4.  "WHERE ARE YOU NOW MY SON?"

It rained when I was in Hanoi. It rained into the bomb craters and made brown swimming pools. The people were carrying their bicycles over the ruins, packing up with nowhere to go.

After the first few nights of bombing, most of the city was evacuated. During the seventh and eighth days of bombing, the city began to fill up again. The B-52's were hitting the countryside at the edges of the city, and I suppose people felt they'd rather die at home. I didn't want to die anywhere.

This is the story of my thirteen-day stay in Hanoi, eleven of them the days of the Christmas bombing, the result of the "most difficult decision" President Nixon had to make during his term in office. That Christmas bombing was, as it turned out, the heaviest bombing in the history of the world.

In December of 1972 I was on the road in the eastern United States when I received a telephone call from Cora Weiss. The group The Liaison Committee, which Cora headed, had been sending a steady flow of American visitors to North Vietnam to try to keep up some kind of friendly relations with the Vietnamese people even as our country continued to bomb the hell out of them, burn their villages, and napalm their children. Before Watergate, anyone who talked or wrote about the atrocities the U.S. military was performing in Vietnam was looked upon skeptically, or with great annoyance and anger, by a high percentage of the American population.

I would be the guest of a North Vietnamese group called the Committee for Solidarity with the American People. No serious fighting had taken place in the north for many months, and four Americans were being invited, among other things to deliver Christmas mail to the POW's in Hanoi. Gabriel would be with his dad at the time. I could return home by Christmas day.

I sat alone in a motel room in Erie, Pennsylvania, chewing on my cuticles and wondering if I could haul myself and my truckload of neuroses halfway around the world to see things I was afraid of seeing, eat food I was afraid of eating, take night flights which are anathema to me, and travel with three other people I'd never met. I was practically paralyzed with fear, and disgusted with myself. At the same time, the prospect of the trip became more and more irresistible. Little did I know while sitting in that crummy motel room with the snow falling outside, my three-year-old child off at a coffee shop in the arms of his loving grandma, that I would come within eight blocks of never returning home.

I made a couple of hundred calls from a New York hotel room, telling everyone I knew that I was going to visit Hanoi.

I would be traveling with a conservative lawyer, ex-Brigadier General Telford Taylor; a liberal Episcopalian minister, Michael Allen; and Maoist Vietnam Veteran Against the War Barry Romo. We met for the first time a couple of hours before departure, in the SAS lounge at Kennedy airport. Displaying the big sack of mail that we would be delivering to the POW's, we bluffed our way through a press conference. We were carrying cameras, tape machines, batteries, film, and a minimal amount of clothing. Tucked in our bags were personal messages to members of the Solidarity Committee from people who'd gone before us, and lists of what people wanted brought back, chess sets being the big priority.

We flew at night, Mike Allen and Telford downing a few and chatting noisily in the row behind me, and Barry dozing off across the aisle. As I think back, the preacher and the general, as we came to call them, were a little anxious, and Barry, who had been in Vietnam in battle and under fire, was (in my opinion) terrified of what he would feel coming back as a friend where he had once been, frankly, a paid killer. I was feeling pretty good, due to a smooth flight and plenty of Valium.

I vaguely remember a hotel in Denmark where we floated in and out of the restaurant, nodding at each other and looking jet- lagged. On another flight I remember leaning over toward Telford as we watched the sun making its hazy way up through the clouds. Telford said, "On the road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play, ..." and I finished, "And the dawn comes up like thunder over China, 'cross the bay," and felt like a terrible hypocrite because I was afraid Telford would think I knew something about poetry, or that I read books. I simply have a good memory, and my mother and father used to say that poem whenever we were driving to the beach.

In Bangkok Barry started to get sick with what I figured to be his internal conflict about returning to Vietnam, and I began pumping him full of tetracycline and trying to talk to him. I got cramps in the Bangkok airport and a uniformed woman from Thai Airlines man- aged to find me a Tampax, the last of that luxury I was to see during nature's long and eerily early visit to me that month.

Somehow we were in Vientiane, Laos. We had dinner with the terribly sweet New York Times correspondent, who was bitterly disgusted that nothing he sent in ever got printed without being massacred first. Jet lag hit with all its force at dinner, and I excused myself and went to bed. The next day we obtained visas from the Provisional Revolutionary Government to enter North Vietnam the week before Christmas.

We boarded our final aircraft along with a gathering of dour-looking Russians and some Japanese. The flight was short and hot and the Russians remained dour throughout.

I remember the landing on the short runway, piling out of the plane, and being met by a group of the loveliest people one could imagine. Our hosts were all men, and they gave us flowers and invited us to sit down while our things went through customs. Quat was the leader of the group, lively and intelligent and full of jokes. During the time we were there, Quat's wife would give birth to a baby during a bomb raid; one member of the committee would lose his wife and eight children; another would lose track of his wife's whereabouts and spend all of the time he wasn't with us trying to track her down, not knowing whether she was alive or dead; but they looked after us as though they were our personally assigned guardian angels and had nothing else in the world to do.

I rode with Telford to the Hoa Binh Hotel, past thousands of people along the route and miles-long traffic jams. I was looking at the children, of course, and what I had heard about them was true so far: they were delicate and reserved, yet full of laughter, and they thought we were hilarious. While our car sat pinned in traffic, the children began to gather. One of them gave me a flower, and all the rest laughed with amusement. Later I tried to give the same flower to a shy little girl who looked on from the edge of the group, but the others would not allow it. They said (and it was translated to me) that the flower had been given to me and I must keep it.

Telford was much more interested in the automobiles that were passing us going in the other direction. "That one's  Czechoslovakian, I believe, isn't it?" he'd say to the driver. I was amused by the way we were seeing things. "Look at those beautiful kids," I said to him, and he replied with a very genuine, "Where?"

I saw Barry get out of his car and walk off. Of course, I thought, how stupid to sit here. I got out and was immediately surrounded by ten or fifteen children who were grabbing at my hand and apparently trying to lead me somewhere. I laughed and let them tug me along, and it wasn't until they took me off the regular dirt bicycle path to an even smaller footpath that I began to understand what was happening. We were approaching a combination lean-to, chicken house, and outhouse. It had two "walls" of rusty corrugated steel backed up against a frail fence. The facilities themselves were even more sporty, a couple of broken bowls, properly being put to use instead of thrown out. I had no choice. I made a little bow to the children and left them standing about fifteen feet from the structure, went steadfastly forth and squatted with as much dignity as I could muster, hoisting my tweed skirt and causing much mirth among my small audience. Unfortunately, due not only to the peanut gallery, but also to the Russian convoy inching past about seventy-five yards. away, I wasn't able to produce anything, but I pretended to be very, relieved and pleased as I stood up and smoothed my skirt and: bowed a thanks to the children.

Traffic thinned out as we came into the city. The streets were lined with trees, and the sidewalks were lined with people. The beauty of the women was stunning. Dressed in white blouses and black pajama pants, they held a baby or a bundle resting on one hip, their heads cocked in placid curiosity under a pointed straw hat. Wisps of hair blew loosely around their faces, the bulk of it gathered into a magnificent braid. The women aged quickly and mercilessly. The faces of the old showed hundreds of lines and their teeth flashed empty gaps and silver. The young men had skin which would be coveted by Western women.

We had all seen the Vietnamese men in the marketplaces, sauntering about the streets, and staring into the intrusive cameras. We'd seen their eyes in a thousand daily papers. And we'd seen them -- these soft men of steel-with bullet holes in their flesh, lying dead in their own rice paddies. On the streets of Saigon, they seemed Westernized in the worst possible sense of the word. Here on the streets of North Vietnam, their eyes were not suspicious, but amused. We were intruders, but must be friends or we would not have been allowed to visit, so most people smiled immediately upon making eye contact.

We arrived in Hoa Binh at mid-afternoon. Our hosts suggested that we wash up and rest, and then gather for dinner. My room, like all the others, was spacious old French architecture, with ten-foot-high ceilings, wooden floors, and a modest balcony looking out over a tiny street. Across the street were tiny houses of the poor with mud courtyards and tropical-looking trees hung with laundry.

My room was furnished with a single bed, with a mosquito net drawn back for daytime. Next to it was a small table with an ashtray, matches, a white candle, and a bottle of drinking water. Near the balcony two chairs were placed on either side of another table holding a Thermos of hot water, a small container of tea, and two cups. 

