by Jack Twist
Chapter 14
With our guide to lead us, this time a more biddable jungle parted before us. When we passed a small pool Abbie took the baby’s wrapping off, washed it and hung it from her belt and just before we reached the bamboo clumps the naked baby started to cry. She gave her to me, and while I carried the baby Arkansas took the jerry can.
He told me I was a ‘number one papa san.’. He seemed comfortable with us now and I wondered what memory he had of our time together in the wee hours, if any. It wasn’t mentioned. And I was pleased.
I would never have imagined I’d be so glad to see rice paddies. When we emerged from the jungle the sun greeted us mercilessly. It was a relief to see the road again and though I would never see it in the same light that Arkansas did, the village of Muc Thap looked almost inviting.
Abbie was carrying the baby when we stood on the roadside at the jungle’s edge and when I looked at her I knew she had seen as soon as I had. There was no vehicle.
Saigon was a huge haze-covered sprawl in the opposite direction, thinly spread on the outskirts, concentrated at the centre. We walked out onto the road and looked in both directions as far as we could but the Land Rover was gone.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Abbie. “They’ll be looking for us. They should be here for us soon.” She turned to Arkansas. “Come with us. Surely you could get leave to come out here sometimes, if … if you wanted to.”
He looked in the direction of Saigon for so long he might have been considering it. “No. No, thank you. And I’ll be grateful if you don’t tell no one where I am.”
“But ... what will happen when your money runs out?” Abbie asked him. “I mean the people in Muc Thap won’t give you food for nothing, will they? And some of them might even be enemy sympathisers. And what if you’re hurt, or get sick?”
“Thanks for your concern, ma’am. I’ll be okay. If I go back now, I’ll be in trouble. I know that. Major Hall. He’s a doctor. He said I can come back any time, but I know I’ll be in trouble. And maybe this war’ll end soon. So’s we can all go home. But I can’t go back now. I’ll be okay.”
“Well, is there anyone we could contact back home? Just to say you’re okay. What’s your real name?”
“Oh,” he considered again. “Arkansas’ll do. That’s what they call me. And I’m makin’ my home here, at least for now. The people here are nice to me. You guys look after yourselves. And your baby san. I’m sure she’ll be fine once you get her home, back in the world. Say. I got somethin’ for the baby. Might help keep her safe.”
He took a little necklace from a pocket and placed it over the baby’s head. She didn’t move, and looked too tiny even for that piece of cotton lace .
I handed him the jerry can again. “You might find some use for this.”
We thanked him again and I asked Abbie to wait a minute while I went to investigate the place where I judged we had left the vehicle. It took me a little while to locate Lieutenant Jefferies’ body because he had been dumped in long grass some twenty metres from the road. But no attempt had been made to cover the body and eventually I saw the flies. Apart from being sickening the wretched sight only multiplied the tragedy. I didn’t want to get close and left his dog tags with him.
As Abbie and I set off I looked around anxiously. “I hope they hurry. The search party.” We looked back to Arkansas and waved. He raised a hand nonchalantly as he turned to head for the village.
“He has a girl in the village,” I told her.
“Yeh, I heard him. He might think he has. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hides when she sees him coming. And I’m afraid to think how old she might be. I’m going to tell my father about him. I think I have to. Before something really unfortunate happens to him. Falls out of his tree. Catches malaria. Who knows what?”
The morning had grown quickly hot, the road turned dustier by the minute, and when the baby started to cry the sound was even fainter than last night. I took her for a while, holding her against my chest to shield her from the sun.
“I’d like to give her a drink,” said Abbie, “but it’s too hot to stop and start messing with that handkerchief.”
We walked in silence. The pathetic little cries were depressing and when they stopped altogether Abbie turned to look at her.
“Let me take her.” The baby settled into the crook of her arm and didn’t make a sound. “She doesn’t need this thing in this heat.” Abbie lifted the necklace over her head and dropped it in the dust. “For God’s sake, where are the helicopters? The one that’s looking for us in particular. Or a jeep or something. They’re supposed to be looking for us. Before it’s too goddamn late.”
“When we get to Saigon ...” I hesitated and she looked at me. It wasn’t a good time to put the question. Her face was creased with concerns and getting up a glow. A thin line of sweat rolled over her temple. But I was wondering to what extent I had been forgiven for my propensity to panic, as demonstrated more than once over the past thirty odd hours. “After you get the baby into a hospital and catch up with your father and everything.” I paused again. “And if I can get some leave.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’d like to see you again? Before you go home?”
