December 7, 1966
The children were not minding their lesson. Worse, Titi could not even upbraid them, for she too was unable to focus. Each time she resumed her instruction on the rudiments of multiplication, another sound would drift through the air from the direction of Major Quon's bunker. At first it had been only a feeble, rasping rambling in an alien tongue, but soon it began to crescendo to shouts, desperate and plaintive supplications that tore the air and tugged at the bosom. The prisoner was begging for something, and the men guarding him were obviously unwilling to give it, for the pleas continued. After a while, they were punctuated with hoarse, breathless screams.
After each such cry the children would whisper excitedly in clear defiance of the rules of the little open-air school. This novelty would not last, and they were determined to enjoy it. Soon a detail of guerrillas would be assigned to escort the captive on the long road to Hanoi. Then the fun would be over until the next Air Pirate was found. Such times as this made the children feel strong and safe. Each tormented shout was a promise that their own people had control. The life of fear and uncertainty, in which the terror of the bombings had become almost commonplace, was dispersed by the captive's cries. The sounds were a reminder that the North Vietnamese were not merely victims, but also at times victors, capable of making their foes cringe and cry like infants.
Such an innocent outlook would never be Titi's again. She could not hear the shrieks of agony without remembering the grotesque ritual she had witnessed the day before. In each frantic supplication she heard the desperation of the man who had been bent and twisted like a willow branch upon the concrete floor of Major Quon's war room. When she closed her eyes, she could see the American's anguished expression as his collarbone split in two.
Titi had not yet spoken to Major Quon since he had dismissed her the day before. She was not sure how she would be able to face him. She was still trying to reconcile the refined, intelligent man with whom she dined almost every evening, and the cold, wrathful commander who had overseen yesterday's… she did not even know what to call it. Interrogation did not seem the right word, for so few questions had been asked.
"Teacher," one of the littlest girls ventured. Titi came abruptly back to the school, abandoning the plaintive whimpers.
"Yes, Yai Lui," she said. "What is it?"
"Why does he scream like that?" the child asked innocently. "Why do they not kill him?"
"Yes!" one of the bigger boys exclaimed eagerly. " When Vât broke his leg the men shot him! He bellowed and bellowed, and they shot him!"
"Yes!" his friend cried. "They shot him between the eyes!"
Two or three of the girls began to weep. "Why did they shoot him?" one sobbed. "Teacher, why did they shoot Vât?"
Vât had been the leader of the village's team of oxen: a great, docile beast who had twisted his leg beyond repair in a snake hole the previous summer. Many of the children were still traumatized by the sudden and brutal loss of an animal who had been almost a pet to them even though his primary value to the village was pragmatic. Titi could, at least, answer that question.
"Vàt was in too much pain, Linh," she told the child. "He suffered so much that it was kinder to kill him. He was a good ox. He died for the glory of Vietnam."
That was one of the first principles that Major Quon had taught her, in the days before the Battle of Ap Bac when Mè De was still alive and the world was small and simple. All deaths—those in loyal service, those in violent senselessness, and those of slaughtered foes—were for the glory of Vietnam.
The platitude consoled the children, but some of the older ones were still questioning the current arrangement.
"Why do we not kill the Air Pirate?" the eldest girl in the school asked. "His death would bring glory also."
"And he would stop screaming," her sister added, shivering as a fresh howl tore the air.
"I—" Titi looked frantically about. She did not know the answer. He was in so much pain: surely it would be kinder to bury a bullet between his eyes and end it all.
"We do not kill him because he is a criminal," a harsh, proud voice declared. Titi looked up from her stool to see Bian striding towards the canopy. "He is a criminal, and he must suffer for his crimes. One scream for each bomb he has dropped upon the land. One wound for each child he has murdered. His pain is justice. To kill him would be to show mercy to one who has never shown it himself."
The children were struck silent by the awe of being addressed by such a fearsome warrior. The order that Titi had been unable to maintain was restored in an instant. Bian paused, regarding the children with her cold, black eyes.
"The lessons are over," she said. "I have need of your teacher now. You are dismissed."
Falling silent in her presence was one thing, but the children had never been dismissed by anyone but their teacher. They did not move. In the lull, another soul-chilling cry rang out. It woke Titi from her stupor. "School—school is dismissed," she said.
The children dispersed as if blown by a mighty wind. Most ran towards the bunker, eager to see what was happening beyond it. Titi rose and looked questioningly at her elder sister.
"Major Quon wishes to see you," Bian said coolly. "He has much to say to you."
"Why?" Titi asked, terror seizing her heart. Was he angry because she had wept when Leung had bent the American so ruthlessly? Was he going to punish her for crying out against the—again, questioning did not seem the right word—as she had? What did he want of her now, in the middle of the morning?
