War Baby (7 page)

‘He is not happy I bring you here,’ she said. ‘He says you will bring him bad luck. They do not like me. I pay more than anyone else because I am
bui doi
.’

An old woman sat on a stool, a small child playing at her feet. The child had coarse black hair but her features were European; round eyes and milk-coffee skin. She was naked except for a soiled T-shirt.

Odile picked up the child, patted her bare bottom. She cooed something in Vietnamese, an endearment perhaps.

‘So now you have seen my little baby,’ Odile said. ‘Now if you do not want to sleep with me, I must go back to work.’

‘You’re not going back to the bar.’

‘How else I can live?’

Webb hesitated. ‘There’s another way,’ he said.

* * *

His apartment was two blocks from the Tu Do, towards the Saigon River. A green wrought-iron balcony, wide enough for two chairs and a small iron table, looked out over the street. There was a green-painted, louvred French window and inside was a plain wooden desk with Webb’s prized Olympia typewriter. There was a small toilet room with a massive high-sided bath and brass taps.

In one corner, opposite the window, was a single bed. It had a T-bar wooden frame covered with mosquito netting. There was a wash basin and an ancient armoire in the other corner. Webb’s black and white photographs had been tacked to the walls along with a red Liberation Army flag with a yellow star which a drunken Marine had sold to Webb for ten dollars. A bookshelf contained mementos collected during his two years in South-East Asia; an opium pipe, a red and white Khmer scarf, an NVA pith helmet. His field gear - his pack, his cameras, a flak jacket - were on the floor beside the bed.

Odile looked around.

‘It’s not very big,’ Webb said, ‘but it’s clean. And it won’t cost you anything.’

Odile sat Phuong on the parquetry floor and perched uncertainly on the edge of the bed.

‘I won’t be here very often,’ Webb said. ‘It’s just a base for me. A lot of the time you’d have the place to yourself.’ He went to the wash basin. There was a wash cloth draining over the faucet. He wet it, and handed it to her. ‘Here, wash your face.’

‘Why?’

‘Take off the lipstick. You don’t have to be a whore anymore.’ He saw her flinch and realized how callous that had sounded.

But she did as he asked. Her shame was painful to watch. He crouched down and smiled at Phuong, who stared back at him, fascinated with this new and strange face.

‘Why do you want to do this?’ Odile said.

‘I should just walk away and pretend it isn’t my problem?’

‘But it isn’t.’

He could see what she was thinking. This had to be some elaborate trap. Nothing was ever free; she could guess what the rent would be. But she had perhaps already calculated that this might be better than having the whole US Army as her landlord.

* * *

They sat on the balcony. Phuong played inside, on the floor. The city sweltered, not a breath of air.

A skyline of plane trees and flat roofs was silhouetted against the bright lights and neon of the Tu Do; in the distance he could hear the rumble of artillery. An old Chinese practiced
tai qi
on a neighbouring rooftop.

‘Ryan is gone maybe two weeks when I think I am pregnant,’ Odile said, her voice a monotone. ‘For a while he write to me, send me money. But then the letters stop, and there is no more money. Perhaps Ryan is killed, I do not know. So I write to my grandmother in Dalat, ask her for help, but she does not write back. I can never go back there with my baby. It will be too much shame. So I stay here. After Phuong is born the money from Ryan is gone. So I go to the Tu Do.’

‘Did you ever write to Ryan, ask him for help?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, but when he does not write back, I think he must be dead.’

‘Does he know about the baby?’

She shook her head.

‘If he’d known, he would have helped you.’

‘Why, Monsieur Webb? He does not love me.’

Phuong started to cry. Odile picked her up and sat down on the edge of the bed to offer her breast. After a while she fell asleep in her arms.

‘I’m going outside to have a cigarette,’ he said.

He shut the door behind him and went down the stairs to the street. He walked around for almost an hour, trying to sort it through in his mind. When he got back Odile was in the bed, Phuong asleep beside her. He went to his field pack in the corner, and unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked him.

‘I’ve slept in worst places the last couple of years. At least it’s dry and there’re no snakes.’

