Duong Huong - The Zenith

“Did you oversleep? I had breakfast and started out right away, I did not go back to the bunker. I had thought that you would remember and get up in time.”

“Chief, you know me, I love oversleeping. When I woke up it was still the dark of night, so I lay myself down to sleep some more. It’s always dangerous to go back to sleep. How’s things? Do you have news of our division commander yet?”

“No, we haven’t found anything…but…”

“But what?”

“The soldiers have found their pants, together with their weapons and other belongings on the bank of the spring. Division is of two minds right now: either to report it upstairs and wait for the verdict or to find the real reason to explain this. The deputy commander and all of us are hoping that you will have a suggestion. You are the only one to have known the Meo platoon leader, the supposed agent.”

“I thank you for your trust. But my knowledge here is very limited. Ma Ly is a Meo. He lives in an earth home and grows poppies — their main occupation. I am a Tay tribesman. We Tay live in houses on stilts, breed cattle and chickens and pigs, grow dry field rice, and eat long rice as well as sticky rice. Our environments and our customs differ. Besides, we haven’t seen each other in fifteen years.”

“At any rate, both of you were comrades-in-arms. Besides, both of you are mountain people.”

An laughs out loud. “Now, every one of us here is a mountain person, for we are living in the Vietnamese Cordillera. If you lump all mountain people together, it means you have no idea about who we are really.”

“Sincerely speaking…”

Nha seems embarrassed, trying to formulate a plan of action. He takes off his glasses to clean them, a regular habit of his when in a situation like this. Just at that moment the deputy division commander notices An and quickly steps toward him, along with the leading cadres of the various battalions. After the greetings, everyone has gathered around An in expectation. But An turns to Nha and says:

“First, I would like to know what they have found on the bank of the spring. For I don’t believe that Ma Ly would invite our division commander to take a bath, especially when it’s pitch dark and the water has gone chilly. In all frankness, the Meo don’t like to bathe. They are in the habit of ‘fire bathing,’ especially those who have acquired the long habit of opium smoking. Do you know, at one time opium was considered like white rice in the Meo kingdom?”

“In truth, that’s the first time I’ve heard this. My native village is on the bank of the Red River. Ever since I joined the army, my contacts have been with ethnic Vietnamese. You are the first tribesman that I have known.”

“Meo territory is right in the middle of the Golden Triangle, where they grow poppies and produce opium for half of Asia. The Meo king, Hoang Su Phi, used to lead a very efficient army charged with protecting the opium caravans crossing the border. They are capable of fighting any national army or forest bandits. The Meo people therefore had to grow poppies for him in exchange for rice, salt, dried fish, and oil. After many generations of such culture, they have grown addicted to opium the way we are used to white rice. I am not too sure why but opium addicts have a great fear of water. Very rarely do they bathe themselves in a spring or boil water to take a bath inside their houses. Instead they take off their clothes and sit next to a fire so that they sweat all over, thus opening all the pores of their skin. Then they use their fingers to roll the dirt into tiny balls, which they throw away.”

“God, is that true?” a battalion commander bursts out in surprise.

An turns toward him: “Do you, Comrade, think that I am just fabricating that? Or that I am prejudiced and trying to slander the Meo?”

“That was simply an expression of surprise,” the deputy division commander interjects. “Don’t misunderstand. Even me, I have never known that.”

An realizes that talking about Meo bathing habits has made them all very curious, but that they dare not ask for more. One only has to see them exchanging looks to know.

Nha tells the deputy division commander, “Comrade An wants to go see the crime scene because he does not believe that the two of them wanted to go take a bath. I hope that the soldiers have kept every trace intact.”

“You can be at ease. I have ordered that the place be kept exactly as it was. You can take Comrade An there to have a look.”

“We will be right back after the inspection,” Nha replies. Then he walks out of the underground command chamber.

An follows him, with his salt-and-pepper hair covering his faded shirt collar. He’s only fifty but looks more seasoned than the division commander. In this war it’s clear that the people from coastal provinces and from the mountains endure much better than those from the Red River delta. Flowers that can blossom on the banks of the Red, or Luoc, River fade very fast under the mountain sun.

It is 10:20 a.m. but the soldiers are already gathered in groups of five or three all over the encampment. Actually, they could have overslept or stayed indoors and played cards, but the gossip has gone from ear to ear, and by the time Nha and An arrive at the stream bank, soldiers from the division are already there in great numbers. A parachute string has been strung from three large trees, forming a protective boundary around the crime scene. The squad normally guarding command headquarters is keeping the curious outside the string.

An takes a look at the bank. Traces of last night’s flooding rain can still be seen on the sand beach and on the pebbles. The belongings that the night before had been neatly piled up are now scattered everywhere. The two pairs of pants had drifted down the stream for a couple of meters before getting caught in the root of a tree. One flashlight is now planted in the sand while the other has been carried down the water some thirty meters until stuck in a stack of dry, fallen branches. As for little things like the toothpick tube, the cigarette packs, the lighters, and the nail trimmer.…they have disappeared without a trace. Only the two pistols are still there, at the original spot, together with one shoe. They are covered, however, with sand and mud. Truly, the rain last night was a masterwork, a high-class act of sorcery that turned everything into something else.

“Comrade, look,” says An. “Look at the mud stuck to the shoe…”

“It really was something, that rain last night,” Nha says, nodding, and then he goes on: “During the rainy season last year, this very stream even washed down a couple of deer. The guys in Division 89, who were stationed downstream, saw them still struggling in the water. They took out their guns and shot them, then threw out some cords to drag them in to eat. But in pulling in the deer, one of them fell down and he himself was washed downstream with the flood without being able to even cry out.”

“I wonder why I don’t remember that incident?”

“How could you? The story was circulated only among the leading comrades in the division. For who would admit to such a truth?”

Nha smacks his lips and lowers his voice to the point of a whisper: “So sad! A human life for a piece of venison.”

Looking at the stream, An tells himself, “Last night if I had not tied one of my legs to a tree, I would have ended up like that guy with the deer.”

In turning back, An sees the soldiers with all eyes on him and Nha — spectators in a mystery without plot or even a stage set. The protagonist is not present. Only a few pieces of clothing and some personal effects lying here and there. But the play is arousing so much curiosity because it dramatizes both a physical and a nonphysical death. Even if it is not yet an absolute death, it nonetheless has severely damaged the reputation of the leadership. Less than three months earlier two soldiers had been sentenced by a military tribunal to death by firing squad for having raped a Van Kieu woman who was burning coal in the forest. News of the execution had been disseminated to all four divisions operating in the region as a severe warning. Yet now the commander of the most famous division in the whole battle zone, the one with the most unit commendations, has disappeared in the night with some Meo, the only trace of them being two pairs of pants snagged on the side of a stream. Clearly it does not require much intelligence to imagine what is going on in the minds of the soldiers crowding around.