Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel (Modern Southeast Asian Literature)

by Ho Anh Thai

  A bottle of cognac after a funeral is as necessary as a good long sleep undisturbed by nightmares. All three of us drank in silence. After a while Bóp opened the wrapped package.

  A brassiere fell indecently onto the table.

  “Cốc was right. We’re drinking the bottle he won in the bet,” Bóp said as he curled his hands as if to choke someone. It wasn’t an accident that although his name was Bắc, his friends called him by the Western name Bob.1 While studying at Construction College, he fell in love with a female classmate. It was a passionate affair. Those who don’t talk much often use a private language to express themselves: the language of hot passion, which is basically the same as insanity. Whenever he felt anger, or jealousy, or was just irritated, he would chase his lover all over the school. They would run from the first floor to the second. From the second up to the third. Chasing her with all his might, he meant to catch her at any cost. And every single time he caught her, he choked her. It took ten of their schoolmates to disengage them. After he’d tried to strangle his sweetheart three times, he was expelled. For a whole month afterward he continued to lie in wait to try and choke her. His two friends had to watch him constantly to prevent him from doing it again.

  Then Bóp applied for a program in culinary arts. He was as dull as a bear, but naturally good with his hands—and good at cooking. Thus it was that when Phũ’s dad was preparing to open the hotel he advised Bóp to become a chef, and then to become his kitchen manager. Bóp studied hard and quickly was able to whip up thirty dishes from the curriculum, sixty high-end gourmet dishes, six dishes he cunningly learned just by listening and observing, and four family-style dishes that he acquired at a high price.

  All of a sudden one day, a VIP’s wife, who was a well-known relation of my own brother Thế, ordered a dish of Winter Solstice Chicken for a party in which she was hosting some foreign guests. Since the open-door market began, this lady had refused to put any trust in state-run hotels. Thế called all of the kitchen staff together—from the old chef that had been contracted after retiring from Government Guest House down to the young chef who had just graduated from culinary school—to ask if any of them had any idea how to make Winter Solstice chicken. Thế was freaking out and sweating. As it happened only occasionally, one was honored to be chosen by the esteemed lady. After waiting until everyone was shaking his head in frustration, Bóp finally spoke up: “Don’t worry, Uncle, you’ll have your Winter Solstice chicken.” But he wouldn’t tell anyone what it actually was. In the end, just one day before the party, with just Thế and a few of Bóp’s intimates around, he finally told us what it was: the deboned leg of chicken stuffed with a blended mixture of ground meat, ground shrimp, and seasonings, with white field cabbage scattered all around (this was kept cold to maintain its crispiness). It was a dish whose name was greater than its substance. Apparently the lady had tried it during her trips to China, both official and unofficial.

  Winter Solstice chicken became the opening dish at the parties she refused to hold at Government Guest House, the only place in Hanoi for politicians to stay. Her foreign business friends lavishly praised and complimented the dishes at the Apocalypse, but who knows if they were sincere or just being polite. I also had to compliment the dishes, even though I could barely force them down, no matter what country they were from. On other days, the lady sometimes decided what would go on the menu. Bird’s nest soup! Two million đồng for 100 grams of swallow’s nests, and a party of eight people would require at least a kilogram. Four taels of gold would just cover it. The customers and boss praised it lavishly as a human and cultural treasure. Culture and humanity all lined up in favor of bird’s nest soup. After the party Bóp winked at me and declared, “That was just fake swallow’s nest.”

  Thế jumped back. “Someday you’ll kill me.”

  Bóp remained impassive. “Don’t worry, Uncle, the cooks didn’t know, and the people eating it didn’t know, so it was a real banquet.”

