Saigon: A Novel Part 13

"If you had the father of Le Loi, I'm sure you would have advised him to 'respect' the Chinese invaders he so gloriously defeated in the fifteenth century," said Kim, his voice now openly contemptuous. "You teach me to respect the great heroes of our past - but forbid me to emulate them. I know in my heart that the only course for a true patriot today is to become a revolutionary!"

"And you will become the savior of our country singlehanded, I suppose."

"The savior will not be one, but many," replied Kim confidently. "The Communist Party of Indochina supported by all the oppressed peoples of the world and led by Nguyen Ai Quoc will set us free. I hope that I'll be able to play my part in that way, yes, I will try to become my country's savior."

"Nguyen the Patriot is dead," said Tam flatly. "It was reported in the Communist newspapers of Moscow and Paris."

"They were wrong. He's alive and the party is recovering," rejoined Kim.

"Then where is he now?"

"That's not important. What's important is that he won't be in Hue with you taking part in the futile charade of the Sacrifice to Heaven. He's still working with many other comrades to ensure that the modern theories of Marx and Lenin conquer the antiquated ideas of Confucius."

Lan saw her father raise his head, his expression suddenly pained and sorrowful rather than angry. For a moment he looked at each of his Sons in turn. "There's nothing more dangerous than to reject the past completely," he said in a quiet voice. "The emperor is still important today as a symbolic focus of our culture and our national character. If our nation is to survive, we must try to combine the best of our Confucian ideals with the best of the new scientific teachings from the West. We must harmonize old things with new things and let the past and the present meet as equals. You've been won over, Kim, by the wild rantings of your uncle Lat. He's obsessed by foreign ideas - but if we let our national sense become submerged in an ocean of foreign knowledge, we will lose the soul of the nation." The mandarin employed the emotive Annamese term quoc hon with a sonorous gravity. "We've always retained our traditions although we've often lost our independence - first to China and now to France. If you and Lat sacrifice our national soul to Bolshevism in return for independence, you'll find afterwards there's nothing left of the true nation to revive. During the Red Terror of 1931 your 'friends' committed many atrocities, butchered hundreds of their own countrymen. They've shown they will not hesitate to tear out our nation's vitals to 'save' it."

Kim stared in silence for a moment, his expression uncertain, as though some small part of him still intuitively respected the wisdom of his father's words. Then his features contorted in a sudden grimace of irrational anger and he sprang forward and banged his fist violently on the writing-table. "You and Tam are blind - or you won't see. The doctrines of Lenin alone can make our people free! Only Leninism can free us from the humiliation of kowtowing all our lives to the insufferable French!"

Tran Van Hieu looked expressionlessly at his son. "You know well enough that the best Frenchmen - like Captain Devraux - have a deep affection for our country. Things are changing now. If we work quietly and methodically, the Emperor Bao Dai could become our first modern sovereign - advised by the French but governing with greater independent powers."

Kim snorted derisively. "The French will only ever use us, as we use the water buffalo. They love only the material riches they can wring from our soil." His eyes blazed suddenly as he stared down at his father, then he thrust a hand into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out some crumpled banknotes. He smoothed out a ten-piastre bill between his fingers, then waved it in front of him. "This is the only thing for which the French colons have a deep affection. And you have the same deep affection for it too. All else is hypocrisy!"

He turned the note in his hands and pointed to the engraved design portraying Mother France with her arms draped benevolently around the shoulders of two native Annamese. "Do you know what that picture is meant to convey? It shows a mother dragging her Annamese b.a.s.t.a.r.d sons to market- to sell them as slaves! And I'm the son of one of the middlemen who has grown fat on the proceeds." He paused and with a dramatic sweep of his arm flung the banknote in his father's face. "You may not be prepared to stop selling our people to France for private gain, but I am - I will no longer be a party to such shameful deeds."

Tran Van Hieu winced and closed his eyes as the banknote fluttered to rest on the table in front of him. When he opened them again his eyes fell directly on the engraving. For a long time he sat without moving. When he finally spoke, he kept his eyes averted from his son.

"You will leave my house immediately," he said in a barely audible voice. "And never return again as long as I live." - From outside the window Lan clearly heard Kim's sharp intake of breath. Beside her father, Tam stood motionless, like a wax figure, his face drained of all color.

"The family and the nation should be one," continued Tran Van Hieu in the same quiet voice. "If the family is lost, the nation will be lost too. In the end, Kim, if Bolshevism succeeds you'll bring down ruination on your country, your family and yourself! Now go!"

