‘Day One,’ Hunter growled in Max’s ear, ‘and it’s already looking more like a farce than anything else.’ One of the judges hissed in Hunter’s direction and he acknowledged the rebuke with a surly nod.
Van Khoa now occupied the well of the court. ‘You have heard the charges described,’ he said, addressing the judges. ‘In the following days I will bring proof of Quatch’s betrayal of the ideals of our revolution. For the moment, as Chief Prosecutor, I must state the penalty which the prosecution believes would be fitting…’
‘Death,’ Hunter intoned in a low rumble.
Van Khoa turned his back on the Westerners. ‘It is our belief that men are not criminal in themselves,’ he said. ‘It is our belief that society is the criminal. In particular it is foreign society which has corrupted Quatch. In view of this belief,’ Van Khoa turned to face Quatch, ‘the prosecution asks the court for a sentence of seven years’ re-education.’
Max felt Nan Luc move beside him and a stir of anger pass through her, but when he looked her face showed no emotion. He glanced quickly in the direction she was looking. A faint smile had appeared on Quatch’s lips. He bowed his head to the court. To Max it was as if the court had just confirmed its side of a bargain. At six in the evening the president called the session at a close.
‘My guess is that Quatch is very pleased with what the prosecution is asking for,’ Hal Bolson said to Max as the foreign press filed out of the courtroom. ‘In a closed session these charges would have carried death.’
‘So why the leniency,’ Max asked, ‘if Quatch is guilty of all he’s being charged with and more?’
Bolson hunched his shoulders. ‘Because I guess this trial isn’t really about Vo Tran Quatch. It’s about Vietnam trying to make a good impression on the world. A modest degree of corruption uncovered, brought to open trial and punished with restraint.’
‘You think Van Khoa wrote the scenario?’
‘Van Khoa and the little grey-haired guy in the baggy cream suit at the back of the court. I think what we’re seeing is a carefully contained version of the new Vietnamese justice. I hope you’re impressed, young Max.’
The correspondents stood outside the courthouse under the dripping, broken fronds of the palm trees and looked with distaste across at the Grand Hotel.
‘A mate of mine, who was here last year,’ Hunter said, ‘told me there’s a sort of unofficial knocking shop in Can Tho.’
‘What’s a knocking shop?’ a Frenchman asked.
‘A bordello,’ Max told him. ‘A cat-house, a knocking shop.’
‘Praise be to God,’ the Frenchman said.
‘They sell vodka for dollars, this mate of mine claimed,’ Hunter told them.
‘Can Tho must be a hundred K from here,’ Hal Bolson said. ‘Too far.’
‘So we start now,’ Hunter urged. ‘We get back by dawn and we sleep it off in court.’
‘Something tells me we’re not going to miss a lot tomorrow,’ someone put in from the back.
Max moved away from the group. Nan Luc was leaving the courtroom with Van Khoa. He watched them as they crossed the square towards the hotel. What signs, he wondered, would two Vietnamese give, that they were lovers?
He spent only a few minutes with her that evening. She had stopped him on the stairs just before dinner, a worried look on her face. ‘One of the kitchen boys tells me the bus has gone,’ she said anxiously.
Max nodded. ‘Yes. It seems I’m dining alone tonight.’
‘But the driver of the bus is still here,’ she said, perplexed.
‘When I saw it leave,’ Max said as gently as possible, ‘the Australian, Hunter, was driving it.’
She looked blank. ‘But who authorised it? Colonel Khoa?’
‘Does someone have to authorise it?’ She was silent. ‘Guests of the Vietnamese people,’ he suggested. ‘Gone for a night out. That’s all.’
‘Do you know where they’ve gone, Monsieur Benning?’
He considered the possibility that Van Khoa would send someone to bring them back, decided they had too long a start and said: ‘I think they took the Can Tho road.’
‘Can Tho?’
He nodded. ‘Will this cause you trouble, Nan Luc?’
It was the first time he had used her name and she looked up at him, then quickly down at her short black skirt and sandalled feet. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I am only responsible for you.’
‘Then the rest have gone to Can Tho but I’m still here… what the hell?’
She looked up at him, saw he was smiling and burst into delighted laughter. ‘All right, Monsieur Benning. What the hell!’
She was not in the dining room that evening and after an imitation French meal Max went up to his room. He had brought with him the slim pack of his father’s letters given to him by his mother. Crossing to the window he looked out over the courthouse. He found it hard to accept that his father’s murder would receive no mention in this trial. He began to riffle through the letters.
There was very little news in any of them. Some were written from captivity and described Peter Benning’s growing devotion to the Vietnamese past. In the third or fourth letter Max paused. He had read the sentences before but they had had less of an impact. Now, re-reading, he came to believe that they actually summed up the essence of this mysterious man.
‘Only by an irrational act,’ Peter Benning had written, ‘can the human being define himself. It can be an act of the utmost savagery or an act of love. It can be an act of apparent importance or of utter triviality. But only when the human being has fully committed himself to this act, will all others know him. And only then will he know himself.’
Max got up and paced the room. A total commitment, his father argued, to a woman, a people, a culture, a tree or a river, was the essence of being human. A single definitive act. His spine tingled and the hair on his neck seemed to rise. Throughout his life he had avoided commitment, had used freedom from commitment as an excuse. But in some way he knew now that he responded to his father’s mad notion.
He had no doubt that he was already thinking ahead, thinking forward to when this trial ended, to the moment he would be faced with leaving Nan Luc.
An earsplitting thudding on the door jerked him upright. Outside in the corridor he heard shouts and running footsteps, whoops and deep laughter.
The newsmen had returned.
Chapter Fourteen
In the pillared entrance of the courthouse the next morning, Max stood on the top step and watched the silent, pale-faced journalists labour up the steps and into the entrance hall. He had not seen Nan Luc approach. She stopped and stood next to him on the courthouse steps.
‘Do the Vietnamese drink?’ Max asked her.
She nodded vigorously. ‘A village celebration can be a very drunken affair.’
‘What do they drink?’
‘Mostly a locally brewed spirit called Lua Moi. Very strong.’
For a moment she watched the Westerners. ‘Why didn’t you go?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Shall I tell the truth?’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t go because I’d hoped I might spend the evening with you.’
‘This is not Paris, Mr Benning,’ she said quietly. They stood for a moment looking at each other. Then Nan Luc turned sharply away. He moved to touch her arm but she shook her head. ‘Not Paris, not New York or London. This is Cahn Roc, Mr Benning.’ He had come to recognise her anxiety to cut short any moment growing between them. She looked towards the journalists.
‘What do you think of this appalling sight?’ Max asked lightly. ‘The wages of sin, would you say?’