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JAMES D. REDWOOD
THE PHOTOGRAPH
Nguyen Van Manh crept along the border of the
Lake of the Restored Sword, where the magic tortoise dwelt. Ever
since he’d arrived in Hanoi the night before, a city swept
up in rejoicing over the end of the war, Manh had run across thousands
of people, his fellow veterans mostly, dressed in drab olive uniforms
and sweat-stained pith helmets with a red star in the middle, like
himself, and all of them happy, celebrating, ecstatic as newborn
stars in the unfamiliar firmament of peace. In 1428, at the completion
of another war, Emperor Le Loi had returned the symbolic sword with
which he’d defeated the Chinese to the huge tortoise and walked
away from the lake in triumph, a hero beloved of his people for
all time. First Class Private Manh, barely noticeable in his shabby
fatigues, halted in front of a soup vendor dispensing steaming bowls
of pho under a sau tree outside the Hoa Phong
Tower.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice straining to make itself
heard above the din of early morning trams and Moskwa automobiles
carrying people to work. “Can you tell me where Comrade Photographer
Ngo Khai Duong lives?”
Just as the words were out of his mouth, Manh noticed the customer
into whose bowl the old merchant was ladling soup. The young woman,
who was turned away from him, was also dressed in fatigues, and
a floppy field hat clung to her forehead, under which her straight
black hair drooped down her back. Manh felt a strange tightening
in his chest, as though he’d been dragged under the surface
of Restored Sword Lake by the renowned turtle itself and could no
longer breathe. From behind, the woman might have been mistaken
for Mei-linh.
“What did you ask, young man?” the soup seller said,
his ladle suspended above the girl’s bowl. He glared suspiciously
at the threadbare veteran in front of him. Vermicelli noodles wiggled
like worms in the middle of the ladle.
Manh was terrified the young woman might turn around. The dead
do not return to earth to eat soup, he told himself. But still
he could not speak.
“Young man?” the vendor asked again, impatiently. He
finished serving the girl, who wheeled at last.
“I was wondering where Ngo Khai Duong lives,” Manh said,
easily now, relieved at the woman’s homeliness. Her face was
squat and brown, like a potato, her nose as flat as a rice pancake,
her eyes set so far apart they looked as though they were trying
to escape from each other. Smallpox scars pitted her face like miniature
B-52 craters.
“Duong, the famous photographer,” Manh repeated.
The vendor gazed at him through a wreath of mist which rose from
the aluminum pot in which his pho brewed. The old man stirred
the soup to keep it off the boil.
“What do you want with a man like him?” he
asked. “Comrade Duong is being made a Councillor of State
today, even while we speak. Our whole neighborhood is proud of it.”
He sniffed in reflected glory at these last words and cast another
disparaging look at the tattered PAVN private. The heroes who had
saved the country in April 1975 were now the outcasts of May.
“For his photographs, you know,” the old man went on.
A customer called from the other side of the soup stand, and the
seller pointedly turned his back on Manh and strode away.
“Indeed, they are marvelous, don’t you think, Comrade?”
the young woman slurping her soup whispered. “The photographs,
I mean,” she added nervously.
She spoke up too soon, too eagerly, and Manh ruthlessly turned his
back on her the way the soup vendor had on him. What right did
she have to talk about these photographs? He was suddenly resentful
of her. What right did she have to be sitting there at all?
He was about to tramp away when the old man turned back.
“Return after dark,” he said. “Number 17, Liberation
Court. Right over there.”
He jerked his head toward a building across the street, then flitted
once more to the far side of the soup cart. Manh spun on his heels
and stalked off without a word to the young cadre who still sat
patiently above her bowl, gazing at him. How dare she remind him
of Mei-linh!
“Here, girl, let me show you.”
Ngo Khai Duong cocked his squat black Hasselblad up onto his shoulder
like a soldier hoisting his rifle to attention and strutted over
to Mei-linh. His stringy salt-and-pepper hair was combed straight
back over his temples in a rakish manner that reminded Manh of the
playboy Emperor Bao Dai, and a Cambodian cigarette from which a
long trail of ash hung down drooped from his mouth. He smacked his
lips together as he came up to her, and his yellow, nicotine-stained
teeth looked like a dog’s preparing to bite. Manh winced with
displeasure as he looked on. With his free hand the great photographer
tugged Mei-linh by the shirt sleeve, first to the left, and then,
when that was not satisfactory, he cupped his fingers around the
ball of her shoulder and nudged her gently back to the right. Manh’s
eyes narrowed as he noticed how long Duong’s hand lingered
on Mei-linh’s shoulder. Until, in fact, the girl blushed.
