We walked into this big Gothic monster that could have been in France, except that I noticed that the place was decorated with blossoms and kumquat trees for the Tet holiday, which I vaguely recalled that even the Catholics celebrated here.
As I was looking up at the vaulted ceiling, Susan said, “Are you afraid it might fall on you?”
“I told you I needed a helmet.”
We walked up the center aisle. The place was cool and dark and about half full. We sat in a pew toward the front. Susan said, “There’s a chance Bill may show up. I spoke to him last night.”
“Was he happy that you got home after midnight?”
“He’s not the jealous type, and there’s nothing to be jealous of.” She added, “If he seems a bit unfriendly, that’s just his manner.”
“Right. Look, why don’t I go back to the hotel after mass?”
“Shhh. It’s starting.”
The organ cranked up, and the processional started up the aisle. The priest and all the altar boys and everyone else in the processional was a Viet, except the man on the processional cross who was Jewish. It’s all pretty amazing, if you think about it.
Anyway, the mass started, and Father Tuan’s English was something else. I think I would have understood the French better. Like the mass, the hymns were in English, and I discovered that Susan had a beautiful singing voice. I faked the hymns, though I can really belt out “The Rose of Tralee” when I’m drunk.
The sermon had to do with sins of the flesh and the many temptations in the city. Then there was something about the souls of the impoverished girls who sold their bodies, and so forth. The priest made the point that without sinners, there’d be no sin—no opium, no prostitution, gambling, pornography, and massage parlors.
I had the impression he was looking at me. I started feeling like a character in a Graham Greene novel, sweating in some godforsaken tropical climate, wracked with Catholic guilt over some sexual transgression, which, in the final analysis, was not that big a deal.
Anyway, the mass went on for an hour and five minutes, though I wasn’t timing it.
The organ cranked up again, and the recessional moved out. I followed down the center aisle and lost Susan somewhere.
I stood near her motor scooter, out in the sunlight of the square. I actually felt good about having gone to church.
I saw Susan at the bottom of the steps where Father Tuan and a lot of parishioners were chatting.
Maybe there was something to this expat thing. I mean, if you’re expatting in London, Paris, or Rome, it’s no big deal. You have to pick some totally fucked up place like this where you’re six inches taller and ten shades lighter than everyone, and where you stand out like a sore thumb; and if that thumb is in the eye of the local government, so much the better. And all the other pale round-eyes were your friends, and you got together for cocktails and bitched about the country. People back home thought you were cool, and they were secretly envious of you, and you celebrated American holidays that back home were just a three-day weekend and a sale at the shopping mall. You even voted, for a change, with absentee ballots.
Of course, there was the other type of expat, people who hated their own countries, and there were also those who were running away from something or someone, and those who were running away from themselves.
Susan, by her own admission, fell into the category of expat who thought it was neat to be an American in a place where she stood out, where her family and peers back home had to use a different and actually unknown standard to judge her success and her life.
Well, I didn’t want to be too cynical or analytical, especially since I liked Susan, and she was self-aware enough to figure herself out.
Susan walked toward me, accompanied by a man of about her age. He wore a light, tropical sport jacket, wasn’t bad looking, tall and very thin, with sandy-colored hair. He looked like a Princeton man, so it must be Bill.
Susan stopped and said to me, “Paul, this is my friend, Bill Stanley. Bill, this is Paul Brenner.”
We shook hands, but neither of us voiced a greeting.
Susan picked up the ball and said to Bill, “Paul was here in ’68 and . . . when?”
“Seventy-two.”
“Yes. It must have been very different then,” she prompted.
“It was.”
Susan said to me, “I was just telling Bill that you had some problems at the airport.”
I didn’t reply.
Susan then said to Bill, “I think Jim Chapman might be around this weekend. I’ll call him at home.” She said to me, “He’s with the new consulate delegation. Friend of Bill’s.”
Bill didn’t have much to say about that, and neither did I.
This conversation was not approaching liftoff, so I said, “I think I’ll go back to the hotel and make some inquiries from there. Susan, thanks for accompanying me to church. I never like to miss mass when I travel. Bill, great meeting you.” I turned and left.
I have a good sense of direction, and within fifteen minutes, I was back on Le Loi Street, and the hotel was in front of me. I noticed I wasn’t sweating as much as yesterday, so I must be acclimating.
I heard a motor scooter behind me on the sidewalk, and I moved to the right. She pulled up next to me and said, “Get on.”
“Susan—”
“Get on.”
I got on.
She gunned it, and we jumped the curb onto the street.
We didn’t speak, and she was tearing up and down the streets, making sharp unexpected turns. She called out, “It’s fun to open it up on Sunday when the streets are clear.”
The streets looked pretty crowded to me.
Susan took her cell phone out of her fanny pack and handed it to me. She shouted, “Give it to me if you hear it ring. Or vibrate. It’s got a vibrator.”
Having just come from church, I resisted an off-color remark and put the phone in my shirt pocket.
