Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

Our people living in the south, however, were not able to lead a happy and prosperous life, working in a peaceful environment. America, which had long been aligned with the French colonialists to annihilate our race, stepped in as successor to the French and foisted upon us a new colonial system to enslave South Vietnam. They have perpetrated full-scale oppression, inflicting a long-term division upon our country with Ngo Dinh Diem in the lead as their agent for exploitation of the population. Now they are plotting to turn the south into a vast military base for the preparation of war in Southeast Asia.

Ever since, the invaders — in conspiracy with traitors to our country — have been running their cruel dictatorship. They have persecuted and murdered patriots and all who demand democracy, depriving us of the basic freedoms accorded to human beings in a democracy. They exploit the laborers, the peasants, and the rest of the working class, and suffocate domestic industry and commerce. They import the decadence of foreign culture to contaminate our race, to cause the degeneration of our traditions, and to destroy our nation’s spiritual foundations. They reinforce their preparations for war, erect military bases, oppress the masses, and degrade our own armed forces to make them serve the American policy of invasion.

For the past six years, not one day has passed without the sound of gunfire attacking the people in the south. Tens of thousands of patriots have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been imprisoned. Our people of all classes are moaning under the iron knout of the American dictatorship. Unemployment, poverty, levies of taxes and tribute, oppression, murder, forced conscription, expropriation of land and housing, all forms of concentration camps which have separated countless families and inflicted upon them unspeakable sacrifices and traumas.

This dictatorship has aroused severe outrage among our people irrespective of class. Even their merciless oppression could not submerge our fellow countrymen in despair. On the contrary, our people are resolutely determined to struggle against the American invasion and the dictatorial rule of their servants. What our people desperately long for now is an end to the merciless dictatorship in power and to win national independence, to secure democracy and to peacefully unify our nation. Grounded in this ardent hope of our fellow countrymen, the National Liberation Front of Vietnam came into being.

Our pre-modern agricultural nation of thirty million people is wailing aloud, for it has been turned by the invaders into a laboratory in which they test their technologies of death — cluster bombs, dinitrophenol chemical shells, Agent Orange defoliant, chloroacetate phenol tear gas, and many other weapons. The power of America in Vietnam is nothing more than that of a technology of homicide. Just as monopoly capitalism has destroyed all possibilities of paradise remaining within its own society, we cry out loudly and solemnly that in the end it will be defeated by humanity and nature.

Our race is a remarkable one. We have an ancient tradition of solidarity and invincibility. No matter what may happen, we will not allow our nation to stay submerged in darkness and suffering. We are firmly determined to eradicate the oppression of slavery and to win independence and liberation.

In the outer room several Americans, Chinese, and Filipinos were quietly drinking, attended by waitresses in red Chinese-style dresses. When Madame Lin had special customers, she usually led them to one of the secluded rooms located through the arched hall and adjacent to the garden. The best of these private rooms had walls of glass. On two facing sides were large aquariums, and palms, banana trees and rosebushes that seemed to press in right through the picture windows making up the other walls.

This special room had a back door opening onto a terrace from which a path led through a tunnel of wisteria vines. At the far end of that curved tunnel stood Madame Lin’s private residence, a white house with a red-tiled roof in the style of the French Riviera. She kept a half dozen rooms with double beds and private baths prepared at all times for use by her guests. The Da Nang Sports Club was frequented by American officers and civilians, and by foreigners visiting to do trade or working in local branches, but as a rule Vietnamese civilians were not allowed in. Once in a while the customers included high-ranking ARVN officers or Vietnamese government officials, but those were exceptional cases.

The waiters were all Vietnamese, hired only after a thorough background check. The hostesses, on the other hand, for the most part were Filipinas, Thais, and Chinese who had migrated from their homes to the battle zone. Occasionally a white woman, a dancer or singer, stranded from one of the touring show companies, would work at the Sports Club for a few weeks or months before heading on to Okinawa, Hong Kong, or wherever. These white women inevitably attracted Vietnamese brass and bureaucrats. Directing this traffic of customers and maintaining the female staff was the vital key to such a business, and Madame Lin managed it as skillfully as a veteran casino dealer shuffling cards.

Oh Hae Jong was in the glass room along with four others, five in all. Present were an American captain named Mike, a finance officer at the US Army Headquarters; Colonel Cao, the Da Nang police superintendent; Frank, chief clerk at the American navy PX; and Beck, an Englishman who was Madame Lin’s husband. Madame Lin herself peeked inside the room every so often and made sure that a steady flow of drinks and food was served to them.

The group was seated around a glass-topped wicker table, playing poker. Beck, who spoke Chinese fluently, was wearing a fancy ivory-colored suit, a pipe in his mouth, and was betting to the bitter end in every game. Even when he lost, he chuckled and exhibited the equanimity of a good-natured fellow. Frank, the PX clerk, was an excellent poker player. Constantly cracking jokes, he had a way of controlling the pace of wagers, cagily raising, passing, or folding to enlarge or diminish the pot in his favor. The player most seriously absorbed in the game was Colonel Cao, but he lost almost every hand to Frank.

Mike was sitting beside Hae Jong, sipping whiskey. He often folded early and seldom stuck in a game to the end. In one round Hae Jong, who was out after the draw, gave this captain a tip that led him to win big with a full house. Mike, along with the other finance officers of the division, was a regular patron and long-standing friend of Madame Lin and Mimi.

“How about some more ice, Mimi?” Mike said, extending his empty glass.

“Aren’t you overdoing it?” she replied distractedly, staring at her hand. “My luck is changing now.”

“Let me have a look. Trying for four of a kind?”

“Hush.”

“Afraid you won’t make it,” said Frank with a loud laugh. “I’m holding a royal flush here. Now, how many do you want?”

“I’m out.” Hae Jong folded and poured two shots of whiskey, one for herself and one for Mike.

“Mike, you cost me a big hand.”

“Well, even if you play until daybreak tomorrow, you’ll never make even a thousand dollars from these peanut stakes, huh?”

“Wow, Mike must have a good thing going,” Frank said, then raised his bet.

“You, you’re winning from Colonel Cao alone,” Mike said. “Colonel, have you decided to let Frank win today?”

“Well, I better make a habit of humoring Frank here. If he ever locks up that cold storage, that’d be the end of the drinking business in Da Nang, no?” said Colonel Cao, winking.

“Mimi, whatever happened with your major?” asked Frank.

“He’s out on an operation in the jungle.”