The Man From Saigon (41 page)

Bridge is a game of diplomacy as much as technical skill
, he said.
That’s why you will be an excellent player, while I will always be dreadful at bridge. I’m anything but diplomatic.

She laughed. She’d witnessed his anger rise suddenly at the very start of their honeymoon, when at the airport ticket counter they were told their seat reservations had been lost. She’d seen his frustration at the taxi driver who had missed the hotel and circled around once more without turning off his meter, and his irritation that one of their bags had been damaged so that the handle was now loose. Little things bothered him—a shirt back from the cleaners missing a button—and those of larger importance, of principle, as when a piece of his own work was translated almost wholesale into a print story by someone else with not so much as a mention. She knew this about him. She shook her head, smiling, amused that he could at least admit his shortcomings. It was a beginning, she thought. Like most young wives, she believed she could change her husband, improve him.

Of course, my advantage at the moment is that I know the rules
, he continued.

He’d been teaching her for days. Their honeymoon, which began in the courtyard of an elaborately decorated Lisbon hotel,
had been mostly conducted inside the vast rooms in which they’d settled. The bed was situated so that when they woke they could feel the breeze from the courtyard, smell the lemon trees, the ebullient flowers, and hear the steady, soothing flow of water from a fountain statue of St. Christopher. The bathroom had a fired earth floor, intricately painted tiles, polished brass taps. She’d dropped a wineglass and it shattered into so many pieces there was barely anything left of it. The light, arriving in the mornings, was so lovely that they did not use the curtains. They enjoyed feeling the rising light across their bodies, opening their eyes to the dawn. The morning light seemed to celebrate her beauty as she lay in bed. Together like that, they were blissfully happy.

He took her dutifully to see the sights of the city. They ate in the recommended restaurants, tried
caldeirada
, a stew of shellfish scented with cloves, and
bacalhau
, prepared so many ways. They sat among the hand-painted plates, the delicate tiles. He did not ask himself if he would love her if she were not so beautiful. When Christine stood, she was as tall as the maître d’ and everyone’s eyes followed her as they found their table. He took her wherever she wanted to go—it was no trouble—but what he mostly wanted was to take in the landscape of her body sprawled across the ironed sheets.

In the evenings they had drinks in a parlor room with marble tables in which chessboards were embedded into the design. The dark furniture was thickly varnished, with velvet seat cushions in a rich mossy green that he had always associated with churches. They played cards and drank, though she allowed herself only the one drink as she was expecting. Here, too, her beauty was noticed. The mincing waiters approached, sometimes five in a quarter-hour, fawning above her so that they began to whittle away at his patience. In the end he scowled at them, and told them to please leave.

On the third night another guest, a tall, gray-bearded man
who wore a brimmed hat even indoors, invited them to play cards, share a box of cigarillos, drink from his bottle of old tawnies. Marc watched as the man flirted with Christine, taking in her long, bare arms, the tidy package of her hips in her cocktail dress, her pretty mouth which sipped tentatively at the port.

Oh dear, cards
, she said, as though it were a slightly scandalous activity.
My husband has been teaching me bridge.

The port was a yellowish brown color. She was drinking it but Marc could see she was unsure about the color. He wanted to explain to her that it had been aged so long it had lost its red hue, but didn’t want to embarrass her. Instead, he took a long sip of his own, making sure she noticed this, and she then followed suit. The bearded man told them his name—Reynolds—and excused himself for a moment. Marc kissed Christine quickly before she could stop him. By the time Reynolds returned, Christine was wiping the lipstick from Marc’s chin. Reynolds did not seem to notice. He had his hand on the arm of an elegant-looking woman with a high, coiffed hair-do who gazed down on the newlyweds as though on to baby pandas at a zoo.

My wife, Angelica
, Reynolds said.

They sat north to south. Marc watched Christine take up her hand, looking suddenly unsure. He asked if she wished to declare, but she declined, absolutely, wagging her chin. He’d known she would refuse, of course. Had she not, it would have been the first time she’d surprised him.

