Saigon (48 page)

That night, perhaps sensing intuitively what he was thinking, she agreed to dine with him in the restaurant of the Lang-Biang Palace where Bao Dai still frequently entertained. In contrast to the rest of the crumbling hotel, its cuisine was still fit for an ex-emperor, and beneath the high, gilded ceilings they lingered at their candlelit table until the other diners had departed; both were subdued, conscious of the bittersweet sadness of what might be their last meeting, and afterwards they sat on the terrace under piercingly bright stars, sipping Vietnamese liqueurs with their coffee. 

“I was sitting here with my mother when we heard the news that my brother Chuck had been killed,” said Joseph quietly, toying with his liqueur glass. “It all seems so long ago now — as if it happened in another life.” 

“Were you very fond of him?” 

“Yes, I think I was probably fonder of Chuck than anyone else then.” Joseph’s face grew pensive. “I was only fifteen, and about that time the world seemed to be collapsing around my ears.” 

“Why?” She looked at him with new interest, her expression softening. “What happened?” 

“It’s not worth talking about — I was oversensitive as a boy, I guess. It all seems very silly now.” He fell silent again and gazed up at the stars that were clustered like clouds of luminous dust in the purple heavens overhead. 

‘Please go on, Joseph. You’ve never talked much about yourself before.” 

An embarrassed look passed across his face, and he stared into the darkness that had fallen over the lake. “My brother always outshone me, you see, Lan. He was a brilliant athlete, a good scholar — and very popular. I lived in his shadow, and my father made no secret of his preference for Chuck. That used to upset me, and I suppose I turned more to my mother because of it.” 

“And was she fond of you?” 

“Oh yes — but something happened while we were here that shocked me deeply. And it took me a long time to get over it.” He turned to smile sadly at her and found her staring at him with a strange intensity. 

“It happened on the second night in our hunting camp in the jungle. There was a storm, and I couldn’t sleep. I got up and stood watching the lightning — and it was then that I saw her.” 

“Your mother?” 

“Yes.” His voice sank to a whisper and he looked away again, his expression pained. “She was running across the camp through the storm, and because I thought she might need my help I ran after her He stopped talking to sip his drink, and Lan noticed that his hand was trembling slightly. “She went to the tent of Paul’s father, and I couldn’t help hearing what happened between them. I didn’t understand too well about those things then, but it seemed such a dreadful betrayal — not just of my father but of all three of us. 

Lan stared at him aghast. “How awful for you.” 

Joseph started guiltily, as if in his self-absorption he’d almost forgotten she was listening. “I’m sorry, Lan, I’ve never spoken of this before 

Moved by his vulnerable expression, she reached out and touched his hand. “There’s no need to apologize.” 

“I think it made inc suspicious and distrustful of every woman I ever met after that — until I saw you again. You seemed so pure, so perfectly lovely. I’d never known anyone like you. When I saw you kneeling in the shrine at the emperor’s tomb, I felt something I’d never felt before.” 

For a long time they sat without speaking and when Lan finally broke the silence, she spoke in a whisper. “Did your father ever find out?” 

“I don’t think so. I think he was very drunk that night. My mother didn’t know that I was awake either Joseph’s voice faltered again. “My younger brother Guy was born at the end of 1925. My mother’s never said anything, but I’m sure he’s Paul’s half brother.” 

Around them on the shadowy terrace the desultory murmur of French voices had gradually died away, and seeing that they were left alone, she took his hand in both her own. “I don’t know what to say, Joseph.” 

“It’s all water under the bridge now.” He managed a faint smile, but saw that her face had become tense. 

“I know I’ve always held my feelings back from you, Joseph,” she whispered. “I’ve never been able to bring myself to tell you how painful it was for me to part with Tuyet after we found her together. I know she was never very far away, with Tam — but it always hurt me very deeply, and I know flow it was wrong.” 

Her lower lip trembled, and he could see she was on the verge of tears. To console her he held her hands more tightly, and they lapsed once more into silence. When at last he rose to drive her back to her villa, to his surprise she took his arm and turned him gently in the direction of the French windows leading into the hotel. When he glanced down at her, she was studying the tips of her sandals intently as she walked. 

In his room she flung back the heavy damask curtains from the long windows so that they could catch sight of the stars, and looking down over the tops of the pine trees they found they could also see their pinpoint reflections sparkling like gems in the black-lacquered surface of the lake. For a long time they stood close together in a reverent silence, then she undressed herself without any sign of shyness and let her hair fall loose down her back before walking into his arms. Barefooted, she seemed suddenly small, and despite the roundness of her purple-tipped breasts and the gentle swell of her hips, she could have passed easily in the shadows of the room for one of the schoolgirls at the Couvent des Oiseaux who were at that hour gathering in the chapel to hear the nuns chant the rituals of the seventh service of the day. As she came to him, he felt the huge emotional dam he’d built inside himself half a lifetime ago begin to crack; her nakedness and the glowing look in her eyes moved him deeply, and he folded his arms about her trembling body at last with great tenderness. 

