A Dangerous Friend (8 page)

Sydney stood alone in the vast open-air lobby feeling the heat and the press of humanity, the Americans so large, bull-like shoulders bulging under short-sleeved drip-dry shirts, the Vietnamese dressed up and brittle as birds, shy in the muscular ceremony of arrival and departure; and just then he understood that he fit both categories, arriving in one sense, departing in another. He had only made landfall. His journey had yet to begin, and until it did he would remain as much a part of America as the Boeing he had just left. This airport seemed to be as much American as Vietnamese, the local police standing about with the authority of cocktail waitresses in a gambling casino. He wondered at the identity of the Vietnamese travelers, as many women as men, grinning and nervous as they made their way slowly to passport control. They would be traveling to Hong Kong or Bangkok, to shop or to transact business, perhaps to emigrate. In any case they did not seem reluctant to leave.

The Americans were obvious enough, construction workers and government officials, crew-cut soldiers in mufti. He recognized someone from the State Department, a deputy assistant something or other who had conducted one of the endless briefings, and a woman who worked for one of the think tanks, Hudson or
RAND.
He remembered her from a conference at NYU. Mr. Ten-months-and-thirteen-days-and-eight-hours-and-thirty-five-minutes was nowhere in sight. Sydney recalled a photograph he had seen of the Gare du Nord in the spring of 1940, soldiers leaving for the front, civilians returning, the picture's texture dark and grainy, somber in the filtered light. Paris had never recovered from its abrupt defeat. In 1940, no one knew who was in charge and the future was in doubt. The Germans were invading once again and there was no animation or confidence in the faces of the French, one more difference between Paris then and Saigon now; and no one doubted who was in charge here.

Those few departing Americans were provided a special gate,
U.S. Personnel This Way.
When Vietnamese approached this gate they were coolly waved away. Military policemen loitered close by, visually inspecting each departing American; and if there was cause for suspicion he was pulled from the line and asked for his passport and exit visa, and if the answers were unsatisfactory the suspect was moved against the wall and searched without delay, the questions suddenly official and specific, and before you knew it there were four military policemen, not two. Sydney watched the little drama unfold, an unshaven middle-aged man shaking his head no, then sighing, staring at the floor, explaining something without looking up, extending his wrists as if he expected to be slapped or handcuffed. The MPs conferred among themselves, one of them consulting a thick blue book, apparently a roster of names.

Sydney heard the MP say, Get the hell out of here.

Yessir, the suspect said.

Don't come back, the MP added.

Why would I come back? the suspect said, and moved along to Vietnamese passport control, where he was waved through. Sydney watched him hurry into the lounge, where the bar was doing an energetic pre-lunch business. So Vietnam was like Puerto Rico, as easy to slip into as it was to slip out of, so long as your papers were in order and your name absent from the roster of suspicious characters.

Noise drifted from the bar to the terminal area. Sydney was surprised to see young Western women among those three-deep at the bar and at tables, everyone laughing and toasting each other. The women were tanned and attractive, in their close haircuts and short skirts looking like coeds on spring break, the last fitful hours before the long flight north. The atmosphere was one of high impatience, a kind of nervous flutter. Through the wide window back of the bar, Sydney could see a flight crew strolling to the Air Vietnam Caravelle waiting on the tarmac. Suddenly one of the women threw her arms around the neck of the man standing next to her and kissed him deeply; the others applauded, even the unshaven middle-aged man, who stood on the fringes of the group drinking beer from the bottle. And then Sydney realized he had misunderstood the ambiance. It was not impatient or nervous. It was festive.

Annoyed, he turned away, looking left and right, uncertain where to go. Of course Ros had better things to do than wait for a morning at febrile Tan Son Nhut, but surely he would leave a message. Sydney watched a television crew being greeted with shouts and handshakes, Vietnamese scurrying about to load the heavy equipment into a white van with a network logo on its side panel; and then the van hurtled away into traffic. He had the address of Llewellyn Group House, Tay Thanh district, but he had no idea how far it was and whether it was safe to travel by taxi. The little blue and white Renaults did not look roadworthy, either. So he marched to the sidewalk where he stood with his suitcases in the damp heat, the sun ferocious but ill defined in the thick diesel haze, and wondered about the reliability of the taxis.

