Saigon (19 page)

group of high officials led by the inspector of political affairs and the captain of gendarmeries, he glanced down at a list in his hand from time to time to name the prisoner they were watching or offer a few words of explanation. Nguyen the Pacifist.. . Ha the Laborious, Nguyen the Benefactor. . . Dao the Paltry. . . . One by one he ticked them off as the rebels marched straight-backed to the scaffold, their faces taut with the effort of mastering their fear. Beside his father on the balcony, Paul Devraux watched the grim procession in silence. He had already resumed light duties, but his right arm was still supported in a white sling and his pinched pale face continued to betray something of the toll his injuries had taken on him. 

“From this distance, Paul, they all look like schoolboys, don’t they?” The Süreté inspector shook his head, musing to his son as the short quick-striding figure of Limpid Stream appeared at the top of the slope leading from the jail. “Perhaps we’re lucky that they apply the romantic notions of boys at play to organizing a rebellion. Otherwise it might not have been so easy to defeat them.” 

“I’m not so sure there isn’t something more ominous in their makeup,” replied Paul quietly. “They seem to have an unshakable faith in their destiny. It doesn’t matter how wild the scheme, how great the odds stacked against them — they still throw themselves in headlong without a second thought.” 

“But doesn’t that only prove that they’re foolish people?” The older man raised a cynical eyebrow at his son. 

“Not foolish — fanatical,” replied the young lieutenant evenly. “A much more dangerous quality.” 

His father shrugged and looked away without replying. For a moment Paul studied his profile; he fancied the lines of age in his father’s face were suddenly more pronounced, and there seemed to be a new hardness about his mouth and eyes. “Did you ever find out, Father, how Loc’s wife came to die in prison?” he asked quietly. 

The older man shook his head without looking at him. “You know I’d left for Hanoi before it happened. I tried to make some inquiries from there. ‘The death certificate said ‘natural causes — heart.’ That’s all the information Saigon had.” 

“Could that be true?” 

His father still didn’t turn to face him. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t believe the official explanation, is there? Prison cells are not healthy places. People do occasionally die in them.” 

“Yes, but Loc’s wife —“The lieutenant broke off suddenly as the eerie silence in which all the executions had been taking place until then was shattered by a flurry of Annamese shouts from the center of the field. 

“Cho toi noi! Cho toi noi!” 

They looked up to find Limpid Stream struggling before the scaffold in the grip of one of the legionnaires, who had clamped a hand over his mouth when he began yelling in his own language: 

“I demand to speak!” The legionnaire managed to hold him silent while the Annamese burreau forced him down into the lunette, but as soon as he was released the Tongkingese teacher opened his mouth and began shouting at the top of his voice: “Viet Nam! Viet Nam! Viet Nam!” 

The rallying cry of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party rang electrifyingly across the hushed field, and as he heard the click above his head signal the blade’s release, the leader of the Yen Bay revolt yelled even louder to drown the noise of its descent. 

“Viet Nam! Viet Nain! Viet Nam!” 

The words died abruptly as the guillotine severed his head, but his strident cries had already reached the ears of the remaining seven prisoners in their cells, arid as each one was brought onto the field new defiant shouts of “Viet Nam! Viet Nam!” echoed from their throats. The Great Professor, the national leader of the party who had been one of the few to refuse baptism into the Catholic Church in his cell, marched silently to the scaffold and inclined his head in a grave salute to the crowd on the hill. Then he shouted “Viet Nam!” once in a loud sonorous voice before he died. 

The silent Annamese spectators, believing that the party leader was the guillotine’s last victim, had begun to break up and move away when Ngo Van Hoc appeared. For a few brief moments his father and brother had been seized by the hope that he might have been reprieved at the eleventh hour because of his youth; but the truth was he had been mistakenly left until last by the harassed French Resident, who in his anxiety to be done with his unpleasant task had overlooked Hoc’s presence in the cells. As a result, his escort of Madagascan infantrymen had been ordered to march him to the scaffold as rapidly as possible, and Hoc had to keep breaking into a shuffling run to keep up with the long-striding African soldiers. This and the innocent whiteness of his smock cut away around his thin neck exaggerated his childlike appearance, and an Annamese woman in the crowd, deeply moved by the sight of him, cried out suddenly in anguish: “Toi nghiep con toi —Oh my poor little boy!” 