“There, that is good,” the photographer said, his face
melting into a smile as he stepped backward. He flicked the ash
from his cigarette and then slipped it between his lips again. He
gazed at Mei-linh appreciatively.
“You are a pretty bird, you know,” he said. “Now
sit on that rock and pretend to play that guitar of yours. But don’t
block the others,” he chided. “They’ll look good
in the background. Out of focus, of course.”
He chuckled, and with a toss of his hand indicated two rather plain-looking
female soldiers seated on another rock directly behind Mei-linh,
swiftly shoveling rice into their mouths from a couple of earthenware
bowls. The lunch time for Detonation Squad Number 2 had been reduced
to ten minutes after the American bombing picked up. Having caught
the eye of Ngo Khai Duong, however, Mei-linh could eat later, and
take as long as she liked.
“No, no, you don’t actually have to do it,” Duong
said impatiently, when Mei-linh suddenly began to play her guitar,
delicately, beautifully. Manh watched her, enchanted. Mei-linh played
on and on, strumming her heart out, ignoring the black looks of
the photographer and the protesting whirr of his camera . . .
Manh wandered the streets with time to kill rather
than an enemy. A force as irresistible as love impelled him in the
direction of the Old Quarter, where he knew he would only be sad.
He shuffled past laughing crowds of shoppers, eager to capitalize
on the changes wrought by the Great Spring Victory, and who shoved
and jostled one another in high good spirits to get at the wonderful
wares displayed in the hundreds of trade shops which had replaced
the guilds of Le Loi’s time. Watches, belts, hairpins, foreign
cosmetics, lacquer boxes, silver and gold jewelry, reed mats, bamboo
furniture. He stopped at a votive objects shop on Ma May and bought
a sheaf of ghost paper, which he carried to a nondescript tube house
on Hang Dao Street. His eyes welled up as he gazed at the tiny,
glass-enclosed foyer where, before the war, Mei-linh and her mother
had sold their red-dyed silk goods. The light glanced off the glass,
and Manh saw a fleeting figure inside. His heart leaped so violently
he felt it pounding in his throat, and he bounded forward and let
out a muffled cry. A fat Indian moneylender glared back at him from
the other side of the window, a mistrustful glint in his eye. Manh’s
hands trembled with disappointment as he took the votive paper from
his pocket. The moneylender scowled suspiciously at him as he lit
it with a match, cupped his hands in a swift prayer, and then dropped
the flaming fragments onto the sidewalk in front of the house. Nor
do the dead come back to sell the things of this world, he thought
mournfully, as he watched the paper burn.
“Get along with you, vagrant!” the Indian yelled, sticking
his head through the door.
Manh turned away, his shoulders slumped as though he carried the
entire sorrow of the war just ended all by himself. . . .
Late in the afternoon he became hungry and stopped for a plate of
cha xuong song at an outdoor restaurant across from the
central rail station. Three years earlier, he and Mei-linh had caught
a troop train together from the same station, and his chest clamped
up as he remembered it. The train was crowded with hundreds of ardent
Youth Volunteers like themselves, their eyes glittering with revolutionary
zeal, their hearts pounding a steady drumbeat to victory in the
south.
Over the loudspeakers hanging from the station portico, Premier
Pham Van Dong exhorted the country to forget the horrors of the
war and move forward. Manh thought of Mei-linh again, and his jaw
tightened. Were those who’d lost so much to be forgotten,
too? His face muscles rippled with anger. Who had the right
to sacrifice her again?
“My fellow citizens,” the premier droned, “the
day has finally arrived when our great country has thrown off the
shackles of colonialism. Peace has come at last, and now we must
focus on reform.”
