The Man from Saigon

I keep thinking that somebody is just there, or there, she wrote, then indicated the treeline, watching us and deciding exactly when to shoot and which one of us to shoot first.

Marc sat with his legs folded, knees bent, his shirt loose around his neck. His utilities had a tear in the pocket from overstuffing them with TV batteries and cables. Through the hole, she could see the white skin of his thigh, a strong contrast to the brown of his arms, his hands. He shook his head, dismissing her fear.

It’s like a movie in my head, she wrote. How do I make it stop?

He got her to play a game in which he wrote a line from a song and she had to guess the song. Then another game in which you filled up boxes on a hand-sketched grid. He drew her away from her thoughts. He wrote, You’re beautiful.

They played hangman and he wrote out PEACE.

She thinks how far away he seems now, belonging to another time. She recalls his face, his dark hair with a crown in front so that if he cuts it too short it sticks straight up. The war had produced a few early gray hairs that clustered by his temples, some new lines by his eyes from squinting in the sun. She has known him six months and in six months he has become far too important to her. She blames the tide of her affections on the war, too. It seemed to transform everything to extremes.

“Here, look! Look, you!” It is the soldier with the sword. He is frustrated because her thoughts have drifted. He commands her attention again as a pesky younger brother might. A younger armed brother, she reminds herself, and nods quickly at the soldier and his sword, indicating she is paying attention. “This is very sharp,” he says, and holds the dark sharp edge near her palm. He wants her to admire the blade, which he has honed to a thin, lethal plane; the handle which allows a strong grip. She looks down at it, but will not touch it. It is how Marc would behave, unimpressed, a little bored. Along with the sprinkling of gray hair, Marc has also acquired here in Vietnam a bold, incautious wit that she is able to assume at times, as though having been with him so much she has assimilated this part of him.

“What you think?” says the soldier. He looks proudly at the sword, holding it up in front of him.

“I think you could use it to shave,” she says. “That is, if you ever needed to.”

The soldier nods, unsure of her meaning.

In Saigon she had become accustomed to sudden violence, expected but nonetheless surprising. People speculated; there wouldn’t be anything today, or this week, or until such-and-such a time. She walked the streets with reporters in tiger suits—their canteens and cameras and tape recorders strapped on to them, some holstering pistols—and just in front of them would be civilian women on their way to a tennis game, looking sporty and white, like women in country clubs all over America. The expats ate lavishly, whatever else was going on; the best restaurants were run by Corsicans, the best clubs by Vietnamese women. A restaurant on the Binh Loi Bridge was blown up—partially blown up—not once, but three different times and still they gathered there because of its position along the river and because it was built on stilts and was therefore irresistible for at least a single visit. Once, while between courses at another restaurant near by, she pointed out the window to where she swore she saw a VC soldier. Her companion, Marc’s cameraman, Don Locke, said, Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me, and asked the waiter for more fish sauce for his chiko rolls. She tried not to worry. The magazine liked her stories; they wanted more. Her editor cabled her to tell her she could sell her combat pieces elsewhere if they couldn’t use them. Locke ate his chiko rolls. She thought, Maybe I’m just seeing things.

And (mostly) she did not worry. Few reporters were wounded, fewer killed. What were the chances? The tennis players rode in their air-conditioned elevators; French women sunbathed at the sports club, lying on their backs and squinting up at the F-100s soaring overhead. The helicopters dove low so that they could see the bathers, who rolled on to their backs and waved with their fingers. These women weren’t afraid. They pointed their breasts to the unseen pilots above, smiling as though to a friend. Vietnamese officers’ wives had grand social schedules. For them, Saigon was one big party. She became friendly with a girl named Nicola, who was having a longstanding affair with a lieutenant colonel who’d re-upped twice just to stay near her, and who frequently flew her to his base for parties. Hippies traveled from around the world just to check the place out. No one thought they were taking risks. And when they went home they told their stories, exaggerating all the dangers that they never themselves truly believed.

“Son, I’m so scared,” she whispers now. She is in a hammock, he is on the ground. Even at night the jungle smells like a stagnant pond. Tonight, the world around her is so black she cannot tell if her eyes are open or shut. It is difficult to assume a relaxed expression or focus her gaze normally. Her vision seeks a destination and she finds herself straining to see in the darkness so that she has to blindfold herself with her hands. She wonders if they will kill them in their sleep, why they haven’t killed them already, why they haven’t let them go. She doesn’t know anything, she despairs, not even if her eyes are closed. It seems unfair, all this confusion.

The guards take turns sleeping. The one on duty sits as though in a trance and may be asleep; he has not moved in at least an hour, though time is distorted now and she cannot honestly tell. He has not moved anyway.

Nothing makes sense. In the morning they will either be killed or get up and march. She doesn’t know why she should die, or why they are marching, because she has no idea where they are heading anyway. Perhaps the Vietcong soldiers are lost. They certainly seem unable to find their unit. They are as stranded and alone as she and Son, but it is they who have the weapons.

“I’ve had enough,” she says now, a phrase she might have used about a bad phone line, no seat on the bus.

From Son comes a whining noise, like that of a dog, and when she hears it she realizes he has, indeed, been listening, noticing, that he has not been nearly so removed as he appeared all day. She feels his hand on her back through the thin material of the hammock, and with that touch she becomes calmer, more solid in herself. He rubs his palm in a short circular motion, then leaves it still for a long time. She cannot remember anything being so comforting. She’d like to reach to him, but dares not. It is the first time—the only time—he has touched her.

