The Tears of Autumn (12 page)

Kim, still chewing, frowned. “Say it in French,” he said. Christopher translated.

“Yes,” Kim said, “That’s it. Then there are the
chi
and the
phai—
different parts of the system.”

“The
chi
is the important unit, is it? Those are people related in direct line of descent from eldest son to eldest son.”

“People who belong to a
chi
think so. How do you know this stuff?”

“I’m not sure I do, that’s why I’m checking. What’s a
phai?”

“There can be lots of
phai
in a family. That’s people who are descended from younger sons.”

“Can you belong to a
chi
on one side and a
phai
on the other?”

“Sure, everyone does. I’m a
chi
on the Nguyen side and a
phai
on the Ngo side.”

“What about, say, Diem and Nhu—where did they fit in?”

“They were both younger sons,” Nguyen said. “The eldest son was Khoi—the one I told you was killed in ‘45 by Ho’s people.”

“Do these categories mean anything in the modern world?”

“You bet your ass they do,” Kim said. “What counts is where you rank in the family. If the Nguyen kings had held on for another four hundred years, I’d be a prince of the blood royal. Nobody forgets that.”

“Where do you rank in the Ngo family?”

“Way down—lower than Diem and Nhu did, even.”

“They couldn’t have ranked so low.”

“Well, no, they didn’t. They were listened to, and they contributed a lot to the family wealth in one way or another. But as far as the Truong toe was concerned, they were just a couple of kids who spoke French.”

“The Truong toe?” Christopher said. “Who’s that?”

“The head of the family. He’s the oldest man of the main line of eldest sons. I guess maybe he was their great-uncle.”

“What’s his name?”

Kim chewed another oyster and gave Christopher a bright drunken look, filled with wariness. “Ngo,” he said.

“Ngo what?”

“That’s for me to Ngo and you to find out,” Kim said, and coughed violently on the oyster that laughter had driven into his nose.

When he recovered, he wiped tears from his eyes and asked, “What do you want to know all this stuff for, anyway?”

“After we had lunch in Rome, I thought I might go back out to Saigon and do a piece on the Ngo family. You made them sound interesting.”

“Well, they’re not. They mostly sit around in dark little houses, eating smelly stuff and talking about the past.”

“I find it hard to believe that this guy—the Truong toe?— could run the lives of men like Diem and Nhu,” Christopher said.

“In politics, no. In the family, yes. He’s the one closest to everyone’s ancestors—very important stuff with us.”

“He’s in touch with everybody in the family?”

“Sure—that’s all he has to do in life. Whenever there’s a problem in the family, he settles it. Consults the ancestors, you know, and comes up with the answer. His house is the headquarters of the
toe.”

“What if you’re a militant Catholic, like Diem or Nhu—do you still worry about ancestor worship?”

Kim held a glass of wine to his lips with his right hand. With his left he made a gesture, palm upward, then downward, and lifted his eyebrows. He swallowed his wine and said, “It isn’t a question of ancestor worship
versus
Jesus Christ Our Lord. I tried to tell you in Rome how strong the family is with us. You’ve got to picture a group of people to whom all the dead ones, going back forever, and all the living ones, including the ones who are going to be born from now to forever, are all
with you,
all the time. That’s the Vietnamese family.”

“I’d like to write something about this.”

“Would you? You’d better do it on some other family. The Ngos are just a little anti-American right now.”

“It would be a good chance for them to make a point or two,” Christopher said. “I’ve got twenty million readers.”

“Your readers wouldn’t know a Truong toe from a third baseman, even after you told them. Paul, you’re shitting me. I think you’ve got something up your sleeve. You think about that while I get rid of some of this wine.”

Christopher watched Kim’s progress through the loud restaurant. Sybille Webster, sitting at a table against the wall, put a finger along her nose and winked at him. Tom Webster watched the Vietnamese go into the toilet, then walked over to Christopher’s table with his napkin clutched in his hand.

“Hi,” he said. “How’s every little thing?”

“Okay, Tom.”

“A college friend of yours passed through a couple of days ago. He left a message for you.”

“Did he, now? What was it?”

“It’s a bit complicated. Why don’t you come over for a drink when you ditch the little fellow?”

