The Tears of Autumn Read online

  “I never was, but when I was younger I had a tendency to melancholy,” Christopher said. “I’d return from Lagos, still seeing the lepers catching coins in their mouths like dogs because their fingers had fallen off, and I’d betray a certain sadness. Cathy thought she knew another reason for my mood.”

  Molly lay still in the moving light. “Black girls?” she asked.

  “That was the least of it,” Christopher replied.

  “It must have been your bloody silence,” Molly said. “Have you any love for me when you’re away, or does it start when you see me and end when your plane takes off?”

  Christopher took a candle off the bedside table and held it up so that both their faces were in the light. “If I love you, Molly, it’s because you’ve never been with me in all those places,” he said. “I won’t tell you, I won’t take you. That part of it isn’t life.”

  A tear ran down her cheek. He had never seen her cry before.

  “I never thought there was any love in you at all,” she said, “and now that you say there is, I want it all.”

  He blew out the candle. Molly drew his arm around her body, put her wet face in the hollow of his neck, and went to sleep.

  2

  The following morning, Molly came back from the post office with Patchen’s letter. Christopher looked at the sterile envelope with his name and address typed on it and knew the sender: the characters that fell on the left side of the typewriter keyboard were fainter than the others. Once, as a joke, he had advised Patchen to get an electric machine to conceal these traces that his letters were typed by a man with one arm weaker than the other. He sent Molly out of the room and opened the envelope. On a sheet of cheap paper were typed two lines from one of Christopher’s old poems.

  Death fell breathless behind us in our war-struck youth, and winning that race, we lost our chance at truth.

  Below this, Patchen had typed: “PSRunner/22XI63/UBS (G).”

  The note was unsigned. Christopher put it in his pocket, lifted the phone, and made a reservation on the noon plane to Geneva.

  Christopher was not known at the Union de Banques Suisses in Geneva, but they were used to strangers there. He told a clerk that he wished to discuss a numbered account, and he was taken into an office where a bald Swiss sat behind a bare desk. Swiss banks have a churchly atmosphere; Christopher judged from the furnishings in the bald man’s office that he was the equivalent of a bishop. The man rose from a chair with a high carved back and shook hands, but did not smile.

  “There is a numbered account here for me, recently opened, I believe,” Christopher said.

  “Will you state the number and the name, please?”

  “It is 22X163,” Christopher said, “and the name is P. S. Runner.”

  “One moment.” The bald man unlocked a file and extracted a large card; he centered it on the polished surface of the desk before him and looked expectantly at Christopher.

  “Do you require a signature?” Christopher asked.

  “No, monsieur. Our instructions are to pay on demand, but you must furnish the second of two lines of verse.”

  Christopher quoted the line from Patchen’s letter.

  “It’s in order,” the bald banker said. “Do you wish to make a withdrawal?”

  “What is the current balance?”

  “A deposit of $100,000 has been made—that is, Swiss francs 432,512.65. You may have any amount, in either currency.”

  “Please give me twenty-five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, and five thousand Swiss francs in hundred-franc notes.”

  The banker wrote on a form and pressed a bell. In a moment, a messenger returned with two long buff envelopes. The banker counted the money rapidly, sealed the envelopes, and handed them to Christopher. “Your balance is now $73,865.74,” he said. “When you call for more funds, you may come directly to this office without asking the huissier. It’s more discreet.”

  Christopher nodded and put the envelopes in his breast pocket. Outside in the rue du Rhone he saw a man in a tweed Brooks Brothers overcoat limping through the crowd and thought for an instant that it might be Patchen. His letter bore a Swiss postmark, so he might have carried the cash to Geneva himself. Christopher followed the limping man for a block or two before he got a clear glimpse of his face, which was whole and handsome.

