A LADY FROM “R” – novel

1.

It was the first time I left the city for the war zone. Before 1975 in South Vietnam there was nothing strange about it, because thousands of young women as I, also had to do so. They fought, were wounded, died, were imprisoned or won back in Ho Chi Minh campaign as my case.

So my story would have nothing worth to say if I hadn’t met that “old man” in the war zone. He was not a normal person. He was a powerful character of the “R”.

“R”, a legendary name, a holy revolutionary land, was both the obsession and the debt of America. But “R” was what? Perhaps it was abbreviated from the word “Rung” (forest). But the forest where I had come was nothing grandiose, nothing mysterious. It was just a wooded area, flat, pristine and quiet.

But there was a very special residence.

It was that old man’s cottage.

As simple as the other cottages, but it was both his Forbidden City and  his Harem. It was located in the middle of a top secret and most important zone which people named it Central Committee R.

And that fifty-year-old man, though not an Emperor but his power covered all. Everybody called him “Prince.”

My presence at that prince’s harem wasn’t a chance but only a disaster. Later on, it would push me to the continuous tragedies that I wouldn’t know how to resist.

Only few people could see prince’s face. He looked like a flickering shadow behind a nylon wall. The forest was pitch-black but in his cottage, the oil lamp still printed his shadow on the wall. He went back and forth. He listened to the radio. He read the reports. He drank tea. And he was waiting for me.