“All right. It may be late.”

Webster nodded and went back to his table. When Kim returned, he changed to red wine.

“Have you been to Beirut yet?” Christopher asked.

“No,” Kim replied, “I’ve decided to live oy my wits for a while. I keep busy selling interviews with Madame Nhu. You’re still not interested?”

“Not really, Kim. I know what she’s going to say—and it’s not publishable.”

“You want to do a story about the Ngo family without talking to her? No way you could do it—you’re too white, with all that blond hair and your big feet in wing tips. They wouldn’t say a word to you.”

Christopher shrugged. “I thought you might help out.”

“I don’t work there anymore.”

“But you work, Kim. I’m not thinking of your doing anything for free.”

Kim put down his wineglass and drew a short finger delicately around its rim. Christopher was .reminded of the bald banker in Geneva, counting money. “Well,” Kim said, “anything for the homeland. What seems reasonable to you?”

“A fair exchange. You give me ten good names—the Truong toe and whoever else you think might talk to me. I’d go to two hundred a name.”

Kim shook his head. “You’d have to use my name to get in the door,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“Then give me some other name—there must be someone I can pretend to know. By the time they check, I’ll be out of the country.”

“Give me a piece of paper,” Kim said. He pushed his plate aside and wrote rapidly with Christopher’s pen, holding it between his second and third fingers. “I’ve given you addresses, too—the one with the asterisk is the Truong toe.”

Christopher glanced at the list. “Who are the others?”

“Men to be careful of, Paul. I mean it. I think I know what you’re after.”

Kim laughed suddenly, staring into Christopher’s eyes. “Oh, this ought to be funny, Paul. You want a name to use as a reference, eh?” He leaned forward and beckoned Christopher closer. “Tell them you know Lê Thu,” he said.

“Lê Thu? That’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, sometimes,” Kim said. “Not always, though. Lê Thu—can you remember that? Believe me, that name will open doors in Vietnam.”

Christopher paid the bill. Outside, the café awnings were whipped by a hard winter rain. Kim fastened the button at the neck of his camel’s-hair overcoat. “Jesus,” he said, “I don’t wonder white people are all screwed up, coming from a climate like this.”

They walked together to the taxi rank at the corner of the boulevard Raspail. A tart standing against the wall of a building with her umbrella held over her head gave Christopher a miserable smile and cried,
“Au secours!”

Kim stopped to inspect the girl. “How much?” he asked her in French.

“Un napoleon,”
she replied,
“service non compris.”

Kim turned away with a look of contempt. “A hundred francs—for
that?”

The girl called after him, “Seventy-five, it’s raining.”

“C’est dégoûtant,”
Kim said.

Christopher stepped under the awning of a darkened shop. He handed Kim an envelope.

“Two thousand francs,” he said. “You’re doing better than the
poule,
and you don’t have to stand out in the weather.”

Kim weighed the envelope in his hand, then stuffed it into the pocket of his coat. His hair had been parted by the rain and his small round face was wet.

“I’m selling a bigger thrill,” Kim said. “Remember the name—Lê Thu.”

4

Christopher let Kim walk alone to the taxi. When the cab was out of sight, he went into the Dome and ordered a hot rum. The zinc bar was gone, and the harp-backed straw chairs, but the manners of the customers had not changed. A boy in a ragged sweater stared contemptuously at Christopher’s suit and tie; the boy held his girl’s hand and pressed down hard with his thumbnail on each of her knuckles in turn, watching with a small smile as pain crossed her face.

Christopher watched the street. When he saw Tom and Sybille Webster get into a taxi, he paid his bill and walked around the corner to the Metro.

Webster opened the door before Christopher rang the bell. “How’s Kim, the P.R. genius?” he asked.

“About the same,” Christopher said. “Are we going to talk here, or do you want to go someplace else?”

“Wherever we go on a night like this, we’ll be surrounded by four walls. Sybille wants to say good-night to you—or goodbye, or whatever.”

Sybille had taken off her stockings when she came in from the rain, and she stood in front of the fireplace with her skirt lifted high on her freckled legs.

“Hello, cookie,” she said. “Why are you in this terrible town when you could be in the sun?”

