* * *

  It was another dark day, with storm clouds swirling in the sky above the village. Hoa Binh stumbled clumsily as she carried two baskets balanced on a bamboo pole to collect buffalo manure for her mother to use as fertilizer in the rice paddy.

  “Are you collecting dung to eat with rice?” a drunken man in the village asked as Hoa Binh stumbled past. But she didn’t reply.

  The man’s name was Toan. He was known for being obnoxious. He liked to brag to the local children that he was a disabled veteran from the American War. But whenever Trong was around, Toan would lower his head with embarrassment. More than once Trong had said, “He’s a reactionary. If I have enough evidence, I will destroy him.”

  When Hoa Binh arrived back at her family’s house that day, she found her father in the yard talking with a town official. She watched as her father opened an old suitcase, removed a stack of papers, and handed them to the official.

  “These days they review Agent Orange cases very carefully,” the official said, as he smoothed out the papers. “As you know, there are travel costs associated with each case, as well as a waiting period. Plus, no result is ever guaranteed.”

  “We joined the military and risked our lives for this country, and for people like you to live in peace,” Trong said angrily. “Look at my daughter! Is she not eligible?”

  The town official seemed embarrassed. He lowered his voice. “No, I just meant you might want to offer money to those who help you. And I can always help with the networking.…”

  Trong seemed surprised. “You mean I should pay money under the table?”

  Hoa Binh’s mother, who was listening from inside the house, came outside and said to the town official, “Just please find a way to help us. We’ll take care of those other things.” To her husband she said, “Give him some money for the ‘transportation fee.’ ”

  But Trong was now furious.

  “This is ridiculous! I won’t pay a bribe to get the benefits we deserve. This should have been taken care of a long time ago, but every time I submit the paperwork it somehow gets lost!” He moved toward the official. “Get out of here! I don’t have time for state officials like you.”

  Once the official’s motorbike had completely disappeared in the distance, Hoa Binh watched her father polish and clean his old dagger, one of his most cherished mementos from the war. The whole family was scared. Whenever Trong was angry, he would polish the dagger and then place it in a drawer at the foot of the bed. Then he’d stay up late listening to the radio, taking notes, and making strange phone calls. He seemed so serious.

  Sometimes Tu Do and Hanh Phuc would play “war,” using sticks as guns that they pointed at each other—“Bang, bang!” Then one of them would pretend to lie dead on the ground.

  “Children,” Trong said once, after silently watching them pointing the sticks at each other, “stop playing that game, or it will ruin you before you even know it.”

  Hoa Binh could see the horrifying memory of the war on her father’s face as he sat motionless on the bed. Sometimes, when he was asleep, she would sneak up to his bed and watch his cheeks twitching in panic as he slept. One night he woke up suddenly and asked, “Hoa Binh, is that you? Why aren’t you in bed? I just had a dream. A big, tall, bloody American fell on me.” Her father had sat up in bed and told her about the time his scout team wandered into an ambush and they’d ended up fighting hand-to-hand with the enemy, and Trong had used his knife to stab an American GI through the heart and kill him. Amid the bombardment and gunfire of war, of course, death was common. But Trong hadn’t known that after the war ended, death would still haunt him every night.

  * * *

  Nobody in the family could stop Trong from taking the trip back to Quang Tri. Mr. Thanh from the neighboring village would go with him. They both carried rucksacks filled with supplies. Mr. Trong also carried his old dagger, freshly cleaned and polished. Hoa Binh didn’t understand why they were taking so many things with them, including yellowed old letters with blurred handwriting.

  Hoa Binh felt worried while her father was away. One day he called, and over the phone he told her, “I’m not dead, so don’t worry.” The sky outside the house was dark and gloomy again; it seemed like a storm was coming. Hoa Binh slept all day, skipping lunch. When she woke up finally her mother said, “Your dad came back. He and his friends went to meet someone in the village, I don’t know who.”

  She went to look for her father and walked along the grassy riverbank. When she came to Mr. Toan’s house, she heard voices and stopped to take a closer look. There were six men in Mr. Toan’s yard, including her father, Mr. Thanh, Mr. Toan, and the village chairman. Mr. Toan seemed to be acting differently than normal. He trembled as he spoke: “I … I … beg you! Please forgive me!”

  Calmly, Thanh said, “Do you feel ashamed of stealing credit from your comrades? Tell us, when were you injured in the war?”

  Trong was staring at Toan with fiery eyes.

  Toan lowered his head and said, “The truth is I shot myself in the leg. I beg you—please forgive me!”

  Later that day, a crowd of men gathered at Hoa Binh’s house. They were all veterans who had come to visit after hearing that Trong’s old army friends were in town.

  “I am by no means a hero,” said Vinh, one of Trong’s old friends. “It’s Trong who gave up the official designation of hero and passed it on to me. He’s the one who deserves the recognition.” Vinh clapped Trong on the back.

  “It was a cruel war,” one of the elderly veterans added. “But we survived. In a sense, we’re all heroes.”

  Trong remained silent. It seemed like he didn’t want to say anything in this particular moment.

