Pickled Uniforms (4/11)

1979

From the asymmetrical frowns and the clouded eyes, I could see that a lot of us did not know why we were here, or what threat we posed to these people. A flower put in infertile soil can not possibly grow any thorns. 

I myself didn’t quite comprehend why exactly I was here. They said this place was for those who were suspected of pro-American sympathies. Army officials, teachers and writers. Sure, I was a writer. But in my possibly unreliable reasoning, being a writer doesn’t correlate to my political stance. 

I looked around to see if there were familiar faces. Tuấn, who was a maths teacher at the local high school before he enlisted in the war, looked as if his body had consumed itself from starvation. His flesh had all dissipated. I remember when we made fun of his boyish looks under his chubby complexion. In fact, I had written a short jingle for him. 

Fat kid fat kid

Where is he now?

He has the will

But is a cow

He’s always late

We don’t know how

Will he also be late

For his wedding vow?

One of my finest works of poetry, composed when I was fourteen years old. Not even years of writing lessons can surpass that level of innocent creativity. But now, he was lanky, with a long nose and piercing eyes. His thin lips could bend and shape, but they would break on their way there. It looked as if I were to give him a friendly pat on the shoulder, his body would immediately disintegrate. 

One man, another pickled man, declared himself in front of everyone behind the podium. 

“You all are here for either one of two reasons. Either you have collaborated with the other side during the war or have attempted to exercise such democratic freedoms as mentioned in Article 11 of the 1973 Paris Agreement. Here, you will be rehabilitated into the new society through education and socially constructive labour for three years.”

When we were dismissed, I went to greet my old friend. As I maneuvered through the mild crowd, I stumbled across a snippet of conversation that was slightly too loud to be casual. 

“They don’t want to kill us straight away; they want to kill us slowly.” 

The crowd had slowly become a violent protesting scene, with men inches away from hitting each other’s faces. With the air charged with such political tensions, the odd heated argument led to physical scuffles. Or more.

“Americans. We shouldn’t have trusted them in the first place.”

“Stop putting on the act. We know you’re just trying to get out of here”, the commander had howled while storming across the crowd. He batted at whoever was in his way and ‘diffused’ the situation. He had declared that the environment ‘too unstable and dangerous for studying to be of any benefit at the present time.’

They didn’t want to silence us, they knew that everyone would hear, but they were confident that no one would listen. 

Vietnam became insulated. We had become trapped in our own home. 

When I looked in Tuấn’s direction, I saw that he was looking at me with the same absence in the soul. The nauseating grey cloudiness in his eyes. We were both too tired to cry. 

This was the new Vietnam.