Saigon: A Novel Part 10

"Viet Nam! Viet Nain! Viet Nam!"

The words died abruptly as the guillotine severed his head, but his strident cries had already reached the ears of the remaining seven prisoners in their cells, arid as each one was brought onto the field new defiant shouts of "Viet Nam! Viet Nam!" echoed from their throats. The Great Professor, the national leader of the party who had been one of the few to refuse baptism into the Catholic Church in his cell, marched silently to the scaffold and inclined his head in a grave salute to the crowd on the hill. Then he shouted "Viet Nam!" once in a loud sonorous voice before he died.

The silent Annamese spectators, believing that the party leader was the guillotine's last victim, had begun to break up and move away when Ngo Van Hoc appeared. For a few brief moments his father and brother had been seized by the hope that he might have been reprieved at the eleventh hour because of his youth; but the truth was he had been mistakenly left until last by the hara.s.sed French Resident, who in his anxiety to be done with his unpleasant task had overlooked Hoc's presence in the cells. As a result, his escort of Madagascan infantrymen had been ordered to march him to the scaffold as rapidly as possible, and Hoc had to keep breaking into a shuffling run to keep up with the long-striding African soldiers. This and the innocent whiteness of his smock cut away around his thin neck exaggerated his childlike appearance, and an Annamese woman in the crowd, deeply moved by the sight of him, cried out suddenly in anguish: "Toi nghiep con toi -Oh my poor little boy!"

Imagining in his agony that it was the voice of his own mother, Hoc stopped suddenly in his tracks and tried to turn in the woman's direction. The soldiers behind him stumbled into him and one fell to the ground. In the confusion Hoc tried to break free and run towards the voice, but because his ankles were hobbled they caught him easily. When they tried to form up around him again, he began kicking and screaming hysterically, and one of the Madagascans eventually picked him up and carried him bodily to the guillotine. - The sight of the wing-shaped blade silhouetted against the glare of the rising sun at the top of the scaffold shocked him to silence and when the bourreau reached out his arms to take him from the soldier, Hoc offered no further resistance.

"Don't be afraid," said the Annamese quietly in their own language. "You will feel nothing."

The next instant he thrust him roughly against the bascule and Hoc tipped forward helplessly into the jaws of the guillotine. On the balcony of the Garde Indigene barracks Paul Devraux turned his head away to stare unseeing at the matted jungle high up on a distant hillside; in the crowd of watching Annamese, Dong and his father bowed their heads in anguish and prayed silently to their ancestors.

As the upper half of the lunette was slammed into place, Hoc closed his eyes tight arid the face of his dead mother swam before him suddenly in the darkness. Then he heard the click of the mechanism and the frame rattled and shuddered about his shoulders. In the instant before the blade bit into the newly shaved nape of his neck he opened his eyes to stare into the sun-dappled dust before his face and screamed frantically, "Viet Nam! Viet Nam Viet Nam!"

13.

One of the gentle morning breezes of late August was ruffling the surface of the Lake of the Restored Sword in the heart of Hanoi when Dao Van Lat stepped onto the little ornamental bridge leading out to the Island of the Turtle close to its eastern sh.o.r.e. Leaning on the parapet he gazed fixedly down at the thick cl.u.s.ters of red and white lotus flowers stirring in the sparkling, jade-green water and tried hard to calm the pent-up sense of excitement growing inside him.

He had been awake half the night thinking about the clandestine meeting he was to have with the most celebrated Annamese revolutionary of his generation, and because of his agitation he had arrived a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. He had chosen the contact point himself on the same bold principle that had led him to take the noisy rickshaw ride to the Quoc Dan Dang paG.o.da meeting. The last place the Surete would expect revolutionaries to conspire, he reasoned, was beside the placid Ho Hoan Kiem in the full light of the early morning. But that was only part of the reason; the little coral paG.o.da on the Island of the Turtle that was just beginning to glow red in the rising sun was the enduring symbol of his people's love of freedom. Five centuries had pa.s.sed, according to legend, since the lake had yielded up a miraculous sword to a fisherman on its sh.o.r.es; with the sword in his hand that fisherman, Le Loi, had raised a huge peasant army, repulsed an invasion from Ming-ruled China and founded a new dynasty that had opened a glorious era in his country's history. Lat had insisted that the meeting be held there to demonstrate his fervent conviction that now, in August 1930, the time was ripe for a new Le Loi to appear and lead a modern army of peasants against the invaders from France! He was sure there should be no further delay, and he was determined to throw down a challenge. Who was to be the modern Le Loi, the new hero of Viet Nam? Would Nguyen the Patriot return at last from twenty years of exile to march at their head - or would he continue to skulk secretly abroad for twenty more years? If he did, then the peasants must have a leader who would inspire them by his presence and he, Dao Van Lat, would take up the miraculous sword of revolution in his place!

