Highways to a War

by Koch, Christopher J.

  Amplified pop music from bar doorways beat in my head like ten radios playing in a room at once. A crude canvas poster I can’t forget waved above a bar, strung from bamboo poles: a Vietnamese girl got up as an American Playboy bunny. She wore the required tights and rabbit’s ears and tail, but her face seemed full of woe: an ambiguous lure for the American troops who lurched across my path. All for them, these parodies of American pleasure, flowering on the grave of rue Catinat! The limbless beggars who were the war’s children crawled on the pavement, trying to impede me as usual, holding up their bowls; small boys in T-shirts and shorts made ancient obscene gestures and shouted their suggestions for the last time. “You want to boom-boom my sister?”

  I still had a conviction that Langford was here somewhere. I drifted on towards the river, wading for the last time through the swamp-dense air at Tu Do’s ground level. Meanwhile, in the dark brown upper air, off beyond the fluorescent green of the tamarind tops, an occasional distant parachute flare lit up the sky: the war going on, ignored. Windows and doorways fitted with wire guards against bombs framed figures that seemed to be locked in cages. A row of GIs sat on stools with tiny Vietnamese girls on their knees. The girls were wearing the demure white tea dresses dating from colonial times; they looked like children at a party, and they stroked the Americans tentatively, as though petting unpredictable animals. I passed La Pagode and the Melody Bar and the Sporting Bar and still I couldn’t find Langford.

  Then I sighted him. About twenty yards ahead, he was pausing under an awning where a very old man in a coolie hat sat beside a little glass cabinet of cigarettes; Mike was buying a pack. He had his throng of child beggars with him, and he was still in his combat fatigues.

  A few doors further on was the neon of the bar called La Bohème, which was known to double as a brothel. As I watched, Langford began to walk away towards it, and I saw that he was very drunk: much drunker than I was. He was weaving along as though scarcely able to stand, supporting himself with one hand on the shoulder of a sturdy boy in a ragged green T-shirt, while the Newspaper Boy, still clutching his bundle of papers, held his other arm. Even at this distance, I could see that the children wore expressions of concern. They were shouting up at him vehemently“ as though trying to persuade him to do something—or not to do it, perhaps.

  Before I could catch up to him, Langford began to turn into the doorway of La Bohème. I heard the voices of the children rise in remonstration at this; the boy in the green T-shirt and the Newspaper Boy both tugged at one of his arms to hold him back, while a small girl in a ragged white blouse and shorts grasped his shirt. Mike paused, looking down at them; then he gently freed himself, and squatted to bring his face to their level, his expression solemn, his eyelids drooping. All of them stared at him intently, as though trying to understand something. He spoke to them for a moment; then he got up again, raised a hand in farewell, and staggered inside La Bohème.

  I didn’t follow; like the street kids, I turned away. I started looking for a cyclo.

  I wouldn’t meet him again until we were all reunited in Phnom Penh, and he’d be different then. We’d all be a good deal older—on the edge of middle age, in fact. His youth and his pain would be left behind in the Delta, and on Tu Do Street.

  II

  THE PEOPLE OVER THERE

  One great hour of noon withthe sky-faring Rukh

  I clanged on the golden dome of Heaven.

  Now in the long dusk of adversity

  I have found my palace of contentment, my dream pavilion;

  Even the tiny twig of the little humble wren.

  PO CHÜ-I, “Myself,” translated by

  L. Cranmer-Byng

  Nine in the second place means:

  There is food in the ting.

  My comrades are envious,

  But they cannot harm me.

  Good fortune.

  “T‘ing: The Cauldron”

  From the I CHINGor Book of Changes

  ONE SURVIVORS

  1.

  The Foxhole is long, dark and crowded. All the bars and massage parlors of Patpong Lane swarm with lights and neon, and the Foxhole’s no exception: its ceiling is a firmament of colored bulbs, winking on and off. This puts bewildering rainbow effects on the faces of Jim Feng and Harvey Drummond, smiling in front of me.

