R&R Read online

  She tried to guide their talk away from personal topics but since politics, religion and work were all banned from the mess, everything seemed to lead back to sex. The officers were fascinated by the idea that she outranked her boyfriend. They asked, ‘Are you always on top?’ The Service Corps captain asked if she had ever had him punished for a poor performance.

  Eventually, Dr Clarke reclaimed her from the mob, and asked how she was enjoying herself in South Vietnam. She told him it was the best time of her life, and he knew what she meant, because he remembered his first months at the BCOF hospital in Seoul, when he was a newly qualified doctor, in love with an English nurse, at the height of the Korean War. All of his career had been an attempt to recapture that feeling, in Port Moresby, Georgetown and Vung Tau.

  Betty felt guilty to be having such an intimate conversation – even though it was unspoken – with a man who wasn’t Shorty. She was tremendously sorry for Shorty, and she knew he missed her. She’d thought they’d be together all the time in Vietnam, huddled in a trench, but she was beginning to realise how naïve they’d been about, well, everything.

  Dr Clarke asked her if she would like to come with him to a movie. The officers had their own theatre, and it sometimes screened better films. Tomorrow night, they were showing It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart.

  Of course Betty would go, she said. It was her all-time favourite.

  She imagined her hand in his lap in the dark.

  A cloudburst punched and patted the canvas roof of the jeep, like the hands of a masseuse beating on an empty man. The storm passed quickly, the sky cleared, and Nashville woke up. Shorty, who had been studying the Australian Military Forces Pocketbook South Vietnam, asked if they were going to look for Sergeant Caution. Nashville, still drunk from the night before, said he needed a beer. It was nine o’clock in the morning and Shorty was complaining he couldn’t take his fiancée on a date.

  ‘Where were you going to bring her anyway?’ asked Nashville. ‘A brothel?’

  They passed a striptease bar.

  ‘Dinner and a show?’

  Shorty shrugged.

  ‘You even got a suit?’ asked Nashville. ‘Your girl’s a lewie, ain’t she? If you want officer pussy, you need a suit.’

  ‘She’s not pussy,’ said Shorty.

  ‘Not without a suit, she ain’t,’ said Nashville. ‘She’s just two closed curtains and one locked door.’

  Outside Le Boudin, they found Moreau supervising a team of Vietnamese boys who were scrubbing the side wall of his bar. The undressed masonry had been sprayed with two large curves in army green paint. The arcs bent outwards, in opposite directions.

  ‘It looks like a broken heart,’ said Shorty.

  ‘Looks like a pair of fucking ears,’ said Nashville.

  Quyn lounged in the doorway of the bar, remembering the banks of a river lined with mulberry and maize, a bronze incense burner before an ancestral altar, and a sky white with butterflies.

  ‘Oh, big man!’ she called, when she saw Shorty. ‘Brave soldier! Kill bookoop VC, yes?’

  Moreau opened the bar and Tâm made coffee. Nashville always found her most attractive in the mornings. As she put down his cup, he whispered, ‘Want a fuck?’

  Tâm looked away. Quyn brought over Shorty’s coffee. She was wearing a tight blue minidress, while the other girls were still in nightclothes. As she put down his cup, she whispered, ‘Want a fuck?’

  Shorty smiled, as if it were a joke, which helped Quyn pretend it was funny that a soldier didn’t want her.

  Moreau said his wall had been painted in the night. Yes, it looked like ears. But it wasn’t his fault a dead man with no ears had come to his bar, and he was tired of hearing about it. Much worse things were happening in the war, and Moreau didn’t care about them either. And the Mamasan, he said, was sorry about what had happened to Shorty. She understood he’d lost ten dollars. Moreau was prepared to refund Shorty from the cash register, or offer him half an hour with two of his girls, in the interests of keeping the peace.

  Two thin, strong arms wrapped around Nashville’s neck, and Bucky jumped high onto his back. He was a small but powerful kid, with violent, clumsy grace. He smelled like a chimp.

  ‘Americans nambawan!’ shouted Bucky, waving his fist in the air.

  Nashville shrugged the kid off, then picked him up and hugged him. He hadn’t seen Bucky for days. Nashville noticed bruising under his eyes.

  ‘Who did this?’ he asked.

  ‘Americans!’ said Bucky.

