. Her face was bubbly with carbuncles. “Number One,” she said, and led them up the stairs and down a winding corridor to their rooms. “Hotel Minneapolis, Number-One sleepy.”

   “Tan and strong,” Sarkin Aung Wan purred from somewhere below his knees. There was a brittle, snapping sound. “In Paris we shall walk everywhere. Shan’t we? Oh, yes, we shall be tan and strong and walk everywhere. We shall learn the city like home, learn everything there is to learn.”

“Everything,” he said.

“And … and, oh, we shall visit monuments and hold hands and watch the Paris lights, and then walk to the river, walk to all the lovely shops and … and perhaps you will buy me something pretty.” She stopped. “Wouldn’t you buy me something pretty?”

“Everything,” he said.

His feet tickled. Even as a kid he’d hated to have his feet touched.

The room was warm and the bed was soft. He couldn’t get over it—the softness of things. He squirmed. She was holding the big toe on his left foot, pinching it to raise the nail, locking in the clippers, then—snap, snap. Her damp hair felt like seaweed on his legs. Everything so soft.

She worked patiently. Her lips were parted and her tongue would sometimes snake out to moisten them.

“Spec Four—?” she said.

He lay still. It was odd, the way she kept calling him Spec Four.

“Spec Four, are you awake?”

He moved his toes.

“Spec Four, how long must we stay in this place? Before leaving again for Paris?”

He pretended to think about it as she used the blade end of the clipper to clean his toenails. Quiet and cushioned and warm, everything soft.

“Spec Four—?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “As long as it takes.”

“For what?”

“To do the job. To look for Cacciato. However long it takes.”

She stopped scraping.

When she spoke her voice was wistful.

“Is it necessary?”

“What?”

“To—you know—to pursue him so vigorously. Is it necessary?”

He shrugged. “Not necessary, I guess. But it’s the mission. Missions are missions, you can’t back away. We’re still soldiers.”

“And what happens if you find him? If you catch him? What happens then?”

“Back to reality,” he said. “If we catch him, then it’s back to the realms of reality.”

Sarkin Aung Wan moved. It was a light, backing-away movement.

“And what about Paris?” she said. Her voice was very soft. “What about the bistros and adventures and beautiful gardens? Have you forgotten the gardens?”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten.” He tried to smile. “Paris is still a possibility. It is. It’s still a live possibility.”

But she was moving away now. The long, damp hair slithered over his shins. He watched as she went to the window, her back to him. A blinking blue-and-yellow neon sign lit the room. She was sobbing. So he pushed up and went to her. Mind over matter, he thought, and, awkwardly, letting his hands circle her belly and down, nose in her hair, he made amends and promises: Paris was still possible, Cacciato was too slippery to be caught, don’t worry; insane promises strung on a ribbon winding toward Paris, where he’d buy her those pretty windowed things, take her to lunch at sunny cafés, stroll with her through the Tuileries, take a cab to Versailles, to Nice, to Marseilles to watch poppy products going to sea on sailing ships, all this. Paris was still possible, he said, still fully accessible. It could be done. It could still be done, and might be done: amends and promises. She smiled. She hugged him. Then back to the bed, where she resumed chipping away at the war, using the clipper blade to scrape caked filth from beneath the nails, rubbing him with alcohol. Then to the tub again for a rinsing. Later they almost made love.

   In the morning they began to search. With Sarkin Aung Wan on his arm, Paul Berlin went route step through Mandalay, moving along bazaar fronts where men squatted to smoke their pipes, where women haggled with hawkers peddling fruits and colored silks and jewelry. Like practice for Paris. Practice for all the good things to come. No helmet crushing his skull, no rucksack or armored vest, no grenades or flares or weaponry, and he moved
lightly through the fine bright city. On the Street of False Confessions, Sarkin Aung Wan helped him pick out new clothes and a pair of hiking boots; on the Street of Sweet Pines she threw bread to the pigeons. They followed the Irrawaddy until they came upon a traveling zoo, where the girl made faces at the peafowl and geese and apes and pythons. She held his hand. She touched him privately, laughed, pointed at old men in their funny hats and baggy pants. He felt happy. There was order in the streets. There was harmony, there was color, there was concord and human commerce and the ordinary pleasantries. So following the river with Sarkin Aung Wan, walking now and not marching, Paul Berlin paid attention to detail. He saw sunlight that lasted until dusk. He saw grain unloaded from small river junks. He saw a monkey dancing at the end of a leather leash. He saw the river darken, the sky turning pink, the city beginning to light itself. And he believed what he saw.

A
gain that evening they searched. They ate fried fish at a high rooftop restaurant, the whole city lighted below, potted palms tinkling with wind chimes. Then they searched.

But first Eddie asked, “What exactly do we look for?”

Shaved, dressed in blue jeans and a striped T-shirt, Eddie looked thoroughly American, his black hair combed up slick and shiny. “I mean,” he said, pausing while a waiter uncorked wine, “I mean, it’s a huge place. We got to have a plan, don’t we?”

Doc sipped the wine and pronounced it suitable. The waiter shuffled into the darkness beyond the potted palms.

“See my point?” Eddie said. “What’s the mission order? Is this a straight recon job, a patrol, an ambush? What?”

“None of the above,” said Oscar Johnson. He wore a silk shirt, the top two buttons open. In his lap was a large felt hat. He held up two fingers. “You want to find Cacciato? Okay, so then you got to concentrate on basics.” He wagged the first finger. “Number one,
you go where the booze is.” He wagged the second finger. “Number two, you seek out womanhood. Booze and broads, dig it? That’s where you’ll find Cacciato. No different than any other red-blooded Joe—booze an’ bimbos.”

Eddie puckered his eyebrows. “I don’t know. That don’t sound much like Cacciato.”

“You doubting me?”

“No, man,” Eddie said. “I’m just saying it don’t strike a right note.”

“The basics. Focus on the basic commodities.”

“But he don’t drink.” Oscar shrugged.

“And, look,” Eddie said. “I doubt the guy knows women from french fries.”

“French fries,” Stink Harris sighed. “Jeez, what I’d give for some.”

The waiter appeared with seven thimble-sized glasses of orange liquid. Doc Peret rose, lifted his glass, called for quiet.