Saigon (60 page)

Madame Nhu leaned forward suddenly and brought a tiny fist crashing down onto the lacquered desk top. “Yes! We’ll smash the Buddhists! Smash them, make no mistake about that.” She gazed at the American, her eyes blazing, her tiny frame shaking with the ardor of her words. “No matter what the rest of the world thinks of us.” 

For a moment there was a silence in the room. Then Nhu shifted impatiently in his chair. “So, Monsieur Sherman, I think you have some idea of our position now, yes? But about the CIA’s attitude we’re not so sure. Is it turning against us — becoming a Buddhist sympathizer?” 

Guy sighed wearily. “I get a little tired of reminding people the CIA doesn’t have a policy, monsieur counselor. The Agency serves the U.S. government by gathering information. I’m here because we wish to understand your thinking. We know your influence and the influence of Madame Nhu on the president are of vital importance. We want to keep our lines of communication to you open.” 

“But sometimes to keep channels of communication functioning smoothly, Monsieur Sherman, a demonstration of goodwill is vital,” said Nhu sourly. “Otherwise we might find it impossible to push unwelcome thoughts about you from our heads.” 

“I’d anticipated something like that. Americans can be good at reading character, too.” Guy smiled suddenly and reached into an inside pocket of his jacket. Taking out a folded sheet of paper, he placed it on the desk in front of Nhu, then rose and walked to the door. He paused with one hand on the doorknob and looked back to find Madame Nhu peering over her husband’s shoulder at the sheet of Continental Palace notepaper. “That’s the name of the monk who tipped off the British television crew — and probably the rest of the foreign press corps as well. I thought you might be interested to have it.” 

As he turned to close the door behind him, Guy saw Madame Nhu take the sheet of paper eagerly from her husband, and Nhu began smiling his cold humorless smile once more. 

In the fading light of a soft August evening the hewn granite stonework of the Cornell University buildings at Ithaca, New York, had taken on a hallowed, ancient air; the high, neo-Gothic gables were casting chasms of dark shadow across the tree-lined lawns, and the muted trills of birds preparing to roost for the night deepened the mellow tranquility of the deserted, vacation- time campus. Only Joseph Sherman’s long-striding figure disturbed the stillness when he emerged from the main entrance of Uris Hall, which since 1950 had housed the Department of Far Eastern Studies’ Southeast Asia Program; he had been conducting a vacation seminar, and as he headed across the dappled grass towards one of the faculty houses, there was a certain restless agitation in his step that suggested he had never been able to reconcile himself fully to the reflective, unhurried ways of the academic world. Although he was in his early fifties, his fair hair was flecked only lightly with gray; lean, broad-shouldered and upright, he had retained the bearing of the athlete he had been in his youth, but the habitual frown he wore and his tightly drawn mouth hinted at tensions beneath the surface that were other than physical. In front of his door, his frown deepened suddenly as his eye fell on the latest edition of the New York Times; set in the kind of heavy type reserved for stories of major importance and spread across four columns of the front page, its main headline proclaimed: “South Vietnam’s Crisis Deepens — Diem’s Forces Raid Pagodas” and he picked up the newspaper quickly and began scanning the story while opening the door. 

Inside, his attention was diverted momentarily by an envelope lying on the hail table where his cleaner had left it; it was edged with red and blue airmail stripes, and the handwriting and the Saigon postmark told him immediately that it was a letter from his son Gary. He stopped reading the news story long enough to tuck it into his jacket pocket, then wandered distractedly into a sitting room decorated exclusively with oriental furnishings. Chinese rugs covered the floors, inlaid lacquer paintings and calligraphy scrolls from the Imperial City of Hue hung on the walls, and several screens bearing Annamese dragon motifs were crowded among tasseled brocade divans that once had graced the homes of mandarin courtiers in Peking. Every table and sideboard bore clusters of Vietnamese porcelain, jade figurines, gilded bodhisattvas or incense burners, and several sloe-eyed porcelain figures of life size were draped with collections of brilliant-hued court robes from Indochina and Thailand. But standing in the center of the room, holding the newspaper, Joseph seemed for once oblivious to the art objects he had collected so fastidiously during his years in the Far East. According to the news agency dispatch from Saigon datelined August 21, hundreds of armed soldiers and police had stormed into the Xa Loi pagoda and other Buddhist temples during the night, and Joseph shook his head in disbelief as he read through the details: several monks were believed to have been killed, hundreds had been dragged off to prison, and President Diem had declared martial law. Tanks and armored cars had taken up position at major intersections in Saigon, the wire service reported, and troops were patrolling the streets everywhere. In an official statement, the president’s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu had described the Buddhists as “Reds in yellow robes” and accused their leaders of plotting to organize a coup d’état. 

