by David Bergen
It was the night guard of the factory who beckoned. “You, come,” he said, and he led Charles through a small metal gate and into the showroom. He made Charles sit on a rolled-up silk rug. He returned with a glass of water and handed it to Charles. “Okay?” he asked.
Charles looked at his stomach. The knife had barely scratched his abdomen, leaving the slightest trace of blood. He nodded and thanked the guard. A single light shone down on the spot where he sat. The night guard was an old man with bowed legs. He carried a magazine and a cup of tea. Keys hung from his belt. He spoke quickly and then left and returned some time later and directed Charles out to the taxi he had found. Charles offered the guard money, but he moved his hands back and forth and said, “Happy, okay?” and he closed the taxi door. Riding home through the quiet streets, Charles saw the moon and the clouds around the moon. His chest hurt. He could not remember if his attacker had hit him in the chest. He didn’t think so, but he could not remember.
In his room, he showered and then lay on his bed in shorts and waited for a sleep that would not come. He recalled the attack as something that had happened quickly and with little warning. He had been more curious than alarmed, as if he were a spectator at the scene of his own execution, and he wondered at what point indifference had set in. He saw Vu’s long face, the dark high cheek-bones, heard the soughing of his voice.
And then he sat up, as if from a dream, though he had not been asleep. Thoughts had been dipping like swallows in and out of his head. He had discovered a kind of narrative but the story had turned out badly. He put it down to a brief sleep that had produced a nightmare in which his attacker, just before sticking him with the knife, had whispered in his ear, “What we have on our hands is always enough.”
He was shaking. His mouth was dry. He got up and drank some water. The manner of his own death was an important one. To be killed by a wastrel and a drunk in the dirty streets of Danang was not what he had imagined. The man had been missing two front teeth, and contrary to the dream, he did not speak English, neither was he any sort of a philosopher.
Charles sat in a chair and watched the sun rise. It came quickly, red turning to orange and then yellow and finally white. He recalled mornings like this on the mountain when the children were younger, mornings when he sat and waited for their voices or the padding of their feet, and always it was Ada who came to him first, settling into his lap, the smell of sleep on her breath, her bare arms around his neck. “Daddy,” she said, and nothing more. She didn’t need more. Sitting there, her head pressed against his neck, was enough.
ON THE WEEKEND HE TOOK THE TRAIN UP TO HUE. FROM HIS window seat he saw the occasional aqueduct and the cliffs falling away into the fog below and then the ocean breaking through that fog.
In Hue it was cold and windy and raining. He found a small room for ten dollars a night and then walked the streets close to the Perfume River. As arranged, he met Jack and Elaine for dinner. They ate noodles and tiny whole fish fried in garlic. Jack drank Festi, Elaine and Charles ordered beer. The restaurant was cold; rain drove against the shuttered windows. Elaine said that the car ride up had been beautiful. She described the hairpin turns and the color of the ocean far below. Charles watched her as she talked. At her neck was a silver necklace and as she talked she fingered the necklace and sometimes it seemed that her hand wanted to reach across the table, but it didn’t. Jack seemed distracted. He looked out the open doorway or he watched other customers and, once, he struck up a conversation with the owner of the restaurant, a tall man wearing a beret. Later, Charles complimented Jack on how well he spoke Vietnamese.
“How do you know?” Jack asked and grinned.
“Don’t listen to him,” Elaine said. “Jack always says that a good ear helps you hear the tones. Jack thinks he is a singer.”
“And you?” Charles asked Elaine.
“She doesn’t want to speak the language,” Jack said. “Anything that smells of this country, she throws away or deliberately ignores.”
Elaine moved her food around on the plate with a fork. “I enjoyed this fish,” she said. “I like being here, right now.” Her head lifted. “Jack likes to show off, to use his halting Vietnamese, which is really quite elementary. And he thinks that talking to a restaurant owner who wears a beret, that this somehow raises our estimation of Jack Gouds. May I?” She reached for Charles’s cigarettes. Took out one and lit it. Her hand was shaking.
Jack watched her. He said, “When did you pick that up?”
Elaine exhaled. “Oh, long long ago. Before we met. Millions of years ago, in fact.”
Jack said to Charles, “She’s impossible.”
Charles took a cigarette for himself and shrugged. Beyond the open door he saw the rain and a cyclo driver curled up under his canopy.
Elaine said, “Charles and I are going to see the Citadel tomorrow. Aren’t we.”
Charles said that that would be fine.
Jack nodded and said, “Good, good,” and then explained that both tourists and locals were pillaging the grounds of the Citadel, prying up ceramic tiles that had been laid a thousand years earlier. It was a shame, he said.
Elaine said, “We are not the kind of people who plunder. Are we, Charles?”
Charles, trying to save Elaine, said that he knew nothing about the history of the Citadel. He said that history was not his strength, but still he liked walking through castles and museums.
“Well,” Elaine said happily, “that’s exactly what we’ll do.” And she told Charles they should meet there at noon. It was easy to find, in the middle of town.
