She had no idea where he had gone. But later, once Uncle Ho’s forces had liberated the city, she heard that people had seen Kiet sitting on one of the tanks leading the convoy.

  * * *

  The reunion at the restaurant eventually had to end. A car came to pick up Smith and Mrs. Trung and take them to the airport. Although everyone promised to get together again at some point, nobody wanted to leave. Mrs. Trung eventually had to pull Smith away from the table.

  “We have to go,” she said to her husband. “And you should give Kiet’s stuff back to him before we leave.”

  “What stuff?” Kiet seemed surprised.

  Smith pulled a bag out from underneath the table.

  “These are the weapons I found in your pockets when you were drowning in the creek,” Smith said, placing the bag on the table for everyone to see. “I knew that if I left them there you would have gotten in trouble. And I was right, because the police came to search you right away.”

  “You’ve been keeping them all these years?” Kiet asked, astonished.

  “No, of course not! I could never bring weapons like these through customs. But a few days ago we visited Mrs. Nam Bong, the former landlady, and dug them up from underneath a banyan tree in her backyard. Fortunately, nobody ever cut down the tree or built a house there.” Smith opened the bag and showed Kiet. “Here, take a look. It’s been over thirty years, so they’re a little rusted, just like the old bridge that leads to the rice paddies.”

  Kiet’s hands trembled as he picked up one of the old rusted guns. He was so moved and emotional that he couldn’t even manage to utter a “thank you” to Smith.

  Then the couple got into the waiting car and drove off in the scorching midday heat.

  Bach was left alone with Kiet in the restaurant now. She poured him a glass of water. Kiet seemed distant and lost in his thoughts. It took a little while before he smiled cheerfully again. He patted Bach on the head, like he used to when she was little.

  “I can’t believe that American!” he said, still surprised. “He hid my weapons under a tree without telling me. I went back to the creek the next day after the water had gone down and looked for them until my feet and hands were swollen.”

  “Did you steal the guns from the prison that afternoon?” Bach asked.

  Kiet smiled. “Who else would it have been? But I got unlucky that day. The water was too fast and aggressive and the guards kept shooting at me. Bullets were flying over my head. Plus my legs started to cramp up as I tried to swim away.”

  “How many times did you steal guns?” Bach wanted to know.

  “A few, I can’t remember exactly. Everyone in the hamlet already suspected that it was me. And they were right.” Kiet smiled again. “Bach, drink this glass of wine with me, okay?”

  “What are we drinking to?” Bach asked, picking up the glass.

  “We’ll drink to the fact that Smith and I can be both enemies and friends at the same time.”

  Bach drank and emptied the glass. But she didn’t drink to Kiet and Smith’s specific situation. She drank instead to a belief she still clung to firmly, over thirty years after the end of the war: that in difficult situations people were still capable of showing some kind of natural kindness toward one another.

  16 / LOVE AND WAR

  NGUYEN NGOC THUAN

  Nguyen Ngoc Thuan was born in 1972 in Binh Thuan and currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City. He is a visual artist but has won several literary awards for his writing, including the Swedish Peter Pan Prize in 2008 for his children’s book Open the Window with Closed Eyes. His story “Love and War” is notable for its postmodern, surreal style, rare in the tradition of socialist realism typical of most Vietnamese war fiction. While on the surface the story seems to function as a simple allegory for war and its destructive, all-consuming nature, the nuances of the narrator’s feelings toward the unnamed cannibalistic female character—the woman he trusts and loves and continues returning to, despite the fact that she seems to be literally consuming him whole—complicate this overly simplistic reading. By the end of the story, the reader is left wondering, Who is the real enemy?

  * * *

  The rumors said she was a cannibal. So I wasn’t exactly surprised when I woke up one morning next to her and discovered that I was missing one of my legs.

  Did you eat one of my legs, I said, while I was sleeping?

  She got angry and refused to let me sleep next to her again.

  It can’t be, I said, because I thought I really loved her. I don’t believe what everyone says. Your smile is so beautiful, your teeth are so white. You wouldn’t use those teeth to bite me or those lips to suck my blood.

  But she was still mad at me.

  I said, When I asked if you ate my leg while I was sleeping last night, I was just kidding.

  She didn’t believe me.

  You are just like everyone else, she said. You repeat the exact same things they all say.

  I said, Well, now that I think about it, I actually must have lost my leg in the war. I must have forgotten, I said. The war was a long time ago, you know. Our country has gone through so many wars, it’s hard to keep them all straight sometimes.

  A few days later, walking on crutches because I was now missing a leg, I came to apologize. She wasn’t mad anymore and forgave me.

  Having a bad memory is not a character flaw, she said. And anyway, I know you’re mentally deranged.

  Suddenly we were in love again, even more intensely than before. She even let me kiss her on the mouth.

  That weekend, she let me sleep next to her again.

  This time, she said, you can sleep at my feet.

  Your feet? I asked.

  Yes, my feet, she said.

  Her feet were pristinely white like pieces of white jade.

  Her feet were so purely white that I thought she must never use them for walking.

