Saigon (58 page)

“Watching a man burn himself to death in public is an experience too awful to describe accurately in words,” she said in a voice that trembled. “So I won’t try — but the Buddhists of South Vietnam couldn’t have chosen a more dramatic way of expressing the growing opposition to the government of President Diem, which they see as oppressive and corrupt. The monk has chosen to take his own life in a fountain of flame in Saigon because the Buddhists are convinced now that their country would be better served by a different government. And this horrifying scene should make America and the rest of the Western world think too — because the United States is now lending massive military and economic support to the government here in a spreading war against Communism.” 

Naomi Boyce-Lewis paused and glanced around at Thich Quang Duc; in the extremes of agony his blackening body was beginning to twitch involuntarily from time to time, but still his fierce resolve held him upright in the lotus posture, and with the aid of a megaphone, one of the watching monks had begun to chant repeatedly in English and Vietnamese: “A Buddhist priest burns himself to death — a Buddhist priest becomes a martyr!” Cloth banners bearing the same slogans in Vietnamese and English were also now being unfurled by other monks, and Naomi read them quickly before turning back to the camera. 

“Death by burning may seem to us to be a particularly barbaric and savage way to make a political protest — but it shouldn’t be thought that South Vietnam’s Buddhists don’t know how to put their message across in the modern world. They were careful to ensure that a few selected Western journalists would be present here, myself among them — and those English banners and slogans make it clear their protest is as much directed at the ears and eyes of Washington as at their own government. But when all that’s been said, standing here today still leaves me with one overwhelming feeling — a deep sense of revulsion and horror 

The moment she’s finished speaking, she turned with professional deliberation to look again towards the dying monk, and the cameraman used his telephoto lens to move into a new close-up of the fiery figure. Almost ten minutes had passed since Thich Quang Duc struck the match that had set his body ablaze, and at last he had begun to sway from side to side. New shrieks and moans of anguish rose from the watching crowd, then suddenly the monk’s body toppled over backwards in the pool of flame. For several seconds his arms and legs jerked spasmodically and his fingers clutched vainly at the air beyond the shroud of fire enveloping him; then he flung his arms wide, as though in one last act of supplication, and his whole body shuddered convulsively before he finally lay still. 

By the time the last of the flames had died away. a truck drew up carrying a simple coffin, but the rigidity of Thich Quang Duc’s limbs, outstretched in his death agonies made it impossible for his corpse to be placed inside. After a hurried consultation, half-a-dozen monks removed their orange robes, bound them about the body and set off to carry their burden to the Xa Loi pagoda, a quarter of a mile away. The circle of demonstrators opened to let them pass, then they regrouped into a column and fell into step behind. As the procession wound its way through the heavy morning traffic, a bell in the pagoda began to toll a solemn death knell, and the crowds that had gathered at the intersection began drifting away, speaking in uneasy whispers of what they’d witnessed. As he moved off towards his embassy car, Guy Sherman stopped to touch Naomi lightly on the shoulder. 

“That was a very impressive performance indeed,” he said quietly. 

She glanced around at him in puzzlement, uncertain of his meaning. “Are you talking about the Buddhist monk — or me?” 

“Both of you,” he said raising one eyebrow slightly. “And I’m looking forward more than ever now to talking to you tonight.” 

By eight-fifteen that evening the terrace of the Continental Palace Hotel was filling up with its regular nightly crowd of Americans from the embassy, the aid agencies and the U.S. Military Assistance Command. Most of the soldiers, still under orders not to flaunt their uniforms in public more than necessary, were dressed in civilian clothes, and here and there a few sleek middle-class Vietnamese with government connections were talking earnestly with their white-skinned benefactors. Guy Sherman had arrived early to make sure of the table in the corner of the terrace where he could sit with his back to the wall and scan the sidewalks of Duong Tu Do — Freedom Street — as the old Rue Catinat had been renamed on the departure of the French; from that vantage point, too, he was able to watch the exits from the hotel without shifting in his seat, and he spotted the English television reporter the moment she stepped out onto the terrace. Her pale blond hair, normally pinned back tidily from her face, fell in soft waves to her shoulders, and as she came towards him he saw that she had forsaken her workday safari jacket and trousers for a fashionable suit of natural cream shantung that looked as if it might have been tailored in Paris. She moved with an easy assurance, obviously aware that many male eyes were turning to follow her, and she paused only once to talk to a waiter. By the time she reached Guy’s table he was on his feet holding one of the deep wickerwork chairs for her, and he smilingly waved aside her murmured apology for lateness. 

“Don’t worry about it — those fifteen minutes gave me the chance to work out why you choose to stay here in this crumbling French hotel when you could have a nice modern air-conditioned room at the Caravelle on the other side of the square. I’ve decided that it has to be the faded red damask and the cracked chandeliers — they must bring back happy memories of imperial grandeur for all you dyed-in-the-wool European colonialists, don’t they?” 

