The Summer Garden (114 page)

She bowed her head as if she were praying. “Alexander Barrington,” said Moon Lai, lifting her steady gaze to him, “what do you believe in? Do
you,
of all people, not know that your new country is at war with your old country? You are in the middle of a very hot war; shouldn’t
you
, of all people, care about this most? Who cares about babies? What do you think is going on around here? Do you know that your country is also at war with
my
country? We are fighting for the very soul of Vietnam! Vietnam will be
one
. One Communist Republic of Vietnam. Nothing you Americans—or the stooges you call your South Vietnamese allies—can do to change that. We will not rest until you go. Southeast Asia: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, they are not your business. They are our business. Instead you come here and pretend to fight.” She laughed easily. “You call this fighting? We call it losing.”

“We are not losing,” said Alexander. “We have not lost one single fucking engagement against you since this damn war began.”

“You are losing regardless. Do you know why? Because you’re wasting your time dumping bombs from safe air, going on recon missions like this one, and fucking whores.”

“Like you?”

“But you know who
is
fighting?” she went on. “We are. The Soviets train us, and teach us, and educate us, and arm us. They teach us your language, Commander—Russian, English, and the language of war—which is the only language
you
understand. We fight with their old weapons and the new weapons you leave behind. We fight without boots and without helmets and without C-rations. You burn us with napalm? We bandage ourselves and keep going. You kill our crops with Agent Blue? We eat grass and keep going. We do not care about your bombs and your chemicals. We do not care if we die. Because we are fighting for our life, for our very existence—the way the Red Army once fought Hitler. Victory was the only option. That is the way Americans fought in World War Two, and for the first few months in Korea. But here in Vietnam, what you are doing is pretending to fight. That is why you will never win, despite having the most disciplined, best trained, best equipped force in the world. Because you are unwilling to sacrifice even fifty thousand of your men to defeat communism in Indochina, while we will sacrifice our men to the last one to defeat
you
. We will sacrifice
millions
of our men, tens of millions, not a lousy fifty thousand! No price is too high to pay, no sacrifice is large enough. We believe in this war, and you do not.
You
yourself do not believe in it, your
country
does not believe in it, your jodies at home do not believe in it. Your politicians and your journalists
certainly
do not believe in it.” Moon Lai smiled warmly. “In fact, they do so much of our vital work for us, destabilizing the will of our American enemy. And once you leave, the South Vietnamese, despite all your training, will not last a week.”

She spoke so softly; her voice was melodious; it never rose above a purr; words fluttered like butterflies off her tongue. She smiled! But these were the words she was saying. A poem, of all things, came back to Alexander. When she spoke what a tender voice she used…John Dryden, how had it gone?…Like flakes of feathered snow, it melted as it left her mouth. But her words were incongruous. Alexander wanted to say, I don’t understand a word you’re saying; speak English.

But he understood.

He was imprisoned by her voice and her large belly. She looked like Tania when she was eight months pregnant, when she could not get off the couch or the bed without Alexander’s help, when she could not turn over without rocking and rolling, when he walked around after her with his hands constantly out, in case she tripped or slipped or wavered.

Alexander wavered. In response to what he had just heard, the only thing he uttered was, “The South Vietnamese also believe in their war, no?”

“No. They are weak, and they are led by the nose by you. Vietnam will be one despite them, and despite the mercenaries you send here to help them.”

“My son is not a fucking mercenary.”

“Your son was not, no,” Moon Lai said, motionless and calm. “He was one among half a million men.” She paused and blinked. “But do you know what? He did not believe in this war either. Oh, he thought he did. Until he met me, he thought he did. And when he married me, he still thought he did. But he never even asked me if I was South Vietnamese! He married me instantly when I told him I was having a baby, and he never even asked if it was his.”

Alexander, his fists clenched, compassion for her draining out of him, said, “Yes. Because he believed in
you
.”

