by Paul Yoon
A car appeared, approaching the bus station. They tracked it like the bird as it approached, slowed, and turned in. The old man on the bench ignored it. Other than the van that had dropped them off, it was the first vehicle they had seen. They checked the road one last time for any sign of the bus they had been ordered to take, but nothing else appeared over the ridge.
The window rolled down. “Faster to ride with me,” the driver said. He nodded and gestured for them to come in. He was wearing sunglasses. They had slid down his nose and he looked first at Vang and then at Prany, who brought his arms behind him.
It was a taxi. Or some version of one; there were no signs. There were strips of duct tape across the passenger seat and a jug of water on the floor. They checked as quickly and discreetly as possible—what he was wearing, the dash, the back seat—for any clue that he might be an official or Pathet Lao, but couldn’t find any.
So Prany named an inn on the western side of a reservoir. It wasn’t very far, perhaps four kilometers south. He asked the driver if he could take them there.
“I know it,” the driver said, and named a price.
They didn’t argue with him. They got in, and then they were heading south. They stayed silent, staring out the windows. Prany kept waiting to get used to the speed of a vehicle. The speed of the world passing. The undulating shapes of the hills. An abandoned farm and what looked like a new cement factory. There were bomb craters in fields that hadn’t yet been filled and a roadside restaurant, the windows and the door all gone.
The driver was eyeing them through the rearview.
“What time is it?” Vang said.
“What?”
“The time.” Vang lifted his wrist.
“Noon,” the driver said.
Vang grinned. It had been years since he had asked for the time and someone had answered him. He leaned forward and asked if they could hear music. The driver laughed, pressed a button on the radio. All they could hear was static.
“You’re not from here,” he said.
They approached the boundary of the massive reservoir that seemed to them an inland ocean. It was impossible to see the far bank. The taxi followed the road that ran along the reservoir’s western side, passing islands, some of them with old structures. A blue ferryboat with no passengers cut across the water. Then, just as quickly, they drove away from the reservoir and entered a forest. Soon, a sign for the inn appeared, and the driver turned onto an unpaved road that they followed for less than a kilometer until it opened out onto a round courtyard.
The building was on the far end. It was a wide, two-story structure with fading red paint and dark window shutters. There were some plants and a copper sculpture of a fish at the center of the courtyard, so oxidized they were unsure what it was at first, the fish in midair, as though caught and being reeled in.
“So then, where are you from?” the driver said, pulling up to the front.
They had practiced this.
“Phonsavan,” Prany said.
They had practiced this every day for years, but in that moment he didn’t say what he was supposed to say. Suddenly, those years collapsed, and he felt as though he were falling. It was too late now. He knew Vang was avoiding looking at him. It would be the one mistake Prany would think of, not at this moment, but one day months from now, leaping out of a van and running.
“I have a cousin in Phonsavan,” the driver said. “Good restaurant. You must know it, yes? Best food in the town.”
He named the restaurant. He said, “Survived the war, the restaurant,” and Vang said, “Yes. Great,” and took out double the amount the driver had asked for. The driver paused, trying to hide his surprise. Then he pushed up his sunglasses and slipped the money into his back pocket.
“I can wait,” the driver said. “If you have somewhere else to go.”
They shook their heads, opened the door, and got out.
“You tell my cousin I drove you today, yes? When you get back. You’re on a trip, yes? But tell him when you get back.”
They waited for him to drive back down the unpaved road through the forest. “Don’t worry,” Vang said, and reached for the copper fish, wanting to touch it, but changed his mind.
They headed in. The brief burst of a ceiling fan spinning above them. There was another fish in the small lobby, this one made of gold and standing on a pedestal. It was gleaming. The floors, too. Above them hung a chandelier. They caught the scent of flowers. The sound of trickling water. It was the most opulence they had encountered since the farmhouse, and they didn’t move, suddenly distracted by it all until a young man standing behind the reception counter called to them and smiled.
It wasn’t him.
Behind the receptionist, on the wall, were room numbers and large hooks for the keys. All the keys were hanging on their hooks. Prany and Vang glanced at each other and then they asked if there was a room available.
From somewhere down the hall came faint music. A slow ballad Prany thought he recognized.
“Only one?” the receptionist said, continuing to smile, looking at Prany and then Vang.
“Yes.”
The receptionist said if they wanted two separate rooms he could offer them a discount.
“Are we the only guests?” Vang said.
“Two rooms,” the receptionist said, ignoring him. “It might be more comfortable that way. And a discount.”
“Only one,” they said.
The receptionist regarded them, their clothes. He asked for identification.
This was the moment they had been curious about. They had no identification. They had their papers but they were supposed to be on a bus crossing the country by now. They opened the envelope and passed a handful of money over to him and said they had forgotten to bring their papers, that they were very tired from a long trip, that they were teachers at a school, and they were heading back home to Vientiane and wanted only to spend the night. They handed him another stack of money to be safe.
