Gods Go Begging (14 page)

He was wearing black thongs and had the wide feet of a farmer. He wore the dark-brown pants that were the standard issue in Hanoi. They were threadbare and soaked with sweat. His body was thin and muscular, his face angular and wide. His nostrils had an indignant, almost arrogant flare and the skin around and above his eyes was as smooth as porcelain. His complexion was darker than that of most Vietnamese and his hair was black and curly above a high and almost regal forehead.

When he got within five feet of the fence, one of the ARVN guards screamed something into a bullhorn, and the man froze in his tracks. He raised both arms into the air, took another step forward, then squatted down, indicating that he would go no further. After a long moment of immobile silence on both sides of the wire, the NVA soldier smiled broadly, almost childishly, then reached up to grab a shock of his own hair. With his other hand he pointed at the American sergeant.

“You same-same me,” he said in pidgin. His voice was high-pitched and musical. War had not altered his civilian timbre. He released his hair, then ran his fingers over the brown skin of his cheek, then over his brown, sunburned forearm. “You same-same me,” he repeated.

Having used all of his pidgin language, he asked a question in Vietnamese. Sergeant Pasadoble shrugged, then shook his head. There was a look of intensity mixed with frustration in his face. “No bic,” he said, indicating that he did not understand. Neither man had bothered to learn much of the enemy’s language. Both knew a few cruel and derogatory phrases, a few crude words of command or interrogation, but not much more.

“You,” said the NVA, still trying his pidgin,
“không den, không trang, no negro, ni blanco
. You Espanol?”

“Habla Usted Español?”
said Jesse excitedly.

“No.
Poco, poco. Beauco
up
Españoles enMarseille
.”

“Marseille? Français? Parlez-vous Français?”

“Mais oui,
”said the regular, his smooth face suddenly transformed by an electric intensity.
“Etes-vous Español?”
he asked.

“Non,”
answered Sergeant Pasadoble, immediately caught up in the common language,
“Jesuis Mexican,Mexican-American.
Do you know where Mexico is?”

The regular nodded his head, yes. “I’ve seen it on the maps, but I am ashamed to admit that I know nothing of it. But I have noticed that many of your troops speak Spanish.”

“C‘est un pays de sang melé.
It is a land of mixed blood, Spanish and Indian. It is just south of the United States. Contrary to popular thought, it was the Mexican people who crossed the land bridge thousands of years ago and populated China and the rest of Asia.”

The Vietnamese laughed with his whole face and body. Behind him, his fellow prisoners were buzzing with suspicion. The flabby PFC up above spat with disgust.

“So it is you who are responsible for
les Chinois,
the Chinese! I have always wondered who to blame for that.”

Sergeant Pasadoble and the NVA soldier laughed loudly at the joke, for a moment forgetting the war that had brought them together as combatants. The sudden burst of laughter turned heads from one end of the compound to the other. Suddenly a voice boomed out over the loudspeakers: “Sergeant, this visit is unauthorized and must terminate immediately.”

Jesse stepped back from the wire and walked toward the guard tower.

“Who is the commanding officer of this compound?” he asked the oafish PFC. When the answer was shouted down to him, Jesse grabbed his gear and walked in the direction of a heavily fortified hooch just north of the compound. In half an hour he returned to the tower with a piece of paper signed by the company commander. He waved the document at the PFC and shouted, “I can talk to him for one hour a day for the next three days.”

“Whatever turns you on, sarge,” answered the PFC. “Personally, I’d rather visit the bar girls on China Beach. I love that Saigon tea.”

On the fourth and last visit, the Vietnamese soldier seemed unwilling to limit the conversation to the lighter subjects that had dominated the first three visits. After a few passing remarks about Mexican food, American jazz, and Brazilian soccer, the man behind the wire grew quiet. The smile on his face faded as the enemy soldier asked something that he had always wanted to ask an American.