He played boldly, making a double and a redouble. He drained his glass and received a fresh splash of the port. He found Christine adorable, how she knit her brow, following the game, how she trusted him as he gathered as much information as he could through his bids. Reynolds asked Christine questions—had she climbed up the grassy area on the Rua de Alcolena to see the Ermida de São Jerónimo? Definitely worth a visit. What about the Belém Tower? Yes, of course she’d seen
that. You couldn’t
not
see that. He asked these questions, paying great attention to the answers as though discussing matters of state. Reynolds was old enough to be Christine’s father, but he did not seem so old. He had a fetching smile, a well-kempt beard. Though he had a paunch, his clothes were nicely tailored. He treated Christine—he treated them both—with a kind, avuncular air. Christine mentioned that she liked films and there was a conversation about whether a particular, quite famous actor was resident in the hotel right now. Marc didn’t know who the guy was. He was enjoying his port when he felt his leg being caressed beneath the table, felt the familiar, high arches of Christine’s feet gliding up his shin bone. He looked up, smiling at his new wife. Now she had surprised him, surprised him indeed. They were doing very well, he thought.

What I love about bridge
, Reynolds was saying,
is that it is as much about how you relate to your partner as anything.

I agree
, said Marc. He felt her leg high upon his. He longed to reach across the table, lift Christine from the cushioned seat, bring her upstairs to the bedroom with its magical courtyard where he’d seen, just this morning, a little family of goldfinches. It was a kind of paradise, he thought. They’d somehow landed in Eden.

The game continued. Reynolds began to bother him a little. It might have been that he was just cranky from drinking. He tried to remain as Christine would have him: pleasant, tactful, easy within the company of others. He felt Christine’s foot just above his knee, the play of her toe on the inside of his leg. He could almost sink into that one feeling alone. He was working out a detail of his game when he noticed the way Angelica was looking at him. She had long, arched eyebrows, shining blue eyes under their hoods of liner, an overly red mouth. She wasn’t exactly smiling at him, but she had a distinct, cemented attention that made him uneasy. He wondered if she knew what was happening under the table. He thought he might somehow
communicate to Christine that she should stop, that others had noticed. He sat up, but Christine’s foot followed his movements, digging deeper up his leg. He looked rather desperately at Christine and realized, all at once, that she was turned in such a way that the foot could not possibly have been hers. She and Reynolds were engaged in a conversation about the origins of the name
Portugal.
Reynolds was clearly enjoying educating her in the complicated history of the Iberian peninsula, and now his avuncular arm was pursuing the brass tacks around the back of Christine’s chair so that her hair brushed occasionally against his wrist. Meanwhile, there was Angelica, climbing like a vine up his leg.

He stood.
I’m sorry, I don’t feel well
, he said.

Surely you just need another drink
, said Angelica. Her mouth was open in a smile. She was younger than her husband; her hair had lost its silkiness but it was a nice shade of brown, forming a neat bowl at the nape of her neck. She held her own drink up, as though showing him something in it. Her eyes squinted at him, her teeth shone in the candlelight. He shook his head, backing a few paces, bumping into a bar waiter. He fell forward again, trying to come up with an excuse, bumbling as though he had drunk too much.

Christine looked at him, puzzled. Angelica rose from her chair and looped her elbow through his.
Let’s all go outside. The night air is good for you. It will clear your head.

Is the game over then?
asked Christine.

Marc shook off Angelica rather too brusquely. She had to put her arm out to balance herself. Christine looked appalled. She took a step toward him, her cheeks flushed.

We’re going
now, he whispered, pulling on Christine, extracting her from the couple as though it was she who had done wrong.

Back in the room, he tried to explain. He sat her next to him on the bed, then turned so that they were catty-corner.
Imagine a tablecloth down to here
, he said, slicing his hand a few inches from the floor. Then he showed her what Angelica had been doing, urging her to believe him.

I don’t know
, she said.
Maybe it was too much drinking. I can’t believe Angelica would do that. I mean, right in front of me? That’s crazy!

You talk as though you
know
them. You
don’t
know them! They targeted us.

Oh, no. I’m sure not
—

Christine, don’t be stupid.