  At a garage near the railroad station, Christopher rented a car with French license plates. There were no identity controls at the French frontier for motor traffic. The weather in northern Europe was already turning bad, and he drove over the Jura through fog and sleet. He did not want to leave any traces of himself on paper in France, so he did not stop at a hotel. He drove all night and arrived in Paris before the morning traffic had begun to move. He parked the car behind the horse barns at Longchamps and slept for three hours in the back seat. When he awoke, he touched the envelopes with Patchen’s money in them.

  3

  It took Christopher half the day to learn the telephone number of Nguyen Kim.

  “Are you still bumming meals?” Christopher asked, when Kim came on the noisy line.

  They arranged to meet at Fouquet’s. Christopher filled the gas tank and spent three hours circling the block until he found a parking place on the Champs-Elysées in front of the cafe.

  Kim drank two large bourbons at Fouquet’s and two more at La Coupole after they had driven through Montmartre and doubled back across the Seine bridges. Kim did not know the city, and the long ride with many detours down side streets did not surprise him. When they reached the restaurant, they were alone; as they pulled away from Fouquet’s, Christopher had seen, in the rear-view mirror, the two men who were following Kim. One hurried around the corner to get a taxi while the other watched Christopher’s rented Peugeot vanishing into a school of others just like it toward the place de la Concorde.

  Kim ordered oysters. For an Asian, he was an adventurous eater, but he looked uncomfortable when he saw before him the thick green meat of a dozen Spéciales in their gnarled shells. He squeezed lemon over the oysters, and putting one into his mouth, opened his eyes wide and chewed. “They have no taste,” he said, and sprinkled pepper over the ones remaining.

  “Kim,” Christopher said, “Let me see if I have this straight. The part of the Vietnamese family called the toe consists of all persons, male or female, who claim a common ancestry back five generations into the past, and forward three generations into the future. Is that right?”

  Kim, still chewing, frowned. “Say it in French,” he said. Christopher translated.

  “Yes,” Kim said, “That’s it. Then there are the chi and the phai—different parts of the system.”

  “The chi is the important unit, is it? Those are people related in direct line of descent from eldest son to eldest son.”

  “People who belong to a chi think so. How do you know this stuff?”

  “I’m not sure I do, that’s why I’m checking. What’s a phai?”

  “There can be lots of phai in a family. That’s people who are descended from younger sons.”

  “Can you belong to a chi on one side and a phai on the other?”

  “Sure, everyone does. I’m a chi on the Nguyen side and a phai on the Ngo side.”

  “What about, say, Diem and Nhu—where did they fit in?”

  “They were both younger sons,” Nguyen said. “The eldest son was Khoi—the one I told you was killed in ‘45 by Ho’s people.”

  “Do these categories mean anything in the modern world?”

  “You bet your ass they do,” Kim said. “What counts is where you rank in the family. If the Nguyen kings had held on for another four hundred years, I’d be a prince of the blood royal. Nobody forgets that.”

  “Where do you rank in the Ngo family?”

  “Way down—lower than Diem and Nhu did, even.”

  “They couldn’t have ranked so low.”

  “Well, no, they didn’t. They were listened to, and they contributed a lot to the family weal
th in one way or another. But as far as the Truong toe was concerned, they were just a couple of kids who spoke French.”

  “The Truong toe?” Christopher said. “Who’s that?”

  “The head of the family. He’s the oldest man of the main line of eldest sons. I guess maybe he was their great-uncle.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Kim chewed another oyster and gave Christopher a bright drunken look, filled with wariness. “Ngo,” he said.

  “Ngo what?”

  “That’s for me to Ngo and you to find out,” Kim said, and coughed violently on the oyster that laughter had driven into his nose.

  When he recovered, he wiped tears from his eyes and asked, “What do you want to know all this stuff for, anyway?”

  “After we had lunch in Rome, I thought I might go back out to Saigon and do a piece on the Ngo family. You made them sound interesting.”

  “Well, they’re not. They mostly sit around in dark little houses, eating smelly stuff and talking about the past.”

  “I find it hard to believe that this guy—the Truong toe?— could run the lives of men like Diem and Nhu,” Christopher said.

