Highways to a War

by Koch, Christopher J.

  They too have an opinion to express, he said, and we all laughed.

  The next night, we sat around the pot in the open again. As we were finishing off our rice, Captain Danh picked up the conversation of the night before as though we’d only just dropped it, pointing a finger at us and smiling.

  I believe I understand your outlook, he said. You are individualists. I have once believed in this sort of individualism myself. But when I thought and studied, I realized we could not afford it in Vietnam. Perhaps no one can afford it, since it leads to anarchy and immorality.

  How does that follow? Mike asked.

  Have you read Hegel? I believe Hegel to be right, Danh said. We can only be truly moral and free if we subordinate ourselves to the State. This is a paradox—but true.

  And the Hegel gave us Marx, who used the same argument, Dmitri put in. And Marx gave us Stalin and Mao Tse-tung, and so people didn’t gain freedom, but lost it. And millions were liquidated.

  His voice had that purring sound it sometimes got, which meant that he was liable to say anything. The danger had been averted last night; but now I grew cold inside. I caught Mike’s eye, but his expression told me nothing. Dmitri had been to university; Mike and I hadn’t. If the Count chose to pursue an argument in political philosophy, there wasn’t much we could do to come in and head him off.

  You are a French citizen, Mr. Dmitri, Captain Danh said suddenly. But your name is Russian. Are you Russian?

  I am of Russian family—but as you say, I am French citizen, Dmitri said. I have never been in Russia. Why do you ask?

  I thought that you might have firsthand knowledge of the Soviet system, Danh said. That is all. And I want to say to you: please don’t think that the Vietnamese Communist Party follows the Soviet model in all things. I want also to say that what you have said is not necessarily logical.

  He leaned forward a little, drawing his packet of Vietnamese cigarettes from his shirt pocket; but still his tone was pleasant, not angry. He offered a cigarette to Dmitri, who took it and thanked him; then he held the packet out to Mike and me. I saw that he was a man who liked to debate.

  If we accept the State as the main source of justice and security, this should not necessarily lead to tyranny, Danh said.

  He was looking at Volkov again.

  The State is the community, he said. And human beings cannot be civilized without a lawful community. You agree? Unless we are protected from want and exploitation and criminal attack, we cannot fulfill ourselves. There can be no science; no poetry; no art; no philosophy. And this protection is what the State gives us. So in making the State paramount, we are liberated.

  Weary slurped loudly on his tea, and Danh glanced towards him with no expression. All the soldiers appeared to be listening, watching our faces like students, and I wondered if some of them actually understood a little English. Lenin was especially intent, his canteen of tea clasped in both hands, his eyes narrow, examining Dmitri’s face. And suddenly I saw that the light in Lenin’s eyes was one of deep dislike—perhaps even hatred. It gave me a little shock, and I feared for Dmitri. None of the others looked at Dmitri or any of us like that, and I began to suspect that Lenin did have some English—and also that he was not an ordinary soldier. I had heard that there was always a second Communist Party cadre in even the smallest of these units, whose job was to report on the leader. Maybe this was Lenin’s function; and I wondered how politically orthodox Captain Danh was being when he spoke.

  This is an elegant argument of the Hegel‘s, Captain, Dmitri was saying. I sympathize with your reasons for accepting it. Unfortunately it went further, you might remember. The monarch is the embodiment of the state, so his power is not to be questioned. And Marxism substitutes for this the Party and its bosses —with absolute power, also not to be questioned. In other words, dictatorship, pretending to represent the people. Correct?

  The captain said nothing for a moment. Then he looked at each of us in turn. When we have won this war, he said, it will not be like that in Vietnam. We will liberate the people, not enslave them. He drew on his cigarette, releasing the smoke slowly through his nostrils. I am a patriot, he said, and so are my comrades. I am first of all a patriot and only secondly a Marxist. Do you understand that? Shall I tell you why I am a patriot?

  We waited, and he pointed into the darkness towards the west. Out there are the old French rubber plantations, he said. You have seen them. In the colonial days, Vietnamese were brought here to work. My mother’s father was one of them. He was beaten constantly; he was fed barely enough to live. He was a slave to the soil. There is no worse slavery.

