The French Art of War by Alexis Jenni

Author:Alexis Jenni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

Novel V

The war in this bloody garden

THERE IS NO CITY in the world that Salagnon despised more than Saigon. The horrendous everyday heat and the noise. To breathe is to suffocate; the air is hot and waterlogged. Open the window you think will protect you and you cannot hear yourself speak or think or breathe: the deafening roar of the street drowns out everything, even inside your head; close it again and you cannot breathe; you feel a clammy sheet wrap around your head and tighten. In his first days in Saigon he opened and closed the window of his hotel room many times, then gave up; and he lay in his boxer shorts on the damp bed; he was trying not to die. Heat is the sickness of this country; you have to acclimatize or you die from it. Better to acclimatize and gradually it subsides. You no longer think about it, so it takes you by surprise when you are called upon to do up the buttons of your jacket, make a vigorous gesture, carry even the slightest weight, lift a kitbag, climb a flight of stairs; in such moments the heat returns like a crashing wave that soaks your back, your arms, your forehead, as dark stains spread over the pale uniform. He learned to wear light clothes, to leave everything unbuttoned, to save his energy, to make sweeping gestures so that skin never touched skin.

He did not like the teeming streets, the constant noise, the swarming anthill that was Saigon; because to him, Saigon was like an anthill in which an infinite number of indistinguishable people scurried here and there, for reasons he could not fathom: soldiers, unobtrusive women, gaudy women, men in identical clothing whose expressions he could not interpret, more soldiers; people everywhere you looked pulled rickshaws, human-powered vehicles; and a bewildering array of businesses on the pavements: food stalls, hawkers, barbers, toe-nail clippers, sandal repair, and nothing: dozens of crouching men in threadbare clothes, some smoking, others not, half watching the commotion, although it was impossible to know what they were thinking. Soldiers in striking white uniforms passed, sprawled in the back of rickshaws; others sat on the terrace of the grand cafés, sometimes with other soldiers, sometimes with women with long black hair; a few sporting golden uniforms moved through the crowds in automobiles, opening up a path with honking horns, threats and a rumble of engines, and as soon as they had passed, the crowds merged again into a teeming throng. He loathed Saigon from the very first day, because of the noise, the heat, all the horrid invasions it endured; but once outside the city, having ventured a few kilometres into the countryside with a good-natured officer keen to show him the calmer, more serene, outlying villages, some of which had swimming pools and pleasant restaurants, when he found himself in the boundless paddy fields beneath motionless clouds, he experienced such utter silence, such emptiness, that he thought he was dead; he suggested they cut short the excursion and go back to Saigon.

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