Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

In the front room she found Mrs. Bingham, a thin, almost elderly woman in a khaki outfit stained with blood, her hair cut like a boy’s, cigarette jutting from her lips while she knelt diapering one of many elfin, simian creatures laid out on an army blanket on the low coffee table. Bloody rags and bandages surrounded her. She paused and took her cigarette from her mouth and gave Kathy a kind of smile or grimace, very simian in itself, while tears welled in her eyes. “What do I say now? Come in.” She waved her cigarette around helplessly. “Be alive.”

Viewing the destruction, Kathy had feared for the medicine. But she saw two refrigerators in the kitchen.

Kathy sat down and said, “It’s terrible.”

“These were all that survived, as far as we know. We had all four subspecies of langur. Now we have two.” Inexplicably she laughed, finishing

the outburst with a wet smoker’s cough. Kathy said, “It’s horrible.” “We’re in a horrible place.” “It’s a fallen world.” “I can’t contradict you. That would be stupid.” There seemed to be ten or so monkeys recuperating on the blanket.

All wore cloth diapers. Mrs. Bingham said, “Sorry we didn’t make it last night. Did things

turn out? Better not answer.” “The mother’s fine.” “The baby perished.” “Correct.” “Sorry. We’ve had our hands full. There’s been a little flu epidemic

here. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Kathy placed her knapsack on the table and opened it. She carried a plastic baggie full of loose GI cigarettes to give as gifts, and she passed them all to Mrs. Bingham. “Some of them look broken, eh?” she said.

Mrs. Bingham held the tiny monkey on her knee and both she and the big-browed creature looked at the baggie without comprehension. “We had eleven bassinets,” she said, “but they all burned.”

They’re only monkeys, it was all she could do to keep from shouting, monkeys, monkeys.

In the kitchen was a maidservant—young, in high-heeled sandals and a short skirt—who stopped washing tiny diapers at the sink in order to see to Kathy. “What can I get?” she said.

Mrs. Bingham said, “Get out of my sight,” and the girl returned to

the kitchen. “Is the doctor around?” “We’re waiting. Some may have escaped. He’s looking for survivors.” “Can he find them? Can he catch them?” “If they’re hurt. This is a golden-head.” She replaced the wounded

langur on the blanket. It lay back looking upward with its black eyes and seemed to be furiously thinking. “The others are probably dead. It could have been all of us. The bastards. They’re psychotic. Oh, well,” she said, “we’ve all been driven mad, haven’t we, whether we realize or not.”

Soon the doctor came in and gestured at the assemblage of battered

animals. “Behold the Vietcong.” “Anything?” He shook his head. Kathy asked, “Was it mortars?” “Rockets,” Dr. Bingham said. “Planes. And not just rockets.” “Napalm?” “Probably.” “It must have been.” His wife broke down weeping. “The screams are

still in my head—just now as I’m talking. You’ve no idea. You’ve no idea.” “You just don’t know,” the doctor explained to Kathy. “I’m sorry, but you can’t possibly.” “Mimi,” his wife said to the servant, “bring Miss Nurse a Coca-Cola, please.”

The servant gave her a Coca-Cola in a glass with ice and they sat in the living room under generator-powered lights while Dr. Bingham spoke of monkeys. The four subspecies of langur had come to be regarded as two separate species, one of which was divided into three subspecies. Of these, the golden-headed Trachypithecus poliocephalus had grown, in his words, “excruciatingly rare,” with an estimated five hundred individuals remaining. And now so many less. They allowed Kathy to put the nipple of a baby bottle into the mouth of one of the langurs and hold it while it guzzled formula. The creature was appealing, but blue snot bubbled from its nose, and she wondered if she’d catch her death.

The couple behaved most hospitably, but when the doctor, a large, bearded man in early middle age, a most prepossessing figure, a real jungle bwana, Kathy had always thought, noticed her open knapsack sitting on the coffee table, he said, “What is that,” very coldly, very hatefully. Most strangely.

“It’s a blood pressure device.” “It’s a tape recorder.” “It’s a blood pressure gauge.” “You’re recording this,” he said. “Dear, it doesn’t look anything like a tape recorder.”

The doctor’s lips were pursed and bloodless. He breathed hard

through his nose. Kathy said, “I’ve turned it off now.” “See that it doesn’t go back on.” “He thinks it’s a tape recorder,” Mrs. Bingham said. Kathy reached for the glass of Coke resting on the floor by her chair.

Fire ants covered it, rolling in from the blazing day in a phalanx about six inches wide and God knew how long. “Have you listened to the radio?” Mrs. Bingham said. “The North is

attacking all over. They hit the American Embassy.” “Really.” “They’ve been repulsed, it seems. So the news reports say. But it’s the

American station. They’d want to sound victorious, wouldn’t they? Dear,” she said to her husband, who ministered to one of the small creatures, “she’s dead. Dead.”

“I was arranging her arms.” “Leave her alone.” The servant girl attacked the ants with brisk strokes of a short-handled

broom, driving them out the front door. The boy guarding the entrance edged a couple of feet to his left. The girl looked Chinese, taller than most, quite tall, with a very short black skirt and long legs.

Kathy asked, “Will you stay on?” “Stay on?” “Can you repair things, do you think you can rebuild the facility?” “What else can we do? Who else would take care of them? There are

only seven, but, I mean, nevertheless. Seven left out of one hundred sixty.” “One hundredfifty-eight,” the doctor said. “You had a store of antibiotics, didn’t you? I wonder if that’s still

true?” She knew they had antibiotics—the second refrigerator. “Goddamn them, who do they think they are, what are they trying to do? You’re Canadian, aren’t you? You’re not American.” Kathy said very evenly, “I’m wondering about your antibiotics now.

Now that things are so different.” “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mrs. Bingham said. “I wondered why you’d come around.” “I know. I’m sorry. I know,” Kathy said. “It’s just the way of things. It

would be such a help.”

“Do you have cold storage?”

“I was thinking of the Bao Dai facility. We have a couple of Frigidaires. It would really help. It truly would. Two hundred children, more or less.”

“We had one hundred fifty-eight/’ Mrs. Bingham reminded her. “Yes,” Kathy said, longing to strike her in the face. She asked them

again: “What will you do?” “We’ll probably stay on.” “Yes. We’ll stay on,” Mrs. Bingham said, staring at the maidservant as

she rinsed out rags at the sink. “Your generator is working well.” “Yes, yes. We still have power.” The doctor said, “Who do you really work for? What are you after?” His wife leapt to her feet. “Do you want medicine? Do you want

medicine?” She ran over to the girl at the kitchen sink and pulled up her skirt from behind. Underneath the girl went naked, she wore no panties—”There,” Mrs. Bingham said, “will we stay on? How could we leave!”

“Let her have the medicine.” She opened one of the refrigerators wide and shrieked, “Take it over

my dead body!” “Give it to her. She needs it,” the doctor said. “It was stupid of you to come,” Mrs. Bingham said. “Take it,” her husband said. The girl went on washing at the sink as