Chapter one: Hot, dark, damp forest dreams

Pham Van Dong wound his way through the world's largest contraption, which, "is more than vicious," he had said it before (and he'll say it again, loudly) "like a descending spiral." Dong bypassed a flourish of invented dangers; also nature's traps; it was hot this afternoon, and every afternoon. He walked in bewildering valleys of shadows of death crossed everywhere in this jungle journey. Dong was able to discern where chaos could explode from over and under, inside and out at any point in hundreds of kilometres in his path. He had ambled through such intense peril for an amazingly long time and at this moment the body went south while the mind traveled in various directions.

The purpose of a contraption such as this was to create carnage on 100,000 square kilometres. The belligerent device chafed at and killed off the population of an unaccountably dark region of the world. Trappers like Dong fooled minds and forged a machine to shred flesh and smash bones of the undisclosed numbers of (scrupulously counted) unsuspecting people. Dong was not alone except at this moment for he worked inside a legion of like-minded 'Dongs' each who carried sinister threads of insider knowledge, some with enough to survive. Their struggle to create a preserve of perpetual carnage was, however, as much a mystery to themselves as to anybody else.

The countryside was a slaughterhouse of the deceived whose blood was shed in more than one jungle. This jungle in which Dong traveled was formerly the Truong Son of the French Associated States of Indochine and soon to be called the Central Highlands (of someplace else). This afternoon he drifted down invisible paths in this mortifying jungle and sweated a lot as anybody would in this heat. He was under the weather in a self-inflicted way.

Dong had been carousing at celebrations in the city of Hanoi until this very day, July 20, 1956, while in hindsight he should have foreseen the difficulties that lay ahead and confronted him now, seen them even as late as last week, or sooner, like when his fancy coat and top hat had been confiscated when he came back from Geneva. He returned to these (invisible) so-called trails in the Annamite Cordillera for a miserable trek through immense danger and dense heat. He hefted a canvas sack that bounced off an area of thick skin on his hip. He stepped over gnarled flora on valley floors and watched the tightly sprung trap coiling all around him.

Ah oui, il et une grande malaise, and the trick is to make it fatal. These are things to consider as he walked the snake-infested Annamite Cordillera, a mountainous maze dividing the land of his forefathers into two geographical extremes situated on the South East Asian subcontinent that possessed neither repute nor disrepute and virtually no world recognition. On this day one-third of his native land disappeared and none of the outside speculators could say where it went; a few blamed the suddenly occurring Central Highlands while others argued whether Annam ever existed. Duplicity and subterfuge of this nature groaned in perpetuity through the constant wafting of mysterious indeed repulsive odours.

As of this day he would propagate “new names” for the “opposite ends” of this uncommon principality, his home and native land. The Elders talked about new names which had familiar 'nomenclature'. Born was a place called Vietnam, name occurring in a previous age. Now to clarify the confusion which arises from there being two of them a North Vietnam would lie to the north and a South Vietnam would lie to the south and nothing could be simpler. These two extremes contained their share of the most fertile soil on earth, a fact the most ignored of all in political discourses that always ended after correspondents endured endless overtures onto occult avenues and down which no man ever went and came back to talk about. The way everything grew around here was a hint of the supernatural fecundity; the hidden proof was accidently found in stuff growing, the cultivations like rice that grew in stupendous yields. Dong ate a big bowl of rice every day (and lately twice a day); nevertheless Dong was no simple rice farmer in sowing his seeds of a homicidal harvest.

He worked for The Wizards behind the mechanical horrors that ruled Tonking who currently raised a spectre, a real nasty one of those, rising to a southward expansion of the contraption. As party to these perpetually dreary prospects for a forgotten part of the world Dong reflected on the momentous turn to a new ism. Nationalism had been replaced very suddenly by communism; and (immune to dread) Dong knew the place contained a few tricky images of paradise including the beauty of the people, the ferocity of nature, and the bounteous harvests from the earth, rivers, and surrounding seas. The ancestors who had once ruled over these gifts were long gone as were their intentions and whatever they possessed of innocence.

He hiked with open mouth, catching flies, spitting, breathing hard, keeping a steady pace and occasionally wiping the sweat from his brow, while thinking about the congress of North Vietnamese nouveau-communistes in Hanoi. The north's centuries-old walleyed city had been seized and turned into the new capital of the DRV. The ruling cabal of petrified Leaders to this end included Ho Chi Minh, Le Duc Tho, General Giap, and other fossils that generated the contraption. These ringleaders sat atop an ominous new Politburo that held its First Party Congress.

Formerly concealed evidence, severely truncated in content in its suddenly apparent form, indicated a variety of interlopers had encountered severe misfortunes over the centuries when unwittingly (but somehow inevitably) entering these parts. Dong knew the was new propaganda designed to obscure historic, existing, and future deeds that could be construed as serious contraventions of new conventions in Geneva.

Propaganda was abundant to be sure but Dong reflected on his own role in the current malodorous century, which so happens to be occurring long after his forefathers originally contracted to build the contraption.

Simplicity governed the function of the contraption; a strange pragmatism governed the thinking behind it. Dong and his cohorts roamed the countryside free-booting from villagers and decorating the realm with knots of string, fishing line, rope, and wire, digging holes, pits, and tunnels, and fashioning tonnes of bamboo into various shapes intended for nothing but deadly force, including thousands of strategically placed punjii sticks smeared with shit; and then the explosives were used on occasions when the comptroller splurged. One way or another the legion’s machinations made segments of earth and chunks or heaps of creation move suddenly to take out everything living thing in the way and the spongy ground quickly soaked up the remains.