He smiled teasingly as he spoke, but to his surprise she sat down without responding; for a moment she glanced around the crowded terrace, acknowledging the friendly waves she received from the huddle of resident American foreign correspondents seated at a distant table. But when she turned to look at Guy, her face was serious again. 

“The last letter I ever received from my father was written on Continental Palace notepaper,” she explained, her tone distant. “He wrote to me from here the day before he was killed in the autumn of 1945. I was nine at the time. and I’d been waiting for five years for him to come home — I suppose that’s the main reason why I stay here.” 

The smile faded instantly from the American’s face. “Naomi, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I hope you’ll forgive my undiplomatic gaffe.” 

A waiter arrived at the moment with a chilled vin blanc cassis that she had obviously ordered herself on the way to the table and she sipped it for a moment in silence. Then she sighed and smiled wearily at him. “I’m sorry too .— I didn’t mean to sound quite so offensive.” She closed her eyes and pressed her fist against the space between her eyebrows. “Today’s events haven’t left me with much in the way of emotional reserves, I’m afraid.” 

“There’s no need to apologize at all,” said Guy hastily. “You must have had a helluva time. Did you get your film out okay?” 

She nodded. “I went to the expense of sending my sound recordist out to Hong Kong with the spools hidden under his shirt — I couldn’t risk the film being confiscated at the airport. But ever since the story broke, my London newsroom’s been clamoring for more explanatory commentary by telephone.” 

“They’re not the only ones. The stills taken by one of the wire service men here have already hit the front pages of the late editions back home — and every damned office in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon is screaming frantically for authoritative explanations.” 

Naomi continued to sip her drink without taking her eyes from his face. “And what’s your embassy telling them?” 

He glanced about him with studied casualness for a second or two, then peered intently into his glass of bourbon. “I wish there was a clear and simple answer to that question — but there isn’t.” 

“I thought you said this morning, Guy, that this was to be a two-way trade.” In using his Christian name for the first time, she seemed to inject a subtle hint of intimacy in to her voice, and he looked up to find her smiling archly at him. 

“That’s right, Naomi, I did,” he said slowly. “But this may be one instance where your guess is as good as mine. Our so-called experts on oriental religions in the embassy don’t even seem to be able to agree among themselves on such simple damned things as exactly how many Buddhists there are in this country. You can take your pick on any number between twenty and eighty percent of the population — then every figure will be qualified by talk of Confucianism, Taoism and the worship of spirits. The one thing they seem to be sure about is that there are only a million and a half Vietnamese Catholics — and most of them are either in the government or the officer corps of the army.” He sighed loudly in his exasperation. “What are you telling your viewers in England?” 

“I spent hours haunting Xa Loi and one or two other smaller pagodas and talked to several venerable old monks who weren’t seeking out Western journalists. One of them told me that ritual suicide has never been seen as an act of despair in Vietnam — it’s traditionally been an honorable and unanswerable means of proving virtue and demonstrating the guilt of a more powerful opponent. He reminded me too that a great river doesn’t rise in flood because it’s pulled from the front — it’s the massive weight of water pushing from behind that unleashes the torrent. When I asked him exactly what he meant by that, lie just gave me a toothy smile and said Buddhist priests would never try to lead the people unless they were absolutely certain that their feelings had already reached a flashpoint.” 

“And did you build your piece around that information?” 

Naomi nodded. “Yes, I think President Diem’s trigger-happy brother probably did the government a great disservice when he rolled his tanks over those few Buddhist marchers complaining about the banning of their flag in Hue. It seems to have sent apathetic Buddhists flooding back into the pagodas in their thousands and brought to a head all the resentment that has been building up against Diem for years. Some of the bonzes. told us privately weeks ago they were planning a public suicide. Of course we could all be wrong, even now — the Viet Cong might somehow have stage-managed the whole business. But I suppose we’d need a friendly CIA man to tell us the score on that.” 

She smiled mischievously, shrugging her shoulders out of her jacket at the same time, and Guy saw that she wore a sheer silk blouse beneath it; in the act of turning to hang the jacket on her chairback, the thin stuff of the blouse stretched tight across the points of her breasts, and the filmy lace and shoulder straps of her brassiere gleamed tantalizingly white suddenly against her suntanned skin. In that moment he was seized by a powerful urge to see her beautiful, disdainful face clenched tight in the extremes of sexual abandon, to hear her well-bred English voice moaning and gasping with pleasure beneath him, and he drew in a long, slow breath as he waited for her to turn and face him again. When she did, he looked directly into her eyes and lowered his voice. 

“So far, Naomi, there’s no evidence of Viet Cong involvement at all — although it’s sure as hell the kind of trick they’d like to pull.” He paused and let the corners of his mouth relax in a confidential smile. “But if we get anything On it, let me assure you you’ll be the first to know — unattributably, of course.” 

