Saigon: A Novel Part 1

Saigon.

Anthony Grey.

This book is dedicated with love to my dear, valiant mother Agnes Grey, my sister June, my lovely wife s.h.i.+rley, and my blessed little daughters Clarissa Jane.

and Lucy-Emma.

What's past is prologue.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest.

PART ONE.

C'est la Vie Coloniale!.

1925.

By 1925 present-day Vietnam was divided into three parts under French colonial rule. The southern region embracing Saigon and the Mekong delta was the colony of Cochin-China; the central area with its imperial capital at Hue was the protectorate of Annam; and the northern region, Tongking, was also a separate protectorate with its capital at Hanoi. The Annamese emperor, Khai Dinh, in theory ruled the two northern regions from Hue with the benefit of French protection, while Cochin-China was governed directly from Paris-but in effect all three territories were ruled as colonies. Some backward tribes inhabited the remoter mountains and jungles but the main population was of the same race; today they are known as Vietnamese but then the outside world knew them as Annamites or Annamese. They had detached themselves from the torrent of peoples that in prehistory had poured out of China onto the countless islands of the Pacific and, settling the eastern coastal strip of the Indochina peninsula, they had named their country Nam Viet - Land of the Southern Viet People. This was changed to An Nam - The Pacified South-by the Chinese who conquered them, occupied their territory for eleven centuries, and called them Annamese. During this time they absorbed the Chinese imperial system and Confucian philosophy, but after winning their freedom on the collapse of the Tang dynasty they flourished as an independent nation. Called at different times Dai Nam - The Great South and Dai Viet - Country of the Great Viet People - they repulsed an invasion by Mongol hordes and successfully resisted new attempts by the Sung, Ming and Manchu emperors of China to re-conquer them. Late in the nineteenth century, however, they were not strong enough to resist European troops. It was then that France, after two centuries of increasing penetration by its missionaries and traders, decided to establish dominion over the Annamese lands and the separate kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia by force of arms and set up the French Indochinese Union. About sixteen thousand Frenchmen ruled the fifteen million Annamese, and their government was harsh and uncompromising. They appointed their own French administrators down to the lowest levels, leaving the Annamese powerless and humiliated in their own land. Rice, coal and rubber were sold abroad for the exclusive benefit of French shareholders in Europe, and Annamese coolies were driven hard in the mines and on the rubber plantations for paltry pay; peasant rice growers, too, were frequently robbed of their lands on flimsy pretexts so that bigger holdings could be granted to French colons and the few rich Annamese who collaborated with France. While exploiting the conquered territories France constantly proclaimed in public that it had come to Indochina on a "mission civilisatrice" to help the backward nation into the light of the twentieth century. Leading Annamese scholars and mandarins, aware of the French hypocrisy from the start, had always refused to cooperate wholeheartedly with their colonial masters and held those of their countrymen who did in contempt. Some tried to organize patriotic resistance groups without much success. Like other colonial nations of the day France believed its subject peoples were inferior to the white European races, and this belief conditioned all areas of daily life in 1925 - whether they were political, economic, social or s.e.xual.

1.

Crinkled quiffs of white foam spurted from the steel bows of the five-thousand-ton French pa.s.senger freighter Avignon as they parted the warm, tropic-blue waters of the South China Sea. The s.h.i.+p which had left Hong Kong two days earlier was heading south towards the equator under a fierce afternoon sun, and in the sweltering darkness between decks, three hundred Chinese coolies and their families jostled together in silence, straining up towards the fresh air currents playing beyond the iron grilles that confined them.