The bathroom was a huge tiled affair, with a big lion-footed tub, stained at the bottom from the yellow and brown water that usually preceded the flow of clear water. Hanoi had been bombed before, and it was difficult to keep running water operating at all. The toilet was a pull-chain, and worked in its own good time. There was an- other bottle of water above the sink, a piece of soap, and a couple of worn but clean towels.

I lay down on the creaky bed and listened to the sounds of a busy city almost devoid of cars. Some Vietnamese music was coming from a loudspeaker across the alley, and I fell into a heavy sleep.

I was awakened an hour or so later for my official chat with a member of the committee. Each of us had separate talks at that point; mine was at my coffee table with Quat, who told me of the plan they hoped to follow for us: trips to local places of interest, visits to war memorials, and talks with North Vietnamese who would, I assumed, try to impress upon us the horrors of America's invasion of their country. On the third day they hoped to pile us into jeeps and head out into the country for Haiphong. The ride was supposed to be beautiful ... Haiphong had once been beautiful.

I watched Quat's face as he spoke. It was a gentle and considerate face. It was patient. We talked a little about pacifism. He seemed to respect me for my beliefs, and like people I meet everywhere in the world, reasoned that it had no place in his own country. I asked him if he knew that the National Liberation Front had once used nonviolent tactics against the French with some success. He laughed politely and said that things were different now. I told him that I had not come there to proselytize, but to meet people and make friends. Later on in the bomb shelter it would be for Quat and a man named Chuyen that I would weep, because I couldn't bear the thought of them coming to any harm. Chuyen was one of the very few people I would see cry during my entire visit. And Quat and Chuyen were the ones who consistently halted the traditional toasting of a fallen B-52 if I happened to be in the room when the news came. I think Chuyen was a pacifist at heart.

At dinner there were fifteen to twenty people. I remember the yellow vodka which I refused to drink, and dish after dish of delicious food. The only dish I couldn't cope with was a whole bird with its head flopped over the side of the bowl, beak open. Aside from that, I had my neuroses under control and began to enjoy watching  everyone loosen up. Quat drank like a fish, and Telford and Mike joined him. Barry hadn't been challenged yet, but his turn was to come.

The level of gaiety rose to new heights with the telling of jokes: first a Vietnamese joke which would need a dozen explanations to cover the culture gaps, and then an American one that got the same treatment. When the joke was finally understood, there was triumphant and uproarious laughter, not so much at the joke as at the feat of having figured it out. Quat dashed over to my place with two little glasses of vodka. I couldn't refuse his offer, nor could I guzzle it down with a "bottoms up." Eventually, Quat thought of a way to let me off the hook by saying that vodka was injurious to my throat, and no one must make me drink anymore. Barry was challenged and rose to the occasion like a trouper, drinking two, three, four, I'm not sure how many little glasses of that awful yellow stuff, his shyness diminishing and his cheeks reddening with each glass.

At the height of the noise and laughter Quat raised his arms in the air and said, "Now, music!" Two Vietnamese singers rose to their feet. Their voices were trained, crystal clear and powerful. The men sang like Irish tenors and the women like nightingales. I got my guitar and asked them what they would like to hear. They liked Pete Seeger songs and anything recognizable as an antiwar song. Quat liked traditional music, and in the end the song which was his favorite was "Hush Little Baby, Don't Say a Word, Daddy's Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird."

In the midst of our rumpus I suddenly noticed that Barry seemed extremely tense, as if the guilt he had been burying had slowly unearthed itself, and now, with the help of the vodka was suddenly unbearable. I dedicated a song to all the Vietnamese and Americans who had died in the war, and then to all the men who had refused to fight it from the beginning, and finally to those who had quit fighting when they had become disillusioned (or, illuminated). I said it was necessary that we forgive them what they could not forgive themselves. I sang "Sam Stone," the story of a Vietnam veteran. Barry put his head down and wept through the song. I supposed he was seeing private reruns of the horrors he'd lived through, that the rest of us had sat home and paid for. I sang my heart out to him. When the song was over, Quat offered him another vodka, and Barry blew his nose and laughed and cried at the same time. Then the Vietnamese did a strange thing. They took him to the head of the table and sat him down, as though to protect him from any harm, hovering about him chatting and joking casually for a few minutes until he dried up. And in this way, Barry Romo, ex-marine, was forgiven, no questions asked, for his part in what had taken place in these people's jungles.

We joked and sang for a little while longer, until it was time for bed. We would be up at seven for breakfast and then taken to see a war memorial. They asked us if we would like to eat American, French, or Vietnamese food during our stay; we all said Vietnamese. I went to bed exhausted under my mosquito net and floated off to the sound of the loudspeaker still playing the haunting melodies that had played all afternoon.

The next morning we saw the war memorial. It was boring. I hated the pictures of babies with bullet holes in their heads and women with their intestines falling out into the mud. I hated the horror stories. I'd heard and seen them for years. It was my business to know them. I also hated the maps and long descriptions of what was bombed and when. Chuyen could feel my restlessness, and he gave me a sympathetic glance. I shrugged and smiled.

Most of the details were directed at Telford, who was there as a lawyer to determine whether or not war crimes had been committed. Legally, I was of no use, especially because of my deep-seated opinion that war itself is a crime; that the killing of one child, the burning of one village, the dropping of one bomb sinks us into such depths of depravity that there's no use bickering over the particulars. But Telford was a terribly conscientious man and was carrying out his duties to the last detail with endless questions' about logistics, dates and so forth. I tried to be patient, reasoning that Telford was probably the most important member of our group as far as credibility at home was concerned. I also liked him very much and was, in spite of my boredom with maps and details, fascinated at the way his mind worked.

We were given tea and tangerines and eventually let out of the little building. Later, in between propaganda sessions, there were lovely walks, and a visit to a restaurant on the lake where the waitresses sang to me in exchange for my song to them. Chuyen took me to a music school where the students and I exchanged songs for over an hour, and where we ended up having a political discussion about American involvement in Vietnam. By then I was taping everything.

Always there was Quat, smiling and laughing and animatedly telling stories and jokes, but listening attentively to any questions we ,might have and trying to explain things to us. It was during one of these talks that Quat innocently said the things which would haunt me in the shelter later on. We were sitting in the lobby of the hotel, where we gathered before and after meals to drink and talk, when I asked Quat what he would do if the insanity ever stopped and he had some free time.

"Oh!" he said. His face lit up and he looked past his glasses an past me to what he was imagining. "There are islands north of Haiphong which I have never been to. I would take a little boat, and go around to all of them, taking my time and stopping at each one. They are supposed to be so beautiful. All of Vietnam was beautiful once. But these islands are supposed to be special." It was as if he knew the islands, and they were his Shangri-la. It was also clear that there had been no time for Shangri-las in his lifetime. He finished talking, and with a smile, said, "Yes, that's what I would do." His smile was not sad; it wasn't a forced stiff-upper-lip smile. It was a truly optimistic and cheerful smile. So that's what this lovely man would do. Take a small boat to some islands. Not very much to ask, it seemed to me. Not very extravagant. I said I hoped he would someday have his dream. "I don't know," he said and laughed.

The second night in the hotel dining room we were shown triotic films about the people of Vietnam. There was one about the Viet Cong in training, sliding down poles and swinging from ropes and shooting at targets, looking an average age of fourteen, though I know they were older. A pleasant-looking officer gave a demonstration in Vietnamese to his juniors about antiaircraft, and he used two little plywood planes to show how one shoots down the other most efficiently. Heroic music played between narrations. I excused myself and went to my room. When I came down later, one of the committee said, "Were you tired? You must have needed a nap."

"I wasn't tired," I said to him. "I just didn't like the film." He smiled.

And so the first two days went, more visits to places with reminders and explanations of the war. We ate three good meals a day, and drank jasmine tea. (I can no longer smell jasmine tea and not think of Hanoi.) I was looking forward to the trip to Haiphong, as our days were too organized. I was longing to walk the streets of Hanoi alone, without a group, and without a schedule. Until now what I had liked best was sitting alone on my balcony and listening to that strange music, or talking with Quat or Chuyen alone without the propaganda.