Carried away by his train of thought he realized suddenly he was not being as watchful as he might about his security and turned quickly to scan the Boulevard Francis Gamier that bordered the lake on its eastern sh.o.r.e. He was searching for a telltale Surete Citroen or Peugeot that would indicate he was being followed, but he saw nothing and turned back to the lake. He was dressed neatly in the European style in a pale double-breasted linen suit and a white panama hat pulled over his eyes. From beneath its brim he scrutinized the roads along the other sh.o.r.es, wondering from which direction Nguyen the Patriot might come. He was rumored to be ingenious in his use of disguise, but how would he conceal his ident.i.ty in the city where his arch-enemies of the Surete Generale had their Indochina headquarters? Or perhaps he would not come at all. The meeting had been arranged through intermediaries, and if, as was rumored, he had never once returned to his own country since working his pa.s.sage to Europe on a French liner as a twenty-year-old boy, perhaps he would not have the courage to return at the age of forty now that many provinces in northern Annam and southern Tongking were suddenly and unexpectedly seething with popular rebellion. Or possibly Nguyen the Patriot too had been astonished at this unexpected turn of events.

Lat himself had hatched with grim satisfaction in February and March as his predictions about the foolhardiness of the Quoc Dan Dang rebellion came true - but had then been amazed by the lightning speed at which conditions throughout the Annamese lands had changed and deteriorated thereafter. The Wall Street Crash had led to a rapid flight of French capital from all Indochina, and Annamese roiling in mines and factories were thrown out of work or had their wages slashed. There had already been a succession of poor harvests, and great tracts of productive land had been abandoned abruptly in the wake of a disastrous fall in the price of rice. Starvation had spread quickly and strikes and rioting followed. In some provinces the Garde Indigene and the Foreign Legion had been ordered to fire into the midst of crowds, and many demonstrators had been killed. With great energy and determination Lat had thrown himself into the task of expanding his own peasant movement, the Society of United Hearts, beyond his home province and his stature as a revolutionary leader had grown by leaps and bounds. Rumors of his violent act of self- sacrifice had spread, too, and many members of his movement as a result were openly in awe of him. - For the twentieth time that morning Lat checked his wrist.w.a.tch. It was still a few minutes short of eight o'clock, the appointed hour for the meeting, and again he looked all around the lake in vain for a sign of the mysterious revolutionary lie was waiting to meet. The sun was already hot on his back but because it was Sunday the streets of Hanoi were still quiet and with the exception of a bent rickshaw coolie hobbling painfully along the sh.o.r.e road two hundred yards away, the approaches to the bridge remained deserted. Resting his elbows on the parapet again he gazed into the sun- dappled lake and let his thoughts return to the slumbering jade dragon of national salvation that the legend claimed had chosen to make its mythical lair there.

He half closed his eyes and imagined the dark-clad figure of Le Loi casting his net, into the water arid withdrawing, in astonishment, the gleaming sword into which its genie had transformed itself; he saw it flas.h.i.+ng colored fire across the waters, the nha que -the peasants - surging from the rice paddies in their tens of thousands to follow the magical blade and its bearer in a bitter ten-year war of independence against the Chinese. A poet's words that he had memorized as a young boy chased the images through Lat's mind and he repeated them softly aloud: "The tyrannous invader fled in fear When his slave refused to kneel.

From the deep lake the firey sword of vengeance leapt forth Rousing the people to freedom."

The little bridge on which he stood must have been very close, he reflected, to the spot where the fisherman who became an emperor returned to offer a sacrifice to the genie of the lake a decade later. It was then that the sword sprang out of its sheath and, exploding in a flash of light, refas.h.i.+oned itself into a great jade dragon that roared and whirled through the clouds above the awe-struck crowd before plunging down to disappear into the green depths of the lake. At the same moment, the legend said, the little red coral paG.o.da materialized on the rock on the lake's southern reaches to mark the spot and Lat was turning to look towards the paG.o.da when a voice spoke quietly in Annamese at his shoulder.

