by David Bergen
“At school I was restless and bored. I had a colleague who wanted to raise chickens by feeding them only jacinth. I thought this was absurd and so I fed poison to the chickens, killing them all. For this farce I was discharged from the school.
“My father called an old friend of his who was a professor of art at a college in Hue and asked if I could work there as a librarian. The friend said that this was not possible; he already had two employees in the library. However, perhaps I would like to be a student. My father presented this proposition to me. I was sitting at home, my writing notebook beside me. There was a blue pencil stuck between the pages. I was twenty-six years old. My wife was pregnant. I agreed.
“The fact was I knew something about drawing, but not much. And so I had much to learn. I moved to Hue by myself and went home once every three months. I still suffered from nightmares. On the nights I was home, my wife shook me awake and asked me who I was talking about. I had been calling out various names, and they were the names of my dead friends. I dreamed about ghosts and dead women. I did not tell my wife about my dreams.
“In the darkness, my wife at my side, I was aware of my father snoring beyond the thin wall, and the rasplike breathing of my grandmother. My wife took my hand and placed it on her belly. She did not speak, but I could tell that she was pleased.”
Vu lit a cigarette and closed his eyes. Finally, he said, “I am thirsty. Perhaps Chi will have something good to drink.” He sat up straight and put on his shoes. Ada shifted and watched as he tied his laces. She saw the back of his neck, the hollow between the ligaments.
He said, “The story was much too long.”
“It wasn’t long enough.”
“Yes?”
“What happened to your wife?”
Vu laughed. “She married the dancing police officer.” He moved his hands and arms in a poor imitation of a dance and said, “There was no baby.”
Ada waited for an explanation, but it was not forthcoming. Just that simple fact: no baby.
It was dark when they arrived in Hue. In the taxi, riding from the station to Chi’s house, Ada sensed that the driver was going in circles, and that the scenes passing by were ones she had seen not more than a minute earlier. She turned to look at Vu, who was completely calm.
The house was outside of town. It was large and dilapidated, with broken windows and doors falling in and warped wooden floors.
Chi was a big, overweight man. He was wearing silk pajamas and holding a cat in his lap. Chi asked Ada where she was from and how old she was. He turned to Vu and said that she was beautiful. Vu shrugged. There were paintings stacked against the far wall and Ada asked if she could look. Chi lifted a pudgy hand and said, “But of course.”
The style was very different from Vu’s. Most of the works were abstract with a lot of color, and she found that they did not appeal to her. Vu called out that Chi was famous. His paintings sold for over a thousand dollars each. Chi seemed pleased with this announcement. Ada smiled and pretended to study the work while Vu and Chi huddled closer together and poured glasses of vodka. She heard words that she thought she recognized—why, yes, no, and happy—and once she heard Vu say her name. He turned to her then and translated. “Chi lives alone. He said we can stay for the night. He said you are welcome to look around the house.”
She didn’t want to stay for the night. She wanted a hotel room with a private shower. But she nodded at Vu and said, “Okay.”
She went upstairs and found rooms that appeared not to have been used in a long time. There was dust everywhere, and in one bedroom two mattresses stood against a closet door. From the window there was a view onto a cement courtyard. There was a large tree and a swing hanging from a thick branch. At the edge of the courtyard sat an abandoned truck, quite large, with its bed raised and rusty. It was ancient and army green. Beside it a jeep with no wheels and in front of the jeep, two misshapen bicycles. She continued her tour of the house and searched for a room that might pass as a place to spend the night. There was one room with a mattress on the floor and a mosquito net folded over a wire that stretched between two walls. The mattress had no sheet, just a wool blanket. She stooped to touch the blanket and then the mattress, which felt damp.
Downstairs again, she went out the back door and into the courtyard. There was a pig in a pen, and a few chickens scratched at the dirt inside a wire enclosure. It had started raining and she was cold and hungry. She went inside and sat down beside Vu, who was gesturing with one hand and talking. She placed a palm on his leg and said, “I need food, I’m hungry.”
