“Everybody close your eyes,” she said. We were all still sitting on the piece of canvas in meditation. “Relax your arms and legs. Do not get distracted, and concentrate your thoughts on the dead.”
Then Ms. Hoa continued her prayer:
“I bow down to the forest and earth gods and to all local spirits. Today is December 22, according to the lunar calendar. On behalf of Nguyen Hong Quan and his relatives, I summon the soul of the fallen soldier Nguyen Thanh Binh, who was buried near Ha Nai Mountain, Sam Mun, Dien Bien. I respectfully request that you guide your relatives to your lost grave so they can reunite you with your ancestors.”
Ms. Hoa paused for a while and observed the rest of us burning incense. The hillside was extremely quiet. Incense smoke was everywhere.
She continued:
“Spirit, we respectfully summon you. We miss you. We invite you to come here and sit wherever you like. You are a sacred spirit. Please show us the way. Do you live down by the creek or up in the mountains? Please show us the way. I bow down to you. Sit wherever you like.…”
After a little while the medium turned to Lan, Quan’s sister.
“I summon you, spirit,” Ms. Hoa said, lowering her voice. “Please enter her body a bit further and show your family the way.”
Lan was shaking. Binh’s spirit, I assumed, must have occupied Lan’s body. Everybody gathered around her now.
Quan spoke first, in a trembling voice.
“Hello, Binh. Is that you? This is Quan.”
Mr. Hung said, “Brother Binh. I am Hung C3. Do you recognize me?”
Lan’s body was still shaking.
I said, “Hello, Binh. I am your brother’s friend. If you have arrived, please say something.”
Suddenly Lan let out a loud shriek, then began to cry. Tears covered her face.
Ms. Hoa said, “Spirit, if you are unhappy or unsatisfied with anything, please let your family know. We are ignorant earthly people.”
Then finally Lan spoke. She spoke on behalf of the spirit. In general, the spirit missed and loved his parents and every day protected all members of his family.
“Please, spirit,” Ms. Hoa said, “we respectfully request that you show us the way to your grave.”
Lan stopped crying for a moment. She wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand.
“That’s my house,” she said, pointing to the area directly in front of where she was seated. Then she added that the spirit had just apologized to Mr. Thang’s spirit because of the mistaken exhumation.
Quan and everyone else seemed thrilled and began to enthusiastically dig and clear trees. Yet another area of the hillside was eventually cleared and dug up. Occasionally someone would shout out, “Oh!” as if they’d found something, but it would only be a mound of dirt built by termites.
It was late afternoon, and a light rain had started to fall. Cold winds blew across the now barren and ripped-up hillside, making us shiver. The air was full of incense smoke, which drifted off into the dark, quiet woods.
The medium, Ms. Hoa, continued her job. She burned more incense and kept repeating mantras.
“I summon you, the spirit of the dead,” she said, sitting in meditation again, her eyes closed. “We miss you. We invite you to come here and be seated wherever you like. You are a sacred spirit. Please show us the way.…”
I listened as her praying continued.
Someone off down the hillside let out a long, weary sigh. It seemed like there was no real borderline out here in the dark woods between the living and the dead. It began to rain more heavily. Out on the horizon I saw the day ending, the bright aura of the sun glowing as if it were trying to say good-bye.
Quan’s cell phone rang and he answered. It was the voice of his uncle back in Hanoi.
“What are you guys doing there?” Quan’s uncle said, his voice ringing out through the phone. “It sounds like soldiers marching!”
Quan seemed astonished and looked around. Everything was quiet. On the far side of the hill, down near the creek bed, a group of blue birds swooped down and landed on the ground near where the laborers were continuing to dig. It seemed like they never stopped digging. The holes became bigger and deeper.
Suddenly one of the laborers shouted, “I found a piece of green cloth, and a belt …!”
Everybody rushed over to the hole. We all stood around anxiously staring down into the dark, upturned earth.
Quan paced back and forth. He looked haggard. I noticed for the first time that there were some gray spots in his hair. His voice, when he spoke finally, sounded like a sob.
“Tomorrow is December 23rd of the lunar calendar, almost Tet,” Quan said. “Brother, when will you come home?”
11 / WAR
THAI BA TAN
Thai Ba Tan was born in 1949 in Nghe An and lives in Hanoi. He is a writer, poet, translator, and English teacher. He earned his BA in English at Moscow State University of Foreign Languages in 1974, and has been active in Vietnamese literary circles ever since. For years, he was vice chairman of the International Literature Department at the Vietnam Writers’ Association. More recently he has earned the ire of several high-ranking Communist Party officials by using his Facebook account to publicly criticize the Vietnamese government; as a result, he is now considered a controversial figure in Vietnam. In “War,” Thai Ba Tan turns his attention to a domestic conflict that emerges between a young married couple after the husband returns from battle. This “new war,” the narrator says, “required something more complicated and subtle” than simple battlefield endurance—“compassion and forgiveness.” The story highlights a common theme and concern shared by writers of this generation: for the Vietnamese people, the war did not really end in 1975.
Imagine a story that happened like this:
There was a young couple who were in love. A few
