Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

1983

H ao brought the New Straits Times to the kitchen table and turned off the small electric fan in order to read. It wasn’t, Kim understood, the fan’s noise that disturbed him, but its interference with the pages. Each evening he sat here with Dr. Bourgois’s morning edition of the New Straits Times, parsing out the news in English in his underwear, and, on Thursday or Friday, the doctor’s Asiaweek as well. What was the point reading the newspaper each day in a place not your home? Even if you lived there? She didn’t mind if he reported to her certain miscellaneous events, but she’d forbidden him to mention news of any obscene Malaysian celebrations. Kim was made uncomfortable by the Islamic influences around them, the crying of the mosques and the public ceremonies of circumcision for thirteen-year-old princes. However, this place suited her. Her vigor had returned—as if from her teens. Dr. Bourgois treated her with free medicines from his hospital, and Kuala Lumpur was full of Chinese herbalists who kept her in health. Several promised immunity to everything. She didn’t want it. If illness didn’t kill you, you died of bad luck.

Her husband stopped reading and raised his face to her. He reached for his empty teacup and looked down into it, as if a sudden need to examine it had stopped his reading.

Kim said, “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s something. Don’t say it’s nothing.”

“Someone from Saigon.”

She stood behind him. He covered part of the page with his hand, and she reached over his shoulder and moved it away. “The Canadian?” “An American.” “No. It says ‘Canadian.’ I can read ‘Canadian.’ And ‘Benęt.’ ” “He’s not Canadian. And that’s not his name. But I remember him. I

knew him.”

“Where? Here in Kuala Lumpur?” “Back home.” “Then don’t think about it.”

Don’t think about it? But I do. I think about luck … sorrow … gratitude… all mixed in a poison. And we drink it.

Luck and the sacrifice of others had brought them to live here in the servants’ quarters behind the house of the physician from Marseilles. Kim did the laundry and sometimes went about the doctor’s house dusting things, as she’d done all her life, though the doctor had other servants for that; and Hao drove the car. He took the girls to and from school and to piano lessons and dancing lessons. The young girls went to the American School and spoke very good English. With the parents Hao communicated in French. Dr. Bourgois walked a few blocks each day to and from the hospital where he worked as an administrator. Hao drove the wife to shopping, to the bridge club, and to the bookstores. All thanks to luck, and the sacrifice of others. But some of those others hadn’t, themselves, chosen sacrifice. He’d chosen it for them. And there came sorrow. The trick he’d played Trung Than—the lowest thing he’d ever done. Yet not at all difficult. The Americans had made it easy. His most terrible crime, and where had it led? The Americans had thrown Trung into a prison camp and he’d come out a hero of the cause, with a house in Saigon and membership in the party. Historians came asking for interviews. Good for Trung. He’d dodged the wind. And Saigon was Ho Chi Minh City.

Some of those others had chosen sacrifice willingly, however, with the strength of their hearts; and there came gratitude. For the colonel. For the infantryman who’d thrown his helmet over the grenade and then himself over the helmet. And for the other Americans who’d helped them get away. The Americans had remembered, had kept their promises to him, and even to his country. They hadn’t failed to keep such a promise. They’d simply lost the war.

And tomorrow, or the next day, he planned to tell Kim he’d had word from their nephew Minh—this through a Vietnamese family who ran a restaurant in Singapore, longtime emigrants who’d set a worldwide network going to make connections among scattered clans. Minh had survived—who knew what troubles he’d survived?—and lived close to Boston, Massachussets. Minh had located relatives in Texas who fished in the Gulf of Mexico, and they might be persuaded to help their Cousin Hao and his wife reach America. And there, again—luck. He’d chosen the right side. Lucky life!

His wife had started the gas, and the kettle trembled on the stove. He hadn’t noticed. He’d thought she was still behind him, studying the face in the news.

She brought him the teapot. “What does it say?” “He’s in a lot of trouble.” “Is there anything you can do?” “No. I knew him, that’s all.”

1/8/83 Dear Eduardo Aguinaldo, You may have already gotten a letter from me. But assuming you haven’t:

My name is William Benęt. They call me “Skip.” You, in fact, called me “Skip.” Do you by any chance remember me? Let’s just say I’m not the person I was back then, and leave it at that. But do you remember me?

I live a good deal in Cebu City. Lived. I haven’t been there for two years, approximately. Around there they know me as “William Benęt, the Canadian guy.”

I have a family in Cebu City, a woman wife and three kids. Not a legal union. Look in on them, will you? Wife’s name is Cora Ng. Her cousin owns the Ng Fine Store near the docks. The cousin can find her for you. Last time I checked I owned two buildings in the neighborhood. Cora can tell you which ones. She understands cash better than she understands real estate, so maybe you’d be good enough to handle the sale for her and see that she gets the money.

I know it’s been a long time, Eddie. I know I’m imposing, but I don’t know who else to ask. All the people I know are crooks, just like me.

If this is one of two letters you’ve received, forgive me for contacting you twice, but I’m not sure which one will reach you. It’s no trouble for me writing an extra letter, I’ll tell you that. I spend my time here writing letters I don’t know how to address. The conditions are tolerable, washing up from a community bucket, eating rice with bits of fish, no maggots, the water tastes fine. It isn’t exactly a Japanese prison camp in Burma. Remember The Colonel? Compared to his stories of “Kilo 40,” this place is an afternoon at the Polo Club.

If you happen to run across any of our bunch from back then, I want you to tell them the Colonel never died. His body died, but he lives on in me. As for the ewes folks who claim he never physically died and he’s running around Southeast Asia with a dagger in his teeth and waving a bloody cutlass or something—they’re wrong. He’s definitely deceased. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

These charges against me are going to stick. Whether they hang me or just keep me, I won’t be running around loose in SE Asia again for quite a while. So see to my family, will you, old boy? Your old Pal, Skip (William French Benęt)

That he should mention the Polo Club! The letter came among a batch Eddie had taken to the club to peruse over lunch—an airletter, written in a very small hand and postmarked Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Charges? Hanging? For what? Eddie had heard nothing about it. He had a friend at the Manila Times who could perhaps see about all this. And the colonel, alive? He’d never had any report to the contrary, never any word of the colonel’s demise. He wasn’t in touch with any of “the bunch” from back then, but surely he would have known if the colonel had died.

How often he’d thought of Skip Sands. How seldom he’d done anything about it. He’d made no attempt to track him down. He associated Skip with the murder of the priest along the Pulangi River in 1965, by far the worst thing he’d done in his life, and the circumstances, war, duty, good intentions, made no difference.

Eddie left his table under the awning near the swimming pool and strolled through the restaurant to the bowling lanes. The man knew his shoe size without having to ask. A couple of kids bowled in the center lane, not doing too well with these duckpins, half the size of tenpins, and a ball without finger holes, held in the hand, hard to aim, and prone to little effect on the targets. After each turn a boy dropped from the darkness above the fallen pins to capture and resettle them. As a teenager Eddie had flung the ball hard and sent the pins flying in hope of catching one of those kids in the head with one, but they knew the game and stayed clear.