  “In politics, no. In the family, yes. He’s the one closest to everyone’s ancestors—very important stuff with us.”

  “He’s in touch with everybody in the family?”

  “Sure—that’s all he has to do in life. Whenever there’s a problem in the family, he settles it. Consults the ancestors, you know, and comes up with the answer. His house is the headquarters of the toe.”

  “What if you’re a militant Catholic, like Diem or Nhu—do you still worry about ancestor worship?”

  Kim held a glass of wine to his lips with his right hand. With his left he made a gesture, palm upward, then downward, and lifted his eyebrows. He swallowed his wine and said, “It isn’t a question of ancestor worship versus Jesus Christ Our Lord. I tried to tell you in Rome how strong the family is with us. You’ve got to picture a group of people to whom all the dead ones, going back forever, and all the living ones, including the ones who are going to be born from now to forever, are all with you, all the time. That’s the Vietnamese family.”

  “I’d like to write something about this.”

  “Would you? You’d better do it on some other family. The Ngos are just a little anti-American right now.”

  “It would be a good chance for them to make a point or two,” Christopher said. “I’ve got twenty million readers.”

  “Your readers wouldn’t know a Truong toe from a third baseman, even after you told them. Paul, you’re shitting me. I think you’ve got something up your sleeve. You think about that while I get rid of some of this wine.”

  Christopher watched Kim’s progress through the loud restaurant. Sybille Webster, sitting at a table against the wall, put a finger along her nose and winked at him. Tom Webster watched the Vietnamese go into the toilet, then walked over to Christopher’s table with his napkin clutched in his hand.

  “Hi,” he said. “How’s every little thing?”

  “Okay, Tom.”

  “A college friend of yours passed through a couple of days ago. He left a message for you.”

  “Did he, now? What was it?”

  “It’s a bit complicated. Why don’t you come over for a drink when you ditch the little fellow?”

  “All right. It may be late.”

  Webster nodded and went back to his table. When Kim returned, he changed to red wine.

  “Have you been to Beirut yet?” Christopher asked.

  “No,” Kim replied, “I’ve decided to live oy my wits for a while. I keep busy selling interviews with Madame Nhu. You’re still not interested?”

  “Not really, Kim. I know what she’s going to say—and it’s not publishable.”

  “You want to do a story about the Ngo family without talking to her? No way you could do it—you’re too white, with all that blond hair and your big feet in wing tips. They wouldn’t say a word to you.”

  Christopher shrugged. “I thought you might help out.”

  “I don’t work there anymore.”

  “But you work, Kim. I’m not thinking of your doing anything for free.”

  Kim put down his wineglass and drew a short finger delicately around its rim. Christopher was .reminded of the bald banker in Geneva, counting money. “Well,” Kim said, “anything for the homeland. What seems reasonable to you?”

  “A fair exchange. You give me ten good names—the Truong toe and whoever else you think might talk to me. I’d go to two hundred a name.”

  Kim shook his head. “You’d have to use my name to get in the door,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

  “Then give me some other name—there must be someone I can pretend to know. By the time they check, I’ll be out of the country.”

  “Give me a piece of paper,” Kim said. He pushed his plate aside and wrote rapidly with Christopher’s pen, holding it between his second and third fingers. “I’ve given you addresses, too—the one with the asterisk is the Truong toe.”

  Christopher glanced at the list. “Who are the others?”

  “Men to be careful of, Paul. I mean it. I think I know what you’re after.”

  Kim laughed suddenly, staring into Christopher’s eyes. “Oh, this ought to be funny, Paul. You want a name to use as a reference, eh?” He leaned forward and beckoned Christopher closer. “Tell them you know Lê Thu,” he said.

  “Lê Thu? That’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, sometimes,” Kim said. “Not always, though. Lê Thu—can you remember that? Believe me, that name will open doors in Vietnam.”

  Christopher paid the bill. Outside, the café awnings were whipped by a hard winter rain. Kim fastened the button at the neck of his camel’s-hair overcoat. “Jesus,” he said, “I don’t wonder white people are all screwed up, coming from a climate like this.”