“I am sorry to ask this question,
mon ami,
but I must. I know that we will never meet again, and I believe you to be an honest man. So I must ask. In the north of my country, the children are told in school that all the people of color in the United States live in a separate country. They are told that white Americans are rich and they throw thousands of gallons of milk into the ocean to spite the poor of the world. They are taught that teachers are not allowed to teach their students.
Ces choses-là, sont-elles vraies?
Are these things true?”

After considering the question for a few minutes, the sergeant answered, “It is true that dairy farmers in America have been known to pour milk into the gutters when an overabundance has driven prices down. It is also true that there are many hungry people in America who could drink that milk. Schoolteachers are sometimes forced to go on strike when the classrooms grow too large or their paycheck has become too small. It is both a protest and a labor tactic. Their strikes do not fare well, because teachers are not as respected as they should be. So I guess what your children have been taught is true, but it is not the truth.”

The North Vietnamese soldier nodded his understanding. The truth no longer surprised him.

“And do you live in a separate country?”

Sergeant Pasadoble placed his right index finger on the center of his own forehead. “We do,” he said.

“Ah,” sighed the regular,
“je comprends!”
He nodded his head. “I am a Chàm,” he said. “Some people say we came from India long, long ago. Some say we came from Indonesia. We have a completely different way of writing and we speak a dialect that is like no other in Southeast Asia. Any radio communications between our troops—if we have a radio—is done in Chàm, since no Vietnamese, north or south, can decode it. Centuries ago we were conquered and then subjugated by the Vietnamese. Since that time we have never had an equal place in this country.

“Because I am Chàm, I must sit alone in this yard.”Just before his smile died away, he replenished it when he suddenly remembered an obvious courtesy that had been completely ignored.
“Pardonez-moi. Jem‘appelle
Hong
Trac.”
He bowed as he said his name. “I have known you for four days and I have not given you my name. I am so sorry. ”

After repeating Hong Trac’s full name several times until the enemy soldier nodded enthusiastically that the pronunciation was correct, the sergeant countered with,
“MeIlamo, Jem‘appelle Jesse Pasadoble. A sus ordenes.
”

Hong found the name Jesse easy to pronounce. “Do you know where we are, Jesse?”

The sergeant looked around himself and shook his head, not really. In Vietnam, all Americans lived in a separate country. Few, if any, GIs tried the local food or bothered to learn any of the language. Most passed their entire tours without ever speaking with a Vietnamese.

“This area is called Thành Bình.” Hong used his hands to indicate the area outside the compound. “The name means ‘peaceful place.’ As a child I lived not three blocks in that direction, on Thanh Long Street, the street of the Blue Dragon. Have you been to Marseille, Jesse ?” asked Hong.

Jesse shook his head, no.

“I once lived in Marseille for two wonderful years. I love that city more than any other on earth. The last time I was there I met the woman I was destined to marry. As a child, I was fortunate enough to have parents who could send me to lycée in the Bouches du Rhone. How is it that you speak French? ”

“I have always dreamed of traveling,” said Jesse. “Since my Spanish isn’t too bad, I took French in high school.” Jesse hesitated for a moment, then added, “I had a girlfriend who spoke French. She was from Quebec. And I figured with three languages I could go just about anywhere in the world.”

“Vous avez raison.
You’re right about that,” said Hong. “But you must go to Marseille someday. The port is magnificent. From the hills above the sea it is easy to imagine the Crusaders leaving in their wooden boats for the Holy Land. Sit in the coffee shops or on one of those green benches on the Canebière and just listen… just listen.

“Marseille is great simply because of all the people like you and I who must go there. It is beautiful because emissaries of separate countries have conferences at every café. There are cultural exchanges in every doorway. Besides,” he smiled, “Paris is too cold for dark people like you and me.”

As he said it, Hong was smelling the sweet steam of bubbling bouillabaisse, nursing a cup of hot espresso, and listening for a moment to the conversations that once surrounded him: the sharp and muffled snapping and cooing of a lovers’ quarrel here; the directions to an address near the Château d‘If over there; at this table a lonely old man is openly disgusted with the writings of Jean Genet; at that one two Belgian students are worshiping Miles Davis. In Hong’s nostrils was the acrid odor of African tobacco and the haughty, self-conscious scent of Swiss perfume.