On the upper deck outside the half-dozen first-cla.s.s cabins, green- and-white-striped awnings fluttered gently in the breeze of the s.h.i.+p's movement, and in their shade Senator Nathaniel Sherman sprawled at ease in a canvas deck chair, his long legs splayed comfortably in front of him. Tall, ruddy-faced and tending to corpulence in his early forties, he had about him the self-satisfied air of a man who has already achieved some measure of public acclaim; he wore his thick shock of fair hair brushed across his forehead from a center parting in two matching wings, and his upper up was thatched with a fas.h.i.+onably luxuriant mustache. He had removed the jacket of his white linen suit but the sense of decorum bred into him by his aristocratic Virginian upbringing compelled him to retain its matching vest and a cravat of maroon silk held in place with a small diamond pin. The same ostentatious pride in Southern good manners also prompted him to sit up immediately when one of the s.h.i.+p's white-uniformed junior officers appeared at his side bearing a tray of iced drinks for him, his wife and two sons.

"This sure is mighty civilized of you, m'sieur, to look after us like this," he drawled, letting a gracious smile play across his face. "Especially when you've already got your hands full running this tidy little s.h.i.+p."

"Please don't mention it, senator. The captain sends you these refreshments with his compliments." The young Frenchman inclined his head deferentially, speaking his English with the caution of one unused to employing it. "We have never before had the honor to carry such an important representative of the United States of America to Saigon."

"Please thank your captain most kindly for his consideration. Your legendary French hospitality promises to make our stay in your colony a memorable one."

The boyishly handsome officer inclined his head once more, then turned his back on the senator to offer the tray to his wife, Flavia, a strikingly beautiful woman in her late thirties. Her pale, oval face framed with raven-dark hair and her slender, high-breasted figure betrayed the Louisiana French blood in her veins, and the officer smiled directly into her eyes as she lifted a gla.s.s of fresh lime juice and glace pilee from his tray with a white-gloved hand.

"Merci beaucoup, monsieur," she murmured, smiling back at him for a fraction longer than necessary. "Vous etes trop gentil."

The Frenchman, before turning to her sons, let his glance fall pointedly for a moment to the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s tightly bodiced beneath a new Fifth Avenue day dress of sheer white silk chiffon; then he smiled secretly at her again and this undisguised expression of pa.s.sionate interest brought a faint flush to her face.

Across the table her younger son, Joseph, saw her cheeks burn, and she looked up to find him gazing at her in mystification. To hide her embarra.s.sment she fumbled in her handbag for a little mirrored compact backed with tortoisesh.e.l.l and turned away to re-powder her face. Joseph took a gla.s.s from the officer's tray but didn't drink; instead he continued looking in his mother's direction, ready to smile in sympathy. To his puzzlement, however, she kept her eyes averted and wouldn't look at him.

"I wonder what he would have said, Chuck, if I'd told him he'd just served a drink to someone who's probably going to be much more important one day than a run-of-the-mill Democratic senator from Virginia?" Nathaniel Sherman chuckled and leaned confidentially towards his elder son's chair as the Frenchman departed. "What if I'd told him that the Avignon was carrying a young man named Charles Sherman who's destined one day maybe to become the -President of the United States?" He squeezed Chuck's forearm then glanced across at his younger son. "That would've made him sit up and take notice, Joey, wouldn't it?"

Joseph nodded and picked up his drink. "I guess it would, Daddy," he replied shortly and drained the gla.s.s without looking up.

Six years separated the two brothers, and although both were fair-haired, Charles Sherman at twenty-one bore the strongest resemblance to the senator. As tall as his father and with the slender, broad-shouldered build of a natural athlete, he had regular features of that open, well-chiseled handsomeness that also suggests unusual strength of character. Already he sported a blond mustache that was a pa.s.sable imitation of the older man's, and he twisted a strand or two of it between finger and thumb as he shot a comic grimace of pain in Joseph's direction to convey his discomfort at the extravagant declaration of faith in him. Joseph grinned ruefully back at him for a moment, then sensing the senator was warming to a familiar theme, he picked up a history of French Indochina that lay open on the table before him and sank down in his chair behind it. Of slighter build than his brother, at fifteen Joseph still had the unfinished face of a growing boy, but his features were already set in a more thoughtful, reflective cast than Chuck's and there was a hint of his mother's sensitivity in his smile. When his father began talking again, a little irritated frown wrinkled his smooth young brow, but although he made a great play of concentrating fiercely on his reading, he still listened carefully from behind the book to what was being said.

