Highways to a War

by Koch, Christopher J.

  He complimented Madame Phan on the meal with an enthusiasm that made her smile; and she shook her head.

  “No, I’m afraid it’s quite crude,” she said. “Forgive me, but things are always rushed these days: since I’ve had to take charge of my husband’s trading company, I have too little time for important things like cuisine. Aubrey will have told you that my husband disappeared? Yes. Six months ago, he was captured by the Communists near Tay Ninh, on the Cambodian border. He was visiting one of our trading posts there, and never came back. We trade into Cambodia: watches; electrical equipment; food: everything. One of our agents there says the Viet Cong were trying to extract too much protection money, and my husband refused. I expected an approach for ransom for a long time, but nothing happened. So now we have little hope. And I don’t really know whether I’m a widow or not.” She smiled faintly.

  Langford said he was sorry.

  She shrugged, her face suddenly blank, and sipped her wine. Then she said: “This country is built on bribery, my dear—you’ve learned that? Our pure-minded Communists are no different; they want their share of the graft: all for the Party, of course. My agents at every depot on the Mekong need a constant supply of bribe money-to pay off the Viet Cong, and to pay off the criminals who burn our warehouses and raid our ships. Everyone thinks the Phans have a bag of money with no bottom. But it isn’t true. Like all businesses, we run on credit; we take risks; nothing is certain.”

  She looked drolly despairing; then she smiled. She was never serious for long, he says.

  Over a second bottle of Beaujolais, they began to talk more easily. Already she was Claudine, and he was Michael—but not Mike. She had the gift of achieving a sort of light intimacy without in any way losing a final formality and privacy; and he’d already sensed that failure to recognize these boundaries would be a mistake. She questioned him about his life and his background, and he pictures her listening with absolute intentness, one elbow propped on the table to rest her chin on her hand, the other hand slowly flapping her bamboo fan.

  “So why are you here, Michael?”

  For a moment he thought that his visit was being challenged, and he stared at her in confusion. But he had misunderstood, and she laughed.

  “I’m sorry: I meant why have you come to Vietnam? You are very welcome in my house.”

  He told her he was here for Telenews.

  “Of course I know this,” she said. “But why have you come to Indochina in the first place? That’s what interests me.”

  He seems to have answered in a deliberately prosaic way. Because it was the best place to be at present for any correspondent or news photographer, he said: the best story going.

  But she pursed her lips as he spoke and shook her head slowly in mock reproach, matching it to the rhythm of her fan. “You are giving me careful answers,” she said. “I think that you are an interesting man who wants to hide the fact that he is interesting. You forget that I have learned a little about you from Aubrey. When he found you in Singapore you were starving. Now why would a healthy, attractive young guy like you want to starve in Singapore? To punish himself?” She shook her head. “No; you don’t look the type. On the run from something? Maybe. I think so. Yes?”

  Cocking her head, she snapped the fan shut and pointed it at him. Then she laughed: the same frank shout that he’d first heard in the anteroom. It invited him to join in, and he did. He saw that she wanted to know him, and to make him like her—but not to flirt. Her sexual presence was strong, and had a quality that was formidable rather than seductive. He saw this as non-Western; baffling.

  “Am I being nosy? Yes; I am nosy,” she said. “That’s me; that’s Claudine Phan. Everyone knows that. If I want to find out, I ask; if I think something is so, I say it. The Saigon bourgeoisie find me appalling. I’m a rude bloody frog, they say.” She laughed again, briefly: a statement in two syllables. “You can stop me asking you these questions if you like, mon cher. But because Aubrey has sent you to me, I’m being absolutely frank with you, and I would like to be your friend. So you and I must be truthful with each other: no secrets. Our secrets have to be from other people—you understand? Aubrey and I have trust, and I want to have trust with you too, Michael. But I cannot be anyone’s friend unless I know him.”