Imagining in his agony that it was the voice of his own mother, Hoc stopped suddenly in his tracks and tried to turn in the woman’s direction. The soldiers behind him stumbled into him and one fell to the ground. In the confusion Hoc tried to break free and run towards the voice, but because his ankles were hobbled they caught him easily. When they tried to form up around him again, he began kicking and screaming hysterically, and one of the Madagascans eventually picked him up and carried 

him bodily to the guillotine. - 

The sight of the wing-shaped blade silhouetted against the glare of the rising sun at the top of the scaffold shocked him to silence and when the bourreau reached out his arms to take him from the soldier, Hoc offered no further resistance. 

“Don’t be afraid,” said the Annamese quietly in their own language. “You will feel nothing.” 

The next instant he thrust him roughly against the bascule and Hoc tipped forward helplessly into the jaws of the guillotine. On the balcony of the Garde Indigene barracks Paul Devraux turned his head away to stare unseeing at the matted jungle high up on a distant hillside; in the crowd of watching Annamese, Dong and his father bowed their heads in anguish and prayed silently to their ancestors. 

As the upper half of the lunette was slammed into place, Hoc closed his eyes tight arid the face of his dead mother swam before him suddenly in the darkness. Then he heard the click of the mechanism and the frame rattled and shuddered about his shoulders. In the instant before the blade bit into the newly shaved nape of his neck he opened his eyes to stare into the sun-dappled dust before his face and screamed frantically, “Viet Nam! Viet Nam Viet Nam!” 

One of the gentle morning breezes of late August was ruffling the surface of the Lake of the Restored Sword in the heart of Hanoi when Dao Van Lat stepped onto the little ornamental bridge leading out to the Island of the Turtle close to its eastern shore. Leaning on the parapet he gazed fixedly down at the thick clusters of red and white lotus flowers stirring in the sparkling, jade-green water and tried hard to calm the pent-up sense of excitement growing inside him. 

He had been awake half the night thinking about the clandestine meeting he was to have with the most celebrated Annamese revolutionary of his generation, and because of his agitation he had arrived a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. He had chosen the contact point himself on the same bold principle that had led him to take the noisy rickshaw ride to the Quoc Dan Dang pagoda meeting. The last place the Süreté would expect revolutionaries to conspire, he reasoned, was beside the placid Ho Hoan Kiem in the full light of the early morning. But that was only part of the reason; the little coral pagoda on the Island of the Turtle that was just beginning to glow red in the rising sun was the enduring symbol of his people’s love of freedom. Five centuries had passed, according to legend, since the lake had yielded up a miraculous sword to a fisherman on its shores; with the sword in his hand that fisherman, Le Loi, had raised a huge peasant army, repulsed an invasion from Ming-ruled China and founded a new dynasty that had opened a glorious era in his country’s history. Lat had insisted that the meeting be held there to demonstrate his fervent conviction that now, in August 1930, the time was ripe for a new Le Loi to appear and lead a modern army of peasants against the invaders from France! He was sure there should be no further delay, and he was determined to throw down a challenge. Who was to be the modern Le Loi, the new hero of Viet Nam? Would Nguyen the Patriot return at last from twenty years of exile to march at their head — or would he continue to skulk secretly abroad for twenty more years? If he did, then the peasants must have a leader who would inspire them by his presence and he, Dao Van Lat, would take up the miraculous sword of revolution in his place! 

Carried away by his train of thought he realized suddenly he was not being as watchful as he might about his security and turned quickly to scan the Boulevard Francis Gamier that bordered the lake on its eastern shore. He was searching for a telltale Süreté Citroën or Peugeot that would indicate he was being followed, but he saw nothing and turned back to the lake. He was dressed neatly in the European style in a pale double-breasted linen suit and a white panama hat pulled over his eyes. From beneath its brim he scrutinized the roads along the other shores, wondering from which direction Nguyen the Patriot might come. He was rumored to be ingenious in his use of disguise, but how would he conceal his identity in the city where his arch-enemies of the Süreté Générale had their Indochina headquarters? Or perhaps he would not come at all. The meeting had been arranged through intermediaries, and if, as was rumored, he had never once returned to his own country since working his passage to Europe on a French liner as a twenty-year-old boy, perhaps he would not have the courage to return at the age of forty now that many provinces in northern Annam and southern Tongking were suddenly and unexpectedly seething with popular rebellion. Or possibly Nguyen the Patriot too had been astonished at this unexpected turn of events. 