"I know you come over a little shy when I talk about you this way, Chuck, but I do it for a good reason," continued the senator, lighting a Havana cigar with elaborate care. "It's never too soon to get a big idea planted in a young head. I believe there's nothing a man can't do once he's made up his mind. If you start early enough, there isn't a thing on this earth that can stand in the way of real determination - remember that. The Commonwealth of Virginia is famous as the birthplace of American presidents, isn't it? Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson and six other Virginians besides have led our nation; so why shouldn't President Charles Sherman in about thirty-five years' time - say round about nineteen sixty - be sitting in the White House? I've told you before - you've got to set your sights high." He paused and pointed his cigar at his elder boy in friendly admonition. "If you do, the impossible will start to seem probable."

Chuck Sherman squirmed in his deckchair and frowned humorously at his mother. "Oh boy, here we go again - you will come and visit me in the White House sometimes, Mother, won't you, so I don't get too lonely there?"

"Nothing would give your mother greater pleasure I'm sure, Chuck, than to see you bring distinction to yourself and your family," cut in the senator reprovingly before his wife could reply. "She wants to see you succeed as much as I do."

Flavia Sherman smiled sympathetically at Chuck for a moment then turned to her husband with an ill-concealed sigh of exasperation. "Wouldn't it be better, Nathaniel, to let us all relax and enjoy our expedition for a few weeks? Can't we leave Was.h.i.+ngton and Virginia politics at home just this once?"

"I certainly want us all to enjoy this rare journey, my dear," replied her husband, smiling and waving his cigar in front of his face in an expansive gesture. "Particularly you. You look most delightful this afternoon in that new frock. I think the trip's been a tonic for you already. It was lucky for us all, wasn't it, boys, that that fancy new Saks store opened up on Fifth Avenue just before we came away?" He directed an exaggerated wink at his two sons, then dropped his voice and reached out to pat his wife's hand on the arm of her chair. "I hear there's a rumor going around Manhattan that they had to close down again the day after you shopped there because they'd run out of Paris fas.h.i.+ons; is that true?"

Flavia Sherman forced herself to smile while recoiling inwardly from his touch. During the past three days of the voyage her first contact for many years with French life had begun to stir long- forgotten feelings in her. The gallant compliments of the captain and his officers particularly had reminded her that the beauty so widely admired in her youth had not yet faded. The many deadening years spent bringing up a family in the narrow society of Tidewater Virginia seemed to be evaporating rapidly from her memory in the heat arid excitement of the tropics. She had been lonely from the start of her marriage, despite the presence of a small army of black servants in the Queen Anne plantation house overlooking the James River, and several years had pa.s.sed before she understood fully that her husband had used his frequent absences, at first on plantation business, then in Was.h.i.+ngton, to conceal an almost total lack of physical interest in her. Eventually she had become resigned to a dull, pa.s.sionless existence; her husband had masked his indifference to her real feelings with elaborate public courtesies, and her only role outside of motherhood had been to act as a decorative hostess at his political functions. In the end she had become so used to living the lie of marital contentment that she had perhaps come to believe it herself. But now that her once-pa.s.sionate nature was reawakening and she was beginning to feel vibrantly alive again, the cold perfunctory touch of her husband's fingers seemed suddenly more repugnant than ever before, and she withdrew her hand hastily from his and picked up her gla.s.s to conceal the real reason for breaking the contact.

"I shall be much happier, Nathaniel, if you don't bother Chuck every few minutes about his future," she said quietly without looking at her husband. "I'm sure he's very excited about the hunting. Why not just let him enjoy himself?"