The blast of a train whistle drowned out the premier’s next
words, and Manh looked up from the restaurant as another troopload
of veterans arrived from the south. Now that the stern work of the
war was over, the commanders had allowed the men and women to mingle
freely, and several of the male cadres laughed heartily, their arms
around the women, and waved bottles of Chinese and Russian beer.
Manh saw a young man turn suddenly to the woman next to him and
give her a long kiss. The girl burst into a giggle and slapped him
playfully, but then stuck her cheek up to be kissed again. Manh
sheered his eyes away and stared sullenly at the last bit of pork
on his plate. How different it had been when he and Mei-linh were
prodded like cattle into separate cars the day they left, only to
be reunited in the jungle two weeks later. There was no time then
for kisses, for laughter. . . .
“It is time to move on, Comrades,” Premier Dong intoned,
his voice crackling with enthusiasm. “The war is over! Let
us move forward with reform!”
Manh felt a lump rising in his stomach. He angrily thrust his plate
away and scowled at the repeated mantra of reform. The picture of
Mei-linh lay before him in his mind, as sharp and clear as on the
day Ngo Khai Duong had photographed her. Without her he felt like
a man from whom the vital organs had been removed, a victim of the
same explosion. What good was it to talk of reform?
“March with me!” Premier Dong concluded, his voice nearly
hysterical now. “I command you! Forward!”
Manh scraped his chair back so vehemently it tipped over and clattered
to the ground. The restaurant owner and several patrons stared at
him, but he left the chair where it lay and stormed off. No one,
not even the premier, had the right to order him to move on.
After taking his pictures, Ngo Khai Duong reluctantly
agreed to watch that day’s performance, a rehashing of Le
Loi’s victory over the Chinese, meant to inspire the troops
and give them the necessary will to go out and defuse the unexploded
American bombs left behind after every air strike. The great photographer
fidgeted in his field chair, however, muttering to Manh how anxious
he was to develop his films and return to Hanoi.
“Recently the audience has been captivated more by the music
than the acting,” Manh said, hoping to spark his interest.
How proud he was to say it, too! His soul stirred with admiration
for Mei-linh.
“Really?” Duong said, yawning. He sighed and glanced
down at his Rolex, then stared off into space. Manh was miffed at
the man’s indifference and pulled back from him. His temples
were throbbing wildly now, as they did every time right before the
musicians stepped onstage. Eagerly he craned his neck as they filed
in at last, in strict order of precedence. Bung, the bamboo flautist,
Vu with his violin, Huynh the dan tranh zither player,
and finally Mei-linh with her guitar slung over her shoulder. Manh
caught his breath when for some reason the others suddenly stepped
aside, like abashed moons retreating at dawn, and allowed Mei-linh
to seat herself at the very front of the stage. His heart pattered
in gratitude at this unexpected acknowledgment of her superiority.
He glanced joyfully at the man beside him. Ngo Khai Duong was yawning
again. Manh’s fingers twitched with annoyance. How he longed
to throttle him!
Just then Mei-linh set her jaw with determination and began to play,
and the chords of a melody divine enough to enslave the Emperor
of Jade himself floated out over the enraptured audience.
The great photographer snapped his head to the stage for the first
time. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, and his eyes sparkled with interest.
“Beautiful,” he murmured fervently. “Simply beautiful!”
Manh peeked at him, pleased.
“Yes,” he said proudly. “Isn’t her playing
magnificent?”
He lingered at the edge of the Lake of the Restored
Sword and watched the sun set. The purple blossoms of the loc
vung trees glittered gaily in the fading light, but their loveliness
failed to cheer him. The soup vendor outside the Hoa Phong Tower
had already closed up his shop and departed for the night. In the
distance Manh heard the jubilant sounds of party bands at the Museum
of the Revolution, loudly playing the carefree songs of liberation,
most of them French or American. Their upbeat tones filled him with
deep sadness.
It grew dark, and young couples started to converge on the lake,
some of them boldly holding hands just like westerners, proudly
showing off their eagerness to move on. The slow strumming of a
guitar came from across the water, which was the color of black
silk in the brief hour of the unrisen moon. Nguyen Van Manh flinched
at the sound, then sighed.
“Why are you not celebrating the victory, Comrade?”
