Democracy

1

THE day Jack Lovett flew down to Saigon the rain began in Hong Kong. The rain muddied the streets, stiffened the one pair of shoes Inez had with her, broke the blossoms from the bauhinia tree on the balcony of the apartment in which Jack Lovett had told her to wait and obscured the view of the Happy Valley track from the bedroom window. The rain reminded her of Honolulu. The rain and the obscured horizon and the breaking of the blossoms and the persistent smell of mildew in the small apartment all reminded her of Honolulu but it was colder in Hong Kong. She was always cold. Every morning after Jack Lovett left Inez would wake early in the slight chill and put on the galoshes and macintosh she had found in the otherwise empty closet and set out to walk. She developed a route. She would walk down Queen’s Road and over behind the Anglican cathedral and up Garden Road to the American consulate, where she would sit in the reception room and read newspapers.

Quite often in the reception room of the American consulate on Garden Road Inez read about Harry Victor’s relatives. In the South China Morning Post she read that Harry Victor’s wife had not been present at the funeral of Harry Victor’s sister-in-law, a private service in Honolulu after which Senator Victor declined to speak to reporters. In the Asian edition of the International Herald-Tribune she read that Harry Victor’s father-in-law had required treatment at the Honolulu City and County Jail for superficial wounds inflicted during an apparent suicide attempt with a Bic razor. In the international editions of both Time and Newsweek she read that Harry Victor’s daughter was ironically or mysteriously missing in Vietnam.

“Ironically” was the word used by Time, and “mysteriously” by Newsweek. Both Time and Newsweek used “missing,” as did the South China Morning Post, the Asian editions of both the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald-Tribune, the Straits Times, and the pouched copies of the New York Times and the Washington Post that arrived at the consulate three days after publication. “Missing” did not seem to Inez to quite cover it. The pilots of downed fighters were said to be “missing,” and correspondents last seen in ambush situations. “Missing” suggested some line of duty that did not quite encompass getting on a C-5A transport in Seattle and flying to Saigon to look for a job. Possibly that was the ironic part, or even the mysterious.

By the time Inez finished reading the papers it would be close to noon, and she would walk from the consulate on up Garden Road to what seemed to be a Chinese nursery school, with a terrace roofed in corrugated plastic under which the children played. She would stand in the rain and watch the children until, at the ping of a little bell, they formed a line and marched inside, and then she would take a taxi back to the apartment and hang the macintosh on the shower door to dry and set the galoshes behind the door. She had no idea to whom the galoshes and macintosh belonged. She had no idea to whom the apartment belonged.

“Somebody in Vientiane,” Jack Lovett had said when she asked.

She presumed it was a woman because the galoshes and macintosh were small. She presumed the woman was an American because the only object in the medicine cabinet, a plastic bottle of aspirin tablets, was the house brand of a drugstore she knew to be in New York. She presumed that the American woman was a reporter because there was a standard Smith-Corona typewriter and a copy of Modern English Usage on the kitchen table, and a paperback copy of Homage to Catalonia in the drawer of the bed table. In Inez’s experience all reporters had paperback copies of Homage to Catalonia, and kept them in the same place where they kept the matches and the candle and the notebook, for when the hotel was bombed. When she asked Jack Lovett if the person in Vientiane to whom the apartment belonged was in fact an American woman reporter he had shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s fine.”

After that when Inez read the newspapers in the reception room of the American consulate she made a point of noticing the byline on any story originating in Vientiane, looking for a woman’s name, but never found one.

The telephone in this apartment never rang. Jack Lovett got his messages in Hong Kong at a small hotel off Connaught Road, and it was this number that Inez had given Adlai when she reached him in Honolulu the day she arrived. Because Harry had hung up mid-sentence when she called him from Wahiawa to say she was going to Hong Kong she made this call person-to-person to Adlai, but Harry had come on the line first.

“I happen to know you’re in Hong Kong,” Harry had said.

“Of course you happen to know I’m in Hong Kong,” Inez had said. “I told you I was going.”

“Will you speak to this party,” the operator had kept saying. “Is this your party?”

“You hung up,” Inez had said.

“No,” Harry had said. “This is not her party.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Inez had said when Adlai finally picked up. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”

“Dad told me.” Adlai had made this sound slightly prosecutorial. “What does it have to do with?”

“Just not with you.”

“What am I supposed to tell Dad?”

Inez had considered this. “Tell him hello,” she said finally.

That had been Tuesday in Hong Kong and Monday in Honolulu.

It had been Wednesday the second of April in Hong Kong when Jack Lovett flew down to Saigon to look for Jessie.

