Saigon (69 page)

The muscles in Mark’s jaw tightened and he stared hard at Kim; seeing that he was beginning to get the response he’d been seeking, the Vietnamese turned away casually and walked back towards the stool on which his document case lay. 

“But perhaps I’m misjudging you. Perhaps, unlike me, you’re not a man to feel regret or worry about what others are feeling. Perhaps you’re able to seal yourself up in your own selfish world, pleasing only yourself. Why should you, after all, concern yourself with bringing relief to your worried father — and your mother? The pleasure your homecoming would give them is no concern of yours, you tell yourself, I expect. Am I right? I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you, has it, that in a different way while you choose to go on suffering here, they must suffer agonies of a different kind back home in America because of your stubbornness.” 

Kim turned again to look at the American and found him staring distractedly in front of him; an anguished look had come into his eyes, and he was beginning to breathe unevenly. 

“If it were left to me alone,” continued Kim in a consoling voice, “I would have you released immediately, lieutenant — for your father’s sake. But unfortunately there are other leading comrades who must be consulted who don’t know your father. They would have to be convinced that your release won’t harm our cause. That’s why if OU wanted to go home I would have to ask you to make a statement. It’s just a precaution and it’s no more than all your fellow prisoners have done. But of course I don’t really know whether you want to be released, do I? Since you continue to refuse to talk to me, I can’t judge whether you really would like to return to the comfort of your home in America. Maybe you are strong enough to withstand prison life here indefinitely. 

Kim drew a single sheet of typescript from his document case and studied it intently for a minute or more. From the corner of his eye he noticed Mark turn in his chair to look at him. 

“Of course if you turn down the opportunity Urn offering you today,” continued Kim in a regretful tone, “it can’t be offered to you again. I you decide you don’t want to read what’s written on this paper, I’ll have no choice but to hand you back to the care of your jailer. You’ll have to be returned to the punishment cells.” He raised his head and glanced briefly towards “The Swineherd,” who stood impassively by the door; then he turned back to Mark again. “But I hope you won’t force me to do it. If you decide you can read for us, I’ll make sure you’re put in line for an early release — and you can go home and thank your father who cared enough to help you!” Kim picked up the tape recorder and walked over to Mark’s table. He signaled for the jailer to clear the food tray away, then placed the sheet of paper and the tape recorder in front of Mark. “It will only take a minute or two to read,” he said gently. “And there’s no hurry — you can take as long as you like over it.” 

When Mark lifted his head to stare at the Vietnamese, he found him smiling sympathetically; suddenly a look of utter bewilderment came into the American’s eyes and his head sank down on his arms. A moment later, his shoulders began to shake, and the sound of his sobbing, quiet at first, gradually grew louder until it filled the room. He wept for nearly a quarter of an hour, and during that time Kim waited patiently beside him; when finally he fell silent, Kim patted him encouragingly on the shoulder and switched on the tape recorder. 

“Just read it, lieutenant, in a normal voice,” he said soothingly. “That’s all you need to do.” 

For a long time Mark didn’t move, then he straightened slowly in the chair and picked up the sheet of typescript. His face worked convulsively from time to time as he read it through, then he turned to face towards the tape recorder. 

“I’m First Lieutenant Mark Sherman, of the United States Air Force,” he said reading aloud in a hollow, halting voice. “My grandfather is Senator Nathaniel Sherman, who has served as Democratic senator from Virginia for more than forty years, and I wish it to be known that, contrary to his views, I see the cruel war of aggression being waged against the heroic Vietnamese people by the United States as a crime against all humanity. I was shot down while carrying out inhuman air raids against churches, hospitals and schools in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and I regard my role in the war as evil and shameful. 

Here and there he stumbled over a word, and whenever he did so Kim patiently told him to go back and reread the sentence again. Each time he stopped and looked up, he found “The Swineherd” staring fixedly at him from his place by the door acid he reluctantly resumed his reading. 

The barbaric and immoral policies of the United States government stand condemned by all the decent peoples of the world,” he continued as the spools of the tape recorder spun silently on the table beside him. “And my conscience will not rest easy until the last of the American imperialist aggressors has been driven from Vietnamese soil. 