The contraption was a trap and worked on the basis of deception as traps do; it’s always about catching them when they least expect it, and it doesn’t hurt to bait and switch once in a while. The surprise attack, the atrocity by stealth; the most recent explosion of surprises was a tumult that transpired at the end of World War II when the contraption was trained on a few divisions of walleyed and square head barbarian longnoses that came to be known for their deeds and became destined to disappear into the unknown, right here, IndoChina, part of which itself had recently disappeared.

Immediately prior to that decade-long operation Dong and his cohorts spent a few years ripping apart a motley crew of Nipponese lured into the vast network of jungle traps for feeding to the great grinder. It wasn't complicated, not in the least; put simply it was incredibly evil and a whole lot depended on it. Heirs to the four centuries of continuous genocide had finished a workup on the walleyes. Those days were gone. 'Ferme le porte,' on your way out.

Despite the havoc of his deeds operating the contraption was still drudgery and the days were filled with arduous, subtle, and tricky tasks. Dong was a rare entity, a long suffering stick-in-the-mud; sure he stood in gore up to his knees but not as much as he used to. Seniority had launched him onto the world stage at one moment, only to have his fame flicker out like a falling star, and pass away instantly. He was once again made to meander in a nameless jungle with an aching head and bones, regretting a week of smoking, drinking, and carousing that ended abruptly this very day, yet seemed so long ago.

He attended the last day of the First Party Congress this morning. (There had been another first party congress a long time ago that nobody talked about.) The leaders had recently moved from Tan Trao the hamlet in the jungle to downtown Hanoi. It was some kind of culture shock, and Dong lived there in a fog. The ruling mob now lived with fewer dreadful bugs and other surprises. His memories of the past week in the city were incomplete but the 'comrades' had taken over the assets to appraise them and suddenly a bunch of Communists replaced a former French-hating mob called the Viet Minh. It was in the Minh that Dong had rank. Well, a new region called South East Asia began slinking in the darkness under the control of North Vietnam's 'Planning Council' that administered the Politburo. Some of this was important news to pass along.

Higher authorities in the emerging Politburo were the usual accountants and botanists and a few councillors were field engineers and none of this would ever change. Dong belonged on the trails, yes, and equally he belonged at the first (or apparently even a third) party congress. He was a long-time servant of stench and last May this seniority took him to Geneva, Switzerland, and when he got there nobody knew who he was, or what he was there to do, or when he came, or from where he came, or why he was even in the room.

Dong journeyed through the jungle where he was important and the contraption knew it and left well enough alone. He ought to have attended more of the endless sessions of the congress at the Reunification Hotel (formerly Hotel Hanoi). Nobody missed the all encompassing Summary Address delivered by the peerless defacto leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) this morning in downtown Hanoi.

He envied the French for leaving, sitting in on the last day of the First Party Congress once Uncle Ho began a long rumination about 'borders' and Dong had to try and act interested, like he had tried to do earlier in the week when he, Dong, chaired a committee, called, 'Preparation of a Rudimentary Map of the Annamite Cordillera.'

He trudged into another volcanic gorge cogitating about Uncle Ho's eventual arrival at another point in the agenda (where he had stayed for a very long time. . .). The main topic of peerless defacto leader's speech was the contraption naturally for the trap was “rice and salted fish heads” to this gang of Viets. A future of gigantic endeavours would dry up, surely, and disappear without the trap. Peerless defacto leader Ho Chi Minh (aka Nguyen Ai Qouc, Nguyen That Than, Nguyen That Thanh, Nguyen Van Than, C.M. Moo) as latest in a long line of contraption confederates and this one spoke to an always attentive audience.

"This device was designed for the walleyes that have departed and with whom went the old borders . . . ."

And everything they could carry went on a flotilla of rust bucket freighters. Whispers surrounded Dong who had been sitting looking sympathetic and hanging on every word, and he thought to himself that he didn't miss the stuff taken down the Red River to Haiphong by the huffy walleyed longnoses when they left the region, saying to anyone who would listen (nobody) that they already lost more than their share. Pas encore.

"The time has come to dismantle the contraption," peerless defacto leader had continued, then Uncle Ho paused, and in that moment Dong pondered a few enduring summary addresses preceding this all important (second) First Party Congress one, until peerless defacto leader continued at that moment to make his most infamous announcement:

"And move it!" and it stunned the crowd.

Move what? A short burst of laughter broke the silence; but it died away instantly probably at the end of a blunt instrument. Then another of the usual ominous silences fell over the crowd and Dong recalled this because it was a silence that occurred when the ringing in his own head started.

"We will move the contraption from one new country to another new country," said peerless defacto leader, "from one No-Man's-Land to another one." Peerless defacto leader's arm was concealed by a floppy black sleeve and it flapped like a black flag or a bat’s wing in the direction of a few chuckles. The speech would destroy all doubt in the minds of would-be scorners if only simply by luring them out for destruction.

Hundreds of confused councillors fell beneath the withering gaze of Ho Chi Minh including Dong. No doubt a few withered back regarding the crazy idea of the Nguyen but none would dare to suggest moving the contraption was an impossible delusion coming out of too much celebrating by peerless defacto leader; nobody had authority to question Uncle Ho, nobody knew of any surviving person who had ever questioned Ho Chi Minh to his face on anything that matters.

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