You know who the Laotian is? Rudolf continued. Here’s what we got from Vohřecký. He pulled out a sheet of paper and read: “Nguyen Dai Vang, general … chief of special forces … South Vietnam. After forced unification of the country in 1975, active in the opposition movement. Served ten years before escaping to Hong Kong. Headed the foreign resistance against the Communists in Vietnam until 1985, when he vanished into the jungle. Commander in chief, Thai partisan camps.”
Zat a fact? For real? You’re not shittin me?
Vohřecký claims this guy’s recruiting gastarbeiters to go back and fight the Communists. Thousands of them’ve already taken off to the West, don’t like it here in the factories, that’s obvious. But sposedly this Vang’s only after a couple ex-officers. When the Commies took Saigon, these guys just dumped their IDs, got new identities, some of em even new faces no doubt, and melted into the crowd.
Rudolf informed me.
Well, I donno politics, but if the communards were pourin in there, it’s no wonder.
Ever hear of the Vietnam War?
Sure, hippies an stuff. Forman did that movie about it.
Sheesh, said Rudolf. Well I won’t burden you with the details … but when the Americans, despite all the promises, finally pulled out of South Vietnam, the Communists started up there … know what reeducation camps are?
Concentration camps? I was just guessing.
Yep. That’s where most of the ones that Vang’s after went. But as the situation changed, some of them resurfaced and got sent to work in Eastern Europe. A few of em ended up here.
C’mon, Rudolf, that’s a pretty long time ago now.
Yeah, but this time is like vacuum-packed, get it? It’s still the same over there. It’s suffocating, it keeps on going.
I perked up. Believe it or not, I get it all right …
He nodded. The general needs these, shall we say, specialists for his partisan camps in Thailand. Where else is he going to find men like them? Seasoned cutthroats, Rambos in the sheep’s clothing of diligent factory workers, you might say. They’re the reason Vang’s here. You’ve got to realize … there’s a hidden battle raging! Neither side makes any noise about it … Vang and his men’re kidnapping Communists, Vietnamese secret police, embassy staff. They dope em up, interrogate em, and then they kill em.
You’re not shittin me? I mean, it’s possible, but … I said.
Don’t let anything surprise you! said Rudolf.
Uh-huh. Reminds me a some kinda wildcat Wiesenthal.
I know you’ve heard about that, Rudolf leered. But there’s one other thing. He leaned toward me and said: According to Vohřecký, Vang’s also got people in Ukraine. And they’re interested in a certain seven-letter metal, beginning with U.
Cut it out, I told him. You remind me of Spider.
What spider?
Where’d this Vang learn to speak Czech?
Huh? I donno. What makes you say that?
But you told me … or was it Jícha.
Uh-huh, said Rudolf.
I still can’t believe it.
I know.
What does Vang need me for? I asked.
He knows you. Maybe he trusts you. You helped them out. Plus you know your way around here.
A rock crashed through the window, showering us with glass, Rudolf quick dipped under the table. I followed him. The cops wrestled a pair of uncouth protesters in black hoods into a paddy wagon. We changed seats. Up at the bar they switched off the TV and turned on some music to drown out the demonstration.
We’re counting on you to help Vang find those men. That crew of yours was their only contact here. And you’re the only one left. If Vohřecký’s information is right, Vang’s ready to roll. He’s gonna need a Czech to take him around the dormitories. You’re the only one. We bet on it.
Sorry, but dorms aren’t my style. That was Jícha’s thing.
Yep. Exactly.
Huh?
I donno. But he knew it wouldn’t be easy for a Vietnamese. Even the ministry doesn’t know which gook’s where. There’s no way to keep track. And the dorm managers, the factory people, they’re not gonna talk to some zipperhead. Even if he does speak Czech.
Why was Jícha killed?
You want that girl?
What’s with Side Pocket an that other guy?
Vohřecký’s a complicated figure, he was in Angola. He’ll find you somehow.
You drive me nuts, Rudolf, seriously. Since when was there anything complicated about a spook.
You can’t see things so black-and-white, he assured me. It’s a different era.
So I’m a mercenary now?
Soon as you say the word.
How much?
Let’s say five.
Been gettin expensive, I noticed.
Ten.
Deal.
I sat by myself. Jícha. Yeah, I wasn’t wild about him. But the least they could do is publish his books now. Who though? I tried to remember that thing Spider recited to me at the bar. Bout the fountain. I’d forgotten, but … maybe I could put out somethin a his. With the cash from Rudolf. That’d be classy. What’s it matter to Jícha now anyway though. What’s it matter to anyone, I mused. I’ll grab my girl and we’ll bolt. Somewhere far outta reach of any long fingers with nails so filthy no constitution can touch em.
A couple kids in hoods dashed into the bar, cops on their tails. They swept em out in a second. Without any reporters’ flashbulbs in sight, the kids didn’t even resist. It was like the moment never happened. Then some beggar walked in wearin blindman’s glasses, but it was just an act, they’d never swallow that etude at DAMU.* The waiter gave him the heave-ho. Had a pretty good view from behind the bar. Probably got a show like that every day. My homeland’s in convulsions and the rats’re rompin along the surface.
Almost forgot about that stuff from Jícha Rudolf’d brought me. I tore open the envelope. At the beginning was a note: “Do as a novella and also try as a play. See what Potok says, it could work for them. They’re still performing.” Behold! A message from the dead … from the old days. I took a look.
Initiation ceremony, font of the story, hero must pass through a tunnel whose slimy walls crawl with repulsive spiders, taunting him with their long furry limbs, the cold wet slap of a monstrous worm beats beneath the sound of his footfalls, in whose echo we hear the stealthy tread of his doppelgänger, as the whoosh of scaly wings pierces the silence. At each and every step the threat of a sudden fall, brutal murder. Pain. And a mocking cackle. An endless train rumbles somewhere overhead.
A story of life as initiation, the final passage into maturity while staring death in the face, a maturity separated from the grave by nothing but a thin wall, three bricks thick, and from the neighbors’ you hear the sound of muffled conversation and coughing as a harbinger of mysteries to come, some plot, you don’t know what. Those few moments in the protagonist’s life extending from the winter of the first encounter in a shadowy bar to the golden sparkle of mountains in summer (to be described later), when he lay stretched on the rack of passion, writhing near death at the mere illusion of his little harlot’s mouth, be it in his cell or in that sunny home where their limbs so feverishly intermingled, or in a solitude filled with gnawed fingernails, poorly digested booze, and indigestible paranoia.
In this time of trial he most resembled the dancers of the ancient people, treating the slender threads of his perception as recklessly as an old rag, an unwanted painting received in the course of a drinking spree. His perception was frayed with the same effort with which our fathers and grandfathers once drove wooden spikes beneath the skin of adolescents’ backs and thighs, and dragged them into the wilderness, where they were left to alternate between waking and dreaming, and the weaker ones died of exhaustion. But he who lived through the sacred delirium of the dream dance acquired strength and saw his protector in animal form. He returned to the circle of the tribe, and was solemnly invited to take part in normal life, as if nothing had happened, and then went on, obedient to his power, in the dance of love and death, drinking solitude, which did not kill him, maturing, nearing the end.