‘I can’t imagine why,’ Doyle said.
Webb gave a rueful smile. ‘We couldn’t help running into each other, of course. The Continental, the Follies, the Press Centre in Danang. Once I literally bumped into him diving for a medevac chopper near Kontum. But we didn’t talk to each other much and then he got the transfer to Pnom Penh.’
‘What about the others?’ Doyle asked.
‘The old guard split up. Lee here was back in the States. O’Leary was rotated back to London. Then it was just me and Croz.’
‘You stayed on?’
‘Croz had to, he was still with the AP. Me?’ He shrugged. ‘Like a dog with a bone. I wouldn’t let go.’
‘You were still freelancing?’
‘I was doing pretty well, selling my pieces to Time-Life and Paris- Match. It helped that I could take my own photographs to go with the stories. There weren’t many guys doing that.’
‘So when did you run into Ryan again?’
‘Croz picked up a bit of gossip occasionally but I didn’t see him for a couple of years. It was Odile I found first. Purely by accident.’
* * *
‘By showing war in its stinking reality, we have taken away the glory and shown that negotiation is the only way to solve international problems.’
Howard Smith, ABC news presenter
‘Take the glamour out of war? I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that? ... Can you take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? ... War is good for you, you can’t take the glamour out of that. It’s like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones!’
Tim Page, combat photographer, Vietnam War, in his autobiography Page by Page
Saigon, March 1972
There was a desperation about Saigon now. The grace once conferred by the French was all but gone, choked by overcrowding and pollution. Even the plane trees in the boulevards were dying. The American legacy had not been peace, but crowds of beggars and cripples and street children, and even more war.
The Calley trial had created a groundswell of revulsion in the US, and it was evident that America would soon turn its back on its disastrous Asian enterprise. The North Vietnamese were throwing more troops against the South, and the US military, with most of its ground forces now back in the United States, reacted by hurling renewed waves of B-52s against Hanoi.
The desperation was most evident along the Tu Do; a Marine was becoming a rare sight around the Saigon streets and the competition among the prostitutes for the remaining American customers was fierce. As the russet and orange clouds of dusk broiled above the city - pollution made the Saigon sunsets remarkably beautiful - the strip came alive, the bars and nightclubs pulsing with rock music, overlaid with the shouts of bar girls, the laughter of crewcut soldiers and the buzz of Honda motorcycles.
Most of the war correspondents frequented the Melody Bar, where the girls were said to be younger, prettier and cheaper. Crosby had fallen in lust with a girl who worked at the Chicago Bar, so Webb arranged to meet him there. When he arrived, some bar girls were clustered under the hot pink neon sign at the door, smoking cigarettes.
They were all parodies of Times Square prostitutes: miniskirts, high-heeled pumps, sweaters of electric pinks and greens one size too tight. They all wore too much lipstick. One of them tugged at Webb’s shirt.
‘Buy me ladies drink?’ she said.
‘No thanks.’
She grabbed his crotch. ‘I love you too much, baby.’
‘Not right now.’
‘Buy me drink, baby, love you too much.’
Webb disengaged himself. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Then you fuck off numbah ten cheap charlie!’
Inside Steppenwolf was howling ‘Bom to be Wild’, the bass on the jukebox almost overriding the lyric. There was a jostling crowd of crewcut soldiers in open-necked shirts and jeans, as well as a handful of overweight Europeans, probably engineers, all surrounded by eager bar girls. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark. No sign of Crosby.
He got a beer. A huge black Marine was pawing one of the girls in the corner. Webb noticed her straight away; unlike the others she seemed almost aloof, as if she had been led to the bar at the point of a gun. She was the only one not screeching too loud, smiling too much. She was also prettier than the other girls, so perhaps she did not have to try as hard.
She was half turned away from him, staring into the mirror above the bar, like a patient after a traumatic operation, examining the scars. She wore a red satin dress and stilettos, and her hair had been cut to her shoulders, leaving commas of hair at her cheeks. She was wearing too much make-up, but it could not disguise her exceptional beauty. The Marine had his hands all over her.
It couldn’t be.
He moved closer, making sure.
‘What you looking at, muthafucker?’ the Marine growled at him.
‘Odile,’ Webb said. Her eyes widened. She did not recognize him, but she looked surprised at hearing a stranger say her name.
‘You want something, man?’
He was the size of a gorilla. Webb shook his head, took his beer and moved away. Another girl grabbed at him, but he pushed her away. Odile. Ryan’s girlfriend, the novice. How had she ended up here? Not too difficult to guess. Why was he so surprised?
He looked again, had to be sure. Everything about her was different but it was her, he was sure of it. He saw her watching him in the mirror.
‘GRENADE!’
Everyone hit the floor. Bar stools crashed over; girls screamed. Bottles and glasses smashed on the floor. Those closest to the door hurled themselves outside, others looked for shelter behind the bar. The big Marine lay prone at Webb’s feet, his arms over his head.
