People waited to see what would happen. There were demonstrations but no government soldiers to break them up. Tan went to school, people went to their jobs, but there was a feeling of waiting, that no normal routine could be taken up till the demands were resolved one way or the other.
Quat started coming home for dinner. He talked openly about politics, about what he thought should be done to choose new leaders. Dr. Co hardly spoke. Quat talked constantly and in ways that were not right in front of one's uncle. It frightened Tan. Often at night now she could hear through the wall that Dr. Co was hitting his wife. Tan felt like she did after Confession, waiting to hear the Penance the Father would give her.
The rumors came first. Ky. Ky was coming to attack them. He was coming, closer, closer. It was hard to get reliable reports. They lived in a walled city and were afraid to travel far. They waited. They wondered if the Americans would let Ky come. One night when Quat was out Dr. Co said that Ky was a good man. He might not have the Mandate of Heaven but he knew how to get things done.
Buu brought the news that General Ky was in Da Nang, fighting the people there. So close. Ky's men were fighting the soldiers who had been stationed there, were shooting civilians in the streets and in the pagodas. The Americans had helped them transport the troops and weapons. Hue would be next.
Dr. Co didn't say anything. He went to bed. Madame Co looked relieved and said maybe the best thing would be to surrender. Quat and Buu talked late into the night. The only way to save it, to keep the Struggle Movement alive, was if Hue could present a united front against Ky. The Buddhists and the Catholics and the soldiers in the Citadel and the citygovernment people — all standing together.
School ended for Tan. Ky was coming, he had cut off food and supplies. Dr. Co brought home some bags of rice and boxes of medicine one night and hid them in the attic. They were for the siege, he said. When things got really tight he would ration them out to the people in his ward. He didn't tell Quat about them. Every day people said that Ky would come tomorrow. They waited. Rumors went around about the killing in Da Nang. But Da Nang was different, people said. Da Nang was crowded with refugees and Communists and Americans. The Americans walked around in the city like they owned it and dumped mountains of garbage alongside the roads. It was the kind of place you could expect a lot of killing. Ky would never dare to do the same thing in the Imperial City, would never march shooting into Hue.
A nun burned herself. Somebody burned the American library, and the American consulate. The leader of the Buddhists, Thich Tri Quang, told people to pray and be very holy. Buddhists planned to put their family altars out on the streets to stop Ky's tanks when he came. Everyone listened to the radio station. Quat spent most of his time there, and Tan heard his voice often.
One day Quat gave her a message to bring to Dr. Co. The doctor was gone when she reached home. She tried the house of one of his political friends. The friend's wife said he had left with Dr. Co, in a hurry. Tan tried the ward hall. No one was inside but an old man who said Dr. Co had been there with the other politicians but had left.
Tan rode into the center of Hue, to the city offices. There was no one but janitors in the City Clerk office and the District Court was empty. Tan went to the soldiers' barracks.
The soldiers were gone. The people in the streets in the Citadel said the soldiers had gotten into trucks and jeeps and driven northward out of town. Ky was to the south, in Da Nang.
Tan started back to the station. Thich Tri Quang was on the speakers telling people to stay off the streets. Ky was on his way and there was no one left to stop him. They had been betrayed. Tri Quang told people not to resist, he didn't want Buddhists killed like in Da Nang.
Before Tan reached the station the talking had stopped and there was music playing. When she arrived there were government soldiers standing guard at the entrance with their rifles pointing out.
Dr. Co came home three nights later in a very good mood. He said the traitors would be taught a lesson. He said that he was glad that order had come back to Hue. He didn't mention what he was going to do with the supplies in the attic. Quat didn't come home. Dr. Co said he must have run off to join the Communists. He was lazy, he wanted other people to do all the work, then come along and take it over. Dr. Co had a lot to drink and said more about Quat. Quat was twenty years old, he said, and yet without a wife or a job. He would never amount to anything, never be able to take care of a wife and twelve children, four of them orphans, like Dr. Co did. When Dr. Co and Madame Co went to bed there was noise, but not because he was beating her.
A week later a boy gave Tan a note from Buu. He had hidden in a Catholic church when the soldiers came and now he was going into the country. He had seen Quat captured by the Ky soldiers and taken away for questioning. When Tan went to the soldiers they said she should try the city police. The city police had a record proving the existence of a Con Tinh Quat, but had no idea of his whereabouts. He was wanted for questioning.
Quat didn't come back. Sometimes late at night Tan and the younger brothers and Xuan would sit facing each other in a small circle and pray for him and cry. But quietly, so as not to wake Dr. Co.
Tan sees a little girl watching her in the fish-tank mirror. The girl is maybe five years old, sitting with her mother. One side of her face is puckered with burnt skin, a nostril and the corner of her lip eaten away. Her blond hair is tied up in pale blue ribbons. She smiles at Tan through the fish and plastic eelgrass and Tan smiles back. The little girl takes her fingers and folds her lids down to make thin eyeslits like Tan's. The mother looks up from her magazine and gives the girl a quick slap on the wrist.
Tan was eighteen. It was very early morning, only a few hours into the Year of the Monkey, when she was wakened by the popping. Close, a sporadic hollow popping and flashes like heat lightning in the sky. Dr. Co had just come back from a Tet party at the ward hall, he was still in his rumpled street clothes when he wandered out from his bedroom. It was monsoon season and had been drizzling on and off all night. Dr. Co held newspapers over his head and went out. He came back without the papers, hair plastered to his head, looking very pale. The Communists were attacking all over, he said — trying to take over the city. It would be best to stay in and wait for the Americans to come out of their compound and chase the Communists away.
They sat in the dark, no one sleeping, no one speaking, and listened to the popping. The sounds grew very close, the house shuddered a few times, and then they moved away. That was the Americans, said Dr. Co from the corner he was huddled in. When the ground shakes like that it is the Americans chasing Communists with their big guns.
At dawn Dr. Co and Tan went out to look. It was very quiet, raining lightly. Soldiers walked in the street carrying rifles — Vietnamese soldiers. They weren't the ones from the Citadel though. These men wore khaki uniforms and greenand-red armbands, and called to each other in the rapid dialect of northerners. Dr. Co hurried Tan back inside.
Dr. Co sent Madame Co and the young children to shelter at the Phu Cam Cathedral, a little ways across the railroad tracks. The soldiers wouldn't bother a woman and children. Tan had to stay and help him gather their valuables. When it was dark they would try to reach the Cathedral.
Now and then Dr. Co had Tan peek into the street. There were people with rifles in everyday clothes, and the people with their hair in buns, the country people in black pajamas. The popping and explosions came from up by the American compound now, and from the walled city across the river. The Communists were in control of Phu Cam.