Nathaniel Sherman removed his cigar from his mouth and patted her hand patronizingly once more. "You're right in one way of course, my dear. We certainly intend to enjoy the hunting and bag ourselves some of Cochin-China's rare game animals. But we are traveling to a little-known corner of the globe, remember. Life in a French colony in Asia will be very different from anything we've seen back home. Every journey, wherever you go, is a new education - that's what my father taught me! Chuck - and Joseph too, of course might learn something here that will be useful to them later. I aim to help them learn to look at things right, that's all." He paused to smile at Chuck. "Even a Harvard man has still got an awful lot to learn from life. You don't get all the wisdom of the world from a library, no matter how good a scholar you might be The sudden snap of Joseph's history book closing caused the senator to glance up briefly but he didn't pause in his monologue; his abstracted gaze followed the younger boy for only a moment as he sauntered away along the deck. "The fact is, Chuck," he said turning back to his older son, "just seeing what's happening around you isn't enough. Whether in Indochina or Was.h.i.+ngton you've got to learn to interpret events correctly Joseph kept walking until the slow drawl of his father's voice became inaudible to him. Then he stopped and leaned on the rail at the top of the companionway, staring with unseeing eyes at the deck below. He found he was angry with himself for leaving his seat; he had badly wanted to hear what his father was about to say, but the all-too-familiar sound of him praising his brother had produced its usual feeling of agitation. Not for the first time he wondered why it should affect him like that, when he himself was fond of Chuck and admired him, too. No answer suggested itself, however, and after a minute or two he became aware that as these thoughts whirled through his mind he had been staring down at the grilles confining the Chinese coolie families. They seemed to come into focus only slowly, a silent ma.s.s of tightly packed yellow faces glistening with perspiration; scores of dark eyes had been watching him unwaveringly all the time, but their expressions remained uniformly blank. He realized with a shock that they reminded him of steers he had once seen in a railroad siding back home in Richmond, Virginia, crowded uncomprehendingly in trucks bound for the slaughterhouse. He was wondering whether the slaves who had been s.h.i.+pped to America had looked like this, when he felt his mother's gentle touch on his shoulder and turned to find her smiling fondly at him.

"Don't brood about it, Joseph," she said softly. "You know your father gets a hornet in his hat every now and then about Chuck. But I'm expecting great things of you, too."

Joseph nodded and managed to smile back at her, relieved that they were communicating again. "It's nothing," he said quickly. "There's no need to worry about me."

At that moment the French captain of the Avignon, a stocky, spade-bearded man, appeared beside them smiling and holding a pith helmet in his hands. "You must always be careful, Monsieur Joseph, not to expose yourself unduly to the sun in the tropics." He placed the helmet squarely on the American boy's head and glanced at Flavia Sherman, who had put on a wide-brimmed sun hat of white felt decorated with colored ribbons. "Your chapeau doesn't look as pretty as your mother's but it will save you from sunstroke just as effectively."

Because the captain had spoken French, Joseph thanked him haltingly in that language, then motioned towards the lower deck. "But what about those people down there, monsieur? They must be feeling the heat worse than any of us - and there are women arid children among them."

"They're potential troublemakers, young Joey, that's why they're kept under lock and key."

The French officer half turned at the sound of Nathaniel Sherman's voice as he came up behind them with Chuck, and nodded in agreement. "You are perfectly correct, senator," he said switching to English. "There are three hundred Chinese on board and only a handful of us. They are illiterate coolies from Canton mostly, emigrating to Cochin-China. But there may be pirates hiding among them. The waters of the China coast are full of pirates. Only last 'week a gang boarded a British s.h.i.+p disguised as steerage pa.s.senger: Thy attacked the bridge in the dead of night and when the crew barricaded themselves in, they set fire to the decks."

Joseph's innocent eyes widened in alarm. "What happened? Were they all burned alive?"

"Fortunately not." The captain smiled at the eager intensity of Joseph's inquiry. "The British master of the s.h.i.+p turned her to windward arid the fire was blown back towards the pirate mob. They all had to jump overboard and a lot of them drowned."

"Wow, that was a smart trick," breathed Joseph, his face alight with excitement at the thought of the drama. Then his expression clouded again. "But all the Chinese down there can't be pirates, can they? Isn't it a bit unfair on them?"

"It's only for the voyage, remember," said the captain smoothly. "There is no other way. Certain things have to be done differently in the colonies." He lifted his shoulders in a little Gallic shrug of helplessness and smiled. "C'est la vie coloniale, Monsieur Joseph. You will soon get accustomed to it."