Lan could not prevent a little sobbing cry escaping her lips, and when Kim rushed from the room, she hurried up the steps into the house. She met her brother in the shadowy hall but he pushed past her without acknowledging her presence. Sobbing openly, she ran into her father's study and found him hunched gray-faced in his chair. Kneeling beside him, she seized his hand and kissed it convulsively. In the doorway her mother appeared silently, having come from the back of the house where she had obviously been listening all the time. Tam went to her and she put her arms around him and drew him close; tears were already streaming down her cheeks too.

4.

The features of the ragged Annamese prisoners appeared uniformly gaunt and pallid as one by one they stepped onto the gangplank of the freighter that had brought them from Paulo Condore. Some carried a few sc.r.a.ps of clothing tied in a bundle, others nothing; all had the watchful, haunted look common to men who have been confined behind bars for a long time against their will. On the quayside Joseph Sherman studied the individual prisoners intently as the companionway sagged beneath their weight. He had retained a clear image in his mind of Ngo Van Loc's face in the jungle hunting camp, but as the first dozen or so men hobbled ash.o.r.e, he began to doubt his ability to recognize him. Eleven years before, Loc's habitual expression had been the servile, respectful half-smile of the domestic servant, but none of the grim, resentful prison faces seemed to bear any resemblance to that memory.

The small freighter, the second to arrive in Saigon with Communists released under the amnesty, carried about fifty prisoners, and there were almost as many uniformed French and Annamese gendarmes stationed ostentatiously on the quayside, monitoring their arrival. To make their job easier arc lamps had been rigged along the berth, and the prisoners blinked uncertainly in the bright pool of light they cast onto the nighttime quayside. Across the broad boulevard that ran beside the river, another mixed group of Frenchmen and Annamese dressed in civilian clothes watched more surrept.i.tiously from beneath the awnings of the Cafe de Ia Rotonde at the foot of the Rue Catinat. From time to time one of their number rose unhurriedly from his table and detached himself from the others to follow a particular prisoner or group of prisoners into the darkened streets of the city; always these agents of the Surete Generale took pains to keep a good distance between themselves and their quarry to ensure that they remained un.o.bserved.

As Joseph scrutinized each successive face, he felt his chest tightening with the same kind of breathless tension he'd first noticed in himself on his arrival in Saigon; again the night was hot and clammy and he tried to dismiss the feeling as a natural reaction in someone unused to the dense tropical heat. But at the same time he suspected that the events of the day and his impulsive decision to come to the dockside had tautened his nerves. The riot at the Cercle Sportif and the subsequent ride in the malabar with Lan had left him feeling strangely exhilarated; his appet.i.te had fled and he had not been able to face dinner alone at the hotel. Paul had telephoned to thank him for escorting Lan home and to report that the disturbance had been quelled without serious injury; because Paul was on duty that night, they had arranged to meet the next day for lunch, and it was while Joseph was sitting alone on the hotel terrace at sunset that he had seen a photograph in the evening paper of the first group of prisoners arriving from Paulo Condore. He had been peering closely at the blurred faces in the picture for some time before he realized with a start that he was unconsciously searching for Ngo Van Loc. At the end of the story the newspaper announced that a second group was expected to arrive some time that evening, and he had risen immediately from his table and hurried down to the quayside.

The next two hours had pa.s.sed with an agonizing slowness, and as he paced restlessly back and forth along the darkened waterfront watching s.h.i.+ps arrive and depart, conflicting impulses and emotions had warred endlessly with one another inside his head; one part of his mind, his most rational self, urged him repeatedly to leave before the prison s.h.i.+p docked. What good could be achieved by seeking out the former hunting camp 'boy"? The past was undeniably past - would anything more be achieved than the opening of old wounds? And would he, when it came to it, have the courage to fire painful questions at a man he barely knew and who had just been released from a harsh spell of imprisonment? He asked himself these questions a hundred times, but still he didn't leave the sweltering riverside.

During the long wait, the image of Loc's sobbing wife fleeing half-naked through the storm, and the sound of his own mother's faint cries returned to haunt his mind, and he remembered again with a disconcerting intensity the turmoil of shock and bewilderment that those events had caused him as a fifteen-year-old. Subconsciously the vague feeling of betrayal, instinctive in that jungle storm, had deepened as his knowledge of the adult world expanded, leaving him with a legacy of suspicion and wariness; but on that Saigon dockside he realized he had never entirely abandoned the hope that perhaps some explanation beyond his imagining might have existed for what had happened, an explanation that somehow would relieve the disquiet that those terrible moments in the storm had implanted in him. He was half aware that such a hope was a forlorn one, but it was this slender chance, he knew, that kept him there, striding back and forth along the wharves in the sticky darkness, his s.h.i.+rt plastered against his back with perspiration.

