There was still activity on the boulevard de la Somme, with barbers shaving customers by torchlight beneath the trees and stalls selling noodle soup or rice with fermented fish sauce. On the waterfront, Charlie kept a distance from the ships, whose unloading was performed under armed guard. He lit a cigarette and leaned back in the doorway. His thoughts turned to home and to Mary, whom he pictured reading alone in the bare sitting room of their Tokyo apartment, her ear tuned to any sound that might come from the children’s room, where two-year-old Richard lightly slept. Mary had her self-balancing temperament, her inner gyroscope; Louisa had her quietly intense interests; he himself still had the capacity for exhilaration; but Richard had something none of the others did: a riotous passion for each day and a delight in its details. His demands were irresistible; his candor disarmed rebuke. He had become seigneurial in his attitude to their discreet Japanese lodging; when he returned from his walk in the park, he would go into the living room, throw open the door onto the terrace and, standing on the threshold with his rosy genitals resting on the ledge of his half-mast pants, micturate resoundingly onto the gravel.
At the thought of his small son, Charlie was smiling a little in the gloom when a voice made him start. “Pardon me. You got a light?”
In the glow of the match, Charlie saw a young man with an unmistakably American crew cut. “My name’s Moone. Buy you a beer?”
Charlie’s instinctive recoil was lost to his reflex affirmative. In a brightly lit café over cheap half liters of beer, Charlie told Moone he was a salesman for electrical goods.
“Sure,” said Moone.
They talked about the war. “The French are doing a pretty good job up there,” said Moone.
“I hear they’re surrounded.”
“You want to go take a look? I could fix it for you.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
Moone shrugged. “Just thought you might be interested. There’s been a flow of visitors for weeks. Reporters go up all the time. I know people who could fix it. Soon the rains’ll come and it’ll be too late. Know how much rain they’ll be getting in the next three months? Five feet. You hear that? Five feet. So now’s the time to go. But not if you’re not interested.”
“No, I’m not.”
After two more beers, Moone made another suggestion. “You ever smoke opium?”
Charlie smiled at the tidy young man with his sky-blue seersucker jacket and cleanly shaved face with its coins of topical acne. “I suppose you can fix that too,” he said.
“It’s not difficult,” said Moone. “There’s a dozen places in this block. I know the best. You know how it feels when you drink a big dry martini before lunch? Feel like you’re king of the heap? It’s a lot better.”
He led Charlie to another café, then up two flights of stairs to a dark landing, where he told him to wait. Eventually, a young Annamite woman came out and led Charlie into a dark sitting room with low couches round the walls. Moone, who was already sitting down, grinned at him encouragingly as the woman set to work, heating a bubbling lump of brown opium over a flame.
“When she gives it to you, suck it all down in one go,” he said.
The woman looked bored by the procedure, though her hands moved dexterously. The pipe was made of bamboo, unadorned, with a bowl cut into it where the woman kneaded the gum on a pin. When it was ready, she plunged it into the bowl and reversed the pipe over the flame, so the opium drew smoothly as she held the pipe out to Charlie. She helped keep it steady as he sucked in the smoke and held it in his lungs. As soon as he had exhaled and released the pipe, she began the process again with a weary efficiency; it made Charlie think of a waggish landlord in a village pub with his regular tankards and china beer handles.
After his third pipe, he felt no alteration in himself or his body, but what he could only describe as a philosophical shift of gravity. The world had shed a skin and revealed its magnificence. Charlie could see that he had previously been deceived into thinking that there was something bitter, tense and self-defeating about the brief human passage through an existence devoid of meaning. Now he could see that the world was not like that at all, but an intricate mechanism of boundless yet quite lucid beauty which was entirely comprehensible to the regal power of his intellect. There was no fear, no doubt, no death; the idea of calamity or grief was absurd. He could perhaps imagine unhappiness, but only as an hypothesis that had no real existence. The truth of bliss, meanwhile, was everlasting and was underwritten by the calm and powerful reality of the revealed world.
Some hours later, Moone drove him back to the Hotel Continental and saw him up to his room. When Charlie awoke, it was almost eleven and he found a note with Moone’s telephone number, saying, “Call me if you change your mind about the trip north.”
The thought that transcendence could be achieved for so little trouble was a poignant one to Charlie, who was finding that moments of contentment had begun to grow elusive. From his hotel he cabled Tokyo about the possibility of a trip to Dien Bien Phu. It was ill-advised to go without knowing who his sponsor was, but he felt confident, in the residual elation of the opium, that all would be well; it would, at the very least, be interesting. The head of his section replied that a major action was thought to be imminent, but told him to trust his own judgment after he had consulted his colleagues in Saigon. Charlie followed the first part of the advice but not the second because he was too impatient with the prudence of bureaucracy. He took the risk. He telephoned Moone and was instructed to report to the military air base in forty-eight hours’ time. Moone left some press accreditation for him at the reception desk at the Continental, stating that he worked for the BBC; Charlie winced at the deception but thought that he had reached a point from which he could not turn back. His fellow passengers were mostly journalists, though there were a couple of overalled mechanics and one or two others Charlie did not care to ask about. They flew for almost four hours in an American Dakota to Hanoi, then refueled for the flight west to Dien Bien Phu.
