by David Bergen
Ada said that she liked the idea of their father spending time with Elaine Gouds. Elaine was clever and she had a privileged woman’s allure and their father must have been intrigued by her confidence and her sharp beauty. They were quiet for a time as they walked alongside the river.
“What will you do while I’m gone?” he asked.
She said she didn’t know. “Wait for you.”
Later, they went up the street to the airline office, where Jon bought a ticket to Hanoi for the following morning. Ada stood there watching him and was aware of the sharpness of his shoulders and the soft bristles of his freshly cut hair.
Jon left for the airport early the next morning. Ada said good-bye to him at the hotel entrance and then went to the café across the street. At first it felt good to be alone, but back in the room later she saw Jon’s empty bed, panicked, and wondered why she had let him go. At loose ends, she read and then showered and read some more. At one point she thought of Thanh’s party and of Jon and Jack, and she recalled Vu riding her down the lane to the ferry and how his silence had made her feel safe. She thought that she wanted to see him again. She liked his presence and that he had known her father. His address was among her father’s things.
That afternoon, she took her map and walked up Quang Trung Street, past metal forges and a glass blowing factory. She paused at Ong Ich Khiem Street. It was a hot day, and she had forgotten her hat. She stood in the shade of an awning. The sun had tired her out. She sat down on a red plastic stool and took a bottle of water from her backpack and drank slowly, watching the street. A bread vendor passed by, a woman on a bicycle.
When she stood finally and continued walking, she found that she had lost her sense of direction. She stopped a young boy, pointed at the map, and said a street name. The boy grinned at her and spoke quickly in Vietnamese and pointed in the direction Ada had been going. The boy asked for a cigarette. Ada gave him one, though he must have been no more than thirteen. She left him squatting by the gutter, smoking, hugging his bare knees. She carried on and eventually came to the street she had been looking for. She followed the small lane and found the number on a green gate. Everything appeared locked, the gate, the door beyond the gate, the shuttered windows. She called out and from inside the house came the sound of barking. She looked around for neighbors, for movement, but saw nothing. She stood close to the gate and waited for a while and then, disappointed, found her way back to the hotel.
That evening it began to rain and she ate in a small restaurant that was actually a boat on the harbor. An old man, who might have been a waiter or the restaurant owner, sat in the corner, his head on the table, sleeping. There were no other customers. She drank a beer and ate crab and fried vegetables with rice that was full of small pebbles. After dinner she found herself in a taxi going back to Hoang Vu’s house. She believed that, if she remained here in Danang for a while, she would be able to discover something new and essential about her father, something previously concealed. With the conviction of these thoughts she experienced a strange feeling of hope. The slap of the windshield wipers in the rain lulled her into a sense of calm and safety.
The green gate was unlocked and the shutters of the house were open now and lights glowed from the front room. Ada asked the driver to wait. He didn’t understand. She moved her hands out toward the house and said, too loudly, “I will go out. I will come back. I will check.”
“Chick,” the driver said. He held out his hand for the fare.
Ada paid him and said, “You wait. Right?”
The driver grinned and nodded.
She got out of the taxi, closed the door, and the driver left. Ada raised her hand to call out but at that moment a dog rushed at the gate and snapped at her. She jumped back and said, “Shoo,” but the dog kept on barking until a young girl appeared. The girl said something and threw a rock. The dog yelped and circled to the back of the house. Behind the girl was Hoang Vu. He asked Ada in. Ada said that she had been there earlier in the day, and that she wasn’t usually so impatient, however she had been free for the evening. She shrugged and smiled and waited to see where her explanation would fall. She had come out of the rain but still her hair was wet and she brushed at it with a bare hand. They were standing in the sitting room; the doors were open and gave out onto the garden. Vu, when he said her name, stretched out the first vowel. His voice was low. He asked her to sit.
In the room there was a cello case and a piano and there were also many paintings and sculptures. Ada was sitting beside one of the sculptures, made from what looked like concrete and iron, which depicted five men bent over and carrying enormous weights. Vu said that the name of the piece was Carrying Cannonballs up to Dien Bien Phu. His name was scratched onto the base.