When he had finished reading, Joseph flung the newspaper aside with a muffled curse and because the room was beginning to grow dark he switched on a silk-shaded lamp before tugging the airmail letter from Gary out of his pocket. The handwriting on the envelope, like Gary himself, was neat, precise, military, and the letter inside had been penned on the headed, airmail-weight notepaper of the Caravelle Hotel. To read it Joseph sat down by the lamp, and he scanned each line with unconcealed anxiety as though he feared the pages might contain information he desperately hoped not to find. 

“Dear Dad,” the letter began, 

I guess I was pretty surprised to get your letter after all these years of silence between us. My reactions at first were “mixed,” I must admit — for reasons which are maybe still too painful to go into in detail. For a day or two I swore to myself I wouldn’t answer you at all but after I’d read it a few times I. think I started to realize that maybe I ought to be glad you cared enough to write at all after the things I said to you during our last painful meeting at the museum. I also started to realize as well that it would be brainless to turn my back on someone with as deep a knowledge of this country as you have — especially when it’s becoming impossible to understand what the hell’s going on around here. 

So when I got a much-delayed weekend pass to Saigon, I brought your letter with me so that I could do my bit to help along the thaw. I also decided that for the time being at least I’d let sleeping dogs lie as you wisely did in your letter and keep off the ticklish subject of you, Mom arid the past. Let me just say that with the passage of time I’ve come to regret a little the ferocity of some of the things I said at the museum. As I grow older I guess I’m beginning to realize that nobody’s all bad or all good and that there are almost always two sides to every question. Now that I’ve got that off my chest I’m going to stick to asking you a few dumb questions and telling you lust how goddamned hard the soldier’s life is out here. As a precaution I’m also dropping this into an anonymous mailbox down the Street rather than submit it to the normal censorship channels. Having the chance to do that of course is something akin to being in heaven right now. The civilized delights of this exotic city are very welcome after another six weeks slogging through the paddies chasing the goddamned Viet Cong. I was beginning to think my feet and legs would stay permanently black from the mud but now the odd glass of iced beer is doing wonders for restoring my morale — to say nothing of the gorgeous Vietnamese girls in their flimsy. Figure-hugging outfits. 

And while we’re on that subject don’t be too surprised, will you, I’ll come home some day with a slant-eyed maiden on my arm? The girls here as you must know are a sight for sore eyes although I can assure you of one thing — it won’t be anyone like the president’s so-called first lady, Madame Nhu. She’s maybe one hell of a looker but she’s known around here now as the “Dragon Lady” because she’s just banned taxi dancing, the “twist,” prostitution, divorce, contraception, abortion, cockfighting — in fact every damned thing that makes life worth living for the average Vietnamese man. Rumor has it that a foreign ambassador who was her lover threw her over in favor of a taxi dancer and in accordance with the “hell-bath-no-fury-like-a- woman-scorned” principle, she shut down all the dancing shops as an act of revenge. I wouldn’t go on about all this, I)ad, if it didn’t lead me to my first dumb question: why in heaven’s name did we decide to go to bat in the first place for a government headed by people like the “Dragon Lady” her husband and her brother-in-law? The way they’re handling the Buddhist, for instance, has got us all baffled. While we spend weeks on end up to our asses in mud in the delta trying to win the war, they seem hell-bent on losing it for us in Saigon and the other cities. The South Vietnamese troops in my Unit have taken to wearing little patches of yellow cloth supposedly cut from the robes used to carry the body of that Buddhist monk who burned himself to death. This, they tell me, demonstrates their support for the Buddhists who’re trying to overthrow the government they’re fighting for! What’s more, Buddhist and Catholic officers are refusing to eat together — can you make sense of that? I’m damned if I can. A South Vietnamese officer I respect told me the other day that Buddhists are very susceptible to Communist influence — but hell, almost everybody in South Vietnam except the Diem family seems to be Buddhist, so what in God’s name are we doing here? (That’s the last dumb question this time round, I promise.) 

There’s some had feeling among our guys out here that Americans are dying now for a government more concerned with hanging on to power than beating the Viet Cong. We’re sacrificing massive amounts of dollars and American byes but he Viets show no sign of gratitude 

quite the reverse. Our ARVN opposite numbers most of the time are downright arrogant with us. A lot of them give the impression they don’t want us here at all. I don’t understand why we don’t get off our butts and get tougher with them. I tried to tackle Uncle Guy on this subject when I met him for a drink at the Continental yesterday hut he was very vague. He more or less implied that it was all too complicated to explain to a mere army lieutenant. He hardly stayed five minutes then rushed off on sonic mysterious political errand which he implied was highly secret and very important. The air here, as you’ve no doubt read, is thick right now with rumors of coups and countercoups. 