‘You do not want to sleep with me?’

‘If I do you’ll still feel like a prostitute. Won’t you? Just with fewer customers.’

‘
Ça na fait rien du tout
.’

‘That’s the point. I want it to matter to you again. I didn’t offer to help you for that.’ He took off his boots. ‘Stay here with me for as long as you want. We’ll work something out. I’ll write to Ryan.’

Whether Ryan would feel moved to do something about the situation, he didn’t know.

He came over to the bed, picked up the miniskirt off the floor and crumpled it in his fist. Then he went to the balcony and threw it into the street.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You won’t need it anymore.’

She stared at him as if he were crazy, which perhaps he was. He had lived in a war zone for two years now, and he’d learned that life was too short not to do whatever you felt like doing.

‘You do not have to do this. I am not a nun. I never was.’

‘I can help you. So I will. That’s it.’

She put her head back on the pillow. ‘You are a very good man.’

‘Sometimes. Sometimes not.’ He turned off the light, undressed and slid into his sleeping bag. He lay awake for a long time, thinking about what she’d said. You’re a good man, Spider, he told himself. You’ll probably go to heaven. But you’ll be there all on your own, you silly bastard. You’ll have to slip out at night and go downstairs for some fun.

Webb was awake soon after dawn, the habit of two years in war zones. He had to be out on the street early, to test the mood of the city.

Odile was still asleep. She lay on her back, her arms above her head, like a child. He stared at her. Exquisite, was the word that came immediately to his mind. The sheet had fallen below her breast. Christ Almighty. He pulled the sheet gently up to her chin.

The child was already awake, playing on the floor. She had on a cheap pink nightdress from the Central Market. She had short, very straight black hair, round eyes and a flat cherubic face. He grinned at her and she grinned back.

He went out, quietly closing the door behind him.

He had coffee at the Shelf and checked the gossip with the other correspondents. Crosby wanted to know why Webb had not shown up at the Chicago. Webb muttered a lame excuse about being unwell. Crosby shrugged it off and proceeded to describe an incident that had taken place at the bar just before he got there.

‘VC threw a fucking grenade in there,’ Crosby said.

‘No shit.’

‘This Marine was telling me about it. Didn’t go off, thank God. Probably some Chicom dud. Last time I’m going there.’

Webb smiled. ‘Me too.’

He drank his coffee and left. He had been planning to hitch a ride into the Delta to Can Tho. Instead he crossed the square and bought fresh croissants at the Givral, and some green bananas from one of the street hawkers on the Tu Do. He took them back with him to the apartment.

When he opened the door, Odile was waiting for him, standing in the middle of the room, her hands behind her back, as if she were waiting to pass inspection. He held up the croissants. ‘Breakfast,’ he said. ‘I bought some bananas for Phuong. She likes bananas?’

‘Yes, but you will have banana all over your apartment.’

‘Well, it needs redecorating. Yellow’s a good color as any.’

She had put on the
ao dai
she had brought with her. That was better, he thought. They ate the croissants on the balcony while the city had clamored to life. The street was a tumult of car horns and
siclo
bells and the tinny music of radios came from a dozen windows and doorways.

‘How long since you’ve been to church?’ he asked her suddenly.

‘How can I go to church?’

‘Why not? God forgives, doesn’t he? Not that you did anything wrong in my opinion. You had a child to feed.’

She ate her croissant delicately, in two hands.

‘We’ll go to Mass this morning,’ he said. ‘I’m not one of your lot but I think I know how it works. You can go to confession, and when you walk out you can start again with a clean slate.’

‘I do not think it is so simple.’

‘We’ll go anyway,’ he said.

* * *

The old
canonesse
was there, and Soeur Marie, a handful of the other novices from the convent in Cholon. Odile saw their faces turned in her direction but she avoided their eyes. She tried to concentrate on the service, but it was different from how it had been before. She did not belong in such a sacred place. She was exiled by her own sin.

When the priest sanctified the host, she did not approach the altar for Communion. But when the service was over, Webb urged her towards the confessional.

