Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

 Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Tree of Smoke is a challenging, thought provoking, long –with 624 pages-, at times hard to read, fascinating, gripping novel, which has won The National Book Award and was included on The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year 2007 list.

The book has an impressive number of intriguing characters, deals with religious issues, from the Philippine aswang to quotes from the bible, CIA and other agencies activities in Vietnam, the Philippines and other places, references to other master works like the Quiet American and the astonishing description of life at the tropics, which seems so otherworldly- studies seem to prove that living in very hot, humid locations makes people different.

From the very beginning, readers have a scene which is outrageous –part of the reason why this reader has placed aside the book, to try it later- wherein a small monkey is shot by one of the personages, for no good reason other than so many of the figures in this collection of demons are troubled or plain crazy.

One thinks of Apocalypse Now – the atmosphere, the killing of the bull, the journey through the jungle, the difficulty in understanding actions, gestures and then coming to the conclusion that perhaps there is nothing to comprehend- and the original material by joseph Conrad- Heart of Darkness.

Skip Sands is the hero of Tree of Smoke and he seems to be the equivalent of Captain Benjamin L. Willard here, whereas Colonel Francis Sands, the uncle, appears to be a version of Colonel Kurtz, elusive, a sacred monster, with allegiances that are hard to identify, loyal mostly, if not exclusively, to the people he fights with, suspected of treason by his own side, elements from the agency investigating the possibility that the colonel is no longer working for the American side.

Alongside Skip and his uncle, we have a series of other characters, some American, like the brothers Bill and James Huston, the Canadian Kathy Jones, the Filipino Major Eddie Aguinaldo, Minh, Trung Than and the German assassin Dietrich Fest, the latter hired to kill first Father Carignan, in one of the botched operations, resulting in the elimination of a man who has done nothing wrong.

While trying to meet with the father and estimate his presumed activity as a man smuggling arms for the Communist guerillas in the Philippines, Skip Sands meets Kathy Jones, married to a missionary called Timothy and who has gone missing for many weeks, until natives find his body in the jungle and on the night of the day when his remains are brought to the widow, she makes love with Skip, entering a strange relationship, with few meetings and a miscommunication between the two.

She writes letters to which Skip does not answer and later on, when he is faced with thoughts of the other side- which should be very frequent given his participation in CIA operations- he writes to her about deep feelings, a love which had been difficult to envisage, given his lack of empathy, answer to the many letters and attitude during the few moments when they encountered each other.

An important part of this novel is dedicated to the various religions- with an assertion from one of the personages that there is one God, with many administrations- beliefs, superstitions, rituals, beliefs in demons like the Filipino aswang, which is a sort of vampire creature that takes any shape it wants, from a baby to a grandmother, sucking away the soul of people.

Skip Sands uses as one cover the position of Canadian missionary and as another, his interest in translating the Bible in local languages – Vietnamese- and collecting the local folk stories, one of which is more than interesting and sad: a man has to leave his wife and child to join the army, his wife talking about the missing parent every night and referring to a shadow on the wall as “father”, an image saluted daily by the son, until the real parent returns, the wife goes to the market to prepare a special meal and the father talks to the son, who rejects him, saying he is not the father…

Upset by this revelation that the child has talked to his father every night, when the wife returns, the spouse is so cold and rude that the woman commits suicide at the river, after which, one night when they are together, the child addresses the familiar shadow with the salutation for “his father”, making the heartbroken man realize what he had committed and hence another suicide and murder…

Bill and James Houston are two of the alluring personages of the narrative, the latter is for a while serving in the Navy, until a dishonorable discharge, after various fights, incidents in which he took apart, after which he goes back home to Phoenix, Arizona, where his mother, a very religious person, proves to be too much to handle and the son prefers to be on the street rather than listen to prayers, sermons and other holy book inspired speeches.

Before ending on the street and n Salvation Army shelter, James finds some work, but he is too often too late to be of much use and loses this and other opportunities to settle down, getting involved in petty theft, shop lifting, more fights and he is finally picked up by the law, after stealing a case of…Lucky beer, which he thought was his lucky brand.

This experience and that of so many- perhaps most- of the protagonists in this magical story can be explained by the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder experienced by many- if not most- of those who take part in a vicious war, such as the one in Vietnam, that many label as useless, but given that the scope was fighting communists, this is a good ideal, if you ask people who have lived under such regimes, such as the undersigned, who feels communists are aswang.

Dietrich Fest is called to Saigon, after he had dispatched the poor, innocent Father Carignan, and his target is a double agent now, Trung Than, who has been working with colonel Sands and given the latter’s bad reputation within the agency, it adds to the determination of CIA operatives in Vietnam to have him killed.

Following the preparation of this assassination and all the other enterprises, missions in the book is gripping and at times exhilarating, much like reading a good spy novel- which this is- which also has intelligent alternative themes, philosophy, existential questions, phenomenal descriptions and mesmerizing characters.