Webb grabbed Odile’s arm. He pulled her towards the door and she did not resist. In moments they were on the Tu Do, running. He dragged her into a side street, putting as much distance between themselves and the bar as he could. Right now badly shaken soldiers would be climbing to their feet in the Chicago, grateful to be alive, but wondering why there had been no explosion. When the relief had worn off, they would ask themselves and each other what muthafucker had scared the shit out of them for no reason, and then they would be very angry indeed.
Webb still had Odile’s arm. Unable to keep up with him in her stilettos, she tried to jerk away, but he only held her tighter. She shouted something at him in Vietnamese, and slapped his face.
‘I know you can speak English,’ he said to her. ‘Talk to me and I’ll let you go.’
She nodded her head and he let her arm drop to her side. ‘Vous êtes qui?’
‘I’m a friend of Ryan’s. We met one night at the Caravelle.’
At the mention of Ryan’s name, she lost her defiance. ‘You know where Ryan is?’ she said.
‘No, I don’t.’
She rubbed her upper arm. His fingers had left angry red marks on her flesh.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘What do you want?’
Good question. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to get you out of there.’
‘Pourquoi? Vouley-vous coucher avec moi?’
He shook his head.
‘Then what do you want? Vous êtes fou!’
‘What the hell are you doing in that place?’
‘It is not your problem, I don’t think so.’
‘I just made it my problem.’ They stared at each other. She’s right, he thought, you’re crazy.
‘You don’t want to sleep with me, leave me alone.’ She turned away, but he caught her at the end of the alley and grabbed her wrist again. She tried to wrench herself free. Passers-by stared at them; two Vietnamese military police stopped, but then moved on. Just another soldier having an argument with a prostitute over money, they must have thought.
‘Que voulez vous, monsieur?’
‘I just want to talk, okay? I’m a friend of Ryan’s.’
‘Monsieur Ryan is dead.’
‘
No. He’s in Phnom Penh.’
‘Phnom Penh,’ she repeated slowly. She nodded, eyes closed, as if some great dilemma had finally been answered for her. ‘C’est vrai?’
He nodded.
‘When you see Monsieur Ryan again .. . you will tell him how I live now. Yes?’ She turned away.
‘Wait...’
‘Please. You cannot help me.’
Webb fumbled in his shirt. ‘How much do you want?’
She stared at the money in his hand, then snatched the bank notes from him and counted them. It was too much, way too much, but he nodded.
* * *
Old women squatted in the mud, hawking wicker pannikins of green bananas, durian and water melons. He followed her up the laneway, dodging the motorcycles and push bikes, picking his way through the piles of rubbish. He made out betel-nut stains in the dirt, like splashes of blood. There was a pervading stench of nuoc mam, kerosene and raw sewage; it was noisy with the staccato shouts of the night market and the whine of motorbikes. A man urinated against the wall.
He followed her up a flight of rotting wooden stairs.
They stopped outside a wooden door, and Odile removed the padlock with her key. She pulled him inside.
The only light came from a low-wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling on a frayed black flex. The room was not much larger than his parents’ bathroom back in London. There were rush mats on the floor and there was a plastic bowl for washing. There was a wooden crucifix on the wall, above a child’s cot.
Her bedroom was an area in the corner partitioned off with a tom curtain. Odile drew it back to reveal a narrow wooden bed. She sat down and started to unzip her dress.
Webb stopped her, shook his head.
‘I only give you sexual intercourse,’ she said, ‘I cannot do anything else.’
‘I don’t want sex,’ he said.
Her shoulders sagged. ‘You want your money back?’
‘No, I don’t want my money back.’ He sat down beside her, his eyes on the cot in the comer of the room. ‘You have a baby now?’
She nodded.
‘Ryan’s?’
‘She is fifteen months old. Her name is Phuong.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘What I say before, this is not true. I do not want you to tell Monsieur Ryan how I live. I will have no face left. Tu comprends?’
‘It’s not your fault, it’s his.’
‘He does not love me.’
There was no dearth of abandoned women and children in Saigon, as there was no shortage of men without legs in the military hospitals. It was just another cost of war. But he had expected more of Ryan. ‘Where is your baby?’
‘When I am . .. working ... une vieille takes care of her for me. I pay her money. Like an amah.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps I can help you.’
‘Why you want to help me?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and it was the truth.
She stood up slowly. It hurt him to look at her. She was a travesty of the woman he remembered from that evening at the Caravelle.
He followed her back down the steps to the alley.
She stopped outside a hole in the wall. ‘In here,’ she said.
It took a few moments for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. There was just a single kerosene lantern and it was crushingly hot. The small room housed a large family; a woman was cooking over a charcoal stove in the comer, while three small children played on the dirt floor. A man in a white vest eyed him with naked hostility. He barked something at Odile.
‘He is not happy I bring you here,’ she said. ‘He says you will bring him bad luck. They do not like me. I pay more than anyone else because I am bui doi.’
An old woman sat on a stool, a small child playing at her feet. The child had coarse black hair but her features were European; round eyes and milk-coffee skin. She was naked except for a soiled T-shirt.
Odile picked up the child, patted her bare bottom. She cooed something in Vietnamese, an endearment perhaps.
‘So now you have seen my little baby,’ Odile said. ‘Now if you do not want to sleep with me, I must go back to work.’