  He said that he’d value her friendship, and would value her help. And he must have given her his smile, because she nodded and said: “Yes. You know how to charm, Michael; good. But still I’d like to know what made you change your life. Why did you come to Asia?”

  —I told her. Told her everything: things I’ve discussed with no one else. I thought it was the wine, last night; now I think it was only Claudine. It’s the way she listens: listens without speaking. I felt she understood everything, and didn’t judge me.

  He gives no detail at all of what he said. But it’s clear that he talked not only of his hopes and ambitions, but of his relationship with Diana Lockhart. He doesn’t even do this in the audio diary: he never looks backward. And in someone as private as Langford, I find the bare fact of this confession remarkable. Nothing could make clearer the way in which Madame Phan had won his confidence. And while his own side of the dialogue is lost, everything she said is recorded in full.

  “I think you will be very successful as a war photographer. You are the kind who will be good at it: you are cool, aren’t you? But I think you must leave your pain behind. Not just about this woman, but the guilt over your friend. Because there’s nothing to be done, is there? You did a bad thing—to yourself as well as him—but it’s all gone. Gone. And now you are doing what you really want to do, and you are where you are meant to be.” Suddenly, her voice grew humorously hard; almost coarse. “So never mind.”

  She laughed at his expression, which must have been disconcerted.

  “Never mind, baby—never mind. Everyone says that in Asia: here in Vietnam we say khong xâu, and where you just came from, they say t‘id-apa, right? ’Never mind; not to worry.‘ The same in Vietnamese and Malay and in all Asian languages. When nothing can be done, we say khong xâu, and walk away. You are going to have to learn to do that too, Michael. I think you have been like Rip Van Winkle. You were asleep; in a dream over this woman, and time went by. Perhaps that’s why you look so young—and you are not really so young, are you? Nearly thirty; that’s quite old, in this country. Yes; you nearly lost your youth. But then, one day you woke up in Singapore. And now you commence living the life you were meant for.”

  She began to laugh again. Laughter, he saw, was a release for the extraordinary, electric energy that brimmed inside this woman.

  The young woman who’d opened the gate to him came back noiselessly into the room, passing Madame Phan’s chair with coffee and cognac on a tray. She stooped, setting the tray down, and Claudine put a hand around her narrow waist, detaining her. At the same time she looked across at Langford with a confiding smile.

  “You should find a nice Vietnamese girl,” she said. “They are very beautiful, don’t you think? This one especially.”

  The young woman stood still, waiting and smiling: small as a child in her glimmering white silk. Her head remained bowed, her eyes averted, and still Claudine held her waist.

  “Don’t worry,” Claudine said. “She speaks no English. Her name is Khanh Ha.” She spoke to the girl in French, too fast for Langford to follow; but he heard his own name.

  He greeted the girl again in his rudimentary French, and told her how good the meal had been.

  “Merci bien, monsieur.” Her voice was only just audible. Released, she glided away again across the tiles.

  “Khanh Ha is from a town in the Delta,” Claudine said. “Her parents, brothers and sisters are all dead: killed in an American air strike. I’m very fond of her. I have a number of girls like her in the house, many from middle-class families. They are not just servants, they are like my own family: I call them my orphans. They don’t want to become bar girls and prostitutes—which is what so many have to do.” Sh
e looked at him with narrowed eyes. “But perhaps this is your loss. Perhaps you will like to spend your spare time laying bar girls—like other correspondents.”

  He still had enough rural conservatism to find this directness startling. No, he said; that didn’t appeal to him.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Now tell me how I can help you. Aubrey has asked me to; and when Aubrey asks, we don’t question.”

  He told her that he wanted to go out on patrol with the Army of South Vietnam. He’d be grateful for her help with this.

  “Really? With the ARVN? Believe me, mon cher, it’s much safer with the Americans—and more comfortable.”

  He explained, as he’d done to Jim Feng. Surely their war should be reported, he said.

  “Mon Dieu, I believe he’s an idealist,” she said.