Whatever the receptionist was considering was unreadable. They waited, holding their breaths. The sound of trickling water seemed to grow louder. Then the young man took the money and selected a key from the wall. As he slid it across the counter, he asked if they needed help with their luggage. They said no. He smiled again. There were maps on the counter of the area if they wanted to take a walk. There were also flyers promoting “self-sustainability” with brightly colored illustrations of farms and lush grass.
They asked if there was a restaurant, and the receptionist pointed down a hall. Then he looked around, leaned forward, and said, quietly, “Please. No sex stuff, okay?”
They didn’t know how to respond to that.
“Okay,” Vang said, and they went to the restaurant.
There were five tables in the room. They sat in the corner by a window with a view of a small garden. They had the restaurant to themselves. Prany placed his hands on the tablecloth, feeling the texture of it. Outside, a child wandered the garden path, shouting on occasion at someone they couldn’t see and pointing at the soil. They had seen so few people today, but it was still unbelievable to Prany to be seeing someone other than those they had seen for years. To see them unharmed. Unbelievable to be seeing different clothes. To be seeing a child.
The receptionist appeared by their table, this time wearing an apron. He fumbled with a notebook and wet the tip of his pen with his tongue. They asked what the kitchen was serving, and he pointed behind him at a chalkboard on the wall. There were two things. Vegetables and rice. And, to their surprise, meat and rice. In the camp, they had never seen the animals they had raised after they had brought them across the fields to be slaughtered. The way all the animals’ gaits changed as though they understood that something different was about to occur, and Prany unable to look into their eyes.
They ordered four servings of each. The young man hesitated, wondering if he had misheard, so they said it again: four of the vegetables and rice, and four of the meat and rice. Then
they asked what kind of drinks, and they ordered everything he listed. Sodas, beer. They asked if there was anything else in the kitchen that wasn’t on the menu. The receptionist had stopped writing. He said they probably had some papaya and some kaipen, and so they ordered all of that, too. They took out the envelope and gave him another stack of money. He pocketed the bills without looking at them and hurried away. They would do everything to get the manager’s attention.
Outside, the child trampled a plant. Not long after, a young woman appeared in the garden and knelt by the ruined plant and began to salvage as much of it as she could. She was perhaps Prany’s age and wearing slippers. Prany watched as she rolled up her sleeves to collect the dirt that had fallen on the stones of the path and carried it back over into the garden. Over and over she did this, somehow avoiding getting dirt on her clothes or even on her slippers.
Prany studied her profile. Her patience. Her resemblance to the man they were looking for. There was no mention of a family. Did it matter? It didn’t to him. He glanced at Vang, but the doctor was looking down at the section of the floor between his feet and rapidly tapping his chest with his fingers. Prany returned to the woman out the window: she brushed the dirt from her hands and left, ducking under the low branches of two trees.
Where was the food?
As the minutes passed, Vang still tapping his chest, Prany began to wonder if this was all a hallucination. That these last years of planning had been a hallucination. That any moment now someone would appear and clap or begin to laugh, maybe Auntie herself would appear, and then the lights would go out and the daylight would vanish. That the woman and the child outside and this inn would vanish. That the loudspeakers would blare, rattling their eardrums like a detonation, and it would turn out that they hadn’t left the prison at all, and this was another one of the guards’ games. And that the man who had interrogated them for years was waiting for them in that same room that had turned Vang so quiet.
For a moment, this seemed possible.
But the food arrived. All the food arrived. They could smell it everywhere now. It was everywhere. They leaned over the table and ate. At first, they ate with shyness and then almost violently. It was dry and not very warm; the meat was tough and the rice was almost raw, but they tasted flavors they had forgotten existed and ones they had thought of so often that Vang began to cry silently. He wiped his eyes and kept eating. They didn’t speak. They drank their beers and ate and opened the colorful bottles of Fantas and drank them, too, shocked by the sudden sugar, some of it spilling from their mouths onto their shirts. They kept eating and drinking. They ignored the receptionist watching them from the kitchen door. No one else came into the restaurant. They ordered more Fantas and beer and one more dish.
When the receptionist came back again, Prany asked how the inn had meat, had all of this. They slid him more money, and Prany gestured out to the garden and the lobby.
“The manager,” the receptionist said. “He knows people.”
“Where is he?” Vang said.
“He’s a good man. He takes care of us. My family. He’s a good man.”
They slid him more money.
“He hasn’t come in yet.”
“When will he come in?”
“Soon,” he said.
“Tell him to come see us, yes?” Vang said.
“Is there a problem? He’s a good man.”
“No problem.”
They went to the room. They had trouble finding theirs, uncertain of how the numbers on the doors proceeded, but then they found the stairs and went up. They had been given a corner room on the second floor. The hallway smelled of damp wood. Prany took the key and tried the lock but it wouldn’t turn. He tried again. They thought they heard footsteps and stopped, but no one came. Prany passed the key to Vang. The key turned. They stepped inside.
