February 19, 2008

• Lost Way

  Bayle and a Free Spirit Vietcong “chịu chơi” (daredevil)[1]

   

  In 1965, I had two best friends.  The first was Bayle, an American marine, and the second was a Vietcong.

   

  This Vietcong did not wear sandals made of truck tires, or cotton hat; but he grew long hair, smoked Blue Bastos and drank whiskey.  He was Tran Quang Long, a poet.

   

  The American marine was a white youth, brown hair, just graduated from Yale and was tossed into Vietnam battlefield.  He also loved whiskey and he played classical guitar.  I too played classics and that was the reason he liked me.

   

  He often visited my place.  He stayed, ate, and slept there.

   

  When he missed his girlfriend, he cried at my place too.

   

  Bayle played flamenco of Sabicas very well, a killer, but he just liked to listen to my playing the works of Tárrega.  He said: “Listening to Tárrega made me depressed.”

   

  One day, when I saw him off at the entrance of an alley, a white uniform police man came.  He asked:

   

  “Who was that American kid?”

   

  “My friend.”

   

  “Why did he come to this slum?”

   

  “Visiting.”

   

  The police man murmured into my ear:

   

  “You are an idiot.  You bring him here if Vietcong murders him, you will be jailed until your bones decayed.”

   

  But Bayle kept coming.  He could eat any cooking, any meals, any Vietnamese dishes, and especially loved such exotic dishes orginated from Binh Dinh such as chim mía, nem Chợ Huyện, mắm cua. . . .

   

  Trần Quang Long and Bayle did not know each other, did not see each other as nemesis, or friends.  But I was their best friend.

   

  Long lured me to join Vietcong.   Then with Long I organized some largest protests never happened before in Qui Nhơn in the summer of 1965.

   

  Long was a very active Vietcong.  I was too.  We made police miserable.  We got attacked by the police’s clubs, tear gas and jailed terms.  Bayle did not khow or get any of that but he was killed right on the street.  Long got a broken leg and I was sent to island Phước Lý with another friend, The Gorrilla.

   

  Bayle died without having in him a single drop of hatred.  He was as innocent as a baby.  I still could remember his long and slender fingers, pale on dirty cement floor.  Those were the artist’s fingers many times, with me, awakening the Tarrega’s romantic music that he was very much in love with.  When Bayle died, I and Trần Quang Long were lying in the Qui Nhơn army hospital that was used to treat Saigon’s soldiers.

   

  Bayle died the same day with an old Vienamese man.

   

  Gorilla’s father.

   

  . . .

   

  While I helped Long to lie down on his bed, there was a sound of an enormous explosion reverberating the city.

   

  Following was a terrible silence.

   

  “What happened?”

   

  There were murmured voices of people asking questions on the hospital hallway.

   

  I looked at Long, stunned.  Long leaned toward me, talked in a very low voice:

   

  “Commandos!”

   

  *

   

  Bayle died in that earth-shaken explosion.  But at the time I did not know because I was in the hospital.  I did not know Gorilla’s father died in that horrible night either.

   

  It was very late into the night, totally pitch black.  After the explosion there was a terrifying silence.  The wind howls came from the ocean made the silence even more fearful.  But only a short time after that the sound of helicopters could be heard hovering on the swamp Thị Nại.  Then batches of heavy machine gun pumped onto the choppy waves.  The sky was shaken, broken, and shattered.  The wind was broken into pieces.  The waves oozed blood.  The fisherman boats were scattered everywhere like rags.  People died without a chance to scream for help.  The vengance was in its utmost cruel nature and totally blindness.  The sounds of airplanes and shelling were sonorous but the death was silent, muffled and hidden.

   

  The next morning I came to the building Việt Cường, the headquarter of American Army.  The building imploded like a foldable lantern exposed an opaque sky.  Yesterday, it was where police had cleared the ways for a team of very high rank of American officers to have their meetings.  And this morning these policemen also came again with MP, fenced off this area so Corps of Engineers could come and use a crane to move away chunks of concrete to retrieve the bodies.

   

  I blended into the crowd.  Suddenly I saw Bayle among the dead people lain on the ground.

   

  Bayle lay on his stomach, his cheek touched the ground, his nose shattered and bloodied.  But I could recognize him because of his two hands.  The hands of people who played classical guitar – long fingernails on the right hand, left thumb – flat and callous. In the works of Tárrega there was a song that Bayle often played, Largrima or A Tear Drop.  Now, a tear drop was flowing on my face.

   

   

  Excerpt from the short story Lost Way, Lạc Đường, an autobiography of Đào Hiếu.

   

  
  

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  [1] I do not know a proper term for this.  It is a characteristic of someone who is friendly, playful, fearless, stubborn, and generous.  While I am still searching, temporarily I will use the word daredevil.  If you know the proper term, please teach me.

   

   

  • 8:57 pm
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