Most of the shopfronts on Pham Ngu Lao are open to the street. I pause to check out a hair salon with a row of orange, 1950s-style upright hairdryers; a pharmacy lined wall to wall with jars of strange dried and mangled things; a jeweller’s with cabinets full of the brightest, most yellow gold I have ever seen. Surely it can’t be real? But my main focus is the footpath itself: it’s like an obstacle course. I weave my way around stalls selling cigarettes and newspapers, dry biscuits and vodka; a man mending a bicycle; women crouched over baskets of prickly fruit and small speckled eggs; children who block the way with shoeshine boxes and trays of postcards and chewing gum.
A man with no legs drags himself along on a homemade trolley. He looks about sixty. His hands work like oars, hitting the ground over and over. His palms must be tough as leather. He grins toothlessly up at me and I am trying to smile back but he is already gone.
Sweat drips down the sides of my face, trickles down my stomach.
When a hand-painted sign advertises The Smiling Café, I slip inside. The first row of tables is bathed in sunlight but the rest of the room is dim and airless – cave-like. Gold-framed prints dot the walls, of beaches with palm trees, Ho Chi Minh with his wispy white goatee, a young, crooning Elvis. Bare concrete underfoot.
I take a seat toward the back in the path of a standing fan. After the street, the café is a haven of cool and quiet. There is only one other customer, a middle-aged westerner with a greying crew cut. Maybe I could just stay here all day, I think, half seriously; read a book, take my meals, and go back to the hotel after nightfall. It’s such a desperate thought it makes me smile, but I want to say it aloud to someone. I want Jess to amble in, my oldest and best friend, and buy me a stiff drink then let me cry in her arms. I want to stop all this chattering in my head.
A young waiter appears from behind a screen at the back. I order a mixed juice and the breakfast special from the menu: ‘Fried eggs sunny-shine up’. Then I get the Lonely Planet guidebook out of my bag. Its bulk is reassuring. If I just stick to the plan, I tell myself, everything will be all right.
‘A new arrival.’ It’s the guy at the other table. He’s American.
‘Yep.’ I smile, but he doesn’t. He’s got an intense look, vaguely hostile.
‘Straight off the boat.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
When he doesn’t respond, I turn back to the guidebook and take out our itinerary from the middle, slowly unfold it. It’s drawn up in table form, in green ink. I look down at Day 1: Revolutionary Museum and Reunification Hall. Book tour to Cu Chi tunnels. Okay, I think, that’s simple enough. But I keep looking at it until the words blur and all I see is Tim, sitting at our round, scratched wooden table with his notes and his felt-tip and his fennel tea, mapping out the journey we would make, together, to a country that had always held a dark, special place in my heart.
I push my fingers hard into my sweaty temples, suck in air. My head feels tight.
‘What your name?’ The waiter has brought pale pink juice, the eggs and a bread roll.
‘Ella.’
‘El-la.’ He breaks it in two. ‘Very nice. El-la. My name Chanh, Chanh the handsome.’ He flutters his eyelashes.
‘It suits you.’ I smile. ‘Do you know where I could book a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels?’
‘Yes, no problem. I arrange for you. Smiling Café Number One!’
‘You organise tours here?’
‘Of course! Every day! You come here tomorrow morning eight o’clock. Minibus very nice, have air condition.’
‘Okay. That would be great.’ I can do this, I tell myself again. I just have to stay focused.
‘You from Australia, right?’ Chanh says.
‘You must be good with accents.’ I take a tentative bite of the sunny-shine egg, all slippery with oil. It makes me gag.
‘He from America.’ Chanh gestures to the other table. ‘He GI. Boom-boom-boom!’ Everything freezes. My heart skips a beat. Chanh is laughing, shooting an imaginary machine gun into the air, and before I can stop myself I am looking over and meeting the American’s eyes, trying to find it – the war – there in his face. He must be around the same age as my father.
‘Allan,’ he states across the empty space. His gaze is blue and searing.
‘Ella.’
‘I heard.’
