Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel (Modern Southeast Asian Literature)

by Ho Anh Thai

  In that moment of panic, I was still conscious enough to find a knife from Phũ’s drawer in the office. I cut the rope while Thế grabbed him and laid him down on a long couch. He pressed Phũ’s cold hands and thoroughly examined the chilled body.

  “He’s been dead a long time already,” he said, and released Bóp’s stiff hands, letting them flop onto the couch.

  Phũ told us that the two of them had just been planning how they would approach that girl’s house. He was going to remain outside and keep watch while Bóp went inside to do the deed by himself. Phũ had jokingly told Bóp to remember to put on a diaper or else he wouldn’t be able to escape with soaked shorts. Phũ had then left the room for about thirty minutes so that Bóp could finish his business. When he returned, he found his friend hanging there in the bathroom.

  Now Bóp lay motionless on the couch. Phũ closed his friend’s eyes. His shorts were totally soaked and smelled of chestnuts.

  “Okay, now we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to get Bóp out of here,” Thế announced. He was always the first one to return to reality. Dead people, from any angle, were still dead, and the cause could be figured out later. He certainly didn’t want trouble with the authorities and he wanted the fact that someone had died in the hotel known even less. If it came out, then “Doomsday” would truly be a fitting name for the hotel.

  But it was also impossible to take Bóp back to Cốc’s house, where his buddy’s ashes still resided. The neighborhood around there had been in an uproar as a result of Cốc’s death. The only option was to entrust the body to the hospital mortuary, covered with an iron lid. Those iron lids that had thwarted the ardent attempts of all the rats outside.

  Thế went to call the hospital director on the phone. He called Bóp’s mother and father in Saigon. It was always essential for Thế to do the proper thing. He took on the responsibility of making all the arrangements for the grief-stricken relatives. “Uncle Đông and Phũ can take the body down on the earliest flight,” he said into the telephone. “Yes, I know that his parents and siblings can’t come up here right now.” Click.

  The hardest work still remained: somehow we had to get Bóp’s body out of the hotel. Naturally, we couldn’t just go past reception like a guest checking out. Nor could we carry the body out the back door for all the workers there to see. I found a cardboard refrigerator box in the storehouse. The three of us stuffed the 88-kilogram body into the box. We had to put him into a sitting position, bending him upright so that he could fit into the box. Then we put the box onto a pushcart and Phũ pushed him out the back door. I brought a minibus around and we put everything and everyone in it and drove to the back gate of the hospital.

  But once we’d gotten the refrigerator container into the mortuary, we had a problem. The body was determined to remain in a sitting position, stubbornly refusing to settle prone on the table. It was as if, in the last moment of his life, Bóp had become ashamed of his wet, sticky shorts. The body was already cold, already stiff, and already curled up. Nobody could get it into the coffin. I suddenly remembered something. I had some experience with this kind of death. I drove the van back to the hotel, grabbed a few bottles of vodka, and then searched the kitchen for a bit of ginger, a thermos of boiled water, and a bucket. When I got back, we placed Bóp on a granite-topped table. He sat there, still leaning over and curled up. The three of us, covering our noses with handkerchiefs to block the death stink of the morgue, used the vodka and the hot ginger water to rub down his joints. After that we could pull his arms and legs loose and get the body to lie on its back. His two hands were pushed down as if hiding something on his stomach. His legs, which had been so beautiful, were twisted and arched inwards. Even so, we were finally able to dump his body into the coffin.

  Phũ and I got on the airplane quite early. The metal coffin was quietly brought on board by the airline staff. We boarded early, but the seat next to us already had a passenger in it: an old man around retirement age who seemed content and relaxed. The old man strained his eyes slightly when a stewardess, pinching her nose shut, hurriedly ran through the rows of seats which were still only partially filled, and sprayed the air with some kind of deodorant that smelled like the hospital. The man clicked his tongue and complained how nowadays that’s the way it was: passengers had to board planes that weren’t really cleaned, only deodorized and air-conditioned.

