Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

In early- and mid-sixties America it was regarded as treasonous to be a war resister, but that period was chronicled in detail and gratefully remembered in the War Remnants Museum. I liked being in this room commemorating the defiant ones, the sign carriers, the shouters and chanters against a policy that meant the massacre of Vietnamese and the sending of American soldiers to their deaths. I was reminded that, as a reply, I had joined the Peace Corps, and stayed on in Africa as a teacher. I had nothing to regret.

"Let's get a beer," Omar said. And at the beer joint he said, "You're funny, you know that?"

"Tell me why."

"All that time at the museum. I saw you writing in your notebook."

"So what?"

"You think people here are interested?" He laughed. "No one wants to hear about it." He drank some more, then stared into his empty glass as though he'd seen a spider at the bottom. "Maybe that's why I like you. It was terrible, man. Terrible."

He told me he was too old to think about going anywhere else. I didn't want to remind him that everything had worked out for the best.

I said, "I read somewhere that seven million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam."

"It was terrible." He was still staring into his empty glass. "I could go to Bangkok. I could live there. But it would be River of No Return."

He was aging in a country where young people with no memory of the war—no bitterness and little sense of history—were the driving force. Omar was right. The visitors to the war museums (there was another one, the city museum, which chronicled the fall of Saigon) were mostly foreign tourists, not Vietnamese. Omar, like many others his age, had been consumed by the American war effort, and by the French, whom his father had served. And while he meditated on defeat and betrayal, the young were thinking about the future.

It was possible to see in the photographs that one of the aims of the American generals was to flatten Vietnam, to burn it to the ground in order to flush out the Vietcong—the fury, the revenge, the despair, the irrationality, the nihilism that possess the demoralized warrior when he sees there is no way out. And we failed.

The Vietnamese have had their own revenge in the expression of the most rampant, selfish, and opportunistic capitalism. Copyright infringement, Mickey Mouse piracy, fake Rolex watches, knockoff designer goods, bootleg books and CDs and DVDs of popular music and successful films—it was all available, as was the wholesale imitation and manufacture of virtually everything we've ever tried to make. It was an astonishing paradox that, after we had failed to destroy their dream of a socialist paradise, divide their loyalties, and visit ruin upon them for our own profit, they had risen—in spite of all our efforts to demolish them—and become businessmen and entrepreneurs. Saigon was one big bazaar of ruthless capitalism, of frenzied moneymaking, of beating us at our own game.

I went to Cholon, just to look. And one day I had a meal at the Hotel Continental—the "Continental shelf," the veranda where I'd gotten drunk before Saigon fell, watching the smoke rise from the city's outskirts, had been enclosed and was now an Italian restaurant.

The Vietnam I had seen in 1973 did not exist anymore. And for most young people in the south, the war was not even a memory. One reason for this was that in all the years of war, from our first appearance as military advisers in 1961 until the fall of Saigon in 1975, we did not put up a single permanent structure. The French had left some graceful old churches, colonial schools, handsome villas, and grand municipal buildings, but in fourteen years and after the billions of dollars spent, the United States had not left behind one useful building. Apart from the land mines and bomb craters and amputees, it was as though we'd never been there.

Over breakfast one morning in Saigon, I read an item in the English-language Vietnam News headed "Today in History": "In 1976, the Trans-Vietnam Railway is officially reopened after 30 years of the division of the country. Construction of the 1700 km line was completed in 1936."

In 1973, I had traveled as far north as I could go on a train from Saigon, though some sections had been bombed out. I had reached the end of the line, the dreary and besieged city of Hue, near the coast. After that were some forward fire bases and the demilitarized zone—a no-go area.

After breakfast, I got two train tickets. Mr. Lien, who helped me buy them, was fluent in English. He had been born in 1973, in November, the month I'd been here. He was bright, efficient, optimistic, and funny—no chip on his shoulder. One ticket was for the sleeper to Hue, where I'd been before, another from Hue to Hanoi, where I'd never been.

NIGHT TRAIN TO HUE