Up Country

  “What the hell is wrong with this place?”

  “Don’t take it personally.”

  “Okay, how do we get to Hanoi from here if Route 6 is closed?”

  “There is another route along the Red River. Goes right to Hanoi.”

  “What if we have three people?”

  She replied, “There’s a train along the Red River at a place called Lao Cai on the Chinese border, about two hundred kilometers north of here.”

  “Okay, how do we get to Lao Cai with Tran Van Vinh?”

  “Maybe by bus. Let’s worry about that after we get to Ban Hin and see how many people we need to get to Lao Cai. Also, the trains start running again tomorrow morning. It’s about 450 kilometers from Lao Cai to Hanoi, so we should make it in ten to twelve hours.” She looked at me and said, “In case I’m not with you, you know the way.”

  I nodded.

  She said, “If all else fails, find a Hanoi-bound logging truck. The only questions they ask is if you have ten bucks and if you’d like to buy some opium.”

  “Did Mr. Anh tell you all this?”

  “Yes, but we could have read it in the guidebook, if you hadn’t given it to Mr. Anh. When you give someone a signal object, you don’t use something you need. Use a bag of peanuts or something. Were you sleeping during that class?”

  “I’m retired.” I asked her, “Why didn’t you get the book back when you saw him?”

  “I didn’t know he had it.” She added, “Another amateur.”

  “And you?”

  “Investment banker.”

  “Right.” We mounted up, and I pulled onto the road. I headed south, in case anyone was looking, and I was out of Dien Bien Phu in a few minutes. I pulled over near the hill where the tank sat. A sign informed me that this was Dominique. I wondered what happened to all the general’s ladies, and I wondered if any of them had ever come here to see their namesakes.

  Susan got off the bike and opened a saddlebag. We put on the fur-lined leather caps and the goggles, and Susan took out two dark blue scarves she’d bought and said, “H’mong tribe.”

  “I know that.”

  She laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”

  We wrapped the scarves around our necks and chins, and she said, “Unfortunately, the tribespeople here don’t know how to set dyes, and you’ll have blue dye on your face.” She showed me her hands, which indeed had blue dye on them. No one in Washington was going to believe this shit.

  I studied the map for a few minutes, and I said to her, “Where’s Ban Hin?”

  She pointed to a place on the map and said, “Someplace up here in the Na River Valley. It’s not marked, but I can find it.”

  We looked at each other, and I said, “This is going to be okay.”

  She got on the motorcycle, I twisted the throttle, and we sped off.

  I found a dirt trail that ran through the rice paddies and, within a few minutes, we were on the road that ran past General de Castries’s command bunker. I also wondered what happened to him, and if he ever saw his seven mistresses again. If I had seven mistresses, I might decide to stay in a POW camp.

  We drove through the vegetable fields, passed the rusting tanks and artillery pieces, and traveled north toward the hills and mountains we’d come out of last night, though by a different road, this one west of the one I’d taken to Dien Bien Phu.

  I looked at my watch and saw it was not yet noon. This one-lane road was dirt, but dry, hard-packed, and smooth between the wheel ruts, so I was doing thirty KPH without too much trouble. In about an hour, unless we got lost, I’d be asking someone in Ban Hin if they knew a guy named Tran Van Vinh. I couldn’t even guess at the outcome of this day.

  This road that was marked Route 12 on the map ran through the Na Valley, which was not even five hundred meters wide in most places. The river was small, but swift-flowing, and the road was actually a levee that ran along the side of the river.

  The hills got higher and towered over the narrow valley, which was no more than a gorge in some places. Wherever the valley widened, there were flooded rice paddies and peasant huts on both sides of the dirt road. The few people we saw looked to be ethnic Vietnamese in traditional black silk pajamas and conical straw hats, working in the rice fields much as they did on the coastal plains, but very far from their ancestors.

  The hills were over two thousand meters high now, and a constant headwind blew down from the north, through the tunnel-like valley, and Susan and I had to lean forward or get blown off the bike.