The answer was slow coming. “It all depends, doesn’t it. I mean there are so many things to be fixed. It’s all so messy now with Lin’s death and I guess my father will want me home as soon as possible. Maybe he’ll want me to take the baby, if he can’t leave right away and that’ll mean waiting till the baby is okay. There are just so many question marks.”
She looked up at me as we thought about it. “There may even be some sort of inquiry, to which we’ll both be invited. I mean the deaths of Lin and your friend were no ordinary wartime casualties, in the field of battle. Right now I just need to see my father, and get this poor little thing comfortable and well. And I was really hoping we’d be picked up by now. I can’t understand it.”
“Yeh. I’ll probably be sent back to my base pretty quick anyway.”
She looked at me again. “But after all we’ve been through, and your help with her, I hope we get to see each other again.”
“Well. I would like to know how you got on. And the baby.”
With her free hand she took hold of my arm. “And I would like to know how you … got on, too, papa san. But we’d better get baby san comfortable first.”
- 0 -
Abbie said that Saigon had been called the Paris of the East during French colonial years, when demure local girls in neat oriental dress served champagne to legionnaire officers who shared adventures as they looked out over the Saigon River from spacious, pillared patios.
We were walking into a different Saigon. As we got nearer, the farmlands receded behind us and small roadside settlements grew in size and number until they merged with city outskirts. They sprawled beyond the road and yet seemed at the same time overcrowded. For the first hour or so of the walk, there were trees for shelter. Though Abbie wanted to give the baby more water we decided not to disturb her sleep and moved on quickly.
Then there were few trees, and then none. The suburbs baked in the morning sun and the people lived in huts made mostly of recycled tin sheets, including old advertising signs, rusty but some still legible. So the walls of homes might announce the refreshing new taste of Coca Cola, or Budweiser beer, or boast the rugged good looks of the Marlboro man. One recommended flying United Airlines. Where the ads were in French the message was hardly less clear. Here and there television aerials rose from roofs in the fetid air, their rigid, right angled symmetry mocking the loose lack of it in the low slung buildings beneath. Technology’s latest arrival, nascent but established, in this shambolic, slapped up world of transient life with all its naked struggle.
There were no clear spaces. All signs of farming were now behind us and I imagined the people who lived here made a living, where they could, from whatever the city had left over for them. In the evening it would sizzle with the relie
f of cooling rains. The dust would turn to mud. If the downpour stopped soon enough, metal and plastic would steam and gleam briefly at the setting sun. By mid morning of the following day most of the water would have gone and the dust returned.
I suppose sight serves memory best, but my sharpest recollection of that morning is the smell. A pungent ripeness, of food, of domestic birds and animals and people living close in the heat, and of the waste from that. Of life without the clean hard sterility of privilege. In a narrow laneway a couple of copulating dogs was locked together, back end to back end, and ignored by everyone.
As we neared Saigon the traffic increased. A cacophony of bicycles, motor bikes and Lambrettas weaved through the crowds. The odd car, mostly Renaults and Citroens, and all variety of military vehicles from Jeeps to semi trailers found their way through.
We moved off the narrow street with the rest of the people as American cavalry, a platoon of armoured personnel carriers, rumbled past, urgent and formidable. It was clear they weren’t looking for us. The soldiers in the turrets showed some curiosity, but only one of them waved, scarcely a wave it was so noncommittal. The crowds returned to the road as the APCs disappeared in their own dust.
You can feel alone in a crowd. Until that day the physical difference between the people of this country and soldiers like me never bothered me. Armed and secure in numbers, our attitude to the locals was at best indifferent. There were exceptions. Blowfly, our camp garbo, treated them with unaffected respect. But now, moving deeper into the teeming humanity that was outer-Saigon, in the company of a white girl with a sick baby, I felt like one of Crazy Al’s western imperialists, wading nonchalantly through Third World poverty, carrying an American-made weapon. Abbie didn’t usually look that tall, the hair beneath her khaki cap that red. I was towering. Even the baby had the wrong coloured hair.
Every so often we were approached for money, usually by children. At first they seemed friendly, were not too insistent and we ignored them, up until an old woman with no legs sitting in the dirt beckoned to Abbie, and Abbie couldn’t resist.
She sat near the entrance of a narrow lane that separated two of the million shacks along the roadside and she nodded her wrinkled grey head as Abbie approached, shifting her hold of the sleeping baby to take money from her bag. The children this close to the city were noticeably more forthright and we were not surprised when a group, an assortment of all ages, gathered to watch. But when Abbie handed a dollar note to the woman a boy of around twelve stepped in front of her. “One dollar,” he told her. Four or five others moved in around him. There were smiles but they were demanding, not asking.
