In the underground command chamber, everyone has assembled, with some standing and others sitting, gathered into small groups. Seeing An finally arrive, Nha goes out and welcomes him:
“Did you oversleep? I had breakfast and started out right away, I did not go back to the bunker. I had thought that you would remember and get up in time.”
“Chief, you know me, I love oversleeping. When I woke up it was still the dark of night, so I lay myself down to sleep some more. It’s always
dangerous to go back to sleep. How’s things? Do you have news of our division commander yet?”
“No, we haven’t found anything…but…”
“But what?”
“The soldiers have found their pants, together with their weapons and other belongings on the bank of the spring. Division is of two minds right now: either to report it upstairs and wait for the verdict or to find the real reason to explain this. The deputy commander and all of us are hoping that you will have a suggestion. You are the only one to have known the Meo platoon leader, the supposed agent.”
“I thank you for your trust. But my knowledge here is very limited. Ma Ly is a Meo. He lives in an earth home and grows poppies—their main occupation. I am a Tay tribesman. We Tay live in houses on stilts, breed cattle and chickens and pigs, grow dry field rice, and eat long rice as well as sticky rice. Our environments and our customs differ. Besides, we haven’t seen each other in fifteen years.”
“At any rate, both of you were comrades-in-arms. Besides, both of you are mountain people.”
An laughs out loud. “Now, every one of us here is a mountain person, for we are living in the Vietnamese Cordillera. If you lump all mountain people together, it means you have no idea about who we are really.”
“Sincerely speaking…”
Nha seems embarrassed, trying to formulate a plan of action. He takes off his glasses to clean them, a regular habit of his when in a situation like this. Just at that moment the deputy division commander notices An and quickly steps toward him, along with the leading cadres of the various battalions. After the greetings, everyone has gathered around An in expectation. But An turns to Nha and says:
“First, I would like to know what they have found on the bank of the spring. For I don’t believe that Ma Ly would invite our division commander to take a bath, especially when it’s pitch dark and the water has gone chilly. In all frankness, the Meo don’t like to bathe. They are in the habit of ‘fire bathing,’ especially those who have acquired the long habit of opium smoking. Do you know, at one time opium was considered like white rice in the Meo kingdom?”
“In truth, that’s the first time I’ve heard this. My native village is on the bank of the Red River. Ever since I joined the army, my contacts have been with ethnic Vietnamese. You are the first tribesman that I have known.”
“Meo territory is right in the middle of the Golden Triangle, where they
grow poppies and produce opium for half of Asia. The Meo king, Hoang Su Phi, used to lead a very efficient army charged with protecting the opium caravans crossing the border. They are capable of fighting any national army or forest bandits. The Meo people therefore had to grow poppies for him in exchange for rice, salt, dried fish, and oil. After many generations of such culture, they have grown addicted to opium the way we are used to white rice. I am not too sure why but opium addicts have a great fear of water. Very rarely do they bathe themselves in a spring or boil water to take a bath inside their houses. Instead they take off their clothes and sit next to a fire so that they sweat all over, thus opening all the pores of their skin. Then they use their fingers to roll the dirt into tiny balls, which they throw away.”
“God, is that true?” a battalion commander bursts out in surprise.
An turns toward him: “Do you, Comrade, think that I am just fabricating that? Or that I am prejudiced and trying to slander the Meo?”
“That was simply an expression of surprise,” the deputy division commander interjects. “Don’t misunderstand. Even me, I have never known that.”
An realizes that talking about Meo bathing habits has made them all very curious, but that they dare not ask for more. One only has to see them exchanging looks to know.
Nha tells the deputy division commander, “Comrade An wants to go see the crime scene because he does not believe that the two of them wanted to go take a bath. I hope that the soldiers have kept every trace intact.”
“You can be at ease. I have ordered that the place be kept exactly as it was. You can take Comrade An there to have a look.”
“We will be right back after the inspection,” Nha replies. Then he walks out of the underground command chamber.
