Finding Moon

“Wonderful,” Osa said. “They hadn’t broken it up?”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Lee said, his smile undiminished. “Broken it up. But it doesn’t matter. I got a sack and picked everything up and brought it here.” He pointed to the house. “Another kam taap will be made. It is the bones that are important.” He looked at Moon for agreement. “There is where the spirit lives.”

“Right,” Moon said.

“Even then the good luck was already working. Miss Vinh and her family were watching me. They saw from what I was doing that I was a religious man. One who follows the teachings of the Lord Buddha could not be a Khmer Rouge. So Miss Vinh came out to learn who I was. She went back and told her family. But her parents said they would wait until the brother of Ricky Mathias came back in the vehicle so they could see him for themselves and be sure it was not a trick before they would come out of the woods.”

“That was sensible,” Moon said.

So Moon, Mr. Lee, and the Miss Vinh who was a second cousin of Eleth Vinh walked up into the meadow. Moon stood there in the hot afternoon sun, feeling foolish, sweat dripping from his nose, his eyebrows, trickling below his shoulder blades, feeling foolish and praying without words. Miss Vinh was pointing at him, shouting something toward the screen of trees. From the trees emerged a man, and just behind him a woman.

The woman carried a baby.

Moon realized he had not been breathing. He whooshed out a huge breath, inhaled another, and looked up at the sky. What is it that Muslims say? It came to him. God is good. God is good.

The adults proved to be the parents of Ta Le Vinh. The required courteous formalities of introduction were handled in an unusual hurry by Mr. Lee. The elder Vinhs were obviously nervous-not happy to be standing here in the open. It was said, they explained, that the Khmer Rouge followed a tactic of raiding a village, leaving just long enough for those who had escaped them to return, and then raiding it again. In another two days, they would return to their homes. Perhaps it would be safe then, and they had no place else to go.

Moon was shown the infant. He looked, hoping to see a family resemblance, perhaps to Victoria Mathias. He saw just another baby. Between one and two, he guessed, but small. Perhaps Ricky’s eyes.

The baby examined Moon with the same results, showing no sign she was particularly impressed.

“Ask them if the child’s grandmother is here,” Moon said to Mr. Lee. “The mother of Eleth Vinh. Is she here?”

Mr. Lee asked a short question. The answer was long and involved pointing. When translated it said that the elder Mrs. Vinh had been one of two refugees shot as they ran into the woods. Mrs. Vinh had been hit twice in the back. She had died last night.

The transaction was completed. Moon was handed the baby, who resisted the transfer by kicking and crying. Mr. Lee was handed a bundle of the supplies that go with babies. The Vinhs were told that the sacks of rice used as mine protection in the APC would be left behind for them. Farewells were said. The Vinhs disappeared into the woods. Moon and Mr. Lee plodded across the meadow, heading for the APC, with Nguyen Nung perched behind its.50, waiting for trouble, with Osa leaning against it, watching them.

Zero for three had turned into two for three.

Now he could go home. If he could get there. But where was the joy he should be feeling?

CAMBODIAN REDS ARE UPROOTING MILLIONS AS THEY IMPOSE A “PEASANT REVOLUTION”

– New York Times, MAY 9, 1975

The Twenty-Seventh Day

THE DINING ROOM OF THE Hotel Maynila was cool in the way refrigerated air cools places in a humid climate. Despite the clammy dampness, Moon luxuriated in it. The last time he recalled being really cool was the morning he’d sat at this very table waiting for Osa to arrive. That was about three weeks ago. Or a lifetime, depending on how you looked at it. Actually, a lifetime minus a few hours, which was how long it would be before he’d have to say good-bye to her unless he tried to do something about it. And maybe even if he did.

He’d already said his good-byes to Lum Lee. Mr. Lee was staying with what he called a “family co

Mr. Lee had remarked that Osa was “feeling very sad.” Moon had said that the death of a brother was a terrible blow. Mr. Lee then said that wasn’t exactly what he meant. He said he’d called Osa to bid her farewell and to tell her of the woman who came to Buddha for help because she could not stop grieving the loss of a loved one. Buddha had told the woman to collect five poppy seeds from homes that had never suffered such a loss. And of course she could find no such home, and that was the lesson. But, Mr. Lee had said, she’d told him she wasn’t grieving for Damon. Then why did she sound so sad? And she had said, Not only death causes sorrow. Did Moon know what she meant by that?

And Moon had said no, he didn’t.

There had been a moment of silence and Mr. Lee had asked if Moon would see Osa today, and he’d said perhaps, but he was extremely busy finishing the paperwork to fly Lila back to the States.

“I, too, have been busy,” Mr. Lee had said. “Even though Lord Buddha taught us that we who busy ourselves picking stones from the path ca

Moon had said he guessed that was true.

“And Osa too has been busy. She said she wanted to tell you good-bye but there had been much to do.”

And Moon had said, Well, she’d had to call her mother to tell her about Damon.

Instead of commenting on that, Mr. Lee had told him another of his Buddhist parables. A bird with two heads lived in a desert where it often had to go without water. Thus each of the heads became proud of its ability to endure thirst. The rains came. A pool formed below the bird’s nesting place, but each of the heads was too proud to take the first drink and so it died of thirst.

“Think of the wisdom in that teaching,” Mr. Lee said.

It had been a strange conversation from a strange man. Moon had thought about the teaching. Then he’d picked up the telephone and called Osa at her hotel. She sounded subdued, tired. But she said yes, she could have di

He sat in the lobby, twenty minutes early, freshly shaven, cleaned and pressed, and with a new Manila haircut that looked an awful lot like the government-issue cuts they’d seen on the crewmen of the aircraft carrier.

The carrier had been quite an experience-a ferryboat for a motley collection of refugees. Its flight deck bad resembled a floating flea market when the U.S.S. Pillsbury had delivered them, and it had become more and more crowded as other frigates arrived to dump off the desperate people they were fishing from the South China Sea. The crowding became their good fortune. Somebody ordered helicopters to shuttle the surplus over to the Subic Bay Naval Base outside Manila. Their little party had made it onto the second flight.

Osa was walking across the carpet toward him, smiling.

Moon caught his breath. An almost-white skirt, a blouse with just a touch of blue in it here and there, her dark hair soft around her face.

Moon stood. “Wow,” he said.

She rewarded that with a wider smile. “Wow to you too. Isn’t it good to feel clean again? And have something done with your hair?”