The Return: A Novel of Vietnam by Charles W. Sasser

Author:Charles W. Sasser
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Military Fiction, Thriller
Published: 2001-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“TET was a very unsettling time in Vietnam,” concluded Father Pierre as we finished breakfast. He had told me what he knew—and, still, it was not enough. The priest rose from table laboriously with the aid of his dragon cane and we moved to the garden where the SEAL and his Viet lover had spent so much of their brief romance together. Primed by my return to Asian, my imagination conjured up images of Pete bent over his canvas while lovely Mhai posed by the water fountain or the bougainvillea. I imagined the two of them walking hand-in-hand, sworn enemies who had fallen in unlikely love with each other. I could almost see that haunting smile of hers so familiar to me from the framed picture Pete kept on his wall. Sometimes I felt I had actually known her.

Father Pierre leaned heavily on his cane. His gaze took in the fountain and the concrete benches now overgrown with weeds. Weeds often grew where memory said grass should grow. His eyes, unfocused, peered into the past, also seeing Pete and Mhai together. He signed at length.

“After the battle at the hotel,” he said, “I am not seeing Lt. Pete for more than two weeks. The next time I am seeing him, it ees late in the evening. Mhai had left in the morning and not returned. Lt. Pete storms into the mission. He seemed in a terrible way, both in a rage and like he ees in great pain. That ees when he carries all the oil paintings he has made of her into the garden and builds of them a bonfire. Then he burns her clothing and everything else he could find that once ees belonging to her. It ees almost as though he wants to erase all signs of her existence on earth. I am never forgetting how his face looked. It ees the same day as the occurrences at Vam Tho—“

“Yes,” I interrupted before he could go on.

The priest’s tired eyes regarded me. “You are aware of Vam Tho, Monsieur Kazmarek?”

He knew. I was almost sure he knew. But it had been such a long time ago. I felt my heart pounding.

“I know about...” I couldn’t say the name, not even after the passage of so many years.

“…Vam Tho,” Father Pierre supplied, watching me.

“Yes.”

“Are you ill, monsieur? Would you like an iced tea?”

“I’m all right.”

He let himself down on one of the concrete benches with his dragon cane. I sat down next to him. The old man sucked in a quavering breath so long and of such rattling volume that it must have filled every hollow in his thread-like body. Then he exhaled, just as slowly and just as noisily, and it was like I watched his soul leaving. It occurred to me that he was slowly dying day by day. Soon there would be nothing left of him except the crucifix around his neck and the long faded black robe. Man arrived on earth and then

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