  Thế almost didn’t accept the lady’s payment for that party. This is how it was with other bigwigs, the kind of offering that would keep the Apocalypse Hotel going until the end of the world. Getting back to Bóp’s story: he studied hard at culinary school. This time he studied well, without a hitch—a good student who gave nobody any reason to expel him. He didn’t love anyone so he didn’t have anyone’s neck to choke. But what was also important was that he’d found an outlet for his obsession with strangling things. He found a way to come to terms with this urge in a calmer manner at school.

  I had an inkling of his new method of satisfying himself during the first Tết that he came back to work at the hotel. That Tết, Thế organized a “hunting contest” and a wild game feast at a hunting preserve about thirty kilometers from the capital. On the morning of the first day of the New Year, we invited all of our customers to come to celebrate by going up to the retreat area. We bought the two hundred thousand square meters of hillside land as an investment, and at a dirt-cheap price. It was fenced with posts taller than a person’s head and it had a bushy longan orchard and a small lake. Early-spring customers, both Vietnamese and Westerners (but mostly Westerners), were carried up to the retreat area. The kitchen and restaurant staff, decked out like authentic ethnic minorities, were ready to greet the customers. The guys were stripped to loincloths, and they carried quivers of arrows on their backs and crossbows in their hands. The women were wearing minority-style embroidered skirts and wicker packs on their backs.

  At the first toll of the gong porcupines, hedgehogs, and monkeys were let loose. At the second toll of the gong the tribal guys and girls and the customers dashed together through the woods, flinging and trampling over the camp, jumping through the bushes, darting through the roots of the trees, chasing after the gang of forest animals. Gradually they found places to lie in wait and to show off their talent with the crossbow. A fox with a bolt stuck through it shrieked and fell. Right afterward, Cốc shot a monkey right in the arm. Before it could escape, he shot it in the other arm. It vaulted out of the tree and ran trampling through the field of grass that ran along the lake. Bóp sprinted in pursuit and disappeared into the grass, which was taller than a person’s head. I kept running after Bóp and the monkey. It ran out onto the edge of the grass, in the direction of the bushes and trees in the garden. It was running awkwardly, from time to time having to support itself by putting a hand to the ground. Both arms were hindered by the bolts sticking out of them. It used one hand to break off the head of the bolt in the other arm, and then plucked it out. Bóp caught up with it as it was going into a bush and grabbed one of its legs. The monkey clawed at him with its bloody hands. Bóp had no desire to roll around frantically wrestling a monkey. Instead, he tightened his hands around its neck. It struggled convulsively. Its tongue jutted out and frothed. Bóp stared down at the animal in its death throes, his hands still wrapped tightly around its neck. The animal’s head slumped to the side and Bóp suddenly trembled and pulled back his whole body. His eyes glazed over in ecstasy.

  That was the first time I had any notion of his icy and bizarre sense of rapture. In time, almost all of the kitchen staff and his two best friends knew about it.

  Now he was sitting still, deeply absorbed, next to the bottle of wine. His lips were pursed and his two rugged hands pressed tightly into each other. He held the bra, kneading the padded cups over and over. Then he wrapped it back up into the paper and put it into the pocket of his shorts.

  “I managed to find the bitch that killed Cốc,” he said to Phũ.

  He stood up.

  “Did you deal with her yet?”

  “Not yet. Can you come with me tonight?”

  “Why not?”

  The two of them turned to look at me. I looked back at them in silence. This meant that I wasn’t going. I didn’t yet believe it. There was no way that girl had killed Cốc. But I left the two of them alone. They had the right to believe whatever they believed.

  Bóp left the room silentl
y. He returned to the staff and their specialty cooking. I sat back down next to Phũ.

  Later, Phũ waved to me from next to the window. It looked out on the courtyard behind the kitchen. Bóp had changed his red shorts for a pair of flashy short pants. He was attempting to pull down the head of a goat. It was a great big goat and it struggled to remain on its feet. Its two forelegs stuck out as straight as rods while its two back legs scrambled backward with all of their strength, trying to escape Bóp’s grasping, pincer-like hands. Both contenders were totally silent. Bóp wasn’t even breathing hard in this uneven battle of strength. The goat was using all of its energy to try to pull away. But it had no strength left, not even to bleat. The struggle continued until the goat collapsed. Its four legs twitched hopelessly.

