Farewell Uncle Ho 93
This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
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Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.
Farewell, Uncle Ho
by Dennis Milholland
questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu
Chapter 93 (Monday, July 17, 1967)
When the telephone rang at 0730 hours, Linh was already up and answered it in his smooth French, telling the caller what our number was and asking who was calling. I heard him, through my sleep induced daze. Then his cheery voice said in his unique English, which in this case wasn't English at all, but French with an American accent. "Juste un moment."
"Jesus, Loughery," The unknown brash American voice aggressively bounced off my eardrum. "can't you find a god-damned Gook houseboy, who doesn't sound like Pépé le Pew."
"We Gooks all sound like Pépé le Pew." I affected a faux French accent, mimicking a sinus infection, playing along with self-deprecation, in order to boost the obviously white ego. It could pay off, since I had to assume that he was an officer. The caller laughed. I now found it increasingly difficult to hide my anger. "And who might you be?"
"Yeah, um," He paused to shuffle some papers. "I'm Bill Minor, Colonel Sander's deputy."
My brain erupted in hilarity. We had a commander named Colonel Sanders and his deputy was possibly Major Minor. I was still half asleep, and giggles were already the mode of the day; there was no hiding my erratic nasal sounds, trying to stifle all sense of funny. The caller chuckled, totally devoid of humor. "No, so that you don't bust a gut, I'm a light-bird. But believe me, those years of being an O-4 were Hell."
"Sorry, Sir," I regained a semblance of composure. "what can I do for you?"
"Come by the office in about an hour." He sounded official enough to cause worry. "We have some serious information concerning you."
***
The first thing that Gerry did, when he heard the news, was to call Wade. As if powered by magic, Wade and Yvette were sitting in our living room within five minutes, sipping coffee. "My answering service called me, next door. Do you have any idea, what this could be about?" Of course, Wade didn't sound concerned: it wasn't his ass on the line.
"Not the slightest." I was approaching serious stress. "Unless they came across something about my Queer life in Paris."
"I don't think that would be the case." Wade slurped Linh's coffee, as if he'd never had anything quite this good. "If it had any relevance to the UCMJ, they would have sent the MPs around for both you and Gerry."
"Okay…" Gerry was right, calling Wade had been the best thing to do. I was starting to calm. "Can't think what else it could be, though."
"Tell ya what." Wade pulled out a large, folded piece of letterhead stationery from the inside pocket of his jacket. "Sign this and I'll go with you as your lawyer."
"What's this?" I asked, since the first half was in Vietnamese, I hadn't gotten to the French part, yet.
"It's our marriage contract." Wade's deadpan face and his matter-of-fact delivery, didn't identify it as a joke. When he realized that everyone, particularly Yvette and Gerry, were just plain shocked, he adjusted his seat. "Uh," He cleared his throat. "It's a power of attorney, designating me as your lawyer, which is required under Vietnamese Law."
I took my time to read the French, nodded and signed. Of a sudden, I felt relaxed, confident, comforted. Wade was becoming the older brother, I'd always wanted. We even looked enough alike to be brothers. Of course, Wade's resemblance wasn't as striking as Jules', but we could definitely have been closely related.
***
Colonel Minor seemed taken aback that I'd brought my attorney with me. So, I lied: "Actually, my cousin, Wade, and his partner Yvette were at the house this morning for breakfast, so he decided to tag along."
"My god, Loughery," Minor motioned for us to take a seat, "you're related to possibly the most feared and respected trial lawyer in all of Vietnam, both North and South, and he just happens to come along for the Hell of it?"
The voice of Colonel Sanders startled me from behind. "Don't be surprised, Bill, the Specialist Doctor flew into Tan Son Nhut on Air Force One accompanied by one General Officer and a Major." He chuckled, obviously having checked the story. He winked at me and shook Wade's hand. "Here's the paperwork, you wanted okayed."
While the CO and his deputy conferred, Wade smiled cordially and asked me in low-volume Cantonese: "Air Force One?" I smiled just as friendly and answered in kind that he would love the story of a major Army fuck-up and to remind me later. When the CO left, I turned my attention to the flustered Colonel Minor. "So, Sir, what do you have for us, this morning?"
