SAIGON 1960

SaigonTetSt.jpg
  • There's a dead tiger on the sidewalk
  • in front of our neighborhood bar
  • and at the table next to the enormous carcass,
  • a French hunter cursing the missing client
  • who commissioned the kill.
  • We are not in Kansas.
  • The beached-up Legionnaire
  • who owns the joint brings unbidden
  • deaux Gabon, the cognac-and-sodas
  • that are his specialité, dry, cooling, perfect.
  • His Lao wife and exquisite children
  • wipe tables, carry trays, fetch Gauloises.
  • Fragile Vietnamese women float by
  • arm in arm, the breezes lifting the panels
  • of their gossamer ao dais, watched by the guys
  • from Life, CBS and the New York Times,
  • drinking Trente-trois from sweating bottles,
  • their legs sprawling too casually
  • from the rattan chairs, all wearing the
  • safari shirts correspondents seem
  • compelled to don when they leave
  • their desks for foreign shores. Vespas,
  • cyclos and bikes hurry les Saigonaise by.
  • Last week a grenade was lobbed from such
  • a Vespa into a café full of American "advisors."
  • The death rolls are back, but now
  • they are made of American names.
  • Last month, when Diem's own
  • paratroopers attacked his palace,
  • we assumed festive firecrackers as
  • Philippe danced into our room singing
  • "Boom boom, maman, boom boom."
  • A machine gun emplacement
  • five doors away was firing at the insurgents.
  • Behind shuttered windows, under
  • a playhouse of mattresses, we listened
  • to rebel-captured radio. Our neighbor,
  • kind Mr. Dinh, hurried his wife and children
  • to the greater safety of our batting-walled
  • cave and gave us ears on the fighting,
  • translating the urgent voices that filled
  • our little fort. The paratroopers had a list
  • of reforms, would not cease fire until
  • Diem commited to the changes.
  • Mr. Dinh shouted at the radio
  • "Don't believe the lying bastard!"
  • then translated their announcement
  • that Diem had agreed to their demands.
  • The firing stopped and we emerged
  • to resume our lives. The paratroopers did not.
  • All over the citySaigonaise have died,
  • and nothing has changed.
  • Mr. Dinh looks away when he sees us now,
  • having noted, "Your government could
  • have saved us from this tyrant."
  • Last year, when we arrived,
  • the briefing officer said,
  • "If stopped by a Viet Minh patrol
  • outside the city,
  • for God's sake speak English.
  • They will kill you if
  • they think you're French."
  • Now when they pass, as we have seen them,
  • silent black forms slipping out of the trees,
  • a lethal panorama moving across our windshield,
  • we must pretend to be French.
  • On a high terrace in Cap St. Jaques,
  • gazing at the glittering South China Sea,
  • light dances through a trellised arbor
  • to play on our skins and on the platter of
  • crimson mangos that fill our lungs with perfume
  • and our mouths with enchantment.