Lat himself had hatched with grim satisfaction in February and March as his predictions about the foolhardiness of the Quoc Dan Dang rebellion came true — but had then been amazed by the lightning speed at which conditions throughout the Annamese lands had changed and deteriorated thereafter. The Wall Street Crash had led to a rapid flight of French capital from all Indochina, and Annamese roiling in mines and factories were thrown out of work or had their wages slashed. There had already been a succession of poor harvests, and great tracts of productive land had been abandoned abruptly in the wake of a disastrous fall in the price of rice. Starvation had spread quickly and strikes and rioting followed. In some provinces the Garde Indigene and the Foreign Legion had been ordered to fire into the midst of crowds, and many demonstrators had been killed. With great energy and determination Lat had thrown himself into the task of expanding his own peasant movement, the Society of United Hearts, beyond his home province and his stature as a revolutionary leader had grown by leaps and bounds. Rumors of his violent act of self- sacrifice had spread, too, and many members of his movement as a result were openly in awe of him. - 

For the twentieth time that morning Lat checked his wristwatch. It was still a few minutes short of eight o’clock, the appointed hour for the meeting, and again he looked all around the lake in vain for a sign of the mysterious revolutionary lie was waiting to meet. The sun was already hot on his back but because it was Sunday the streets of Hanoi were still quiet and with the exception of a bent rickshaw coolie hobbling painfully along the shore road two hundred yards away, the approaches to the bridge remained deserted. Resting his elbows on the parapet again he gazed into the sun- dappled lake and let his thoughts return to the slumbering jade dragon of national salvation that the legend claimed had chosen to make its mythical lair there. 

He half closed his eyes and imagined the dark-clad figure of Le Loi casting his net, into the water arid withdrawing, in astonishment, the gleaming sword into which its genie had transformed itself; he saw it flashing colored fire across the waters, the nha que —the peasants — surging from the rice paddies in their tens of thousands to follow the magical blade and its bearer in a bitter ten-year war of independence against the Chinese. A poet’s words that he had memorized as a young boy chased the images through Lat’s mind and he repeated them softly aloud: 

“The tyrannous invader fled in fear 

When his slave refused to kneel. 

From the deep lake the firey sword of vengeance leapt forth 

Rousing the people to freedom.” 

The little bridge on which he stood must have been very close, he reflected, to the spot where the fisherman who became an emperor returned to offer a sacrifice to the genie of the lake a decade later. It was then that the sword sprang out of its sheath and, exploding in a flash of light, refashioned itself into a great jade dragon that roared and whirled through the clouds above the awe-struck crowd before plunging down to disappear into the green depths of the lake. At the same moment, the legend said, the little red coral pagoda materialized on the rock on the lake’s southern reaches to mark the spot and Lat was turning to look towards the pagoda when a voice spoke quietly in Annamese at his shoulder. 

“Our ancestors long ago established an independent nation with its own civilization. We have our own mountains and our own rivers, our own customs and our own traditions 

Lat turned slowly, recognizing the words uttered by the emperor Le Loi in his victory address at the lakeside. He started when he found himself gazing into the face of the bent rickshaw coolie, who still clutched the shafts of his vehicle behind him. But instead of the wizened, aged face he might have expected from the coolie’s posture, he saw a pair of deep-set eyes regarding him with a glittering intensity from beneath a smooth, high-domed forehead. A shock of dark hair swept back from the narrow, intelligent face belied the impression of agedness given by the cringing gait and the hairpin-thin body. The Annamese was not much more than five feet tall and clean shaven, and as lie awaited Lat’s response his piercing eyes softened into a faint, self mocking smile at his assumed disguise. 

We have sometimes been weak and sometimes powerful —— but at no time have we suffered from a lack of heroes,” said Lat softly, completing the quotation which had been set as their secret password, 

For a moment the man between the rickshaw shafts said nothing but merely glanced about himself in all directions with the practiced casualness of one used to being pursued. 

“I can hardly believe I am at last face to face with the famous Nguyen the Patriot,” said Lat quietly. “Are you really Nguyen Ai Quoc?” 

“How should a humble pousse-pousse coolie answer that?” replied the Annamese, his eyes twinkling. “Only Nguyen Ai Quoc himself would be able to give an adequate reply.” 

Lat stared at him uncertainly. “If Nguyen Ai Quoc himself were really here,” he asked, his voice suddenly challenging, “what would he advise our nation’s best patriots to do?” 

