Highways to a War (29 page)

-My European half’s fading out as I get older, she said. I used to read French and English novels; now I read only the Chinese and Vietnamese poets. I’d rather do that now than run the business.

-And she began to tell me about her youth, when she’d studied in Paris. Her father thought she’d marry a Frenchman. He sent her to Paris four years after the War to do a degree at the Sorbonne-and also to find a husband. At first she liked the idea, and she was excited by Europe: even by the cold, she said, and by gray winter skies with an orange sun showing through. She did all the things you do in Paris: talked with her friends in cafes about films and books, and had an alfair with an interesting Frenchman she liked but didn’t love. That was the French half of her spirit coming out, she said. But then her father died, and she came back here to Saigon.

-Ah, Snow, she said, where we spend our childhood, that’s what counts! And she told me how she’d missed her mother’s people, and the tamarind trees in the streets, and the heat and noises and smells. She’d missed the monsoon, with the rain bucketing down and everything coming alive in the Delta. She’d even missed the smells of monsoon drains.

—She found now that she was most truly Vietnamese: she even became nationalistic. She wanted the French to be thrown out, which would have made her father sad, if he’d still been alive. Her husband, Phan Le Dang, was young and idealistic too, when she met him. He’d come here from Hanoi, and he was very northern and serious, she said. They were both in the same political club. They wanted the French to go, but they didn’t like the Communists.

-We’d debated with enough Marxists to know that they were fanatics, she said. We weren’t attracted by people who would tell us how to think and how to live. Certainly we didn’t want to exchange French rule for another bloody dictatorship run by them. We wanted real freedom: but instead we got this filthy war.

-In those early years, she really loved Phan Le Dang. Helping him build the business, she found she had a talent for it. It linked her to him, and it linked her to the life here. For a South Vietnamese, life is business, she said. Yes, she said, there’s bribery and corruption involved—but that’s in every part of our life here: the pure-minded intellectuals are participating too. Most business people are cunning yet naive, I’ve found. A bit like politicians: complexity frightens them.

-For those reasons, she said, she stopped being amused by business and business people some time ago-and politicians too. And she lost her feeling for her husband. Making money had become all he wanted, and he began to do things that she couldn’t agree with and didn’t want to know about.

-I want to tell you something, Snow, she said. Phan Le Dang wasn’t just selling watches and food over the Cambodian border. He was selling automatic rifles—and I believe he was selling them to the North Vietnamese Army. He still had family in the North, and maybe the NVA people pressured him. I think this is why he disappeared; something went wrong. You’ll probably tell this to Aubrey Hardwick, won’t you? But Aubrey already knows, I’m sure.

-I told her no, I wouldn’t say anything to Aubrey. What she and I discussed was private. We were friends, and wasn’t on Hardwick’s payroll.

-I wouldn’t have told you this once, she said. Now I don’t care, I’m finished with it all. Do you understand what I’m saying? Don’t play those games for Aubrey, Snow. Don’t trust him, or you’ll eventually be sorry.

-The glow of the little orange lamp made her face like a beautiful mask: like one of her carvings downstairs. She sat up straight with folded hands, frowning at me. It was an expression I’d never seen her wear before.

-Aubrey had good-quality information from Phan Le Dang and me over the years, she said, especially about what was coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But now our Uncle must be worried: he must ask himself whether Dang was misinforming him: whether Dang had links with the North all along-or whether they’d perhaps turned him. This is always a spymaster’s nightmare, isn’t it? Well, you can tell Aubrey that I don’t know. I don’t know, because for years didn’t know my husband any more. And I’ll tell you something else. For all I know, it was Aubrey and his friends who arranged for my husband to disappear. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Don’t look so shocked. I’m finished with secret games. They’re over for me.

-She sighed then, and sat back; she looked tired.

-Business and politics and the war surround me like a bloody web, she said. I’m compelled to sit at the center of it, if only for the sake of my sons, who are still at school. They have only me to rely on. But I’m tired of it, Michael. I’d rather be reading my poetry. I’d rather run a restaurant, with my little Khanh Ha. Yes, perhaps I’ll sell off the business, and turn this house into a restaurant! My orphans will help me. What do you think?

