Saigon (72 page)

Joseph sat alone at his own dining table that evening, staring absently into the shadows beyond the candles his bep had lit. A bowl of canh chua soup stood before him but it was untouched and growing cold, and every minute or two the bep peered anxiously around the kitchen door to see if he was ready for his next course. A bottle of Vietnamese ruou de stood beside a slender-stemmed glass at his elbow, and from time to time he sipped the rice wine but made no attempt to touch his food. 

When the bep appeared noiselessly beside him, he started in surprise, then made an apologetic gesture as he saw the Vietnamese gazing accusingly at his full soup bowl. “I’m sorry, Chinh — I’m not very hungry this evening.” 

“But Mister Sherman, canh chua is my best soup,” complained the cook with a beseeching smile. “Is my speciality — shrimp, bean sprouts, pineapple, celery—I put all good things in for you. And your bo nuong la is ready now.” 

“Okay Chinh, bring in the bo nuong la. I’ll try to eat a little.” 

The Vietnamese removed the soup and hurried back to the kitchen. Before he appeared again with the main dish the telephone rang, and Joseph heard him answer it with a sibilant flurry of broken English. When he reappeared with the food — finely chopped tender beef wrapped in grape leaves — he was smiling delightedly. “That was your brother, Mister Sherman. He asked if you here and when I tell him you alone, he say he coming right over. Shall I bring bo nuong ta for your brother too, Mister Sherman?” 

Joseph’s face clouded for a moment, then he nodded. “All right—if he hasn’t already dined.” 

Guy arrived a quarter of an hour later, and the bep’s smile broadened as he conducted him into the dining room; before another minute had passed, a dish of food had been placed before him. 

“I didn’t mean to invite myself to dinner,” said Guy apologetically. “I just wanted to talk to you.” 

“My bep likes people to enjoy his food and I’m letting him down tonight.” Joseph’s expression was guarded as he poured ruou de for them both. “Has there been any reaction from Washington yet on the prisoner exchange?” 

“No — but we’ve had an urgent request from the State Department to try to find Out who ‘the man in the white room’ really is. Nobody in D.C. is fond of the idea of letting a nameless man go free.” Guy sipped his wine and began to eat, using his chopsticks with quick, deft movements. “That’s why I’m here — to try to persuade you to come back to the embassy this evening to finish the photo search.” 

Instead of replying, Joseph drained his glass and refilled it again; he neither looked at his brother nor touched his beef, and Guy ate in silence for a few minutes, then pushed his plate away and sat back. 

“You know, Joseph, I’ve never been able to read what goes on inside your head,” he said in an impatient tone. “You’ve always been damned cool with me for reasons best known to yourself and I’ve come to accept that as the norm as far as you and me are concerned. But hell, I’m beginning to think you must be some kind of cold-blooded animal all through. Don’t you have any human feelings at all? After two years you discover your younger son’s alive when he might’ve been dead, and instead of doing everything you can to help, you closet yourself here in your villa taking dinner on your own and doing nothing! I just don’t get it.” 

Joseph put down his glass and glanced across the table at his brother. “Hasn’t it occurred to you, Guy, that if your prisoner in the white room turned out to be someone of the top rank from Hanoi, it might jeopardize the whole deal involving Mark? Hasn’t it occurred to you that if I could identify him positively, that fact in itself might condemn Mark to several more years of torture and suffering— maybe even worse.” 

“I guess I hadn’t looked at it from that angle.” Guy gazed at Joseph thoughtfully for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was suddenly more sympathetic. “Does that mean you already know who he is — but aren’t saying?” 

Joseph got up abruptly from the table and went to the kitchen. When he returned he was carrying a new bottle of ruou de, and he filled both their glasses without speaking. 

“Okay, I can see you don’t want to answer that question and I won’t press it right now.” Guy picked up his glass. “But maybe we’ve made some progress. For the first time in your life you’ve actually shared a confidence with your kid brother. Maybe we should drink to that.” 

