Linh slumped back down to the floor. “My family were city people, demoted to living in the village after the partition, when we left for the South. So the customs were strange to us. In the village, the boys would go down to the river on a full-moon night and sing songs to the girls on the opposite shore.”
He remembered eating shrimp with hot red chilies no bigger than the tip of his finger, leaving his mouth burning; he and friends drinking beer his older brother, Ca, had bought for them. His stomach tightened at the memory of the colored lanterns hung along the river so they could see each other better, the reflection of the lanterns on the river. He squinted to see the faces of the girls, each bathed in a pool of pure color. But Mai’s face was perfectly clear, the blue lantern showing her features like moonlight against the night.
“And the girls would sing a song back in reply. Back and forth all night long. We were both fifteen when I saw her singing to me across the river.”
“She picked you.”
He bent his face into Helen’s lap. “She picked me.”
“That’s a beautiful story.” She caressed his shoulder and neck lightly with her fingers. “How did you and Darrow meet?”
“I went to Gary for a job. He needed an assistant for Darrow.”
“Amazing.”
“He flew me to Angkor the same day.”
“That’s when he fell in love with the place?”
“ Gary said no one else would work with him.”
Helen laughed. “I’m glad you stuck it out.”
Linh stood up and excused himself. Helen had almost fallen asleep when he came back in, dripping water.
“Did you go for a swim?”
He shook his head. “I met him once before.”
“Darrow?”
Linh nodded. “He came to photograph a joint movement with my SVA regiment and American advisers.”
“Oh.”
Pulling away, Linh told the story he had been unable to tell, the only story that mattered. Wide-awake now, Helen shivered, knees drawn up, face cupped in her folded arm. Without thought, Linh grabbed both her ankles as anchor, one in each hand, fingers tight around the sharp knobs of bone, grounding himself or her, he did not know which.
Danger that after the telling he would not be able to stand being with her any longer, the wound too deep to share, but her tears fed him. His anguish had grown skeletal in its solitude. He wished it didn’t have to be so, that one could ingest pain and keep it from others, but instead it seemed one could only lessen it by inflicting little cuts and bruises of it on another.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
A miracle how she appeared beneath him, how she unfolded and folded him into the wings of her arms and legs. He kissed the bony globe of her knee before descending.
Our company had been near the paddy fields settling in for the night when scouts ran into a camp of VC. Quickly, we pulled back toward my village while the American advisers stood alone in the field, yelling at us to stay put. But we abandoned our positions, and the Americans, cursing, called firepower in to target the adjoining forest. Planes came, bombs dropped that shook the earth many kilometers away, so powerful the villagers sent up prayers that the world would not end.
After a shaky perimeter guard had been set up, I slipped away to see my family and reassure them.
My mother and father were bundling belongings, ready to flee with Mai, my older sister, Nha, with her baby, and my brothers, Toan and Ca. My mother was more weary than frightened. She cried that she had been leaving one home after another since she was a young girl in the North. Tears ran down Mai’s face, and she held the sides of her belly as if it pained her. She shook like an animal sensing the approach of the hatchet. Begging me to take them away to someplace safe. To her sister, Thao’s, home. “Please, take us. Take me away.”
“I can’t.” For a brief moment, Mai’s selfishness angered me. For all her girlish charm, if I had to pick again I would have chosen the practical Thao. My mother had worried that Mai would be too fragile, too high- strung, to make a good wife.
“You promised to take me to Saigon,” she said.
“My company knows I’m here.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Mai shook her head, her eyes wild and glittering, not seeing me. “I’ll go anyway. Alone.”
Nha, listening, turned away, embarrassed for her sister-in-law. Her own baby whimpered in her arms, still feverish after a cold. Nha, as homely as Mai was lovely, took comfort in her virtue and self-sacrifice.
I promised that the bombs were to protect us, that the VC would have retreated by now, nothing to fear, trying out the words in my mouth as I said them, not knowing myself if they were believable. “I met an American. I don’t know why, but they are helping us.”
“The eyes and ears in the trees see soldiers retreat here,” my father said, shaking his head.
My family was still frightened, but as the air grew quiet, nerves calmed. My mother built a small fire and boiled tea and fresh rice for a meal. When Mai offered to help, she slapped away her hand. “I remember in Hanoi, the servants made a full meal, even mang tay nau cua, asparagus and crab soup, as the Communists rolled into the city. No matter what, one must eat.”
Mai rolled her eyes, a steady private complaint that the old woman turned everything into a story of her former wealth.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have some asparagus and crab now?” my mother went on.
Incense was burned for the ancestors. A bowl of rice held out as an offering. I bowed my head to the ground three times at the altar. We ate in silence.
“Did you notice,” Mai said, “during the play, at the song-”
“Please,” said Toan. “Stupid girl, can’t you think of anything more important than that wretched play?”
Mai’s lips puckered, and I refused to look her in the face, certain she would burst into tears again. She struggled to her feet, unable to stand until Nha came over and lifted her under her arms. Mai went outside with her bowl. I could say nothing because Toan was my older brother, bitter at his own unmarried state, but nothing would have pleased me more than to talk about the play. Anything to forget the present fear.
Because they had no choice, they tried to share my faith that the Americans were different. I knew I should report back to the company but couldn’t. After a year’s absence, what could one more night matter?
By midnight everyone fell into a fitful sleep in the communal room, within touch of one another. Later, I would remember dreading the coming morning, when I would be alone again. I woke and heard the suck of Nha’s baby. I wished, and was ashamed to wish, that I could be alone with Mai one last time before our separation. Was Mai right? Should we have escaped when we could to Saigon? The thought of desertion was always present, like uncooked dough in my stomach.
A terrible howling noise. Like a roar from inside the earth. We woke, disoriented, in the middle of the night. Outside, mortars bit at the edge of the village, shards of fire and metal and earth flying. Palm trees, thatched roofs of houses, in fl ames. I could hear screams, could hear Mai’s shrill sob rise up, her breath catching, and then another sob. Where had the mortars come from? Which side? A sound, pull, puff, and then another three mortars landed all around the hut. Plumes of earth rising more than double the height of the tallest palm. Soldiers from my company ran by, abandoning their camp and leaving the village exposed. The enemy attacking from close by if not from inside the village itself.
“Quick,” I yelled. “We must leave.”
Now the Americans would call in airpower and raze the village. My father, still in the vigor of middle age, ran and brought back a long rope that he used to tie our buffalo to the plow. It was stiff and heavy, the
