The Vietnam Mirror.

[MANICHAEAN]

VIETNAM MIRROR.

Part 1: Arrival.

He was a thickset individual, originally from Idaho, with close cropped hair turning white and was at the immigration entry of Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Min City.

The Vietnamese official viewed the American who stood before him.

"Nature of your business in Vietnam, Mr Hobbs?"

"Generators. I commission and service them for a company in the States," he replied.

"First time in Vietnam?"

Jeff Hobbs looked him straight in the eye and did not dodge the question. "No, I was here in the American military during the war."

The official did not offer any body language, but said softly, "For the Vietnamese people, what we consider the second war of independence ended in 1975. Please enjoy your stay."

Appreciating and thanking the man for his courtesy, he picked up his luggage and traversed the modern, Japanese built airport. Nothing like his last visit, for from 1968 - 1974, what was
then Saigon Airport had been one of the busiest military airbases in the world, and Uncle Sam had been running it.

He had been warned of the taxi scams and exiting the main terminal, placed his impressive bulk side by side in the front seat, next to an equally impassive and diminutive driver, ensuring the meter was put on before moving. The ride to the Saigon Sheraton on Dong Khoi Street took twenty minutes and cost what initially appeared as a rip off, namely 110,000 dong. Mental arithmetic being one of Jeff''s fortes, he equated that with $5 and the concern subsided.

An hour later, he was showered and changed, made a few business calls, plus one to his Filipino wife in Manila to say he had arrived safely. He took his whisky and water out onto the
balcony on the sixth floor. Remorseless waves of his past engulfed him and his chest felt unnaturally heavy.

It had been late 1967, when even the most detailed maps didn't reveal much any more; reading them was like trying to read the faces of the Vietnamese, and that was like trying to read the wind. He knew that at the time he had been living too close to his bones, all he had to do then was accept it.

He had been a Marine gunner on a helicopter & he remembered back vividly.

" To all extents and purposes, the ground was Charlie's realm, above was our dominion. We ruled the air. We had the days and they had the nights. The dawn and twilight were always up for grabs. When we went up against his terrain and landed on hill tops we usually took it definitively, but even if we didn't keep it you could always see that we had at least been there."

Helicopters to his mind were the sexiest thing going; saver-destroyer, right hand- left hand, hot steel, grease, jungle-saturated canvas webbing, cassette rock and roll in one ear and door gun fire in the other, heat, vitality and death, death hardly itself an intruder. Men on the crews would say that once you'd carried a dead person he would always be there riding with you.

It was great if you could adapt, you had to try, but it wasn't the same as making a discipline, going into your own reserves and developing a real war metabolism, slowing yourself down when your heart was trying to punch it's way through your chest. Day one, if anything, penetrated that first innocence.

The problem was that you didn't always know what you were seeing until later, maybe years later, and that a lot of it never made it in at all, it just stayed stored there in your eyes. Jeff refreshed his drink and wondered if he should have passed this assignment to one of his colleagues. He knew he would have to drink heavy tonight for sleep now, like then, might be a problem.

[cafolini]

I think in this one you were less biased than in others you have written. Vietnam for the length it took was a failure. We were paid with sugar, rubber, and rice for almost ten years where and when we tested and researched a great arsenal that later gave us the edge necessary to win in many fronts.

[MANICHAEAN]

What are you taking about?

This is fiction, looked at from the perspective of a fictional character.

And be so kind as to explain the "bias" in my "more biased" stories.

[Delta40]

The para where he had been a marine gunner seems to go from the Narrator's voice to Jeff's internal talk, which kind of threw me.

I like the last para where what you see stays stored in your eyes. Very powerful and a good way of showing how some things in life are just too hard for the mind to process.

When I arrived in Ho Chi Minh I saw a group of US Vietnam Vets wearing shirts saying as much but also donning a peace sign. Your story reminded me of them.

Good start Manch and I look forward to reading the next instalment.

[Steven Hunley]

I love this foreign stuff you do so well. I have a suggestion, where you wrote:

To all extents and purposes, on the ground was Charlie's, above was theirs. We had the air. We had the days and they had the nights.

Try:To all extents and purposes, the ground was Charlie's realm, above was our dominion. We ruled the air. We had the days and they had the nights. The dawn and twilight were always up for grabs.

How would that be?

If I wanted to read Graham Greene, (sp?) what should I read for starters?

