Bao Ninh - The Sorrow of War

But in the face of Kien’s audacity and cool the man had lost courage; trembling, he dropped his machine-gun.

‘Shit!’ Kien spat out in disgust, then pulled the trigger from close range, snapping the ARVN soldier away from the tree, then shredding him.

‘Ma… aaaaaa!’ the dying man screamed. ‘Aaaa…’

Kien shuddered and jumped closer as bullets poured from all sides towards him. He hadn’t cared, standing firm and firing down into the man’s hot, agonised body in its death throes. Blood gushed out onto Kien’s trousers. Walking on, leaving blood-red footprints in the grass, he slowly approached two other commandos hiding and shooting at him, his machine-gun tucked carelessly under his arm, his shirt open. He was unconcerned and coldly indifferent, showing no fear, no anger. Just lethargy and depression.

The enemy backed away and dispersed in retreat.

Despite that imprudent, risky action Kien was invited on return to the military personnel section and told he was on the list of officers selected to attend a long-term training course at the Infantry Institute near Hanoi. The order would soon come down from the Divisional Commander and Kien was to travel back up north.

‘The fighting is endless. No one knows when it will stop,’ the hoarse, gloomy personnel officer told Kien. ‘We must keep our best seeds, otherwise all will be destroyed. After a lost harvest, even when starving, the best seeds must be kept for the next crop. When you finish your course and return to us your present officers will all be gone, and the regiment with them. The war will go on without you.’

Kien remained silent. A few years earlier he would have been proud and happy, but not now. He did not want to go north to do the course, and felt certain he would never join them, or become a seed for successive war harvests. He just wanted to be safe, to die quietly, sharing the fate of an insect or an ant in the war. He would be happy to die with the regular troops, those very soldiers whose special characteristics had created an almost invincible fighting force because of their peasant nature, by volunteering to sacrifice their lives. They had simple, gentle, ethical outlooks on life. It was clearly those same friendly, simple peasant fighters who were the ones ready to bear the catastrophic consequences of this war, yet they never had a say in deciding the course of the war.

Someone was coming up to him from behind, but Kien didn’t turn. The person came closer then silently sat down behind Kien as he fished on the edge of the stream. At that late hour the bamboo forest on the other bank seemed to make the dusk thicken. The brief, rainy day faded away quickly.

‘Fishing?’ the person asked.

‘Obviously,’ Kien replied coldly. It was Can, chief of Two Squad. A small thin boy, nicknamed ‘Rattling’ Can.

‘What’s your bait?’

‘Worms.’ Kien added: ‘I thought you had a fever. What’re you doing here in the wet?’

‘Caught anything?’

‘No. Just killing time.’

Kien mumbled. He hated any confidences, any sharing of personal problems. Hell, if everyone in the regiment came to him with personal problems after those horrendous firefights he’d feel like throwing himself over the waterfall. He knew Can was going to unload some personal problems on him.

‘It’s raining heavily in the north,’ Can droned on in his gloomy, dispirited voice. ‘The radio says it’s never rained as hard. My home district must be flooded by now.’

Kien just cleared his throat. More rain was falling. The air was getting colder and now it was quite dark.

‘You’re about to go north, I hear.’

‘What if I am?’

‘Just asking. Congratulations.’

‘Congratulations? Congratulations?’

‘Please. I’m not jealous, Kien. I’m sincere. I know you don’t like me but can’t you understand a little of what I mean. Accept what heaven gives you. You’ve survived down here and now you’ll go north and continue to survive. You’ve suffered a lot. You were from an intellectual family, so it’s not right for you to die anyway. Just go, and let events unfold here. We feel pleasant envy for you. You deserve it.’

‘I’m not going anywhere to make others happy. I know you’re scared of being killed, but you have to overcome your fear by yourself. You can’t place that responsibility on others’ shoulders.’

Can seemed to ignore the taunt.

‘As for me, I’ve always longed for the opportunity to get into an officers’ training course. Truly, that was my dream. I’m younger than you. I was top of the class at school. I’ve tried to discipline myself, to fulfil all my duties. No disobedience, no gambling, no alcohol, no dope, no women, no swearing. And for what? All for nothing! I’m not jealous, just depressed.’

Kien felt uneasy about what was coming. He feared it, yet he expected it.

Can continued, ‘I haven’t lived yet and I want very much to live.’

Kien remained silent.

‘For just one week in the north I’m prepared to lose everything. Everything.’

‘So I’ll tell Personnel to put your name down, instead of mine,’ said Kien sarcastically. ‘Don’t moan! Please, go back to your hut and lie down.’

‘Don’t patronise me! I’m telling the truth, not trying to change things. I can look after myself. I’m not afraid of dying, but this killing and shooting just goes on, forever. I’m dying inside, bit by bit. Every night I have the same dream, of me being dead. I swim out of my corpse and turn into a vampire going off to suck human blood. Remember the Playcan fighting in 1972? Remember the pile of corpses in the men’s quarters? We were up to our ankles in blood, splashing through blood. I used to do anything to avoid stabbing with bayonets or bashing skulls in with my rifle butt, but now I’ve got used to it. And to think that as a child I wanted to take orders and go into a seminary.’

Kien turned and looked curiously at Can. You occasionally found such traumatised misfits in the army. Their chaotic minds, their troubled speech, revealed how cruelly they were twisted and tortured by war. They collapsed both spiritually and physically. But it was curious that after fighting alongside Can for so long Kien had never heard him go on like this. He had seen Can only as a trusty farmer who’d gradually adjusted to the hell of the battlefield.

‘You’re an experienced front-line soldier, but you’re starting to whinge and moan. That will make you even more miserable, Can. You’d better transfer out of the scout group. We’re the first to go into the fight.’

Can continued his gloomy confessions as though he had not heard a word. ‘I used to ask myself why I’m down here while my old suffering mother is at home, helpless, day and night crying for her distant son. When I joined up my village was flooded and it was hard for mother even to get by. Who was left to help her? My brother was already in the forces. I could have been exempted as the only son left but the village chief wouldn’t agree. We have so many of those damned idiots up there in the north enjoying the profits of war, but it’s the sons of peasants who have to leave home, leaving a helpless old mother, exposed to hardships. So, Kien…’

Suddenly, Can burst into tears, burying his face in his knees, his shoulders heaving and trembling, his thin back wet and shivering.

Kien stood up, picked up his fishing rod and looked down, frowning, at Can. ‘You’ve been reading too many enemy pamphlets. If someone reported you to the upper levels you’d be a goner. Are you going to desert?’

Can remained sitting, his head on his knees. His voice came low, mixing with sounds from the stream and the rain. ‘Yes. I’m going. I know you’re a real friend. You’ll understand. Say goodbye to my mates for me.’