Authors: Tobias Wolff
“Nonsense,” Pete said. “It’s a perfectly good road. I’ve driven it many times.”
“The surface is all right,” I said. “It’s just not very secure right now. Nobody uses it much.”
“If nobody’s using it,” Pete said, “then they won’t be expecting anybody, will they?”
“Probably not,” I said.
Shaw was looking from one to the other of us. “How far is this place?”
“Around twenty-five clicks,” I said.
“Twenty at the most.” Pete looked at me. “Please don’t feel obliged to go. I’m sure you have pressing things to do here.”
Until that moment I’d had no thought of making the trip; it hadn’t even crossed my mind. “I was hoping to go,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“Don’t do this on my account,” Shaw said. “There’s no need.”
I shook my head. “Curiosity.”
“Good man,” Pete said.
P
ETE HAD
to make some calls to Saigon. While he was over at the communications center I piled sandbags on the floor of the Land-Rover and fixed us up with weapons. Two M-16s, plenty of ammo, a bunch of frags. Pete had brought his Swedish K, a good-looking, much-sought-after rifle, but only one clip. I asked Shaw if he knew how to use any of this hardware. He said he did, but preferred not to. “I’m planning to stay noncombatant on this trip,” he said.
“You might have to change your plan.”
“I hope not,” he said.
“Are you a Quaker?”
“What a peculiar question. Why do you ask?”
“Something about the way you said ‘noncombatant.’”
“What a place. You say the word
noncombatant
, you get asked if you’re a Quaker.”
“You’re not, then.”
“Nope.”
“No offense meant.”
“None taken. I can think of worse things to be.”
“Not me,” I said. “Not over here.”
Sergeant Benet pulled me aside before we left. He didn’t think I should be going. I had no orders and no mission to perform.
I said I wanted to go.
“Begging your pardon, sir, you got no business down there.” He waited for my answer, and when I repeated that I wanted to go, he said “Bullshit” and turned away. It was the only time he ever swore at me.
After we’d driven a few kilometers beyond My Tho the countryside changed. The paddies were empty. Nobody tried to sell us anything, the kids didn’t beg and chase after us. There were no military vehicles on the road, only a few mopeds and bicycles. The bridges were unguarded. I sat in back and kept track of our position on the map while Pete drove and pointed things out to Shaw.
Along the way we stopped to look at a brick building that had been all shot up. An acrid smell still clung to the walls. We wandered around inside, looking up at the sky through the holes in the roof. Shaw stood beside a window and began to snap pictures. Still taking pictures, he went into a crouch. I came up behind him and saw what the camera was getting, the pile of spent shells under the window, the blasted window frame, the country outside clear to the horizon, too much of it to hold at bay, though some poor soul had desperately tried. This picture was the story of his desperation.
We reached the village just before noon. Pete sent a boy with a carton of Marlboros to announce our arrival, and not long afterward we were sitting on the floor of a large, dim room with Ong Loan, the man Pete had spoken of. Ong Loan was small even for a Vietnamese, bald, and very old. He didn’t look that old—his face was smooth and round, babyish—but
you could hear it in his voice. He spoke in a papery whisper. Conversation must have been painful for him, but he didn’t spare himself. He asked after our health, commented on the season, answered Pete’s questions as to his own well-being. He spoke in his own tongue and occasionally in French; if he knew English he gave no sign of it. As he talked he held a cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger, drew deeply on it, and with his eyes closed blew smoke toward the ceiling.
A number of people had gathered in the room with us. They stood along the walls, watching, saying nothing. After a time two women came forward with tea and rice cakes. Ong Loan apologized for the plainness of the fare. Pete praised its quality.
Ong Loan asked Pete about Saigon. It had been so long, he said, since his last visit. Years. Pete described how busy it was, how crowded; how overrun with soldiers. I kept expecting them to exhaust the civilities and get down to business, to discuss those important matters of which Ong Loan had such intimate knowledge. But no. They went on in this pleasant humor, Ong Loan whispering the questions, Pete answering in his liquid, idiomatic Vietnamese. I lost them for long stretches, then picked them up again at a familiar word or phrase. Shaw swiveled his head from side to side as he listened. Of course he didn’t understand a word.
