American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [21]
While the photographer was out the younger woman who had been watching her on the street rang all the buzzers on the front entrance of the small building. One old woman answered and let her in. The young woman had dark straight pretty hair, almost black, cut to just below her chin. It swung a tiny bit as she spoke to the old woman because she was shaking slightly. Her heart was beating very fast and she realized at once that this guileless old lady would answer any question. When asked where there might be a key to the top-floor apartment, the old woman said she had a spare one in case her neighbor was locked out. The old woman was wearing a housecoat and had liner scrawled madly around her eyes. It did not occur to her that this respectable-looking person in her late twenties or so might not be telling the truth when she said that the upstairs neighbor whom she called by name was her relative and that she had said that she could use the apartment but that she had forgotten to leave the key. So the old woman gave her the key. Her hand was bony like a bird’s skeleton. The younger woman walked up to the top floor. The banister wobbled. Some of the poles along the stairway were missing. Above the top-floor landing a dirty skylight let in some dirty sun. She turned the key in the lock and the door opened and she stepped inside.
1936
On a corner not far from the Museum of Natural History Joe was holding Vivian in his arms. There was a wind in his hair and it blew forward onto her face and her hair blew around in his.
CHAPTER SIX
Saigon
The woman with the dark pretty hair who had lied to get the key to the photographer’s apartment was sitting in the back of a hot room. She looked a few years younger. She was wearing a summer dress and she was pregnant. Her dark hair was longer and pulled back into a ponytail. Tiny beads of sweat filigreed her back and upper chest and she was fanning herself with an envelope. In the front of the room a list of charges against her husband was being read out loud and he was standing with his back to her. The room was small and crowded and out a tiny high window she could see the spinal arc of a curving palm frond. They were in Saigon. He had been flown from Soc Trang for the court-martial.
They were altering one of the charges. The charge that her husband, a physician, had failed to conduct himself as a medical officer and a gentleman was being changed to reflect that he was now being accused of having presented erroneous factual data to a general. He was also on trial for two other alleged violations of military law: One accused him of having presented an undisciplined appearance by not shaving and not wearing his uniform. The other accused him of having feigned mental illness while on duty.
Someone was called to testify. A young man in uniform sat in the front of the room and said that he had seen Captain Michaels out of uniform near the hospital in South Vietnam. Under cross-examination he said that on occasion the doctor’s uniform had been missing buttons when he reported for physical training in the combat zone. The specialist was thanked for his testimony. More witnesses were called. They spoke to the merits of the accusation that Captain Michaels had approached the United States commander in Vietnam while the general was inspecting the hospital and had complained about a shortage of supplies. Captain Michaels had said that the shortages were of a kind that meant the difference between life and death. According to testimony, the general had said that he would look into the alleged shortages but that he had no sympathy for “whiners.” Captain Michaels had received orders returning him to Saigon on the same day.
The light outside the tiny window turned the palm frond a dark gray. Captain Michaels’s wife continued to fan herself in the July heat. The ink on the envelope smudged and bled from the moisture of her fingers. They called