So much so that I stepped up with a hand out, not touching the boy but gesturing that he move back. He ignored me, refused to move and turned back to Abbie. “One dollar.” I forced myself between them as Abbie stepped back and during the little melee a smaller boy grabbed Abbie’s bag, so forcefully, tugging so hard, that he might have got away with it and vanished among the multitudes had not the whole business been brought to a stop. The smaller ones scattered first, Mr ‘one dollar’ last. Someone had snapped at them from somewhere behind, a woman’s voice, older, controlled, and even with that upward inflection of Asian speech, holding authority.
I looked around and as people, old and young, assumed their customary indifference to our presence, no one showed herself as the speaker who had saved Abbie’s bag, at least Abbie’s bag. It was as if nothing had happened. The old woman with no legs had gone. I swore hard, tried to shake out the residual tension by looking menacing, dangerous, with a ready and able grip on the rifle, watching out for the older kids from the mob. But they had gone.
Abbie was visibly upset. Both hands, one holding the baby, the other her bag, shook uncontrollably. Her breathing came in short sudden gulps. I asked her if she was okay.
She took a couple of deep breaths and nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”
As we set off I recognised no one. They had vanished as suddenly and easily as they’d appeared. And then I saw a young girl, sitting on a bicycle, the only one of the people watching us, and watching us steadily. It was little Mai, but when I turned to tell Abbie she was talking to someone else.
I looked sharply to see who had attracted her attention this time. The woman had her back to me and I couldn’t make her out. And I never did see her face. She had appeared from nowhere. There was something eerie in the way Abbie, who had been walking so close beside me, was speaking to the woman before I knew she was there.
The woman spoke then, and when I moved closer to listen she moved, slightly, deftly, to keep me from seeing her. It was some time later when Abbie told me that the woman was Lin’s sister.
She had a light, grey shawl over her head and wore nondescript local pants and shirt. She was taller than her sister and there was a stoop to her wiry, almost scrawny body. She bowed her head as she spoke to Abbie but for all the passive humility of her stance and even with her back to me I could sense a strength in her, the sort of resilience that was there in her sister and even in the old man I presumed to be their grandfather.
Abbie’s concentration on what she said was absolute and when I moved in close enough at least to hear her, she made sure her face remained out of my view.
“Is not good,” she was saying. “Your pere ... your papa ... is not there. Is not good.”
“Well, you see, he’ll be out looking for me. With a search party. Or in Saigon waiting for word.”
“There is a man, Le Dang Bah. Kill my sister. I take baby ... orph ... orphalina.”
“Orphanage? But she needs hospital treatment. Look at her. She’s getting very weak. Please wait till I see my father.”
The woman looked around her, down the street but not in my direction, and any impatience with Abbie was quickly controlled. “There is orph … orphanage, not far, I can tell you. The … the mama look after babies, …little babies. She look after baby,when … until … until your father come. You see? She tell us where baby go, you see?”She looked around again. There was another convoy approaching through the crowds and she spoke more quickly. “This mama, this … orphan woman know me. She tell me, you see? I know where baby go. Your father come, take baby. I know. You come, take baby. I know. You see?”
“Okay. Yes, I see. But please let me take her to a hospital first and then we can contact you in Muc Thap. My father will want you to know.”
“But he is not there. Not there in Vung Tau. I take baby. I can tell you where … where to go to orphan … orphanage.”
She turned to look at the convoy as the first vehicle came close up beside us. They were trucks this time, headed towards the city and I stepped out towards them as I waved.
I’d had enough of the outskirts of Saigon. The last one stopped.
“Wanna ride?” an officer asked from the co-driver’s seat. I believe he was a captain.
He got out to let us squeeze in between him and his driver. I looked back as I climbed in but both Lin’s sister and daughter were nowhere to be seen.
“Where to?” The captain had to shout above the noise of a transistor radio that sat on the dash. “We’re on our way back to base but I guess a little detour’ll be okay if it’s not too far out of our way.”
..... armed forces radio in downtown Saigon.
Abbie shouted back. “Can you take us to an army hospital, please?”
“Well, which one you have in mind, ma’am? If you’re talkin’ the field hospital out at Long Binh I’m afraid it’s too far out of our way. There is a little’n close by here.”
“Sorry. I don’t know Saigon. But the baby is sick and needs help urgently. We’d like the best care possible for her.”
The driver moved the vehicle away, the radio persisting, music starting up. It was all I could do not to reach over and find the volume control.
“Sure. Sure. Sounds okay. I’ll just need to explain to my CO He’s a nosy son of a ... gun. You know how it is.”
