—Right, I said, and Jim nodded.
—We all have to fight it, he said. Never let it take over. That’s how you get your arse shot off. And please don’t wear that shirt again. Then he laughed, and I joined in. We were still laughing a lot; we knew how lucky we’d been.
—There were no other foreigners in the noodle shop: there was nothing here for them. Just three or four cyclo boys: young men in their twenties, tired from pushing their machines, smoking and drinking beer. Maybe they were VC, but I don’t think so: they didn’t seem to mind us. The round wooden table we were sitting at was very low, like a table for children, and the chairs were old cane ones like some we had on the verandah at home. It was like being in a private house: children’s toys were stacked in a china cabinet; a little boy played with a truck on the tiles; a white cat was asleep on a chair. Behind the bar counter, you could see the living area, with an old woman in black pajamas asleep on a bed, and a man in a cotton army hat mending a bicycle. Red candles and incense sticks burned in a little shrine.
—Through the door the afternoon faded, and we began to drink Ba Muòi Ba: the same Vietnamese beer the cyclo boys were drinking. It came crammed with ice: beer on the rocks, Jim said, the way the Vietnamese like it. The latest rain shower had stopped, and an orange, smoky sunset came on. And I felt I was being hypnotized: by the thick light out there; by the smells of camphor smoke and nuoc am, the fish sauce they put into everything; by the Vietnamese music coming from a radio that sat on the red bar counter at the back of the room. It was a woman singer, high-voiced like a very young girl, the way their singers always are, and her songs went on and on, to a very slow, rocking beat, unwinding like a stream, like one continuous song that wouldn’t end: slow, slow, with sexy, high-calling, wailing notes that made my nerves jump. The darkness came down now, and inside this dark were people who could kill you. The VC guerrillas were in charge, out in these suburbs at night. But I was confident we wouldn’t die today: that had already been proved.
—After we’d eaten a cheap but good Vietnamese meal served in clay pots, we went on drinking beer. We really liked it here, and had no desire to move.
—I think you will be OK, Snow, when it comes to your first bang-bang, Jim said. No sweat. I have taught you all I can. Just remember to take the lens cap off.
—He laughed, and punched my shoulder. We were both getting pretty smashed now, and it was the first time I’d seen Jim actually look drunk: eyes half closed and eyebrows raised. He signaled for two more bottles of Ba Muòi Ba. The young woman who brought them had a warm, smiling face, and Jim tried to chat her up, the way he always did pretty women. He turned to me with a question, when she’d gone.
—Do you have a girl back home, Snow?
—No, I said. Not now.
—I had a girl in Hong Kong, Jim said. Very attractive and intelligent young woman. We were engaged; but she broke it off last year. Her parents didn’t want her to marry a man who was likely to be killed at any time. Parents have a strong influence, in Chinese families. And I guess they were right. A man who covers combat is not a good marriage bet. Most people say your luck runs out after three years: three years of covering battle full-time is enough. And I have done five, in various places.
—He carefully poured more beer, spilling a little; then he suddenly looked up at me and shook his head and frowned. I am thirty-two and I have been in love with a number of women, he said. For a time. Sometimes I’m afraid I will never find the woman I can stay with. I get bored, Mike —I get bored with many people; many situations. So run away from them. I leave.
—told him I understood. I’d been running away myself, when I came to Asia.
—Hearing this, he didn’t go on immediately, but stared at me with a Chinese look I couldn’t read. When he spoke again, his voice was more soft and gentle than usual. it always has a rise and fall that’s good to listen to; now, perhaps because of the beer, it had a sort of extra rhythm to it.
—I thought that might be, he said. He leaned forward across the table and pointed a finger. I get bored, he said, and I run from this terrible boredom that is the opposite of life. But I never become bored with battle. Never. Please understand, Snow, I don’t approve of this war, or any other. I don’t enjoy seeing men mutilated. But still I have to tell you: I can’t keep away from battle.
—I asked him why.
