Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

Interrogator: About what?

Cole: I decided it was time to give the boy his freedom to die. I spoke to Sloat, telling him I’d overheard the boy talking to Sergeant Nguyen. I said the boy had confessed that he was taking the stuff to his uncle in the swamp near Dien Banh. Sloat took Sergeant McCoy and me and hurried us to the staff headquarters. A helicopter assault force was already lifting off, having been alerted by wireless. There in the air-conditioned office of the headquarters, I watched as an outsider and secretly laughed at their hectic rushing about. For the helicopters would find nothing at that place. I just wanted to give the boy some time to die in peace even if it meant lying. As I sat in the chair drinking ice water, the medic came in and reported that the boy was dead. Lieutenant Sloat kept making phone calls, and I heard him give an order to pick out any bastard they wanted from among the prisoners and bury the boy. McCoy went out.

Interrogator: Private Taylor, I believe the time has come for you to testify.

Taylor: That sergeant brought a guard with him to our work site and asked who among us knew Marvin Cole. I’d been worrying about Marvin and Howard because they had not returned since lunchtime the day before. The three of us had become good pals while living together the past year in that prison. I said I was their close friend and asked whether something had happened to them. McCoy said they were enjoying a poker game in an air-conditioned room. I felt a bit uneasy, but not knowing what was going on, I followed him over to the Quonset hut. Inside was so dark that at first I couldn’t see anything. The sergeant who was behind me threw a vinyl bag to me and told me to put the bastard on the desk inside of it. It was a heavy, waterproof body bag used for soldiers killed in action. I opened the zipper and started to load the corpse in legs first.

Interrogator: Just describe the location and condition of the wounds, please.

Taylor: Both knees were deeply punctured and the thighs were flapping, sliced in a half-moon shape. His face was swollen and the desk was soaked with blood from cuts on his back. His eyes were open. Because of the pitiful expression of the dead little boy, his slanted eyes wide open under that pale forehead, I somehow felt he was on our side. I only learned later that he was a suspected Viet Cong. I decided to shut his eyes, and the paper-thin eyelids slid closed under my palm. Then I carried the vinyl body bag out to a place behind the garbage incinerator.

Interrogator: Did you go with the sergeant?

Taylor: Yes, he led the way. He walked in front with a shovel and I followed, dragging the vinyl bag by one end. I guess I was pulling the ankles, and the head and torso were dragging in the sand.

Interrogator: Did you bury the corpse?

Taylor: The sergeant threw the shovel down at my feet. I dug a hole as deep as my waist. . and then he gave me a hand. We each held one end of the bag and tossed it down into the hole.

Interrogator: Can you remember the place?

Taylor: Well, I’m not so sure since it was sandy in all directions.

Interrogator: Lieutenant Sloat and Sergeant McCoy, is there anything else you want to state for the record?

McCoy: General Westmoreland’s search-and-destroy operations will judge a mishap of this kind as something inevitable under the exceptional circumstances of battle in Vietnam. As a professional soldier, I’ve done my duty faithfully.

Interrogator: How about you Lieutenant Sloat?

Sloat: Nothing, sir.

Interrogator: Just a while ago, Private Marvin Cole testified that he had lied about the confession. So did you not end up wasting combat resources?

Sloat: No, sir. We annihilated an entire company of the enemy in the swamp near Dien Banh. The information proved to be most valuable.

Footnote:

11 Military Intelligence Division

The pleasant sound of balls hitting rackets came from the tennis courts. The maid brought in some coffee and bread. Pham Quyen set the English newspaper down, and buttering a piece of baguette, said, “Those Americans, playing tennis! What idiots!”

Hae Jong misunderstood what he meant. “Do you find it noisy? I kind of like the sound.”

From the direction of the tree line, laughter was audible. High-ranking American officers played tennis religiously every morning. Before, Pham Quyen and Hae Jong had joined in the games from time to time. The Americans had welcomed Hae Jong with open arms but cold-shouldered the Vietnamese officer. It was one of those old customs observed by white people toward the natives of their colonies. Strictly speaking, the US military’s rule barring the locals from entering the bars and restaurants was just another remnant of the old white colonialist customs. There was no real difference between the French in Indochina and the British in India.

“This is my country. A few miles from here people are dying, dropping like flies, but here. . a tennis match every morning. It isn’t right.”

“Please, stop talking about death. We’re eating breakfast.”

Hae Jong took a sip of her coffee. She sensed Pham Quyen’s sour mood and said to him, “They’re like that wherever they go. You should get some exercise, too.”

“I don’t want to play tennis. If I go down there in shorts and with a racket, they’ll all stop and stare at me.”

“It’s because they’re fighting against your own countrymen. But what about the general’s villa in Bai Bang? It has a wonderful pool, why not take me there once in a while?”

“I get too much exercise, that’s my problem. Do you have any idea how busy I’ve been lately? My belly has even melted away. At this rate, I’ll become an alpinist.”

“Are you headed up into the mountains again today?”

“What do you mean ‘again today’? We have to finish everything in one month. I don’t think it can be done. We should set up a headquarters in Ha Thanh and just stay there.”

Pham Quyen wiped his fingers with a napkin and got to his feet. “My uniform.”

Hae Jong called the maid and in awkward Vietnamese told her to bring the major’s clothes. Standing behind him after he had changed into his crisply starched uniform, she said, “So you mean you’ll be staying in the jungle?”

“The harvesting starts today.”

“I don’t like it. This place is not like in the city, and I’m scared to stay out here in the middle of nowhere all alone.”

“You have nothing to worry about.”

After putting on his hat, Quyen went out into the living room and sat down on the couch. A minute later he was ready to leave.

“What’s there to be afraid of? You’re not a child. We’ll have workers from Nyugen Cuong’s side as well as from ours, but the soldiers are all under the Second Division commander and I’ll have to keep a close eye on them. We have to protect our cinnamon.”

Hae Jong gave in. “You’re right, the work is important.”

The cinnamon collection operation up in the highlands, which Pham Quyen had planned a month earlier, was going ahead without a hitch. One of the branches of the Thu Bon River ran through Da Nang but the main flow spread through the Hoi An region where half a dozen branches had formed a delta. From the delta the river wound back and ran parallel to Route 1 up to East Tuanh Bay north of Chu Lai. Upstream there are two main tributaries of the Thu Bon: the northern stream has its source in the highlands near the settlements of An Diem and Lien Hiep, while the southern stream gathers at a junction near Tabik, from which a branch also runs down southeast into the Chang River, irrigating the fields of Tam Ky.

Pham Quyen and Nguyen Cuong had gone up in General Liam’s Cobra and surveyed from the air the entire region southeast of Da Nang and on up into the highlands. Starting from An Diem, they had made a round of the Quoi River, which runs through Bien Jiang, passed the Hiep bank up the Chang River toward Tabik, then across the Jiang Hoa fields to Ha Thanh and back to An Diem. At last Nguyen Cuong spotted a large stand of cinnamon trees and cried out. Pham Quyen’s heart leapt as he peered down through his binoculars. It was indeed a sight: the cinnamon forest went on and on, most of the trees too large for a man to clasp his arms around the trunks. An entire section of the jungle covered with cinnamon trees.