When the prison s.h.i.+p finally appeared Joseph had hurried to join the little crowd of Annamese relatives who had antic.i.p.ated its arrival, and it was then that the Surete agents across the boulevard noticed his presence for the first time. When he moved closer to the foot of the gangway to get a better look at the disembarking prisoners, the inspector directing the undercover operation from the back of the cafe gave quiet instructions to a heavily built Frenchman to put him under immediate surveillance.

More than half the prisoners had left the s.h.i.+p before Joseph saw a man who bore a faint resemblance to Ngo Van Loc; like all the others, however, his features were blurred by the ashen pallor of long confinement, making recognition difficult. His threadbare black cotton tunic and trousers hung loose on his skeletal frame, and Joseph noticed that his left arm dangled uselessly at his side. At the moment of stepping ash.o.r.e the prisoner glanced incuriously into the American's face before turning away, and for a second Joseph decided he had been mistaken. Then on impulse he stepped towards the man and touched his shoulder.

"Excuse me, monsieur," he said quietly in French, are you Ngo Van Loc?"

The released prisoner turned to look at him with a startled expression; fear and suspicion were mingled in his gaze, and he didn't reply. He glanced warily around at the faces of the uniformed gendarmes crowding the quayside, then back at Joseph again.

"Weren't you once the hunting camp 'boy' of Jacques Devraux?" asked Joseph desperately.

For a fleeting instant he fancied that the emaciated face of the Annamese registered surprise, but then he turned his back without speaking to catch up with another of the released prisoners. Joseph watched for a moment or two as they crossed the boulevard, then looked back again towards the s.h.i.+p. But none of the remaining faces aroused his interest, and making up his mind suddenly, he hurried across the quayside in the direction taken by the Annamese with the paralyzed arm.

The streets were crowded, and fearing he might lose track of the man, Joseph broke into a run. He caught sight of him and his companion as they turned into a street leading towards the central market, but the sound of his running feet caused the two Annamese to turn their heads, and to Joseph's dismay, on seeing themselves pursued, they began to run too. By one of the arched entrances to the vast covered market they turned and glanced frantically in his direction again, then disappeared inside. Joseph followed without hesitation, and although he could see nothing in the subterranean gloom, he clearly heard the scuff of running feet and the labored breathing of the two Annamese.

"Monsieur Loc, please wait," he called frantically in French. "I just want to talk to you."

His voice echoed and re-echoed hollowly in the cavernous interior of the deserted market, but the men didn't stop, and Joseph plunged on in the direction of their footsteps. When he paused to listen again, to his surprise he could hear nothing except the sound of his own breathing, and he walked on more cautiously through the silent darkness that reeked of overripe fruit and rotten Fish. From time to time he called Loc's name, but still there was no response, and when an unseen arm encircled his neck from behind he was taken completely by surprise; in the same instant he felt the point of a knife pressed hard against the small of his back.

"Who are you?" whispered an Annamese voice in French, close to his ear. "Why do you follow us?"

"My name's Joseph Sherman," gasped the American, struggling to loosen the fierce arm lock clamped around his throat. "Jacques Devraux once guided my family on a hunting trip when Ngo Van Loc worked with him." He heard the two men mutter rapidly to one another in their own language, but the pressure on his windpipe didn't ease and the knife was jabbed harder into his back.

"And is Devraux living here in Saigon?"

"No, he's chief of the Surete Generale in Hue now. Are you Ngo Van Loc?"

"Yes!"

The headlights of a car pa.s.sing one of the market entrances penetrated the gloom briefly as the hold on his neck was released, and Joseph turned to see Loc still holding the knife warningly in his good hand; beside him the other Annamese stood in a half- crouch, ready to move against him again if necessary.

"How did you know where to find me? How did you know I was a prisoner?" Loc's voice, still threatening, betrayed his curiosity.

"I've talked with Paul Devraux," replied Joseph, ma.s.saging his neck. "He's in the army here. He told me he thought you were in Paulo Condore." He hesitated and rubbed his neck again. "He told me, too, the tragic news about your son, Hoc. I was very sorry to hear that he'd died."