On the third night I cleaned up and went down to dinner. From that point on, my mind contains only strong flashbacks of what took place. I remember that we were again shown films, but these interested me because they were about children and what the different kinds of poison chemicals used by the United States military had done to unborn infants. I remember a sequence of a cat in a cage dying from a kind of gas, and a monkey dying from the same thing. I remember an American soldier shooting fire from a hose at a small hut and planes spraying miles of jungle with poisonous white clouds. There was a picture of a baby born abnormal because of chemicals. She was lying on her stomach and appeared to have no muscles. A nurse and doctor were standing next to her; they lifted her arm and when they let it go it dropped to her side like a piece of butterfish.

Nervous and afraid that I would feel faint if I watched any more, I was about to retreat, make myself small and apart from the things and people around me, set up the armor that would keep me from seeing, when right in the middle of that whole familiar series of regressive emotions the pattern was jolted.

The electricity in the building failed, leaving us sitting in the dark. Everyone stiffened, the Americans uneasy, the Vietnamese speaking rapidly to each other in quiet tones. Then, as though I'd been whirled back in time, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I heard a siren coming from a distance, starting at zero bass and rising evenly to a solid, steady high note where it stayed for a second or two and then slid back down through all the notes like a glider. All I could think of was the civil defense drills we'd had in grammar school. I sat still, aware that my heart had doubled in pace, and waited for instructions from the Vietnamese. By the time the siren began its second wail, one of our hosts had lit a candle and broken out of Vietnamese to say to us, calmly and with a smile, "Please excuse me. Alert."

How ironic. Please excuse whom? But I didn't think of the irony yet.  I thought of standing up carefully and not banging into anything in the dark. I also thought that we were having a drill, a routine drill, being led at a careful but rapid pace out the door and down the hall. At the end of the hall there was a turn, a small room filled with bicycles. We were bumping into each other and making wisecracks about I don't remember what.

The flickering from the candle half helped and half hindered, blinding the eyes when it came too close, but giving us our only light. The tiles were uneven, and we walked by feel. The rest of the hotel guests were appearing from other halls and floors, forming a bottleneck at the rear door of the hotel. The candles were put out,. and we poured and stumbled into a courtyard bright with moonlight.

There were Mike and Telford. Now I saw Indians, Latins, and  others whom I later learned were Poles and French.

"What's going on?" I asked a Latin man. He was Cuban.

"They don't know anything. Maybe planes. I don't hear them. We'll just wait. Hasn't been any bombing for a long time."

Bombing? I heard the word, and I had surely suspected that's what the sirens were all about, but hearing this man say it as he looked so matter-of-factly at the sky was something different. I realized that we were standing just outside of a bomb shelter. The Indians began making jokes and everyone laughed. I thought I was the only only one who was nervous. Telford had been in war zones before. Barry was not around. Mike may have been as nervous as I was, but he was chatting away and seemed fine. I relaxed a little.

A tall Indian held up his forefinger and said, "Shhh." In the distance I heard them ... the planes. Everyone went on standing there in the moonlight, but now we were not talking. The sound faded into the distance and the voices came back, only much softer. People let out sighs. My heart was slamming again. I felt alone with my panic. There were a few more jokes, the voices almost back to normal.

And then it hit.

The planes were coming fast, and they were loud. The group jumped as a unit, heading for the door of the shelter down the narrow stairs. A big boom happened somewhere, and it shook the shelter walls and sent a wave of adrenaline through all of us. People hurried down the steps. The Cuban sat me down at the end of a long narrow bench which faced another long narrow bench. I had to go to the bathroom. There was another blast.

"That was close," was all the Cuban said. He and the other veterans were trying to assess the seriousness of the situation.

I didn't know what was happening. My ears were fluttering and popping as if I was on a plane gaining altitude quickly. The Cuban was telling me to lean away from the wall, to keep swallowing and pop my ears. I grabbed his arm with both hands. For a while all I could think of was my straining sphincter muscles. The bombs were coming down continuously. The Cuban was shouting in my eat. "It will be all right. They are not as close as they sound. Don't worry."

But I could see that I was not the only one who was worried. The big Indian sat forward with his head down. He was very dignified. People would look up at each other and shake their heads. When there was a lull they would look at the ceiling. When it started up each time it did so with such force that we were almost knocked out of our seats with the plain shock. Every muscle in my body was tight and ready to move. I must have cut off the blood to the Cuban's hand. With every fresh concussion I bent over his lap, feeling that I would be protected next to his chest. I was desperately afraid. I said to him, "I am scared."

"I know," he said. "That's okay. After a while you get used to it. You'll be a veteran after a few more raids."

A few more raids! I'd be dead by a few more raids! More concussion, more fluttering, more deafening roar. Down went my head. I didn't like losing control like that; I decided to try to keep my head up.

There was a lull. We heard the planes getting softer. I loosened my grip. Murmuring started up among the group.

"Maybe they are leaving."

"Yes, perhaps. But they could be circling."

"Had you heard any rumors of this?"

"Nothing."

"An early Christmas package from Nixon, perhaps." And we all laughed.

I looked around the shelter. We'd come down a concrete stairwell, wide enough for one person to pass at a time. There was a narrow eight-foot hall which turned left at the end. A few steps later there was a small door on the right leading to the cement room where most of us sat. The room was about twelve feet long and so narrow that when you sat on one of the two long benches that were placed lengthwise against the walls, your knees almost touched the knees of the person sitting opposite you. There was a bare bulb dimly lit in the middle of the ceiling. 'At the far end of the room was a door leading to an annex, the shelter for the Vietnamese who worked at the hotel. They had a separate entrance. It was only many raids later that Barry and I rebelled and took blankets in to sit with the Vietnamese.

There were about five Indians who were with the International Control Commission and had been in Hanoi for sixteen months. The Cubans were off of a ship that had been hit by our bombs in Haiphong harbor. There were three Pathet Lao (the Laotian Communist Liberation Movement), and the wife of one held a three-day-old baby in her arms. Most of the French didn't come down to the shelter. They were with Agence France Press, and they remained on the third floor of the hotel watching out the balcony window or wandering the streets trying to guess what was going on so that they could report it.

I introduced myself to the Cuban. His name was Monti. I told him that I was trying to stop shaking and thanked him for the loan of his arm. We Americans exchanged glances, shaking our heads in amazement. The Vietnamese in their annex sat patiently, the children now beginning to play. I was coming out of shock. I'd forgotten how badly I'd needed a bathroom.

CRACK-BOOM! This time the bomb exploded before any of us heard the planes. I took a deep breath and felt like vomiting. I took Monti's hand again, breathed deeply and waited. This time I made  a conscious effort to keep my head up. I was only partially successful. Monti explained that we were hearing carpet bombing. It was like thunder, the kind of thunder that rolls and rolls when you see purple lightning like strobe-lit twigs hurled into the air at the edge of a desert horizon. The intermittent cracking of antiaircraft seemed to be coming from the hotel patio. I didn't understand that it was ground-to-air, and its volume added to my panic.

We rode out the minutes. Carpet bombing is relentless. I realized, with shame and horror that to pray for the planes to go away was to  pray that they would drop their bombs somewhere else. I was  kneading Monti's hand and sweating all over, my body shaking again as badly as before. But I was beginning to get a grip on myself, As soon as the noise became less than deafening, I felt like making a joke.

"I wonder if Macy's is open till nine this evening."

"What is Macy's?" asked the big Indian.

"It's a department store in the States. There's some last-minute Christmas shopping I have to do." They began to laugh. The bombing was in the distance now.

"Oh yes, Christmas. Your country has an amusing way of celebrating." It was not said bitterly.

"I think it's stopped," Monti said, and again I let go of his hand. My body began to unclench, a long process of relaxing muscle knots like untying an old-fashioned buttonhole shoe. Then I was limp. The fear was gone and all that remained was a light anxiety.

The Vietnamese stirred from their squatting positions in the annex. The siren started its low rumble and soared to the all-clear note, staying there for about fifteen seconds. Everyone stood up, talking, joking, speculating, and we walked back up the stairs into the moonlight.

I followed Mike back through the hotel, past the room where we'd been watching the film before the lights went out. I peeked in. The Vietnamese were setting up to roll the movie again. They acted as though nothing had happened.

"Christ," I muttered to Mike. "No thanks, I'm going to bed."

I passed the lobby where all the people from the shelter were gathering to drink yellow vodka and beer, and trudged on up to my room. Barry's door was closed. He'd slept through the entire raid.

