Strange Meeting
Bao Ninh’s novel The Sorrow of War opens three years after the Americans have departed from Vietnam. Kien helps search the Forest of Screaming Souls for the remains of those killed in the war. The spirits of the dead will suffer unless properly buried.
At night, when reading my paperback copy, I would fall into a sort of trance and feel as if I were floating above myself. In 1995 I traveled eight months in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Europe, where I had many adventures and many flashbacks. In Hanoi I invented reasons to not find Bao Ninh.
A few weeks passed. I wrote to Ninh. Two months later came his warm reply.
On the occasion of Christmas and the New year, I am very glad to send you our warmest regard from Vietnam. I wish you and your family a new year full of happiness. I hope we will soon meet each other in Hanoi.
In the summer of ’98, while sitting with a hundred forty people in a small auditorium at the Joiner Center Writer’s Workshop, ten meters to my right, pressed against a wall, I spotted five Vietnamese writers waiting to be introduced at the podium. I recognized one immediately. When the ex-NVA finished speaking they began walking single file, as if on patrol, to the exit at the rear of the room. Instantly I jumped up and pushed past a gauntlet of crossed and outstretched legs. “Excuse me...excuse me...” I said, following my target, the last man in line.
“Bao Ninh!” I stammered as he neared the door. He turned round. The puzzled look on his face asked, “Who has called me? Which of the American’s knows my name?” From five meters we locked eyes. I identified myself.
“Moc Leby!” he shouted, “Moc Leby!”
We rushed to each other, shook hands, his grip warm, firm, confident. We began speaking rapidly, neither knowing the others language, both caught up in the grace of coincidence.
I opened my arms to Ninh. He embraced me, pulled me close, clapped my back once, twice, three times as if I were a brother, a long lost friend. When my tears did not stop Ninh took my hand to lead me away.
Still sobbing, I managed to blurt out, “No...no...I'm all right.”
Lady Borton, an American woman who had accompanied the Vietnamese delegation from Vietnam, drew near and translated for us. After a time Ninh said he had to leave but we could talk tomorrow.
“Sure,” I said. We shook hands. The rest of the day I felt elated.
For years I’d had a recurring nightmare in which an invisible spirit grabbed both my feet and lifted them straight up. Powerless to fight back I would struggle to wake, filled with dread. But that night, as the dream took over I fought back, and woke feeling a deep sense of calm.
The next morning beneath a cluster of shade trees I sat cross-legged opposite Ninh. A muscular wiry man in his late forties, perhaps 5' 6" tall, he sported a tousled head of jet black hair. A wispy Fu Manchu mustache adorned his upper lip. We talked for three hours through a second interpreter. At the end I asked, “Is there anything I’ve overlooked? Is there anything you want to add?”
“Yes,” said Ninh, his eyes narrowing. “The NVA were not robots. We were human beings. That is what you must tell people. We were human beings.”
I recalled too late that Bao Ninh had spent six years in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Out of five hundred men and women only ten had survived the war with the Americans.
We stood up, dusted ourselves off, shook hands and headed back to campus. Along the way Bao Ninh stopped to view Boston Harbor and smoke a cigarette. I took the opportunity to delve into my wallet for a small photo of my platoon I’ve carried ever since the war.
As their medic, I cared for their their cuts and scratches, their brutal wounds; in return they looked out for me. On the back of the photograph I wrote, “To Bao Ninh, these good men meant as much to me as yours did to you.” Holding the image in his palm, Ninh stared at the smiling young Americans with their steel helmets, sun bleached uniforms, hand grenades and M-16s.
. “How many dead?” he asked, looking up, his face inscrutable. “Just a few,” I answered. “Many hurt.”
Ninh tucked the photo into his shirt pocket, and then checked his watch. It was past noon. We headed to the student café for lunch.
* * *
On the final day of the conference, at Harvard’s resplendent Yen Ching library, Bao Ninh walked to the stage, bowed slightly to the audience, held his open book close to his face and began to read. He spoke softly, his voice almost prayerful, the Vietnamese cadence dreamy and hypnotic.