  We were sitting right next to the flight attendants’ galley. A group of pretty boys were grab-assing with some willing young ladies. A lady with her hands clasped in front of her was standing before a small bowl of incense with a tray of airline food in front of it. Her protective spirits were flying for free. The pretty young gentlemen and willing young gentlewomen put on serious faces while the lady softly recited her prayers and made her offerings. As soon as she finished, she squeaked out a final shrill note and the whole group broke into raucous laughter. One hoodlum took the chance to jump in and ask the spirits to help him get his hands on the nice breasts of a virtuous girl.

  “These are monsters, not human beings,” the old man said to me. “Watch, now they’ll get into some kind of superstitious nonsense themselves. And they should be scared,” he said. “I’m very scared of flying these domestic airlines. Only when we’re back on the ground will I believe that I might actually survive. Once before, we were about forty minutes into a flight when the cabin suddenly became as hot as a furnace. Westerners were sweating through their shirts and vomiting all around me. I looked out the window and saw the Red River again beneath the plane. Apparently the airplane had had mechanical problems and we had already turned back around. Later I heard that the ventilation system wasn’t working and if the plane had kept flying then everyone would have burned to death. And that’s not all! One time I was flying to Saigon with a high-level delegation. The plane had had its preparatory maintenance a few days before; nevertheless it circled the runway once, and then circled again a few times before it could finally lower its landing gear. After the big shot who headed the delegation came back from that trip, he decided that if he had to go somewhere, he would make sure that it was on a plane with a foreign pilot. He had been appealing people to use domestic products, but his own life had to be guaranteed by foreign pilots and foreign medicine.”

  I didn’t want to talk. I pretended to be staring intently at a newspaper, but really I couldn’t read a word. Phũ’s face was scowling as if he were looking into another world. But the old man wouldn’t stop bending our ears. “I’m suspicious of these newly purchased airplanes,” he said. “It’s clear that they just made them look good; they’ve obviously been only cosmetically refurbished—dressed up to look new, and then sold at an attractive price. They’re better than old planes, but not as good as new ones. The developing countries are the garbage piles of the developed world, where they cast off their discarded things. The only ones who benefit from the deals they make are the ones who sign the contracts. People think that these airplanes have a lifespan of decades. Then one of them suddenly dies mid-flight. It’s no wonder people are superstitious. And the only thing that one can do on one of these planes is pray it won’t fall out of the sky.”

  It was as if the old man were obsessed with death and kept speaking about it to calm himself down. In spite of all his talk of death, his face remained calm and emotionless. He was someone who liked to talk just to please his mouth; he just liked to scare other people. I wanted to tell him that on this flight he was traveling with a corpse. But at that point Phũ made me move to another row. The flight was pretty much empty, with everyone sitting a few rows apart.

  At the airport, Bóp’s corpse was picked up to be taken to the place where the funeral would be held. Again, bouquets of white flowers. Bóp’s father lifted the shroud over the body to see the face of his child. He cried as he held his face. Tarzan man, 185 centimeters tall, 88 kilograms; his face had been made up carefully so he looked like he was sleeping. “Father will follow you, Son,” he cried. “Why didn’t you
try to wait for me?”

  A band played the traditional eight-tone music with all the traditional instruments, glittering like a military band. The music surged, each line rising to greater and greater levels of rousing elation: “Heart in prison, heart in prison / I love you, love for a thousand autumns . . . / Don’t listen to the things the girls say, / Don’t listen to the things the girls say, / Don’t listen to the things the girls say.” Northern funerals always had heartrending songs. Such music was meant for the living people taking part in the funeral ceremonies. The funerals here in the South had nothing but cheerful tunes. Happy songs so that the departed would leave peacefully, with an untroubled mind. Or was it the reverse: Sad music for the dead; happy music for the living?

