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

This is a simple enough ghost story, and if you have turned your face to the bus window while I spoke and if it is clear to me that I have been boring you, as I can do to people — my daughter’s American husband, for instance — then I will stop right there and let that be the story for you. But there is more. If you’ve looked at me while I’ve spoken and there is a light in your eyes and no condescension, then I will tell you more, for I know this story to be true.

The next week, when the major returned to An Khê, he did not go directly to his lover’s house. First of all he went to the street called Lotus. It was a narrow street at the edge of the city on a little rise so that it looked out over the tops of banana trees, across a plain, to the mountains. The street was very quiet, though the sun was not yet high. The major heard the sound of the wind and the muttering of chickens and that was all. He faced a stretch of modest wooden houses with slate roofs and he thought he would knock on the nearest door and ask about the girl.

But then a young man came around the side of a house on a bicycle and drove past and the major hailed him. The young man stopped and the major said, “Do you know a girl named Nguy n thi Linh?”

The boy’s reaction was surprising to the major. He gave a short little sneering laugh. “I know the girl, to my regret. But I will not speak ill of the dead.”

The major’s breath stopped and he felt a chill, like a winter wind, at the news that Linh was dead. Somehow, though, he was not surprised. He knew that no living person could project her spirit in such a way as he had encountered. The chill soon passed, but his breath was just as hard to draw as he grew furious with the boy for his disrespectful words about this beautiful girl who had saved his life. The major very nearly stepped forward to strike the young man, but suddenly a calmness came over him. This was merely a jealous boy, one who had seen Miss Linh’s beauty and desired it and who was rejected by her. The major knew this as surely as if Miss Linh had suddenly bent near him and whispered the facts of the case into his ear.

The major said, “And do her parents live in this street?”

“The red house at the end,” the boy said and he did not wait for any further words but turned away and rode off on his bicycle.

The major walked down the block and at the end found a small wooden house perhaps once painted red but faded now into a mellower shade, a pink from some sunset. He went to the door and knocked, and after a time, a woman appeared. She was old and bent but slim and with a thin nose and she looked up into the major’s face with searching eyes.

“I am Major Trung,” he said. “May I come in?” These words sounded strange to the major as he said them; they were as if he needed to give no explanation here. But without asking anything of him, the woman nodded and opened the door and stepped aside, and when the major was in the room, his eyes went at once to a shrine set against a wall. The shrine held flowers and candles and incense curling its smoke into the air and in the center was a large photograph of the girl from the mountain road. Miss Linh was unmistakable in this photo — the round face, the wide mouth, the thin nose, like her mother’s.

He turned to the woman and said, “Is this your daughter?”

The old woman nodded and touched her eyes lightly with a handkerchief. “Yes, she passed into the spirit world four years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” the major said.

“We are all sorry,” the woman said. “The whole world should be sorry. This war took the sweetest daughter a mother could have.”

The major said, “Yes, madame, and she saved the life of this soldier just last week.” And with that, the major sat the old woman down and told her his story.

After he was done, the old woman simply nodded and turned her face toward the window. “I am glad to know that my daughter’s spirit has not forgotten this world,” she said.

Then the old woman lowered her face and such a stillness and sadness seemed to come over her that the major knew he could say no more. He rose and bowed to the woman and turned and bowed to the shrine of Miss Linh, saying a silent prayer of thanks, and he left the house on the street called Lotus and he wandered into the grove of trees nearby and sat down, because a great weariness had come over him. He spoke her name once more-"Linh"-and a pale light filled the grove of trees and he fell into a deep sleep.

When the major woke, it was very dark. He leaped to his feet with the fright of waking from a bad dream, but he could remember no dream and he realized where he was and what had happened. He had slept all day and into the night in the grove of trees near Miss Linh’s house and once again he felt a calmness come over him. He had to drive back to the base camp, but he knew that Linh’s spirit would be there in the mountains to protect him. So he walked back to his car, bowing to her house, which was dark with sleep now as he passed. In his car, his hands were steady and his heart was light, and he drove off without even thinking of his earthly lover, who no doubt was weeping now in another part of the city.

The night sky had no stars and no moon. All was black and the whole world for the major was the column of light his car pushed before him. But he drove across the plain and up into the mountains and the road rose and cut back and rose and the mountain on the one side and the chasm on the other were the same, deep black, and the major was calm. There was nothing in his head but a light rustling, like a summer wind moving banyan leaves or the panels of an aó dài rising behind a beautiful girl. He kept his eyes on the turns of the pavement in his headlights and at every turn he half-expected Miss Linh to appear before him. And he would stop on his own. He would go to her.

And the road went up and up until he passed the white road marker and the road leveled and he felt a change in the darkness, he could sense the difference in the dark of the chasm and the dark of the mountain, which rose on both sides of him now. This was near the place of Linh’s last appearance and his heart began to race. He felt like a boy carrying a flower across a schoolyard to a girl he’d been watching all year and now his courage was strong enough to move his legs but not strong enough to give him a voice or enough breath. The road descended gently and turned to the right, the place where he’d seen the rabbit kicking up its heels and disappearing, and then the sharp left and it was now, he thought, now, but the lights showed only the road, there was no young woman in an aó dài, and he slowed his car as he passed the place where she’d first appeared but there was nothing. The major felt a hot flush in his cheeks, the bloom of disappointment, and he thought, Perhaps it’s because I am not in danger this night. Then for a moment he even wished that the VC were doing their job, waiting to kill him, so that Miss Linh would have to come.

Even as this thought shaped itself, the road dipped and before him Miss Linh appeared in the far reach of his lights. The major cried out, wordless, a sound of pleasure like the yip of a dog about to be fed. And he slowed the car, pressed at the brake, and as he neared her, he could see her face, lovely, round, and the wide mouth was smiling, a smile he returned, broadly, and he pulled off the road and came to a stop.

The major leaped out of the car and stood where he was because she was coming toward him and he wanted to watch her move. She floated, this highland girl from An Khê, floated like the most beautiful of the Saigon girls, and the panels of her white aó dài lifted delicately, and she was smiling. Her thin nose seemed like the very best of the faces of Western women and the rest of Miss Linh’s face was the best of the Orient. The major trembled as she drew near and she stopped just before the car, in the brightest beam of the headlights, and she seemed so substantial to the major, a spirit that had all the delicious tangibleness of an earthly body. “Miss Linh,” he said, with a great sigh, as if he had been destined all his life to be on this mountaintop with her.