Guy smiled lopsidedly as he raised his glass to his lips, but despite his faintly sarcastic tone his manner had softened noticeably, and Joseph felt a sudden stab of remorse for always having kept him at arm’s length. 

“Perhaps there’s something I should tell you too, Guy,” he said hesitantly. “I didn’t just get one shock today. Hearing Mark’s confession would have been enough on its own — but while I was going through those photographs, I got another one” 

“When you saw the picture of the Vietnamese girl, you mean?” Guy paused significantly. “Tuyet Luong?” 

Joseph’s eyes widened in astonishment. “How did you know?” 

“I saw the expression on your face and I made a mental note of the file’s position as you pushed it back into the drawer. I checked it out after you’d gone and I guessed she must have been someone you met sometime — someone you didn’t think was a Communist then maybe. Is that it?” 

“No, that’s not it.” Joseph bowed his head and spoke towards the table. “Tuyet Luong is my daughter.” 

‘Your daughter?” Guy’s mouth fell open in disbelief, and for a long time he sat and stared at Joseph; then he nodded his head several times. “I think I understand now why you’re sitting here in the dark not eating dinner.” 

“I haven’t seen Tuyet since 1954 — she was seventeen then. Since I got back I’ve heard rumors that someone with a name like hers had got on the ‘wanted’ list — but I never really believed them until I saw that picture this morning.” 

“But who’s her mother? And what the hell was it that made her go over to the VC?” 

“It’s a long story, Guy,” said Joseph resignedly. “But if you have time to listen, I’d like to tell you.” 

“Sure, go ahead,” said Guy quickly. “If it’ll help.” 

In a voice that sometimes cracked with emotion Joseph told - his brother of his long involvement with Ian and Tuyet, leaving nothing out, and when he’d finished Guy let out a low whistle. “I’d heard bits and pieces through the family grapevine over the years, but I never dreamed you’d been living with all of that.” Guy picked up the wine bottle and filled Joseph’s glass and his own again, and they lapsed into a companionable silence. 

“That’s the first time in your life, you know, Joseph, that you’ve ever let your guard down with me,” said Guy at last in a wondering voice. “And I appreciate that more than you might think. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time worrying about why you seemed to have your knife in me. You made me feel for a long time like I wasn’t good enough to be a brother of yours or Chuck’s. Do you remember?” 

“I know,” said Joseph quietly. “I knew I was doing it and I’m not proud of it — it really wasn’t your fault.” 

“How do you mean?” Guy smiled in mystification. 

“Quite illogically I blamed you for something that had nothing to do with you.” 

“What was that?” 

As Joseph considered how to phrase his answer, he realized to his dismay that without meaning to, he’d arrived on the brink of telling Guy the one thing he’d sworn always to stay silent about. He glanced at the second bottle of ruou de on the table between them, saw that it was three quarters empty and regretted that his tongue had begun to run away with him. “Forget it, Guy,” he said hastily, rubbing a hand across his eyes. “It’s just the rice wine talking.” 

“Oh no, you don’t slip out of it that easy,” Guy laughed and emptied the entire contents of the bottle into their two glasses. “Now that the wine’s started talking, let it finish.” 

Joseph smiled in return, and they raised their glasses to drink in the same moment. -“I’m not too sure how I ought to go about this, Guy — but I guess you’re right — it’s something you really should have known all along 

“Come on, quit the softening-up process,” said Guy with a smile. “I’m a big boy now.” 

“Well, didn’t you ever wonder how it was that mother and father lived all those years in that big house in Georgetown on separate floors? Didn’t you ever wonder why mother drank so much in her last years? Didn’t you ever wonder how long that had been going on?” 

Guy’s smile waned a little. “No, I guess I didn’t ever really think about it. I suppose I always, kind of assumed that the rambunctious senator from Virginia always needed a lot of space for his larger-than-life political activities and our wise mother liked to give him a wide berth.” 

