an open wound, over my shoulder, “We are close now.”
I walked until I felt a tug at my sleeve and looked into the wrinkled face of an old grandmother. She shook her head sharply, as if shrugging off a ghost. I could not make out her words, so tired I simply noticed her sunken lips and the few blackened, betel-stained teeth in her mouth. She motioned with her hands to lie down, and the idea of sleep was suddenly overwhelming. I would have walked till I dropped over. I struggled to the tall grass at the side of the road, and only as I worked to loosen the knot of rope around my chest did I notice the cold heaviness of Mai’s body, and as I slowly knelt down to let her off I realized I had felt no movement all night long, no warm breath, and now as I laid her in the long, lilac-tinted grass, and as her long hair draped down to the earth, I saw that she had the pearl gray pallor of death, and I knew, as the grandmother shook her head, quick as a bird, and handed me a small spray of yellow paper flowers before she turned away, that I had carried a corpse the whole night through, but somehow Mai’s spirit had saved me.
This is how the world ends in one instant and begins again the next.
I crouched in the grass and saw that we were both covered in blood, that she had bled to death with our child. I looked up and down the highway, saw other bodies fallen by the side, and when I looked into the faces of the people, I saw we were all the living dead, no one had escaped.
I bowed my head, the spray of flowers still gripped in my fingers. The paper ones the poor bought to place on family altars. Petals faded yellow and dusty from long use, the paper crumpled in places where the old woman had clutched them. But when I brought the spray to my face, I smelled the fresh orange blossoms of Mai’s hair. And so I buried my wife, Mai, under the tree the bird sang in, placing the spray of flowers in her mouth. The blossoms were paper, yellow faded, already dusty from mourning, but they were all I had left to give.
EIGHTEEN. Cat Cai Dau
Cut Off the Head
The next morning Linh sought out Mrs. Xuan, who was feeding garbage to the catfish in the large village pond.
“We need a lacquered box of betel and areca. And gold earrings. Can you prepare a small feast-at least six dishes-for the entire village?” he asked.
He was pleased to see Mrs. Xuan’s eyebrows shoot up, her gossip suddenly gone stale. She chewed on her lips as Linh gave her dollar bills. “For when?”
“Soon. A day or two at most. We must return to Saigon.”
“Too soon,” she said, figuring that time would allow her to dole out the information to Mr. Bao for greater profit.
He knew the old woman would not give up the tidy sum she would make. “Then we’ll have the ceremony in Saigon instead. She prefers it-”
“No, no. Hungry bridegrooms. So impatient.” Mrs. Xuan scrunched up her eyes in a failed effort to appear good-natured, quickly withdrawing her hand filled with dollar bills.
When Linh told Helen of his plans for a ceremony, she was quiet. The implications of their time together had not sunk in for her, yet after hearing his story, she knew that he was dead serious. Only Americans thought that Vietnam was as permissive as the brothels and G.I. bars in Saigon. The society was conservative, a relationship outside marriage unheard-of. At times Linh seemed even more foreign now that he was her lover than before when they had been only friends. “Does this have something to do with Mr. Bao? Will he be angry when he finds out?”
“It’s important to save face. But it’s important for me also,” he said. A wild gambit, but he thought the idea of lust would be understandable to Bao and protect Helen. For the last year, Mr. Bao had been consumed with his drug business, Linh with his work, and their reports to the NVA had been empty for a long time. In desperation to appear busy, Bao had slowly pieced together the idea of Helen being captured by the Viet Cong, taken prisoner. Maybe even allowing her to take pictures of the other side, leaking some of them out. He thought that would create new interest in his assignment, quell the talk of his being reassigned to a less lucrative post in the North.
“Why not have a civil ceremony in Saigon, with Gary and the others?”
“This first. A Buddhist ceremony for us.”
“You know I can’t have a child.”
“You are my family,” he said.
Helen rubbed her forehead. She had been living in a dream world in the hamlet, and now he was forcing her to think fast, but her thoughts came sluggishly. How could she explain the infidelity of her heart, that asleep in his arms she couldn’t help if her dreams were still of Darrow. The pain of being in the war with Linh and the pain of being away from him were equal, were driving her mad. She had broken, become something else. She didn’t know what yet. Could you love someone in the process of changing? She did love Linh. As much as a ghost loved. The mind treacherous.
The ceremony was simple, only a dozen people comprising the whole village attending. Both the bride and groom decades younger than the youngest guest. A quiet, subdued afternoon, the clouds having finally spread, wind speeding overhead and spitting raindrops. The times were lean in the countryside no matter how much money one had, and Mrs. Xuan could not buy a proper pig for the feast, so she had made do with catfish, shrimp, and buffalo.
Linh stood with Helen before a small altar of joss sticks, borrowing his aunt’s pictures of his parents, brothers and sister, and Mai. A glass of rice alcohol and a plate of food offered in celebration. He bowed over the lacquer box of betel leaves and areca nuts, to signify unity and faithfulness in the marriage, then gave Helen the traditional set of gold hoop earrings to complete the marriage vows. It scared him to feel so hopeful for the future.
The old village women stood huddled at the back of the house, Mrs. Xuan in the middle. All during the brief ceremony, they eyed the plates of food brought and placed on the center table. When Linh clapped his hands and invited everyone to eat, they fell on the food with ravenous eyes and clawing fingers.
After they had eaten, their stomachs as tight as drums, the villagers settled down in the garden for a long night of drinking, but Linh scolded them away, pushing them out of the house with the remaining dishes of food, out of the garden with bottles of beer. The three old men grinned and said he was an anxious groom, but one of the women, Mrs. Xuan’s best friend, said that he had already been at the duties of a groom for the last week, and they all burst out laughing.
“Enough,” Linh said. “Leave us alone.”
Helen, oblivious to all the talk, sat near the pool watching the clouds chase their way in front of the moon. When everyone was gone, Linh came out to her. “Don’t you feel the drops? You’re wet.”
“I’m happy.”
He carried her into the house, and they made love, past desire, past hunger, past exhaustion. His thirst for her had changed, grown greater, like drinking sea water only to feel more parched with each drink. He woke the next day, late in the afternoon, his face thinner, dark circles under his eyes like bruised fruit, but as soon as he touched her skin his desire again became electric, and he wanted to conquer each part of her all over once more.
Now it was Helen who searched out Mrs. Xuan for meals. The old woman approved of the American’s new wifeliness. Helen brought food to Linh while he slept, and she sponged him off with cool water after they both were soaked with sweat, sore down to the muscle and bone. It gave her a deep plea sure to take care of him during those days, something that he had never allowed before. Finally, like a fever, their passion broke, and they floated in the calm left behind.
It became more and more clear in the intervening days that Helen and Linh could not love each other fiercely, selfishly, as young lovers. They loved each other like secular saints, too selfless for reckless passion, too aware of each other’s pain and the avoidance of it. They loved with a middle-aged caution.
They returned to Saigon, and Linh moved into the crooked apartment in Cholon. She could have brought no other man there, it being both sacrament and sacrilege.