  You’re right about that, Captain.

  I looked up in surprise; Mike had said this.

  Danh glanced at him. You agree? Then you will understand, Mr. Mike, when I say that this was why the Viet Minh fought; and why we go on fighting as sons of the Viet Minh. No one else will own our soil! You come from countries where patriotism no longer matters—but that is because you do not have to fight for your soil.

  He turned back to Dmitri. I know the dangers you are speaking of, he said. It is the passions of the mind that are most dangerous, I think—not the passions of the body. Europeans have been very prone to those passions. So are we.

  Dmitri regarded him with a delighted expression. He had begun to look like some sort of bandit, in the last week: his blond hair tangled, his face red from the sun, his blue eyes faded and staring. Now he gave the captain the sort of open-mouthed smile he usually reserved for his friends. “The passions of the mind”: good, Captain, what you say is true. Did you study history, in your youth?

  I wondered whether Captain Danh would react badly to this familiarity: but he still answered courteously. Yes, he said, I studied in Paris, in the fifties—like many of my comrades. I wanted to be a teacher. I studied European history and political philosophy.

  His frankness and pleasantness were reassuring; but I knew that we would be foolish to trust him. He’s probably playing a game with us, I thought: he’s encouraging this discussion in order to report what we say to his superiors.

  My friends and I would read everything we could, in those days, Danh said. We wanted to know everything. We read Tom Paine, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Marx, Sartre. We were drunk on ideas; drunk on revolution: we would talk all night, in Paris. And I have to admit, Mr. Dmitri, it was European history and European thinkers that we learned our lessons from. Mostly French. The French didn’t want to give us liberty, but they have certainly taught us about it.

  I too was a student in French hands, Dmitri said. For a very brief time: one year, before failure and forcible removal from Sorbonne. I was not scholarly type. But my reading was much the same as yours. Tom Paine gave me a big buzz.

  Danh frowned, not understanding this term; but Dmitri was going on.

  “To begin the world over again”: yes. That is very exciting idea when you are young. But I put it to you, Captain: we cannot begin over again. To begin again is impossible: what results is destruction; murder. Tyranny by the worst: those for whom destruction is their food, and who in fact want nothing but power. We still have to learn from French Revolution, in my opinion. French Revolution is not over, any more than Russian. The trouble is, with revolution: first comes romantic frenzy—then comes sickness. First comes lovely idealism and love of mankind—then comes power-lust and Terror.

  Danh had no expression as he listened to this. His eyes never moved from the Count’s face, and his cigarette stayed still in his hand.

  Do you not credit the French revolutionaries with love of liberty? he asked.

  Please, Count, I thought, no more. This was far worse than the night before, and it’s hard for me to explain to you how scary Dmitri’s talk was in that situation. Speaking like this to a Communist cadre who was our jailer must surely be jeopardizing any chances of release we might have: I felt sure of it.

  But Dmitri went on.

  Of course, he said. They have all loved liberty: Marat; Robespi
erre; Saint-Just. They were all Inquisitors defending liberty—and seeing heretics against it everywhere. Robespierre was very religious man, as a matter of fact: high priest of a new religion —right, Captain? Young Saint-Just the same: you will remember he has said that the fire of liberty would purify society. So he drew up lists for his secret police to carry this out, sending thousands to guillotine. Mon Dieu, it’s mind-blowing! Faster and faster goes Madame Guillotine, and the prisons are jammed—until people can bear no more, and rise against these men of liberty. One of the Great Committee said that their eyes were fixed too high to see that the ground was covered in blood—and he was proud of this!

  He drew quickly on his Vietnamese cigarette, then wrenched it from his lips and exhaled, looking around the silent circle of faces with his pale eyes. His face wasn’t smiling now: it was fervent; severe. Captain Danh and Lenin were watching him as though seeing him for the first time—as though wondering what trick he would perform next. As for me, I was in despair, a knot in my belly; I had just about given up hope for us. I half hated Dmitri for what he was doing, while a part of me admired his daring—if daring was what it was, rather than foolishness.

