Up Country (17 page)

I
got off the elevator and walked into the hotel lobby at ten after eight. Sitting in a chair under a palm tree was Susan Weber, reading a magazine. Her legs were crossed, and she was wearing black slacks and walking shoes. As I got closer, I could see that the magazine was in English and was called the
Vietnam Economic Times
.

She put down the magazine and stood. I could see now she was also wearing a tightly tailored red silk shirt with half sleeves and a high mandarin collar. She had sunglasses on a cord around her neck, and one of those nylon fanny packs around her waist. She said, “Good morning. I was just about to start calling around for you.”

“I’m alive and well.”

She said, “I may have had a little too much to drink last night. If so, I apologize.”

“I certainly wasn’t in a position to judge. I hope I was a good dinner companion.”

She replied, “I enjoy talking to people from home.”

Ms. Weber was a little cooler this morning than she’d been last night, which was understandable. Remove the alcohol, the music, the candlelight, and the starry night, and people get a little more reserved around last night’s date, even if they’ve wound up in the same bed.

I was wearing my standard khaki slacks, and instead of a golf shirt, I wore a short-sleeve dress shirt. I replied, “Am I dressed all right for church?”

“You’re fine. Ready?”

“Let me get rid of my room key.” I went to the front desk and gave the clerk my key. “Any messages?”

He checked my box and said, “No, sir.”

I walked toward the front doors where Susan was standing. This was really annoying about the passport. Mang knew I was leaving tomorrow, and I needed my passport to travel.

I joined Susan, who said, “I see you didn’t get your passport back. But I’m sure they’ll return it today if they know you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“I think I’ll be picking it up at Gestapo Headquarters.”

“They usually just return it to the hotel. Or they’ll tell you to pick it up at the airport. But that usually means you’re going home sooner than you thought.”

Fine with me, though I didn’t say that.

She asked, “Do you have your visa?”

“The hotel has my visa.”

She thought a moment and said, “You should always have photocopies of your passport and visa with you.”

“I did. The police stole them from my overnight bag at the airport.”

“Oh . . .” She said, “I’ll get a copy of your visa made.” She walked to the front desk and spoke to the clerk, who checked a file box. He pulled out a piece of paper, read it, and said something to Susan. Susan came back to me and said, “The police have taken your visa.”

I didn’t reply.

She said, “Well, don’t worry about it.”

“Why not?”

“No one’s going to stop us. Ready?”

We walked outside, and it was hotter than the day before. Motor traffic on Le Loi was a little lighter on a Sunday, but there were as many bicycles and cyclos as on Saturday.

Susan gave the doorman a dollar, and we walked toward a red motor scooter parked on the sidewalk. She stopped beside the motor scooter, took a pack of cigarettes from her fanny pack, and lit one. “I need a cigarette before we go.” She smiled. “You might need one after we get on the road.”

“Can we take a taxi?”

“Boring.” She patted the motor scooter. “This is a Minsk, 175cc’s. Russian made. A good machine for around town. I also own a motorcycle,
a 750cc Ural, a real beast. Great for the open road, and a very good crossover bike in the mud.” She took a drag on her cigarette and said, “The Russians make decent bikes, and for some reason, there are always parts available.”

“Are there helmets available?”

“You don’t need helmets in Vietnam. Do you ride?”

“When I was your age.”

“There were no helmet laws in the States when you were my age. Did you wear a helmet?”

“I suppose not.”

She drew on her cigarette and asked me, “Did you get your number?”

“Couldn’t find it.”

“Couldn’t find it? I ticked off number 32 on the crossword puzzle. Didn’t you notice that?”

“I’m not that bright. Took a few spills when I had my motorcycle.”

She laughed and said, “Thirty-two. I’ll remember it for you.” She asked me, “What’s it mean?”

“Thirty-two down? I think the word was rotisserie.”

She didn’t think that was funny, but left it alone.

I looked at her as she finished her cigarette. She passed the direct sunlight test—in fact, she looked better than last night, with a nice tan, and bigger and brighter eyes than I’d noticed in the candlelight. Also, the shirt and slacks fit well.

She took a final drag on her cigarette and said, “Okay. I
have
to stop smoking.” She threw the cigarette in the gutter and said, “I went to my office this morning and sent that fax.”

“Thanks.”

“It was about 7
P.M.
, Saturday, their time, but someone replied. They work long hours there, wherever and whoever they are.”

“What was the reply?”

“Just acknowledged receipt, said to keep them informed. They wanted me to give them a time when you and I could be near the fax for a confidential response later. I said I’d come back to the office at 8
P.M.
my time for the fax. Is that okay?”

“Well . . . considering that you’re not being paid to go in on a Sunday, that’s fine.”

She replied, “Whatever they have to say can wait twelve hours.” She
added, “You might have your passport by then, or your exit visa. Ready to roll?”

She put on her sunglasses, jumped on the motor scooter, started the engine, and revved it a few times. “Hop on.” She took an elastic band out of her pocket and tied her long, flowing hair back so it wouldn’t blow in my face.

I got on the saddle seat, which was a little small, and held on to the C-strap. Susan pushed off the center stand and drove down the sidewalk, then cut onto Le Loi Street. I put my feet on the footpegs just as we made a sharp U-turn.

Within five terrifying minutes, we were at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, an out-of-place Gothic structure with twin spires, but made of brick instead of stone. There was a small grassy square out front where we dismounted. Susan chained the motor scooter to a bike rack. I remembered this square from 1972, and nothing much had changed. Even the big statue of the Virgin Mary had survived the war and the Communist takeover. On that subject, I asked Susan, “How are the Commies with religion?”

