darkness.
Forty, I said. Maybe you’ve only made it to forty. No further ever, now. Four months younger than me. November child and July child. You the arrow in the air; I the crab under the rock. Now I’ve got your hoard, under my rock. What am I going to do with it?
Over the past two weeks, most of us had continued to maintain that Langford must still be alive. But this week something had happened to reduce our hopes. It had also made me decide to do as Diana Lockhart had suggested: I’d go up to Bangkok to see what I could find out for myself. I’d written to Jim Feng to arrange a meeting with him, and was booked on a flight from Melbourne in ten days.
A number of English-speaking papers around the world, while hedging their bets about Langford’s fate, had this week published what amounted to obituaries. A final assessment was being made of his achievement, and of what the papers were now calling his “legend.” All this because of an unsubstantiated report that had come in from the Thai-Cambodian border.
Even the New York Times had run a three-column story, and tributes had flowed in from journalists in North America, Europe and Asia. Foreign correspondents seemed more or less unanimous in regarding him as one of the best war photographers produced by the Vietnam conflict; he even had hero-worshipers who’d declared him one of the best of all time. I’d been startled by the upsurge of sentiment; Mike seemed to have been liked—even loved—by just about everyone he’d ever worked with. He’d come to belong to the fraternity of international journalists rather than to a country; but the Australian press was claiming him as its own, and was striking organ-notes of sentimental pride in feature articles. At the same time, it was able to revel in a mystery, and to hint that Langford could still reappear.
Like Lockhart, I’d never thought that could be counted on, considering the nature of the Khmer Rouge regime. Yet our hopes had been kept alive until now by Langford’s colleagues of the press in Asia.
“Langford can’t have bought it,” one of them said. He was a cheerful, middle-aged Australian broadcasting correspondent working in Bangkok: one of Mike’s drinking mates, interviewed on television. “Not Snow,” he said. “He’ll turn up, and buy us all drinks in the Foxhole Bar.”
But then the report of Mike’s death came in.
It had originated with a new batch of Khmer refugees who’d got across the border, and it was vague about details. The exact way in which Langford was supposed to have died remained uncertain, since the refugees hadn’t witnessed it, but had got it by word of mouth. On one thing they were unanimous, though: a Western correspondent answering to his description had been taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge—and this man was said to have been executed.
—I sometimes think of writing up some memoirs from them, now that the war’s over. I hope of course that you’ll never get to listen to them—no one ever has—but if you do, they may be of interest. You always were fond of history....
I punched off the letter-tape again. Did he really want me to “write up” these memoirs for him? He didn’t say so directly; he was always a little sly like that. But I thought he did want it; and if he proved to be lost irrevocably, I’d do it: I knew that already. So did he, standing behind my shoulder.
The taped diaries, nearly all of which I’d now heard, had surprised me deeply. Mike’s silences had always made me see him as inarticulate; even unimaginative. But not on tape, it had turned out: not when he was alone, speaking into his machine. Was it old John Langford’s beatings that froze him outwardly? His mother’s early death? There was an inner life I’d half suspected, but had seldom been given a glimpse of; now it was all in my hands, more complex and intense than I would have thought possible—to be dealt with as I wished.
There’d be a great deal to be
Forty, I said. Maybe you’ve only made it to forty. No further ever, now. Four months younger than me. November child and July child. You the arrow in the air; I the crab under the rock. Now I’ve got your hoard, under my rock. What am I going to do with it?
Over the past two weeks, most of us had continued to maintain that Langford must still be alive. But this week something had happened to reduce our hopes. It had also made me decide to do as Diana Lockhart had suggested: I’d go up to Bangkok to see what I could find out for myself. I’d written to Jim Feng to arrange a meeting with him, and was booked on a flight from Melbourne in ten days.
A number of English-speaking papers around the world, while hedging their bets about Langford’s fate, had this week published what amounted to obituaries. A final assessment was being made of his achievement, and of what the papers were now calling his “legend.” All this because of an unsubstantiated report that had come in from the Thai-Cambodian border.
Even the New York Times had run a three-column story, and tributes had flowed in from journalists in North America, Europe and Asia. Foreign correspondents seemed more or less unanimous in regarding him as one of the best war photographers produced by the Vietnam conflict; he even had hero-worshipers who’d declared him one of the best of all time. I’d been startled by the upsurge of sentiment; Mike seemed to have been liked—even loved—by just about everyone he’d ever worked with. He’d come to belong to the fraternity of international journalists rather than to a country; but the Australian press was claiming him as its own, and was striking organ-notes of sentimental pride in feature articles. At the same time, it was able to revel in a mystery, and to hint that Langford could still reappear.
Like Lockhart, I’d never thought that could be counted on, considering the nature of the Khmer Rouge regime. Yet our hopes had been kept alive until now by Langford’s colleagues of the press in Asia.
“Langford can’t have bought it,” one of them said. He was a cheerful, middle-aged Australian broadcasting correspondent working in Bangkok: one of Mike’s drinking mates, interviewed on television. “Not Snow,” he said. “He’ll turn up, and buy us all drinks in the Foxhole Bar.”
But then the report of Mike’s death came in.
It had originated with a new batch of Khmer refugees who’d got across the border, and it was vague about details. The exact way in which Langford was supposed to have died remained uncertain, since the refugees hadn’t witnessed it, but had got it by word of mouth. On one thing they were unanimous, though: a Western correspondent answering to his description had been taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge—and this man was said to have been executed.
—I sometimes think of writing up some memoirs from them, now that the war’s over. I hope of course that you’ll never get to listen to them—no one ever has—but if you do, they may be of interest. You always were fond of history....
I punched off the letter-tape again. Did he really want me to “write up” these memoirs for him? He didn’t say so directly; he was always a little sly like that. But I thought he did want it; and if he proved to be lost irrevocably, I’d do it: I knew that already. So did he, standing behind my shoulder.
The taped diaries, nearly all of which I’d now heard, had surprised me deeply. Mike’s silences had always made me see him as inarticulate; even unimaginative. But not on tape, it had turned out: not when he was alone, speaking into his machine. Was it old John Langford’s beatings that froze him outwardly? His mother’s early death? There was an inner life I’d half suspected, but had seldom been given a glimpse of; now it was all in my hands, more complex and intense than I would have thought possible—to be dealt with as I wished.
There’d be a great deal to be
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