Veteran |
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It is dark outside the door. Dark and cold. I wonder if she will recognise me. It's been so long, nearly twenty years. I pull the coat closer, trying to keep warm. I'm not 20 anymore, and I feel it, especially on days like this. Maybe I can go south this winter. Maybe they'll let me. As I get into the car, I take off my coat. It's going to be warm enough after a while, but right now the steering-wheel feels like a ring of ice. My hands shake as I turn on the headlights. It's almost spooky how much they look like the searchlights from the black, soundless helicopters who destroyed the POW-camp and got us out. They were like black angels as they hovered above the camp. I still remember how Chi Minh, the captain, curled up in a ball and wet himself as they landed. I remember thinking that he had become too used to working with prisoners, powerless creatures, whom he could order around at whim. I guess the thought of us as people was too much for him. It was a horrible time, and he did horrible things to us. We were always hungry, always dirty and always lower than even the dirt under his boots. I close my eyes shortly to wipe away the vision of the camp. It's going to be a long drive. The sun is rising in the east as I drive through the city. It's a pretty city, I still think so, even though I've been living here on and off for the past five years. The broad streets are lined with old trees, and at night, if it is really quiet, you can hear nightingales sing in the park. I look at all the people I pass on my way and marvel at the confidence with which they do everyday things. Here, a woman carrying her infant and a bulging bag out of the supermarket. There, a young couple, lost to the world on a park bench where people pass all the time. They don't know the pain of standing outside. Don't understand the loneliness of knowing. Shock hits me like a fist in the stomach when I drive through the rundown part of town. In front of a crumbling building with huge red and black banners stands a Chinese man. He looks a lot like the cook that kept us alive through the five years we spent in that bloody camp. Hunger was an everyday event in the camp, but he always made more food than he had to, always gave us more than he was allowed to. Always disgusting, but at least it resembled food, and we ate it, even with gratitude after a while. I remember him well. Too well. I can still see his legs kicking when he was dangling from the dead tree they had kept for just such occasions. There was no room in the camp for people who thought we were worth keeping alive and well. I cut him down afterwards and buried him, trying not to look too closely at his neck, where the rope had tightened. I'm well out of the city before I get the last of that memory away. Out in the open land. Fields to all sides, only the highway in front of me. It fills me with a feeling of freedom, as if I could just continue, never look back. But I know that freedom is an illusion for me. A brief dream, doomed to turn into pain if I don't push it aside. When I look out at the cornfields, they disappear in flashes, turning themselves into rice-fields. Tranquil as they always were with the sense of eternal patience over them, but also with the hovering fear. Always we were afraid. No one ever knew when a peaceful rice-field would turn into our little corner of hell. Out of nowhere a machine-gun would begin to rattle its song of death. Screams from those who were hit, the quiet moaning from those who were dying. Shouting, as the orders fell, and then we'd return the fire. Lying on our stomachs in the murky water that was slowly turning red with our blood. And suddenly it was all over and the world was quiet again. With our ears ringing from the gunfire, we would shout a row-call, trying to figure out who was hurt and who was dead. I always thought that there was no worse fate than bleeding to death in one of those rice-fields so far from home. I've learned to imagine worse things. To live them, even. Then I blink once or twice, and that image is gone too. Over the years I've grown very good at getting those memories to go away. The problem is, they always seem to come back. Like her face. It never quite disappeared. It's grown dimmer over the years, and I remember more feelings, situations, than actual images. Like the day I left. I remember the tears in her eyes, I remember the pain of leaving her, and I very clearly remember the bitter sweetness of her lips as we kissed goodbye. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot recall her face on that very day. I wonder if she has married again. I could understand that, and I've convinced myself that it would have been the best thing for her to do. The last thing I want to do is intrude on her, to devastate the life she must have now. I told the colonel that I would only look. That I would stay in town for only one week and not talk to her. He was worried that she might recognise me. I remember the first time I saw the colonel. He was one of the men in those night-black choppers who took us away from hell. Just to see the face of someone not dirty or Asian, made us all feel better. He smiled, and we were too happy and too exhausted to notice that the smile never reached his eyes. But when I look back, I can see that the smile is not a friendly one. All in all the colonel doesn't have a friendly face. Hard, would actually be a better description. Narrow grey eyes under black hair that was already then spotted with white and a firm jaw. And you never saw him smile. Or, rather, you could see him smile, if you didn't look closely. If you did that, you would see something that could be described as a the look on the face of your cat when it has just eaten your favourite parakeet, just to upset you. But