Bian's expression softened, and Titi's heart was eased. Bian looked that way upon her alone. It was the loving gaze of a sister, and Titi knew that while she had Bian's love nothing could harm her. A memory of black blood running over a smooth stone came to Titi. Neither bombs, nor American guns, nor Quon's wrath could harm her while Bian was her protector.
The older girl reached out to touch Titi's face, gently. Her sun-browned lips parted in a smile as rare and precious as a red butterfly. "Do not be frightened, little sister," Bian said. "You have done well, and he is proud. As am I."
Titi followed her, carrying her dark head high and moving with quiet dignity through the village. As they neared the bunker, the sounds coming from beyond it crystallized in her mind again: desperate, plaintive cries punctuated by shrieks of torment and Leung's voice, taunting in the American tongue. Titi shivered.
"What does he ask for?" she inquired softly.
Bian turned, and the cool, cruel glimmer was in her eyes again. "He wishes us to tend his arms," she said scornfully. "He seeks treatment for his injuries, as if he had ever done anything in his worthless life that warranted kindness."
A tortured howl made the small hairs on the back of Titi's neck stand on end. "What are they doing to him?" she cried.
Bian's lip curled in disgust. "The scum is lazy and undisciplined," she said. "He refuses to stand at attention. The sergeant must force him to do it. He is no soldier: he is a common criminal."
"Yesterday…" Titi murmured. "Yesterday, he said something that angered you."
"He said many things that angered me," Bian snarled. "He is a foul, stinking wretch. He shows no respect. He mocks Major Quon. He refuses to answer the questions we put to him. He calls himself a 'prisoner of war', when he is nothing but an Air Pirate. An unscrupulous murderer."
"Mocks Major Quon?" Titi gasped. She could not believe it. How could anyone mock such a brave, noble and mighty man? Major Quon was a war hero and one of the Viet Cong's most valuable commanders!
"Yes," hissed Bian. "He has called Major Quon one-eyed, and impugned the honor of his parents. He has said other things, too, that evidence great disrespect."
"One-eyed?" Titi cried indignantly. "How does he dare to say that? The wicked—" Another scream tore the air, but this time Titi did not flinch. The Air Pirate deserved the pain. He had no right to speak out against Quon's wounds, the marks of valor and victory and honor that he bore because the Americans had come to meddle in affairs that were none of their concern—to murder without cause or reason.
"Wicked indeed. Filth. Scum. Slime." Bian's eyes were dark with rage.
"How did he impugn the honor of Major Quon's parents?" Titi asked in horror, her tongue unable to curtail the questions.
"There is a word the Americans have for a child born out of wedlock," Bian explained. "It is a word implying worthlessness and ugliness. The American has called Major Quon by this word. He has used many vile expressions."
"What expressions?" Titi asked.
Bian answered her in the American tongue. Titi shook her head, and Bian repeated the words more slowly. Titi listened carefully to the sounds. First there were two brief syllables that she recognized at once because they sounded like a man's name: Phuoc Yu. "One-eyed bastard," Bian said, and Titi identified those four syllables also. She tried to repeat them, and Bian smiled a little at her effort.
"Very close," she said, then continued wrathfully. "The first part speaks of the major's honorable wound as if it were an impediment, something to be ashamed of! The second is the American word for 'illegitimate child'. More important than these disrespects, though, little one, the scum refuses to answer our questions. Name he will give us, and rank. Date of birth and service number, but nothing else."
"Is that not all that he is required to give?" Titi queried. She knew that the soldiers of the Viet Cong had instructions to offer nothing else if they were captured by the Americans.
Bian spat upon the ground. "He is not a prisoner of war. His country has not declared war on Vietnam. He came, against international law, to murder us. He is an Air Pirate. A criminal. He has no rights."
The American cried out again, begging wretchedly for respite from his torment. A cold smile appeared upon Bian's lips.
"I think he is learning that now," she said.
By now they had reached the door of the concrete building and Bian led the way into the room. The place where the American had been punished was stained with blood and vomit and other fluids. Cam Lan, dressed in one of her ragged old smocks, was on her hands and knees as she scrubbed away the foulness. She kept her eyes lowered respectfully, but as Bian passed she cringed away as if in fear. Titi wanted to speak to her other sister, the disgraced one, but Bian swept past the knot of men surrounding Quon's table, and entered the back room at once.
Major Quon stood with his back to the door, leaning on the sill of the chamber's only window. From the noises that drifted in through it, Titi knew what he was watching with such intent. Her own eyes, however, were drawn to the other person in the room.