In his log and sandbag bunker seven hundred miles to the northwest, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Devraux at that moment lay dozing fitfully on his army cot. He was fully dressed in his camouflage battle dress and he still wore a surgical dressing on the scalp wound that was proving slow to heal; close to the cot a steel helmet hung on the back of a chair within easy reach. The jumble of paperwork heaped around the leather-bound field telephones on his work-. table was, like his wall charts and everything else in the underground bunker, covered with a fine film of red dust, but for the moment the showers of powdered earth that fell regularly from the low ceiling had ceased. Outside the night was unusually still; the sporadic Viet Minh mortar attacks, which had become almost routine in recent weeks, had gradually died away, and several of Paul’s fellow officers had smilingly predicted that the Communists, realizing there was no alternative, must be preparing at last to gamble on an all-out infantry assault against the valley fortress. 

There had, however, been many such hopeful predictions as the days and weeks passed, and Paul had become accustomed to preparing repeatedly for an attack that never came. He had taken to making and renewing the command dispositions ordered by Colonel de Castries with is usual methodical thoroughness, then snatching sleep in brief bouts while the endless minutes and hours of waiting ticked by. He had grown tired of trying to guess against which quarter of the thirty-mile perimeter the first enemy thrust might be made, and after six weeks of living underground the tension of waiting had become so familiar to him that it seemed little more than a minor irritant. Because he had been effectively shackled in the valley for so long, his mind too had become confined and bunkered, and since Joseph’s visit he had given little thought to the wider implications of the war. Messages from General Henri Navarre’s headquarters in Saigon frequently emphasized that the French Expeditionary Corps was still holding firm in the Red River delta and that the new operation being mounted against the Viet Minh in the central highlands was going well; success at Dien Bien Phu would augment the less spectacular achievements in these other areas, but if the strategy did not work out as planned, it would not be a major failure -—- that seemed to be the view of the French high command and Paul had come to share it. The fact that the enemy at hand remained tantalizingly invisible in the surrounding mountains and had so far failed to mount any significant attack had lulled him, like most of the other senior officers at Dien Bien Phu, into fearing only that General Giap and the Communist leadership might at the last moment decide not to• attack in strength and so deprive France of the spectacular victory it had planned. 

On waking after fifteen minutes’ sleep, Paul heard in the bunker only the quick tick of the watch on his wrist. The silence was so complete that he sat on the edge of his cot for a moment listening intently for some sound. But he heard nothing; even the garrison’s little force of aircraft, he realized, must have temporarily ceased operating. Rising stiffly to his feet, he filled saucepan with water and set it to boil on his spirit stove. He was in the act of spooning powdered coffee into his tin mug as he did a dozen times each day when the bunker was shaken suddenly by what sounded like a deafening roll of thunder directly overhead. Because of the silence that had preceded it, the noise shocked Paul into immobility. Quiet returned for a second or two, and he found himself listening hopefully for the pounding of rain at the head of the sap. But then the stillness was shattered by further explosions that shook the earth all around him, and he recognized then the unmistakable roar of heavy artillery. The terrible detonations quickly became continuous, and through the sack-covered doorway he heard the high-pitched whine of flying shells begin punctuating the din. 

Paul stood rooted to the spot, listening in an agony of suspense for the louder roar of the nearer French guns to open up in reply. It was probably no more than a matter of seconds before the first salvos of counter battery fire boomed across the valley, but to him it seemed an age and even when it came, the response seemed ragged and badly coordinated. His instinct was to fling himself to the field telephones to begin preparing a report for Colonel de Castries on the readiness of the various unit commanders around the fortress—but he held himself in check. They had prepared so many times for this moment that it would be insulting to them to intrude in the first chaotic moments of the attack. Like himself, the other officers must have been shocked by the weight and density of the artillery bombardment, which Colonel Piroth had insisted could be mounted only from outside the ring of mountains. As Paul listened, he wondered for the first time if Piroth could have been mistaken; if the enemy’s howitzers had been placed on the outer slopes of the mountain basin they would have been at least five or six miles from the command center, but to his ears the guns seemed much closer. After a moment’s pause he put on his steel helmet, then called the artillery commander on one of his field telephones. 

“Charles,” he yelled at the top of his voice to make himself heard above the noise of the barrage, “the enemy seems to be doing better than we thought with his artillery, am I right?” 

At the other end of the crackling line Piroth’s answer was not intelligible. 

“Could they have got some 105S onto this side of the mountains?” shouted Paul, drawing his words out slowly. “They seem nearer than we expected.” 

“Yes I think somehow against all the odds they have.” This time Piroth’s reply was audible, and Paul could hear that the familiar note of confidence was missing from his voice. 

“Just a few, do you think, mon vieux?” 

There was a long pause at the other end of the line. “No,” replied Piroth at last with obvious reluctance. “They seem to have more than a few 105s. Arid they’ve sited them very high too, I think.” 

