A Dangerous Friend (9 page)

Understood, Syd had said.

I knew you would, Ros replied.

Sydney dumped his suitcases on the bed, washed his face, and walked downstairs to his office. The walls were bare except for Stalin-LBJ and the ambassador on one wall and an enormous map of South Vietnam on the other, Tay Thanh district outlined in red, the province in blue. Someone with coral-colored lipstick had kissed Saigon. The lipstick had begun to flake but the intent was clear enough. When he switched on the overhead fan a wisp of smoke fell from the gears and after two momentous revolutions the blades feathered to a halt with an end-of-the-world finality. The air thickened. Sydney opened a window and watched a brilliant yellow bird nose here and there in the bougainvillea. Its beak was the size of a toothpick and it poked among the leaves as if it were writing messages on them, and then it flew away.

Waiting for him on his desk was a large oblong carton wrapped in silver paper that squeaked when he touched it. The return address was his parents' place in Darien. He recognized his father's spidery handwriting. The note inside said, "These will be as valuable to you as life itself and unless I miss my guess they will turn out to be life itself. Happy birthday, Sydney. Love, Dad." He had forgotten that it was his thirtieth birthday next week, whichever day it was; he had lost track of dates along with everything else.

Sydney looked at the shape of the carton and knew at once that his mischievous father had sent him his prized shotguns, the twin Brownings he had won in a poker game at the club but unused for many years because of the old man's failing eyesight and newfound reverence for animal life; he had always kept them cleaned and oiled, however. Naturally the old man would not know, and if he did know wouldn't care, that sending firearms through the APO system was strictly forbidden, punishable by a fine together with a sharp letter in your personnel file, a career-threatening letter depending on the title beneath the signature. Definitely bad news and Tay Thanh was already on the list of problem districts, thanks to Dicey Dacy. So his first day in-country was already compromised. Sydney supposed that his father, in his infinite capacity for fantasy, imagined him suiting up on lonely weekends and driving to the Camau peninsula or the central highlands to gun for mallards, a battalion of ARVN airborne deployed for security. But the box inside the carton was unopened.

The Brownings were wrapped together in heavy butcher paper, sealed with duct tape and secured with thick twine, wound to within an inch of its life and knotted with some arcane sailor's hitch such as you would use on a foundering vessel. Taking the box apart was like unraveling chain mail but at last his father's handiwork was exposed: not firearms at all but two intricately carved boxes, each ten inches by fourteen inches, one marked
IN
and the other marked
OUT
in deep curving script. The old man could be very droll. He knew that the
IN
and
OUT
boxes were the maneuver battalions of bureaucratic existence, now forward, now back, now concealed, now full, now empty. They were the yin and yang of a life inside the government; in fact they were, as the old man said, life itself, its tact and proportion, its essence,
IN
and
OUT
boxes were the guardians of the language; language was action. So in a sense they were weapons of a specific lethal sort.

The old man was a woodworker in his spare time and these boxes were lovingly crafted of walnut, tongue-and-groove joints and each with its own delicate design on the sides along with the intimidating script in front. God knows how many hours he had devoted to them, using his platter-sized magnifying glass in order to cut accurately. At work, he could be mistaken for a master jeweler. His concentration was so complete that when you came upon him in his shop in the basement it was wise to tread loudly in order not to startle him, especially when he was using the knife, his phonograph cranked up high, Billie Holiday or Louis Armstrong keeping him company. He worked in the brilliant light of four lamps, his hands steady enough, perhaps not as steady as they once were.

Was it a subtle change in temperature or a small noise or a sixth sense? Just then Sydney knew he was not alone in the office. When he turned he saw a young Vietnamese woman in the doorway. She was staring at him incuriously, her arms at her sides; and then he saw that she was not looking at him but over his shoulder, as if she did not want to appear too forward.

He said, Hello.

Hello, sir; she said, her voice very soft and strained.

I'm Sydney Parade.

I know, sir.

I'm the new coordinator. Then he added, with a note of disapproval, Mr. Dacy was fired.

She nodded.

I just arrived. Minh brought me from the airport.