Vu said something to Chi and Ada heard the word doi. She nodded and smiled.
Chi drove them in his old Mercedes to a restaurant on the other side of town. Ada was sorry that she had not changed out of her short skirt. The air-conditioning was on and she wanted to say that she was cold but instead she bit the inside of her cheek and stared out at the wet streets.
At the restaurant she decided to drink. It would loosen her up, and perhaps Chi would like her better if she were more talkative. She drank a hazy-looking liqueur that Chi had recommended. It was harsh and bitter but she drank it bravely and Chi looked at her with admiration.
He said something to Vu. Vu shrugged.
“What did he say?” Ada asked. She knew it had been some reference to her. Perhaps about her body, or what she was wearing, or the fact that she had drunk the liqueur. She was feeling warmer and welcomed the possibility of something.
Vu said it wasn’t important. “He talks too much.”
“Tell me.”
“He said that I am too old for you.”
Ada, as if she had been waiting all day for this statement, said, “Only twenty years.”
“I am a drunk.”
“I can learn to drink.”
“I like to drink alone.”
“You can. I will be in the next room, and when you call, I will come.”
“You are a silly girl.”
“I’m happy.” Then she said vui, and then said it again except with the word very preceding it. She smiled. Saw that she could have what she wanted.
Chi was watching them. He was eating a brownish soup with squid and shellfish and using his fingers to pick the shells from his mouth. There was a candle on the table, and each time the rain and wind blew in through the open door, the flame flickered and almost went out. At one point Ada cupped her hand around the flame and felt the heat.
They drank and ate and talked in a mixture of Vietnamese and English. Sometimes, because he said he found it easier than English, Chi spoke French.
“Do you understand?” Vu asked.
Ada said, “A little.”
“He’s a show-off,” Vu said. “And a worse drunk than me.”
This was true. As midnight passed and the bottles were opened and emptied, Chi’s tongue sped up. He stood at one point and recited something in English, looking from Vu to Ada. “The Substituted Poem,” he said, and his eyes widened. His tongue clicked over consonants: “I hope my wife can keep down her rutting. Up north, I’ve had to put up with this sad dangler, down south, she’d better sit on her yawning clam. I hope it’s tight and tortuous still, like a gopher hole.” He paused. “And there is more,” he said. He closed his eyes. Sat down.
Vu apologized to Ada. “He is not a very good reader of poetry. Nor of women.”
SHE FELL ASLEEP BENEATH THE MOSQUITO NET IN THE ROOM with the window that looked out on the courtyard. Chi had given her a kerosene lamp and she felt, for a moment, that she was back on her father’s land, in the bunker, waiting for the bombs that would never come. She had brushed her teeth in the kitchen where the water ran weakly from a small spout. She had not asked for a sheet, assuming that there would not be one in any case. She laid two T-shirts on the mattress and covered herself with the wool blanket. Vu’s voice rose to her from the main floor. She fell asleep thinking about rats, willing Vu to come to her. When she woke it was quiet and very dark. She heard Vu breathing. He was lyi
ng on his back on the floor outside the mosquito net, still in his clothes; he had used his shoes for a pillow. She slipped her hand out of the netting and touched his head and the hair that fell to his shoulders. In the dark, she felt for the buttons on his shirt.
“Is it you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, and she felt the slight vibration of his chest against the heel of her hand.
“I thought it was some small animal.”
“I am some small animal.”
She had unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was smooth and hairless.
“I was watching over you,” he said. “Like those angels in fairy tales. Not the dark angels who carry you away to the other side, but the other, safer angels.” He paused, and she could feel his chest rise and fall. “I thought that if I watched you long enough you would wake up. And that is what happened.”
She did not invite him under the netting. The thin gauze between them made her braver, and she touched under his arms and felt his throat; it was just as she had imagined. She unbuckled his belt and, with one hand, tugged at his pants. He lifted his hips, and in doing so brushed against her wrist and she moved her hand across him. She came out from under the netting and lay alongside him, trying to touch as much of her flesh to his as she could. His ankles, insteps, the thin legs. He did not move, did not speak. She straddled him in the darkness, and when their mouths met she discovered that he was not a very good kisser. Or that he did not like it. She tasted alcohol.