"Well," He shuffled papers. "Colonel Sanders has approved your referral back to CONUS, and a direct commission."
"No can do, Sir." I was surprised that they hadn't looked at my file. "I'm not an American citizen."
"Oh shit." He shuffled some more papers and found what he wanted. "I forgot to tell you that the Supreme Court overturned Perez versus Brownell in a five to four decision on 29 May. Your American Citizenship has been reinstated."
"Don't I get a say in this?" The good Colonel's jaw dropped as I asked the question.
"Uhm, you'll have to sign the paperwork, here, for it to happen. But it's virtually automatic. And you get the commission that you wanted, and you get out of Nam--"
"--just to get sent back as a second lieutenant in the infantry?" I laughed sarcastically. "To become a butter-bar bullet sponge in Quang Tri City?" I laughed at him and his feeble assumption that everyone wanted to be American. "I don't think so, Sir."
It went without saying that I didn't even hint at the real reason to keep everything as it was. For the first time in my life, I had a family and a mate, neither of which I would ever give up without a fight to the death.
***
The highlights of having accompanied Gerry to the West-German legation across the street was to be able to establish the fact that the blond man with the scar, we'd seen at Givral, was, in fact their representative and to look through their large window, providing a panoramic view of Lê Loi and see our apartment with Linh setting the table for lunch in the dining room. I silently conceded Wade's point on both counts: the man was a German diplomat, and large windows were indeed great for air but lousy for privacy.
We returned home to get Linh, so he could help us get a taxi out to a suburb of Cholon to the Seventh-Day-Adventist clinic to purchase a supply of chloroquine and to get tested for our ability to use the secondary anti-malaria medication, primaquine phosphate, which we would take for fourteen days after we returned. There was something about primaquine that had to be okayed before they could give it to us.
Malaria prophylaxis was not deemed necessary in Saigon, probably because the air pollution was so high that the mosquitoes stayed away. But the risk in Central Highlands, where Dalat was located, was considered to be very high, so, medication was necessary. We could have gotten it from the Army, but the test would have taken a week that we didn't have. Apparently, this was a totally different prophylaxis than had been given to Sean. But again, we had paid for this. Sean's had been government issue.
So, once we got the okay, we were given the medication, and had paid, we took another cab to the French consulate on Hong Thap Tu to let me register. Linh explained how the embassy had been on the same road, only up a ways and virtually across the street from le Cercle Sportif. Actually, I was sort of glad that it was no longer there.
***
When we got out of the cab in front of the French consulate, Linh pointed at the huge, new American Embassy, which would open in September, he explained. Until then, the old Embassy building, one block from the Saigon River and of which the windows had been concreted shut, leaving only ventilation spaces, would be used.
We walked to the corner of Mac Dinh Chi to get a better look, albeit from the back. Aesthetics had obviously not been an issue in the design of the six-storey building. It resembled a huge cinder block, placed on its side, with a helipad on the roof. There was literally nothing to see, except one huge tamarind tree, which had been boxed in to keep it from being damaged during construction.
When we got back to the main door of the French consulate, one of the four Vietnamese guards had been eyeing us. He approached Linh and me and asked something in Vietnamese. Linh shrugged and asked him to speak French. Although he glared at us, as if having to deal with traitors to the Fatherland, he allowed us to pass. The French guard behind the gate, dressed in a khaki uniform, wearing the distinctive kepi, nodded and smiled somewhat nervously until he saw the French passport in my right hand.
Okay, it had been less than five months, since a huge demonstration had tried to take over the place to show their anger at the old colonial power, and their support for the new colonial power, next door. From what Yvette had said, the demonstration had had the same flavor of state-sponsored spontaneity, as did the hundreds of colorful banners stretched across various streets, denouncing negotiations, peace agreements, communism in English and Vietnamese, but never in French. My immediate favorite, not far from the Seventh-Day-Adventist clinic, read: 'We are determined to resist'. What, it didn't say.