“But you’re marking them now, yes?” prompted Paul. “They won’t be coughing and spitting at us for too long, will they?” 

“We’re doing everything we can to neutralize them!” 

The line went dead abruptly, but the dismay in Piroth’s voice was unmistakable, even over the field telephone. Feeling a knot of alarm tightening inside him, Paul snatched up a clipboard and dashed through the connecting tunnel to the central headquarters bunker. When he entered, he found the commanding officer of Dien Bien Phu standing gray-faced beside his map table; with his head cocked on one side he was listening to the unceasing torrent of noise that was filling the darkened heavens above the valley. 

“Their firepower is much greater than we thought, isn’t it?” asked De Castries in a strangled whisper. 

Paul saluted and nodded grimly. “Colonel Piroth says somehow they’ve managed to get 105-millimeter howitzers up high on this side of the mountains.” 

De Castries turned away distractedly and began fiddling with a wooden ruler. “But our counter battery fire will deal with them in due course. And all units are fully prepared to resist the ground assault when it comes, yes?” 

“Of course, sir!” 

“We’ve nothing to worry about then, have we? Contact the commander of each strongpoint for an assessment and report back to me again as soon as you can.” 

Back in his own bunker the incessant roar of French and enemy guns made it impossible for Paul to get together a clear picture by field telephone of the destruction caused by the surprise opening barrage. Although some units reported that their troops were welcoming the attack jubilantly after the nerve-wracking weeks of waiting, most of the officers commanding the Legionnaires and paratroopers could not make themselves heard. A worrying number of his calls also went unanswered, and when he heard a rolling explosion blot out all other sounds outside, Paul raced up the sap to the bunker entrance and stared out into the night. 

The sight that met his eyes brought an involuntary gasp of horror to his lips. One of the enemy’s mountaintop salvos had scored a direct hit on the garrison’s napalm and gasoline store, and a spiraling tower of orange flame was climbing into the black sky above the valley. By its light Paul could see the charred hulks of several aircraft caught and destroyed beside the little airstrip, but what made him catch his breath was the sight of the mountainsides at the northern head of the valley. As he watched, the lower slopes were coming alive with wave after wave of Communist infantrymen; swarming like countless ants in the glare of the blazing fuel dump, several thousand green-uniformed soldiers wearing flat bamboo helmets were pouring out of their jungle trenches and heading towards Beatrice and Gabrielle. The two vital hills were defended by crack units of the Foreign Legion, hut neither commander had responded to Paul’s persistent efforts to contact them, and it became clear suddenly that the main weight of the first bombardment had fallen there. 

As he watched, Paul’s attention was distracted by the arrival of a jeep outside an adjoining bunker. In the orange glare from the flames he recognized the tall, bulky figure of Colonel Piroth; to his astonishment he noticed that the artillery commander had driven himself back from his gunnery headquarters without a helmet, and although Paul called out to him, he climbed down from the jeep and headed unsteadily towards his own hunker without acknowledging him. Sensing something was wrong, Paul dashed across the open ground and caught Piroth by the shoulder. 

“Charles, you should take more care of yourself. Where’s your helmet?” 

When the one-armed artillery officer turned his head, Paul was shocked by the sudden change in his appearance; the long-jowled face, composed when he’d last seen him in its habitually haughty lines, was suddenly haggard, the face of a man haunted by guilty knowledge. His eyes too were distant, glazed almost, and he made no attempt to answer. 

“Come to my bunker and I’ll make us some coffee,” said Paul insistently. “I need you to give me an estimate of the enemy’s artillery strength.” 

“They’ve done the impossible! Their guns must be embedded in the rock on the very peaks of the mountains — we can’t knock them out. Three of our 155s have been destroyed already.” Piroth stared over Paul’s shoulder. “It’ll be a terrible massacre. There’s nothing we can do to stop them— and it’s all my fault.” 

“Pull yourself together, Charles.” said Paul sharply. “We’re all responsible. Come to my bunker and calm down.” He tried to tighten his grip on Piroth’s remaining arm, but the distraught officer tore himself free. 

“I’ve got something urgent I must do first,” said Piroth sharply. “I’ll conic in a few minutes.” 

Paul stood and watched him as he hunched his shoulder to duck through the sack-covered entrance to his bunker. Then as he disappeared from view Paul looked back to where the attacking force was beginning to mount the lower slopes of the two northern strong points. The artillery bombardment was gradually petering out as the Communist troops neared their main objectives, and Paul heard clearly the roar of the single explosion that came from inside Piroth’s bunker. 

As he raced down the entry tunnel he recognized the acrid smell of the explosion fumes. Inside the bunker itself he found the artillery commander of Dien Bien Phu sprawled on the earth beneath his own cot. When he turned him over his face was no longer recognizable, and he saw that the grenade which he had pressed against his own heart in the depths of his despair had blown off his remaining hand as it killed him.