A Dangerous Friend (15 page)

I'm better now, she said after a moment.

It helps me to talk. Was I making any sense? Tell me when I stop making sense.

Perfect sense, he said. What happened after the sand trap?

She said, What are you doing in South Vietnam, Sydney Parade?

I run one of the aid programs.

Is that what Llewellyn's outfit does?

That and other things, Sydney said.

I know who you are. I know who you work for. You're a brass band in Tay Thanh, making your inquiries about Claude and me. No, I mean why here instead of Latin America or Africa or other places where Americans go to spread the word. What encouraged you to come
here?
Did you have a marital breakup? So many do. They come here to get away from the missus and the children underfoot. They come here like they used to come to Havana. The girls are cheap and the whiskey's cheap, too. It's hot. And it's better than Havana because your army's here to protect you and you don't have to worry about courts of law, like that dreadful character who ran things in Tay Thanh, Dacy. They were ready to kill him. They would have if he hadn't wised up and gotten out of the district. Claude says he's holed up somewhere in Saigon with a teenage whore. If you're in touch with him, you'd be doing him a favor to tell him to go back to America. Be doing us a favor, too, not to mention the Vietnamese. Where do you get them from, Sydney Parade? Where do you
find
people like Dacy? Or do you think South Vietnam's like Australia a hundred years ago, a place to dump your incorrigibles.

She hesitated, trembling, her hand on her forehead.

She said, Am I still making sense?

I suppose you are, he said.

Because I need to rest for a while. Let me know when we pass the airport and I will direct you from there. Better hurry. Her voice wavered as a fresh spasm rippled through her body. But please if you could watch out for the potholes.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES
from Tan Son Nhut she asked if she could have some water from his canteen. He passed it back and she drank a few sips while she raised herself to look into the rear-view mirror. God, she whispered. I look a mess. Poor Claude, only last evening talking about the unpredictability of the revolution and how we would have to be more careful. Her voice wandered, as if her thoughts were blown off course by errant winds.

The day had begun so well, she said. A café crème and a brioche on the verandah, listening to short-wave BBC. Do you listen to the BBC, Sydney Parade? You should. The news is reliable. And most of it isn't from here.

I'll remember, he said.

Then she had taken her binoculars and field guide,
Les Oiseaux de l'Indochine Française
, and staked out the grove of firs at the western edge of the plantation, enjoying the company of the birds and a trillion murmuring insects. The forest was dark even at midday, and a patrol had passed within a hundred meters of where she stood. They moved gracefully and quietly with a rhythm like dancers. And at once she saw a fire-backed pheasant and a red junglefowl, all in the space of fifteen minutes.

A wonderful morning, she said.

It was so rare to see them together. The point of bird-watching was to discover disparate species in the same area, and when you did it was cause for rejoicing. There were the normal woodpeckers and sparrows but she had not expected the junglefowl and the fire-backed pheasant—to be absolutely official about its identity, "Diard's Fire-Backed Pheasant,
Lophura diardi
(Bonaparte)." Not the emperor, surely, but a relative. It would be hard for the emperor to keep track of birds with all those corpses on his hands. Birds would not
count,
would they? On the other hand, the emperor was a hunter and the bright red face of the fire-backed pheasant would attract him, no? Probably it was named in his honor after one of the great bloody victories, Austerlitz or Jena; the bright red face would remind the ornithologist of Austrian blood, or the feather in the emperor's cap.

Sydney said, You were bird-watching?

Of course, she said. You have no idea how many species there are on the plantation, Sydney. Vietnam is an aviary. You could spend your entire life cataloging the birds in
Les Oiseaux de l'Indochine Française
and never see them all, until one day you would find a species that had never been recorded and then you could name it after someone, Gray-faced Buzzard (Dacy). She laughed hollowly and then fell silent, idly watching the motorcycles and taxis, stalled now in the traffic jam around the airport. Helicopters thumped overhead, the sound blending with the roar of commercial jets. The air was thick with the stench of kerosene.