As they began their approach, Charlie noticed that the French camp was in the bottom of the valley; it was a cul-de-sac, from which the only exit was the airstrip itself. It looked like a vast prehistoric village whose inhabitants, not having discovered how to build, were sheltering in various holes in the ground. They saw regular red flashes of Vietminh artillery fire from the intense jungle on the hills; the sound followed a few moments later, then the upward trickling smoke. To have allowed the enemy to take the high ground above a position from which you had no guaranteed means of escape struck Charlie as, to say the least, unorthodox. The second thing he noticed as they came in was that they were under fire; and the third, as they touched down, was that the temporary runway, made of pierced steel plates, was holed by artillery shells. Beside the strip, abandoned, were the still-smoldering remains of an American Flying Boxcar transport and a Cricket reconnaissance aircraft. Red dust was blown through the steel plates of the runway by the propellers as the plane taxied down into a bunker at the end of the strip. They climbed out and went inside a depot where they were given tea by a Senegalese corporal. Charlie spoke as little as possible to the others for fear of giving away his ignorance of journalism. Eventually a French major came in and introduced himself.
“You are the last group of journalists we shall be entertaining. Consider yourselves fortunate, gentlemen.” He spoke in English, with a light Franco-American accent.
He described for them how French paratroopers had taken the area the previous fall and how the engineers had demolished the housing that existed in Dien Bien Phu, previously some sort of administrative outpost, then built a system of strongpoints protecting the center, which consisted of the depot where they were sitting, the airstrip, the hospital and the headquarters of the camp commander, Colonel de Castries. Each strongpoint had a woman’s name—Béatrice, Eliane, Gabrielle, Huguette and so on.
“The locations have been carefully chosen and each has been designed and reinforced by the
engineers.” The major paused and gave a small cough. “There is no truth in the rumor that they are named after Colonel de Castries’s mistresses.”
Some of the American newspapermen laughed obligingly.
“The strategy of General Navarre remains the same: to entice the Vietminh out of the jungle into a place where the superior weaponry, training and manpower of the French army can be decisive. Dien Bien Phu is the ideal battleground for us since they must place their artillery on the reverse side of the hills where our planes can destroy it. We will run offensive actions from inside the camp to drive their infantry into the open.”
One of the American reporters, a paunchy gray-haired veteran with a cigar, had a question. “Couldn’t help noticing the fire from the high ground as we came in. Looks like they have some pieces on this side of the hill.”
“We are mounting regular air strikes,” said the major. “If you look out of the window you can see another flight about to take off.”
“Yeah, but suppose they put the airstrip out of action. How are you going to get out?”
The major smiled. “They will not, my friend.”
“But suppose they did.” The newsman removed the cigar from his mouth and examined its sodden end.
“The only way out of the camp is to march out victorious. Now then, you will be divided into smaller groups and each will be taken to see one of the strongpoints. You will be billeted there tonight and a flight will take you back to Hanoi tomorrow. Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen.”
Charlie was driven in a jeep with four other reporters over a trembling Bailey bridge that spanned the narrow Nam Yum River, already beginning to swell with early showers, up a rough road that, at least until the downpours came, was still passable to a sturdy military vehicle.
“C’est la route Quarante-et-Un. On va à Béatrice,” said the Algerian corporal who was driving. “La plus belle des maîtresses du colonel.” He showed a gold tooth as he laughed.
Charlie found himself smiling a little as they jolted up the road; there was something profoundly strange about this clearing in the jungle where the flower of St. Cyr officers, their heads full of European gunnery tactics, had brought a collection of troops to provoke a people they hardly knew in a colony that had been returned to them after the disgrace of Vichy only because the Americans and British had no use for it. This giant folly of pride, greed and quixotic ambition was about to receive, as far as Charlie could see, a cataclysmic judgment.
Béatrice turned out to be on top of a hill, where it could control Road 41. If any Vietminh artillery was placed on the hills opposite, the corporal explained, the French fighter-bombers and heavy howitzers would silence them at once. Once the jeep had deposited them, however, it was clear that well-placed enemy artillery was already hitting a strongpoint on a hill to the west.
The corporal laughed. “ça, ce n’est rien. Ce n’est que Gabrielle qu’ils essaient de réveiller.” There was another flash of gold.
In a temporary building in the main complex of Béatrice they were left for half an hour until a press liaison officer could be found. Two other American reporters who had been at Dien Bien Phu for almost a week came in to join them. One was a loud, florid man, complaining about military censorship; the other was lean and quiet with a distracted look in his eye.
Their new guide was a man with considerably less joie de vivre than the major or the corporal before him. A pale, bespectacled Parisian captain called Rigaud, he took them to inspect the trench system that his men had dug forward to repel any infantry attacks; it had communication trenches leading to the rear area and a system of reinforced dugouts where radio, first-aid posts and some of the officers were housed.
Charlie turned to the quieter of the two new reporters. “Christ,” he said. “It’s Verdun.”
The man smiled faintly and looked at the press tag Charlie was wearing round his neck. He held out his hand. “Frank Renzo,” he said.
