Saigon: A Novel Part 26

"These mountains are home to several different hill tribes that would interest a man if your tendencies," said the French officer playfully when they halted to catch their breath. "The Meos grow opium up there on the crests to make a harsh life bearable - but watch out for the Xas who live down here in the foothills! They're an ancient, backward people still living in the Stone Age. They look more like jungle animals than humans. The women particularly have sloping foreheads and long apelike arms - mod more your type than mine." He punched Joseph lightly on the arm and moved off again, laughing quietly to himself, and Joseph followed, trying to smile to hide the turmoil growing inside him.

His failure the previous evening to give Paul any hint of his guilty attachment to Lan had left him deeply troubled. He had slept badly, listening often to the sound of the French officer's steady peaceful breathing in the quiet bunker, and the realization that his visit had cheered and relaxed Paul had only served to make Joseph more acutely aware of the grossness of the betrayal he would have to commit if he and Lan were to join their lives at last. As he climbed the mountain path in the growing light, he turned over in his mind the reasons for his failure to speak out, and he remembered suddenly with a stab of shame a conversation he'd had with a Legion corporal during his tour of the camp the previous afternoon. When he had mentioned that he was going out on a patrol next morning, the German corporal had laughed cynically and said that the only patrols sent out were minor ones for the purpose of deceiving visiting journalists. "The enemy knows very well we can't maneuver successfully from here because of the dense jungle and their tight encirclement," the corporal had said with a resigned shrug. "It's simply a matter of waiting until they choose to attack now." Had it been that casual admission, Joseph wondered, that had really convinced him that Dien Bien Phu was doomed? Was he remaining silent because he hoped that when the dust of battle had settled, there would no longer be any need to ask a dead man if he minded him stealing his wife?

The shock of this possibility made Joseph stop abruptly in his tracks, and for a moment he stared at the receding back of the French officer, gripped by a feeling of profound self-disgust. Then the paratrooper behind him stumbled into him with a. m.u.f.fled oath and Joseph apologized hastily before hurrying on again.

A fresh breeze that had risen with the coming of dawn stirred the waist-high gra.s.s as the patrol continued to make its way up the mountain ravine, and slowly the wind's gentle force began to tear jagged holes in the dense curtain of morning fog. Through one of these sudden gaps the men of Ngo Van Dong's company caught their first glimpse of the French paratroopers. Along with half-a- dozen other companies of the 59th Regiment, they were manning one of the valley's many carefully prepared ambush points at the top of the ravine, and from their trenched and fortified positions amid trees and tall gra.s.s, the five hundred Viet Minh soldiers were able to follow the patrol's progress a quarter of a mile below without risk of discovery.

Dong and his men had been granted only six hours' rest after hauling the last howitzer into its mountaintop casemate, but they had been issued with special extra rations of lump sugar to help restore their energies. The many ambush points that ringed the French camp had been manned round the clock for weeks, and Dong's company had been moved into position the previous evening during a routine rotation of units. For several hours they had watched the French camp fires flickering in the darkness below them and had been able to hear clearly the sounds of troops splas.h.i.+ng in the Nam Youm River; they had even been able to make out the words of the ribald songs sung by the Legionnaires before they settled down to sleep. Throughout the long night Dong had ordered his men to rest in carefully organized relays, and during his hours on watch he talked quietly to those around him to ensure their morale remained at the same high pitch that had enabled them to hoist the heavy artillery piece up the mountain in record time.

Because all patrolling of any consequence had virtually ceased two or three weeks before, Doug and the other ambush commanders were surprised by the strength of the force climbing towards them in single file. Through a captured pair of French field gla.s.ses Dong studied the line of troops carefully as they crossed a stretch of rocky open ground only two hundred yards beneath his hiding place. He could identify clearly the little Thai guides at the front; they were of the same Highland stock as the village people of the valley who were only just beginning to shuffle sleepily from their huts in the early dawn light, and they moved quickly and nervously ahead of the first group of French paratroopers. He swung the powerful lenses from man to man, pa.s.sing over the tall upright figure in the red beret and camouflaged battle dress and the civilian in plain green drabs without being able to recognize either of the men who long ago had gamboled with him and his brother in a jungle hunting camp. Dong's company had been detailed to man the forward positions on the steep bluffs that overhung the top of the ravine, and he was searching intently for the spearhead radio operator so that he could detail his sharpest marksmen to pick him off in the opening onslaught. When at last he pinpointed him, Doug muttered a quick command to the sharpshooters at his side and the rest of the company lifted their rifles to their shoulders too; hardly daring to breathe, they peered intently into the swirling mists waiting for the white-skinned men to come into range.

