Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

“Are you all right?” Lei asked, supporting Shoan.

“Yes, the cool breeze makes me feel much better.”

They were walking along the tree-lined road heading toward the customs house.

“Sister, would you like to see my brother?”

“I don’t know. .” Shoan turned to face the dark ocean, as if she was afraid she might cry again.

“He showed no sign of it, but I think he’s hoping that you’ll come first to see him.”

“The truth is… I may get engaged to someone else.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“My father does keep pushing me,” Shoan said, with her head down. “Mother knows how I feel, but Father is different.”

“But it’s something that happens to everyone in the graduating class.”

“I’ve already refused many times, but this time my father is very firm.”

Lei held Shoan’s hand tightly. “Sister, let me talk to my brother. I think he feels so ashamed for having left the NLF. That’s why he avoids talking to anyone in the family.”

The three girls reached Phuoc’s house. The German shepherd barked loudly. Phuoc pushed open the iron gate, muttering, “All that stupid dog does is bark, day and night. Gene, it’s me, me! Stop barking!”

A light came on in the front hall and Phuoc’s younger brother stuck his head through the open door.

“Is that you, Sister?”

“Yeah, and Shoan and Lei are with me.”

They traded hellos and entered the house, where Mrs. Hue greeted them. “Come on in, we have a guest.”

Under the gaze of the girls, a foreigner with a dark complexion stood up and bowed.

“Nice to meet you.”

Phuoc recognized him to be the Korean soldier who had been visiting her family now and then, and the corners of her eyes grew taught.

“Why is that man coming to our house so often?”

“Don’t say that, dear. He’s Huan’s friend and has been very nice to your little brother. I invited him to dinner. His own family is back home in his country, so I figured it’d be nice for him to know something about Vietnamese families, don’t you think?”

“They’re beasts who kill children.”

The boy, Huan, shouted, “Ahn is not like that! He’s my friend. Daddy said he’s a decent man.”

“He’s right. You should apologize to your brother. And since he’s a young man not so much older than you, why don’t you girls have a talk with him?”

“No, thanks. If he wasn’t a soldier we might.”

Phuoc led Shoan and Lei upstairs.

“I hate foreign soldiers. Especially the Koreans,” Phuoc said, glaring back down the stairs.

When the glass door to the veranda was open, a cool, salty wind blew in from outside. Phuoc took out a bottle of wine and some glasses.

“Today is Shoan’s day. Help yourself.”

Lei put the glasses away. “No more of this nonsense, please, Phuoc.”

“Leave it. I’ll drink,” Shoan murmured.

Phuoc and Shoan started drinking the wine. Lei pulled a chair over by the window and sat down.

“Don’t you go to Uncle Trinh’s in Dong Dao anymore?”

Shoan shook her head. “No, the members of the study circle are all scattered now.”

“Could they all have gone into the jungle?”

“Probably. Otherwise, to the universities.”

“Pham Minh is the only one who returned.”

As Phuoc kept up her insinuations, Shoan grabbed her head with both hands and said, “Please. . enough talk about Pham Minh!”

Curfew hour had come and gone, so all the fishing boats in Da Nang Bay had been pulled up on the beach. The only light visible was from the US Navy patrol boat cruising up and down the harbor. A flare went off in the distant sky. The three girls gradually quieted down. Sitting in the dark, her head propped against the wall, Shoan started reciting softly in French:

Rappelle-toi Barbara.

Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-la….10

Pham Minh and the foreman finished counting the sacks of cement and fertilizer that had been delivered and wrote out a receipt. After all of the workers had gone, Minh buried himself in the sofa, out of reach of the sunlight pouring through the window, and propped his feet up on the desk. The provisioning of weapons for the Fourth Company had now been done without a hitch. A new mission would be coming down for the reinforcements.

Minh was waiting for Nguyen Thach. The sun cast a long bright rectangular patch that reached from the desk to the center of the warehouse. A shadow appeared on one edge, and gradually lengthened. Minh quickly took his legs down from the desk and craned his neck around to look toward the entrance.

“Who’s. .”

The bottom of a white ahozai came into view, and as his eyes moved upwards they met Shoan’s. Her head was hanging, and her face was partly concealed by her long hair, but those eyes of hers were trained directly upon him.

“What are you. . what are you doing here. .?”

He was halfway to his feet. She lifted her foot, and tapping the floor with the toe of her sandal, said, “Lei told me where you were. I’ve known for a while that you were working in Le Loi market, though. Yesterday Lei mentioned the name of the company, so. .”

Like hers, Minh’s eyes were downcast. “Why have you been avoiding me?” she asked.

“Here, sit down.”

Minh pulled his chair out from behind the desk and pushed it toward her.

“Let’s go outside and talk.”

Pham Minh looked at his watch. “I still have things to take care of. If you go straight down the alley, there’s a pub called ‘Chrysanthemum’ by the bus terminal. Will you go there and wait for me?”

Shoan walked out and headed down the alley, staring down at the hem of her ahozai , in the same way as when she had come.

“Who was she?”

Minh was watching her walk away when he heard Nguyen Thach’s voice from behind. He looked back.

“Good morning, sir.”

Thach was dressed rather neatly today, like his brother, which was unusual for him.

“I asked you who she was.”

Minh walked to the warehouse door and looked outside. “She’s a friend of my younger sister, sir.”

“Is that a fact?”

Thach waited. Minh remained silent for a while, then, as Thach sat in his chair looking calmly about the warehouse, he took a deep breath and spoke again. “To tell the truth, she’s a girl I was in love with before. She stopped by to see me.”

“What do you mean ‘before’? Before you went to Atwat?”

“Yes, sir. Since then I haven’t seen her at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because I kept thinking about what my friend Thanh told me. Besides, I was afraid.”

“Ah, Thanh is a fine fighter. He’s now a company commander in Hue district. Did he tell you not to see her?”

Minh stared at Thach with an air of resentment. Nguyen Thach held up both hands.

“Oh, all right. I don’t doubt that Thanh said something, like that a love affair is tragic in your generation, or that love should be sublimated into love for the Vietnamese people, well, something along those lines. You see, I know him pretty well, too.”

“The reason I’m not seeing Shoan is. .” Minh paused for a moment, and then he said in a clear voice, “. . because I’m not confident I can make her into a comrade.”

Thach just nodded. He picked up a ballpoint pen and kept tapping the desk with it, as if absorbed in thought. He seemed far away, his eyes focused in midair. Minh spoke again.

“What I find most tormenting is that I have to conceal the truth even from her. I’ve caused her and my younger sister to lose their faith and pride in me.”

“I can understand that.” Thach stopped tapping. “Everyone is bound to have some remorse about the days of their youth. I wonder if Thanh wasn’t scared himself.”