Moon Lai shook her head. “Only superficially. When he opened his eyes here in Kum Kau and saw where he was and pleaded for me, the interrogator brought me to him, pregnant and roped up and told him to speak. Anthony spoke all right, but do you know what he said?” She took a breath. “‘I don’t give a fuck what you do to her,’ said your son. ‘And that baby isn’t mine. They say that a wife is only for one man. But sometimes she is for two men, and sometimes for three. And
my
wife fucked every American soldier from here to Saigon, lying on her back trying to ambush them with her pussy like she ambushed me. She may as well have had razor blades in it. Kill her in front of me. I don’t care.’” Moon Lai smirked casually even as a tremble passed her face. “Needless to say, of course, they did not kill me. But my point to you is made. He did not believe in me.”

“Believe in you? What the fuck are you talking about, believe in you?” said Alexander, gratified that at that terrible moment Anthony finally saw the truth—Anthony, who once thought all the world was good. “My son finally learned he had found something lower than a two-dollar whore,” said Alexander, “and he wanted you to know it.”

“Yes, that is right,” she said. “So love was not completely blind, was it?” Moon Lai composed her mouth. “You should be grateful to us, because it was here in Kum Kau that your son finally found out what he himself believed in. It was not the war against communism, and it certainly was not me. Until he found out what he believed in, we could not make any progress with him. Nothing we could say could convince him to confide in us. We threatened him with a transfer to the Castro camp. We brought in our best interrogators, we used our strongest methods—”

Alexander flinched and flinched again.

“—Nothing was making an impression on him. He cursed us in English, Russian, Spanish—even our own. He told us to kill him. We kept him in water, we deprived him of water. We beat him, we starved him, we burned him. We kept him with rats, we did…other things to him. And then I would come and minister to him.” Her voice was soothing. “I ministered so
thoroughly
to him. I was his only friend, and his
wife
, and he was chained and naked and had no way out. He had to let me
touch
him. What punishment that must have been for him, what
torture
.” Her hands were tensing slightly, lying less languidly on her stomach. “You are recoiling, Commander, why?” Moon Lai relaxed her hands. “Finally we figured out a way. Pretending to give up, we said to him that we have kept him hidden long enough. He was no longer of any use to us. We were going to notify his government that he was still alive and an NVA prisoner. Maybe they would negotiate for Anthony Barrington.”

Alexander paled.

Moon Lai smiled. Her teeth were dazzling.

“Exactly.” She nodded. “You are very good, Anthony’s father. You see things. We said, your parents will be so glad to know you are alive, a POW in North Vietnam. But Anthony did not seem to think so at all. He said he would tell us everything, to keep his name from appearing on the POW rolls, and you from finding out he had been taken prisoner. How much valuable classified intel he gave us then! After all,” said Moon Lai, looking straight at Alexander, “he knows you are a wanted traitor and deserter, who killed sixty-eight of our men to escape his just punishment.”

Our men
?

“And so now, Commander,” said Moon Lai, “are you coming with me? Because your son is waiting. Is your wife here, too, with you, perhaps?” She waited for his answer and when Alexander did not speak, she whispered, “What a pity.”

“Who
are
you?” Alexander whispered, inaudibly, trying not to gasp.

Her voice finally catching and breaking, Moon Lai said, “I want you to know I couldn’t help it. I
loved
him.” Her eye filled up, spilled over. “He was so…open. But you ask me who I am. Your son taught me this. Ask yourself these three questions, Moon Lai, he said to me, and you will know who you are. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important, what do you love? And I will tell you. I am a Vietnamese Communist. That is what I believe in. That is what I hope for. That is what I love.”

Before she was finished speaking, before Alexander could move, could draw breath, a shiny sickle flashed in Moon Lai’s small hand, a splint blade that swung forward and plunged hilt-deep into Alexander’s inner thigh. She aimed straight at his femoral artery. He jerked in a half-inch, half-second reflex and she missed—just—but she was lightning swift, and in the next inhale, without losing her balance, she pulled the blade out, ready to thrust the knife into Ha Si’s face as he moved on her. But Alexander grabbed her wrist, and Ha Si had his own knife well in hand. She opened her mouth to scream and Ha Si yanked her head back and sliced his blade deep and wide across her throat. He pitched her on the ground away from them, and with her gurgling sounds behind him, dropped his knife and grabbed Alexander’s leg.

