We hurried along the platform, and Susan said, “Car 9. That’s at the far end, of course.”
My watch said 10:12, and the conductor was calling all aboard in Vietnamese, which could have been funny if I was in a better mood.
We got to Car 9, and I hefted my suitcase on board, then jumped on and pulled Susan up after me. We stood there in the end vestibule compartment, and I was huffing, puffing, and sweating.
The conductor gave the last all-aboard, the doors closed, and the train started to move. We stood there and looked at each other as the train began gaining speed, moving away from the station.
I asked, “How much do I owe you for the ticket?”
She smiled. “We’ll settle later.”
I said, “I really didn’t see this coming.”
“Of course, you did. You’re a spy. You saw that I wasn’t dressed for the office. I held the tickets. I already called the consulate. I stopped mentioning that I wanted to go with you. I came to the station. I held a taxi with your luggage in the trunk — along with mine. So what was your first clue?”
“All of the above, I guess.”
“So, stop acting surprised.”
“Right.”
“Do you want me along?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll only stay in Nha Trang a few days, then I’m going back to Saigon.”
“Did you get a hotel?”
“No, we’ll find that hotel you stayed at on your R&R — if it’s still standing.”
I looked through the window of the vestibule door and saw that the coach was packed with people, luggage, crates, and just about everything except farm animals. I said, “We may be better off standing.”
She said, “It’s five or six hours to Nha Trang. We’ll buy two seats.”
The train was passing through the northern outskirts of Saigon, and I saw a jet fighter, a Russian-made MiG, coming in to land at what must have been Bien Hoa Airbase, my former home away from home.
A conductor came into the small vestibule, and Susan and he spoke. She counted out twelve singles, and he left. She said to me, “He’ll do the deal. He keeps the change.”
The tracks swung east now, toward the coast, and the Saigon sprawl rolled on with the train. I could see houses that were little more than shacks, and I remembered these from 1972, when almost a million refugees from the countryside had crowded into the relative safety of Saigon.
Susan said to me, “I really love the beach. Do you have a bathing suit?”
“Yes. Bathing suits in your luggage look touristy to government snoops going through your things.”
“You spies are really clever.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“That’s right.” She smiled. “I packed light, as you can see. Just a few days. I brought my swimsuit. The beach is supposed to be magnificent.”
“Is the beach topless?”
She smiled. “Always thinking. No, you can’t do that here. They go nuts. But at Vung Tau there are secluded spots where the French go to swim and sunbathe in the nude. But if you get caught by the local fuzz, you’ve got a problem.”
“Did you ever get caught?”
“I never went topless or nude. I’d love to, but I’m a resident, so I can’t claim ignorance.” She asked, “So you had an R&R in Nha Trang?”
“Yes. May 1968. The weather was good.”
“I thought you went someplace out of the country for R&R.”
“There were three-day in-country R&Rs available to people who did something to deserve it.”
“I see. And what did you do to deserve an in-country R&R?”
“I invented a new recipe for chili.”
She didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “I hope in the next few days you’ll feel comfortable enough to tell me about your experiences here.”
I replied, “And maybe you’ll tell me why you’re here and why you stay.”
She didn’t reply.
The train moved on, east across the Saigon River, through a landscape of rice paddies and villages.
I looked at Susan and saw that she was looking at me. We both smiled. She said, “What would you have done without me?”
I replied, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out after you go back to Saigon.”
She said, “After three days with me, you’ll be good to go.”
“After three days with you, I’ll need a three-day R&R.”
She smiled. “You keep up pretty good for an old guy. Do you swim?”
“Like a fish.”
“Hike?”
“Like a mountain goat.”
“Dance?”
“Like John Travolta.”
“Snore?”
I smiled.
She said, “Sorry. Just teasing.”
The train moved on, away from old Saigon, away from the new Ho Chi Minh City, north toward Nha Trang, and back to May 1968.
BOOK III
Nha Trang
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The conductor led us through the crowded coach to seats vacated by two young Viet guys. I threw my suitcase on the overhead luggage rack, then sat with my overnight bag stuffed under my seat. Susan sat beside me on the aisle and squeezed her backpack under her legs.
The seat was wood, and it had enough legroom for an amputee. The width was okay for the two of us, but almost all the other seats had three people sitting in them, plus babies and kids riding laps.
We were on the right, so we’d have a view of the South China Sea at some point as we traveled north. There was no air-conditioning, but a few of the windows were open, and small fans mounted in the corners kept the cigarette smoke circulating.
I said, “Maybe we should have taken a car and driver.”
“Highway One can be a problem. Also, this is a good experience for you.”
“Thanks for your interest in my character development.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
I asked her, “What is the fascination here for all these young backpackers?”
“Well, Vietnam is cheap. Then you have sex and drugs. That’s pretty fascinating.”
“Right.”
“Kids talk to one another via e-mail, and this has become a hot place.”
“It was pretty hot when I was here.” I added, “It just seems a little incongruous for a totalitarian state to be so attractive to all these young tourists.”
“They don’t think like you do. Half of them don’t know this place is run by Communists, and the other half don’t care. You care. That’s your generation. That was your big boogeyman. These kids are into world peace through pot. International understanding through intercourse.”
“And your generation? What’s your take on Vietnam?”
“Money.”
“Do you ever feel that there’s something missing in your life? Like something to believe in or to live for beyond yourself?”
“That sounds like an antagonistic question, though maybe I need to think more about that.” She added, “We live in incredibly dull times. I think I would like to have been a college student in the Sixties. But I wasn’t. So, a lot of this emptiness and shallowness is not my fault, or the fault of my generation.”
“Do the times make the generation, or does the generation make the times?”
“I have a hangover. Can we make idle chitchat?”
We chatted about the landscape.
A cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the hot, humid air, and the rail felt as though it had been torn up by the Viet Cong and never repaired. How bad could Highway One be?
About sixty kilometers out of Saigon, the train made its first stop at a place called Xuan Loc, which I knew had been the location of the Black Horse Base Camp, headquarters of the Eleventh Armored Cavalry. I said to Susan, “The gentleman called K, whom we communicated with in your office, was stationed here in ’68.”