It was a gecko on the wall that provoked the reflection that sent me away. I was staying at The Mess, a tall airy house on a leafy hill, and I realized that I had been staring at a gecko on the wall for fifteen minutes or more. It was an old habit, begun in boredom. It seemed as if I had been in Singapore a long time ago, when I was young and didn't know anything, and being there this second time, after two years' absence, I had a glimpse of this other person. It is possible at a distance to maintain the fiction of former happiness – childhood or schooldays -and then you return to an early setting and the years fall away and you see how bitterly unhappy you were. I had felt trapped in Singapore; I felt as if I was being destroyed by the noise – the hammering, the traffic, the radios, the yelling – and I had discovered most Singaporeans to be rude, aggressive, cowardly, and inhospitable, full of vague racial fears and responsive to any bullying authority. I believed it to be a loathsome place: many of my students thought so too and they couldn't imagine why anyone would willingly stay there. At last I left, and on this return I could not imagine, watching this gecko, why I had stayed three years there; perhaps it was the deceived hesitation I had called patience, or maybe it was my lack of money. I was certain that I would not make the same mistake again, so after seeing a few friends -and everyone told me he was planning to leave soon – I flew out. The previous day I had spent at a club where I had once been a member. The secretary of this club was an overbearing man with a maniacal laugh, but he had been in Singapore since the thirties. He was a real old-timer, people said. I asked about him. 'You a friend of his?' said the man at the bar. I said I knew him. 'I'd keep that quiet if I were you. Last month he did a bunk with 180,000 dollars of the club's money.' Like me'- like everyone I knew in Singapore – he had just been waiting for his chance to go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I went to Vietnam to take the train; people have done stranger things in that country. The Trans-Vietnam Railway, which the French called the Transindochinois, took over thirty-three years to build, but in 1942, a short six years after it was finished, it was blown to bits and never repaired. A colonial confection, like one of those French dishes that take ages to prepare and are devoured swiftly: a brief delicacy that is mostly labour and memory. The line went along the beautiful coast few of our reluctant janizaries have praised, from Saigon to Hanoi; but now it is in pieces, like a worm chopped up for bait, a section here and there twitching with signs of life. It is mined by the Viet Cong – even more furiously since the cease-fire (which is, willy-nilly, a painful euphemism); it is also mined by local truckers, cash-driven terrorists who believe the continuance of these railway fragments (to Dalat, to Hue, to Tuy Hoa) will prevent them from earning the livelihood Americans have taught them to expect. Like much else in Vietnam, the railway is in ruins – in northern Binh Dinh Province the line has been turned into rice fields – but the amazing thing is that part of it is still running. The Deputy Director of Vietnam Railways, Tran Mong Chau, a short man with thick glasses, told me, 'We can't stop the railway. We keep it running and we lose money. Maybe we do some repairs. If we stop it everyone will know we've lost the war.'
Tran Mong Chau warned me against going from Nha Trang to Tuy Hoa, but said I might enjoy the run from Saigon to Bien Hoa – there were fourteen trips a day. He warned me that it was not like an American train. That particular warning (though how was he to know?) is like a recommendation.
Outside the office I asked Dial, my American translator, a Marine turned cultural-affairs escort (he had – and smiled at the lechery in the phrase – made a 'lateral entry'): 'Do you think it's safe to take the train to Bien Hoa?'
'About a month ago the VC hit it,' Dial said. 'They got six or seven of the passengers in an ambush. They stopped the train with a pillar of salt – then they started shooting.'
'Maybe we should forget it.'
'No, it's secure now. Anyway, I've got a gun.'
At breakfast the next morning, Cobra One – this was the code name of my American host in Saigon – told me that the Vietnam Tourist Board wanted to see me before I took the train to Bien Hoa. I said I'd be glad to pay them a visit. We were eating on the roof of Cobra One's large house, enjoying the coolness and the fragrance of the flowering trees. From time to time a low-flying helicopter paddled past, weaving between the housetops. Cobra One said there was going to be a big campaign to attract tourists to Vietnam. I suggested that the idea might be rather premature – after all, the war was still on.
'You'd never know it here,' said Cobra One's wife, Cobra Two. She looked up from her newspaper. Below us in the centre of the compound there was a swimming pool, set amidst flower beds and rows of palms. A far wall held a coil of barbed wire, but that only made it seem more like Singapore. There was a hedge of red hibiscus along the driveway and clusters of giant ferns, and a man in a yellow shirt raking the gravel paths under the laburnum trees. Cobra Two, striking in her silk robe, kicking a furry slipper up and down, and rattling Stars and Stripes, said, 'Some of the best – hey, what hemisphere is this?'
'Eastern,' said Cobra One.
'Right. Some of the best lays in the eastern hemisphere are right in this compound.'
The office of the Director of Planning of the Commission for Vietnam Tourism was decorated in red velvet from floor to ceiling, and there were ribbons on the margins of the walls. We seemed to be sitting in an empty box of expensive chocolates. I said I didn't have much time, since I was going to take the train to Bien Hoa. The Director of Planning and the Deputy Commissioner exchanged uneasy glances. Vo Doan Chau, the Director, said the train was in bad shape – what I should do, he said, was to take a car to Vung Tau and go swimming. 'Vietnam is famous for its beaches,' he said.
Famous for its beaches! 'And much else,' I was going to say, but Tran Luong Ngoc, the American-trained Deputy Commissioner, launched into the explanation of the campaign. They were going all-out for tourists, he said, and they had devised a publicity gimmick that could not fail, the Follow Me! scheme. Posters were being printed showing pretty Vietnamese girls in places like Danang, Hue, and Phu Quoc Island, and the slogan on the posters would be follow me! These posters (pleiku -follow me!, dalat – follow me!) would be sent all over the world, but most of the campaign money would be spent to encourage tourists in the United States and Japan. Mr Ngoc gave me a stack of brochures with titles like Lovely Hue and Visit Viet-Nam, and he asked me if I had any questions.
'About these beaches,' I said.
'Very nice beaches,' said Mr Ngoc. 'Also woods and greenery.'
4Vietnam has everything,' said Mr Chau.
'But the tourists might be a bit worried about getting shot,' I said.
'Noncombat areas!' said Mr Ngoc. 'What to worry about? You're travelling around the country yourself, no?'
'Yes, and I'm worried.'
'My advice to you,' said Mr Ngoc, 'is don't worry. We expect many tourists. We think they will be Americans, and maybe some Japanese. The Japanese like to travel.'