Her cell phone rang and vibrated, and I handed it to her. She held it to her ear with her left hand while she steered with her right hand on the throttle. If we had to make a sudden stop, she wouldn’t be able to squeeze the front brake grip, but that didn’t seem to bother her or any of the other scooter drivers with cell phones.
She was obviously speaking to Bill, or listening to Bill—she wasn’t saying much. Finally she said loudly, “I can’t hear you. I’ll call you tonight.” She listened and said, “I don’t know what time.” She hit the end button and handed the phone back to me. “You answer it if it rings again.”
I put the flip phone back in my shirt pocket.
She continued her death-defying motor scooter run, which was actually, of course, just her venting a little anger at Bill. But I wasn’t angry at Bill, and there was no reason for me to get splattered across the pavement. “Susan, slow down.”
“No backseat driving.”
A cop was standing in a traffic circle, and he held up his hand as we approached. Susan swerved around him and when I looked back over my shoulder, the cop was flapping his arms and shouting. I said to her, “You almost ran over that cop.”
“You stop, you get a ticket for something, and it costs you two dollars on the spot.” She added, “Also, it could be a major hassle because you don’t have any ID.”
“What if he got your license plate number?”
“I was going too fast. But next time, put your hand over the plate.”
“What next time?”
“I have an NN plate. That’s the prefix on the plate, and it tells them I’m a foreign resident—nguoi nuoc ngoia. Foreigner, and not a tourist. The tourists get hit with a ten-dollar fine because they think that’s cheap, and they’re frightened anyway. It’s not the money, it’s the principle.”
“I think you’ve been here too long.”
“Maybe.”
We approached the fenced-in gardens that held Reunification Palace, formerly the home of the South Vietnamese presidents, when it was called Independence Pala
ce. I remembered this place from ’72, and then I saw it again in April of 1975 on television in the now famous videotape of a Communist tank breaking through the massive wrought iron gates.
We turned into a side street and drove through a gate into the grounds of the presidential palace, then pulled into a small parking lot and dismounted. Susan chained the motor scooter to a bike rack and took off her sunglasses. She said, “I thought you’d like to see the old presidential palace.”
“Are we expected?”
“It’s open to the public.”
She opened one of her saddlebags and took out a camera and slung it over her shoulder. She said, “I can guarantee you we weren’t followed, but if they radioed ahead or something, and they know you’re here, then you’re just sightseeing with some local chick who you picked up somewhere. Right?”
“Let me worry about my cover.”
“I’m here to help. Plus, I like showing out-of-towners around. Follow me.”
We walked on a garden path around the palace and came to the front of the big building, which was not a traditional ornate palace, but a precast concrete structure whose architecture can be described as tropical modern mortar-proof. About a hundred meters across a wide lawn were the wrought iron gates, now looking in better shape than when the North Vietnamese tank crashed through them. In fact, to the left side of the gates was a big Russian T-59 tank sitting on a concrete platform, and I assumed this was the tank.
Susan asked me, “Do you know what this place is?”
“I do. Is that the tank?”
“It is. I was very young when all this happened, but I’ve seen the videotape. You can see it inside for a dollar.”
“I saw it on TV when it happened.”
I noticed a lot of Westerners around the tank taking photos. But unlike the rusting American tank in the war crimes museum, this Russian-made tank was chained off, with flags all around it. This was a very important tank.
She said, “I’ve taken a lot of Americans here, including my parents, and I’ve memorized the guide’s tour. You want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“Follow me.” We climbed the palace steps and stood at the top. She said, “So, it’s April 30, 1975, and the Communists have entered Saigon. That tank is barreling up Le Duan Street and bursts through those gates. It continues on across the lawn and stops right here in front of the palace. That’s what you saw on the videotape, taken by a photojournalist who happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
She continued, “A minute or so later, a truck comes through the gates, drives across the lawn, and stops near the tank. A North Vietnamese officer jumps out and walks up these steps. Okay, standing right here is General Minh, who had become President of South Vietnam about forty-eight hours earlier, after President Thieu beat it. Minh is surrounded by his new cabinet, and they’re probably very nervous, wondering if they’re going to be shot on the spot. The Communist officer climbs the steps, and Minh says, ‘I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you.’ The Communist officer replies, ‘You cannot give up what you do not have.’ End of story, end of war, end of South Vietnam.”
And, I thought, End of Nightmare. When I saw the tank bursting through the gates on television, I recalled feeling that all those American lives that had been lost trying to defend South Vietnam had been wasted.
I tried to remember what happened to General Minh, but like everyone else in America, after April 30, 1975, I turned off the Vietnam Show.
She asked me, “Do you want a picture of you with the tank in the background?”
“No.”
Near the front doors of the palace was a ticket booth, and in English, a sign said Foreigner: four dollar—Vietnamese: free.
Susan had an argument with the guy in the booth, and I guessed it was the principle and not the money.
I said to her, “Tell them I want a senior citizen’s discount.”
“Today is on me,” she said.
