But Enough About You: Essays (17 page)

The evening was soft. The vineyards below darkened to purple. In the distance we could see the Cape. As the sun set it turned a low-lying layer of mauve fog. I remarked on it, and the waitress said, “It’s smoke, from the fires. Twelve thousand people lost their homes.” A shantytown had burned. Seven geese loudly rose out of the vineyard and made off toward the vanishing sun.

On our last morning we stood atop Cape Point, looking down on the end of Africa. On one side is the Atlantic, on the other the Indian Ocean. I’d been here before—in 1971, as an eighteen-year-old seaman on a long passage aboard a freighter bound from Ceylon to New York City. It was night when we transited the Cape. I had the watch and it was my duty to report the movements of the many other ships around us. I was terrified.

But now all was peace. We saw kelp gulls, rock kestrels, oystercatchers, terns, and gannets, and not a baboon in sight. Someone had warned us, “If you make a picnic on the Cape the baboons will come and eat your food and then you’ll
have
no picnic.”

We lingered, being in no hurry to begin the long journey home. A boat rounded the Cape, crossing from one ocean to another. A huge tail rose out of the water and disappeared back into it with a loud
plop
, our last African creature.

—
Forbes FYI
, May 2005

On my first day in Hanoi I awoke at four a.m., but for once was grateful for circadian disrhythmia, otherwise known as jet lag. I’d been told that if you want to see “the real Hanoi,” you must stroll around Hoan Kiem Lake as the city is waking up. There are a hundred reasons to stay at the Metropole Hotel, as I did; one of them certainly is its proximity to Hoan Kiem.

It was dark but already steamy. Boom boxes blared tinny sounds of exercise music. Women and men did calisthenics and tai chi in groups along the shore. Some men fished. Another group of men, wearing what appeared to be underwear, were setting up weight-lifting equipment on the sidewalk outside a temple. Hadn’t seen that before, but by the time I left, a week later, I decided that I hadn’t seen anything quite like Hanoi before.

Walking around that first morning, I came across another temple and the smell of incense drifting from a small shrine atop some rocks. A woman appeared out of the darkness to sell me joss sticks. I paid 10,000 dong (about 60 cents) and she led me up irregular steps to the shrine so that I could light the incense. She shook her head and in sign language conveyed that I must light an odd number. In the Buddhist-Taoist-Confucian tradition even numbers are bad joss. I held out five and the old woman nodded. I made my orisons to whatever spirits inhabited the shrine, descended the tricky stairs, and crossed the bridge—appropriately called the Bridge of the Rising Sun—to the Temple of the Jade Mountain.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but: during the Ming domination of Vietnam, a fisherman on this lake discovered a magic sword one day in his net. It had been sent by the Emperor of the Waters, to help the king end the Chinese occupation. With the sword’s help, the king drove out the occupiers. A year later, while the king was boating on the lake, a tortoise appeared and asked him to return the magic sword. Hoan Kiem is thus the “Lake of the Returned Sword.” There
are about twenty lakes in Hanoi, each with its own legend. In 1967, Lieutenant Commander John McCain parachuted into one of them.

It was growing light, and hot. I completed my circumnavigation of Hoan Kiem and proceeded west and found my destination without difficulty. Its name is painted above the forbidding main entrance:
Maison Centrale
1896–1954.
In fact, it was in use as a prison after 1954, when Hoa Lo became known in the United States as the “Hanoi Hilton.” After being fished out of the lake, John McCain spent five and a half years inside these walls.

I spent an hour inside, shuddering in silence at dungeons, shackles, torture cells, death cells, and its once busy guillotine. I will never again think of it in connection with the name “Hilton.” The display about the American inmates of Hoa Lo makes it out to have been a mildly uncomfortable guest home for naughty imperialist pilots. Photos show them smiling, playing basketball, and even happily receiving “souvenirs” before they went home on March 29, 1973. Reading their memoirs tells a somewhat different story.

I made my way back to the Metropole. It’s a storied place. It was built in 1901, at the height of the French colonization of
l’Indochine
. The contours of the recently installed swimming pool had to be determined by the bomb shelter beneath. Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard spent their honeymoon here in 1936. Graham Greene drank vermouth cassis here. Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser stayed here a half century later while filming Greene’s
The Quiet American
. (The Graham Greene suite is number 228.)