"Our ancestors long ago established an independent nation with its own civilization. We have our own mountains and our own rivers, our own customs and our own traditions Lat turned slowly, recognizing the words uttered by the emperor Le Loi in his victory address at the lakeside. He started when he found himself gazing into the face of the bent rickshaw coolie, who still clutched the shafts of his vehicle behind him. But instead of the wizened, aged face he might have expected from the coolie's posture, he saw a pair of deep-set eyes regarding him with a glittering intensity from beneath a smooth, high-domed forehead. A shock of dark hair swept back from the narrow, intelligent face belied the impression of agedness given by the cringing gait and the hairpin-thin body. The Annamese was not much more than five feet tall and clean shaven, and as lie awaited Lat's response his piercing eyes softened into a faint, self mocking smile at his a.s.sumed disguise.

We have sometimes been weak and sometimes powerful -- but at no time have we suffered from a lack of heroes," said Lat softly, completing the quotation which had been set as their secret pa.s.sword, For a moment the man between the rickshaw shafts said nothing but merely glanced about himself in all directions with the practiced casualness of one used to being pursued.

"I can hardly believe I am at last face to face with the famous Nguyen the Patriot," said Lat quietly. "Are you really Nguyen Ai Quoc?"

"How should a humble pousse-pousse coolie answer that?" replied the Annamese, his eyes twinkling. "Only Nguyen Ai Quoc himself would be able to give an adequate reply."

Lat stared at him uncertainly. "If Nguyen Ai Quoc himself were really here," he asked, his voice suddenly challenging, "what would he advise our nation's best patriots to do?"

The Annamese fumbled in the pocket of his faded shorts and drew out black tobacco and papers to roll himself a cigarette. As if in response to the obvious tension in the man facing him, his movements were exaggeratedly slow and relaxed. He had positioned himself with his back to the rising sun beneath the overhanging fronds of a lakeside willow, and Eat had difficulty in discerning his features in the shadows. "Your name has gained much renown because of a courageous act of self-sacrifice," he said. "You have proved you have the determination to lead."

Lat, despite the seeming compliment, detected a clear note of disapproval in the unemotional statement and didn't reply.

"But determination is not enough on its own - it should always be tempered by good judgment. Weren't the leaders of the Quoc Dan Dang determined to make a rebellion at Yen Bay?"

"My judgment was good," replied Eat coldly. "I refused to take part. I warned them that the people weren't ready."

The dark eyes glittered in the shade of the trees and he nodded slowly. "That at least was wise But are the people really ready now, do you think?"

"Yes. I've worked among the peasants for six months. Many thousands have flocked to join my Society of United Hearts."

"Better known to its members as the Dao Van Lat Society, yes?" An ironic little smile tugged at the corners of the older man's mouth. "I found the oaths and the initiation rites of our secret societies exciting as a boy, too. It was like 'The Romance of the Three Kingdoms' come to life. I've heard your followers still prop their leader's picture on their altars and prostrate themselves before it like members of the old societies did, is that right?"

"I've forbidden that practice," said Eat sharply, "but our peasants respond best to traditions of the past that they understand."

"But do they really know your program? Do they have any idea along which path you are leading them?"

"To sovereignty, independence, freedom!" replied Eat hotly.

"They can't eat sovereignty or drink independence - or plant rice in them either. They need a promise of land, something they can feel and touch - or they will lose interest when they're no longer starving."

"Their loyalty to my leaders.h.i.+p is unshakable," protested Lat, his face Hus.h.i.+ng with anger.

The man between the shafts of the rickshaw sighed resignedly and lit the straggly cigarette he had rolled. He sucked the smoke noisily into his lungs for a moment, peering absently across the take. "Yes, the old habits die hard. But we must fight modern oppression with modern means of resistance. Secret societies and ancient rituals are of little use against machine guns and bombs dropped from the sky."

"And what is so much better?" asked Lat in a sullen tone.

"About the time of the Yen Bay debacle I held a meeting with representatives of three different Communist factions from our country - on the crowded terraces of a football stadium in Hong Kong!" He paused and smiled impishly at the memory. "With the crowd yelling all around us we succeeded in sinking our differences and formed a united Communist Party of Vietnam."

