American Romantic by Ward Just

bird, and next, from far away, the thut-thut of a helicopter’s rotor—but the sound may well have been something else, a truck perhaps, or a farm vehicle. As if there were Deere tractors in the far south of the wretched Delta, a swamp, notoriously difficult of access. But if it was a truck, that would mean a road, and Harry had seen no roads en route to the camp. It occurred to him then—such were the uncertainties of the jungle atmosphere—that the thut-thut was a motorbike come to fetch the captain. Harry scurried back to his own hut and smoked a cigarette. He heard chatter among the guards and some laughter. The thut-thut ceased. But soon enough it began again, receding as the motorbike sped away in the direction it had come from. Harry was disappointed that the comrade captain had not thought to say goodbye, nor to explain the “arrangements.”
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    He dozed in the morning, then spent the rest of the day reading Conrad’s novella
A Smile of Fortune,
in which a young sea captain is attracted to a strange monosyllabic young woman, with its scenes of high erotic power that put Harry in mind of Sieglinde. But she was never very far from his thoughts. That evening Comrade Thin, a carbine over his shoulder, took up station a few yards from Harry’s hut. Madame Mao appeared from the darkness to hand him a plate of rice with a bit of fish on the side, along with a glass of lukewarm water. Harry ate the rice and part of the fish, undercooked and tasteless except for the smell. He drank the water and when he went outside to take a leak the soldier with the carbine was at his elbow. Harry went back to the hut and climbed into the string hammock. Sleep came surprisingly quickly, though it did not last for long. Sometime after midnight he fell from the hammock, retching, drenched in sweat. The smell was foul. He cried out and someone came to the hut’s entrance and looked in but did not speak. He went away and Harry heard soft voices and then no voices at all. He retched again and again until he came up dry, and then he slept, still sweating. He began to shiver.
    It rained in the morning, a steady clatter on the bamboo roof of the hut. Little rivulets found their way to the interior and soon his shorts were soaked. The water was cold. His head was on fire and he had no medicine to ease it. What he needed was aspirin, a simple over-the-counter bottle available anywhere. He tried to climb back into the string hammock but found he had no strength. For most of the day he lay in vomit and rainwater, and late in the afternoon he slept once more. He had terrible dreams the second night, fantastic shapes and colors he could not identify. He believed he was lying on the steep slope of a mountain of the sort depicted in Japanese scroll paintings, gnarled trees clinging to a high precipice, a straw hut dead center, an old man in a kimono leaning on a crook and looking skyward. Pigeons whirled above the old man and seemed to mock him. Harry tried to bring the picture closer but it receded as he looked at it and finally disappeared altogether. He thought he was losing his mind. He heard some movement in the camp but had no idea who it was. His vision was furred and fractured as if he were looking through cracked glass with someone else’s eyes. He lay a long time trying to focus, wondering if all this was a nightmare. With effort Harry raised his head and saw a bristly dragon the size of a calf, and when the beast turned toward him he saw it was an ordinary barnyard pig, black in color, rooting around the other huts, snorting as he went. Harry had the idea the pig was a creature from Asian mythology, the counterpart of a unicorn or a centaur. Rats figured in there somewhere. Snow-white hares. A brown bear. A yellow snake was coiled beside the campfire, its flat head moving from side to side. The smell of it all was ghastly, rotting flesh and something more besides. Harry was certain he was losing his mind