  Her feet reminded me of a pair of delicate hands.

  At midnight I touched her feet and felt a sudden shock, but also happiness.

  After that I feel asleep. Contented. Fulfilled.

  When I woke up the next morning and discovered that I’d lost my other leg as well, I had to ask her, While I was asleep last night, did you eat my other leg?

  Immediately I regretted that I’d said anything. She was so angry that she began to shake. Her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t speak.

  Finally she ushered me outside and shut the door.

  I crawled across an empty verandah, feeling extremely sad. I knew then that I’d lost my pure trust in her.

  I have lived this life, but I don’t trust it.

  I don’t trust love.

  I listen to the words of others instead of my own heart.

  After she kicked me out I continued to sit in front of her door, hoping she would reconsider.

  I continued to sit, and I continued to wait.

  Meanwhile everyone kept repeating the rumor that she was a cannibal.

  Finally, one rainy day, she opened the door and let me inside. Quietly she began cleaning the wounds of my severed legs.

  I said, It wasn’t you, it was probably because of the war. I said, We have gone through too many wars—wars with the French, the Americans, and the Chinese. I said, I must have forgotten that I’d already lost both legs before I even met you. I said, It’s all these past wars that have damaged our love for each other.

  Please forgive me, I said.

  Please forgive war.

  Please forgive everything that destroys our memories.

  Or makes us not want to remember.

  Or causes us pain.

  Tears began running down my face as I spoke.

  She said, War isn’t worth getting angry about.

  With that, I knew she had forgiven me.

  War is a piece of shit, I said. Dog shit.

  She laughed cheerfully.

  She had apparently forgotten that we were in a fight, and so once again she let me spend the night.

  She said, Tonight I will let you sleep under the blanket with me.

  My heart leaped up into my throat, like on the day the South was liberated.

  War has separated us, I said. But peace will allow our hearts to blossom. As if our hearts were growing roses, I said.

  I love peace, I said.

  And I hate war, she said.

  Me too, I said.

  When I woke up that third time beside her in bed, I discovered that my arms were gone.

  I said, Of course, I lost my arms and my legs in the war. I must not have remembered that. War is cruel, I said. It confounds me.

  Sweetheart, she said, it isn’t your fault. You have a bad memory, that’s all. Nobody can hold a bad memory to blame.

  It’s true! I said. It’s all war’s fault. Goddamn war!

  I said, We need to condemn the Americans. The French too, I said.

  And the Chinese! she said.

  We must resist them, I said.

  The Japanese fascists as well, she said.

  I am so happy, I said.

  She had never loved me this much before.

  I said, I’ll print out pamphlets to inform people that we need to hate war. We must be antiwar, I said. War destroys our love for one another.

  She said, Tonight I will let you put your head under my breasts.

  Under your breasts? I said.

  Yes, she said. Under my breasts.

  I lay my head underneath her breasts and went to sleep. I had never been so close to her heart.

  The fourth time I woke up next to her, I touched my entire body and realized that my head was missing.

  It’s not a problem, I said. It’s only normal. Everyone loses their head after experiencing war. Besides, having a head only makes us crazier anyway, I said.

  War makes us crazy, she said.

  She wanted to reward me for my trust in her love.

  She said, Tonight is a special night. I want to give everything to you.

  Give me everything? I said.

  Yes, everything, she said.

  My soul jumped. I lay down in her arms. I knew that I deserved this love. I had sacrificed enough in the war. It was a terrific reward for everything I had suffered.

  Afterward I fell asleep.

  Only people who are really in love can understand that when a woman chews a piece of your flesh, tearing it from your body, she is only feeling true love.

  The fifth time I woke up next to her, I didn’t bother checking what parts of my body were now missing. All I thought about this time was my love for her.

  That is all I have now, this love. When it cools during sleep, I need to heat it up first thing in the morning when I wake up.

  I also need to hate and condemn war more.

  The Chinese, the French, the Americans … You were all cruel. I hate you!

  I also hate those who have never gone to war with our country but plan to in the future.

  Those are my last words. From a person who dies for love and war.

  17 / THE PERSON COMING FROM THE WOODS

  NGUYEN THI AM

  Nguyen Thi Am was born in 1961 in the South Vietnamese province of Long An and earned her undergraduate degree in law in the former Soviet Union. She currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City and works as a successful businesswoman at a firm specializing in agricultural products. Although she is not a full-time writer, many of her short stories have been widely anthologized in Vietnam, and she is known for her minimalistic and subtle style. In “The Person Coming from the Woods,” the spiritual world is treated as a normal extension of the physical world. Though she claims to be frightened at times, the narrator does not seem shocked or surprised to be visited by the wandering ghost of a fallen soldier. This is the reflection of a widely held belief in Vietnam: a person who has died in a violent, unnatural way, or a person whose body is missing, can never really rest in peace; on the contrary, their soul will continue to wander lost in the afterlife, stuck in a kind of tormented, restless purgatorial state.

