Part 14 (1/2)

In his turn Joseph, anxious not to offend again, was careful to remain at a distance behind her as he wandered through the gardens and palaces. He too pretended to study the treasures of the tomb with care, but the motionless rows of life-sized mandarins and elephants carved from white stone drifted almost unseen past his eyes and the sculpted dragons and other mythological beasts entwined in the roofs and bal.u.s.trades in reality received little more than a pa.s.sing glance from him. As he followed her slowly across the lake towards the tree-covered tumulus known as the Mount of the Sun, the antique, weather-mellowed dwelling places of the imperial spirits remained beyond the real focus of his vision; to him the splendid pavilions were merely a sublime backdrop for the lithe, living figure moving beguilingly ahead of him, her long mane of hair flowing darkly down her back. In one of the shadowy temples when she thought she was un.o.bserved, she knelt briefly before an altar in prayer, and coming in sight of her suddenly from the garden, his heart lurched inside him; with her head bowed over her hands, her kneeling figure seemed to radiate simple piety and goodness, and in that instant he knew he loved her.

The realization made him tremble inwardly, and he wanted desperately to rush to her side and tell her of his feelings. But remembering the startled, uneasy expression in her eyes minutes before, he fought down the impulse and waited out of sight until she rose to her feet again. Then he moved quietly to her side, feeling a new sense of pleasure in their closeness, and together they viewed Minh Mang's most intimate possessions - his great teak bed with its long pillow of decorated porcelain, his favorite jewels and weapons, the altars on which every morning fresh dishes of his favorite foods and beverages were set out by tomb guardians. They didn't speak again until they were standing outside in the Garden of Eternity where azaleas, orange flamboyants and frangipani blossomed around twin lotus pools; the sun was still pleasantly warm, and the deep, thrilling silence was broken only occasionally by the muted calling of waterfowl from the lake below them.

”This must be how paradise is, Lan,” said Joseph in an awed whisper. ”It hasn't lost any of its magic, has it?”

She shook her head, but there was still a hint of melancholy in her smile. ”It's still an enchanted place - but perhaps as we grow up our worries grow bigger too. I don't really expect my prayers to be answered this time.”

Joseph frowned, ”Then there is something bothering you?”

”Yes.” She looked anxiously along the terrace and didn't continue until she spotted Tam and his fiancee climbing the steps to the Gate of Dazzling Virtue. ”I try not to think about it all the time - but my father was very upset by the trouble at the Cercle Sportif. Kim's hotheadedness has caused trouble between them before. But after the tennis match he and my father quarreled violently. ... Kim insulted him and vowed to become a revolutionary. In the end my father ordered him never to return to our house.” The recollection disquieted her, and she tugged agitatedly at the bracelet of translucent blue jade on her left wrist, ”It's upset all my family, of course.”

”I thought your father seemed a little distracted this morning.”

Lao nodded, still tugging unconsciously at the bracelet. ”It's affected him the most. The Communist troubles five years ago were bad for my country. I hoped all that had pa.s.sed - but obviously it hasn't. My father's afraid that one day there might be a civil war.” She sighed and gazed at the golden roofs glinting in the sun. ”In this beautiful place those worries don't seem to be real. Coming here makes me wish I could get away from all those awful things.”

”I wish I could show you my country, Lan,” he said impulsively, seizing her hands. ”Wouldn't you like to see America?”

He had spoken before he realized what he was saying, and again she looked uneasy. ”Please let me go, Joseph,” she said quietly, struggling to free her hands. ”My brother might see us.”

He loosened his grasp reluctantly and she turned and began walking away from him across one of the three little parallel bridges leading back towards the Hall of Venerated Beneficence. Realizing that within a few minutes they would be back in the sampan with her brother Tam, he caught her up quickly in the middle of the bridge and took her gently by the arm again.

”I believe you feel something for me, Lan - I think I can see it in your eyes. I know you need time - but I could come back to Saigon to work for a while. That way we might get to know each other better. Would you like to do that?”

”My father wouldn't approve of such a thing.”

She half turned away from him to gaze across the lake, and he saw her tugging agitatedly once more at the jade bracelet.

”Why not?”

”Because of Kim! Perhaps you can't understand - but now my father needs the loyalty of Tam and myself more than ever. I can't think of myself at a time like this.”

”But I don't see-”

A sharp cry escaped her lips suddenly, and she leaned out over the parapet, gazing horror-stricken into the waters below. Frightened that she might topple off the bridge, he seized her shoulders. ”What is it, Lan?”