He said, Isn't it dangerous?

Why should it be?

As you said, "the revolution."

They're not interested in birds or the people who watch them. She leaned forward, resting her chin on the seat back. She said, Go straight here until you see the cathedral, then turn left.

If I see a military jeep, I can get us an escort.

No escorts, she said.

Sydney drove through a high iron gate into a courtyard bounded by low stucco buildings with louvered windows open to the air. Large-waisted plane trees shaded the courtyard from the afternoon sun. Among gnarled stone sculptures of the Cham, patients in blue pajamas sat in twos and threes on wooden benches attended by nurses who stood apart chatting among themselves. The hospital had its own specific ambiance, like that of a campus or religious retreat far from any commercial or civil authority. When Sydney turned off the Scout's engine the place was quiet and cool under the huge leaves of the plane trees.

Then two doctors were opening the passenger door and lifting Dede Armand from the back seat, speaking to her calmly in French. Two Vietnamese orderlies stood nearby with a stretcher but she paid no attention to them and broke away from the doctors. With a sharp cry she spilled into the arms of the gumbooted stranger who had come up behind the doctors. He half carried her to the stretcher but she refused to lie down. She was laughing and crying at once, saying she did not want to leave him for the stretcher or for anything else, everything would be fine now that he was here at last. He whispered into her ear and kept whispering as his hands caressed her hair and shoulders, though his eyes were fastened on her bloody dress and the belly beneath it. Finally he picked her up and hurried her into the hospital like a bridegroom crossing the threshold, the doctors giving what assistance they could and the orderlies bringing up the rear; everyone talking now until the French doors slammed and the courtyard was as before, peaceful, with only the vague hum of traffic beyond the stone walls. The patients in blue looked on from their benches before returning to conversation or their newspapers. Somewhere a radio played American pop from the armed forces station; and then as Sydney strained to listen he realized it was not American pop from a radio station but
La Bohème
from a phonograph.

He took a long swallow of water from the canteen and lit a cigarette while he strolled the courtyard, admiring the stone figures of the Cham, animal deities. The Cham were a Muslim tribe that had refused to assimilate. Now there were only a few isolated communities, mostly in central Vietnam. They had held out for three hundred years, like the American Indians, except the government did not care where they went or what they did and offered no sympathy, or employment either. Assimilate or disperse. These sculptures were very old and represented what was known of Cham culture, at least to Westerners. No doubt the Cham had their own view of themselves and perhaps the sculpture meant no more to them than golf to a Connecticut squire, something they did in their spare time as recreation. At one of the briefing sessions in Washington Sydney had shared notes with the provincial-representative-to-be in Qui Nhon, who had announced his intention to make friends with the Cham and discover what animated them and what they valued, if anything; and if they had any insights into the progress of the revolution. They were a subjugated people, after all. The briefer had laughed and said, Good luck.

How distant all that was, the blackboard and chalk, the maps, the charts and bar graphs, the briefing books and the lectures of experts. Nothing in the briefing books about a shooting in the market at Xuan Loc, a'séance with the local VC cadre, and a ninety-minute drive to a private hospital in Saigon with an American woman in the rear seat of the Scout, her dress soaked with blood, haranguing him for a general lack of subtlety and tact. And that was why, when she heard his Sousa voice in the stall, she flinched—appalled at the impulsive American official come to violate her neutrality. She was one of those who lived between the lines in South Vietnam, living as if there were no revolution and no reason to choose sides, happy to pursue her bird-watching from a safe haven on her husband's rubber plantation. Forget the revolution and she could have been one of those who fled the big city for rural Connecticut. Simplify.

