by Lan Cao
Saigon in 1963 was battered down by factional rivalries and conspiratorial politics. It was a city driven by appetites, afflicted with vertigo. Plots were recklessly hatched. A common desire ran through the city, to charge and push outward, to enlarge the sphere of influence.
One November day, our collective fate would be redirected. After that, everything faltered and changed.
• • •
I was in a government-issued jeep driving to the military headquarters. The streets of Cholon, sloped and tilted, were slicked with spilled diesel. Still, as if to defy, trucks, cars, motorcycles, assaulted the concrete landscape. Here, in this traffic, was where the highest level of gamesmanship would be played out. Everyone believed he had right-of-way and no one yielded to anyone. Drivers turned their steering wheels wherever they needed to go and blasted their horns.
My jeep was stuck among ox-drawn carts, construction trucks, cars, and bicycles. This section of the road was under repair and traffic converged into one lane. Everyone was heading home for the afternoon nap or lunch. High school girls floated in their virgin-white ao dais. The acrid smell of diesel and tar lingered in the air, trapped in the earth’s steam. My eyes smarted from the sting of smoke. A persistent sourness like the odor of damp laundry lifted from the street. It had rained and a certain unpleasant moistness remained trapped inside the black asphalt. Vendors thrust wedges of green, unripe mangoes toward me, their sourness to be tempered by chili-spiced salt wrapped in plastic. I bought a glass of sweet jelly grass cubes mixed with syrup and hand-shaved ice. The midday sun hovered fiercely above, suspended against the bruised sky. On the sidewalks shoeshine boys squatted, running their rags over rows of military boots just like mine. Perhaps it was the military boots that triggered it; suddenly I could feel it, the way you could feel your throat tighten and your heart clutch when you sense the beginnings of danger.
I drove the jeep onto the main boulevard of Saigon, heading toward the Presidential Palace. I had received the order to attend a routine meeting at the Officers’ Club in the General Staff headquarters. Such meetings were necessary to maintain an esprit de corps among the president’s officers.
During those chaotic, troubled times, forthrightness was neither prudent nor desirable. People presented impassive faces and learned to produce oblique answers that were ambiguous enough to satisfy the country’s many competing factions. But I was not a political man and, unfortunately for me, saw only what was right before my eyes, not what was brewing underneath.
Months before, I had watched as flags were hoisted along the major streets of Saigon. The mood was celebratory. Multitudes were expected to gather for the Buddha’s birthday. Against the indigo sky the flags luffed and billowed. I noted with some trepidation that all the flags were Buddhist flags and not one was the national flag of three red horizontal stripes against a background of yellow. It was a fact worthy of observation because the government had ordered that religious flags could be flown only in temples or churches and political flags only in political headquarters. The government had decreed that national flags must be bigger in size and hoisted above all other flags. We were trying to forge a common identity and a sense of duty to the nation, after all.
As I stood that day watching events unfurl in Saigon, something similar was happening in Hue, home of the most militant and organized Buddhist hierarchy in the country. Among the ancient, mildewed sidewalks in that old imperial city, along the banks of the Perfume River, Buddhist flags were being hoisted. It was there, in Hue, that fate conspired with politics to spin complications. In a country of Buddhists, President Diem was Catholic. All his brothers were Catholic, including the archbishop, whom the Vatican had appointed to Hue.
Hidden in the gray-hued shadows of the royal citadel and the tranquil tombs of the emperors, the Hue monks, committed to their transcendental quest, conspired to remake the country’s political fortunes.
As they flexed their muscles, rumor had it that the increasingly desperate archbishop of Hue turned to his brother the president for commiseration. And so the president ordered that government regulations regarding national and religious flags be strictly observed, even in Buddhist Hue.
This was of symbolic importance, but it had an immediate effect. The defiant snap of Buddhist flags could be heard around the country. There, right there, was the tug of opposing forces, the struggle between central control and religious expression. After several years of fighting and finally quelling armed rebellions by the religious sects, the government opted decisively for national identity over religious autonomy.
Even the most obstinate and thick-skinned official in Hue could sense the stirring of whipped-up discontent. Far from Saigon and surrounded by a sea of angry monks, government officials succumbed, turning a blind eye to the president’s directive. They watched as Buddhist symbols were tacked on doors and Buddhist flags hoisted, in historical centers among crowded shops, along the river’s old-fashioned promenade and the boulevards winding through the old city.
In city after city, passions spilled over. A venerable old monk doused his clothes with kerosene and set himself on fire. Radio stations were seized. Buddhist leaders issued fiery sermons denouncing the Catholic presidency, authoritarian rule, and, most searingly, the arrogance of the president’s brother and the supercilious dragon-lady style of his flashy sister-in-law. The newspapers were full of stories about Hue. Day after day, security forces with batons and guns stood clench-fisted, facing broad, patient rows of razored heads and fixed, unforgiving eyes. Over time, university students joined the monks to jabber about injustice. At barricaded intersections, they locked arms. A few lobbed stones at scorched vehicles. As the crowd became animated, soldiers tapped their nightsticks and prepared to unleash water jets.