***

The music from the scratchy little speaker sounded like Russian marching music. I laughed. It wasn't completely Russian, but the influence was obvious. I leaned over the balcony feeling strangely calm. People were moving about as usual. The only difference was the sound of sirens in the distance and the fact that the sky was eerily bright.

I remember taking a bath and getting into a long woolen nightgown. What innocence! I didn't even lay my clothes out so they would be easy to find, but dumped them over a chair on the other side of the room. I lit the candle and climbed under the mosquito netting. I must have been asleep in three minutes.

A strident voice was squawking at me in a language I didn't understand. From somewhere inside the hotel, through the window, enveloping everything, encasing my head, came the siren. It was so matter-of-fact. There were footsteps in the hall. I was out from under the mosquito net reaching for the candle. There was a knock at the door, and Mike Allen came in.

"Want some help? Want me to take you down?"

"Yeah, okay. Thanks. Just let me get some clothes on."

Mike stood near the door holding his candle. "Okay," he said, "but hurry."

I was feeling around for my clothes, finding only a pea coat, leaning over the chair groping for my long johns, when the sky lit up and there was a RATTA-TAT-TAT which seemed to come from the balcony. I jumped back from the window, grabbed the pea coat, and Mike came hulking over to grab my arm.

"Screw the clothes! Let's get moving!" My heart was bouncing around the back of my throat and head. My candle was out. We bumped down the hall in the dark. The sky was bright: when we passed a window we could see. Something happened, and I was alone on the stairs. I think Mike went to find Barry and Telford. I saw the black and white tile floor of the lobby like a checkerboard with men dashing across it. Very suddenly I became disgusted and angry and sat down on the bottom step. I'm not going this time, I thought, it's stupid. A group of Cuban sailors passed. One of them said: "Come. You mustn't stay there. It's dangerous."

"It's all dangerous. It disgusts me."

"Please come. The bombs could start any minute. Come, I'll take you." I got up and walked with him.

My bravery dwindled to nothing at the sound of the planes. We began to run. The Cuban had me by the elbow. The planes were overhead, and we were scrambling like rabbits across the courtyard.  The sky lit up just as we made it to the stairs. This time the shelter  was full, the entrance and hallway jammed. Mike and Telford hurried in. The concussions started. The sound was deafening. I remember distinctly that my nightgown was fluttering. Again I was shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to bend over and curl up on the ground. Fortunately, there was no room, so I went on standing. My nightgown continued its mysterious fluttering. (I learned later that  the fluttering was caused by drafts made by the concussions.) There was a lull. Mike Allen was right next to me; I was pretty sure he was praying.

The planes were back. Down went my head, this time onto Mike's chest. He put his arms around me, but there was not a thing to say. If anything, this was the worst the bombing had been so far. It seemed to last forever. Even some of the French had joined us. Finally, the racket stopped and there was only the sound of the planes droning away from the city. There weren't any jokes this time. The Vietnamese appeared at the shelter door just as the all-clear sounded. We left solemnly. The Vietnamese asked where Barry Romo was, and Mike said he had wanted to stay in bed. They smiled.

I said goodnight to Mike and the people in the hallways, went to my room and got dressed in long johns, a turtleneck, blue jeans, boots, and my pea coat. I made myself some tea, lit the candle, turned out the lights, and sat in a chair trying to think. But the music was like hypnosis. Just before I climbed into bed, I put my little cassette machine on the night table.

I couldn't have been asleep more than half an hour when I heard the voice on the loudspeaker again. I sat up and waited. The voice came again, that singsong, clipped, woman's voice delivering its elaborate message. I climbed out from under the mosquito net and put my cassette under my arm. The hall lights went out at the same time the siren started. I blew out the candle and felt my way toward the door. The sky lit up, and I heard a plane approaching tremendously fast. It didn't sound like the other planes. I began to run, trying to turn the tape recorder on as I ran. I was alone in the hall. Either the others weren't up yet or they'd all gone downstairs. I passed a window and there came a white flash accompanied by a RATTA-TAT-TAT and I hit the floor on one knee, the tape recorder dropping onto the tiles. What am I doing down here? I thought. I didn't know what was happening. I huddled low to get past the window and wondered if anyone had seen me. Then I stood up and realized with great lucidity that I did not want to die running. I could die scared, but not running. I tested the recorder and found it was working; it had picked up the siren, the running footsteps, the RATTA-TAT-TAT, and the clunk as it dropped to the floor. My unheroic flight had all been recorded. Good. I'd keep it to remind myself that it's embarrassing to run like a puppy. In the eleven days of bombing which followed, I ran only once, and it was at the in structions of and alongside members of the Swedish Embassy who had to cross two streets to get to their shelter.

There were ten raids that first night. Monti was right: by dawn I was a veteran. I had even started singing to everyone during the less intense raids. When we stumbled out into the air after the last raid of the night, the sun was up and there was a rooster strutting around the yard, crowing. Women were hanging out wash and children were puttering in the yard.

To my amazement, I was told that the trip to Haiphong was still on. We brought all our things downstairs and stood around the lobby. Quat's men handed us each a helmet. I immediately left mine behind a door because I knew I could never wear it.

And then, looking tired and distressed and apologetic, as though they were parents who had just ruined a weekend for the kids, the Vietnamese informed us that the roads to Haiphong were dangerous, both in their condition and in their location, and we would have to stay in Hanoi. I was relieved and disappointed at the same time.  I was already addicted to the bomb shelter.  Being under fire on the open road did not appeal to me, but a sense of adventure lingered on, pushing me to get out into the country, out of Hanoi.

We went to the outskirts of the city, Telford and I in the same car, passing through what had been a village the evening before. Now small huts were left standing between huge craters filled with muddy water and people were busy hunting for the remains of their things in the ruins. The Vietnamese always gave us the impression that few people were hurt. I know now that they did not want us to know the death toll.

Telford asked a series of questions of the guide while I stood silently at the edge of a bomb crater, looking down into it and then up at the people. They paid us no mind. We got back into the car. As we were bumping slowly back over the bricks and mud which had once been a country road, a girl passed by the car, carrying her bicycle. She looked in the window and said something to the driver. I had to pump a translation out of him. I heard her say, "Nixon."

"What did she say about Nixon?" I asked.

"She say, do they come to take a look at Nixon's peace?"

We returned to the hotel, having been spared seeing anything but a sampling of what fresh bomb craters look like. There was a raid during lunch. We all said "shit," and grabbed some food and headed for the shelter. The Air Force was setting a pattern for the days to come: raids all night, one at noon, one in mid-afternoon. We rested as much as possible in between. Those funny Viet-Russian marches played over the speaker all day long now. After the noon raid I slept.

The second night of bombing was similar to the first, only not quite as severe. I asked Barry if he would help me out. I have never found a way to thank him. He was a fanatic Maoist who disliked the pacifist rhetoric that armed-struggle advocates referred to as "sunshine talk" as much as I hated his endless jabber about the fascist racist imperialist pigs. Each time the siren rumbled to a start and all the lights in the city went out, Barry would come to the door and say, "Are you ready?" would take my hand and walk me to the shelter. I told him to make me keep my head up during the heavy bombing. When there was a loud concussion it would often be followed by a "tsk, tsk, tsk," which was Barry reminding me to get my chin up. One night we stayed in the shelter to continue a discussion we'd begun on violence versus nonviolence. We were frustrated that we could get nowhere with each other's dogmas. We'd both heard it all before, and each believed vehemently that the other was wrong. It ended in a state of near tears and at that point we made a pact never to talk about it again. I don't know if I was of much help to Barry, but he was the person in the group who was most able to help me with my terror. I spoke no more about Gandhi and he never again referred to bullets of love. And we laughed a lot. I was especially grateful to him for spending so many long hours in the shelter because I found out later that if he had any fears at all, they were of being caught and sealed into a shelter to die of suffocation.

For me, the mercury that measured fear and anxiety soared up and down totally out of my control. Eventually, even with the bombs crumping nearby I would find myself joking and singing, adding ridiculous verses to lighten things up. One night as we waited in the shelter, someone asked me to sing "Kumbaya." As the verse progressed, we heard the planes in the distance, heading toward the city. I'd been squatting and singing near the tape recorder. The planes droned onward, getting louder. The next verse was "Save the children, Lord." In the middle of the second line the bombs began raining so close to our bunker that the tape recorder fell over with the concussion. I rose to my feet, grabbed on to Barry who was standing, and went on singing. When the bombing finally stopped, someone said that was the last time they'd ask me to sing when the night was quiet.