As Paul Devraux breasted the tall gra.s.s and brushed aside the tangled creepers hanging from the trees, he scanned the hills and surrounding scrub constantly with the instinctive, narrow-eyed gaze of a trained hunter. But although as he approached it, he looked directly several times towards the bluff where Ngo Van Dong's company lay concealed, he saw no hint of their presence amidst the gently waving gra.s.s. When a quick movement did eventually catch his eye a hundred yards away on an adjoining hillside, he turned smiling to Joseph and pointed. "Look quickly - there! Do you see the Xas?"

Joseph lifted his binoculars and studied the little group of naked Xa women who had broken out of the scrub and were scampering across a bare rock face. They moved like animals, as swift on all fours as on their legs, and the strangeness of their movement riveted his attention. From the length of the patrol there came the sound of coa.r.s.e laughter, and some derisive shouts sounded across the ravine when one of the terrified women slipped and tumbled shrieking down a steep scarp. None of the paratroopers about to move into the jaws of the ambush suspected the truth: that little groups of the Stone Age tribes people were held captive all over the valley by the Viet Minh to be released as a diversion whenever it suited their purpose. In this case the ruse worked perfectly; the Xas distracted the unsuspecting patrol successfully for a few seconds, and at the precise moment when they finally scurried out of sight into the mouth of a cave, the first withering fusillade of shots rang out from the ambush positions above the patrol, scything down a dozen men. The rest dived frantically into the cover of the long gra.s.s, and immediately most of Dong's company rose up stiff-armed on the bluff above to send a thick shower of grenades arcing down among them.

Joseph and Paul rolled together into a shallow gully alongside the radio operator, whose face had been mashed to a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp by the accurate opening shots of the Viet Minh marksmen. As they crouched stunned against one rocky wall, a young lieutenant scrambled down beside them, tugged the radio from the dead operator's grasp and began calling for Red Cross helicopters to evacuate casualties. The mountains quickly came alive with the rattle of rifle and automatic weapons fire as the French troops began to shoot back, and all around them groans and screams from the wounded and dying rose above the hubbub of the battle. Joseph gasped with horror when he turned and saw the body of the paratrooper who had cursed him a few minutes earlier slumped over the rim of the gully; his chest had been torn open by the simultaneous impact of several bullets, and one arm had been blown away by a grenade. The fingers of his remaining hand were visible hanging over the gully edge and they were twitching spasmodically, keeping time with the soft murmurs of agony that escaped from his bloodied mouth as he died.

Beside Joseph, Paul was barking orders to the young lieutenant to begin pulling men back down the narrow track, and when the American turned to look at his friend, he saw that blood was trickling into his eyes from a wound on his forehead.

"You've been hit, Paul," he gasped.

"It's just a shrapnel graze," retorted the Frenchmen sharply, motioning down the hill with one hand. "Start working your way back along this gully - and keep your head down!" He brushed the sleeve of his combat jacket quickly across his brow o clear the blood, then seized the radio and began calling urgently for B-26s to strafe and napalm the heights above them.

Joseph ducked away and began slithering down the gully, but something made him stop and look back. Paul was still huddled against the rock wall, yelling into the radio, arid he hadn't noticed the Viet Minh trooper arrive on the lip of the gully above him. The enemy soldier had already fixed a bayonet to his rifle and for a moment was silhouetted against the dawn sky, holding the weapon pointing downward like along, obscene dagger; with his feet apart and his back curved in an ungainly crouch, he was preparing to throw all his weight into the bayonet thrust, but before he moved, Joseph lunged back up the gully, yelling a warning as he went. Bunching his knees beneath him, Joseph Rung himself bodily at the Vietnamese soldier as he leaped downward, and they fell grappling blindly with one another beside Paul. The Vietnamese hit the ground heavily and the rifle flew from his grasp, but he soon recovered and began jerking and struggling frantically in an effort to break free. By the time he extricated himself from Joseph's grip two paratroopers were rus.h.i.+ng up the hillside to the aid of their senior officer, and he scrambled out of the gully and disappeared.