Armored cars sputtered, clearing the way, and troops advanced in frontal formation toward a radio station, where two big explosions ripped through the hyperkinetic heat. In the dense orange haze, the crowd swiftly dispersed. The scent of blood and charred flesh lingered in the heat.
Much later, it was determined that what the soldiers carried, MK III grenades, could not have killed and maimed so many. MK IIIs are used for training only and do not have the power to shred arms and legs. The smell of conspiracy hung in the air. Was it a Vietcong grenade? Did the Vietcong possess such a weapon in their arsenal so early on, even before receiving massive Soviet and Chinese aid? Could the explosives have been part of a twisted CIA plot? To turn the population against a president who no longer met its needs?
A few weeks after that terrible explosion, elements of the government’s Special Forces attacked the famous Xa Loi Pagoda in Saigon. Monks and nuns were beaten and rounded up. The president’s supporters shuddered. I knew this new government of ours was stumbling badly.
I looked at my watch, worried that I would be late for the scheduled meeting at the Officers’ Club. I had learned to become wary of bottlenecks, stalled traffic, sputtering scooters that slowed down just enough to hurl a bomb into crowded intersections. Anything could be hidden under the buckled sidewalks, inside the sewers beneath the road’s surface.
Finally I lurched the jeep into a patch of shade in the parking lot and hurried to report to the General Staff headquarters. Soldiers with fully loaded M1 assault rifles stood guard. An M66 machine gun pointed from a guard tower surrounded by concertina wires and fortified with sandbags.
I was ushered along with fellow senior officers into the cavernous conference room. Others were directed straight into the Officers’ Club down the hall. This was not routine. Next to me was the commander of the Special Forces, Colonel Tung. I stared at his blank, broad face, the fierce, narrowed eyes, the short bristled crew cut. He was as unsure of what was happening as I was. His eyes blinked in nervous tics.
After a while a man wearing a military police uniform opened the door. His voice was matter-of-fact. “Please follow me, sir. Colonel Tung, sir. The general is waiting for you
.” Colonel Tung was then swiftly hustled out. The MP’s hand stayed detectably insistent on Tung’s lower back. I searched for signs of normality. Diesel fumes leaked into the room through the door’s crack. Saigon dust, dry specks of grittiness, blew in through the partially open window. Silence. Then laughter down the long hallway in the direction of the Officers’ Club. And then, cutting through the November evening, the sound of gunshots.
I stood up, braced myself for whatever would happen next. Another knock at the door, and the same MP appeared before me. “Please, Colonel,” said the voice with eerie formality. “The general would like to meet with you now.”
I followed him out of the conference room, down the familiar hallway toward the office of the chief of the General Staff. From behind, a sudden pounce. Big rough hands, several, in fact, squeezed my wrists into handcuffs. Utter panic passed over me.
General Minh motioned me to come in. On instinct, I tried to snap him a salute. The general proceeded to inform me he was orchestrating a coup d’état against the president. He looked me over, then asked, “Colonel, we would like to know your view. Will you be with us? Will you mobilize the troops under your command?” His voice was flat, uninflected.
The general’s aide-de-camp, the MP who had led me here, stood still. His fingers moved ever so lightly over the unholstered pistol against his thigh. I heard the sound of the safety clicking off. The general fingered his pearl-handled pistol and rattled off names, explaining the convergence of events that made the planning of an elaborate coup possible.
For every gesture of trust, there is, is there not, a countervailing gesture of betrayal?
General Dinh, a close friend of the president who had been put in charge of organizing countercoups, had himself joined the plot. He had sent the Special Forces out of Saigon to address a supposed Vietcong buildup, leaving the Presidential Palace vulnerable. If General Dinh had turned against the president, the matter was practically hopeless, I feared. Another of the president’s most trusted officers, the one he relied on to counter intrigues, chief of the General Staff himself, was recuperating from lung cancer treatment. Bad luck. His temporary replacement, General Don, had taken over, led the charge, and also joined the coup. Other generals entrusted with the task of commanding the areas north of Saigon had also turned. The list of cohorts willing to shift allegiance grew. I was astonished to hear the names. The coup had been punctiliously planned. These very generals had convinced the president to let them move troops into Saigon as a massive show of force to frighten potential coup plotters.
Blood rushed to my head. It was now clear that there were two camps: those in the Officers’ Club who were aware of the coup and supported it, and those in the conference room who were gullible and believed this to be a routine meeting.
I could feel a primitive rage rise through me, spiraling inward into itself until it turned inexplicably and with effortless delicacy into something else altogether, into a deeper reserve of calm, a subterranean well of steady, shadowless tranquillity. I could disappear, unstretched, unbeset, into its bottomless comfort—even standing before the mouth of a .45-caliber pistol.
“General, this is a matter of enormous magnitude. I was not contacted beforehand. I cannot join you now while under threat.”
It was straightforward in its own strange way, this direct threat of death. I felt no fright, no grief, no terror. And I certainly felt no courage.
The chief of military security requested that I make an announcement on the national radio in favor of the coup. I refused.
“In that case I’m afraid we have no choice.” The general’s voice hardened.
I was dismissed, arrested, and returned to the conference room to be sequestered. I thought of what had happened to Tung and waited.
