The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons
She just lay on the ground, panting and limp, not trying to get away, saying nothing, her brown eye moist and knowing, blinking at him. Ha Si backed away a few inches, his knife still trained on her, and Alexander moved away three feet—to get away from her heaving belly. He wished he could close his eyes and not look at her. His instincts were about to fail him, looking at a tiny woman so heavily pregnant, in a physical fight with two armed soldiers. It was too fucked up. “Please,” he said, “just tell me where he is.”
Moon Lai opened her mouth and spoke softly in halting but very good English. “You know,” she said, “he assured me you would never find him. But I told him you would find a way.”
No closing of eyes now. Eyes were opened wide. “What?” Alexander whispered.
“It won’t do you any good to pretend to be surprised,” she said.
“Who is surprised? He is alive?”
“I do not know,” she said in her spare voice. “He was barely alive when they took him from here.”
Took him from here! Alexander couldn’t speak. He almost cried.
“You are too late. He is near Hanoi now,” she said. “Soon they will take him to a Castro camp near China. And then USSR.”
Groaning, exhaling, Alexander sank into the earth.
She was watching him unblinking. They were all on the ground, Moon Lai near the manhole, half-lying down. Alexander aghast and against the wall, legs spread out, Ha Si close to her, gripping the pointed knife.
“I know where he is. I will take you to him,” she said. “You come with me. He was alive when he left here. But we do not have much time.”
Alexander had lost his power of speech.
“You are a fucking liar,” said Ha Si. “Whose bandages are you changing twice a day?”
Moon Lai smiled softly. “This is a transit camp. We have other POW here,” she said. “I help them, too, the way I helped him.” Sitting up, she straightened out and brushed the straw off her face.
“Keep your hands in front of you,” Ha Si said, moving closer.
“Okay, okay.” She put them on her belly and cringed as if she were in pain. She was trying to control her breathing.
If Alexander didn’t listen to her words and looked at her mute, she was just a young pregnant girl pleading for compassion from men. Perhaps pregnant with Anthony’s baby. Oh God. If one didn’t look at the patch over her face, you could see how fresh she was, how small and pretty. “How old are you?” he asked numbly.
“Seventeen.”
His heart nearly gave out. He glanced at Ha Si for strength.
Ha Si, emotionless, his eyes brutal, shook his head at Alexander, as if to say, buck up, soldier. “You are not seventeen,” he said. “Maybe a hundred and seventeen. Do not lie to the major. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” she said. “Born in 1943. Like his son.”
Alexander was surprised; she looked young like a child. “Are there guards down there?” he asked, frowning at her lies.
“Many. Guarding the POW. But what does it matter? He is not here.”
“Armed guards?”
“Heavily.”
They were quiet.
“You lay in wait for the American patrols in Hué,” Alexander said. “You lay in wait for my son.”
“I was just bait,” she said with a shrug. “Usually we killed them then and there. Not your son. He is some warrior. He is the reason I am half blind.”
“Ah,” said Ha Si, “but in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
“I do not care for your insults about my country,” said Moon Lai without looking at him. She spoke in a gentle, non-inflammatory tone. Her manner was subservient. “It is your country, too, Bannha.” She never once looked at Ha Si. Her eye was trained only on Alexander. “In Hué, Anthony thought he was saving me. He was so noble and decent. Such an easy mark, your son,” she said softly. “The easiest. Just a few days and he was wholly addicted.” Her eye smiled approvingly at Alexander. “But really, I must tell you, you did not teach him very well. He is too trusting. Though, of course, it is probably the only reason he is still alive today. Because I was going to kill him like I kill them all— kill him with opium, with deadly vipers.” She had a lilting voice, sweet. “But he started telling me such interesting stories about his life! I waited to listen. He told me a little at a time, but when we married, he told me everything. I was just a Vietnamese whore he saved, a simple village girl desperately in need of his protection.” Her eye glistened and shined as she spoke of him. “He told me so much, thinking I barely understood. And I sat and listened. He told me about his mother, the Soviet escapee, and about his father, the American who came to the Soviet Union, who had served in the Red Army, who escaped twice, who killed Soviet interrogators and NKVD border troops, who escaped from a maximum security Soviet prison and was now in U.S. military intelligence.” Moon Lai looked as though she were tenderly reminiscing. “He was so thorough, we barely even had to go to your files to confirm his stories.”
“Oh, my God, who are you?” Alexander whispered, his hands shaking.
“I am his wife,” Moon Lai said in her most pleasant voice. “I am his pregnant wife and I was his nurse.”
Alexander was grateful he was sitting. Once he had given all of himself away, the same reckless way, to a small, soft, very young Soviet factory girl, whom he had barely known, sitting on a bench under the summer elms in the Italian Gardens in Leningrad. Pale and trembling, watching this girl, he asked, “How did you get him to come with you all the way here?” He was looking for something from her, a small tremulous clue to one thing and one thing only: Where was Anthony?
