Darkroom (2 page)
Authors: Joshua Graham
The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths …
—Eddie Adams, Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém, a Vietcong officer, with a pistol to the head
Prologue
IAN MORTIMER
Making people disappear isn’t quite as easy as I remember. Of course, I’m not as young as I used to be. Rigor mortis will soon set in, and I’ve got to dispose of this poor lass’s body straightaway. How can I possibly be doing this again?
Thankfully, no one’s around this time of night. And with her limbs properly weighed down, she’ll stay under until … Bugger! Only three bags in the trunk. I shall have to improvise.
Right. Everything is ready. I cross myself and pull her ever-stiffening body from the trunk. She’s slight—just shy of forty-five kilos, I’d venture—but quite muscular in the limbs.
A heavy duvet of clouds obscures the moon. It’s beastly cold out. Here on the remote side of the pond, far off the path, the rowboat is hidden behind the thicket of reeds, exactly where I left it last night. My headlights are off and I’m parked close enough to lower the body into the boat and row out.
As I lower her into the inky water, I’m careful not to splash. Her sweatshirt balloons, and bubbles surround her. A mane of flaxen hair spreads on the water’s surface.
Bollocks, she’s not sinking!
With my oar, I nudge her down. Even though her hands and feet have submerged, her hair still floats. A halo around the back of her head.
In the distance, a pair of headlights looms. It’s a blooming patrol car. No choice, I’ve got to row back and get away from here. But look at her—the back of her sweatshirt and her head are still bobbing at the surface.
Back in my car now. Slowly making my way back to the main road, I steal another glimpse. She’s still just beneath the surface, her blond hair a clear marker.
The patrol car’s headlights vanish behind a bunch of trees. If they turn left, they’ll be here in less than a minute.
I’m about to crawl clear out of my skin.
And then it happens.
Two large bubbles pop out from under the sweatshirt, just at the nape of her neck, and the weights do their trick. The lass’s body sinks to the bottom of the pond.
That was too close.
With all lights off, I drive off. A minute later, I can see in my rearview mirror that the squad car has just passed the pond. Didn’t even slow down. I’m well on my way home now. Into the warmth of Nicole’s embrace, and to kiss Bobby as he dreams of ponies and puppies.
Good Lord, what have I done?
1
XANDRA CARRICK
Binh Son, Vietnam: October 2008
This was her wish. Dad kept saying that from the moment we boarded our flight at JFK to our first step onto the fertile soil of
Bình Sơn
, which in English means “peaceful mountain.”
En route to our penultimate destination, Tran, our middle-aged guide, tells us all about the scenery through lively gesticulations and nasal broken English.
“This place all rice field now.” He lifts both hands and spreads them wide. Enthralled by the verdant fronds and the sound of exotic fauna, I hardly notice the weight of my backpack. “But during war,
Việt Nam Cộng Sản
come here in Bình Sơn.”
Perhaps it’s because I appear more Vietnamese than American that he breaks into the native tongue. Ironically, Dad, an American, knows more about this country than I do. He’s quiet and has been holding the urn under his arm, staring out at the hills.
Out in the lush green paddy fields, a boy prods his water buffalo with a bamboo stick, distracting me from Tran’s narrative. “Viet … what?” I’ve had enough years in weekend Vietnamese language classes to read and write. But this term escapes me.
“Việt Nam Cộng Sản.
V.C.” Tran laughs. “You know, Vietcong? Charlie?”
I glance over to Dad, to whom this would hold more meaning.
He shrugs.
That same emptiness in his eyes, which have grown darker and more profound since I was a child, evokes a blunt pang. It's been over a year. Rather than drawing closer, he's grown more distant.
Of course, Tran has no idea that he’s hiking with Peter Carrick, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who earned coveted accolades for his on-the-spot photos of the massacre at Huế. Nor does Tran realize that his daughter, Xandra Carrick, is a respected photojournalist in her own right. I may not have won a Pulitzer—not yet, anyway—but at twenty-seven, working for the
New York Times
is not too shabby.
“Vietcong fight American soldier here,” Tran explains, stopping to catch his breath.
I can take some pictures, which I do more out of responsibility to my craft than anything. “Now just rice farm family and water buffalo. Even water buffalo part of family. You know,
Chống cảy, vở cấy, con trâu đi bừa
.” Which means, The husband plows, the wife sows, water buffalos draw the rake. A proverb Mom taught me years ago, but it’s lost on Dad, who keeps staring at the hills.
“You okay, Dad?”
“I’m fine.”
The boy driving the long-horned beast is at most twelve years old. His loose pants are rolled up past his calves and his feet are submerged in ankle-deep water.
Narrow, peaked hills stand over the horizon, Titans guarding this remote village nestled in the manifold waterways of the Mekong. Palms sway in the earthy breeze blowing through the window and brushing through my now unruly hair.