She placed her hand lightly over his eyes. Felt the movement of his eyelids. “Can you see me?”
He shook his head.
“Touch me, then.”
He took a long time to come. Perhaps it was the alcohol, perhaps his age, perhaps fatigue. Vu fell asleep curled against her bum. They were under the mosquito net together. He snored lightly, his left arm twitched. Ada was wet between her legs but she didn’t want to fuss with the lamp and look for a bathroom in the dark. She did not fall asleep until the sky began to lighten beyond the dirty window.
When she woke, Vu was gone. She put on a T-shirt and jeans and wandered the second floor in search of a toilet. She found only empty rooms and eventually went downstairs and used the small bathroom off the kitchen. It was a squat toilet, quite dirty. She hugged her knees and stared at the plastic pail in the corner. A cockroach migrated from the pail to the drain. She heard movement in the kitchen. When she came out of the toilet, she saw a young boy who wore only shorts, standing before a single gas burner. He was stirring something in a large pot. He turned toward Ada when she left the bathroom. He said, “Hello, how are you?”
“Good morning,” Ada said.
The boy said that his name was Nhat. He was thirteen years old and Chi was his father. He lived with his mother, but he came here every morning to cook his father’s breakfast. He waved at the pot. “Would you like some?”
Ada declined. She said that Nhat spoke very good English.
“There are more than two ways to skin a cat,” Nhat said. He dipped his head and scooped whatever was in the pot into a bowl.
Ada went upstairs. Her little bag with its meager belongings lay yawning on the floor. She was light-headed and shaky. She sat on the floor and recalled that Vu, just before he came, had grasped the hair at her crown and pulled her head backward and, after, he had kissed her neck and described how it looked in the dim light of the moon. And now, in the brilliant light of day, he had disappeared.
When she arrived back in the kitchen, she asked Nhat if he had seen Vu.
“Hoang Vu is my uncle. He drove away.”
“When will he be back?”
Nhat said that he didn’t know. “I am sorry,” he said. “My father is upstairs.”
Ada pretended nonchalance. She ate a banana and sat in the front room looking at the doorway and the light that spilled onto the warped floor. She walked outside into the courtyard. Someone was sweeping leaves in the neighbor’s yard. Voices, the yelp of a puppy, cry of a small child.
She bought bread from an old woman passing by the front street on her bicycle and ate it sitting on the porch, looking out across to the welder’s shop beyond the trellis of Chi’s yard. When Chi finally came downstairs, he said good morning. He was dressed in shorts and a large black T-shirt. His legs were stubby and bruised. He smiled and bowed slightly. “Vu went into town early.”
He sat beside her and ate an orange. He said, “Vu is a lucky man. It has always been that way for him. He is full of luck. He survived the war. Then he became a painter and has done very well. People admire him. Now he has you.”
“And there will be others after me.”
“Perhaps.”
Ada said that she didn’t believe in luck. She said that whatever happened, happened. This might be called fate or it might be called luck, or it might be fact. She preferred to think of it as fact.
Chi said that might be true some of the time. He rose, breathing heavily, and walked into the kitchen. Ada heard him sharpening a knife. The blade against the whetstone and then the shuffling of his feet as he moved out into the yard. After a few moments a high-pitched squeal of a pig came from the courtyard and it did not abate. She rose and went and looked out into the courtyard. The son, Nhat, had tied the pig’s feet and was sitting on its side, as if it were a hassock. Ada stood just inside the doorway and shuddered slightly. She wanted to but did not leave. She did not turn away.