  No one was working in the fields, and there was no traffic on the one-lane road. I remembered it was the last day of Tet, and people stayed home, including, I hoped, Tran Van Vinh. The Viets who had traveled to get to their ancestral homes wouldn’t be on the road again until tomorrow or the next day. It occurred to me, of course, that Tran Van Vinh might have an earlier ancestral village on the coast, and he may have gone there for Tet. But if that was the case, I’d catch him on his way back to Ban Hin, though that would be pushing my time frame. I really wanted to be in Bangkok Sunday, or anywhere other than Vietnam. But I knew I’d stay until Mr. Vinh and I had a talk.

  In the hills, I could see Montagnard longhouses clinging precariously to cleared ridgelines, and it struck me that two very different civilizations existed in the same space, but vertically to one another.

  About an hour after we’d started, I saw on the odometer that we’d come thirty kilometers. “What do your directions say?”

  “Ban Hin is right on this road.”

  “It is? You made it sound complicated.”

  “Sometimes you want to leave me behind, so I need to sound invaluable.”

  I didn’t reply to that interesting statement, but said to her, “See that hut there? Go ask about Ban Hin.”

  “We speak only to Montagnards. We haven’t come this far to blow it at the last minute.”

  We continued on slowly, north on Route 12. About ten minutes later, coming toward us, were three young men, Montagnards, on their ponies.

  I stopped the motorcycle and shut it off.

  As the Montagnards approached, I could see that the ponies were sad-dleless, which they always were, and there were sacks of something tied over their backs.

  Susan and I took off our scarves, hats, and goggles, and Susan dismounted and walked toward the riders. She greeted them with a wave, and they reined up, looking at her.

  She spoke to them and they were nodding. They looked at me, who had been a Montagnard myself just two minutes ago, then looked back at Susan. Almost simultaneously, the three of them pointed back over their shoulders. So far, so good.

  Susan seemed to be thanking them and was about to walk away when one of them reached into his sack and pulled out something, which he gave to her. She waved and walked back toward me.

  The three riders overtook her and chatted again. They obviously liked what they saw. They came abreast of me and the motorcycle, and sort of saluted as they continued south.

  Susan walked up to me and said, “They were nice. They gave me this skin.” She held up a two-foot-long animal skin with black fur on it. She said, “I think it’s a wolverine. Unfortunately, it isn’t tanned and it smells.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.” I said, “Get rid of it.”

  “I’ll hold it awhile.”

  “Where’s Ban Hin?”

  “Up the road a piece.”

  “How far?”

  “Well . . . they apparently don’t measure in time or distance. They travel by landmarks, so it’s the big village after two small villages.”

  “Good. Mount up.” I added, “You have blue dye on your face.”

  She mounted up, and I started the engine and kicked the bike into gear. We continued on without our Montagnard accessories.

  Within five minutes, we passed a small cluster of huts. Village One.

  Five minutes later, we passed small Village Two.

  Five or six minutes later, we approached a bigger village sit
uated along the right side of the road. In front of the village were four stucco structures set back from the road, and I could tell that one was a modest pagoda, the other a clinic, and the third was a school. The fourth flew a red flag with a yellow star, and had a dark green military jeep parked in front of it. I knew this had been too easy. I stopped the bike.

  Susan said, “This is Ban Hin.”

  “And that’s a military jeep.”

  “I know. What do you want to do?”

  I said, “I haven’t come this far to turn around.”

  “Me neither.”

  I went quickly past the military post, then cut into the landscaped yard in front of the pagoda, and pulled the bike around to the rear, out of sight of the road and hopefully of the military building.

  I shut off the engine, and we dismounted.

  Susan said, “Okay, how do you want to ask if Tran Van Vinh is alive and at home?”

  I replied, “We’re Canadian military historians, who speak some French. We’ll ask about some veterans of the Tet Offensive, then get down to the battle of Quang Tri. Wing it. You’re good at bullshitting people.”