  “They’re still living inside the war, some of these guys,” Harvey says. He jerks his head at a row of men hunched on stools along the bar. Nearly all of them are in early middle age: most are dressed in a mixture of old military fatigues and combat boots.

  “Right,” Jim says. “Some of them don’t believe it’s over. Not even after a year. Sometimes I don’t either, Ray.”

  When I first met them, Feng and Drummond were like figures from fiction who’d suddenly walked into reality. They were different from the way I’d pictured them, over the past two months. The men in Mike’s photographs—pictures mostly taken in the sixties-were young, their faces always lit with expectancy. These men have lost their youth. Harvey Drummond’s sparse, curling hair has turned half gray, and he’s almost bald on top. His height is as startling as I’ve been led to expect, but his stoop is pronounced. In contrast, Jim Feng’s hair remains thick and black, and his long, refined face has the smooth, apparent age lessness of so many Chinese faces. As in the photographs, his white shirt and khaki trousers are so well pressed that he looks like a military officer. But a particular essence is gone from this face, just as it’s gone from Harvey’s: youth’s essence is missing, making him subtly different from the figure in my archives. And there’s something else.

  When he first appeared, on the night of my arrival, coming up to greet me in the foyer of my hotel, I saw that he limped badly. Then, as I took in the mechanical stiffness of the action, and the way he threw the right leg forward, I realized that this leg was artificial.

  I hadn’t known that Jim Feng had lost a leg, and this was as shocking and pitiable to me as the mutilation of someone close to me. He told me it had happened eleven months ago. He’d been filming a Khmer Rouge attack on a Thai border village, at a point where Cambodian refugees were coming across; he’d stepped on a Khmer Rouge landmine. So he’d survived the whole war, only to be crippled by an accident.

  We’re standing now by an inner wall of the bar, glasses of gin and tonic on a wooden shelf beside us. The Foxhole isn’t the usual girlie bar for tourists: it caters for them in a perfunctory way, with its winking bulbs and a catwalk for dancers in the middle, but for now the catwalk’s empty, and the piped music is playing at a volume that favors conversation. A poster on one wall advertises a Soldiers of Fortune shooting match. A sign above it says: There are no Atheists in Foxholes. There’s a betting board displaying horse-racing odds, and a list of propositions to bet on. (Teddy Kennedy will run for President.) On a notice board next to it there are photographs of boxers, and of other people I don’t recognize: journalists, perhaps, since the Foxhole’s an unofficial club for correspondents, war photographers, mercenary soldiers and Vietnam War veterans.

  Harvey’s following my gaze.

  “This was Mike’s home away from home,” he says. “That’s why I thought you should visit it, Ray. He had a lot of friends here-as you can see.”

  He puts down his glass and points in the direction of the wall near the notice board, and I find myself looking at a framed black-and-white portrait photograph of Langford. It gives me a shock that’s different from mere surprise.

  The picture seems idealized, and has the appearance of an icon. Perhaps it is. Langford, staring across at me, looks super-naturally young, and at the same time like a man from a much earlier era. Underneath is a professionally lettered legend: Michael (Snow) Langford, 1935-1976. The Lucky One.

  “So it’s agreed in here that he’s dead,” I say.

  “No—there are lots of people who keep on hoping,” Harvey says. “And some people in the Bangkok Press Club took strong exception to those dates under the picture-but no one’s bothered remo
ving them. There’s an assumption that he’s dead at the of ficial level, though—as you’ve probably found out.”

  Jim passes me a fresh gin and tonic. “You know, Ray, now that you’re here, I have a feeling that we’ll find him,” he says. He smiles, and his face is cheerful.

  I’m about to reply when a huge wave of amplified rock and roll music swamps everything, and half a dozen Thai girls file onto the catwalk, all in black tights that leave their golden buttocks bare. They begin to go through motions of dancing, holding on to the steel poles that support the ceiling, jerking mechanically. Around the bar, the sweating, red and white faces of the male tourists turn upwards in salacious worship. But the correspondents and mercenaries don’t even glance aside; they continue their conversations by shouting.

