Travels with Jim: This One Has a Score

"’Only connect!’ That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height." ˜E.M. Forster
The hours we spent in a London queue trying to see Miss Saigon when it first opened were the closest we had ever been to Vietnam. Then one day we were on the deck of the Regal Princess, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries" playing in our thoughts, as we slid by its mist-covered hills. Ask Americans who have never been to Vietnam about their impressions of that Southeast Asian country and, inevitably, they will think about this mist, the sound of chopper blades, and The Doors singing “Beautiful friend / This is the end /My only friend, the end.” Maybe some wisenstein will quote, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” or shout, “Goodmorningvietnam!” These are just movie memories, of wartime, of the 1960s and 70s. Although we heard so often that the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam defined our generation, Jim and I were there to make our own memories and write our own definition. Soon another song would replace Wagner, The Doors, and Chris and Kim’s laments in the movies of our minds. No film or theatre queue this time, we were sailing to the real Saigon, but they changed the name.
The ship docked about two hours from Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. We took a tour bus into the town, horn honking all the way. We looked at each other and smiled, knowing that we shared the same thought: “In Viet Nam the horn is attached to the gas pedal.” We had studied the guidebooks to determine what we would like to see on our one day visit. We were told that no taxis would be available dockside so we chose a guided tour that covered all our preferred spots, seemed wheelchair accessible, and would leave us an afternoon to explore on our own.
Through movies and Graham Greene, we felt as if we had been in Saigon before, had sipped coffee in that corner outdoor café. We went inside the beautiful yellow French-inspired post office across from the compound-like former U.S. Embassy. We enjoyed the traditional water puppet show at the museum. We anticipated an afternoon watching the girls in their ao dais bicycle by us—masked white birds on wheels—as we strolled through the markets, experiencing the sounds, sights, and smells of Saigon. Jim thought maybe he would buy some shirts, but that is a story for another time, filed under “shirt story.”
The tour bus stopped at a hotel. The guide announced that we would have one hour to experience the city sans guide. “One hour!?!” “Yes. Sorry, Madame.” Jim asked about the market, thinking of shirts again: “Sorry, Gentleman. Today we no go.” We asked about shops and were told, “There.” “There” was across a traffic jam created by mopeds and bicycles—no cross walk, no lights, no crossing guard. Someone told us to traverse the street, going straight and not stopping until we reached the other side. That way, the vrooming mopeds and ding-a-ling bicycles could gauge our route and speed. We set out, wheelchair rolling perpendicular to the swans on two-wheelers.
The shops were small, the steps to them high, and we had already spent much of our hour deciding how to cross the road. I left Jim on the sidewalk where he could look at tables of merchandise outside the boutiques, having no time to lift his chair up each set of steps. I went from shop to shop, bargaining, piling packages on his lap, and hanging bags from the handles of his wheelchair. At one store, I bought our youngest child a beautiful wooden tam, a violin-like musical instrument. From the sidewalk, I heard another North American bargaining for the exquisite photo albums I wanted to take home for holiday gifts. When the shopper and the proprietor reached consensus, I handed the tam to Jim and told him to be very careful with the delicate instrument. I entered the shop, planning to piggy-back on the other shopper’s price for the lovely lacquer-cover books. While waiting for the clerk to wrap the twenty-five gifts, I heard the deep, loud, laughing voice of my husband outside the shop. He was singing, “I found my ta-a-am in South Vi-et Na-a-am” to the tune of “Blueberry Hill.” I went outside and there sat Jim, the double amputee in his preppie uniform of khakis and polo shirt, sitting in his wheelchair on a street in Saigon, surrounded by beggars. The beggars, too, were missing limbs, but they were dressed in dirty rags and pulling themselves along the ground. I asked Jim what he was doing. “You left me with all these packages and no money. I feel guilty because I am so much more fortunate than these guys.” I heard “the prose and the passion” in this man who could “only connect” with people. I saw his white straw hat on the ground, upside down and full of money. He was singing to raise funds from the other tourists for his new friends. I stopped shopping and put the rest of our cash in the hat. Jim handed the money to the princes of the sidewalk and rolled away, whistling a tune I would never forget from our visit to the “world that's far away /where life is not unkind /The movie in my mind.” *