A Dangerous Friend (31 page)

Teaching adolescent boys? What a pain in the ass. The social sciences, I suppose. That's what you started out as, a social scientist, and I'd guess our environment here has only added to your knowledge. Everyone needs some on-the-job training, practical facts added to the usual bogus theories.

Sydney looked at him, wondering whether to spoil his picture and tell him he intended to teach English. He had decided that he had nothing to bring to the social sciences, and the social sciences had nothing to bring to him. If he was to explain the way the world worked, he would have to journey to the offside made-up discredited world of novelists and poets. That would not save him any more than social science, civics, or love. But he thought it would make a harmless beginning. He smiled at Rostok and said, I'll be teaching English, Ros. No on-the-job training for that.

Tell you what, Rostok said, clapping his hands. Sydney thought that if he were more full of himself he'd explode. I have a fine edition of the works of Joseph Conrad. You can have it. It's in our apartment in Washington. I'll tell the tenants. You go in and take the set. I envy you, making the acquaintance of Almayer, Nelson (or Nielson), Captain Whalley, and Jim. Thing about Conrad is, he's an inspiration for an adolescent boy. Conrad understands the need for self-reliance and clear vision, knowing what you want and doing whatever's necessary to achieve it. Conrad has no patience with illusions. Conrad sees the storm gathering and he meets it head-on and God help anyone who gets in his way. He steers his vessel into the eye of the typhoon, knowing that God rewards the brave; and if God is absent, it's up to the man to defeat the sea. There's something of the manifest destiny in Joseph Conrad, don't you think? And he's relevant in these times because he hated the Russians. Dostoyevsky once insulted Conrad's favorite uncle. Indicated contempt for all Poles and Conrad never forgave nor forgot. So everything's personal, you see. And it's important to have confidence.

Sydney looked hard at him. Speechless was not the word.

He is our greatest novelist. Why, he's greater even than Greene!

Promise me something, Ros.

Rostok looked at him suspiciously.

You'll stay away from the Armands. You won't contact them. You won't threaten them. You won't ask them for favors. You'll pretend they don't exist.

That's a tough assignment, Syd. You see, they're
in.
They've anted up, they're part of the game whether they want to be or not. It's the sort of hand, you have to play it out. You can't leave the table whenever you want to. So if we need some help, we're going to talk to them. We have no choice, given the stakes. They're part of things, same's you or me or Pablo. It's all the same loyalty, Syd.

They did us a favor. Smalley's alive because of them.

Why—that's the reason they're in! You can't avoid the war. It's all around us. It's the oxygen we all breathe, even the Armands. You can't resign from it any more than you can resign from a typhoon. Even you. When you go back to the world you'll still be in the war. It's nature's way, and we've given our word. Yet. In the specific manner we're going forward now into our tunnel, the Armands are small potatoes. Probably we won't have the time for them, Syd. And I'm guessing they'll be content to seek a protected anchorage as the barometer falls and the wind rises. They'll need us more than we need them. And I can tell you this, cross my heart. If they need us, we'll be there.

Rostok smiled and Sydney smiled back. Sydney was still bushwhacking through the thicket of card games, typhoons, anchorages, and Joseph Conrad's Russophobia. He was certain that the Armands would continue to feint and evade, for the rest of their lives if need be. Rostok did not know that they had left Plantation Louvet and were staying with friends at a cottage at Vung Tao. They did not believe they were safe in their own house. There were so many rumors they could not sort them out, but the most persistent had them as informers whose collaboration with the Americans had resulted in the destruction of Song Nu. And they knew there was truth to the accusation. So they had driven to Vung Tao on back roads and would remain a month or more, until the atmosphere improved. But they knew also that Vietnamese had long memories and their situation could never be as it had been.

***

So we'll do what we can and hope it's enough, Dede Armand had said when Sydney showed up unannounced the day before, to offer what explanations he could and tell them he was going home and would be happy to carry whatever messages they had to their families in France and America.

Tell them we are all right, she said.

Will you ask my mother to send me some underwear?

Claude wants English crackers and a wheel of brie.

As for the situation, Dede went on, at some point we'll have to explain. Maybe they'll believe us, most likely they won't. She stood in the front doorway and did not invite him in. He could see three pieces of luggage in the hall, and beyond the luggage Claude Armand on the verandah talking to his foreman.