  They walked together to the taxi rank at the corner of the boulevard Raspail. A tart standing against the wall of a building with her umbrella held over her head gave Christopher a miserable smile and cried, “Au secours!”

  Kim stopped to inspect the girl. “How much?” he asked her in French.

  “Un napoleon,” she replied, “service non compris.”

  Kim turned away with a look of contempt. “A hundred francs—for that?”

  The girl called after him, “Seventy-five, it’s raining.”

  “C’est dégoûtant,” Kim said.

  Christopher stepped under the awning of a darkened shop. He handed Kim an envelope.

  “Two thousand francs,” he said. “You’re doing better than the poule, and you don’t have to stand out in the weather.”

  Kim weighed the envelope in his hand, then stuffed it into the pocket of his coat. His hair had been parted by the rain and his small round face was wet.

  “I’m selling a bigger thrill,” Kim said. “Remember the name—Lê Thu.”

  4

  Christopher let Kim walk alone to the taxi. When the cab was out of sight, he went into the Dome and ordered a hot rum. The zinc bar was gone, and the harp-backed straw chairs, but the manners of the customers had not changed. A boy in a ragged sweater stared contemptuously at Christopher’s suit and tie; the boy held his girl’s hand and pressed down hard with his thumbnail on each of her knuckles in turn, watching with a small smile as pain crossed her face.

  Christopher watched the street. When he saw Tom and Sybille Webster get into a taxi, he paid his bill and walked around the corner to the Metro.

  Webster opened the door before Christopher rang the bell. “How’s Kim, the P.R. genius?” he asked.

  “About the same,” Christopher said. “Are we going to talk here, or do you want to go someplace else?”

  “Wherever we go on a night like this, we’ll be surrounded by four walls. Sybille wants to say good-night to you—or goodbye, or whatever.”

  Sybille had taken off her stockings when she came in from the r
ain, and she stood in front of the fireplace with her skirt lifted high on her freckled legs.

  “Hello, cookie,” she said. “Why are you in this terrible town when you could be in the sun?”

  Christopher kissed her. “To see you for the last time—we can’t go on meeting this way, Sybille.”

  “That’s what David Patchen told me the other night. Oh, I realized I hated him when he sat right there with his eyes propped open like a bad statue’s and said, ‘By the way, Christopher’s resigned,’” Sybille said. “As a conversationalist he’s a blowgun—Paul, I know he’s your best friend, but every time he comes here he has some bit of news, tipped with curare, that he fires into my poor flesh. Why does he come? Why doesn’t he stay in Washington and stroke his computers?”

  Webster handed his wife a glass of brandy. “We’ll still see Paul,” he said. “Blame him—he’s the one who resigned, after all.”

  “I’d rather blame David Patchen,” Sybille said. “Besides, it will never be the same. We can’t assume Paul knows the same secrets as we do anymore. I’ve seen people go outside—they have the same faces as before, but they change. Little by little, what made them nice leaks out of them.”

  Sybille drank her cognac. “Oh, well,” she said. “I’m going to bed like a good professional wife, so you two can have your last exchange of dark confidences. Are you sleeping here tonight. Paul?”

  “I might, if that’s all right.”

  “You know where—I’ll put some towels out for you. We’ll meet again in the morning.” Sybille put a hand to his cheek and kissed his lips. “It’s raining all over the world,” she said.

  Webster filled their glasses again. They stood together by the fire, smiling at Sybille’s noises in the back of the apartment. Finally her bedroom door closed and Webster brought a sealed envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Christopher. There was no salutation on the note and no signature:

  You wanted something on Oswald’s movements before Dallas.

  He was in New Orleans from 24 April to 25 September, working at insignificant jobs. He passed out leaflets for something called the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

  On 25 September, for no apparent reason, he went to Mexico City by bus, arriving there on the morning of 27 September. He stayed at the Hotel Commercio ($1.28 a day).