  —I said I hoped I was. The South had to win, didn’t it?

  She ignored his question. “Joining the ARVN should be simple for you to do. You have accreditation, no? So how do you need my help?”

  He needed to find a good company, he said, with a good commander.

  “Aha. Yes; that’s important,” she said. “A commander who will not get you killed, you mean. Yes—I can do that. I have a cousin who is a company commander in the Delta—a good man. A rarity. I’ll arrange it.”

  She swirled the brandy in her glass, and then set it down. For a moment, her ebullience and vivacity had gone. When she spoke, it was to answer the question she’d previously ignored. “ ‘They have to win,’ you said. Oh yes, they have to—but without the Americans they won’t. And perhaps not even with them.”

  You can’t believe that, he said. You’d lose everything.

  “Yes, that’s true. But we are used to that idea. Today we have; tomorrow we have not. That’s how we live, in Saigon.” She drained her glass. “I am glad you are an idealist,” she said. “You and my cousin Trung will get on well. He is one too, poor fellow.”

  Her deep laughter was released again, and he found himself joining in.

  4.

  Down in the Mekong Delta, that country of water, Michael Langford had a second birth.

  There seems to have been no single moment of revelation. It was a gradual process, as he waded and stumbled hour by hour and day by day through the marshes and flooded paddies, soaked by the monsoon downpours and by his own pouring sweat; seldom dry, and seldom halting except for brief hours of sleep. All that he’d eventually become had its origins in those early field patrols with Captain Le Tan Trung, whose unit was tracked faithfully by death. Death was there week after week and month after month, waiting with a cocked Kalashnikov across each paddy dyke. In the region called the Cradle, it was always prowling close to them, behind or in front, and Trung and his men were what they were because of it.

  Down there in the Cradle, a life began which Langford saw as his true one. It was a life that would last for a decade, and die with the war.

  AUDIO DIARY: LANGFORD

  TAPE 6: MAY 28TH, 1965

  —At six in the morning, I caught an Air Vietnam flight from Tan Son Nhut to My Tho, the chief provincial town of the northern Delta. That’s where the ARVN Seventh Division has its headquarters, in an old French barracks. I had an appointment there at eight with Captain Le Tan Trung: Madame Phan’s cousin.

  The office was large, and languidly warm; there were a number of green metal desks in it, and maps on the walls. Young ARVN officers in tailored green uniforms came and went, carrying files. Langford sat in front of Captain Trung’s desk, and Captain Trung studied him without smiling, leaning back in a swivel chair. He hadn’t smiled when they shook hands.

  “We leave in half an hour,” he said. “I am taking a company down to Kien Hoa Province. American helicopters will drop us at our forward base to relieve others who are there.”

  His English was stiff and educated, and his voice low and courteous, but without detectable warmth. He was dressed for the field in combat fatigues and jungle boots; he had crew-cut hair like an American, and was taller than the average Vietnamese. Relatively young—around Langford’s age—he looked older. Experience, presumably harsh, had prematurely tightened Trung’s face, and emphasized the hollows under his cheekbones. On the wall behind the desk hung a framed map of the Delta region - with little flags stuck in it; he swung around now and stood up to point at it.

  “This area where we go is called the Cradle,” he said. He looked hard at Langford over his shoulder. “It is called the Cradle because it is the birthplace of the Viet Cong. Nearly all is in their hands. No American troops fight there. Only we. Our company makes sweeps from the base, staying in the field for four, five days. You would be with us all the time: not just one day, like your people are with the Americans.”

  He turned back and leaned towards Langford, his hands on the desk.

  “That whole countryside is full of booby traps. You understand, Mr. Langford? Just to move through it is dangerous. I lose troops all the time that way. There is no resupply in the field like Americans have. Often no artillery or air support, even if we are overrun. We can radio for help, but this doesn’t mean it will come; we are often too far out of range. No foreign journalist has ever come out with us.” He paused, as though expecting Langford to say something; when Langford didn‘t, he went on. “Madame Phan has asked that I help you, and I am happy to do so. But I will not be responsible if you are killed.”

