Saigon (14 page)

“Where on earth do you keep finding them, Auguste?” Claude Duclos wiped the champagne froth from his mustache with the back of his hand and refilled their glasses. “I heard a rumor you were deliberately smashing dikes in the north and flooding the paddies to drive the starving ‘yellows’ to our rubber trees. Is that right?” 

Lepine’s sallow features twitched and a sardonic smile flickered across his face, but he didn’t reply. Instead he took a sheaf of glossy photographs from his portmanteau and pushed them across the table towards the Corsican. Duclos rattled the empty champagne bottle impatiently against the table-top as he picked them up. The oppressive heat was making both men sweat despite the breeze from the electric fan, and distant thunder presaged the early 

approach of the nightly storm. Duclos mopped his forehead with a handkerchief already soaked in perspiration before looking at the photographs. 

Some showed neatly dressed Annamese families smiling from the doorways of houses set in small gardens beside groves of rubber trees. In other well-fed, well-clad workers were tapping trees while friendly, attentive Frenchmen in sun helmets looked indulgently over their shoulders. Duclos smiled grimly as he flicked through them. “Marvelous, mon vieux. Marvelous! You show them these, and then you have to put up barriers to stop them volunteering in their thousands, yes?” 

“It’s not quite as easy as that, Duclos,” replied the recruiter testily “It’s very hard work. Last year I supplied the plantations of Cochin-China and Annam with thirty-five thousand northern coolies — and shipped another ten thousand to the New Hebrides.” 

The Corsican whistled approvingly. “Forty-five thousand bodies! And you make a fifteen-piastre profit on each one, don’t you? That’s nearly seven hundred thousand piastres He closed his eyes to calculate then opened them and whistled softly again. “About seven million francs — not a bad profit for the year, Auguste.” He smiled and made a little admiring gesture with his hand that took in Lepine’s well-cut linen suit, his handmade shoes and silk shirt. “No wonder, Auguste, you can afford to dress now like an English lord.” 

“If your wastage rate on these plantations wasn’t so high, there would be no need for me to supply you with new coolies all the time,” said Lepine sourly. “If you treated them better, they wouldn’t be mutilating their hands and feet at the rate they are, to escape your clutches.” He glanced at another sheaf of papers. “Your fever deaths too are high again — or are they mostly concealed suicides?” 

Duclos, taken aback by Lepine’s hostility, sat up indignantly in his seat. “The fashion for voluntary mutilation is being stamped out, Auguste. They know that we send them straight to the cells at An Dap now, no matter how badly they injure themselves. And can I help it if so many ‘yellows’ die of fever in their own country?” He shrugged helplessly. “I have to drive them hard. Always the shareholders in Paris want higher production. Already they’ve had six million francs’ profit from an investment of twelve million — but always they want more.” 

Lepine yawned and passed a hand wearily across his face. “You talk of the shareholders in Paris as though you yourself owned no shares in the plantation,” he said slightingly. “Perhaps it is most convenient to imagine you are doing all that you do here at the behest of some distant ogre.” 

“My holding is very small, Auguste,” protested Duclos with a little laugh of embarrassment. “Compared with the major share- holdings, it is nothing.” He looked at the stiff unbending features of the recruiter for a moment: the dark hollows around his eyes and his dry, parchment like skin betrayed a long addiction to opium, and Duclos guessed that hi irritability stemmed for this. “But why should we endure the hell of life in the colonies, mon vieux, if we don’t enjoy ourselves a little and try to put something by for our old age at the same time, heh?” The Corsican, straining to inspire conviviality in his guest, picked up his champagne glass and held it towards him, inviting him to drink to the idea. But the recruiter steadfastly ignored him. 

At that moment a clap of thunder exploded directly overhead as the storm burst and rain began beating noisily against the outside of the house. Both men listened to it for a moment, then Duclos stood up restlessly and walked over to his gramophone. “Perhaps we need a little jazz, Auguste,” he said, winding the mechanism vigorously. “I find it is the only thing which will keep the cafard at bay when I’m alone. I try not to drink too much when nobody’s here. Without my jazz I don’t think I would survive the tropics. What would you prefer? Sidney Bechet’s saxophone? I have ‘Wild Cat Blues’ or ‘Kansas City Man.’” 

