Saigon (31 page)

He sat down abruptly as he finished speaking and stared belligerently towards the United States flag behind the vice- president. From the public gallery there was scattered applause, and even the senator from Texas, who had ceded the floor so reluctantly, nodded approvingly in Nathaniel Sherman’s direction. Murmurs of support rose from all sides of the chamber until the vice-president politely ordered the resolution to be read again and put the formal question “Shall it pass?” Without further comment the roll was called, and after Senator Sherman had recorded his “yea” he was the first to rise from his desk. As he limped along the aisle towards the exit, silence fell briefly on the Senate, as though the sight of his disfigured body had a hypnotic effect on all those present. The swing door rocked back and forth on its hinges for a moment or two after he had gone, and the tap of his cane was clearly audible in the hushed chamber as his footsteps receded slowly along the tiled passageway outside. 

The chill afternoon wind sweeping across the West Front terrace of the Capitol plucked fractiously at the flaps of their heavy winter topcoats as Tempe, Joseph and Guy waited for the senator. Against the leaden, overcast sky the cream stonework of the majestic rotunda seemed to glow with its own inner luminosity, and although there were several hours of winter daylight left, the black wrought-iron lamps on the stone balustrades facing the Mall were already beginning to flicker into life. 

“Daddy certainly knows how to make a fine speech, doesn’t he?” said Guy excitedly, hopping from foot to foot to keep warm. 

“He not only knows how — he always knows where and when to do it to achieve the greatest impact for himself,” replied Joseph acidly. “That one was more contrived than most.” 

Guy’s sixteen-year-old face crinkled in puzzlement as he studied his elder brother’s face. “Why is it, Joseph,” he asked in a troubled voice, “that you always seem to go out of your way to put Daddy down?” 

Joseph continued gazing along the Mall in the direction of the presidential memorials, his eyes narrowed against the stinging wind. “Let’s just say, Guy, that I’m not so starry-eyed as you are in general about politics and politicians” 

The young boy continued to stare at him in consternation for a moment, then hearing the unmistakable tap of a can on the flagstones, shrugged and turned away. 

“Did you enjoy that fighting speech from a winded old warhorse, young fella?” Nathaniel Sherman clapped Guy affectionately on the back and winked broadly at him. “Do you think we made the Sherman family viewpoint clear enough?” 

“It was just wonderful, Daddy,” replied the sixteen-year-old, falling into step beside him as they started down towards the broad greensward of the Mall. 

The senator glanced more circumspectly at Joseph, aware that his silence implied a hint of criticism. “It was nice to see you in the gallery again, Joseph,” he said quietly. “It’s a few years since you’ve been up there, isn’t it?” 

Joseph nodded grimly without looking at his father. “I guess today’s a special enough occasion to break old habits, whatever they may be.” 

“We all admired your address very much,” broke in Tempe quickly, moving close to the senator and kissing him on the cheek. “It was quite uncanny - you seemed to say just what was on everybody’s lips.” 

He stopped and patted her hand affectionately. “Thank you, my dear. You always manage to make my battered old heart feel young again.” 

As the four of them hurried on down the broad terrace of steps side by side, Joseph stole a quick glance at his father. His eyes still glittered brightly from the excitement generated by his speech in the Senate, and Joseph found himself wondering again at the eager, almost adolescent relish with which he still grasped every opportunity to steal the limelight. The terrible visible mutilation he had suffered in the hunting accident might have encouraged a different man to shun public life, lie reflected, but his father, he was sure now, never had any compunction about exploiting for his own ends the sympathy his appearance invariably provoked. 

On his return from Saigon five years before, Joseph had felt an angry compulsion to confront him over the accident that had caused Chuck’s death; but somehow the sight of the disfiguring injuries themselves had always proved too daunting, and in the end he had never been able to bring himself to speak of what he had learned from Ngo Van Loc and Jacques Devraux. As they descended in silence toward Union Square, Joseph turned Guy’s mystified question over in his mind and concluded uneasily that perhaps his own lack of courage had helped harden his hostile attitude towards his father and made him more inclined to avoid his company. His mother had been glad to move to Georgetown completely as soon as he and Tempe took over the running of the plantation house, and since then he had seen his parents on no more than two or three occasions each year. 

Do you think the Japanese will really invade California, Dad? I heard on the radio there was a rumor going around out there in the West that they already had.” 