In the darkness the young woman reminded him of Mei-linh from the
front now, and he tensed as she approached. She had a thick book
in her hand, the place marked with her forefinger, and Manh suspected
she’d spent the day at the Temple of Literature. He itched
to drag her into the lighted street where her ugliness would console
him. The feeling troubled him.
“Have you been waiting for me . . . , Comrade?” he asked.
She laughed lightly, like a spoon clinking against a glass rim,
and Manh found himself wishing the laugh had been coarser, more
appropriate for a woman with a face like hers.
“Hardly. Like yourself, I am waiting for the return of Councillor
Duong.” She nodded in the direction of the photographer’s
apartment. At that moment an explosion shattered the relative stillness
of the night, and a brilliant flash of color lit up the sky. Manh
knew there’d be fireworks, but nevertheless he shrank into
a defensive posture as though they might obliterate him. More explosions
came, more flashes of light. Had Premier Dong gone back on his word?
The girl laughed merrily again.
“Relax, Comrade. The festivities are ending. Photographer
Duong will be coming back soon.”
Manh gathered heart from the increasing light. Fireworks erupted
all around them now. Then the moon rose, and a pale orange disc
smiled on the waters of the Lake of the Restored Sword. Suddenly
he was hit with a sharp pang, however.
“I’m sorry I was so . . . rude to you this morning,”
he said. In the light of a particularly large explosion he noticed
an unoccupied bench on the edge of the lake. He indicated it with
his hand. “Would you like to sit down?”
She nodded, and they moved slowly toward it. On the bench next to
them nuzzled a couple of lovers, the girl’s head cocked against
the man’s shoulder. They whispered to each other, their voices
as sweet as the murmur of wind through grass. As he looked at them,
Manh felt his loss more intensely than at any other time since he’d
arrived in the capital, and it pained him like the probing of a
knife which had found his heart at last. The young veteran girl
sat down beside him, and he felt a sudden yearning for her, as though
she might be able to remove the knife without hurting him, accompanied
by a strange, sad tenderness.
She turned to watch the couple snuggling on their bench, and the
sight of her floppy field hat and her long black hair glistening
in the moonlight reminded him of how he’d first come to notice
her that morning. He stiffened like a man caught on the brink of
infidelity, and he drew in great gulps of air to cleanse himself
of guilt. His resentment for her returned. What a temptress she
was, coming on to him like that! And yet how slatternly she was!
Just then she turned back to him, and the smile on her face faded
instantly at the frown on Manh’s. She trembled, the lines
etched into her potato face indicating her distress, and Manh’s
annoyance at her instantly evaporated.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, making his tone as
gentle as he could.
She laughed a third time, but the lightness was gone now.
“Oh, it’s all right,” she said, hesitantly. “I
sensed you had an important reason for seeing Photographer Duong.
You were very serious.”
Manh gazed toward the Lake of the Restored Sword while the happy
couple continued to warble next to them. His eye caught the tall
granite statue of Le Loi, meant to last the ages, astride his pedestal,
the magic sword clutched triumphantly in his hand. Some cheerful
young tourists, too young to be drafted, stared up at it and cooed
in admiration. Manh clenched his jaws. Did any of them have any
idea just how many bones it took to build a monument to a great
war hero? Or whose they were? He shot his eyes away from the adoring
little group, afraid of what he might do if he didn’t.
“Am I correct?” his companion asked timidly.
He bit his lip and swallowed hard, then looked away again, this
time toward Writing Brush Tower and the Sunbeam Bridge on the other
side of the lake. The old familiar lump knotted up his stomach again.
Of course he had an important reason for seeing such a man! Yet
how could he explain it to her?
He’d begged Mei-linh not to join the patrol sent out to defuse
the remaining bombs after Ngo Khai Duong’s driver accidentally
stepped on one lurking in the Lao grass like a krait. She was still
shaking from her meeting with the great photographer, just after
the performance, in the darkened tent where he did his developing
work. Duong’s high-handedness must have offended her greatly,
for she’d left the photograph behind her in the tent. But
she didn’t want to talk about it and instead stalked off on
the heels of the detonation squad. Manh followed her with his eyes,
hoping she might relent, but then he turned sadly away when she
did not. . . .
“And you?” he asked. “Why do you wish to see Photographer
Duong?”