On parting, Jack seemed to want to repair the evening. He held an umbrella above Elaine’s head and said that he had been bad company. He was sorry. Charles waved the apology away. In the driving rain, he was aware of Elaine studying him, and then her mouth moved and she said, “See you tomorrow.”
He rode back to the hotel by cyclo. His feet and hands were cold, his head felt light, and he saw the images that passed as if they were happening elsewhere and at another time: a man leaning over a pool table; a child crying beside a chicken; a woman sleeping inside her jewelry shop; a boy being beaten with a stick by two other boys while several people looked on and laughed; a basket of bread; a man and a fridge on a bicycle.
That night he sat at a small desk and opened Dang Tho’s novel to the blank pages at the back where he had written the few lines in Hanoi and the date, October 4. Now, he wrote Elaine Gouds’s name. And then he wrote, “In Hue. It is raining. The room is damp and chilly. Ate fish the size of pencils. She is sharper than him by far. Than I am, as well.”
AT THE CITADEL THE NEXT DAY, CHARLES WALKED PAST SMALL iron cannons and foundering sculptures, on down the walkway between two shallow pools, and came upon Elaine sitting in an alcove full of sunshine. He said her name and she looked at him and said that the sun’s heat was making her sleepy. They sat and looked out at the grounds. Several French tourists took photographs of their group by the entrance to the Midday Gate. Elaine said that she had thought of Charles all night. “I couldn’t sleep. The room was cold. I imagined a day of looting.” She laughed. Closed her eyes. Her hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. The marble spiral of her ear. Her eyes opened, caught him looking. He shifted, aware of the sun on his knees.
“Sixteen years I’ve been married to Jack,” she said. “We met in college. He wrote for the paper, I was on the debating team. We moved around a lot at first and finally bought a house in a suburb outside of Kansas City. And then about a year ago Jack started to get restless and to talk about going overseas, doing something different with our lives. We went back and forth, with him really pushing and me resisting. I loved my life. I had started up a small catering business with a friend and I didn’t want to walk away. And then Jack suggested Vietnam and I said, Okay.” She paused and whispered okay again. She removed the cap from a bottle of water and drank. Then she said, “I was thinking about you being here so many years ago. How old were you?”
/> Charles hesitated, then said, “Eighteen.”
Elaine considered this. “I was ten when I first heard about it. I remember things. Or maybe I think I remember. The television reports. The images. That little girl running down the road screaming. The helicopters lifting off of roofs.” She touched his arm.
“I saw that photo,” Charles said. “The one of you with your horse.”
“Albany. I was older there.”
“Did you know Jack already?”
She nodded. “I did.”
“You had a good life.”
“You mean spoiled.”
He said he didn’t mean that. He said that there were times when he wished his own children could have had more.
She asked him then about his children and he gave her the bare facts of his life. Sara, the mountain, the twins, Ada. He said that he had just talked with Ada the week before and that hearing her voice from such a great distance had carved out a space inside him. “Maybe it was her worry for me. I don’t know.” He paused and then said, “We used to go duck hunting together. She didn’t like to shoot very much but she always said if she was going to eat the duck, she might as well kill it. Not a hypocrite, that one.”
“You’re lucky,” Elaine said. “I can’t get anything out of Jane. Sometimes she’ll talk to her father. Never to me. I think she’s afraid that she is me. Or will be me. And she loves Jack. I remember my own father, waiting for him to come home from work. The smell of him, something like ink, the feel of his suit jacket, the way it hung like a real person across the back of the chair. Sometimes I would wear one of his jackets around the house.” Elaine folded her hands and slipped her feet out of her sandals. “I don’t eat duck,” she said.
The heat of the sun had pushed Charles down into himself and her words floated about, here and there, landing, slipping away, returning. He thought she might be waiting for him to jump so that she could catch him.
She said that she and Jack would be taking the children down south to Dalat for a two-week holiday. They’d planned this a while ago. Then she said, “You get to go home soon.”
He shrugged and said he had no immediate plans. He had a three-month visa.
“So, two more months,” she said. Her voice was brighter. She stood and pulled him upward and hooked an arm into his as they walked through the grounds.
Charles said that he didn’t know much history and he would be hard-pressed to explain why the Citadel existed. Elaine said that if Jack were present he would give a running commentary on wars fought and each emperor’s most important lover and the succession of rulers. She said that she preferred it with Charles; she liked the absence of noise. “Jack likes to trample on other people’s space.”
They walked along the gravel lanes into the grassy areas and up onto a plateaulike structure that used to be a courtyard. It was a peaceful place in a state of disrepair. Further on, they found an old man working in the sun, refashioning clay carvings of swords and cannons. They stood and watched him work. A young girl sat beside him drawing in the mud with her finger.
Elaine asked Charles why he was sad. What secrets did he have?
He was quiet for a while and then said that his secrets, if he had any, were small and unimportant. “I don’t know that I am any sadder than other people. Than you, for instance.”
