The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction Page 18

  There was another knock at the door.

  “Aren’t you going to see who it is?” asked the Poet.

  “Ignore it,” said the Calligrapher. “We must finish the story.”

  “Damn the story and answer your door!” the Poet blustered, but he remained sitting on his hands on the couch.

  The Calligrapher’s face was serene. “It is not necessary. I am perfectly aware of who is knocking, and you will be, too, if you stop interrupting me. Pay no attention to the door. There is no door. We are in the jungle and we are twenty-three years old and it is colder than we could have ever imagined. Out of fear I shot a bullet into the shadows and out of stupidity I decided to follow it. The sigh was a human one, I was certain, and every bit of me trembled as I felt my way through the dark to where I thought the sound had come from. E minor and F now … Good.

  “I didn’t notice the dying girl until she was practically underneath my feet, though at that point I wasn’t yet aware that she was a girl—there was only enough moonlight to tell that what I had been about to stumble over was a pair of pale legs, not to whom they belonged. It sighed once more. I counted to one hundred and then, having convinced myself that I was being brave, put my gun away and grabbed hold of the ankles. They were cold and without pulse and, I assumed, attached to a body that was thoroughly dead. With heavy steps I began making my way out of the forest, dragging my find behind me. I didn’t look back at it once; I kept my head up and my eyes fixed on the distant point where I knew camp was.

  “But when the trees started thinning and letting the moonlight in, I realized that I was mistaken. The darkness had deceived me; I had gone trudging off in the wrong direction and emerged in an unfamiliar clearing. More frustrated than afraid now, I threw the legs down on the ground. It was then that the body sighed once again.”

  Here the knocking returned, and this time it escalated into a heavy pounding. The Poet suddenly leapt up. “It’s Dien!” he cried. “He must have gotten out and needs to be let in again!”

  The Calligrapher’s nostrils twitched. He needed to shout to be heard over the banging at the door. “Sit back down! Dien is in the kitchen! You know perfectly well that he can’t get out! Sit down! Down!” The knocking ended abruptly just as he said his final “down,” and the word echoed around the room. The Poet dropped back onto the couch once more. “And your hands?”

  The Poet muttered under his breath and settled back into position.

  The Calligrapher was growing impatient. When he thought the Poet and the Guitarist wouldn’t notice, his eyes darted up to the open window. “Please try and concentrate, for we are running out of time. Imagine, if you will, the chill of fear that ran through me as, at last, I turned to look at who I had shot.

  “Her eyes were open, and the wound below her right breast wasn’t bleeding as much as I expected. Now, you won’t like what I’m going to say next. A young woman meeting her untimely end in the primeval forest, the young soldier responsible for her death dropping to his knees in anguish beside her—it is terrible, yes, but is it not darkly beautiful as well? And wouldn’t you expect the star of this tragedy, the girl taking her final breaths in the moonlight, to be just as beautiful? As delicate as the dying sighs from her lips—which themselves ought to have been soft and fresh, full yet innocent—her slender limbs arranged in the tall grass as gracefully as those of a dancing Apsara. That was how she should have been.

  “So you must not fault me for my reaction upon seeing her. Following my feelings of guilt and horror, of course, was disappointment. First, the girl was dressed in a bizarre harlequin ensemble of a tunic and short baggy trousers stitched together from orange scraps of what I recognized as parachute cloth. It was an outfit altogether ill-befitting a beautiful corpse. Even worse, her bare feet were so caked with mud that they had taken on the appearance of hooves, and her hands were almost as dirty and rather spade-shaped. The romanticism could have been saved had she possessed a lovely face, but in that category, too, she fell short. There was nothing fragile or pretty about her features; the girl’s face was broad and squashy—almost like a pancake, with little slits for eyes and nostrils, and a pair of thick, unrefined lips toward the bottom. I couldn’t help but feel as if I had been cheated somehow. The two of you think me beastly no doubt for saying this, but had it been you, you would have felt the same.

  “My homely corpse blinked her small eyes at me. Her fleshy lips parted and she said, in a voice as flat as her face, ‘So, you have killed me.’ She sighed again and looked up at me with an expression of disappointment so powerful it rivaled what I was feeling inside—an expression that seemed to say, I don’t mind being shot, but why did you have to be the one to do it?