An follows him, with his salt-and-pepper hair covering his faded shirt collar. He’s only fifty but looks more seasoned than the division commander. In this war it’s clear that the people from coastal provinces and from the mountains endure much better than those from the Red River delta. Flowers that can blossom on the banks of the Red, or Luoc, River fade very fast under the mountain sun.
It is 10:20 a.m. but the soldiers are already gathered in groups of five or three all over the encampment. Actually, they could have overslept or stayed indoors and played cards, but the gossip has gone from ear to ear, and by the time Nha and An arrive at the stream bank, soldiers from the division are already there in great numbers. A parachute string has been strung
from three large trees, forming a protective boundary around the crime scene. The squad normally guarding command headquarters is keeping the curious outside the string.
An takes a look at the bank. Traces of last night’s flooding rain can still be seen on the sand beach and on the pebbles. The belongings that the night before had been neatly piled up are now scattered everywhere. The two pairs of pants had drifted down the stream for a couple of meters before getting caught in the root of a tree. One flashlight is now planted in the sand while the other has been carried down the water some thirty meters until stuck in a stack of dry, fallen branches. As for little things like the toothpick tube, the cigarette packs, the lighters, and the nail trimmer.…they have disappeared without a trace. Only the two pistols are still there, at the original spot, together with one shoe. They are covered, however, with sand and mud. Truly, the rain last night was a masterwork, a high-class act of sorcery that turned everything into something else.
“Comrade, look,” says An. “Look at the mud stuck to the shoe…”
“It really was something, that rain last night,” Nha says, nodding, and then he goes on: “During the rainy season last year, this very stream even washed down a couple of deer. The guys in Division 89, who were stationed downstream, saw them still struggling in the water. They took out their guns and shot them, then threw out some cords to drag them in to eat. But in pulling in the deer, one of them fell down and he himself was washed downstream with the flood without being able to even cry out.”
“I wonder why I don’t remember that incident?”
“How could you? The story was circulated only among the leading comrades in the division. For who would admit to such a truth?”
Nha smacks his lips and lowers his voice to the point of a whisper: “So sad! A human life for a piece of venison.”
Looking at the stream, An tells himself, “Last night if I had not tied one of my legs to a tree, I would have ended up like that guy with the deer.”
In turning back, An sees the soldiers with all eyes on him and Nha—spectators in a mystery without plot or even a stage set. The protagonist is not present. Only a few pieces of clothing and some personal effects lying here and there. But the play is arousing so much curiosity because it dramatizes both a physical and a nonphysical death. Even if it is not yet an absolute death, it nonetheless has severely damaged the reputation of the leadership. Less than three months earlier two soldiers had been sentenced by a military tribunal to death by firing squad for having raped a Van Kieu woman who was burning coal in the forest. News of the execution had been disseminated
to all four divisions operating in the region as a severe warning. Yet now the commander of the most famous division in the whole battle zone, the one with the most unit commendations, has disappeared in the night with some Meo, the only trace of them being two pairs of pants snagged on the side of a stream. Clearly it does not require much intelligence to imagine what is going on in the minds of the soldiers crowding around.
“Can we return to the command post now?” asks Nha.
“Yes…We have observed enough,” An responds, and the two of them go back. “I am sure they went out looking for a deserted spot so that they could make up chicken-style,” a soldier suggests. “They picked the right moment, too. With the soldiers wrapped up in watching the girls in the show, they went out there to take care of their choked-up balls.”
“What do you mean, chicken-style?” asks another soldier.
“Damn you, don’t play the innocent. If you don’t know, then who else would?”
“You want to pick a lump of charcoal and put it in the hands of another?”
“Fire and charcoal. Who the hell told me the other day about the Lao being expert at ass-fucking?”
“You mean chicken-style and ass-fucking are the same? Oh, then I know now…”
“Hell with you, joker!”
“If I am not the joker, how can you have such a hearty laugh?”