Christopher kissed her. “To see you for the last time—we can’t go on meeting this way, Sybille.”

“That’s what David Patchen told me the other night. Oh, I realized I hated him when he sat right there with his eyes propped open like a bad statue’s and said, ‘By the way, Christopher’s resigned,’” Sybille said. “As a conversationalist he’s a
blowgun
—Paul, I know he’s your best friend, but every time he comes here he has some bit of news, tipped with curare, that he fires into my poor flesh. Why does he come? Why doesn’t he stay in Washington and stroke his computers?”

Webster handed his wife a glass of brandy. “We’ll still see Paul,” he said. “Blame him—he’s the one who resigned, after all.”

“I’d rather blame David Patchen,” Sybille said. “Besides, it will never be the same. We can’t assume Paul knows the same secrets as we do anymore. I’ve
seen
people go outside—they have the same faces as before, but they change. Little by little, what made them nice leaks out of them.”

Sybille drank her cognac. “Oh, well,” she said. “I’m going to bed like a good professional wife, so you two can have your last exchange of dark confidences. Are you sleeping here tonight. Paul?”

“I might, if that’s all right.”

“You know where—I’ll put some towels out for you. We’ll meet again in the morning.” Sybille put a hand to his cheek and kissed his lips. “It’s raining all over the world,” she said.

Webster filled their glasses again. They stood together by the fire, smiling at Sybille’s noises in the back of the apartment. Finally her bedroom door closed and Webster brought a sealed envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Christopher. There was no salutation on the note and no signature:

You wanted something on Oswald’s movements before Dallas.

He was in New Orleans from 24 April to 25 September, working at insignificant jobs. He passed out leaflets for something called the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

On 25 September, for no apparent reason, he went to Mexico City by bus, arriving there on the morning of 27 September. He stayed at the Hotel Commercio ($1.28 a day).

On the twenty-seventh, he went twice to the Cuban embassy and once to the Soviet embassy to apply for visas; said he wanted to return to Russia, transiting through Havana. He was turned down at both places, and had a loud argument with the Cuban consul. At the Soviet embassy he spoke with Yatskov and Kostikov, both KGB types under consular cover.

Between 27 September and 1 October, he remained in Mexico City, but there is no information about his movements on those three days. He returned to Dallas, arriving 3 October, and went to work at the Texas Book Depository on 16 October.

He’d had the rifle for some time—bought it under a false name, “A. Hidell,” on 13 March, by mail order.

On 1 November, he rented P.O. Box 6225, Terminal Annex, Dallas.

After our little dance on the sidewalk, I began to think about what you’d said. Maybe we’re the ones with illusions, but it doesn’t matter. See what you can do; if you succeed, I’d like to hear about it. But that’s up to you.

The money in Geneva represents less than the total of your magazine salary over the past five years. We never found a way to give it to charity (something about accounting regulations), so it’s been lying in a safe all this time. I found a way to give it back to you as a “termination bonus.” As long as we call it that, it seems to be okay. There’s more if you need it.

I wish I could arrange a nobler gesture. It’s not possible. I do advise you to stay out of this country for a while. Your highly placed friend won’t be in “power” forever, but while he is, you might as well realize you have no one here who can help you. He’s serious about the straitjacket.

I’ve told Tom about your “resignation,” to prevent his sending me cables asking where you are. He’ll keep it to himself, even if asked directly. He knows nothing else, and shouldn’t.

Good-bye.

Christopher read the first part of the note again to memorize it, and dropped it in the fire. Webster said, “What’s all this about, Paul?”

“A word of farewell from David.”

Webster brushed aside Christopher’s reply with a motion of his hand. “I mean, what brought this on so suddenly?”

“Tom, it’s not so sudden. You get tired of the life. I’ve been hanging around alone in hotel rooms in central Africa and Afghanistan ever since I got out of college. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“It’s not too convenient for the rest of us, you know. There are twenty-six principal agents in eighteen different countries out there who won’t talk to anyone but you.”

“They’ll get along. Ninety percent of what they do, they do out of their own resources. They aren’t photographing documents, they’re running political movements. I’ve held their hands for a long time—let them go on alone.”