He lifted a two way
radio up from the floor and extracted the aerial which went out of the window high into the air . He barked call signs. The transistor radio was untouchable. Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, everything that’s wonderful is how I feel when we’re together.
While he attempted to make contact with his base the captain looked at Abbie. His grin was friendly. “I gotta say,” he yelled. “You’re the first white woman I’ve ever seen south of the Dong Nai River.” Then to me. “You mind tellin’ me just what you and your ... ah ... wife, I presume, are doin’ wanderin’ round the dirty old streets of south Saigon with your baby? And don’t tell me you were lookin’ at real estate.”
“I’m not his...”
The radio crackled and voiced its contact. As the man shouted explanations, the driver, as silent as his captain and the transistor were noisy, made a right turn while the rest of the convoy continued on down the road, his dark, poker face saying nothing. I felt relieved that the baby had not added to the commotion. She was now very still.
They left us in front of a building set back from the road, surrounded by a high concrete fence with barbed wire along the top. It was in a more or less tree-lined street, buildings with covered, concrete courtyards, relics of French times, and in spite of the odd broken wall, there were suggestions of a rough affluence, or the facade of it, behind the scarred pillars.
Two well-dressed, armed guards stood inside a locked gate. They did not look friendly from the start. Even when Abbie explained our situation, emphasising her citizenship, they were unmoved. She showed them the baby. “She’s getting worse by the minute.”
They looked at me. I explained my circumstances, careful to endorse all Abbie had said. They looked at the baby. “That baby’s a gook,” said one.
We all examined the baby. “With auburn hair?” Abbie explained her relationship with the baby. “Look. Is there any way I can call the embassy, please? My father would have contacted them. He may even be there by now. He would verify everything I’ve said.”
“My unit will verify what I said.”
The senior one went inside while the other watched us as we stood in the hot sun outside the gate. A nurse who came out looked at the baby with some sympathy but explained that the facility was strictly for American personnel. “We have trouble with these sorts of requests all the time.”
“But I’m American. And the baby is half American, soon to be an American citizen. And,” she could barely control herself, “I think she’s dying. As we speak. And if she does you will be hearing about it from my father.”
When the nurse brought out a doctor, a man who looked close to sixty, he took a look at the baby through the bars of the gate. “Bring the baby in. We’ll sort out the paper work later. You’ll have to excuse our caution. Usually they’re just left at the gate.”
I was asked to leave my rifle in a locker near the lobby and as we were led through, it was noticeable how much older than the average soldier the patients were. When a place was found for the baby it was in a staff room with a table and chairs and a sink and small refrigerator. A noisy fan did battle with the hot heavy air. The doctor gave instructions, the nurse left in a hurry and when he put the stethoscope onto the baby’s chest she didn’t flinch or make a sound.
“How is she, doctor?” Abbie asked.
The doctor listened for a moment. “She’s very weak. We’ll make sure we give her plenty to drink. We might have to put her on a drip, before we move her on to somewhere better equipped for babies.” He listened some more then turned to Abbie. “You look pretty beat yourself. Would you like to get cleaned up, have the nurse take a look at those cuts?”
“Thank you. But I should contact my father first.”
“When the nurse comes back she’ll show you the office. You can phone from there.”
“Thanks so much. Can I get through to the embassy from here?”
“Well, I think that’ll be okay. Jennifer will know.” He turned to me. “And what about you?”
“I should phone Australian headquarters, if that’s okay. When Abbie’s finished. I guess they’ll send someone for me.”
“Sure. Sit down. You look a little worse for wear too. These calls can take a while. Maybe you’d like to get cleaned up yourself, while you’re waiting. Take a shower.”
I was given a clean towel and a cake of soap. The only other man in the showers had a swollen knee and a huge purple scar running down the outside of his thigh. He asked me to help him and I gave him support while he hobbled out on crutches. “Much obliged.” He grimaced. “Fell on the slippery son of a bitch coming in.”
With the place to myself I undressed, stood under the flow of water and gave myself a prolonged soaking. When I returned to the staffroom there was no one there with the baby. Until the nurse came in.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She needs plenty to drink and she’s a very undernourished little girl. We’ve sent for some formula and paediatric equipment from another hospital. I hope it gets here soon. We’re not prepared for patients this young.”
“Is Abbie still on the phone?”
“The girl? No. As soon as she made the call someone came for her. From the embassy, I think. Amazing how quick they arrived. She must be important.”
“She’s gone?”
“Yes. Just now. Oh, and she said to tell you thanks.”
Part 3
Saigon
