Quan Barry - She Weeps Each Time You're Born

Less than two feet down Giang hit something. It was as if a leather glove had disintegrated, the desiccated skin hanging in shreds on the bone. Grischa ordered one of the boys to help. After another twenty minutes they could see that the body had fallen backward with both hands shielding its face, a small clean hole through the front of the skull. A large ragged hole gaped at the back.

They spent all morning going from spot to spot, Rabbit walking between the orange flags. After the first one, the noise was deafening, the whole field groaning. I hear you, she said. Be patient. At one point the Russians marked the earth with their shovels for later, the places they would come back to and dig up. It was as if they’d hit a vein of ore, a river of bodies snaking north-south. Each one with the same trauma to the face, the same holes in the skull.

They’re Black Tai, aren’t they, said Giang. In hole after hole the fabric was in tatters but still evident, tibia and femurs draped in indigo rags. Rabbit nodded. The Black Tai were one of the ethnic minorities who lived along the Black River and had sided with the French. Rabbit could hear the terror in their voices. As the battle raged, the men deciding one by one and then collectively to stay in the trenches and lay down their guns. To abandon the French. It wasn’t our fight, said one of the voices. Overhead the daytime moon hung in the sky like a whisper.

They shot them, said Rabbit. Who, said Giang. Rabbit closed her eyes. The French. Then she could see it. As night fell the killers came back, the Foreign Legion and the tirailleurs . It was a small group, ten at the most. The French soldiers were acting on their own without orders, thinking they could persuade the Black Tai to come out and fight for them if the ethnics woke in the morning and found some of their comrades dead, presumably at the hands of the Vietnamese. The French soldiers assumed the Black Tai, hungry for revenge, would pick up their guns again and rejoin the battle. Instead when the fog lifted, the French looked out over the bodies of the fifteen or so Black Tai they had killed in the trenches of Anne-Marie and saw that the remaining Black Tai had fled.

The Russians were marking up their map. Rabbit was sitting stroking the dog when Laika’s ears twitched. Rabbit had heard it too. She got up and began walking toward the voice. The dog trotted by her side. Giang was back with the men marveling over the number of bodies they had uncovered.

Fifty feet up the trail Rabbit and the dog came to an open pit. Laika lay down flat on her belly and began to whine. My lion, Rabbit said. On the ground something winked in the sunlight. She imagined bending down into an open grave and kissing a bright yellow bead on the tip of a dead woman’s finger, the sudden taste of honey. Then she could see Levka and the other two men reaching down into the earth, a belt of old hand grenades lying underneath the corpse which the soldier had been wearing when he was killed. As the three men gingerly lifted the body out, the belt exploding. Tenfold. Twentyfold. Infinity. Lastochka, my little swallow, Levka said, his mouth on her as the wave crested in her body. I hear you, she said. Something glinted in the grass beside the pit. She stooped and picked it up. It was his ring. She kissed it, but it didn’t taste like anything.

Someone has locked the door. Or imagine yourself at the bottom of a mile-long well, the wooden cover on tight so that you are forced to rely on your memory to conjure up images of what is on the other side. Then for the briefest instant the wooden cover that keeps the world out is lifted, the opening like an oculus but from a mile away the opening no bigger than a distant star. This is your chance to be heard. Say only what needs to be said. Someone is lying. Someone doesn’t want you to be found because you’ll ruin the whole effect .

WHEN THE WOMAN ENTERED THE COURTYARD, CHILDSIZED shoes in hand, the female parakeet sitting in the lemon tree began to cry. For the past few years mourners had been coming to Hang Giay straight from the funeral procession. Most times the hearse would park out front with the six-foot-tall portrait of the deceased still draped with flowers. Then the widow would float through the grand wooden doors and on into the garden, one son at each shoulder, everyone in white like a battery of moths. Invariably joss sticks burned between the widow’s fingers, her hands as if on fire.

But today was different. That night the moon would be full, the moon like a white hole on the waters of Hoan Kiem Lake. It was the full moon of the fifth month, the day the Buddha died, the unluckiest day of the year. The streets were empty. People stayed indoors, waiting for the day to be over.

All afternoon the three of them had been sitting in the courtyard shielding themselves from the June sun. The lemon trees were adorned with fruit. Linh was just coming out of the house with a pitcher of drinks made from fresh mango and milk. Despite her angelic face something about Linh reminded Rabbit of herself at that age. There was a steeliness to the child, the way the girl would slip in and out of rooms without anyone noticing. The way she too could stare down a grown man. Rabbit and Qui had taken Linh in just after they’d moved onto Hang Giay. She had been one of a group of street children sent out each day to beg for money from the western tourists. Once the girl was inside the great wooden doors of the house on Hang Giay, Qui had cut Linh’s hair into the same shapeless bowl Rabbit had worn at that age, but on Linh the haircut looked feminine, her delicate features emphasized, cheeks dimpled and pink, her mouth pursed like a cat’s. Sometimes when she lay sleeping Rabbit had to reach out and touch the child’s warm cheek; Linh looked so much like a doll, her perfectly upturned nose like something an artist would sculpt in wood.

Rabbit and Qui couldn’t be sure how old Linh was. Between malnourishment and the slightness of most Vietnamese girls, she could be anywhere from eight to twelve. For all the years she’d been with them it was as if she hadn’t grown an inch. She seemed frozen in time, like Son, the scratch forking down his face as permanent a feature as his nose or mouth. The two women had decided that when Linh began bleeding, they would officially declare her thirteen in the modern system of reckoning. Each day both women eyed her for the first signs of change, but each day there were none.

Qui sat by the fountain nursing another baby from the foreign orphanage that had recently returned to Vietnam after more than twenty years. Each morning Linh went out to bring back a baby for Qui. Today Linh had left the wooden doors unlocked after returning from the orphanage. At the sound of the great doors opening, Rabbit sat upright, the hinges creaking like swollen joints. In the air something hummed imperceptibly. Like a needle drawing blood from a skull.

The woman didn’t even knock. She simply pushed open the doors and stepped over the threshold, her sandals in her hands, the sound of the hinges like a body in pain. There was usually a policeman at the door to keep the curious away. People were eager to contact their loved ones or even just to catch a glimpse of Rabbit. But on the unluckiest day of the year the chief of police had decided it wasn’t necessary to station a guard at the door.

As the woman entered, Rabbit felt something tighten in her stomach. The woman clapped her hands together in front of her face, a cigarette burning between her fingers. I have no money, the stranger said. The baby at Qui’s breast let out a small sigh. Overhead the male parakeet turned to his weeping mate and softly clucked remember this, remember . Linh came back outside with a clean glass and poured some of the mango and milk into it before handing the glass to their guest. Rabbit hadn’t even noticed Linh get up.