-She threw back her head and gave that loud tough of hers; but there wasn’t much amusement in it tonight.

-Time you went to sleep, Snow, she said. Then she leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth. She’s never done that before: her lips seemed very soft and tired.

NOVEMBER 29TH

-This morning when I woke, my mind was like a clean sheet hung out to dry in the sun.

-This isn’t happiness, but not grief either. lt’s the place that Claudine’s taken me to. I want to remember it, and all the things she’s said to me.

—Last night we talked again, and she lay on the bed beside me.

—We lay lightly together, head to head, foot to foot, holding each other. She’d come in the
ao dai
again; then she was naked, and her hair was hanging about us like a black tent. And even as we made love and I forgot everything, I knew that she could never belong to me, however much I might feel for her.

—Afterwards she spoke in my ear, while her hands kept moving over me. They seemed to explore and heal every muscle and nerve; and eventually every muscle and nerve would be made loose, and I’d float free of my body. Nothing and no one’s ever made me feel like that before. For a while, she took away sadness: not just over Kim Anh: over everything.

—She lay propped on her elbow in the orange glow of the lamp, stroking my forehead and looking down at my face. She touched the wound there, and the other, behind my ear; then her finger traced the mark left on my forehead by the butt of that VC’s Kalashnikov, in the Delta.

-Snow, she said, in her deep voice; but she wasn’t laughing this time. So many wounds already. She shook her head, lips pursed. You nearly died, and you might not be so lucky next time. You could die down there with my cousin Trung, in some bloody Delta rice field. But you won’t stop going out, will you? This means that you live in a dream. So I mustn’t love you, because you’re always likely to disappear.

—Itold her I had no intention of disappearing. But she didn’t answer; just looked at me.

—Then she said: Don’t think I’m Hattering you, Michael. The opposite, really. It’s sad, being a warrior: and that’s what you are, of course. It means you’ll always be alone. You’re a warrior because battle is what you want most, and the comradeship of men. Don’t deny it. You really don’t do it for the money, do you? Many people say that they’re not interested in money, but they usually lie; especially those who can’t make much. But you’re truly not interested in it, I can tell: I’m an expert on that. And you’re the sort of warrior other men love, because you’re what they wish to be. You’d make a good father. But if you have children, they’ll end up orphans, won’t they? So better that your children are orphans already-like Kim Anh.

-You have a little bit of the woman in you, she said. Don’t be offended, Snow, I know this is true: it’s in your face. And perhaps that makes men love you more, without knowing why. As for women, they’ll always want to rescue you and change you. But they won’t change you, and won’t possess you. And the reason I understand that is because I’m the same. I can’t be possessed either, and I don’t want to possess you. But we’ll always be here for each other, won’t we?

-Don’t feel badly about losing your Kim Anh, she said. Vietnamese don’t waste time on regret: regret’s a bloody waste of life; you should learn that. You wouldn’t have stayed with her, she said, even though you wanted to. Yes, I know how much you loved her. I was becoming a little in love with her myself, she was so beautiful. Don’t look at me like that: sometimes I do love women, didn’t you know? I’ve never met a man ! care for as I care for you, but I’m not going to say I’m in love with you. And I know that I won’t really lose you, because I know that you’ll never leave Asia.

-I asked her how she knew that.

-Maybe I’m a bit of a witch, she said. I also know that you won’t die here in Vietnam. You’ll die somewhere else in Asia. Don’t worry; it won’t be for a long time. And remember: “For the fish, it’s a question of being alive—they don’t worry about the depth of the water.”

-Recording all this is probably not a good idea. Maybe it’s best to forget it-even though I don’t want to. Maybe I’ll eventually wipe this tape.

About Kim Anh I’d known almost nothing. Now she was gone, and I doubt that Langford had really known her much better than I had.

Some people see the crippled girl’s disappearance (and perhaps her death, for all we’ll ever know) as a major blow, and the reason he never married. I’m not so sure about that, myself: but certainly he changed from then on. Outwardly, it wasn’t obvious: his easy good humor was the same, and his enjoyment of life appeared to come back as soon as he was covering the action again. But he had spells of brooding quietness, back in Villa Volkov; and he drank a lot more than before in the Tu Do bars. Usually, Volkov and Feng went with him; so did I, when I was in town. But sometimes I’d catch sight of him alone.

