Saigon (47 page)

When dawn broke over the hill resort of Dalat on Saturday, March 13, 1954, the pine-clad peaks that border the Lang-Biang plateau were still shrouded in mist. No breeze stirred the cool mountain air, and not even the calling of a bird broke the calm of the early day. Slowly, as the sun’s rays strengthened, the mother-of-pearl sky became suffused with warmer tints of gold, and the high, somber crags emerged darkly from the haze like vague Chinese watercolor shapes daubed on a scroll of gray silk. From the shore of Dalat’s highland lake Joseph gazed spellbound at the mountains; beside him as they walked Lan was singing softly, her voice as wistful as the plaintive words of “Les feuilles sont mortes,” and the haunting beauty of the moment made him wonder if he might be dreaming. 

Beneath the dripping pines they seemed to be alone in the world; the strange little sailing craft with brightly colored sails, which visitors to the hill station maneuvered noisily across the lake by day, hadn’t yet appeared, and the woods, too, were deserted at that hour. Here and there in the shadows beneath the trees the sudden glow of a yellow or white orchid caught his eye, and words of wonder started to his lips; but always he checked them, not wanting to break the spell of the early morning which Lan had invited him to share with her. 

Listening to her sing made it easy for him to imagine her strolling there as a girl with her friends from the Couvent des Oiseaux, all of them wide-eyed and eager for the life that was, for them, just beginning. He had never forgotten that poignant description of her happy schooldays in Dalat which Lan had given him during their drive north nine years before, and when after flying out of Dien Bien Phu he discovered that she was taking a villa there for a month to be near her son at the Dalat Military College, he had immediately hurried north from Saigon. He had taken a room at the Lang-Biang Palace Hotel where he had first stayed with his mother in 1925, but the sad thoughts that returning there invoked had been quickly dispelled by Lan’s obvious pleasure when he arrived unannounced at her rented villa. She had insisted that next day they should watch the dawn break over the mountain lake as she’d often done in her schooldays, and back in his hotel he had scarcely slept am all before rising while it was still dark. They had met in the half-light beside the placid expanse of water and begun to walk hand in hand without speaking. 

“I went back to the convent last night, Joseph, and slipped into the chapel to listen to the nuns sing Compline.” She had stopped singing suddenly, hut she spoke in the same subdued and wistful tone. “I stole in quietly and kneeled on the floor among the other schoolgirls just like I used to. Nobody noticed.” 

He smiled and squeezed her hand, unable to speak. There was an innocence in her expression which made her look little more than a girl in the blurred dawn light, and a lump had come into his throat when he thought how alike she and Tuyet were; both of them in their different ways remained elusive to him, seeming always to remain tantalizingly outside the grasp of his real life, and this realization filled him with a deep sadness. Suddenly these thoughts changed the complexion of the morning for him, and looking down at her pensive face he wondered fleetingly whether her nostalgia for the past had blinded her to the present. Was she unaware how faded and tawdry in reality the grandeur of the hill station had become? Built in the heyday of French colonial dominance, the once-magnificent Lang-Biang Palace was now a shabby ghost of a great hotel; the air of opulence and luxury was gone, replaced by frayed carpets and peeling paint, taps that didn’t produce water, and Vietnamese servants who tended the guests’ needs in the overlarge rooms with cigarettes poking insolently from their mouths. The Catholic convents on the hill crests and the spire of the church still materialized romantically from the mist each morning, and the Former emperor, Bao Dai, still inhabited one of the villas with the finest mountain views; hut the town that had been built so grandly around ,the lake now had a tired and bedraggled air, as though like the French colonizers who had created it and enjoyed its reinvigorating pleasures, it was fast approaching the end of its useful life. Even the banks of the small lake had been worn and trampled by too many feet, and only the sparkling air and the distant panorama of hills remained as Joseph remembered them. 

“Lan,” he began gently. “I don’t want to spoil the charm of Dalat for you, but I can’t help feeling that time is running out fast for France in Vietnam. Maybe the whole way of life that your family long ago chose’ to follow is coming to an end too He took her elbow to try and make her stop but she smiled up at him briefly then continued walking through the trees, looking out towards the lake from which the mists were beginning to lift. 