And then they began to discuss porcelain—Chinese porcelain. I knew that Pete had some expertise here. The house in Saigon was filled with books on the subject, and he owned a collection of valuable plates and jars he’d picked up cheap from dealers who were out of their depth. Pete described one of his recent acquisitions
to Ong Loan, who bent forward and turned his head slightly. He forgot to smoke. It seemed that he too was an enthusiast.
I couldn’t follow them. There was no point in trying. Like Shaw, I could only watch, and mostly I watched Pete. More than ever I was struck by his fluency, not just in the flow of his words but in the motion of his hands and the set of his mouth; the way he ate and took his tea; his elaborate courtesies. He did it all with such a flourish, such evident pleasure—how happy and assured he was in his possession of these people’s admiration, how stylishly at home in this alien place, on this hard floor, surrounded by wonder-struck villagers. Yet I could see that his greatest pleasure came not from mastery of this situation but from our observation of his mastery.
I watched him, and understood why he’d brought us here. He wanted us to see how easily he could take his place among these people, to be one of them and at the same time not one of them, yet not quite one of us. Something more than either. And his demonstration of mastery required that we be stripped of it, made helpless, reduced to the role of spectators.
Not that Pete saw it that way. He probably thought he was exposing Shaw to valuable atmospherics. But whether he knew it or not, that’s what this whole number was about: the perfect Vietnamese, the compulsion to excite native awe, the insouciant gamble of life, the porcelain collection, the Swedish fucking K rifle. It was about cutting a figure.
We drank more tea. My butt was numb, my back hurt, my legs burned with cramp from being crossed
so long. I didn’t say anything, though. Shaw had begun to show signs of impatience and I figured he would break first. He kept shifting creakily. When this didn’t get Pete’s attention he simply stood up.
Pete raised his hand in acknowledgment but went on talking.
“I’m ready,” Shaw said.
“We’re almost done,” Pete said.
“I’m ready now,” Shaw said.
Pete made sumptuous apologies for the haste in which he was forced to depart, apologies Ong Loan declined even to hear. He spoke to one of the women behind us, who left the room and returned with a blue-and-white bowl on a wooden base. It was about the size of a rice bowl. Ong Loan presented it to Pete, Pete tried to give it back, and when this was not allowed he closed his eyes and made a deep bow over the bowl and began to speak of Ong Loan’s incomparable largesse. It looked like we were in for a profound experience of mandarin gratitude. I gathered up our weapons and ammunition. Shaw followed me outside into the rain.
“What was all that about?” Shaw said.
“You’ll have to ask Pete,” I told him. “It was too fast for me.”
We sat in the Land-Rover and listened to the rain tap against the canvas top. The wind picked up. The rain fell harder. The sky darkened, and a great blinding sheet of water broke against the windshield. Early afternoon, and the sky was black as night.
Through the blur of rain I saw Pete appear in the doorway. In one hand he held a package. He scanned
the sky, then ran for the Land-Rover. Shaw pushed the door open for him and Pete fell inside, laughing, drenched to the skin. He handed the package back to me. “Guard this with your life,” he said. “It’s worth more.”
“We’ve got ourselves one hell of a storm here,” Shaw said.
“Not so bad,” Pete said. “It’ll break.”
He drove fast, bent over the wheel, into the blackness. Our headlights glared back at us from the glassy wall of falling rain. The rain drummed on the rooftop. The air inside the Rover grew rank and steamy; Pete had to keep wiping the glass with his sleeve. I couldn’t see well enough to track us on the map, but it didn’t matter because the radio was useless. Nothing but static.
Pete looked at me in the rearview. “Why so glum?”
“Who’s glum? So what did Ong Loan have to say?”
“Ong Loan,” he said, pensively. “An original. A true original.”
“So what’s the news? Are we winning?”
“I’ve got some news for you,” he said. “Are you ready for it?” When I didn’t answer he reached back and shook my boot. “Come on, boy! Let’s see some enthusiasm! Uncle Pete’s been working for you!”
I waited.
“I talked to General Reed this morning. He’s going to take care of your problem.”
“What problem is that?”
“Missing out on all the fun. Pack your bags, big guy—you’re going to the party.”
I said, “I’m not sure I understand you.”
“Sure you do.”
He was right; I did. I waited a moment, then said, “What, am I getting transferred?”
“Kid’s got a mind like a steel trap,” Pete said to Shaw.