Moon Lai shrugged. “He came peacefully. When he got suspicious, a few miles south of the DMZ, I helped him go to sleep, and when he woke up, he was here. It was not even a fight.”
Alexander was mute, struck dumb by the vision of his son, waking up to find himself here.
Moon Lai continued in a murmur. “But once here, Anthony suddenly needed so much persuasion to keep on talking! Which is when all our trouble with him began. Because when he did talk, he told us the most damnable lies about the American military positions. He sent us on crazy missions that ended in large losses for us; we kept walking right into ambushes and booby traps. And he kept trying to kill our guards, succeeding three times, twice while he was still shackled! He became very dangerous. We had no choice but to incapacitate him and then to transfer him.”
Incapacitate him? mouthed Alexander.
“Every other word out of your mouth,” said Ha Si, “is a fucking lie. He is down there right now.”
“No, he is not,” Moon Lai said without argument. “But there are fifty guards there with the prisoners. You two want to take them on in the dark tunnels by yourselves? Please—go right ahead.”
“Fifty guards?” said Ha Si. “How many prisoners do you have down there?”
Not answering, Moon Lai said to Alexander, “Tell your Bannha to take his weapon from me, Commander. I am your daughter-in-law. This child could be your grandchild. The knife comes off my neck right now.”
After a frayed moment Alexander motioned to Ha Si who, with supreme reluctance, moved himself and his weapon away and behind Moon Lai.
“Is it... Anthony’s child?” Alexander asked haltingly.
Her one eye stared right back at his two, all three brown-hued, a telescoping triangle playing for keeps, all unblinking and unflinching. “Commander, what are you asking me? You came to Vietnam, abandoned your family, put your own life in mortal danger, all to see your son again. I am about to help you do that, if you will be reasonable, and you are sitting here asking me about”—she pointed to her large belly—“this? What does it matter?”
Now Alexander flinched and blinked. “What does it matter?” He exhaled. “It matters a great, big, fucking deal. Don’t evade me, don’t defraud me. Can you say one fucking thing without dissembling? It’s a simple question. Yes or no. Is it his child?”
“We are not losing,” said Alexander. “We have not lost one single fucking engagement against you since this damn war began.”
“You are losing regardless. Do you know why? Because you’re wasting your time dumping bombs from safe air, going on recon missions like this one, and fucking whores.”
“Like you?”
“But you know who is fighting?” she went on. “We are. The Soviets train us, and teach us, and educate us, and arm us. They teach us your language, Commander—Russian, English, and the language of war— which is the only language you understand. We fight with their old weapons and the new weapons you leave behind. We fight without boots and without helmets and without C-rations. You burn us with napalm? We bandage ourselves and keep going. You kill our crops with Agent Blue? We eat grass and keep going. We do not care about your bombs and your chemicals. We do not care if we die. Because we are fighting for our life, for our very existence—the way the Red Army once fought Hitler. Victory was the only option. That is the way Americans fought in World War Two, and for the first few months in Korea. But here in Vietnam, what you are doing is pretending to fight. That is why you will never win, despite having the most disciplined, best trained, best equipped force in the world. Because you are unwilling to sacrifice even fifty thousand of your men to defeat communism in Indochina, while we will sacrifice our men to the last one to defeat you. We will sacrifice millions of our men, tens of millions, not a lousy fifty thousand! No price is too high to pay, no sacrifice is large enough. We believe in this war, and you do not. You yourself do not believe in it, your country does not believe in it, your jodies at home do not believe in it. Your politicians and your journalists certainly do not believe in it.” Moon Lai smiled warmly. “In fact, they do so much of our vital work for us, destabilizing the will of our American enemy. And once you leave, the South Vietnamese, despite all your training, will not last a week.”
She spoke so softly; her voice was melodious; it never rose above a purr; words fluttered like butterflies off her tongue. She smiled! But these were the words she was saying. A poem, of all things, came back to Alexander. When she spoke what a tender voice she used ...John Dryden, how had it gone?... Like flakes of feathered snow, it melted as it left her mouth. But her words were incongruous. Alexander wanted to say, I don’t understand a word you’re saying; speak English.
But he understood.
He was imprisoned by her voice and her large belly. She looked like Tania when she was eight months pregnant, when she could not get off the couch or the bed without Alexander’s help, when she could not turn over without rocking and rolling, when he walked around after her with his hands constantly out, in case she tripped or slipped or wavered.
Alexander wavered. In response to what he had just heard, the only thing he uttered was, “The South Vietnamese also believe in their war, no?”
“No. They are weak, and they are led by the nose by you. Vietnam will be one despite them, and despite the mercenaries you send here to help them.”
“My son is not a fucking mercenary.”
“Your son was not, no,” Moon Lai said, motionless and calm. “He was one among half a million men.” She paused and blinked. “But do you know what? He did not believe in this war either. Oh, he thought he did. Until he met me, he thought he did. And when he married me, he still thought he did. But he never even asked me if I was South Vietnamese! He married me instantly when I told him I was having a baby, and he never even asked if it was his.”