  That night Phũ and I drove through the streets of Saigon on a custom Prawn 750-cc motorcycle as bulky as a scorpion. Phũ remembered that Cốc’s dog was at home by itself, and that it might not have anyone to look after it for the next two days. He ran to the telephone booth on the street and called Hanoi to ask one of the guys from the hotel kitchen staff to go to Cốc’s house to feed the dog. Cốc’s dog and Bóp didn’t used to get along. Sometimes Bóp would get excited and attempt to choke the dog. But after Cốc died, Bóp had brought his ashes home, and put them up on the altar, and the dog had been stricken with panic and confusion. Every day, when Bóp would light the incense, it would lie beneath the altar and sadly hang its head, its eyes brimming with tears. Bóp was touched by its display of loyalty and they began to live together in peace. No more strangling. Now that both of its masters were dead, how could the dog bear to go on living?

  The two of us went into a nightclub. Two polite dancing girls came over and invited us to dance. Phũ gave them some money and said that we were discussing business. They said thanks and left. We were drinking coffee when a lady carrying a glass of orange juice came over and asked to sit with us. I glanced questioningly at Phũ, but he immediately shook his head. A quiet apology: “We’re not from Hong Kong or Singapore, we’re not overseas Vietnamese, we’re just discussing a little business.” The lady politely withdrew. Why did she look so familiar? Why did I see familiar faces on women wherever I looked? Just looking at her, I could tell she was a high-class, semi-professional call girl practicing a flexible, improvised trade with Westerners, Chinese, Japanese, Americans, and the real overseas Vietnamese types.

  We weren’t disturbed by anyone else. Phũ announced that the story that Bóp had hanged himself was a lie. Phũ had seen something that nobody else had noticed: around Bóp’s neck were strangulation marks from someone’s hands. It meant that Bóp had had done to him exactly what he’d planned to do to that girl. That wretched girl must have snuck into the hotel and killed him. And she couldn’t have done it alone with her soft hands; surely she must have a formidable gang that gave her the strength to carry out something so difficult so quickly. “Too bad,” he said, “that I didn’t ask Bóp for the address they were going to. But no problem. Hanoi is no bigger than a hand; Hanoians run into each other every day. After dealing with this, I’m going to find that bitch and make her pay.” He alone was left from his group of three friends. He would live for all three of them. He would exact revenge for all three of them.

  We drove aimlessly through the nighttime streets of Saigon. Many women’s faces on the streets. Once again, so many of them looked familiar.

  THREE

  The two of us didn’t need to return to Hanoi. The culprit appeared in Saigon. It was Phũ who discovered her. He dashed into the room, grabbed me, and pulled me out after him. His hard hands shook with burning hatred. He launched us on the high-displacement Prawn. The bike had been borrowed from Bóp’s family during the days of the funeral. We rolled up to a street vendor on the side of the road. Looking around, I thought the area looked like a gathering place for the lowest-class petty traders. There was a dubious-looking hotel with dubious-looking guests and dubious-looking drinks. Just a bit of coffee and a glacier of ice in a glass, making the whole thing look like a polar ice cap.

  People sat, doing nothing but sipping their drinks. Even so, everyone had to order a cup of coffee, a cup of salted lemon drink, and a cup of rau má juice. Every cup was two-thirds full of ice to be chucked away. As Phũ sipped, he kept his eye on the other side of the street. A small road. On the other side was a mini hotel. Every once in a while people came in or went out.

  I was suddenly dumbfounded. The lady pushing open the door and stepping into the hotel was the same woman that had rented the Captain’s Studio the day before. She was still in the same blouse and skirt. Still had the same rippling but frizzled hair.

  I glanced across the street. Phũ was still sitting there impassively, waiting. If I didn’t go with him, if we didn’t have to go and ambush somebody else, maybe I’d have gone over there and talked with her.

  Ten minutes later, the door of the mini hotel opened. Another female stepped out. I was dumbfounded again. I immediately recognized her; I had no need for Phũ to tap me on the leg to get my attention. It was none other than the lady from the beach at Bình Sơn. The lady with the unlady-like name of Mai Trừng. The same person that had been chased by Bóp before and was currently being chased by Phũ. The young lady who now got on a Honda 70 that was parked in front of the hotel—clearly a rented motorbike—and then took off.

  “Let’s go home, Uncle.” Phũ stood up and paid the bill, then walked leisurely to the parking area. His face was calm and composed.

  “It will be finished tonight,” Phũ said. “Dry and cold. Simple and final.” There was no misunderstanding what he meant.

  My heart pounded. I wanted revenge. But at the same time I wanted to repress this feeling. And, finally, I had a feeling of presentiment about the tragic end that would befall my nephew if he kept flying like a moth to the flame. Is she the flame? Had she been the one to burn up Cốc first and Bóp afterward? I was starting to understand this, but I could not understand how she could have done it.

  But Phũ didn’t take us in pursuit of the prey. Instead, he took us back to our room in the hotel. He seemed to be content knowing that his quarry had no way to escape.

  I tried to persuade Phũ that this girl couldn’t be the one responsible for the deaths of Cốc first and then Bóp. But the more I tried to convince him, the more I felt that my argument was without reason. I was worried that Phũ would also die. Did I still know fear? Wasn’t it I who had doggedly planned revenge after the death of my two-year-old? If my experienced brother Thế hadn’t intervened in time, then I might have committed a murder.

  But now I couldn’t just fold my arms and stand there as I watched Phũ head to his death. To celebrate Tết last year the two of us footloose guys had gone to the gathering at the Đống Đa knoll. During each lunar month, one should not travel or trade during the fifth, the fourteenth, and the twenty-third days. In fact, each person that came to the celebration on the fifth day presented another opportunity. Phũ had managed three breast-gropes and a waist-squeeze among the many women in the jam-packed crowd. Quite contented, we worked our way out of the crowd and collapsed on the ground next to an old fortuneteller who was yawning and swatting at a fly. In front of him was a deck of Western cards. “Choose seven,” he said, and quickly flipped over the cards. He sat motionless. Finally he managed to mumble, “Young man, you should go home and think what you can do—this year, not only will you die, but you’ll also be arrested.” Phũ punched him straight in the face and laid him out.

  “Fortuneteller bullshit,” he muttered. “I haven’t killed anyone, so ain’t nobody gonna kill me.” He stood up furiously and scattered the deck of cards with a vicious kick.

  Now I remembered the words that the fortuneteller had said to Phũ. “Not only to die, but also to go to jail,” I said, trying to intimidate him a bit. Phũ smiled insipidly and repeated the words he’d spat into the fortuneteller’s face. He hadn’t killed anyone, so . . . certainly nobody would be thinking about killing him.

  I surrende
red. I abandoned him to fate. Man tries to outdo the heavens. Who knows if he’ll succeed? However it ended, we would finally conclude this incessant cycle of vengeance.

  In 1972, my sister-in-law, not having had time to get to a hospital, gave birth to Phũ in an evacuation zone. During the war the hospital was more than ten kilometers away, and bicycles were the only means of transportation. Instead, she had had the benefit of a village midwife. That midwife had cared for almost everyone in the village—except the deputy village chairman, who had led a group of uncouth youths in pissing in the incense bowl and then burning down the temple of the village tutelary spirit. And except for a widow of doubtful chastity, whose husband had been dead ten years and was known throughout the village, her eyes always darting back and forth, her face always glowing and content, not even trying to hide behind an appearance of sorrowful virtue. And except for a few people who drifted around making their living through theft and fraud . . .

  Everyone else in the village had been blessed by this midwife. Now it was my nephew’s turn.

  Behind the pressed-bamboo screen, my sister-in-law shrieked intermittently, “Thế! Thế! You’ve killed me!” I had just turned twelve and, hearing this, I was panic stricken, afraid she was actually going to die. I ran through the partition. She was lying on her back on a wooden platform, her face completely white, her big belly arched weirdly up into the air. The midwife quickly covered my eyes and screamed, “What’s wrong with you? Someone get this kid out of here.” My aunt ran in and pulled me out. My sister-in-law was still howling: “Thế! Thế! You’ve killed me!” At this time, Thế was serving the Vietnamese delegation at the Paris Peace Talks and everybody here was watching the conference, waiting for the Americans to stop their last bombing raids on the North.