  ‘Americans?’ asked Nashville.

  ‘Nambawan!’ said Bucky.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Nashville to Shorty, ‘I think this is the only guy in Vietnam who really fucking appreciates us.’

  Bucky passed a bag of patisseries to Tâm.

  Shorty was surprised how quickly he had grown to enjoy Le Boudin’s croissants, which would have been a poofter’s breakfast in Bendigo, Victoria. He hoped to share them with Betty, who wasn’t yet aware of his French side.

  Nashville put on his quizmaster’s voice. ‘What was the highest position in the Billboard charts reached by Sergeant Barry Sadler’s magnificent “Ballad of the Green Berets”?’ he asked Bucky.

  ‘Nambawan!’ said Bucky.

  When Tâm accepted the cakes and passed Bucky his red envelope, the boy panted like a delighted puppy, and Nashville couldn’t help but pat his head. His fingers found the hole that ran all the way through Bucky’s life, and it made Nashville wonder if everyone would be happier if they were stupid.

  He imagined Shorty was pretty content.

  When Nashville had been roused and calmed by beer, he made to return to the jeep. Bucky followed him outside, and tried to climb on board.

  ‘I’m sorry, buddy,’ said Nashville. ‘I can’t take passengers no more.’

  Bucky, who understood nothing or everything, bowed his head.

  ELEVEN

  Along the esplanade, girls in leaf hats carried fat bags of dark, silver-breasted fish, balanced like the scales of justice on bamboo poles. An MP marched up to the driver’s side of Nashville’s jeep. Nashville recognised him as one of the fucking new guys.

  ‘You ain’t answering your radio,’ he said to Nashville. ‘Captain wants to see you. Said I’d find you outside Le Boudin.’

  Nashville took the coast road, past fishing boats that flew the flags of no nation, coloured orange, blue and green. A man in black robes waded out to his sampan, unravelling an invisible cord. On the beach, fishermen darned their nets or others scraped at their traps with scythes.

  Nashville left Shorty with Hauser at the boom gate of the PMO. The Captain met Nashville with a grim smile, as Nashville stood to attention like a cigar-store Indian.

  ‘Where in hell are we,’ asked the Captain, ‘with finding Sergeant Caution?’

  ‘We ain’t anywhere, sir,’ admitted Nashville.

  ‘And the Mamasan?’ asked the Captain.

  ‘We still ain’t sure who she is, sir,’ said Nashville, ‘but we’ve figured out a number of people who she ain’t.’

  ‘Such as myself, General Westmoreland and Bob Hope?’ suggested the Captain.

  ‘Among others, sir,’ agreed Nashville.

  The Captain nodded, although not in agreement, and showed Nashville an Australian newspaper.

  ‘Do you know what’s in this?’ the Captain asked him.

  ‘Nothing?’ ventured Nashville.

  The Captain held the paper open at a story written by ‘Our man in Phuoc Tuy province’, which described how the body of a South Vietnamese civilian had allegedly been dug out of his grave by American soldiers, who had cut off his ears, broken his limbs, taken him into a Vung Tau bar and shot him.

  In response to the crime, Buddhists in Saigon had formed a National Committee for the Defence of the Dead, which was to supply militiamen to guard Vietnamese cemeteries from American graverobbers. The committee’s symbol was a pair of ears, which had begun to appear on buildings associated w
ith the foreign presence in Vung Tau, apparently applied using paint stolen from the US Army itself.

  ‘What the hell is that Aussie reporter doing,’ asked the Captain, ‘snooping around town in his stupid yellow hat?’

  Nashville had noticed men seemed infuriated by Izzy Berger’s hat. It was taken as a mark of disrespect for the war. If a little guy like Berger could float around Vung Tau wearing a brightly coloured target, then what was the point of all the razor wire and guns?

  ‘The hat guy’s not a reporter,’ said Nashville, ‘he’s an impresario.’

  ‘A female impersonator?’ asked the Captain.

  ‘He’s Australia’s P T Barnum, sir,’ said Nashville.

  ‘Does he have any midgets?’ asked the Captain.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Nashville. ‘He’s here to arrange a concert for the guys. With Caution, who he thinks is our entertainment manager.’

  The Captain dropped his head into his hands, and rubbed it vigorously. ‘It’s a circus,’ he said. ‘It’s the Ringling Brothers.’