[hillwalker]

I agree with Delta that the change of pov in paragraph 12 doesn't sound quite right - who is the 'We' you're writing about? One assumes it's Jeff and his fellow Marines, but since when did he take over the telling of the tale?

As for bias - I can't see any from where I'm sitting. The locals indeed owned the ground (and the tunnels underneath it) and the Americans owned the air. But it wasn't enough to win them the war.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

Delta, Steve, Hill

Thanks for the feedback. I was especially taken Steve by the line "The dawn and twilight were always up for grabs."

Steve. Recommendations for Graham Greene. His best in my view is "The Power & the Glory," with the whisky priest in Mexico. But he has such a range, that others I think you would enjoy would be:
1. A Burnt-Out Case.
2. The Comedians.
3. The End of the Affair.
4. The Heart of the Matter.
5. The Honorary Consul.
6. Our Man in Havana.
7 The Quiet American.

Best regards
M.

[WolfLarsen]

Good read.

Well done. The story starts very matter-of-factly. The sentences are short and disciplined. Then at a certain point the sentences start gushing forth like a river just barely under control, which might be how the main character feels as those memories go gushing through his head.

I liked the beginning of this read, and as it progressed I liked it even more.

[MANICHAEAN]

VIETNAM MIRROR.

Part 2: Dinner.

He went down by elevator to the hotel restaurant and was shown to a table adjacent to large plate windows that visibly darkened and subdued his reflection. He looked down on Saigon. It looked so unnaturally peaceful now. Last time, the capital was to him the repository and the arena, a paved swamp of hot mushy winds that never cleaned anything away. Those nights then, there was a serious tiger lady going around on a Honda shooting American officers on the street with a .45.

He realised increasingly that he was going in too much on himself and all the flashbacks were
becoming more disturbing. The waiter came and he ordered "conh chua," a fish sour soup that he remembered from before and which was always served extremely hot. Then some fried spring rolls with a salad and a "Bia Hoi" national beer.

"Well," he thought,"If nothing else to break his mood, Vietnam serves some of the healthiest food in the world."

He looked around the restaurant. It was not too full. A few discreet couples and some Korean or Chinese businessmen eating their food with too much gusto and noise. His gaze fell upon a Vietnamese woman placed alone, further down the room. Although seated, he observed she
was tiny, he guessed about 5 feet tall, with lacquered glamour & an icy hauteur. She seemed to favour heavily kohl-rimmed eyes and the figure-hugging "ao dai" tunic that national women feel comfortable in. He put her in her 50s, a somewhat svelte and sinister lady.

Between courses he remembered with an ironic smile being once told by a medic, "If you get hit, we can chopper you back to base-camp hospital in twenty minutes. If you get killed, we'll have you home in a week."

But then there was the stark realism and dawning of the time at Duc Hoa and the scenario of
a company's worth of jump boots standing empty in the dust taking benediction from the army chaplin while the real substance of the ceremony was being bagged and tagged and shipped back home through what they called the KIA Travel Bureau. Then, the trauma was such that they wouldn't have looked around for holy ghosts if some of those boots had filled up again and walked.

He felt, despite the air conditioning, sweat gather at his hair line. This was getting to him too much and he knew he had to take some action, and move, any action to get back some balance.

The meal finished, he approached the Vietnamese woman sitting alone. She looked up, no fear or apprehension in the features, not even curiosity .

"My name is Jeff Hobbs. I'm an American. Would you like to join me for a drink?"

She took him in calmly.

"Thank you very much, I would like that. My name is Thi Anh Huynh."

The pronunciation was precise with a hint of French in the vowels and she held out her hand.

"Where would you like to go?" said Jeff, "I presume they have a bar here in the hotel."

"Oh no," she replied softly, "It's much to impersonal, I will take you elsewhere. Do you know Saigon?"

"A long time ago, in different times," he replied. "I'm afraid that I don't have transport, having just arrived. Shall we get a taxi in the lobby?"

"No need I have my scooter, it's so much easier getting around in traffic here."

She led the way out of the dining room and he towered above her in the confines of the lift.

The "ao dai" tunic dress moulded her like a dagger in it's sheath.

[WolfLarsen]

But then there was the stark realism and dawning of the time at Duc Hoa and the scenario of a company's worth of jump boots standing empty in the dust taking benediction, while the real substance of the ceremony was being bagged and tagged and shipped back home through what they called the KIA Travel Bureau. Then, the trauma was such that they wouldn't have looked around for holy ghosts if some of those boots had filled up again and walked.


