The Throat Read Online Free PDF Page B

extended straight through
a warren of ramshackle buildings and zigzag streets— the military road
was the only straight thing in sight. Two hundred yards away, in harsh
brilliant light, I saw a real checkpoint with a flag and a guardhouse
and a striped metal gate. The jeep was just beginning to approach the
checkpoint, and a guard stood in front of the gate to meet it. I was
aware of being watched as soon as I passed through the gate—it was like
stepping out of the elevator into a men's suit department.
    Beside a hand-painted sign reading HEINECKEN COLD BEER ROCK a
Vietnamese boy in a white shirt lounged in a narrow doorway. An old
woman carried a full basket of laundry down a steep flight of stairs.
Vietnamese voices floated down from upper rooms. Two nearly naked
children, one of them different from the other in a way I did not take
the time to figure out, appeared at my legs and began whining for dollah, dollah.
    By the time I reached the BUBBLE sign, five or six
children had
attached themselves to me, some of them still begging for dollah ,
others drilling questions at me in an incomprehensible mixture of
English and Vietnamese. Two girls leaned out the windows of bubble and
watched me pass beneath the sign.
    I turned right and heard the girls taunting me. Now I could smell
wood smoke and hot oil. The shock of this unexpected world so close to
the camp, and an equal, matching shock of pleasure almost made me
forget that I had a purpose.
    But I remembered the green door, and saw the name Ly picked out in
sharp businesslike black letters above the knocker. The children keened
and tugged at my clothes. I knocked softly at the door. The children
became frantic. I dug in my pockets and threw a handful of coins into
the street. The children rushed away and began fighting for the coins.
My entire body was drenched in sweat.
    The door cracked open, and a white-haired old woman with a plump,
unsmiling face frowned out at me. Certain information was communicated
instantly and wordlessly: I was too early. Customers kept her up half
the night. She was doing me a favor by opening the door at all. She
looked hard at my face, then looked me up and down. I pulled the bills
from my pocket, and she quickly opened the door and motioned me inside,
protecting me from the children, who had seen the bills and were
running toward me, squeaking like bats. She slammed the door behind me.
The children did not thump into the door, as I expected, but seemed to
evaporate.
    The old woman took a step away from me and wrinkled her nose in
distaste, as if I were a skunk. "Name."
    "Underhill."
    "Nevah heah. You go way."
    She was still sniffing and frowning, as if to place me by odor.
    "I'm supposed to buy something."
    "Nevah heah. Go way." Li Ly snapped her fingers at the door, as if
to open it by magic. She was still inspecting me, frowning, as if her
memory had failed her. Then she found what she had been looking for.
"Dimstro," she said, and almost smiled.
    "Di Maestro."
    "Da dett man."
    The dead man? The death man?
    She lowered her arm and gestured me toward a camp table and a wooden
chair with a rush seat. "What you want?"
    I told her.
    "Sis?" Again the narrow half-smile. Six was more than di Maestro's
usual order: she knew I was being diddled.
    She padded into a back room and opened and closed a series of
drawers. In the enclosed front room, I began to smell myself. Da dett
man, that was me too.
    Li Ly came out of the back room carrying a rolled cellophane parcel
of handmade cigarettes. Ah , I
thought, pot. We were back to
the recreations of Berkeley. I gave Li Ly twenty-five dollars. She
shook her head. I gave her another dollar. She shook her head again. I
gave her another two dollars, and she nodded. She tugged at the front
of her loose garment, telling me what to do with the parcel, and
watched me place the wrapped cigarettes inside my shirt. Then she
opened the door to the sun and the smells and the heat.
    The children materialized around me