“Charlie van der Linden.”
“You Dutch?”
“No, English. I had a Dutch grandfather who came to London on business and married a local girl. Otherwise I’m all English. Have you been here for a while?”
“A few days.”
“Were you in the army during the war?”
“Sure was.”
“So was I. Tell me, am I missing something or are the French about to be buried?”
Frank said, “See that jungle there? For five months tens of thousands of men and women have been bringing supplies up here. Coolies paid in opium, trucks, mules, reinforced bicycles—they’ve brought thousands of tons through hundreds of miles of jungle and the French can’t see a goddamn thing. They’ve bombed some of the routes, but they haven’t found most of them. The Vietminh tie the branches of the trees together overhead to make a tunnel. They have guns all over the hillside—this side, not the other side, where the book says they’re supposed to be. The Americans have shot infrared film to try and find them and it’s come back blank.”
Charlie looked at Frank and smiled. “Is your paper interested in this?”
“Not really. They’re more interested in Senator McCarthy. I can’t get that son of a bitch off the front page. But The Washington Post said that if the French are defeated then Paris’ll feel the same as London did after your English general surrendered to Washington at Yorktown.”
Captain Rigaud’s answers to the reporters’ questions were brief and ill-tempered until they returned to the main building at dinnertime. As the mess corporal brought in more bottles of Gevrey-Chambertin with which to quell the taste of the chicken curry, Charlie and Frank managed to maneuver Rigaud to one side, where he became mournfully confidential. He told them in English that hardly any of the buildings in the camp were properly reinforced. There was a drastic shortage of timber, and when engineers were sent out to cut trees they were attacked by Vietminh patrols. When they destroyed the local houses to find more materials they succeeded in making all their inhabitants into Communists. The enemy outnumbered them by five to one, Rigaud had been dependably informed. Although his men had started a number of brush fires, there had not been enough time or manpower to burn back the surrounding jungle, with the result that the enemy had laid a trench system that finished, in some places, only fifty meters from the French lines. Sapping out from the front, the Vietminh had then dug mines and filled them with explosives, which they were waiting only for the word from General Giap to detonate.
Rigaud held his scholarly head in his hands. “I just keep thinking of Paris. The shame of this. I think of how the radio stations will play solemn music and the traffic will stop along the Seine. The rue de Rivoli, the quai des Grands Augustins.”
The other journalists had left to play cards at the far end of the tin-roofed mess, and the hurricane lamps shed a harsh glow along the empty table. Frank poured more wine into Rigaud’s glass.
“You married?” said Charlie.
“Yes,” said Rigaud. “Since two years. I have one son, who is with my wife actually in Paris. She’s expecting another baby. If it’s a girl she will not be called Béatrice.”
“What’s going to happen?” said Frank.
Rigaud sighed. “The rain, that’s what will happen. In three months there will fall one and a half meters of it. And we’ll fight. The Foreign Legion is here after all. The Algerians are good if their officers are good. We have also Tai tribesmen, but you have to place them between paratroopers and Moroccans, otherwise they run away.”
Charlie said, “How did you get into this position?”
“A complete failure of Intelligence,” said Rigaud, lighting a French cigarette. “We were misinformed about their numbers, their weapons and their supplies. Also, their general is better than ours.”
“Where do you suggest we go tomorrow?” said Frank.
“Hanoi. The Hotel Métropole. Have a pastis for me.”
At midnight the other journalists were taken back to the depot at the camp center for the morning flight, but Charli
e decided he would like to see some more. He said good night to Rigaud, who made off for his quarters, unsteadily, taking a candle and a copy of Montaigne’s Essais. Frank had disappeared.
Charlie slept well on an army cot in a storeroom. He was not frightened of the crunching mortars or the occasional thump and screech of artillery. He had been an infantryman himself for two years from 1942; he had commanded a company in Tunisia and Italy before being transferred to Intelligence. The situation in Dien Bien Phu was bizarre, but it was not boring, and it appealed to his sardonic sense of history; at this stage of his life his nerves were still well sheathed.
There was nothing to eat for breakfast, though there was the sound of mortar fire directed at Road 41. Béatrice was surrounded, and it took a battalion guarded by two tank platoons to get drinking water up from the river.
Charlie saw Rigaud at the end of a corridor, running to a communication room. “You’d better get out,” said Rigaud, who looked pale and hungover. “We’re clearing the road now. The corporal will take you back to the airfield.”
Charlie walked to the edge of the position, where thick barbed wire was mined with antipersonnel charges. In the valley below he could see French fighter-bombers coming in from the southwest, over strongpoint Dominique, and setting fire to the road, the adjacent trees and any enemy soldiers in the way with napalm bombs. Toward eleven it was considered quiet enough for vehicles to move off, and the jeep went back along the blackened road, where a platoon of Tai tribesmen were bayoneting the burned Vietminh survivors. Charlie had never seen the effects of napalm before, nor smelled its fierce odor.
In the main depot area, he made contact with the urbane major of the previous day, who seemed pleased with the way things were going and happy to accommodate Charlie’s desire to stay a little longer.
On Green Dolphin Street Page 18