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

The Spy Who Loved Us 257
Before I say good-bye, An returns to discussing his death,
telling me that he wants to be cremated and have his ashes
scattered in the Dong Nai River near Bien Hoa, where he was
born. The army, on the other hand, is insisting on giving him a
state funeral.
The house fills with the smell of rice cooking in the kitchen.
I look to the far end of the salon to see that the dining room
table is out of commission. It is groaning under enormous piles
of books and magazines that have metastasized as if An’s friends,
afraid of losing him, have built a paper fortress against the lord
of the underworld. Dinnertime comes and goes, and An is still
“yakking, yakking,” until he collapses onto his bed, breathless.
I say good-bye and rise to walk through the garden on my own,
passing the porcelain statue of An’s beloved German shepherd
and the cages that hold his fighting cocks. I leave with a heavy
heart, knowing that this is the last time I will speak with An.
An was not always a reliable narrator; he refused to talk
about some parts of his life. He had a story he told about
himself—about being a strategic rather than a tactical spy—
which I have come to doubt. But encapsulated in his life are
fundamental truths about the war in Vietnam and its aftermath.
I persist in thinking that the particular story of this one
Vietnamese spy, who also happened to be a journalist, is our key
to understanding the contemporary world of embedded reporters.
After all, what reporter is not embedded, either in a
military unit or in a clan or culture, and who better than An to
help us understand the moral perils and sheer terror of trying
to report on a world at war?
The Saigon streets are bustling with people buying presents
and getting ready for the new year’s festivities at Têt. It is also
the season of weddings, when it is not unusual to get invited to
two weddings a day. These sumptuous affairs in Saigon’s hotels
involve hundreds of guests, live bands, fountains of champagne,
and emcees who jolly everyone into drinking enormous quantities
of beer and cognac. After being filmed raising their glasses