A Parte Ante.

[MANICHAEAN]

A Parte Ante.

Chapter 1.

Memories are veils upon veils; that in the most unexpected and unprovoked circumstances, slip so provocatively to reveal incomplete images. They are never so fully executed, as to satiate that kernel of reality, that one, (perhaps involuntarily) is fumbling for. Sometimes there are dreams that go nowhere; transient journeys, encompassing no logic or reason. Yet occasionally, just occasionally they produce overwhelming feelings of warmth, and a bond of past boundless affection, when for a fleeting instance, a deceased loved one is present.

Each landscape, especially in later life, evokes a spiritual response; music plays in background harmony; whilst in tandem there is a visual awareness upon life's lens. It is the "nowness" of it all that is perhaps so frightening.

Below in the Asian jungle, the odd spiral of smoke from a single fire was apparent. It faded from view and with it one life was left behind.

The plane dropped down in monsoon weather onto the slick tarmac, and the engines in overdrive clawed back into reverse. Horizontal rain on the widows, and frantic spray on the underside of the wings. As the plane taxied to the terminal the inevitable modern idiot, switched on his mobile to convey to those willing to listen that he had landed.

At immigration, young men in smart green military style attire took the first arrivals.

"First time in Vietnam Mr Rossow?"

Blank facial features, and a restraint in body language, imperceptible to those not attuned to the Far East.

"No, I was here during the war, but Ho Chi Minh City was known as Saigon then."

"A long time ago Mr Rossow, but please consider yourself welcome."

The passport was stamped with a three week visitors visa, and he proceeded down to the hall below to collect his luggage.

He booked into the upmarket Caravelle at Lam Son Square in District 1, but that night he drank in a small local bar in his old haunt in Pham Ngu Lao. They even remembered him; though any discussion was limited regards his initial assignment and the turbulent years in between. This had been the time of the Tet Offensive. Until then the rules of engagement had established a seemingly perverse pattern. We had the sky's, the daylight and the hilltops. Charlie had the night and the ground. Anything in between was winner take all.

He slowly swivelled his beer upon the glass counter and sweat beads gathered on his forehead. He had forgotten the heat and the humidity of this place.

But he had come back, and despite a logic that demanded resistance, he had succumbed; as is so often the case with facing past traumas. There was a remorseless need to revisit and to stand at the edge of the precipice.

[Danik 2016]

Loved this beginning, the reflection as well as the narrative. I don´t know who suggested that people usually write better about what they know well. The narrative is revisiting old (and cherished) haunts.

[Steven Hunley]

I couldn't ask for a better beginning. Robert Graves supposedly told Alan Sillitoe "Stick to what you know." Can't wait for more. Glad you picked up the pen again.

[kiz_paws]

Awesome beginning and look forward to more installments.

[MANICHAEAN]

Chapter 2.

If he slept well that first night, he did not know it; and if dreams were formed, they would have been deep; akin an ammonite's slumber, imperceptibly uncurling to lay itself upon Rossow's still form. For too long he had lived as a spectator of his fellow man; outside of their existence, and between two worlds, one dead, and one in which he would seek to be reconceived.

As he awoke, the initial visions of an unfamiliar hotel room sparked a spontaneity of consciousness. He knew then that he was back, and that he was obliged to face his past Calvary of forsaken beliefs and impossible loyalties.

He moved around Saigon that first morning, mainly on foot, sometimes in cramped local taxies. A lot of his former street impressions had not changed; whirlwind localised scenarios of small busy enterprises; barbers, coffee houses, and vegetable markets with slight slender women in conical hats squatting over their wares, or bartering vociferously over prices. Numerous street stalls catered for breakfasts of; pho, xoi , or banh mi; sitting on low plastic stools; the slurping of noodles, with chopsticks poised in concentrated coordination.

But much had still changed he observed. The traffic, (ninety per cent motor scooters, and now devoid of army jeeps), was heavy, with an intensity and unpredictability bordering on chaos. The population seemed entirely to consist of young people. Mobile phone shops prolific whichever area he traversed; and whilst old French colonial buildings were still apparent in the centre, new high rise blocks elsewhere had overwhelmed existing structures; with an incongruity that beggered any notion of architectural purism.

Was this the Saigon, whose US Embassy roof he had scrambled to escape from by chopper fifty years ago?