“I always felt cheated by Vietnam,” said Naomi Boyce-Lewis with a rueful little smile. “Even before I knew what or where it was. All the other girls in my class at school had their fathers back, we’d had the celebrations and the war was obviously over but I was still told I had to be patient and wait. I’d been getting occasional letters from this strange place called ‘Saigon’ that nobody had ever heard of, then suddenly they stopped and I was told he wasn’t ever coming ‘back. I took it pretty hard, I suppose, and quite illogically when I came here for the first item in 1963 I was still nursing the grudge deep down. I think without fully realizing it I felt Vietnam owed me something.” 

She picked up a spoon and toyed for a moment with the little French sorbet ice that the white-jacketed Vietnamese waiter had brought to their table on the verandah of the Cercle Sportif, and watching her, Joseph felt himself deeply moved. Although twenty-three years had passed, it had come as a shock to hear in Le Loi Square the previous night that the British intelligence colonel with whom he’d worked had been killed in action only a day or two after his own departure from Saigon in 1945; in his memory Colonel Boyce-Lewis had been an aloof, faintly condescending figure who had dismissed American sympathy for the native Vietnamese with some disdain, but the mental picture of a distressed nine-year-old girl waiting fretfully for her father’s return from the war aroused an intense feeling of compassion in him. The news had also carried his own thoughts vividly back to those moments in late 1945 that had been so poignant in his life 
— his reunion with Lao and their rescue of Tuyet from the famine-stricken North — and this too colored his response. 

‘How was he killed exactly?” 

“He was shot through the neck with a poisoned arrow in Montagnard country north of here. He died within a few hours.” Naomi spoke in a flat, unemotional voice without looking up from her plate, but Joseph closed his eyes for a moment. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” An awkward little silence developed, and they ate for a while without speaking. “Sir Harold as I remember him was the kind of Englishman all Americans admire greatly despite themselves,” he said at last, resorting to a white lie about his recollection of her father in an effort to break the ice again. “That unfailing courtesy and dignified bearing no matter what the provocation is something your crass, ex-colonial subjects born on the other side of the Atlantic just aren’t capable 

of. It can he infuriating sometimes — but it’s a much-envied quality. I remember the dinner in the British staff officers’ mess that last time I met him was a tribute to the British sense of style in difficult circumstances, too. Regimental silver, linen napkins and a great sense of decorum was observed by all — even though a civil war raged in the streets outside. For me it was a memorable return to civilization after those weeks in the jungle in the North. I was ungracious enough to blow my top that night, on the subject of British policy, but your father, who was sitting beside me, merely smiled politely and pointed out what he saw as the error of my ways in a tolerant voice.” 

“That sounds just like Daddy!” She looked up at him, her warm smile reflecting the inner pleasure that his reminiscences had invoked. “I’ve never met anybody who knew exactly what he was doing out here before he died and It’s SO Strange for me to hear you talk about those times. He was such a misty figure in my own life, you see, because he was away most of the time. Listening to you talk like this about him helps somehow to lay the ghost of his memory for me.” She continued smiling at him for a moment, then looked away quickly as if embarrassed by the inadvertent intimacy of her confession. 

“I’m delighted that what little I’ve been able to say has been some help,” said Joseph quietly. “I wish there was more I could tell you.” 

“Hearing what it was really like here in ‘forty-five from somebody who lived through it is rare enough.” She smiled at him again a little wistfully; she wore a crisp white shirtwaist dress and her hair, freshly coiffed, fell in soft waves to her shoulders. In the candlelight she looked rested again, almost radiant, but the sadness which the conversation obviously induced in her tugged down the corners of her mouth from time to time, giving her beauty a touchingly vulnerable quality. During most of the dinner she had sat motionless in her seat, her chin resting on her fingertips, as Joseph described in detail the events in which he and her father had been caught up during the autumn of 1945. She had barely touched her food or her wine and had spoken little herself until he reached the end of his account. “I suppose because of my father I’d have been drawn here some time or other to see what it was like, even if I hadn’t become a journalist,” she said, a faraway look coming into her eyes. “But as soon as I arrived in Saigon for the first time, I think I knew I was going to have a kind of love-hate relationship with the place. I stumbled across the most dramatic stories of my life almost immediately with the pictures we salvaged from the ambush at Moc Linh and the burning of Thich Quang Duc. I can still dine out on either of those in London whenever I like, even five years later . . 