The young woman squirmed in her seat.
“My mother sent me,” she said softly. “She wishes
me to get a photograph from him, if I can.”
Manh leaned instinctively toward her, then suddenly backed off.
“That is what I want, too. How strange!”
Tears glistened in her eyes, and she glanced down at her feet.
“You see, Photographer Duong snuck into Quang Tri right before
the puppet troops retook it during our great Easter offensive,”
she said. “My brother and a squad of four other men were left
behind to keep our flag flying over the citadel. Ngo Khai Duong
snapped some pictures of them and got out barely in time. One of
the photos later appeared in an issue of Viet-Nam Pictorial,
and my mother saw it by chance. She cried over it for days. Now
she has sent me to see if Comrade Duong has any others which she
can keep for herself. She no longer wants to share him with the
rest of the world.”
Manh listened carefully. His heart beat in sympathy at her loss,
but then the image of Mei-linh playing her guitar crept into his
mind and knocked the young woman’s brother off the ramparts
of the Quang Tri Citadel. Slowly he drew away from her. He, too,
was tired of sharing Mei-linh—with Ngo Khai Duong.
They climbed the one short flight of stairs together, but by then
the girl, who introduced herself as Tran Thi Trinh, had recovered
her composure. Manh was struck with the elegant wrought-iron banister,
the beautiful chandelier which hung over the staircase like a huge
ice crystal, the carved moldings and sculpted plasterwork. Their
heels clicked smartly on the translucent marble tiles, which reflected
in Manh’s face the new opulence which was the shape of things
to come, at least for those lucky enough to be in the vanguard of
reform. The house had once belonged to the Assistant Governor General
of Tonkin and was now rented out to several stars of the revolution.
Manh knocked loudly on the mahogany door several times, afraid the
sound might not penetrate the rich, thick wood.
The door creaked open, and a man dressed in an ill-fitting black
tuxedo and stocky as a seladang bull stood before them, weaving
from side to side. His hair was all gray now, his nose as red as
an overripe jambu, and broken capillaries stood out on both cheeks
like purple spider webs. Manh leaned back as he caught a whiff of
the man’s breath. Good living had aged the great photographer
considerably in the last three years.
“Comrade Duong?” the veteran asked, irritated at the
trepidation in his voice. “We’d like to speak with you,
please.”
“It’s Councillor Duong,” the man said
self-importantly, puffing his chest out so that his medals sparkled
in the light of the chandelier which hung from the ceiling, the
twin of the one outside. He staggered forward and squinted at the
figure cringing behind Nguyen Van Manh.
“Well, hello, who’s this?” he said unctuously,
steadying himself against Manh’s shoulder. His half-full champagne
glass bobbed in his hand as he tried to stay upright, and some of
the wine splashed across Manh’s chest, which was not decorated
with medals. Manh made a face and shook the liquid off.
“Why, you’re a nice one!” Duong exclaimed to Trinh,
running his eyes up and down her body. “Come in! Come in!
You know, you two are my first official petitioners! Think of that!
What do you want, anyway?”
He offered his arm to Trinh, but she shrank even farther behind
her companion. Ngo Khai Duong’s eyes glittered fiercely at
her, panther-like, but he merely shrugged and looped his arm through
Manh’s instead.
“Let’s go into the parlor, OK?” he said, twisting
round and dragging Manh after him. “Houseboy!” he cried,
at the top of his lungs. “More champagne!”
Manh immediately spotted the photograph among a number of others
on a table by the fireplace. But just as Mei-linh had taken precedence
at the performance in the jungle, so too her picture did now. It
stood in a large gilt frame at the front of the table. Manh caught
his breath and stared at it, transfixed. His temples pulsed violently
as he approached it, like a suppliant to an altar, and it was as
though he was facing the living Mei-linh again.
Photographer Duong had gotten the light just right. It shone full
on the left side of her body, accentuating the beautiful lines of
her face, the silken smoothness of her skin, the velvet luxuriance
of her hair, which hung down over her shoulder to below the fret
of the guitar. The right half, down to the hand which delicately
strummed the strings and which glittered in the sunlight like the
fingers of Calliope, lay in the shadow and gave an exquisite chiaroscuro
effect to the entire photograph. Manh’s heart churned over
and over as he studied it. He was in the presence of a masterpiece!