“From that moment at your bedside in the hospital, I knew,” he said more insistently as he caught her up. “After seeing your beautiful face again I knew I would never be able to rest until we’d joined our lives. Back home I tried to forget — but in my heart I always knew it would be impossible.” 

She smiled tolerantly towards the ground as she walked. “There’s more to life than beautiful faces, Joseph. Are all Americans so incurably romantic?” 

“If being strongly drawn towards beauty and love is romantic, then I am,” said Joseph quietly. “Those are the only things that make life truly worthwhile. Back home after the war, every time I closed my eyes the memory of you came back to me. I knew I still loved you and I wanted you to be my wife. I knew then that I hadn’t stopped loving you during the nine years that we’d been apart. That’s why in the end I became a foreign correspondent, I think so I could have a reason to come back to Saigon and look for you again.” He banged his right fist loudly into the palm of his other hand as they walked, and the sudden noise echoed across the mirror like surface of the lake. “Why on earth were we so foolish, Lan? We should have thrown caution to the winds long ago!” 

“We’ve been through all this before, Joseph. What’s the use of going over it again?” She smiled sadly at him. “When you first arrived, you said you wanted to talk about Tuyet.” 

“Yes, I did — but I want to talk about us too.” This time he took her firmly by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Because of the damp she was wearing the same dark cloak that she’d worn during their drive north in 1945 10 search for their daughter. The hood was thrown back, and for the early morning walk she had dressed her hair loosely about her shoulders. In her late thirties, he realized, her beauty had acquired something indefinable — an extra dimension of sensuality perhaps; her lips seemed fuller, her lustrous eyes more knowing, as though the full bloom of womanhood had revealed to her some calming secret about herself she hadn’t known before. Looking at her more intimately than he’d done for many years, he wondered anew at the strength of his attraction to her; she seemed lovelier in the pale light of that dawn than ever before, and it was difficult for him to believe that the reason for her presence in Dalat was a prolonged visit to a son who was already a cadet in the French military academy, almost a grown man. 

“Have you seen Tuyet recently, Joseph?” she prompted gently, seeing that his mind was becoming distracted. 

“Yes, two (lays ago — but she behaved very strangely. She asked if I was really her father and why we hadn’t married. She asked me too, quite openly, if I still loved you.” 

Lan’s smooth brow crinkled in a puzzled frown. “Normally she’s so distant and withdrawn.” 

“Yes, exactly. But this time it was uncanny almost as if she’d read my thoughts. You see, I’d already made up my mind. I don’t know why — perhaps it’s a feeling that the war here is reaching a crucial stage. Everything is going into the melting pot now He gripped her more tightly, and a new intensity came into his expression. “Lan, we’ve thrown away two golden chances already. I should’ve made you agree to marry me that day in your garden in Hue. And when we found each other again at the end of the war, we both behaved as if we were insane 

She began to interrupt, but he held up a hand to silence her. “I know what you want to say. ‘But, Joseph, that war had caused such a terrible upheaval in all our lives.’ Yes, it’s true. We were like two drowning swimmers- then — we had to find our way back to shore to make sure we were still alive. We both had young families who needed us.” He stopped and smiled tenderly into her eyes. “That was all true. We both knew what obstacles there were, and we chose deliberately not to face up to them. But what was it that drew me back to Asia? Why, when we met again, was it as if nothing had happened in between-—as if time had stood still?” 

She dropped her eyes suddenly, as though shamed by his recalling the intensity of the passion that had survived two long separations to flower again so powerfully in both of them. “Because we feel this way, Joseph, it doesn’t mean we can just turn our backs on our responsibilities.” 

“But, Lan, now things are different! We’ve both made our sacrifices. We’ve done our duty! Neither of us can go on with these guilty secret meetings behind Paul’s back. And I’m deceiving Tempe by pretending all’s well. We’ve had two chances and wasted them—now I want to make up for all the mistakes of the past before it’s too late. And soon it will be too late. The worlds changing, Lan! Vietnam’s changing — much faster than we realize. If the Communists win, nobody knows what might happen in Saigon. I want to take you and Tuyet away from here. I want to take you some place where we can always be together. Singapore perhaps, I don’t know — any place where I can try to make Tuyet understand. Here I can’t get near her. She’s always so suspicious — so hurt and resentful.” His face clouded suddenly, as though with pain. “Sometimes I’m sure she hates me for what I’ve done. And that’s very hard for me to bear.” 

