The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

appeared in the hallway. She stared directly at him, a mute cry in her eyes. Phuong!
    He was transfixed, confused.
    "Kien!"
    She stepped gently forward, leaning into his arms.
    Kien responded, gradually coming to his senses, and bent a little as her smooth arms tightened around his neck.
    "Phuong, my darling," he murmured as he began kissing her, kisses for ten long years. An unforgettable embrace for each of them, from one heart to the other, an embrace they would remember forever, for nothing so wondrous had touched their lives in those lost years apart.
    She gently rubbed her cheek on his lips, then his collar, then his rough army shirt.They whispered urgently to each other."It's been ten years.Ten years. I was sure I'd never see you again."
    "We've each been ghosts in the other's mind," he said.
    She continued to murmur, "But from this moment on we'll never be apart, will we, darling?"
    Kien tensed a little. A feeling of deep embarrassment began to creep over him, a shadow of concern intruding into his happiness, a feeling of uneasiness that seemed to stem from the supple body he held in his arms.
    He tensed. He could hear soft footsteps. Someone was watching them in their embrace.
    Phuong, oblivious, began undoing the top button of her nightgown, from which she took a shiny key, slung like a necklace. His eyes blurring, Kien unlocked his door and went in. The air, stagnant for several years, flowed out, emerging like a dying gasp.
    Kien turned and grasped Phuong's arm and began pulling her into his room. He had seen a shadow inside the door of her room and suddenly became brusque. She had not been alone.
    Phuong turned pale, her gaze defensive. Kien reached down in front of her and picked up his knapsack, then, letting her go, stepped into his room alone and closed the door in her face.
    So this was what the peace and happiness would be! The glorious, bright rays of victory, his grand, long-awaited return. So much for his naive faith in the future. He swore: "Wretched man that I am!"
    And every time after that when he recalled the first night home of his new postwar life, his heart was wrenched in anguish and bitterness and he would involuntarily moan.
    Having stepped into the room and unslung his knapsack he began to pace the room, trying to make sense of the second presence with Phuong. So, the divine war had paid him for all his suffering and losses with more suffering and loss at home. Throughout his years at the front he had dreamed—when he had dreamed of home at all—of little else but the magic moments of return and Phuong, seeing them both in a Utopian dream. He sat down. A succession of images passed through his mind.
    Phuong had returned to him later that same night, saying the man she was living with, who had asked her to marry him, had left immediately afterwards because Kien had returned.
    How blind they had been back then. Though now he often drowned himself in alcohol, though hundreds of times he pleaded with his inner self to calm down, he was constantly torn with pain recalling the postwar times with Phuong. His life, after ten destructive years of war, had then been punctured by the sharp thorns of love.
    Kien's new life with Phuong had broken both their hearts. In hindsight it was a love doomed from the start, doomed from the time he had heard those soft footfalls in her room.
    It had ended recently, abruptly, after a fight outside a tavern where Kien had beaten up Phuong's former lover, mauling him badly. The police had been called and Kien had been described by witnesses as "a madman." He had returned home from the police station and met Phuong. He was speechless and distraught.
    As Phuong was preparing to leave him she spoke: "We're prisoners to our shared memories of wonderful times together. Those memories won't release us. But we've made a big mistake. I thought we would face just a few small hurdles. But they aren't small, they're as big as mountains."
    She reflected:"I should have died that