In early 1972, my unit was on its march along the Ho Chi Minh Trail when a flash of light shattered the curtain of darkness. Light blazed; explosions blasted. Luy and I clenched our fists, shoving each other into the dirt. When the sound of bombs receded, I stood up, stunned to find the forest in tatters; the smoke of bombs and then the settling dust of the ravaged earth gradually exposed the canopy of heaven in a night that was clear and vast and thick with stars.
I heard the cries of men pleading. Where was Luy? I shuddered: My hand held Luy’s wrist. That’s all there remained of Luy’s body, his severed hand, with its exquisite wrist watch losing luster.
Since my unit was on an urgent march, we left behind a small group to bury our dead. From that day until now I’ve not been able to find Luy’s remains, and so when I visited Luy’s ancestral home in Tang Phuc Village, I was unable to take him’s remains to the War Cemetery.
I stopped my motorbike at the "Y" in the paved road and asked a girl approaching me
"Can you tell me the way to Tang Phuc?"
The girl looked at me, then broke into a smile.
"Don’t you recognise me, Mr. Nuoc?" she asked. "Have you returned for Luy’s Death Day Commemoration? Tang Phuc Village is that way – it’s not far."
I was dumb founded and looked again. It had been only two years since I’d been back, but the village had changed so! Sure enough– There, just beyond, stood the gate to Elder Khang’s house. I thanked the girl and rode off.
The entire household came out to greet me, showing closeness and warmth. Luy’s mother, Elder Luy–according to the customs of our area, we call the parents by the name of their eldest child–had grey hair, but her eyes remained clear. As for Luy’s wife, she seemed younger now and happier because Quyet, Luy’s only son, had finished school with a degree from the University of Transport. These days, Quyet flew in an airplane over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to survey a new north-south route.
I lit three sticks of incense and silently gazed at Luy’s picture on the family altar. The enlargement was fuzzy because the photo had been taken for his identification papers. Luy seemed to gaze at us from some remote place.
"When will you marry?" I later asked Quyet.
He smiled. Elder Luy answered, her reply was like a dropped knife.
"I’m about to send word to Thoa in the lower hamlet to come here so you can meet her. She’s extremely dutiful."
I didn’t dare laugh aloud. These days, youths are free to fly to their own heights. A young man like Quyet might be in Hanoi today, in Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow, and then off to Australia or France the following month. These days, the young follow their own ideas. Why should a father or mother worry if they’re not married? I was thinking this, but I didn’t dare say anything, though Quyet and I caught each other’s eye and smiled.
The entire village had prospered since the "Open Door" policy. Every family had built a brick house with a flat roof. There were even some two-story houses with cupolas on top. Cupolas had been the rage in 1990; villagers built parapets with green and lemon-yellow ceramic balustrades and, on top, red roof caps; the result looked like the colorful hub of a cart wheel. Labourers working in Iraq had brought this style, which originated in the Middle Ages, back to Vietnam.
Luy’s house was the only one in the village that retained the ancient and traditional Vietnamese style because, as a widow and single parent, Luy’s wife hadn’t been able to make money and Young Quyet had only been working for a few years. Their house was divided into the traditional three sections with decorated walls and a tile roof. A courtyard made of bricks from Bat Trang included a cistern with a vaulted cover to keep out the falling bamboo and mahogany leaves, and there was a garden hidden behind the kitchen. This was an honest family. There had been some changes in the interior: a floor of flowered tiles, an electric light, a 14-inch colour TV.
Luy’s wife said to me, "We have a lot. More than I ever dreamed of. If we want more ‘modern things’ then Older Brother Quyet will have to buy them."
From the time she’d been widowed, Luy’s wife had called her son "Older Brother."
Elder Luy looked on with approval.
"Yes," she said, "the house will belong to the two of them. Soon, it will be their worry."
Once again, the two of us- "uncle" and "nephew"–looked at each other and smiled.
Quyet leaned close to my ear. "As if I already had a wife! Hardly!"
We all sat down to enjoy the meal, with the entire family gathering around the tray of dishes. Elder Luy had considered me her son from the day I brought home Luy’s things and the news of his death. Sister Luy or Luy’s wife gave me responsibility for Quyet’s studies, so when Quyet came to Hanoi to attend university, he lived at my house. Because we were so poor, my wife had to re-tailor an old shirt of mine, taking it in at the armpits for Quyet to wear.