Joseph's expression remained dubious for a moment then his face lit up again and he pointed westward over the captain's shoulder. "Isn't that land over there?" he exclaimed excitedly.

The Frenchman peered through his binoculars for a moment. Yes, Monsieur Joseph, you are right. That is the coast of the most beautiful and prosperous French colony in the world." He glanced at his watch and offered the gla.s.ses to the American boy. "Would you like to look? We shall probably be landing in Saigon sometime after lunch tomorrow."

With his naked eye Joseph had glimpsed only a faint smudge of coastline, but through the gla.s.ses he was able to see more clearly some of the rocky peaks of the thousand-mile-long mountain spine that linked the rich southern rice lands of the Mekong delta and Saigon with the fertile plain of the Red River around Hanoi in the north. From the book he'd just put down he knew that vast tracts of virgin tropical forest covered those mountainsides and large areas of the lowlands too; in the book there were sepia-tinted photographs of primitive tribesmen who still hunted with stone- tipped arrows and poison darts in those same forests that also teemed with elephant herds, tiger, buffalo, black bears and countless other rare species of animal life that had been left undisturbed by the march of civilization. Joseph had devoured the contents of the book avidly during the long Pacific crossing and had begun reading it again after they left Hong Kong.

As he peered through the binoculars he felt a tremor of excitement course through him at the prospect of seeing the printed images come to life. For a moment he let himself imagine he was some great explorer about to enter a hostile, unknown land on which his name would later be stamped for all history. Then he wondered if great explorers ever felt as he did - excited, yes, but more than a little frightened too! Remembering suddenly that Chuck and his father were standing behind him, he blushed inwardly at the thought. Could they detect the excitement he felt? Could they read the apprehension of his expression? The last thing he wanted them to think was that, at fifteen, he was immature. As he turned and handed the binoculars to his elder brother he frowned in what he hoped was a manly, intent manner and tried to make his voice sound casual. 'Looks a bit like Virginia Beach in a heavy haze, if you ask me," he said and attempted to shrug like the French captain.

Chuck Sherman, who had noticed the excited gleam in his young brother's eyes, grinned and punched him affectionately on the arm as he took the binoculars, but before he could lift them to his eyes a tumult of shouting and screaming broke out suddenly among the throng of Chinese pressing up against the iron grille below them. All the Shermans turned to watch in alarm as the captain dashed away down the companionway, dragging a revolver from inside his white uniform tunic. Beside the grille he dropped to one knee and fired three quick shots into the air. The sound of the gun silenced the Chinese for a few seconds, then a lone woman's voice began wailing again and the Shermans saw a thin ragged body forced up against the underside of the grille.

After a muttered exchange through the bars, the captain ordered two of his officers to standby with pistols drawn while he unfastened the padlocks. When the grille swung open he called two or three seamen to his side and ordered them to haul the corpse out onto the deck. He allowed a thin, ill-clad woman to scramble out behind it, and immediately she fell to her knees beside the body and began wailing once more. Ignoring her, the captain ordered his men to carry the body aft, and the woman eventually rose and hobbled after them, still sobbing piteously.

Flavia Sherman turned her back to the rail and closed her eyes; her face was pale and she was trembling. "How dreadful," she said at last "It's a wonder any of them survive in there."

"I shouldn't lose too much sleep over it, my dear," said the senator in a soothing voice. "Chinese coolies are tough. They live hard lives. They don't crave the same bodily comforts as we do. Life is cheap to them." He leaned over the rail to peer down onto the lower deck. The captain's party had disappeared, and the Chinese beneath the grilles had grown quiet again. "You might say, Chuck," he said over his shoulder, "that you've just witnessed a very clear demonstration of the principle on which every empire in history's ever been built. Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great knew it, and so did Britain's Queen Victoria - 'might is right.' Here and now the French have the power, so the Asians on their s.h.i.+p and throughout Indochina do as they tell them. That's the way of the world. The rich and the powerful call the tune. If you can muster superior strength, you can impose your way of thinking on others - even if they don't like what you do or the way you do it. If you've got bigger muscles and the will to use them, the others have to go along with you. Nothing's ever going to change that." He paused and glanced about him to check that no French crew members were within earshot. "The French have a heavy hand. They like to use an elephant gun to stun a flea. You'll see that when we get ash.o.r.e. I'm told they behave here as if they expect their empire to last forever. We know different in America. The French way isn't the American way. We do things different, boys - and do things better..."