When she turned to look at him, her face was white and tears were br.i.m.m.i.n.g in her eyes. ”My bracelet! It's fallen into the lake.” She held up her bare wrist for him to see.

Joseph peered into the blue water twenty feet below but saw nothing. ”Don't worry,” he said soothingly, ”I'll buy you another bracelet.”

”You can't.”

”Why not?”

”It can't be replaced. It was given to me by my mother when I became twenty-one. It's been pa.s.sed down in our family from life to life, from mother to daughter for over two hundred years. It was a gift to one of our ancestors from the imperial court.”

Joseph stared helplessly at her stricken face. ”I'll try to find one just like it.”

”It's another bad omen,” she said in a horrified whisper.

They heard the sound of footsteps and looked up to see her brother, who had obviously heard her cry out, approaching at a run.

”Please, Joseph, don't tell Tam,” she pleaded. ”My mother and my family mustn't know the bracelet's lost.”

When Tam came up to them, she pretended she had twisted her ankle and leaned on her brother's arm all the way back to the sampan. During the journey downstream to Hue she scarcely spoke, and Joseph forced himself to exchange polite conversation with Tam about the tombs. The River of Perfumes was again as serenely beautiful as it had been earlier, but as the light faded, somber black shadows began to creep across the valleys, and in his dejection Joseph thought he suddenly sensed an ominous, brooding quality in the jagged mountains that hadn't been noticeable in the brightness of the afternoon.

6.

The face of the Frenchman who stared incredulously at him as he entered the foyer of his hotel on the morning of the Sacrifice to Heaven seemed only vaguely familiar to Joseph Sherman. Then in a remarkable feat of memory he recalled a fleeting encounter with a stoop-shouldered stranger on a street in Saigon eleven years before while watching shackled Annamese prisoners endure a savage beating; the man in the foyer had the same unhealthy, parchment-like skin that hung slack on the bones of his face, his yellowing eyes were sunk in the same blackened sockets, and when he came close to him, Joseph's sense of smell was jolted back eleven years too, as he detected the same mustiness about the man's clothing that betrayed the addicted smoker of opium. Then with a palpable sense of shock Joseph realized he was mistaken; the aging, dissipated face was not that of the supercilious colon he and his brother had met briefly in 1925 - he was looking at Jacques Devraux.

The Frenchman didn't drop his gaze until Joseph stopped in front of him; then he held out his hand, smiling apologetically. ”Forgive me, Joseph, for staring like that. But you looked so much like your brother as you came through that door. For a moment I couldn't believe my eyes.”

Joseph hesitated, not wanting to have any physical contact with the man before him; illogically he had expected Devraux to have remained unchanged - to mirror still the silent, heroic image that had first scored itself so deeply in his impressionable, fifteen-year- old mind on that first ride through the jungle. The thought of seeing even that man again had induced a sour, sullen mood, but the startling deterioration in the appearance of the once clear- eyed hunting guide sent a new sensation surging through him - contempt. His instinct was to ignore the Frenchman's greeting pointedly, but in the end habit prevailed and, regretting it immediately, he allowed his hand to be shaken.

”There's no need to concern yourself,” said Joseph speaking with a deliberate coolness. ”I've got very used to people telling me I look like Chuck. Paul said the same thing.”

In the awkward silence that followed Joseph saw Devraux's gaze flicker over the wet swimming costume wrapped in a towel that he carried under his arm, then s.h.i.+ft to his still-damp hair. ”Even so, it can't be an enjoyable experience, Joseph. I apologize.”

”It's really not important. May I ask how you knew I was in Hue?”

”Paul sent me a wire from Saigon. He told me you were writing a book.” Devraux spoke his previously clipped English in a dull monotone as though he made the effort now unwillingly, and he stumbled occasionally over his words. ”He urged me to make sure that you saw the ceremonies from the best vantage points. I left a note here yesterday to say I would arrange something. I trust you received it.”

”Yes, I did - thank you.” The typewritten note stating that the ”Chef de Surete d'Annam” would call after breakfast had been waiting for him the previous evening when he returned to the hotel from the tomb of Minh Mang, and he had decided that if a meeting became unavoidable he would try to be civil but no more. Outside the hotel the streets of Hue, decked with national flags and banners bearing expressions of good omen, were filling rapidly with crowds of Annamese gathering to catch a glimpse of the Emperor Bao Dai, and Joseph gestured through the windows in their direction. ”It's getting late. Perhaps it would be better if! made my own way there. It'll take me a few minutes to get ready.”