This paragraph is unclear. The rest of the piece is excellent.

[MANICHAEAN]

My research was that, being a combat zone, there was no time, or it was an inappropriate location for a full service. And so the boots represented the dead soldier. I'm not sure if it is unique to the U.S. for I remember when Kennedy was killed, the reversed boots in the stirrups of the horse at the funeral.

[MANICHAEAN]

VIETNAM MIRROR.

Part 3: A Drink.

The motor scooter was parked off to the side of the hotel when they left. Thi kick started it confidently and beckoned Jeff to climb on behind. It must have appeared a strange sight, guaranteed to draw glances, even in a country where such kind of transport was so prolific.

She wheaved with verve through District 1 with broad, tree-lined streets, originally laid out at the time of the French occupation, and headed south. Traffic was hectic, noisy and competitive, bumper to bumper and increasingly so as they entered Phu Nhuan which was a more densely populated area.

To Jeff, looking around at the unfolding scene, his arms resting like two bear paws on the slim shoulders of this diminutive Asian woman, he felt that Ho Chi Minh City, as it now was, equated to Bangkok with attitude. It appeared with the bustle, the shops, numerous small businesses and the sheer energy, an overgrown boom town where the entrepreneurial skills learned during the war and the American occupation were once more being vigourously practiced.

It was getting dark and they pulled into a narrow street, next to a local bar with a small lamp above the front door and a depressing brown worn awning. A dog coughed in an alley nearby. Around one could sense, tenements crowded with the unfortunates materially left behind in this city.

They entered. It was crowded, under-lit and smelt bad of smoke and humanity. There was a long bar to the right and pool tables further down. Conversation subdued as they came in, looks were traded and it was obviously not in the normal course of events for the establishment to experience such an odd and exotic couple of customers.

Jeff asked Thi what she wanted to drink.

"I think I'd better order, they will not understand you here" she said.

They took the drinks and sat at a table.

She looked at him.

"You do not fear to come here?" she said.

"No" he replied, "I came to terms with this country long ago. It is not my well-being that concerns me. It is the memories."

"You refer to the war obviously" she said gently.

"Yes, and you? Were you affected badly?"

"I lost all my family and I lost the man I loved."

"And you never met anyone else?" Jeff said.

"There seemed no point to it."

One of the men at the next table said something in a voice loud enough to be heard by them both, and in the immediate vicinity.

Thi turned on him abruptly and addressed him sharply in Vietnamese, the words like bullets
direct to a face whose demeanour quickly changed. His friends glanced at him and hurried him quickly out. The bar owner, came urgently to the table and with head lowered, said something to Thi.

She acknowledged with a slight nod, the expression on her face devoid of anything. Only the eyes showed the passion, the anger and the self-assurance of vindication.

Jeff sat silent and watched. He had been in the East long enough to know of women there that are strong, domineering, or mysterious. This gal was all three!

Thi eventually looked back to him.

Jeff asked, "Do they know you here?"

"No" she replied, "But they know of me."

[MANICHAEAN]

Part 4: Conclusion.

For the rest of the evening they drank at different bars across the city, though none as rough as the first. That had been the testing ground, the place for them that had been all theirs. There had not been the realisation then, that until their own breath had entered, that it was to become just another instrument in the place's music. But by then, it wasn't just music anymore, it was experience.

Later around 11.30 p.m, at one cafe where drinks were sold also, they had sat and she had
asked, "Why did you invite me, a stranger, out?"

"You would laugh if I told you, but I knew I could not sleep," he replied with a shy grin.

"It was the memories again?" she persisted.

"Yes."

How could he explain to this woman, what it had been like on the American side! Many times he had heard men attempt it. Sometimes they were hardly explanations at all, but sounds and gestures packed with so much urgency that they became more dramatic than a cheap novel.

They didn't remember their dreams either when they were in the zone, but on R&R or in the hospital their dreaming would be constant, open, violent and clear. As for his own dreams, the
ones he had lost, he knew they would make it through later. Some things will just naturally follow until they take.

