by Robert Stone
“Hi,” Converse said. “The man been here?”
“Sure enough,” she said. She led him into the enormous room where she slept and which she had filled with Buddhas and temple hangings and brass animals bought in Phnom Penh. Her house was half of a villa which had been owned by a French brewer in colonial days. She was always finding old family photographs and novena cards in odd corners of the place.
“The man been,” she said. She lit a joss stick, waved it about and set it down in an ashtray. They could hear her washing lady singing along with the radio in the wash house across the back garden.
“You’re high,” Converse said.
“Just had a little hash with Tho. Want some?”
Converse shook his head.
“Weird time to get high.”
“John,” Charmian said, “you’re the world’s most frightened man. I don’t know how you live with yourself.”
She had walked to a metal cabinet against one wall and was kneeling down to open a combination lock on the bottom drawer. When the drawer was open she took out a large square package wrapped in newspaper and held it out for him. The newspaper in which it was wrapped was the liberal Catholic one, identifiable by the strips of blank column which it carried to chafe the censors.
“How’s this for terrifying?”
She set it down on a desk beside the smoldering joss stick and folded back the newspaper. There were two snow-white cotton ditty bags inside with their tie strings done in dainty bows. Each was lined with several layers of black plastic U.S. Government burn bag and the plastic sealed with masking tape. Charmian peeled away the tape to show Converse that the bags were filled with heroin.
“Look at it down there,” she said, “burning with an evil glow.”
Converse looked at the heroin.
“It’s all caked.”
“So what? It’s the dampness.”
He gently put his finger into the powder and worked a tiny amount onto the nail.
“Now let’s see if it’s really shit,” he said, sniffing at it.
She watched him amused.
“Don’t think you won’t get off on that. This is nearly pure scag. Can you imagine?”
She was standing on tiptoe with her hands tucked into the folds of her white jellaba. Converse rubbed his nose and looked at her.
“I hope you’re not doing this crap.”
“My opiate,” Charmian said, “is opium. But I’ve been known to take a little Sunday sniff now and then same as anybody. Same as anybody. Same as you.”
“Not me,” Converse said. “No more Sunday sniffs.”
It seemed to him that he was able to feel a faint cold easing down from his sinuses, cooling the fever, numbing his fear. He sat down on a cushion and wiped the sweat from his eyes.
“Scag isn’t me,” Charmian said.
Charmian’s daddy was a judge in north Florida. A few years earlier she had been secretary and dear friend to a one-man ant army named Irvine Vibert, who had come crashing out of the Louisiana canebrake one morning—young, smarter than hell, and insane with greed. The newspapers described him as an influence peddler, sometimes as a “wheeler-dealer.” He had had many friends in government and all of his friends were nice to Charmian. They went on being nice to her after the inevitable scandal broke, and even after Vibert’s death in a curious flying accident. The farther away she kept from Washington, the nicer they were. For a while Charmian had worked for the United States Information Agency, now she was the nominal correspondent of an Atlanta-based broadcasting syndicate. She liked Saigon. It was a bit like Washington. People were nice.
Converse was suddenly aware that he had stopped sweating. He swallowed, mastering a small spasm of nausea.
“Christ, it’s merry little shit.”
“Tho says it’s fantastic.”
“How the hell would he know?”
Charmian retaped the bags and wrapped them up. Struggling a bit, she lifted the package and handed it over to Converse. He took it, supporting its weight with his forearms. It felt absurdly heavy. Three kilos.
“You’re gonna have to balance your weight right when you walk with that in the bag. Otherwise you’re gonna look comical.”
Converse put the package in the briefcase and zipped it up.
“You weigh it?”
She went into the kitchen and took a bottle of purified water out of the refrigerator.
“’Course I weighed it. Anyway, you don’t get burned with scag by getting short weight. You get it cut on you.”
“And this isn’t?”