But, despite all the confusion and the dissatisfaction, it’s surprising how some U.S. officers here are developing a really strong sense of commitment, of mission, almost. The jungles, the endless rice fields and the inscrutable natives seem to cast a strange kind of spell on some of us. Volunteering for a second tour isn’t uncommon at all anymore and I’m not sure the paddies aren’t beginning to get to me a little, as the saying goes. Perhaps not being able to fathom it all out is part of the peculiar fascination of Vietnam. But more than anything else any American who comes to this stricken little country these days is invariably horrified by the tragedy he can run into every day — it seems never-ending. Every officer I’ve talked to has his own version, some experience or other of terrible suffering, almost always accepted passively. With me it was something that happened at Moc Linh, the ambush you probably read about in the papers. My ARVN opposite number seemed a really nice guy for a change — just before the VC hit us he was saying how much he hated the Communists because they’d tortured and killed his father during the French war, A few minutes later both his legs were blown off by a mine and later I found they’d put a bullet neatly through his left temple just for good measure. Maybe it was because he was my age and rank but somehow it’s personalized the war for me, made me a little more determined to make the Communists pay in some way the next time we catch up with them. 

I guess I’m sorry to end this letter on such a downbeat note but I don’t want to leave you with the impression that this war isn’t a pretty grim business. I guess that’s another thing that made me want to write — thinking that if I left it any longer I might not be able to. So let me say, Dad, I appreciated your letter and I’ll try to respond, God willing, if you want to write again. Now a chilled beer or two in a shady sidewalk café calls so I’ll wrap it up there. 

Yours ever, 

Gary 

Joseph let the hand holding the letter fall into his lap, anti he stared unseeing into the darkness beyond the circle of light. The muscles of his face tightened for a moment as though he were enduring physical pain; then his expression relaxed again and he leaned back on the divan with his eyes closed. The sound of the front door opening and closing reached him, followed by soft footsteps in the hail, but he didn’t turn or rise. A moment later the shadowy figure of a young Asian girl with long, straight black hair reaching almost to her waist appeared in the doorway. Because of the hot night she wore brief shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt and thong sandals on her bare feet. 

“Are you all right, Joseph?” 

The anxiety in her tone made him open his eyes, and as she hurried across the room towards him, her bare thighs shone like polished amber in the dull glow of the lamp. She stopped beside the divan and laid a tentative hand upon his shoulder, a frown of concern crinkling her smooth forehead. “You were so still, honey, and the house so quiet Her voice trailed off and she glanced down at the letter he still held in his hand. “Has the mailman brought bad news?” 

He shook his head, laying the letter aside, and stood up. “No, Emerald, I’m okay — it’s just a letter from my son Gary in Vietnam.” 

Beside him she seemed tiny, the top of her dark head reaching only halfway up his chest. “Then I haven’t come here in vain,” she said, cocking her head on one side and smiling up at him as she held out a sheaf of manuscript paper she had been holding behind her hack. “This is chapter eleven of what I hope Professor Sherman will decide eventually is a brilliant doctoral dissertation on the Taiping Rebellion — presented for critical comment.” Her West Coast accent bore not the slightest trace of her Chinese ancestry, but her manner, like her voice, was soft and delicate, obviously Asiatic, and Joseph forced a smile to his lips as he took the papers from her. 

“You should smile more often, Joseph,” she said, pressing her face gently against his shirt front and slipping her bare arms around his waist. “You look so stern and forbidding— as though you’d never once been happy in your whole life.” 

He glanced at the manuscript she had given him for a moment or two, then dropped it onto a red-lacquered coffee table with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Emerald. I’ll look at it later. I can’t concentrate right now. That letter’s the first word I’ve had from my older son in seven years — I guess it’s making it hard for me to turn my mind to anything else.” 

She unwound herself from him and, taking his hand, motioned for him to sit down beside her on the divan. “Has it upset you badly? Do you want to talk about it?” 

Joseph sat staring indecisively at the letter. 

“You’ve never talked about Gary or your other Son,” she prompted gently. “Are they very like you?” 

“I’ve never talked about Gary because he’s twenty-five — your age.” Josephs voice was heavy with resignation, and he spoke without looking at her. 

“But that doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “Your age makes no difference to the way I feel. Please tell me about Gary if it’s important to you.”