Part 16 (1/2)

”I refuse to answer your questions. It's none of your business.”

Devraux sank back wearily against the leather upholstery and lit a cheroot, then opened the window to toss the match into the darkness. As he took the little cigar between his fingers, Joseph noticed that his hand shook slightly. ”If I told you that an attempt was made on my life in Hue, would that make you think I had the right to ask you some questions?

”An attempt on your life?”Joseph echoed the words in disbelief. ”Do you know who it was?”

”Ngo Van Dong - Loc's son.”

”But how does that involve me?”

”Under questioning, Dong claimed that he and his father were informed of my whereabouts by you. Is that true?”

The limousine was purring along the Quai Clemenceau, heading towards the Lake of the Restored Sword, and Joseph gazed out of the window into the gathering darkness in a horrified silence. ”Yes, I suppose it's true,” he said at last in a small voice. ”But it was accidental -just an innocent remark.”

”Our agents saw you waiting on the dockside for two hours. Do you expect us to believe that it was just a coincidence that you arrived in our colony as large numbers of Communist prisoners were being amnestied?”

Devraux drew deeply on his cheroot while he waited for an answer, and in its reflected glow he looked again for a fleeting moment more like the fierce-eyed hunting guide who had conducted their expedition eleven years earlier.

”Yes, it was just a coincidence. Paul told me he thought Loc had been in Paulo Condore - and I saw in the newspaper a s.h.i.+p was due in.”

”But why did you want to see Loc?”

Joseph hesitated; the Frenchman was asking his questions in a toneless voice without turning his head to look at him. ”I wanted to ask him about a personal matter,” he said slowly.

Beside him the Frenchman seemed to be sitting very still. ”You mean about the death of your brother?”

Joseph's throat suddenly went dry, and he was surprised to find himself nodding in agreement. ”Yes - it was Loc who told me that Chuck had died trying to save my father.”

Devraux s.h.i.+fted in his seat, then relaxed. ”I think I understand now.”

For a while they rode in silence; then Joseph leaned forward in his seat again. ”But you really believed I was part of a murder conspiracy, didn't you? And I suppose your agents here expected to find me plotting in a paG.o.da somewhere to overthrow French rule.”

”I didn't want to believe that,” said Devraux, closing his eyes as though with fatigue. ”But such ideas are not as fantastic as they appear. Undercover agents of the Comintern are working all over Asia - many of them are Europeans. So why not Americans too? Idealistic Marxists almost invariably come from wealthy, middle- cla.s.s families. We can't afford to a.s.sume that every white-skinned visitor to Indochina is a devoted admirer of France.”

”Perhaps if your government didn't exploit the people here so ruthlessly they wouldn't want to revolt against you,” said Joseph grimly. ”Maybe if your countrymen didn't milk the land of all the rubber, coal and rice they can lay their hands on, and did not beat the pousse-pousse coolies in the streets, Loc and people like him wouldn't he trying to kill you.”

Devraux opened his eyes again and drew reflectively on his cheroot. ”You know from the files you've been reading in our archives, Joseph, that the history of the Annamese is full of bloodshed and brutality. There's a cruel streak in these people.” He paused and exhaled smoke slowly towards the open window. ”But they are also a deceptive race. They like to mislead with an outward show of pa.s.sivity.”

Joseph flinched inwardly, realizing that even the files he had been inspecting had been closely monitored by the Surete. A protest rose to his lips but he stifled it.

”Ngo Van Loc and his wife were spying on me for years before I found out. Their younger son, Hoc, murdered a rubber plantation director without reason- then they all turned up at Yen Bay and tried to do the same to Paul. They seem to be pursuing a pointless personal vendetta against us.” He stopped speaking and turned his gaze on Joseph for the first time. ”And Dong's arrest doesn't seem to have cooled them down. Since he was locked up, my men have detected one or two other furtive attempts to check my movements. My house servants have been threatened and pumped for information He shrugged and turned away again, and his voice trailed off as though from lack of interest.

They had entered the Avenue Beauchamp, that ran beside the Lake of the Restored Sword, and glancing out of the window, Joseph saw that the moon was beginning to rise; a broad path of white light was flooding across the placid expanse of water, and he wanted suddenly above all else to be gone from the car. ”If I'm not under arrest, Monsieur Devraux, I'd prefer to get out here,” he said curtly, ”I'd like to breathe some fresh air before dinner.”