“I’m not sad,” she said. “I refuse to be. I think you are mistaking sadness for longing. I was imagining your caboose. How romantic it must be.” Then, before he could respond, she said that she had had enough of Hue and she thought she might return to Danang before Jack. By train. “We could travel together,” she said. “If you like.”
Charles turned, looked at her for a moment, and said that she should do what she wanted.
“You know what I want,” she said.
“Come with me, then,” he said, and he was immediately sorry. He felt he had nothing to offer her.
“That’s better.” She took his hand and held it.
ON THE TRAIN, COMING DOWN THROUGH THE PASS FROM HUE, Charles said that when he had first arrived in Vietnam he’d come down by train through Hue and on to Danang, and so he’d taken this leg of the trip before. He remembered a young girl on the train, with two birds and her grandmother. The girl had chattered. The birds were noisy. The grandmother was affectionate and seemed happy. Charles said that at that point everything felt normal and good and he’d been quite hopeful. He hadn’t known what would happen.
Elaine looked at him. “What I like best is figuring you out.”
Charles said, “The first time I saw you I thought that you were beautiful but I also thought that you were very self-centered.”
She said she was. “Always have been, in some ways.”
“And that you loved your children more than you loved him.”
“You saw that?”
“I did.”
She said, “I imagine standing at the edge of a rift, and far below there is a deep gorge. You are at one edge, I am at the other and attempting to cross a narrow and treacherous bridge.” Elaine seemed pleased by this image. She sat up and asked, “How far am I on the bridge? Near the middle or just at the beginning?”
They were seated across from a girl who wore tight white corduroy pants. She had a round face with a jag of red lipstick, and an older man, with a thin mustache, was talking to her as if he had hopes of something more than conversation. The girl’s hair was long and dark and Charles was reminded of his daughter Ada.
Charles took one of Elaine’s hands and held it. Her knuckles, the sharpness against his palm. He said, “What you want, I can’t give you.”
She turned quickly and said, “A few nights with Charles Boatman. That’s all I want. I don’t expect anything else.”
“You know that’s not what you want.”
Elaine stood and said she was going for a cigarette. She slipped by Charles, stepped out into the aisle, and walked toward the end of the car. The girl in the facing seat was watching. She probably didn’t understand English, but she was watching and Charles was aware of her curiosity, of how she feigned sleep and shifted in her seat.
Charles rose and joined Elaine, who was standing by the open door of the car. The greenery rushed by and fell toward the ocean. Elaine turned to Charles and began to finger the buttons on his blazer. Then she dropped her cigarette on the floor and ground it out with the toe of her shoe. She put her head against his chest. “Oh,” she said. Then she lifted her chin and kissed him on the mouth, tentatively at first, then deeply. Charles kissed her back. After, she stood hugging herself and said, “I’m shivering.” Far below them the water was green and azure and white and then blue. “Come,” he said and guided her back to their seats, and they sat and after a while she leaned her head against his shoulder and fell asleep. He wanted to wake her, but he didn’t. The girl across from them was still watching.
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN DANANG. THE station was cool and wet. A family of six was gathered near the last car, all dressed in formal wear. Elaine held Charles’s arm as they walked out onto the platform. She said that she wanted to see him. He could come by for dinner that night.
He felt the pressure of her hand and he lifted his head to look past her and he said, “I’m not sure.”
She did not respond, simply hailed a taxi and then pressed her cheek against his and said, “Charles.” Then she got into the taxi and was gone.
He took a cyclo to the hotel. He could still feel where her hand had touched him. Later, in his room, he lay in his underwear on the bed. He watched the ceiling fan slowly turn and recalled her expression on the train as she pushed her head against his chest and said, “Oh.” After she had kissed him and drawn away, he had seen the wet inside of her lower lip and her perfectly straight teeth and the flash of one silver filling. He fell into a light sleep and woke to the ring of the phone and the clear image of himself as a dentist bending toward her and extracting a flawed tooth. Above him the fan still turned. The phone rang and rang. And
then stopped.
Much later, he sat up. Poured himself whiskey and drank. Then he dressed and went down the stairs and out into the street and walked toward the harbor. He followed Bach Dang Street till it curved with the waterfront and then he turned and walked back, stopping at a restaurant that extended out over the water where he had a beer and watched the lights of the boats in the harbor, the ferries passing by.
After he had paid he left the restaurant and followed the walkway, the water on his left now. A strong wind was blowing and bits of garbage blew across his path. For a moment he paused at the edge of the harbor to light a cigarette, and as his hands cupped the match he saw the corpse of a dog, hugely distended, moving back and forth with the waves. Footsteps behind him. He turned as three men in suits passed by. Charles stepped back. He heard the men’s sudden laughter and the wind and the clicking of the palm trees. The bloated moon. A hole had opened up before him.
In his room, with trembling hands, he took out a small pipe and a package of tinfoil, crumbled bits of hashish into the pipe, and lit it and drew. He lay on the bed and ascended with the twisting smoke, up, past the swirling fan, beyond the ceiling and into a night sky hurled through with celestial beings that blinked and disappeared and then blinked again.