On the third day the Bach Mai Hospital was bombed. I saw a dead woman laid out by the roadside. There were corpses around her carefully covered with mats. She had not yet been covered up. She was old. I wanted to go and lie next to her and put my arms around her and kiss her. I would have done it if there had been no people around but I was afraid that I would offend someone or that the press would take a picture and I would be accused of being theatrical. We walked around what had been the largest hospital in North Vietnam. The head of the hospital was speaking rapidly, pointing to the wreckage of three-sided rooms on second stories where beds hung partially over the floor's edge, bits of sheet dangling in the breeze.

"This was X-ray," he said, waving toward the remnants of a wall, as we labored over slippery debris. Telford had his notepad out and was asking those awful questions again.

A woman hurried by carrying a bandaged boy on her back, her face set but the tears undried on her cheeks. Telford was asking the dates of when certain craters had been made. Was this one fresh or was it from the June bombing? The Vietnamese spoke quickly, explaining everything. Quat was there. He asked me to sit down and not go any further while the others went ahead. Barry stayed With me. From around the comer came the smell of burnt flesh. Near the entrance of the grounds we could see a crane and some small equipment struggling to lift concrete and bricks from the mouth of the shelter in which a number of people were still alive. The last I heard, the attempt was not successful, and eighteen people died there.

It was at the hospital that I saw Chuyen cry. He simply walked away from our group where he had been translating. Someone called him, and when he kept his back turned another member of the committee took up where Chuyen had left off. When he joined us again, his eyes were red and full. I put my arm around him for a moment. He just shook his head. It wasn't until the night after we'd seen the Bach Mai disaster that I finally began to feel what I had absorbed.

I had gone down to the shelter. Barry spread my blanket in the Vietnamese quarters. I was catching a cold and my body was uncomfortable and restless. Sleep seemed impossible. One of the Indians had brought his blanket down and was lying in the guest section of the shelter. Barry fell asleep. The little bunker was so damp and cold, so unhealthy. Our guardians were upstairs now, taking turns resting three on a bed near the rear entrance to the hotel. They were the most patient people I'd ever known ... and the bravest. Chuyen's tearful face passed before my eyes. And then Quat's face, animated and cheerful ... : "There are islands north of Haiphong ... I would take a little boat and go around to all of them ..." Very suddenly I was sobbing. Barry was awake, sitting up and encouraging me to cry.

"Get it out. You've been holding it in there too long. Go ahead and cry."

My racket woke the Indian and he began telling me not to cry, that I was upsetting myself. "No! You must not. Here. Here's a tangerine. Eat something. You will feel better."

"I don't want any fucking tangerine," I mumbled, and Barry  began to laugh. He was encouraging me to cry, and the Indian wouldn't hear of it: a cultural difference, I assumed, and took the tangerine.

"Here, I'll peel it for you," the Indian said, grabbing it back. It occurs to me that he just wanted desperately to help out.

"Thank you." I sighed.

Well, I had scratched the surface. I wondered what was really going on inside of me. I wondered about the children who spent their lives ducking bombs. The ones I'd met seemed very stable. Perhaps it was better to have something real to deal with than to conjure up, as I had, symptoms and phobias all of your childhood. Here was the difference I'd thought so often about, between victims of ourselves and victims of circumstance. Me and my years of therapy. Me and my friends who went in and out of psychiatric hospitals, trying to decide whether to live or die. And here, where the children had always known war, perhaps here life was a little more precious, just the opposite of the nasty cliche I'd heard all my life about Asians-"life is cheap over there." Perhaps there was no time for phobias here on the battlefield.

And so it went. Eleven days and nights of bombing, and then going out to see it in the mornings. I came to know the French press people, Jean Thoroval and his wife, who lived on the top floor of the Hoa Binh Hotel. They seemed fearless. Mike Allen suggested I spend some time out of the shelter so I began going up to the Thorovals'. The French were fun and distracting. They gave me great courage. I took my guitar up and we sat around, Mike, Jean and Marie Thoroval, Telford, two other members of the French press, and Barry, and I sang. Thoroval's favorite song was "Ate Amanhii," a Brazilian carnival song. His face would light up and he would do a little dance. When the voice came over the microphone, Jean would go to his desk and mark down the number of the raid. When the bombing started, I would put down the guitar and pick up a cigarette. I don't smoke.

One night we were up in the Thorovals' room chatting, drinking beer and waiting. I was nervous. There had already been several raids that night which I had sweated out in the shelter. When the next raid began, Mike called me over to the window.

I went unhappily to the balcony and looked out over a city already burning from the preceding raids. The planes were on their way. Mike stood there, boldly cheering me on. We could hear the droning of the B-52'S getting steadily louder, bringing the war closer. I wilted and took his arm. "I don't want to see," I said, and went over to Marie, who was perched on an armchair, smoking casually. I could see her by the light from outside that was bouncing around the room. I took her hand.

"J'ai peur," I said.

"Moi aussi," she said. She patted my hand. "There is nothing to do but wait."

A fresh wave of carpet bombing rolled persistently. Marie uttered a "mon Dieu." Then came a crash which set the windows flapping and objects dropping from desks. I was on my feet.

"Ah. Bon. Descendons a l'abri." It was Jean, the stoic, saying, "Let's go to the shelter," as he walked at an even pace to his bedroom and  came out with a carton of Gauloises. We went slowly down the three flights of stairs. Marie was telling him to hurry, but he would not. He had never been to the shelter. It was again filled to capacity, and we crowded in under a display of fireworks.

The Indians were in the hallway looking somber. They did not make light jokes or ask me to sing. Jean kept rushing out into the courtyard to see if any planes were being shot down, and Marie kept calling desperately for him to get back inside. I was breathing deeply again. I remembered an expression I'd heard from old Doner, ten years before. I turned to Mike.

"You speak French, don't you?" I yelled in his ear.

"Oui, un peu."

"You'll like this one. Je n'ai pas peur-Je tremble avec courage!" ("I am not afraid-I tremble with courage!") He loved it. It began doing the rounds of the shelter, translated into various languages. Meanwhile, Barry was out running around the streets counting B-52's as they exploded in the sky.

There was much publicity over the first six pilots shot down. What , a tiny victory, I thought, as we began to see their faces on posters all over town. We were invited and taken to the press conference to see them. Heavy security surrounded the building where the pilots were to be shown to the international press. There were city officials, military personnel, and tons of cameras and tape machines. I did not want to sit in the front row where places had been saved for us; all four of us sat a couple of rows back. Barry was on one side of me, and was not in good shape. Perhaps he was afraid he would see himself when the pilots came out. Barry called people in the U.S. military "pigs." Perhaps he was wondering if he had made a total, transition himself. Telford was taking notes, and Mike and I were getting our tape recorders ready for whatever was about to happen. What did happen was unspectacular. The prisoners were driven into a courtyard adjoining the press room. One at a time, they were led around in a circle in the patio while people took pictures of them. They were bandaged and in shock. I was astounded that they hadn't been torn to shreds by the Vietnamese. They looked young, and I felt sorry for them. One by one, they stepped up to the microphone  and gave their name, rank, and serial number. If they had a message to give the press, they could. One of them said he hoped "this terrible war would come to an end real soon." Another sent his love to his wife, Sally, and wished his family a Merry Christmas. My God, they were oblivious. These guys were guilty of genocide, and I don't think it had ever occurred to them. In spite of the fact that I hated the press conference, I thought it was carried out with great restraint by the North Vietnamese. And I, too, hoped the war would end soon and Sally and the family would be joined by their daddy, and he would get a nice civilian job-like a fireman or forester, and bum his uniform and send all his medals back to the White House.

Our visit to the POW camp was even more bizarre than the press conference. It began with the same red tape I'd been through at prisons everywhere, except that I was never before given tea in the warden's office. The sun was going down, which meant that the evening raids could start at any minute. I had my guitar, Mike had his Bible, Telford had his notepad, and Barry had a stomachache. It didn't really matter what we had with us or what we planned to say or do. In this prison, as in all others I've ever seen, the main issue was boredom and loneliness for home and one's friends and family. We were closely supervised as the pilots showed us around their barracks. Flying shrapnel had severely damaged their bunkhouse the night before, and they were irate about not having any shelters provided for them. So was Telford. They were scared. They didn't understand what was happening. One of them held up a large piece of shrapnel.