"He didn't 'die' - he was butchered by the French with their guillotine! Did he tell you that they murdered my wife too? And that I lost the use of my arm when their brave pilots bombed and machine-gunned defenseless peasants at Vinh? Did he tell you that the French killed ten thousand Annamese because we dared to defy their despotic rule?"

"Paul feels deeply sorry for all that's happened," said Joseph desperately. "He regarded you and your sons as his friends."

The Annamese snorted in contempt. "Did he send you himself to tell me these lies?"

"No. He doesn't know I've come."

"Then what did you wish to talk to me about?"

Joseph suddenly found himself unable to summon up the words he wanted. "It's a very personal matter, Loc," he said hesitantly. "I wanted to speak to you alone."

The Annamese muttered a few rapid words in his own language, and Joseph waited until the shadowy figure of Loc's companion had moved away through the gloom and taken up guard inside the nearest archway.

"Loc, do you remember that night of the bad storm in the jungle camp at the start of my family's expedition?" Joseph's voice shook slightly as he spoke. "Do you remember what happened?"

No reply came from the darkness, but Joseph thought he sensed an unseen tension in his listener.

"I couldn't sleep and wandered out into the rain. I was walking past Monsieur Devraux's hut when I saw your wife rush from there weeping Joseph felt suddenly that his heart was expanding in his chest, threatening to choke him, and he became acutely aware of the sickening reek of putrefaction inside the darkened market. "I wanted to ask.

"Don't ask me questions about that night!" The ferocity of Ngo Van Loc's words shook Joseph, and he sensed that the Annamese was trembling beside him in the darkness. "Every day for five years in my cell in Paulo Condore I've had to live with my own misery. And often I saw the accusing face of my dead wife in my dreams!"

For a long moment they stood facing each other silently in the evil-smelling darkness.

"What do you mean, Loc?" whispered Joseph at last.

"I forced her to do it. In the end it was my fault that she fell into the hands of her French murderers." He paused, his breathing agitated, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "So the senator and I have something in common, haven't We? Does he have bad dreams too?"

Joseph started at the unexpected reference to his father. "Why should he, Loc?"

"Because just as my stupidity led to the death of my wife -it was your father's stupidity that caused the death of your brother, wasn't it?"

"My father tried to save Chuck," said Joseph, his voice rising incredulously. "He was injured badly in the attempt he lost his arm."

Loc's bark of humorless laughter startled Joseph. "Is that what he told you?"

"Yes."

"It was the other way round."

Joseph leaned forward anxiously; he had suddenly remembered the startled look on Paul's face when he mentioned the accident. "What are you suggesting, Loc?"

"I'm not 'suggesting' anything, Monsieur Sherman. Your brother was killed trying to save the senator. Your father was suffering from fever- he was too sick to hunt. He drank a lot of alcohol with the medicine he took and foolishly followed the wounded seladang into a thicket against Devraux's orders. Your brother lost his life trying to save him."

"You must be lying!" The words leaped to Joseph's lips before he considered what he was saying.

"What reason have I to lie?" asked the Annamese in an indifferent voice.

Another car pa.s.sed one of the entry arches, and in the reflected glow of its lights Joseph saw the second Annamese turn and begin running swiftly towards them. Loc listened to his urgently whispered words for a moment, then leaned towards Joseph again. "Two Surete agents are watching the market entrances," he said accusingly. "So you are in league with them after all!"

Joseph started to protest, but the Annamese didn't stop to listen; after cursing him bitterly in their own language they ran off in opposite directions, and he was left alone again in the reeking darkness. For several minutes he stood rooted to the spot, grappling with the enormity of Ngo Van Loc's revelation; then he left the market in a daze and returned slowly to the Continental Palace.

He walked without seeing the streets along which he pa.s.sed and didn't notice that both the Surete agents were following him. They entered the foyer of the hotel openly a minute or two after Joseph had gone up to his room, and the nervous Annamese clerk on the reception desk, after one glance at their stolid faces, made the hotel register available to them without question. Knowing from previous experience what was required of him, the clerk turned away and busied himself with some mundane task while the agents copied into a notebook the name and address of Joseph Theodore Sherman of The Sherman Plantation, Charles County, Virginia, U.S.A.

5.

"Because the river is so peaceful and serene, the sages say the heart of Annam can be heard beating on its banks." Lan turned to smile warmly at Joseph as their sampan glided southwards out of Hue on the glittering waters of the Huong Giang - the River of Perfumes. "That's why the emperors chose these lovely glades outside the city for their final resting places."

