He
crouched in the darkness, pressing his hands into the earth walls to push
himself as far as he could into the bend of the tunnel. The ground around,
below and above him was no longer trembling to the concussion of the enemy’s
bombs, so he wouldn’t be buried alive – not just yet. But they would be coming,
dropping in from their helicopters or riding on their tall boxy armoured
personnel carriers.
He knew what would happen after that. He’d
seen it many times before. They’d comb the blasted forest, seeking among the
charred undergrowth and snapped off tree trunks for the entrance of a tunnel.
And if they found this one...
Then they’d flood it with gas, or send in
the small brown-skinned soldiers with the pistols and grenades. And he had
nothing to defend himself with, not even a knife.
Despite the muggy heat in the tunnel, he
shivered. He was afraid, and he didn’t want to be afraid.
Not long ago, he hadn’t been afraid. Not so
long ago, he’d been the boldest man in the section, so that his cell commander
had given him a dressing down for foolhardiness. But that had been when he was just
out of training, and everything had been strange and new and he could do
anything he wanted, anything at all.
Back in the hamlet, nobody had ever taken
him quite seriously. Old Schoolteacher Van’s son, they had called him, with a
mixture of condescension and pity, would never be anything more than a copy of
Van himself, small, meek and the butt of everyone’s jokes. And they’d been a
bit suspicious of him because, being the schoolteacher’s son, he was a bit too educated. But that was before the war
had reached this far, before it had stained the forest and rice paddies, and
before the hamlet had formed a defence committee.
Nobody had expected him to volunteer,
though. He still remembered the look of shock on the face of the defence
committee chief, Minh, when he’d turned up.
“But you’re Van’s son!” he’d said.
He’d looked at Minh. “I’m also one of the
men of the hamlet,” he’d said. And Minh had looked away.
“All right,” he’d mumbled. “Report for
training tomorrow.”
His father hadn’t said anything when he’d
heard. But his face had frozen, and his eyes sunken back into his head. And his
mother had cried, but softly, in another room, so that she’d thought he hadn’t
heard.
Why had he joined? He hadn’t had any
interest in politics, in the Party, and, if truth were to be told, he hadn’t
been all that interested in the liberation struggle – not then. That was before
he saw villages burned by the hairy pink American invaders, before he’d seen their
inhabitants shot and dumped in a ditch. Then he’d become very interested in the liberation struggle.
It was in training that he’d met Phuong. She
was from a larger village down on the delta, a place with a road cars could
travel and even electricity. He was almost afraid to speak to her, even when
they were allocated to the same guerrilla cell. She was too sophisticated, too
knowledgeable, and far too pretty for him. But she’d been kind to him then and
later, and hadn’t laughed at him even once, not even when he’d stammered and
blushed whenever she’d spoken to him.
Little by little, quite naturally, he’d
fallen in love with her. He’d realised that in the first bombardment, when she’d
crouched beside him in the forest while shrapnel slashed through the trees. He’d
realised it when they’d been setting up an ambush for the Saigon puppets, and
she – who had been banned from taking part in the fighting – had given him a
small amulet on a string to wear around his neck. It was a good luck charm from
the village, she’d said. And he’d realised it again, more than ever, one more
time.
He’d never spoken of his love to her, of course. For one thing, it was
forbidden as long as they were fighting. For another, he was terrified of being
rejected if he told her, or, even worse, laughed at. Perhaps she’d decided that
she would marry someone in the city after the war, he’d thought. Maybe, if he
didn’t say anything, she would finally fall in love with him herself. And then
maybe after the war was over they could get married.
So he just loved her, and waited.
Then there came the day when their unit had
been surrounded and bombarded. First the shells had exploded among the trees,
blasting aside the trunks like matchsticks, and then the planes had come
roaring over, napalm exploding over the jungle in a rain of fire. There had
been nowhere to go, nowhere to run.
Phuong and he had got away then, though. They
and a third guerrilla, the unit commander, who had been temporarily blinded by
a head wound, had managed to survive the bombardment and evade the American
troops when they had come searching. They had even managed to find their way
down to the river, Phuong leading the commander by the hand because he had a bandage
round his eyes and couldn’t see. For almost two days they’d kept moving,
drinking from puddles and eating leaves when they could no longer stand the
hunger. Finally, they’d reached the river,
and once there they’d believed they had managed to escape.