"And now all our problems are solved, I suppose," rejoined Lat sarcastically. "What magic genie is watching over the party born at a Hong Kong football match?"

The morning wind shook the trailing willow branches in little flurries about his shoulders as the older man leaned towards Lat. "We agreed to work to overthrow French rule and set up a government of workers, peasants and soldiers. But most important of all our new Marxist-Leninist party is supported by the international proletariat -- by all the oppressed people of the world. The party and its goals will survive the death of individual leaders. If you are killed or imprisoned, what happens to your society?"

"A man with a will of iron is not so easily destroyed," replied Lai fiercely.

The man who called himself Nguyen the Patriot drew slowly on his cigarette, then suddenly his face lit up with a childlike radiance. "A true revolutionary cannot be a man of iron," lie said softly. "An iron rod can be broken with a single blow. A revolutionary should be more like our own bamboo that bends before the wind and springs back again. Vietnam needs revolutionaries who are flexible, revolutionaries who don't try to cut themselves off from life - revolutionaries who are sensitive to the winds of events and needs of their people."

Stung by the rebuke, Lat glared angrily at the man before him.

"The greatest need of the people now is for a leader who will march bravely and openly at their head - not one who continues to hide abroad!" He paused, his chest rising and falling quickly in his agitation. "The provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh are seething with revolt. Do you intend to go there and lead the peasants?"

Before he replied the older man calmly studied all the roads leading towards the bridge once more. Then he turned the full brilliance of his gaze back to Eat. "I'm a professional revolutionary. The Comintern makes sure that every party in the world is strengthened by the support of proletarian internationalism, I am always on strict orders. My itinerary is carefully prescribed."

"So you don't have enough faith in our revolution to stay?" Lat couldn't hide the note of triumph in his voice.

"We've worked patiently for five years training our activists in Moscow and at the Whampoa revolutionary academy in Canton - some small results are beginning to show. But we must proceed carefully. Our organization is still poor." He stopped, and a rueful smile played across his face. "Many peasants still believe the hammer and sickle is the flag of the French government. So the road will be long-and you are right-we need many more good men to lead our movement."

He smiled again and his face radiated a warmth and simple heartedness that the younger Annamese found strangely disarming despite his anger.

"What if I join your new party," said Lat brusquely, "and go to Nghe An to help organize the peasants? We lack arms now, but what could the French do if fifteen million Vietnamese could be persuaded to lay down their tools in the factories and mines and in the rice fields?" He paused, and his voice grew excited. "What if the cooks and the boys and coolies of the cities could be made to join them in peaceful protest marches? Even without arms they would become a great unstoppable tide!"

"We must proceed carefully," warned the man between the shafts of the rickshaw, staring over Lat's shoulder. "The movement isn't steady or continuous by any means. Don't take unnecessary risks." Then he smiled quickly. "And don't arrange any more meetings in daylight on the sh.o.r.es of the Ho Roan Kiem."

Eat saw that the other man's eyes were fixed on the Boulevard Gamier, and swinging around to follow his gaze he saw a s.h.i.+ny black Surete Citroen nosing slowly along the lakeside. Nguyen the Patriot raised his hand in the direction of the red coral paG.o.da and immediately a bent peasant woman hobbled from the doorway, struggling with a heavy bag of vegetables. The Annamese removed his faded, threadbare s.h.i.+rt and wound it quickly around his head in a makes.h.i.+ft turban. Naked to the waist he trotted slowly towards the woman, and when she had climbed into the rickshaw, he turned with lowered head and brought her back across the bridge. Hobbling hunch-shouldered between the shafts, he had transformed himself in seconds into a bowed and shriveled figure, in appearance twice his forty years.

Lat leaned over the narrow parapet again, watching the rickshaw out of the corner of his eye. He saw the Surete car cruise slowly towards the shabby little vehicle, then pa.s.s by without pausing. In the rear seat Inspector Jacques Devraux was reading a newspaper and he didn't even glance up at the hunched figure between the shafts.

