Dragon Apparent, page 18
By the time we reached the village it was deserted. There was a single woman left alone, sifting herbs outside her hut, but she paid not the slightest attention to us. Three of our party of four were armed, and we wondered whether the sudden appearance of armed men in their midst had caused the villagers to disappear like this. At the other end of the village we found more signs of life. Two men were at work making coupe-coupes in a primitive forge, while a boy worked the bellows made from two thick sections of bamboo, filled with wooden pistons. These also ignored us, but one of the men suddenly got up, with face averted, and went away towards the entrance to the village. The Vice-Mayor suspected that he might be going to organise an ambush in case we committed any hostile action. He thought that it was best to act in a natural and unconcerned way, so we picked up various half-finished coupe-coupes and put them down again, and wanted to take an interest in the woman’s occupation, but she had gone. The Judge rather overdid his nonchalance – much to the alarm of the Rhadés chauffeur – by fingering the ornaments on one of the sacrificial masts. The Rhadés chauffeur who only knew a few words of French, said he could not speak the local dialect. The village he said was forbidden and we must go immediately. He could give no explanation for this opinion and when questioned drained his face of intelligence and took refuge in ‘Moi pas connaisse’.
There was something a little sinister about this village that was deserted even by the domestic animals. No sooner had we left the forge than it became silent. The imagination, too, was affected by the framework supporting buffalo skulls, flanked by two Easter Island figures that had been stained by sacrificial blood. As we reached the outskirts we heard the slapping of naked feet behind us. The man who had stayed behind in the forge was running after us. He stopped a few paces away and bowing his head respectfully took his right elbow in his left palm and came forward to touch hands with each of us in turn. He was the chief, we found, and seeing that we intended no harm he had had an attack of bad conscience at his shocking breach of good manners in letting us go like that. Now, said the chauffeur, who had suddenly recovered his wits, he had come to invite us back to the village to broach a jar of alcohol with him.
CHAPTER 12
Cholon and Cochin-China
AIR FRANCE PLANES from Dalat were booked up three weeks ahead. By what I thought at the time was a miracle I got a seat on a plane run by a small company, without any delay. It turned out later that there was not much demand for this plane as the company had had one or two crashes on the run. There was not much hope of a successful forced landing in those jungles.
While waiting to take off, I chatted with a fellow passenger, a Vietnamese student, who wanted to know what I was doing in the country. I told him, and the conversation immediately took a political turn. Which Vietnamese intellectuals had I met? I confessed that I had met none. The student didn’t see how I could form any objective opinion of the conditions of his country when the only opinions I listened to were those of French colonialists. This reasonable point of view had already occurred to me and I said that the chief reason why I had made no contacts among the Vietnamese was that, judging from their manner, they would be difficult to approach. The student said that this was natural enough, as I would be taken for a Frenchman. He persisted so strongly that I should meet certain intellectuals that I was sure that he was about to suggest how this could be done when the plane took off. We were seated on loose camp-stools and as soon as the plane began to lurch in the hot air-currents we were thrown about rather badly. My friend, who was flying for the first time, was violently ill and I did not have the chance of speaking to him again.
Saigon was as rumbustious as ever, with lorries full of Algerians patrolling the streets and the cafés full of German legionnaires. I dined at a Chinese restaurant on the main road to Cholon. This was outside the European quarter and I enjoyed the district because of the turbulent processes of living that went on all round me. Although I noticed in my newspaper that this restaurant advertised itself as having an Emplacement discret, the walls were much scarred from a bomb which had been thrown in it the previous night. Perhaps for this reason it was crowded, in deference to the theory that two shells do not burst in the same crater. The waiter said that they hoped to have a wire-grille fitted by the next day, which would keep the grenades out. Their little incident had only contributed two casualties to the grand total of seventeen for the night. But a colleague had been one of the unfortunate pair. His condition, said my waiter, was very grave, and, curiously enough, all this had been foretold by the resident fortune-teller, who I now observed to be approaching my table carrying the tools of his trade and smiling in anticipation of the grisly predictions he would unfold for suitable payment.
