I think of Allan – another man without a home. ‘But what about your kids?’ I say, impulsively. ‘Isn’t home where they are?’
Hugh sighs. He picks up his keys and lets them clack against his palm, a nervous habit I’ve come to know so well. ‘I don’t know, Ella. Our family home is gone. But what about you? Have you found the answers you were looking for?’
‘No … but maybe I’m starting to find the questions.’
He nods. ‘You should go to that nunnery, you know. Take some time out from everything, time to think. Read a book. Eat and sleep.’
‘Maybe.’ I smile at his concerned face. ‘I don’t know. Time to think can be bad.’
‘Yes.’
We finish our drinks. It is late. We catch the lift back down to the street but it is hard, tonight, to say goodbye.
‘Well, you take care, okay?’ he says to me when we’re standing on the street outside.
‘You too.’ He turns to go. ‘Hugh?’ I’m reminded of the morning we faced one another in the doorway of Room 513, when he first asked me to lunch. Lonely strangers, reaching out. ‘Thank you for telling me about your mother.’
We hug, squeeze one another tight. Then we get on our bikes and go in our separate directions.
I decide to take the long way home. It is a beautiful night and there is not much traffic. I get up a good speed; the night air rushes through me. I take a detour past the Blue Dragon and peer in but I can’t see Ariel. Then I ride up Hai Ba Trung to the Catholic church, down Vo Thi Sau and back along Cach Mang Thang Tam.
Eventually I end up at the Hotel Van Mai; the night guy lets me in. There’s been a power cut so I use my fake Zippo to climb the stairs to my room, where I light a few of the little red candles; tomorrow I will buy a kerosene lamp – I don’t have to make life harder for myself. I sit down heavily on the edge of the bed.
‘Jesus!’ I say aloud, letting the momentousness of the night catch up with me.
I pick up my father’s watch and put it on my wrist. It dangles brokenly there. I let it fall, with a clatter, to the floor.
I wake on my twenty-fifth birthday, 22 July, to Hien’s voice outside the door, ‘Miss Ella! You have telephone! Your mother!’
I sit up in the bed, straight as a ruler. ‘I’m coming!’ I call back.
I pull on clothes and head downstairs; I have an acid taste in my mouth that I associate with her. There’s a pack of 555s on the front desk that the night guy must have left. I walk over and take one, making motions to Hien for a lighter. She finds matches in the drawer and strikes one in my face. ‘Hurry,’ she stage-whispers. ‘Very expensive!’
I take a long drag then pick up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
‘Ella, my baby girl … happy birthday!’ I can tell straight away she’s been drinking, even though it’s only midday Melbourne-time. Her words run together, softly collide.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Where are you? Shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘Another strike. This government,’ she pauses for effect, and a swallow of something, ‘is ripping the heart out of our education system and we’re just standing by, watching it happen.’
‘I haven’t heard Australian news for a while,’ I say, dully.
‘The city is losing its soul, Ella, everything we’ve worked so hard to create destroyed by a mean-hearted man …’
Months since we’ve spoken and she rings me like this; tomorrow she won’t even remember what she said. The unbearable boringness of it, the disappointment, seems to expand inside me until I can’t even hear her words. I interrupt: ‘I’m well, by the way.’ My voice is whiny. Why don’t I just let her finish and hang up? There’s no use trying to talk to her now.
But then she says, ‘Of course you are, baby. You’ve always known how to look after yourself,’ and suddenly I feel like screaming.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not always.’
She pauses. Even through her riesling haze, she has heard me. ‘I know it was rough,’ she says, ‘the break-up. Tim was never strong enough for you. But it gets easier.’
‘Like it did for you?’ It’s out of my mouth before I’ve thought it through. My heart starts beating madly.
I hear her intake of breath. ‘Ella, I did my best. I know I’m not always Mum of the Year, but I do my best.’
‘Well then maybe you could try ringing me sober on my fucking birthday!’ I slam down the phone.
I have never before hung up on my mother. Never. And I haven’t talked to her like this since I was fifteen. I’m shaking all over. Hien stares at me wide-eyed. I laugh. I know it’s inappropriate, I know she doesn’t understand.