After the Vietnamese had gone, Paul lay staring white-faced at Joseph, aware suddenly how close he had come to dying on the bayonet. Then he grinned lopsidedly. "You move quickly for a veteran campaigner, mon vieux. I'm glad you came."

Joseph didn't reply; he had already begun to tremble with delayed shock, and when one of the paratroopers took him by the arm and began to rush him hack down the slope, he went without protest. His impulse to help Paul, he knew, had been a reflex action; he had acted instinctively, without conscious thought, and as his rational mind took over again, he realized with a sickening clarity that he had risked his own life so recklessly for only one reason: although he despised himself for it, deep in his heart he wished Paul Devraux dead.

6.

"Are you really my father? I can hardly believe it sometimes." Tuyet's gaze was bright, a smile almost. To anyone glancing casually at their table on the terrace of the Cafe Chez Maria in the Boulevard Barbet, her expression might have seemed warm and sincere: but Joseph had come to recognize of late the hard edge of mockery in her tone. The first of her moods, at fourteen, had been an innocent bewilderment; then her silences had changed in their quality from shyness to a dull, resentful sullenness. She was seventeen now, her pale gold complexion s.h.i.+ning with a youthful radiance, and she had adopted during his last two or three visits to Saigon a light, mocking manner, as though she had realized instinctively that this would prove most wounding to him.

She had appeared suddenly from nowhere at the last moment and seated herself at his table as he was paying his bill and preparing to leave. Straight and slender as a pencil, she perched on the edge of the chair and rested her chin delicately on the back of one hand while she looked at him. Her face held little of that chalky whiteness which often characterized mixed race girls, although her skin was noticeably paler than normal and her eyes were wider than her mother's; but her beauty was no less striking than Lan's, as the number of male heads that turned in her direction from the surrounding tables confirmed. She wore a high-collared primrose yellow ao dai tailored tightly around her slender wrists and waist, and her natural gracefulness was heightened by an air of self-possession unusual in a Vietnamese girl.

"I often find it very hard to believe too, Tuyet." He spoke quietly, trying not to let the choking emotion he always felt on seeing her show in his voice. "Until one of these rare occasions comes around and your lovely face is in front of me, that is. You're growing up to be as beautiful as your mother."

"If you thought she was lovely, why didn't you stay here and marry her?" She tossed her head and the question came out gaily as though she had been practicing it for hours in her English cla.s.s at the Lycee Marie-Curie. Joseph wondered fleetingly whether he detected a faint hint of hysteria in her voice; had she been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her courage to ask these uncharacteristically pointed questions that she had never dared venture before? A waiter approached, but she dismissed him with an angry little shake of her head.

When the waiter had moved away again Joseph placed his hands palms downward on the table and studied them in silence for a moment. "I wanted very much, Tuyet, to marry your mother," he said huskily. "But her feelings of loyalty to her father and her country made it impossible for her to say yes."

His daughter's reaction was impossible to gauge from her expression. It was as blank as it had been half an hour earlier when she had looked across the boulevard in his direction on emerging through the school gates with a laughing group of friends. He had stepped out from the shade of the tamarind tree where he had been waiting and waved to her, and he was sure that she had seen him. But she had turned away in the opposite direction without acknowledgment and continued walking arm-in-arm, chattering animatedly, with the other raven-haired girls of her cla.s.s. Their excited giggling drifted back to him as he followed them slowly on his side of the street, but she hadn't looked back.

The first time he had come to the school gates one blazing Saigon forenoon in i951, he had needed the photograph Lan had given him. With its help he had recognized her easily and hurried quickly across the boulevard among the swarm of cyclo-pousses which had by then replaced the old rickshaws of the city. Her fourteen-year-old face had contracted into a grimace of genuine alarm when he approached and touched her arm, and the expression had reminded him for a fleeting instant of the terror he had seen in her burning eyes on the edge of that muddy pond in northern Annam six years earlier. But otherwise there had been nothing to remind him of the desperate, starving child he had clutched to himself then with such a wildly beating heart.