  “Naturally I was offended, but did I let it show? Of course not. I said, with the perfect amount of tremor, ‘It was an accident! An unforgivable accident that will haunt me for the rest of my days and—’

  “She cut me off abruptly. ‘You can count on that,’ she said with something disarmingly like humor.

  “I had been prepared to launch into my act of contrition. I was going to weep and beat my fists against the ground and then end by vowing to bring her body to her family and willingly accept whatever punishment they chose to mete out. However, at this interruption I began to lose my zeal. She really wasn’t cooperating at all. But I could have returned to my heartbreaking plea for forgiveness had the dying girl not done what she did next: She looked at me with disdain, pure and unmistakable, and then she laughed. She laughed! Derisive laughter that wouldn’t stop even as it sent more blood seeping out of her bullet wound. It was completely inappropriate for a situation like this. Perverse, even.

  “ ‘Look here,’ I said, unable to keep the sulk out of my voice, ‘I’m rending my heart, trying to get an apology out before you exsanguinate, and you’re not even listening!’

  “She stopped laughing. It was clear that she hadn’t liked my tone. ‘No, you look here, soldier,’ she said. She was as rude as she was ugly. ‘Can I even call you “soldier”? You’re an insect that they plucked from a rice paddy and then handed a gun. A mosquito larva, perhaps. Soldiers. You’re useless, all of you. I’ve been living right here, under your noses, unnoticed for weeks now. I’ve had a front-row seat from which to observe your ineptness. I can only assume that you were able to shoot me because you were aiming for something ten yards to my left.’ Now that she was insulting me she seemed to be enjoying herself, but I couldn’t help but notice happily that her breaths were growing shallower by the second.

  “ ‘Hurry up and die, won’t you?’ I grumbled.

  “The girl suddenly reached out, grabbed on to my ankle, and began tugging at it. ‘I’m on my way,’ she said, ‘Come closer. Come down here with me.’ I crouched next to her, wrinkling my nose at her particular musk. She looked up at me, and in each eye there was a little pinprick of moonlight. ‘Soldier,’ she said, ‘someday you will regret what transpired here tonight. Because I am going to return and make sure of it. Oh, don’t look like that! You deserve it, wouldn’t you agree? You shot me and then you strayed where you should not. If you enter the woods, you shouldn’t be surprised when something follows you out, that is, if you make it out at all.’ A sharp, final sigh. ‘I’m almost gone now. Quickly, give me your hand.’

  “I remember thinking: At last! She is frightened to move from this world to the next and needs me to comfort her in these last moments. I went to take her hand, but to my surprise she reached out and grabbed mine first. Though she was weakened, her grip was formidable. She held my hand up in front of her eyes, as if inspecting it. Then she pushed all the digits down into a fist except for the index, which she left out pointing right at her own face.

  “ ‘Here is the finger that did it,’ she whispered. ‘Here is the one that pulled the trigger.’ And then, in what was to be her last act on earth, she bit down on it as hard as she could.

  “She had the jaws of a tiger. I shrieked and slapped her repeatedly with my free right hand, but
I was entirely ineffective; she only unclamped her teeth when she was finally dead, fifteen very long, very painful seconds later. I cradled my poor finger in the fabric of my shirt and tried to stanch the bleeding; the flesh was shredded, and I didn’t appear to have knuckle skin anymore, but luckily she hadn’t bitten hard enough to sever the member.

  “I kicked the body of the no-longer-dying girl twice before leaving her there. You don’t need to make that face; I know it wasn’t very civil. But that wasn’t the worst thing I did. When I saw how her face was now covered in the blood from my mangled finger, I thought to myself that it was a vast improvement. Yes, yes, you may look horrified.”

  The Calligrapher paused and bestowed a meaningful glance upon each of his friends. “Now here is the part where the story becomes a bit implausible,” he said.

  This time it was the Guitarist’s turn for an outburst. “You mean that everything else was believable?” he cried. For emphasis, he viciously strummed an E minor seventh.

