‘This baby was born in 1969.’ Cal touched the typewritten sign under a woman nursing a swollen-headed baby with no eyes. ‘Same year as my mum.’
‘God. Your mum isn’t from the countryside though, is she? I mean, she wouldn’t have been affected.’
‘I don’t know. She was born around here. I guess she never got dioxin dumped on her. I don’t know. She spent some time further south, sleeping in the jungle before they could get a boat.’
I stood behind Cal, waiting for him to move on. A drop of sweat trickled from the base of his skull into the top of his t-shirt. ‘Must make you feel so lucky. So grateful to her for going through all that, getting out when she did.’
‘She was six, she had no choice. My grandparents were the ones who decided.’
‘Grateful to them, then. That they made that choice and got your mum out safely.’
He shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, as it turned out Mum went and had a defective kid anyway. Sydney or Saigon, babies get born wrong and die. Shit happens everywhere.’
He stepped across to the next photo: conjoined twin babies with one leg between them. I walked to the next corner and faced the fan. The warm air stung my eyes, dried my face. I watched the blades spin until Cal barked my name into my ear.
‘You look like an idiot,’ he said and stomped to the third wall of the gallery.
I stayed where I was. My eyes began to weep and so I closed them. Somewhere nearby, a British woman kept saying ‘Bloody hell’ and a couple spoke continuously in rapid French. There was a child’s voice, too, speaking in a language I couldn’t identify. I didn’t take particular note until she began to bawl. I think the idea that this was no place for a child flitted through my head a moment before Cal started yelling, but maybe I’m misremembering, crediting myself with his sensitivity when all I was really thinking was that it was no place for me.
‘Get her out of here! Jesus! Why would you bring a kid in here?’
I took a running step towards him, but my sandal slipped off and my ankle folded in on itself. I stumbled, my face hot, and retrieved my shoe. People who had been chatting through photos of torture and mutation went silent at the sight of Cal rearing up over a woman who knelt in front of the wailing child and a man trying to tug both of them away. A security guard peeled off the front wall and sauntered towards them. I spent seconds trying to put my shoe on, but I was sweating and breathless and afraid of overbalancing. I gave up and hobbled half-shod across the room, arriving at the same moment as the guard.
‘Cal, come on, please.’ I touched his arm, expecting him to shake me off, but instead he shuddered and his shoulders sagged. I held tight to him and managed to get my shoe back on.
‘,’ I said to the guard and pointed to the door to let him know we were leaving. The guard looked younger than Cal. He yawned and, with a glare at the crying girl and her parents, who had not so much as glanced at Cal throughout, floated back to his wall.
In the grounds of the museum, we found a bench shaded from the sun by a US fighter jet. ‘It shouldn’t be allowed,’ Cal said. ‘They should have a rating system or something. I mean, Jesus, a kid wouldn’t be allowed to see that in a movie.’
‘I know.’
‘No, you don’t. How can you know when you didn’t even look at it?’
‘Cal, listen, I know it was—’
‘What? What was it?’ He stood and glared down at me. ‘You don’t know, because you’re so gutless you won’t even look at a fucking photo.’
‘I didn’t need to look at it to know it was terrible. They’re all terrible and I can’t see any reason at all to put myself through that. It’s not like I’m unaware of what happened here. But maybe . . . Maybe it’s different for the Vietnamese. Maybe those parents felt it was important that their daughter see—’
‘How do you even know they were Vietnamese?’
‘They were speaking Vietnamese,’ I said, though I wasn’t at all sure this was true. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Whatever their reasons, I agree with you. It’s no place for kids. I don’t know if it’s a place for anyone except those bloody ghouls snapping photos of atrocities to stick in their souvenir albums.’
Cal ran his hand over the nose of the plane. ‘I think the opposite. I think everybody – every adult – should have to look at those photos. Then maybe . . .’
He had never seemed such a child, standing there impressed against his will, believing that the men who started wars had never seen photos of deformed babies, didn’t know what their weapons did.