I’m not stupid!

He was staring at you like he was going to have you for dessert!

We were talking!

I had to do something.

Well, fine. You’ve done something! Now, you’ve really done something!

She never believed him. Not the night the couple had tried to engage them in God knows what kind of affair, and not later, either, when he would speak of the ways in which the government was conning America into supporting the war. She did not believe him when he took up his post in Vietnam and wrote of what he’d seen firsthand, following the troops. Whenever they spoke, him barking down an unreliable telephone line, her voice small and light as though coming from the end of a long tunnel, ten thousand miles, the whole of the Pacific Ocean between them, he found himself getting more and more emphatic.
They stand there at the briefing and lie. About everything. About the outcome of every firefight or set piece or bombing or engagement. Nobody is winning. We
certainly
are not winning.
Either she didn’t feel it necessary to add to the fire of his emotions—the bold accusations, the announcement of unsavory discoveries he made weekly and which he recorded, when possible, on film—or she didn’t believe him. He began to suspect the latter was the case.

She suggested that perhaps he was being overdramatic; or that the things he covered made him slightly unbalanced in his view. After all, he could not know for certain the reasons for every military action; he was not privy to that information—none of them were. How much of what he reported was a result of how he’d positioned himself in the first place? He shook his head; he felt her responses had been given to her by someone else, a friend, a family member, maybe even another man, who had listened to her accounts of the strained conversations she had with her reporter husband and offered an alternative perspective, or at least an explanation.

That night in Lisbon, she’d maintained that Angelica had mistaken his leg for her own husband’s, for Reynold’s leg. An embarrassing, correctible mistake for which Marc had forsaken a potential friendship. She was disappointed because Reynolds had promised to take them all on a day-trip to Sintra. Reynolds had a car; they could all have gone together. No woman touches up a strange man’s leg in a public place—Marc had made that up, surely. He’d misunderstood.

In the end, they’d chosen not to speak of it. There had developed a whole list of subjects they did not talk about and now here she was, arriving in Saigon just when he wishes she would not.

“I’m not sure it’s a bad thing, having Christine along,” says Locke now. “Strange as it might feel. And yeah, it will be strange.” He is half lying on the chair now, looking like he might fall asleep, while Marc pushes his dirty clothes into the wrapping from a dry cleaner and then into a plastic trash bag. What he ends up with looks disconcertingly like a bodybag. He puts it in the corner by the door, smoothes his hands over his fresh chinos, and notices Locke shaking his head back and forth as though deciding on something. Locke continues, “What I want to know is what you got on prescription that you’re out of now. You’re sweating like a sonovabitch and, to my mind’s eye,
heading toward the DTs stage. Not that I’m an expert, but the word
withdrawal
springs to mind.”

Marc gives him a brief, defiant stare. He’s sweating, even through the clean clothes. He strips off his T-shirt, using it like a flannel under his arms, and then tosses it into the back of the cupboard. He gets a new one and puts it on, wondering what Christine will say if he sweats like this.

“You look sick,” says Locke. “Not quite malaria sick, but getting there.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Symptom two. So, we’ve got sweating, insomnia—” He has his hand up in the air, two fingers out like a peace sign.

“You can add dizziness, if you wish.”

“Dizziness,” he says, popping up a third finger.

Marc hands him the box from his night table, empty now, all the little blister packs used up.

“Ah, yes, I should have known. Stop at the dispensary,” Locke says. “Don’t go near that lovely lady without first getting this puppy refilled.”

Christine arrives at the airport in a cream pants suit, beautiful, well fed, with long golden arms, her wrists encased in silver bangles, holding a pretty suitcase with a jungle motif and shining brass buckles that look more like jewelry than something with a practical use. When she steps off the plane he feels he can barely approach her, cannot construct in his mind the fact of Christine as part of him, his wife, even. She has not changed in appearance, not much considering she is now six months along in the pregnancy. It is the way in which her muscles are smoothed by a healthy layer of fat, the generous outline of her thighs in the pants suit, her height—surrounded by petite Vietnamese. She looks regal, he thinks.