I reach for Dad’s hand. One can only speculate on the reason for his reluctance to make this trip. As for me, this is my first time in Vietnam and I’m taken by its overwhelming beauty. “Was it like this when—?”
“Xandra, please. Don’t.”
“But there’s so much I want to know about this place, about you and Mom.”
“You know my answer.” The same for years, from the moment I first developed an interest in his career and experiences during the war.
“Even now?”
“Your mother would understand.” Dad’s gaze returns to the hills. “She knew how I felt about coming back here, but …” His gaze wanders off, draws him away to a time, a place, far off and forbidden. I know that look.
“Never mind, then.” I kiss his hand, lean into his chest.
For the next fifteen minutes, we continue quietly along the trail. Finally, Tran turns around and smiles, a gold tooth glinting in the setting sun. “Okay, we here.”
Still in awe of the breathtaking landscape, I set my pack down, and stretch. The ground is soft and moist, but at the same time it’s as solid as the sidewalk outside my apartment on Central Park West.
Beyond the hilltops, the sun falls to rest in a poignant wash of amber. The
chrink-chrink
of Rain Quails rings out invisibly behind an emerald veil of bamboo in the distance. Every thought arrested, every word, no one speaks.
The light is perfect, though it won’t last much longer. And despite the somber occasion, I simply cannot forsake the scenery. These shots will help me to remember.
The shutter sounds from my Nikon ripple the silence like a stone tossed into a glassy pond. Still transfixed on that same spot up in the hills, Dad lets out a pointed breath. “Probably not the best time.”
“Just a couple more. For Mom.” A twinge works its way up and lodges in my throat. As Charles Kuralt so aptly put it: “There is melancholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass.”
“Make it quick, will you?” He pads over to Tran and hands him a roll of greenbacks. “
Cám ỏn nhiêu ľ âm.
”
With both hands, Tran receives his payment and bows. He waves and returns to the trail from whence we came.
All is tranquil as the sun passes her mantle to the rising moon. We are serenaded not only by the Rain Quails’ ditty but by a
chorus of frogs and crickets as well. Farmers and their water buffalo slosh back to their huts about half a mile downstream of us. Yet they can be heard as though a mere stone’s throw away.
For the first time in this journey, Dad puts his arm around my shoulders, warming my heart as nothing else can. He points to a vacant hut, with a kerosene lamp glowing in the window. Leaning into the security of his strong shoulder, I nod and take a moment to consider the significance of this place. Both to him and Mom.
“We start at daybreak.” He takes our bags and approaches the hut. “Let’s settle in.”
As I follow him into the hut, an unexpected irony arises: I’ve never traveled so far just to say good-bye. But I am glad to have made the trip. Mom would be pleased.
This was her wish.
2
GRACE TH’AM AI LE
Thirty-Five Years Ago
Binh Son, Vietnam: January 7, 1973
I always knew the war would come to the South. Before the Communists sent the Vietcong back down the Ho Chi Minh trail, before the Spring Festival attacks during
Tết Nguyên Đán
, I knew. I had seen it all in my dreams. I even foresaw my parents’ deaths, which left me and my brother orphans, forcing us to flee to the village of my aunt and uncle.
Some of the boys in Bình Sơn, on this side of the Mekong Delta, had expressed interest in joining the Vietcong, my brother included. Everyone else feared this would eventually draw a confrontation to our otherwise untouched hamlets.
And so it had.
The trip back from Saigon was only 120 kilometers, but it was like going from one world to another. At first glance, you would not imagine a war was taking place. Abundant green mountains, flowing waters of the Mekong, all resting under cotton clouds and sunlit skies.
Amongst the countless generations of farming families, I was the first girl, if not the first person, to leave and go to university. Now, upon my return, my entire life had changed.
At the bottom of the dusty road, where the foot of Bình Sơn touches the water, all that remained of the huts in the neighboring
village were charred embers. Not a soul stirred. I could only hope that everyone had escaped.
Higher up, I looked to the hills where once I lived. Where Huynh Tho still lived. Perhaps, because it was hidden behind bamboo and palms, it had been spared. So quiet were the mountains. But for the whispering wind, nothing stirred. Not even a bird.
Off the road’s side, I walked under the shade of the trees. I had to find my brother and quietly bring him back to Saigon before it was too late.
Quietly.
How do you take an angry young idealist who espouses the goals of the Vietcong away from his village quietly? The thought of an argument with Huynh Tho made me as anxious as did the war itself.
I stepped toward the path leading to our village. Each snap of a twig jolted me, as if it were a gunshot. But there was no one in sight. The utter quiet unsettled me.
Without warning, less than ten meters from the path, a terrifying explosion threw me to the ground. Through the ringing in my ears and the clouds of dust and smoke, I could tell. A battle had just erupted all around me.
“Huynh Tho!” Disembodied and hollow, my voice sounded as though I were underwater. Flashes of light, thumping explosions reverberating in my chest, the
tat-tat-tat-tat
of gunfire. Too frightened was I to lift my face from the dirt.