But they’d been still beside the river,
waiting for some way to get away to the main force regiments to the north, when
the American patrol had arrived. It was his own fault they’d got so close
without being seen; he’d been so tired that he’d half dozed away while Phuong
changed the commander’s bandage. And then, suddenly, they’d been there, walking
along the path by the water, coming right in their direction. It was already
too late to run.
Fighting back hadn’t been an option. They’d
had no weapons between them but the commander’s pistol, ad that had only half a
clip of ammunition. And the enemy had been a full platoon, forty heavily armed
soldiers. They wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Another moment, and they’d have been seen.
And then Phuong had got up, and walked down
the path away from the soldiers, as quickly as she could without running. He’d
seen her do that, known instantly what she was doing, and yet been unable to
stop her or even to protest.
The Americans had seen her too, of course,
and their attention had been drawn instantly to her. One of them had called to
her, in heavily-accented Vietnamese, to stop. She’d broken into a trot instead,
not running, not going fast enough to provoke them to fire, just fast enough to
make them run to catch her.
He’d watched them catch her, and he’d
watched them do things to her. He’d reached for the commander’s pistol then,
but the older man, who still could barely see, had grabbed his hand.
“Don’t be a fool,” he’d hissed. “She’s given her life for us. Stay down and don’t move.”
So they had stayed down and he’d watched
the soldiers roll Phuong’s body into the river when they’d finished with her,
and then they’d stood around smoking for a while before going on with their
patrol. And when the night had fallen they’d continued their journey.
He’d been brave then, and reckless with the
force of his love for her.
Now he was merely afraid. Now, he was alone
in the dark, unarmed and terrified.
It wasn’t completely dark. There was a tiny
chink of light, invading from somewhere, a pinpoint-thick dot of illumination showing
nothing. He stared at it with hatred, imagining it to be something which would
pick him out to the enemy as brightly as a searchlight. He wanted to seize the
light, take hold of it, twist it and crush it and bury it where it could do no
harm. But he didn’t dare leave his niche in the wall.
Once more, knowing it was useless, he felt
about him in the darkness for the carbine, or failing that, anything at all,
even a bayonet or a panji stake,
which he might use as a weapon. But there was nothing except the stale air and
the heat.
Suddenly he stiffened. Surely that was a
noise in the darkness? He thought he heard a voice. He listened intently. Yes,
it was a voice, and now footsteps. He could imagine the tunnel rats, in the
darkness round the bend, pausing as they listened for any noise at all, even
that of breathing, before coming further. They’d be small men, tiny by American
standards, and they’d have a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.
He’d fought them many times before and he’d won.
But that was then, when he’d had weapons
and he hadn’t been afraid.
He began to shake, the tremor starting in
his neck and shoulders and spreading down his back and arms, shivering with
terror, as the muffled footsteps came closer. He buried his head between his
shoulders, and fought down a whimper of fear.
Light flooded in on him.
“Father,” the round-faced middle-aged woman
said. “There you are, in the wardrobe again. I thought I’d find you there. Really,
you’re getting impossible. Come out at once!”
The old man crouching in the corner got up
slowly and shuffled into the room. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his
shoulders shook.
“Father,” said the woman, “what’s wrong?
You’re crying.”
The old man shook his head.
“The war is over, Father,” the woman said
gently. “It’s been over a long, long time.”
The old man didn’t reply. The female
interrogator asked him something. He didn’t even try to understand what she was
saying. It no longer mattered what they did to him.
Phuong had given her life for him, and he’d
been through so much, only to be captured so ignominiously after all, and the
tears of shame just kept flowing.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2014
[Source] |
You know, you see and read portrayals of PTSD in the media, but... It's remarkably similar to how you'd picture it, so far as I can tell. I work with a nonprofit that does free legal advice clinics at the local VA hospital every week, and the PTSD bunch acts in such a stereotypical way that i thought they were kidding the first few times I saw it.
ReplyDeleteSlammed doors, fast movement, that sort of thing gets a reaction from them.
Human brains get messed up for good.
I was wrong, when I talked to you earlier. I hadn't read this all the way through. Really magnificent writing. Wonderful, horrible story. Haunting.
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