The booted thump of MPs sounded on the tiled floors outside. I was under guard, waiting to be executed. From the window of the darkened room I could see the courtyard, and above it clusters of forlorn clouds. Below, standing next to General Minh on an outstretched patch of earth, was one of my closest friends—Phong. How many evenings had we spent together sipping coffee and playing Chinese chess until our wives insisted on an end to the game? How many arguments had we had, how many times had we surfed the ocean waters of Vung Tau together and felt the tug of its undertow? How many meals had we shared? And now suddenly, the dependable, trustworthy side of him, that which defined him to me, could have been altogether inauthentic. Phong’s body shook. I recognized the familiar wheezy cough, the quickening steps that signaled private turmoil, the cigarette loosely held between his fingers, flicking ashes.
A church bell sounded mournfully. I blinked and looked away, my heart seized by a fierce, vengeful pinch. I did not want to see Phong standing next to a coup leader.
Yes, blunders had been made and had been left uncorrected. But President Diem had also managed a series of reassuring accomplishments. The disciplined resettlement in the South of almost one million North Vietnamese fleeing Ho Chi Minh’s Communists. The crushing defeat of the warlords’ militia controlled by an array of wayward factions. Assembling with surprising swiftness a strong central government.
Once upon a time, President Diem had made the construction of a centralized government free of local feuds and factions a national priority. It had to start with a desire and a will and a commitment to implement it—to butt heads with opponents, to be forceful, to take unpopular steps, to take away privileges, to threaten. Diem broke conventions and gave offense. At what point did power become too concentrated? When did he become a dictator? Somewhere between a measure to clamp down on the press and another to muffle dissidents, somewhere between what we had imagined and what we ended up with, I too began to have doubts.
But much more than his actions or inactions, his blunders or virtues, it was his character that touched me. He was frugal and uncorrupted. I understood him. He was an unmarried man drawn to a spartan lifestyle and uninterested in the accumulation of personal wealth. His sin was an overinflated sense of loyalty to his family. But who among us in this land of Confucius could not understand such a sense of duty?
My eyes returned to the courtyard. An MP walked toward the general, conveying a message furtively. My friend Phong remained at the general’s side.
Hours later, an apocalyptic darkness was settling in, bringing with it its own noises and surprises. There were red ribbons of tracer rounds, lolloping curves, each sizzling against the moon’s molten silhouette. Metal fire streamed from every corner of the city. The Saigon skyline glowed. A rocket shot straight up, pulling lilies of white phosphorus that intertwined, then scattered across the sky. The sounds were overwhelming. I hated to think it, but the sky looked beautiful.
The fighting continued into the night. Tanks and cannons would fire into the Presidential Palace. The Presidential Guard’s headquarters would be subjected to an intense artillery barrage. I waited for the MP’s return. And for my own death.
I could see into a row of windows across the courtyard where Phong stood, making grand gestures with his hands. Facing him was General Minh, large and imposing. One talking, quickly, almost pleading, the other listening, then nodding in apparent agreement. Phong smiled. He pulled the cigarette’s end from his mouth and smashed it triumphantly into an ashtray. He looked up and for one instant I thought our eyes locked. I stared unblinking until someone pulled a curtain.
There were crescendos of massed voices in the hall, rising and falling. But the MP never came. The passing hours clicked by. One day passed, then the next. Finally the door swung open, and I was released into a new day.
Never had it been as clear to me as it was at that moment: For every act of betrayal, there is also a simultaneous act of friendship. I knew full well to what I owed my life. To the mere chance that Phong, one of the coup’s leaders in the Revolutionary Military Council, was my friend. How fragile the rules of survival were. These were the elemental calculations of loya
lty and treachery. He had betrayed the president but had saved me. The poignant incongruity of it all stayed with me.
• • •
A fine crimson dust coated the windshield as I drove home, encumbered by a new and heavy debt. I maneuvered my way toward the labyrinthine decrepitude of Cholon as the radio announced the revolution’s success. It was reported that the president and his brother had committed suicide. Nobody would believe such a story, of course, as they were Catholics. When published photographs of the president’s corpse showed his hands tied behind his back, the official cause of death was amended to “accidental suicide.”
From the beginning there was the word. Murder. Murder that was being passed off as revolutionary wonderment. What awaited the country now? Something had changed irreversibly. Fighting had stopped but a sense of emergency persisted. An unprosperous future lay ahead of us.
I let the jeep sputter in the back lot by the bedroom before turning the ignition off. I resisted the urge to rush to the house, to shake off the ghostly fog that cast its long shadow over me that late afternoon.
“Is it you?” The voice was frantic. “Minh?”
My wife was at home. Of course she would be home when Saigon was still seized by the aftermath of a military coup. I negotiated my way up the front steps and came into the room, eager to throw off the stale uniform and undershirt. She ran toward me. “You’re safe,” she whispered, pushing her body against me. I felt the fluttering beat of her heart. The world was full of mistakes and punishment, but here, in the sanctuary of her arms, I would be safe. I dropped to my knees, from exhaustion and relief. My arms wrapped around her legs as I pressed my face against her flesh.