  Vinh stayed with Hoa Binh’s family for a few days after this. She often saw them marking a map with blue and red dots and cleaning old war mementos. They were preparing to take another trip to look for the graves of fallen soldiers from their unit. Hoa Binh had never seen her father so happy.

  Over the radio, she listened to the announcement of another storm approaching, but this time she felt a strange sense of relief.…

  14 / THEY BECAME MEN

  PHAM NGOC TIEN

  Pham Ngoc Tien was born in 1956 in Hanoi and graduated with a B.A. in literary studies from Hanoi University. He has been a member of the Vietnam Writers’ Association since 1997 and has won several awards for his fiction. His most famous work is a collection of short stories called They Became Men. The title story addresses an aspect of the soldier’s experience rarely acknowledged in Vietnamese fiction: the fact that many young men were still virgins when they went off to fight and die in the war. By celebrating the female character at the center of the story—a woman who sleeps with multiple young soldiers—Pham Ngoc Tien challenges the traditional Confucian values that had dominated Vietnamese society for thousands of years and dictated how a “virtuous” woman should act.

  * * *

  I

  The MC’s voice rang out loudly over the speaker system: “Pham Van Ngoc, a junior majoring in literature at University X, will be presenting her research paper titled ‘Sacrifice: The Unique Fate of Women in the War to Defend the Country.’ ”

  The morning session of the conference was almost over. The audience of literature majors culled from different universities was getting tired and restless.

  “Not war again!” some of them cried out.

  “This is a forum on literature, it has nothing to do with war!”

  “What’s the point of digging up some outdated past?”

  “What does she know about the war, anyway?”

  The student, Van Ngoc, hesitated at first as she reached the stage. Then she walked confidently to the podium. Her elegant white ao dai and kind face immediately silenced the unruly crowd. Her posture and mannerisms were determined and confident, but her voice trembled slightly as she began to speak.

  At first it seemed there was nothing out of the ordinary in her presentation. She shared some of her research findings and several examples. The audience was quiet throughout—a kind of indifferent silence. Her topic was nothing new. Everyone already knew and accepted that women had made tremendous sacrifices during the war. It wasn’t until the conclusion of her presentation that Van Ngoc posed a rhetorical question about a specific kind of sacrifice and the role it deserved in any honest accounting of the war, that the audience started to get restless. What was she talking about? Why was she bringing this up?

  The audience began to grumble even more vehemently as Van Ngoc finished her presentation. Her usually rosy face went suddenly pale. Their voices were like the sound of gunshots.

  “You’ve turned the entire value of sacrifice upside down!”

  “There’s no need to talk about this filthy subject!”

  “This is crazy!”

  “Get her off the stage!”

  Van Ngoc’s entire body shuddered; then she collapsed suddenly behind the podium. After a few seconds she got up and ran off the stage, then stumbled her way out of the conference hall altogether.

  I couldn’t bear it any longer and finally ran after her. I found her in the hallway outside, crying. It was like something extremely heavy had overtaken her otherwise innocent face. As she saw me approaching, she wiped away her tears, then said hurriedly,

  “You were a soldier and you’re a writer. Please help me understand. The war happened not that long ago, so why do people seem to forget so quickly? Why won’t they acknowledge the sacrifice those women made? Is it just old-fashioned morality? But it was wartime! Why should they think this is something that somehow blemishes victory? Please answer me!”

  I remained silent.

  “My father,” Van Ngoc continued, “was a soldier who became a man after his experiences with one of these women. She helped him overcome many challenges. You know that, and yet you remained silent back there. This woman helped my father in more ways than anyone can imagine. No matter how much time goes by, we can’t let people question her dignity.”

  Again I said nothing.

  “Why won’t you help me tell the truth about these women? Why won’t you help me fight for their honor?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to speak. There was nothing really for me to say. So instead I took her hand and held it tightly in my own. But with all of her strength she tore away from me and ran quickly down the hallway.

  I stood there all alone for a moment. From the conference hall I heard the speaker announce, “Nguyen Trung Hieu, a senior at University Z, will now be presenting his paper titled, ‘Illusive Poetics in the Surreal Poems of Han Mac Tu.’ ”

  II

  She was twenty years old and had been in the military for one year. The war against the Americans was at its peak. She was stationed at a small base deep in a section of the jungle where heavy bombing had destroyed most of the dense foliage. After long, grueling marches, different companies of soldiers would stop at the base to rest before going into combat. Female soldiers were rare at this particular jungle base. There were only five females out of the over one hundred soldiers stationed there. And she was the only one from the city. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, as she readily admitted, or at least wouldn’t have been considered so back in the city. But in the wilderness of the jungle, amid the cruelties of war, her beauty seemed mesmerizing: her smooth, lithe body; long silky hair; and fair skin.

  Next to the base was a creek. The water was clear and calm, though it wasn’t deep; the reflection of the golden moon often shone off the bottom. She was well educated—she’d been studying literature before dropping out to volunteer for the army—and the other soldiers would criticize her for her bourgeois habit of bathing in the morning, typical among female soldiers from the city.