Larry Heinemann, fellow veteran and author, then read passages in translation. Clearing his throat, adjusting his shirt, he filled the room with the sights and sounds of the battle in the Forest of Screaming Souls. The terror of the bombardment wiping out an NVA unit, so astoundingly dramatized, transfixed the audience.
* * *
On the final night of the workshop five American Vietnam veterans and the NVA arranged to meet at a well known Boston bar. Among the Americans was Andy, a heavy-combat Marine, Heinemann, who had known his share of combat as a regular grunt, Allan, a Special Forces colonel stationed in Laos, tall and lanky Chris. The Vietnamese, established writers and poets, had spent years in combat in various roles. For the first half hour the mood was somber but soon after the drinks arrived tongues loosened, giving way to ribbing and casual banter.
I sat kitty-cornered to Ninh, who sipped endless shots of whiskey and chain smoked cigarettes. He barely spoke. After a time, and perhaps too much beer, someone asked Ninh which side had the better automatic rifle. Ninh felt the AK47 was superior. Submerged, rain soaked, caked by dust or clotted with mud it rarely failed to fire. But, he said, the M16s small tumbling bullets caused terrible internal wounds which caused great suffering and many losses. Someone asked his saddest memory. Gazing into a veil of curling blue smoke, Ninh said it was the job of finding and burying the North Vietnamese dead. At that moment his face went blank and no one spoke.
Toward 1AM, while the now high-spirited group continued to drink and jabber, Ninh remained solemn and quiet. Spur of the moment, I pantomimed taking a photo. He nodded agreement. I turned to Chris, shot in the neck during his first month in country; the unsightly scar a jagged comet trail of zigzag stitches.
“Would you?” I asked, offering him my camera. “Sure, Doc,” he said.
Ninh and I put our arms around each other. Unexpectedly, I could barely stop myself from weeping as Chris said, “Smile, Doc. C’mon, smile." Instead, I clamped my jaw tight. After Chris snapped the photo I took his and he too choked up. Whatever Ninh felt he did not reveal it.
* * *
“Got to hit the loo,” I said, but once out of sight left the bar to find a liquor store. “I’ll take that bottle, and that one, and that one,” I said to the clerk. “Can you wrap them, please?”
Larry Heinemann had once mentioned that Ninh liked Jack Daniels.
No one noticed my stealthy return. During a lull in the conversations I set a large paper bag on the table and took out three gift-wrapped bottles. As Mr. Mau, who’d fought the French and the Americans, began opening his Heinemann suggested I make a speech. “Thank the NVA for being here,” he said. “For reading their poems. For telling their stories. Tell them the war has been over a long time and we’re glad to be their friends.”
The word rang true but a dark knowledge quietly persisted: thirty years ago we’d have shot each other on sight and thought nothing of it. Some things are difficult to forget.
I handed out another bottle. Everyone clapped and smiled. Then it was Ninh’s turn. He seemed genuinely surprised. “Open,” I said. As he peeled the wrapping away, as the familiar stout bottle with its black and white label came into view, Ninh’s eyebrows nearly skyrocketed from his face.
“Jack Daniels!” he shouted, jumping from his chair, clapping my back again and again. “Jack Daniels!”
In post war Vietnam resources for veterans were modest; drinking was accepted as a way to manage PTSD. Ninh had acquired a taste for the scorching American brew that provided relief from the sorrow of war and its aftermath.
* * *
It’s been twelve years since I met Bao Ninh. I treasure the card he sent, and think of him often, and hope he is happy and well. Our meeting was an extraordinary coincidence, and a turning point in my life. I would like to think he feels somewhat the same. To this day I don’t fully understand the meaning of those deep sobs; some say it was an outpouring of grief for my platoon, and for the men and women we murdered. I don't know. But I do know this: Over the years I’ve encountered many Vietnam vets who continue to hate all Vietnamese. I believe they cannot accept that in war and beyond it, we are all human beings.
Parts of this essay were originally published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in the Fall/Winter 1999 (Vol 29, Number 2) issue of The Veteran (see http://www.vvaw.org/).