Joseph smiled back at her and glanced around him, marveling inwardly at the richness of the natural color in the landscape. Under a clear azure sky the river was as blue as the silk of Lan's ao dai, and all along its borders willow trees bent as though in homage to trail their pale tendrils in its sparkling waves; to the west the river was sheltered by the Annamite Cordillera, and the dense emerald-green foliage cloaking the shoulders of the mountains tumbled extravagantly down their slopes and across the valleys to the water's edge.

"I expect you already know, Monsieur Sherman, that we Annamese believe that the spirits of our ancestors continue to dwell among us after their deaths," said Tran Van Tam politely from one of the rear seats. "But we believe too that the well-being of each family depends on the happiness of those spirits - and it's our responsibility to see that they remain content. It's the same for our nation too - and that's why this region where the emperors have their tombs in the most beautiful and sacred in all our land."

Joseph nodded and smiled his thanks. To make his duties as chaperon for the visit to the emperors' tombs less intrusive, Tam had brought along the girl he had agreed to marry at his parents' command; plain, and shy, her chief virtue was that she was the daughter of another wealthy mandarin family, and she spoke only when Tam addressed her. In comparison, Lan's beauty seemed to Joseph's excited gaze more breathtaking than ever. A faint flush of color that he had seen rush into her cheeks on his arrival in Hue that morning had persisted; she had been visibly embarra.s.sed by his appearance at her father's official residence inside the red walls of the Imperial City and was still reserved in her manner when he called again to collect her for the afternoon outing. But once on the river, her eyes had begun to s.h.i.+ne, and as the coolie on the stern rowed the sampan beyond the city, she eagerly pointed out the ancient landmarks that became visible one by one in the surrounding hills.

"There's the Shrine to the Venerable Lady of Heaven ... and that's the Tower of the Source of Happiness . . and do you see the little Confucian temple almost hidden by the trees? It's the Van Mieu - the PaG.o.da of Literary Culture."

Joseph smiled back at her each time, scarcely taking in her words; he was above all else delighted to find himself close to her again so soon, and he had to make a conscious effort not to stare. Her glossy black hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and the gentle wind ruffled it now and then, causing her to toss her head prettily and brush an occasional strand from her eyes with what to Joseph seemed movements of infinite grace and delicacy; she smiled at him sometimes in her exasperation with the playful breeze, and Joseph felt a simple glow of happiness take hold inside him.

His decision to travel to Hue by the first possible train had been taken during the sleepless hours that followed his meeting with Ngo Van Loc. Throughout the long night, as new tortured images of the past invoked by his conversation with Loc flickered through his brain, the memory of Lan's beautiful golden face in the malabar began to return more and more frequently until it a.s.sumed the force of an obsession; amidst the turmoil of deceit and suspicion in his mind, she seemed suddenly to personify the sweetness and purity he instinctively craved and before dawn he rose and packed his belongings to ready himself for the journey north. In the note that he left for Paul Devraux explaining his premature departure he had said only that no student of Asian history could possibly afford to miss the imperial ceremonies, and this half-truth had left him feeling guilty and ill-at-ease as he hurried to the railway station. The little wood-burning train that left before breakfast had taken nearly three days to cover the five hundred miles to Hue, stopping each night to deposit its pa.s.sengers in wayside inns, and during the long, slow journey he had suffered renewed pangs of remorse at the thought that he was betraying Paul's trust. But as the train drew nearer to Hue, the growing excitement he felt at the prospect of seeing Lan again had gradually overshadowed these thoughts and they had been replaced by a growing anxiety about how he would be received in the capital of Annam. To his great relief, however, although he had neither announced his coming nor received any invitation, Tran Van Hieu had welcomed him courteously at his residence. After inquiring briefly about the health of his family and thanking him elaborately once again for his rescue of the gibbon eleven years before, it had been Tran Van Hieu himself who had suggested that a visit to the tombs might be of special interest to a student of Asian history.

"Don't imagine they are just gloomy sepulchers," he had warned with a smile. "Many of the emperors supervised the building of their own tombs and often used them during their lifetimes as country palaces where they could meditate in peace and tranquility close to nature. There you'll discover the art and sculpture of the Orient wedded in perfect harmony to great natural beauty."