  Langford told him that he understood. The responsibility was his own, he said. Whatever risks Captain Trung and his men were taking, he was happy to take too.

  The captain compressed his lips and frowned; then he looked resigned, and nodded. “Okay,” he said. He jerked his head for Langford to follow, and led the way out of the office.

  The floor that Langford sat on was of diamond-patterned aluminum; his camera bag and his pack were between his legs. The Vietnamese soldiers on each side of him looked at him curiously; in their outsize American helmets and baggy combat fatigues, they seemed like boys playing at soldiers. The roar of the engines and the thumping of the rotor blades was terrific: his teeth vibrated. There was a reek of hot metal and of the fuel called JP-4: a smell he would come to know as the universal odor of the war.

  He was airborne in a Bell UH-1: the transport-cum-gunship that Dmitri Volkov had waxed so poetic about. Ten of these small helicopters had taken off together from the airfield at My Tho, piloted by Americans, with about eight ARVN soldiers in each: the whole of Captain Trung’s fresh company. Some of the soldiers were sitting on their helmets, and Langford sat on a thick paperback book he’d put in his pack. Captain Trung had informed him that VC snipers often tried their luck from the ground, and this made him acutely conscious of his rectum, he says: he imagined a bullet coming through the floor and neatly finding its mark. But after a few more minutes, he forgot about it.

  The doors of the Huey stood open, and the rush of air was exhilarating. Poised on the edge of space in the doorway nearest to him, an American gunner in his harness squatted over an M-60 machine gun. Looking past him, Langford saw four other Hueys strung out across hazy, radiant sky, riding in a perfect, unstoppable line. They were like a new kind of creature: light, evanescent, frivolous and absolutely predatory.

  —I felt free in a new way. I was so happy I felt drunk.

  He brings his circumstances back like a high memory of childhood. A bright day, despite the onset of the monsoon, and below him, Vietnam: this bitterly contested country that was seldom much more than a hundred miles wide, but which seemed now to extend to mirage-like infinities, deep green and cigarette-smoke blue, its checkerboard of mangrove swamps, coconut groves and paddy fields invisibly patrolled by the Black Ghosts. The gleaming, flooded rice fields made the land here like a chain of islands; long, thread-like canals ran between the coconut groves, and the vast silver bends of the Mekong flashed in the sun, dotted with sampans and the blunt, brutal shapes of gunboats. The tall, flat-topped towers of thunderhead clouds stood reflected in the river.

&
nbsp; This was the Cradle: the country of violent birth and violent death. But even the hidden threat down there was part of its beauty for him.

  —The big American door gunner caught my eye. He patted his down-tilted M-60 and grinned, as though he knew what I was thinking. I liked his face; it reminded me of Ken’s. I wonder if he’ll make it through his tour of duty?

  He waded shin-deep in water, with the slow-motion gait of a man wading through a dream. The mud beneath the surface dragged at his boots, which seemed to be weighted with lead.

  At this time of the year, most of the country here was flooded, and heavy downpours punctuated the day. Endless gray liquid extended under a high dome of silence, and Langford had never been so tired in his life. He wanted only to drop and lie still, but knew there was no hope of this until Captain Trung called a halt.

  This was the third day of the sweep. Two ARVN companies, marching far apart, were crossing a flooded plain of marsh weed. Langford marched in the company led by Captain Trung. The small Vietnamese soldiers were burdened with their weapons and ammunition belts, and Langford was hung about with the tools of his own trade: a Bell and Howell cinecamera attached by a strap to his wrist; a small cassette tape recorder hanging from his webbing belt; a camera bag, with its precious cargo of film stock, lens brushes and filters, slung from his shoulder. A Weston light meter in a leather case dangled from his neck like an amulet. So did his Leica, which he’d brought despite the fact that he was only employed to shoot film.