She touched the water gently, then lowered herself down into it. Behind her, on the bank of the creek, there was a rustling sound. A chicken jumped from a bush and ran off into the jungle. Suddenly she had the sense that someone was watching her. Then she heard two young voices coming from behind a pile of rocks.
“She’s gorgeous! Just like the Venus!”
“I don’t know about the Venus, but she’s more beautiful than all the girls in my hometown.”
“Did you spy on them too?”
“No. In my village everyone just bathes together in a local pond. But the girls don’t have light skin like hers.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen a girl’s body so clearly.”
“Same here.”
“I should’ve gotten married before getting sent out here. I should’ve known to do that.”
“Don’t be an idiot. You can’t marry someone just because you want to take off her clothes.” The voice grew quieter all of a sudden. “With my girlfriend, I could’ve known her body, if I’d wanted to. She wanted to get married but, you know, we don’t know when we’ll come back. She’s in the prime of her youth; I didn’t want her to feel tied to me. Who knows what can happen in the middle of all this shooting and bombing? So I refused to get married. The day before I left, we went out together to the fields and sat there until morning. She cried a lot. I felt sorry for her. She said that I didn’t have to marry her and all she wanted was to have a child with me. She didn’t care how long the war might last or about her reputation. She didn’t mind suffering through hardships. She would raise our child and wait for me, no matter how long it took. To be honest, I was really moved by what she said and almost agreed. But in the end I had to control my emotions and make the right decision. I hope she understands. In the future, maybe I can find her again. But what if …”
“Shhh! Keep your voice down. You don’t want anyone to hear us. I was about to say the same thing. Our country is at war. We don’t know what will happen to men like us. It’s not fair to ask a woman to wait for us.”
“If I died now, I’d still be a boy, not a man. It’s sad.”
“Let’s go collect some water. And don’t make too much noise! It would be embarrassing if we got caught.”
She didn’t miss a single word they said, and her eyes followed the shadows of the two young soldiers as they retreated from behind the rocks. She forgot that they had just been spying on her. Thinking about their conversation, she shivered. Why was the creek water so cold? Her entire body trembled as she steadied herself on a rock and ground her teeth. She tried to understand it: If they died before being with a woman, would their souls wander lost in the afterlife, full of regret and longing?
But no! she told herself. That was ridiculous. If I died, I would simply die.
Gathering all of her strength, she stood up from the creek bed. It was so cold that her body felt as if it were being poked by thousands of tiny needles. Somehow she managed to get out of the water, put on her clothes, and stumble back to her unit. On the ground of the main tunnel back at the base she collapsed.
A sensation like floating. Her body bouncing gently up and down. What kind of bomb had they dropped on the tunnel this time? Had the tunnel collapsed? No, it couldn’t be that. She’d experienced the bombings before, the suffocating feeling, the soil closing in all around, her hands clawing in every direction to dig herself out.
But this was different.
It was completely dark. She wanted to scream but couldn’t. To take her mind off the fear she tried thinking of her mother. But she knew that her mother wouldn’t be able to bear seeing her in this situation, so forced her from her mind. And her father? He had died at Dien Bien Phu, and she’d never met him. Soldiers are funny like that—they stop home for a short visit, get their wives pregnant, and then leave forever. She could imagine her father shaking his head and saying, “You can’t die. You’re all we have.”
She must think of something else.
My boyfriend.
He’d lost his life in an aerial bombardment. They bombed the tunnel where he was stationed, and his fellow soldiers painstakingly removed his body from the dirt. His hand was still clutching a Truong Son pen, a gift she had given him. Perhaps he’d been killed while working on a novel or a poem.
As this thought occurred to her, the sky suddenly brightened. She closed her eyes and heard voices.
My comrades, she thought, wishing she could scream out the words. I am alive!
She felt as if she were on a ride at an amusement park, being carried off somewhere by forces beyond her control. She felt dizzy and scared and called out to her mother. But no, it wasn’t her mother. Her mother would never wear a white shirt and white hat like that. Whose voice was that? It sounded totally unfamiliar.
“Forty-four degrees … Delirium … Get her in the bed over there.…”
She felt herself floating even more quickly now. The figure in white faded. In the distance she thought she could see Long Bien Bridge back in Hanoi. The smell of bombing. They had destroyed one of the bridges’ pylons again.
Hurry up! someone yelled. Why are you so slow?
There was fire everywhere. A rocket had also