After that he had always stayed on the opposite side of the boulevard and waved and waited where he stood. The first few nines he went to meet her, she had detached herself reluctantly from her friends and come across to greet him. Sometimes they had walked to the Jardin Botanique or strolled through the public park around the old governor general's palace where he had first met Lan when she was only ten years old. When Tuyet ignored him completely for the first time outside the school gates, he had been astonished and hurried after her; but she had deliberately led him a dance back and forth through the dazzling blooms of the flower market in the Boulevard Charner and had eventually disappeared from sight with her wildly giggling friends. From that time onwards he had made a habit of following her for only a short distance if she chose not to acknowledge his presence outside the school; then he fell into the habit of taking a seat on the terrace of the nearby Cafe Chez Maria to give her the opportunity of returning to speak with him if she wished. Sometimes she came, sometimes she didn't; there had been perhaps seven or eight meetings in the three years before that day, and they had invariably been stilted and uncomfortable, with Joseph always trying desperately to overcome the innate hostility she had shown him from their first meeting. He had begun learning Vietnamese in an effort to get closer to her, but if he tried to converse in that language she invariably ignored him and insisted on speaking English.

Whenever he had asked her about her life she had always spoken with enormous affection of "Uncle Tam" and his wife, enumerating their acts of kindness repeatedly as though to emphasize the obviously deep resentment she felt that he and her mother had not brought her up. Whenever she spoke of Lan, her manner had been cool and reserved, although she had never expressed any open animosity towards her. Joseph had told her a hundred times how much he regretted the way things had turned out, but she had always listened to his protestations in an unresponsive silence. Yet although her demeanor had invariably been distant, he was certain that not far beneath the surface she was struggling to conceal deep feeling of hurt and betrayal.

"Do you still love my mother then, despite all that?"

Joseph looked up sharply, taken aback by the directness of her question. For a moment her eyes held his, then she turned her head away, embarra.s.sed suddenly by her own boldness. As he gazed at her delicate profile, her likeness to Lan made his breath catch suddenly in his throat.

"Yes, Tuyet, I do," he said at last, his voice cracking slightly. "I love her very much. I've never stopped loving her, and I haven't given up hope that one day we'll still be married."

She glanced at him quickly, with a startled expression in her dark eyes, but said nothing.

"And I carry this with me wherever I go too." He drew out his wallet and took from it the photograph of Tuyet at fourteen, now a little creased, which he had carried with him the first time to the school gates. In the photograph, her expression was apprehensive, even a little sad. "I've seen your face looking like that too often, Tuyet," he said, pus.h.i.+ng the photograph across the table. "I'd like to help make you laugh and smile more. If Lan and I marry, I'd like to take you both away from Vietnam. I want us all to be together as a family."

"Isn't it a little late for that?" She tossed her head disdainfully, scarcely glancing at the picture in front of her, and turned to look absently out into the Street through one of the metal bomb protection grilles that had first been bolted across the city's cafe terraces eight years before when Viet Minh bicycle guerrillas had begun bowling grenades among their tables.

"1 hope not. The war's definitely going the Communists' way now and things look worse and worse at Dien Bien Phu - but I don't think it's too late. If the Communists do win, many things might never be the same again here in Saigon . . that's why I wanted to talk to you." He leaned forward earnestly to engage her attention again, but she appeared not to be listening, and her gaze remained fixed on the Street.