Twice during that first week, the week of the rain, he had come back up to Hong Kong unexpectedly, once on an Air America transport with eighty-three third-country nationals who had been identified with American interests and once on a chartered Pan American 707 with the officers and cash reserves of the Saigon branches of the Bank of America, the First National City Bank, and the Chase Manhattan. The first time he came up it had been for only a few hours, which he spent placing calls from the telephone in the apartment, but the second time he had spent the night, and they had driven out to the Repulse Bay and taken a room overlooking the sea. They had ordered dinner in the room and slept and woke and slept again and whenever they were awake Jack Lovett had talked. He had seemed to regard the room at the Repulse Bay as neutral ground on which he could talk as he had not talked in the apartment that belonged to somebody in Vientiane. He talked all night. He talked to Inez but as if to himself. Certain words and phrases kept recurring.

Fixed-wing phase.

Tiger Ops.

Black flights.

Extraction.

Assets.

AID was without assets.

USIA was without assets.

By assets Jack Lovett had seemed to mean aircraft, aircraft and money. The Defense Attaché Office had assets. It was increasingly imperative to develop your own assets because without private assets no one could guarantee extraction. No one could guarantee extraction because they were living in a dream world down there. Amateur hour down there. Pencil pushers down there.

Each time Jack Lovett said “down there” he would glance toward the windows that opened on the water, as if “down there” were visible, nine hundred miles of South China Sea telescoped by the pressure of his obsession. Toward dawn he was talking about the lists they were making down there. They had finally decided to make a count of priority evacuees in case extraction was necessary.

In case.

Inez should note “in case.”

“In case” was proof the inmates were running the bin.

Because the various agencies had been unable to agree on the count each agency was drawing up its own list. Some people said the lists would add up to a hundred-fifty-thousand priority evacuees, others said ten times that number. Nobody seemed in any rush to make it definite. They were talking about evacuating twenty years of American contacts, not to mention their own fat American asses, but they were still talking as if they had another twenty years to do it. Twenty years and the applause of the local population. An inter-agency task force had been appointed. To shake this down. The task force had met for dinner at the residence, met for goddamn dinner at the goddamn residence, add a little more lard to those asses, and by the time the cigars were passed they did not yet know whether they had a hundred-fifty-thousand priority evacuees or ten times that number but they did know what they needed.

They needed a wall map.

They needed a wall map of what they kept calling Metro Saigon.

This wall map had been requisitioned.

Through General Services.

They were getting their wall map any day now, and what they would do when they got it was this: they would make a population density plot. In other words they would plot, with little colored pins, the locations of a few types of people they might want to invite to the final extraction.

In case.

Strictly in case.

“Types” of people, right.

A little green pin for every holder of an embassy ration card.

A little yellow pin for every holder of a DAO liquor ration card.

A little red pin for every current member of the Cercle Sportif. Note “current.” Behind on the dues, forget it.

The little white pins were the real stroke. Follow this. There was going to be an analysis of all taxi dispatch records for the period between the first of January and the first of April. Then there would be a little white pin placed on the map showing every location in Metro Saigon to which a taxi had been dispatched. Too bad for the guys who drove their own cars. Around Metro Saigon. Taken a cab, they’d be on the map. This map was going to be a genuine work of art. Anybody down there had any feeling for posterity, they’d get this map out and put it under glass at the State Department.

Pins intact.

Memento mori Metro Saigon.

By the time he stopped talking the room was light.

Inez sat on the edge of the bed and began brushing her hair.

“So what do you think,” Jack Lovett said.

“I don’t know.”

Through the half-closed shutters Inez could see the early light on the water. It occurred to her for the first time that this was the same sea she had looked on with Jessie, the day there had been no baby cobras in the borrowed garden and Harry had been at the situation briefing in Saigon. Now there was about to be no more situation and Jessie was in Saigon and Jack Lovett was going back down to Saigon but Jack Lovett might not find her before it happened.

Nobody even knew what “it” was.

That was what he was telling her.

She brushed her hair harder. “I don’t know how an evacuation is run.”

“Not this way.”

“She’s not on anybody’s list, is she.” Inez found that she could not say Jessie’s name. “She’s not on the map.”

Jack Lovett got up and opened the shutters wide. For a while the rain had stopped but now it was falling hard again, falling through the patchy sunlight, glistening on the palms outside the window and flooding the broken fountain in front of the hotel.

“Not unless she happened to join the Cercle Sportif,” Jack Lovett said. “No.” He closed the shutters again and turned back toward Inez. “Put down the hairbrush and look at me,” he said. “Do you think I’d leave her there?”