Lepine shrugged indifferently, and the plantation director put on a record of his own choice. He stood listening attentively for a moment as the saxophone vied with the noise of the storm outside; then he returned to his seat, picked up his champagne glass and drained it. “Another fashion we are stamping out or the plantation, Auguste, is Bolshevism,” he said, leaning earnestly towards the recruiter. “Did you hear about the trouble the big Michelin plantation as Phu Rieng has been having with ‘red peril’ agitators?” 

“I’ve been in the Pacific islands for a month looking at the plantations there,” replied Lepine in an uninterested voice. The jazz coming from the gramophone was irritating him and in his limbs the uneasiness familiar to smokers of opium was beginning to take hold. 

“There was a mass breakout two weeks ago and the cai uncovered an attempt to organize a strike. Half-a-dozen coolies have been clapped in irons —assorted Bolsheviks and members of something called the ‘Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang’ —— the Nationalist Party.” He snorted with contempt. “My Overseers keep their eyes peeled here, I can tell you. The slightest suspicion of trouble and we run them into An Dap so fast their yellow feet don’t touch the ground.” He laughed mirthlessly, hoping to persuade Lepine to share his black humor. “You didn’t bring any Comintern infiltrators with that load today, did you, Auguste?” 

“Just getting coolie labor to you here is difficult enough, Duclos,” snapped the recruiter. “I can’t give you guarantees about their political purity.” 

At that moment the door opened to admit the barefoot Annamese congaze carrying a fresh bottle of chilled Perrier-Jouet champagne. She filled Duclos’ empty glass unobtrusively and retreated silently towards the door. As he picked up his drink Duclos looked meaningfully at Lepine and raised an inquiring eyebrow in her direction. 

Lepine dropped his gaze. “Can she prepare a pipe?” 

“Of course,” 

“Then for that alone, I will require her.” The recruiter spoke his words with careful deliberation, peering intently into the froth of his champagne. Then he added: “And do I understand correctly that you don’t keep a ‘boy’ in your house?” 

Duclos looked puzzled for a second. Then comprehension dawned and he bristled. “I have no need of ‘boys’ in my house,” he said brusquely. “That’s not one of my vices.” 

“Really, Duclos, you surprise me.” The tone of the recruiter remained confident, unabashed. “It might perhaps be worth considering who controls your supply of coolie labor now. I tend to remember first the requirements of those plantations that care to provide the best hospitality when I pay a visit.” 

Duclos’ eyes narrowed as he registered the undisguised threat in the recruiter’s words; then he forced a laugh to his lips. “I am a man of the world Auguste, mon ami. I’m sure we can find a pretty young thing for you.” 

A hundred yards away across the rain-drowned compound Dong and Hoc were weeping openly as they embraced their father in the blackness of their leaking barrack lint. Huddled together on the muddy earth floor they were content for a long time to embrace one another without speaking. 

“How, did you find us, Father?” sobbed Dong at last. He strained his eyes but could make out no more than the vague outline of Ngo Van Loc’s face in the darkness. 

“The party helped me trace you — the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang. It’s a new secret organization of nationalists and patriots working to free us from the French!” The older man paused and his voice took on a faint note of censure. “But how did you come to be here?” 

Dong and his younger brother moved closer together. “After we ran away from you we traveled as far as Quang Nam — that’s where we met the French recruiter who arrived here tonight with your truck,” said Dong hesitantly. “He and his Annamese cai tricked us. They gave us six piastres and told us it was advance pay for work on a rubber plantation not far away. They said we’d receive eighty cents a day for six hours work and promised us good food, good houses to live in. They then put us on trucks to bring us here and anyone who tried to escape was beaten senseless.” Dong’s voice became tearful at the memory. “We tried to escape but every time they caught us and beat us. We. tried to write letters to you — but they were taken away by the cai and burned 

Around them the coolies punished earlier whimpered and groaned in their sleep. Others snored and all the time the rain pounded loudly against the thin palm thatch above their heads. 

“But why did you run away from the hunting camp in the first place?” 