She met Son in a hospital in Pleiku about a week after her arrival in the country. He’d come in from the bush with a bunch of soldiers from the 4th Division, his lip cut, the blood all down his shirt, making the green cotton black. The lip looked awful, swollen so that he appeared to be pushing it out like a pouting child. It was the end of the day now and he was arguing with a nurse that he didn’t need any stitches, just give him a needle and thread; he’d do it himself. He claimed he’d stitched himself before in the field and it hadn’t even gotten infected. Please, he said as the nurse clasped his chin. Ah do it!

The nurse held his jaw in her hand, dabbing iodine on his face. Don’t move, Tarzan! she said.

Da nun show may! he said. He was a scrapper; he never stopped talking.

Why’re you moving so much? You want to split that lip worse? The nurse had her eye on his lip, squinting into it as though down a scope glass. She was angling his face for better light. On her smock was her name, Tracy Flower, sewn neatly in what might have been the same stitch being applied now to Son’s lip.

Da nuns! he tried again. Dey show may!

Nuns? Are you talking about nuns? I’m not a nun. Stop moving.

Tah so!

She let go his face and he cupped his hurt lip behind his palm to shield it. He saw Susan watching and pretended he had not. She could tell this by the way he moved away all at once, as though discovered. She’d seen him earlier while walking the lines of beds, trailing the triage nurse, passing through screens thin as kite silk that separated the living from dying, and again outside the muddy exit where the grim drums of gasoline lined up above their nests of fire. She had seen him and had felt instantly drawn to him, a feeling powerful enough that she had needed to remind herself it was invisible. It was as though he knew her, or wanted to know her, and she felt it that way, as a kind of invitation.

The nuns showed me how to sew, he said quickly before the nurse could grab him again. Susan realized now why he had got her attention. It was not the wound to the lip, not Son himself, but how he spoke during the temporary moment he had his jaw back. It wasn’t only that his English was good, though that in itself would cause her to take notice, but that the vowel sounds were British. That is what had seemed so oddly familiar to her. She knew the voice. She’d heard it that day at JUSPAO when she’d infuriated the lieutenant colonel by insisting he tell her what a WBLC was. Sampan, she remembered, and the voice of a young Vietnamese journalist who said, Can we have confirmation that a WBLC is a sampan, sir?

Son tried to smile now, but the lip prevented it. Susan smiled at him, but only for a moment. The nurse was giving him instructions again. She had a soft but commanding voice, reminding Susan of one of her father’s sisters, who had that same way of telling you what to do in the nicest fashion, but with an authority that meant you better do it.

Nuns? she was saying. Well, that’s just grand. Now keep still!

The nurse was as tall as he was. Her hair, pinned at her neck, had come loose from its clip and she blew it away from her eyes, still holding on to Son. He finally gave in, sighing into her palm, and stood quietly for the stitches. Susan could see the grit on his neck, the red mud smeared on his trousers, the caking of dirt around his fingernails. He was just in from the field and he’d sweated so much his hair rose straight up from his head as though the light were sending a current through him. He seemed to be trying to move away from the nurse and stand still at the same time, almost jogging in place. Finally, he gave up the struggle and stood without wincing as she put line after line of neat stitching across his mouth. In the middle of the procedure, in a gesture as casual as a wave, he held up a camera, angling it on to the concentrating nurse, and snapped several shots of her stitching his lip.

Who is that? Susan asked another nurse, someone she’d tagged herself on to, a woman named Donna who did not object to being followed around. Donna held two bottles of urine pinned under one arm and a third in her right hand. They didn’t have anything as useful as Foley bags but had to improvise even in this regard, using empty water or saline bottles to collect urine. The hospital operated out of little Quonset huts, corrugated-iron buildings, like pig arcs, maybe half a mile from the landing strip. Sometimes rockets intended for the airstrip hit the wards by mistake. They used to operate out of tents, held in place by sandbags, and the sandbags still lined the walls.

You’re still here? Donna said. She dried her palm against her thigh, pushed a swatch of heavy bangs from her forehead, and gave Susan an amused, slightly disapproving look. She wore a long smock with sleeves that she rolled as high as they would go on her arm. The smock was stained a rust color with damp patches beneath the arms. She nodded down at her bottles. You want a job?

Susan said, I really wanted to interview a surgeon, but I haven’t talked to one yet—

No, and you won’t, Donna said.

Then you’ll be stuck with me a little longer.

That’s okay. You on a deadline?

Susan told her yes, though this was not strictly true.

You can bunk with us. But really, I should make you do something! Donna moved with purpose, with the stamina of a plow horse. Everywhere she went in the ward she picked up one thing, deposited another; she carried rolls of bandages, ringers, drugs, sheets, plaster, splints, these items balanced across her chest or on her hip. You’re a nice girl, Susan, and we don’t mind you being here. But a reporter in a hospital! I mean, no offense, sweetheart, but really. Titties on a tomcat, you are.

They ran into Son in front of a supply room. What are you doing here? Donna said, and he slouched off, was herded off, in truth. Susan nodded at him, then looked at Donna, making a question with her hands.

Who knows? the nurse answered. Some gook with a hurt lip. Who gives a

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