A Southern Girl (60 page)

“Did the bomb go off?”

“Yes. Our spy who verified sailings stayed to see the result. Several were killed. Dong survived, but was severely crippled. Perhaps that is better. He crippled me in a way I cannot describe.”

“You’ve done a pretty fair job,” I say, reaching over to pat his forearm. “I had no idea. I feel guilty for pressing you into this trip.”

“No matter. It was time. For many years my enterprise took all my time and energy so that I was too tired to think much. Lately, that is not so.”

“I’m going to conduct a little memorial service for my friend Philip,” I say. “Perhaps we should rent a boat and do the same for your family.”

He shakes his head. “I buried them long ago. I will go to see our old house. That will be enough. I must think of happier times.”

He reaches up to switch off the light. His seat reclines and eventually his head lolls toward me, his breathing spaced and deepening. His brow has returned to its familiar countenance, the lost years restored by this draining exorcism. High above the ocean, I dwell on his account. I try to visualize the conflagrant boat, the screams mercifully silenced by the lifesnuffing hiss that must have accompanied its descent below the surface, his stunned helplessness at being forced to witness such ineffable tragedy. I think of Mihn, an angel only three, vulnerable to God’s whim or Dong’s greed, but vulnerable.

I have heard his story but I cannot grasp his loss. Like an immense reef arising from the sea it looms. I can cling to it as true but grab only a piece or fragment, the enormity of it such that only the arms of a deity could encompass it entirely.

Above, the night is clear and moonless. Stars litter the heavens in sparkling fenestration. Our jet wings us on, the undeviating pitch of the massive engines lulling us near the speed of sound. We could be encased in a cloud, so smoothly do we glide. Here, above it all, a perfect peace presides, surreal and infinite.

We land. Heat and humidity reach us before the luggage, saturating us instantly in a heavy blanket of sweltering thickness. The monsoon season is still a month away, but ambient moisture gloms my shirt to my skin. By comparison, Charleston seems like Vail.

As we enter the terminal, slightly built, wiry porters hustle about us jabbering in a cacophonous admixture of sing and song. Mr. Quan takes command, pointing out bags, shouting directions. In the cab he falls silent, gazing somberly out his window, and soon his head is in something of a constant, subtle oscillation, a continual denial or disbelief, either from evidence of change or lack of it. I ask him about the slogans printed on a
whitewashed wall we are passing but he points a discreet, silent finger at the driver before saying, “Later.”

We enter the city on a wide boulevard. Black and white TV images from the mid-sixties superimpose on pedestrians in cone-shaped hats and delta pajamas. Traffic inches along. Bicycles weave in and out with daring precision. Women carry, suspended from their shoulders, loads equal to their weight. As we near the center, aromas made familiar by the Red Dragon are mingled with odors of street refuse and sewage.

Our reservations are for three nights at a hotel franchised by an American chain. Here, quality is desirable for food and service but essential for air conditioning, still very much a luxury. At the entrance, uniformed porters engulf us and minutes later we enter the bracing chill of five-star air conditioning.

Behind a highly polished teak desk a striking woman in an
ao dai,
the long-sleeve traditional pantsuit, registers us. The clerk’s apparent boss, a young manager in a European suit, prowls the length of the counter and rivets his eyes on us as we sign the register and accept our keys. An ancient elevator, equipped with a living operator, takes us to the fifth floor.

The next morning, I take a tour alone. I had not planned it that way, but when I knocked on Mr. Quan’s door there was no answer. I waited half an hour, knocked again, and left a message. He either got out early, or never came home last night. I hope it was the latter. At any rate, I’m here mostly for him, and if he doesn’t need the support he thought he did, so much the better. Perhaps telling his story on the plane was catharsis. In late afternoon, I’m in the hotel lounge, showered, changed, and, with a little salt and soy, hungry enough to eat the wooden table at which I sit.

In the middle of my cocktail, a very professionally crafted martini, he gets off the elevator, spots me, and waves as he approaches. He offers no account of the past eighteen or so hours.

“Dinner this evening is on me,” he announces. “It may be unforgettable.”

“May be?” I ask.

“If the restaurant still exists,” he says.

We go out into the sluggish evening. Lights incongruously reminiscent of Forty-second Street and Times Square blink overhead as we walk the crowded sidewalks.

“Here, we are two blocks from the Saigon River,” he tells me as we stroll. A septic smell of salt water and fish waft by, borne on a breeze which is no cooler than the air it displaces. “The street is called Dong Khoi. It means, ‘Street of the General Uprising.’ In my day, Tu Do—Freedom Street. You could buy anything here.” He shoots me a knowing “for men only” glance.

We pass a club called Maxim’s, which Mr. Quan says caters to an international crowd hosted by
tu san,
Vietnamese capitalists beginning to emerge openly in the city. “The ones who look unhappy are Russians,” he deadpans as we pass. The canopied doorway is busy, and a band blares out as the door swings open. “It is not far,” he says.

In mid-block he slows, seemingly reluctant to have answered the fate of the restaurant to which he is leading us. Then, smiling broadly, he accelerates. “It’s still here.”

He enters ahead and inquires of the mâitre d’, who turns and disappears into the kitchen. Moments later, a wizened old man limps from the kitchen door, trailed by the head waiter. The old man approaches with the same restraint I observed moments ago in Mr. Quan, squinting as he nears. Mr. Quan advances. A brief pause, then both men enfold each other in fraternal embrace. Within seconds they are laughing, talking simultaneously and inspecting the changes wrought by fifteen years. The old man beckons aging waiters, who, upon recognition, abandon customers to join the reunion.