  It was then that Bóp began to do the deed that brought him such pleasure. He released the goat’s horns and then slipped his hands around its unlucky neck. From the beginning it looked like a gesture of love, as if they were embracing. Suddenly the goat jerked and bounced up. Its four legs flailed.

  Bóp began to squeeze.

  Bóp squeezed.

  Bóp finished squeezing.

  The time it took me to mentally compose those three sentences, from the beginning of the undertaking to its conclusion, was about two minutes. Bóp finally released a primal sound of ecstasy as his burly form shook with an orgasm that soaked his pants. The kitchen staff called Bóp the master gunner. Every time he would step out to strangle a goat, many pairs of eyes would be glued to the window, furtively watching everything, like a secret peep show. When he returned, his eyes would be glazed over and he would be satiated. As he went to change his pants, all the spectators would wink at each other. Although they had to have goat meat every day, Bóp didn’t always strangle them. Usually they just chased the goat around the courtyard, beating it until it was covered in sweat, in order to sweat out its rank goat odor. The meat didn’t suffer when the animal just got excited and hot.

  This time Bóp didn’t toss aside the dead goat and go to change his pants. He sat down, yanked the goat’s neck upward, and turned its head back and forth, looking at it over and over. As if he recognized some person or other. As if blissfully identifying a dead enemy. As if satisfied because he’d been able to vent his hatred.

  I instantly understood whose face he saw in the lifeless visage of the goat.

  A few days later, I was sitting with Phũ in the office when Bóp walked in. He told us that he’d found the house of the bitch that had killed Cốc. He’d learned her routine. He was going to destroy her today—the sooner the better.

  The language of action has more effect than any speech. Bóp opened his tennis bag and took out a pair of gloves the color of human skin, a spray can of anesthetic, and a roll of rope. This meant that he’d chosen to deal with her in the same way he dealt with the goats. Afterward he’d disguise the rope as the noose she’d used to hang herself.

  Certainly I was not going to participate. But neither would I try to talk them out of it. If people are careful in one area, they’ll be incautious in another. One cannot judge who the fool is and who the wise man is and so one should forbear to give advice to others. These young men in their twenties could take care of themselves and take responsibility for their own actions.

  I just sensed that there was going to be a disaster. I often had premonitions of catastrophe.

  I left the two of them in the room and went to the coffee shop. As I sat there, looking through darkly tinted glasses, I could see a group of Westerners of different sizes who had just come in and were milling in front of the reception desk, waiting to check into a room. This was the bumper season for the hotels.

  Thế came in and sat down at the table with me. The waiter brought us two cups of coffee right away, just as if we were two regular customers.

  “I heard that the state is going to take down signs in foreign languages.”

  When he said he “heard,” he meant that it was the truth. This is a country where all information can become public knowledge. The topics of important conferences were out in the street for ordinary people to discuss just a few hours after the meetings concluded. The big shots couldn’t manage to hold back on issues that caused such swelling in their hearts, and had to spill their loads onto their esteemed ladies. Their esteemed ladies, in turn, had to pour out what they’d heard to other esteemed ladies throughout the city. Word traveled from mouth to mouth and over telephones—both with and without cords. Those esteemed who had humble roots immediately passed the information along to the network of ordinary people.

  Thế was a repeater station on this information network. He was a good-looking young guy who had worked as head interpreter for many leaders. After work trips overseas, his colleagues came home with thoughts of “You go your way and I’ll go mine,” but Thế was quite contrary. He knew that his connections with those politicos helped him make his living. He’d faithfully make his rounds, visiting the big shots and their families, patiently conversing with the wives. These ladies had been naturally affectionate toward the young translator during his lightning-quick friendship visits abroad. In those countries he’d even made time to go shopping with them, deftly translating the names of sensitive products, and so it was that Thế came to be appreciated by the ladies, who in turn made sure their appreciation was sweetly and smoothly mentioned when they spoke to Mr. Head of Department and urged him to have Thế promoted. Thế rose to the rank of department head himself. At that point everyone had thought that he’d keep going higher but, all of a sudden, he submitted a request to resign from his post. He was forty-four years old at the time. Sixteen more years and he would have reached retirement age. But Thế had collected enough capital to build a large hotel instead. Of course, people who have participated in politics are rarely able to stop being politicians; all they do is to switch their political methods to literature or business or science. Thế was no exception. He had constructed a protective and supportive network and all of his connections continued to help him. The bigwigs clucked behind his back that he was a fool who had destroyed his career at the halfway point. But their women smacked their lips about Thế and didn’t consider him a fool at all: his hotel was so big, so impressive, and so luxurious.

  Who knows who is foolish and who is wise in this world? The wise and the foolish alike all die. Only a few people truly know what life is, and once they know, once they’re enlightened, they don’t die. They only live out their miserable lives. I mentioned that during my years and months on the sea I read many Buddhist works. I felt sorry for the Buddha. He had reached enlightenment at thirty-five years of age (although, to tell the truth, if I was ever truly enlightened it happened this year) and for forty-five years more the Master would have to live within the world of those who would venerate him, admire him, believe in him, but maybe never actually understand him. The Master is a lonely and pitiful figure.

  I reflected on this as I sipped my cup of coffee, only vaguely aware that Thế was talking to me. Suddenly, I jumped back. A woman had pushed the door open and walked into the front room, straight to the reception desk, and then found the staircase and walked upstairs. She looked like someone I knew but I couldn’t recall whom. I wondered why I’d met so many people who’d seemed familiar to me lately. My friends teased me that everywhere I went I bumped into people I knew, spoiled youngsters that I was afraid to hit in case they were actually my kids. “Never mind,” I thought. “Just let it go.” I smiled to myself and tried to concentrate on what my brother, who was more talented than others, was talking about.

  He was complaining that people often mistakenly called the hotel the Ngày Tận Thế, which was actually Vietnamese for Apocalypse Now, the restaurant owned by old Đắc Tùng. He’d just lifted the name wholesale from Francis Ford Coppola’s film about America’s war in Vietnam. “That old man,” my brother was saying, “was so ignorant of politics that he had decorated the inside of restaurant with replicas of helicopter rotors, parachutes, and
US combat helmets. A lot of people were responsible for perpetuating that ignorance by allowing him to do business in an atmosphere that reeked of war.” But he, Thế, was different; he was a very aware man. He had thought very hard from the beginning before he named his hotel the Apocalypse—it was certainly not Apocalypse Now. His choice of name was actually a reference to the final book of the New Testament, Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, in which John of Patmos foretells the end of the world.

  “If, as seems likely soon,” he said, “I don’t have permission to use foreign words for my hotel name, I’ll change it to Khải Huyền or Thiên Khải.”2

  Thế paused, looking at me as if he were cracking a joke.

  “And I’m afraid that the Captain’s Studio will have to be renamed Xưởng Vẽ của Thuyền Trưởng.”3

  I grinned slightly to let him know that whatever he chose was okay. Thế burst into laughter to show that he was just teasing me. At that moment, Phũ walked in.

  “Dad, Uncle Đông, come to my room, right now.”

  His face was pale, his lips trembling.

  The two of us rushed after Phũ back to the office. He carefully locked the door, and then led us toward the bathroom. Bóp was swaying back and forth like a mannequin in the middle of the large bathroom. A length of rope, tied tight around his neck, hung from a hook on the ceiling. His face had turned a livid purple from the accumulated blood. His eyes were bulging and his tongue protruded.