The Golden Mists of Hue - Part II

I awoke at first light, my neck and back sore from sleeping against a corner. I quickly gathered my notebook and pencil into my bag. Gunshots still echoed through the ancient streets of Hué, the stone roads picking up each shot and throwing it for miles. I heard yells in the distance, set my bag down, and jumped into the Phuong River. The brown water chilled me and I shook as I emerged, any evidence of my mishap the night before hidden by mud and dirty water. If anyone asked, I accidentally fell into the river.

Shivering I walked in the direction of the shouting. As I neared I moved close to the building walls. I clung to the textured stucco and leaned my head to look around the corner. Duc and several of my comrades from the Trail stood over a pair of young men with their hands tied, squatting in the road. I watched as Duc screamed at them. He slammed the butt of his machine gun into one’s face. The boy reeled back, blood spattering the ground from his nose and mouth.

“Traitors,” Duc yelled, stepping back and aiming his gun at the boys, “You have betrayed your country and must die.”

One of the boys started crying, “We love Viet, we wouldn’t—”

Duc pulled the trigger twice, releasing a short burst into each boy’s chest. They fell back to the dusty stones beneath them, their blood flowing through the cracks, pooling in the corners of the stonework. I couldn’t believe what I just saw, a good Buddhist man taking the life of two innocent boys in cold blood.

I stepped out from the corner. Two of the group turned abruptly and aimed their guns at me. I waved them off and walked to Duc’s side. He still stared down at the two boys. “God Duc, what did you do?”

“I don’t know Thanh,” the thin haired man with glasses whispered.

The other men of the cadre didn’t move. I looked at each one, most avoided my eyes, but the ones who scared me even more stared back with animus, as if daring me to say something wrong so they could kill me too. I refused to accept it, these men once cherished life, a basic tenet of Buddhism and Confucianism both, but now they discarded their beliefs without scruple.

“I’m leaving,” I whispered back to Duc and stepped around him heading into the city toward the Citadel. As I walked I thought of Hoan’s words. Did we all walk with three legs or was it just a clever old man trying to confuse his younger colleague?

***

The next day I saw an old woman, bent and wrinkled, walking on three legs. She waddled out of a house, screaming at some soldiers. “You bastards, you killed my son. You deserve death without burial.”

Several of the soldiers tried to calm the woman but she refused, hitting one of them over the head with her cane before shuffling back into the building. The leader of the cadre pointed for one of the soldiers to follow the woman, I did too. She led us into her house and through the narrow first floor room to a set of wooden stairs. We climbed them, waiting for the woman to pull her feet up each one. Reaching the top she continued shuffling, muttering at us the whole way, calling us wicked monsters of an evil demon, and other things.

She pointed to a closed door with her cane. “He’s in there, dead, because he didn’t want to give you the chance to kill him.”

“I’m sorry,” I tried to tell her, but she refused, pushing me away.

I stared into those ancient eyes, eyes that mothered a family, eyes that saw unfathomable pain and suffering, eyes that mourned her son’s death. She deserved to walk on three legs, to hide from the realities of life in Vietnam.

“Oh God,” the soldier gasped.

I left the woman and paced to his side. Her son crouched on the toilet. A pistol hung loosely from his lifeless hand, blood stained the brown wall behind him and dripped from his mouth. I gagged, but this time stopped my breakfast rice from escaping. I needed to get out, to flee the suddenly stifling building. I ran on two legs down the narrow stairs and rushed into the street. I kept running for several blocks before I stopped and squatted against a wall. I held my head in my hands and started crying. This was not what I expected to see in Hué.

I was supposed to see the heroic cadres fighting for freedom, showing the world how important Vietnamese independence was. Not murder and suicide, not an endless line of offenses to our ancestors.

But heroism is what I wrote.

That night, sitting in a commandeered room, I scribbled the events of the day, describing the old mother as a heroic woman showing the liberating soldiers to a traitor, a traitor who hid away like a coward, shuttered in a toilet. The words came in a trance, a perfect propaganda piece, written mechanically.

I finished the story and extinguished the lights. The nightmare of Hué filled my mind as I lay down to bed; images of death and murder flashing over and over until I squeezed them out through my tears

At some point I slept, and dreamed.