  During this, we’re joined by two men who greet Jim and Harvey and then stand beside us, watching the dancers. Their names are Carr and Kennedy: Harvey shouts introductions above the noise, briefly explaining my association with Langford and the purpose of my trip. The two nod, and look at me with expressions that could be either sympathetic or dubious.

  Finally the music ceases. The girls file off, and Carr, the newcomer standing nearest to me, addresses me abruptly.

  “I’m afraid you’re here on a wild-goose chase, Ray. Sorry to have to say so.”

  He’s a correspondent for a London daily: stocky, pallid, somewhere in his fifties, with flat, rusty hair that has a wig-like appearance. His speech is precise, with a Midlands accent, and his small, tight mouth closes on his words with finality. “Mike Langford was executed,” he says, “Khmer Rouge style. That’s ninety percent certain, and it’s not a thing you’d want to think about.”

  “That’s if it’s true,” I say. “We don’t seem to have firsthand evidence.”

  Jim Feng has been watching Carr fixedly; Harvey looks thoughtfully into his drink. Kennedy, the other newcomer, remains silent, his blank, hooded eyes seeming quietly amused by something. He’s a big, powerfully built man who’s running to flesh a little, with thinning fair hair and a mustache; he has a hard, pleasant face of a type I’ve encountered in violent criminals, and he gives off the same atmosphere of warning. He looks like a mercenary-which is more or less what he is, it seems. Harvey has murmured in my ear that Kennedy’s an ex-Air America pilot, who flew arms for the CIA.

  Carr is still speaking to me. “There’s a constant idea among some of the press corps here that Langford’s still alive,” he says. “They pick up rumors from Cambodian refugees—from anyone who’ll cook up a story and claims to have seen him. Some of them will say anything-especially if they’re shown money. And a lot of the journalists here who were Langford’s mates believe them because they want to believe them. It’s bloody sad, really.”

  “But that’s natural, Paul,” Harvey Drummond says. His voice is soothing; almost placatory: a tone I’m to find is habitual. “In a situation where no death has ever been confirmed, and where a man has simply vanished-it’s natural to hope, no matter how bad it looks.”

  Jim Feng is still looking at Carr. “I will not stop hoping,” he says.

  Carr refuses to meet Feng’s stare, which is now openly hostile. “Well, Jim, you’re entitled; but you know I don’t agree,” he says.

  “I will not believe he is dead,” Feng says. His voice is hushed yet strong. “I will not believe it unless I meet someone who saw it happen-someone I can trust,” he says.

  “If you want verification,” Carr says, “go up to the refugee camps on the border, and talk to the people I talked to.”

  “I have already done that,” Feng says. “They tell stories that other people told them. Rumors. A European picked up inside the border by the Khmer Rouge, and taken away to be executed. Yes. We all know that.” He claps his palm down on the shelf along the wall: not very hard, but the effect is one of pent-up violence. “Nothing firsthand! No witnesses, as Ray says. Are you such a lousy bloody journalist that you make up your mind on this basis?”

  Harvey Drummond puts a hand on Jim’s forearm. “Come on, Jim.” It’s a murmur that’s only just audible.

  Carr rubs his nose. “No need to get offensive. The evidence is circumstantial,” he says. “I’m satisfied those refugees were telling the truth. The story fits with the time he went in there; and how many Europeans would have been wandering around in the Cambodian countryside? None; no one would be crazy enough. Add to that the fact that he’s been gone for two months with no word.” He turns to me. “If the Khmer Rouge found him or any other foreigner inside the country, death would be pretty well automatic; we all know that. If they didn’t kill him on the spot they’d try him as a spy, and then execute him—and we’d have to hope they didn’t interrogate him first. I’m sorry. It just has to be accepted.”

  Harvey speaks quickly, before Jim can reply. “Unless he’s still a prisoner, Paul. That’s always possible.”

  “It’s possible, if the story those people brought in isn’t true,” Carr says. “But I think it is true.”

  “Your opinion does not make it true,” Feng says.

  Carr finishes his beer and puts the glass on the shelf. “I know you two were friends a long time, Jim, but look at it this way. Maybe Mike died at the right time.”

