Highways to a War (24 page)

 

 

Villa Volkov: the sitting room. I remember the walls ballooning, pushed out by humidity and by a big sweet cloud of cannabis, the frontier of the Land of Other long ago crossed. Jim Feng, Trevor Griffiths and I were imprisoned by Volkov inside a single Elvis Presley ballad—“Can’t Help Falling in Love”—which he insisted on playing over and over again.

He was seated in a massive, throne-like leather armchair of 1930s vintage. Here he had control of the turntable, which was on a table next to him. Vice Marshal sat frowning on an arm of the chair, occasionally reaching out a small black hand to caress his master’s face. Volkov kept putting the needle back to the start of the record again, smiling like someone cooking a perfect omelette. The rest of us were sprawled on cushions scattered about the floor’s raffia matting. On a coffee table near at hand were cigarette papers and a commonly owned sandalwood box filled with Monsieur Chen’s precious herb. Pasted on the side of the box was a headline from a magazine:
What are you afraid of?
The room was getting dim, but no one turned on the lights. Through the open shutters of one of the front windows, I could see green sky, the top of the tamarind tree, and a ferroconcrete balcony across Cong Ly Avenue, overgrown with potted plants, where small Vietnamese figures moved about, leading useful family lives.

Dmitri had been in the Central Highlands today, covering some heavy action, and had changed into his black kimono: with his wavy blond hair and Tartar face, it made him look like a medieval boyar. Where the kimono gaped over his chest, his lucky charm could be seen: a chain to which was attached a medallion of Saint Nicholas that had been brought out of Russia by his grandmother. All the cameramen were superstitious; all of them. had some emblem or other without which they believed they’d immediately be killed. Jim had a Cambodian tiger’s claw, and Mike had a brass belt buckle with the Communist star: these were taken by the Americans from captured North Vietnamese soldiers, and were greatly prized.

Elvis was at fairly low volume—or else I was becoming deaf from the effect of the grass. The Beatles had sung “Eight Days a Week,” Del Shannon had sung “Keep Searchin‘,” the Stones had sung “Little Red Rooster,” and I’d managed to slip in one of my Gregorian chants. We all contributed to the LP collection, bringing records back from Singapore and Hong Kong. The others got off on my chants when they were stoned, but I hadn’t been able to convert them to my Artur Schnabel Schubert Impromptus. And for now, we were stuck with Elvis, whom I was fond of, but not fond of enough to hear ten times in succession. Dmitri’s lips moved devoutly as he sang along under his breath, a joint suspended in his upraised fingers.

Only fools rush in
...“

Jim Feng passed me another joint that was going from hand to hand; I took a drag, holding the smoke in my chest in the recommended way, and when I let it out, things had changed even more. I didn’t really share the general devotion to grass in Villa Volkov, it made me paranoid; but not to smoke it seemed like an unfriendly act. I found the Count watching me now with his open-mouthed smile and pale blue czarist stare, the pupils so small it gave him the look of a fanatic.

“Look at the Harvey. He doesn’t really approve of these illegal substances. No no, man, he says, take it away, don’t rape me. But then he blows his mind anyway. You are a bloody puritan, Harvey.”

Jim Feng laughed quietly: a monotone chuckling. But Trevor Griffiths didn’t join in. He sat with his hands flat on the floor, looking at Volkov, blue chin set, tangled black hair falling on his forehead to meet his heavy eyebrows. In the room’s twilight, his face looked more corpse-white than usual. He’d been up to the Central Coast area for the past week, doing a story on the American air strikes there. He’d mentioned this to me before we began to smoke, his dark, significant stare and compressed lips warning me that he was holding in check a tide of righteous anger. Trevor’s anger, like his humor, was never far below the surface.

Now he spoke to Dmitri with artificial politeness, his resonant Welsh voice coming from his chest. “Do you think, Count, that this doleful and crude dirge of Elvis’s might soon be changed? Giving way, perhaps, to the subtlety of Bob Dylan?”

Volkov gazed down on him, reclining in his leather throne; he toyed with his medallion. “Greatest thing the King has ever done,” he said, and reached for the needle again.

“I beg you to change it,” Griffiths said, “before I smash it.”

Volkov raised his eyebrows. “It must have been a busy day, Trevor; you sound tense. I take it you filed the assassination?”