Ada said she liked the shapes of the heads. “My sister lives with an artist,” she said.
Vu took in this information. He smiled and said that her sister must have good taste. He offered Ada a beer. Or whiskey. She noticed his arms, the thinness and the veins against the dark skin. His shirt was unbuttoned and she saw his narrow chest.
She said she would prefer whiskey. He stood, and as he left the room she noted that he walked carefully as if judging each step, and that he held his hands slightly out from his body, a kind of balancing act. When he returned and handed her a glass of whiskey, she asked about the little girl. Was that his daughter?
His niece. “My sister lives here as well. I don’t have children.” He called out, twice, and the girl appeared. She wore a yellow dress with white lace trim. Black flat shoes. Her hair was in braids. “This is Phuong,” Vu said.
Phuong clasped her hands and said, “How do you do?”
Ada smiled and said hello.
“Phuong plays piano. Would you like to hear her?” He made a motion with his fingers and spoke quickly. Phuong shook her head.
“Yes, yes,” Ada said. “Please.”
Phuong nodded this time and went over to the piano. Lifted the cover, pulled the bench toward her, and sat. She played a short simple piece that Ada recognized. Phuong’s back was straight, her toes barely touched the ground. She played by memory and when she was done she stood and curtsied and then stood off to the side, sneaking looks at Ada as Vu explained that his sister taught music at the local high school. “Flute, cello, violin, piano. She is very talented and so, as you can see, is her daughter. Bach. I love Bach.”
Phuong slipped from the room and returned with a plate of chocolate wafer cookies. Held them out to Ada, who took one. Phuong turned to her uncle, who waved her away. Mouselike, her small flat feet barely scraping against the floor, she left the room.
Vu leaned toward Ada. “Now, tell me, what brings Ada Boatman to see Hoang Vu?”
Ada said that she was interested in finding out about her father. “He’d written down your name. You told me that you met with him. So here I am. Silly me.”
“There is nothing silly about this. It is wonderful to spend time with the beautiful daughter of Charles Boatman.” He said this plainly, with no hint of flirtation. His hands were at rest on his knees. He explained that he had met her father only once and that they had spent the evening together. “A good man,” he said. He lit a cigarette. Offered Ada one. “I never saw him again,” he said.
“My father died,” Ada said.
Vu said that he knew. He had heard this at the party and also again through Thanh just recently and he had not been happy to hear this news. He was looking over her head when he said this and then he sighed and his eyes met hers and then moved over her face and took in her shoulders and arms and the rest of her body. He looked at her face again and said he was sorry. Ada said thank you.
Vu said that it was an odd thing to thank someone for expressing sorrow about a father’s death. Did she not think? He said, “Two nights ago, on the ferry, you were not well. And so we couldn’t talk. But now, you are better.”
Ada said, “I was wondering if my father said anything. If he told you something about himself.”
“When your father was here I am afraid that we drank a lot. And that I did most of the talking. Even so I would have a difficult time relating what I said, let alone what he said, but we talked of many things. Of poets, of your country, of his children, yes, of his return to Vietnam. He told me he had read and admired a certain novel by one of our best writers.”
“That’s the novel then. By Dang Tho. I’ve also read the book, thinking I might find something in it to explain my father. Or what he saw in himself.”
“And you have found this something?”
Ada shrugged. She said that perhaps all men who had fought in the war would find something in the novel to relate to. “It’s a very strong story, full of sadness, and I know that my father’s experiences in Vietnam produced sadness.”
“Dang Tho writes with great certainty and brilliance. He tells his own truth. However, I have a brother in Hanoi who works at the writers’ association, and he says that there is more than one fish in the sea, that Vietnamese literature has many very good books, and isn’t it too bad we can’t translate those for the foreigners.” He held up the bottle of whiskey. “More?” Ada nodded, and as he poured she saw once again the thinness of his wrist. The whiskey, the warmth of the room, Vu’s physical proximity, all of this gave her a feeling of comfort. She raised her head and leaned toward the intimacy of Vu’s voice and said, “The police believe that my father killed himself.”