  We got our backpacks and cameras out of the saddlebags, and Susan went around to the entrance of the pagoda.

  I followed her through the open doors, and there was no one inside. Tet blossoms were stuck in ceramic urns, and there was a small shrine at the far end of the small, windowless structure, and joss sticks burned on the altar.

  Susan went up to the altar, took a joss stick, and lit it, then threw a few dong in a bowl. Hey, whatever it takes.

  She turned and joined me near the front door. She said, “Today is the last day of the Tet holiday, the fourth day of the Year of the Ox. We have arrived in Ban Hin. Let’s go find Tran Van Vinh, then let’s go home.”

  We left the pagoda and walked into the village of Ban Hin.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The village of Ban Hin was not like the tropical and subtropical villages of the coastal plains; there were no palm trees, for one thing, but lots of pine and huge leafy trees, plus thick clumps of wild rhododendron that were starting to bloom on this cool February afternoon.

  The village was hemmed in by the steeply rising mountain to the east, the rice paddies to the north and south, and the one-lane dirt road we’d arrived on.

  The peasants’ huts were mostly rough-hewn pine with roofs of thatched bamboo leaves. Each house was surrounded by a vegetable garden, and in some of the gardens I could see the entrances to earthen bomb shelters, remnants of the American bombing.

  I wouldn’t have imagined that a valley this remote had been bombed, but I recalled in Tran Van Vinh’s letter to his brother, Lee, that Vinh had mentioned that their cousin, Liem, had written and described trucks filled with wounded soldiers, and columns of fresh troops heading south. I could picture this now, this remote valley road that began at the Chinese border, where much of the war matériel originated, then wound its way to the Laotian border where the Ho Chi Minh Trail network began. I had the feeling that anyone here over thirty years old remembered the United States Air Force.

  The village was filled with kids and adults of all ages, and it seemed that most of the residents of Ban Hin were home on this last day of Tet.

  In fact, everyone was staring at us, the way people in a small rural American village might stare at two East Asians who were wandering around in black silk pajamas and conical straw hats.

  We reached the center of the village, which consisted of a red dirt square, no bigger than a tennis court, surrounded by more houses and an open pavilion that housed a small produce market. I could see some picnic-like tables where people sat, talked, drank, and ate. They stopped what they were doing and looked at us.

  I always knew that if we got this far, the biggest problem would be here in this village. The military facility on the road added to the problem.

  In the center of the square was a simple concrete slab about ten feet long and six feet high set on another concrete slab on the ground. The vertical slab was painted white, and on the white paint was what appeared to be red lettering. At the base of the slab were Tet blossoms and joss sticks burning in ceramic bowls. We walked over to the monument and stood before it.

  The red lettering was, in fact, names, running in rows top to bottom. Across the top were larger letters, and Susan read, “‘In honor of the men and women who fought for the Reunification of the Fatherland in the American War of 1954 to 1975.’” She said, “These are the names of the missing, and there are a lot of them, including Tran Quan Lee.” She pointed.

  I saw Tran Quan Lee, and saw, too, that there were many people of the family of Tran listed as missing.

  We both read the names, but did not see Tran Van Vinh. So far, so good. I said, “The dead must be on the other side.”

  We walked around the monument, whose entire surface was painted with red-lettered names that looked as though they’d been recently touched up.

  A crowd of about a hundred had gathered, and they were inching a little closer to us. I noticed that a number of middle-aged men and women had missing arms or legs.

  I looked at the names of the dead, which were listed chronologically, like the names on the Wall in Washington. If Tran Van Vinh had been killed in action, we’d have no idea when, but it wasn’t before February 1968, so I started there, while Susan began at the end with April 1975.

  I held my breath as I read the names.

  Susan said, “I don’t see him yet . . .”

  “Neither do I.” But I didn’t want to see his name, and I may have unconsciously blocked it out, though every time I saw a “Tran,” my heart skipped a beat.