“Assassination?” Griffiths’ eyes widened in alarm; hands still flat on the matting, he began to push himself up from the floor. Then he saw Volkov begin to laugh, and lowered himself again. “You bastard, Count.”

It was the oldest of correspondents’ jokes, but it still worked. We were all terrified of being scooped in Saigon now, since so much was breaking every day. Griffiths had been out of town for a week, and in Prime Minister Ky’s new military government, anything seemed possible—especially to Trevor, who had placed the elegant Air Vice Marshal high in his pantheon of villains, close to Lyndon Johnson.

I’d come to like Griffiths, despite his uncertain temper. Whenever he appeared, large brown eyes gleaming, menacing black eyebrows clenched into one, simmering over some tidbit concerning the follies of the American Military Command here, or the perfidy of the Saigon Government, I was somehow glad to see him, agree with him or not. Trevor was passionately sincere in everything: his opinions; his pleasures; his love affairs. His sense of humor saved him from being earnest all the time, and he was generous in sharing information. His love of Dylan Thomas had caused him to memorize many of the poems, and he would intone them beautifully when drunk. For this I forgave him anything.

But tonight the grass had affected him the wrong way: he was still looking broodingly at the Count, and had begun to bark questions at him.

“Why must you always take control, Volkov? Or to put it another way, why are you such a Fascist?”

Dmitri took a drag of his joint; then he removed the needle from the disc. There was silence, and he spoke in his slurred drawl.

“Why do you show me the strong arm, Trevor? Why do you call names?”

“Just making an observation. You are a Fascist, aren’t you? You even support the Ky junta.”

“Anyone you don’t like is a Fascist, Griffiths. The Ky is not too bad. At least he has guts, and is better than them.”

“Good God. He’s a maniac. This is a man who wants to lead a bombing raid over Hanoi just so he can blast his lost family home out of existence.”

“Yanks have to work with who they can. Ky can do what he likes if he stops the Commies, so far as I am concerned. You know what your beloved Commies do when they take over, Griffiths? They build a prison and put the people inside it. Then the commissars proceed to live in luxury, like fuckin’ bishops of Middle Ages, pretending to love peace and the peopte—whom they screw.”

“And who’s screwing who in South Vietnam? The Yanks are turning this country into a colony. They’ve transported California here for their own benefit, while they pauperize and bomb the peasants. And still they can’t beat these peasants in rubber sandals, can they? Charlie’s still coming down the highway.”

Trevor’s chest rose and fell; his fists were clenched on the matting; he was whiter still, transported with noble rage. Vice Marshal, apparently alarmed by this, leaped suddenly from his master’s chair onto a dresser, and sat frowning at Griffiths from there. But Volkov, sprawled in his throne, continued to smile down with an air of insolence.

“Is that so? U.S. First Cavalry have just done all right in the Ia Drang Valley, baby. Their first engagement with the Army of North Vietnam and they won, as a matter of fact. In the end, Communists pissed off across Cambodian border. I covered. So did Mike.”

“And you really think that’s the way it will go? That the Yanks will win in the end? Against the North Vietnamese? These are the same people who hauled artillery through fifty miles of mountain and jungle, an inch at a time, half a mile a day, for three months, and then shafted the French at Dien Bien Phu. These are the Spartans of Asia, Volkov. And discipline and dedication will always defeat decadence—haven’t you learned that?”

“Bullshit. Their artillery was courtesy of fuckin’ Soviet Union. Is that what you want, Griffo? Soviet control of Southeast Asia?”

It was Trevor’s turn with the joint; he inhaled, and returned to the attack.

“I’ve just been in Binh Dinh Province. The Yanks have designated it a ‘free-bombing zone.’ You know what that means? Have you seen what it bloody well entails?”

“I have seen it. Those are VC areas, and you know it. American boys are dying too; so are ARVN. And VC have no mercy. They roll grenades down floors of cinemas and blow up women and kids: does your heart bleed about that, Trevor? Do you think they’ll be merciful if they win?
Mon Dieu.
I know about Commies, baby.”

“Oh yes. All because your grandfather ended up driving a taxi in Paris, with no more serfs to flog.”