An hour later, our table resembles a cache of contraband from an international cuisine raid. Of the items I can identify, we are treated to giant shrimp, lobster Newburg, fried squid, conch, ginger duck, roasted pig, chicken in four distinct sauces, goat, and a medley of fresh vegetables. Unidentified are a murky soup, a shredded leafy something, and a sea creature who eyes me from the plate with almost the same intensity with which I am scrutinizing it. The spring rolls are the best I’ve ever had, provided I leave off a condiment popular around the table; a sauce that looks innocent enough but which would, in fact, take the ice off a Nova Scotia windshield. Veuve Clicquot champagne, plum wine, and a beer called Saigon Export wash it all down.

During this feast, Mr. Quan and Mr. Ngo, the old man, have held incessant conversation, while I remain contentedly ignored. Two waiters stand behind us, anticipating whims I don’t have. Unforgettable it is. At
the other side of the table, smoke from Cuban cigars is wreathing their heads as the years are compressed into paragraphs punctuated by laughter. I extend my thanks to Mr. Ngo, who asks me in very fractured English to return another night.

Mr. Ngo, I learn as we exit, has told him of a friend he wants to find. “In the Phu Tho sector. I knew it well. If she is at home, we may find her.”

We alight on the sidewalk of the Phu Tho district as an evening crowd besieges street vendors selling food, as pungent as it is mysterious. We walk two blocks without slackening. Mr. Quan seems bent on a certain destination. At the window of a small jewelry shop, he slows.

“Wait here,” he instructs, then disappears inside with a jingle of the entry bells over the door.

Nearby, a vendor tends a rickety wooden pushcart. I idle over. He seems reserved at my approach, at odds with a merchant’s enthusiasm for a customer. Displayed on the dingy beige cloth overlaying the cart are cigarette lighters of distinctly American manufacture, old Zippos and others predating their modern disposable counterparts. I pick one up. On the side is engraved EHT. Near the lighters rest assorted rings. My eye is drawn to a large, substantial one: West Point, class of 1965. The name Boyd G. Fleming is inscribed inside; a name I silently wager is also chiseled into a black marble slab in Washington, D.C. The man says something to me, presumably a price.

The bells on the jeweler’s door rustle and Mr. Quan emerges, smiling. I beckon him over.

“I’d like to own this ring. Offer him whatever it takes.”

Mr. Quan engages him, shaking his head decidedly several times before turning to me. “He knows its value. It won’t be cheap.” A counter-offer later, it is mine. On my return, a Fleming may value it, and if not the USMA museum may suggest a display more appropriate than this tired street in this haunted city.

“She lives not far,” Mr. Quan announces. “The owner has not seen her for some time. Let us hope her health is good.”

We walk two more blocks. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

I shake my head. “After that meal? You must be joking.”

“It is just as well,” he says, indicating the aromatic stall we are passing. “Barbecued dog.” He turns to read my expression.

The neighborhood is declining. Tin doors languish on rusted hinges, half concealing almost certain squalor inside. Mr. Quan seems less assured here and consults a map crudely drawn by the jeweler. At a rundown tenement, he checks it yet again before approaching an unmarked door. He raps and we wait.

We hear no movement within but the door swings open. A frail woman looks inquiringly out. Her silver hair is pulled straight back. It is a rich, luxuriant sterling highlighted by contrast against her dark skin, so that she could be a Mayan princess whose headdress had been crafted from the ore of a priceless vein. On top a tortoiseshell comb serves as a demur crown. For a moment she does not recognize him, but when she does, the Mayan sun rises in her eyes.

They speak for several minutes. He introduces her as Lily Nguyen. She looks doubtful, neither confirming nor denying the relationship I feel sure they’ve shared. He offers more words and gestures toward me. When he stops, she bows her head and steps aside to permit us to enter. The room is immaculate. A Buddhist shrine, a scaled down miniature of the one in Mr. Quan’s apartment, lends a reverential aspect to what would otherwise be the mundane, if fastidious, appointments of her sitting room. Mr. Quan indicates we should be seated and that she will make tea. We are silent until she returns, carrying a tray with the spryness of a girl. She serves us. He apologizes for holding a conversation with her that is inaccessible to me, then speaks rapidly with her for thirty minutes. We leave as suddenly as we arrive, but even without a word of Vietnamese, I know he will be back.

We return to our hotel, where I place a call to Natalie. She has just gotten out of bed, she tells me, and the vision heightens my longing. I relate the events of my day, then ask about progress on the lawsuit. She has almost finished her research and will begin drafting the complaint that day. Before moving to more personal matters, I ask her to call Margarite.

“Tell her we return on the morning of the seventh and that it is critical that she gather the Board as soon as possible.”

“You’re going to meet with them again?”

“We’re going to meet with them again.”

I hang up, satisfied that all that can be done is being done. Still to be trod is that rural road between Cu Chi and Duc Lap, to an unmarked
grave where the Army would say Philip gave the last full measure and where, in his own words, he bit the banana.

37

The road to Cu Chi quickly dissipates into a rural byway once we leave Saigon. Mr. Quan, driving a car borrowed from an old friend, assures me that it has been much improved over the two-lane pothole tarmac of twenty years ago. He has purchased since our arrival a lightweight jungle hat, resting on the seat between us, and a loosely fitting white silk shirt with a small dragon embroidered on the pocket. The countryside, green and pastoral with corn, languishes to either side. Iowa east.