He leans back in his chair, hands behind his head, unsmiling, and though it is hard to meet his gaze it is also hard to turn away. I think of the opening scene in Platoon, where Charlie Sheen, newly arrived in-country, walks past a man whose tour is up, who is going home, and whose dead eyes seem to convey horrors beyond our possible comprehension.
‘Allan, good man,’ Chanh is saying. ‘Allan same-same man Vietnam.’
I’ve no idea what this means so I just nod, finish my juice and stand up. I pay Chanh for breakfast with US dollars and he gives me back a thick wad of dong, reminds me to be here in the morning for the bus.
‘Good luck,’ Allan says as I walk out – as if he knows I will need it.
Back on the street, I head boldly off in what I think is the right direction for the Revolutionary Museum, holding the guidebook open at the map of Ho Chi Minh City. I’ve never been good with maps and I think now with a deep yearning of all the times Tim and I argued in the car when I was supposed to be navigating; he’d miss the turn-off because I was daydreaming, or disorientated, or else I’d give him a warning five streets too early. Jesus! he’d say, exasperated. What is wrong with you? I’d shove the Melways at him. You do it then! He would put it on his lap and keep driving.
After a block of dodging all manner of moving and stationary obstacles, mopping sweat from my brow, I flag down a cyclo. I know I’m supposed to bargain at this point but instead I slide gratefully onto the wooden bench seat and hold the map up to the driver, show him where I want to go. He nods and sets wordlessly off into the traffic.
Within seconds we are swallowed up. It’s like being inside an arcade driving game. There don’t seem to be any rules, just this intricate weave of bicycles, motorbikes, cyclos, the odd car, all veering and swerving to avoid one another and get ahead in whichever direction they are going. Lights, when we come to them, are completely ignored and yet I watch pedestrians step out into thick traffic and somehow reach the other side unharmed.
We are overtaken by three teenage boys balanced on one very small bicycle. They point at me and laugh. We pass a cyclo overflowing with live ducks, bundled together by their feet, and then an entire family – mother, father, grandmother, two small children – on one motorbike, seated in a neat row along the body of the engine; the women have handkerchiefs tied around the bottom half of their faces, like storybook bandits. I spot three buses and a truck loaded precariously with new office chairs.
Eventually we pull up outside the white, nineteenth-century French palace that now houses the Revolutionary Museum. I clamber out, pay the driver and buy a bottle of water from a stall beside the entrance.
Admission is free. All the information attached to the exhibits is in Vietnamese and no one approaches offering guidance so I wander aimlessly through the great white ballroom among the guns and medals, a diorama of the Cu Chi tunnels, a map depicting the advance of the Viet Cong onto South Vietnam. The exhibits make me tense; I don’t stop at anything for long.
I pass the famous portrait of a monk burning himself alive in protest against President Diem, and his face through the flames is perfectly composed. I keep moving. There are photos of a mass demonstration and one of emaciated men doing what I deduce is a victory run after the fall of Saigon. Then a shot of a road covered with boots and socks, not a soul to be seen.
I pause at the boots. I am a little light-headed. The palatial windows are nailed shut and the air is thin and musty. I keep staring at those boots – I wonder who they belonged to. There are so many of them. I wipe sweat from my brow. Were they abandoned by the living or were they gathered from the dead? What are we supposed to make of the damned boots? And
suddenly, in my growing agitation, I am back in the school library at lunchtime, hunched over books about the war, heart thumping, afraid someone will walk up behind me and see what I am looking at, ask questions; all prepared with excuses about the headache I have, the essay I am writing, anything but the shameful truth of what my father was; desperate to know, to understand, but with no one to ask. Vietnam? My mother would blanch if ever I mentioned it. She’d refill her glass. We’ve put that behind us, Ella. There’s no need to dredge that up again.
Another tourist walks up and stands beside me. Our eyes meet. She nods, solemnly; I nod back, but my nerves are stretched taut as the strings of a violin. Has this stranger guessed the awful truth? Is it written on my face? I take one last sweeping look around the room and walk out, skipping the upstairs exhibits and the Soviet tank out back.
