Dog Soldiers (6 page)

“
Crikey,
”
Jill said.
“
We
’
d falcon under the merciless sky. And at night while I
’
m asleep — into my tent he
’
ll creep.
”

“
Exactly,
”
Converse said,
“
and you
’
ll tickle his prostate with an ostrich feather.
”

Jill affected to sigh.
“
With a peacock
’
s wing.
”

Ian had turned to watch the waitress bend over her hibachi.
“
This is sheer racism,
”
he said.
“
Well,
”
Converse said,
“
that
’
s fucking. East of Suez.
”
The shock came up at
them from under the floor; Con
verse experienced a moment of dreadful recognition. When the noise ended, they looked, not at each other, but toward the street and saw that the glass window was gone and that they were looking directly on the metal grill that had stood in front of it. There was food in everyone
’
s lap.

“
Incoming,
”
Jill Percy said. Someone in the kitchen cursed shrilly, scalded.

They knelt on the tea-stained mat, trying to find their
shoes. The proprietor,
who was a man of mild and schol
arly appearance, was forcing his way toward the door in grim fury; people had begun to leave without paying. Through the space where the window had been, Converse could see a fine layer of dry white dust settling on the wet pavement.

The street outside was st
rangely quiet, as though the ex
plosion had blown a pocket of silence in the din of the city, which was now only slowly drawing in the stricken cries and the police whistles.

Converse and the Percys walked toward the river; they could see the four American reporters at the corner ahead of them. Everyone seemed to know better than to run. Halfway to the corner they passed the Arvin newspaper seller and his rented little
boy; the pair of them stood mo
tionless on the sidewalk facing the street. The Arvin still had his glasses on; the b
oy watched them pass without ex
pression, still holding the Arvin
’
s hand. On the corner it
self was an old woman who held her hands pressed to her ears in the position of hearing no evil.

“
The tax office,
”
Ian said. And when they turned the next corner they saw that it had indeed been the tax office. The street before it was in ruins; a whole section of the concrete pavement was blown away to show the black earth on which the city was built. Night-lights in the nearby buildings had been blown so it was a while before they could see anything clearly. By now there were plenty of sirens.

The tax office had been a Third Republic drollery, Babar the Elephant Colonial, and the bomb had made toothpicks of its wrought-iron fence.

One of the balconies was lying smashed in the forecourt, surrounded by shredded personifications of Rectitude and Civic Virtue and the
Mission Civilatrice
. As they stood watching, a jeep with four Arvin MPs shot past them and pulled up on the sidewalk.

In the light of the MPs
’
torches, they could see that there were people sitting down in the street, trying to pick the concrete chips out of their flesh. It had been very crowded in the street because of the stalls. Families of refugees sold morsels of fish and noodles to the petitioners who stood all day outside the building, and at night they settled down to sleep among their wares. Since the building had been empty when the charge went, the street people had taken the casualties.

Converse and the Percys moved back against the metal shutters of a building across the way, as Arvin paratroopers arrived in canvas-covered trucks to seal off the street to traffic. The Arvins came picking their way through rubble, nervous as rats, poking people aside with the barrels of their M-
1
6s.

After a few minutes, the barbed wire arrived. The emergency services in Vietnam always carried immense quantities of barbed wire for use in every conceivable situation. There was still no sign of an ambulance. They rolled the coils along the street to spread at each end of the block. Policemen were poking among the ruins by the fence, shining hurricane lamps. Now and then Converse could see marvelously bright gouts of blood.

When the ambulances came, fastidious men in white smocks got out and walked carefully toward the pile; when the wire caught their clothing they swatted at it with quick delicate gestures. Jill Percy followed them across the street and peered over their shoulders and over the shoulders of the National Policemen making a short patrol the length of their line. Converse tried to see her face in their lights.

From the way she recrossed the street, Converse and Ian could tell what she had seen. Her steps were slow and deliberate and she appeared confused. If one stayed in the country long enough one saw a great many people moving about in that manner.

“
Crikey,
”
she said. She made a small fluttering gesture with her hands.
“
Kids and … all.
”

Ian Percy had brought his beer bottle from the Tempura House; he let it fall from his hand to shatter on the street. The Vietnamese nearby turned quickly at the sound and stared at him without expression.

“
Somebody ought to set a
plastique
at the London School of Economics,
”
he said.
“
Or in Greenwich Village. All those bastards who think the Front are such sweet thunder — let them have their kids
’
guts blown out.
”

“
It could be anybody,
”
Converse said.
“
It could be an irate taxpayer. Anybody can make a
plastique
.
”

“
Are you going to say it
’
s the Front?
”
Jill asked her hus
band.
“
Because it probably wasn
’
t, you know.
”

“
No,
”
Ian said.
“
I
’
ll say it probably wasn
’
t. It could have been anybody.
”
He began to curse in Vietnamese. People moved away from him.

