The Shadow of Arms (48 page)

The boy, Huan, shouted, “Ahn is not like that! He's my friend. Daddy said he's a decent man.”

“He's right. You should apologize to your brother. And since he's a young man not so much older than you, why don't you girls have a talk with him?”

“No, thanks. If he wasn't a soldier we might.”

Phuoc led Shoan and Lei upstairs.

“I hate foreign soldiers. Especially the Koreans,” Phuoc said, glaring back down the stairs.

When the glass door to the veranda was open, a cool, salty wind blew in from outside. Phuoc took out a bottle of wine and some glasses.

“Today is Shoan's day. Help yourself.”

Lei put the glasses away. “No more of this nonsense, please, Phuoc.”

“Leave it. I'll drink,” Shoan murmured.

Phuoc and Shoan started drinking the wine. Lei pulled a chair over by the window and sat down.

“Don't you go to Uncle Trinh's in Dong Dao anymore?”

Shoan shook her head. “No, the members of the study circle are all scattered now.”

“Could they all have gone into the jungle?”

“Probably. Otherwise, to the universities.”

“Pham Minh is the only one who returned.”

As Phuoc kept up her insinuations, Shoan grabbed her head with both hands and said, “Please . . . enough talk about Pham Minh!”

Curfew hour had come and gone, so all the fishing boats in Da Nang Bay had been pulled up on the beach. The only light visible was from the US Navy patrol boat cruising up and down the harbor. A flare went off in the distant sky. The three girls gradually quieted down. Sitting in the dark, her head propped against the wall, Shoan started reciting softly in French:

Rappelle-toi Barbara.

Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-la.
 . . .
10

Pham Minh and the foreman finished counting the sacks of
cement
and fertilizer that had been delivered and wrote out a receipt. After
all
of the workers had gone, Minh buried himself in the sofa, out of reach of the sunlight pouring through the window, and propped his feet up on the desk. The provisioning of weapons for the Fourth Company had now been done without a hitch. A new mission would be coming down for the reinforcements.

Minh was waiting for Nguyen Thach. The sun cast a long bright rectangular patch that reached from the desk to the center of the warehouse. A shadow appeared on one edge, and gradually lengthened. Minh quickly took his
legs down
from the desk and craned his neck around to look toward the entrance.

“Who's . . .”

The bottom of a white
ahozai
came into view, and as his eyes moved upwards they met Shoan's. Her head was hanging, and her
face
was partly concealed by her long hair, but those eyes of hers were trained directly upon him.

“What are you . . . what are you doing here . . .?”

He was halfway to his feet. She lifted her foot, and tapping the floor with the toe of her sandal, said, “Lei told me where you were. I've known for a while that you were working in Le Loi market, though. Yesterday Lei mentioned the name of the company, so . . .”

Like hers, Minh's eyes were downcast. “Why have you been avoiding me?” she asked.

“Here, sit down.”

Minh pulled his chair out from behind the desk and pushed it toward
her.

“Let's go outside and talk.”

Pham Minh looked at his watch. “I still have things to take care of. If you go straight down the alley, there's a pub called ‘Chrysanthemum' by the bus terminal. Will you go there and wait for me?”

Shoan walked out and headed down the alley, staring down at the hem of her
ahozai
, in the same way as when she had come.

“Who was she?”

Minh was watching her walk away when he heard Nguyen Thach's voice from behind. He looked back.

“Good morning, sir.”

Thach was dressed rather neatly today, like his brother, which was unusual for him.

“I asked you who she was.”

Minh walked to the warehouse door and looked outside. “She's a friend of my younger sister, sir.”

“Is that a fact?”

Thach waited. Minh remained silent for a while, then, as Thach sat in his chair looking calmly about the warehouse, he took a deep breath and spoke again. “To tell the truth, she's a girl I was in love with before. She stopped by to see me.”

“What do you mean ‘before'? Before you went to Atwat?”

“Yes, sir. Since then I haven't seen her at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because I kept thinking about what my friend Thanh told me. Besides, I was afraid.”