I half expected Volkov to physically launch himself at Griffiths; but his response was still verbal, his drawl exaggerated. “We all know why you are a bloody lefty, Griffiths. You are victim of English class system.” He turned to Jim and me. “A poor Welsh boy sent to English snob school; parents made sacrifices. This makes him feel deprived, and so he becomes a radical. And so he overlooks liquidation of twenty million people in Soviet Union. He prefers this to democracy, and filthy capitalism.”

Dope had turned both men into cruel children; and now I expected Griffiths to slug Volkov. But instead he sat motionless, fists still clenched, still staring. For all his intelligence and commitment to ideas, I doubt whether Trevor
reflected
very much; and I doubt that Dmitri did, either. They were actually very alike. Both were men given to passionate intensities; and I believe both had taken up positions in response to old psychic wounds. Political arguments are not finally about politics, in my experience. All those abstract passions have their origins somewhere smaller, somewhere humbler: in childhood, usually, or adolescence, where some small humiliation alters us forever. So it wasn’t lost Russia or broken Vietnam that had brought my two brothers to such an intoxication of rage. There’s no wound so profound as the early wound to our self-esteem—or perhaps to our esteem for a parent. To be esteemed: this is surely our greatest hunger, right? All else pales.

I think there might have been some sort of punch-up eventually, despite the fact that they were both too dazed with grass to handle it. But then Mike Langford came in.

 

 

He suddenly materialized among us, standing in the middle of the room in stained combat fatigues, with a large white wound dressing taped to his forehead. He seemed pale and tired, but cheerful. He dropped his camera and camera bag onto the coffee table and put his hands on his hips, smiling around at us.

We looked back at him, adjusting to his existence. Jim Feng spoke first. “Jesus. What has happened to your head, Snow?”

Mike didn’t answer; instead, he pointed a finger at Jim, and then at the rest of us. “You’re stoned, James. You’re all stoned. All right, where’s my fix? And what’s happened to the music?”

His presence dissolved all antagonism: his white and yellow blandness had a calming quality. He went to the record player, hunted through the stack of LPs beside it, and put on Bob Dylan. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” filled the room, and Volkov and Griffiths stopped looking at each other. Trevor lay back on his cushion, and a small smile returned.

“That man is a genius. Took his name from the great Dylan Thomas, of course. In homage.”

Mike sank down beside Jim, who passed him a fresh-rolled joint. “What the hell hit you?” Jim asked. “Shrapnel?”

“Better than that, James. I was out with an ARVN patrol near Soc Trang, and Charlie overran us for a while. I saw one of them coming over the top of a dyke, and I tried to get film of him. It would have been a bloody marvelous picture, but he clubbed me with the butt of his AK as he went past.”

Volkov was shaking his head. “Cameraman’s Daydream, Langford. Jesus. Lucky he didn’t shoot.”

“You’re right; you’re right.” Mike shook his head in mock regret; catching my eye, he gave me his wink.

Griffiths addressed him now. “Still going out with the ARVN, Snow? You’re mad. You’ll run out of luck eventually—and what’s it all for? They’re a bloody lost cause.”

We all knew that Mike had become devoted to the ARVN, going out over and over again with his friend Captain Trung. He also covered quite often with the Americans; but the Army of South Vietnam was his first love. Most of us were impressed by the risks he was taking and the privations involved—risks and privations that even Feng and Volkov had no wish to share. For one thing, the ARVN just weren’t the main story. Yet we all acknowledged that the film he shot of battle with the South Vietnamese was remarkable; and his stocks were high with Telenews, which was selling his footage successfully in many countries. Seeing Asian troops in battle was a novelty at that time for Western audiences, who had always been shown the Americans. And Langford was shooting closer to the action than anyone else in the business. People watching their television newscasts over dinner saw these Vietnamese soldiers dying; saw the expressions on their faces as they tended wounded comrades. To get such shots meant being right in the front line, instead of shooting with a telephoto lens from the second or third line, as most photographers did. Already one began to hear the nickname Suicide Langford; but that was either sour grapes or silly sensationalism. He judged his risks; he had an extraordinary survival instinct.

He drew on his joint now, regarding Griffiths mildly. “Oh I don’t know,” he said. “I reckon the ARVN’ll still be fighting when the Yanks have gone. Anyway, the Count just scoops me when I cover with the Americans—so I might as well be with the ARVN.”