how could we know then, what he had in store for us? Once more I turn my attention to the landscape I'm driving through. Now I'm in the foothills of those mountains ahead. It's rugged terrain, and I wonder if there are any training-camps like the one we were in up there. The desolate and wild surroundings would fit it. Then I discard the thought and think about my wife. When I left to fight in the war she was twenty-four. We were happy together. And she was so beautiful. I can't help but wonder if she has married someone. All of our family was told we were dead. It was better, more comforting, than being "missing in action". At least that's what they told us. I'm not entirely sure I believe in it anymore. I've worked for them for too long, done too much of their dirty work. We are getting old. All of us. Even the colonel. I look in the rear-view mirror and see my own eyes. I still, very clearly recall the first time I looked into a mirror after I woke up. The pain of recognising nothing of the face I saw in it. Nothing except the eyes. The colonel told me that it was too risky to change the eyes, but my old face was gone. The innocence that once belonged to the young man I used to see there, my firm jaw that I was so happy about, the soft lips that she loved so much. All gone. He told me it was necessary for our work. Told us all, that there was no point in running away now, because our families would not recognise us anymore. And we were all so shocked that we believed him. Now I'm driving through the mountains. I drive along a gorge with almost vertical sides. It makes me think of the training. It was much harder than the training we had got before going to war, but nobody complained. The colonel never told us what we were being trained for, and we were still in shock from the camp and the surgery that had been performed without our permission. Without even telling us about it. I guess that it was the ultimate way of showing us that we had no control over our own lives. That they owned us. The colonel never used those words, but it was an undertow in everything he said. Not that we saw too much of him. We were simply trained. The men who trained us wore military uniforms without insignia, but I don't think they were professional soldiers. To this day, I don't know who they were, or where they came from, but they certainly didn't belong to Pentagon. Maybe Langly was a better bet, but I don't know. Even we have heard too many conspiracy theories to be completely immune. The difference is that we know more than the rest, and I don't seriously think that the CIA was involved. This is much to covert and they are far too public. I don't know what we were thinking. I know that I never gave what we learned a second thought. But we learned, and we learned well. All of us. They taught us to be killers. Assassins. We would also have made excellent spies, because we learned how to pretend being someone else. That's always a good way of getting close to your victim. And we were taught to make bombs, use all kinds of different weapons and fight without weapons, if it came to that. Eventually, I guess some of us figured out what was happening. So one day, the colonel gathered us all. It was a scorching day in the late summer and the "parade grounds", our rather impressive name for the space between our barracks and the office was red and dusty. - Someone has asked me: - Why are we being trained like this? The colonel started. He had a voice like the bellow of a bull when he wanted too, but he rarely raised it. It had a certain cold quality to match the rest of him. - And I have one answer: because your country needs you! He looked at us, and even though he didn't say anything, we all got the distinct feeling that he was disappointed. - You are being trained to do what your country needs you to do, and you will do it. Noone drops out of this training, noone quits. You are the Omega corps, and you will do what we tell you to do, because we give you the orders! Is that understood? We all bellowed YES SIR! and he turned around and disappeared into the office. After that, nobody went to him with their questions. But the way we were being trained had been brought into the open, and we discussed it amongst ourselves. Some of us became more and more upset, they couldn't cope with the strain of being that much under somebody else's power. But what could we do? Our every move was observed, and the camp perimeters looked like those of a concentration camp. Row after row of barbed wires, towers with guards. At night men with dogs patrolled, and I know now that all of that only was a diversion. We were being guarded by measures that later became famous because they surrounded area 51. There was effectively no way out, but some just couldn't adjust. Mack was one of them, and he was the first to disappear. One moonless night, he left the barracks and I heard him leave. While people around me snored, I heard distant gunfire. And Mack never came back. The colonel never explained, and we never asked. Two more disappeared during the training. Maybe they were the only ones who couldn't adapt, or maybe their disappearances scared us all, but nobody else left. I pull over high above a valley covered in forest. Now this is a place I remember all too clearly. I did my first "job" here. Shooting a man. I had killed during the war, off course I had, but this was different. In war, you are caught up in a frenzy. It is a question of killing as many of the others as you can, because if you don't, they will. It was the first time I ever shot a man who wasn't in any way threatening me. Actually he was begging for his life. And I shot him anyway. I've never stopped to wonder why. I guess I'm afraid to. I was never told why he had to die. I never heard about a murder here, just some articles about a missing