Converse went across
the street and watched the ambu
lance people lug body bags over the rubble. Dead people and people who appeared to be dead had been laid out on the exposed earth where the cement had been blown away, and the blood and tissue were draining into the black soil. There were chopsticks, shards of pottery and ladles lying about and on close inspection Converse saw that at least some of what had appeared to be human fragments might be chicken or fish. Some of the bodies had boiled noodles all over them.

As he went back to where the Percys were, four men wearing rubber gauntlets came carrying large aluminum cans. When they reached the wreckage, they upturned the cans and scattered white powder over it.

“
What is it?
”
Converse asked Ian.

“
Chloride of lime.
”

Jill Percy stood with her shoulders hunched, arms folded.

“
If you get run over in the street,
”
she said,
“
they
’
ll come and string barbed wire around you. If you don
’
t get up fast enough they
’
ll sprinkle you with chloride of lime.
”

They walked down the street a few yards until they stood before the glassless windows of a Toyota agency. In the glare of the lights, they could see the office inside with its charts and wall calendars and tiny electric fans on each desk. Reams of paper were scat
tered over the floor; be
cause of the angle of the windows, the office had absorbed a great deal of the concussion. One of the interior walls was dappled with blood that looked as though it had been flung from a brush. Converse stopped for a moment to look at it.

“
What?
”
Jill Percy asked.

“
Nothing. I was trying to think of a moral.
”

He could not think of a moral. It reminded him of the lizards smashed on his hotel wall.

In his office just off the tiny lobby of the Hotel Coligny, Monsieur Colletti was watching
“
Bonanza
”
on the Armed Forces Television Network. Monsieur Colletti had taken eight pipes of opium during the afternoon; he had taken eight pipes of opium every afternoon for forty years. When Converse entered, he
turned from the set with a wel
coming smile. He was the most courteous of men. Con verse and Monsieur Colletti watched
“
Bonanza
”
for a while.

On the screen, two cowboys were exchanging rifle fire at a distance of thirty meters or so. They were fighting among enormous rounded boulders, and as far as one could tell each was trying to move as close to the other as possible. One cowboy was handsome, the other ugly. There was music. At
length, the handsome cowboy sur
prised the ugly one loading his weapon. The ugly cowboy threw his rifle down and attempted to draw a sidearm. The handsome one blew him away.

Monsieur Colletti, who spoke no English, brought his palms together silently.
“
Hoopla,
”
he said.

“
It
’
s the same in Saigon,
”
Converse ventured. Monsieur Colletti always seemed to understand his French.

Monsieur Colletti shrugged.

“
Here,
sure. Everywhere it
’
s the same now.
”
Monsieur Colletti had been everywhere.
“
Everywhere it
’
s Chicago.
”

He said it
Sheeka-go
.

“
There was a bomb tonight,
”
Converse said.
“
At the of
fice of taxes. It
’
s all ruined there.
”

Monsieur Colletti made hi
s eyes grow larger in an expres
sion of surprise that was purely formal. It was not easy to bring him news of Saigon.

“
But no,
”
he protested mildly.
“
Any dead?
”

“
Some, certainly. Outside.
”

“
Ah,
”
the patron said,
“
it
’
s cruel. They
’
re bastards.
”

“
You think it was the Front?
”

“
These days,
”
Colletti said,
“
it could be anybody.
”

When
“
Bonanza
”
was over, they shook hands and Con

verse went upstairs. Back inside his room, he turned on the overhead fan and the air conditioner. The air conditioner did not work very well but it provided a busy and, to the American ear, vaguely reassuring noise which drowned out the sounds from the street. The sounds from the street were not reassuring to anyone
’
s ear.

He switched on the lamp on his writing desk to provide his room with the most agreeable cast of light. Small tricks, picked up all over. He took a bottle of PX Johnnie Walker Black Label from a locked suitcase and drank two large swallows.

There it is, he said to himself. That was what everyone said — GIs, reporters, even Arvins and bar girls. There it is. It would have been good not to have had a bomb that night. To get stoned with the
Percys and then sleep. Be
cause of the bomb he felt numb and stupid, and although there were situations in which stupidity would do almost as well as anything else, he was not in one of them.

And getting drunk wouldn
’
t do. Nor would smoking more grass. Better to have stayed downstairs and watched more Westerns with Monsieur Colletti.