  Nashville felt sorry for the Captain, who would have been happier out with the grunts, getting killed over who controlled a bit of hill.

  ‘I can understand the motives of whoever wrote the note,’ said the Captain. ‘I can see why somebody – or anybody – would set up Sergeant Caution and lure him to Le Boudin, to shock him or scare him or set him up for something worse. I can grasp that the appearance of a corpse at the table might be an anomaly even in that drinking hole of the damned, and Sergeant Caution might feel moved to make certain it was actually dead by killing it some more. But what I cannot figure out is why he would then be so taken with guilt, regret or fear that he’d disappear. You and I both know he’s done far worse in this town and stuck around.’

  Nashville chewed, although his mouth was empty.

  ‘Whenever I have a difficult case, sir,’ said Nashville, ‘I think to myself, What would Doctor Watson have called it? And this one, I guess, he might’ve named “The Adventure of the Asshole Who Shot the Dead Guy with No Ears and then Disappeared”.’

  The Captain scowled.

  ‘But then I ask myself, Would Watson have been right?’ said Nashville. ‘Maybe it’s too complicated. Every mama-san, papa-san and cowboy-san in the street hates Caution’s redneck guts for the way he throws his weight around the bars. He’s conned Aussies out of their dough and they’ve sent a little man in a yellow hat to chase him. That’s reason enough for anyone to go AWOL.

  ‘So I think we’ve got two separate stories, sir: “The Adventure of the Asshole Who Disappeared” and “The Adventure of the Dead Guy with No Ears”. They just happened to meet in Le Boudin, like the railway line to Covington meets the line to Collierville in Memphis, Tennessee.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ said the Captain.

  ‘What about the grunts who found the body, sir?’ asked Nashville.

  ‘They’re dead,’ said the Captain. ‘They flew back to the 173rd Airborne the next day, and got greased at Dak To. One boy had half a nose in his pocket, but no ears.’  The Captain shook his head.

  Nashville had noticed the Captain fell easily into despair, and hoped he would soon allow Nashville to leave. But there was another reason the Captain had wanted to see him. He had heard enthusiastic reports of Nashville’s talk on Communism and venereal disease, and was keen to have him repeat the lecture to the guys in Long Binh and Saigon, as part of the military police education program.

  ‘I didn’t know we had one, sir,’ said Nashville.

  ‘It hasn’t previously been a priority,’ said the Captain, ‘as I didn’t feel we could afford the manpower.’

  ‘What’s changed?’ asked Nashville.

  ‘I’ve realised you can do it,’ said the Captain. ‘And I’ve got the strong feeling that your absence from the streets of Vung Tau will have no effect on military discipline or public order.’

  Nashville had no wish to visit any US base forward of Vung Tau. Generally, he found the rest of Vietnam to be a depressing place, torn apart by a bloody and intractable local conflict in which outsiders had no useful part to play.

  ‘You mean the war?’ asked the Captain.

  Nashville shrugged. He felt persecuted. ‘What have I done to demerit this, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not a punishment,’ said the Captain. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. In fact, as far as I can tell, you’ve done nothing at all.’

  Nashville shuffled in the boots his hoochmaid had shined that morning.

  ‘Go to Long Binh on Friday night,’ said the Captain, ‘and pretend to be a military policeman.’

  ‘I believe, sir, that may be an offence,’ said Nashville.

  ‘Not,’ said the Captain, ‘when it’s your fucking job.’

  Nashville drove angrily back from the PMO, past a bar girl walking to work in sunflower shorts and stag-beetle sunglasses.

  ‘If I were on patrol with an American,’ he said to Shorty, ‘I might look at Natalie Susan Mitchell over there and say, “Nice ass.” And he might answer, “I’d like to see what that ass is made of.” Or, “I could bounce a dime off it.” Or he’d simply repeat, “Nice ass.”

  ‘You might want to try that,’ said Nashville. ‘Or you might feel moved to make a fucking joke. Or tell me about a broad you knew in Australia who had an ass just like that, or an ass not like that.’

  Spots of perspiration gathered on Shorty’s brow.

  ‘You might share a story,’ said Nashville, ‘about the time you met a hoochmaid who let you take her up the ass. I enjoy stories like that.’

  Shorty shook his head and wiped his eyes.