I had happened to read that a Vietnamese nationalist newspaper had been suppressed and this gave me an idea. Next day I called at the paper’s office and asked to see the editor. He was not there. When would he come? Nobody knew. Well, would he ever come? I was trying to pin down one of the blank-faced employees to commit himself to a definite statement, but, without knowing it, I was a beginner engaging in verbal ju-jitsu with masters of the art, whose forbears for several generations had schooled themselves to meet force with evasion. Too much directness on my part only produced a ‘pas connaisse’, and while still trying to talk my way out of this fog of non-cooperation I found myself manoeuvred out into the street. A Vietnamese was walking on either side but in a casual and noncommittal manner, as if they were going somewhere on their own account and they happened by chance to find themselves walking at the same speed as myself. Refusing to talk anything but the pidgin French which allowed for the maximum of misunderstanding, they suggested that I might like to disclose, without reserve, the full nature of my business with the editor. There was nothing for it but to tell them. Others joined them, friends it seemed, particles broken haphazardly from the great, anonymous crowd, and I was invited to repeat my story. While we strolled thus, separated continually by boys on bicycles, beggars, animals and children playing with toys, the thing was considered and at last – it was hinted at, rather than announced – I gathered that if I called back that afternoon I might, or might not, see someone who would interest me.
I was naturally not surprised when I returned that no one I recognised was there. The faces of that morning were not to be seen, and when I called across the counter to one of the much-abstracted clerks, I got the ‘pas connaisse’ that I expected. There was a flight of stairs at the end of the room and I went up them into a first-floor room. A young man came out from behind a partition, and said in English, with a good accent, ‘Are you the Englishman?’ He wore thick spectacles and had a grave, studious expression. In starting to introduce myself I spoke French, and he asked me, a trifle sharply, to speak English. I told him the reason for my presence in the country and that as until then I had been exposed solely to French propaganda I thought that I should make some attempt to balance this with propaganda from the other side. This remark was not considered funny. With a sternly reproving glance the young man told me that all Vietnamese patriots were members of the Viet-Minh and that if I really wanted to see Vietnam, I should not bother with French-occupied territory but cross the lines to the Democratic Republic. I told him that I should be delighted to do so, if given the opportunity. He then asked to see any documents that might help to establish my bona fides, and I showed him my passport and various letters. The application he said would have to be submitted to the branch of the army of the Viet-Minh which dealt with such matters. He thought that it would take several weeks to get an answer and to make arrangements for ‘crossing over’. I asked whether he thought permission would be granted and he said, yes. He regretted being unable to give me his name and told me that I should be unable to get in touch with him again, but he would find means to contact me when the moment came.
This was the first of such political experiences, and that night the second occurred in the most improbable way.
I had been invited to spend the evening with a French journalist and his Vietnamese mistress. It was evident from the start that it would follow the standard pattern: dinner at the Chalet, followed by an excursion to Cholon for a visit to the gambling casino and one or more of the nightclubs. Cholon is a purely Chinese city, about three miles from Saigon, which it overshadows in almost all activities. For some reason or other it is supposed to be more ‘typically Chinese’ than the great seaports of China itself, and one is told in proof of this that the city shots in some Hollywood epic of life in China were taken in its streets. There is a great, swollen wartime population of perhaps three-quarters of a million, most of whom live wretchedly, and an exceptional proportion of millionaires whose number is continually added to by black-marketeering triumphs arising out of the present war. The Chinese are go-betweens for both sides. They sell food from the rural Viet-Minh areas to the French towns, and the dollars smuggled in from France, which are needed to buy arms, to the Viet-Minh. As they are not affected by causes, either good or evil, they prosper exceedingly.
