I’d come to like Griffiths, despite his uncertain temper. Whenever he appeared, large brown eyes gleaming, menacing black eyebrows clenched into one, simmering over some tidbit concerning the follies of the American Military Command here, or the perfidy of the Saigon Government, I was somehow glad to see him, agree with him or not. Trevor was passionately sincere in everything: his opinions; his pleasures; his love affairs. His sense of humor saved him from being earnest all the time, and he was generous in sharing information. His love of Dylan Thomas had caused him to memorize many of the poems, and he would intone them beautifully when drunk. For this I forgave him anything.
But tonight the grass had affected him the wrong way: he was still looking broodingly at the Count, and had begun to bark questions at him.
“Why must you always take control, Volkov? Or to put it another way, why are you such a Fascist?”
Dmitri took a drag of his joint; then he removed the needle from the disc. There was silence, and he spoke in his slurred drawl.
“Why do you show me the strong arm, Trevor? Why do you call names?”
“Just making an observation. You are a Fascist, aren’t you? You even support the Ky junta.”
“Anyone you don’t like is a Fascist, Griffiths. The Ky is not too bad. At least he has guts, and is better than them.”
“Good God. He’s a maniac. This is a man who wants to lead a bombing raid over Hanoi just so he can blast his lost family home out of existence.”
“Yanks have to work with who they can. Ky can do what he likes if he stops the Commies, so far as I am concerned. You know what your beloved Commies do when they take over, Griffiths? They build a prison and put the people inside it. Then the commissars proceed to live in luxury, like fuckin’ bishops of Middle Ages, pretending to love peace and the peopte—whom they screw.”
“And who’s screwing who in South Vietnam? The Yanks are turning this country into a colony. They’ve transported California here for their own benefit, while they pauperize and bomb the peasants. And still they can’t beat these peasants in rubber sandals, can they? Charlie’s still coming down the highway.”
Trevor’s chest rose and fell; his fists were clenched on the matting; he was whiter still, transported with noble rage. Vice Marshal, apparently alarmed by this, leaped suddenly from his master’s chair onto a dresser, and sat frowning at Griffiths from there. But Volkov, sprawled in his throne, continued to smile down with an air of insolence.
“Is that so? U.S. First Cavalry have just done all right in the Ia Drang Valley, baby. Their first engagement with the Army of North Vietnam and they won, as a matter of fact. In the end, Communists pissed off across Cambodian border. I covered. So did Mike.”
“And you really think that’s the way it will go? That the Yanks will win in the end? Against the North Vietnamese? These are the same people who hauled artillery through fifty miles of mountain and jungle, an inch at a time, half a mile a day, for three months, and then shafted the French at Dien Bien Phu. These are the Spartans of Asia, Volkov. And discipline and dedication will always defeat decadence—haven’t you learned that?”
“Bullshit. Their artillery was courtesy of fuckin’ Soviet Union. Is that what you want, Griffo? Soviet control of Southeast Asia?”
It was Trevor’s turn with the joint; he inhaled, and returned to the attack.
“I’ve just been in Binh Dinh Province. The Yanks have designated it a ‘free-bombing zone.’ You know what that means? Have you seen what it bloody well entails?”
“I have seen it. Those are VC areas, and you know it. American boys are dying too; so are ARVN. And VC have no mercy. They roll grenades down floors of cinemas and blow up women and kids: does your heart bleed about that, Trevor? Do you think they’ll be merciful if they win? Mon Dieu. I know about Commies, baby.”
“Oh yes. All because your grandfather ended up driving a taxi in Paris, with no more serfs to flog.”
I half expected Volkov to physically launch himself at Griffiths; but his response was still verbal, his drawl exaggerated. “We all know why you are a bloody lefty, Griffiths. You are victim of English class system.” He turned to Jim and me. “A poor Welsh boy sent to English snob school; parents made sacrifices. This makes him feel deprived, and so he becomes a radical. And so he overlooks liquidation of twenty million people in Soviet Union. He prefers this to democracy, and filthy capitalism.”
