Flames & Music

A shock wave of horror raced through Saigon last week. In a small park inside Saigon's main traffic circle, a young Buddhist priest at noon squatted cross-legged in the traditional lotus position, pulled a plastic container of gasoline out of his cloth bag and soaked his lap. Then he struck a match to his brown robes. Flames burst over him. Grimacing but uttering no sound, the monk shriveled into a charred skeleton. After three minutes, his arms stiffened before him, and he pitched over. It was the sixth suicide by fire in the Buddhist struggle against President Ngo Dinh Diem.

From the curious crowd which had gathered, a low moan arose. A little girl whimpered in her mother's arms; a woman laughed hysterically; tears streamed down the cheeks of old women. A traffic cop grabbed a straw hat off one woman's head, tried to put out the fire by waving it over the flames, succeeded only in making them blaze higher. Three U.S. newsmen at the scene were brutally clubbed, kicked and beaten to the ground by plainclothesmen who tried to seize a newsreel camera (see PRESS).

The afternoon of the immolation, presumably to soothe the populace, government loudspeakers newly installed in trees near the traffic circle began blaring music. There were Vietnamese songs, French songs, Viennese waltzes and--either by accident or contemptuous design--that old Tin Pan Alley favorite, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

At Dalat, 140 miles northeast of Saigon, the government faced a Buddhist problem of a different nature: what to do about an aged nun who, by reputation at least, has been flitting about the countryside working miracles. Known simply as "the Saint," she first appeared, according to rumor, on a mountain-top and began turning water from a dirty stream into miraculously clean holy water. A father reported that she cured his daughter's acne; two little boys who were mutes were taken to her, have since started uttering sounds. As word of her feats spread, Buddhist faithful by the thousands began jamming the narrow, rain-soaked paths leading to the mountaintop. Taking no chances that the pilgrims might turn into antigovernment demonstrators, authorities called out troops, banned the processions on grounds that the trails were too dangerous. "The Saint" has since disappeared--but she has assertedly promised to reappear on six other mountaintops.

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