"Our household is poor, nephew," she told him, "but the poorer you are, the more you must live up to your name, determination."
During this visit to Luy’s family, my wife remained at home. In her absence, Sister Luy doted on me.
I poured a cup of rice alcohol and placed it in Elder Luy’s hand.
"Have a little, Grandmother, so we, younger ones, can also enjoy ourselves."
The older woman began to weep; her tears were prolonged. She set the cup of alcohol on the table.
"The only thing I want in life is to cradle your younger brother’s remains and take them to the War Cemetery. But I don’t know where he is."
"Think about it, Grandmother," Quyet said. "There are so many people missing all over the country, not just my father."
A neighborhood child ran in the house.
"Grandmother," he said, using the generic form of address "may I borrow your hoe?"
"Of course, Grandchild," the old woman answered. "But come here first and have something to eat."
The child was merry. "My grandfather sent me on ahead. He’s waiting at the end of the alley."
"Then go on out to the garden and get the hoe. It’s in its usual place, leaning against Young Gion’s altar."
The boy ran out of the house. Elder Luy called after him "Let me get it for you. It’s not gracious for you to go alone. And take some bananas with you for your younger brother."
"Please," Sister Luy urged me, "eat as if you were at home. Grandmother’s still a little crazy that way. She remembers him on every Death Day Anniversary and every Tet and whenever she picks up her chopsticks. At times I’ve had to say, ‘How can our guests eat if you act that way?’"
With that, Sister Luy also began to cry.
I was dumbstruck.
"Young Gion - Who’s he? Do you mean he has an altar? I’ve come here often but never heard of this."
Quyet spoke next.
"Don’t you remember, Uncle? Young Gion flew the F-4 that was shot down in our garden in 1972."
"How could I forget? I was just taken aback about an altar."
"Ah, well," Quyet said. "It happened this way..."
And so, hearing the story of Young Gion once again, I finally understood this last detail: At the end of 1972, when American B-52 bombers tried to smash us into ruins, a flaming "phantom" plummeted into Elder Luy’s garden. The plane exploded as soon as it struck the earth, thrusting itself deep into the family fish pond and creating a terrible stench.
The village returned to quiet soon after the turmoil of the bombing. Elder Luy, her daughter-in-law and grandson filled in the "pond." In the front of their rehabilitated garden they planted several dong rieng bushes of aromatic ginger to harvest and sell in order to buy food. The seeds took root quickly; the plants grew tall, with dense leaves and colourful flowers.
Not many people knew that every year, on the Day of Lonely Souls, Elder Luy bent her head to a private task. Every year, on the Fifteenth day of the Seventh Lunar Month, she slipped behind the ginger bushes, taking with her sticks of incense to light in memory of the young American who lay buried beneath the earth.
After receiving compassion pay for Luy’s death, the family was able to rebuild the house. A few bricks remained. Elder Luy led one of the workers out behind the garden and asked him to build an altar. Only then did everyone know that the elderly woman had been paying homage to the young American pilot. A number of people thought her idiotic and half-witted.
"He’s an enemy!" they said. "How can you honor his monstrous deed with the sacred smoke of incense?!"
"They were both soldiers," Elder Luy would say, turning to her daughter-in-law. "They were both unlucky..."
Whereupon the two women would think of Luy and begin to cry. This had all happened more than twenty years before. Now, I was touched to hear Luy’s wife add more details.
"A MIA delegation came here looking for the remains of American soldiers who’d died during the war. They said an American’s bones remained inside the airplane carcass. They asked permission to dig up the plane and take the remains back to America."
The excavation took several days. Once more, Elder Luy’s garden was devastated, her crops demolished, and the earth turned inside out. The Americans winched the airplane up our of the old pond. Then they retrieved from the mangled cockpit the pilot’s smashed bones and his intact skull protected by his pilot’s helmet.
As the excavation team was arranging the bones on a nylon sheet spread out near the excavation site, the head of the delegation checked around for the source of the strange fragrance of incense in the blue smoke floating over the leaves of nearby trees.
