Charles Mccarry - The Tears Of Autumn

Christopher put the page of the notebook in his pocket. “If I knew who killed Diem and his brother, I would tell you that,” he said.

The Truong toe moved his hand and let it fall back in his lap. “How did you know of me?”

“I made inquiries. Your existence is not a secret. The dead boy in France-he was a member of the Ngo chi, was he not?”

The Truong toe opened his eyes. There was nothing involuntary about his expression of surprise; he wished Christopher to understand that he respected his knowledge.

“Yes,” the Truong toe said. “We had hoped he wasn’t dead, but of course there was no other explanation.”

Christopher looked into the flat face of the Truong toe; the old skin stretched over the bones of his head like the ruined glaze of a china plate recovered from the ashes of a burned house. The old man had the light behind him, so even the faint expressions he allowed himself could not always be seen.

“It did not matter to the parents,” Christopher asked, “that Khoi was a Communist and an agent of Ho Chi Minh?”

“One accepts what a son becomes in politics. There is no choice.”

“I would be glad,” Christopher said, “if you could tell me something about President Diem. I met him only twice, but I thought him a great man.”

The Truong toe folded his hands. “Many thought him a tyrant,” he said. “He was not much loved outside Vietnam. Even in his own country, many never understood him. He hadn’t the gift of the popular gesture. He once said that it was impossible for him to feel guilt.”

“Yes,” Christopher said. “‘He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire.’”

“Lao-tzu. You’re a surprising man.”

“One may read as one wishes. Do you believe President Diem loved his world, which was Vietnam, as he loved his own body?”

“They were the same,” the Truong toe said. “And now the one is dead and the other is dismembered,”

“The family is partly in the North, partly in the South. Is it dismembered?”

“No, the family is one.”

“And acts as one?”

“In matters that concern the oneness of the family, when it can. But it is weak, compared to the apparatus of the state and the weapons of the world.”

“So are all families,” Christopher said. “When the American President was killed, as Diem had been killed, I wondered if the members of his family had any thoughts about your family.”

“Because we had similar sorrows? I would be surprised. We live far away, in a weak country.”

“The assassinations came close together-only twenty-one days, three weeks, separated them.”

“The Americans live in another world,” the Truong toe said. “How can they compare their situation with ours? We cannot touch such beings. Perhaps time will touch them.”

Christopher stood up. “When you communicate with Ngo Tan Khoi’s parents,” he said, “tell them I am sorry to have brought such news-and to have brought it so late.”

The Truong toe, his hands folded in his white lap, called out a phrase in Vietnamese. The young woman reappeared and led Christopher to the door.

“What’s your name?” Christopher asked.

She gave him a contemptuous glance and remained silent.

“If you want to be worthy of the Truong toe, you must learn to hide your feelings,” Christopher said.

She opened the door and dropped her eyes, as if looking at the color of his skin offended her.

Christopher walked through the muffled atmosphere of the garden. Two Vietnamese in European clothes lounged by the gate. Christopher saw the outline of revolver butts under the thin white stuff of their identical shirts. The men watched him get into his waiting taxi, then one of them crossed the street to use the telephone in a shop.

Christopher told the driver to take him to the Continental Palace Hotel. He walked past the desk and up the stairs. It was still very early in the morning, and the maids were not yet active. He found an unlocked room from which the luggage had been removed. Closing the door behind him, he sat down on the soiled bed and used the telephone to call Wolkowicz.

Wolkowicz imagined that he was stalked by murderous enemies. He carried a heavy revolver in a shoulder holster and a smaller pistol strapped to the calf of his leg. A young Marine armed with a submachine gun drove Wolkowicz to work in the embassy and home again in a Mercedes with armored doors and bullet-proof windows. Wolkowicz’s villa was surrounded by a concrete wall, and the house itself had been fitted with steel doors and shutters. There were submachine guns, steel helmets, and flak vests in every closet.

Christopher rang the bell and saw Wolkowicz’s eye at the peephole. In the dark hall, Wolkowicz worked clumsily to refasten the bolts and locks with his left hand. He carried a pistol in his right hand and a newborn pig under his arm.

“I was just about to feed the snake,” Wolkowicz said. “Have a drink if you want one.”

Christopher made himself a gin and tonic with big clear ice cubes from Wolkowicz’s American refrigerator.

“Nhu, where the hell are you?” Wolkowicz said. “Come on, baby, we haven’t got all night He hides during the day, half the time I can’t find him.”

Wolkowicz shifted the pig to his left hand and replaced the revolver in his shoulder holster. He got down on his knees and looked under the furniture. “There you are, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Come on out.”

A young python glided from beneath the sofa and lifted its flat head. The pig squirmed sleepily in Wolkowicz’s arms.

“I have to dope the pig, otherwise the house gets wrecked in the chase,” Wolkowicz said. “I gave this one a Miltown in a can of beer. He’s feeling no pain.”

“Where’d you get the snake?” Christopher asked.

“Phnom Penh,” Wolkowicz said. “I had to go over to see Pete. The Cambodians run around with pythons draped around their necks. This is a nice one-I bought him from a taxi driver. He had him on the seat beside him. The problem is getting food for him. You don’t have to feed him often, but he’ll only eat live stuff. He likes chickens, but I can’t stand the noise.”

Wolkowicz put the pig on the floor and sat down heavily beside Christopher on the sofa. “You ever seen this done?” he asked. “It’s kind of interesting.”

The snake watched the pig fixedly. The drugged pig seemed surprised that it was unable to run; it gave a faint squeal and staggered toward the sofa. Wolkowicz gave it back to the python. With much slower movements than Christopher had expected, the snake attacked, wrapping itself around the pig’s small body. The pig struggled briefly, then subsided, uttering a series of thin squeals like a baby drifting to sleep. Its head thumped on the floor.

“Look at the snake’s eyes,” Wolkowicz said. “This is the only time they change expression-he gets dreamy while he’s squeezing.”

It took the python a long time to swallow the pig’s limp body. Toward the end, when only the pink rump still showed in the snake’s widened jaws, the python reached around with its tail and pushed the pig into its throat.

“He’ll sleep for days now,” Wolkowicz said. “I never knew they used their tails like that-it’s pretty interesting.”

“You enjoy having him around the house?”

“I make sure I know where he is before I go to sleep-snakes are good pets. They’ve got dry, very smooth skin, like the local girls,” Wolkowicz said, grinning. He grasped the snake’s tail and pulled it across the floor and into a closet.

When he came back he said, “I heard you took a little heat in Washington.”

“Oh, how did you hear that?”