Chi took a plastic pail and held it under the pig’s neck. There was a black wire looped around the pig’s snout. Nhat pulled on the wire and forced the snout back as Chi pushed the blade of the knife into the animal’s throat. Ada heard the tearing of flesh. A thin rope of blood hit Chi’s chest. The pig bucked and the boy rode him. The screams were higher now and they filled the courtyard like some ancient and infernal call. Ada wanted to cover her ears but she didn’t; she knew that Chi was watching her. The pig sang and with each sucking squeal a fresh rope of blood arced out over the ground. Gradually, the howls became muted and muffled and then, quickly, as if a curtain had fallen across the scene, the pig died. Chi castrated the pig. He held up the testicles for Ada to see, grinned, said, “Very large,” and threw them into the bucket of blood. Then he cut off the pig’s head with a rusty saw while the boy held the ears. Chi’s arms and legs were bloody.
Ada felt dizzy and her breath came in quick gulps. She turned away and walked back into the house and stood in the large front room. She could hear Chi and his son talking. They laughed. She tried to remember what Vu’s hands felt like. She imagined a white room with a bed and clean sheets and a window that offered a view of a perfectly clear sky. She went to the toilet and washed her hands and face, and when she was done she smelled her hands. Upstairs in the room she’d slept in she gathered her things and then wrote Vu a note telling him that she was sorry. She told him not to worry, she would get back to Danang on her own. Then she went downstairs and out through the front door and onto the street, and she began to walk.
She knew the direction of the train station, but she did not know how far it was. She walked for about an hour, past roadside cafés and small factories, and then she entered a confusion of cars and bicycles and trucks, and a man on a motorcycle called out, You, and then again, You, until she turned to him and cried, “I do not know you.” He laughed and drove away. She bent her head and carried on, watching her feet as they moved, aware that a window had been flung open onto a view of an alien and foreign place, and then, just as suddenly, it had closed.
The road was straight but at some point she turned left and then right and then left and so on until she halted, breathless, and held her arm out for the next available cyclo. It arrived, at its helm a boy who seemed not to have the strength to pedal her. But he did. Out of the bedlam of the streets and on toward the station, where the ticket master told her that the train to Danang would leave almost immediately.
WHEN SHE GOT BACK TO HER HOTEL IN DANANG, THE DESK CLERK handed her two messages. The first was from Elaine Gouds, who said
that she would be at Christy’s the following evening around eight and if Ada was available, she should join her. The second message was from Jon. He had called and left his number in Hanoi. She phoned him immediately, but no one picked up, and when the answering machine cut in and she heard a voice with a slight European accent, she hung up.
She tried once more a little later, and again there was no answer, but this time she left a message. She said she wanted to go back home. She wanted him to come back to Danang. “Please,” she said, and she hung up. After, she looked at the phone thinking that if for some reason this wasn’t the right number, how ridiculous she must have sounded.
Late that night Jon phoned. Ada asked if he had gotten her message. Before she could say anything else he told her that she should visit Hanoi. His voice was light and cheerful. “For a few days at least,” he said. “It’s done me good. It might do you some good. There’s Lenin Park, and the old quarter’s great. It’s a fascinating city. We can go back to Danang together after.” He went on to explain he was staying with someone who worked for the UN. “He’s a Dutch man a friend in Vancouver told me about. In case we needed something. Andries. I don’t know if he has room in his apartment but maybe I can find you a hotel nearby. How are you doing, Ada?”
She thought of the answers she could give, that she was lonely, that she had just come from Hue and had spent the train trip fighting off a dread that had left her breathless, or that she needed Jon right at that moment, but she said none of this and instead told him she would call him in a few days, and she hung up.
THE SKY AT NOON WAS WHITE AND THEN A FAINT BLUE APPEARED and by late afternoon a pinkness had arrived, washing down to the tops of the trees. She had spent the day aimlessly on the rooftop, and now when she stood to go down to prepare for her meeting with Elaine, her figure cast a long shadow across the rooftop. In her room she poured some scotch and sipped at it as she thought about what she should wear. She chose a dark short skirt and a sleeveless top, and then put on some makeup by the dim light of the bathroom mirror. She wanted Elaine to see her as strong, as someone neither given to nor swayed by petty judgments.