Vu made a humming noise that was almost inaudible. He said, “I had heard that. It was told to me and I thought that this was possible but it was not from the horse’s mouth. Is this what you think? That he killed himself?”
“Yes,” Ada said.
“I am sorry about this. I saw unhappiness in your father.” As if considering this, Vu paused, and then he said, “Several years ago I met an artist from Chicago. There happened to be an exchange of Vietnamese and American artists and she came to Danang. We fell in love. It was foolish love, but it was love. She wanted me to come to America. I said, ‘I cannot leave my country. I love it. This is my place. Why would I want to live in Paris or L.A. or Chicago? What language would I speak? No, Vietnam is my country, and though it has its faults, I will stay.’ I suggested that she stay in Danang. She did not like that idea. So, she left.
“When I told my sister, she laughed. She said this: ‘That woman will pull your heart from your chest and leave it on the floor. You are the jasmine sprig, she is the field of buffalo dung. She will betray you. She will love you and walk away. She has a passport. You don’t. You are making a fool of yourself. She has white hands that are smooth and her soft skin is seducing you. Marry a Vietnamese girl, they do not smell like cheese and sour milk. A Vietnamese girl will wash your face and take off your shoes when you come home from work. This girl will run off with other men. She will dance to the Bee Gees late at night in small bars and then come home and expect you to have dinner prepared. She will buy jewelry and waste your inheritance. She will take you away to Chicago, where they eat food from tins and women sleep with men who are not their husbands and large groups of people have sex. She is too beautiful. She doesn’t speak our language. She wears short shorts and her legs are long and white. Other men will want to touch those legs and she will let them. You are Vietnamese. You eat pho for breakfast. She eats cornflakes. If you have children, they will speak English. She is not a good artist.’” Vu paused and smiled. “My sister has strong opinions.” He lit a cigarette. Said, “Most of this was not true, of course. Except for the last part. Her art was not the best.”
The dog had come back into the room. It nosed Ada’s leg and flopped over. Ada was quiet. She had listened to Vu talk and she had smiled. She didn’t know why he had told her this story; it seemed too comical, too far-fetched, too self-centered, and maybe even made up. It seemed more like some set piece that he recited as a sort of warning to every foreign woman he met. Still, his voice had taken her to another place and she wanted to stay in that small room with Hoang Vu, she wanted him to tell another story. He showed little curiosity about her and this was disappointing in a way. She tried to imagine him falling in love with the artist from Chicago. She wondered if he fell in love only with other artists. At the end of the evening, when he said that he would take her home, she said there was no need.
“Of course there is a need,” he said. “It is raining and a taxi will be difficult to find and you cannot walk at this hour.” He disappeared and came back wheeling his bicycle. “My car,” he said, and he laughed.
And so, she sat with one of her hands on Vu’s waist, the other holding an umbrella, the rain nevertheless dripping onto her back. Vu weaved through the streets. He did not speak. At one point he sang a brief song and then stopped. Ada wanted to rest her head against Vu’s back, but this time she had no excuse, she was not sick. And so she held his small waist and felt him breathing in and out. She imagined a wraith.
At the hotel she handed him the umbrella and thanked him for the evening. For the ride. Vu nodded. His face was dark as if carved from some ancient and nearly extinct wood. Then he was gone. His shirt glowed in the dim light of a streetlamp, and then he disappeared into the black rain. Ada climbed the stairs to her room. She undressed and showered. Passing from the bathroom to the bed, she saw herself in the mirror, her shape, fleeting proof of her own existence.
SHE SAW HIM AGAIN THE FOLLOWING MORNING. THE RAIN HAD stopped during the night and the sun was out but even so it was a cool morning. He brought her the bicycle and said it was hers to keep until she left the country. He had painted it black. She asked him when he had found time to do this.
