At the time, right here in the sad wet jungle, Kien’s B3 scout platoon had lived a moment of love which was strange and fascinating, fuelled by a passion both wanton and unique, born of a magical meeting.
Kien had unfortunately not been included in this ambience of love. He recalled his unit had arrived and chosen to build huts at the foot of this very mountain. After the first two nights had passed everyone sensed something unusual was happening to the platoon. Kien had done more than sense that mysterious atmosphere. He had listened to it, and had seen vague figures flitting by. On the third night, a rainy August night, Kien, fitful after three days of fever, was distressed and could not sleep. Uneasy, just before dawn, he put on his raincoat and with machine-gun at the ready went to check the huts. The forest floor was muddy and slippery and lightning sparked the air, lighting the jungle every few moments.
Kien slipped around, groping his way through the rain, his machine-gun swinging. Approaching Squad One’s hut, Kien stopped. Laughter? Yes, peals of laughter. But who would be laughing like that in this sorry platoon? And imitating a girl’s voice? It sounded ghostly. Kien approached, looking inside. It was dark, but there was no sound of snoring. Just a heavy silence.
Kien was wary: ‘Who laughed in there?’
‘Why, Kien?’ Thanh’s voice. Alert.
‘Who? Maybe an angel,’ said another.
‘Don’t piss around. Someone laughed. I’m not that feverish, you baboon.’
‘So come in, platoon commander. Check for yourself.’
Kien was confused. Shit! Was there another ghost in this Screaming Souls Jungle? Kien dropped the flap, then left. Still, the laughter had seemed clear, sharp, genuine. A girl’s laughter, not a ghost’s. He was not imagining things.
Walking slowly back he sensed a movement and stopped, stiffening to stay still and alert. He could hear his own heart come almost to a standstill. In the reflection of the stream he saw a lovely young girl. Her midriff was bare, her skin shone like the light dancing on the water, her hair, long and flowing, hung down on her thighs. She walked slowly out of his vision, leaving her reflection dancing on the reeds along the bank.
Kien stared after her into the jungle, then shook himself free of the vision and shouted out, ‘Stop! Who’s there?’ He stepped forward with his hand on the trigger. ‘Code Five!’ he called. No answer.
The rain, the thunder and the lightning seemed to halt abruptly.
‘Stop! I’ll shoot!’ Kien shouted angrily.
‘It’s me, mate, Thinh!’
‘What?’
‘It’s me. My turn on duty,’ answered ‘Lofty’ Thinh clearly. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Who’s been in there with you?’
‘No one.’
‘Didn’t you see anyone?’
‘No. What’s up?’
Kien swore through his teeth. Just then the lightning and thunder flared up again. Kien stared into the swaying trees, looked again at the swirling stream, then back at Thinh.
Thinh stood before him, looking innocent. He wore shorts, his bare midriff glistening in the rain.
Kien groaned softly, then trudged back slowly to his tent. He threw himself back into his hammock, overcome by a sense of self-pity and impending doom.
What had he seen? Ghost or girl?
The next morning the matter was not mentioned. Neither Thanh nor Thinh said a word, but Kien felt they and the others shared a secret, while pretending nothing unusual was happening. It was the first time he had felt cut off from his mates.
Kien slowly discarded fears that he had imagined things. Something was happening, something strange. No more beautiful ghost-girls slipped by the huts near the stream. But he sensed other mysterious movements.
At midnight, shadows slipped silently from the hammocks. Gently creeping to the hut doors, making signals to the night guards, they disappeared in single file into the dark jungle. The shadows slipped quietly into the stream and headed, in teeming rain, towards the great dark mountain.
Night after night these shadows moved around, until one night Kien, too, awoke. He lay still, feigning sleep, listening. At first he heard the whispers, then movements from hammocks, then bare feet stepping into mud. Then muted conversation with the guards. Someone slipped over. Muffled laughter.
Some nights they were shadows from own his hut: the next night from another hut: once from the hammocks near him. They were going out every night, returning hours later, just before dawn. He could hear them, out of breath, muddy and shivering from the drizzle and cold air.
After a few nights Kien began caring for them, worrying for the welfare of these shadows. He would lie awake until every one of them had returned. When the last one had returned he would hear a long, mournful call from the base of the mountain, like a call of farewell. At the return of the last shadow Kien would sigh with relief and drop into a slumber.
Not the entire platoon of thirteen were involved. Three regulars, he was certain, made the dangerous journey at night to the dark mountain through a wild, gloomy valley. He now recalled there had been a prosperous farm there by a waterfall, before the war had spread inland.
The farmhouse had been abandoned, then commandeered by the district military officers as their headquarters, then abandoned again many years ago. There had been three very young girls from the original farming family. It dawned on him that the girls, who would now be in their late teens, had returned home despite the farm’s vulnerability.
Kien felt he now knew what was happening and that he understood their feelings. Which is why, as a commander, instead of stopping the undisciplined and dangerous liaisons, he did nothing. He recalled the standing orders from the Political Commissar: ‘It is necessary to readjust, rectify, and re-establish the rules, the morals and behaviour of your men when there are breaches.’ Of course that would have meant pulling the soldiers out, snapping them out of their romantic spells. Kien’s heart would never allow him to truly discipline those boys. It begged him to keep silent and sympathise with the young lovers. What else could they do? They were powerless against the frenzied forces of young love which now controlled their bodies.
At the time Kien felt old. Only he and Can were over twenty. All the others were still teenagers, still boys.
It was then that the honeyed dreams began, and in his sleep he saw his beautiful girl from Hanoi appear before him. During those rainy nights she would come to him from the back door of his memory, stepping lightly like a sprite. His body would shiver, then tremble, starved and thirsty for desire, wanting to savour the heightened sensations of smooth body contact. ‘We two may die as virgins, our love is so pure. We ache for each other, unable to be together,’ Phuong would say, causing their seventeen-year-old hearts nearly to break.
In his dream he knew that he was dreaming and he would writhe, trying to change the images, trying to get away from the pain and desolation he suffered from knowing it was all a dream.
When he awoke he heard his mates’ footsteps from far away. Now, he had no need to await their return. He could tell long before. In their hut, along with the gentle perfume of dope, there was now a new fragrance, distinctly soft, tender and ethereal, which lingered vaguely in the wind.
Kien thought back to the source of his own love, when he had been young. That was now hard to imagine, hard to remember a time when his whole personality and character had been intact, a time before the cruelty and the destruction of war had warped his soul. A time when he had been deeply in love, passionate, aching with desire, hilariously frivolous and light-hearted, or quickly depressed by love and suffering. Or blushing in embarrassment. When he, too, was worthy of being a lover and in love, as his troops were now.
But war was a world with no home, no roof, no comforts. A miserable journey, of endless drifting. War was a world without real men, without real women, without feeling.