Shaw turned in his seat and looked at him as if he’d never seen him before.
“You should have your orders by the end of the week,” Pete said.
“Where to?”
“Up north. Very interesting slot, just came open. A-team.”
I leaned forward between the seats. “You already set this up? This is definite?”
“A done deal. We’re checking you out of the Plaza.”
“I wish you’d said something to me about it.”
Pete didn’t answer.
I sat back again.
For ten months now I’d been telling myself that whatever luck I enjoyed was no fault of mine. I’d volunteered for the whole nine yards, and they’d chosen to put me here. This fact had allowed me to half absolve myself of the suspicion, held so far only by myself, of malingering. But now the bet was called. This was a chance to offer myself up and put all doubt to rest, and I found I had no heart for it. The knowledge was humiliating. It left me with no protection against myself.
We went through a hamlet. An old man was hunched in a doorway, smoking a cigarette. American voices broke through the fuzz on the radio, then faded again.
“Pete? I’d like to talk to you about this.”
“What’s wrong?” Pete said. “Afraid to leave the big guns?”
Shaw was looking straight ahead. I had the feeling he was trying to efface himself, to grant me privacy, as if I were naked.
I said, “If we could have a word together.”
“Sure. All the words you want. But this is going to happen.”
The rain stopped just after we reached the battalion. I invited them to spend another night, but Pete wanted to press on to Saigon.
“Pete,” I said. “A word?”
Shaw headed toward the hooch. “I’ll be inside,” he said.
Pete watched him go. He had an air of puzzlement and injury, of being insufficiently appreciated. It was clear that he’d expected both of us to admire this trick of being able to yo-yo a man from one end of Vietnam to the other with a single telephone call.
“I wish you’d talked to me before you went ahead with this,” I said.
“We talked last night.”
“I never said I wanted a transfer.”
“But of course you want a transfer! You’re wasted down here.”
“This is where they sent me. I took my chances like everyone else. They could’ve sent me anywhere. They could’ve sent me to this interesting slot of yours.”
“They should have.”
“But they didn’t. That’s the breaks, just the same
as if they’d sent me up north. It’s just the way things fell out.”
“It was a mistake. Now we’re fixing it. You’ll thank me someday. This is the chance of a lifetime.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“You don’t have to like it,” he said. “That’s not the point.”
“I’m lucky I made it this far.”
“It’s all set,” he said.
“Fine. It’s all set. I understand that. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to accomplish up there in two months. It took me longer than that to get things scoped out down here.”
“Two months? Who said anything about two months?”
“That’s when my tour’s up.”
“Come on.”
“Less than two months”
He stared at me.
“Fifty-four and a wake-up,” I said.
“You’ve been here ten months already?”
“Ten and change.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake! You can’t go up there for two months, they’ll still be breaking you in and then you’re heading back home. I’ll never hear the end of it. I don’t suppose you’d consider extending.”
I shook my head.
“You know, I used up a very big favor with General Reed getting this spot for you. What’s going to happen the next time I have to ask him for something?”
I had no answer.
“If you had even four months left I’d ram this thing through anyway,” Pete said. “For your own good.”
I
WAS
undressing to take a shower when I found his package in the pocket of my fatigue jacket. I stashed it, figuring I’d have Sergeant Benet drop it off at Pete’s villa the next time we went up to Saigon. But in the morning a message came over the battalion teletype, instructing me to put extra padding on the package and take it to the My Tho airstrip and send it out in the priority mailbag. The message concluded:
DO NOT DELAY REPEAT DO NOT DELAY.
This Was followed by Pete’s name and the acronym and postal code of his place of work.
I took the parcel out of my footlocker and weighed it in my hand. When I pinched the puffy wrapping I could feel the outline of the bowl. I didn’t remember exactly what it looked like, its particular marks and patterns, but I still retained an impression of its beauty. Surely it struck everyone with its beauty when it was first brought into the room. No one had spoken; we simply watched as the bowl was handed from the old woman to Ong Loan and then to Pete. That it was ancient I knew at a glance. The blue was soft and watery, the white subtly yellowed like old ivory. To see it cupped in the hand, and then to see it given into another hand, was to understand that it was meant for that purpose; to be passed on. Pete’s bow had been cinematic but I couldn’t blame him for it. That he should bow in his pleasure at so antique and beautiful a thing was only right.