She silently obeyed.

Odile remained for a long time on her knees in the gloom of the Lady Chapel while Webb held little Phuong. She closed her eyes and tried to form the words of prayer in her mind, but it was hopeless. She had brought her suffering on herself, had placed her own happiness over service to God. That was why she had been punished.

She could not tell the Englishman but she had once even considered committing
chat lam ba
- infanticide. It was the traditional remedy for unwed mothers in Vietnam; chop the newborn child into three pieces, wrap the head, torso and legs in cloth and throw them in the river, so that the mistake could be washed away by the tide.

To have contemplated such evil! How could she ever confess such things to a priest? It was impossible. She could not do it.

* * *

They stood on the cathedral steps in the bright morning sunshine. ‘Did you do it?’ Webb asked her.

‘I could not,’ she murmured. ‘There is too much shame.’

‘You said nothing?’

‘I accuse myself of the sin of envy. And once I think that I want to kill Monsieur Ryan. For that the cure he gives me penance and absolution.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Please. You are very kind to me. But do not ask me to do what I cannot do.’ He has the round-eye’s belief in easy answers, she thought. They think that fate can be changed by force of will. Because he had taken her away from the Tu Do he thought he could take away from the shame, also.

For herself she knew there was nowhere to go on this hot morning but back to the world God had sent her to, where the beggars patrolled the streets like crabs and the homeless children roamed in packs, the place she now belonged.

It was midday and the heavy gold drapes inside Juliette’s were drawn against the sun. Webb could see over the rooftops of Saigon through a gap in the curtains. The city looked tawdry in the shimmering heat, a panorama of peeling hoardings and red-tiled roofs. He and Crosby sat on bar stools drinking ‘33’ beers and discussing where the sirens of war might lead them after Vietnam. The conversation turned to Cambodia, and then, predictably, to Ryan.

‘Have you heard from him recently?’ Webb asked.

‘A guy I know from UPI was in Phnom Penh last week, and said he ran into him. Still the same.’

‘You know where I can get in touch with him?’

‘Does he owe you money?’

‘It’s not for me. You remember the nun?’

Crosby grinned, as if in anticipation of the punch line of a favorite joke. ‘Sure I remember.’

‘He left her with a baby.’

Crosby did not seem quite sure how to react. Another chapter in the legend or did this smack of real scandal? ‘Well, I’ll be dipped in shit,’ he said, finally.

‘This wasn’t just some bar girl, Croz.’ When Crosby offered no comment, he added: ‘A lot of people seem to think he’s a lovable rogue. He’s an asshole.’

‘He saved your life once, man.’

‘Is my life so important to the world that it’s recompense for every outrage he cares to commit?’

Crosby sucked on his front teeth, thinking about this. ‘There’s a lot of it going around. Kids with no fathers, I mean.’

‘Ryan isn’t some dumb nineteen-year-old fresh out of the boonies. And she’s not a whore. This is different.’

Crosby played with the ends of his moustache. ‘He know about this kid?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Maybe someone should tell him. One of my guys is flying to Phnom Penh on Friday. If you want to get him a message, I’ll see it gets there.’

* * *

Whenever he was in Saigon he looked forward to going back to the apartment. Phuong for some reason found something pleasing about his presence and would smile at him as soon as he walked through the door. There was a domesticity to the arrangement that quickly became comfortable. Perhaps too comfortable.

In the evenings, instead of drinking in the Caravelle or the Melody or the Continental with the other correspondents, he took Odile and Phuong to dinner in the Givral perhaps, or the Royale. Odile, however, remained diffident. It was as if she had pulled a curtain across her soul. She spoke little. She was attentive to Phuong, but nothing else in her life seemed to interest her.

Webb was quickly aware that his initial charity, if that was what it was, had become obsession. He wanted to save her, unravel her mystery. He thought about her constantly.

The letter to Ryan was never finished.

* * *

The air conditioner broke down and his Tonkinese landlord refused to repair it. He left the windows open at night but the city smelled foul. He took his typewriter onto the balcony, working in the semi-darkness rather than endure the stifling heat inside. He heard Odile singing softly to Phuong, settling her to sleep in her cot.