Looking around, the American noticed Luy’s mother at the end of the garden. She was murmuring a prayer to some ancestor, at least he supposed so, for he couldn’t see her face but only the altar. The American stood there, curious. Parting the ginger bushes, he walked towards the altar. He knew a few words of Vietnamese, which he spoke with a heavy accent.
"What is this?"
The interpreter asked Luy’s mother again and then explained.
"This is the house and the resting place of the soul of your pilot who died in battle. For the last twenty-five years, she has kept his soul free of hunger and thirst. She lit the incense today to pray for his safe return to his family, so he can rest in peace."
"My God!" the delegation head said.
He asked permission to follow Luy’s mother into her home. His face turned pale when he saw the family’s altar in centre of the house and, on it, a photograph of a soldier of the Vietnamese People’s Army. His hands, with a camera, trembled as the interpreter told him that the woman’s son had died in the war and that she still didn’t know where he was buried. The mother was seventy-one years old; her last life wish was to bring home whatever remained of her son, to wash his bones in sweetened water, and to make him a proper burial. She hadn’t yet been able to do that.
The American followed Asian custom by standing, head bowed, his palms together in prayerful silence. He stood in front of Luy’s altar as a representative of dead and living Americans, expressing compassion for the mothers in Viet Nam.
After he’d seen the simple house and the tattered clothes the old woman wore, the American thought of giving Luy’s mother a few dollar notes. But the interpreter put out his hand in time to stop him and then made a long speech, turning to the curious villagers who had gathered.
"I just explained to the American how in Vietnam each village has an altar to the village spirit and to the people who made some great contribution to our country and its people, and how at its cemetery each village has a small pagoda for wandering souls, where we pray for the missing. In the past, this area was a battle front. The enemy died in droves. And so I explained that on a nearby hill you built a small temple to the lonely spirits. I told him how each year in the Seventh Month on the Day of Lonely Souls, you go to that altar to light incense in a ceremony to honor the wandering souls. I told him about the offerings of boiled sweet potatoes, rice wafers, popcorn, and white rice soup ladled into ‘bowls’ made from banyan leaves, about the first secret buds of bamboo shoots."
The gathered villagers nodded their heads. As for the American, his eyes opened wide as if he’d just stepped into a strange world.
Elderly Luy sat on her heels, chewing betel nut. She asked slowly,
"What’s his name, the man who piloted the plane?"
The interpreter answered. "His name is John. John Brown."
The American pulled a picture from his pocket to show her. "There he is. John Brown."
The picture showed a handsome young American with an intelligent appearance and eyes that seemed to be laughing. The American continued
"His mother is alive. She lives in a retirement community for elderly people who are lonely. His wife married someone else."
Mrs. Luy spit out her betel saliva.
"Gion. I’ll remember now. His name is Gion."
One might think that Elder Luy would have destroyed Gion’s altar once the excavation team had taken the pilot’s remains back to America. But no. On each Tet New Years, on each Day of Lonely Souls and on each anniversary of Gion’s death, the old woman takes a glass of water and a bunch of bananas or oranges to set on the altar in the garden. Then she lights incense; when the incense finishes burning, she quietly re-enters her house.
The old woman has always told the men of the village
"My son went to the South, but he has returned to the North. At times he is in the jungles of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. At times he is in a corner of the kitchen under the gables. Who knows when the souls of the dead are far away and when they are near?"
The village of Tang Phuc is on the Yen Vien rail line that runs north of Hanoi. Bomb craters from the B-52 attack left the earth looking like a sieve, but by now, ordinary life has pressed everyone into making a living and seeking personal riches. Still, perhaps every Vietnamese, deep within his or her spirit, would find Elder Luy’s gesture ordinary.
The afternoon of that visit, before I returned to Ha Noi, I went out to visit the altar standing in a corner of Elder Luy’s garden. The altar was as tall as a person; its facade was straight. There was a hollow like a place to rest in the back of the altar, and in the middle there were sticks left from burnt incense. Below the altar, on the ground, I noticed a bit of grass burning. A few cinders lifted with the breeze. Luy’s mother had just been there, burning ritual money for the dead.
Translated by Lady Borton