  * * *

  After graduating from teacher training college, I was assigned to a school in the west of Quang Tri province, a remote and desolate area. It was a middle school with five classes and teachers who came from the lowlands; the majority of the students were ethnic minorities. The school principal had arranged for me to live with a math teacher named Ha who was about thirty years old. We shared a small house, the roof thatched with grass. It didn’t look very sturdy. Sitting inside the house, I imagined that a strong wind could easily blow the whole thing away.

  After class was over, we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves in the evenings. In winter we would walk down to a creek and collect wood that had washed up on the shore and carry it back home. At night we burned the wood in a fire in the middle of the house to keep warm. Then we’d sit and stare at the flames, engaging in deep, serious thinking, as if we were philosophers.

  One night, when it was getting close to bedtime, Ha sighed and said,

  “I’m ugly and getting older, so it doesn’t matter for me. But you’re young and as beautiful as a goddess and have to teach and live here. It’s such a waste.”

  I laughed. “My mother says that everybody has their own special fate. Maybe one day a man will come find me here.”

  “That could very well happen,” Ha said. “You know, about twelve kilometers from here there’s a border patrol station. Maybe a border patrol officer will propose to you.”

  Both of us laughed cheerfully; then we crawled into bed and lay under our blankets. We had trouble falling asleep. Eventually we slept for a bit and woke up again, then slept a little bit more. It was a long, restless night.

  After two months, I started to notice that this area was really beautiful on brightly moonlit nights. When we opened the door on those nights, we saw mountains and hills drowning in the moonlight. In the distance, patches of white grass waved gently in the wind. It was at moments like this that Ha made her usual complaint:

  “Shut the door! This place used to be a battlefield, didn’t you know that? There are lost souls wandering all around here.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said. “Why should I be? There’s no anger between us.”

  Ha got into bed and covered her head with the blanket.

  “Hang, please!” she moaned. “I’m begging you.”

  Finally I got up and shut the door, then crawled into bed myself. I could hear the strong winds outside blowing through the woods. I couldn’t help but think that it might be fun if a border patrol officer out walking his rounds got lost and wound up here at our little thatched-roof house, talking with us, two young female teachers.

  At the end of my first six months teaching at the school, I received a letter from my boyfriend. He wanted to end our relationship. His reason was simple: his family wanted him to get married because he was the only son. He couldn’t marry me because I was living so far away. If everything had ended like that, it would have been fine. But with the letter he included a wedding invitation that had a note scribbled on it: “If possible, please make a visit back to your hometown and come to my wedding.”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks as I held his letter. It seemed obvious that he didn’t care at all about my feelings.

  That night, I woke up suddenly from a strange dream. My body felt hot and my throat was dry. I got up to look for a pill, then sat down next to the fire. Ha seemed to be in a deep sleep over in her bed. Maybe she was used to this lonely life by now. I stood up and opened the door. It was October. The sky outside seemed unusually high and full of stars. In the distance was a crescent moon, slipping slowly behind the mountains.

  Then, at the foot of the mountain, I suddenly noticed the outline of a man holding a gun and walking with his head bowed. I knew that night hunters were common in this area. They often wore a small light on their forehead; when the light caught an animal in its path, we’d sometimes see the beam freeze, then begin to dance, and then hear the sound of a gunshot. Sometimes the hunters would stop by our little house to ask us to light their cigarettes or for a glass of water, or sometimes even to slaughter the animals they’d just killed. They could be extremely generous; sometimes they’d even give us a piece of meat that was still warm.

  I’d been lost in my thoughts and hadn’t noticed that the man was approaching our house. I could see now that he wasn’t a hunter; he was a young soldier holding a gun and carrying a rucksack on his back.

  He smiled.

  “Hello, Miss Teacher,” he said. “My unit has given me permission to return home for a short visit. May I rest here for a few minutes?”

  I invited him inside and gave him a chair by the fire.

  “Please, have a seat,” I said.

  The soldier took off his rucksack and sat down. I poured him a glass of water, which he drank enthusiastically. When he was finished, he put the glass down and warmed his hands by the fire.

  “It’s about seven kilometers from here to the main road,” I said, “if you’d like to catch a bus to go to the lowlands. Do you know how to get there?”

  “I’ve been living here for six years,” he said. “I’ve been all over these woods.” He paused for a moment and smiled. “Tomorrow I will visit my mother.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen your mother?”

  “It’s been six years.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Because I haven’t been able to make it back home. May I have some more water, please?”

  I brought him more water and the soldier again drank voraciously, as if he hadn’t had anything to drink in a long time. Outside, a lone forest cricket chirped loudly.

  “Tell me about your hometown and your mother,” I said, changing the subject. “I live far away from home, so I feel homesick too.”

  The soldier added more wood to the fire.

  “My hometown is far away,” he said. “In Ha Bac, near the Thuong River. There are many rice fields there. In the afternoons I used to go out to the fields to look after my water buffaloes and fly kites. I remember how the twinkling evening light used to mean that a monsoon was coming. The afternoon would look colorful and beautiful under the broad sky full of dark clouds. Then within a few minutes, the sky would go black, the winds would pick up, and it would start to rain. The kids who were out there taking care of the buffaloes would shout and run home.”