I had my first meal in Hanoi at one of the hotel’s four restaurants, Le Beaulieu. I was hungry after my morning ramble, and did not hold back. I started—as you must in Vietnam—with
pho
. (To pronounce it correctly, imagine you are Inspector Clouseau.) It’s the national dish: noodles in broth with meat or chicken, vegetables, and spices. I slurped down two bowls and then tucked into a plate of fried rice with bok choy and chili sauce. Then had at the croissants. I was tempted by the pancakes, the omelet station, full Japanese breakfast, cheeses, cold cuts, crème caramel, yogurts. Le Beaulieu’s breakfast buffet is the sort that makes you think,
Well, I could always just spend the day
here.

Though Hanoi seemed generally laid-back, authoritywise, every day, at about the same time, loudspeakers blared outside my window. I made inquiries. A local rolled his eyes and shrugged: “The Party.” I asked what the loudspeakers said. “Oh, they’re either denouncing someone, or telling everyone to do something. Yesterday it was ‘Have your dog or cat vaccinated by three o’clock tomorrow.’ ” He shook his head. “F— communism.”

The hotel arranged for me and a guide to be driven around in their 1953 blue Citroën limousine. It was a pleasant, but strange sensation to drive around rainy, busy Hanoi in a car manufactured the year before Dien Bien Phu. Mr. Anh, the driver, was in full chauffeur’s livery; Mr. Tuan, the guide, sat beside him in front. As we pulled into Hanoi’s chaotic traffic flow (more on this later) I felt colonial, and uneasy, as if someone on a passing
cyclo
might toss a grenade through the window. We made our way to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and house.

The mausoleum—monumental and grim in the Soviet style—was closed for its annual renovation. Ho Chi Minh’s body is preserved, as are many Communist gods, and must go annually to a sort of spa for “refreshment.” I’ll spare you the details. The mausoleum is sited on the spot where, on September 2, 1945, Ho declared independence from France, inaugurating nine years of war.

The house, where he conducted much of the war with the United States and the South, is near the mausoleum and stands in a peaceful, leafy precinct of grapefruit, bamboo, willow, almond, and Buddha trees alive with bird-chirp. There’s a large fishpond full of carp. The house is teak and on stilts, in the manner of Vietnamese village houses. Ho’s air raid helmet is there under glass, next to his three telephones, one of which is crank operated. With these modest devices he won a war against the most powerful nation on earth.

I wanted to see the “B-52 Museum” indicated on the map. It is something that an American should see. So Mr. Anh, shifting—
rrrr-unk
—gears, drove down frenetically crowded streets. Driving through Hanoi is an experience second only to walking in Hanoi. It is a city of two million motorbikes, and I saw them every single one of them, up close. On the way to the B-52, one motorbike passed us, its rear rack heaped high with boiled carcasses.

“Pigs?”

Mr. Tuan and Mr. Anh laughed. The Vietnamese laugh easily, an endearing quality along with courtesy, friendliness, and generosity.

“Dog!” Mr. Tuan corrected.

The streets grew narrower and narrower until finally we came to a lake, not much more than an acre, surrounded by city houses. The water was the color of bright jade. From the middle protruded the tail section of a B-52. It fell to earth here just before midnight on December 27, 1972, during the so-called Christmas bombing that forced the North back to the negotiating table in Paris. A plaque refers to the wreckage as evidence of the “Dien Bien Phu of the air.” I said a silent prayer for the crew and we left.

We proceeded to the Temple of Literature, a thousand-year-old university where the mandarins took their exams. These were tests you wanted to pass, as mandarins ruled the country.

My tourist receptors began to flag. It was past noon. I was hungry. We went to a place in the old quarter called Cha Ca La Vong. It’s been there since 1871 and it serves only one dish. If you guessed that the dish is called
cha ca
, you are correct. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten: chunks of perch dusted in turmeric, grilled atop a wooden brazier set on the table. While it cooks you drink cold Bia Ha Noi (Hanoi beer). You add green onion, dill, fish sauce, peanuts, shrimp sauce (
not
for the faint of heart), herbs, and hot chilies, all heaped onto rice noodles. Cost of meal for three: $25. (395,000 dong. Dealing with dong takes some getting used to.)

The next day I set off on foot to see a bit of the city on my own. This turned out to be a pedestrian adventure, quite literally.