Beyond the metal grilles through which Tuyet stared, Saigon had already become a vastly different city from the one Joseph had encountered for the first rime thirty years before. Although the French still thronged the fortified cafe terraces at midday and seven o'clock for their ritual aperitifs, a thousand or more of Joseph's fellow Americans now walked the boulevards of the "Paris of the East" every day. The star-spangled banner had become a familiar sight in many streets in the city center as the five-hundred-strong staff of the United States Emba.s.sy was gradually augmented by the Economic Aid Mission and a dozen other government agencies that had begun arriving in the wake of President Truman's crucial decision to take a stand against Communism in Asia. To house them, modern concrete apartment blocks were shooting up to tower above the pastel-shaded stucco of the French villas, stamping a distinctive American imprint on the city, and shops in the Rue Catinat had begun to stock nylon s.h.i.+rts with b.u.t.ton-down collars, spearmint-flavored toothpaste, Coca- Cola and other goods Americans habitually favored. This small army of American government civilians, Joseph knew, had begun intriguing among the Vietnamese religious sects and other native power groups in an effort to groom an anti-Communist force that could, with American help, save Vietnam from Marxism when the French finally departed, and he had already written articles for the Gazette warning his countrymen to tread cautiously in a strange and complex country they had scarcely started to understand. To cover the war successfully, like other visiting journalists he'd cultivated clandestine contacts with wary-eyed Viet Minh agents who were ever eager to explain their cause at secret meetings in jungle villages outside the city or in flyblown cafes in the poorer quarters of Saigon. He'd learned enough to make him fear that whatever the outcome of the war, Vietnam was approaching a turning point in its affairs, and that much danger and uncertainty lay ahead.

"Tuyet, I'm worried about what might happen to you if the Communists did win the war," said Joseph more insistently when at last she turned to look at him again. "Perhaps you aren't very interested in politics, but the Viet Minh want to change the way everybody lives here, including you"

"I've managed very well until now in the country where I was born," replied Tuyet, smiling with a brittle sweetness that she knew must be wounding. "It's very nice of you to be concerned; but I think I shall be able to survive without your a.s.sistance."

"Please, Tuyet, let me explain what I've got in mind" He reached tentatively across the table to take her hand. "It doesn't cost anything to listen, does it?"

She pulled her hands quickly into her lap and smiled again. "No, it doesn't cost anything to listen. But unfortunately I don't have the time just now. My friends are waiting for me." She stood up and offered him her hand in a little show of mock formality, "Au revoir, Monsieur Sherman, and thank you."

To avoid embarra.s.sing her, he rose reluctantly, and in the brief instant their hands touched, she smiled sweetly at him again. Still standing, he watched her walk away across the crowded terrace, then when she'd gone he lowered himself slowly into his seat once more. On the table-top the sad-faced photograph of her still lay untouched before her empty chair.

7.

When dawn broke over the hill resort of Dalat on Sat.u.r.day, March 13, 1954, the pine-clad peaks that border the Lang-Biang plateau were still shrouded in mist. No breeze stirred the cool mountain air, and not even the calling of a bird broke the calm of the early day. Slowly, as the sun's rays strengthened, the mother-of-pearl sky became suffused with warmer tints of gold, and the high, somber crags emerged darkly from the haze like vague Chinese watercolor shapes daubed on a scroll of gray silk. From the sh.o.r.e of Dalat's highland lake Joseph gazed spellbound at the mountains; beside him as they walked Lan was singing softly, her voice as wistful as the plaintive words of "Les feuilles sont mortes," and the haunting beauty of the moment made him wonder if he might be dreaming.

Beneath the dripping pines they seemed to be alone in the world; the strange little sailing craft with brightly colored sails, which visitors to the hill station maneuvered noisily across the lake by day, hadn't yet appeared, and the woods, too, were deserted at that hour. Here and there in the shadows beneath the trees the sudden glow of a yellow or white orchid caught his eye, and words of wonder started to his lips; but always he checked them, not wanting to break the spell of the early morning which Lan had invited him to share with her.

Listening to her sing made it easy for him to imagine her strolling there as a girl with her friends from the Couvent des Oiseaux, all of them wide-eyed and eager for the life that was, for them, just beginning. He had never forgotten that poignant description of her happy schooldays in Dalat which Lan had given him during their drive north nine years before, and when after flying out of Dien Bien Phu he discovered that she was taking a villa there for a month to be near her son at the Dalat Military College, he had immediately hurried north from Saigon. He had taken a room at the Lang-Biang Palace Hotel where he had first stayed with his mother in 1925, but the sad thoughts that returning there invoked had been quickly dispelled by Lan's obvious pleasure when he arrived unannounced at her rented villa. She had insisted that next day they should watch the dawn break over the mountain lake as she'd often done in her schooldays, and back in his hotel he had scarcely slept am all before rising while it was still dark. They had met in the half-light beside the placid expanse of water and begun to walk hand in hand without speaking.