"This thing came right through the ceiling. We was hiding under the beds. We've kinda made our own shelters, but they don't amount to much. I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?" I asked.

"This," he said, holding up the deadly looking piece of steel again. "I mean, I don't understand what's happening." He was absolutely serious.

"Well," I ventured. "There are these planes flying over here every night carrying bombs."

"I know that. But I don't understand what's happening," he repeated for the third time.

''Well, it's really very simple," I explained. "These people drop the bombs out of the planes and the bombs fall to the earth where they explode and cause tremendous damage to people and things. Apparently one or several of these bombs landed close enough to your compound to send that piece of metal flying through your roof."

''But what I mean is," he persisted, "Kissinger said peace was at hand, isn't that what he said?" The sarcasm drained out of me like milk pouring from the tipped cup of a child. I wanted to cry.

''That's what he said," I told the expectant pilot. "Maybe he didn't mean it. They lie a lot."

Mike kneeled and said a prayer. They kneeled with him. I sang the Lord's Prayer, thinking I should keep things Christmas- ike. Then I asked them what they'd like to hear. The consensus was unanimous: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."

I laughed out loud and sang it. Then we all sang "Kumbaya." Fighter pilots, lost in a strange land, standing with an American brigadier general. a preacher, a Maoist, and a pacifist, all under supervision of the "enemy:' joining hands and singing with tears in their eyes, "No more bombing, Lord, Kumbaya ..." I embraced them one by one and we left. The last thing I heard one of them say was "Get us out of here ... if you can."

On the ride home, Telford announced to me that the POWs' having no shelters was the most disgusting thing he'd seen since he'd been in Vietnam. The prison officials had assured us a number of times that shelters were being built; in fact, the prisoners were digging them themselves.

At dinner Barry and Telford exploded at each other and Barry I finally moved to another table. I felt he needed support and took my plate over to where he was sitting. It was not the first rent within our group, nor the last. Mike refereed, and Barry and Telford seemed to make a silent agreement similar to the one shared by Barry and myself. Mike held things together through his good nature and a bit of preaching and storytelling. Barry hated the church, but he, too, seemed relieved at Mike's boisterous good spirits.

Toward the end of the week, we learned that the airport had been bombed, causing considerable damage to the runway as well as the airport building. There would be a slight delay in our departure.

As Christmas drew nearer there was no letup in the bombing. Occasionally, a Chinese plane would land and take off. We did not have visas to go through China, and it became clear we were going to celebrate my favorite holiday in the Hoa Binh Hotel.

The Vietnamese put a two-foot-high replica of a tree in the middle of the hotel lobby on a table, and hung bits of decoration on it. It sat fifteen feet from the bar as our only visual reminder that the Prince of Peace had come into the world to redeem all of our sins, in the hopes that the people of the world would be a little kinder to each other. Mike and I planned a small service to take place in the lobby for the hotel guests and for our hosts, who I thought would at least be amused. There had been a lull in the raids, and I was hoping that a twenty-four-hour cease-fire had begun.

All the stories about Christmas have been written. They are of abounding love, sacrifice, rebirth, and forgiveness. They are about children in their time, their joy, their magic. Every year they are told again and again, and they are fresh and warming to the souls of the weary and the old. They become true even if they are only wondrous fantasies. Because it is the one time in the year that those of us who celebrate it have an unwritten alibi to be nicer to each other. An extra inch or two of love. Christmas to me is exquisite.

I don't know what Christmas was to the United States President and Secretary of State in 1972, but some of the true spirit escaped them. Surely there is a time zone chart somewhere in Washington, D.C. They must have known that it was Christmas Eve in Hanoi even if it wasn't yet Christmas Eve in the "real world."

Mike led a prayer in English and gave a short improvisational sermon to suit our situation. There were no more than twenty- ive people in the lobby. I was ready with my guitar to share in whatever the Christmas spirit dictated on that, the strangest of all Christmas Eves of my life. I sang "The Cherry Tree Carol," and after Mike did a reading in French, I sang a calypso version of the Lord's Prayer.

My head was stuffed up with a cold, but the voice was coming out fine. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. What a strange and pitiful Christmas. Give us this day our daily bread. Hallowed be Thy name. Perhaps Quat would eventually get to his islands. That will be my prayer for him. Forgive us all our trespasses. Hallowed be Thy name. God, bless and keep Gabriel. Give him a good Christmas. And keep his daddy well. As we forgive those who trespass against us. Hallowed be Thy name. I wonder if my family got the last telegram we sent out. It told them we were all right, and wished them a Merry Christmas. Best not to think of home. And lead us not to the devil to be tempted. Hallowed be-a bomb exploded somewhere in the city. I went on singing-Thy name. But deliver us from all that is evil. The lights went out. I stopped my song. The French were telling me to keep going, and the Vietnamese were asking us to go to the shelter. The siren commenced. Mike was swearing. People lit candles and I tried to go on singing. My voice Came out so weak that I thought it was someone else's. I realized later that I was trying to keep quiet so the bombs wouldn't know where we were. I strummed on the guitar, waiting for the hotel to be blown to bits or my voice to return. Either would have been a relief. I cut a verse, and amidst the shuffling of feet, encouragement from the French, and the closing notes of the siren, finished the Lords Prayer. Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Hallowed be Thy name.

"Those bastards," I said to Mike as we hurried to the shelter. "If there's one thing I can't stand it's being interrupted in the middle of a performance." Mike had been swearing steadily under his breath ever since the bombing started.

Later that evening we went to a midnight mass. I was in a near panic. The church was full, the streets outside lined with soldiers and police, obviously an emergency unit to lead people to shelters in the event of a raid. The service was awful. The priest gave the sermon in Vietnamese, French, and German. Each time he ran through his lines he appeared more pompous and cold than the time before. This was one time I was some help to Barry: I think if I hadn't kept him joking with rude remarks under my breath he might have run up to the rostrum and throttled the priest. When the collection plate came around he was delighted to see Quat ignore it. Mike was so excited to be inside a house of God that he managed to work himself into a state of religious fervor; I think he even took communion. Telford looked serious and reminded me of my father in Quaker meeting. There were roving news cameras with bright lights" which also kept me from being a public outrage. The choir sang' familiar Christmas carols in French, and I taped them on my cassette recorder. When the service was over, I didn't feel one bit holier than I had when it began but only wanted to go home and go to bed and not hear any sirens, planes, or explosions for a full day.

I got my wish and slept for sixteen hours straight. I think we all did. Even our hosts took a break. A twenty-four-hour truce is an amazing feeling.

There is something I feel I must say here. During this "truce" a great psychological, and probably physical, change took place in me. The exhaustion, the sleep, the calm were, by the end of the twenty- four hours almost boring. It was like the letdown that follows a long-prepared- for performance in a play or an exciting tour of concerts. Odd as it seemed, and frightened as I had been for so many days, something in me actually missed living on the edge of the knife, I would be ashamed of saying this, but I have heard others express the same feelings about their experiences in the Second World War. At least I knew I was alive during those raids, because I was treasuring my life as I had never done before. Why be ashamed to admit that I missed the excitement? Because to wish it back was insanity, was wishing back death for hundreds more people and possibly myself. And, sure enough, as soon as the raids began again, I wanted to be out of Hanoi, and my thoughts returned more and to my home and to Gabe. And once again, I became afraid.

One morning after a particularly bad night we were taken to a business district called Kan Thiem that had been devastated by carpet bombing. It shook us all more severely than anything else had so far. Even our hosts seemed shocked. Maybe it was because the raid had occurred near dawn and there hadn't been time to clean things up. People were dashing about or just standing and facing the ruined area, talking rapidly and shaking their heads. Within a few yards of the road we were walking on mud, brick, and debris, staring into the small rooms which lined what had so recently been a street. There was a woman quietly picking up a few scraps of her life. There was a man weeping to himself, and a surviving family moving about their small area like zombies. Everywhere were head bands of white cloth, the symbol of mourning for a relative.