The phone rings and I pick it up. I expect her to be sobbing, or yelling, and just for this moment I don’t care, I don’t give a fuck.
‘Are you all right?’ she says. ‘Darling, what’s wrong? Tell me. Please.’
It’s so unexpected that I start to weep. Hien retreats through the service door and it’s like I’m alone with my mother in a dark, cavernous room.
She murmurs, her voice strangely lucid, ‘El, you know how much I love you, don’t you? Please talk to me.’
Please talk to me. Here is my opportunity. There is so much I want to tell her, so many things to say. I want to tell her how lonely I am. I want to ask her if I am going to be okay, if anyone will ever love me enough to stay. I want to ask her about my father. There is so much I need to know.
‘A quarter of a century ago,’ she is saying, her voice loose again, ‘I held you in my arms. You had this tuft of black hair and tiny white hands. One of the midwives said you’d be a dancer because the muscles in your legs were so strong.’
I hear her drinking, I pull back; I stop crying and I am alone again.
‘I wish you’d come back,’ she says. ‘I worry so much.’
‘I know.’ I wipe my eyes. ‘I’m okay. It’s just hard sometimes. I’ve been sick.’
‘You’re so far away.’
‘Mum, it’s not that far.’
We talk more about Jeff Kennett and the pain in her right shoulder and then say goodbye, back where we belong, everything left unsaid.
I am starting up the stairs when Hien calls to me. I turn. She is holding a gift in her hand.
‘How did you know it was my birthday?’ I haven’t told anyone, not even Hugh.
‘I check your passport. Today, Miss Jenny give you party.’
‘Really?’ I come back and sit down to open my present. It’s a pink polyester scarf embroidered with little yellow flowers. ‘Thank you, Hien!’ I tie the scarf around my neck. ‘I love it.’
‘Why you angry your mother?’
‘It’s complicated.’ I wouldn’t know where to begin.
On the ride to work I’m caught in the middle of a downpour. I think of the crazy woman and hope that someone has taken her inside, that she isn’t standing out there, tied up, keening in the rain.
I’ve only been in class a couple of minutes, still trying to gather myself, dripping all over the floor, when Miss Jenny walks in. She’s carrying a cake and grinning from ear to ear. I look at the students, they’re all beaming too.
Miss Jenny puts the cake down on my desk and Mr Trung approaches with a gift wrapped in gold paper. A card has been signed by Miss Jenny and all the students, neat little signatures that cover both sides. I unwrap the gift and take out a black lacquered pencil box inlaid with shells to form two birds flying. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say, tears pricking my eyes.
Then they sing to me. I usually hate the birthday song but they do it with such care I tell them I wish I could tape it and play it every year. I’m kidding, but Miss Jenny rushes out and comes back with the cassette recorder and they sing it again while I cut the cake. We eat wedges of dry sponge filled with fluffy, sweet cream. ‘Thank you,’ I keep saying. ‘You shouldn’t have done this.’
I am inspired by the singing so when Miss Jenny leaves I break the class into small groups and ask them to write a simple verse, in English, about anything they want
. It gives me time to sit and think. My head is spinning with Mum’s phone call, the cake and song.
I finger my pencil case, study the pearly love birds; I remember my last birthday with Tim. He cooked dhal and then we watched TV. He knew I liked my birthdays to slip quickly and quietly by after all those hollow celebrations as a child when the phone didn’t ring, the mailbox went empty; always the sense of something missing. It was cold last July and the heater was on; I lay with my head on Tim’s lap, on the couch. I can still picture how he looked from below as I turned my face up to him – the sharp angle of his jaw, his slightly flared nostrils. Maybe, even then, he was wishing he was somewhere else.
When I sense the class waiting, in the polite way they do, I say, ‘Okay, who’s going first?’
Each verse read out is about love – every single one. Stilted, heartfelt dedications to ‘My sweetheart’ and ‘My true love’. ‘Too much love!’ I say, rolling my eyes. We laugh and laugh.
One of the verses begins, ‘My love, my home.’ I ask about this and Huong, from the pea pod, explains that in Vietnamese, nha toi – my house – can also be an endearment for a spouse. My love, my home.
