Love Like Hate by Linh Dinh Page B

wasn’t Kim Lan who had been screwing around, but Hoang Long. He had not shown up for some of his leaves because he wanted to spend time with his mistress in Cao Lanh. Though not as pretty as Kim Lan, she was also a nurse, younger and not pregnant. Clearly, Hoang Long had a thing for very young nurses. One benefit of the war was that it allowed a man to be in two places at the same time. If the war ended, Hoang Long would have to dump one of the two women.
    This young nurse could screw like a pro. In fact, she was sort of a pro, a semipro. Though she never accepted cash for sex, men had to bring her expensive gifts. Hoang Long unwrapped a National rice cooker one time. Another time, a gold-plated Seiko watch with embossed leather band. For four nights of lovin’, it wasn’t cheap, but it was worth it. The young nurse had a drawerful of Citizens, Seikos and Bulovas, so many she couldn’t sell them fast enough. She only stayed a nurse because she liked the white uniform and because she really cared about people—she had a gold-plated heart.
    Hoang Long thought of the stiff, almost comical way his wife yielded to his sexual advances at home. While most people arrived at spousal sexual ennui two or three years into marriage, necessitating weird videos and training manuals, Hoang Long and Kim Lan had achieved it instantly.
My wife is still a sexual innocent after all these years
, he thought,
and she will always be a sexual innocent. My wife is unsuitable for sex
.
    My mistress gives me something my wife can’t
 … 
is not equipped to give me, is constitutionally incapable of giving me. She was made to be a good wife and she is certainly that, but I need something more. A soldier’s existence is already abnormal, so I need abnormal solutions to go with it. When I’m with my mistress, I feel compensated, at last, for all the shit I go through. She makes love joyously. Screaming and laughing, she challenges me. I feel born again when I’m with my mistress. Lying next to her, I am no longer a bloodstained man but a freshly washed newborn. Her fragrant sweat cleans all that filthy blood from my body. Without her, my anger and hatred would turn me into a monster. I’d probably have killed my wife already if it wasn’t for my mistress. I’d kill everybody if it wasn’t for my mistress. Isn’t it enough that I risk death every day to support my family? Don’t I have a right to enjoy myself once in while? One week of pleasure for eleven weeks of hell is fair compensation, don’t you think?
    Hoang Long always took off his wedding ring before visiting his mistress. He took it off and on so often, he nearly lost it a few times. When he did wear it, it pinched his finger.
Either the damn ring has shrunk
, he thought,
or else my finger has gotten much fatter. Blocking my circulation, it’s liable to give me gangrene. Soon I’ll have to chop that goddamned finger off!

9NIXON IN CHINA
    W hen Richard Nixon visited China in February 1972, he effectively ended the Vietnam War. With this rapprochement, Vietnam became a dispensable pawn. In January of 1974, Chinese warships sailed through the US Seventh Fleet to seize a handful of South Vietnamese islands. If China had waited until after the Fall of Saigon to grab them, it would have been stealing from its own allies, the North Vietnamese. In any case, the end of South Vietnam was near.
    In 1974, Hoang Long came home only once, just for Tet. He spent his other three leaves intertwined with his mistress in Cao Lanh. His techniques had improved much over the years—he had a more diversified sexual portfolio now—but his wife was never the beneficiary. He brought a stack of money home as usual, which allowed them to buy a fridge, rebuild the kitchen and add a second floor to their house. It had become one of the better-looking homes in the neighborhood. Saigon has always been a city where the few building codes are routinely ignored. Houses grow haphazardly, ulcerously, according