He fed a blank sheet of paper into the Remington, writing a story to accompany the pictures he had taken that morning in the Delta. He was tired; it was a tired war. The photographs were unremarkable, and he doubted he would find an enthusiastic editor at Time-Life or Paris-Match. The world was not interested in stories of Vietnamese killing Vietnamese; it seemed it was only truly horrible if the bodies were white. The real war was going on across the border in Cambodia and Laos now, away from prying eyes.

He was suddenly aware of her standing behind him. He felt her hands on his shoulders kneading his neck muscles.

He stopped typing, reached up and put his hands on hers. ‘I have to go away tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Danang. I may be gone for a week or two.’

‘I will miss you. I will pray you are safe.’

‘Will you? Miss me, I mean.’

‘You are a very good man.’

He looked up at her. For a moment she reminded him of PFC Judge that day at An Qanh; there was such emptiness in her eyes. ‘What would you do if you were free?’ he asked her. ‘If you could do whatever you wanted?’

‘But I am not free. I was born
bui doi
. I will never know what freedom is.’

‘If you could leave Vietnam ...’

She shrugged her shoulders, unable to imagine it.

‘If you want to get out of Vietnam, I can help you.’

‘What would I do? Be a prostitute in America? I can be prostitute here.’

‘You don’t have to go to America. And you don’t have to be a prostitute.’

‘I will always be prostitute now.’ She held a hand to her breast. ‘In here.’

‘What atrocity did you commit exactly? Compared to murder? Compared to torture? Compared to dropping napalm on villages or burying a mine and blowing off another man’s legs? Yours is such a small sin, Odile.’

‘You cannot compare one sin with another like they are melons in the market.’ She pulled her hands away. ‘In my head I still hear myself say things I think I can never say, do things I think I can never do. I want to be like I was before but ... it is like you are away from somewhere, the town you are born, and when you go back everything is changed. It can never be like it was before.’ She put her hands inside his shirt. ‘What is it you want from me?’ she whispered,

‘I don’t want anything from you.’

‘
Non, çe n’est pas vrai.
I see how you look at me.’

She went back inside. He heard the rustle of silk, and when he looked around she was standing naked beside the bed. The yellow lamp beside the bed threw shadows over her body.

Webb went inside.
Exquisite.
He reached out for her. Her skin was silken. He closed his eyes, wrestling with his desire and his guilt. He had to believe he did not do all this just to get her into bed.

‘It’s okay,’ she whispered.

He kissed her neck; the scent of patchouli and silken hair against his cheek. A block away he could hear the traffic on the Tu Do, the barking cough of hundreds of Hondas, the heavy bass thump from the bars. A long way from London. A dream.

Don’t let me fall in love with her now. Ah, too late.

* * *

Webb was gone for two weeks. During long nights wrapped in a poncho, shivering with cold and fear on a firebase somewhere in the Highlands, or sweating it out on patrols with the ARVN in the jungles around Pleiku, he thought about her, sorting through the decision he knew he would have to make. He had eked out a living for two long years in Vietnam, two years longer than he had any right to expect when he had first arrived. He had harbored dreams of death or glory, an ignominious end or a fast track to the top, but Vietnam had been neither. His photographs and stories had been used by some of the major international agencies and magazines, but he was neither dead nor famous. He had arrived a year too late; by the time he got there Vietnam was no longer the war in which to see and be seen.

He had started to think about other career moves; and if he left Vietnam, he might perhaps take Odile with him.

He still had not finished the letter to Ryan. If he told him about Phuong, what would Ryan do? There was no imperative for him to pick up the pieces.

And certainly none for me, either.

He could not stop thinking about that last night in his apartment. Did she love him, or was it just her way of repaying him for saving her from the Tu Do? The night before he flew back to Saigon he was sitting in the open-air cinema in Danang watching a rerun of The Graduate when the answer came to him. It didn’t matter. He would ask her to marry him anyway.