“At night,” he said. “I do not sleep well. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all.”
They were sitting in the café across from the hotel. As Ada ordered a breakfast of eggs on rice and coffee, she noticed Yen standing in the café entrance, talking to one of the waiters. She turned to look at Vu and then shifted her gaze back to Yen, but he had disappeared and only the waiter remained.
Ada felt a brief moment of pity for the boy but then shrugged and asked Vu if he was hungry.
He said no and lit a cigarette.
She said, “You smoke too much. You should eat instead.”
Vu said that the cigarette was a friend and it was hard to give up a friend. Besides, he had eaten early in the morning with his sister.
Ada imagined him sitting across from his sister, bending over a bowl of rice, the lines of the chopsticks dissecting his wrist. She could smell him. A breeze passed across the table and it carried his scent and she smelled soap and something else, a hint of some spice, cilantro perhaps, maybe ginger. He had a beautiful face. She tried not to stare, then she said, quite abruptly, that she wanted to go out to the village her father had visited. “I guess I could ask Mr. Thanh to take me there, but I thought you might want to come instead and translate for me.”
“I’m not a translator. That is Thanh’s job.”
“I know. It’s just, I don’t know, I thought it would be easier with you.” She was embarrassed and wondered if Vu could notice this.
That evening, he called on her. He gave her a Chinese ink drawing of three boys squatting and playing marbles in the dirt. The lines were uncomplicated and round. “Very simple,” he said. “Not brilliant.” She said she loved it. She had seen boys playing in the street, just like this. She invited him up to the rooftop and they sat at the table. A breeze came in off the harbor and brought with it the smell of fish and salt water. Vu said that he had found out where the village was and they could drive out the following morning.
He said that the light was different from this height, that there were fewer shadows and the lack of shadows changed the colors of objects and the sky itself. He said that even her skin was a different color.
She said that she didn’t know how to see color or light.
“So,” Vu said suddenly. “What do you think, do you want to go dancing?”
“With you?”
“Of course. I don’t dance, but we can watch ot
her people dance.”
“Wait here,” Ada said, and she left Vu on the rooftop and went to her room. She changed into a red dress whose hem was possibly too short but she liked the idea of dancing and the dress was suitable. When she climbed the stairs she found Vu leaning over the balustrade, gazing out at the city, and she stood beside him. He turned to look at her and he lifted his right hand and lightly touched the back of her neck.
The club was in the back of a restaurant. Through the kitchen, past an old woman boiling lobster in a terrifically large pot, and into the din of recorded music and flashing lights. They sat at a corner table and drank Singha beer. It was very dark and loud, and occasionally Vu leaned over to say something into Ada’s ear. There was his mouth, the rasp of his solicitous voice, and a hand on her arm. “Go ahead, dance.”
She tried to pull him up, but he refused. And so she danced alone, to music of the seventies, and in the midst of the crowded floor she caught glimpses of Vu in the corner: his dark suit, the flashing lights revealing his face, his hand at his brow, the glowing cigarette. She could still feel his hand brushing across the back of her neck. When she returned to the table, Vu was wistful. He said, “Ten years ago I would have been severely questioned for talking to a foreigner. Today we can sit here and you can dance and then come back to talk to me and nobody bothers us.”
He paused, lit a cigarette. He crossed his legs and clasped his hands. “This is good,” he said. “You and me. Now.”
A boy, probably no more than eighteen, approached Ada and asked if she wanted to dance. She shook her head. He looked mournful and asked, “Are you sure?”
She shook her head again.
When he was gone, Vu said, “You see, everyone envies me.”
She did not dance again but instead watched Vu as he talked to her and she thought about his hand touching her face. Here, in the bar, he seemed more cautious, and once, when she put her head close to his, he smiled and pulled away and said that the beer was making her too happy. They left the bar late and walked up toward the hotel. The pavement was uneven and Ada had difficulty walking in her shoes. Vu said she could hold on to his arm if she liked. She accepted and pressed against his shoulder slightly as her right hand held his sleeve.