  One morning, as she made her way down to the creek, the air felt unusually chilly. It was like autumn had suddenly arrived overnight. The sun was still low on the horizon and the mist hovering over the water looked silvery. Everything had that pure silver color. She stood still as a statue, enjoying the early morning air. In that moment everything seemed to suddenly disappear. There was no war, no sorrow, no worry.

  She touched the water gently, then lowered herself down into it. Behind her, on the bank of the creek, there was a rustling sound. A chicken jumped from a bush and ran off into the jungle. Suddenly she had the sense that someone was watching her. Then she heard two young voices coming from behind a pile of rocks.

  “She’s gorgeous! Just like the Venus!”

  “I don’t know about the Venus, but she’s more beautiful than all the girls in my hometown.”

  “Did you spy on them too?”

  “No. In my village everyone just bathes together in a local pond. But the girls don’t have light skin like hers.”

  “This is the first time I’ve seen a girl’s body so clearly.”

  “Same here.”

  “I should’ve gotten married before getting sent out here. I should’ve known to do that.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You can’t marry someone just because you want to take off her clothes.” The voice grew quieter all of a sudden. “With my girlfriend, I could’ve known her body, if I’d wanted to. She wanted to get married but, you know, we don’t know when we’ll come back. She’s in the prime of her youth; I didn’t want her to feel tied to me. Who knows what can happen in the middle of all this shooting and bombing? So I refused to get married. The day before I left, we went out together to the fields and sat there until morning. She cried a lot. I felt sorry for her. She said that I didn’t have to marry her and all she wanted was to have a child with me. She didn’t care how long the war might last or about her reputation. She didn’t mind suffering through hardships. She would raise our child and wait for me, no matter how long it took. To be honest, I was really moved by what she said and almost agreed. But in the end I had to control my emotions and make the right decision. I hope she understands. In the future, maybe I can find her again. But what if …”

  “Shhh! Keep your voice down. You don’t want anyone to hear us. I was about to say the same thing. Our country is at war. We don’t know what will happen to men like us. It’s not fair to ask a woman to wait for us.”

  “If I died now, I’d still be a boy, not a man. It’s sad.”

  “Let’s go collect some water. And don’t make too much noise! It would be embarrassing if we got caught.”

  She didn’t miss a single word they said, and her eyes followed the shadows of the two young soldiers as they retreated from behind the rocks. She forgot that they had just been spying on her. Thinking about their conversation, she shivered. Why was the creek water so cold? Her entire body trembled as she steadied herself on a rock and ground her teeth. She tried to understand it: If they died before being with a woman, would their souls wander lost in the afterlife, full of regret and longing?

  But no! she told herself. That was ridiculous. If I died, I would simply die.

  Gathering all of her strength, she stood up from the creek bed. It was so cold that her body felt as if it were being poked by thousands of tiny needles. Somehow she managed to get out of the water, put on her clothes, and stumble back to her unit. On the ground of the main tunnel back at the base she collapsed.

  * * *

  A sensation like floating. Her body bouncing gently up and down. What kind of bomb had they dropped on the tunnel this time? Had the tunnel collapsed? No, it couldn’t be that. She’d experienced the bombings before, the suffocating feeling, the soil closing in all around, her hands clawing in every direction to dig herself out.

  But this was different.

  It was completely dark. She wanted to scream but couldn’t. To take her mind off the fear she tried thinking of her mother. But she knew that her mother wouldn’t be able to bear seeing her in this situation, so forced her from her mind. And her father? He had died at Dien Bien Phu, and she’d never met him. Soldiers are funny like that—they stop home for a short visit, get their wives pregnant, and then leave forever. She could imagine her father shaking his head and saying, “You can’t die. You’re all we have.”

  She must think of something else.

  My boyfriend.

  He’d lost his life in an aerial bombardment. They bombed the tunnel where he was stationed, and his fellow soldiers painstakingly removed his body from the dirt. His hand was still clutching a Truong Son pen, a gift she had given him. Perhaps he’d been killed while working on a novel or a poem.

  As this thought occurred to her, the sky suddenly brightened. She closed her eyes and heard voices.

  My comrades, she thought, wishing she could scream out the words. I am alive!

  She felt as if she were on a ride at an amusement park, being carried off somewhere by forces beyond her control. She felt dizzy and scared and called out to her mother. But no, it wasn’t her mother. Her mother would never wear a white shirt and white hat like that. Whose voice was that? It sounded totally unfamiliar.

  “Forty-four degrees … Delirium … Get her in the bed over there.…”

  She felt herself floating even more quickly now. The figure in white faded. In the distance she thought she could see Long Bien Bridge back in Hanoi. The smell of bombing. They had destroyed one of the bridges’ pylons again.

  Hurry up! someone yelled. Why are you so slow?

  There was fire everywhere. A rocket had also hit the Phuc Tan neighborhood, a dense working-class part of the city.

  Is anyone hurt? she heard herself call out, but she was only answered by the haunting echo of her own voice. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but she laughed. How embarrassing if someone could see her laughing like this while their countrymen suffered and died.