person. As far as I know he is still buried in that mountain slope over there. That's what my life has been for the past ten years I suddenly realise with a bad taste in my mouth. Killing people I didn't know for reasons I was never told. Spying on my own countrymen. When I had first been told that would be required of me, I had refused. But the colonel was not a man who would accept a no. - This is the reason you are still alive. This was why we got you out of the POW camp. And that's why you have a new face. We didn't post five years of expensive training into you for nothing. This is what your country needs you to do. And there is no way around it, no way out of it. How could I not believe his icy voice? And his steel-grey eyes told me beyond any doubt what the result would be if I refused. Death was lurking in those eyes and his scythe sang in the colonels voice. Off course I accepted. The drive to survive is strong in all of us. Even when you have been through hell and can see no way out, the last emotion that leaves you is hope. Against all common reason you hope. As I hoped. That one day, maybe, I could go home to the woman I loved. That some day it would end. Now I know that there is no way out but death. And still I go on. We were given our freedom. Something so alien to us after ten years of camp-life where we had no choices, that we were afraid to do even the most simple things. Buying the daily groceries among all those strangers was a horrible experience. In ten years the world had changed, and I had to change rapidly to follow it. I was amazed by how naturally people did everything. Perhaps I saw that, because I had to struggle to do the simplest things. I wanted nothing more than to buy a house with a huge garden and a wall around it. Somewhere I wouldn't have to deal with all those strangers. Somewhere I could live out the rest of my life in peace. But they wouldn't let us, and they used us as only they could. So many things were done. I read about many of them in the papers, as small articles on page three or four. Nobody would have recognised our prints on those cases. I only did, because I did the same kind of jobs. Assignments, as the colonel called them. So much death, so many disappearances, and still I only noticed a fraction of them. Yes, they have used us well. As I leave the mountains and drive into the town at the foot of them, I know that she will not recognise me. I'm no longer the man I used to be. That man had died somewhere along the line. When I went to war I had been young, innocent, idealistic. If I had still been that man, I would have died long ago. All the terrible things I have done has not only stained my innocence but completely erased it. The ideals I once had, that I never thought I would abandon has gone missing. Suddenly I feel a thousand years old. The realisation of what I have become lands on me like a ton of bricks. Like the world on Atlas' shoulders. I pull over, wanting to turn around and drive back. Return to the job, where all the decisions are made for me, where I don't have to worry about hurting anybody. The people I kill never feel anything and neither do I. Not anymore. But she still does. The last thing I want is to hurt her. But as I start the car again I realise, that I want to see her once more. Just to see how she is doing. I may not be the same man who left her, but I still care about her. The city is strangely like I remember it. It's not really changed that much in twenty years. I still know my way around and I take a tour of the city. As I drive around, I can't help but look at every woman I pass on the way, just to check if it's her. But everywhere I go, they are all strangers. It is as if the car knows the way and I'm only following it around. I drive past the university and I wonder if any of her children will be going there soon. When I spot the cafeteria she used to work in, I decide to go inside for a cup of coffee. It has changed. Where the old jukebox used to be, now stands a modern version of it. A horror of shining chrome and screaming plastic. From it flows a steady stream of music that has no meaning, no point. As I look around, I notice that the interior has changed as well. Everything is chrome and plastic. The kids who works there, hasn't changed all that much, though. I guess they are more or less the same everywhere at all times. It's quite sad to see how much it has changed, how our old, cosy place has turned into something almost alien. But I suppose I should have known. Off course it has changed. It's been twenty years since I was here last. It's just that seeing this place makes me really feel how long I've been away. I check into a motel just outside town. It is old and shaggy, but it presents a bed and a telephone, and that is all I need. Fortunately it doesn't remind me of the bunkhouses we lived in at the camp. They had been too naked compared even to this standard. Outside my window the neon-sign begins to send it's Morse-code into the night. Before I go to bed I go outside in the cold evening air. On the highway cars rush by like ghosts. In the hall hangs a rundown telephone, tilting tiredly to one side. I open the heavy and smelly phonebook and look up her name. There is half a page of them. I tear it out and fold it neatly while I leave the booth. The man at the teller looks at me shortly, but he doesn't even bother to say anything. I guess he's afraid to. Some of the men I have killed have been paralysed by my eyes. Almost as if they were snake-charmed. I don't really care. As I go back to my room I suddenly feel tired. I do every once in a while. Feel so damn tired. In a matter of minutes I'll be so weary of all the killing. So tired of all the death that I will fall apart in tears. Even that I've grown accustomed to. Amazing really, what people can adapt to.