—Because in battle everything matters, he said. Every little thing is clear, as though you see it for the first time, like a child. And in battle, you are all drawn together. You are close to those around you in a special way: you see the best in everyone. Afterwards, ordinary life seems unimportant: business; politics; all the things people get worked up about: unimportant.
—He lit a cigarette, looking out the door. Everythiing was a perfect mix: the slow Vietnamese music, still going on; the quiet-talking cyclo boys at the next table; the cat on the chair; the burning dark out the door.
—I’m telling you this because I think you may become like me, Jim said. You are the type. You could come to like war too much, and be good for nothing else. Look at Dmitri: he’s like that. He has had one failed marriage, and no woman stays with him for long. You will want a wife and children someday, and so will I. So do the job well, Snow, but don’t do it too long—that is my advice.
—I’ll give it up when you do, I told him, and that made him laugh. Besides, I said, this looks like too good a war to miss.
—He shook his head, glanced aside at the cyclo boys, and his voice dropped. Great to cover; but a bad war, he said. In Saigon, the South Vietnamese are making money out of it while the Americans try to save them. Their generals grow rich on graft instead of fighting, and waste the lives of their men. And the Viets really don’t want the Americans here, did you know that? They call them crude. They hate their rock and roll music; and they say the Americans are oversexed, with cocks too big for a Vietnamese woman. They would rather have the French back, they say. At least the French had style and good manners-and nicer music. The people of Saigon are living in the past, Mike, and that is a dangerous place to live. I know all about that; my father’s class were doing it in China, before Mao came. And now they are gone, and old China is gone.
—He stubbed out his cigarette and was silent again, staring past my shoulder, and I knew he had memories too strange for me to get into: probably memories of Peking and his boyhood. He looked more Chinese than usual, and very serious and dignified, even though he was drunk. I liked him a lot now; ever since the VC had fired on us, I’d known that Jim and I would probably be friends for life.
—He leaned forward, speaking even lower, holding his beer glass in both hands. My father was never very practical, he said. He is a scholar. Once he was an important public official, and had a small estate; now he teaches in a Chinese school in Hong Kong. He taught us classical poetry, myself and my brothers. He made us learn a lot of poetry by heart, but I have forgotten most: I was never the scholarly type, which disappointed him. My two brothers were brighter than me. I am very fond of my father, and I know he is honest. He has no time for the Communists: he told me once how Mao Tse-tung boasted that he executed forty-six thousand scholars. So the Communists destroyed our best minds, as well as killing greedy landlords. Not many people want to hear this—or they won’t believe it. But even my father says that his class was no longer fit to rule. They had failed the people; they did too little to stop the suffering. They had lost what the emperors had lost: the Mandate of Heaven.
—And now it was all happening here in Vietnam, I said.
—Yes; and because I know how it was in China, I understand the rulers here in South Vietnam, Jim said. I’m afraid they may lose here for the same reasons.
—I asked him whether he ever went out in the field with the South Vietnamese Army.
—With the ARVN? No, he said. Nobody in the press wants to. Some of them fight well, but their bad leadership puts you at too great a risk. And when Charlie engages the ARVN, the ARVN either fight thei
r way out or die—and that means you die too, if they lose.
—So it’s easier with the Yanks, I said.
—Of course. They lay it all on for us, he said. Air transport there and back guaranteed: same day. Purified water. Fresh food and ice cream flown into combat zones: even pizzas. And you’re back in the Continental that evening.
—So no one was covering the South Vietnamese Army, I said.
—You are thinking of doing it? You are serious? he said.
—Why not? I said. You say we get scooped with ewerything else.
—But Jim shook his head. Christ, he said. Do one patrol, Mike. I don’t think you will do a second. But if you must do it, find a good commander.
—He stood up. He was swaying, and quite drunk now. We had better get back to the Continental, he said. There are VC out here, and I don’t want to dodge being shot up again.
—When we came outside, it was black and spooky. Most of the kids had gone, and a dog was eating garbage from a pile by a stall. Kerosene lamps had come on under awnings, glowing in that murky way they do, like treacle, and lighting up the faces of some passing men. They didn’t look at us. We checked the Budgie to see that no VC had wired it to explode. Jim’s method was to throw a rock onto the accelerator pedal. He missed a few times, he was so drunk, and we started laughing and couldn’t stop, staggering around in the mud. But it was OK, and we drove away with no problems.