Both brothers shifted uncomfortably on the wet ground but did not answer. 

“Why, Dong, why?” he asked again in a gentler tone. 

After another long silence Dong found his voice. “We were ashamed, Father.” 

“Ashamed of what?” A slight break in the older man’s voice suggested he already suspected what the answer might be and was afraid. 

“Ashamed of what was happening Dong’s answer came in an almost inaudible whisper. “We hated what our mother was doing—and you knew!” 

Loc let out a little moan of anguish. “I thought you were too young Loc understand! I should have tried to explain.” He groaned again. “Now it is too late.” 

Hoc gripped his father’s arm in alarm. “Why is it too late?” 

“Because all I can do is to pray to the spirits of our ancestors for forgiveness 

The despair in their father’s voice had sent a sudden chill of apprehension through the brothers. “What do you mean? Where is our mother” asked Dong. “Why have you left her alone to come here?” 

Ngo Van Loc reached out in the darkness and clasped both his Sons’ hands tightly in his own. “Your mother is dead.” 

“Dead?” Both brothers echoed the word in horror. 

“Yes. She died two months ago — in prison.” 

“How in prison?” 

Loc hesitated, then took a long breath. “We supplied information to different revolutionary groups for many years about Devraux’s work for the Süreté. I often traveled abroad with him as his driver when he investigated the activities of our revolutionary émigrés. When the Quoc Dan Dang was formed two years ago we joined secretly and agreed to continue spying on Devraux His voice broke with emotion and faded to a whisper. “That’s why she did what she did — so that Devraux wouldn’t suspect us. She hated it! And I hated it too! It didn’t happen often, but when it did, we tried to put it from our minds — to remember only what we were trying to do for our country.” 

Hoc buried his face in his brother’s shoulder and began sobbing silently. For a long time the furious rhythms of the storm and the grunting of the exhausted men around them were the only sounds to be heard inside the hut. 

“But why was she taken to prison?” asked Dong in a choked 
voice. - 

“I had to go away for several days and while I was gone your mother saw some papers in Devraux’s desk. She hid them in our quarters, thinking they might be of use to the party, but Devraux found them and she was taken to prison. I was warned by the party and didn’t return to the house.” He paused, fighting again to control his emotions. “A month later I learned she was dead. The French say she died of ill health! But I know from the jailers that she was tortured! The French are terrified of the revolutionary movement and are torturing all prisoners for information, with electricity.” 

“He killed her!” breathed Dong. “Devraux killed her!” He pulled his sobbing brother to him and they rocked back and forth together making little moaning noises between their clenched teeth, trying to ease their agony. 

A moment later the sounds of the storm were magnified suddenly in the hut as the door at one end flew open. A flashlight searched back and forth across the sleeping bodies of the coolies as the hulking figure of Duclos advanced down the barrack in a dripping black rain cape. The beam came to rest on the Ngo brothers, and after a moment’s hesitation Duclos bent down and seized Hoc by the arm. “Come, my pretty lad, you’re coming with me!” He hauled the sobbing boy to his feet. 

“This is no time to sleep. There’s a spot of extra work for you tonight.” 

Beneath the shelter of the plantation house verandah, Auguste Lepine was standing, his eyes glazed with opium, watching the rain. When he saw Duclos striding back across the compound dragging a young Annamese boy behind him, he smiled quietly to himself, stepped back into his bedroom and began fumbling with the buttons of his silk shirt. 

The plangent notes of the dawn gongs rousing the coolies from their barracks faded and died as Claude Duclos drained his third and last cup of café noir on the verandah of the plantation house. The scowl of irritation on his face was more marked than usual, and the moment he replaced the cup on its saucer the congaie, Who had been hovering behind the screen door, hurried out to remove his breakfast tray. Sniffing the moist morning air, he fancied he could still detect sickly traces of the opium smoked by his guest, and his scowl deepened. He found the personal habits of the coolie recruiter deeply repugnant and this only increased the resentment he felt at his helpless dependence on him for replacements to his dwindling labor force. 

