He fell back onto the wet forest floor. It was all a dream, he thought. I never got out of that ambush. Twelve years, the crummy security jobs, the transforming music, the woman, the plan, cutting that guy’s throat, I dreamed it all. I’m still here in Cu Chi. He thought, how totally fucking far out! Wait’ll I tell the guys! He filled his lungs to yell for the medic, and died.
It was eight the next morning before Marlene could talk sensibly. She came up out of the dream resentfully, reluctant to leave the glittering space opera whose wonderful denizens seemed able to answer the deepest questions that afflicted her soul. And unlike a regular dream, this one stayed in her memory, each detail sharp as crystal, although she could no longer understand what they meant.
“Camel spent off the water,” she said to Tranh. “It’s not less than the sixth, more than the vision. Belanthey is the absolute key.”
“Marie-Helene,” said Tranh, “can you understand me? Do you know where you are?”
The French was somehow able to penetrate through the last seductive vapors of the drug. She blinked, sighed, saw the man, knew him, knew herself, recognized the room she lay in as her bedroom at Wooten’s. Her mouth felt all at once unbearably dry. She asked for water, drank.
“I was out of action for a while, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, for nearly an entire day. I believe it was Robinson that put some drug in your lemonade.”
A frightened look. “Lucy …?”
“She is well.”
Then memory flooded back. “My God! Wolfe, Edie, what …?”
Then Tranh had to explain what had happened, editing around Lucy’s part in it, which he did not feel Marlene was yet up to absorbing. There would, apparently, be no trouble with the authorities, who had already come and gone.
“The Wootens apparently can do no wrong in this locality,” he said. “The police arrived, they were polite, they removed the corpse. Miss Wooten explains Wolfe was simply an insane stranger, shot by a security guard. It is fortunate that she speaks excellent French, or it would have been impossible for me to convey the nuances of the necessary fabrication. Wolfe’s association with your company was not mentioned, the press was not notified. So it ends.”
Marlene felt her nose burn and her eyes overflow. “Poor Wolfe! I still can’t believe it. He was … there was something so …” But she could not explain, not to Tranh, hardly to herself, what the dead man meant to her. It was tied in with her brother, and the fucking war, and the men she hired and the men she hurt, all the sweet, slow violent lost American boys.
She stopped crying and asked, “How is Edie? I should go down and see her.”
She made to get out of bed, but Tranh gently prevented her. “Mlle. Wooten is fine, and it seems that she is not to be disturbed in the mornings for any cause. Listen!”
The cello’s music drifted up from below, sonorous and sad.
“I spoke with her last night at some length. A strange story. Would you like to hear it?”
She would. Tranh said, “He spoke to her about her music. Wolfe. He said he knew that she was speaking to him in a way that no one else could understand. Apparently, he was quite knowledgeable about the instrument and its repertoire. She was amazed despite her terror. A sensitive man. It was at root a kind of jealousy, as if by playing to an audience she was betraying him, like a woman who shares her body with many men, and so he had decided to kidnap her so that she would play for him alone. The things he had taken from her, the recordings, these were no longer sufficient to slake his passion.” And more in this vein.
They talked for some time, remembering Wolfe as a comrade, a stranger, a puzzle beyond their comprehension. “He was a soldier too,” said Tranh musingly. “A good one, an infantryman. In Vietnam.”
“How do you know? Did you see his record?”
“I saw him move. I remembered.”
A number of things now came together in Marlene’s mind: Tranh’s isolation from the normally cohesive Vietnamese community, certain things he had let drop, his peculiar skills, the Russian pistol Lucy had seen …
“You weren’t one of our Vietnamese, were you?”
After a moment he shrugged, smiled faintly, and answered, “No. But Tranh Vinh was. He died on the ocean, during our voyage. There were twelve of us on a fourteen-foot sailboat. I took his papers.”
“Who are you, then?”
“No one, to tell the truth. A casualty of the war, perhaps like Wolfe, or your brother. Yes, I know about him. He comes to the office occasionally when you are not there. I give him small sums. We talk about the war.”
“Does he know?”
“No. Only you know. And, you know, sometimes it is very hard for me to recall that there was once such a person as Pham Vinh Truong, who studied in Paris, who taught mathematics in a lyceé in Saigon, who had a wife and a daughter, who joined, reluctantly, the National Liberation Front, who was a major in the 615th Battalion of what you call the Viet-cong, whose family was killed in a bombing raid, who, after the war, was deemed insufficiently devoted to the state, and was imprisoned and reeducated, who escaped by sea, and who …” He stopped and let out a long sigh. “I suppose it was Lucy that led me to this latest chapter in what seems even to me to be an absurd life. She reminds me so much of Nguyen. Not her appearance, of course, but in spirit, her air. I will deeply regret losing her acquaintance.”
“Why should you lose her acquaintance?” Marlene asked.
Tranh seemed surprised at the question. “Because, I assumed, that now that you know my history, you will not wish to employ me. But I hope that you will not feel obliged to inform the authorities of my-”
“Don’t be absurd!” said Marlene, waving her hand dismissively. “I can’t possibly do without you. For the business with long division alone I owe you lifetime employment. Besides, the war is over.”
It is not, thought Tranh, but he said only, “Thank you, Marie-Helene.”
By nine, Marlene had showered, scrubbed most of the foul taste from her mouth, dressed, went down to the kitchen, heard Mrs. Marney’s version of the story (clearly the most exciting thing that had happened on Wooten Island since the Montauk Indian raid in 1687), fended off the substantial breakfast offered, hugged her daughter, heard her version of the story, was appalled and grateful, and sat down at the kitchen table with toast, coffee, and a cigarette.
Mrs. Marney had a little color TV in the kitchen, turned to some morning news show from the city, with the volume turned down to a barely audible murmur lest practice be disturbed. On it a well-groomed woman was interviewing a distinguished-looking older man. Marlene paid it little attention. She still did not feel herself. The colors of the morning were still too bright, the sounds-the sighing of the cello from the music room, the sound of the birds outside the kitchen window-were still too poignant, chance remarks still resonated with covert meaning. Acid, she thought. The fuckhead had slipped her a really immense dose, probably mixed with more exotic indoles.
The TV switched back to an anchorman. He was saying something about a riot. Tape of a night scene, the city, uptown, a gang of black youths, flames from a shop, an overturned car. The anchorman came back, something about the rain suppressing what could have been an even worse riot in the wake of the Rohbling verdict. Marlene’s attention focused on the faint voice. A shot of the distinguished-looking man who had just been interviewed, speaking to reporters in a lobby of the Criminal Courts Building. Lionel T. Waley in white letters across the screen. Marlene felt a chill, one that increased as she saw her own husband shying from a mob of reporters. She got up and ran to the phone.
Karp was in his bed, playing with his sons. He had his knees up under the cover, and Zik and Zak were having a hilarious time climbing up this mount and rolling down it to Karp’s chest, where they were rewarded with a loud raspberry on the tummy. Karp was having a hilarious time too. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more, at this point or into the indefinite future. The phone rang, for the thirtieth time that morning, and as before, he let the machine pick it up.