Saigon: A Dreamlike Twilight Mood

With the enemy literally at the gates, Saigon last week seemed to be in a state of schizophrenia--and in both phases seemed equally mad. With their inbred fatalism and stoicism, the 3 million residents of the old French colonial capital fought, often in vain, against a rising sense of terror. The result, as TIME Correspondents Roy Rowan and William McWhirter cabled from Saigon, was a strange blend of serenity and fear in the aloof and careless city that had so largely been spared the shock of war.

At times the city's main thoroughfares looked like the site of a weird Grand Prix, a kind of motorcade to nowhere. Climbing aboard bicycles, pedicabs, Hondas, mini-Jeeps, taxis, small trucks--anything that would move --Saigonese sped up and down broad boulevards lined by huge tamarind trees. The hot dry air turned blue with exhaust smoke as the procession wheeled endlessly past the sidewalk cafes where red-bereted French paratroopers and homesick G.I.s once sat, watching the lissome Vietnamese girls stroll by.

There were other traces of panic. Newspapers were crammed with notices reading "Xe ban " (car for sale) and "Nha ban " (house for sale), and though both cars and houses were selling at one-sixth their value of just a month ago, there were still no takers. Women filled barrels with dirt and sand to be used as roadblocks. Thousands of troops strolled aimlessly through the city, as though whole divisions had been given leave at once. Paratroopers in jump boots and camouflaged fatigues were everywhere, cadging cigarettes from Americans: "You give me smoke, mister!"

With the soldiers and the refugees came rumors and gossip, which sometimes were printed by the Saigon press as though the editors wished they could be true. In this surreal atmosphere, the entire city seemed to have heard that China had invaded North Viet Nam, precipitating a coup in Hanoi and necessitating the withdrawal of seven Communist divisions from the South; that U.S. Marines had landed at Vung Tau, Danang and Cam Ranh. "It is like a dream," admitted a Saigon journalist.

And, dreamlike, life went on in many parts of the city as though the North Vietnamese divisions were hundreds of miles away. Banners still proclaimed military victories in the province of Long Khanh ("a big cemetery of the North Vietnamese aggressors"), although the region was lost. At the fashionable Cercle Sportif Francais, center of the social life of the wealthy Saigonese, champagne was served as usual beside the greenlined swimming pool. At the Club Nautique de Saigon, racing shells got another coat of varnish, as though the joys of summer would never end. The front gate of the My Canh restaurant, where two Viet Cong Claymore mines killed 48 diners in 1965, was being painted a sparkling aquamarine.

Food was no problem. Marketplaces were filled with green vegetables and raw meat, peanuts were piled high on the pavement on Le Loi, the busiest boulevard in Saigon, and exotic aromas bubbled up from the hot food stalls in front of Saigon's cathedral. Young women crowded the lobby of the Mini Rex Theater every matinee to see Brigitte Bardot in Boulevard du Rhum. Roving photographers armed with Polaroid cameras still tried to hustle a few piasters out of foreign correspondents they mistook for tourists. The piaster rate, perhaps the best war barometer in town, shot up from 2,000 to 3,900 for one U.S. dollar in four days. For a time, a hooker could be hired for less than $1. But when hopes for a cease-fire rose, the piaster rate dropped to 1,500 per dollar.

The Saigonese paid remarkably little attention to the resignation of President Thieu. A day after his departure, he was virtually forgotten and hopes quickly focused on a political settlement that would somehow preserve the city from destruction. Despite Thieu's indictment of the U.S., most Vietnamese were still treating Americans with their customary politeness.

With the Communists closing in, Catholic priests and Buddhist monks gathered at the Basilica, Saigon's cathedral, for the first joint service in the history of South Viet Nam. Prayers were offered to Buddha, in the words of one monk, "to seek harmony and protect and help the Vietnamese people. It would be very good to help us sufferers."

Not all of the city's residents were relying on prayer. On the outskirts, some farsighted Saigonese had on hand a supply of the black, pajama-like garments that are affected by the Viet Cong.

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