Finally, they settled on six dollars, we each got a paper ticket, and went inside.
She said, “Shut off the phone. They go nuts if a cell phone rings in one of their shrines.”
The palace wasn’t air-conditioned, but it was cooler than out in the sun. We walked into the big, ornate reception hall, and through the massive four-story palace. The place looked better inside than it did outside, and the modern architecture had an open, airy feeling. Most of the furnishings were time capsule Sixties Western modern, but there were a lot of traditional Vietnamese touches, including a collection of severed elephant feet.
There were a large number of people touring the palace, mostly Americans, if I went by the number of shorts. Each section of the palace had a Vietnamese guide, who kept telling Susan in English to stay with the group. Susan would reply in Vietnamese, and there’d be a little argument, which Susan always won.
She really pushed the envelope, and I guess this was part of her persona; she wanted to be recognized as an American, but not as a tourist. Also, she was a bit of a bitch, to be truthful. I think Bill would back me on that.
We went up to the roof of the palace where dozens of tourists stood around taking photos of the city. It was a nice view, except for the pall of smog. A female Vietnamese guide stood on a helipad next to an old American Huey helicopter, and said in English, “This is where the American puppet and number one criminal President Thieu and his family and friends get on helicopter and fly away to American warship as the victorious People’s Army approach Saigon.”
The rooftop helipad was a good place to smoke, and Susan lit up. She said, “I’ve learned a lot of history since I’ve been here. It’s interesting to be with someone who actually lived some of this.”
“Are you suggesting that I’m a relic?”
She seemed a little embarrassed for a change and said, “No, I just mean . . . well, you were probably very young when you were here.” She smiled. “You’re still young.”
In fact, Cynthia and Susan were about the same age, so I guess I was still in the game. It must be my immature personality that fooled women.
Susan finished her cigarette, and we went back into the palace. On the second floor, we entered the presidential receiving room. Susan gave the guard a dollar and said to me, “You can sit in the president’s chair. I’ll take a picture of you.”
I really don’t like my picture taken when I’m on assignment, and I said, “That’s all right—”
“I already paid a buck. Sit.”
So, I sat in the silly chair of the former president of South Vietnam, and Susan took a photo. This was too much fun, and I said, “Have we seen it all?”
“No, I’ve saved the best for last. Follow me.”
We went down several staircases into a dimly lit hallway off of which were many doors. Susan said, “This was the air raid shelter, and also the war rooms.”
She led me into a big room that was lit with old fluorescent fixtures. We seemed to be the only people there. The walls were cheap luan mahogany plywood, the kind of stuff Americans once used to finish basement rec rooms.
On the walls were dozens of maps of South Vietnam in various scales, maps of the individual provinces, and some closer detailed maps of towns and cities. On all the maps were colored symbols showing the locations of American, South Vietnamese, and enemy military units deployed around the country.
The maps were dated, and some of them went back to the Tet Offensive of January and February 1968, and I saw the location of my infantry battalion, marked by a pin with a flag, outside Quang Tri City, which was eerie. Some maps were dated April 1972, the time of the Easter Offensive, which I was also here for.
Susan asked me, “Does this interest you?”
“It does.”
“Show me where you were stationed.”
I showed her my little flag outside of Quang Tri City. “This was my base camp in 1968, called LZ Sharon.”
She said, “LZ is Landing Zone—another vet told me tha
t, and all the camps were named after women.”
“Most, but not all.” I showed her another pin. “This was LZ Betty, which was actually an old French fort, also outside Quang Tri City. That was brigade Headquarters, where the colonel lived.”
“Are you going to visit these places?”
“Maybe.”
“I think you should. And where were you in ’72?”
“Bien Hoa. Right outside Saigon. You must know it.”
“Sure. But I didn’t know it was an American base.”
One map was dated April 1975. I can still read military symbols, and I recognized the positions of the South Vietnamese forces and the progression of the North Vietnamese army, represented by red arrows, as they swept over the country. It appeared that at some point, no one bothered to make any further marks, or move any more pins on the map. Whoever kept the map updated must have realized that the end had come.
You could hear the ghosts if you listened, and if you had a good imagination, you could picture the military men and politicians here each and every day and night through the month of April 1975, as it became clear that the red arrows on the map were not abstract, but were hundreds of thousands of enemy troops and tanks, coming toward Saigon—toward them.
We looked around the underground war rooms: conference rooms, a communications room with vintage radios and telephones, a nicely furnished bedroom and sitting room for the president, and so forth, all frozen in time.
We left the underground war rooms and went outside into the sunlight, behind the palace, where President Thieu’s old Mercedes-Benz still sat; another piece of frozen time that made this place eerie.
We walked through the gardens of the former presidential palace, which were quite nice.
She asked me, “Was that all right?”
“Interesting. Thank you.”
“I’m never sure what people want to see, but as a vet, I thought you’d appreciate that little piece of history. I have a few more places in the standard tour, then you get to pick.”
“You really don’t have to show me around Saigon.”