The senator took his elder son by the elbow and, still talking, motioned him to stroll with him along the deck. Joseph watched them go, then he glanced' back at his mother with a troubled expression in his eyes. "Do you think those people down there are really so different from us, Momma?" he asked, keeping his voice low so that it wouldn't carry to his father's ears.

Flavia Sherman brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen across his eyes and smiled fondly at him. "Life is full of impossible questions like that, Joseph. They're very different in many ways, no doubt. But we're all still made of flesh and blood, aren't we?"

His face remained creased with thought and she could see that the answer hadn't satisfied him. To distract him she put an arm around his shoulders and moved away from the rail. "Don't worry about it any more for the moment. Let's go back and sit together in the shade, shall we? Then you can tell me some more about that book you've been buried in for the past week."

2.

"Oh boy," breathed Chuck Sherman, gazing longingly at the impenetrable green wall of tropical foliage slipping past only a few yards from the s.h.i.+p's rail, "this is going to make the mountains of West Virginia seem a bit tame. How d'you think you're going to feel, Joey, when we come face to face with a herd of elephant or a tawny tiger out there?"

"I thought we weren't out to shoot elephants or tigers," replied Joseph absently.

"We're not going looking for them, genius - but they don't know that, do they? If they come looking for us with tusk and fang you'd better be ready with that Winchester peashooter of yours."

"I suppose so." Joseph nodded automatically.

They had left their cabins early to enjoy the fresh morning breeze, and Joseph had perched himself on a coil of rope beside Chuck at the rail to finish his reading. The clear, blue water of the river mouth had given way to a brown muddy flow as the s.h.i.+p moved inland, and both banks were now lined with natural stockades of tall, fleshy-leaved trees that trailed tangled creepers over the water. In occasional clearings the American boys caught sight of slender natives in conical, palm-leaf hats bending over fis.h.i.+ng lines or snares for river fowl, but they rarely looked up; only the naked, potbellied children paid any attention, staring at the Avignon with brown, expressionless eyes as it swung past the low banks on which they stood. Sometimes the sudden screech of an unseen bird startled the brothers, but otherwise the brilliant green tropical forest through which they were gliding remained eerily silent.

"I'll bet you don't know, Chuck, how Saigon got its name, do you?" exclaimed Joseph at last, closing the book and jumping to his feet. "It's really quite interesting."

"I don't know how it got its name, no," replied the older boy smiling patiently, "but no doubt some book-reading bore is about to inform me."

"In old Annamese it means 'Village of the Boxwoods,' after the trees that originally grew there. It wasn't much more than a fis.h.i.+ng village until the eighteenth century when French Jesuits and a few merchants demanded the right to build a city. But its name could also be based on the Chinese characters 'Tsai Con,' which mean 'Tribute paid to the West.'"

"Fascinating," said Chuck facetiously. "You're still king of the useless-information department."

The Avignon's captain, strolling down from the bridge in a crisp, freshly starched uniform, smiled on hearing their banter and approached to greet them both with a formal French handshake. "No matter what the Annamese named it, my dear young sirs, you'll find that we French call the city you are about to visit 'the Pearl of the Orient' or sometimes even 'the Paris of the East.' And it won't take you long to see why."

"But why are all these Chinese going there?" asked Joseph, dropping his voice and nodding towards the sea of silent yellow faces still pressed against the underside of the grilles in the deck below.