An observes Nha walking really fast with his head down, as if trying to flee from the rowdy comments of the soldiers. He must feel awful, thinks An. Normally he is a well-spoken man, if somewhat simplistic, but all offenses against the more spiritual side of life always take him off guard and affect him more than others.
An catches up with him and says, “No one is born to be a soldier. War is something imposed on us. You shouldn’t give those comments too much thought.”
“I am someone not given to quarreling. But in this case you can’t just stop wondering. How do you explain this affair?”
“I, too, am at a loss.”
“How are we going to explain it to our colleagues?”
“If we don’t understand it ourselves, then it’s better not to give any explanation.”
“But you can’t do that. Whether we want to or not, there is no way for us to escape giving some explanation in front of everyone. In the army, each
death must be explained clearly, for it also concerns the family of the deceased. Either it’s the shameful death of a traitor, or it’s a sacrifice out of one’s duty to the people, in which case the family is entitled to some compensation.”
“Yes,” An responds as he bitterly thinks to himself: “But life is not all that simple. There are lots of deaths lying outside the boundaries that you are drawing. There are unjust deaths, stifled and quiet deaths, unintended and unconscionable deaths, deaths that steal upon you like poisonous snakes, these poisonous snakes of Fate that no one can prevent or fight off.”
Soon they are back at the command bunker, where everyone has been silently sipping tea or smoking water pipes while waiting for them. An knows that they are all waiting for an explanation. There has to be an explanation. Concluding that it is best if he speak first without waiting for entreaties, he announces:
“I report to you, Deputy Division Commander and leading cadres…Battalion Commander Nha and I have carefully observed what remains on the bank of the stream. I feel certain that our division commander and Ma Ly could not possibly have gone out together for a bath because although he was in good health, our commander was already over fifty. At that time of day, the water is freezing. Second, I am sure Ma Ly would not dare go into the water. The whole time I lived with him in the Viet Bac, I wit-nessed him taking a bath only twice, and on both occasions it was during the middle of a hot summer when he was enticed to do so by his San Diu, San Chi, friends. Normally, Ma Ly would never volunteer to sink his body into the water. Even when he had to, he would quickly dry himself so he could put his clothes on right away. We used to call the Meo ‘water-shy cats.’ Thus there is no possible reason for both of them to suddenly and crazily step into the water for a bath in the middle of the night. As for other explanations, I do not have enough time nor experience to guess…”
After he finishes, he sits down by Nha. The others are shell-shocked. Someone coughs dryly. Then the deputy division commander, with all seriousness, states:
“Comrades, I am forced to ask that all of you give your opinions so that we can come to a final decision. We have responsibility for solving this situation, as it relates to the honor of each one sitting here. We have to confront the anxieties of more than one thousand of our soldiers here as well; after that I am sure public opinion will spread to other friendly divisions. Furthermore, we cannot just report the situation upstairs and wait for the
higher echelons to come and open an investigation, then write up a file to submit to the military tribunal as usual. That is out of the question. It would take half a month, minimum, for the paperwork to move up and down. Besides, it will only take a heavy rain tonight for everything to be washed away if we do not gather whatever is left on the bank of the stream. These mementoes need to be kept for the families of the missing men. I use the word ‘missing’ here because we are still uncertain as to the fate of our division chief and the Meo fellow. We hope, of course, that they are somehow still alive in some way that we don’t yet know.”
One officer says, “I believe we should rule out that they are missing, for it would not be very persuasive. Can you imagine two naked persons alive without a piece of clothing on? Who could have forced them to do something like that?”
Another reminds him: “A year or so ago, did not enemy rangers catch a whole bunch of our troops bathing naked in a spring? If I am not mistaken, they were from Division 887.”
“Oh yes, I had forgotten all about that incident.”
“You certainly have a short memory. It happened just last summer and you had already forgotten?”
The first officer replies, “I am forty-nine already. ‘Can’t be too smart when young, or keep it all together when too old.’”