The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh Page A

Kien's heroes are not the usual predictable, stiff figures but real people whose lives take diverse and unexpected directions.
    After all his trial essays, short stories, and novellas comes this novel, which he suddenly realizes is his last adventure as a soldier. Curious, for it is at the same time his most serious challenge in life; in writing this work he has driven himself to the brink of insanity. There is no escape, no savior to help him. He alone must meet this writing challenge, his last duty as a soldier.
    In contemplation an odd idea takes root in his mind— or has it been there for many years? At the bottom of his heart he believes he exists on this earth to perform some unnamed heavenly duty. A task that is sacred and noble, but secret. He begins to believe that it is because of this
    heavenly duty that he had such a brief childhood and adolescence, then matured in time of war. The duty imposed on him in his first forty years a succession of suffering with very few joys. Those who selected Kien to perform these sacred tasks also ordained that he should survive the war, even in battles where it seemed impossible to escape death. The heavenly glow which streaked, sparkled, and vanished like a falling star had bathed him in serene light for just a few moments, then disappeared so suddenly that he had no time to understand its full import.
    The first time he had felt this secret force was not on the battlefield but in peacetime, on his postwar MIA missions gathering the remains of the dead. The sacred force nurtured him, protected him, and willed him on, renewing his thirst for living and for love. He had never before acknowledged this heavenly duty, yet he had always known it existed within him as an integral part of him, melded with his soul.
    From the time of that realization he felt that day by day his soul was gradually maturing, preparing for its task of fulfilling the sacred, heavenly duty of which the novel would become the earthly manifestation.

    It was in summer five years ago that, totally by chance, on a lovely warm day he had stopped by the Nha Nam township. And from there he went on to revisit Doi Mo, a tiny, ancient hamlet where twenty years earlier his newly formed battalion had been based and had trained for three months while awaiting transportation to the front, called "Long B."
    The landscape looked to Kien as though it had been forgotten by time. The pine plantations, the myrdes, grassy slopes, and eucalyptus in desolate and gloomy lines between
    fields were exactly as he remembered them as a young recruit. The houses were scattered about as he had remembered them, one on each small hilltop and each as dull and unimaginative as before.
    With no particular plan in mind, Kien left the only road through the hamlet and turned down a dirt track almost overgrown by grass.
    He knew the track led to Mother Lanh's house. She had been godmother to the many young recruits, especially his own three-man special team.
    The house was still there, looking exactly as he had seen it the day he left: earthen wall, thatched roof, kitchen at the rear facing onto an overgrown small garden. Near a flight of steps, almost obscured by wildflowers and shrubs, was the same old well with its windlass. Godmother Lanh had died. So now it would be Lan, her youngest daughter, who lived here.
    When Lan opened the door and stepped outside she recognized Kien immediately. She even remembered his platoon nickname, "Sorrowful Spirit." Kien had forgotten everything about her.
    "In those days I was just thirteen years old. I still called you uncle. And we girls of the backwoods have always been shy and unattractive," she added in self-deprecation. But what Kien saw before him now twenty years later was an intelligent woman, quietly attractive, with mistily sad eyes.
    Tears welled up in those sad eyes when Kien told her that the other two in the three-man squad who had stayed with Lan's mother had been killed on the battlefield. "What