Dope had turned both men into cruel children; and now I expected Griffiths to slug Volkov. But instead he sat motionless, fists still clenched, still staring. For all his intelligence and commitment to ideas, I doubt whether Trevor reflected very much; and I doubt that Dmitri did, either. They were actually very alike. Both were men given to passionate intensities; and I believe both had taken up positions in response to old psychic wounds. Political arguments are not finally about politics, in my experience. All those abstract passions have their origins somewhere smaller, somewhere humbler: in childhood, usually, or adolescence, where some small humiliation alters us forever. So it wasn’t lost Russia or broken Vietnam that had brought my two brothers to such an intoxication of rage. There’s no wound so profound as the early wound to our self-esteem—or perhaps to our esteem for a parent. To be esteemed: this is surely our greatest hunger, right? All else pales.
I think there might have been some sort of punch-up eventually, despite the fact that they were both too dazed with grass to handle it. But then Mike Langford came in.
He suddenly materialized among us, standing in the middle of the room in stained combat fatigues, with a large white wound dressing taped to his forehead. He seemed pale and tired, but cheerful. He dropped his camera and camera bag onto the coffee table and put his hands on his hips, smiling around at us.
We looked back at him, adjusting to his existence. Jim Feng spoke first. “Jesus. What has happened to your head, Snow?”
Mike didn’t answer; instead, he pointed a finger at Jim, and then at the rest of us. “You’re stoned, James. You’re all stoned. All right, where’s my fix? And what’s happened to the music?”
His presence dissolved all antagonism: his white and yellow blandness had a calming quality. He went to the record player, hunted through the stack of LPs beside it, and put on Bob Dylan. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” filled the room, and Volkov and Griffiths stopped looking at each other. Trevor lay back on his cushion, and a small smile returned.
“That man is a genius. Took his name from the great Dylan Thomas, of course. In homage.”
Mike sank down beside Jim, who passed him a fresh-rolled joint. “What the hell hit you?” Jim asked. “Shrapnel?”
“Better than that, James. I was out with an ARVN patrol near Soc Trang, and Charlie overran us for a while. I saw one of them coming over the top of a dyke, and I tried to get film of him. It would have been a bloody marvelous picture, but he clubbed me with the butt of his AK as he went past.”
Volkov was shaking his head. “Cameraman’s Daydream, Langford. Jesus. Lucky he didn’t shoot.”
“You’re right; you’re right.” Mike shook his head in mock regret; catching my eye, he gave me his wink.
Griffiths addressed him now. “Still going out with the ARVN, Snow? You’re mad. You’ll run out of luck eventually—and what’s it all for? They’re a bloody lost cause.”
We all knew that Mike had become devoted to the ARVN, going out over and over again with his friend Captain Trung. He also covered quite often with the Americans; but the Army of South Vietnam was his first love. Most of us were impressed by the risks he was taking and the privations involved—risks and privations that even Feng and Volkov had no wish to share. For one thing, the ARVN just weren’t the main story. Yet we all acknowledged that the film he shot of battle with the South Vietnamese was remarkable; and his stocks were high with Telenews, which was selling his footage successfully in many countries. Seeing Asian troops in battle was a novelty at that time for Western audiences, who had always been shown the Americans. And Langford
was shooting closer to the action than anyone else in the business. People watching their television newscasts over dinner saw these Vietnamese soldiers dying; saw the expressions on their faces as they tended wounded comrades. To get such shots meant being right in the front line, instead of shooting with a telephoto lens from the second or third line, as most photographers did. Already one began to hear the nickname Suicide Langford; but that was either sour grapes or silly sensationalism. He judged his risks; he had an extraordinary survival instinct.
He drew on his joint now, regarding Griffiths mildly. “Oh I don’t know,” he said. “I reckon the ARVN’ll still be fighting when the Yanks have gone. Anyway, the Count just scoops me when I cover with the Americans—so I might as well be with the ARVN.”