He reasoned that he had to reconcile today these new impressions, with the events of the night of the 30th January 1968 and subsequent events. It had supposedly, (even formally) been announced by the North as a lunar New Year holiday truce. Based on this, many ARVN in the South had arranged leave to visit their families.

Rossow had been awakened on that day at 3.30 am with what he initially thought were the traditional Tet firecrackers. But then, this was at odds for that time in the morning. It dawned then, that the cause was the familiar sound of gunfire; apparently on the outskirts of the capital, and later confirmed at Cholon south west of the city centre, plus the Gia Đình industrial area. This did not initially lead to widespread defensive measures being undertaken; but by later that morning, news came in of a countrywide and coordinated offensive, with over 80,000 Việt Cong and North Vietnamese troops assailing over 100 towns and cities throughput the South.

In the weeks prior, there had been a sense of foreboding, based on limited intelligence that something was up; confused even more by what appeared to be strategically senselessly attacks on border areas in South Vietnam, notably Khe Sanh. What was not known at the time, was that these were the preliminary moves in the Tet Offensive to draw US attention and forces away from the cities. General Giap had in essence combined guerrilla operations into a conventional military offensive, with the Việt Cong tasked to spark a popular uprising.

In Saigon in particular, he remembered, nerves were rattled even further, when small sapper teams hit primary downtown targets at; the Radio Station, the Tan Son Nhut Air Base and the US Embassy. A nineteen man team in the last location blew a hole in the eight foot high surrounding embassy wall, charged through and blew off the front door with a rocket propelled grenade, before being checked, contained and killed.

The drink of fear invariably assails all powers of acting and reasoning; but Rossow had, by his involvement in Vietnam, evolved a fatalism that had spun a thread in his being; whereby fear was not to be evaded, (just as conversely, love was to be pursued.) On this occasion, in retrospect, Death had put down his book.

[MANICHAEAN]

Chapter 3.

He lunched that day at a small local restaurant he had frequented back during the war. It was in the Cholon district, on the west bank of the Saigon river; and had, (since the Hóa Chinese minority in Vietnam had sought refuge there in the 18th century) evolved into one of those satellite China towns so familiar around the globe.

Back then he remembered, it had a reputation as a formative black market centre, dealing mainly in stolen US army items; with both soldiers, deserters and locals involved. But for Rossow, it was a place which had enchanted his youthful imagination; perhaps because, ancient customs of a national culture, invariably seem to endure more vividly in remote colonies than in their original motherlands. It also, more importantly drew him as the location where he had known someone who had been very close. Vietnam had not been all conflict. His existence then had also included some lucid intervals and emotional pauses, akin the behaviour of birds and bats that reassuringly forever fly by twilight.

The restaurant was busy; not that a crowd is company. It was a ground floor establishment off a side road, with a flimsy awning to protect customers against the sun. At multiple tables, large groups of voluble Vietnamese piled into fresh fish and crab from surrounding display tanks adjacent the walls. In the open kitchen, spits of meat were turned methodically, as hot smoking fat dripped into ever receptive trays below. Elsewhere in the kitchens behind, inexperienced eyes would have viewed more exotic dishes of; boiled tortoise and the entrails of live snakes being removed to either eat or to spike local drinks. The old adage stood firm. "If it moves, you can eat it!"

Rossow managed to get a table, near to a young group of men, throwing back shots of local vodka. He was invited to join, but politely declined, as he knew from past experience the dangers of getting drawn in, and waking up the next day, in a state of confused and sickly total wastage.

He had just started to eat, when he became aware of a slight figure standing in front of his table. He looked up.

A man of about his same age was looking at him; curiosity in the eyes and a pronounced series of questioning lines where the nose meets the forehead.

"Excuse me, but are you Master Sargent Rossow?"

The voice was hesitant, polite and carried the badge of someone not fully conversant with the language employed.

Rossow looked, but could not place him. Nevertheless, he rose, and extended his hand in affirmation.

"Yes I was here during the war. In fact I knew this area quite well then. Where did you know me from?"

The stranger took his hand warmly.

"I knew it was you. My name is Nguyen Son. I was in the ARVN then and was involved, like yourself in part of the events we had at that time in Cholon."


Rossow thought back to the start of the Tet Offensive, when by the dawn of the first day, most of the attacks within the city center had been eliminated; but intense fighting between the Viet Cong and allied forces had erupted in the Chinese neighborhood of Cholon around the Phu Tho racetrack; used as a staging area and command and control center by the North Vietnamese. Extremely destructive house-to-house fighting had erupted in the area; such that after a protracted period, the area had been declared a fire free zone, and eventually all the residents had been ordered to leave their homes and evacuate.