“Uh-uh. No way. Like I know a lot more about scag than Tho does and he’d be scared to burn me first time out. I own a hydrometer.”
Converse eased back on the cushion and rested his elbows on the tile floor, facing the whitewashed ceiling.
“Jesus,” he said.
“That’ll learn you, messing with the pure. Don’t get sick on my cushion.”
Converse sat up.
“Your friends can pick up from my wife on the twentieth in Berkeley. She’ll be home all day. If she’s not there, have them call the theater where she works. It’s called the Odeon—in the city off Mission. She’ll have a message for them.”
“She better be around.”
“We already talked about that.”
“Maybe there’s a side to her character you don’t know about.”
“In all modesty,” Converse said, “there isn’t.”
“She must be a pretty good kid. You ought to spend more time with her.”
Charmian sat down beside him on the cushion and rubbed at a mosquito bite over her Achilles’ tendon.
“Maybe she’s keeping bad company in your absence. Maybe she’s hanging around with some far-out hippies or something who might encourage her to weirdness.”
“If you don’t trust us,” Converse said, “pay me off and move it through somebody else.”
She closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, John. I can’t stop doin’ it.”
“I understand. I think it’s very professional of you. But stop anyway.”
“Damn,” she said, “I’d hate to make my living this way.”
Charmian poured them out two glasses of the cold bottled water.
“How much do you think your friends in the States will make?” Converse asked her.
“Depends on how much they cut it. It’s so good they can cut it down to ten percent. They could make a couple of hundred thou.”
“Who are they? I mean what sort of people are they?”
“Not the sort you might think.”
She stood up and shook the hood of her robe to free her hair.
“What they make is no concern of mine. I don’t want their trouble.”
“No,” Converse said. She was watching him with country caution; her eyes held a measure of contempt, a measure of suspicion.
“What are you gonna do with your money, John? Such a dedicated nonswinger as you are.”
“I don’t know,” Converse said.
She laughed at him. Her laughter was something soft and satisfying, good to hear.
“Shit, you don’t know, do you? You know you want it though, don’t you?”
“I desire to serve God,” Converse said, laughing himself. “And to grow rich, like all men.” His laughter felt a little too loose in the jaw to suit him.
“Who said that? Some great hustler of the past?”
“I’m not sure,” Converse said. “I think it was Cortez. Maybe it was Pizarro.”
“Sounds a little like Irvine,” Charmian said.
She poured out more water and they went outside on the verandah to drink it. The rain slackened for a few moments, then came harder. It was a savage, not a sustaining rain. The bright fleshy plants in the garden folded to endure it.
“How’s my Colonel Tho?” Converse asked.
“Pretty mellow today. He’s got another big deal set up. He’s dealing cinnamon now. Hey, you know a lot about tape recorde
rs?”
“No,” Converse said. “Why?”
“Tho wants me to tell him what the best kind of tape recorder is. That’s his big thing now. He’s gonna find out what all the best things in the world are and he wants one of each.”
Two old women in ao dais ran delicately over the mud beyond the gate, sharing a single white umbrella.
“What do you think he wants to tape?” Converse asked.
“Who the hell knows? Me, I guess.”
“I’m glad somebody around here knows what they want.”
“Well, Tho knows all right. Then there’s Victor Charles. Victor Charles knows.”
“Maybe,” Converse said.
“Absolutely,” Charmian said firmly. She had a respect bordering on reverence for the Viet Cong and she did not like to hear their sense of purpose questioned. “Like even Tho is kind of an idealist. He used to be a very gung ho soldier at one time.”
She leaned back in her chair and stretched out her long tanned legs to rest the backs of her ankles on the porch railing.
“He’s always saying how all the graft and double-dealing pisses him off. He told me once that what this country needs is a Hitler.”
“The Vietnamese have a terrific sense of humor,” Converse said. “That’s what keeps them going.”
“He says that if somebody gave him a chance he’d like to serve his country like he was trained to do. He figures we corrupted him.”