I managed to lead him out of the museum grounds, and onto the street where shoe-shiners and moto-drivers and vendors began shouting at us. Cal scowled his way through several transactions, buying a bottle of water, a bag of dried pineapple and a clutch of postcards. I didn’t protest or hurry him along. It was a relief to be back amongst the living.
Back at the hotel, we went together to check on Matthew. He was sitting up in bed reading the Vietnam News, which he threw to the floor when we entered. He squinted at us and my guilt made me think there was suspicion in his eyes.
‘Oh! You had a haircut.’
Cal ran a hand over his head. ‘Yeah. Back in Hanoi.’
‘Sorry. I haven’t been seeing clearly. Tram switched me to something milder this morning and I’m feeling so much better.’ He cringed. ‘More pain from my legs, but better. Clearer.’
‘Thank God for that. Now you can help me sort out this insurance mess. I tried to fill out the forms on my own, but there are all these details I don’t have.’ I went to the desk and grabbed the pile of papers. ‘I’m not even sure these are the right forms. Shouldn’t your work be taking care of all this?’
‘Yeah, yeah, what we’ll need to do- Actually, Cal, mate, can you do us a favour? This medication makes me hellishly thirsty. I’d love a fresh coconut juice. There’s usually a seller up on the corner outside the American coffee place. Can you run out and get me one while Mischa and I start sorting through this mess?’
Cal was cross-legged on the floor, rubbing his dusty feet. ‘Can’t you order some from room service?’
‘I suppose so. They’ll probably bring me that awful watered-down stuff, though. Perhaps I’ll just have a Coke.’
‘No. It’s fine. I’ll go.’ He heaved off the bed, wincing as his feet hit the floor.
‘Thanks, mate. Do you need some money?’
‘Nah. I’ve got it.’ He slid into his thongs and left the room, letting the heavy door slam shut.
‘We walked a long way this morning. All the way to the—’
‘Mish, I need to tell you something.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘No, no, it’s nothing bad, really, I just don’t want Cal to know. Okay?’
‘Of course.’
Matthew rubbed his eyes. ‘I wasn’t down here on work. I took a few days off and came down here for a break. I told Cal it was a conference because—’
‘God, that’s horrible.’
‘Because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I just thought I could pop down, have a few days to relax and then be back refreshed.’
‘Refreshed? After a weekend in Saigon? It’s ninety per cent humidity out there. You didn’t think Sapa might be better? Hoi An, even?’
‘I felt like the . . . the nightlife would do me good. I was feeling a little cooped up, doing the full-time dad thing and I thought it would be better for him, you know, if I popped down here, let off a bit of steam and . . . ’
My face must have been showing the disgust I felt, because he trailed off and closed his eyes.
‘I didn’t realise Hanoi had run out of nightlife.’
‘Mish, I don’t . . . In Hanoi, I couldn’t . . .’
‘What?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘No, actually, I don’t.’
He sank back into the pillows. ‘Anyway, I thought there’d be no harm in it. Just a weekend away. And then this happened.’
‘Why didn’t you call
Henry to come and help you?’
‘Because he wouldn’t understand.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, I know, but you’re not judgemental like him. He thinks his way of doing things is the only right and moral way.’
‘I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore. Whatever this thing is you can’t do in Hanoi – is it illegal?’
‘No! Well, technically it might be, but—’
‘Technically.’
‘You know what it’s like trying to figure out the bloody rules in this place. You can’t question too much or you’ll get in shit just for being interested. I mean, I’ve heard it’s illegal for unmarried people to spend the night together, but no one seems to know if it’s actually true and I’ve never heard of anyone being busted for it.’
‘I’ve heard something like that. Thought it only applied to foreigners hooking up with locals, though.’
He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t help me.’
‘No. Okay. But it’s not – whatever you’re doing – it wouldn’t be illegal in Australia?’