“What are you taught about us?” he said with a calm and distracted air.

“In America they say that you Vietnamese do not value life.”

Hong laughed a dark, sardonic laugh.

“If that is true, then why do I fear death so much?”

As he spoke, memories of diving Huey gunships and B-52 strikes filled his mind. Of the hundred and sixty men in his original company, only five were left.

“When the bombs fall, I curl up like a trembling child and I pray that death will be painless. No, Jesse, life is a valuable thing. I know that I will soon be losing mine.” Grief suddenly began to cloud Hong’s large eyes. “I will never see Marseille again. Even now my dear wife Hoa is waiting there for me.”

“You’re not going to die,” said Jesse. “You’re a captive and the rules are specific regarding prisoners of war. For you this conflict is over. You’ll get three square meals a day, a shower, and a place to sleep. You just have to wait it out, then go home.”

Hong smiled patiently.

“Do you see those men behind me, Jesse? Soon one of them will be taken away to be questioned. That one will quickly decide that the loss of a Chàm is a small price to pay for his own survival. So he will tell them my title: that I am a high-ranking infantry officer. They will come for me in another day, perhaps two days.”

“They kill prisoners out in the bush, Hong, but not here in a secured area.”

There was a sad desperation in Jesse’s voice. The anonymity and heat of combat were one thing, but to kill an unarmed prisoner in a secured area was murder. There was no hot blood here.

“They don’t shoot people here, Hong. They won’t shoot you. You can take my word for it.”

“You’re right, Jesse,” said Hong with even more patience.

“There is a soft and fat South Vietnamese colonel in that metal building”—he pointed to a Quonset hut just outside the compound—“and he has a good friend who is an intelligence agent from your army. I’ve seen them drinking Korean beer together. It is said that they have a very special way of torturing prisoners. They use a
tournevis.
It is just a rumor; no one can say for sure because no one ever comes back from an interrogation.”

Jesse culled through his French vocabulary for the meaning of the word
tournevis
but found nothing. At the same time, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

“They place it into the ear and drive it through the brain with a carpenter’s hammer.”

As he said it, Hong placed a cupped left hand over his left ear. He wondered which of his precious memories would die first. Would it be his memories of childhood on the Street of the Blue Dragon or his memories of lovely Hoa in Marseille? Then there was that very special memory of a night in Orléans. It had been their first night of nakedness.

For days he had been sitting alone in the prison yard using all of his powers of concentration to shift his memories around so that the first to go as the hammer fell would be his days as an officer, his rousing, stupid days of ambition and war lust. He had passed the few last hours just before meeting Jesse by weighing his recollections, determining their priority, then arranging the stages of his military career along a straight line from ear to ear. All of his other memories were dispersed to other countries, other continents of the mind, far from that line.

When the
tournevis
was driven in behind his eye sockets toward his right ear, the muscles of his face and the airy tendons of his spirit would strain to protect an ember, to shelter a single flicker of light and hide it safe in the ruin and wreckage of his soul. He would be there once again, looking up from a coffee-stained volume of Baudelaire to see her for the very first time, her jacket and arms closed desperately around a stack of falling books and her large eyes casting back and forth for a place to sit, a dry, safe place out of the rain. Hoa’s gaze would meet Hong’s in that small instant and life would truly begin.

Without uttering another word, Hong rose up from his squatting position and dropped to his knees as he fully embraced that moment so long ago. All at once his head fell forward and he wrenched his arms behind his own back as though they were being rudely bound.

“Hong,” cried Jesse,
“écoutez-moi!”

“What’s the matter with him?” called out the oafish PFC. “Is he dinky-dau?”

No matter how hard Jesse tried, Hong would say no more; he would answer no more questions. Jesse pleaded with Hong, but the regular would not respond. The words and visions in his mind were too scrambled now for communication with the living. He had spoken his last words.

“Connaissez-vous le soldat?”
the French photographer asked Jesse one week later, as she stood among the dead. Then remembering herself she said, “Do you know this soldier? ”