Lat remained on the bridge with his back to the road until the car had disappeared into the distance. Left alone he felt suddenly exhilarated and full of confidence. He would show Nguyen the Patriot who was right! He would show him that too much caution was as dangerous as too little. Millions of peasants now were crying out for strong, courageous leaders.h.i.+p, and if Nguyen the Patriot wished to give priority to his secret foreign duties, he, Dao Van Lat, would show the way! And perhaps by his decisive actions he would even win first place in the hearts of the people as Le Loi had done five hundred years before!

Excited by this thought he turned and strode briskly away along the eastern sh.o.r.e, glancing from time to time into the s.h.i.+mmering waters of the lake. The jade dragon was there in the shadowy depths, he reminded himself fiercely, waiting to rematerialize as a mighty sword of vengeance. It remained invisible only to the eyes of those without sufficient faith and determination to see it! But as surely as the dragon of his own iron will lay coiled and waiting inside him, it was there, ready and eager to spring forth again soon!

14.

The narrow road winding through the empty paddies of Nghe An province in northern Annam was lit only by the feeble glow of a waning moon as Dao Van Lat pedaled a bicycle furiously northward in the early morning of September 12, 1930. It was an hour before dawn, and to the west, the peaks of the Annamite Chain, dimly visible in the fading moonlight, resembled a dark jagged row of dragon's teeth. As always the sight of the mountains stirred Lat's emotions deeply; the mighty outcrops of gnarled rock that pushed down almost to the sea in places in the province where he had been born, he thought of as the strong roots of his own life. Sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, these stony rice lands, much less fertile than the rich deltas around Hanoi and Saigon, had over the centuries produced a tough, resilient breed of people from whom he was proud to be descended. They were accustomed to battling hard to survive, and all the leaders of peasant rebellions in his country's history had sprung from that region - including, Lat reflected grimly as he rode, Nguyen the Patriot.

His encounter with the Communist leader in a rickshaw coolie's guise had lived on vividly in his memory during the past three weeks; the strangely hypnotic physical presence of the man had left an impression that grew with the pa.s.sage of time - but above all else his smiling, ironic criticisms had continued to rankle in Lat's mind. As a result he had flung himself into his new role in the Viet Nam Cong San Dang - the Vietnam Communist Party - with ferocious energy, and he had found his determination to prove Nguyen the Patriot wrong increasing daily during the furtive meetings of the party's Provincial Committee.

He had been appointed to the committee immediately on joining the party because of his reputation, and in the first ten days of September its members had been meeting in almost daily session in paG.o.das in and around Vinh, the capital of Nghe An, as they battled to control the great upsurge of peasant discontent that was shaking the province. By then it had become clear that starvation was affecting about a third of the entire population throughout the Annamese lands, and the unrest that had begun with Communist-led coolies hoisting a hammer-and-sickle flag above the cainha of a rubber plantation on May Day was obviously reaching a new peak. In Nghe An and the neighboring province of Ha Tinh, violence had become widespread; peasants armed with crude spears and coupe-coupes had begun burning down district government offices, murdering landlords and pro-French mandarins, and other terrified Annamese officials were fleeing to the provincial capital in increasing numbers. In many areas something close to anarchy reigned.

To bring the stamp of firm leaders.h.i.+p to this growing chaos and provide a focus for the discontent, Lat had proposed a ma.s.sive unarmed protest march into the city of Vinh and had undertaken to organize and lead it himself. He had worked day and night for a whole week, drafting fifty of the best members of his Society of United Hearts into the party to help him in the task. He was trying to a.s.semble a column of ten thousand peasants, and as dawn approached on the day of the march he was racing from village to village by bicycle checking that they were being a.s.sembled in sufficient numbers, distributing crudely written pet.i.tions to be carried and giving last-minute orders.

He had already visited a dozen villages in the past two hours and to his satisfaction had found that behind the tall bamboo thickets which screened all the settlements of that part of Annam, the sleepy-eyed peasants were gathering obediently in groups several hundreds strong under the watchful eyes of his own handpicked leaders.

Lat himself was wearing a tunic and trousers of cheap red- brown peasant cloth, and a mollusk-shaped straw hat was tied about his shoulders. He crouched low over his handlebars as he rode, pumping the pedals in a fast rhythm, his antic.i.p.ation of the march's success fueling his strength. Occasionally he disturbed a pair of long-legged herons rooting for frogs in the shallow water of the roadside paddies and the quiet plain echoed for a moment with a succession of eerie cries as the birds flapped away into the darkness. The rice fields through which he was pedaling had just produced their third bad harvest in succession, and he had found little difficulty in persuading the hungry peasants to march on Vinh to present pet.i.tions demanding abolition of the high rice taxes still being collected by the French. When he dismounted from his machine to wheel with rough the bamboo groves rattling in the pre-dawn breeze around the fourteenth village on his list, Lat was pleased to see the familiar face of Ngo Van Loc materialize from the shadows.