There were two Western-style double beds. Red mattress covers. A brochure, trifolded and standing up. Vang laughed softly. Beds! They turned on the light in the bathroom and saw the folded towels and the toilet. A shower. Then they froze at their reflections in the mirror, their similar clothes, their gauntness, the deep hollows of their cheekbones, and their broken posture. Their age. They stood in silence, avoiding looking at each other through the mirror. They were just bones and old, older.
They returned to the beds. Prany sat on the edge of the one closest to the window, where there was a view of the back of the inn, the paths, the hills. He waited for the child and the mother, but they didn’t appear.
They took off their clothes and folded them carefully on top of the dresser. Prany’s working papers slipped from the pocket of his trousers and he knelt to examine them. He didn’t know what all the words meant. He tore the papers up, Vang’s too, and flushed them down the toilet. He grabbed a towel like Vang had, wrapped himself in it, and went over to the bed. The room was small, but to them it was a palace. He thought he would walk around because he could, but like Vang, he ended up staying there on the bed as though not wanting to leave the borders of it.
He reached over the space between the beds and held Vang’s hand. “What if he doesn’t come?”
“He’ll come,” Vang said.
“But if he doesn’t?”
Vang didn’t answer. Prany kept holding him. He watched as the doctor breathed as slowly as he could. His own heart was pounding, but he focused on Vang’s breathing the way they had practiced, matching his, and as they waited, it was as though he were falling and floating somewhere terribly far and deep and vast. He thought of Noi and the pears he had dropped that had rolled down the banks of the river, the way he had chased after them, and he thought of how he had bashed his head against the wall one day in the cell, over and over again, until Vang woke, pinned him down, and held him.
He remembered the soothing hum of a song coming deep within the doctor’s chest as Vang tried to stop the bleeding with his shirt. Then a joke Vang made about how, in a cell, it was impossible for him to misplace his glasses.
He saw that hall of mirrors in the farmhouse and the woman who had kept wanting to get up, forgetting she had lost the use of her legs. The way they had left her and so many others there, on that last day, unable to move them as they had fled.
That day so many years ago, after leaving the farmhouse and arriving at the schoolyard alone, a helicopter already there, he had gone back for them. Alisak and Noi, the nurse and Vang. He had driven back across the Plain of Jars, seeing smoke rising from a field. A farmer waving a pale shirt, indicating to him someone was alive.
Prany only found Vang. By then, the helicopters had already gone. In their desperation, they had driven across the country, all the way toward the Mekong.
He thought of the papers he had just torn up, floating in the toilet water. He imagined the life that had been given to them this morning and understood it would not have been all that bad. He felt the rhythm of going to work every day and helping a village grow food. It seemed good; it seemed okay. It was something he could have done. He knew how. He could do things like that now. He could help a village and a village could help other villages. Maybe he should. Maybe the reeducation center had been right and they had helped him. Maybe what was waiting for them was wonderful. He let go of Vang, their arms falling.
Prany woke to footsteps. The sudden knock that snuck into him and rattled his teeth. He crossed the room and peered into the eyehole.
There he was. They had imagined this day for so long, but as he opened the door, they forgot to envision that the man standing in the hall by their room entrance was now, like them, older. Much older. That the man who had been their interrogator when they had arrived, the man who had used a hammer on their fingers and who had continued to torture them, who had continued to torture Vang, had aged. His hair was thinner and gray. He had gained weight around his waist and was wearing a collared short-sleeved shirt with a tiny horse embroidered on it. He seemed, simply, like an old father. Someone healthy and at peace.
It was clear
the interrogator didn’t recognize them. They were sure he wouldn’t have. What had they been to him? So little. They had been so little. Information they didn’t have. It took them a year to discover where he had gone, that he had retired and had inherited this inn from an uncle.
“I’m the manager of this establishment,” he said. “I wanted to personally welcome you to the Vientiane Prefecture, the most beautiful place here in Laos, the most beautiful place in the world. All praise, all praise, all praise.”
“All praise, all praise, all praise,” they said.
The interrogator looked over Prany’s shoulder at Vang. If he was disturbed that they were only in their towels he hid it. He said, “Please let me know if there’s anything you need, and I will personally assist you.”
Prany opened the door farther. He apologized for their appearance. He said they had stained their clothes and were waiting for them to dry. He gestured for the manager to come in and offered him a chair by a small table in the corner. The interrogator stayed where he was, holding the bottle of whiskey he had brought with him. He offered it to them, but they declined. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. His eyes stayed on Vang, who was by the window, and they waited to see if some recognition came.
The manager shut the door behind him and locked it. He opened the whiskey and drank it himself. He asked where they were from. Whether they were enjoying their stay. He said he catered mostly to foreign diplomats and that it was rare to have guests of such means who weren’t here officially. That it was quite the honor for him. That he heard they were teachers, but he knew that was not true, though they need not worry, he was most discreet.
Then, more quietly, he asked if they needed entertainment. He said they looked like men who wanted to have some fun. He said, “You like the young entertainment? I know the young entertainment.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said again that he was most discreet. That he knew the best and the youngest. Fresh like the best fruit.