“Ah, Thanh is a fine fighter. He's now a company commander in Hue district. Did he tell you not to see her?”

Minh stared at Thach with an air of resentment. Nguyen Thach held up both hands.

“Oh, all right. I don't doubt that Thanh said something, like that a love affair is tragic in your generation, or that love should be sublimated into love for the Vietnamese people, well, something along those lines. You see, I know him pretty well, too.”

“The reason I'm not seeing Shoan is . . .” Minh paused for a moment, and then he said in a clear voice, “. . . because I'm not confident I can make her into a comrade.”

Thach just nodded. He picked up a ballpoint pen and kept tapping the desk with it, as if absorbed in thought. He seemed far away, his eyes focused in midair. Minh spoke again.

“What I find most tormenting is that I have to conceal the truth even from her. I've caused her and my younger sister to lose their faith and pride in me.”

“I can understand that.” Thach stopped tapping. “Everyone is bound to have some remorse about the days of their youth. I wonder if Thanh wasn't scared himself.”

Thach stood up. “Among the NLF fighters, there are some who are waging war alongside their loved ones. They're the happiest men and women in Vietnam. Our cases are different, however. You and I are intellectuals, Comrade. And we're underground agents. The most important thing for you now is to keep your exposure to a minimum and maintain the security of the organization. Our foes are not only the visible power of the imperialists and their followers but also ourselves. I happened to hear that you made a date to meet her at the pub. Why don't you go ahead there now and then come back? Meanwhile, I'll have lunch with Dr. Tran and come
back
here.”

“Dr. Tran?”

“Director of the Da Nang Red Cross Hospital. It's possible he might sell antibiotics and painkillers to us. Why, do you know him?”

“No . . . I mean, his daughter goes to
Lycée de
Pascal with my younger sister.”

Thach laughed loudly. “We certainly will win. In South Vietnam, the NLF is the only group that has any sense of responsibility for this war. Did you know? The grenade in my possession helped me.”

“Grenade?”

“You know, don't you? That Korean investigation agent. He's the one who's introducing me to Dr. Tran.”

“Well, I'll see you during the siesta hour, then.”

The two went their separate ways. Thach went out through the inside door leading from the warehouse into the front corridor. Minh walked out the main door and then pulled the iron gate shut and locked it.

At Chrysanthemum Pub, Pham Minh and Chan
Te
Shoan found themselves once again seated face-to-face. It was lunchtime, and the place was crowded.

“Let's have lunch. The Puo noodles here are great,” Minh said.

“I don't feel like it.”

“Then I'll eat alone.”

“Go ahead.”

Minh ordered noodles. They were served with minced meatballs and a garnish of fragrant herbs. He began to eat.

“Have you been back to Uncle Trinh's?” Shoan asked.

Shoan was gently reminding him of the night they had spent together in the air-raid shelter before he departed for Atwat.

“No, I haven't,” Minh answered curtly.

“What is it with you? I'm the same as I used to be. I don't care whether you went into the jungle or came out of it.”

Minh quietly emptied his bowl.

“Phuoc says you're a coward, but, my dear, I don't think so.”

She used the words, “my dear,” but Minh responded with measured coldness.

“Shoan, I'm no longer the same man as before. I've changed.”

“How? You no longer care for me as you did before?”

“I see now how thoughtless I used to be. Now I'm a soldier in the Air Force of the Republic of Vietnam. I plan to help my brother make a lot of money. And then I'll go abroad to study. I've no time for marriage now or for flirting with women. When I become famous and powerful I'll have many opportunities to meet wonderful women, and . . .”

“I see you really have changed, just as Lei said.” Shoan gritted her teeth to hold back the tears. But there was still a thread of hope she was clutching. She managed to speak again in a weak, quivering voice.

“I'll probably be engaged. My family is urging me to.”

“En . . . gaged?”

“Yes, I'm a graduating senior now. Once the dry season is over, we'll have graduation exams.”

Minh averted his eyes from Shoan's gaze. He felt his throat growing tight. “That's good.”

