Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

“Let’s talk later, the three of us,” said the chief sergeant, who, until then, had turned his face away from the two of them.

“So, you, this is how it’s going to be?” Pak said to the sergeant. “You shake, and the dust’ll be raised for both of us.”

After checking every room, Yong Kyu reported back to the captain.

“Nobody else in the house, sir.”

“We’ll take all of you in to the Da Nang police station,” said the captain. “Yesterday you did illegal transactions involving a pallet of Salem cigarettes at the air force PX and four pallets of beer at the pier. We’ve got photos from the scene, so I hope you won’t try to lie about it. Let’s go.”

“What about the storehouse, sir?” asked Yong Kyu.

“Give him the key,” the captain said to Pak. “If you don’t, we’ll just break the lock.”

Pak pleaded with the captain. “Think of my position, please. If we’re to go after each other’s throats, both of us will lose. Me and your commander, we’re like brothers, you know. And our seniors from school are sprinkled in important posts all over Vietnam. Go down to Saigon and see for yourself, you’ll see I’m not the only reserve officer doing business here.”

“Let’s go. We can talk later.”

The men got dressed and were led out of the house. The captain and the chief sergeant each took two of the men and an armed guard in their respective Jeeps. As they were leaving, the captain said to the other private, “You and Toi stay here and house sit. And Sergeant Ahn, check out all the goods in the place and then take a little rest.”

Once they were gone, Yong Kyu said, “Shall we have a look in the storehouse?”

He unlocked the metal bar fastening the galvanized iron gate and went in first. In the middle of the floor were pallets of Salem cigarettes and Hamm’s beer, and further inside electric appliances were piled up. As for the Korean beer, it seems they had been intending to deliver it direct from the pier. Out in the market, Yong Kyu estimated that the beer and cigarettes alone would be worth close to half a million piasters.

“I’m starving, let’s get something to eat,” Toi said.

They went back into the house and headed for the kitchen where the found some sausages, canned fruit, and milk in the refrigerator.

“Take a look at this,” the private called out from the living room. “There’s a ledger here.”

Yong Kyu thumbed through the palm-sized spiral notebook with a black vinyl cover. The sesame seed figures scrawled in ballpoint pen revealed all the details of revenues and expenses, and memos were jotted down here and there as well. Yong Kyu hunched over one of the living room tables and started transcribing the information from the notebook. Toi brought in a plate of food.

“What are you doing?” Toi said as he placed the plate on the table.

“Copying a list of the Vietnamese dealers. And the Americans, too.”

“A lucky find.”

“Yeah. Never know, maybe we’ll find a good American connection among these names.”

Pham Minh was waiting for his brother in Lei’s room. He had gotten a call from him that morning. Minh hadn’t left the house since going out to Son Tinh to meet Hae Jong. Quyen had asked him to stay put, and until Minh’s status was resolved he didn’t really feel like being out and about. He had a meeting with Nguyen Thach planned that day, and the first rendezvous with his cell of the organization was scheduled for Wednesday. He had to make sure matters were settled before then. Orders from the committee would be handed down to him that afternoon through Thach.

The excitement his return had aroused within the family gradually subsided after the first day. His mother started her usual nagging and Mi no longer made any effort to conceal her disdain for him. Lei was still very kind but she no longer talked with him like she did with her classmates. Before he had left, she often confided in him what others at her school had said, or, with a twinkle in her eyes, she would report the latest gossip about some incident on the outskirts of the city.

Now Lei did not even bring Minh any word of Shoan. If things went on that way, he thought, then Lei would be as openly contemptuous toward him as Mi in a matter of months. For Lei, the legend of her brother the patriot was gone for good. Still, during his training Minh’s ears had been calloused by the incessant repetition of the rule that, whatever the circumstances, he could never reveal his true colors nor was he to run his mouth about the political reality in Vietnam. An urban guerilla had to be a man of ordinary occupation, enslaved by daily life, a good-for-nothing slacker, or else camouflaged as a defeatist. In short, the less one was trusted by others, the more his safety would be assured. He had to implant in the minds of those surrounding him the belief he was a man so weak, lazy, and degenerate that he could not possibly commit an act requiring conviction.

When Lei was due home from school, Minh would make sure she found him sprawled out and snoring on the living room couch. When she was away, he would hole up in her room. His own room was now occupied by Mi and her children. Nobody was using Quyen’s room, but it was cluttered with a lot of household stuff. In the evenings Minh would linger about the living room, sipping beer bought from a neighborhood restaurant. When Mi cleaned the house in the morning, she made a point of avoiding the area around him and she did the sweeping and dusting without uttering a word to him.

Minh looked at the clock. It was ten a.m. He heard a car pull up outside followed by the heavy steps of his brother’s combat boots.

“Minh, where are you?”

The door opened. Lying on his long narrow wooden bed, Minh gazed up at his brother with a tired look. Quyen sat in front of the desk and faced him. He removed a slip of paper from the upper pocket of his jacket and held it out to Minh.

“Here’s your transfer order confirmation.”

“Transfer? But how can I be transferred when I’m not even enlisted?”

Pham Quyen frowned. “Let me tell you it was a real pain to get this. Would you prefer to enlist and go through boot camp training? You’re supposed to have joined the service two years ago and completed all required training. Your rank is sergeant and you were assigned to duty at Nha Trang before coming here. It cost me thirty thousand piasters to slip your military and personal records into the files at air force battalion headquarters here in Da Nang. Now go report for your transfer. They’ll assign you to an air base detachment unit. Then you just go and see the major at that unit, and then you can come back home and that’ll be the end of it After that, all that is left to be done is for you to deliver a duty fee of five thousand piasters to that major every month and you can be exempted from roll calls and inspections. This time next year you’ll be able to go and pick up an honorable discharge certificate. That’s all.”

“Do I have to report today?”

“No, you’re going with me tomorrow to headquarters. I know the battalion commander pretty well.”

Quyen exuded confidence. He had come to believe that of all the family members, only Minh could understand him.

“So how do you like life now that you’re resting at home?”

“Well, I’m afraid I’ll be a burden to the family.”

“You went to Son Tinh, didn’t you?”

Pham Minh hung his head.

“I just wanted to see her once. To see what kind of woman she is. I didn’t want to be like Mother or Mi and blindly hate her.”

“So, how do you feel?”

“What do you mean?”

“After meeting Mimi… do you still think she is one of those cheap women?”