In the early hours of the morning I wake up like I always do. Like a spring released I am wide awake, almost before I've shook the last of the morning's dream. I never seem to dream anymore. Or at least I can't remember them. Sometimes I think that's all for the best. That's usually when I wake and the bed is damp with sweat.
I scratch my chin, feeling my fingers being stung by the stubbles there. It's a good feeling. Over the years I've grown accustomed to that way of waking so that now, when I wake, I can settle down into a morning routine that is very close to a normal one. I take my time to shower and shave. Then I eat a miserable breakfast without even noticing what I eat. And then I begin my search. All morning I go over the roads in the eastern part of town. Talking to neighbours, trying every way I can imagine to find out where she's living now. I pretend to be a friend of her husband. An old veteran from Vietnam who had a good relationship with him over there. There is one who almost fits the description and I can hardly conceal the hope that surges in me. But it isn't her. Her husband had been lost in Vietnam. But she has two sisters. Not like my wife who only has one brother. I go back to the old cafeteria for lunch and feel incredibly sad by seeing that it has changed so much. Even the food has changed. At least I don't remember it to have been this dull. Sitting in a booth and eating the wet and flat hamburger I look out the window at the square outside. Suddenly I feel hit by a hammer. I stop chewing. I even stop breathing. Across the road stands a woman who looks so much like her. She scans the road and then she flags down a cab. Only after she has got in and the cab has pulled away in the heavy traffic I react. But in stead of rushing out the door and start a chase I would lose anyway, I take time to finish the unappetising hamburger and consider, what I actually saw. She looked like her, that's true. But she looked like she had done more than twenty years ago. No, this beautiful young lady couldn't be more than twenty.
Early the next morning, just before the sun rises, I get out of bed. I just can't wait any longer. I take the car and drive out to the address I was given. I park just around the nearest corner and begin the long watch. It's boring, but when you do it often enough you get used to it. It is all a question of developing the right state of mind. Only this morning, it's harder than usual.
It takes me the rest of the day to settle down. I have found proof that she is the one I'm looking for. But the question is what to do next. I know I should leave town at once. I've found what I came for. But I can't. I've got to see her. The easiest would probably be to visit the place she works. The more I think about that, the more reasons I find not to do it. I take a good long look at myself and find out that I want to see her in her home. To get away from that sort of futile speculations, I take a walk and pick up the local newspaper. When I return to my room at the motel, I leaf through it without actually reading it. That's a trick you learn on stakeouts. Your mind can uphold a vigilance, while at the same time looking as if you are actually reading the paper in front of you. Right now my thoughts circle my current problem. And then, suddenly, my mind pulls me away from that line of thought. I look very carefully at the two pages in front of me. They're covered with advertisements. And right there, in the corner, there is a paragraph with her name below. She's looking for a handyman. It doesn't take me many seconds to decide that that's my chance. I'll go and see her about that job, and then I'll leave town.
When I get into my car, shivering slightly in the cool morning air, I still haven't figured out what to say to her. I know that I should just have left town without warning her, but I couldn't. It's impossible. She's in a hurry when I arrive. All she does is throwing me the keys to the house and shouting that there's food in the fridge for my lunch. And then she's gone. I have little choice left, but to start working. I start by cutting her hedges. It takes me the better part of the day because of the tools I have to use. I'm not used to working with that kind of thing. Once I'm done with that, I decide to clean up and cook diner for her. She left a note on the kitchen-table that she wouldn't be home until six o'clock. |
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