The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles

Chapter 12-3

After arriving in Hong Kong, Ba waited

several days until he could buy a first-class ticket on a Pacific

Mail Steamship Company vessel bound for San Francisco. For the next

three weeks he spent most of his time in his ten-by-ten-foot cabin.

He didn’t want to call attention to himself and preferred not to be

confused with the hundreds of Chinese laborers who were traveling

in steerage on the ship.

One day, out of curiosity, Ba ventured below

decks to steerage where he saw some eight hundred bunks stacked

three high in a cargo area that extended in either direction from

the loud and blistering engine room. He was appalled at the

conditions and, for the remainder of the trip, felt guilty about

his first-class accommodations. The five-thousand-ton steamer

stopped several times on its way to the American mainland to take

on coal. On one such stop in the Hawaiian Islands, Ba almost

decided to disembark but at the last minute changed his mind and

continued on to San Francisco.

When Ba finally arrived in San Francisco, he

was almost refused entry because of the Chinese Exclusion Act that

prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the United States.

However, he produced a French Titre de Voyage. That travel

document, which had been issued by the French military in Indochina

several years before, saved him from being turned away. It did not,

however, protect him from being treated like an outcast by a

majority of the Americans he came in contact with as he looked for

work.

I went on to tell of Ba’s romantic

involvement with the daughter of a wealthy Chinese merchant in San

Francisco and his despair when she was kidnapped by Tong gangsters

and apparently sold into prostitution. I told of his years-long

search for her throughout the mining camps of the American West. I

recounted how he barely managed to escape death when the ranch on

which he was working as a cook was attacked by the outlaws my posse

was after.

“I see,” Dr. Son said. “That explains a

lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am afraid your friend has joined the

resistance leader Phan Đình Phùng up in Quảng Bình province.

I was surprised to hear that. After all, Ba

had to be close to fifty years old—hardly young enough to be

involved with a band of anti-French partisans, and I said as much

to Dr. Son.

“I am sorry to say he is fighting for a lost

cause,” Dr. Son said. “The French are too powerful and will not be

dislodged easily from Cochinchina—at least not in my lifetime.”

I nodded. “I wonder if I could find him up

in…Where did you say he was?”

“Quảng Bình province. It is in the French

protectorate of Annam maybe 1,200 kilometers from Saigon. But, Mr.

Battles, I would strenuously argue against such an endeavor. It is

highly dangerous up there with lots of conflict with the French

military.”

“Do you think I could get a message to

him?”

“That would be the most prudent course. Let

me look into it. Give me a few days.”

With that, we shook hands, and he left. The

next day, Linh Thi’s friend, a man named René Callot, who operated

a touring company, contacted me; and for the next three days, I had

a grand tour of Saigon.

One evening, he took me on the city’s

classic promenade known as the tour de l’Inspection. The hour-long

tour by carriage made a full circuit around the city. After the

oppressive heat and humidity of the day, the tour offered cooler

air along broad, shady, and well-maintained roadways that were

chockablock with carriages and bicycles. It seemed as if all of

Saigon’s foreign community was on the tour de l’Inspection.

The next day, we took the Low Road steam

tramway to the town of Cholon, a suburb of Saigon built by Chinese

immigrants some four miles from the Continental. Cholon was awash

in activity. It seemed like a place that never slept—sort of like

Tombstone, Arizona, but without the gunplay.

Most of the textile and tailor shops,

porcelain stores, restaurants, gambling parlors, money changers,

launderers, shoemakers, furniture stores, and trading companies

opened for business at sunrise and stayed that way until midnight.

At dusk, shops and streets were illuminated by multicolored paper

lanterns. Junks and small boats tied up along the quays loaded and

off-loaded merchandise, large bags of rice, vegetables, slabs of

meat, fish, and bolts of cloth.

We had dinner at a restaurant that served an

eclectic array of cuisine—partly French and partly native. We had

fresh fish, some kind of pork dish, and a soup called ph?.

It consisted of white rice noodles, cuts of pork, cinnamon, ginger,

green onions, bean sprouts, lemon wedges, black cardamom, and

fennel seed. It was delicious.

There were also bowls piled high with boiled

white rice. I had never really eaten much rice in America, but in

Cochinchina, it was a staple of the diet. I found myself liking it

as much as I did the starchy potatoes back home. We washed it all

down with French wine, which was available almost everywhere.

I could see why the French had colonized

this part of the world. It is lush, tropical, and replete with

abundant agriculture. Nevertheless, I still had trouble accepting

the fact that the French kept people like Ba and Dr. Son under

their forceful yoke. I thought about Manfred, Katharina, and their

fervent opposition to European colonies in places such as the

Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, French Indochina,

etc.

Before I met them, I hadn’t really thought

much about the practice of colonization. Now the practice made me

feel uncomfortable. Since arriving in Saigon, I felt as though I

were an uninvited guest who was being tolerated by a gracious but

annoyed host, and I said as much to Callot.

“My friend, you have not been here long

enough to grasp what we French are doing for these backward

people,” he responded. “When we first came here, Saigon was an

insignificant fishing village in a swamp. Look what we have done in

a little more than thirty years. Not only is Saigon the capital of

Cochinchina, but it is also the Paris of the East.”

I said nothing. I did not want to argue with

René. But he was not finished.

“You have seen the beautiful public

buildings, the broad tree-lined boulevards, the villas, the

railways running north to Tonkin and south to the Mekong River

Delta,” he said. “Then there is the export of agricultural

products,” he continued. “None of that would exist if we were not

here.”

I wanted to tell him about Ba, but I decided

not to. I was in no mood to argue. Instead, I just said, “I guess

you are right.”

“Of course I am. And when you are here a bit

longer, you will see for yourself.”