The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

The Spy Who Loved Us 245
and other offerings. This is the tomb of Vo Thi Sau. At sixteen,
she tried to kill some French colonists who were celebrating
Bastille Day. At nineteen, she was shipped to Poulo Condore
and executed. From the picture on her headstone, she was a
beautiful young woman, and her grave has become another of
the island’s sites where people stop to light bundles of incense
and pray for the souls of the dead.
Reading from her biography as we stand over her grave,
Kyle tells us that Vo Thi Sau was one of fifty Vietnamese executed
in reprisal for the death of General de Lattre de Tassigny’s
son, a lieutenant in the French army. In January 1952, she arrived
at Poulo Condore with her hands tied and her feet chained
to the deck. “The island’s church bells rang on her arrival. But
the face of god was blank at the moment of her execution,” Kyle
reads. The island’s Eurasian and Senegalese guards placed her
on death row in bagne one. In charge of executing her was a
Frenchman of German ancestry named Petervol, who was married
to a congai—a Vietnamienne who consorts with Europeans.
“The night before her execution, Vo Thi Sau bathed and
carefully combed her long black hair. She donned an outfit of
black silk pajamas, embroidered with purple flowers. She was
allowed out of her cell for ten minutes, to see her beautiful land
for the last time. She began to sing the old Viet Minh songs
about freeing Vietnam from its colonial masters. She sang all
night. All the prisoners on the island, with their voices raised
from camp to camp, began singing with Vo Thi Sau.”
In the morning, the camp chaplain came to visit. “Now I will
baptize you and wash away your sins.”
“I have no sins,” she said. “Baptize the people who are
about to kill me.”
“Do you have any regrets?” he asked.
“I only regret that I have not yet exterminated the colonialists
who stole Vietnam and the errand boys who sold it to
them. I ask only for one thing. When you come to shoot me,
don’t cover my face. I am brave enough to look down the barrel