From inside the house the scratchy gramophone burble of “Muskrat Ramble” was providing an incongruous counterpoint to the screech of the wild birds wakening unseen in the roof of the surrounding jungle, and Duclos sighed and closed his eyes to concentrate better on the music. For a minute or two he relaxed; with something approaching a smile on his face, he sat drumming his fingers on the tabletop and tapping the toe of one of his jungle boots on the verandah boards. Then he opened his eyes again to peer at his watch and the expression of irritation returned. 

From the nearby compound of Village Number Three he could hear the Annamese cai marshaling the shuffling coolies for roll call. He listened for a moment to their angry shouts and the occasional thud of their rattan canes, then he stood up and jammed his pith helmet squarely on his head; automatically his hand checked the presence of his bone-handled knife in its sheath. As he made to step down from the verandah he heard a footfall behind him and turned to find Lepine, already immaculate in his ‘white suit, ready to leave. Although the recruiter had obviously bathed, he still exuded the faint mustiness of the habitual opium smoker as he pressed past Duclos to take his place at the breakfast table. 

“Bonjour, Auguste, mon vieux. I hope you’ve enjoyed your first visit to Vi An,” said the plantation director with a forced affability. 

Lepine confined his greeting to a surly nod. Without looking up he poured himself coffee and sipped it noisily. “Your Annamite was scabrous — and he sniveled constantly,” he complained in a sour voice. 

“Tant pis, tant pis! Perhaps next time I’ll have more time to prepare. I know what to look for now.” Duclos offered his hand, anxious to be gone from the unwholesome presence of the recruiter. “Please excuse me — I must begin my work.” 

Lepine shook his hand perfunctorily without rising. “I trust from now on you will employ your work force sparingly. Replacements for your plantation won’t be so easy to come by in future.” 

The recruiter’s voice had become undisguisedly offensive and Duclos, after a moment’s hesitation, stepped off the verandah and strode angrily away without replying. When he reached the barracks of Number Three Village the sky to the east was already lightening but the cai had still not finished handing out the morning quinine. Immediately the anger and irritation he had brought with him from the house erupted in a howl of anger. He snatched up a handful of the medicaments and began distributing them himself to the coolies in the front rank. Halfway along the line he came across the Ngo brothers, and his eye fell on Hoc. The Annamese boy was standing in an attitude of despair, his chin sunk on his chest. His coupe-coupe and his other tapping tools hung limply in his hands at his sides, and he didn’t raise his head at the Corsican’s approach. 

The sight of the youth who had so displeased the detested recruiter and thereby jeopardized his future supply of coolies stopped Duclos in his tracks. Hoc’s puny shoulders and bowed head reminded the furious Corsican suddenly of his own helplessness in the face of the unreasoning demands from Paris, and without warning he struck out at Hoc with his free hand, knocking him to the ground.” You sniveling wretch! Stand up straight and show respect to your superiors — or you will feel the irons of An Dap about your ankles again!” 

Hoc struggled upright with difficulty. For a moment he stood gazing balefully at the Corsican’s back as he turned away to pass on down the line. Then his eyes, red-rimmed from weeping, widened dementedly and he lunged from his place, swinging the long blade of his coupe-coupe high above his head. 

One of the Annamese cais yelled a frantic warning, aid Duclos was starting to turn when the sharpened edge of the heavy blade split his helmet. Because he was swiveling his head to look behind him, the blow skidded off his skull, severed his left ear and bit deep into vital veins and arteries at the base of his neck. The anguished force of the stroke drove the Corsican to his knees and, paralyzed with shock, he remained in this posture, groping ineffectually for the bone-handled knife as his blood spurted onto the red dust around him. 

Hoc and his brother shrank back in momentary horror from the man dying at their feet; then Hoc began sobbing loudly. All around them the other coolies stared in disbelief at the sight of their tormentor so astonishingly struck down before their eyes; then the floodwaters of their hatred burst some invisible dam, and several men dashed forward screaming incoherently to slash at the kneeling man’s head and shoulders with their coupe-coupes. He fell on his side under the onslaught, and one coolie wrenched the bone-handled knife from his helpless fingers. With a wild yell of triumph the Annamese dropped to his knees and plunged the knife to the hilt in the dying Corsican’s chest. 

