The Shadow of Arms (26 page)

“Let's head downtown, anyway. It's been a while since you were there, right?”

At this, Leon got excited and whistled loudly.

“That's an off-limits zone for us. I've never been there.”

Leon looked much younger now than when he was in uniform.

“You like to drink, don't you?”

“Sure.”

“All right if you don't make it back tonight?”

“Don't bother with that. If I get caught, hell, I'll dig ditches or run around the grounds, no big deal. Anyway, I'll be safe if I make it back to the barracks by tomorrow. The sergeant has gone down to China Beach himself.”

“Will he stay there tonight?”

“I think so. Every weekend he's been playing poker with some navy officers.”

“What's his name?”

“Stapley.”

Yong Kyu turned off from Route 1 towards downtown Da Nang. There was a checkpoint, but civilian company vehicles were just waved through. The Vietnamese QC sentry made a slow hand gesture. Soon they were crossing Le Loi Boulevard into the crowded streets of the old market and veering up Puohung Street. He had no intention of going to the Bamboo, for it was a gathering place for too many other black marketeers. He drove a few blocks farther and pulled into an alley line with stores near the mouth of Doc Lap Boulevard. He parked in a back alley where some young boy peddlers were thronging. Leon looked nervously about.

“Where we going?”

“Now we're becoming complete civilians.”

“Civilians?”

“That's right. Let's wash off the soldier scum.”

Unable to grasp what Yong Kyu meant, Leon walked edgily a few steps behind him. They came up to a glass storefront with a sign overhead reading “Steam Bath.” Yong Kyu bought the tickets and they pushed aside a curtain to see a long hall. A boy standing there took the tickets and led them into a small room. They took off their clothes, put them into a basket and headed into the baths. Leon laughed loudly. “What the hell are we doing, anyway?”

“A maintenance job. Wow, your dick is enormous.”

“Shit, yours looks like a frog.”

Bursting into laughter, Leon slapped Yong Kyu on the butt. When they opened the door inside, hot steam came rolling out in a steady stream.

“Hey, I don't like it.”

“Listen, you should get the sweat out of your system. It's good for you.”

They went in and sat down in the hot steam bath. Along the wall were seats that looked like stairs. The middle of the space was packed with bamboo branches from out of which steam was pouring upwards. Leon was covering his mouth and nose with a towel. Yong Kyu spoke.

“Take a look. There's a pile of pebbles down there heated by fire. They're covered with herbs.”

“It smells awful.”

“It's not that bad, is it?”

They came out again, pulverized from the heat and the sweating. As they finished washing off with cold water, two girls came in and waited with huge towels. They were scantily clad and wore real flowers in their hair. With one arm Leon leaned on the girl who was drying his body and said, “She's killing me.”

“Slow down, she's just a kid.”

“Hey, you shit. It's been over two months for me. The mere sight of that fucking uniform makes me want to puke.”

The girl smiled, slightly nudging Leon away. Yong Kyu went over to the bed first and lay down, and Leon then came over and lay down on the next bed. The girls were about to pull the curtains when Yong Kyu stopped them.

“I'd like to talk about business.”

Leon opened his eyes wide and tried to read the expression on Yong Kyu's face.

“I want us to be friends. Friends must never cheat one another. I want to buy things from you.”

“Coffee, you mean? Well, I'll give you the damn stuff free.”

“Not just a couple of boxes, I mean I want to buy as much as you can handle.”

Leon was silent. Instead of replying, he tapped the head of his bed with his finger, thinking. Yong Kyu went on.

“When you get back home, how much do you think you can make? What can you earn in a week?”

“Well, maybe between a hundred and two hundred. I spend it all on the weekend.”

“You can make ten times that. Look around, there's a mountain of goods piled up in the warehouse. There's everything there.”

Leon let out a short laugh. “I know the whole story. And there are many divisions in our warehouse where goods are being sold.”

“So much the better. Our supply vehicle goes to Turen every day. Once a day, or once every other day, whichever you like is fine with me.”

“Once every other day sounds good. We rotate, you know.”

“Let me have two pallets of salad oil on Monday.”

“Big or small?”

“Big would be better.”

Leon held out his hand for Yong Kyu to shake.

“If it's only B-rations, I can let you have as much as you want.”

They shook hands. The girls were pressing, rubbing, and patting their shoulders and spines, moving down toward the calves.