Guy’s voice broke into Joseph’s thoughts, jerking him back to the present. They were passing the mounted statue of Ulysses S. Grant on Union Square, and all four of them were dwarfed by the life-sized bronze figures of Grant and a group of Civil War soldiers frozen in a moment of fear as they struggled with their plunging horses and a wheeled cannon. Nathaniel Sherman stopped suddenly beside the massive statues and turned back to look at the Capitol; the red, white and blue United States flag strained at its staff in the high wind, furling arid unfurling spectacularly against the background of the pillared dome, and Joseph saw his father’s mouth tighten with emotion. 

“Nobody knows exactly what this war will bring, Guy,” he said after a moment’s thought. “It might change all our lives before it’s finished. I hope it’ll be all over before you’re old enough to have to fight in it — but if it isn’t, never forget that we’re the inheritors of many great traditions.” He turned to look westward along the Mall towards the slender stone needle of the Washington Monument. “We’ve been tested many times before and we’ve never been found wanting. But maybe our greatest test is coming now. All these symbols around us here in the heart of our capital, remember, should help to stir us to defend that proud heritage.” 

He was off immediately he had spoken, stumping along quickly with the aid of his cane beneath the flailing branches of the plane trees, his head forward, his shoulders hunched into the driving wind. Tempe and his two sons had to walk fast to keep up with him, and he didn’t slacken his pace until they reached the Sherman Field Museum of Natural History standing in the shadow of the red sandstone towers of the Gothic castle which housed the headquarters of the Smithsonian Institution. Built in the style of a Florentine Renaissance palace, the Sherman Field Museum’s rounded arches and simple balustrades of rose-white Tennessee marble harmonized with the pink granite of the adjoining Freer Gallery of Art finished a year earlier in 1923, and on its western side gleaming new stonework indicated that a further wing had been added recently. Although separately financed by a Sherman family trust, the museum, like the others ranged along the Mall, had been placed under the Smithsonian’s administrative control, and when the senator and his sons entered the building they found half-a-dozen prominent members of the institution’s board of regents among the crowd of distinguished guests gathered inside. Nathaniel Sherman greeted them all by their first names, then acknowledged the chief justice, three or four other senators and half-a-dozen congressmen with quick handshakes as he passed through the throng. A tiny rostrum had been set up beside a broad ribbon strung across the entrance to the museum’s new west wing, and beyond it the black bulk of a huge African bush elephant was visible, standing on a central pedestal with Its trunk and forelegs raised in a posture of raging aggression. Above the entrance arch to the new galleries letters spelling out “The Charles Sherman Memorial Wing” had been inscribed in gilded Gothic script. 

An attendant helped Nathaniel Sherman off with his coat, and a little ripple of applause greeted him when he stepped up onto the rostrum. “Ladies and gentlemen, when we set the date or the opening of this new wing of the Sherman Museum six months ago, none of us knew what a dark day it would turn out to be for America,” he said, his expression grim and unsmiling. “But I saw no point in postponing our little ceremony, and I thank you all for attending in this time of deep national crisis.. . . Most of you know that when my father died in 1922 he made a bequest with which the Sherman Museum was founded. Since then it has proved itself a valuable adjunct to the bigger Smithsonian Museum of Natural History that faces us across the Mall. As a field museum we’ve always concentrated on the collection and exhibition of rare wild animals and many of you will be aware that in making some of the early collections my family suffered a tragic loss in the jungles of Indochina 

He stopped speaking and dropped his eyes to the lectern for an instant, although he was speaking without notes. “That’s why ladies and gentlemen, these new galleries are dedicated to the memory of my late son, Charles. When he died on the threshold of life he showed great promise for the future and his untimely death was, I believe, a loss not only to his family but also to our country. He had high political ambitions and a strong desire to serve the nation, but first and foremost he was a young man of great courage and a fine huntsman and he was responsible for collecting many of the animals which visitors to the museum over the past sixteen years have enjoyed seeing.” 

He hesitated again, and when he looked up, those standing closest to the rostrum could see that his eyes had become suddenly damp. “Many of you present here today will know that I sustained my own injuries in the accident which cost Chuck his life. And, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve not missed him less as the years have gone by. It was this continuing sense of loss that decided me to pay an added tribute to his memory in the shape of a composite tableau of the finest animals he shot in Indochina. The exhibits have been gathered together for the first time in the wing named for him, and they constitute a public memorial to his courage and skill.” 