‘That’s beautiful,’ I say, wistfully. That’s Little House on the Prairie.
I ask the students to pack up. I take the duster and drag it across the blackboard. I draw a deep breath for the long, lonely night ahead. It seems to stretch out into eternity.
In the corridor, on the way out, I catch up to Co Ngoc. ‘Is it still okay for me to join you at the farm nunnery?’
She smiles. ‘We will take my motorbike.’
When I get back to the hotel with my new kerosene lamp from the department store it’s still raining. I give Hien a piece of cake wrapped in paper. She brews tea. I show her my pencil case and tell her about my party. We drink our tea, the standard bitter type, and watch TV for a bit.
When evening sets in, I go up to my room and undress. I open the doors to the balcony so I can hear and smell the rain. I read the three birthday cards from my father, as I do each year, then spend the rest of my birthday lying naked on the bed eating coconut biscuits and drinking vodka, watching Bones hunt.
I dream I’m coming into Room 513. I notice that the door to the bathroom is ajar. I peer in. There is someone lying on the floor. I’m not scared; I go closer. It’s Mum. She’s passed out in there; there’s a glint of dribble on her chin. I’m worried she might be cold. I don’t have any blankets so I start trying to lay newspaper over her, The Vietnam Investment Review, sheet by sheet. It’s while I’m doing this that I notice her hands are tied behind her back. I’m not scared, or worried. It seems perfectly natural.
TWENTY-ONE
We take off early Sunday morning. I’ve got my day pack on, stuffed full, and Co Ngoc’s knapsack is strapped to the back of the Honda. We don’t talk much on the two-hour ride except to comment on the landscape a couple of times and to stop for a short toilet and tea break. Leaving the ceaseless sensory excess of Saigon fills me with a strange kind of dread; the sky is full of stretched white clouds. We pass through small villages and endless expanses of green rice. The world becomes vast and vertiginous. It’s just after ten when we travel down the last orange dirt track, thick jungle now to either side, and through a huge stone archway.
We park the bike, take our bags, head up the drive.
It could be the setting for an Indiana Jones film. To our left is a big, square pagoda, supported by wooden columns but otherwise open to the elements. To the right, a kitchen and outdoor dining area comprising one very long trestle table under a gazebo draped with massive creeping vines. Between the pagoda and the kitchen, Co Ngoc points out the study and meditation hall, and in the centre of this semi-circle of structures sits a big white Buddha surrounded by blooming flowerbeds. Spreading out from the complex are patches of vegetables and herbs, enormous ferns, coconut palms, and, further back still, fruit orchards and rice paddies; here and there, small bamboo huts. Everywhere I look, grey-robed figures are sweeping, weeding, pushing barrows. Their steady movements are hypnotic.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I breathe.
‘Yes,’ Co Ngoc answers, ‘this is a good place for you to rest.’
A delegation of six nuns comes out to meet us. They all take turns embracing Co Ngoc, and greet me with their hands folded in the prayer position. We’re shown to a small, one-room guest hut where we put down our bags. There’s no furniture but two narrow straw mats have been laid out on the wooden floor. Paper fans rest on child-sized pillows; mosquito nets hang from hooks on the ceiling. There’s one kerosene lamp and a tray of tea things; two small square windows with wooden shutters, no glass.
On one of the mats is a set of folded grey robes. Co Ngoc explains I must wear them while I am here. I am not officially permitted to stay at the nunnery so I should try to blend in, in case a stranger calls. She steps outside with the other nuns while I put on the robes. They are soft and loose; concealing.
When I come out, Co Ngoc explains that we’ve arrived during a hair-cutting session. We leave the hut and go to a communal bathing area behind the kitchen – a small courtyard open to the sky. I squat in the dirt and watch while Co Ngoc and another dozen or so nuns have their heads shaved with gleaming silver razors. It reminds me, in a jarring way, of the opening scene of Full Metal Jacket, where all the recruits are being shorn like sheep, their close-up, frightened faces. They have no idea what lies in store; where on earth, anyway, is this shit hole Vietnam?