Cholon capitalises, to some extent, its exotic attraction for Europeans, but this is offset by the necessity at the same time to provide titillation for the rich Chinese, who form the bulk of the patrons at the places of amusement. The result is an astonishing pastiche. Our first visit on this particular occasion was to the ‘Van Canh Nightspot’, at which a certain Ramona was billed to appear each evening, ‘dans ses danses exotiques’. The band was Philippine and played with great feeling such revived classics as ‘September in the Rain’. Ramona, who was stated to be ‘direct from Mexico City’ but who, I noticed, spoke Italian to her partner, performed a hip-rolling fantasy of her own devising, inspired undoubtedly by the Bosphorus rather than the China Seas. The clientele was composed in the main of elderly Chinese rice-merchants, who danced with Chinese and Vietnamese taxi-girls.
After this, my friend was lured by his girl into the ‘Parc des Attractions’, where she, but not he, was frisked at the entrance for concealed weapons. Like most Vietnamese, she was a victim of the passion for gambling, and by limiting herself each day to a certain sum which she placed on well-known exceptionally lucky combinations, her losses were regular but not disastrous. On this occasion, influenced by her interpretation of a dream, she lost in record time. This was one of Cholon’s two great gambling dens, and here, in a cheerful funfair atmosphere, the wealth of the Vietnamese people, both high and low – since all incomes are catered for – drains steadily away into the coffers of the Chinese, who, of course, are made to pay very dearly by the French authorities for the facilities thus afforded.
We finished up at the ‘Paradis’, and it was here that the amazing circumstance happened. The ‘Paradis’ is favoured by the Chinese, who are attracted by the discreet indirect lighting, which is lowered as often as possible during sentimental numbers. Most of the girls – at least, the Chinese ones – who act as hostesses are supposed to have been sold into glittering servitude by their impoverished parents, and it is a polite convention to refer to this as soon as possible over the champagne, and to press one’s temporary partner for details of this romantic aspect of her past. A celebrated crooner, Wang Sue, was at the microphone, but it was ‘September in the Rain’ again, and while the powerful sing-song voice intoned ‘the leaves of brown came tumbling down’ my friends went off to dance leaving me to the mercy of the ‘taxi-manager’ who arrived with une girl they had secretly ordered for me. (Why has English been chosen as the lingua franca of such pleasures?) The fourth member of our party had the fragile aristocracy of manner of most Vietnamese dance-hostesses. Her features, powdered chalk-white, wore a kind of death-bed composure. She was sheathed in the traditional costume, in this case of white silk, had incredible fingernails, and every hair on her head was, I am quite sure, in place. The only human touch in this total of geisha perfections was a man’s wrist watch which bulked enormously on that lotus-stem wrist.
The two girls were evidently old friends, probably colleagues. They chatted happily, and once, from the oriental, fan-screened glances I intercepted, it seemed that I was the object of their remarks. When the other two got up again, the girl said, ‘You are English aren’t you? Do you think that we Vietnamese are as civilised as the French?’ Somewhat surprised by this first sample of small-talk in a Saigon nightclub, I replied, yes, that I thought they were. From this point on the conversation followed the lines of that with my chance acquaintance on the Dalat plane, although as the circumstances were more favourable, it was carried to a more profitable conclusion. It was through this girl that I was put in touch with the leading Vietnamese revolutionary-nationalists in Saigon.
A message left next day at the hotel invited me to call at a certain address at a certain time. I went there and found that the address given was a luxurious-looking villa. There were several expensive cars outside. A group of Vietnamese, who were at first reluctant to give their names, awaited me. Among them was a prosperous lawyer, a bank director and an ex-member of the Cabinet of the Governor of Cochin-China. All these people were members of the wealthy, land-owning class, and all were wholehearted supporters of the Viet-Minh, which, if, as it is said to be, under communist control, would supposedly dispossess them as soon as it came to power. One of this group was actually known to be a high-ranking member of the Viet-Minh, but was left unmolested in Saigon by the French as providing an unofficial diplomatic contact, which could be used whenever the occasion necessitated.
It would be tedious to describe the conversation that followed, but it may be summed up by saying that these people made it clear that the Vietnamese would never be satisfied with anything less from France than India had obtained from England. The ‘Independence within the French Union’ conceded a year before was described as a bad joke, since it left France’s control of all the key positions unaltered. The publication by the Viet-Minh of a secret report prepared in 1948 by Monsieur Bollaert, the previous High Commissioner, for submission to the Prime Minister, had not helped. A great deal of publicity had been given to the sentence which might be roughly translated, ‘It is my impression that we must make a concession to Vietnam of the term, independence; but I am convinced that this word need never be interpreted in any light other than that of a religious verbalism.’
