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

The Spy Who Loved Us 259
shoo them off, but everyone assumes his statements are scripted
for him by the government. “The Vietnamese have a ‘deep’
explanation for everything,” a friend explains. If nothing else,
they are great confabulators. They fill the city’s cafés and streetside
beer parlors with animated knots of people talking nonstop.
In an avid torrent of jokes, aphorisms, and gossip, they dissect
politics, analyze world affairs, share recipes, sing songs, recite
poems. The only time I hear this chatter stilled is when I stand
among the crowd peering into the face of the Virgin.
One night, strolling back to the Continental Hotel after
dinner, some friends and I find the usual crowd standing in
front of the Virgin. “I’m sure what they saw on her face was pigeon
droppings,” Thang says. Vietnam suffered prolonged
rains in the fall, lasting through Christmas Day. It has also been
unusually cold, leaving the country damp and somber. The mai
apricot blossoms, which normally appear around the Vietnamese
New Year and symbolize the country’s prosperity and
happiness, will not be blooming this year. “Maybe there is
something to it,” he admits. “First we had an earthquake in
Saigon. Then came the bird flu. Now we have workers on strike
and government officials being executed for corruption. These
are not easy times.”
In the summer of 2006, An was admitted twice to Military
Hospital 175. A friend who went to visit him reported that An
was joking about wanting to find a place in hell next to a good
storyteller so that he would have someone to talk to. On his second
visit, An’s friend found him with a tracheotomy tube stuck
in his windpipe. You wouldn’t stop talking, An, he said. So they
finally had to shut you up. An smiled with his eyebrows. On the
third visit, An’s friend found him in a coma. On Wednesday,
September 20, at 11:20 in the morning, on the twenty-eighth
day of the seventh month of the Year of the Dog, Pham Xuan
An, age seventy-nine, died. He was put in a coffin and carried
back to his house for three days of viewing. Visitors to the