Volkov smiled. “Bullshit will get you nowhere, Snow. But be careful, or you will die with your Captain Trung.”
Griffiths looked up quickly.
“No he won’t: shut up, Count. Also, accept my apology. I shouldn’t have spoken about your family like that.”
Volkov waved a slow hand.
“Accepted. I also have said personal things which I withdraw.”
Such animosities were never maintained. We were all superstitious, at Villa Volkov.
3.
HARVEY DRUMMOND
At first, to tell you the truth, I thought Langford rather ordinary—apart from his risk taking, that is. And in many ways he was ordinary: ordinary at the personal level, I mean.
But I soon came to notice two things that weren’t quite ordinary about him: his unchanging calm and gentleness, and the impression he gave of having a secret life. I’m sure the air of secrecy wasn’t conscious; he was never pretentious. It was simply an atmosphere he created around him, probably without knowing it.
Well, there was a secret life, we know that now. But in those days I didn’t take seriously the things that people like Trevor Griffiths had to say about Mike’s association with Donald Mills at the Australian embassy. Mills was the resident spook for ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, with the spook’s usual cover of Second Secretary—but I never believed that he was running Mike as an agent. You’d see them drinking on the Continental terrace from time to time, and sometimes Aubrey Hardwick would be with them when he appeared in Saigon; so maybe Mike gave them a few personal impressions of the way he saw the war as going on the ground, and of some of the Vietnamese leaders he filmed interviews with for ABS—interviews that I usually conducted. No great harm in that, from a cameraman; or so I thought at the time.
I think his real secret life was more innocent, and at the same time more subtle. I believe it revolved around Claudine Phan. Whether he and she were ever lovers is something I don’t know either; and I don’t think anyone knows, because nobody dared ask him. For someone so easygoing, he could be quite intimidating when he closed up on you. Personally, I doubt that he and Madame Phan were ever sexually involved. She was a good deal older than he, and I see them as friends: genuine friends. They stayed friends all through the next ten years, and I find that a lot more interesting than a simple affair. Mike would never talk about her, except in the most general terms. His relationship with her was something separate in his life, existing in some private bubble. What their intimacy was based on I’ve no idea. No doubt she was some sort of Saigonese guide and confidante—but I don’t really know what vital links held them together. All I do know is that she was important to him.
Another feature of Langford’s character, which I see as being linked to his secret life, was his preoccupation with the outcast, the vulnerable, and those who were fighting for doomed causes. Some of my more cynical colleagues put it more simply: he was forever trying to help losers.
What they were mainly referring to of course was his deepening sympathy for the Army of South Vietnam. Unlike Griffiths and Volkov, Langford never grew heated in argument: his voice remained soft. But in our drunken or stoned discussions at Villa Volkov and in the Happy Bar, he came back and back to his claim that although some ARVN companies avoided battle, others were fighting heroically—and the Americans were denying them credit for it. He didn’t rail, he remained good-humored; but it became a near-obsession with him. The ARVN were taking much higher losses than the Americans, he said—a fact that wasn’t generally acknowledged. They fought the Viet Cong on the Viet Cong’s terms, and no one brought them pizzas in the field.
“The Yanks call them gooks and slants,” he said. “They don’t see them as human beings. They say that they’re all cowards, and that their women are all whores. That’s not bloody true. Smart-arse correspondents help to put that sort of thing around—the sort that are always propped on bar-stools along Tu Do, and don’t go out in the field.”