—I’d really like to go to that noodle shop again, but I don’t think I could find it. I guess there are places that you’re only meant to be in once.
3.
AUDIO DIARY: LANGFORD
TAPE 5: MAY 20TH, 1965
—Last night I had dinner at Madame Claudine Phan’s. When I phoned her, I found she’d been expecting to hear from me. Donald Mills had contacted her, and told her I was in Saigon. He doesn’t waste much time.
The Phan villa was in a narrow residential street of high stone walls and spreading tamarind trees, running off the top of Tu Do near the Cathedral. Langford arrived there after dark, riding in a cyclo.
The cyclo boy knew where the house was immediately, without being given the address. He was a long-haired young man with a thin, sly face, wearing a long-billed American fatigue cap. He’d already asked Langford his name and occupation, and Langford had answered his questions warily; he’d been told by Jim Feng that many cyclo boys were Viet Cong. As the young man bent forward to pedal, his mouth was brought conveniently close to Langford’s ear, since the passenger seat in the cyclo was in front.
“You are friend of Madame Phan, Mr. Mike?” The voice from behind was hushed and intimate.
No, Langford said, he was just about to meet her.
“Everybody know Madame Phan,” the voice murmured. “She is a dragon lady. Important business every place. Her husband Mr. Phan Le Dang also important—but I think he is never in Saigon now. Some say Phan Le Dang is killed by the Communists. Why do you visit Madame Phan, Mr. Mike?”
Just business, Langford said.
Silence followed, in which the squeaking of the cyclo’s pedals sounded like a protest at Langford’s brusqueness. Then the machine stopped beside tall iron gates with white, grimy pillars. The cyclo boy wanted to wait, but Langford told him to go, and paid him off. The boy pedaled slowly away under the streetlights, looking back with lingering reproach.
As Langford approached the gates, a small, fantastically narrow figure materialized in the darkness on the other side, coming from behind an orange tree. At first, he says, he thought it was a child. But it was a young Vietnamese woman, little more than five feet tall. She wore a white ao dai, the silk tunic and pantaloons outlining her body from throat to hip, and her face was an inverted triangle, peering at him through the bars.
—Like a fairy looking out of a cave.
She unlocked the gates and swung one open to admit him. “Bonsoir, monsieur.” Her piping voice was only just audible. He summoned up his school French to return the greeting, and she led him up a short set of stone steps to the main entrance, pushing open tall, heavy double doors that he calls “historic-looking,” their carved wood the color of dead leaves. The villa was French colonial, with a basement area below the steps, two stories above, and many windows with faded blue shutters. The girl brought him inside and then vanished, as though into a crevice.
He found himself in the semidarkness of a sort of anteroom. In front of him, light came from a remarkable number of candles on shelves and low tables, their flickering causing the whole interior to dance with a golden glow. He smelled sandalwood and spices, and was startled by the sound of a piano; a European piece was being played that he identifies only as “classical.” He took a couple of paces forward, his eyes adjusting to the light.
The piano was an old upright, situated at the far end of the chamber; it was played by a woman who sat with her back to him. Her black hair was drawn back in a chignon; she wore a high-collared Chinese blouse of midnight blue, and a black slit skirt. At first he thought she was unaware of him, but then she turned and smiled over her shoulder-as though they’d already met, and shared some intimate joke. She went on playing, one prominent cheekbone dusted orange by the candlelight.