  The Calligrapher looked up over the Guitarist’s shoulder at one of his prized pieces hanging on the wall. The title on the frame identified it as The Path Out of the Forest, but to the untrained eye it would appear to be no more than a collection of vertical smudges. While the Calligrapher’s attention was diverted, the Poet shifted his weight to free one of his hands. He surreptitiously pulled out his notebook and pencil again, and on a fresh page wrote: “One-Finger” in neat cursive. The Calligrapher, who did not take his eyes off his painting once, surely couldn’t have noticed the Poet’s furtive movements, but a curious smile crossed his face when the Poet quietly slipped his notebook back into his pocket. Still staring at The Path Out of the Forest—though it seemed more as if he were staring through it—the Calligrapher brought his part of the story to an end.

  “I began walking through the trees, confident that I would soon emerge at the forest’s edge. Every few steps I stopped to tear the leaves off the ferns growing in the underbrush and bandage myself with them. Eventually the task absorbed me, and my attention wandered away from the more pressing matter of getting back to camp. It was only when I had forgotten about finding my way out that I was able to do so. I looked up from wrapping another leaf around my finger to discover that I was somehow back at my original lookout post. There was camp, fifteen yards away from me once more—a cluster of geometric shadows beneath the moon, which was now starting to set. Though I wanted nothing more than to drag myself back to my tent and lose myself in sleep, the night was not yet over, and I knew what was expected of me: I resumed my position and stood staring into the darkness for the hours of it that remained.

  “When dawn broke I was relieved from the watch by Pimple-Face Quan. You both remember him—he was the one who killed a monkey with his bare hands on a dare from Crooked-Nose Thanh. When Pimple-Face Quan saw the blood on my clothes he looked concerned, but I didn’t provide an explanation and he didn’t press for one. I ran off to wash before you and all the others rose, and to think up a decent lie to account for my injury. As I approached the stream by camp I remember thinking that either my makeshift plant-cast had been effective or the cold night had numbed the pain, because my finger was barely throbbing anymore.

  “When I was certain that I was not being observed, I slowly unwrapped the bandage to see what damage the dead girl’s teeth had done. In the light of day there could be no mistake: There was still plenty of blood on the digit, dried and dark, but the skin underneath it was now unbroken. I washed away the carnage and examined it again—there were no marks, no marks at all. As I gaped at my own finger incredulously, the last of the pain left my body. It still didn’t feel right, and it never really would again. But after a time I resigned myself to the belief that what had transpired during the night had all been in my head. Why have you stopped playing?”

  The Guitarist had not moved his hands for a long time. The Poet’s were now folded in his lap instead of beneath him. He looked at the Calligrapher and asked, in the voice that he used with child beggars, gentle but measured, “Why are you telling us this?”

  Only now did the Calligrapher look away from his painting. “Because, dear friends, earlier this evening I was startled to see a familiar, unattractively flat, blood-covered face looking in at us from that very window. It is my guess that after all these years, she has returned to carry out the promise she made to me in the forest.” Both the Poet and the Guitarist did not let themselves turn to look outside. The Calligrapher’s voice dropped to a low snarl. “However, I don’t intend to let her.”

  “And what, precisely, are you planning to do?” asked the Poet wearily.

  “Well,” said the Calligrapher, “this is the part where your cooperation is necessary.” Still seated, he reached around and from somewhere behind his back drew out a large kitchen knife.

  “Good God!” the Guitarist yelped, and rocked backward on his stool.

  The Poet did not want to dwell on the reasons why his friend had been hiding a knife this entire time. “Why don’t I take that from you?” he said softly. “Why don’t you hand it to me, very carefully?”

  The Calligrapher presented it to him politely, handle first, without complaint. “Excellent. Take it,” he said. “For I need you to use it to cut off my finger.”

  “What?!”

  “My left index. One of you must amputate it.” When this was met with silence that was more exasperated than stunned, he calmly continued: “Don’t you see? The trigger finger that she didn’t manage to destroy in the forest—it must be sacrificed in order to atone for what I did. It is the only way to appease her. It’s why she tracked me down. Listen …”

  The knocking at the door was back again, soft but insistent. Almost like a gentle scratching now, which was somehow more frightening.

  “I had hoped that our fallen comrade would be able to assist us in this task,” said the Calligrapher, indicating the broken vodka bottle, “to make it easier. Because the truth is that I am a coward.” He rose to his knees and placed his left hand atop the stack of paper on the table. “I cannot do it myself.” He spread his fingers wide and lifted his chin. His fingers were steady. “Who is my true friend? Which of you will help me?”

