She forced a smile and smoked.
I walked over to the family altar and looked at the framed photographs in the dim light. I noticed that all the men and women were young, in their early to mid twenties. I said to Susan, “No one gets too old around here.”
She glanced at the photographs. “They use photos of the deceased when they were in their prime, no matter how old they were when they died.”
“Really? So if I died today and I was Buddhist, they could use one of the photos you just took of me.”
She smiled. “I think they’d call your mother for a slightly less recent photograph.” She added, “The family altar is more ancestor worship than Buddhist. It’s sort of confusing. The Vietnamese who are not Catholic call themselves Buddhist, but they also practice a primitive ancestor worship. Plus, they practice Confucianism and Taoism. They call it Tam Giao — the Triple Religion.”
“I count four.”
“I told you, it’s confusing. You’re Catholic. Don’t worry about it.”
I looked at the small photographs and noticed that many of the young men were in uniform. One of them, I was certain, was Tran Quan Lee, who though not officially dead, could be presumed so after nearly thirty years of not showing up for the holidays.
We still had the option of coming to our senses, and I said to Susan, “If we hustle, we can be on the BMW in about five minutes.”
She didn’t even hesitate before replying, “I don’t know who’s going to come through that door, but we both know we’re not going anywhere until someone does.”
I nodded.
Susan asked me, “How do you want to handle our conversation with Tran Van Vinh?”
“First of all, it’s my conversation, not our conversation, and I’m going to be straight. This is how I’d do it with a witness in the States. You bullshit suspects, but you’re straight with witnesses.”
“Including the fact that we’re Americans sent by our government?”
“Well, not that straight. We’re Americans, but we’ve been sent by the family of the murdered man to seek justice.”
“We don’t know the murdered man’s name.”
“Tran Van Vinh does. He took the dead man’s wallet. Let me do the talking, Susan, and the thinking. You do the translating. Biet?”
We made eye contact, and she nodded.
We waited.
I looked at Susan. We had come a long way, but beyond that, this moment of truth, which had been abstract up to now, was suddenly real and immediate. Tran Van Vinh was alive, and what, if anything, he told us would present a whole new set of problems.
Susan stood and put her arms around me. “I have deceived you, and I may still have to do some things that you don’t like, but no matter what happens, I love you.”
Before I could reply, I heard a noise behind me, and we both turned toward the door. Standing in the open doorway was the dark outline of a man who I hoped was Tran Van Vinh.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Susan walked directly to the man at the door, bowed, and said something to him in Vietnamese.
He bowed in return, said something, then looked at me. We made eye contact, and I had no doubt this was Tran Van Vinh.
He looked to be about sixty, but was probably younger. He was thin, and taller than the average Viet. He had all his hair, which was still jet black and cut short. He wore baggy trousers and a black quilted jacket, and on his feet were socks and sandals.
Susan said to me, “Paul, this is Mr. Vinh.”
I walked directly to him and put out my hand.
He hesitated, then took my hand. I said, “I am Paul Brenner, an American, and I have come a long way to see you.”
He stared at me as Susan translated.
I said to him, “We told your compatriots that we were Canadians because we felt that there may be some unpleasant feelings toward Americans in your village.”
Again, Susan translated, and again Mr. Vinh kept staring at me.
I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine. The last American he’d seen had probably wanted to kill him, and vice versa, but I saw no hostility in his expression; in fact, I couldn’t see anything.
I took my passport out of my pocket and handed it to him with the front page open.
He took it and looked at it, then closed it and handed it back to me. He said something, which Susan translated as, “What do you want?”
I replied, “First, it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that your brother, Lee, was killed in action in the A Shau Valley in May of 1968. His body was found by an American soldier, who removed personal items that identified him as Tran Quan Lee.”
Mr. Vinh understood A Shau and coupled with his brother’s name, he must have known this wasn’t good news.
Susan translated, and Mr. Vinh listened without emotion. He kept staring at me, then walked over to the family altar, picked up a photograph and looked at it a long time. He put it back, turned, and said something to me.
Susan replied to him directly, then said to me, “He wants to know if you killed his brother. I told him you did not.”
I said, “Tell him I was a soldier with the First Cavalry Division, and that I saw combat in the A Shau Valley in May of 1968, and that it could have been me who killed his brother, but it was not I who found the body.”
Susan hesitated and asked me, “Are you sure you want—”
“Tell him.”
She told him, and he looked at me, then nodded.
I said, “Tell him I was also outside Quang Tri City at the time he was recovering from his wounds in the Buddhist high school, and it was my duty to kill the North Vietnamese soldiers who were trying to escape from the city.”
Susan translated, and Mr. Vinh looked surprised that I knew a little of his war experiences. We made eye contact again, and again I saw no hostility, and I knew I would not. In fact, as we looked at each other, I had no doubt that he was saying to himself, “This poor bastard was there, too.”
I said to Mr. Vinh, “I’m glad I didn’t kill you, and glad you didn’t kill me.”
Susan translated, and I saw a faint smile pass over his lips, but he didn’t reply.
I was getting somewhere with him, but I didn’t know where. I said to him, “Quite frankly, Mr. Vinh, I’m very surprised that you survived seven more years of war.”
Susan translated, and Mr. Vinh stared off into space, nodding to himself as though he, too, were surprised. I thought I saw a slight tremble in his upper lip, but that might have been my imagination. The man was very stoic, which was partly for our benefit, and also an old wartime habit.
I said to Susan, “How we doing with your translating?”
She replied, “He spent a lot of time in the south during the war, and he’s aware of my southern accent. I’m catching most of what he’s saying.”
“Good. We like true and accurate translations.”
She didn’t reply.
I didn’t say anything further to Mr. Vinh, and I let him think if he wanted to say anything to me. Finally, he spoke and Susan listened, then said to me, “Mr. Vinh says he was in the 304th Infantry Division of the People’s Army of Vietnam.”
Mr. Vinh continued and Susan translated. “He was sent into the south in August 1965 and fought in Quang Tri Province. He says you should know where his division was during the Tet Offensive in the winter of 1968.”
Indeed I did. The 304th was our main adversary when I got to Quang Tri in January 1968. This guy had already been there two and a half years, with no end in sight and no R&R.
Mr. Vinh was speaking, and Susan said, “In June of 1968, the division returned to the north… there were few men left in the division… the division was rebuilt with new soldiers, and returned to Quang Tri in March 1971, then participated in the Spring Offensive of 1972… the Easter Offensive… and his division captured the province and the city of Quang Tri… and suffered heavy losses from the American bombing and withdrew north again to rebuild the division.” Susan added, “He wants to know if you were there for the Spring Offensive.”