After the long row of what had been buildings the night before, we struggled over an area of even more jagged and slippery terrain leading out into the open. Hundreds of people struggled past us carrying their bicycles. Some looked at the ruins, others simply kept walking. I glanced up and saw, amidst the flow of people stumbling toward me, an old, old man. He had a long white beard and a kind face and was bent forward with his hands low to the ground so that when he slipped he could catch himself before he fell. Just as his footing became unstable again, I reached out automatically to take his hand. He allowed me to help him and then looked up. He peered deep into my eyes, straining for a second, and then smiled cheerfully and nodded his head. He said, "Dankeschon! Dankeschon!" and clasped my hand in both of his. I bowed to him as he bowed to me, and off he went.

I saw a woman sitting on a small heap of rubble, pounding her fists on her thighs and crying with a despair that was ferocious. She would go from a wail to a moan to almost a growl, then sob wretchedly from her island of misery. Her husband was tugging her gently by the hand, looking somewhat embarrassed, scolding her softly to get up and come with him. She would attempt to rise to her feet and then she would give in to the anguish which had taken away all her strength and pride and sensibilities, Cry, I wanted to say. Cry, for God's sake. Keep crying until there is nothing left in the well, until the next turn of the hourglass. All my common sense told me to stay away from her, but I could not. I squatted next to her, putting my arm around her. Some people looked on, as they looked on at the many other scenes taking place all around. For one desperate moment she wailed and put all her weight against me. Then she looked up and saw that I was not only a stranger but a foreigner as well, and she became visibly uneasy, though her sobbing didn't change. I got up immediately, found my way back to Barry and took his hand.

We came to what looked like a large expensive movie set of a piece of the moon. Men were standing atop craters banked with mud and trash, shouting out the number of the dead. Today they wanted us to know. The number was mounting into the hundreds. The white headbands were a part of the moon people's costume. Some of the younger children were laughing excitedly and scrambling from crater to crater like extras. Many people walked in slow motion. Barry guided me around the edges of a crater. We were walking on top of what had been people's homes. Here was a shoe, here a half-buried little sweater, a piece of broken dish jammed into the earth, a book lying open, its damp pages stuck together. The press were' there. with their cameras. Barry and I were walking just behind Jean Tho roval and his interpreter. On the other side of a thirty-foot abyss I saw a woman bending low to the ground singing a 'strange little song as she hobbled back and forth over an area of ten or twelve feet of ground. At first I thought she was singing a song of joy that she was all right and her family had been spared. But as we got closer her song grew strange to my ears. She was alone. Thoroval asked his interpreter what she was singing. The interpreter listened closely for a few seconds and said to him, "Elle dit, 'Man fils, man fils, ou etes vous maintenant, man fils?'-My son, my son. Where are you now, my son?"

Oh, heaven and earth. Such depths of sadness cannot exist.  I crumpled to the ground and covered my face and sobbed.  That woman's boy lay somewhere under her feet packed into an instantaneous grave of mud, and she, like a wounded old cat, could only tread back and forth over the place she'd last seen him, moaning her futile song. Where are you now, my son?

Barry raised me to my feet and said, "Let's go now." I couldn't walk very well, and he supported me. I was sick of mud, sick of craters, sick of death. Not for me, but for these people who had been living here for so many years. We passed a younger member of the French group. He was furious. "Ah, bon. Now what do you say, eh? You still think like a pacifist? After all this you would still say to put down your arms?" I waved my hand to indicate the moon set. "This is supposed to change my mind?" I said in a quiet fury. "You are a fool." But he was beckoning to Barry. I was not supposed to notice, but what he pointed out was a child's hand lying a few feet from us in a pile of debris. It was like a doll's hand which pops out at the wrist, and the rest of the doll was nowhere to be found. Barry took me back to the car.

After our visit to Kan Thiem an air of desperation spread over all of us. Thoroval became ill. His wife said he could not eat. He called it indigestion, but it was more like a case of revulsion. He'd been in Hanoi for two years. The Vietnamese children looked drained and colorless. I had begun to dress like the Vietnamese, wearing black pajama bottoms and sandals with my shirts and pea coat. I was afraid to think of home. Telford read books patiently during the raids by the light of a candle. The Frenchmen looked tired. The Pathet Lao couple with their tiny child couldn't make it up and down the stairs anymore. The mother was too sore. I bought five chess sets and jewelry from a woman who had lost her brother the night before. She let me hold her a minute. Our Vietnamese hosts went out and bought a jumper for Gabriel, as though to reassure me that I would see my child soon. We'd already made two unsuccessful trips to the airport, being turned back at a checkpoint. No planes. And the ghastly unspoken fantasy slowly formulating in the minds of all of us finally began to be voiced.

I think it was first spoken, in broken English, up in the Thorovals' quarters over beer and cigarettes. It made perfect sense. By now it was clear that the American administration's strategy was to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the bargaining table. The strategy was not working. There was the insult of the new Russian missiles which were shooting B-52's out of the sky like fat crows. By now Nixon was so insulated from the American people that there was no way for him to sense that he was losing their confidence, and that he had completely overstepped the boundaries of everyone's sensibility, ex cept the extreme right wing and idiots. On Christmas day a tree had been delivered to the White House, its branches broken and all the ornaments smashed. The message was clear.

Why was the administration sticking to a strategy of losing B-52's and Phantoms by the score when Hanoi could be wiped off the map forever with one nuclear bomb? Certainly China or Russia would not retaliate over such a small item as Vietnam. No, dear Barry, China would not have done a thing. We were, as the expression goes, sitting ducks.

"At this point, Quat began a campaign to restore our good spirits and d hope. He planned a series of farewell dinners as though we were actually going to leave Hanoi alive. I distinctly remember two of these parties at which we again drank, laughed, made music, and goodbye to many people we'd met during our stay. At one of the parties a woman sang to us in Vietnamese, and then told us in a tearful voice that her son was at the front, and that she would sing her favorite song in English for us and for her son. She clasped her hands together and stood rocking back and forth next to me, choking back the tears and singing an old Stephen Foster song, verse by verse. She knew the words phonetically and it was only because we all knew the song from high school music class that it was at all comprehensible, but it was unbearably beautiful and moving. Mike began a seizure of throat clearing, and even Telford's eyes could not stay dry. I tried to sing with her, but could not hold the notes. She .soared to the high notes and broke on the lower ones, and with each  break tears rushed from her eyes. She ended on a wavering note,  and then reached her arms out to me saying, "Sank you, sank you,"  to which I could respond nothing. I sang too, all of their favorites, and Quat passed around the vodka.

At the other farewell dinner there were raids, and we went singing into the shelter. Beneath the bombs, two women sang steadfastly and clear-eyed, in two voices which sounded like one, in perfect harmony, accompanied by an accordion drowning out the sound of  the planes. I think during the few minutes that they sang I would  have been able to face death with some dignity. That night after the party was over, I stood out on the Thorovals' balcony, at Barry's prompting, and breathed in the night air while waiting for the planes to return. He had persuaded me that I would feel better if I faced up to the fear and watched the sky.

"If you really want to have courage," Barry said softly, "you will sing."

I began to sing "Oh, Freedom," quietly at first and then more and more boldly. "And before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave ..." The notes were coming out loud and sure. I sang a few verses, and when it was over there was the sound of clapping from the little street shelters below us. I smiled at Barry.

"You see?" he said. "You made them feel good."

I sang some more. I sang through the entire blackout, feeling many things as I went along. How I would miss my son if I died; but then no, I would be dead: he would miss me. I still didn't want to die. I was not brave like the people walking below. I was hanging on desperately to my life. But I was singing.

"Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, me around, walkin' up to freedomland ..."

No bombs came down during that raid. Perhaps it would been very different if they had, but as it was I came in from the balcony feeling triumphant.

It was decided that we would try to leave Hanoi through China since the Chinese planes were still the only ones attempting the Hanoi airstrip. This would mean a trip to the Chinese Embassy to obtain transit visas.

Telford, Mike, Barry, and I arrived fifteen minutes early in the afternoon. We were ushered into a dark and gloomy old French building, down a hallway hung with pictures of Ho Chi Minh and Mao, and were seated in the receiving room which was also hung with pictures of Ho Chi Minh and Mao. There were two interpreters; one to get us from Chinese to Vietnamese, and the other to get us from Vietnamese to English. Barry was sitting across from me trying to hide his delight at being in the embassy of his beloved Mao. We were served Chinese beer, offered cigarettes, and at long last the ambassador arrived. We stood up to greet him, and all he said was, "Hmmmmm." He was wearing little round glasses and a Mao jacket. He seated himself and said, "Hmmmmm," again. He spoke to the interpreter, who in turn spoke to the other interpreter, who then spoke to us.