“I think I can trust you. You're not greedy,” Leon said.

“Your sergeant, did you say Stapley was his name? What's his job?”

“He's in charge of checking all the warehouses in our section. But he's got no power over us and rarely interferes. A nice guy.”

“Career soldier?”

“No, he was drafted, too. He hates this war.”

“You, too?”

“I don't know. I just want to go home soon.”

“All right, we'll talk more later. Enjoy yourself.”

Yong Kyu signaled with his eye and the girls pulled the curtains together.

From the other side of the partition came the sound of Leon and the other girl laughing, then the sound of bare flesh slapping. Caressing Yong Kyu with her fingertips, the girl with him asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“What do you recommend?”

“Hands, body, special . . . prices are different.”

“How different?”

“Five-dollar difference.”

“I'll give you thirty. Do them all to that guy.”

“He already has a girl.”

“Do a double for him.”

With a look of disdain, the girl stared down at Yong Kyu with narrowed eyes and the corners of her mouth twitching upward, then she moved over into the next compartment. The whispering and giggling of the two girls could be heard together with eruptions of convulsive laughter from Leon.

“Hey, Sarge, you're crazy! This is too much!”

Without responding, Yong Kyu put his clothes back on. He smoked a cigarette absentmindedly and listened to the gradual changes in the sound of their heavy breathing, the moving flesh and the laughs. He was detached. Thirty dollars for a girl, sixty for two, plus ten dollars for the bath—for a grand total of seventy dollars he'd bought hell's pleasures. The girls would suck the marrow out of the bastard and leave him a drained pulp . . . just as the goods heaped up in Leon's warehouse had made the larger and more grandiose hell prosper.

Yong Kyu thought of the porn films he used to watch with the administrative agents back at the Grand Hotel. The constant hunger, the lack, the incessant material quest. The next day Yong Kyu had found his way into this bathhouse during duty hours. And he had come back once more with the team leader. He pictured sperm crawling on the screens like worms. His body was mindlessly hung between his legs.

He saw the countless limbs and blobs of flesh swept up into vinyl bags for disposal, the stench of the blood, the rotting wounds, the flesh swollen with an amber brown tinge, the sticky pus oozing around, the swarming maggots, the hordes of lizards ceaselessly slipping in and out of the hellish holes in torn and severed parts of corpses, . . . our machines, our poisons, our weapons, our own despair, hell is a frenzied festival of all the things we've produced, ourselves included.

Drink, drink, you'll feel great at heart, peel and eat while it's still soft and tender, chew it, relish it, suck it, suck it, stick it in deep and suck it, see you in a clean bedroom with graceful designs and tasteful decor, soft touch, for diminishing stamina, for indigestion, it'll make you younger, it'll make you sleep, stocks and savings and investments will make a deluge of money, of rifles machine guns rockets grenades cannon napalm helicopters tanks kill me take the GI money and run for the room down the hall, hey, whore here's your customer, take him to your room sit down lie down undress go ahead spread insert suck pay soldiers of the Cross rise up for the Lord go away brimstone is burning God bless Americans God bless America.

When the smokescreen of this horrible blood-drenched war is gone, we shall see our finance still standing firm. And we shall also find money to drop on the next place, and money to rebuild the razed and ruined world. And we also shall find dollars that will illuminate the earth with a victorious peace by burning the lights in the factories once again.

Standing amidst the lower-class pleasure spots and GI bars, the Saigon branches of the Bank of America and the Chase Manhattan Bank resemble a modern granite forest sunk deep into the psammitic soil. These edifices were built especially to withstand the condition you know by the name of “war.” That is, the windows of the banks are bulletproof, and the walls are of reinforced materials designed to hold up against bombings and mortar attacks. If there had been no American power in Vietnam, then no American banks ever would have been built there. The economy of any nation that depends on American money will in time become America-oriented.

Yong Kyu took out his wallet and removed a red ten-dollar military certificate. Then he folded up sixty dollars more and placed it on the table where the girls would easily find and take it.

“I'll be waiting for you in the car.”

Yong Kyu spat out those words above the blended noise of moaning, sniffling, and panting, then walked out into the corridor.