“It’s strange you should feel that way too.” Joseph’s voice suddenly had an emotional edge. “I’ve had something of a love-hate relationship with Vietnam all my life too — and even now I can’t make up my mind which feeling is the strongest.” 

“Why do you say that?” 

“I first came here on a shooting expedition when I was fifteen 

— to help collect animals for a natural history museum founded by my grandfather. I was just bowled over by the exotic people, the jungles, the palaces in Hue — but on the last day of the hunting my elder brother was killed. So I was entranced and horrified by the country a one and the same time. But it was that trip that made me decide to major in Asian history and like a moth drawn to a flame, I came back to do research here ten years later. That’s when my love affair with Vietnam started to go deeper than yours, I fancy He broke off abruptly, a faint look of embarrassment showing on his face. “Damn it, Naomi, I can see why you make such an outstanding journalist. I’ve hardly known you two minutes and you’ve got rue pouring out my heart in a way I’ve never clone to anyone before.” 

“But I’ve barely asked you a single question,” she protested with an amused smile. 

“Maybe that’s the secret of it!” 

His exasperation was so genuine that for the first time that evening they both laughed, but when their laughter died away he continued without any further urging to recount the story of his unhappy love affair with Lan, his marriage to Tempe and his later discovery of Tuyet’s existence. In her turn Naomi was moved to see the handsome, confident man opposite her grow hesitant and embarrassed at his own words, and her eyes softened as she watched him fiddling with the stem of his wineglass. Most of the time he kept his gaze averted from her, speaking slowly and haltingly of emotions that she could see had lain buried away inside him for many years, and he passed quickly over Lao’s death, Tuyet’s later disappearance and his retreat to Cornell before finally falling silent. 

“But after staying away for twelve whole years,” she prompted gently, “what was it that made you decide suddenly to risk reopening all those old wounds and come back again?” 

Joseph shook his head slowly from side to side and sighed. “I was afraid you were going to ask me that. When I left my wife, you see, Naomi, she married a career army man who I think in my absence made military life look very glamorous to my sons. Gary, whom you met at Moe Linh, chose the army and my younger son, Mark, went for the air force. They both took my leaving very hard — Mark has refused to have anything at all to do with me since, and although I’ve had some contact with Gary he’s still cool towards me. He’s been back here a few months now on his second tour and we had lunch the other day — but it was hard going. Mark was shot down over the north flying from Da Nang two years ago. I live in hope that he’s survived the crash, hut I’ve had no news of him at all. When Gary came out here again I was still sitting on the fence in Cornell watching my country tearing itself apart. I found I couldn’t line up with the peace marchers or the draft dodgers, I didn’t fit comfortably among the doves or the so-called silent majority, and it suddenly dawned on me that both my sons were out here doing their duty in this god-awful war mainly because of my own stupidity. If I hadn’t turned my back at the wrong moment maybe neither of them would have chosen the careers they did. And even my brother Guy’s back here now for a second tour at the embassy — so I suddenly felt like a backslider, and first off I decided to write a personal letter to Ho Chi Minh about Mark. I was with an OSS unit that dropped into Tongking at the end of the war and I met Ho then and got to know him well. I went to see my former wife about the idea, and by chance she showed me one of Mark’s old letters. He’d passed on a garbled message without understanding it from a girl in Da Nang who he thought called herself ‘Tuyet’ 

Naomi’s eyes widened suddenly. ‘And you thought you could find your missing daughter! That’s what really brought you back?” 