"How many, Comrade Loc?" he asked sharply before offering any greeting.

The murmur of a big crowd could be heard coming from the clearing in the center of the darkened village, and Loc smiled. "Don't worry! Already seven hundred when I last checked fifteen minutes ago."

"Good!" Lat glanced down at his list. "Then you still have three hundred or so to come. Send out new messengers and hurry them up." He lifted his head and listened for a moment to the growing murmur. "And when they begin to move, they must all remain absolutely quiet. Is that clear? The march must be tightly disciplined. It must take place in total silence."

"Yes, Comrade Lat," replied Loc dutifully. "I have already told them. But I will get Dong to make a new announcement when they are all a.s.sembled."

Lat had persuaded the former hunting camp "boy" to accompany him to Nghe An with his son Dong when they had met by chance in the old quarter of Hanoi. After watching his younger son and the Viet Nam Nationalist People's Party itself die under the guillotine at Yen Bay, Loc had turned naturally in his agony to the new Communist Party to continue the fight against the hated French. He had welcomed the hard work and the responsibility of supervising one of the biggest a.s.sembly points for the march, and when Lat arrived, his eyes were alight with a subdued excitement at the success of his efforts to gather the large crowd together in secret.

Lat patted him on the shoulder and smiled as he pulled a sheaf of pet.i.tions from inside his tunic. "Now, Comrade Loc, you are really seeing the people rise up together. There'll be no more crazy, halfhearted military mutinies! This time the leaders.h.i.+p is right!"

Loc nodded and took the papers he was offered. "These look very authentic, comrade," he observed leafing through the pages by the light of his flashlight.

"I had them written by semiliterate peasants of my society. Give them to innocent-looking villagers. When the time comes, hide yourself in their midst - but make sure that they know you're there so that you can control them."

Loc nodded again.

"How many women and children have you got?"

"Over two hundred, I think."

"Good. Put them all at the front and along the sides of the column. Your group will lead the whole march, and the soldiers won't open fire if they see only women and children." Lat glanced at his watch. "Begin moving towards the road half an hour before dawn. Arid search them again before daylight for weapons. No bamboo lances, no coupe-coupes, nothing. Understand?"

"Yes of course, comrade."

Lat turned his bicycle and swung his leg across the saddle again, then he stopped and patted Loc quickly on the shoulder. "You've done a good job, comrade. Keep it up. Things are going well. Today you will be part of a mighty sea of protest - the biggest the French have ever seen!" With a wave of his hand he turned and pedaled rapidly away towards the next village on his list.

While it was still dark the village groups all began trickling out of concealment and heading for one of the main highways ten miles from Vinh. By the time dawn broke the column had virtually a.s.sembled; filling the narrow road from edge to edge, it stretched for a distance of three or four miles between the flat patchwork of paddy fields. Moving slowly and in silence, it began heading for the provincial capital.

The sun was well up the eastern sky before the French detected the marchers and it was an adjutant chef, piloting a Potez 25 fighting biplane of the Armee de l'Air, who first caught sight of them. He was flying his first routine reconnaissance patrol of the day and from a distance he merely thought he was looking at a muddy brown river that he hadn't know was there before. Then as he drew nearer he saw with astonishment that he was looking at a silently flowing stream of human bodies. Wide, conical hats spread a multipointed roof of straw above the heads of the peasants, but as he flew in to take a closer look, the pilot saw the hats tip backwards in a long slow rippling movement; like an army of mollusks opening their sh.e.l.ls in unison on the sea bed, the brims lifted to reveal thousands of soft, unprotected faces beneath. With their eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun the peasants of Nghe An stared blankly at the unfamiliar sight of the little French warplane as it flew along the length of the column.