"The ambassador says he hasn't been sleeping too well lately."

We shifted around in our chairs trying to think of appropriate responses to his statement, but he spoke again.

"He says perhaps it is because of the bombing that goes on all night."

''No doubt, no doubt," said Telford.

"Tell him we haven't been sleeping so well either, and apologize about the bombing," I ventured. It was interpreted and the ambassador said, "Hmmmmm."

"The ambassador wants to know why you have come here to see him today." He knows damn well why we're here, I thought.

''Well.'' It was Telford's turn now as spokesman of the group. "The ambassador is surely aware of the fact that it is very difficult to find a way out of Hanoi, and we understand that the Chinese planes are the only ones which seem to be functioning with any regularity at all." More interpreting.

"The ambassador wants to know, is this the only reason you came to visit the Chinese Embassy?"

"Oh!" said Telford hurriedly. "No, of course not. But we did think it would be a wonderful experience for us to see even a small portion of your great country on our journey home."

Telford, you hypocrite, I was thinking. And who do you think you're fooling? At this point Mike Allen commented on the beer. Marvelous beer, the Chinese beer. Made in Peking? Marvelous! Barry was squirming in his chair and probably plotting how he could get a Peking beer bottle for a souvenir. The ambassador was looking almost comically inscrutable and was no doubt enjoying nailing us all into a corner.

"I don't wish to be rude," I blurted, "but please tell the ambassador that speaking for myself, I'm scared stiff and would like to get the hell out of this city as soon as possible, and that's why I came to see him today." The ambassador smiled faintly with his next  "Hmmmmm." Mike and Barry laughed, and I don't remember if Telford responded.

After more small talk, the ambassador had our passports collected  for what he had probably intended to do all along, which was to give us visas for the next day. We tried to muffle our excitement and relief. I wanted to rush up and hug him, but that seemed definitely out of order. We all stood up and made gratuitous gestures and  speeches and shook hands and bowed. Barry had been silent the whole while. His moment had now arrived. Just as we were filing toward the exit, he plunged his hand into his pocket and gathered a fistful of Vietnam Veterans Against the War buttons. Walking stiff up to the ambassador he placed the buttons on the tea table, saying, "I am with you in your fight to stamp out the fascist imperialist aggressor." The ambassador looked baffled, peering at the pile of tiny buttons with their incomprehensible logo, which had been delivered with the equally incomprehensible short speech. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Barry," I mumbled to him. "He doesn't know what the hell you're doing."

"He'll understand," said Barry.

Back in my room at the hotel I packed for the third time. It was beginning to look as though we would actually leave Hanoi, and I wanted to listen to the music from my balcony window and think about the people and enjoy feeling hopeful about returning home. There would be raids all night, but there was a general air of optimism about the arrival of the Chinese plane.

In the morning we ate breakfast and met for the final time in the lobby, dragging our bags, tape recorders, cameras, gifts. Once again, I tried to leave my helmet behind, but when I got in the car I found it had been placed by my feet. For the third time we headed off in three cars for the airport. Again we passed the skeleton of a train depot, the wrecked huts, the craters. We came to a pontoon bridge. I popped two Valium. The pontoon bridge was the only way left to cross the river. The traffic went one direction for a half hour and then the other direction for the next half hour. I shrank down in my seat and waited for the sound of sirens. Getting caught on that bridge during a raid was my idea of hell. It would mean getting out and climbing under the car. There would be a fight about the helmet. But worst of all was the great expanse of open sky above the bridge. I felt sure we were a perfect target. The ride across the bridge took about an hour.

At the airport, the chairs were lined up the way they had been when we'd arrived two weeks before, but the room had only half a roof and part of its walls. Debris had been pushed into corners and the room swept and wet-mopped, but there was a dull finish everywhere, an endless amount of dust. The bar was standing. I asked for the ladies' room and was directed to a cubicle just intact enough to ensure partial privacy. The plumbing was out. From the broken window I could see some Russians, some Vietnamese, and a group of wounded Polish soldiers arriving outside for the same flight.

We wandered outside looking at the damage. While I was strolling around peering at the rubble, I saw partially buried in the thick mud, halfway down the inside of a crater, a piece of metal which had a startling shape to it. I climbed in and pulled it out of the dirt. A piece of an airplane, no doubt, had melted into the shape of a bird sitting on a branch. I slipped it into my purse. The lobby was filling up and I knew there would be a raid. A phone rang, and everyone sauntered across the pockmarked area in front of the terminal, toward the airport shelter.

There were eleven Polish soldiers, counting two who were in coffins. Like Monti's, their ship had been hit in Haiphong harbor. When we reached the area just outside the shelter, people struck up conversations. Some of the Poles asked me for autographs and I obliged and shook hands with them; others were very much in pain, and just looked on.

We were ushered down into the shelter. It was pitch-black until someone lit a candle. There was a fat lady who was embarrassed about trying to make it down the stairs. The shelter was like a catacomb, each new room black until a candle- bearer caught up with us. Ten or twelve of us reached a small cubbyhole and sat down to wait. A Pole stood in the doorway. I was next to Barry and Mike. Near me sat a wounded Pole with his head sunk into his knees. All the Poles looked exhausted and shell-shocked. We heard the planes in the distance.  Every soldier in the bunker stiffened. One began to cry. I reached out my hand and stroked the head of the one nearest me. He looked up wearily and put his head back down. I began to sing, "Hush, little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird." I kept stroking his head. "If that mockingbird don't sing, Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring." Get those goddamned planes out of the sky and let these guys get out of here. "If that diamond ring is glass ..." I finished the song and the planes were gone. No one spoke as we got up and headed slowly for the open air.

The Chinese plane was landing. The soldiers were too tired to smile. We walked back to the runway and lined up. The coffins were 'loaded first, then the Poles, and next the Americans. We turned around at every other step to wave goodbye again and again to Quat, Chuyen, and the others. The plane was small and hot. Directions were given in Chinese, and Chinese music played over the speakers. The engines started up. As we taxied down the wreck of a runway I looked out the window and saw our little band, still wavingg. Suddenly, en masse, they all turned their heads around and skyward, and I knew that the B-52's must be coming back. And then, as though nothing had happened, they turned back and continued to wave to us until we were airborne and they were specks on the pockmarked land below.

We arrived home safely on New Year's day. My son stepped out of the crowd at the San Francisco International Airport and handed me a bouquet of acacia which was as big as he was, and he said "Hi, Mom." I picked him up in my arms and said, "Hi, sweetheart," and gave him a fire truck I'd bought at the Tokyo airport.

The first two weeks I was back I stayed at David's house, where I slept most of the time and spent the remainder giving interviews to newspapers and magazines. Every time I fell asleep on the couch I could hear Gabriel hollering around the house, and the only thing that woke me up was when he'd drop a Tonka truck on my head or the cat on my stomach or himself on my chest. Then I would grab him and hug him and tell him I'd play in a few days when I was back on my feet. At night I left a candle lit so that when a plane went over and I found myself sitting up in bed reaching for my pea coat I could orient in a hurry to the fact that I was home. But part of my psyche was still in Hanoi.

When I had fully recovered my physical strength I went to my own house and listened to the fifteen hours of cassettes I had taped in Vietnam, including the sirens, the bombs, Phantoms, 5-52's, anti- aircraft, the children laughing, Monti talking, the Vietnamese singing, myself singing in the shelter. I did a rough edit and took the results to the record company to record as best I could the story of my Christmas in Hanoi. It is one. long poem partially sung, and begins with a run to the Swedish bomb shelter during a raid, some bombing, and then the old woman at Kan Thiem chanting, "Oh, my son, where are you?" The last verse of the title song goes:

Oh, people of the shelters
what a gift you've given me
To smile at me and quietly let me share your agony
And I can only bow in utter humbleness and ask
Forgiveness and forgiveness for the things
we've brought to pass.

The black pajama'd culture that we tried to kill
with pellet holes
And the rows of tiny coffins we have paid for
with our souls
Have built a spirit seldom seen in women and in men
And the White Flower of Bach Mai will surely
blossom once again.
I've heard that the war is done
Then where are you now, my son?

The album is called Where Are You Now, My Son? and it is my gift to the Vietnamese people, and my prayer of thanks for being alive.

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