"Saigon has a twin city, Cholon, a mile or two away across the plain - that's where they're making for. 'Cho Lon' in Annamese means 'Great Market,' and they hope to make their fortune there as many Cantonese emigrants have done, by exploiting the lazy Annamese. There are already two hundred thousand Chinese living in Cholon and you can buy everything there from a pipe of opium to a slant-eyed 'singing girl.'" He paused and winked surrept.i.tiously at Chuck to emphasize his innuendo. "Your father will have to go to Cholon to buy all your hunting supplies, too. Warn him to be careful. Bargain hard! The Chinese are the Jews of Asia."

"How much longer will it take us to get there, captain?" asked Chuck impatiently. "This jungle seems to go on forever."

"The journey from the river mouth to the city takes six or seven hours normally, Monsieur Charles. It's about sixty miles. All too soon, I regret, we shall be forced to say adieu to you and your distinguished father."

"It can't come too soon for me, captain." Senator Sherman advanced smiling affably across the deck, still getting into his jacket. "I mean no disrespect, of course. We've been greatly flattered by your generous hospitality on board. But we're mighty anxious now we've come all this way to get out into that jungle just as soon as we can and start hunting."

"What will you be going for, senator? A tiger skin for your floor? A pair of tusks for the wall?"

"Neither, captain. We're not souvenir hunters. Before he died my father set up a trust to endow the Sherman Field Museum of Natural History in Was.h.i.+ngton. Natural history was a special interest of his, you see. He died five years ago but the museum's only just been finished on the Mall below Capitol Hill. It's really a pretty sight, captain, built of Tennessee marble like one of those old palaces in Florence. So we want to put only the best wild animals in it, and here in these jungles of yours you've got some of the rarest animals in the world The senator paused to light his first Havana of the day and as he got it going he studied the matted vegetation of the riverbank through its smoke. From the corner of his eye Joseph saw his mother emerge from her cabin. As she walked down the companionway to the lower deck the breeze molded her couture suit of cream silk bouquette against the contours of her body. On the bridge he saw the third officer raise his hand to his cap in a debonair salute, and she waved gaily back. Joseph noticed that she avoided pa.s.sing close to the iron grilles closing off the between- deck areas o the s.h.i.+p and when she reached the stern she gazed into the jungle for a moment, then closed her eyes and Lifted her face to the gentle warmth of the morning sun.

We're going mainly for wild water buffalo, banteng and seladang," said the senator, his resonant Southern drawl sounding loud in the stillness that lay over the river. "And we don't just want the big bulls. We need a pair of each - and calves, too, where we can. That will require some fancy shooting. We'll skin them right here and preserve their hides so they can be s.h.i.+pped home and stuffed. Then they'll be put on show in what we call 'habitat displays' so that all the people of America who won't ever come here will be able to see them in our nation's capital just as they once lived in these jungles. We'll send other expeditions to India and Africa for tiger and elephant later. You see, captain, I want to make the Sherman Field Museum the finest of its kind in the United States, maybe even the finest in the world."

"And who is the family's leading marksman?" asked the captain, glancing inquiringly at Chuck and Joseph in turn.

"Chuck here is a deadeye," replied the senator, ruffling the hair of his elder son. "He's learned everything that I can teach him. We hunt in the mountains of West Virginia every fall and he shoots now nearly as well as his daddy."

"And Monsieur Joseph is a budding 'deadeye' too?" asked the captain, rolling the unfamiliar expression off his tongue with a grin.

"Well Joseph isn't too sure yet what he's going to be. 1-le can shoot well enough if he wants, I think, but just can't seem to make up his mind whether he likes the idea that much." The senator's smile faded and he leaned over the rail to let the ash that had formed on his cigar fall into the muddy river. "His mother isn't that keen on hunting, and he maybe sides with her a little. I guess we'll find out for sure what Joseph's made of here in Cochin China."

The captain saw the corners of Joseph's mouth tighten momentarily, then the American boy's eyes widened and he pointed excitedly over the starboard rail. "Captain, what's that out there? Is it a native temple? It looks enormous."