Joseph pursed his lips as though he wasn’t proud to own up to the motive and nodded reluctantly. “I guess if I’m going to be honest I have to admit I suddenly wanted to try to salvage something from the wreckage of my life. There’s not much chance that Gary will ever see things my way, and Cod knows whether I’ll ever see Mark again. But I always sensed that deep down Tuyet might be hiding her real feelings ..“ He sighed again and finished his wine. “Several government agencies had tried to persuade me to rake posts out here over the past year or two because of my background, and I’d always turned them down. But the JUSPAO offer dropped out of the sky two months ago, just after I’d heard about Mark’s letter and I decided there and then to put my moral objections on ice.” 

“You’re right, Joseph, it’s very strange.” Naomi spoke slowly, as though thinking aloud, and there was a note of wonderment in her voice. “We don’t just seem to have a love-hate relationship with Vietnam in common. In different way I think perhaps both of us have come here time and again, almost against our will, looking for something important — something we don’t have much hope of finding.” 

He raised his head to look at her in surprise, and their eyes met and held; in that instant they both sensed instinctively that a new intimacy was being born, and he smiled at her. “When you’re looking for something you never dared hope to find, Naomi, it’s especially nice to find something you never dared dream of looking for.” 

She smiled playfully back at him. “That sounds as if it might have been translated from the mysterious works of some Chinese sage—or is that pure Joseph Sherman-style wisdom?” 

“The Chinese have a nice unsentimental proverb .to describe those who get lucky against all the odds. They say, ‘Even a blind cat sometimes trips over a dead rat.’ 

They laughed together, and looking up he saw for the first time that the rest of the diners had gradually drifted away, leaving them alone on the verandah; several waiters were watching impatiently for signs that they were ready to leave, and Joseph signaled apologetically for his bill, then led the way out into the tree-lined boulevard running alongside Doc Lap Palace. In the warm darkness beneath the trees they strolled side by side for several minutes without speaking, content to enjoy the pleasurable ease they suddenly felt in each other’s presence, and it was Naomi who broke the silence at last. 

“I don’t think any European who’s ever had anything to do with Vietnam goes away entirely unchanged,” she said in a pensive voice. “Perhaps we’re not so different from all the others in that respect. There’s some hypnotic quality I can never put my finger on that casts a spell over all our minds when we’re here. And whatever it is, it seems to have the power to bring out the best or the worst iii us — sometimes even both.” 

“I think I know what you mean.” 

“I felt it on my very first day in Saigon in 1963. And in the beginning I think it brought out the worst in me.” 

“It sounds like you’re working up to some juicy true-life confession,” said Joseph humorously. “This could be interesting.” 

“I suppose I am — but this isn’t a joke. I told you earlier that I’d met Gary and your brother Guy briefly when they were here before — well I wasn’t being really honest then. It’s true I met Gary only once, but I got to know Guy quite well because we found we had a mutual interest in comparing notes during the Buddhist troubles. We had a faintly flirtatious friendship, that never really came to anything and I wanted to tell you that, in case I every meet you together.” She stopped walking and he saw that her face in the shadow of the trees was serious. “I’m saying this, Joseph, because I have a strong intuition that your friendship’s going to be important to me — do you understand?” 

Her eyes searched his face anxiously and he nodded. “Yes, I understand.” 

“There was something else too that happened then, about the time of the Diem coup. It involved Guy, but I don’t think I can tell you about it now. Perhaps when I know you better it will be easier. But it made me see myself with a sudden clarity — made me realize that I was in danger of becoming something 1 didn’t admire.” 

“What was that?” 

She looked at him uncertainly, then turned and began walking again. “I’ve always been very ambitious, Joseph. Perhaps it’s something to do with being the daughter of someone rich and titled who was a stranger to me. Perhaps your psychoanalysts back home would tell OU I’m trying desperately to prove myself to my dead father, or show that I can succeed at something where my privileged background’s no help — or some such mumbo jumbo. Well I don’t know what the reason was in the first place, but I certainly did set out to convince myself and the world I could do my job as a television correspondent as well as anyone else — or even better. And I haven’t really changed my mind about that. But the incident I’m talking about made me realize I was so anxious to succeed that I didn’t care who suffered in the process —- that’s what I meant when I said Vietnam at first brought out the worst in me.”