Reaching to open his pack, he pulled out a blanket that Nang Dong had meticulously sewn stitch by stitch for him from a parachute taken as a trophy during the battle for Dien Bien. He covered himself with it. Closing his eyes, he took long breaths and waited for his body to warm up.
“I must escape. I must live at all costs,” he told himself. That resolve kept repeating without pause, like a breeze blowing gusts into a charcoal stove. Repeating this mantra over and over, his frigid body finally began to warm up; after almost twenty minutes, he could feel his heartbeat return to normal. Pulling the blanket aside, he sat up and went to the stream to clean up. He washed his soiled clothes and wrapped them in a raincoat, which he tucked carefully back inside the duffel bag. Then, after crossing over to the other side of the stream in his clean clothes, he resumed running. It was getting late; in another ten minutes he had to take out his flashlight. From then on, his life had only the forest trees for protection. He had to be frugal with each flash of light. He also had to be frugal with each piece of dry cake still left until he could find shelter. Dizziness forced him to stop. Reaching inside his pack, he pulled out a piece of cane sugar and put it in his mouth. The sweetness penetrated his tongue and made him less shaky on his feet. Later the sugar melted down and even revived his empty and damaged stomach, and he was able to move with more confidence. He continued along the dark path, but an hour later, he suddenly heard the rushing galloping of horses mixed with screams. “Why do the galloping horses sound so close? Have I ended up getting lost or turned around? Is this worn path taking me back to where Nong Tai was eaten by the tiger?”
He turned off the flashlight and crawled into a thick bush, knowing that when one is not sure of an escape route, it is best to sit tight in the dark. It was less dangerous than making squishing noises and revealing his location with the flashlight. Indeed, the sounds were getting closer and the wind brought the cursing of the soldiers to his ears:
“Slow down! Your mare bumped into my horse.”
“I can’t help it — it’s so dark.”
“We have to wait for them to cross the road before we can move forward. Don’t push your horse.”
“I did not. It just jumped on its own.”
A voice intervened, surely from the fort’s captain: “Enough, you guys. Don’t fight with each other. When we return, there will be a pot of chicken soup to fill us up.”
The soldiers kept quiet.
The captain again said, “Let’s speed up a little. Don’t forget that these hill people know the forest ways a thousand times better than us. They are born with the forest trees.”
“Reporting, Captain: we are really trying but there are too many vines. This stretch of road is a bitch.”
“Because it’s a bitch, we need your professional skill with a knife. Try hard. I think we are almost there. No matter what they do, they cannot be faster than the horses.”
The sounds of their movements mixing with the hissing of the horses became even clearer. Soldiers in the front slashed at the vines, preparing a way for the horses to advance. Since the sun had set they had been under orders to chase down An and Nong Tai, but their horses had been blocked from entering the forest. If the worn trail had not been covered tightly by the hanging green vines, the soldiers would have already caught him when he was lying under the blanket next to the stream, in the most compromising situation imaginable.
“Now I have regained my composure, and if we do clash I can still take out some guys before I die.”
That thought was a consolation to An. An insect bit his neck; the pain was so excruciating he almost cried out. Reaching back with his hand, he seized a toxic ant the size of a black bean. He squeezed it to death but the ant still managed to bite the tip of his forefinger, which started to burn from the acid pain. At the same moment, a scream was heard:
“Tiger! Tiger!”
A hail of bullets erupted right after the terrifying scream.
An smiled to himself: “Those are too many rounds to deal with the king of the jungle.”
After the firing ended, An clearly heard the captain’s voice:
“Do you see it?”
“No. Reporting, Captain: right by the horse’s foot I saw a bunch of bones from a torso with the flesh all eaten.”
“Where?”
Then he heard the outpost commander shout: “Dismount. Bring the electric lantern over here.”
There were footsteps running; talking to horses; the slapping of riding crops on backs; then silence. Perhaps the soldiers were tiptoeing around Nong Tai’s headless body and bones. Then the captain spoke in a tremulous voice:
“Two guns? This tiger finished both of them?”
“Yes. It must be a big one.”
“I never heard of a tiger eating two people at the same time.”
“Reporting, Captain: tigers do not kill two people at one time because when a tiger catches one victim, the other one has time to run or shoot. But it can carry a cow on its back and still run swiftly. This time, perhaps the two highlanders met their last call; perhaps they sat and rested; perhaps they walked close together. They may be woodsmen but they underestimated these forests.”
“We cannot locate the heads.”
“Tigers never eat the head; only foxes and wild boars. Foxes do not eat at one place; they normally fight each other and take their prey far away. I believe foxes have dragged one body and both heads. It must have been one big pack of foxes.”
“That’s right. Only foxes and wild boars could clean it up this fast. I believe the round of bullets we shot chased them away. Looking at the pile of ribs, we know they were really famished.”
Another moment of silence passed, then a soldier said, “Captain, let’s return. Here the blood stinks.”
“Pick up the two guns,” the captain ordered. “Our mission has been accomplished without wasting one drop of our blood. Those who betrayed the nation and are foreign spies have been punished by wild animals instead of a people’s court.”
An heard repeated coughing from a soldier; it must have been the unlucky one who had to pick up the two guns smeared with dried blood. After that: the sound of horses being mounted, the whipping of crops, whispering, and, at last, galloping horses. Then the sounds grew fainter and fainter.
Waiting for the noise of the running horses to completely subside, An came out of the bushes, knelt down, and reflected:
“Oh you, King of the Jungle — you saved my life!”
From that year on he lived in an isolated hamlet of the Van tribe, so remote that not even Lao would set foot there. Two years passed in the belief that he would never see his country again. His country was no longer Vietnam, because that name only evoked rage in him. On the back side of propaganda pamphlets that he would pick up in a tiny market in a Lao village, he wrote out with a bit of pencil the sordid story of his family. In the third year, he began to understand that he must return to the hostile territory that was once his homeland, to Hanoi, a city hell he thought he would never see again. In the middle of these mountains, among a people who spoke another language and lived a different culture, he could write thousands of pages that no one would ever care to read, and thus his escape would become pointless. He had prolonged his life to vent his rage, but, in the end, this longer life had sunk him in useless darkness.