"So nice to meet a fellow soldier M'Son" Rossow responded. " Please join me for something to eat, or perhaps a beer."

It was a fortuitous meeting, beneficial to two ex-combatants joined in a remembrance of times past; not so much of education, but as a sharing of mutual experiences no longer written in present day dust.

It soon became apparent that they had both been involved in action around the racetrack. It had been at the time, the hub of most of the key streets in the area, and by holding it, the VC were able to deny its use as a helicopter landing zone. From that location, Communist political cadres had fanned out to work through the huge urban sprawl. Some tried to whip up support for the General Uprising. Others went to seek known government figures and ARVN officers in the area. A month-long reign of terror in Cholon had begun.

Eventually, supported by helicopter gunships, the Americans had succeeded in taking the track, but the VC troops had melted away into the streets of Cholon where the protracted street fighting had ground on until finally cleared in early March.

Two hours later both men now rose to go.

"It was good to see you Sergeant Rossow. Please call me if you are in Cholon again. I live nearby."

"Thank you. I enjoyed it also, but before you go. Do you remember a young lady who used to work here called Phuong?"

"Yes I know who you mean."

"Whatever happened to her? Do you know?"

"Yes, I seem to remember, that after Saigon fell, she left. From what I recollect, she was with child and returned to her village on the Mekong Delta. I've not seen or heard of her since over all these years. You must remember that the new regime was dealing ruthlessly with any person they thought was too close to the enemy, so it was probably a wise move."

Rossow struggled to contain the emotions, sensing that his companion had read his thoughts. He had not asked further, and anyway it was the kind of situation where even if he had, no real answer would have been forthcoming.

[fudgetusk]

Good story, or part of one it felt. Very well written. It seemed you were writing from experience as the setting and context seemed so real. Very wordy; Not a critique. You use the word 'yawning' did you mean 'awning'?

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks for the proof reading fudgetusk. The "awning" is now installed.

There is, (as you rightly guessed), more to come. However I have to get a trip to Athens out of the way first.

Excuse the verbosity. I invariably blame it on the amount of imbibing that I indulge in whilst writing.

Regards
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

He sat alone at a table of the rooftop bar at the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon and gazed out at a city so trenchantly embedded in the recent history of South East Asia. Tomorrow he would start that personal mission of unfinished business, out in the Mekong Delta; untutored and intrepid to navigate uncharted consequences of a past existence.

He glanced again at the overnight imported edition of the Washington Post. Yet another demise at a relatively early age was in the news of some famous person. What he found disconcerting was that invariably they were of the same age as himself, or in many cases even younger. Private disquisitions of agitation and anxiety seemed to lurk in the shadows; a premonitory echo somewhere in the undergrowth of the night shrubbery outside and below. A veneer of prescient emotion seemed to glide just below a long established appearance of imperturbable insouciance and urbane comprehension.

Life to date had been no innocuous apprenticeship, and if the truth be known, he had always preferred an accommodating vice to an obstinate virtue. Heroic expedients of spirited effusions, as opposed to harsh exigencies; even if the practice was comforting and the reasoning led nowhere.

However now there was a growing realization that these creeping admonitions held forth the prospect of being the chief mourner at his own protracted funeral; a public pageant, as it were, of gloomy years ahead.

Leaning back into the cushions of his chair he shook the ice in his drink and took a hard swallow, for there was no aegis in what lay ahead in the next few days.

[AuntShecky]

Gotcha. But did you happen to catch the recent documentary about the great Carl Reiner. He's a nonagenarian who makes a point of starting each day by reading the obits -- to see if his name is there.

And, uh, "protecting aegis?" A redundancy, perhaps?

[MANICHAEAN]

Hi Aunty.

Unfortunately I did not see the documentary on Carl Reiner as I'm back now in Vietnam on a new contract and the fare on the box is somewhat different. At 96 years of age I would not so much prioritize reading the obits, as on waking up! I found interesting a quote of his though where in describing himself as a Jewish atheist, he says " I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us."

Point taken on redundancy. I had been playing with a bunch of words not in common parlance and got carried away with with an unbalanced and what Fudgetusk calls a "wordy" piece.

Must try harder.

Best wishes
M.