‘No. God, it’s not like I’m molesting children!’ He winced and rubbed his right hip. ‘This is awkward as hell, but . . . I don’t want you thinking badly of me, Mish. I get lonely and . . . and restless. But I’m not like Henry. I’m . . . I suppose I’m a romantic. I like nice girls who still live with their families and would no sooner take money for sex than they’d rob a bank. I like to take them out to dinner and drink wine and talk about movies and books and then, yes, I’m human, I like to bring them home to spend the night.’ He shook his head. ‘And since my home was occupied by my teenaged son – something I’m thrilled about, really, Mish, you know how much I love having him here – but he seems to want to stay for the foreseeable future and I needed some me-time and thought there’d be no harm in—’
‘A dirty weekend in Saigon.’
‘If you must put it that way.’
‘Well. I hate to side with Henry, but it sure would have saved a lot of trouble if you’d just taken yourself off to a local brothel for a few hours.’
‘Believe me, I know. My whole life would be different if I could just . . . The heart wants what it wants, you know?’
‘Heart? Really, Matty.’
‘Yes, really. I love this country and I love its women. I even love its whores, but I’m not attracted to them. The idea of them being with so many men, of their putting on a performance they’ve put on a hundred times. It’s a turn-off. I can’t help that.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more.’ I picked up the air-con control from his bedside table and pumped up the power. The wall unit was the same as the one in my room, but in this space its blasts turned warm before they reached me. I dialled the temperature down to 15 and set the power back to low.
‘So I’ll help you with your stupid paperwork and organise your transfer back to Hanoi and then I never want to hear another word about your sex life again. Okay?’
‘Thank you.’
Cal came back then, flushed and sweating and juggling two young coconuts with straws in the top. He handed one to Matthew who thanked him far too heartily, and handed the other to me. As he bent I noticed three angry pimples sprouting on his jaw line. The juice was warm and gritty, but I drank it anyway.
I left father and son alone for the afternoon and took a to September 23rd Park. I sat under a tree with a copy of an English-language travel magazine I’d found in the hotel lobby. I read an article about shopping for antiques in Paris and wondered if I’d ever go there. When I was at high school, my friend Steph and I used to talk about moving to Paris. We would work as au pairs and take the children we cared for to the same park every day so we could eat lunch together and compare notes on the many gorgeous young Frenchmen who would surely be wooing us.
I’d mentioned this plan to Glen once and he laughed and said Parisian au pairs were all fluently bilingual and had advanced degrees in childcare or nursing and years of experience caring for children and running French homes. ‘It’s not like fruit-picking, Mischa. They don’t take any dumb hick with a high school diploma.’ I thought he was probably right, but I’d secretly hoped that Steph had gone and done it anyway. On the odd occasion I thought of her I imagined her looking exactly as she had at sixteen, glossy black ponytail swinging as she pushed an old-fashioned pram through the Jardin du Luxembourg, being stopped every few metres by twenty-year-old Parisian art students wanting to ask her out for a drink.
Something rustled beside me. I turned and laughed out loud at the sight of a yellow-breasted bird picking at the seams of my handbag. I stifled my laugh and sat still in the hope it would stay. The bag was cheap and falling apart anyway and I so rarely saw birds that weren’t caged or skewered or hung upside down with blood draining through the points of their beaks.
‘Ha! Ha!’ A woman dressed in the green canvas apron of a city worker shook her grass broom at the bird and it squawked once and flew away. She dropped the delicate pink mask from her face and said something to me in Vietnamese. I smiled apologetically and she shook her head angrily, replaced the mask and went on her way.
‘Dirty,’ said a man sketching on a large notepad nearby. ‘She said that you should not let birds touch on your items.’
‘Oh. I see.’
He closed his notepad, threaded the pencil through the wire binding, and squatted beside me. His skin was smooth and clear, but his hair was white and he was missing several teeth. I had an impulse to take hold of my bag.
‘Where you from?’
‘Hanoi.’
‘You travel Hanoi to Saigon, yes?’
‘No. I live in Hanoi.’
The man rocked back on his heels. ‘What? You are crazy!’
‘That’s true.’
‘Ah, I was going to ask for you to marry, but I cannot marry crazy Hanoi tây.’
