John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

Tan rode into the center of Hue, to the city offices. There was no one but janitors in the City Clerk office and the District Court was empty. Tan went to the soldiers' barracks.

The soldiers were gone. The people in the streets in the Citadel said the soldiers had gotten into trucks and jeeps and driven northward out of town. Ky was to the south, in Da Nang.

Tan started back to the station. Thich Tri Quang was on the speakers telling people to stay off the streets. Ky was on his way and there was no one left to stop him. They had been betrayed. Tri Quang told people not to resist, he didn't want Buddhists killed like in Da Nang.

Before Tan reached the station the talking had stopped and there was music playing. When she arrived there were government soldiers standing guard at the entrance with their rifles pointing out.

Dr. Co came home three nights later in a very good mood. He said the traitors would be taught a lesson. He said that he was glad that order had come back to Hue. He didn't mention what he was going to do with the supplies in the attic. Quat didn't come home. Dr. Co said he must have run off to join the Communists. He was lazy, he wanted other people to do all the work, then come along and take it over. Dr. Co had a lot to drink and said more about Quat. Quat was twenty years old, he said, and yet without a wife or a job. He would never amount to anything, never be able to take care of a wife and twelve children, four of them orphans, like Dr. Co did. When Dr. Co and Madame Co went to bed there was noise, but not because he was beating her.

A week later a boy gave Tan a note from Buu. He had hidden in a Catholic church when the soldiers came and now he was going into the country. He had seen Quat captured by the Ky soldiers and taken away for questioning. When Tan went to the soldiers they said she should try the city police. The city police had a record proving the existence of a Con Tinh Quat, but had no idea of his whereabouts. He was wanted for questioning.

Quat didn't come back. Sometimes late at night Tan and the younger brothers and Xuan would sit facing each other in a small circle and pray for him and cry. But quietly, so as not to wake Dr. Co.

Tan sees a little girl watching her in the fish-tank mirror. The girl is maybe five years old, sitting with her mother. One side of her face is puckered with burnt skin, a nostril and the corner of her lip eaten away. Her blond hair is tied up in pale blue ribbons. She smiles at Tan through the fish and plastic eelgrass and Tan smiles back. The little girl takes her fingers and folds her lids down to make thin eyeslits like Tan's. The mother looks up from her magazine and gives the girl a quick slap on the wrist.

Tan was eighteen. It was very early morning, only a few hours into the Year of the Monkey, when she was wakened by the popping. Close, a sporadic hollow popping and flashes like heat lightning in the sky. Dr. Co had just come back from a Tet party at the ward hall, he was still in his rumpled street clothes when he wandered out from his bedroom. It was monsoon season and had been drizzling on and off all night. Dr. Co held newspapers over his head and went out. He came back without the papers, hair plastered to his head, looking very pale. The Communists were attacking all over, he said — trying to take over the city. It would be best to stay in and wait for the Americans to come out of their compound and chase the Communists away.

They sat in the dark, no one sleeping, no one speaking, and listened to the popping. The sounds grew very close, the house shuddered a few times, and then they moved away. That was the Americans, said Dr. Co from the corner he was huddled in. When the ground shakes like that it is the Americans chasing Communists with their big guns.

At dawn Dr. Co and Tan went out to look. It was very quiet, raining lightly. Soldiers walked in the street carrying rifles — Vietnamese soldiers. They weren't the ones from the Citadel though. These men wore khaki uniforms and greenand-red armbands, and called to each other in the rapid dialect of northerners. Dr. Co hurried Tan back inside.

Dr. Co sent Madame Co and the young children to shelter at the Phu Cam Cathedral, a little ways across the railroad tracks. The soldiers wouldn't bother a woman and children. Tan had to stay and help him gather their valuables. When it was dark they would try to reach the Cathedral.

Now and then Dr. Co had Tan peek into the street. There were people with rifles in everyday clothes, and the people with their hair in buns, the country people in black pajamas. The popping and explosions came from up by the American compound now, and from the walled city across the river. The Communists were in control of Phu Cam.

Dr. Co cursed the Saigon generals and the Americans. This was what came of declaring a truce with the Communists. Dr. Co gathered his papers and money and some of the medicines he had stored in the attic. Ever since the Struggle Movement failed, Dr. Co had been bringing home supplies and storing them in the attic. Things he said the Americans had given him. He put the medicines and a few cartons of cigarettes in his suitcases, but he left the American ham and beef upstairs.

In the early evening someone pounded on the door. Dr. Co told Tan to say he had gone to the hospital to treat casualties, and ran up into the attic. The pounding continued, someone yelled that they should come outside, that no one would be harmed. Dr. Co was called by name. Tan sat on the floor, too scared to answer the pounding. It stopped. After several quiet hours Dr. Co came down.

They tried to sneak out late at night. At the railroad tracks someone called for them to stop and searchlights came on. Dr. Co ran into the darkness and Tan tried to follow. The suitcase she'd been given was heavy and when she heard men close behind her she had to drop it and scurry away. Tan spent an hour squatting in the shelter of a small pagoda and then found her way home. Dr. Co slapped her for leaving the suitcase behind. How would the family eat, he asked, now that she had thrown all their money away? Tan saw no sign of the suitcase Dr. Co had been carrying.

They lay on mats in the children's room, several feet of darkness between them. They didn't speak for over an hour. Neither slept. Then there was pounding on a door down the street. Voice shouting. Screaming, and a shot, very loud, very close, and a woman wailing on the street. Pounding on a door, closer. Dr. Co came over and lay by Tan, putting his arms around her. She couldn't tell which one of them was shaking so hard. Pounding right next door, more shots, more crying. Tan held her breath. She felt Dr. Co's heart beating against her back. The pounding came again, on the other side of the house. They had been passed over. The pounding moved on down the street.

Tan felt Dr. Co's breath hot on the back of her neck. He pushed his face through her hair and kissed her there. She was the one shaking now, she was sure of that. He rolled her onto her belly and pulled her clothes up. The northerners were near, she couldn't cry out. She couldn't think who she would cry to.

Tan felt crushed under his weight, the matting dug into her breasts. She tried to think of prayers. She was glad she didn't have to see his face. Tan bit her lip against the pain and he pushed into her from behind. That evening, frightened by the pounding, she had forgotten and not called him Dr. Co, had not even called him Uncle. Father, she had said, what will we do?

Dr. Co lay still on top of her when he had finished. He lay so still and so long that Tan thought he must have fallen asleep. But then he rolled off her and she groped her way to where she could wash herself. Tan sat shivering under her father's desk until dawn.

It rained heavily all morning and the fighting sounds were muffled. Dr. Co didn't meet her eyes or speak. When Tan looked out she saw a few of the country people riding by on bicycles. They didn't seem to notice how wet they were getting.