  He now threw his cigarette into the fire, and looked at Captain Danh again.

  They always come with revolution, guys like that, he said. They are special. Robespierre; Saint-Just; Lenin; Stalin. Lenin has a lot in common with Saint-Just: he too has established secret police immediately on arrival. These are educated men, you remember. Full of crazy enthusiasm; full of hate for what doesn’t fit their plan! “The passions of the mind,” Captain! And the people, the peasants, finally try to rise against them. They tried to rise against Jacobins; against Lenin and Stalin too. With very shitty results for themselves in both cases, poor bastards.

  He went on and said more, but I’ve forgotten it now; perhaps I blocked it out. When he concluded, Danh cleared his throat and spoke as quietly as before.

  We are not like this, he said. Our land reforms have freed the peasants from landlords who were squeezing them to death.

  And then he turned to me.

  You will know about such land reforms in China, Mr. Jim. I understand you came to Hong Kong from the mainland: that your family lived in Peking. You must have been a boy there before the Liberation.

  A chill went through me. Now I understood, or thought I did. This was an interrogation. Everything we said was helping to fill out a dossier that would affect our fate. The statements we’d been made to write out in the hut on the evening of our capture had clearly been passed on to Captain Danh; and he and his superiors had deduced what I was: a class enemy, to use their language. I felt despair. As a Chinese, I would be looked at differently by the North Vietnamese authorities from the way in which they would regard Mike and Dmitri. My accreditation as a correspondent and my Hong Kong passport would mean very little. But there was no point in lying.

  Yes, I said. My father was a scholar.

  Captain Danh nodded. So you were of the shen-shih, he said. The gentry class. Many were landlords, and treated the people very badly. Is that not true?

  Yes, I said. But not all. My father was a public official, not a landlord, and he believed in reform himself. His chief love has always been T‘ang poetry, not money making.

  Danh looked at me for a few seconds more, but said nothing. Then he turned to Mike, who was sitting beside me. And you, Mr. Mike, he said. What do you think? You say very little.

  Mike rubbed the back of his neck, not answering at first. Then he threw the last of his tea onto the ground.

  I think we have to care about each other, he said.

  Danh pursed his lips, and looked amused. That is all? And this includes all enemies?

  As long as they don’t try to shoot us, Mike said. And then he winked at the captain, keeping a straight face.

  I could tell now from the captain’s expression that he didn’t know what to make of Mike, and didn’t know whether Mike was kidding him or not. But you often didn’t know, with Snow. After the discussion between Captain Danh and Volkov, his words sounded quite naive. Well, Snow was no big thinker, any more than I am. But it was strange: these unimportant words and his wink had eased my anxiety, and had somehow taken tension from the air. Perhaps it had something to do with the power of his silence, and the calm in his face. Even the faces of the young soldiers—all except Lenin, that is—seemed to soften and grow happy as they looked at him. Nothing ever changed Mike, I thought; nothing ever could, it seemed. And I found myself looking at him as a child looks at a certain kind of adult, believing that such an adult has the ability to solve any problem, and to remove all fear from the world.

  Captain Danh turned back to Dmitri. I would just like to say this to you, Mr. Dmitri, he said. Marxism is not a religion for us that cannot be changed: Marxism is a tool to help us free our country. Do you understand?

  Dmitri raised his eyebrows; then he lifted his canteen of tea in a toast. I understand, he said. Bonne chance, Captain.

  In one way this surprised me from Dmitri; his hatred of Marxism was so great. But in another way it didn’t. Captain Nguyen Van Danh was a likable man, and for Volkov, the person always came first, not the beliefs. And I saw too that despite all Dmitri’s talk, he didn’t seem to have antagonized Danh—which wasn’t to say that he hadn’t done us great damage in regard to the report on us. But whatever the outcome of his behavior, there was some kind of spark of interest between himself and Danh that I believe was genuine. Of course, Danh might be a very good actor, and his interest might be secretly hostile; but somehow I didn’t think so. Sometimes an atmosphere springs up between two people that cannot be manufactured or faked.

