Saigon (45 page)

The drone of the duty Dakota taking off to drop guidance flares over the darkening hills reached faintly into the log and sandbag hunker of Colonel de Castries’ chief of staff as Paul and Joseph settled themselves on facing army cots. The ground shook as the plane passed along the nearby airstrip, and Paul covered his own tin mug and dropped a hand over Joseph’s an instant before a shower of fine red powdered earth drifted down onto them from the low ceiling. 

“if you choose to live like a mole, Joseph, you must learn a few of the mole’s tricks to make life bearable.” The French officer laughed affably and raise his drink to toast the American. “Courvoisier fine champagne isn’t at its best drunk out of an enamel service mug, but it tastes worse mixed with the red dust of subterranean Dien Bien Phu — Salut!” 

“Salut. “Joseph lifted his mug smilingly in response, drank, then leaned back wearily on one elbow. He had spent the day touring the hills and installations of the fortified camp with different escorts, and the green war correspondent’s fatigues in which he had trudged through China and Korea were streaked with dust. The notebook in his breast pocket was crammed with details of conversations he’d had with a dozen different officers and NCOs, and the camera he invariably carried slung around his neck had consumed several rolls of film in the course of the day. Paul had set up a sleeping cot for him, beside his own in the bunker, and during the previous half-hour, Joseph had watched the French lieutenant-colonel wading conscientiously through his chief-of- staff duties with the help of a junior officer. The leather-bound field telephones on the makeshift desks whirred constantly, piles of supply papers came and went, and Paul rose Frequently from his chair to update cellophane-covered maps and stores charts with colored chalks. Every time a shell landed in the vicinity of the camp, clouds of fine red earth showered down from the low roof, and the straw mats covering the walls did little to restrain the damp, sour smell of the earth that permeated everything in the dugout. 

“Needless to say, Joseph, this isn’t my idea of what soldiering should be,” said Paul, ruefully waving a hand around the bunker when his aide had gone. “I’d take a (lay patrolling in the mountains any time for every hour I have to spend here.” He paused and sipped his drink again. “But I’m glad you’ve turned up because it’s reminded rue how long it’s been since I went out. Arid to put that right I’ve persuaded Colonel de Castries to let me go with the patrol that’s taking you into the hills in the morning.” 

“That’s great news,” said Joseph, grinning, 

“Yes, I’ll be able to keep an eye on you — make sure you don’t stray into any smoky native huts.’ Paul smiled back at him with real pleasure. In his late forties, the Frenchman had lost none of that infectious warmth which had helped make them firm friends the moment they met nearly thirty years before, His close-cropped hair was now steel gray above his temples but his body was still spare and fit-looking, although there was a new gauntness in his features that made him look more like his father than he had done in his youth. 

“Can we expect any help then from the local tribes in these parts?” asked Joseph, grinning facetiously. 

“No.” Paul sighed exaggeratedly and shook his head. “There aren’t any friendly Moi chieftains offering us ternum anymore. Those days are gone forever.” 

Despite Paul’s cheerfulness, Joseph thought he detected a note of sadness and resignation in his voice, and this filled him with fresh feelings of guilt and remorse. He had been to Indochina perhaps a dozen times in the past few years to cover the war, and during his early visits Paul had always been away from Saigon on duty with the French Expeditionary Corps. What had begun as tentative visits to his home in the hope of finding him there had developed as time went by into carefully calculated efforts to arrive when Paul was away. Almost without their realizing it, both he and Lan had begun to go back on the firm decision they’d taken in 1945 to go their separate ways. After the brief euphoria of finding Tuyet together, they had been forced to face up to the stark reality that with the ending of the war, their paths must diverge once more; with young families and partners dependent upon them in countries on opposite sides of the world, there had seemed in the end to be only one choice. Joseph had insisted on making arrangements to help support Tuyet financially while she was brought up, at Lan’s suggestion, in her brother Tam’s household, but beyond that they had agreed there should be no further contact between them. 

