From there to Hanoi the train’s siren seemed to sound continuously, saying ‘good times, good times, good times,’ and the wagon wheels clipping over the rail joints replied, ‘happy days, happy days, happy days.’ As they neared beautiful old Hanoi Kien was intoxicated by the excitement, as though he’d been lifted to a higher level on a fragrant cloud. Swept up in the fever of anticipation of returning home, his eyes blurred over with tears for a homeward journey he had never dreamed possible.
It was already dark when he arrived at his old home after walking through quiet dark streets from the Hang Co railway station. He stopped and looked at the old building which itself was also strangely dark; perhaps the families were all asleep. He entered the front yard cautiously, then approached the front door. Perhaps someone had waited up for him, he thought, for the door was unlatched. Surely no one would wait for me. How would they know? But as he began to climb the stairs he felt a dark sense of urgency and his heart tightened in foreboding.
A pale light shone from a yellowish lamp on the first landing, throwing a dim glow down the corridor. The door to the rooms where he and his father lived was still the same, with the bronze plaque bearing his father’s name. His hands began to shake, then his body, and tears of joy welled up inside him. He stood, swaying gently, fixed to the spot before the door.
Suddenly, another door down the corridor opened and a tall, slim woman wearing a nightgown appeared in the hallway. She stared directly at him, a mute cry in her eyes. Phuong!
He was transfixed, confused.
‘Kien!’
She stepped gently forward, leaning into his arms.
Kien responded, gradually coming to his senses, and bent a little as her smooth arms tightened around his neck.
‘Phuong, my darling,’ he murmured, as he began kissing her, kisses for ten long years. An unforgettable embrace for each of them, from one heart to the other, an embrace they would remember forever, for nothing so wondrous had touched their lives in those lost years apart.
She gently rubbed her cheek on his lips, then his collar, then his rough army shirt. They whispered urgently to each other. ‘It’s been ten years. Ten years. I was sure I’d never see you again.’
‘We’ve each been ghosts in the other’s mind,’ he said.
She continued to murmur, ‘But from this moment on we’ll never be apart, will we darling?’
Kien tensed a little. A feeling of deep embarrassment began to creep over him, a shadow of concern intruding into his happiness, a feeling of uneasiness that seemed to stem from the supple body he held in his arms.
He tensed. He could hear padded footsteps. Someone was watching them in their embrace.
Phuong, oblivious, began undoing the top button of her blouse, from which she took a shiny key, slung like a necklace. His eyes blurring, Kien unlocked his door and went in. The air, stagnant for several years, flowed out, emerging like a dying gasp.
Kien turned and grasped Phuong’s arm and began pulling her into his room. He had seen a shadow inside the door of her room and had suddenly become brusque. She had not been alone.
Phuong turned pale, her gaze defensive. Kien reached down in front of her and picked up his knapsack, then, letting her go, stepped into his room alone and closed the door in her face.
So this was what the peace and happiness would be! The glorious, bright rays of victory, his grand, long-awaited return. So much for his naive faith in the future. He swore: ‘Wretched man that I am!’
And every time after that when he recalled the first night home of his new post-war life, his heart was wrenched in anguish and bitterness and he would involuntarily moan.
Having stepped into the room and unslung his knapsack he began pacing the room to make sense of the second presence with Phuong. So, the divine war had paid him for all his suffering and losses with more suffering and loss at home. Throughout his years at the front he had dreamed – when he had dreamed of home at all – of little else but the magic moments of return and Phuong, seeing them both in a Utopian dream. He sat down. A succession of images passed through his mind.
Phuong had returned to him later that same night saying the man she was living with, who had asked her to marry him, had left immediately afterwards, because Kien had returned.
How blind they had been, back then. Though now he often drowned himself in alcohol, though hundreds of times he pleaded with his inner self to calm down, he was constantly torn with pain recalling the post-war times with Phuong. His life, after ten destructive years of war, had then been punctured by the sharp thorns of love.
Kien’s new life with Phuong had broken both their hearts. In hindsight, it was a love doomed from the start, doomed from the time he had heard those soft footfalls in her room.
It had ended recently, abruptly, after a fight outside a tavern where Kien had beaten up Phuong’s former lover, mauling him badly. The police had been called and Kien had been described by witnesses as ‘a madman’. He had returned home from the police station and met Phuong. He was speechless and distraught.
As Phuong was preparing to leave him she spoke: ‘We’re prisoners to our shared memories of wonderful times together. Those memories won’t release us. But we’ve made a big mistake; I thought we would face just a few small hurdles. But they aren’t small, they’re as big as mountains.’
She reflected: ‘I should have died that day ten years ago when our train was attacked. At least you’d have remembered me as pure and beautiful. As it is, even though I’m alive, I am a dark chapter in your life. I’m right, aren’t I?’ Kien remained silent. As she passed out of his life again he made no attempt to stop her.
He had thought then it was for the best, but preserving that attitude was more difficult than he’d imagined. A week went by, then two, then a month. He became increasingly restless, unable to concentrate, or even to turn up at the university. He sat uncomfortably, unable to relax or plan his days properly.
He lived on the razor’s edge. Whenever he heard high heels tapping on the stairs his heart would stop. But it was never her.
Kien took to staring out of his window for hours on end, then walking the dark streets, now and then looking back in hope. On bad nights he would lose control altogether and break down, sobbing into his pillow. Yet he knew that if she returned to him both of them would suffer again.
His room began to get colder as the winter pressed in. He stood by the window one cold night, missing Phuong as usual, as he watched the slow drizzling rain, slanting with the north-east wind. Scenes from the northern battlefront began forming before him and he saw once again the Ngoc Bo Ray peak and the woods of the Screaming Souls. Then each man in his platoon reappeared before him in the room. By what magic was this happening to him? After the horrible slaughter which had wiped out his battalion, how could he see them all again? The air in his room felt strange, vibrating with images of the past. Then it shook, shuddering under waves of hundreds of artillery shells pouring into the Screaming Souls Jungle and the walls of the room shook noisily as the jets howled in on their bombing runs. Startled, Kien jumped back from the window.
Bewildered, confused, deeply troubled, he began to pace around the room away from the window. The memories flared up, again and again. He lurched over to his desk and picked up his pen then almost mechanically began to write.