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'What did he say?' asked Cobra One.
'"Motherfucker",' said Dial.
'Let's get out of here.'
That evening I met Colonel Tuan who, under the name Duy Lam, writes novels. He was one of about ten writers in Vietnam who told me how severe censorship was under Thieu's regime – not simply political censorship, for A Streetcar Named Desire is also ba
'Vietnamese is a very beautiful language,' he said. 'But it is hard to translate. For example, if a man is addressing his wife there are so many ways he can do it. He might say "You" – but this is considered rude. Or he might call her "Little sister", and she will call him "Brother"… The most beautiful is when a man calls his wife "Myself" – "How is myself?" he will say to her. And there are others. He might call her "Mother", and she will call him "Father" -'
'"Mother, Father",' said Cobra One. 'Why, Mister and Mrs Front-Porch America say thatY
Before he left I asked Colonel Tuan what the general feeling in Vietnam was towards Americans after so much war, disruption, and death, after all the years of occupation.
Colonel Tuan thought a long time before he replied, and when he did he chose his words carefully. 'We think the Americans,' he said, and stopped. 'We think they are well disciplined… and they made many mistakes in the war. And of course we think they are generous. But we also believe they are people without culture – none at all, none that we have seen. I am not speaking for myself: I have read Faulkner and many other American writers. I am thinking of the average person – most of the people in Vietnam. That is what they think.'
I flew from Danang to Nha Trang to take a train to Thap Cham, but the day I arrived there was an attack by a squad of sappers on the oil depot outside Saigon, at Nha Be, and 50 per cent of Vietnam's fuel was wiped out in a morning. Fuel rationing started and I cancelled my trip. It was an u
The flight back to Saigon in a thunderstorm scared the life out of me; I was strapped against the stomach wall of this pitching whale, and the three Chinese pilots gave me no reassurance. I recovered sufficiently to give two more lectures of which I remember little apart from what Auden described in 'On the Circuit' as
A truly asinine remark, A soul-bewitching face.
And then I was off and waiting at Tan Son Nhut Airport to go to Japan. In better times I would have taken the train to Hanoi, changed for Peking, and gone via Shenyang and Seoul to Pusan for a boat linking to one of Japan's Kyushu expresses. Or I could have gone straight from Peking to Moscow via Ulan Bator in Mongolia, and then home. The way is clear, by rail, from Hanoi Junction to Liverpool Street Station in London. Perhaps at some future date…*
* Now – April 1975 – most of the Vietnam towns I passed through by rail have been blown up, all have been captured, and many 6f their people killed. For the survivors the future is melancholy, and the little train no longer runs between Hue and Danang.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE HATSUKARI ('EARLY BIRD') LIMITED EXPRESS TO AOMORI
In Japan I pla
It is with a kind of perverse pride that the Japanese point out how expensive their country has become. But this is as much a measure of wealth as of inflation, and I began to wonder if it was as crippling as people claimed. I asked about it, but this timid inquiry is the foreigner's first question and the knowing resident is prepared to shock you with joke prices. How much does a kimono cost? 'You can get a good one for a thousand dollars.' A meal? 'At most restaurants you ca
The streets of Toyko after dark were filled with glad groups of whooping Japanese. Less enthusiastic ones lay dead drunk in the doorways of Mori's Noodle House or the Pub Glasgow, or were slumped on the sidewalks of crooked back lanes – wherever they were overcome by alcoholic fatigue. These were casualties of the bonus. Twice a year Japanese employees are awarded a bonus: December is one of these months and it was my fate to arrive the day the money was dished out. Towards midnight I could see all the stages of Japanese drunke