  The Poet raised the knife, reflecting a blurry, distorted living room in the blade. He placed it on the table next to the Calligrapher’s hand and shook his head. The Calligrapher turned to look at the Guitarist, but the stool was now empty; the Guitarist was in the corner, putting his instrument back in its case.

  The Poet lifted himself from the couch cushions. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Cong,” he said. “We’re not calling you a liar, but Liem and I think that you might need, well, a rest. Didn’t you say it yourself earlier, that we are all old and soft and useless?” He tugged the waistband of his trousers up. “I, too, can sometimes feel a little lost in my own mind. Perhaps it’s all for the best that our drink took a tumble earlier. Just rest tonight, Cong, and we’ll see you next week.” He went to stand by the Guitarist.

  “I understand,” said the Calligrapher. “You are free to leave.” He made a grand gesture toward the front door. “I believe that you both know the way out …”

  The Poet and the Guitarist followed the sweep of his arm with their eyes, but neither of them moved; the soft knocking had not gone away. They looked at each other nervously.

  The Calligrapher clapped with undisguised glee. “You see!” he cried. “There is a part of you that believes me and you know it! If there wasn’t, you would have been through that door already. But you can’t help but wonder if she’s waiting out there, can you? It frightens you, even if it’s not you she wants. So will you march out that door and meet her, just to prove that you are not afraid? Or will you admit that you are and stay? She is patient—she has been waiting for me these forty years already. If you don’t help me, dear friends, we may be killing time here for quite a while.”

  The Guitarist shuffled his feet. The Poet’s eyes darted from the door to the Calligrapher, from the Calligrap
her to the door. He had reached a decision. A look of defiance came over his face as he hoisted his trousers once more. “This means nothing!” he declared. And then he turned, stepped onto the couch (a motion that caused its middle to sag to the floor), and heaved himself up and out of the window. There was a small thud as he landed in the soft earth of the Calligrapher’s garden five feet below.

  The Guitarist shrugged and then mounted the couch, too. He handed the guitar case down to the Poet below, and then swung one leg over the windowsill.

  Before he jumped he heard the voice of the Calligrapher. “Perhaps if you had played an A minor this could have ended differently,” was what he said. And then the Guitarist was gone, too, old bones clicking as he hit the ground and started running down the back roads that led away from the house, the Poet huffing and puffing alongside him with the guitar clutched to his chest.

  The Calligrapher placed his inky hand back on the table. He balled all of the fingers save for the index into a fist. He was ready now. “Come in,” he said softly. With his right hand he picked up the knife and placed it on the floor. Then, with a little flick, he sent it sliding across the tile and toward the entrance to the kitchen. It spun to a stop mere feet from where Dien was pressed against the wall of the dark hallway, listening. “Come in,” called the Calligrapher once more. As a cold mountain breeze crossed in through the window with a sigh, Dien detached himself from the shadows. With his good arm he reached for the knife on the ground, or perhaps he was reaching for the twisted version of the living room reflected in its blade. Whichever it was, when he held it in his hand, he knew what was expected of him.

  DESCENDING DRAGON

  MS. NGUYEN WAS HAVING her daily phone conversation with her daughter Lam when she saw the first tank. It appeared abruptly in the middle of her bedroom, enormous and yellow-green, its treads caked with red Mekong mud and its long gun resting on the windowsill less than two feet away from her. For five long seconds the tank quietly occupied the space before her. It somehow put the other objects in the room slightly out of focus, making everything else seem unreal by comparison. She was less surprised by the appearance of the tank than by the fact that she did not fear it, as she would have forty years ago. It even smelled the same way she remembered—like dust and buffalo shit, with something tangy and metallic underneath—and even though Ms. Nguyen knew it was a hallucination, she had the urge to get up and touch it. She didn’t, though, because Lam’s voice suddenly trilled in the earpiece. Her daughter had always been a little too perceptive, too good at detecting the minute shifts in atmosphere that indicated when something was wrong. And Ms. Nguyen’s silence now, at the appearance of the tank, though brief, had already triggered Lam’s suspicions: