"There It Is": Narratives of the Vietnam War. Tom Burns
existence in the jungle, cut off from their families and social backgrounds” (69). In another sense, this exchange is a rehearsal of the old argument between Communism and its liberal critics, in which western intellectuals were critical of the intolerance and doctrinaire propaganda of Communist regimes, and the Communist leaders believed that the people in whose name they are carrying out revolution, need only to “work and obey” for the time being. In their view, there will be more tolerance later, once the regime has been consolidated and a Communist state is achieved.
According to a French captain captured at Dien Bien Phu, the Communist Viet Minh were victorious because they created a new kind of army, “a total army, in which every soldier is at one and the same time a propagandist, a schoolmaster and a policeman, every officer an administrator, a priest and an agronomist” (62). Whether meant as critique or admiration by a defeated soldier, the statement suggests the attraction of Communism for poor Asian countries, as well as why revolutionary forces like the Viet Minh and later the National Liberation Front were able to achieve victory over powerful adversaries. These revolutionary armies did not consist of military professionals but soldiers who belonged to a highly integrated political, social and military organization.
The plot complication that develops in the first part of the novel, while the Viet Minh are preparing their triumphant entrance into the city, is the presence of a potentially disruptive terrorist, Dr. Tuan-Van-Lê, another old friend of Jerome’s from Paris. Pursued by both the Viet Minh secret police and the French Sureté, or security forces, Lê is hiding in a basement with his strange companion, an assassin named Trieu. Described as a tiny, thin, gnome-like man, Lê was once a member of the Viet Minh Central Committee, said to be more acclaimed even than Ho Chi Minh, because he represented “revolt and immediate action” while Ho was thought to be overly cautious. Lê later broke with the Viet Minh to lead an anti-colonialist, anti-Communist organization called the National Resistance Front, which started up in Paris but later degenerated into a terrorist organization.
It is not explained why Lê, a ruthless man of abstemious habits, someone who might find Communism to his taste, fell out with Ho, unless it was from his own egoism and love of power. Lê’s and Trieu’s motives, in any case, remain murky: Lê is portrayed as a disillusioned idealist who has become a fanatic without program or followers; Trieu, a former peasant driven by supernatural notions of righting a wrongly ordered universe through violence. Together, they have assassinated a number of people and blown up a statue of Buddha to no apparent purpose other than create a sense of insecurity and terror. Lê compares South Vietnam to the Chinese Kuomintang, with their “gang-leaders” and “war lords,” a comparison that is not elaborated on, but the Kuomintang’s defeat by Mao’s Chinese Communists may be a presage of what was to come in South Vietnam. In his determination to stir up trouble, Lê merely wants to “maintain the character of the whole-hearted, relentless revolutionary to the bitter end” (43).
Both the French and the Viet Minh are eager to get their hands on Lê, who, they correctly surmise, is plotting mayhem to disrupt the changeover. The policeman Bernot suspects that Lê, whom he has pursued for years, is in town and imagines that he can finally flush him out by keeping an eye on Jerome. Bernot believes that in crime as well as politics “certain men find themselves at the hub of every intrigue, every plot, every coup, without ever taking an active part, being even perfectly innocent. Jerome was one of these men” (83). The Viet Minh leaders have the same idea and in fact hire the same informer to follow him. Lê tells Jerome his plan, knowing that Jerome will not denounce him to the police: he intends to eliminate the Viet Minh Administrative and Military Committee, Phang’s organization, as “one last gesture” (94), since, under the circumstances, it will be a suicide mission. He tells Jerome, who by now only wants to retire, that it is impossible to drop out of political activity because “we are all prisoners of one another” (96).