There was some truth in this, of course; but most of us remained repelled by the Saigon regime’s networks of graft, and by the ARVN colonels and generals who were busy becoming black market millionaires instead of fighting. Listening to Langford plead the cause of the few honest commanders, and of the ordinary troops on the ground, I began to understand that beneath his calm, he was a peculiar kind of dissident and nonconformist: one whom I began to see as well-meaning but naive. His thinking and his positions were never really political; they were tuned to some other wavelength, and he fitted into no easy mold. The fashionable position among journalists like Trevor Griffiths was to deplore both the Saigon Government and the American involvement, and to see the North Vietnamese as liberators; but Langford didn’t hold this view. He seemed to take the justice of the South Vietnamese struggle for granted—but at the same time he grew more and more disenchanted with their American allies. He liked the Americans; he got on well with them when he was attached to one of their units; but he condemned their air strikes on Viet Cong-held villages. He shot footage of the effects of these strikes, which ABS didn’t want to run: mothers weeping over the bodies of their children; old people wandering in shock. So in this he agreed with Griffiths, and not with Volkov. The war could only be fought on the ground, he said, as the ARVN were doing—not by the destruction of farming people from the air.
Some in the Happy Bar were amused by his insistence about this; others were reluctantly impressed. Even Griffiths didn’t argue very much; he just shook his head and smiled with raised brows. Because of Langford’s obvious liking for the Vietnamese, and because he shared the dangers they faced—which none of us was prepared to do—his view was respected. If the truth’s told, few of us correspondents had very much to do with the Vietnamese people at all, and fewer still learned their language, as Langford was doing. He’d already become a lot more involved with the country than we had; he seemed bent on forming a bond with it, and I wonder now if this might have been one of the reasons for his affair with Kim Anh.
Of course, she was one of the outcast, to begin with. I’m not being cynical: this was a powerful brew for him, and I’m sure he was utterly sincere.
I first learned about his involvement with her on an evening when he and I met for a drink on the Continental terrace. That was quite late in the year; about October, I think.
In those early days of the war, the Continental Palace Hotel was still locked in a colonial reverie. Its yellow arches, its pillars and its latticework, its little interior garden with the ceramic elephants and the falling petals of frangipani, would seemingly never change. The aged, shuffling Chinese waiters who’d been there since before World War Two would always be there; and beside the grand staircase in the lobby, plump Monsieur Loi in his white suit would always be bowing to arriving guests. The war was a noise in the background, which eventually must go away. He always used to find a room for me: I wonder what happened to Monsieur Loi?
I sat waiting for Langford in my deep wicker chair over a chilled aperitif, close to the low stone wall that was the frontier on Tu Do Street. The terrace—or the Continental Shelf, as it was known to the press corps—was Saigon’s axis: our rendezvous and refuge after a hard day in the field, just as it had been for generations of s
cribes and diplomats before us, and before that for the French rulers and planters. It was raised a few steps above the pavement, its privileged black and white tiles a zone nominally forbidden to the beggars, child thieves and hawkers beyond the wall. But they kept invading, and a row of boys hung over the wall now and shouted and pulled faces at me with macabre vigor, hands reaching out as though to clutch me.
“Hey you! Number One! Change money? You want boom-boom photo? You want number one fuck? You number ten!”
It was seven o‘clock. Twilight was coming on fast, adding its thickness to the effluvia at ground level: petrol fumes; fish sauce; camphor smoke. Everything was the color of paper, which was the color of the heat; nothing was natural. Chaos ruled on Tu Do and the square beyond the wall: my ears rang with the cacophony made by military trucks, armed Jeeps and motor scooters. The Saigon Cowboys roared by on their Hondas, masked in criminal sunglasses, looking for watches to snatch.
Now I sighted Langford, walking up Tu Do Street towards me. It’s a memory with the unaccountable staying power some small things have, while bigger incidents get vague.
Neat and spruce in his green TV suit, hair held in place by that cream he always used (he remained in the 1950s, where Bryl creem was concerned), he was coming past the old French Opera House, accompanied by a jigging crowd of street kids: his outcast tribe. Two of them held his hands, walking on each side of him, and I’d seen these two before: they both worked the front of the Continental. One was a small boy of about ten, carrying a bundle of newspapers. The other was a crippled girl I thought to be about fourteen: she was hobbling on a single crutch, a tray of cigarettes and flowers hanging about her neck. For her sake, Langford walked slowly, smiling down like a fond young father.
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