silk condom, with an embossed fleur-de-lis, which had once been used by Louis XIV, though with what success was not made clear in the catalogue. Had it really impeded the pox which might otherwise have felled the Sun King?
Sao had wanted the object as a gift for his father’s seventieth birthday, but at the Sotheby’s auction he had been outbid by a determined, fur-coated Chechen, probably acting for some big dealer in Moscow or Berlin. At least, Sao mused, as he rose from the tub and wrapped himself in a comforting bathrobe, I forced the sonofabitch to pay fifty thousand dollars for the privilege of feeling the King’s silk. Since more dollars were being printed in Russia than in America these days, he hoped that Sotheby’s had been paid in forged currency. Sao felt remote and isolated from the world in which he had become so successful.
The problem remained. What should he buy his father? In previous years Sao had sent the old man silk shirts, handmade shoes, antique Vietnamese gowns, crates of champagne cognac and much else besides. Most of these presents ended up on the Hanoi black market.
This year, for the first time, his father had expressed a wish. He had read in a magazine that a Louis XIV condom was being offered for sale. For some deep, mystical and, to Sao, totally incomprehensible reason, it had become an object of desire for his father. Sao felt guilty. Perhaps he should have fought the Chechen to a standstill. It was the first time that his father had ever asked him for anything and he had failed. Sao loved his father.
Sao père had fought at Dienbienphu – a small town in Northern Vietnam occupied by the French, who imagined it to be impregnable – in 1954, but on the French side, though this fact was long forgotten and never mentioned. Family history claimed that he had always been a communist agent. This was not true.
He had been a uniformed menial, a batman who served and was well treated by an aristocratic French colonel with a large estate near Nîmes. Old clothes, discarded boots, generous tips, dregs of cognac and the odd kind word had kept the simple Vietnamese soldier happy. And all this because the Vietnamese, a skilled barber, shaved his master with great care every morning.
So pleased was the Colonel that he had offered to take him back to France. And so it might have been if history had not proved so awkward. One morning in 1954, Sao’s father woke up in the besieged town of Dienbienphu and realized, even though he was no great military strategist, that the unthinkable was about to happen. His side was on the verge of collapse. The chief of the Vietnamese resistance army, Vo Nguyen Giap, the ‘Bush General’, as the French called him, was on the eve of a sensational victory. The elite corps of the French Army had only two options: abject surrender or annihilation.
Cruel disillusionment set in. Sao’s father deserted to the winning side. He wasn’t the only one. Two days later the French army surrendered. The second Vietnam War was over.
Old Sao was sure that his old master would die rather than yield. Despite the belated conversion, it turned out to be an astute move, politically and emotionally. The French were defeated. They withdrew from the Vietnamese peninsula, never to return. The Colonel had confirmed his native batman’s instincts and shot himself in the head.
And, most important of all, Sao’s father had met Sao’s mother. Thu Van, twenty years old, already regarded as a veteran by her guerrilla comrades, had participated in the siege of Dienbienphu. It was she who had first sighted her future husband, in French army fatigues, crawling underneath the barbed wire and waving an extremely clean white handkerchief on a stick. For some reason the sight of him had made her laugh. She had debriefed him thoroughly, reported his defection and handed him over to her political officer, and returned to the front-line.
After the surrender, he did not give her a moment’s peace. He followed her everywhere till she admitted to herself that she, too, loved him. Thu Van was a deeply committed Communist. She took her lover’s political education very seriously. It was only after she felt that his education was complete, that he was a new man, that she deigned to bear him a son. Young Sao.
After the accords of 1956, when the country was partitioned, pending a general election, Sao’s father stayed in the north with Thu Van and the Communists, abandoning Hue to the catholic priests and his cramped living quarters to a cousin.
Even though he regretted having served in the French army, deep in his heart old Sao missed the ways of the French. And, if the truth be told, he missed the dregs of the colonel’s cognac and the tinned grenouilles. He missed the songs they used to sing. He missed the photographs of beautiful French women and curly-haired children. He missed the French colonial epoch. All the expensive presents and foodstuffs his son sent him from Paris did not taste the same. Their moral flavour was repugnant to his senses.
Elections never happened in Vietnam. Why? Because the Americans, who had replaced the French, were scared that the Communists would win. The Third Vietnam War began. Thu Van, whose knowledge of the terrain in the south made her invaluable, left her young son and husband in Hanoi to join the newly organized National Liberation Front in the south.
‘You must eat properly while I’m away, Sao. When you were a baby you were plump and round like a sweet flour candy. Look at you now. A scarecrow! Promise me you’ll eat your meals.’
Sao had promised and she had lifted him off the ground and kissed his eyes. Her own eyes had filled with tears. As she bade farewell to her husband and son something told her she wouldn’t see them again.
‘Look after him well,’ she whispered in his ear.
She was killed a few months later in 1962, during the battle of Ap Bac, when the Americans suffered their first serious reversal. The encounter itself was minor, but in it was written the war’s future.
One day young Sao came into the dirty barber’s shop in Haiphong where his father now worked and where the main customers were sailors on leave. It was late and there were no customers. Sao looked into the blinded mirror. His father’s intense gaze suddenly gave way to tears. Sao hugged him quietly.
‘The Americans are really stupid,’ Sao’s father said in a soft voice which indicated that he had been thinking of Thu Van. ‘Can’t they see that if the French couldn’t beat us, nobody will?’
Sao always carried a photograph of his mother with him. It was one of those formal photographs designed for posterity and political propaganda. She was dressed in black pyjamas, a straw hat and was carrying a rifle. Her face, full of hope, was wreathed in smiles. It was the last photograph ever taken of her and he had carried it on him all his life. When he went to join the struggle he had shown it with pride to his comrades.
How could she have been so full of hope? Sao envied her this more than anything else. His world was the settled, comfortable one of a wealthy man, but it was devoid of an apocalyptic view of the future.
He was now completely dry. He picked up his watch, realized he was getting late and began to dress quickly. Just as he was putting his wallet in the inside pocket of his jacket, the phone rang. He let it ring for a few seconds while he tied his shoelaces.
‘Excuse me, Herr Sao, there is a Professor Meyer waiting for you in reception.’
‘Send him up, send him up,’ said Sao excitedly as he laughed and threaded his gold cufflinks.
Vlady had walked to the Ku-Damm and the cold wind had given his cheeks a gentle flush. He felt refreshed, more alert in mind and body. As the lift ascended to the penthouse floor, Vlady smiled as he thought of the changes of the last decade that had transformed Sao’s life and his own since the night of their accidental meeting in Dresden, in the old DDR, nearly twelve years ago.
Sao was waiting outside the open door of his room. The two friends embraced.
‘My first question to you, Professor,’ Sao spoke with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. ‘Are the workers contented now?’
Both men laughed.
‘Not all workers can live like you, Sao.’
‘That is a pity,’ laughed the Vietnamese as they descended to the ground floor and headed towards the Lobster Bar. He ordered caviar, lobster and champagne, while