Kai Speth, the Metropole’s genial general manager, had given me advice on how to negotiate Hanoi’s streets: “Just walk out, and keep walking slowly. If you stop, you die. If you run, you die. And whatever you do, don’t look into their eyes. It only confuses things.”

My first moment of truth was Dinh Tien Hoang, the street that runs along Hoan Kiem Lake’s eastern shore. When I crossed it that first morning, before five, there had been only minimal traffic. Now,
as I stood sweatily on the curb, it was a continuous onrush of motorcycles, with cars and trucks thrown in. No stoplights, no cops, just Hanoi’s two million motorbikes, all of them beeping.

I stood for perhaps fifteen minutes frozen, trying to muster the courage to cross. My mouth went dry. Finally I said, “Well, are you a man?” A voice replied, “No, you are not. Go back to the hotel. Have another breakfast.” I took a deep breath and stepped off the curb.

Keep going
, I told myself.
Do. Not. Stop. Do. Not. Run.

Hundreds of vehicles threaded their way around me. Somehow, I made it to the far curb and collapsed against a tree, breathing heavily. Emboldened by my thrilling accomplishment, I walked for four hours. Here are some redacted notes:

A new and interesting challenge as I make my way down Trang Thi St: a woman driving her motorcycle at me
on the sidewalk.

Heart soars as I encounter an intersection with an actual traffic light! Bliss! Resolve to spend rest of day here.

Turns out there is not much difference in Hanoi between intersections with lights and intersections
without
lights.

A new strategy—wait until pregnant woman (plentiful) appears and cross using her as a shield.

Some peripatetic hours later, I found myself in an open-air market a few blocks north of Hoan Kiem Lake. It’s off Hang Be Street; you can’t miss it. Drenched in sweat, I walked amid the most concentrated commerce I’ve ever seen. Everything Vietnam had to offer by way of foodstuffs was here, along with a thousand pungent smells. I made notes as I strolled:

Flowers, live eels, snakes, catfish, meats, spices, snails, sweets herbs, watercress, live crabs tied with vines, noodles, cooked ducks, live ducks, live shrimp in tubs, squid, giant shrimp,
periwinkles, nuts, live sturgeon, carp, duck eggs, quail eggs, cakes, ribs, limes, cilantro, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, curry, coffee, chilies, ginseng, vermicelli, incense, moon cakes, live rabbits, dead chicken feet, green dragon lychee . . .

I wanted to prolong the visit, but I was due back at the Metropole for a lunch of Nha Trang lobsters and
fines de claires
from Brittany. I braced myself for one more assault on Dinh Tien Hoang Street with the thought that the five joss sticks I lit the first morning would surely see me safely across.

—
ForbesLife
, June 2010

You go through the visitors center and there it is. You’ve seen it in photographs a hundred times, the famous gate: “Arbeit Macht Frei.” Work will set you free. The idea was to be reassuring, unlike the slogan Dante hung over the entrance to his hell, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Put in an honest day and everything will be all right. It would be counterproductive to panic the arrivals. Here, and up the road, in Birkenau, they thought through all the details, down to the numbered hooks in the dressing rooms outside the gas chambers. The SS jollied you along. Remember which hook you hang your clothes on so you’ll be able to find them after the shower. And don’t forget to put your shoes underneath so you’ll be able to get them, too. You’re a shoemaker? Great, we need shoemakers. At Auschwitz, they even had a prisoner orchestra playing inside the gate.
It helped keep order. Good for morale, too. How bad could it be, if they greeted you with music?

It’s February and gray. The poplar trees that line the avenues between the cell blocks are bare. The swimming pool—See? We even have a swimming pool.—that was to impress the Red Cross is covered with dirty ice. Crows, gallows. It’s hands-in-the-pockets cold, but would you want to see this in springtime, with blossoms and sweet earth smells?

Our guide is Jarek. Midforties, fluent English, dark mustache, knit cap. He grew up in Oswiecim. He speaks precisely, in a low, clear voice without emotion for nearly six hours, except for twice, once outside Block 10 and inside Block 11. We pass under
Arbeit Macht Frei
. He indicates a grassy strip. “Here is where they gave the welcome speech. They said, ‘You dirty Poles, this isn’t a sanitorium. There’s only one way out—through the chimney of the crematorium. Jews, you have three weeks. Priests, one month. Three months for the rest of you.”