The Time in Between by David Bergen

Author:David Bergen [Bergen, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary, Historical, Sagas, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307432681
Google: RTZ87eU0rioC
Amazon: B000SF8AC2
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

5

THE TYPHOON ARRIVED DURING THE NIGHT AND CONTINUED until early morning. All through the following day, the sky remained dark and the wind still blew and tossed muddy water onto the wreckage of the beach. Two days after the storm, midmorning, a local fisherman pulled his basket boat down toward the water and saw the movement of a large object in the waves. He thought it was a dead marlin or a dolphin, but as he approached he saw the arms and the head of a man. One of the legs was bent backward in an awkward position; there was a frayed rope tied to the left ankle. The man’s face was gray and bloated. The arms were swollen. Something had eaten away at the right leg; the foot was missing. The man wore jeans and a black T-shirt. No shoes. He had a watch, and the fisherman looked around and then bent quickly to remove it. He patted the dead man’s pockets, found his wallet, pulled out several waterlogged hundred-dollar bills, and put the wallet back, which was difficult because the body kept rolling with the tide. The fisherman saw the corpse’s face, the holes where the eyes had been. He stood and looked up the beach. Then he moved away toward his basket boat. He had been planning on going out for the day, but now he wouldn’t. The dead man would weigh on the fisherman’s thoughts. His money would weigh in his pocket. Still, he would keep the money; for him, it was the equivalent of a year’s salary. He walked back up behind the restaurants that lined the beach and stepped over into the bushes and urinated. Then he climbed onto his bicycle and returned to his house. His wife was in the back, squatting and fanning the coals in the barbecue. He walked past her and she looked up but she didn’t say anything. He went into the room where he and his wife slept, took out the money and studied it, and slipped it into his dress shoes, the ones he wore for weddings and funerals. Then he went outside and got on his bicycle and rode down to the police station to announce that a white man had drowned at My Khe.

THE MORNING THAT CHARLES BOATMAN’S BODY WAS FOUND, A young policeman who barely spoke English knocked on Ada’s hotel door and announced that Lieutenant Dat required her to come down to the police station. The policeman, a boy really, had taken off his cap and lowered his head as he spoke. He talked too quickly, slurring his words, getting them all out in one breath, as if they had been memorized. Ada asked him to repeat himself. The boy looked horrified but said again what he had been told to say.

Ada was still half asleep. She noticed the boy’s eyes move up and down her bare legs and then he turned his head away.

Ada rode behind the boy on his green Czech-built motorcycle.

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