Robert Butler - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Stories

The government program that allowed a longtime, hard-core Viet Cong like Th p to switch sides so easily had a stiff name in Vietnamese but it came to be known as “Open Arms.” An hour later, when Th p came through the door with Townsend, he filled the room and looked at me once, knowing everything about me that he wished, and the idea of our opening our arms to him, exposing our chests, our hearts, truly frightened me. In my village you ran from a ghost because if he wants you, he can reach into that chest of yours and pullout not only your heart but your soul as well.

I knew the facts about Th p from the file, but I wondered what he would say about some of these things I’d just read. The things about his life, about the terrible act that turned him away from the cause he’d been fighting for. But Townsend grilled him, through me, for an hour first. He asked him all the things an intelligence captain would be expected to ask, even though the file already had the answers to these questions as well. The division interrogation had already learned all that Th p knew about the locations and strengths of the VC units in our area, the names of shadow government cadre in the villages, things like that. But Th p patiently repeated his answers, smoking one Chesterfield cigarette after another, careful about keeping his ash from falling on the floor, never really looking at either of us, not in the eye, only occasionally at our hands, a quick glance, like he expected us to suddenly be holding a weapon, and he seemed very small now, no less smart and skilled in killing, but a man, at last, in my eyes.

So when Captain Townsend was through, he gave me a nod and, as we’d arranged, he stepped out for me to chat with Th p informally. Townsend figured that Th p might feel more comfortable talking with his countryman one on one. I had my doubts about that. Still, I was interested in this man, though not for the reasons Townsend was. At that moment I didn’t care about the tactical intelligence my boss wanted, and so even before he was out of the room I intended to ignore it. But I felt no guilt. He had all he needed already.

As soon as the Australian was gone, Th p lifted his face high for the first time and blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. This stopped me cold, like he’d just sprung an ambush from the undergrowth where he’d been crouching very low. He did not look at me. He watched the smoke rise and he waited, his face placid. Finally I felt my voice would come out steady and I said, “We are from the same region. I am from Pleiku Province.” The file said that Th p was from Kontum, the next province north, bordering both Cambodia and Laos. He said nothing, though he lowered his face a little. He looked straight ahead and took another drag on his cigarette, a long one, the ash lengthening visibly, doubling in size, as he drew the smoke in.

I knew from the file the sadness he was bearing, but I wanted to make him show it to me, speak of it. I knew I should talk with him indirectly, at least for a time. But I could only think of the crude approach, and to my shame, I took it. I said, “Do you have family there?”

His face turned to me now, and I could not draw a breath. I thought for a moment that my first impression of him had been correct. He was a ghost and this was the moment he would carry me away with him. My breath was gone, never to return. But he did not dissolve into the air. His eyes fixed me and then they went down to the file on the desk, as if to say that I asked what I already knew. He had been sent to Phu’ó’c Tuy Province to indoctrinate the Villagers. He was a master, our other sources said, of explaining the communist vision of the world to the woodcutters and fishermen and rice farmers. And meanwhile, in Kontum, the tactics had changed, as they always do, and three months ago the VC made a lesson out of a little village that had a chief with a taste for American consumer goods and information to trade for them. This time the lesson was severe and the ones who did not run were all killed. Th p’s wife and two children expected to be safe because someone was supposed to know whose family they were. They stayed and they were murdered by the VC and Th p made a choice.

His eyes were still on the file and my breath had come back to me and I said, “Yes, I know.”

He turned away again and he stared at the cigarette, watched the curl of smoke without drawing it into him. I said, “But isn’t that just the war? I thought you were a believer.”

“I still am,” he said and then he looked at me and smiled faintly, but the smile was only for himself, like he knew what I was thinking. And he did. “This is nothing new,” he said. “I confessed to the same thing at your division headquarters. I believe in the government caring for all the people, the poor before the rich. I believe in the state of personal purity that makes this possible. But I finally came to believe that the government these men from the north want to set up can’t be controlled by the very people it’s supposed to serve.”

“And what do you think of these people you’ve joined to fight with now?” I said.

He took a last drag on his cigarette and then leaned forward to stub it out in an ashtray at the comer of my desk. He sat back and folded his hands in his lap and his face grew still, his mouth drew down in placid seriousness. “I understand them,” he said. “The Americans, too. I learned about their history. What they believe is good.”

I admit that my first impulse at this was to challenge him. He didn’t know anything about the history of Western democracy until after he’d left the communists. They killed his wife and his children and he wanted to get them. But I knew that what he said was also true. He was a believer. I could see his Buddhist upbringing in him. The communists could appeal to that. They couldn’t touch the Catholics, but the Buddhists who didn’t believe in all the mysticism were well prepared for communism. The communists were full of right views, right intentions, right speech, and all that. And Buddha’s second Truth, about the thirst of the passions being the big trap, the communists were real strict about that, real prudes. If a VC got caught by his superiors with a pinup, just a girl in a bathing suit even, he’d be in very deep trouble.

That thing Th p said about personal purity. After it sank in a little bit, it pissed me off. But this is a weakness of my own, I guess, though at times I can’t quite see it as a weakness. I’m not that good a Buddhist. I live in America and things just don’t look the way my mother and my grandmother explained them to me. But Th p suddenly seemed a little too smug. And I wasn’t frightened by him anymore. He was a communist prude and I even had trouble figuring out how he’d brought himself to make a couple of kids. Then, to my shame, I said, “You miss being with your wife, do you?” What I almost said was, “Do you miss sleeping with your wife?” but I wasn’t quite that heartless, even with this smug true believer who until very recently had been a bitter enemy of my country.