“Tho always says idiotic things when he talks to Americans. He’s trying to make himself agreeable.”
Charmian shrugged. “People can be corrupted.”
Converse got out of his chair and went back inside the house. Charmian followed him in. He picked up the briefcase and measured its weight.
“Just don’t get taken off,” Charmian said.
He opened the case, took out his plastic anorak and got into it.
“I’m going. I’m having dinner with the Percys and I’ve got to get a flight down south for tomorrow.”
“Tell them hello. And don’t look so damn scared.” She came up to him as he stood in the doorway and affected to smooth the wrinkles on his plastic raincoat. “When we get this cleared we’ll get a bunch of us together and fly over to Phnom Penh and get stoned and have a massage.”
“That’ll be nice,” Converse said. He had not been to bed with her for months. The last time had been after his return from Cambodia; bad things had happened there and he had not had it together.
He saw to it that she did not kiss him goodbye. Walking up the alley to Nguyen Thong, he flexed his free arm to keep his back straight against the weight of the briefcase. So as not to look comical.
Because of the rain, it was a long time before he found a taxi.
“Every day in this place,” Sergeant Janeway said, “we entertain the weird, the strange, the unusual.”
They were sitting in the refrigerated offices of JUSPAO, the public affairs office. The walls were government gray; there were no windows. The briefcase rested beside Converse’s chair; rainwater ran from it onto the plastic tiles like an incriminating effusion. Like blood.
“If I had anything to say,” the sergeant went on, “we’d really tighten up our accreditation procedure. We’ve got people around here with bao chi cards who are currency crooks, dope smugglers, God knows what. We’ve got hippies coming in from Katmandu who depend on Mac-V for their next meal. Sometimes I feel like a social worker.”
Sergeant Janeway was the most articulate enlisted man in the American Armed Forces and was thus regarded locally as a sort of idiot savant. He enjoyed the familiarity and condescension of the international press corps’s celebrities and was able to display toward them an ingratiating manner of extraordinary range. According to the taste of his interlocutor, he could project any manner of deference from the austere courtesy of a samurai to the prole-servility of an antique Cunard cabin steward. To the notables and the men of affairs, Sergeant Janeway was a picturesque menial at the vestibule of inside dope. Converse’s relations with him were rather different. From Converse’s point of view, Sergeant Janeway was in charge of the war.
“I don’t understand what you want down in My Lat. Nothing’s happening down there.”
“I happen to think there’s a story in the civilians,” Converse said. “The merchant seamen and so forth.”
Sergeant Janeway sat on a corner of his desk, drumming on a wicker basket with a rolled-up copy of The Nation. His haircut, Converse thought, appeared to be the work of a theatrical barber shop.
“Sounds pretty dull to me,” the sergeant said. “But of course I’m not a journalist. Which one of your many employers do you think would go for that?”
“All of them, I hope,” Converse said. “Anyway, it’s none of your business. You’re not a journalist and you’re not a critic.”
Sergeant Janeway smiled.
“Know how I think of you, Mr. Converse, sir? With all due respect? As a letterhead. Perhaps you’re making a valuable contribution to an informed public, but I don’t see any evidence of that.”
“I had a piece in the Irish Messenger two weeks ago. If you want to find out what we’re up to, get your clipping service on the stick.”
He reached out and brought the briefcase a little closer to his chair.
“I’m accredited to this command. My card is as good as Time’s and I’m entitled to the same courtesy.”
Sergeant Janeway picked up his telephone.
“I’m sorry you’re not satisfied with us,” the sergeant said. “Personally I’m not too satisfied with you. Since there’s all this dissatisfaction, maybe you and I should talk to the colonel about your accreditation.”
But the sergeant was not calling the colonel. He was calling Operations to get Converse on the morning run to My Lat. When he had booked the hop, he reminded Converse to renew his membership in the officers’ club.