Devraux immediately signaled his driver to stop and opened the door. He allowed Joseph to climb out, but when the American turned to take his leave, he found that the Surete man had stepped out behind him. After giving instructions to the driver in rapid French, he fell into step beside Joseph. ”You told me you spoke to Ngo Van Loc in all innocence,” he said, lighting a fresh cheroot and glancing up at Joseph through a new flurry of smoke and flame. ”Well, let me warn you that in Indochina innocence can he a very dangerous quality. The Annamese are not 'innocent'; they are an infinitely cunning people.”

Joseph didn't feel like replying, and they strolled on beneath the gnarled trees at the water's edge in silence.

”Your concept of colonialism is a little 'innocent' too, if you'll forgive the term,” said the Frenchman gently. ”Perhaps the white man's dealings with the Orient have always been motivated by a basic, indefensible greed, and perhaps one day we'll have to pay a price for that. But there's never been any program of calculated evil mapped out by France here. Running colonies has always been a chaotic sort of business. But it's not all one-way traffic either. With the righteous part of their souls Frenchmen have always felt compelled to offer unselfish enlightenment and education to these people back in France. As a result, the best Annamese minds go off and soak up our knowledge - then come home and organize violent revolution against us.”

”But why is it we never seem to learn anything here ourselves in return?” asked Joseph, feeling his interest aroused despite himself.

”You've been here twice already, haven't you? You've been in the jungles, the temples, walked in the crowded streets. You've felt the mysterious power of the East set your blood frothing like champagne, haven't you? Every European who ever comes here feels it. It's a land of great extremes, so vastly different from your own Virginia or my birthplace in Normandy that we really never learn to adjust. The mountains and jungles are hostile, the rice fields unending - and all the time the fierce sun and the wet heat force all growth to its limits and overexcite our nerves and emotions. The land teems with so much life that death doesn't seem to matter. Animals kill animals, men kill animals, and men kill one another too - it's all part of a brutalizing process. Violence is commonplace, an everyday occurrence, and our senses become permanently drunk with all this pulsating vitality. We respond to the heat like moths to a lamp. It's a land that fires the senses, not the intellect. That's why we don't learn anything. it's a land so elemental that sooner or later the brute climbs out of every man. n.o.body's immune.”

Devraux's voice had taken on a bitter, almost resentful, edge as though he were reliving his own past as he spoke. His hand was shaking more noticeably as he drew on the cheroot, and Joseph thought he sensed a growing tension in him.

”Then the people get under your skin. Because they're small and graceful, they seem to possess greater refinement than us. They seem so deft and subtle, don't they, and make us feel gross and clumsy beside them? Because they've been victimized by the elements for so long, they've cultivated the inner self to a high degree. The teachings of Buddha appear to have proved the futility of both ambition and remorse and the mystical rites they perform seem to give them access to secrets of the soul from which we're barred. All this devotion to tranquility and spiritual harmony is very seductive to the restless souls newly arrived from Europe and America where physical activity is admired above all else. But perhaps most of all it's the fragile golden bodies of the women, isn't it? They're almost like toys, with their exquisite little hands and feet. Their pa.s.sive beauty, too, rouses the blood like no other woman can.” The Frenchman paused and raised a quizzical eyebrow in Joseph's direction. ”Does what I'm saying strike a chord with you?”

Joseph stared at him, taken aback by the implication of the Frenchman's words. ”So you had me followed all night in Hue too?” The Frenchman ignored the question, and Joseph felt his anger rise. ”Perhaps, Monsieur Devraux, you should explain precisely why you're telling me all this.”

”To give you a chance to think what you are doing. Bewitching first impressions aren't everything. Excessive love for the exotic can destroy the white European in the Orient. Many men think they go away from here with their souls intact-but then find in their own countries they've been profoundly changed by their experiences without knowing it. They become outcasts among their own people because everything at home seems insipid in comparison with the East. Then usually they're lured back again by the siren call of what has already ruined them. Try to see things as they really are. Stay as long as I have and you'll see that first enchantment turn to tropical languor and bad temper. All your restraint and self-discipline can dissolve here. The tropics too often drain away the energy and rot the moral fiber of good men. They come to despise that native finesse that they found so seductive in the beginning because they can't match it.” Devraux paused and drew a long breath. ”These lands are deeply inhospitable to men with white skins, Joseph - and too often that compels them to commit acts of which they can't be proud.”