When a Vietnamese approached and tried to hand him a card, Syd shook his head.

You come, the Vietnamese said.

Go away, Sydney said, but the Vietnamese was insistent, shoving the card in front of his eyes and jabbing at it with his finger. Syd saw that the writing was in English, introducing the bearer as the faithful Minh, who would drive him to Tay Thanh.
Welcome to the war. See you for dinner. Rostok.

Tired and disoriented—the dregs of the bloody mary had left a rancid lemony taste in his mouth—Sydney stowed his luggage in the back of Minh's Scout. He stood swaying in the heat while Minh patiently held the door; waiting for him to climb inside; he did not fail to notice the ideograph drawn on the door, a pair of clasped hands. The Scout stumbled into traffic and turned away from the city. Saigon's anonymous suburbs unfolded, one following another indistinguishable villages, each with its market and roadside kitchens and stagnant river, some viscous tributary of the Saigon. Traffic began to thin, sedans yielding to trucks and trucks to Solex motocyclos, rickshaws, and pedicabs. Ordinary bicycles were everywhere along with foot traffic, mostly old women with bundles and children. Every few moments Minh would tap the horn but always moved respectfully to the side of the road when a military convoy needed to pass. When the convoy was American, Minh gave a smart salute.

And suddenly they were in the country and alone on the road. The air was sour. The fifteenth century began just beyond the broken asphalt, water buffalo hauling wood plows, a weary farmer leaning on his plow. Beyond the field was the rain forest, dense and mysterious, feral, sickly green in the midmorning light. In the far distance low hills were visible through the haze. Here and there in clearings were temples where Buddhist monks in pumpkin-colored robes moved aimlessly about, apparently in contemplation. The temples seemed in no way distinguished architecturally, and
Sydney
was put in mind of the makeshift shrines beside roads in rural America commemorating the dead in a traffic accident. Mongrel dogs prowled the perimeter.

They passed a guard tower surrounded by barbed wire, causing Syd to wonder whether the wire was there to keep the guards in or the enemy out; in any case, he could see no guards. He closed his eyes, sweating in the heat, his shirt stuck to his back and chest. He was unable to assimilate the environment. Eyes closed, he sensed the world turning and he was turning with it, molecules rearranging themselves as he sat dumbly in the front seat of a government Scout with its symbol of hope, clasped hands. He would never again travel this road in exactly the same way; the vacant guard tower would soon be as familiar as the stone bridges on the Merritt Parkway. No doubt at that hour momentous decisions were being made elsewhere in the world, in conference rooms in Washington or Moscow. And in due course a bomb would fall or not fall in his vicinity or someone else's and the war would creep forward, as promised.

Minh let him out in the courtyard, fetched his bags from the rear of the Scout, and drove away. They had not exchanged a word since "you come" and "go away." The front door of Group House was not locked, yet there was no one present. The place had an abandoned look, as if it had been evacuated in the course of a hasty retreat. Typewriters and filing cabinets were intact but paper was loose everywhere on the floors and the ashtrays were filled to overflowing. Framed photographs of the ambassador and the President were askew on the wall; someone had drawn a moustache on the President, giving him a resemblance to Stalin. Sydney wrestled his bags upstairs to the living quarters. The bed in the big room was unmade, the towels in the bathroom mildewed. An empty whiskey bottle was lying in the tub, and women's underwear was draped over the single chair. Two more empty bottles filled the plastic wastebasket, along with discarded toothpaste tubes, aspirin vials, shaving cream, mosquito repellent, hair spray, deodorant jars, and Kotex cartons. Above the bed were various
Playboy
centerfolds, haphazardly taped to the plaster. An army-issue .45-caliber pistol was lying on the bedside table, the pistol as forlorn as everything else in the room. A wobbly message was written in lipstick on the mirror:
Im a prisoner in the Vtnamese laundry and need help now, D. D.

Dacy, Sydney said aloud. That bastard Dacy.

Tony "Dicey" Dacy had not worked out. Dicky Rostok had said that Sydney would have some public relations work to do with the staff and some of the local people in Tay Thanh. Dicey was a handful. Nice enough fellow, Ros had said, but not suited to the environment. Dicey lacked tact. Dicey went over the edge as some do here because of—the situation.