The old man at the ticket booth looked up at him with a vacant stare. Outside, the heat was still burning, reflected from the cement sidewalks. Hot air enveloped his eyes. Suddenly, Yong Kyu felt heavy at heart. Sure, treat him to a fine meal, maybe at the French restaurant down by the White Elephant. What the hell, it would all work out somehow.
Garçon,
a bottle of champagne, if you please.

Wait, a diplomatic mission this is not. Business ought to be a bit more barbaric. Right, a secret room would be perfect. There must be strong whiskey and the exquisite skills of naked women. Let's call
Toi.
He should know all about it. The familiar sound of a grenade exploding could be heard only a block away. Instinctively, Yong Kyu pressed himself against the wall. A moment later, a roll of machine gun fire was audible. ARVN guards patrolling the street could be heard barking signals to each other. Across the street, people were cowering on the ground or else had dashed into nearby buildings. A terrorist attack by urban guerrillas, apparently. A little while later, armored personnel carriers and Jeeps were speeding by and the streets once more became animated with life. Slowly Yong Kyu crawled into the Jeep and fell asleep with the front door open.

 

 

18

The telephone was ringing loudly.

Yong Kyu managed to open his eyes, but getting out of bed would take too much effort. He fumbled around the table beside the bed for his watch, then picked it up to check the time. Two in the afternoon. The ache at the back of his skull was terrible and his mouth felt like it was full of sand. He staggered to his feet. By the time he picked up the receiver, the caller had hung up. For a long while he sat there on the edge of the bed, his mind completely blank. The buzzing white noise from the air conditioner made his head even fuzzier. He took a carton of milk from the refrigerator and downed a couple of gulps. The cold milk flowing down his throat put his senses on edge.

He had returned around six in the morning. He remembered Toi dropping him off. They had been drinking all night at some bar with a strip show. Toi had probably driven on with Leon slouched unconscious beside him, passing through the checkpoints on the outskirts of the city where ambush alerts remained in force, then slipped out of Da Nang.

Yong Kyu had seen floorshows a few times before, but this one was something else entirely. There were mulatto dancers and Vietnamese girls who could pass for white—half-French, must have been. He checked his jacket. A single ten-dollar note was left. He had had a hundred and fifty on him and Pointer had given him another three hundred, so he must have spent about four hundred fifty dollars. Peanuts, he thought to himself. He was confident that that and much and more would be easily recovered with a single deal.

After peering over the cliff of sudden death dozens of times and at long last emerging from the jungle swamps, a fighter about to embark for Korea would be unlikely to have saved from his combat pay more than three hundred dollars, a paltry sum of money stuck in a savings account somewhere back home. Korean crawlers often said their lives were worth forty dollars—their monthly salary. Sure, they got the economic, military and financial support America gave to its allies, and the privileges normally reserved to businessmen in Seoul. And army privates would sail back home along with their plywood crates holding a couple of Japanese appliances or electronics items they had conjured up on the sly.

Once he had showered, Yong Kyu rummaged through the refrigerator and ate what he found. He set his dirty laundry basket out in the hall and came back in and looked in the closet where he found a set of clean clothes neatly folded with a bill on top. The phone rang again. Yong Kyu slowly lifted up the receiver.

“Ahn Yong Kyu, is that you?” It was the voice of the staff sergeant.

“It's me. What's up?”

“Military life is tough, eh? Any idea what time it is? Hurry up and get your ass over here. We've got a problem.”

“Why are you getting all worked up on a Sunday? Call the PX boys.”

“No, the captain's away at headquarters. He'll be back tomorrow evening. I'm over at the CID office. We've got a problem.”

“What kind of problem? You've made a mess again.”

“Hell, I'm crying tears of blood. Come on, you bastard, some of our boys had their goods confiscated for no reason, and I can't speak the damn language.”

“All right, I'm on my way.”

When Yong Kyu arrived at the office, the staff sergeant was sitting there simmering in his own sweat. Miss Hoa was not in. On the captain's desk was nothing but an ashtray heaped with butts from the cigarettes he had been chain-smoking.

“I don't get it. Today when the chief went off to headquarters he told me to man the office, you know. So I came in here, leaving the grunt sprawled in dreamland after a night on the town. And then, just a little while ago, some American boys come in here babbling away about God knows what. I guess they came to get me, but then they left and brought back two of our guys, kids who'd been on combat duty and are fixing to head home soon. One of the two had a television and the other a tape recorder they'd bought, but the PX guard caught them, I think. Black something or other, the boys said they were told. So I asked that guy Lukas who speaks Korean, and he said the goods were all going to be confiscated. Look, honestly, you know what kind of money that is, right?”