He lowered his gaze, as if in prayer, and the sea-green tiles on
the parlor floor began to glisten as his eyes filled. Then his sight
cleared, and he glanced up again, his soul overflowing. Behind him
he heard a series of short nervous laughs and suddenly remembered
he was not alone. How could he have failed to appreciate the creator
of such a divine work? He was ashamed of himself, and felt a sudden
rush of affection for Ngo Khai Duong for having prized her so greatly.
But he had to have the photograph.
“Councillor Duong,” he said respectfully, turning around.
“I was wondering whether—”
He stopped in amazement when he saw the photographer’s hand
move up and down Cadre Trinh’s thigh, stroking it gently.
The girl sat frozen in horror. As the hand went higher, she fidgeted
and let out a gasp. Manh felt extremely embarrassed. A white-frocked
servant scurried up to the sofa with three champagne glasses tinkling
on a salver. Tran Thi Trinh desperately shook her head, but Ngo
Khai Duong quickly swept up both their glasses with his free hand
and pulled them to him. He tossed one off, then started on the other.
The houseboy came over to Manh, who angrily shook him off. He did
not know why he was angry. He continued to stare open-mouthed at
the couple on the sofa.
“You can have any one you like, my dear,” Duong was
saying, tapping a photo album with his finger. “I am pleased
to help out your dear old mother. But there is something you can
also do for me.”
He winked insinuatingly at her, and she emitted a loud unnatural
laugh like a sparrow screeching in a cactus hedge. She darted her
eyes to the floor. Then she tried to pull back from him, but his
hand was firmly cupped around her upper thigh, the way Manh had
once seen it on Mei-linh’s shoulder, and she trembled in shame
and continued to stare at the floor. Manh suddenly realized why
he was so angry. He sprang forward.
“Comrade Duong!” he said sharply, and the old man flinched
and spilled his champagne again. He set his glass down with a smack
and scowled at Manh. Instinctively he kept his other hand glued
to Cadre Trinh’s thigh, however.
“You still here!” he snapped. “What do you want?”
Manh lurched to a halt as though the great photographer’s
question had broken his stride. He stared at the girl quivering
at Ngo Khai Duong’s side, then at the monument to the one
who’d been past saving for years. Looking troubled, his eyes
went back and forth, several times, until all of a sudden his brow
cleared and his anger fell from him like a suit of clothes tumbling
to the floor.
“This,” he said firmly, picking up the photograph.
Duong gave it barely a glance. He burst into a short laugh and waved
him away.
“Take it and go,” he said impatiently, his other hand
groping the girl again. “I have no use for that thing
anymore.”
He turned back to Trinh, baring his teeth like a jackal. The girl
looked pleadingly at Manh, her hands clasped helplessly in front
of her. She gulped like a terrified animal, several times, and her
eyes shot wider apart each time she did so. Manh’s fury at
Ngo Khai Duong rose inside him again. He felt a brief stab of pity
for the girl, but then an immense revulsion swept over him when
her nostrils quivered anxiously and the blotches on her face turned
a muddy, unsightly brown, like the run-off from a foul winter rain.
He turned his rage on her with the swiftness of an explosion. Her
ugliness was as indestructible as granite, and suddenly it exasperated
him beyond measure. In a flash he set the picture down, bunched
his fists, and advanced on her, seized with the urge to grab her
by the throat and pound her face until it was beautiful, unrecognizable,
capable of dying. She cried out in alarm when she saw him, and the
feeling passed, but this time the pity died out of him as well.
He stared stonily at the two of them, his eyes filled with equal
hatred for them both. He clasped the photograph of Mei-linh to his
chest.
Ngo Khai Duong watched him steadily. His lips slowly parted in a
thin, humorless smile.
“My houseboy will see you out.”
James D. Redwood, a law
professor in Albany, New York, has had stories published in Virginia
Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. He has a story
forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly. From 1972-1974 he
taught English and worked for a social welfare project in Saigon,
Vietnam. He is currently in the process of completing a collection
of short stories.
Work that appears on the KR web site is from The
Kenyon Review and all applicable copyright restrictions apply.
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