Yes, she said.

And your name?

Mai, sir, she said. Office manager.

He looked at the papers on the floor and nodded.

Mr. Dacy, sir.

Made this mess?

She was listening carefully, then seemed to nod. Her hard little eyes were following him now as he moved behind the desk to straighten the President's photograph and collect the papers scattered beneath it. He gathered them and placed them in the
OUT
box. She did not move and he guessed she was waiting for instructions.

He said, Well, Mai ... He began slowly to explain about Dicey Dacy, how his behavior had been found to be intolerable and the government had removed him from Tay Thanh. He was on his way out of the country, never to return. Criminal charges would no doubt be filed once the facts were assembled. Of course she would have an opportunity to testify if she so desired. Counsel would be provided at no cost to her. Sydney apologized on behalf of Llewellyn Group and Mr. Richard Rostok personally. They were mortified in Washington, always recognizing that mistakes were often made owing to the enormity of the undertaking, reconstruction of South Vietnam. Literally hundreds of jobs were open and the security procedures regrettably lax. He said, You yourself were not—molested?

She moved her lips fractionally and seemed to shudder but her shy smile told him the answer was no.

He said he was glad to hear it. That god damned Dacy, he said. He would make every effort to undo the damage that Dacy had done to the image of Llewellyn Group. Thank God the scandal hadn't reached the newspapers. Meanwhile, he wanted a full bill of particulars, specifically any loss of government property together with any personal complaints of the staff. In any case, they would all start afresh at once. Dacy was gone. Dacy would not return.

He paused then, watching her stand motionless, her gaze still over his shoulder. An unwelcome thought forced itself into his mind.

He said pleasantly, How old are you, Mai?

She said, Yes, sir.

So she had not understood one word. He had been talking into fathomless Asia itself, and she had let him do it. And it had served him right, trying to pass off Dicky Rostok's public relations homilies as honest concern. He had not failed to notice the little gold Seiko wristwatch, either. Sydney smiled warmly and with the universal gesture let her know she could take the rest of the day off.

And Mai—she smiled, too, nodding gravely and backing out of the office that still stank of Dacy and whiskey. She knew the smell would never leave it. Even the geckos refused to inhabit this room, no matter how often it was scrubbed. This new man's voice had been harsh, similar to Dacy's. It was an American voice without lilt or feeling. At least with the French she heard some rhythm, some small change of tone that let you know what they were feeling when they spoke. With Americans you had to listen very carefully and watch them closely; their gestures often gave them away. This American was not filthy like Dacy, and that was something. Perhaps he was not quite as coarse, though his language was thick with gutturals, the sound of gears in a machine. In the lower register he sounded like an animal. He had a full head of hair and a softer manner than Dacy. But Dacy had been gentil on first meeting until he laughed, and then she knew he was common, a vulgar type. Dacy's booming laugh was cruel. She watched this Sydney moving the carved boxes left and right. The boxes seemed to have some meaning for him and surely in time she would discover what the meaning was. With the dark circles under his eyes and his stubbly beard, he resembled the construction workers she saw at the installation near Xuan Loc, the radar; they were always leering and making crude gestures. She would have to be patient and see what this one wanted and what he was prepared to give for it. He did not seem to regard Dacy as a friend. He seemed to understand that Dacy was a pig. This Sydney did not look like a drinker, either, though you could never be certain. Dacy often drank alone when he thought no one was looking. He should have known that someone was always looking. Americans did not notice what went on around them, as if their own field of force was sufficient protection from the world. They did not know that you must become one with the world; you did not escape it, you disappeared into it and at that time you discovered what was required of you. With his gray face and slumping shoulders, this Sydney looked like any exhausted round-eyed traveler in a shapeless suit, discouraged at the asymmetry he found. Now he was pawing through the desk drawers with his thick fingers. He was perspiring, too, and the smell annoyed her, yet another manifestation of egoism and immodesty. He muttered something she could not make out. He shook his head and cursed, as Dacy often did with the thick growl of a dog. It was evident then that he had forgotten all about her. Mai had ceased to exist.