“Yeah, I know. I'll handle it. Who's in charge of the American boys?”

“The marine sergeant. You know, the fat one with the bulging eyes.”

Leaving the main building, Yong Kyu passed the radio room and walked over to the investigation office in a barracks next to a flower garden. As he entered, an American sergeant with a short crew cut dressed in a crisp uniform was leafing through some documents at his desk. Yong Kyu saluted, and the sergeant gestured with his chin towards a chair.

“Have a seat.”

“I heard there was some problem with two of our men, so I came to see you.”

“Ah, that case, you mean? We've put them in a cell since there was nobody to take custody. I've just received the report, would you care to look it over?”

Yong Kyu picked up the report. The ink was not even dry. One man was a marine corporal, the other a private. Both were assigned to a bottom-level combat infantry squad, and after a tough month in the field they were on special leave for a little R & R. They had access to a PX at brigade headquarters, but they were not allowed to use the American PXs and downtown Da Nang was off-limits. They had gone to the marine PX near the rec center and made black market purchases.

The report was simple enough: Two Korean marines in possession of a TV and a stereo tape recorder were stopped by a PX security guard. They were unable to produce ration cards, so the goods were confiscated and the two soldiers detained. The price of the TV was eighty dollars and the tape deck was one hundred twenty. Those were duty-free prices, naturally. The TV was a National and the tape recorder an Akai.

“According to this report, there was no evidence that they bought the stuff on the black market,” Yong Kyu said.

“They had no ration cards. Unless they stole them, there was no other way for such items to come into their possession under the circumstances.”

“As I understand it, in a black market deal, both the seller and the buyer are guilty of an infraction. In fact, the seller is the worse offender. No black market is possible without a seller, is it?”

“They confessed buying on the black market. Lukas got their signatures here.”

“But there's no signature of the seller. No signed statement of an eyewitness, either. The sentry merely stopped them at a checkpoint. So, this is not a black market case, it's one that falls within our disciplinary jurisdiction. We'll handle it as a matter of entering an off-limits area or as an unauthorized use of leave. The money they paid for the goods must be returned in the amounts shown in the report.”

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know. They made signed confessions and the chief has approved our action already. Now all you need to do is take over custody of the two recruits.”

“That's not right. It's just arrogance. Even if they were stopped within your compound, it is our matter to deal with. And our soldiers were using our money when they bought the goods.”

“It's the practice of the American forces to consider all events occurring in our compounds as falling under the jurisdiction of the American forces.”

“All right, but you can still return the money.”

“It doesn't work that way. Since it's been approved, the goods will go back where they were before sale.”

“And what happens to their money, then? The money that's gone into the PX, does it go to your government or to the marines?”

“Watch what you say, sergeant, keep in mind this is a military investigation office of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

“Fine. I'll also make a separate investigation of the case and send up my own report.”

“Suit yourself. But sergeant, you can't challenge the authority of the American forces. This case was handled by the book and it's been closed. Don't try to second guess us.”

“I'm not trying to challenge it, but to rectify it.”

Yong Kyu emerged from the investigation office and went back into the main building. Then he headed down the stairs to the basement where a uniformed MP was sitting at a desk. Thanks to the ventilation system, the basement was cool inside. He spoke to the MP and then went inside and further down, finding the two soldiers crouching behind bars in the corner of a cell. He opened the doghouse with the key given him by the MP.

“Come on out here.”

They awkwardly saluted, holding their pants up with the other hand.

“Personal effects in custody?”

“Yes, sir. Our watches, wallets, cigarettes . . .”

“I see. Follow me.”

He gave the American MP a signed paper to acknowledge transfer of custody and received the box containing their personal effects. The two soldiers rethreaded their shoelaces, put their belts back on and took back their helmets. Yong Kyu led them to the CID office. The staff sergeant, lounging in the captain's chair with his legs up on the desk, quickly put his feet on the floor.

“Hey, did they agree to give the money back, or what?”

From his attitude, right away Yong Kyu sensed that the sergeant had made a deal of some kind with the soldiers.

“Give me a hundred.”