"I went back to the convent last night, Joseph, and slipped into the chapel to listen to the nuns sing Compline." She had stopped singing suddenly, hut she spoke in the same subdued and wistful tone. "I stole in quietly and kneeled on the floor among the other schoolgirls just like I used to. n.o.body noticed."

He smiled and squeezed her hand, unable to speak. There was an innocence in her expression which made her look little more than a girl in the blurred dawn light, and a lump had come into his throat when he thought how alike she and Tuyet were; both of them in their different ways remained elusive to him, seeming always to remain tantalizingly outside the grasp of his real life, and this realization filled him with a deep sadness. Suddenly these thoughts changed the complexion of the morning for him, and looking down at her pensive face he wondered fleetingly whether her nostalgia for the past had blinded her to the present. Was she unaware how faded and tawdry in reality the grandeur of the hill station had become? Built in the heyday of French colonial dominance, the once-magnificent Lang-Biang Palace was now a shabby ghost of a great hotel; the air of opulence and luxury was gone, replaced by frayed carpets and peeling paint, taps that didn't produce water, and Vietnamese servants who tended the guests' needs in the overlarge rooms with cigarettes poking insolently from their mouths. The Catholic convents on the hill crests and the spire of the church still materialized romantically from the mist each morning, and the Former emperor, Bao Dai, still inhabited one of the villas with the finest mountain views; hut the town that had been built so grandly around ,the lake now had a tired and bedraggled air, as though like the French colonizers who had created it and enjoyed its reinvigorating pleasures, it was fast approaching the end of its useful life. Even the banks of the small lake had been worn and trampled by too many feet, and only the sparkling air and the distant panorama of hills remained as Joseph remembered them.

"Lan," he began gently. "I don't want to spoil the charm of Dalat for you, but I can't help feeling that time is running out fast for France in Vietnam. Maybe the whole way of life that your family long ago chose' to follow is coming to an end too He took her elbow to try and make her stop but she smiled up at him briefly then continued walking through the trees, looking out towards the lake from which the mists were beginning to lift.

"From that moment at your bedside in the hospital, I knew," he said more insistently as he caught her up. "After seeing your beautiful face again I knew I would never be able to rest until we'd joined our lives. Back home I tried to forget - but in my heart I always knew it would be impossible."

She smiled tolerantly towards the ground as she walked. "There's more to life than beautiful faces, Joseph. Are all Americans so incurably romantic?"

"If being strongly drawn towards beauty and love is romantic, then I am," said Joseph quietly. "Those are the only things that make life truly worthwhile. Back home after the war, every time I closed my eyes the memory of you came back to me. I knew I still loved you and I wanted you to be my wife. I knew then that I hadn't stopped loving you during the nine years that we'd been apart. That's why in the end I became a foreign correspondent, I think so I could have a reason to come back to Saigon and look for you again." He banged his right fist loudly into the palm of his other hand as they walked, and the sudden noise echoed across the mirror like surface of the lake. "Why on earth were we so foolish, Lan? We should have thrown caution to the winds long ago!"

"We've been through all this before, Joseph. What's the use of going over it again?" She smiled sadly at him. "When you first arrived, you said you wanted to talk about Tuyet."

"Yes, I did - but I want to talk about us too." This time he took her firmly by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Because of the damp she was wearing the same dark cloak that she'd worn during their drive north in 1945 10 search for their daughter. The hood was thrown back, and for the early morning walk she had dressed her hair loosely about her shoulders. In her late thirties, he realized, her beauty had acquired something indefinable - an extra dimension of sensuality perhaps; her lips seemed fuller, her l.u.s.trous eyes more knowing, as though the full bloom of womanhood had revealed to her some calming secret about herself she hadn't known before. Looking at her more intimately than he'd done for many years, he wondered anew at the strength of his attraction to her; she seemed lovelier in the pale light of that dawn than ever before, and it was difficult for him to believe that the reason for her presence in Dalat was a prolonged visit to a son who was already a cadet in the French military academy, almost a grown man.

"Have you seen Tuyet recently, Joseph?" she prompted gently, seeing that his mind was becoming distracted.

"Yes, two (lays ago - but she behaved very strangely. She asked if I was really her father and why we hadn't married. She asked me too, quite openly, if I still loved you."

Lan's smooth brow crinkled in a puzzled frown. "Normally she's so distant and withdrawn."