Lê’s remark also suggests the claustrophobic interlocking relationships of the men on all sides of the power struggle, each one of them bound by ties of the past. Both Phang and Lê, for example, are former friends of Jerome. Where they differ is in their dreams of the future, which the Communists Phang and Nguyen nurture but the disillusioned idealists like Lê and Jerome have abandoned. How the different sides are bound together by political necessity is shown by the episode in which Lê is killed. The French policeman Bernot discovers his hiding-place but is anxious for the Viet Minh to perform the actual assassination; at the same time, he must also get the French general’s cooperation to withdraw sentries in the area so that the Viet Minh assassins can toss in a grenade. All sides must cooperate in eliminating what is considered a loose cannon.
In the triumphant entrance of the Viet Minh, it is typical that Phang enters Hanoi discreetly, and Nguyen anonymously, while Phang’s assistant in charge of propaganda has orchestrated a parade, with ubiquitous red flags, but the parade has only a lukewarm reception despite agents planted in the crowd to lead the cheering spectators (in one minor but significant scene, the Viet Minh soldiers and the French policemen exchange cigarettes and show each other their American-made weapons). Phang cunningly holds his first press conference in English, to the fury of the French journalists. There is some tension among the Viet Minh leaders: the pro-China Ten wants to get rid of everything French, but Nguyen and Phang, aware of their western cultural roots, reject this proposal. Nguyen, who ordered the assassin Trieu taken alive, wants to make an example of him to show the apathetic people of Hanoi, who are too accustomed to seeing rulers come and go, that this regime means business. As an ideologist, however, he cannot understand a man like Trieu, who seems to act only from instinct. Trieu agrees to be killed for any purpose Nguyen wants, as long as he is kept supplied with cigarettes. Nguyen, accordingly, has him reported as a robber and the word is put out on the street that he will be tried by a “people’s court,” which is to be chosen at random, and immediately executed by the security forces. In this way, terror is instilled in the “judges,” who understand that they might have to condemn their neighbors some day in the same way, another of Nguyen’s “lessons.”
Held on France’s symbolic last day, Ma Lien’s funeral dinner is not a success. When Kieu plays traditional melancholic songs on the zither, they are drowned out by the noisy revolutionary songs of a youth organization next door, which has been placed there by her nephew, Phang, to drive her away. Jerome, along with some giggling paid mourners, will be the only member of the original group in her funeral procession: Ma Lien, like Hanoi itself, has been abandoned by her friends. Jerome imagines that he is following the funeral of all the others who died there since the French arrived, Hanoi being “a French town standing on the confines of China” (171), a formula that neatly characterizes Vietnam as a country defined by its invaders.
The end of the first part evokes an orgy of French nostalgia for a time of “communion between a yellow race, a white army and a handful of officials, adventurers and revolutionaries—all this died in Hanoi on the same day” (189), which manages, at the same time, to celebrate the colonial regime while forgetting its brutal oppression. The “corpse” of the vanished colonial world is said to have gone on “decomposing in Saigon.” The second part of the novel, accordingly, has its setting in the southern capital, although the action has little connection with the first part (the journalists and most of the other characters, for example, make only cameo appearances).
The chaos in Saigon—assassinations, riots, shifting alliances, intrigues and betrayals—contrasts with the orderly rituals of the new regime in Hanoi. The nominal leader of South Vietnam, the emperor Bao Dai, rarely visits his country, preferring to lead the life of a playboy in Cannes, financed mainly by Lê Dao (historically, Le Van Vieu), the leader of the Binh Xuyen gangsters. This organization is said to have began as a group of pirates who looted junks and were willing to work for anyone, whether Japanese or Viet Minh (Le Van Vieu was in fact a gangster whom Bao Dai granted the gambling concession and actually made a “general” in charge of the local security forces). Besides the Binh Xuyen, the government has to deal with the two religious sects, both of which have large private armies: the Hoa Hao, led by Lê-Son, a more dedicated leader than Lê Dao, and the Cao Dai, led by the ambitious Trinh Sat, whose “action committees” (assassins) have infiltrated Saigon in small groups. Trinh Sat is a terrorist who would have joined the Viet Minh if he could have been their leader; he became a Caodaist only “by force of circumstances.”