It was a woman, sitting on the major's bed with one foot on the mattress and the other dangling just above the floor. She wore weather-stained black uniform trousers, but nothing else, and what was revealed by the lack of tunic and band held Titi's full attention. It was at once one of the most piteous and the most hideous things that she had ever seen.
The pale skin of the woman's left breast was perfectly normal: smooth and honey-colored. It was round and soft as nature had intended it to be. Its mate, however, was anything but. Here, the flesh was gnarled and lumpy. It was as if the woman was a candle, one side of which was still white and even, while the other had been turned too near the fire, so that its surface bubbled and melted in strange and ugly shapes. The right breast was shriveled. The nipple and areola were gone. The adipose tissue had been melted away and replaced by blister-like scars webbed with red and purple blemishes. This mass of ugliness extended along her side, vanishing below the waistband of her trousers. It stretched upwards, too, over collarbone and shoulder and up the side of her neck. Her right upper arm was similarly misshapen. Then she turned to look at the two young women, and Titi could not help but gasp a little.
The right side of her face, too, was mangled and waxy, veined with purple striae and bubbling as if boiled. Her eyebrow was gone, and a fringe of coarse black hair was combed forward to cover the place where her scalp had been damaged. Her eyelid drooped low, though the orb beneath it was still clear and keen. The roiling flesh was a permanent and hideous memento of… Titi could not imagine of what.
The woman saw her horrified stare, and the left side of her mouth smiled—Titi did not suppose she could move the other side.
"Hello, Titi," the stranger said.
The girl's eyes widened. Did this woman know her?
"Do you not remember me?"
Titi shook her head. Outside, the prisoner screamed again.
"I taught you your letters," the disfigured visitor said.
Titi swallowed hard. "Thanh?" she breathed.
The woman nodded. With a burst of nostalgic affection, Titi wanted to run to embrace her one-time teacher. Then she remembered how Thanh had always been cold and formal, and also Titi was not sure that she wanted to touch the horrible, rippled skin.
"What is it?" Thanh asked. "My face?"
Titi nodded, but her eyes could not leave the withered breast. "What has happened?" she whispered.
Thanh shrugged her shoulders—the whole, beautiful one and the ugly, melted one. She was smoking one of Major Quon's cigarettes and she toyed with it as she spoke. "You know of napalm?"
"Yes." Napalm was an American weapon: liquid fire that rained down upon the jungle. It clung to whatever it touched, burning relentlessly.
"I was in a firefight near Mai Choi in the south," Thanh said. "I ran, but not swiftly enough."
"I… I am sorry," Titi murmured.
"I am not," Thanh said. "I am proud. My body is proof to all of the justice of our cause. It is evidence of the enemy's crimes."
With painfully exquisite timing, another howling sob rang out. Major Quon turned from the window, smiling fondly.
"Titi," he said, extending his hand. Titi hurried to take it. Her worries about being able to face him after what she had witnessed fled. He was a great man, and a brave man, and he cared for her. As their fingers met Quon drew her to him. He kissed her forehead and with his free hand stroked her hair. The shirt of his uniform was untucked and hanging open over his chest. He, too, was smoking.
"Thanh is going to travel to Hanoi," he said. "She will take with her Lieutenant Khoi and three other men. They will deliver reports to the government and dispense with other important business."
"I see," Titi murmured politely. She wondered why she had been sent for. Certainly, it was nice to see Thanh again, but it did not seem to justify disrupting school for the whole day.
"It is my wish," Quon said, "that you accompany her."
Titi's heart began to race with excitement. "To Hanoi?" she exclaimed.
"Yes," Quon said. "It is right that you should see that which you praise so well. On the journey, also, there will be many opportunities to learn. Thanh will teach you to be a warrior. Khoi can instruct you in the language of the Americans. It is time, little Titi, for you to begin to fight."
Titi did not want to fight! She wanted always to be the schoolteacher and to live a quiet and peaceful life. Yet those who spoke such words were reviled and abused. Rather than risk such ignominy, she bowed her head respectfully.
"Yes, Major Quon," she said with obedience. "When do we depart?"
Thanh studied the tip of her cigarette pensively. "As soon as the pig can walk," she said.
"As soon…" Titi echoed, confused. Pig? Why would they take a pig to Hanoi? Besides, the village livestock was all healthy. The animals had no difficulty walking.
Five eyes turned as one when Thanh, Bian and Quon looked to the open window through which sounds of wretched blubbering began to drift.
Bian spat disdainfully upon the concrete floor. "I would drag the scum by the neck," she growled.
Thanh shook her head, reiterating firmly, "As soon as he can walk."