The Annamese fumbled in the pocket of his faded shorts and drew out black tobacco and papers to roll himself a cigarette. As if in response to the obvious tension in the man facing him, his movements were exaggeratedly slow and relaxed. He had positioned himself with his back to the rising sun beneath the overhanging fronds of a lakeside willow, and Eat had difficulty in discerning his features in the shadows. “Your name has gained much renown because of a courageous act of self-sacrifice,” he said. “You have proved you have the determination to lead.” 

Lat, despite the seeming compliment, detected a clear note of disapproval in the unemotional statement and didn’t reply. 

“But determination is not enough on its own — it should always be tempered by good judgment. Weren’t the leaders of the Quoc Dan Dang determined to make a rebellion at Yen Bay?” 

“My judgment was good,” replied Eat coldly. “I refused to take part. I warned them that the people weren’t ready.” 

The dark eyes glittered in the shade of the trees and he nodded slowly. “That at least was wise But are the people really ready now, do you think?” 

“Yes. I’ve worked among the peasants for six months. Many thousands have flocked to join my Society of United Hearts.” 

“Better known to its members as the Dao Van Lat Society, yes?” An ironic little smile tugged at the corners of the older man’s mouth. “I found the oaths and the initiation rites of our secret societies exciting as a boy, too. It was like ‘The Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ come to life. I’ve heard your followers still prop their leader’s picture on their altars and prostrate themselves before it like members of the old societies did, is that right?” 

“I’ve forbidden that practice,” said Eat sharply, “but our peasants respond best to traditions of the past that they understand.” 

“But do they really know your program? Do they have any idea along which path you are leading them?” 

“To sovereignty, independence, freedom!” replied Eat hotly. 

“They can’t eat sovereignty or drink independence — or plant rice in them either. They need a promise of land, something they can feel and touch — or they will lose interest when they’re no longer starving.” 

“Their loyalty to my leadership is unshakable,” protested Lat, his face Hushing with anger. 

The man between the shafts of the rickshaw sighed resignedly and lit the straggly cigarette he had rolled. He sucked the smoke noisily into his lungs for a moment, peering absently across the take. “Yes, the old habits die hard. But we must fight modern oppression with modern means of resistance. Secret societies and ancient rituals are of little use against machine guns and bombs dropped from the sky.” 

“And what is so much better?” asked Lat in a sullen tone. 

“About the time of the Yen Bay debacle I held a meeting with representatives of three different Communist factions from our country — on the crowded terraces of a football stadium in Hong Kong!” He paused and smiled impishly at the memory. “With the crowd yelling all around us we succeeded in sinking our differences and formed a united Communist Party of Vietnam.” 

“And now all our problems are solved, I suppose,” rejoined Lat sarcastically. “What magic genie is watching over the party born at a Hong Kong football match?” 

The morning wind shook the trailing willow branches in little flurries about his shoulders as the older man leaned towards Lat. “We agreed to work to overthrow French rule and set up a government of workers, peasants and soldiers. But most important of all our new Marxist-Leninist party is supported by the international proletariat -— by all the oppressed people of the world. The party and its goals will survive the death of individual leaders. If you are killed or imprisoned, what happens to your society?” 

“A man with a will of iron is not so easily destroyed,” replied Lai fiercely. 

The man who called himself Nguyen the Patriot drew slowly on his cigarette, then suddenly his face lit up with a childlike radiance. “A true revolutionary cannot be a man of iron,” lie said softly. “An iron rod can be broken with a single blow. A revolutionary should be more like our own bamboo that bends before the wind and springs back again. Vietnam needs revolutionaries who are flexible, revolutionaries who don’t try to cut themselves off from life — revolutionaries who are sensitive to the winds of events and needs of their people.” 

Stung by the rebuke, Lat glared angrily at the man before him. 

“The greatest need of the people now is for a leader who will march bravely and openly at their head — not one who continues to hide abroad!” He paused, his chest rising and falling quickly in his agitation. “The provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh are seething with revolt. Do you intend to go there and lead the peasants?” 

Before he replied the older man calmly studied all the roads leading towards the bridge once more. Then he turned the full brilliance of his gaze back to Eat. “I’m a professional revolutionary. The Comintern makes sure that every party in the world is strengthened by the support of proletarian internationalism, I am always on strict orders. My itinerary is carefully prescribed.”