“Depends on the program of the moment. They seem okay with the Buddhists, but not thrilled with the Catholics, who they view as subversive.”

We walked toward the cathedral, and I said, “And therefore, you go to church.”

She didn’t reply, but continued, “They give the Protestants a really hard time. They harass the missionaries, kick them out, and close their mission schools and churches. There are no Protestant churches in Saigon, only some private services in homes.” We got to the steps of the cathedral, and she asked me, “Did you ever come here during the war?”

“Actually, I did, twice, when I got into Saigon on a Sunday.”

“So, you were a good Catholic then.”

“There are no bad Catholics in a foxhole.”

We climbed the steps of the cathedral, and Susan said hello to a few Americans, and people who sounded like Australians. I noticed there weren’t many Vietnamese, and I commented on that.

She replied, “Father Tuan says this mass in English—the next is in French, then the rest are in Vietnamese.”

“Are we staying for all of them?”

She ignored me, and we went into the narthex, and here, too, Susan chatted with some people and introduced me to a few of them. One woman looked at me, then asked Susan how Bill was. There’s always one.

We walked into this big Gothic monster that could have been in France, except that I noticed that the place was decorated with blossoms and kumquat trees for the Tet holiday, which I vaguely recalled that even the Catholics celebrated here.

As I was looking up at the vaulted ceiling, Susan said, “Are you afraid it might fall on you?”

“I told you I needed a helmet.”

We walked up the center aisle. The place was cool and dark and about half full. We sat in a pew toward the front. Susan said, “There’s a chance Bill may show up. I spoke to him last night.”

“Was he happy that you got home after midnight?”

“He’s not the jealous type, and there’s nothing to be jealous of.” She added, “If he seems a bit unfriendly, that’s just his manner.”

“Right. Look, why don’t I go back to the hotel after mass?”

“Shhh. It’s starting.”

The organ cranked up, and the processional started up the aisle. The priest and all the altar boys and everyone else in the processional was a Viet, except the man on the processional cross who was Jewish. It’s all pretty amazing, if you think about it.

Anyway, the mass started, and Father Tuan’s English was something else. I think I would have understood the French better. Like the mass, the hymns were in English, and I discovered that Susan had a beautiful singing voice. I faked the hymns, though I can really belt out “The Rose of Tralee” when I’m drunk.

The sermon had to do with sins of the flesh and the many temptations in the city. Then there was something about the souls of the impoverished girls who sold their bodies, and so forth. The priest made the point that without sinners, there’d be no sin—no opium, no prostitution, gambling, pornography, and massage parlors.

I had the impression he was looking at me. I started feeling like a character in a Graham Greene novel, sweating in some godforsaken tropical climate, wracked with Catholic guilt over some sexual transgression, which, in the final analysis, was not that big a deal.

Anyway, the mass went on for an hour and five minutes, though I wasn’t timing it.

The organ cranked up again, and the recessional moved out. I followed down the center aisle and lost Susan somewhere.

I stood near her motor scooter, out in the sunlight of the square. I actually felt good about having gone to church.

I saw Susan at the bottom of the steps where Father Tuan and a lot of parishioners were chatting.

Maybe there was something to this expat thing. I mean, if you’re expatting in London, Paris, or Rome, it’s no big deal. You have to pick some totally fucked up place like this where you’re six inches taller and ten shades lighter than everyone, and where you stand out like a sore thumb; and if that thumb is in the eye of the local government, so much the better. And all the other pale round-eyes were your friends, and you got together for cocktails and bitched about the country. People back home thought you were cool, and they were secretly envious of you, and you celebrated American holidays that back home were just a three-day weekend and a sale at the shopping mall. You even voted, for a change, with absentee ballots.

Of course, there was the other type of expat, people who hated their own countries, and there were also those who were running away from something or someone, and those who were running away from themselves.

Susan, by her own admission, fell into the category of expat who thought it was neat to be an American in a place where she stood out, where her family and peers back home had to use a different and actually unknown standard to judge her success and her life.

Well, I didn’t want to be too cynical or analytical, especially since I liked Susan, and she was self-aware enough to figure herself out.

Susan walked toward me, accompanied by a man of about her age. He wore a light, tropical sport jacket, wasn’t bad looking, tall and very thin, with sandy-colored hair. He looked like a Princeton man, so it must be Bill.

Susan stopped and said to me, “Paul, this is my friend, Bill Stanley. Bill, this is Paul Brenner.”

We shook hands, but neither of us voiced a greeting.

Susan picked up the ball and said to Bill, “Paul was here in ’68 and . . . when?”

“Seventy-two.”

“Yes. It must have been very different then,” she prompted.

“It was.”

Susan said to me, “I was just telling Bill that you had some problems at the airport.”

I didn’t reply.

Susan then said to Bill, “I think Jim Chapman might be around this weekend. I’ll call him at home.” She said to me, “He’s with the new consulate delegation. Friend of Bill’s.”

Bill didn’t have much to say about that, and neither did I.

This conversation was not approaching liftoff, so I said, “I think I’ll go back to the hotel and make some inquiries from there. Susan, thanks for accompanying me to church. I never like to miss mass when I travel. Bill, great meeting you.” I turned and left.

I have a good sense of direction, and within fifteen minutes, I was back on Le Loi Street, and the hotel was in front of me. I noticed I wasn’t sweating as much as yesterday, so I must be acclimating.

I heard a motor scooter behind me on the sidewalk, and I moved to the right. She pulled up next to me and said, “Get on.”

“Susan—”

“Get on.”

I got on.

She gunned it, and we jumped the curb onto the street.

We didn’t speak, and she was tearing up and down the streets, making sharp unexpected turns. She called out, “It’s fun to open it up on Sunday when the streets are clear.”