A Ghost and Snow by Robert Olen Butler Somewhat sad, but stupendous narratives

 A Ghost and Snow by Robert Olen Butler

Somewhat sad, but stupendous narratives

A Ghost

In this tale the hero is a major in the army...I am not sure if the North or South Vietnamese.

So far, to my great pleasure, the commie have been the enemy, in the other short stories by the very gifted Robert Olen Butler that I have read.

This major is visiting his lover, they have intimate relations and he falls asleep.

Alas, when he wakes up it is very late at night.

And he has to go back to his unit.

Driving at night is extremely dangerous and on the way he is very tense and only uses the headlights late in the game.

The enemy can be hiding anywhere and a road block would be deadly.

The major imagines hundreds of rifles pointed at him.

Suddenly, in the road he sees amount woman, with a round face, big mouth and small nose.

It is a trap, the driver thinks and pulls the wheel and avoids her.

Only to see again, just a short distance away, the same figure.

-          Is it her sister?

-          These soldiers would use a local to make one stop and then kill him.

The apparition pulls out an immense tongue, flicking to the car and then he collapses.

Upon waking he is amazed to see that the car is intact and he expected it to be crushed.

He feels no pain, notwithstanding his impression that he must have had an accident.

The figure in the road told him that there is an ambush up the road and indeed, when he continues he stumbles upon a carnage.

-          That woman saved me.

When he returns to the village, he asks about the girl and he is told she had been dead for some years.

The narrator explains that he has met this ghost himself.

How and what happened is for you to read and find out

Snow

The heroine of Snow is a woman called Giau, which may mean wealthy but it can also signify other things.

In Vietnamese, the meaning of a word depends on how one pronounces it.

Giau is not happy, albeit I would not call her miserable either.

She lives with her mother who is unsatisfied, if not really unhappy with the fact that her daughter, who is no longer in her twenties is still unmarried.

She had a fiancée back in Vietnam, but after the fall of Saigon he remained in the country.

Mother and daughter live in the United States.

The man is now a driver in Ho Shi Min and has married another woman.

Giau's mother keeps bringing him up, notwithstanding the fact that the daughter does not regret a man she did not really get to know.

She works in this restaurant, where she meets a man named Cohen.

When Giau asks about Christmas, he explains that he does not celebrate it, seeing as he is Jewish.

They both have a dislike, if not loathing for snow.

The lawyer explains that he had to leave his father behind, in Poland, when there was snow on the ground.

He knew he would never see him again and ever since he has hated snow...