When he first returned to Saigon with the Gazette five years later, however, Joseph had become aware within moments of seeing her again that Lan, like himself, was still torn between loyalty to her marriage vows and her feelings for him. She had said enough to make it clear that she and Paul were not close, and during his subsequent visits, although she had insisted on stopping short of any outright act of disloyalty, she had given in to her emotions sufficiently to continue meeting him secretly. That alone had induced in Joseph intense feelings of guilt, and each time he’d seen her he’d anxiously sought reassurance that Paul knew nothing of their meetings or Tuyet’s existence. A few days before his first visit to Dien Bien Phu, he had learned that Paul had been appointed chief of staff to the camp’s commander, and realizing that a meeting between them was at last unavoidable in the beleaguered camp, he had promised himself that he would try to tell Paul the truth; but now that they were face to face in the bunker, Joseph found he couldn’t keep that promise; seeing the French officer smiling cheerfully despite the obvious dangers and disappointments he faced caused his resolve to desert him completely. 

“Do you still suffer any ill-effects, Paul, from the wound you got in Saigon?” he asked lamely instead. 

Paul shook his head. “They don’t keep cripples on in the ‘paras.’ The shots were high, and two of the bullets went straight through me. I was lucky.” He looked at Joseph for a moment with the same mischievous twinkle in his eyes that the American remembered from the reception in the grand palais of the governor of Cochin China — then his gaunt features fell into serious lines again. “But there are more kinds of ill-effects than just physical ones. I’ve never forgotten the look on Loc’s face as he screamed for his guard to kill me. From that day I knew that there was nothing I could do to wipe out the memory of what my father’s generation did here. The agony runs too deep.” 

“And how have you managed to keep going, knowing that?” 

“By trying to be a good soldier and not thinking too much, perhaps. A soldier, remember, isn’t supposed to reason why—just to do and die.” 

“But that can’t have been easy in your position. Not many officers in the Expeditionary Corps have your long connections with the country.” 

“No, it hasn’t been easy. And it hasn’t been possible to keep the poison from creeping into my family life.” 

Joseph looked sharply at his companion; Lan had always loyally refused ‘to discuss her relationship with Paul in any detail, arid this sudden frank admission that all was not well between them made Joseph’s pulse quicken. “How do you mean?’ he asked casually. 

“It took me a long time to realize that I probably married Lan to prove that all Frenchmen weren’t colonial rapists and galley- masters. I think I was more idealistic than I knew at the time. Unconsciously I saw my marriage as living proof of my commitment to the Vietnamese — my determination to change things, if you like.” Paul shrugged and picked up the bottle of cognac to replenish their mugs. “But because of that, there was probably always something missing. We love our son deeply, but what I first thought was love on my part was shot through with a lot of wishful thinking. And with Lan, I know now there was always something lacking.” 

A rumble of distant explosions shook the bunker, bringing down a new flurry of red dust from the ceiling, and on his cot Joseph stared fixedly into his drink, trying riot to betray the new sense of hope surging through him. 

“In a funny way the marital bed has been divided down the middle by politics for a long time.” Paul tried to make the remark lightly, but he couldn’t keep a note of regret from his voice. “It all has a terrible logic, somehow.” For a minute or two they sat without speaking, listening to the distant sounds of the garrison’s B-26s attacking the heights around the valley with napalm. When Joseph finally looked up he found the Frenchman smiling at him with an expression of undisguised affection on his face. “It’s good to be able to tell someone, you know, Joseph,” he said quietly. “Those aren’t the kind of things I can say lightly to my brother officers.” 

“I guess not.” To his dismay, Joseph found he couldn’t look his friend in the eye, and raised his mug hurriedly to his lips to hide his discomfort. 

“What about you, Joseph? How is that side of your life?” 

“All right, I guess. I have two fine sons who’re growing up fast. My wife and I get along well enough.” Joseph looked up to find Paul watching him closely, and he smiled with an effort. “I suppose no marriage is all fun.” 

Paul didn’t reply, but continued to look quizzically at him. “Are you sure you’re keeping to our old rules of total honesty with one another, Joseph? You seem a little on edge — that’s not like you.” 

“I’m fine, Paul —just fine.”Joseph took another nervous pull at his cognac. “It’s you I’m worried about. Have you ever thought of resigning your commission and getting out before it’s too late? Couldn’t you take Lan and your son back to France where you belong?” 