“You might not find her.”

“I always found you,” Jack Lovett said. “I guess I can find your daughter.”

2

IN fact Jack Lovett did find Inez Victor’s daughter.

In fact Jack Lovett found Inez Victor’s daughter that very day, found her by what he called dumb luck, just got on the regular Air Vietnam flight from Hong Kong to Saigon and landed at Tan Son Nhut and half an hour later he was looking at Jessie Victor.

Jack Lovett called this dumb luck but you or I might not have had the same dumb luck.

You or I for example might not have struck up the connection with the helicopter maintenance instructor who happened to be one of the other two passengers on the Air Vietnam 707 to Saigon that day.

Jack Lovett did.

Jack Lovett struck up a connection with this helicopter maintenance instructor the same way he had struck up connections with all those embassy drivers and oil riggers and airline stewardesses and assistant professors of English literature traveling on Fulbright fellowships and tropical agronomists traveling under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation and desk clerks and ticket agents and salesmen of rice converters and coco dryers and Dutch pesticides and German pharmaceuticals.

By reflex.

The helicopter maintenance instructor who happened to be one of the two other passengers on the Air Vietnam 707 that day had last been in Saigon in 1973, when his contract was terminated. He had been in Los Angeles working for Hughes but now he was coming back to look for the wife and little girl he had left in 1973. The wife had been with her family in Pleiku and he had gotten a call from her saying that the little girl had been blinded on a C-130 during the evacuation south when a leaking hydraulic line overhead sprayed liquid into her face. The wife said Saigon was still safe but he thought it was time to come find her. He had the address she had given him but according to a buddy he had contacted this address did not check out. The helicopter maintenance instructor had seemed cheerful at the beginning of the flight but after two Seagram Sevens his mood had darkened.

What had she done to get on the C-130 in the first place?

Didn’t everybody else walk out of Pleiku?

What about the fucking address?

Jack Lovett had offered him a ride into Saigon and the helicopter maintenance instructor had wanted to make one stop, to check the address with a bartender he used to know at the Legion club.

Which was where Jack Lovett found Jessie Victor.

Serving drinks and French fries at the American Legion club on the main road between Tan Son Nhut and Saigon.

Still wearing her tennis visor.

An ao dai and her tennis visor.

“Hey, no sweat, I’m staying,” Jessie had said to Jack Lovett when he told her to sign off her shift and get in the car. “This dude who comes in has a friend at the embassy, he’ll get the word when they pull the plug.”

Jessie had insisted she was staying but Jack Lovett had said a few words to the bartender.

The words Jack Lovett said were Harry goddamn Victor’s daughter.

“You know this plug you were talking about,” Jack Lovett said then to Jessie. “I just pulled it.”

3

“YOU’RE looking for a guy in the woodwork, the Legion club is where you’d look,” Jack Lovett said when he finally got through to Inez in Hong Kong. “Christ almighty. The Legion club. I covered Mimi’s, I don’t know how I missed the Legion club.”

He was calling from the Due.

He had left Jessie for the night at the apartment of a woman he referred to only as “B.J.,” an intelligence analyst at the Defense Attaché Office.

B.J. would put Jessie up until he could get her out.

B.J. would take fine care of Jessie.

B.J. was even that night sounding out the air lift supervisor at Tiger Ops about the possibility of placing Jessie on a flight to Travis as an orphan escort. These orphans all had escorts, sure they did, that was the trick, the trick was to melt out as many nonessentials as possible without calling it an evacuation. They might or might not be orphans, these orphans, but they sure as hell had escorts. The whole goddamn DAO was trying to melt out with the orphans.

Which was what they didn’t know at the Legion club.

Which was where you looked if you were looking for a guy in the woodwork.

“About these flights to Travis,” Inez said.

“Looking, hell, look no further.” Jack Lovett could not seem to get over the obviousness of finding Jessie at the Legion club. “This is it. This is the woodwork. American Legion Post No. 34. Through These Portals Pass America’s Proudest Fighting Men, it says over the door to the can. Through those portals pass every AWOL and contract cowboy in Southeast Asia. Guys who came over with the Air Cav in ’66. Guys who evacuated China in ’49. Dudes. Dudes who think they’ve got a friend at the embassy.”

“That was an orphan flight to Travis that crashed,” Inez said. The connection was going and she had trouble hearing him. “Last week.”

“There are other options,” Jack Lovett said.

“Other options to crashing?”

“Other flights, Inez. Other kinds of flights. She’s fine with B.J., there’s no immediate problem. I’ll check it out. I’ll get her on a good flight.”