They had reached the waiting Citroen parked obediently by his driver at the roadside, and Devraux stopped beside it and crushed the stub of his cheroot against the bole of one of the lakeside trees. The glowing ashes- fell to the ground in a bright shower, and after gazing at them for a second he squashed them out with his foot, twisting his sole with unnecessary force into the soft earth.

”You mean like that night of the storm in our jungle camp?” said Joseph in an emphatic undertone.

Devraux had opened the door of his car but he stopped and turned slowly back to face Joseph. Iii the direct light of the moon his face looked suddenly cadaverous.

”I couldn't sleep either,” continued Joseph, watching the Frenchman closely. ”And perhaps you ought to know that I've got a younger brother -- who's ten years old now. At the end of that year my mother gave birth to a son.”

Devraux stared at the American, a stricken expression slowly contorting his sallow features. ”I'm sorry,” he said in a half- whisper. ”Tell her I'm sorry.” Then he turned quickly away and got into the car without offering any parting salutation.

As the glow of the Citroen's taillights receded along the lakeside boulevard, the Surete chief was little more than an indistinct shadow in the' rear seat, hut Joseph could see that he sat with his shoulders hunched around his ears; something in his att.i.tude seemed suddenly suggestive of hopelessness and despair, and the moment the car disappeared in urgent, indefinable anxiety seized Joseph. For a long time he stood without moving, staring distractedly across the lake; on their twin islands, the old temples, symbols of an ancient and enigmatic Asia, were silhouetted sharply against the pale gold disc of the rising moon.

10.

When the red-lacquered moon gate of the Imperial Delegate's residence in Saigon swung open for the second time in response to Joseph's impatient ringing of its little bronze bell, the same Annamese servant girl who had sent him away earlier in the day appeared again. She smiled shyly at him just as she had done that morning when she informed him that Mademoiselle Lan and her father were unable to receive visitors, and for an anxious moment he feared she was about to give him the same message. Then to his immense relief she stood back and motioned him inside.

The house, set at the end of an avenue of coconut palms and shaded by taller trees, was built in the traditional Annamese style; its pale, stuccoed walls were capped by ornamental crimson roofs, and the upper floors opened onto a curved verandah supported on red-lacquered pillars. As they approached the house, Joseph looked eagerly for some sign of Lan coming out to welcome him, but the steps beneath the verandah remained disappointingly deserted.

Inside, walking on polished teak floors, he was led past a succession of shaded rooms where French period ormolu and filigree blended discreetly with the hanging silks and sculpted wood of oriental furnis.h.i.+ngs. The ancestral altar visible in the austerely furnished princ.i.p.al room was decked with gold name tablets, framed photographs and incense burners, and Joseph saw a servant reverently setting out fresh howls of fruit and flowers around them. He was conducted finally to a room where carved tables had already been set out for tea beside keg-shaped porcelain stools and he was left alone there for several minutes. A deep silence pervaded the house, and as he waited, his sense of foreboding grew.

The five-day rail journey from Hanoi had seemed agonizingly slow, and on his arrival in Saigon he had rushed straight to the house, unannounced. The servant girl's rebuff and her request that he return for an appointment later in the afternoon had immediately intensified the disquiet that had plagued him ever since his conversation with Jacques Devraux beside the Lake of the Restored Sword. Because of that unease he had rounded off his research hurriedly the following day and arranged to travel south again by the first available train. On the journey he had been unable to escape his ominous thoughts; although they defied rational a.n.a.lysis, the joy and happiness he'd glimpsed in Hue seemed irrevocably threatened, and his desire to marry Lan and spirit her away to safer, more familiar climes quickly became an obsession. Waiting alone in the quiet room to speak with her father, he realized that the moment of decision was near, and he felt the palms of his hands dampen with perspiration.

Because of his distracted state of mind he didn't notice them at first when Lan and Tran Van Hieu appeared soundlessly in the doorway. When he did look up, the Annamese mandarin, dressed in a simple black silk coat and cap, bowed low, and Joseph rose hurriedly to his feet to bow in return. Behind him Lan hesitated then smiled formally before seating herself on a stool set close at her father's side.

”I trust your visit to Hanoi has been crowned with success.” Tran Van Hieu smiled courteously as he spoke his sibilant French, but Joseph saw immediately that his manner was strained.

”Two weeks was hardly enough. It's a fascinating city.”