“Well, somebody has to do it.”
He laughed, then added, “In fact, the Japanese and Koreans are also raping the country. There are a lot of natural resources in Vietnam that have never been exploited, and the labor is very cheap.”
“Good. I’m on a tight budget.”
He continued, “The Communists, however, are a problem. They don’t understand capitalism.”
“Maybe they understand it too well.”
Again, he laughed. “Yes, I think you are correct. In any case, be careful. The police and the party officials can be a problem.”
“I’m just on vacation.”
“Bon. Do you prefer girls or boys?”
“Pardon?”
He pulled out a notebook from his breast pocket and began writing. He said, “Here are some names, addresses, and phone numbers. One bar, one brothel, one exquisite lady, and the name of a good French-Indochine restaurant.” He handed the note page to me.
“Merci,” I said. “Where should I start?”
“One should always begin with a good meal, but it’s very late, so go to the bar. Don’t take any of the prostitutes — choose one of the bar maids or cocktail waitresses. This shows a degree of savoir faire.”
“ ‘Savoir faire’ is my middle name.”
“Don’t pay more than five dollars American in the bar, five in the brothel, and twenty for Mademoiselle Dieu-Kiem — she’s part French and speaks several languages. She’s an excellent dinner companion and can help you with shopping and sightseeing.”
“Not bad for twenty bucks.” That’s what Jenny got thirty years ago in Georgia, and she only spoke English.
“But be advised, prostitution is officially illegal in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
“Same in Virginia.”
“Vietnam is a series of contradictions — the government is Communist, totalitarian, atheist, and xenophobic. The people are capitalists, free-spirited, Buddhists, Catholics, and friendly to foreigners. I am speaking of the south — in the north, it is quite different. In the north, the people and the government are one. You need to be more careful if you go to the north.”
“I’m just hanging around Saigon. See a few museums, catch some shows, buy a few trinkets for the folks back home.”
The Frenchman stared at me a moment, then sort of blew me off by picking up a newspaper.
The PA came on, and the pilot said something in Vietnamese, then French. Then the co-pilot, who was a round-eye, said in English, “Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. We’ll be landing shortly.” The flight attendants collected the champagne glasses.
I looked out the window and saw arcs of green and red tracer rounds cutting through the night sky around Saigon. I saw incandescent flashes of outgoing artillery and rockets, and red-orange bursts where the shells and missiles landed in the rice paddies. I saw these things with my eyes closed, thirty-year-old images burned into my memory.
I opened my eyes and saw Ho Chi Minh City, twice the size of old Saigon and more brightly lit than the besieged wartime capital.
I sensed the Frenchman looking at me. He said, “You have been here before.” It was more of a statement than a question.
I replied, “Yes, I have.”
“During the war — yes?”
“Yes.” Maybe it showed.
“You will find it very different.”
“I hope so.”
He laughed, then added, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
I listened to the hydraulic sounds of the aircraft as it made its approach into Tan Son Nhat Airport. This was going to be, I knew, a strange journey back into time and place.
BOOK II
Saigon
CHAPTER SIX
We came in through the clouds, and I looked down at Tan Son Nhat Airport for the third time in my life.
Strangely, it looked the same as it did almost thirty years before; the sandbagged revetments hadn’t been removed after the war, and there was still a military side to the airport where I could see Russian-made MiG fighters around the old American hangars. I also caught a glimpse of an American C-130 cargo plane, and I wondered if it was operational, or if it was some sort of war trophy.
I recalled that Military Advisory Command, Vietnam had been headquartered at Tan Son Nhat, which turned out to be convenient when, in April 1975, the victorious Communist troops approached the airport; the MACV guys, among the last American soldiers in Vietnam, blew up their headquarters and flew off on Air America planes. I had seen it on TV, and now I saw some rubble that might have been the old MACV Headquarters, known then as Pentagon East.
As we approached the runway, I saw that the civilian terminal, too, was the same old piece of crap I remembered. I had this weird feeling that I’d passed through the Twilight Zone, and I was going back for my third tour. Actually, I was.
We came down on the wet runway with barely a bounce, so the round-eye was flying. The tarmac, however, must still have had shell holes in it or something because the rollout was a mile of bad road.
The aircraft turned onto a taxiway and for some reason stopped. On the approach, I hadn’t seen a single aircraft around, so it wasn’t like we were backed up waiting for a gate at this nowhere airport. When the Americans ran it during the war, Tan Son Nhat was the third busiest airport in the world, and it ran fine. But that’s another story. I knew I needed to get my head into the reality of this time and place, and I tried. But as we waited on the taxiway, my mind kept pulling me back to 1972, and the events that led up to my second visit to this place.
I was stationed at Fort Hadley, where I had re-enlisted after my first tour, after Peggy Walsh and I had stopped writing to each other, or I had stopped writing to her, to be more honest.
After about six months at Hadley, for some reason known only to God and Sigmund Freud, I married a local Midland girl named Patty.
Patty was very pretty, had a cute Georgia accent, didn’t hate Yankees, loved sex and bourbon, was poorer than me, and always wanted to marry a soldier, though I never found out why. We had absolutely nothing in common and never would, but getting married young and for no good reason seemed to be part of the local culture. I really don’t know what I was thinking.
Housing for married people was tight during the war, and there was nothing available on the fort, so we lived in this squalid trailer park called Whispering Pines, along with hundreds of other soldiers, their wives, and kids.
We watched guys go off to war and some of them came back, some didn’t, and worse, some came back to the army base hospital, missing parts. We drank too much, there was too much fooling around with spouses not one’s own, and the war dragged on with no end in sight.
So, there I was, a kid from Boston living in a trailer park with a wife whose accent and outlook made her incomprehensible half the time, and I had a few years to go in the army, and guys around me were getting their second and even third sets of orders for ’Nam. Don’t think I didn’t miss Peggy and Boston, and my friends and family. Especially when Patty would turn on the country western station, and I had to listen to songs titled “Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth ’Cause I’m Kissing You Goodbye.” Or “How Can I Miss You if You Won’t Go Away?”
Mom and Pop and my brothers had not yet had the pleasure of meeting the new Mrs. Brenner; I kept avoiding a trip north, or them coming south.
I never thought I’d see Whispering Pines Trailer Park again, but I did, last summer, when I was on undercover assignment at Fort Hadley investigating the arms deal case that turned into the case of the general’s daughter. I could have lived anywhere while undercover, but I chose Whispering Pines, which by that time was nearly deserted and filled with ghosts.