When the sampan coolie finally moored beside a long grove of sacred banyan trees, and they approached the tomb of Minh Mang, heir and successor to Emperor Gia Long, Joseph remembered Tran Van Hieu's words. A breathless hush seemed to hang in the air above the red-pillared pavilions built across the center of a wide, crescent-shaped expanse of water known as the Lake of Scintillating? Brightness; lotus flowers cl.u.s.tered on its surface as thickly as freshly fallen snow, and in the distance pointed hills and mountains were visible, forested thickly with the same luxuriantly green trees that bordered the lake.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything more beautiful in all my life," said Joseph in an awed voice as he mounted the blue granite steps of the entrance gate at Lan's side. "It scarcely seems real."

"Whenever I felt troubled as a little girl I liked to come here with my nurse-and somehow my worries always went away. I wonder if it's lost its magic powers."

Her expression was unexpectedly sad and there was a faraway look in her eyes; glancing around, Joseph saw that Tam was already descending the steps in front of them with his future wife. "Is something worrying you, Lan?" he asked gently.

She shook her head quickly and smiled. "No - but so many things change as you grow up, don't they? It always makes me feel sad when I realize I can no longer go back."

The simple poignancy of her words moved Joseph deeply, and he took a step closer to her.

"The burial mound itself is beneath that green hill covered with tangled trees, do you see?" She shaded her eyes and pointed along the wide terrace that bisected the lake. "To get there we have to pa.s.s through the Gate of Dazzling Virtue. In that temple on the other side, we'll see the memorial tablets to the emperor and empress. The gardens have been laid out in the form of the Chinese character for 'Eternity' ..." She broke off when she became aware that he was gazing at her instead of following her pointing finger, and the intensity of the expression in his blue eyes made her blush.

"I'm sure no empress was ever more beautiful than you, Lan," he said softly. "Seeing you here among these lovely old palaces makes me realize why your father and mother named you after the heroine in 'The Tale of Kieu.'" He paused and smiled at her again. "Do you remember those lines describing Kieu...?

'Crystal-bright autumn streams, her eyes, Her brows curve like hills in spring, Flowers envy the brilliance of her face, Willows wish only for her grace, Compared to her beauty, the riches of An emperor's palace are without worth.'"

He continued to gaze wonderingly at her. "Those words could just as easily have been written about you, Lan She looked at him with startled eyes for a moment, then turned away and almost ran down the steps.

Alarmed that she might fall, Joseph hurried after her and took her elbow to steady her. "I've been thinking about you constantly, Lan, since I last saw you," he said breathlessly. "I've dreamed of you at night, too." She didn't reply or look at him, and when they reached the bottom of the steps he glanced anxiously ahead to check that Tam was beyond earshot. "I don't seem to be able to get you out of my mind even for a minute."

She blushed deeply. "It's not right to say such things to me, Joseph. We hardly know one another."

"But we've known each other for eleven years!"

He smiled again, a dazzling, delighted smile which seemed to Lan to draw her towards him with the force of a physical embrace, and she glanced with agitation around the formal gardens. With the exception of the red-robed imperial guardians patrolling the terraces, the tomb was deserted; occasionally a blue-gowned mandarin appeared, moving reverently among the temples on some errand aimed at soothing the imperial spirits, but otherwise the antique pavilions stood silent in the middle of the dreaming lake as though hanging on their every word. "You must promise me, Joseph, not to say such things again," she said distractedly. "Otherwise, I can't permit us to walk apart from my brother."

"Please forgive me!" Joseph felt a sudden, desperate regret. "I was so happy at seeing you again that I forgot myself."

She turned away abruptly and walked ahead of him. In the deep silence she was frightened that he might have been able to hear the sound of her heart racing inside her chest. A minute later she could still feel the touch of his hand, as comforting as his arm around her shoulders had been during those sudden moments of fright at the Cercle Sportif. Even in the sampan she had noticed herself suddenly at ease in his presence; she had become intensely aware of his strong, sunburned face, his good-natured smile, his broad shoulders that made him seem so powerful in comparison with the slight figure of her brother Tam. His closeness to her had produced again the same indefinable sense of physical well-being that she had first felt beside him in the malabar, but it had been the tender intensity of his smile as he quoted the lyrical pa.s.sage of Nguyen Du's epic poem that had made her pulse race so bewilderingly, and she determined to keep herself apart from him to try to still the commotion inside her.

She bent with unnecessary concentration to study the inscriptions on the memorial tablets among the urn-wood pillars of the shadowy Sung An Dien, pretended to lay wondering fingers on the long-legged bra.s.s cranes before another altar, peered closely at the gold and jade ornaments, the urns and vases in each richly furnished chamber as though she had never seen them before; but during all this time there was barely a moment when she wasn't acutely aware of his presence, wherever he moved around her.