I stand in the sun on the corner of Ly Tu Trong and Nam Ky Khoi Nghia with my guidebook, holding on to it like it’s some kind of flotation device. I notice my hands are trembling. I’m just one block south-east of Reunification Hall, formerly the Presidential Palace, where Tim wanted us to go next, where the Communist tanks pulled up on 30 April 1975, where the Viet Cong flag was unfurled, where the war ended. But Tim isn’t here.
I wave down a cyclo and ask the driver to take me back to the Hotel Van Mai. I have seen as much as I can stomach. I want to get inside my dingy room and bolt the door, make it all go away.
I climb out on the wrong side of the street. The traffic is dense, it never stops; it comes from all directions, all the time. I try to cross. I keep stepping out and stepping back. At my feet is a dead sewer rat squashed flat as a pancake. Its little arms and legs are splayed wide open as if it were in full stride when disaster struck. I can’t do it. I can’t cross the fucking road!
Then a cool hand slips around my wrist. It’s the boy with the newspapers from last night, the very same one. This must be his patch. He guides me through the traffic. I flinch with every step.
At the other side, we face one another. ‘Madam, you buy newspaper. Vietnam newspaper very good,’ he insists.
I pick up the Vietnam Investment Review because it’s in English. ‘Embargo Lifted’ is printed in big block letters across the front page.
He takes my money. ‘Next time you buy from me, okay?’
‘Yes. And thanks … for helping me.’
He shakes his head and snorts derisively before walking away, his small body disappearing into the hustle.
The woman at the desk is cracking open shiny red seeds with her teeth, eating the kernels then dropping the empty shells onto a neat little pile. I ask for the room key and she pushes the paper sack towards me. I take a seed, try to crack it open, but it crumbles in my mouth, shell with kernel. Her face doesn’t move as she indicates the scrap heap. I put my mangled seed there. She cracks open another and then passes me the small, perfect kernel. I hesitate, thinking of her teeth, her wet lips; bacteria; disease. Then I eat it. It tastes smoky. She smiles at me, for the first time. Tears come to my eyes, they come rushing up. She doesn’t seem to notice.
‘You give me passport,’ she says.
I give her my passport, she gives me my key.
Vietnamese senior politicians have reacted with optimism to the prospect of better economic links with the United States, following President Bill Clinton’s announcement that the 30-year-old trade embargo has been lifted.
‘I think the immediate step which should be taken is to move towards normalisation of relations between the two countries,’ said Finance Minister Ho Te.
I read the paper and sip the hot tea that was left in a thermos outside the room. The tea is bitter and smells like henna. There is a constant clamour from the street below. I don’t know how I’ll ever go back out there.
Te said his office was now preparing to provide the support and necessary assistance, including tax incentives, for all potential investors and entrepreneurs in a post-embargo era.
‘US firms can and are welcome to enter the Vietnamese market,’ Light Industry Minister Dang Vu Chu told VIR. Chu predicted that American firms such as Phillip Morris, Coca-Cola and American Express would be among the first to engage in direct business links with Vietnam.
So today will make history, I think: 4 February 1994, another chapter closed on the war. After decades of isolation, Vietnam is opening up again to the world, like some rare orchid. Old enemies coming together to make cigarettes and soft drink. How weird that I should be here at this time.
But it’s a much smaller piece on page six that captures my full attention; that I read through twice. Apparently, a joint US–Vietnamese military team on a field search in north and central Vietnam has found human remains that might be those of US servicemen listed as missing in action – MIA. Both parties hailed the search a success, the largest since joint operations began in 1988. The remains will be examined in-country, and those believed to be American will be forwarded to army forensic laboratories in Hawaii.
I think of the boots and socks on the black and white road. I picture femurs and fibulas on stainless-steel trolleys, people in white coats with silver tongs, probing for answers.