Sydney watched an elderly monk step through the French doors, his arm in a black sling, an IV hanging from a wheeled steel tree. He moved carefully, favoring the arm and his right leg, awkwardly gripping the tree with his free hand. The other patients looked up and nodded respectfully, offering a palms-together Buddhist greeting. None of them rose to speak to the monk, who acknowledged them with a benign dip of his chin. His saffron robes were brilliant in the monochromes of the courtyard. He made a dignified figure as he shuffled along six inches at a time. Sydney wondered if this monk was the one injured in the bomb attack at the temple a few blocks from the American embassy. A number of religious had been killed or injured including a radical, a monk controversial within his own sect and a danger to the government. Sydney could not remember his name—it was Thich Tien Something, a stubborn oppontent of all Vietnamese factions, particularly the government faction. The bomb at the temple was an outrage condemned by the various parties, except the Viet Cong, which did not issue communiqués. Because no one had claimed responsibility, the government was free to denounce the Communists—in the guise of monks more radical even than the old man shuffling along the perimeter of the courtyard, pushing his steel tree. He turned now to look at Sydney, his expression perfectly bland. It would be too much to call it serene. When Sydney nodded, the monk appeared to return the nod and after a moment continued his circumambulation of the stone path beneath the windows of the low buildings, the path guarded by the stone deities of the Cham.

La Bohème
ended. Sydney sat comfortably on a bench under a plane tree and lit another cigarette, watching the French doors and wondering how Dede Armand was faring inside. He remembered the threadbare gloom of the New York hospital where his daughter was born, the plastic furniture and the month-old magazines, the waiting room filled with men. Karla was in labor for eight hours, and when he was allowed to see her at last she could only murmur I've been in a train wreck. The doctors in New York were hurried and irascible, behaving as if they had been somehow inconvenienced by the long labor and delivery. These French doctors seemed sympathetic and capable and Claude Armand very capable. Sydney had never seen a woman drop into a man's arms as Dede had, falling from the highest precipice without fear, knowing she was safe now with her husband, his eyes wide open with relief.

If Claude was horrified at her condition, he betrayed nothing, continuing to whisper into her ear and comfort her with his hands, while she held on. And then he picked her up and carried her into the hospital because the stretcher was too impersonal for a woman with blood on her dress and a child in her belly, the child growing inside her these many months but still now. It was obvious they meant everything to each other. Living between the lines in dangerous circumstances would give them a special connection, like living on a fault line or under a volcano. They could trust no one but themselves; or blame no one but themselves. In Vietnam they were without allies in a milieu overturned by revolution and that was no part of their life together. The war was one thing, the plantation another, as distinct as Darien and Harlem. Sydney remembered that Karla had looked at him that night as she might a stranger, and then she asked him to leave the room, she was so tired. But he stayed, and when she woke up an hour later she was so happy to see him. She made room in the bed so they could hold each other.

He watched the French doors open and Claude Armand step into the sunlight, his hand on his forehead. He took a step and sagged, steadying himself on one of the Cham deities. When he looked up he saw the monk creeping toward him, pushing the IV tree. Claude went at once to the old man and they embraced, the Frenchman towering over the old Vietnamese. His khaki shirt was stained with his wife's blood. They stood talking a moment, Claude explaining something, shaking his head with infinite melancholy. Then he spat a furious sentence in Vietnamese, causing the monk to put a finger to his lips, leaning close now, speaking directly to him in a soft purr. Claude nodded wearily and looked around. When he heard a helicopter's chop-chop he stared at the sky with loathing. There were two of them flying over the hospital, side by side. Claude said another few words to the monk, all the while scuffing the toe of his shoe on the gravel.

He started when he saw Sydney on the bench under the plane tree. He took the monk's free hand with his own and spoke urgently a minute more, nodding his head in Sydney's direction. And then he looked back at the French doors and the darkness within the hospital. No one was visible through the open windows. This seemed to be a moment of indecision for him. Claude stood motionless, then turned and said goodbye to the monk and walked across the gravel to the bench where Sydney sat.

He said, I want to thank you for what you did.

Sydney said, It was nothing. How is she?

You didn't have to do it.

She is an American. Of course I would help her.

The Frenchman looked at him strangely, pursing his lips as if measuring the value of an American soul against a French or Vietnamese soul. He said, She needed to be brought here, where she knows the doctors. Where they have the proper facilities. Where she feels comfortable.