Inez said nothing.

“Inez,” Jack Lovett said. “This kid of yours is one of the world’s great survivors. I take her kicking and screaming to B.J.’s, half an hour later they’re splitting a bucket of Kentucky fried and comparing eye makeup. The lights go off, Jessie tells B.J. she knows where they could liberate a Signal Corps generator. ‘Liberate’ is what she says. She got here any earlier, she’d be running the rackets.”

Inez said nothing. The connection was now crossed with another call, and she could hear laughter, and sharp bursts of Cantonese.

“She’s as tough as you are,” Jack Lovett said.

“That never stopped any plane from crashing,” Inez said just before the line went to dial tone.

After Inez hung up she tried to call Harry at the apartment on Central Park West. Harry’s private line rang busy and when she tried one of the other numbers Billy Dillon answered.

“This is pretty funny,” Billy Dillon said when she told him about Jessie. “This is actually funny as hell.”

“What’s actually funny about it?”

“I don’t know, Inez. You don’t find it funny we’re sending bar girls to Saigon, I can’t help you. Hey. Inez. Do us all a favor? Tell Harry yourself?”

Inez had told Harry herself.

“I see,” Harry said. “Yes.”

There had been a silence.

“So,” Inez said. “There it is.”

“Serving drinks. Yes. I’ll get hold of Adlai at school.”

“What’s he doing at school?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s he doing at school’? You think Adlai should be serving drinks too?”

“I mean I thought he was doing this internship with you. I thought he didn’t have to be back until May.”

“He wanted to organize something,” Harry said. “But that’s not the point.”

“Organize what?”

“Some kind of event.”

“What kind of event?”

Harry had hesitated. “A vigil for the liberation of Saigon,” he said finally.

Inez had said nothing.

“He’s eighteen years old, Inez.” Harry had sounded defensive. “He wanted to make a statement.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Very eloquent. Your silence.”

Inez said nothing.

“Jessie’s tramping around Saigon, you’re off with your war-lover, Adlai tries to make a statement and you’ve got nothing to say.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Fine then,” Harry said. “Pretend what you want.”

All that night Inez lay awake in the apartment that belonged to somebody in Vientiane and listened to the short-wave radio that Jack Lovett had left there. On the short-wave radio she could get Saigon and Bangkok. Jack Lovett had told her what to listen for. Jack Lovett had also told her that it was too soon to hear what he had told her to listen for but she listened anyway, whenever she could not sleep or wanted to hear a human voice.

“Mother wants you to call home,” the American Service Radio announcer in Saigon would say when it was time for the final phase of the evacuation, and then a certain record would be played.

The record to be played was Bing Crosby singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”

“I could do better than that,” Inez had said when Jack Lovett told her what to listen for. “I mean in the middle of April. Out of the blue in the middle of April. I could do considerably better than ‘Mother wants you to call home’ and ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.’ ”

“What’s your point,” Jack Lovett said.

“It’s not just the best secret signal I ever heard about.”

“It’s not going to be just the best evacuation you ever heard about either,” Jack Lovett had said. “You want to get down to fine strokes.”

Toward four in the morning Inez got up from the bed and sat by the window and smoked a cigarette in the dark. The window was open and rain splashed on the balcony outside. Because it was still too soon to hear the American Service Radio announcer in Saigon say “Mother wants you to call home” Inez moved the dial back and forth and finally got what seemed to be a BBC correspondent interviewing former officials of the government of the Republic of Vietnam who had just been flown to Nakhon Phanom in Thailand.

“No more hopes from the American side,” one of them said.

“The Americans would not come back again,” another said. “En un mot bye-bye.”

Their voices were pleasant and formal.

The transmission faded in and out.

As she listened to the rain and to the voices fading in and out from Nakhon Phanom Inez thought about Harry in New York and Adlai at school and Jessie at B.J.’s and it occurred to her that for the first time in almost twenty years she was not particularly interested in any of them.

Responsible for them in a limited way, yes, but not interested in them.

They were definitely connected to her but she could no longer grasp her own or their uniqueness, her own or their difference, genius, special claim. What difference did it make in the long run what she thought, or Harry thought, or Jessie or Adlai did? What difference did it make in the long run whether any one person got the word, called home, dreamed of a white Christmas? The world that night was full of people flying from place to place and fading in and out and there was no reason why she or Harry or Jessie or Adlai, or for that matter Jack Lovett or B.J. or the woman in Vientiane on whose balcony the rain now fell, should be exempted from the general movement.

Just because they believed they had a home to call.

Just because they were Americans.

No.

En un mot bye-bye.