Because the plane was on reconnaissance duties, its external bomb racks beneath the fuselage were empty and the two Lewis guns mounted in the rear c.o.c.kpit were unmanned, but when the adjutant chef recovered from his astonishment he used his c.o.c.kpit wireless to call his base near Vinh. "C'est incroyable!" he repeated over and over again into his tiny transmitter. "It is incredible. There are many thousands of peasants marching towards Yen Xuyen - but they have no arms, no banners. And they are marching very slowly it's all very eerie.

On the ground Lat dismounted from his bicycle and stood still at the side of the procession, watching the little biplane disappear into the sky towards the east. "Retreating in bafflement," he thought delightedly and turned to look at the faces of the peasants trudging past a few feet away. Men, women and children alike were hollow-cheeked from hunger, but they were moving along the road with determined strides and he felt a tremor of elation run through him. It was working! The great tide of humanity flowing towards the French administrative capital had been conceived in his own mind, and by his energy and determination he had brought the dream to life!

As the peasants plodded by, they stared at him incuriously and he wondered if they knew that they were marching because he, Dao Van Eat, had decided they should. Then he realized a face beneath one of the wide straw hats was staring at him with unusual intensity. For a second or two because, like him, she was dressed in the dun-colored clothes of the region, he didn't recognize Lien. They had not met during the eight months that had pa.s.sed since the eve of Tet, and she was staring at him with a pained expression in her eyes. Although she must have seen that he had recognized her, she turned away quickly without acknowledging him to whisper in the ear of a young Annamese marching beside her. For a moment Lat watched her retreating back, but she didn't turn her head again and he jumped on his bicycle to give his stewards towards the rear of the march new instructions.

As he pedaled along the column, however, he found he couldn't dismiss from his mind the naked expression of pain he had seen in Lien's eyes. Remorse welled up inside him with sudden, unexpected force, and when he had finished giving his orders he hurried back towards the front of the marching column. On spotting her he ordered one of the peasants to push his bicycle and slipped into the crowd at her side. "It's good to see you marching with us today, Comrade Lien," he said quietly.

She looked startled when she turned, but didn't speak. Despite her drab clothes and her cartwheel-sized hat of plaited banana leaves, the fineness of her features still betrayed the background of her upbringing in one of Hue's leading mandarin families. If anything, her plain garb accentuated the refined, gentle loveliness of her face, and Eat felt his pulse quicken at the memory of the love they had once shared.

"This is Comrade Hao," said Lien awkwardly, and the young Annamese at her side nodded and moved away so that Eat could walk between them.

'And have you come here together to join my march?"

"Yes." She nodded once but stared hard at the ground as she spoke.

"I take it you're an enthusiastic worker for the party, comrade," said Eat, addressing Hao in a curt voice. "Would I be right?"

"Of course." Hao, who appeared to be in his early twenties, looked steadily back at him, his eyes bright and eager in his boyish face.

"Then take my bicycle and ride two miles ahead to Yen Xuyen. Give me an idea how many Legionnaires are on duty there and how many local militia!"

"Very good, Comrade Lat." Hao turned and pushed through the crowd and mounted the bicycle immediately.

Even after he'd gone Lien still continued to march with her eyes turned from Lat, arid because he found himself at a loss for words they walked side by side in silence for several minutes. Once, somebody ahead of them stumbled and fell, and as the crowd surged to a halt he was pressed roughly against her. Conscious of touching the softness of her upper arm and the curve of her hip with his own body, he felt a spasm of sweet agony shoot through him. Almost immediately the crush of those around them relented and they s.h.i.+fted apart but she saw at once how deeply he had been stirred by the brief moment of contact.

"Lien he began then stopped, his voice dying in his throat. "Lien ,...I' m sorry." Impulsively he reached out and took her hand in his own, looking at her with burning eyes.

"It is too late to be sorry, Lat."

He felt something fall against his hand and looked down to see that a single gold bracelet, one that he had given her a year before, had slipped down her arm from its place of concealment beneath the loose sleeve of her peasant tunic. She glanced down and saw it, too, then looked into his face and tried to smile. But tears suddenly welled in her eyes.

"Comrade Lat! Comrade Lat!" The anxious voice made him turn, and he saw Ngo Van Loc struggling through the crowd towards him. "The Legion guard post up ahead sent an Annamese messenger to ask about our intentions, and some women at the front of the crowd said we were carrying tax pet.i.tions."

"Yes, yes. What of it?" snapped Lat irritably.