He turned to the woman and said, “Is this your daughter?”
The old woman nodded and touched her eyes lightly with a handkerchief. “Yes, she passed into the spirit world four years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” the major said.
“We are all sorry,” the woman said. “The whole world should be sorry. This war took the sweetest daughter a mother could have.”
The major said, “Yes, madame, and she saved the life of this soldier just last week.” And with that, the major sat the old woman down and told her his story.
After he was done, the old woman simply nodded and turned her face toward the window. “I am glad to know that my daughter’s spirit has not forgotten this world,” she said.
Then the old woman lowered her face and such a stillness and sadness seemed to come over her that the major knew he could say no more. He rose and bowed to the woman and turned and bowed to the shrine of Miss Linh, saying a silent prayer of thanks, and he left the house on the street called Lotus and he wandered into the grove of trees nearby and sat down, because a great weariness had come over him. He spoke her name once more-"Linh"-and a pale light filled the grove of trees and he fell into a deep sleep.
When the major woke, it was very dark. He leaped to his feet with the fright of waking from a bad dream, but he could remember no dream and he realized where he was and what had happened. He had slept all day and into the night in the grove of trees near Miss Linh’s house and once again he felt a calmness come over him. He had to drive back to the base camp, but he knew that Linh’s spirit would be there in the mountains to protect him. So he walked back to his car, bowing to her house, which was dark with sleep now as he passed. In his car, his hands were steady and his heart was light, and he drove off without even thinking of his earthly lover, who no doubt was weeping now in another part of the city.
The night sky had no stars and no moon. All was black and the whole world for the major was the column of light his car pushed before him. But he drove across the plain and up into the mountains and the road rose and cut back and rose and the mountain on the one side and the chasm on the other were the same, deep black, and the major was calm. There was nothing in his head but a light rustling, like a summer wind moving banyan leaves or the panels of an aó dài rising behind a beautiful girl. He kept his eyes on the turns of the pavement in his headlights and at every turn he half-expected Miss Linh to appear before him. And he would stop on his own. He would go to her.
And the road went up and up until he passed the white road marker and the road leveled and he felt a change in the darkness, he could sense the difference in the dark of the chasm and the dark of the mountain, which rose on both sides of him now. This was near the place of Linh’s last appearance and his heart began to race. He felt like a boy carrying a flower across a schoolyard to a girl he’d been watching all year and now his courage was strong enough to move his legs but not strong enough to give him a voice or enough breath. The road descended gently and turned to the right, the place where he’d seen the rabbit kicking up its heels and disappearing, and then the sharp left and it was now, he thought, now, but the lights showed only the road, there was no young woman in an aó dài, and he slowed his car as he passed the place where she’d first appeared but there was nothing. The major felt a hot flush in his cheeks, the bloom of disappointment, and he thought, Perhaps it’s because I am not in danger this night. Then for a moment he even wished that the VC were doing their job, waiting to kill him, so that Miss Linh would have to come.
Even as this thought shaped itself, the road dipped and before him Miss Linh appeared in the far reach of his lights. The major cried out, wordless, a sound of pleasure like the yip of a dog about to be fed. And he slowed the car, pressed at the brake, and as he neared her, he could see her face, lovely, round, and the wide mouth was smiling, a smile he returned, broadly, and he pulled off the road and came to a stop.
The major leaped out of the car and stood where he was because she was coming toward him and he wanted to watch her move. She floated, this highland girl from An Khê, floated like the most beautiful of the Saigon girls, and the panels of her white aó dài lifted delicately, and she was smiling. Her thin nose seemed like the very best of the faces of Western women and the rest of Miss Linh’s face was the best of the Orient. The major trembled as she drew near and she stopped just before the car, in the brightest beam of the headlights, and she seemed so substantial to the major, a spirit that had all the delicious tangibleness of an earthly body. “Miss Linh,” he said, with a great sigh, as if he had been destined all his life to be on this mountaintop with her.
“Major Trung,” she said, and her voice was as soft as a summer wind moving through banyan leaves, and he knew it had been her voice rustling in his head all through his journey to this place.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.
“And I’m glad you are here,” she said. “This was our appointed time.” And she smiled at him. Her lovely, wide mouth widened farther as the smile grew and the smile did not stop when it reached the edge of her mouth but pushed the mouth farther, quickly now, and the major’s hands clenched as the smile opened and the great tongue came out, red and soft, and it grew and filled his sight and licked forward and touched him, a lover’s tongue, wet and insistent and clinging, and the major’s feet left the ground, the tongue lifted him up and he was yanked forward and he had time for one glance at Miss Linh’s eyes gleaming in the light, enormous eyes, as big as twin moons, and then there was darkness all around him and the pain crushed along the back of him, from his head to his feet, though he died quite quickly, long before he was chewed into pulp and swallowed.
Now, if you’ve been listening to me and even took note of my claim that I know this story to be true, you may be surprised at this turn of events. You thought perhaps that I myself was the major, and things would have turned out differently. But that is a foolish, romantic notion. I have no hesitation in telling you that. The major died horribly in the jaws of this enticing woman. And if you care about what I’m saying and you do not despise me for calling you foolish, even if I have no guile anymore and I call you this seriously, without charm, then you are a very rare American indeed, and I will tell you how I know this story to be true.
When Saigon was falling to the communists in April of 1975, I was working for your embassy and I kept waiting for my boss, an American foreign service officer, to come and get me out. He had left the week before and he told me to wait. But things happened — do not blame him — and it was getting very late — the communists were already in the outskirts of the city — and I knew I had to go from my apartment on Nguy
n Hu Street to the American embassy because the last helicopters would soon be taking off.
So I went out and got in my car, an American car from the embassy. It was only a few blocks, but I thought that my having the embassy car would help validate my claim with the Marines at the front gate, for I knew there were many of my countrymen trying to leave at the last minute. I went only a couple of blocks, had barely gotten beyond the Continental Palace Hotel, when I sensed the craziness in the streets. People were running everywhere now, frantic, carrying whatever possessions they could on their backs and running, many of them in the direction of the embassy. So I turned into Gia Long and up at the far corner there was a great commotion. I slowed down, and even as I did, I saw her.