The pati-ochre-colored main building of the consulate had been well maintained from colonial times and elegantly situated on a spacious, walled couple of wooded acres, resembling the grounds of le Cercle Sportif. Hopefully, the personnel here would be friendlier.
Linh, however, settled that question with a not-terribly-discrete shriek of: "Salut, Marie-Claude!" as we crossed the brown-and-dark-red tiled entry. The startled woman, resembling a bespectacled scarecrow in her mid-thirties, frowned at first, but recognizing Linh, hurried from behind her counter to dispense kisses to both his cheeks.
Since Linh had taken it upon himself to explain my situation to her, the minute she had my passport, the entire procedure lasted less than three minutes. There was another round of kisses, including Gerry and myself, this time, and with big hugs.
Once we were back on the street, Gerry said in a low voice, that he could have sworn that she'd pinched his ass. I could hardly get the translation out for Linh, due to giggling, since she'd touched mine, as well. Linh laughed and nodded. "Hm, she does that a lot."
***
Linh told us that we were walking home. And that was because we could then help him carry his purchases. I hadn't realized that he could actually get two crocheted shopping nets tucked into the waist band of his black trousers, hidden under the shirttails, without ever being noticed.
Of course, we had to go by Brandt's butcher shop on Hai Bà Trung to get steaks and Gerry's dose of German gossip. Our next stop was a few doors down to KHINH - KY to restock our selection of cheeses and Dubonnet.
Due to the late-morning heat, humidity and brilliant sunshine, it was slow going. By the time we'd walked the seven or eight blocks to our home, Wade was waiting in front of the building, listening to the radio in his Ford Vendôme. We loaded Linh down with the shopping nets and got in the car.
"Do you have your passports, pictures, and twenty-five dollars, each?" Wade turned off the radio and pulled into traffic, as soon as I nodded and patted the leather pouch that I wore under my shirt on a string around my neck, which contained our passports, pictures and illegal cash.
***
Gordon had told us a lot about Cholon, where he had lived with Ju-Long and Cam, back before, in their words 'the war really started'. But the problem with telling something is that you can never include the sounds and smells. Of course, you can talk about the brightly colored pagodas and the signs of shops, predominantly in Chinese characters, being that Vietnamese was written with Latin letters, of sorts, But here, in this city within a city, you only saw Latin letters above Vietnamese-owned businesses and authorities or used in state-sponsored propaganda.
This was Chinese, the streets were cleaner than Saigon's and the French influence was less flashy. The streets were narrower and some were covered with tarpaulins against the elements. The narrow passageways smelled of herbs and spices, and people pushed, which according to my experience, the Vietnamese never did. The pushing was nothing like in New York, where everyone, even in Chinatown, were perpetually late and aggressive. This was a gentle nudging, which would get you a broad smile, should you turn around to see who it was.
Even in the huge Bin Tay market, the spoken Chinese was more subdued. The only loud and shrill voices you heard were Vietnamese. Or maybe it was because I was used to Chinese, and Vietnamese was still unaccustomed.
Wade told us something interesting. The name Cholon means 'big market' in Vietnamese and the Cantonese name, 堤岸, of course, means 'embankment' 'dike' or 'dam'. And again, there was a comfort factor, here. I understood most everything, even though the Cantonese spoken in Saigon had an odd tinge to it. It was not enough to make it incomprehensible. It just made it quaint.
Wade had taken us by the hand, with Gerry in the middle, as he led us through the huge throngs of vendors and buyers. And I had to agree with Linh, who claimed that the produce here was much more aromatic and fresher than at the small market on Hai Bà Trung near our home, not to mention a lot less expensive.
We arrived at a small stand on the pavement, at which Wade took our passports, pictures, and a total of fifty dollars. The man smiled at us and asked Wade something in Vietnamese. Then he started filling in the red booklet with a fountain pen in blue ink. He then placed a stamp in each of our passports, making us official permanent residents of the Republic of Vietnam. Henri Landry et Fils, Jules tobacco company was listed as our employer.
To answer Gerry's and my inquisitive looks, Wade claimed that it was totally authentic. "The man is the functionary who does this at Immigration. He moonlights when he's off, making a few dollars on the side, but he also asks fewer questions, here."