  The crowd was right behind us now. It felt a little odd staring at the monument to the dozens of dead and missing of this village, all of whom had been killed by my compatriots, and maybe even by me. On the other hand, I had my own wall to deal with. Also, I was Canadian.

  Susan and I kept reading the names, and she said softly to me, “A lot of these names are women and children, and the names are noted as having been killed on the homefront, which I guess means by bombs.”

  I didn’t reply.

  Susan and I met in the middle of the list and read the last of the names to ourselves. I said, “He’s not here.”

  “Not here, either. But is he still alive?”

  “I’ll bet everyone behind us can answer that question.”

  As I stared at the simple slab of concrete with hand-painted names, I couldn’t help but think of the polished granite wall in Washington. In the end, there was no difference in these two memorials.

  I said to Susan, “Canadian. Ready?”

  “Oui.”

  We turned around and looked at the crowd. In rural South Vietnam, we had aroused passing curiosity; here, we aroused intense interest, and if they discovered we were Americans, they might get hostile. I couldn’t read anything in the faces of the crowd, but they didn’t look like a welcoming committee. I said, “Bonjour.”

  There was some murmuring, but no smiles. It occurred to me that with Dien Bien Phu so close, there might be some residual animosity toward the French. Ong die here . . . grand-père. I said, “Nous sommes Canadiens.”

  I thought I saw the crowd relax a bit, or maybe that’s what I wanted to see.

  Susan, too, said, “Bonjour.” She then said something about us coming from Dien Bien Phu, and was it okay if we made une photographie of Le Monument?

  No one seemed to object, so Susan stood back and made une photographie of the names of the dead.

  Finally, someone came forward, a middle-aged gent in black wool pants and an orange sweater. He said something to me in French, but I totally didn’t get it, and I didn’t think he cared if the pen of my aunt was on the desk of my uncle.

  Susan said something to him in halting French, and he replied.

  The guy’s French was a little better than Susan’s, so she mixed in some halting Vietnamese, which had the effect of startling the crowd and
bringing everyone closer.

  It couldn’t be long before a few soldiers showed up and asked for our passports and discovered we weren’t actually Canadians.

  I was starting to feel less like James Bond and more like Indiana Jones in a movie titled Village of Doom.

  Susan was giving this guy the line of crap about l’histoire de la guerre américaine, which he seemed to be half buying.

  Finally, she said something to him in more fluent Vietnamese, and I could hear the name Tran Van Vinh.

  Asking for someone by name in a small town in Vietnam, or Kansas, or anywhere sort of stops the show.

  There was a long silence, then the man looked at both of us, and I held my breath until finally he nodded and said, “Oui. Il suvivre.”

  I knew I had not come this far to visit a grave, and here I was in the village of Ban Hin, and the answer to the question of whether or not Tran Van Vinh was alive was, “Yes, he’s alive.”

  Susan glanced at me, nodded and smiled. She turned back to the guy and continued in broken Vietnamese, with a little French thrown in, and he replied to her in slow Vietnamese, with lots of French. We were actually getting away with this.

  Finally, he spoke the magic word, “Allons.”

  And off we went, following him through the crowd, which parted for us.

  We passed through the covered market, and the man stopped at a community bulletin board covered with clear plastic. He pointed to two faded black and white photographs of Americans in flight suits with their hands in the air, surrounded by pajama-clad peasants carrying old bolt action rifles. There was some room left for another picture of me and Susan in a similar pose.

  The man said, “Les pilotes Americains.” I glanced at Susan, and we made eye contact.

  We continued on a narrow tree-shaded path between small houses toward the towering mountain at the end of the village where a group of low hillocks lay at the base of the mountain, which I recognized as burial mounds. Beyond the burial mounds were small wooden houses.

  We followed the guy up a winding path toward a house built of hand-hewn pine and thatched with bamboo leaves.