He must have drunk in every bar and brothel in central Saigon many times. He was searching there for Kim Anh. He didn’t talk about her much, but he insisted to us that she was still alive, and in some way entrapped by the man he said posed as her uncle. He was convinced that the uncle had put her to work as a bar girl, and was living off her earnings. He searched for the uncle as well, scouring often through the shantytown near Cholon; but he never found him either.

As far as anyone knows, Langford’s relationships with women for many years after that were few and transitory. The only thing that appeared constant in his life was the friendship with Madame Phan-and as I’ve said, I believe that was platonic. There were no other serious involvements in Vietnam; and he was never, so far as I know, involved with a Western woman again. His occasional affairs-if they really were affairs—were always with Vietnamese and Cambodian bar girls. He’d never gone to bar girls before Kim Anh disappeared. Now, when he’d appear in company with one, he’d behave to her with scrupulous courtesy and respect. This may sound hackneyed, but he really did treat the bar girls as ladies.

Some people were cynical about this, seeing it as a technique of seduction he employed; but I don’t think so. In another time, he’d probably have been described as romantic. That may seem paradoxical, since we’re probably talking about a very casual sex life, similar to that of many other correspondents and cameramen: men like Volkov. But Langford was always giving these young Vietnamese women lavish amounts of money: just as he did with his child beggars. I heard too that he helped some of their families—when they still had families. He had a kind of secret life now in that shantytown at Cholon; after he gave up looking for Kim Anh and her uncle, he seems to have involved himself there with helping the refugees from the bombing. He wouldn’t talk about this; one picked it up in indirect ways. So when I say he was romantic about his bar girls, I mean that some sort of idealism was involved-presumably founded on pity. And pity can be romantic, wouldn’t you agree? Pity can be a kind of aphrodisiac. And maybe all these girls were shadows of Kim Anh.

Having said all that-and all of it’s guessing--I can’t quite see Mike’s loss of her as a tragedy in depth. You may disagree. But the episode had been so brief; so unreal. And the barrier of language would surely have prevented much depth of communication. He had little French, and far less command of Vietnamese then than he’d develop in the future. His acquaintance with Kim Anh, despite what he’d done for her, had been as brief as his acquaintance with Vietnam then was. So forgive me: although she was so poignantly lovely and sad, I have to see his love of her as love of an illusion. I don’t want to sound callous, but I also formed the impression that Kim Anh had promised to be an answer to something for him-and now the answer had been taken away.

I’ve no idea what that something was.

 

 

A few months later, in the February of 1966, ABS informed me that I was being posted to London. It would be seven years before they sent me to Indochina again. So except for a few letters we exchanged over those years, and sightings of his pictures in various papers and magazines, I lost track of Langford until early in 1973, when I came back to cover the war in Cambodia..

My last sight of him in Saigon is easy to remember. It was the eve of my final departure-and also the afternoon of his extraordinary outburst at the Five O‘Clock Follies.

You’ll have heard of the Follies, no doubt. That was what we called the press briefing the American Military Command staged each afternoon in the Rex-a big hotel on Nguyen Hue Boulevard, conveniently opposite the Eden Building, where Telenews and other media organizations were housed. The Rex had been entirely taken over by Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (or “Macvee,” as we called it), and the ground floor housed one of those many organizations of theirs that went under an acronym: JUSPAO, the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office.

Here we entered a fully North American zone. It was air-conditioned, and crowded with hardworking military public relations people, typing and telephoning with that air of intense purpose that can make the Americans impressive or worrying, depending on your prejudices. The amount of paper pumped out in those warrens was awesome. It contained not only the vital daily intelligence that we all depended on, but an unfolding story of the war as MACV wished it to be: a sort of serialized novel whose tone was realistic yet ever positive, and whose ending was bound to be triumphant. The morning and evening press releases sat in bulging racks; we were even provided with telephones, to get the stuff through. Journalists could live almost entirely within the walls of this paper kingdom if they wanted to, and cover the war from JUSPAO, through JUSPAO’s eyes.