He searched her eyes for some sign that she might be wavering but saw only the same doubt and indecision that had always been there before, the same stubborn determination to stand by a conscious decision taken long ago, no matter how badly it had turned out. 

“It’s not a good time now Joseph,” she whispered, looking away from him, “with Paul at Dien Bien Phu.” 

Joseph looked at her undecidedly for a moment, then leaned closer. “Please listen carefully, Lan, At Dien Bien Phu, Paul and I talked about you. He told me that things hadn’t been right for a long time. You’ve always been wonderfully loyal in not speaking to me of that side of your life •— but now that I know things haven’t really worked out, I don’t feel so badly about us 

“Did you tell him the truth?” Her eyes had widened in alarm. “Did you tell him we’d been meeting?” 

Joseph shook his head and looked away. “No, I wanted to — but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” 

“Then why did he talk of our marriage?” 

“We were discussing his hopes for Vietnam — and it just came out.” 

Her eyes searched his face anxiously. “Does he suspect there’s anything between us?” 

“No — I almost wish he did. It might have made it easier to speak out.” Joseph shook his head in a little motion of distress. “I can’t bear deceiving him. Lan. He thinks of me as his most loyal friend. I have to fly into Dien Bien Phu again soon to do another story, and I’ll hardly know how to face him. However things turn out, I’ve got to tell him everything when all this is over.” 

“But why, Joseph?”A hand flew to her mouth and she stared at him in horror. 

“I can’t go on living these lies any longer. I want you and Tuyet with me all the time — somewhere safe.” Joseph’s voice shook with emotion, and he felt tears start to his eyes. “Don’t you understand, Lan? I want this more than anything else in the world.” 

“But what about your own wife and your sons?” 

“I’ve decided to tell Tempe everything. She ought to know the truth, too. My boys are growing up now and I’m going to ask her for a divorce, I want to do that to show you and Tuyet how much you mean to me.” 

For a long time Lan stared unseeing across the brightening lake, saying nothing. 

“What’s your answer, Lan?” he asked at last, lifting her chin gently so that she had to look up into his face. “Will you leave Paul and marry me?” 

“Paul’s my husband, Joseph.” She spoke in an almost inaudible whisper, and he had to bend his head to catch what she said. “I don’t know what the future has in store — for me or my country. I’m afraid, I suppose. But I’m more afraid of what life would be if I made the wrong choice and left Vietnam.” 

Joseph gazed back at her, perplexed. “But, Lan, you’re not being fair to yourself!” He looked around, desperately searching for words to persuade her. “Don’t you remember how you once dreamed by this lake that your life would always be filled with poetry and romance? Well there’s no reason to let that hope die! Marry me, Lan, and I’ll make you happier than you’ve ever been before.” 

She looked back at him with troubled eyes. “I can’t decide now, Joseph, at a time like this.” 

Joseph sighed and let his hands fall to his sides. “I suppose not.” 

“And please, Joseph, you must promise me one thing.” 

“What’s that?” 

“That you will say nothing of this to Paul when you go back to Dien Bien Phu. Say nothing at all until I’ve seen him again.” 

Joseph searched her worried face for a moment, then smiled. “All right, Lan, I promise. I’ll wait till it’s over.” 

They walked until the sun was high above the plateau, threading their way without speaking through the green meadows and gardens where the succulent strawberries and lettuces so highly prized in Saigon were grown. They parted for lunch but met again in the afternoon and drove down a river valley to the neighboring plateau of Djiring, passing tumbling waterfalls and many neatly marshaled plantations of tea and pineapple. The car disturbed great yellow clouds of butterflies on the isolated roads, and flocks of bright-colored birds swooped among the tall jungle trees at the roadside. The area was still a no-man’s-land ignored by the Viet Minh and French troops alike, and it was the butterfly clouds that triggered his memory first; then when he saw Rhade men and women trudging along the sides of the road wearing only breechclouts about their naked haunches he fell into a reverie, thinking of that fateful family hunting trip in the nearby jungle twenty-nine years before. Because they couldn’t talk of what was uppermost in their minds, they seemed to reach a mute agreement not to talk at all, and the exhilaration Joseph normally felt in Lan’s presence was tempered this time by the gnawing fear that this might be the last day they would share together.