The moment Duclos fell, his two young French assistants and the cai started instinctively towards him; but seeing the electrifying force of spontaneous, hate-inspired rebellion sweeping through the crowd of five hundred coolies, they froze where they stood, their faces blanching with fear. The coolies sensed their fright instantly, and in a moment forty or fifty of them were advancing menacingly on the little group of overseers, brandishing the implements they had used for so long to tend the rubber plantation under their ruthless. tutelage. 

Caught up in the hysteria of the moment, Hoc ran blindly with the milling crowd, still clutching the bloodstained coupe-coupe with which he’d felled the Corsican. His brother, Dong, ran yelling beside him, as shocked and bewildered as all the other coolies by their sudden freedom. Knowing they could expect no mercy from the revenge-crazed mob, the Annamese caj were the first to turn and flee, and the two terrified Frenchmen followed them. They reached the shelter of the brick-built cainha far enough ahead of their pursuers to lock themselves in, and for several minutes the coolies milled around the building, trying without success to smash the stout wooden doors and shutters. Then a voice yelled: “Burn them out! We must burn them out!” and Dong and Hoc joined a party of two-dozen coolies in a headlong dash to the tractor sheds to fetch drums of oil. 

The two boys were splashing the fuel frenziedly over the walls and windows of the cainha when their father found them. Flushed and wild-eyed like all the others, they resisted at first when he tried to drag them away. 

“The alarm will be raised soon! The provincial garrison at Bien Hoa will be called out! We can’t take on the whole French colonial army — we must escape. Now!” Loc seized them both by the arm and forced them to run with him towards the jungle. 

As they reached the trees they heard a wild burst of cheering and turned to see the first tongues of flame licking up the walls of the cainha. Several hundred coolies were Surging round the building baying for the blood of the overseers inside. 

“They will hive guns in there! They’ll shoot their way out!” cried Loc, urging his sons on again. “Many coolies will be killed. They are foolish to stay.” 

“But where are we going, Father?” asked Dong frantically. “Whenever we tried to escape before we were always captured by the Moi. It’s impossible to get through the jungle to Saigon from here.” 

“We’re not going south! Runaways from these plantations have always tried to reach Saigon because it is the nearest big city. That’s foolish! We will go the other way — to Hue, to Hanoi. It’s much farther but there we can carry on the fight. The Quoc Dan Dang is stronger in the north!” 

A sudden flurry of shots rang out from the direction of the cainha, confirming the older man’s prediction, and without further argument the two boys turned and followed him into the jungle at a run. 

On the verandah of the plantation house Auguste Lepine heard the commotion in the compound but in the half-light could not see clearly enough to identify its cause. As a precaution he returned leisurely to his bedroom to collect the case containing his business papers and the revolver he habitually carried. On his instructions his luggage had already been carried to the Citroën by the congaie. When he stepped out onto the verandah again, to his astonishment a mob of twenty or more Annamese was swarming across the garden dragging between them drums of oil and petrol stolen from the tractor sheds, intent on firing the house. 

They recognized him instantly and half-a-dozen coolies wielding coupe-coupes separated from the rest and dashed towards him. Snatching his revolver from his case, he emptied the gun into the advancing group from a range of only thirty yards; three or four of the coolies stumbled and fell, but the rest came on screaming with even greater frenzy. 

Sweating with fear, Lepine dashed along the verandah and flung himself behind the wheel of the Citroën. The engine started first time and the car shot away down the dirt road, but he could not prevent the leading coolie from leaping onto the running board beside the driver’s door. As the motor car gathered speed, the Annamese flailed wildly at the windshield until the glass splintered in the recruiter’s face, blinding him. Revving fast in low gear the Citroen swerved in a half-circle and smashed into the bank at the roadside, flinging the coolie clear. Lepine was knocked unconscious by the impact and a few seconds later his head was hacked from his shoulders by a flurry of coupe-coupe blows rained on him in the driving seat by the surviving coolies. They tipped the contents of one oil drum into the car and threw in a burning rag. W[hen its petrol tank exploded a few minutes later, the flames from the blazing car, the house and the cainha lit the dawn sky more brilliantly than the first rays of the rising sun.