It was the last kind of scene he would have expected to confront him in Southeast Asia: a cameo from nineteenth-century Europe—or rather, a kitsch idea of nineteenth-century Europe: a painting on a chocolate box. He found it absurdly stagy, and was partly embarrassed, partly amused. Yet he was also impressed: perhaps because the staging was so effective. He waited politely, among gilded Chinese cabinets and carved tables: all of them aflame like altars, all of them laden with dimly seen busts, statuettes and vases. “Crowded with junk” is how he describes the place—not yet knowing (as he would do eventually) that he was looking at Khmer, Cham and Chinese artifacts centuries old: some of them of great value. He had an impression of museum dustiness, and the closeness in here made the heavy Saigon heat almost suffocating. Sweat ran down his face, and he mopped it away with his handkerchief. There seemed to be no electric fans—as though in this papier-mâché Europe they were thought to be not needed.
The woman brought the piece to an end, and stood up. He guessed her to be somewhere in her late thirties. She was slim, but much more substantial than the servant girl had been, her physical scale European rather than Vietnamese. Moving towards him, hand outstretched, she gave off an aura of vigor and physical well-being. The silk blouse, worked with a design of red peonies, shone like porcelain; so did a heavy gold chain around her neck that was set with rubies. He describes the chain with some awe.
“Do you like Chopin, Mr. Langford? Yes? Forgive the romantic candlelight: we’ve had a power failure.” Her speech was rapid, her voice somewhat deep, and her accent French. The pressure of her hand was firm.
A single color photograph of her has survived among Langford’s effects: a portrait with the name of a Saigon studio on the back. It was probably taken around this time, when she still had her youth, and it’s easy to see that she was as attractive as Langford claims she was. But it’s an unconventional attractiveness, and one he does little to describe. The face is dominated by the eyes, which look directly and challengingly at the camera. They have the Vietnamese almond shape, but the French side of her ancestry has made them a surprising gray green.
“No electric fans, either,” she was saying. “So we are melting. That’s bloody Saigon for you. We melt.” She took Langford’s arm. “Come on. My girls have still found a way to cook dinner —under my supervision, of course. I don’t want to disappoint you. I’m sure Aubrey Hardwick will have told you about our cooking. Perhaps that’s why he sent you here—for a good meal. Yes? But Aubrey never has one reason for doing anything. You’ve found that out?”
Langford told her that he didn’t know Aubrey well enough to make a judgment.
She laughed as though what he’d said had been witty. Her laugh was a gleeful, exuberant shout, her deep voice making it almost masculine. It made him laugh too, and sh
e looked at him with quick warmth. “Yes,” she said. “Good. You have understood that Aubrey needs a lot of study. True. He does.”‘
She slid back a curtain of heavy red velvet that screened a door beside the piano, and led him through.
They sat at a round table covered with a lace cloth. The room was large, and less stuffy than the other, but the warmth was still heavy. Folding bamboo fans sat beside their plates, and they both made use of these. There were even more candles in here than in the anteroom: the same golden flares and areas of shadow. The room was imposing—but it was not, to his mind, like the dining room of a wealthy household.
High and square and somber, its white walls dim and grimy, it was more like the shabby-genteel salon of cultivated people whose country had been occupied and impoverished: somewhere in Central Europe, perhaps. Its fans hung stalled above them like the wheels of an extinct machine. Eventually he’d discover that this had been the house of Madame Phan’s late father, a French colonial official. It belonged to Asia and Europe at the same time, and the effect was odd and troubling. There were huge stuffed armchairs from the 1930s, their backs draped with antimacassars; dark French dressers; a library of books in French, Vietnamese and English. More Asian objets d‘art, some of which Madame Phan identified for him, sat on shelves: stone heads of Buddha; a bronze statue of Shiva; a stone bas-relief of the naked Cambodian nymphs called apsarases, dancing with serene smiles.
But Langford has more to say about the cooking than he does about the art works. Aubrey had been right: it was quite simply the best meal he’d ever eaten. There were little spring rolls and spiced chicken wings; hearty French onion soup; then a chicken casserole with rice, accompanied by a delicate Beaujolais. The casserole was French, yet with a coloring of Indochina, the flavors mysterious and novel. It had come in individual clay pots, carried in from the kitchen by two young women who Langford assumed were servants, yet who didn’t look like servants: he describes them as “refined.” Both were formal and elegant in the traditional white ao dai; one of them was the girl who had opened the gate.
Highways to a War Page 15