Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“Who is it?”

“They will say. Let me not say.”

But twenty minutes went by, and nobody came out to see him.

Sands finished his haircut, went into the cool parlor room with its polished wooden floor. Empty. And nobody in the dining area other than Sebastian, setting the table for lunch. “Was somebody here to see me?”

“Somebody? No… I think nobody.”

“Didn’t you say I had a visitor?”

“Nobody, sir.”

“Great, thanks, keep me guessing.”

He took himself to a rattan chair on the patio. Here he could either read the news or watch the English entomologist, a man named Anders Pitchfork, chip a golf ball with a three-iron back and forth between the two full-sized greens of the very undersized golf course. Its two or so acres of lawn were minutely tended and biologically uniform, circled by high chain-link with which the surrounding plant life grappled darkly and inexorably. Pitchfork, a graying Londoner in Bermuda shorts and a yellow Ban-Ion shirt, an expert on anopheles mosquitoes, spent his mornings here on the course until the sun cleared the building’s roof and drove him away to do his job, which was to eradicate malaria.

Sands could see, down the colonnade, the German visitor taking breakfast in his pajamas on the private patio outside his room. The German had come to this region to kill someone—Sands believed this having spoken to him only twice. The section chief had accompanied him from Manila and, though the chief’s visit had been ostensibly about squaring Sands away, he’d spent all his time with the German and had instructed Sands to “stay available and leave him alone.”

As for Pitchfork, the malaria man with the unforgettable name —just gathering information. Possibly running agents, of sorts, in the villages.

Sands liked to guess everybody’s occupation. People came and went on murky errands. In Britain this place might have been called a “safe house.” In the U.S., however, in Virginia, Sands had been trained to consider no house safe. To find no island anywhere in the sea. The colonel, his closest trainer, had made sure each of his recruits memorized “The Lee Shore” from Melville’s Moby-Dick:

But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!

Pitchfork placed his ball on a tee, selected a big-headed wood from the golf bag lying by the green, and drove one over the fence and deep into the vegetation.

Meanwhile, according to the Enquirer, pirates had seized an oil tanker in the Sulu Sea, killing two crewmen. In Cebu City, a mayoral candidate and one of his supporters had been shot full of holes by the candidate’s own brother. The killer supported his brother’s opponent— their father. And the governor of Camiguin Province had been shot down by, the paper said, “an amok,” who also killed two others “after becoming berserk.”

And now the German practiced against a rubber tree with a blowgun: of other than primitive manufacture, Sands guessed, as it broke down neatly into three sections. Assembled, it ran better than five feet in length, and the darts looked seven or eight inches long—white, tapered; like overlong golf tees, as a matter of fact. The German sent them deftly into his target’s hide, pausing often to mop at his face with a hankie.

Skip had an appointment down in the village with his friend, Philippine Army Major Eddie Aguinaldo.

Skip and the German assassin, who may not have been an assassin, or even a German, rode together halfway down the mountain to the market. They took the air-conditioned staff car, gazing out the closed windows of the backseat at the thatched homes of warped, rough-cut lumber, at tethered goats, wandering chickens, staggering dogs. As they passed the grannies who squatted on the dusty stoops, spitting red betel nut, squads of tiny children detached themselves from the old crones and ran alongside the car.

“What is that? They’re saying something.”

” ‘Chez,’ ” Sands told the German.

“What is that? Did you say ‘chez’? It means? What does it mean?”

“Their parents used to ask the GIs for matches. ‘Matches! Matches!’ Now they just shout, ‘Chez, chez, chez.’ They don’t know what it means.

There aren’t any GIs around anymore, and if they want a match they say ‘posporo.’ “

But the old women grappled after the children angrily, in a way he hadn’t seen before. “What is the matter with these people?” he asked the German.

“They need a better diet. The protein is too little.” “Do you sense it? Something’s up.” “It’s too little fish high up in the mountain. The protein is too little.” “Ernest,” Skip said, leaning forward and talking to the driver, “is

something going on in the village today?” “Maybe something, I don’t know,” Ernest said. “I can ask around for you.” He came from Manila, and his English was excellent.

Major Eduardo Aguinaldo, in crisp fatigues, waited in the rear seat of a black Mercedes outside the Monte Mayon, a restaurant run by an Italian and his Filipino family. Pavese, the Italian, served whatever people would buy, which wasn’t much. For visitors Pavese made a quite delicious spaghetti Bolognese with a lot of goat’s liver in it. The major welcomed the German and insisted he call him “Eddie” and insisted he join them for lunch.

To Skip’s surprise, the German accepted. Their guest ate robustly, voluptuously. He wasn’t fat, but food seemed his passion. Skip hadn’t seen him so happy. He was a bearish, bearded character with thick brown rims for his glasses and skin that burned rather than tanned, and big soft lips that got wet when he talked.

“Let’s get some of Pavese’s espresso, because it’s full of life,”

Aguinaldo said. “Skip was up all night. He’s tired.” “Never! I’m never tired.” “Were my men good to you?” “Most respectful. Thanks.” “But you didn’t locate any Huks.” “Not unless they were hiding by the road and we never saw them.” “What about the PC boys?” “The PC?” These were the Philippine Constabulary. “The PC were

fine. They kept pretty much to themselves.”

“They don’t care for the army’s assistance. I won’t say I can blame them. It’s not a war. These Huks are only renegades. They’ve been reduced to the status of bandits.”

“Correct.” But these excursions amounted to Sands’s only strategy for gaining points and landing a reassignment to Manila or, even better, to Saigon. Above all, these jungle patrols relieved him of the uneasy feeling that he’d undergone rigorous training, swung by ropes along the faces of cliffs, parachuted into thunderclouds, sweated while following recipes for highly explosive materials, clambered over barbed wire, traversed rushing streams in the dark of night, been interrogated for hours while tied to a chair, all in order to become a clerk, nothing more than a clerk. To compile. To sort. To accomplish what any spinster librarian could accomplish. “And what did you do last night?” he asked Eddie.

“Myself? I turned in early and read James Bond.” “You’re kidding.” “Perhaps we’ll go on patrol this evening. Will you come?” Aguinaldo

asked the German. “It can be quite exhilarating.” The German was confused. “What is the purpose?” he asked Sands. “Our friend won’t be coming,” Sands told Eddie. “I’m going farther down,” the German explained. “Farther down?” “To the train.” “Oh. The station. Going to Manila,” Aguinaldo said. “A pity. Our lit

tle patrols can be bracing experiences.”—As if they came often under fire. Nothing of the kind had ever happened, as far as Skip knew. Eddie was boyish, but he liked to seem menacing.