Mostly what you had was on the agitated side of half-sleep, you thought you were sleeping but you were really just waiting. Night sweats, harsh functionings of consciousness, drifting in and out of your head, pinned to a canvas cot somewhere, looking up at a strange ceiling or out through a tent flap at the glimmering night sky of a combat zone. Or dozing and waking under
mosquito netting in a mess of slick sweat, gagging for air that wasn't ninety nine per cent moisture, one clean breath to dry-sluice your anxiety and the backwater smell of your own body.

"What about on your side?" he asked.

"For us it was something different," she replied. "For a start, it was our country. It was not alien. But then there was the death also, and for us the important aspect of what you call the rite of passage. You see in Vietnamese tradition, when someone dies, their remains should be unearthed and cleaned three years after the initial burial. Once these bones are reburied, the soul of that person can find peace. Many Vietnamese MIA were unable to have their remains
tendered in that way, and so they became lost, wandering souls. Perhaps these souls are robbing you of your sleep!"

She smiled at this last remark. It had been the first time she smiled and it had not been anticipated by either.

"Come, you shall be my guest tonight, and anyway it is late."

They arrived after a short ride outside a large dark colonial house and she let him in through a heavy iron gate. Despite it being dark, he could still make out the red and orange flowers of a mature phoenix's tail tree and elsewhere on the short distance to the porch, the scent of a
golden cypress.

Inside, incorporated traditional Vietnamese features; woven rattan screens, painted blue & white ceramics and delicate lacquered wood furniture with a Chinese flavour. In the corner, eyes lowered, sat a large iron Buddha statue.

It was a side of Vietnam that Jeff had, by dint of circumstance and history, been unaware of.

She showed him to his bedroom at the rear of the house. On the large window behind the bed, bamboo shutters were closed and secured, resting on their hinges, a line of defence for the advance of dawn approaching Vietnam from across the South China Sea.

She kissed him lightly on the cheek and said, " Tonight you will sleep, I will keep watch."

[WolfLarsen]

This is fascinating.

[MANICHAEAN]

Glad you enjoyed it Wolf. It's getting the first idea which is the most difficult bit.

I do have an American friend who I've worked with in the Middle East, was a helicopter gunner during the Vietnam conflict, Filipino wife etc etc. He sent me an e-mail explaining how he had to go back to that country to commission a generator. I tied this in with research into the actual dragon lady character who used to go around on a Honda & had shot 4 American officers before being captured. Quite an interesting photo in Time magazine.

Some of the Lit Net gang, including yourself, helped of course in tweaking bits, which is always appreciated.

Best regards

M.

[Hawkman]

I loved this Man. but the above is not really a conclusion. It feels as though there should be more. With the mention of the scooter riding hit-girl, the fact that the middle-aged lady rides a scooter, combined with her obvious reputation, I was, I think, expecting a little more drama - lol. Stopping here would be a crime against narrative causality!

Live and be well - H

[cafolini]

I agree with Delta that the change of pov in paragraph 12 doesn't sound quite right - who is the 'We' you're writing about? One assumes it's Jeff and his fellow Marines, but since when did he take over the telling of the tale?

As for bias - I can't see any from where I'm sitting. The locals indeed owned the ground (and the tunnels underneath it) and the Americans owned the air. But it wasn't enough to win them the war.

H

We didn't go to Nam to win the war. We didn't lose it either when properly analysed. And we won the postwar period very well. Ask Gorbachev.
We could have won that war anytime.
"We could have gone to Vietnam, pave all the roads, install parking meters all over the place, and still be back home for Christmas." ~ Ronald Reagan.

[MANICHAEAN]

H

I could develop the story more, but it's something of a blind alley, as I found out to my cost when I wrote the "Murder in Accra" piece. Could never quite kill the beast, returning to it time after time, even after long periods away.

No, thanks for the encouragement, but I'm going to let this one hang.

Best regards

M

[WolfLarsen]

Your instincts know best Mr. Manichaean. Listen to your instincts. Not everything needs to be long, I agree with you. This was nice writing. And anyway now you can write something else. I'm sure we're all looking forward to reading it, or I am.

I give this story series a great big thumbs-up!

[tonywalt]

Brilliant short story!

[MANICHAEAN]

Wolf
You might have to wait a bit. I'm leaving tonight on what Hill normally alludes to as one of my "gin and tonic" tours, Papua New Guinea this time for a six month stretch. But let's see what transpires on the writing front.

Tony
Glad you enjoyed it.

Best regards
M.