  Jim has been about to light a cigarette; now he pauses without doing so. “What does that mean?” he says.

  Carr speaks to the wall of the bar, not to heng. “Langford was a great war photographer,” he says. “Don’t misunderstand me. The pictures will always be there to prove it. But in one way Mike was like a lot of those stringers and freelance cameramen who had the big ride in Vietnam: some of them ended up being war-nuts, and it’s hard for them now to give up the drug and move on. Hard to believe they’ll never hitch a ride on a Huey into battle again.” He looks at me now, his expression slyly confiding: You’ll understand, the look says, even if Feng doesn’t. “You see them in here all the time,” he says, and gestures towards the figures at the bar. “Always talking about the war,” he says. “Always in their macho combat boots. Ankle high. Zipped up. In this heat.” He smiles, and there’s a touch of spite at the corners of his mouth.

  “You are saying all this about Mike? You are calling Mike a war-nut? I tell you, Carr, he was never a war-nut,” Jim says. “And neither was I. We left that to the crazies; the amateurs. And amateurs got killed.”

  “I’m not saying he was a crazy,” Carr says. “But with his reputation, he could have been working anywhere in the world: so why did he hang on here in Bangkok? With Vietnam and Cambodia locked up, and the war over, there was simply nothing here for a news photographer of his caliber. Nothing’s happening in the region now that matters-you know that. It’s different for you, Jim. You’re a bureau chief, a man with a family; you’ve got a life here.”

  Feng slaps his artificial leg through his knife-edged khaki slacks, his eyes still gleaming with anger. “If it weren’t for this, I would still be covering. I would not be flying a bloody desk for Telenews.”

  Carr shakes his head. “Then maybe it’s just as well for that charming wife of yours that you lost the leg—or she might have lost you.” Before Jim can reply, he turns to Harvey. “What I’m saying, Harvey, is something you’ll probably understand. Mike was forty, with no war to cover any more. What was in front of him, if he stayed in Bangkok? He was propping up the bar here in the Foxhole half the time, like so many others—or else he was up at that Khmer Serei camp on the border, doing God knows what with those shady guerrilla groups, and that military commander he was so bloody thick with: Colonel Chandara.”

  Feng interrupts. “Is there something wrong with Chandara? I know him: a brave man.”

  Carr shakes his head again. “Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid. I’ve heard some pretty nasty stories about him.” He turns to me again. “You know what they called Mike in the press club? ‘The unofficial spokesman for the Free Khmer.’ ”

  Harvey Drummond smiles; so does the silent Kennedy. But Carr’s tone now grows severe, and fai
ntly pompous. “Mike lost his objectivity over that movement-which he’d never done before. It’s a bloody lost cause, but he couldn’t see it. He forgot the journalist’s duty to be impartial. I didn’t realize it at first. He got me interested and fed me news stories about his Free Khmer. I filed them, and my paper ran them—stories that actually affected the policies of governments. And then I found he’d gilded the lily. He did it with other correspondents too. Now that was naughty.”

  “Maybe he’d found something worth getting involved with,” Harvey says.

  “In that case he’d ceased to be a journalist,” Carr says. “Suicide Langford was a good name for him: maybe he really was hooked on death.” He’s looking at me again; his expression is covertly mocking, and it’s plain to me now that this is a man who didn’t like Mike at all. “But in the end, I don’t really feel I knew Mike Langford,” he says. “Maybe none of us did.”

  He glances at his watch.

  “I have an interview to do: I must go. Nice to have met you, Ray.”

  “Better you do go,” Feng says.

  Carr’s face stiffens. He turns away without speaking again and edges off through the crowd, not looking back.

  “A bit harsh, Jim,” Harvey says.

  “He is a shit,” Jim says. “No one can speak about Mike like that.” He turns to Kennedy. “It would be a pity if Ray listened to someone like Carr,” he says. “He’s here to find Mike, and I believe he will do it.”

  Kennedy looks at me. “Good luck,” he says. “I miss having Mike around. We had some great times in places like Laos in the old days, Mike and me.”