Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

As soon as they reached Tungdik territory, another liaison agent took Thanh’s place. Before departing Thanh took Minh over to a shady spot under a tree. The two were about the same age but Thanh looked much older. The determination in his eyes, his hair cut short like a peasant’s and the shine of his darkly tanned cheeks made him look like a man over thirty. Pham Minh was exhausted. He realized that one day he too would be a grown man. Thanh spoke warmly as he would have to a beloved younger brother.

“I’m headed back to my duty assignment. You’ll stay here for a week before being sent for training at the school in Atwat.”

“Are you going back to Da Nang?”

“No. . I’m posted at Hue. We may never see each other again. I expect the district committee may give me a new mission. Not on underground assignments anymore, probably leading an action group. I’ve been out of action for some time.”

“I’ll come and see you in Hue.”

“Come and see me?”

Thanh laughed. When he laughed, his face looked just like when he was a little boy. Minh remembered way back to New Year’s when they used to throw fireworks made from hollow bamboo sticks at the houses in the neighborhood. When the women saw the beautiful sparks flying followed by the loud cracks, they handed out sweet rice cakes and candies, thanking them for scaring away all the evil spirits.

And he remembered the time when Thanh had been bitten by a dog at the old rubber factory run by the French. When a brown-haired foreign woman tried to treat his wound he shook his head, weeping. For he had heard dozens of times from his mother and brother that his father had died because of those French people. But those were the happy days.

Thanh was tall and skinny and Minh had been a sissy-looking boy known for his sweet singing voice. As his voice deepened, as mortar shells destroyed the lilacs at the Lycée Pascal, everything had changed. All that was gone now. The peace accords were shattered. Then along came the elections. Until then neither Thanh nor Minh thought about the future of Vietnam. When their parents spoke of Dien Bien Phu, to the boys it was no more than a far-off place as vague as the places in their French readers, like the Eiffel Tower or the River Seine.

“The training period at Atwat will probably be two months,” Thanh said with a grave look on his face. “I trust you will be a skilled guerrilla.”

Thanh seemed purposely to limit his talk to matters of military duty, so Minh blurted out, “Thanh, when you go to Da Nang. . why don’t you see your parents, at least once?”

Thanh put his hand on Minh’s shoulder. For the first time since leaving Da Nang his expression was warm and friendly.

“You’d rather I see Chan Te Shoan than my own parents, right?”

Pham Minh turned his head and did not reply. Perhaps there was truth in what Thanh had said.

“Whether you return to Da Nang or go to Hue, or to Saigon, in any event, by then you will have forgotten about Shoan. To be a liberation fighter does not only mean that you’ll be turned into a man capable of fighting, it means you’ll be born again as a revolutionist with an entirely new body and soul. That our grandfather Ho was born in Quimluyen in Nghe An province as Nguyen Sinh Cung meant a meaningless birth under colonialism. However, when he later returned from abroad to Indochina using the name Nguyen Ai Quoc, he was born again as a member of the Vietnamese race. And that he came to be called Ho Chi Minh was because he devoted his whole life to leading the Vietnamese people. Pham Minh, there’s no time for us to look back.”

Pham Minh was perplexed by the icy zeal in Thanh’s voice.

“Well, I was just talking about. . about your parents,” Minh falteringly said. “Your mother is. .”

“A very good woman,” Thanh said hastily, as if to cut Minh off. “She brought me into this world. Like Vietnam did. By the way, when you. . well, this is a tough question for anyone, but if you are about to die, who’d be the first person you’d want notified?”

The question stung, like pricking a finger on a thorn. During the past three days on the way to Tungdik territory, the possibility of death had hung over them the entire time.

“In revolution there are only two outcomes. Either to be killed by the enemy or to win victory. Death is one’s own, but victory belongs to the masses. Pham Minh, the chance you will die alone is a thousand times more likely. Unless we firmly believe that victory is ours after we die, an all-out struggle of this kind can never last. When that moment of death comes to you, whom do you want to be informed first, that is what I am asking. Your mother? Your brother?. . Chan Te Shoan?”

“I don’t think I can say.”

Pham Minh had to give an ambiguous answer. The question was overwhelming. Minh realized how hideously foolish he had been. He, who had walked voluntarily into the jaws of death, had not even once thought of dying. He thought of his fallen comrade, the former teacher, with curly hair and nice, even teeth. At that point no one could have found their way back to the ridge where they had left his dead body. In the tangle of trees and dense vegetation, they could not even say with certainty where in Vietnam they had been. Unless the corpse got up and walked away, it would disappear on that forgotten ridge, among scavenging lizards and swarms of flies. It was not the same as being bombarded and dying surrounded by the wails of family members. After all, isn’t a guerrilla one with no name, no identity, no past, not even a face? Thanh continued:

“It doesn’t matter if you can’t answer. Our death is dedicated to the national liberation of Vietnam. So there’s only one place you should want notice of your death sent. The National Liberation Front. Nothing is more wretched than death without conviction.”

At first, Pham Minh was jarred and invigorated as from a thorn prick, but gradually the sensation faded. Thanh did not seem to be talking to him at all, but shouting aloud to himself, with all of his thoughts focused obsessively on a single object.

“Your mother is a mother,” said Pham Minh, “she is not Vietnam. I was just asking if you wouldn’t like to see your mother.”

“You’ve seen how bananas are fried. When you put a lump of lard in the frying pan, it melts slowly, losing its shape. Then it gets watery and spreads out evenly on the bottom of the pan. The same is true of my mother. I know what you’re trying to say. I’m too much a formalist, that’s what you mean. You’re saying I don’t understand life.”

Thanh paused for a while and hung his head. When he raised it again, Pham Minh, seeing his cheeks wet, felt like he was choking.

“Listen, Pham Minh, of all the new recruits starting out from Suanmai Military School, Tanh Hoa Teachers College, and my alma mater, Dong Hoi Military School, almost a quarter drop dead from malaria or heatstroke or something as they march down the endless road on the Laotian border. They die even before they reach the battlefields where bombs rain down like a hailstorm. Most who make it into battle die within two years. It’s been only a year and a half since I started with the guerrillas. Already most of the comrades I started with are dead. In this business of warfare against a gigantic nation like the US, you have no other means but to endure, holding out to the end while exchanging human lives for things. And now why do you think I should distinguish my mother from Vietnam when I think of her? Mother has already melted away, shapeless like the lard, soaked into every corner of this torn land of ours.”

Thanh shook his head violently and fell silent for a moment. Pham Minh took out two cigarettes and put one in Thanh’s mouth.

Thanh said in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry, I’ve been babbling, swept away by emotions.”