Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

They went through it together. Storm opening the door, stepping well out of the way, and standing absolutely still. Trung stepping forward, pulling the trigger, taking three steps back.

They heard the street door open downstairs. Mr. Jimmy’s mouth also opened. Trung attempted to smile reassuringly and stepped into the hall. At the bottom of the stairwell the travel broker who owned the building stood reaching his hand to the wall switch. The hall lights came on

fitfully. Trung said, “Good evening,” and the man raised his hand both in greeting and farewell and stepped out and shut the door.

Dusk had come. Trung lay the bulky weapon on what was left of the mattress and lit the lantern and turned up the hissing gas so the wick flared white-hot.

“Mr. Jimmy. I go.” The idea seemed to puzzle the sergeant deeply. “I go out.” “You’re going out?” “I go. Yes.” “Well, what’s on for tonight, man? Is there a mah-jongg tournament

we just can’t miss? Because this is not the time for excursions.” “Mr. Jimmy. I food. Hunger.” “Stay here. I’ll go.” “Stay here. I go.” “Jesus Christ.” “I come back.” Gingerly Trung pointed at the sergeant’s wristwatch. He

moved his fingertip over its face to indicate thirty minutes. “I come back.” “This is bullshit.” “No, Jimmy.” A great storm of frustration brewed inside him. In Viet

namese he said, “I need to get out. I need to think. I need to breathe. I need to go. I need to move.” He seized the bulky weapon and reinserted the magazine, pulled the slide to bring a round into the chamber, ejected the magazine, loaded into it the spare round, and reinserted the magazine. Cradling the weapon in both hands, he presented it to Mr. Jimmy, who set it down on the mutilated bed before pointing at his watch.

“Thirty minutes?” “You wait.” The American took a billfold from his hip pocket and gave him sev

eral bills. “Get cigarettes. Marlboros. Real Marlboros.” “You wait.” “Real Marlboros. Don’t bring me no fake Marlboros.” “Marlboros,” Trung assured him.

On the street Trung kept close to the buildings, but after crossing at the corner he walked openly. What use caution?

Hao had betrayed him. Or Hao had saved him. Or both. Under the circumstances it wouldn’t get any clearer than that.

When he reached Anh Dung Street he stopped a vendor for a pack of Marlboros, the good ones. The American wanted the good ones, he understood that much.

In the café he sat at his usual table. It wasn’t the old Chinese man tonight. It was some woman instead, nearly as old, maybe the wife. “Noodles, please,” he said, but she shook her head. She didn’t speak Vietnamese.

All right—he didn’t see any noodles. Let it be rice again. He went to the counter and pointed to the kettle of rice on the stove, pointed above it to the teapots on a shelf. She nodded some kind of assent, and he took his chair again.

He watched people passing on the street. Surrounded by souls he didn’t know he woke to the world in its true scale, not a room with a window that looked at a wall, but an entire world in which he was lost. Whatever the details of the situation, whatever the nature of the problem, whoever had let him down, he was lost.

And to think how careful he’d been, and how pointlessly. It wasn’t that he regretted the mistake. He regretted the hesitation. Doubt is one thing, hesitation another. I waited three years to decide. I should have jumped. Doubt is the truth, hesitation a lie.

The old man came into the café. “You want two Coca-Cola? And the bread?” —his usual day’s supply. He didn’t suppose he needed it, if he was about to run. Run where? Where could he go? Once there, what would he do? And why wait around to ambush the assassin? Why not disappear quickly and fight another day? Mr. Jimmy recommends fighting now—insists on it. And who is Mr. Jimmy? By appearances, an ally. And on what basis to proceed, now, other than on the basis of appearances?

But Hao—enemy or ally? Trung doubted he would ever know.

The sergeant might know, but the two of them couldn’t communicate. This led him to think of Skip Sands with his terrible pronunciation, his phrase books and dictionaries, an American he could talk to. But for all he knew, Skip Sands had arranged this. The colonel was dead; perhaps his contacts had become liabilities and were being eliminated. To seek out Skip Sands was not advisable. To trust anyone on earth was ill-advised.

He felt the weight of innumerable griefs—but so many people had just as much to carry, and even more. But this one. This one was very lonely.

The old woman brought the bowl and a teapot, came back again with a teacup and two sauces. He smelled each decanter. One was hoisin. He poured it over the rice. No sticks. He waved his hand at her and rubbed two fingers together. She brought him lacquered sticks ornately decorated. Good luck, bad luck, but hunger visits each day. He bowed his head, lifted the bowl to his face, and fell to.

Though perfectly visible in the last light, Fest stood out front of the fabric shop without any pretense. Let them wonder why. Whatever happened, this was his last evening on the post.

If the target doesn’t go out by ten or so, after the cafés have closed, if I’m sure he isn’t leaving, if I can’t get inside to wait for the man—that’s it. I won’t go in at all.

He would instead go directly to the Armed Forces Language School and report his failure and demand extraction. And if the school was closed at night—if that contingency, like so many, had been overlooked—he’d go to the American Embassy and present Kenneth Johnson’s business card to the marine guard. If they turned him away he’d take a cab to Tan Son Nhut and wait there for the first plane going anywhere.

The darkness fell, the woman who ran the shop locked the door from within and turned out the light. She must spend her nights somewhere in the squalor of the building’s recesses. He stepped farther into the doorway, and he was hidden.

The street door to the rooming house opened fifteen minutes after nightfall, and the target headed diagonally across the street without keeping to the shadows. Fest waited until the man had rounded the corner and followed at a trot as he had the night before, and did the same at the next corner, when the man turned right to head, perhaps, for the same café. At the end of the block Fest couldn’t turn to follow—the man was stopped, talking to a street boy. Fest continued across the street, heading into the tide of honking motorbikes without pausing, as he’d learned to do. They knew how to keep from hitting pedestrians.

From the other side Fest looked back. The man was buying cigarettes or gum. Then he went on into the café.

Fest turned and made his way back to the street of the rooming house. At the first patch of darkness he came to he stopped and caught his breath. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands, replaced it in his back pocket, and repeated the process with a second handkerchief. He drew up his shirtfront and took the pistol from the belly holster and the suppressor from his front pocket and fixed them together and took the key from his left pocket and walked immediately to the building’s front door and opened it. Locking it behind him, he pocketed the key, took the other from his right-hand pocket, and proceeded up the stairs.

His hand in its wet envelope of heat inserts the key. He opens the door and removes the only assumption left: that in thirty-odd years of life he’s learned something that will be of help in this region where the grown-ups are all dead.

Inside, the lantern was burning. A shirtless man, a white man, unmistakably American, stood beside the bed holding out a rotund package.