My father appeared, walking on a cloud of golden mist, his figure full and well fed, not like the starving man I knew before I left Vinh as a child. He came close to me and smiled. I smiled back.

“Thanh, you have done well. Do you know of your ancestor, Nguyen Ai Linh?”

I shook my head.

“Linh fought centuries ago with the Trung sisters against the Chinese. He killed many of the enemy, bringing great glory on our family, and victory to the sisters. Returning from war he saw a nobleman beat a beggar. A man of great heart, Linh stopped the noble, killing him in the process. Captured and tried, the expected punishment of execution was pardoned because of his valor in the wars. Instead he was banished from our country—”

“Yes,” I said, “I know it now, he wandered the earth and did good, helping the poor and aiding heaven and nature by ensuring justice.”

My father smiled and turned, as he walked back into the golden mist I heard him say one last thing, “You have a grand heritage, be true to it.”

I awoke and my eyes burst open. The darkness of predawn filled my room. I quickly rose from my bed and lit a candle. A small altar sat in the corner of the room. I hurried to the desk and ripped two pieces of paper from my notebook. I wrote the names of my parents in bold letters across the pages. Carrying them across the room I set them on the altar. A bundle of incense lay beside the small table. I pulled out three sticks and quickly lit them. Kneeling, I held the sticks to my forehead and bowed, letting the smoke float to heaven. I had to express gratitude to my parents for their blessed vision.

***

I found Duc easily. In the last two days he had become a butcher, so I simply followed the screams. He worked in a colonial schoolhouse, one left over from French occupation, surrounded by soldiers. I bluffed my way past the guards at the door, citing my job as a writer. I found Duc in a classroom interrogating a woman.

“You worked for the quisling government. What makes you deserve mercy?”

“I needed the money,” the woman sobbed. I could see blood on her lip and a bruise forming around her eye.

Duc wrapped his fist across her face, “You don’t deserve to live, you betrayed your brothers and sisters. Worse, you betrayed heaven—”

“Duc,” I pushed the door fully open and stepped into the room.

“Thanh, I’m glad to see you’ve recovered from pissing your pants.”

I blushed, but did not let the embarrassment stop me. I knew what must be done. “You can’t kill this woman, she has done nothing. Let her go.”

“Let her go? You are a coward,” Duc grinned and bared his yellow and cracked teeth.

“What you are doing is wrong Duc, my ancestors have visited me.”

Duc grabbed the woman’s hair and slammed her face against the table. Her nose gushed blood and she spit a tooth on the wood. “Can your ancestors save her? Or do you expect to?”

“I—I—”

“Guards,” Duc shouted.

I heard pounding in the hallway and in an instant the door swung open. Heavy arms gripped mine and pulled. My feet lost their ground and I fell helpless into their hold.

Duc pointed at me like a dog, “He is a traitor, take him to the graves.”

“But—”

The guards dragged me from the schoolhouse. I didn’t resist. I walked into this with two legs, knowing what might happen. I simply relaxed and let them pull me through the streets, my feet hitting against the uneven stones laid centuries before. They dragged me to the east of town where several cadre members carried spades and shovels, digging and moving earth.

I craned my neck to see between my captors. Rows of large pits dotted the field, some of them already buried mounds. They reached one and tossed me inside. I crouched to cushion the fall, my hands sinking into a woman’s breasts. She stared up without seeing, her body ripped by soldier’s blades. Her pants gathered around her ankles. I stared at the body and wanted to kill the bastard who raped her.

The dirt came next, stopping my anger, and flying into the hole shovel by shovel. Some of the scoops held rocks and I groaned when one hit me in the head. Otherwise I made no sound. I lay beside the woman’s body and buried my face in her shirt. The weight above me slowly increased until I couldn’t move my hands or my head. Heavier and heavier the load grew. It mounted higher and higher. I couldn’t breath. I tried to open my eyes but only saw brown earth.

After what seemed like days of ever-increasing pressure I finally took my last shallow breath. I finally understood Hoan’s words. No longer did I walk with three legs, blinded by lies and propaganda, now I walked with two legs, seeing everything before me, and ready for what lay ahead. With a smile on my face I walked back to my parents, walking through the mists of gold on two legs.

Copyright 2005