‘You’re not going back to the bar.’
‘How else I can live?’
Webb hesitated. ‘There’s another way,’ he said.
* * *
His apartment was two blocks from the Tu Do, towards the Saigon River. A green wrought-iron balcony, wide enough for two chairs and a small iron table, looked out over the street. There was a green-painted, louvred French window and inside was a plain wooden desk with Webb’s prized Olympia typewriter. There was a small toilet room with a massive high-sided bath and brass taps.
In one corner, opposite the window, was a single bed. It had a T-bar wooden frame covered with mosquito netting. There was a wash basin and an ancient armoire in the other corner. Webb’s black and white photographs had been tacked to the walls along with a red Liberation Army flag with a yellow star which a drunken Marine had sold to Webb for ten dollars. A bookshelf contained mementos collected during his two years in South-East Asia; an opium pipe, a red and white Khmer scarf, an NVA pith helmet. His field gear - his pack, his cameras, a flak jacket - were on the floor beside the bed.
Odile looked around.
‘It’s not very big,’ Webb said, ‘but it’s clean. And it won’t cost you anything.’
Odile sat Phuong on the parquetry floor and perched uncertainly on the edge of the bed.
‘I won’t be here very often,’ Webb said. ‘It’s just a base for me. A lot of the time you’d have the place to yourself.’ He went to the wash basin. There was a wash cloth draining over the faucet. He wet it, and handed it to her. ‘Here, wash your face.’
‘Why?’
‘Take off the lipstick. You don’t have to be a whore anymore.’ He saw her flinch and realized how callous that had sounded.
But she did as he asked. Her shame was painful to watch. He crouched down and smiled at Phuong, who stared back at him, fascinated with this new and strange face.
‘Why do you want to do this?’ Odile said.
‘I should just walk away and pretend it isn’t my problem?’
‘But it isn’t.’
He could see what she was thinking. This had to be some elaborate trap. Nothing was ever free; she could guess what the rent would be. But she had perhaps already calculated that this might be better than having the whole US Army as her landlord.
* * *
They sat on the balcony. Phuong played inside, on the floor. The city sweltered, not a breath of air.
A skyline of plane trees and flat roofs was silhouetted against the bright lights and neon of the Tu Do; in the distance he could hear the rumble of artillery. An old Chinese practiced tai qi on a neighbouring rooftop.
‘Ryan is gone maybe two weeks when I think I am pregnant,’ Odile said, her voice a monotone. ‘For a while he write to me, send me money. But then the letters stop, and there is no more money. Perhaps Ryan is killed, I do not know. So I write to my grandmother in Dalat, ask her for help, but she does not write back. I can never go back there with my baby. It will be too much shame. So I stay here. After Phuong is born the money from Ryan is gone. So I go to the Tu Do.’
‘Did you ever write to Ryan, ask him for help?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but when he does not write back, I think he must be dead.’
‘Does he know about the baby?’
She shook her head.
‘If he’d known, he would have helped you.’
‘Why, Monsieur Webb? He does not love me.’
Phuong started to cry. Odile picked her up and sat down on the edge of the bed to offer her breast. After a while she fell asleep in her arms.
‘I’m going outside to have a cigarette,’ he said.
He shut the door behind him and went down the stairs to the street. He walked around for almost an hour, trying to sort it through in his mind. When he got back Odi
le was in the bed, Phuong asleep beside her. He went to his field pack in the corner, and unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked him.
‘I’ve slept in worst places the last couple of years. At least it’s dry and there’re no snakes.’
‘You do not want to sleep with me?’
‘If I do you’ll still feel like a prostitute. Won’t you? Just with fewer customers.’
‘Ça na fait rien du tout.’
‘That’s the point. I want it to matter to you again. I didn’t offer to help you for that.’ He took off his boots. ‘Stay here with me for as long as you want. We’ll work something out. I’ll write to Ryan.’
Whether Ryan would feel moved to do something about the situation, he didn’t know.
He came over to the bed, picked up the miniskirt off the floor and crumpled it in his fist. Then he went to the balcony and threw it into the street.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You won’t need it anymore.’
She stared at him as if he were crazy, which perhaps he was. He had lived in a war zone for two years now, and he’d learned that life was too short not to do whatever you felt like doing.
‘You do not have to do this. I am not a nun. I never was.’
‘I can help you. So I will. That’s it.’
She put her head back on the pillow. ‘You are a very good man.’
‘Sometimes. Sometimes not.’ He turned off the light, undressed and slid into his sleeping bag. He lay awake for a long time, thinking about what she’d said. You’re a good man, Spider, he told himself. You’ll probably go to heaven. But you’ll be there all on your own, you silly bastard. You’ll have to slip out at night and go downstairs for some fun.
Chapter 11
Webb was awake soon after dawn, the habit of two years in war zones. He had to be out on the street early, to test the mood of the city.
Odile was still asleep. She lay on her back, her arms above her head, like a child. He stared at her. Exquisite, was the word that came immediately to his mind. The sheet had fallen below her breast. Christ Almighty. He pulled the sheet gently up to her chin.
War Baby Page 8