“Do you really mean it?”

Minh just stared into his teacup, with both arms stretched out on the table. Shoan abruptly stood up. Then, without a word, she rushed out of the door of the pub. Minh went after her, murmuring passionately to himself: “No, I don't want any woman but her. She has to be my wife.” He saw the white trail of her skirt disappear into the crowd.

“Shoan, wait!”

But his cry was lost in the loud rumble of engines at the bus terminal and in the shouts of peddlers trying to beckon for customers. Minh stopped in his tracks, his fists clenched, and tried to convince himself that his feet were glued to the ground. When he looked up again, Shoan was nowhere to be seen.

“Shoan . . .”

All the people in the crowd, all the buildings, and everything in old Le Loi market grew blurry. Minh hurriedly wiped his eyes with his palms.

Down on White Ivory Road along the shore, Nguyen Thach arrived at the restaurant that occupied an old wooden vessel. He came upon Ahn Yong Kyu and Dr. Tran sitting on the aft end of the upper deck. Ahn introduced the two men to each other.

“This is the Mr. Nguyen Thach I've been telling you about. And this is Dr. Tran.”

From behind his glasses, Dr. Tran carefully scrutinized Thach. They shook hands, then Ahn said, “Dr. Tran tells me his request was granted by the public welfare section of the US headquarters, so he'll be receiving medical supplies on a regular basis.”

“Very good. In Vietnam, there are patients dying everywhere without receiving any medical treatment,” Thach said.

Dr. Tran maintained a prudent silence.

“I've given Dr. Tran a bit of advice about the military hierarchy,” Yong Kyu said. “And so he sent an official letter in the name of the Red Cross Hospital to the supply command, including the official approval from US headquarters. He received an immediate approval for his requisitions. Yesterday, the first deliveries of medical supplies were made.”

“What is being supplied?”

Dr. Tran answered in Vietnamese, “Mostly antibiotics like streptomycin and Terramycin. Painkillers in plastic syringes for field use, topical disinfectants for external wounds and burns, ointments, and so on, but most of them are for use on the battlefield. We won't need it all, only a portion will be sufficient for hospital use. We're struggling though great financial hardship.”

“Of course. I understand,” Nguyen Thach remarked. Then he asked, “What's the approximate quantity available?”

“Two crates of antibiotics and one of painkillers, roughly.”

“A crate means ten small boxes, with each box containing a dozen bottles and each bottle a hundred pills, right?”

“I think so.”

“That's really a lot if they supply it regularly. The current market price for a single capsule of Terramycin has been fluctuating between three hundred and five hundred piasters, which means a bottle would run between thirty thousand and fifty thousand.”

“A crate would then be about three or four hundred thousand piasters,” Dr. Tran said, smiling contentedly.

“Can you request more medicines?”

“We only have a limited number of beds in our hospital. But, there's another way. Every city in Quang Nam Province has a public hospital. And out in the hamlets, most people don't have the benefit of medical care.”

“Let's suppose that a legal channel is arranged to make a request, then can you get the medical supplies from the supply corps?” Thach asked.

Yong Kyu interrupted. “I don't understand Vietnamese. You seem to have lost your manners—how about using English?”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot about your presence. I just asked Dr. Tran if he could increase the quantities of medicines being supplied.”

“He's opened a proper channel, so I don't see why the hospital can't make direct purchases,” Yong Kyu said.

With Yong Kyu taking part, Thach resigned himself to speaking English “That's only a temporary measure. The most important thing is that the supplies should be regular.”

Dr. Tran spoke in Vietnamese to Thach, “You and I are compatriots. Is there any need for a foreigner to be a middleman?”

“Don't worry. He's just here this once to introduce us to each other. He'll be returning to Korea in a few months.”

Dr. Tran pushed up the rim of his glasses and, switching to English, said to Yong Kyu, “Due to budget cuts, our hospital is encountering serious financial difficulties. With the money from disposal of leftover medical supplies, we're planning to make some new appropriations. We'll have to follow the formal procedures on paper, however.”