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

The Spy Who Loved Us 29
One morning, after I pull the bell at his gate and An walks
through his garden to greet me, I find him looking tired
and dispirited. “A friend died last night,” he says. “This is happening
all the time now.”
“Old people lose their teeth,” he says. “What they should
lose instead, since they have no use for them, is their balls.”
“I really wanted to grow up to be like Tarzan. To have a
pretty girl and live freely in the jungle. Now they make me
live in a house. I have to put on a tie to go to meetings and weddings
and funerals. Tarzan never put on a tie.”
“I thought you wanted to grow up to be a Vietnamese
gangster.”
“When you’re a good gangster, people like you. You can
help them. You fight for the weak against the bullies who dominate
them.”
“What happened to your project?”
“My grandfather said no. My father said no. That’s why he
exiled me to Truoi, when he noticed that I was trying to become
a Saigonese gangster. Seeing the hard life of the peasants, I was
supposed to mend my ways, but I enjoyed it. Do you know
why? Because my father wasn’t there. I wasn’t being whipped
by him with his rattan cane.”
An was brought back to Saigon for a final try at passing his
exams. He returned to swimming in the river and larking about
town, but things had changed. War was looming in Asia. The
world was shifting around him.
“I had a friend, a Vietnamese boy, who was a French citizen.
His brother was drafted by the French in 1938 to serve in the
French army. Before he was shipped to Europe to fight the Germans,
he was detained in the military barracks near the zoo.
Every weekend my friend and I would walk from Gia Dinh to
the barracks, carrying a big bunch of bananas. His mother
wanted him to have them. This might be the last native food he
ate before going to die in Europe.”