‘Too bad. That’s why I came to Saigon, to find a nice man to marry.’
He laughed and I recoiled at the stench of rot coming from his open mouth. ‘Ha, ha. Yes, because Hanoi men like this.’ He scowled. ‘No good husband there. Saigon husbands much happy.’
‘Well, I better go and find one then.’
He stood and watched me get to my feet. ‘I have Honda. I drive you your hotel.’
‘My hotel is on . How much?’
‘No, no pay. I take.’
The balls of my feet stung and my back was wet and I had paid almost double what I should have to the driver I’d hired this morning because he’d pretended not to understand my request for change and I was too embarrassed to argue with him in front of a bunch of wide-eyed tourists waiting at a bus stop.
‘Are you sure? I can pay.’
His face morphed into the Hanoi Man scowl. I had insulted him.
‘Okay, yes, thank you.’
He clapped and scuttled off down the path toward the main road. He limped heavily to the left but still I barely kept up. He shouted something to three young men drooped over a row of motos and they stood and watched us approach. When we’d reached the bikes one of the boys rolled a dusty, Soviet-era Minsk from the pack. The man muttered angrily making several fast hand gestures, meaningless to me. The boy shrugged and replaced the bike, while his friend rolled out a newer, almost-shiny Honda. The man thrust his notepad at the third boy and leapt onto the bike.
‘Okay crazy Hanoi tây. , yes?’
‘Yes, please.’ I told him which hotel and climbed on behind him, aware, suddenly, from the parking boys’ leers, that they thought I was a prostitute. Or given the obvious fact I was far wealthier than the man, perhaps they thought me just another old white slut, desperate enough to pick up war veterans in a public park. They leered but did not seem surprised or scandalised.
Is this what happened here then? All these years I could have been making cock runs down to Saigon. Matthew and I could have been travel buddies, meeting up each day for lunch at the pub, to compare notes on the rough trade we’d exploited the night before.
‘I have a friend waiting for me at the hotel,’ I told the man.
‘Okay.’ He started the bike, kangarooed a few feet, stopped. He reached back and took my hands, pulled them around his waist. My fingers locked low on his stomach, my arms sinking beneath the arches of his ribcage. ‘Okay, good.’
Traffic was thick. Faces slid past slowly enough for me to register the distrust. I rested my head against his back, and closed my eyes. My cheek bounced off his shoulder blade, my hair whipped back behind me like a flag. I had enough cash in my wallet to pay for a dentist or a proper set of drawing pencils and an easel. I would barely miss it. In a month, I would have forgotten I ever had it.
We stopped at the lights near the Crazy Buffalo and he leant back into me a little and sighed. Then we roared off again and within seconds juddered to a stop outside my hotel. I climbed off the bike and said thank you. I opened the zipper of my bag, determined to insult him for his own good, but he was too fast. He patted my rummaging hands. ‘I wish you to find nice husband,’ he said and, without looking at me, clunked the bike back out into the stream.
That night Cal and I ate overcooked pasta in a restaurant recommended by the receptionist from our hotel. Our table was in the back, between the obviously badly plumbed toilet and the door to the adjoining karaoke bar.
‘Have you done karaoke in Vietnam yet?’
Cal gave me a look of pure teenaged disdain. ‘Karaoke. Are you serious?’
‘Sure, it’s pretty big here. I’m not much of a singer, but I used to go along with this Canadian guy I was dating. He was pretty good.’
‘Ugh. I have visions of some forty year old in a denim suit, belting out eighties rock ballads while you wave a lighter in the air.’
I laughed. ‘No, no. This was proper Vietnamese karaoke. Marcus said it helped his language skills. I don’t know if that was true, but I did enjoy the delight of the Vietnamese patrons when this tall white guy got up and started crooning “Long Me” like he’d been raised with it.’
Cal dropped his fork into the bowl of spaghetti, splashing watery sauce on the front of his shirt. ‘ “Long Me”? That’s another cultural reference I’m supposed to get.’
Fishing for Tigers Page 16