Alexander, his fists clenched, compassion for her draining out of him, said, “Yes. Because he believed in you.”
Moon Lai shook her head. “Only superficially. When he opened his eyes here in Kum Kau and saw where he was and pleaded for me, the interrogator brought me to him, pregnant and roped up and told him to speak. Anthony spoke all right, but do you know what he said?” She took a breath. “‘I don’t give a fuck what you do to her,’ said your son. ‘And that baby isn’t mine. They say that a wife is only for one man. But sometimes she is for two men, and sometimes for three. And my wife fucked every American soldier from here to Saigon, lying on her back trying to ambush them with her pussy like she ambushed me. She may as well have had razor blades in it. Kill her in front of me. I don’t care.’” Moon Lai smirked casually even as a tremble passed her face. “Needless to say, of course, they did not kill me. But my point to you is made. He did not believe in me.”
“Believe in you? What the fuck are you talking about, believe in you?” said Alexander, gratified that at that terrible moment Anthony finally saw the truth—Anthony, who once thought all the world was good. “My son finally learned he had found something lower than a two-dollar whore,” said Alexander, “and he wanted you to know it.”
“Yes, that is right,” she said. “So love was not completely blind, was it?” Moon Lai composed her mouth. “You should be grateful to us, because it was here in Kum Kau that your son finally found out what he himself believed in. It was not the war against communism, and it certainly was not me. Until he found out what he believed in, we could not make any progress with him. Nothing we could say could convince him to confide in us. We threatened him with a transfer to the Castro camp. We brought in our best interrogators, we used our strongest methods—”
Alexander flinched and flinched again.
“—Nothing was making an impression on him. He cursed us in English, Russian, Spanish—even our own. He told us to kill him. We kept him in water, we deprived him of water. We beat him, we starved him, we burned him. We kept him with rats, we did... other things to him. And then I would come and minister to him.” Her voice was soothing. “I ministered so thoroughly to him. I was his only friend, and his wife, and he was chained and naked and had no way out. He had to let me touch him. What punishment that must have been for him, what torture.” Her hands were tensing slightly, lying less languidly on her stomach. “You are recoiling, Commander, why?” Moon Lai relaxed her hands. “Finally we figured out a way. Pretending to give up, we said to him that we have kept him hidden long enough. He was no longer of any use to us. We were going to notify his government that he was still alive and an NVA prisoner. Maybe they would negotiate for Anthony Barrington.”
Alexander paled.
Moon Lai smiled. Her teeth were dazzling.
“Exactly.” She nodded. “You are very good, Anthony’s father. You see things. We said, your parents will be so glad to know you are alive, a POW in North Vietnam. But Anthony did not seem to think so at all. He said he would tell us everything, to keep his name from appearing on the POW rolls, and you from finding out he had been taken prisoner. How much valuable classified intel he gave us then! After all,” said Moon Lai, looking straight at Alexander, “he knows you are a wanted traitor and deserter, who killed sixty-eight of our men to escape his just punishment.”
Our men?
“And so now, Commander,” said Moon Lai, “are you coming with me? Because your son is waiting. Is your wife here, too, with you, perhaps?” She waited for his answer and when Alexander did not speak, she whispered, “What a pity.”
“Who are you?” Alexander whispered, inaudibly, trying not to gasp.
He
Before she was finished speaking, before Alexander could move, could draw breath, a shiny sickle flashed in Moon Lai’s small hand, a splint blade that swung forward and plunged hilt-deep into Alexander’s inner thigh. She aimed straight at his femoral artery. He jerked in a half-inch, half-second reflex and she missed—just—but she was lightning swift, and in the next inhale, without losing her balance, she pulled the blade out, ready to thrust the knife into Ha Si’s face as he moved on her. But Alexander grabbed her wrist, and Ha Si had his own knife well in hand. She opened her mouth to scream and Ha Si yanked her head back and sliced his blade deep and wide across her throat. He pitched her on the ground away from them, and with her gurgling sounds behind him, dropped his knife and grabbed Alexander’s leg.
They both struggled with their hands over the red river, fighting to cover the deep wound. With one hand Ha Si pulled a QuikClot coagulant out of his first-aid pouch. It was painless, sterile and worked by physically absorbing the liquid from the blood. Alexander pressed it into the wound; grabbing a vial of silver nitrate from the pouch, Ha Si poured an unconscionable amount over the leg and yanked out an emergency kit. He laid the primary bandage on top of the QuikClot, strapped the pressure bar against Alexander’s thigh, tightened with adhesive and pulled the cords. He wrapped the secondary dressing twice around. All of this took no more than thirty seconds.
“I can’t believe I wasn’t more careful,” Alexander breathed out.
“You were plenty careful,” said Ha Si, dripping more silver nitrate over the bandages. “Your son got hooked and never saw the sickle until it was too late.”