Yong Kyu held out his hand. The team leader rolled his eyes with surprise.

“Now, now, what a thing to say to a poor man like me. Ask Pointer to pitch in, man. You guys are like family, huh?”

“They refused to cough up the money. Shit, these boys are screwed, so we're going to make up their loss with a hundred from you and a hundred from me.”

Stunned, the staff sergeant stared back at Yong Kyu with his mouth hanging open.

“You don't think a lowly sergeant like me is loaded with cash, do you? I'm not even prepared for going home myself. Anyway, these bastards asked for it, they deserve it. You two idiots, when you get back home there'll be plenty of that kind of junk at the base PXs, so what the hell were you doing slinking around an off-limits PX here?”

Documents in hand, Yong Kyu was getting ready to take statements from the soldiers when he paused to look over at the staff sergeant.

“You go on first.”

“Mmmm. What about these boys . . .”

“I'll handle them all right.”

Pretending to not want to leave, the staff sergeant barked a rebuke at the soldiers as he got up.

“Listen, you two, when you get your money back, at least give him some beer money, understand?”

Ignoring this remark, Yong Kyu flattened him, saying, “Go straight there. Don't stop to see the Hong Kong Group.”

“I've washed my hands of them.”

“The chief has his eye on them. We'll fall on them hard. I'll tell you about it later.”

Once he was gone, Yong Kyu looked closely at the two soldiers in turn. He knew very well the face of a fighter: expressionless, and not just because of the skin tightened and tanned dark by a scorching sun. Yet the eyes set in that dull and inarticulate face shine brightly in a mysterious way. While at the front line, the messy hair and the stubbly beard along with those wild eyes give an impression of animal-like vitality, but once wrenched away from combat into a city environment like this office, that face looks different, spent and dazed. The insecure, frightened movements and the impassive surface make them looked down upon.

Yong Kyu questioned them: posts, ranks, names, and details of the incident.

“Why did you go to the marine PX to buy a TV?” he asked the private. “Couldn't you buy it in your own compound?”

“In our compound all they have is beer and toothbrushes and stuff like that, so we have to go to brigade headquarters to buy anything big. My family has been hounding me to bring home a TV, so I didn't send my pay home for two months and saved up the money to buy one. I'm going home soon, you see.”

So, with the price of two months' survival, this soldier had purchased a National television set.

“How did you buy it?”

“From the recreation center you can see the American PX through the barbed wire fence. So I sneaked in there and got hold of an American and begged him. In return he asked me for a set of jungle fatigues. So I brought him a uniform and he bought the TV for me. But then another bastard showed up and took it away. We're no different from them . . . we're all shipped in here and take the risk of having our heads blown off, right?”

“All right. And you, did you do it the same way?”

“Yes, sir. We went with our squad leader.”

“Where did you get the hundred and twenty dollars?”

“I saved twenty a month for six months, sir. I wanted to buy a camera but was so fascinated by the voice coming out of the recorder . . . well, I was going to record all the voices of the old people in our neighborhood when I get home.”

“You weren't planning to resell it, were you?” Yong Kyu asked the private.

“Why, why would I sell it, sir? It's hard enough to buy, who the hell would I sell it to?”

“Don't you have a ration card?”

“What's that?”

No wonder they were in such a mess, he thought. Some bastard had intercepted their ration cards and probably used them to buy up to the limits for goods to sell in the local black market.

“Everybody in the Allied Forces is entitled to a ration card,” said Yong Kyu. “You didn't have yours, and that's why they confiscated your things.”

“It's the first time I ever heard of that, sir.”

Tears started welling up in the private's eyes. That too, Yong Kyu knew very well. Anyone fresh off the battlefield is very vulnerable. Due to the excitement, actually like a state of intoxication, he finds it hard to adjust to the atmosphere of ordinary society. Yong Kyu remembered once, right after returning from a mission, he had cried his eyes out after glancing through movie ads in a newspaper that arrived by mail from home. It reminded him how people's daily routines went right on as always, totally oblivious to the critical danger to his own life. If he had had a weapon in hand, he might have broken down and shot himself, or just sprayed the people in the street with bullets. This man in a similar state was going back home now, returning home a different man. Despite himself, despite the ineradicable scars in his brain, gradually he will revive or reform. But now, what about the two hundred dollars?