Goodbye, sir, she said softly from the outer office.

'Bye, Sydney said without looking up because he had found a photograph stuck between the drawer and the desktop, a picture of Dacy and a young girl. She wore an army-issue helmet so large that it covered her eyes and nose, giving her the comical appearance of a lascivious doll or warlike Lady Godiva astride her man-stallion in brilliant yellow sunlight. She was sitting in Dacy's lap, her legs spread, her fingers cradling his balls. The rest of him was erect. They both faced the camera, the girl grinning and Dacy grinning, too, except his grin was blissful and hers was indecipherable, detached as it was from her eyes. Her glossy hair spilled over her shoulders. She was small and looked like a child atop Dacy's bulk, his heavy thighs and fleshy knees. In her tiny fist, his erection resembled a giant plum-colored acorn. Dacy's half-lidded eyes gazed triumphantly into the ecstatic future, one golden afternoon following another, golden afternoons without end in a distant country with infinite patience and possibility, where everyone knew the value of a dollar.

Sydney stared at the photograph, wondering about the preparations for it, the helmet and the time of day, the camera's timer set and then the scramble back to the chair. He looked more closely now and saw that Dacy and the girl were sitting in the desk chair; and the camera must have been placed in the low bookcase, the one beneath the photographs of the President and the ambassador. So Dicey had a sense of humor, making unwilling voyeurs of their excellencies. Sydney did not fail to notice the gold Seiko on the wrist of the hand that held the erection, and the rhinestones on the fingers, and Dacy's fat thumb resting on one of the rhinestones.

Dacy was bald with a fringe of hair that resembled the puppet Kukla, exactly as Rostok had said. His jowls were unshaven, and unless pictures lied Dicey Dacy was the suspect Sydney had seen at the airport, the one briefly detained by the MPs and then sent through passport control, "and don't come back." The one who had scuffed his feet as he looked at the floor and shook his head no, extending his wrists to receive the handcuffs. Dacy did not look like a man familiar with remorse. It was his last desperate bid to remain in the country of his dreams. Any jail cell in Saigon was paradise compared to the split-level in Modesto. A man like Dacy could not grow into himself in sunny California, altogether too American, too strait-laced and composed, a soul-killing domestic milieu.

Sydney moved to replace the photograph, forgetting for a moment that the desk no longer belonged to Dacy. He saw then that there were dozens more photographs, Dacy and the girl on the floor, in the bed upstairs, in the bathtub, on the sofa, perched on the edge of the desk itself, the poses identical, the girl's detached grin and Dacy's busy fingers and glazed ecstasy. Sydney thought, The answer to chaos is repetition.

N
IGHT HAD FALLEN
when Sydney and Rostok settled in at the café across the street from the police station at Tay Thanh. The café was without walls, open to the night air. The fluorescent lamps cast a fitful light, buzzing all the while; insects collected around them, crashing into the glowing tubes. Sydney was alarmed by a teenage boy crouched in the corner. He had the unpredictable look of a wild animal, his neck disappeared into his shoulders, his head forward, his legs splayed awkwardly on the wooden floor. He rocked slowly on his knuckles, keeping time to some inner rhythm. One of his legs was infected with elephantiasis, a formless limb below the knee. The leg looked like an elongated balloon filled with water, flopping this way and that. At the waiter's command the boy rose to scatter the insects around the lights. Then he fetched a pitcher of water; the useless leg dragged behind him like a tail. The foot was huge, the size of a man's thigh but without sinew.

Food's good here, Ros said.

The boy filled their water glasses, concentrating hard. Up close he did not look like a wild animal, merely an undersized boy performing a simple task. Sydney turned away, filled with pity. What a ghastly combination of bad luck, bad genes, infection, and Third World medicine. What sort of life would this boy know? And would it be better or worse than the life of the girl in the helmet? And just then Sydney thought he had seen enough of Vietnamese youth for one day, his first in-country. Part of him was still in New York and another part in Comminges.

The boy finished pouring water and then limped away, his heavy foot making a silky sound as he dragged it across the floor. Sydney wondered if the boy was in pain. He didn't look in pain.