One of the nuns motions to me to come and have mine done. I shake my head and smile; they all laugh. A trail of soapy water streams past, a thin black cat wanders by; I can smell rice, steaming, from the kitchen. There is gentle chatter and for once I am grateful that I can’t keep up. I close my eyes and almost drift off, squatting there in the dirt.
‘Ella, will you join me for a walk before lunch?’ Co Ngoc is standing above me, her round head shining newly white, almost blue, in the sun.
We head off through a field of golden corn, emerging at the other side into a vast Peter Rabbit–style vegetable garden with rows and rows of leafy greens, pumpkins, tomatoes and aubergine. The beds are immaculate and perfectly ordered. From time to time we pass one of the small huts Co Ngoc says sleep four nuns apiece; each is, at once, secluded yet open.
As we’re walking, I ask Co Ngoc about how she first became a nun. As a young woman, she tells me, she realised she wanted to help people. She joined the local nunnery in her home town of Thu Duc and after a year transferred here to the bigger farm nunnery for another six years’ study. This was only possible because of Doi Moi and the gradual lifting of restrictions on Buddhist practice; training of monks and nuns had been outlawed in Vietnam for many years. When she moved to a Ho Chi Minh City pagoda three years ago she began her community work while continuing studies in English and Chinese. She explains that Buddhism has taught her to live peacefully within herself so that she can be fully active in the outside world, but that when she needs to retreat – to rest or continue her spiritual studies – she returns here, to the farm.
We arrive at a rotunda at the edge of a rice paddy, built about ten feet off the ground; we walk up the narrow rickety wooden plank. Inside, a middle-aged nun is swaying in a hammock. She and Co Ngoc greet one another like old friends. Another two hammocks hang empty, as if they’ve been strung up just for us. We climb into them and I close my eyes to the lullaby of their conversation and an unfamiliar birdsong. I’ve never even noticed birds in Saigon. Within minutes I am asleep.
I wake some time later. The third hammock is empty. Co Ngoc says it’s time to go back for lunch. She hands me a wet face cloth and a glass of fresh coconut juice floating with slivers of slippery white meat. I thank her and drink it thirstily, mop my face.
We take a different route back to the dining area, via an orchard of dragon fruit and banana trees. The sky is still unseasonably clear. Co Ngoc points out the perimeter of the property, surrounded by the same dense jungle we saw on the way in,
like a natural fortress – and this here is our secure base, I think, distractedly, and tomorrow we’ll go out on a search and destroy. Bang, bang!
At lunch, we sit under the gazebo. There must be at least fifty nuns along the table. The uniformity of their robes and their bald heads serves to underline the uniqueness of their faces – the wrinkles and the bucked teeth, big ears and thin lips. Some gaze at me curiously but I have the sense that nothing is expected of me, that it doesn’t really matter who I am or why I am here. It is a nice feeling, like sinking into a hot bath. Big silver pots of rice are set out and various dishes of vegetables, saucers of soy and chilli. Some sort of grace is said and the nuns begin to fill their bowls.
Co Ngoc introduces me to the head nun who is sitting a few seats up. She looks about sixty and her bespectacled eyes are both warm and shrewd. She doesn’t speak any English so Co Ngoc translates as she informs me everything eaten at the nunnery is home-grown apart from the soy-bean products and the instant noodles. Excess produce is taken to market and sold; the nunnery is entirely self-sufficient. I listen and eat two bowls of the clean, fresh food.
After clearing up the dishes with the other nuns, Co Ngoc and I go back to our hut for an afternoon nap. I can’t believe how tired I am. We stretch out on the mats and again I fall quickly, easily, into a deep sleep.
I have one of those dreams that start out like simple action replay. Ariel and I are at the fish market. He’s walking a little way ahead, taking photos. It’s daytime but otherwise everything is clear and lifelike. I am happy again, hopeful and light, when suddenly I notice these horizontal wires stretched out across the footpath just ahead of him. They’re exactly at neck height. I know he can’t see them because he has his camera up to his face. I scream Stop! STOP! but he can’t hear me through the clamour and haggle. Fish – everywhere. And then I am running but I know I won’t get to him before his head comes clean off.
The Rainy Season Page 20