“They say the beach down there is very nice. I’m sure you’ll have a terrific time. You better bring some malaria pills though.”
“Christ,” Converse said. He had forgotten to sign for them at Tansonhut. He looked at his watch; it was after four. The sick bays would be closed for the weekend and the duty corpsman would not issue pills without authorization from MACV.
Sergeant Janeway looked concerned. “I bet you went and forgot.” Sergeant Janeway kept a supply of the pills in his office to dispense as a courtesy to his celebrated clients.
“You better get some somewhere,” he told Converse. “They have all the nasty strains down there.”
As it grew dark, there was a time of small rain, a sprinkle between the afternoon’s and the night’s downpour. Converse carried the briefcase through the hurrying evening crowds on Le Loi, walking as casually as he could. The weight of the case was causing him to sweat even more immoderately than usual and his shoulder ached from his effort to adjust his posture.
It was a city of close watchers. The hustlers sat in their open-fronted cafés checking him out, eyeing the briefcase. They did not bother to approach him now; his face had become familiar downtown. His cheap Japanese watch was known throughout the city and shoeshine boys unable to distinguish between round-eyed faces recognized him by its shiny tin band. It was Number Ten. Its lack of distinction sometimes caused him to be insulted in the street, but no one ever tried to grab it.
The watch was his talisman against street snatchers. In all the time he had been in Saigon he had been street-snatched only once, although he knew people who were street-snatched as often as twice a week. Almost a year before, he had lost a briefcase to a Korean in a passing jeep, and the Korean had thereby acquired the collected works of Saint-Exupéry and a Zap comic. In Converse’s view, the idea of a Korean soldier reading a Zap comic was worth the loss of the case.
Opposite the flower market he stepped into the maniacal Le Loi traffic, attempting languor and unconcern. It was necessary to appear as though innate good fortune made one invulnerable. History had made the Saigonnais great believers i
n luck. Unlucky-looking people made them uneasy and even tempted some to assume the role of misfortune. It was as bad as looking comical.
On the far side of the street, a cyclo driver and an Army Spec One were engaged in some dispute. The Spec One was rubbing his thumb and forefinger together under the cyclo driver’s nose and cursing in Italian. The driver, eyes rolling, was demonstrating t’ai chi strokes, weaving and dancing on the pavement. He was a great success with the crowd. People laughed and applauded. The exercise he was performing in pantomime was the one called Repelling the Monkey.
The Hotel Coligny, where Converse lived, was just off the flower market, which enabled the more life-affirming of its guests to rush downstairs each morning and buy poinciana boughs and fresh roses to adorn their rooms. A Dutch correspondent in the room adjoining Converse’s did so regularly. The Dutchman was a stoned head, and so fond of flowers that he had once taken to wearing marigold chains in his long golden hair. One day some street cowboys threw an uncharged hand grenade at him for a joke. The flowers had made him look unlucky.
As Converse entered the small dark lobby, Madame Colletti, the patronesse, who was a young and exquisitely beautiful Vietnamese lady, regarded him with suspicion and loathing. She regarded everyone that way.
Converse naturally preferred to deal with Monsieur, but he did not take Madame’s attitude personally. Sauntering past the desk, he threw her a snappy “Bon soir.” The Sisters had taught Madame Colletti to abhor those who abused the language of clarity. She stared at him with an incomprehension that bordered on horror.
“Bon soir,” she said, as though his mouthings were human speech.
Converse rented a tin safe from the Collettis in which he kept his checks, notes, and such things as Zap comics and the works of Saint-Exupéry. Acutely aware of the patronesse’s close attention, he stuffed the briefcase inside. There were merchant adventurers in Saigon who paid the Indian currency sharks to hold their contraband in strongboxes that were as secure as anything there could be. But Converse was frightened of Indian currency sharks; he had decided to risk the tin safe. The briefcase was an awkward fit, but it went in.