I suppose he was scared to death, Sydney had said.

Scared? Why no, Ros had said. He wasn't scared. There's nothing to be scared of, if you keep your wits about you, use common sense. Meaning a sense of proportion. Dicey Dacy liked to drink and he also liked to chase women, in more or less that order. He especially liked to chase women when he was drinking, and he was drinking most of the time, maybe remembering the fifty-year-old wife he left at home in Modesto with the Chevrolet and the children. Dicey was having the time of his life in Tay Thanh. He was just a little round guy with a fringe of frizzy black hair on his bald head, looked like Kukla. This was his first trip outside the United States, except for Vancouver once over Labor Day. So we had complaints from the village elders and the staff, and it became necessary to let Dicey go, reluctantly because he was damned good with accounts; and he wasn't happy about it because of the fine life he'd found here, but the other choice was the stockade. We can't tolerate fuck-ups, Syd, because fuck-ups tend to get into the newspapers and the supremos back home don't like it, town-gown embarrassments in the middle of a war while our brave soldiers are getting shot at. So we fired him. Gave him a week to get out of the country. Last I heard he was holed up somewhere in Saigon, incognito. Dicey loved life in Indochina. Dicey said he found the fountain of youth in Tay Thanh. Truth was, he found himself. Dicey grew into himself right here.

And I'm cleaning up, Sydney had said. And apologizing to the staff and squaring things with the elders.

That's right, you are, Ros had said. That's your most immediate assignment, to restore some trust between us and our plucky little allies. This won't be easy. I try to look beyond their eyes into their brains. To see what's bothering them beyond Kukla fucking their teenage daughters, because there has to be something more to it, the way they're behaving. Most uncooperative lately, a kind of slowdown such as the UAW used to orchestrate on the line at River Rouge come contract time. They're difficult people. It's like looking at the Mississippi Delta from thirty-five thousand feet, one big river and a hundred tributary rivers, itty-bitty towns and fields and then a boat with a wake behind it. You know there's life, you just can't see it. They believe in magic, you know. Magicians and sorcerers and astrologers and numerologists. God's there somewhere, along with the usual sins and virtues and ways of redemption. But it's hard to see the unity, other than the big river itself; and you can't see where it begins and you can't see its end, either. I think they're trying to figure out why we're here. I think geopolitics doesn't have much meaning for them in Tay Thanh. So we must want something from them and they don't know what it is unless it's their souls. That's what the Christian missionaries wanted, and how far removed are we from them? Different uniform. Different Antichrist. We're practicing salvation, Syd, not in the hereafter but in the here and now. And the Vietnamese are wondering what the price is, and they're guessing it'll be high. What we want really is their loyalty, and is that so much to ask? Do you see the fine line we're walking here? We've got to do our level best and Dicey Dacy isn't our level best, so we've defrocked him and sent him on his way. And you're nominated to clean up his broken dishes.

Sydney began to smile.

I'm not joking, if that's what you're thinking, Rostok said.

Tell me this, Ros. Where did you find him?

He was a policeman, Rostok said. And a friend of his congressman. So he had superb references and we thought we were lucky to get him, experienced man, streetwise, as they like to say. But not everyone fits in here, no matter what their résumé says or what they promise. Matter of restraint and a sense of proportion. Matter of modesty, a sense of where you are and a sense of how much is too much. You can drive over to the PX in Saigon and buy Johnnie Walker Black for about two bucks and Beefeater gin for half that. A man can live like a rajah in South Vietnam. And you can buy French perfume and hair spray and nylon stockings and Winston cigarettes and Playtex bras and those little gold Seiko wristwatches that the young girls like because they don't have those goods over at the Tay Thanh market. And the girls will do almost anything to get them, too, because they don't have much in their lives to look forward to. Their boyfriends are on the other side, living God knows where in serious danger. The girls are bored and frustrated and adrift and naturally look to us for support. Why wouldn't they? We're the future. When they look into the new year, who do they see? They see us. And the year after that for as many years as it takes. We're cocks of the walk here, Syd, but there are ways and means of living a reasonable life without turning Group House into a god damned bordello.