Joseph stared into his drink, seeing again suddenly his mother on that day a month before she died welcoming him to her sumptuously furnished apartments on the upper floors of the big Georgian mansion in Dumbarton Street. There had been separate bottles of wine at either end of the long table for luncheon, and she had finished one of them on her own, Afterwards she had dropped her balloon glass of brandy in the hearth and sobbed uncontrollably in his arms while blurting out what she had called the “terrible secret” of Guy’s birth; she had stared at him in horror when he told her that he already knew, that he had seen her by chance that night in the jungle storm and had recognized Guy’s unmistakable likeness to his natural father as he’d grown up. Before he left, she had made him promise never to reveal her secret to his father or Guy, and the memory of the vow he’d made then haunted him fleetingly as Guy waited for him to continue. 

“The fact is, you see, Guy, they hadn’t just been living on separate floors for the last twenty-five years as you remember 

they were living on ‘separate floors’ for quite a few years before you were born.” 

“Is that why the old man likes to make those sly references to me being ‘bred’ in the jungle on that hunting trip?” 

“In a way but what he’s never known is just how true that was.” 

“You’d better say now what you mean, Joseph — so we both know what you’re getting at.” 

“I’m trying to tell you, Guy, that the man you’ve always thought of as your father isn’t your real father.” 

The smile faded instantly from Guy’s face, and his features turned to stone. The enormity of the revelation rendered him speechless, and Joseph felt a sudden tide of alarm rise inside him. 

“No other living soul except me knows this, Guy,” Joseph went on hurriedly. “I swore never to tell him or you — but I think you have a right to know.” 

“And why in hell’s name were you let into the dreadful secret?” asked Guy, speaking fiercely between his teeth. 

“Mother blurted it out to me a few weeks before she died. It had preyed on her mind, and she had to tell someone to ease the pain.” 

“But why did it have to be you?” 

“Perhaps she sensed that I knew already that the story about the hunting camp was true. The great senator from Virginia, you see, was as high as a kite on the night in question. I saw him staggering as he went back to their hut. Then a while later the flap opened and I saw Mother run out into the storm 

“So you played Peeping Tom! That’s how you knew the identity of my real father!” 

Guy’s voice ruse accusingly, and Joseph nodded. 

“So who was he?” 

“Our French hunting guide — an ex-French army officer. He became an inspector in the Süreté Générale here in the ‘thirties.” 

“Is he still alive?” 

Joseph shook his head quickly. “He was assassinated by Vietnamese nationalists in Hue — in 1936.” 

Guy’s chair fell over backwards with a crash as he rose to his feet; his face was white and his breathing became ragged. “So sanctimonious little mother’s boy Joseph decided thereafter to spend the rest of his life looking down his nose at his kid brother because he considered him a semi-bastard -— is that right?” 

“I guess I’ve always known deep down it was wrong, Guy — but somehow I could never shake myself out of it.” Joseph looked up miserably into his brother’s face. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t waste your breath apologizing!” A look of cold fury had come into Guy’s eyes, and Joseph thought for a moment he was going to lash out at him; but Guy controlled himself with an effort. “If you’re hoarding any more nasty family secrets, keep them to yourself— I don’t want to hear them!” Guy spun around and strode towards the side door of the villa, but before he reached it Joseph got up and hurried after him. 

“Guy, wait! For God’s sake, if I’d thought you’d take it like this I would never have told you Before he reached the door it was slammed in his face, and a moment later he heard a car start up in the street outside; its motor was revved furiously for a second or two, then there was a crash of gears and the car accelerated away and was soon traveling at high speed. 

Joseph didn’t go to bed but sat up all night; the sound of firecrackers exploding in the street at midnight startled him at first, then he remembered that it was the eve of Tet. The explosions continued for several hours, and he made frequent cups of coffee and paced sleeplessly back and forth through the house listening to them; occasionally he dozed fitfully in a chair, but when the dawn came, he went out into the garden and walked there. Several times his tortured thoughts went back to the agonizing confrontation he’d had with Paul Devraux at Dien Bien Phu. Then as now his rash belief that the truth would conquer all had been the cause of deep emotional anguish, and he cursed himself repeatedly for his stupidity. He tried to think of sonic means of making amends to Guy, but realized with a feeling of despair that there was no way back.