"Yes, exactly. But this time it was uncanny almost as if she'd read my thoughts. You see, I'd already made up my mind. I don't know why - perhaps it's a feeling that the war here is reaching a crucial stage. Everything is going into the melting pot now He gripped her more tightly, and a new intensity came into his expression. "Lan, we've thrown away two golden chances already. I should've made you agree to marry me that day in your garden in Hue. And when we found each other again at the end of the war, we both behaved as if we were insane She began to interrupt, but he held up a hand to silence her. "I know what you want to say. 'But, Joseph, that war had caused such a terrible upheaval in all our lives.' Yes, it's true. We were like two drowning swimmers- then - we had to find our way back to sh.o.r.e to make sure we were still alive. We both had young families who needed us." He stopped and smiled tenderly into her eyes. "That was all true. We both knew what obstacles there were, and we chose deliberately not to face up to them. But what was it that drew me back to Asia? Why, when we met again, was it as if nothing had happened in between--as if time had stood still?"

She dropped her eyes suddenly, as though shamed by his recalling the intensity of the pa.s.sion that had survived two long separations to flower again so powerfully in both of them. "Because we feel this way, Joseph, it doesn't mean we can just turn our backs on our responsibilities."

"But, Lan, now things are different! We've both made our sacrifices. We've done our duty! Neither of us can go on with these guilty secret meetings behind Paul's back. And I'm deceiving Tempe by pretending all's well. We've had two chances and wasted them-now I want to make up for all the mistakes of the past before it's too late. And soon it will be too late. The worlds changing, Lan! Vietnam's changing - much faster than we realize. If the Communists win, n.o.body knows what might happen in Saigon. I want to take you and Tuyet away from here. I want to take you some place where we can always be together. Singapore perhaps, I don't know - any place where I can try to make Tuyet understand. Here I can't get near her. She's always so suspicious - so hurt and resentful." His face clouded suddenly, as though with pain. "Sometimes I'm sure she hates me for what I've done. And that's very hard for me to bear."

He searched her eyes for some sign that she might be wavering but saw only the same doubt and indecision that had always been there before, the same stubborn determination to stand by a conscious decision taken long ago, no matter how badly it had turned out.

"It's not a good time now Joseph," she whispered, looking away from him, "with Paul at Dien Bien Phu."

Joseph looked at her undecidedly for a moment, then leaned closer. "Please listen carefully, Lan, At Dien Bien Phu, Paul and I talked about you. He told me that things hadn't been right for a long time. You've always been wonderfully loyal in not speaking to me of that side of your life - but now that I know things haven't really worked out, I don't feel so badly about us "Did you tell him the truth?" Her eyes had widened in alarm. "Did you tell him we'd been meeting?"

Joseph shook his head and looked away. "No, I wanted to - but somehow I couldn't bring myself to do it."

"Then why did he talk of our marriage?"

"We were discussing his hopes for Vietnam - and it just came out."

Her eyes searched his face anxiously. "Does he suspect there's anything between us?"

"No - I almost wish he did. It might have made it easier to speak out." Joseph shook his head in a little motion of distress. "I can't bear deceiving him. Lan. He thinks of me as his most loyal friend. I have to fly into Dien Bien Phu again soon to do another story, and I'll hardly know how to face him. However things turn out, I've got to tell him everything when all this is over."

"But why, Joseph?"A hand flew to her mouth and she stared at him in horror.

"I can't go on living these lies any longer. I want you and Tuyet with me all the time - somewhere safe." Joseph's voice shook with emotion, and he felt tears start to his eyes. "Don't you understand, Lan? I want this more than anything else in the world."

"But what about your own wife and your sons?"

"I've decided to tell Tempe everything. She ought to know the truth, too. My boys are growing up now and I'm going to ask her for a divorce, I want to do that to show you and Tuyet how much you mean to me."

For a long time Lan stared unseeing across the brightening lake, saying nothing.

"What's your answer, Lan?" he asked at last, lifting her chin gently so that she had to look up into his face. "Will you leave Paul and marry me?"

"Paul's my husband, Joseph." She spoke in an almost inaudible whisper, and he had to bend his head to catch what she said. "I don't know what the future has in store - for me or my country. I'm afraid, I suppose. But I'm more afraid of what life would be if I made the wrong choice and left Vietnam."