  I raised my canteen. So did Mike, and Captain Danh laughed. A pity we have no wine, he said.

  The spindly trees with the white trunks grew close together here, and we slung our hammocks between them: close enough to talk to each other in whispers, and a little way off from the nearest hammocks of the soldiers. Across by the dead fire, Prince sat on watch, his rifle across his knees. The team took turns on watch throughout the night.

  I wanted only to sleep, but Mike and Dmitri went on whispering to each other.

  I like this Danh, Mike said. I think he has good feelings.

  I also like him, Dmitri said. But remember what he is. Don’t fool yourself he’s our good old buddy.

  I think there’s a chance he’ll set us free, Mike said. But listen, Count, go easy on the political speeches. Don’t fight the Cold War here, mate, or he’ll never let us go.

  Dmitri chuckled. They are very unlikely to do that anyway, haven’t you realized? You think I am being unwise, but I tell you, Snow: it doesn’t matter. Everything is down against us already—opinions will make no difference. They think we are CIA—and the Danh just likes to talk. He has his duty, which is to hand us over to much tougher bastards on Vietnam side—where we will go to goddamn prison camp.

  Maybe, Mike said. But I’m going to keep on hoping that’s not so. You should do the same, Count.

  Dmitri’s voice rose slightly above a whisper: it was weary and small, and suddenly drained of its life.

  I try, Snow—but I am getting very tired. I think I am in for one of my malaria attacks.

  We’ll get you through, mate. Right, Jim?

  Mike’s pale face had turned towards me under its mosquito net, and I roused myself. Right, I said. Don’t worry, Count. Hang in there.

  There was silence for a time: nothing to be heard but the rustling of leaves in a breeze, the whine of mosquitoes, and the sounds of other insects. Then I heard Dmitri again, very soft, like a child.

  Hey, Jim: where would you like to be now?

  It was a game we often played, to help ourselves along.

  Sitting in the York in Singapore, I said. With a long cool beer, and Old Charlie breaking up the ice.

  Old York is gone now, Dmitri said.

  So is Old Charlie, Mike said. A lot of things are gone.

  Whatever happens, Dmi
tri said, we had some good times—right?

  Right, we both said, and were quiet again. We had meant what we said, and it was important to us. I drifted into sleep, feeling comforted.

  The next day, the march got much harder.

  We’d now been moving down the Trail for seven days, and were into the first week of May. The monsoon was arriving, and the afternoon downpours were turning the surface of the Trail to a thick red mud: mud that sucked at our sandals, making it difficult to walk. Soon these rains would get heavier and more frequent, and I dreaded what this would mean. Never dry, we would get foot sores and fungus, and there would be mud, mud, mud.

  Turning, I found that Dmitri had lagged far behind, and I stopped to wait for him. So did Mike; and Weary halted to watch all three of us, while the rest of the patrol went ahead. We were always watched.

  Dmitri trudged up to us slowly, looking very pale and tired. I remembered what he’d said the night before about his malaria coming on, and Mike obviously remembered this too: he asked him whether he was sick. But Dmitri shook his head.

  I’m OK, he said. He is the one with malaria.

  And he jerked a thumb at Weary, who stood with his rifle drooping to the ground. Weary’s eyelids were half closed now; he was a bad yellow color, his face shining with sweat, and he was shivering in regular spasms. We all knew the symptoms, and looked at him with concern: that he walked at all was remarkable. Mike spoke to him in Vietnamese, pointing to his rucksack. He was asking to take it.

  Weary looked baffled and uneasy, shaking his head. But Mike took the pack from him; he tried to take his Kalashnikov too, but Weary looked so alarmed that Mike grinned and gave this up. He slung Weary’s rucksack from one shoulder, and was now marching with two packs.

  After a few minutes, Captain Danh turned and saw what had happened; he stopped, frowning, waiting for Mike to come up to him. What are you doing? he asked.

  He’s sick, Mike said. Malaria. He should lie down.

  We cannot stop. Our medical officer will give him tablets, Danh said. But you cannot carry two packs.