As he watched for Paul’s response, Joseph wondered if in his anxiety to change the subject he’d just destroyed his last chance of persuading Lan to make her future with him; but to his relief the French officer shook his head slowly from side to side. 

“It may seem strange, mon aim, but I find it hard to think of France as my country now. Perhaps I’m a bit like sonic of those Legionnaires out there in the trenches — perhaps I don’t have a country to call my own anymore. I’d feel like a fish out of water in France. I’ve spent more of my life in Vietnam than anywhere else. 

I’ve never considered doing anything except seeing it through.” 

“But for what? For the sake of all those colonial shareholders in Paris who are still skimming off profits from the rubber trade, the mines and their shipping and banking interests?” 

“No.” Paul shook his head more emphatically this time. “For the same reason that your own country has poured three billion dollars into our Indochina war chest already — to stop Moscow and Peking from taking over. We’re fighting Chinese weapons and training now — but if we can hold the Communists off until the other Vietnamese nationalists have set up a strong government, maybe they will still be able to build themselves the kind of future I’ve always hoped for.” 

Joseph stood up suddenly and began pacing agitatedly back and forth. “I’ve never believed we should think of Vietnam as another Korea, Paul — they’re two different kinds of problems. We had a chance to make a friend of Ho Chi Minh nine years ago and we botched it. But from what I’ve see here today, if Dien Bien Phu is going to be a model for defeating world Communism the West’s lost already.” He stopped and turned an apologetic face towards his friend. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to seem unsympathetic. But damn it, this camp looks like the nearest thing to a site for mass military suicide I’ve ever seen in my life.” 

Paul shrugged. “I’ve got some private reservations of my own, of course, but every day you’ll hear officers here telling one another that we’re only frightened of one thing — the Communists deciding riot to come down and attack us. Until now we’ve never been able to maneuver their main force into a position where it’s become a concentrated target. It’s always been like chasing a will-o’-the-wisp — you know that. General Navarre is confident, Colonel de Castries is confident. Colonel Piroth is sure our defenses are sound.” Paul shrugged again. “There’s no choice left now. We’ve got to put our shoulders to the wheel and push.” 

“But your pilots aren’t confident,” retorted Joseph. “And they’re your lifeline. The monsoon season’s coming on fast, and if your air support goes down The American hesitated, his expression indicating that the prospect was too gruesome to express in words. 

Paul got up from the cot, holding the bottle of cognac loosely by its neck, and led Joseph by the arm towards the sack-covered doorway. “Let’s go up and get some air, mon vieux, before we turn in, shall we? It’s stifling in here” 

Outside, at the top of the sap, they watched the duty Dakota circling above the mountains, dropping flares. From time to time one of Colonel Piroth’s artillery batteries opened up, and the exploding shells set patches of jungle alight high on the distant mountain slopes; .beside Joseph, Paul sucked the cool night air noisily into his lungs. 

“You know, Joseph,” he said at last with a sigh, “the French are no longer the only people doing crazy things in Vietnam. If the ‘Amorous American’ went in search of his dusky princess in her Moi village today, do you know what he’d find?” 

Joseph shook his head. 

“He’d find she no longer displayed her naked bosom proudly to the world. Such sights have offended the eyes of your newly arrived American missionaries and some of your Economic Aid Mission’s funds are being spent on free brassieres for the Moi women. A new ‘mission civilisatrice’ is under way — the uplifting American way of life is beginning to penetrate into Vietnam.” 

Joseph chuckled quietly. “You’re not serious, Paul.” 

“But I am, mon vieux. And that’s not all. Your countrymen are trying to teach the Moi and the Vietnamese peasants Western food hygiene — they distribute cheese wrapped in cellophane to the villages, and the peasants don’t know what it is. They try all kinds of things and even wash themselves with it, thinking it might be soap. So you see, your Moi princess, when you find her, will be sobbing bitterly in the corner of her hut, that beautiful bosom once so proud and free pinched tight inside a wired American brassiere. What’s more, her whole body will reek of Wisconsin cheese as well because she’s mistakenly washed herself with it.”