Two pointed spires of stone had become visible, seeming to sprout from the middle of the jungle, and the captain laughed again. "It's a native temple of sorts, I suppose, Monsieur Joseph. Dedicated, you will find, to the main religion of my own native country. Those are the steeples of Saigon Cathedral - the first sight any traveler ever sees of 'the Pearl of the Orient.'"

"But we aren't going towards them, captain," protested Joseph, standing on the bottom rail and craning his neck to get a better view.

"That's right - not at the moment. The Saigon River now begins to wind like a serpent. It's like sailing through a maze. Every time I come here I begin to worry that I have somehow crossed into another stream and am sailing back in the opposite direction."

The Avignon's bows had begun to swing rapidly through all the points of the compa.s.s as the river meandered on through the jungle, and the tips of the cathedral spires seemed to dart around the s.h.i.+p, popping up first in one quarter then another like the ears of an inquisitive rabbit trying to follow its progress. Joseph saw them one minute to port, then the next minute to starboard, and once they even appeared dead astern as the river turned back on itself. After an hour the s.h.i.+p emerged from the jungle, and the Shermans found themselves gazing across an open alluvial plain dotted with isolated clumps of palm. Rice paddies stretched away endlessly on either side of the s.h.i.+p, and they saw crowds of Annamese in cone-shaped hats of palm leaf already at work, sometimes wading waist-deep in the muddy water.

For a while Flavia Sherman joined them at the rail and stood with her hand resting on Joseph's shoulder; but she seemed restless and soon tired of watching the peasants at work in the fields. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the heat grew gradually more oppressive, and Chuck and his father also retreated to the shade of their cabins. Joseph joined them briefly to gobble down his lunch then rushed back on deck alone, wearing his sun helmet, and stood at the rail eagerly devouring with his eyes each new detail of the ever-changing scene.

The Avignon sailed in and out of thick belts of marshy, deserted jungle, and sometimes he caught sight of villages of stilted houses with matting walls built in the clearings. He waved his helmet in greeting at several groups of Annamese squatting in the dirt before their doors, but they gazed back at him unmoving. When the river broadened, the Avignon began to encounter other craft that had started downstream from Saigon on the favorable tide, and Joseph wondered why the battered-looking Chinese junks, with their shabby, patched sails, didn't sink as they lumbered past among a succession of grimy workhorse freighters from Europe and Latin America. A long French liner slipped majestically by with a mixture of European and Asian faces staring curiously from its rails, then the Avignon was pus.h.i.+ng its way through a swarm of sampans moving downriver on local errands, most of them rowed, to Joseph's surprise, by women. Gradually the water emptied of departing traffic and the Avignon glided on along the muddy river in the deep silence of a blistering noontide.

The white stone wharf, when it appeared, took him by surprise. It ran beside a broad, shaded boulevard of feathery pepper trees, and the sudden sight of European-style buildings made him reflect that the jungles, fields and villages through which they'd been moving for the past few hours had remained unchanging throughout many centuries. But there without doubt were the elusive twin spires of Saigon's cathedral that he'd seen from far off, stationary now and clearly visible, standing sentinel over the wide, tree-lined avenues. They had really arrived at last at their destination!

Then Joseph realized why they had come upon the city so completely by surprise; it was the uncanny silence. No sound of any kind rose from the hot deserted streets - no traffic noise, no hustle of people, no children, no animals There was no movement either, along the quay in front of long rows of deserted customs sheds. It was with a sickening sense of shock that his eyes fell at last on the heaps of bodies lying in the shadows of the dock buildings arid beneath the pepper trees. He grabbed his binoculars with trembling hands and swept the long quay as the Avignon drew nearer, scrutinizing each pile of bodies in turn. There was no doubt about it! The men lay crumpled and motionless, open- mouthed, their thin legs tangled together. Through the lenses he could see clearly that their faces and clothing were covered with blood.

"Captain, captain!" he called frantically, running towards the bridge. "Come quick, there's been a terrible ma.s.sacre in Saigon."

The captain, to his horror, emerged from the wheelhouse smiling. "A ma.s.sacre, Monsieur Joseph?"