“We are only seeking to liberate our country, to do what you did during your own Revolution.” He studied me with his thin lips, his Asian brow only slightly furled. His dark eyes emanated the seriousness of his mission. “We want to unite our country and bring freedom and dignity to all Vietnamese. The Saigon regime is corrupt, and you know it. It’s merely a puppet power in the hands of ruthless thugs, doing what your government bids because you want to be all powerful. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you let us establish our own form of government, run by ourselves, even if it is a Communist one?” He seemed to relax. Having delivered the memorized essentials of his speech, he smiled widely and awaited my reply
“I guess that last point is why,” I said, without blinking. “We’re afraid of the Soviet Union, its Eastern Block countries, and Red China. Your system promotes insurgencies and wars of revolution, murder, and chaos wherever Communism goes. It forbids freedom of thought and expression. It enslaves poor classes and lowers the standard of living, rather than raising it. Like in Cuba and Central America and East Germany. Or Poland and Hungary.”
A slight twinge of color darkened his high cheekbones. “We are not Cuba, or East Germany. We are Asians. Proud and with a long history and culture of our own. We fear China, ourselves.” There was a touch of remorse in his voice, but no anger. Pride, yes, and perhaps a smidgen of desperation, but not anger. “Vietnamese have a right to determine their own destiny. We wish you no harm. I hate it that we have to kill your soldiers and they kill ours. Already I have lost my wife, my mother, two brothers, and a sister. My two children live with my father in a village north of Hue. They have known nothing but machine gun fire, grenades, mortar rounds, hunger, and, everywhere, death. You can at least understand that.”
He tried to smile, putting the best face forward he could with respect to his country’s war and his own miseries and personal anger, over which he continued to exercise enormous control.
“Do you do this every day?”
“Yes. My government is sacrificing dearly for me to be here. I want to be at home, with my children, and with my comrades at war. I bear you no animosity, nor enmity. You must surely know that.”
“Nor I you. I long for this war to end, too. It’s destroying us, as well.”
“I’m due to go home in eight more weeks. I will rejoin my unit, and we will have to kill more Americans and some of our countrymen. Revolutions are never clean. Both sides suffer.”
“I hope you survive. I hope your children will grow into adulthood, marry, have families, and die in their homes in peace.”
He struggled to his feet, re-slung his pouch, and extended his hand. I realized he had a war wound of some kind by the way he favored one side. I rose with him, accepted his hand, and shook it firmly.
“Salut, mon ami,” he smiled. “Perhaps we shall both live to see peace.”
“Would that that might come to pass.”
“You would like Viet Nam. Perhaps one day, you will come and visit it.”
“That would be nice.”
“Adieu!” he said, holding his head erect with dignity.
“Au-voir, to you, too,” I bowed slightly, as I shook his hand a second time.
He walked slowly past the monument, the surrounding tall plants, and was gone.
After dinner, I retired to my room to resume reading Sullivan’s chapter on the Minotaur. I had left the windows open; a light breeze stirred the long yellowed muslin curtains where I had pulled them aside. The room’s warm air felt muggy, but it was comfortable enough to sit at the long cherry table and look toward the window. The glow of neon signs and the evening sheen of the deepening spring night filled the skyline with muted shadows that pulsated red, green, and purple.
What should I do the coming day? Perhaps translate more Pascal, or attempt some verses of Baudelaire. I had scarcely begun to ponder the possibilities, when a faint rap sounded at the door. Was it a knock or not? I heard it again, ever so timidly and softly.
“Yes? Is someone there?”
I went to the door and opened it. It was the British girl. Her hands were trembling and her face appeared pasty.
“I am so embarrassed, but I think someone’s hiding in my room. I was sitting in the room, reading, when I heard a noise behind the drapes.” The dark pupils of her eyes loomed wide open. Her lips had turned pale, almost dark blue.
“I’ll come down right now,” I said, with a smile.
“Number eighteen!” she referred to her room’s number.
“Sure.” I followed her to the end of the hall and slightly to the right, down another wing. “I didn’t realize this floor was so long.”
“And spooky,” she added, “when the lights go out.”
“Is it unlocked?”
“Yes.”
I eased the door open and entered the room. The rush of air from the hallway caused the drapes to balloon outwards. No outline of anyone or anything appeared behind them.
“I’ll check your armoire and under your bed.”
The armoire was latched; no one was inside. I ran my hands between her hanging garments. “Sorry,” I blushed.
“Oh, no! That’s quite all right. I’ll check under the bed.”
While she bent down to complete her own inspection, I walked to the windows and pulled back the drapes, along with their frail dusty curtains. I leaned forward and stared out, first to the left and then to the right of her room’s tiny balcony and down to a narrow street below. I realized that her room was on the same side of the hall as mine, but it looked down into an alleyway rather than into the busy rue that I was accustomed to viewing. “I’m not certain I would leave these unlocked.” I hated to frighten her, but anyone could make his way up the building and enter this side of the rooms. Then, of course, the noise she heard might have been the breeze, or a puff of wind in the drapes. I looked again into the black pit of the alleyway. Only someone desperate or mad would attempt such an entry.
“I’ve never once been afraid, till now. Please sit down and have a glass of wine with me. I’m still very jittery.”
“I guess we all are, since the murder across the street.”
“Yes,” she mumbled, attempting to smile.
In all the time that I had been at the pension, I had paid her but scant attention. She rarely showed for breakfast, and generally came in late at dinner. I couldn’t help but return her smile. “I would love to sit down and have that glass of wine.”
“Thank God! Incidentally, I’m Christine. Christine Cunningham. What’s your name? What do you do?” she asked. “What brings you here?”
“Clayton Rogers Clarke. I’m a professor of humanities on sabbatical. An aficionado of French history, philosophy, and literature. What about yourself?”
From somewhere in the bottom of her armoire she produced a bottle of red wine and several glasses. She poured me half a glass and herself as much. We scooted the room’s two fragile wooden chairs up to the table and sat down.
“I teach French in a little school northwest of London. I’m attending the Institut Français. I used to be a jeweler. Not really,” she smiled. “But I clerked for this chap who trafficked in diamonds, gems, and silver. He made pendants, lockets, bracelets—you name it. My favorite gems were garnets and rubies. One morning, he discovered his shop’s back door lock broken. The thieves had made off with everything. I was dating a somewhat brawlsome, rugged Welshman at the time. Clarence, the owner, accused me of tipping the guy off, and being an accomplice in the heist. I tell you, I had nothing to do with it, and I told him as much, too. The bobbies