Only six Australians went missing in Vietnam; over five hundred lost their lives. My father was one of the lucky ones who returned unharmed, all in one piece. I used to picture him strolling through the front door of our Brunswick home in slouch hat and greens, bright sunlight behind him, like Jesus, arms open wide. But four years later, just after I started school, he walked out again, to take a job as a chef somewhere up north, Mum said, and this time he vanished completely, never to be seen again.
For years I waited for him to come back. Maybe he got lost out there, I’d think, in my dreamy way. Or something very important must have held him up. I would ask Mum, When will Daddy come home?, and she would say maybe he didn’t have money for the ticket, or he must be too busy at work. She always told me that he loved me very much. But when I turned ten and there was no birthday card for the second year in a row, I cried inconsolably and Mum told me then that he wasn’t coming back. Why? I asked her. It didn’t make any sense. She said he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. She never did have a good answer.
I throw the newspaper onto the floor and walk over to my pack, reach down deep inside and pull out the black drawstring bag. I take out his remains. They have been with me wherever I have gone, for as long as I can remember.
I take out the broken watch that I found in the bottom of a drawer in Mum’s room – heavy, old-manly, with its stainless-steel links and dull, worn clasp. There is the short wooden spoon, handle bent to the left, that Mum said he liked to cook with. He was the cook in our family. Three birthday cards; two photos. The powder-blue toothbrush he left behind, bearing the real and genuine marks of his teeth. And, most precious, the stuffed lion he sent when I was born and he was stuck in training in Queensland, made from rough yellow cotton, a mane of looped orange wool, a face painted on with two big eyes, half crossed.
I gather these things together on the table beside the bed. A shrine to my missing father. But I leave the marbled blue folder in the bottom of the pack because that was Tim’s idea, to bring that stuff here. I don’t want to dredge all that up.
THREE
Day 2: Tour Cu Chi tunnels and Cao Dai temple (Check out VC propaganda film!)
I wake disorientated, confused. For a sliver of a second I think Tim is there, beside me; everything back to normal, the way it was. Any minute he’ll throw his arm over me and make one of those wordless grunts I spent five years of mornings decoding. But even as I let myself imagine it, I am remembering: he is gone. There is no one here but me.
I try to sink back down into sleep, eyes clamped shut, but it doesn’t work so I sit up. My body is bathed in sweat and I can hear my own breathing, shallow and uneven in the empty room.
I find my watch on the floor. It’s almost nine.
‘Fuck!’ I say aloud, but the silence that follows is even deeper.
Tim would never h
ave let us miss the bus.
I fall back on the bed, draw my body up around me, and, with a kind of relief, give in to the pain.
I weep without making a sound. I cry for Tim’s fine blond hair and his elegant hands; his knobbly knees and the muted sound of him typing in the study. I cry for the humdrum pleasures of wheeling my bike down the hallway before cycling off to work at the bookshop, of coming home to the smell of his chickpea curry. I cry for the sudden and breathtaking loss of our future, our dreams. I cry because I am so terrified of being alone.
I cry for all I have lost and it seems I have lost it all, but nothing happens – no one comes – and eventually I stop; still as death.
Somehow I know I have to keep moving.
Under the shower I hold the nozzle directly over my face. The cold water is scalding at first but then it makes me numb. I gaze down at my body – pale and slight, insignificant. I run my hands over my small breasts. Even they appear forlorn, abandoned. I forgot to pull the net down last night and my arms are covered with mosquito bites. My feet look childlike in the man-sized rubber shower slippers. I am ridiculous, a joke, a reject.
I turn off the shower and dry myself; by the time I have dressed, I am sweating again.
When I get downstairs, the desk woman is standing at the pond sprinkling crumbs from a bread roll. I hadn’t realised there were fish in there. I go and stand beside her and watch them, three white carp with bulging black eyes moving sluggishly up for food.
‘What your name?’ she asks after a bit.
‘Ella. What’s yours?’
‘Hien.’ She hands me a chunk of bread to crumble. ‘What your age?’
‘Twenty-four.’
The Rainy Season Page 2