“Really? Why didn’t he come back here with you?”
“That’s a good question. He would have enjoyed Colonel Mang. They’re cast from the same mold.”
People got off at Xuan Loc, and people got on. Balance and harmony were achieved, and the train moved on. I said, “Xuan Loc was the site of the last stand of the South Vietnamese army before the fall of Saigon.”
Susan yawned and replied, “I’m too vapid and self-centered to care.”
I think I’d pissed her off. Or maybe it was the generation gap. I suddenly felt middle-aged.
It had been a long night and an early morning for both of us, and Susan fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. Within a few minutes, I, too, was asleep.
We both awoke as the train approached Cam Ranh Bay, about four hours from Saigon. I could see the huge bay, and also part of the former American naval installation, and some gray warships at anchor. Farther north on a peninsula that formed the bay had been the big American airbase. Susan was awake now, and I asked her, “Have you ever been here?”
She said, “No, no one comes here. It’s mostly off-limits.” She asked me, “Were you ever here?”
“Once. Briefly in ’72. I was on a military police detail to pick up a couple of soldiers who’d gotten into some trouble. We had to take them down to LBJ — that’s Long Binh Jail — outside Bien Hoa. Back in ’68, when Johnson was still President, we used to say about guys going to jail, ‘LBJ got you once, now LBJ got you again.’ Get it?”
“Is this in the history books?”
“Probably not.”
I looked out the window again. The American naval and air installations at Cam Ranh Bay were considered among the best in the Pacific at that time. After 1975, the Soviets were handed the whole complex by the new regime. I asked Susan, “Any Russians still here?”
“I’m told there are some left. But mostly the Vietnamese navy uses the place.” She added, “It’s a deepwater port, and it would make a great commercial port for container ships and oil tankers, but Hanoi has pretty much banned all development in the area. I don’t think you’d be allowed to visit the base unless you want to get shot.”
“That’s okay.” That was two places now — Bien Hoa and Cam Ranh Bay — where I couldn’t go home again.
The train stopped at Cam Ranh Bay station. Only a few people got off, and the people getting on were mostly Vietnamese sailors and airmen, and most of them jammed into the vestibule.
Susan took a half-liter bottle of water out of her backpack, opened it, and drank, then passed it on to me.
The train moved out and continued north.
Now and then I could see a bomb crater, a derelict tank, a few dilapidated sandbag bunkers, or a French watchtower. But mostly the war seemed to have been erased from the landscape, though probably not from the minds of the people who had lived through it, myself included.
Susan took a container of yogurt out of her bag and a plastic spoon. “Want some?”
I hadn’t eaten since the hamburger in the Q-Bar, but I’d rather starve to death than eat yogurt. I said, “No, thanks.”
She spooned the stuff into her mouth.
I asked, “Does this train have a dining car?”
“Of course. You go through the bar car, then the panoramic observation car, and you get to the dining car.”
I was hungry and light-headed enough to believe that. I noticed that everyone around us had brought lots of food and drink. I said to Susan, “I’ll have some yogurt.”
She put a spoonful of this white goo in my mouth. It wasn’t all that bad.
We finished the water and yogurt, and Susan wanted to switch places, but there was no room in the aisle, so she squeezed onto my lap, then I slid across to the aisle seat. I said, “Let’s do that again.”
She smiled.
Susan lit up an after-dinner cigarette and blew the smoke out a crack in the window. She had a copy of the London Economist with her, which she read.
A half-hour after we’d left Cam Ranh Bay, and about six hours after we’d left Saigon, the train began slowing down as we approached Nha Trang.
We came in from the west, and the landscape was spectacular with mountains running down toward the sea. Picturesque brick towers — which Susan said were Cham Towers, whatever that is — dotted the foothills. There was a huge Buddha statue in the hills to our left, and on a small hill ahead, overlooking the train station, was a Gothic-style Catholic cathedral, which I remembered.
The train slowed down and stopped at the station.
This was the last stop, and people grabbed kids, luggage, and packages, and headed for the doors as the mob on the platform fought to get in.
As we pushed toward the door, Susan said, “Just keep pushing. You’re the biggest guy on the train, and everyone behind us is counting on you.”
We finally popped out the door onto the platform.
It was cooler here than in Saigon, and the air was about a thousand times cleaner. The sky was blue and wispy clouds floated by.
Susan and I walked along the platform into the small station house, then outside where dozens of taxis waited for fares.
We got into a taxi, and Susan said something to the driver, who did a double take at her Vietnamese, then pulled away from the station. Susan asked me, “What do you remember about that R&R hotel?”
“It was toward the south end of the beach. It was a French colonial structure, maybe three stories. It could have been white, or maybe pale blue.”
She said, “Not bad for an old guy.” Susan spoke to the driver. He listened as he drove and nodded.
We passed through Nha Trang, which looked like many other seaside resort towns — white stucco buildings and red tiled roofs, palm trees, and climbing bougainvillea. The town was in better shape than I remembered it, when it was filled with military vehicles and soldiers. It had been a generally safe haven from the war, and I didn’t recall any major war damage, though now and then Charles would lob in a few mortar rounds from the surrounding hills. Also, the CIA had a big sub-station in Nha Trang, a sure sign that the place was safe and had good restaurants and bars.
Within a few minutes, the taxi turned south along the beach road. The beachside buildings to our right ranged from ramshackle to bright new hotels and resorts. To our left was the beach, miles of white sand, palm trees, beach restaurants, and turquoise water under a bright sunlit sky. The beach was crescent-shaped, and two headlands jutted out into the South China Sea from the north and south. Across the water were several intriguing-looking islands of dark green vegetation. Susan said, “Oh, this is beautiful.”
“It is.”
“Is this how you remember it?”
“I was here only three days, and I believe I was drunk the entire time.”
The taxi stopped, and the driver pointed and spoke to Susan. About a hundred meters beyond a concrete balustrade that ran along the road was a big, white, three-story stucco building with two wings jutting out from the main section. A blue and white sign read Grand Hotel.
Susan said, “The driver says this was one of the hotels used by the Americans during the war. It was called the Grand then, got a Communist name change to Nha Khach 44—which just means Hotel Number 44—and it’s now the Grand again. Look familiar?”
“Could be. Ask him if there’s a waitress named Lucy in the bar.”
Susan smiled, said something to the driver, and he drove in between two tall pillars, into a circular driveway, in the center of which was an ornamental pool.
The place did look familiar, including the veranda out front where people were sitting and drinking. I could almost picture Lucy waiting on tables. I said, “This has to be the place.”