He paused again and beamed at the family group where Joseph stood with Tempe, his mother, Guy and his sister, Susannah. “This, ladies and gentlemen, I should add, I’ve been keeping as a little surprise until now — even my family didn’t know about the new tableau. But all of them were as fond and as proud of Chuck as I was -— and will, I hope, share my pride that an appropriate permanent tribute has at last been set up to his memory.” The senator picked up a pair of ceremonial scissors and stepped down from the rostrum. “So it gives me great pleasure to declare open the new Charles Sherman Memorial Wing of this museum.’ 

Polite applause swelled from the gathering as the senator snipped through the tape, and uniformed waiters appeared immediately bearing trays of drinks and canapés. But Joseph brushed past them without accepting anything and hurried ahead of the crowd into the new gallery. In front of the memorial tableau he stopped and stared numbly at the huge black seladang bull which had killed his brother; its long murderous horns were lowered in an attitude of attack, its cloven hooves pawed the jungle floor, and two ferocious blue eyes glared out through the grass at his feet. The red banteng bull which Chuck had dropped from two hundred yards with a single shot the day before he died stood with its head raised in anger on one side of the seladang, and on its other flank the buffalo Joseph himself had spotted when he climbed a tree held its great scimitar-shaped horns belligerently low, ready to charge. A realistic riverside background of plain and jungle had been constructed around the animals, and in the grass by the seladang’s feet a brass plaque announced: “Charles Sherman, at the age of twenty-one, courageously sacrificed his life to kill this prime example of a male seladang during a collecting expedition for the Sherman Field Museum of Natural History in the jungles of Cochin-China in 1925. The buffalo and banteng exhibited in this special memorial tableau, both fine bull animals in their prime, were also shot by the same hunter.” 

As Joseph stared down at the seladang, a terrible image of his brother thrashing in his death throes beneath its horns filled his mind, and he closed his eyes to blot out the sight of the animal. At that moment he felt a hand on his sleeve and he turned to find his mother standing pale-faced beside him. 

“How could he do such a thing?” asked Joseph in an incredulous whisper. 

For a moment Flavia Sherman didn’t reply. In her mid-fifties, there was little trace left of the radiant beauty she had possessed at the time of her visit to Saigon; the birth of Guy in early middle age had taken a heavy physical toll on her, and her thickened figure had never regained its earlier grace. Her features too had slackened and bore the dull, withdrawn expression of one long since resigned to living in retreat inside her own thoughts and confidences. As she stared at the tableau, her mouth twisted with distaste and Joseph realized with alarm that she was on the point of tears. 

“It’s a shrine to masculine violence, Joseph,” she said, speaking in a barely audible voice. “And to your father’s foolish male pride —it’s not a memorial to Chuck at all.” 

Joseph took her arm gently to comfort her and, glancing up, he saw his sister, Susannah, approaching quickly, carrying two glasses. Clear-skinned and as lovely in the flower of her womanhood as her mother had been in her own youth, she was already staring at the stuffed animals, and a worried frown clouded her face. From their expressions she realized instinctively how they felt about the tableau, and seeing tears in her mother’s eyes, she turned her head anxiously in her father’s direction; flanked by Guy and Susannah’s politely attentive husband, Nathaniel Sherman was gesturing with his cane towards the African elephant on its central pedestal and smiling with pleasure as he headed in their direction. 

“For glory’s sake, Joseph, don’t say anything to him here in public,” pleaded Susannah quietly, handing her mother one of the glasses and taking her elbow to guide her away. “We must all bite our tongues for Daddy’s sake. He doesn’t mean badly.” 

Joseph took several paces backward across the gallery and pretended to scrutinize the tableau from a distance through half-closed eyes; he watched his father lead Guy and Susannah’s husband to the glass and begin talking animatedly about the dead animals, gesticulating every now and again with his cane. Guy stood close to the senator, obviously hanging on his every word, and seeing them together like this against the vivid green jungle• backdrop made Joseph stare. For a moment he didn’t fully understand why; then he realized it was the tall, erect bearing of his younger brother. Beside the hunched figure of the senator, Guy seemed to stand ramrod straight, and Joseph suddenly saw again the square-shouldered figure of Paul Devraux striding away into the crowds of the Rue Catinat in his captain’s uniform, saw too Jacques Devraux riding proudly upright at the head of their pony train as they trekked into the jungle. His younger brother’s dark head contrasted vividly with the snowy white hair of the senator, and the smoldering resentment rose up suddenly within him with renewed force. Searching quickly among the crowd, Joseph found Tempe, seized her by the arm and without offering any explanation hurried her out of the museum into the windswept December afternoon.