Joseph gazed back at her, perplexed. "But, Lan, you're not being fair to yourself!" He looked around, desperately searching for words to persuade her. "Don't you remember how you once dreamed by this lake that your life would always be filled with poetry and romance? Well there's no reason to let that hope die! Marry me, Lan, and I'll make you happier than you've ever been before."

She looked back at him with troubled eyes. "I can't decide now, Joseph, at a time like this."

Joseph sighed and let his hands fall to his sides. "I suppose not."

"And please, Joseph, you must promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"That you will say nothing of this to Paul when you go back to Dien Bien Phu. Say nothing at all until I've seen him again."

Joseph searched her worried face for a moment, then smiled. "All right, Lan, I promise. I'll wait till it's over."

They walked until the sun was high above the plateau, threading their way without speaking through the green meadows and gardens where the succulent strawberries and lettuces so highly prized in Saigon were grown. They parted for lunch but met again in the afternoon and drove down a river valley to the neighboring plateau of Djiring, pa.s.sing tumbling waterfalls and many neatly marshaled plantations of tea and pineapple. The car disturbed great yellow clouds of b.u.t.terflies on the isolated roads, and flocks of bright-colored birds swooped among the tall jungle trees at the roadside. The area was still a no-man's-land ignored by the Viet Minh and French troops alike, and it was the b.u.t.terfly clouds that triggered his memory first; then when he saw Rhade men and women trudging along the sides of the road wearing only breechclouts about their naked haunches he fell into a reverie, thinking of that fateful family hunting trip in the nearby jungle twenty-nine years before. Because they couldn't talk of what was uppermost in their minds, they seemed to reach a mute agreement not to talk at all, and the exhilaration Joseph normally felt in Lan's presence was tempered this time by the gnawing fear that this might be the last day they would share together.

That night, perhaps sensing intuitively what he was thinking, she agreed to dine with him in the restaurant of the Lang-Biang Palace where Bao Dai still frequently entertained. In contrast to the rest of the crumbling hotel, its cuisine was still fit for an ex-emperor, and beneath the high, gilded ceilings they lingered at their candlelit table until the other diners had departed; both were subdued, conscious of the bittersweet sadness of what might be their last meeting, and afterwards they sat on the terrace under piercingly bright stars, sipping Vietnamese liqueurs with their coffee.

"I was sitting here with my mother when we heard the news that my brother Chuck had been killed," said Joseph quietly, toying with his liqueur gla.s.s. "It all seems so long ago now - as if it happened in another life."

"Were you very fond of him?"

"Yes, I think I was probably fonder of Chuck than anyone else then." Joseph's face grew pensive. "I was only fifteen, and about that time the world seemed to be collapsing around my ears."

"Why?" She looked at him with new interest, her expression softening. "What happened?"

"It's not worth talking about - I was oversensitive as a boy, I guess. It all seems very silly now." He fell silent again and gazed up at the stars that were cl.u.s.tered like clouds of luminous dust in the purple heavens overhead.

'Please go on, Joseph. You've never talked much about yourself before."

An embarra.s.sed look pa.s.sed across his face, and he stared into the darkness that had fallen over the lake. "My brother always outshone me, you see, Lan. He was a brilliant athlete, a good scholar - and very popular. I lived in his shadow, and my father made no secret of his preference for Chuck. That used to upset me, and I suppose I turned more to my mother because of it."

"And was she fond of you?"

"Oh yes - but something happened while we were here that shocked me deeply. And it took me a long time to get over it." He turned to smile sadly at her and found her staring at him with a strange intensity.

"It happened on the second night in our hunting camp in the jungle. There was a storm, and I couldn't sleep. I got up and stood watching the lightning - and it was then that I saw her."

"Your mother?"

"Yes." His voice sank to a whisper and he looked away again, his expression pained. "She was running across the camp through the storm, and because I thought she might need my help I ran after her He stopped talking to sip his drink, and Lan noticed that his hand was trembling slightly. "She went to the tent of Paul's father, and I couldn't help hearing what happened between them. I didn't understand too well about those things then, but it seemed such a dreadful betrayal - not just of my father but of all three of us.