Devraux shrugged. ”As you like. But I've made special arrangements for the Tran family at Paul's request and would be glad to include you. You'll be able to see very little of the procession or the ceremonies on your own. The spectacle is greatest at the Bull Gate as the emperor leaves the Imperial City. If you go over there alone, you won't be able to follow the procession back to the south side of' the river - the Clemenceau Bridge will be closed for two hours after the emperor pa.s.ses. I've arranged a sampan to bring the Trans and myself to this bank. I've got Surete cars waiting here to take us all to a viewing stand at the Nam Giao. And I've reserved places for you and the Trans inside on the temple steps tonight for the climax of the ceremonies.”

Joseph wavered for only a moment or two then the prospect of seeing Lan again swayed his decision. Hue was the only city in the world where the three-thousand-year-old ritual of the Sacrifice to Heaven inherited from China's emperors had been celebrated since the overthrow of the last Peking dynasty in 1911; soon it seemed certain that the tradition must die in Hue too, and because the elaborate ceremonies were performed only once In three years, the opportunity, Joseph knew, was unique. To see the solemn procession emerge from the Purple Forbidden City and follow it across the River of Perfumes to the Nam Giao would be an unforgettable experience; the Nam Giao was the sacred walled compound, corresponding to the blue-roofed Temple of Heaven in Peking, where the emperor would spend the day in meditation before performing the sacred rites, and Joseph decided it would be foolish to pa.s.s up such a rare chance to witness all this pageantry from a position of privilege.

”If you don't mind waiting a moment or two longer,” he said quickly, turning towards the stairs, ”I'd be glad to accept your invitation.”

The ramparts of the Citadel glowed a fiery red in the light of the rising sun when fifteen minutes later Joseph and Jacques Devraux stepped onto the modern bridge of latticed steel girders that spanned the river. Two imperial elephants decked with gold harness and ridden by Annamese in blue, ankle-length court uniforms stood guard at the entrance to the bridge, ready to close it to traffic as soon as the boom of nine cannon from inside the Citadel indicated that the emperor was ready to leave his secluded palace; this signal, however, was not expected for another ten minutes, and all around Joseph and the Surete chief a noisy, excited crowd was still pouring across the bridge towards the northern hank.

Among them a shabby pousse-pousse bearing the wasted figure of Ngo Van Loc attracted no attention. A wide hat of palm leaf hid his features, and his thin body was clad in the black tunic and white trousers of a middle-cla.s.s Annamese clerk whom he and his son Dong had ambushed and robbed in a narrow side Street in the Annamese quarter of the city the night before. Dong, stripped to the waist, loped easily between the shafts of the pousse-pousse, a black peasant's turban wound around his head, but even if the Frenchman or Joseph had turned to look behind, they would not have recognized him as the shy thirteen-year-old who had once romped in their jungle hunting camp. He had grown into a tall, gangling youth of twenty-four who had to affect a stoop to hold the shafts of the pousse-pousse level, and the expression in his brown eyes, although watchful, hinted at the physical self-confidence his unusual height gave him.

”It's the American who told me Devraux was here in Hue - I'm sure of it.” Loc leaned forward in his seat to murmur quietly in his son's ear. ”It looks as though he's taking him to the Ngo Mon. Don't get close. There are too many people around to do anything here.”

Dong nodded obediently and slowed his pace. They had been shadowing Jacques Devraux since he left his home that morning, and Dong had agreed before they set out that his father should decide when the best moment came for him to act. Behind him Ngo Van Loc settled himself in the pousse-pousse once more, s.h.i.+fting his paralyzed arm into a more comfortable position with his other hand, and as they continued across the bridge he glanced back towards the southern bank where they had watched Devraux station the two Surete Renaults before visiting the American's hotel. For a moment his brow creased in thought, then he touched the hard steel b.u.t.t of the Beretta pistol concealed in the waistband of his trousers and searched ahead among the crowd until his gaze came to rest once more on the white-suited figure of Jacques Devraux.

”No copulation ... no garlic no wine. . . but plenty of hot baths and devout prayers - those are the rules of the 'Great Abstinence' the emperor's been practicing for three days now. Or at least he should have been.” Devraux's ravaged features twisted in a sardonic smile as he glanced at the young American at his side. ”After spending ten years of his youth in Paris, there's some doubt in court circles whether he's still capable of observing the Great Abstinence --. even for three days.”