“Of course.” She held his gaze as she drained her glass and allowed him to take it from her hand when it was empty. While he summoned the waiter, she stared thoughtfully out into the traffic-filled plaza surrounding the old Opera House which had been converted to house the National Assembly. The nightly swarm of cars and motor scooters that had flooded into Saigon under the American economic aid programs were filling the humid night air with their acrid exhaust fumes; many of the scooters were being ridden by slender Vietnamese girls, and the split skirts of their gossamer-light ao dai fluttered in their wake like the wings of butterflies. All along Tu Do she could see more evidence of change; gaudy neon signs in English pointed the way to countless dimly lit bars with names like “The Shack,” “The Capitol,” “Fifth Avenue” and through their open doors the raucous jangle of Western pop music could be heard day and night. In their gloomy interiors she knew that painted Vietnamese bar girls waited to welcome the growing population of American GIs whenever they took time off from fighting the Viet Cong, and she found herself wondering how different her father would have found the French colonial capital he’d last known in 1945. Would he even recognize the tawdry, honky-tonk hybrid city that was now part Asian, part Western but becoming increasingly corrupted, it seemed to her, by American aid and spending power. 

“Here’s to Anglo-American cooperation, Naomi!” Guy’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she turned back to the table to find him holding a new drink in his hand. Picking up the vin blanc cassis that a waiter had just placed in front of her, she clinked her glass against his. 

“Long may it thrive.” She returned his smile and fumbled in her handbag until she found a small sheet of Continental Palace notepaper on which she’d written the name of the Buddhist monk who’d alerted her that morning to the suicide. She placed it face-down on the table, still smiling, and pushed it towards Guy but didn’t release it. “Here’s the first installment from England 

but before I part with it I’d like to ask you one or two questions.” 

“Fire away. As many as you like.” 

“Why do you need my sources so badly? You must have your own at the embassy.” 

“Sure we have some —-- but this situation is so damned volatile and not a little unfathomable. So every lead we can get our hands on could be vital.” 

“But doesn’t the confusion make you and your colleagues a little uneasy sometimes? Don’t events like today’s make you worry about the wisdom of America’s role here?” 

“Naomi, we don’t set policy at the embassy. We just try to supply a clear picture of what’s happening here. It’s for others in Washington to make the decisions— you know that.” 

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t have opinions.” 

“Of course not. But believe me, everybody in the embassy is one hundred percent behind the military effort we’re making here — especially me. I’m sure deep in my bones what we’re doing is right.” He put down his drink and leaned earnestly towards her across the table. “What’s happening here, Naomi, is part of a worldwide Communist offensive. They call it a ‘war of liberation’ in their doublespeak — but they’re using the same kind of subversion and infiltration techniques here as they’re using all over the world. This way the Communists in Moscow and Peking can chip away at the West’s security country by country without risking a major confrontation. Unless we make a firm stand in South Vietnam and anywhere else they choose to fight, the West could go under without a single missile being fired or a single border being crossed. Communism’s got to be stopped 

don’t make the mistake, Naomi, of thinking this isn’t an important war. It might even be more important than World War Two.” 

‘I don’t think anyone in Whitehall would disagree with any of that, Guy — they wouldn’t work up as much enthusiasm and conviction as you do, of course, but they would go along with the general philosophy.” She smiled and implied admiration of his energy by hr tone of voice. “But what I was really wondering is whether a war like this can be won — especially after my experience at Moc Linh.” 

“Moc Linh wasn’t typical,” said Guy quickly. “The war’s being fought on two fronts and being won on both — that’s an inside view, believe me, from someone with access to all the important data. We’re keeping the Viet Cong on the move now with fast deployment of the ARVN troops in helicopters and armored rivercraft. You’ve seen the Hueys with their 7.62-millimeter mini- guns and rockets, you saw the T-28s and the effectiveness of our artillery and napalm attacks —- we’re smoking them out fast now with our superior technology. And on the political front we’ve got ten million people safely walled up now inside the same kind of fortified hamlets that you British used to win your ten-year war against Communism in Malaya. You’ve seen the bamboo palisades, haven’t you? Don’t they look a little like the old cavalry stockades out West? Well take it from me, Naomi, we’re winning out here in the East as surely as we won in the old West,” 

“But the French fought here for eight years and killed possibly a million Viet Minh and still they lost. Doesn’t that ever give you sleepless nights?” 

“The French didn’t light the right way, Naomi. And they didn’t have our technology. What’s more they were colonials. We Americans, remember, were the first nation to throw off the colonial yoke. We’re not tainted with a colonial past.” He rolled his eyes humorously. “Funny how easily you English forget that.” 

“Perhaps none of us think enough about history.” 

Guy shook his head emphatically. “I don’t think that’s true. I believe worrying too much about history impedes action. Determination and the will to act are the vital ingredients in a situation like this. Those two qualities are what sets America apart. I guess that’s the chief thing my father taught me. He’s represented Virginia in the United States Senate for over forty years now living by those principles.” 

“But ‘determination and the will to act’ aren’t bringing home the bacon, are they, according to those gentlemen over there?” She nodded in the direction of the resident American correspondents. “They’ve been out on a lot more patrols than I have, and they’re not sending glowing reports back home to their editors, are they?”