  ‘I also,’ said Nashville, ‘take pleasure in memories that start, “Before I joined the military, I spent one happy year selling life insurance to lonely housewives . . .” ’

  ‘But I worked on the farm,’ said Shorty.

  Nashville punched the dashboard. ‘For Christ’s sake, Shorty!’ he shouted. ‘You have got to get laid, buddy. Let’s go buy you that fucking suit.’

  The tailors of Vung Tau were Indians who had come to Vietnam to dress the French. Their shops were clustered in Tran Hung Dao, with window displays cut from magazines of men with ambiguous smiles. Legless, headless mannequins modelled sports jackets, shirts and ties, like mine victims blown up on their way to a wedding.

  The leader of the tailors was Sam Singh, who had negotiated with the Mamasan and the VC to allow the tailors to stay once the French had gone. He spoke English, French, Vietnamese, Gujarati, Sindhi and Cantonese. He had known Moreau in another place, and once a year the men met to drink and remember it.

  Sam Singh shook hands with Nashville and bowed. A tape measure circled his shoulders like the snakeman’s python. Nashville introduced Shorty.

  ‘He is very tall,’ said Sam Singh.

  ‘You could hang a flag off him,’ said Nashville, with a father’s pride.

  The tailor measured Shorty’s leg, shaking his head.

  ‘How’s business?’ asked Nashville.

  ‘Very bad,’ said Sam Singh. ‘Nobody is having the big balls any more. There is no société in Vung Tau. Now there is only Australians.’

  He looked at Shorty sadly, as if he had driven away the French.

  ‘Also, there is the problem at Le Boudin,’ said the tailor. ‘You have turned this town into a brothel. The VC accept this, but they do not like it. When they win, they will close down the whorehouses and send the bar owners into camps.’

  ‘They won’t win,’ said Shorty.

  ‘Until then,’ said Sam Singh, ‘we must all continue our business and try to get along.’

  He gave Shorty his pattern book. Shorty chose a dark suit with a three-button jacket and narrow lapels, while Sam Singh talked over his shoulder at Nashville.

  ‘Cooperation is a matter for all of us,’ said Sam Singh. ‘Including your Sergeant Caution. He was out of control even before he shot the body. It was noticed, Nashville. The people of this town have had enoug
h of him.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked Nashville, fishing for an excuse not to look for him.

  ‘Do not interfere with corpses,’ said Sam Singh.

  Clouds gathered over the hills, as Shorty and Nashville drove down Highway One to Long Binh, in a jeep with an M60 machine gun mounted on the back. They had a driver – PFC Simpson, from Simpson, Illinois, who worked as the Captain’s batman – and Eagle came along as their gunner. Shorty had volunteered to join the convoy because Betty was ‘busy’ at the hospital that night, even though it wasn’t her shift.

  Simpson from Simpson said he had the best job on the base, as it meant he could drink the Captain’s liquor and smoke his pipes. He had even worn the Captain’s underwear to fuck the Captain’s hoochmaid. Every GI in Vung Tau was jealous, which is why he kept being lent out for bullshit details such as escorting Nashville to Long Binh.

  The jeep joined a circus of US Army trucks and tankers with thick tyres, heavy smoke and dull, green armour, the war rolling in and out of Saigon. Shorty felt a sense of common purpose, the idea that he was part of the same invincible fighting force that had helped save Europe from the Nazis and Australia from the Japs. He thought the US Army was his army. Nashville hated all this military stuff.

  ‘Remember when I got attacked by all those VC?’ Shorty asked Nashville.

  ‘You never fucking shut up about it,’ said Nashville.

  ‘And they tried to drag me into their hole —’

  ‘It was junior VC, wasn’t it?’ asked Nashville. ‘Schoolboys? Must’ve been their youth wing.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking,’ said Shorty, ‘maybe that’s where they’re keeping Sergeant Caution. Underground, in the sewers.’

  Nashville smiled. ‘The idea appeals to me,’ he said, ‘because TJ is a sewer rat. But, like the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, it hinges on a single fucking absence: there are no sewers in Vung Tau.’

  Shorty mused unentertainingly about the identity of the Mamasan. He believed the Mamasan was a male, who had adopted a female title to throw people off the scent. Shorty always suspected somebody was trying to throw him off the scent, although Nashville had yet to get a sniff of any scent at all.