And that was how it worked out in practice, my informants said. To take the example of the police force. A great show had been made of turning over to the Vietnamese of the Sureté headquarters in the Rue Catinat. But all the French had actually done was to leave the incoming officials an empty building and open up themselves again at another address under the title of Sureté Fédérale. As the Sureté Fédérale had kept all the archives, the Vietnamese organisation was disabled from the start. Then again, French troops would be withdrawn from Vietnamese soil, but, somewhat vaguely, ‘when the opportune moment arrives’. And, of course, extra-territorial rights were retained, by which persons other than Vietnamese nationals were tried in mixed courts presided over by a French judge. This meant that Cambodians and Laotians, as well as French, were not subject in Vietnam to Vietnamese law, while all matters relating to security came before a French Military tribunal.
Thus, I was informed, was independence interpreted. But there were other and more sinister French manoeuvres which envisaged the possibility of the Vietnamese independence becoming real and took steps accordingly. Certain districts such as the Hauts Plateaux and the areas occupied by various tribal groups in Tonkin had been declared racial minority zones and separated entirely from Vietnam. And now, at the assembly of the Union Française the Cambodians, who had never raised their voices before, had been worked upon to demand the return of their old provinces in Cochin-China as well as legal right of access to the port of Saigon. Militant religious sects as Cao-Daïsm and the Hoa-Hao, originally banned by the King of Cambodia and the Emperor of Annam, had been encouraged as potential separatists and aided in the formation of private armies. In this way, Vietnam, even fully independent, would be weakened in every possible way.
And now after this revelation of rankling injustices and huge scale political manipulations, a curious complaint was made, the cri du coeur of the Asiatic’s injured ego, a single comparatively insignificant fact, but significantly disclosed at the end of the list of oppressions: the French were as insultingly exclusive as ever – ‘the cercle sportif does not admit Vietnamese’. Perhaps, if the French – and the English – had been gentler with their colonial subjects’ amour-propre in the matter of such things as club memberships, their position in the Far East might have been a lot less precarious than it is.
* * *
Planes to Laos were infrequent and the earliest seat I could get was for a fortnight later. In the meanwhile, a French acquaintance, who was trying to sell British Land Rover cars to the Cambodian army, mentioned that he was sending a sample car to the army headquarters at Phnom Penh and asked if I would like to go with it. I accepted the offer, with great pleasure, especially as my friend would be making the journey by plane and suggested that we might spend a few days together in Cambodia. He had lived for several years in the country and knew it as well as any European could.
There were four days to spare before the car went to Cambodia and I filled in this time by going on one of the more-or-less standard excursions round the re-conquered part of Cochin-China arranged for foreign correspondents by the French army. These trips could be quite exciting if one ran into action, and this made the French a little chary about them, because sometimes correspondents saw more than they were supposed to see, and sent back a batch of unfavourable telegrams. Bob Miller, of the United Press, for instance, was in an armoured barge going up a canal at ten o’clock one night when three sampans were picked up ahead by the searchlight. Two of them failed to stop and were riddled by machine-gun fire. The third gave up and three peasants – an old couple and their son – were brought aboard. They were carrying rice; travelling by night, probably to avoid the exactions of local officials. Their cargo was tipped into the water. The boy, who tried to escape by jumping over the side, was killed by a hand-grenade thrown in after him. The officer in command was exceedingly young, charming and cooperative. He was convinced that the peasants had not been partisans of the Viet-Minh, but they had broken the curfew regulations, and what followed was the logic of warfare. In a country where they were enormously outnumbered by a hostile populace, it was only by making people understand that breaches of regulations would be punished with extreme severity that they could hope to keep the upper hand. But this kind of logic is apt not to be so apparent to non-combatants, including newspaper men, who sometimes protest that it was the attitude of the Nazis in occupied countries.