She looked at Sydney and said, Why did you do it?

Rostok did it, Sydney said. Rostok gave you away. Pablo and I wanted to get Smalley out, and forget how it was done or who did it. But Rostok—finds things out. That's what he does for a living, and he's good at it.

Always Rostok, she said.

And we were careless, Sydney said. We could have gone ahead without his knowledge, simply done it on our own accord. Sydney paused then, wondering why they had not acted alone, according to their own good instincts, and knew at once that he and Pablo did not have what Rostok had in abundance, confidence, a sense of infallibility. They did not trust their own judgment, and at the same time they did not rely on Rostok, either. They relied on the institution, the government itself, the United States. Sydney said, I believed I had to involve him.

And that was a mistake, wasn't it?

A big mistake, Dede.

You're a dangerous friend, Sydney. You come from a dangerous country. It's not good for us, you know. They won't rest. The Americans will come to call—in fact they already have. They searched the house. Rifled the drawers, looked at the photographs on the wall, helped themselves to beer. And one of them stole my Buddhas, all five. My bronze Buddhas that I've had for years and depended on and now they're in some soldier's pack, war souvenirs.

At least they did not disturb the graves of my children, she said.

I'm sorry, Dede. Sorry for—all of it.

This is the life you've made for us, Sydney. And they'll come again, when they think there's something valuable we can tell them. Next month, or two months from now, we'll have a visit from VC. They'll have questions, too, and they'll assume we know some of the answers; and we will. What do you suggest we do then, Sydney? They'll demand a larger cut of our payroll and there'll be other sorts of dues to pay. And we'll give them what they ask because what else can we do? We refuse to leave our home. No one can make us, not you certainly. Not VC if we can help it. I refuse to wander this earth like a lost soul or a displaced person.

Raised voices inside caused Sydney to raise his eyes. Claude was arguing with his foreman. He shook his head once, and again, but without conviction. The foreman took a step forward and snarled something, his finger tapping Claude Armand's chest, emphasizing each word. Then they separated and stood glaring at each other. The air was charged and Sydney believed something violent was at hand. When Claude nodded at last, the foreman dipped his head in mockery, and the Frenchman began again to explain, his voice softer now.

Goodbye, Sydney, Dede said, and closed the door.

For a long time Sydney sat in his car looking at the house nestled so close to the earth, its stucco chipped, its foundation in need of repair. The curtains were drawn. As architecture, it had no distinguishing features beyond an undefinable colonial ambiance. Foreigners lived there. It disclosed something of its past but nothing of its future. It was not an obvious place for anyone to cling to, and to love beyond life itself. Forbidden its solace, Dede saw herself adrift on the surface of the earth, a soul lost. Surely that would not happen. She would not permit it. Dede and her husband would find a means of survival. They were practical people. They were resourceful. If you wanted a thing that badly, then fortune was on your side, however unsettled the future. Sydney saw a curtain move, and close again. Who knew the shape of things to come? They were still alive after all, and Dede was with her children.

The ship stirred. Rostok and Sydney stood shoulder to shoulder watching the horn of plenty gush forth once more. They were offloading America, the arsenal of democracy, its knowledge and its wealth, its optimism and industrial might. Typewriters, blackboards, two cases of thesauruses and three of dictionaries, cartons of envelopes and notepads, pencils, paper clips, gum erasers and ballpoint pens, account ledgers, file folders, coffee mugs, paperweights and insect repellent and scissors and picture frames and desk lamps. Television sets were followed by transistor radios, then telephones, movie projectors, intercom systems, lecterns with microphones attached, and case after case of plastic rulers. An American stood to one side with a checklist on a clipboard.

Sydney and Rostok stood quietly for some time watching the offloading, and then Sydney noticed the prayer flag hanging from one of the aft portholes, no doubt an ancestor being remembered. The flag hung limply in the damp breeze, and then a gust came up and rocked it, the cloth rising and falling, rippling in the current. He imagined the prayers released, flying to whoever might need them, words of faith and consolation winging west to Laos and Burma, to Assam and Pakistan, farther west to Persia and the Anatolian plateau, gathering speed across the Aegean to the Po valley and on to dry Iberia, still strong and confident as they swarmed across the Atlantic to the New World.