They both struggled with their hands over the red river, fighting to cover the deep wound. With one hand Ha Si pulled a QuikClot coagulant out of his first-aid pouch. It was painless, sterile and worked by physically absorbing the liquid from the blood. Alexander pressed it into the wound; grabbing a vial of silver nitrate from the pouch, Ha Si poured an unconscionable amount over the leg and yanked out an emergency kit. He laid the primary bandage on top of the QuikClot, strapped the pressure bar against Alexander’s thigh, tightened with adhesive and pulled the cords. He wrapped the secondary dressing twice around. All of this took no more than thirty seconds.

“I can’t believe I wasn’t more careful,” Alexander breathed out.

“You were plenty careful,” said Ha Si, dripping more silver nitrate over the bandages. “Your son got hooked and never saw the sickle until it was too late.”

“You wrapped it like a tourniquet,” said Alexander.

“The blood has to stop, Commander,” Ha Si said quietly.

“The blood will stop but I’ll lose my fucking leg.” Alexander loosened the dressing.

“You will have your life,” said Ha Si.

“I need my leg,” Alexander said. “He is down there and we have to get him immediately before someone notices she’s missing. And easy with the nitrate.”

They waited a few moments to see if the blood would stop. “How do you know he’s down there?” asked Ha Si. “I was bluffing her.” He paused. “But I told you. She would be dead before she gave anything away.”

“She gave it away,” Alexander said, holding his leg, his hands red-gluey, sticky. “She couldn’t help what she is either. He’s down below.” He broke off, glanced behind Ha Si, breathed hard, stared down at his leg to
retain
his composure, stared down at his profusely bleeding leg to keep his voice and his face, so that he could speak his next words to the Yard. “Bannha,” Alexander said, with his head down, “could you—turn her away from me? Could you—turn her so her back is to me? Please.” He didn’t look up as Ha Si crawled across the straw. Alexander heard him flip Moon Lai’s pregnant body away. He breathed out.

“It is all right, Commander,” said Ha Si. “Do you want some morphine?”

“Get the fuck out of here, morphine. I won’t be able to get up.”

“You think you are going to get up now?”

“Just stop the bleeding, will you?” The room, so hot before, was not just hot now, the air was wet with floating red particles and the hooch began to smell like rust, like magnetic metallic compounds, like they were sitting in a blood smelt. It was suffocating. They were breathing in four quarts of Moon Lai’s iron—and some quarts of Alexander’s. Silently they held their bandages and clothes and hands and silver metallic poisons against the slick thigh, and waited out the seconds.

“You forgot there are no civilians on the other side,” said Ha Si. “They are all enemy combatants. It is war, and you forgot even as her vicious words were reminding you. Her pregnancy was such a powerful weapon against you. She knew Ant had to learn it from somewhere. You did get careless.”

“Wrong,” said Alexander. “Rather, you’re right—I wasn’t listening to what she was saying. I didn’t give a shit about her principles or beliefs or whatever other fucking thing she was telling me. And I’ve heard so many vicious things in my life, that frankly it’s just water off my back. I was listening for one thing and one thing only—whether I had been right in what I had observed of her, walking into this hut and walking out with lead on her shoulders. That lead was love. Every time she went down she was devastated from seeing him.” The opium vials told Alexander more than he wanted to know. “Once I knew she loved him, I knew she wouldn’t let him go into the Cuban Program. I knew he was down below.”

“Yes, but once you knew it, she had to kill you,” said Ha Si. “She sacrificed her own life, her baby’s life, to kill you.”

“Did she kill me?”

“I cannot stitch this,” said Ha Si. “The wound is deep. You need—”

“Ha Si,” said Alexander. “I know what I need. To get my son. Now stop my fucking leg from bleeding and let’s get to it.”

Ha Si held him tighter. The seconds ticked. One minute became two. “You are lucky,” he said. “She pulled the knife out too quick trying to kill me. Look, the blood is already thickening. Let us wait five more minutes.” He gave Alexander some water.

Gulping it down, Alexander said, “We don’t have five minutes. We don’t have five seconds. Let’s go.” He got up and fell down. He couldn’t stand on his numb leg.