by Rolf Potts
While I’m spending the day in Hoi An, Chuck has hired a driver to take him to a village about a half mile off the end of the runway they used during the war, where he plans to ask residents if they recognize the girl and perhaps know what has become of her.
“I’m prepared to be disappointed,” he says. “I know the odds aren’t good, and I’m almost sure I won’t find her, but if I don’t try, I’ll be thinking about it for the rest of my life.”
Leaning on the railing of the bridge that spans Hoi An’s Thu Bon River, I watch fishermen setting their nets while wooden tour boats sit empty along the banks. The boats’ painted eyes silently gaze at the Japanese merchant houses, Chinese temples, and souvenir shops with Viet Cong pith helmets and t-shirts exclaiming “Buddha is my Omboy.” During the American War, Hoi An, with the cooperation of both sides, remained almost completely undamaged.
The Ancient Town is small—one street running along the Thu Bon with three more streets parallel to the river. They’re intersected by smaller streets and alleys, and in a few hours, visitors can cover it all. Detours into the alleys reward me with glimpses of Buddhist altars, scrolled lampposts, families eating breakfast, and women loading baskets of goods for market.
Near one end of the Ancient Town, a Japanese covered bridge emerges from rose-colored walls, linking previous Japanese and Chinese communities. I walk past monkey guardians at one end, before entering a tiny temple built into the bridge. The deep red wood glows under silk lanterns, and smoke curling up from a forest of incense sticks never quite reaches the ceiling before an oscillating fan blows it gently away.
Looking out from the covered bridge, I spy Vietnamese teens in suits and ao dai tunics posing for photos near the river. Tourists emerge from shops with new treasures, and backpackers perch on tiny plastic chairs to sample street food prepared in front of their ankles. The fisherman hauls in his net, arranging fish in his boat with painted eyes, and casts the net again.
It’s still morning as I walk along the river toward Hoi An’s Central Market. My eyes are focused on the ground, to avoid stepping on the buckets of fish on one side and the baskets of peppers on the other. I don’t see her coming. The light punch on my shoulder, delivered with an expertly closed fist, is her only communication. I turn quickly to see a tiny older woman, with salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a bun underneath a conical hat, scurry away through the market crowd.
Resisting the urge to run after her and ask her motive, I scan the faces of the market vendors around me. They’d been quietly observing, and now with my gaze on them, turn back to their tasks—whether selling cucumbers, lychees, shrimp, dragonfruit, or the hundreds of other types of merchandise at the Central Market.
Their disinterest makes it seem as if a tiny elderly woman is regularly scheduled to punch someone every day at around this time, like the clock parade at It’s a Small World in Disneyland, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, or even the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas. I must have missed important advice if the Hoi An Central Market’s punching lady is merely part of the entertainment.
My growling stomach lures me to a stall with a sign that advertises “Pho, Cao Lau, Hu Tieu, Kinh Moi,” and I take a seat as I wait for the rich pork broth with light yellow noodles, slabs of tender pork, bean sprouts and fresh herbs to be ladled into a bowl.
“She’s still mad about the war,” the vendor says, handing me the bowl of cao lau, a specialty of Hoi An. “She lost many people in her family.”
“She knows I wasn’t here in the war, right?” I ask, wondering just how old I look.
The woman smiles and nods, and as I pull money out of my pocket to pay, she waves her hand to communicate that this bowl of cao lau is her treat. A minor blow for a bowl of porky goodness is a fair trade.
I wonder how Chuck is doing with his search, and recall a conversation I had the day before with Geoff, the ship’s travel anthropologist, about the likelihood of finding Tia.
“If she made it through the war and is still in the area, which for a number of reasons is unlikely,” said Geoff, “the North Vietnamese would have identified her as a sympathizer or even considered her a combatant, and life for her would have been very difficult, to say the least.”
He added that for many men who supported the South Vietnamese campaigns (or worked with the United States directly), “reeducation camps” were the norm. Higher-ranking people may have faced forced labor, aggressive treatment, or execution.
“For women, while they may not have been killed directly, it’s highly possible they may have been abused at the discretion of the men who found them, in ways unthinkable,” said Geoff.
I find myself slowing down as I walk through Hoi An, watching women tend to their daily lives. How many of them had been lucky enough to escape torture and death? How many others had been from the other side? How large would today’s population of Hoi An be if there had been no war?
Hoi An extends far beyond the old architecture and shops of Ancient Town. Eager to get a longer look at life outside old Hoi An, I walk past the boundaries to see what most of the tourists are missing.
I find a vendor who sells me a glass of bia hoi (fresh beer brewed only in Hoi An) and sip it while watching residents and visitors pass by. The rain falls lightly at first, and then begins to pour. I stand under the vendor’s umbrella, and the woman lifts a stack of t-shirts from a chair, motions for me to sit, and then plunks a non la hat on my head.
“Wait for rain,” she insists, sitting in a chair under the umbrella and miming drinking a beer, so I’ll understand. Traffic stops, and for a moment, it seems that we’re in our own timeless cocoon. We take turns offering simply worded observations about passersby as we wait out the rain.
She shows me a stack of old photos—dog-eared sepia-toned remnants of the American War. I flip through the stack to see images of soldiers, villages, beach activities during down time, even simple portraits of Vietnamese people. Every once in a while, I linger on a photo, and she leans over and touches it. Both our hands hold it together as we gaze into the past.
The vendor appears to be in her mid-fifties, around the same age Tia would be today. I wonder how long she’s had the photos, and if now they were such a part of her memories that despite the prices she’d penciled on the back, she might have a hard time letting go of them.
We finish looking through the images, and I hand them back to her. She tucks them inside a silk scarf, and then behind the last pile of t-shirts, decidedly not on display, or for sale. Like many things that challenge us, causing both pleasure and pain, placed just out of reach.
When the rain stops, I finish my glass of beer and hand it to her, along with the loaner hat. In return, she tucks a small pink flower behind my ear. Our goodbyes are nearly drowned out by the sound of motorbike traffic, but our smiles are enough to convey the sentiment. I skirt puddles as I head back into modern Vietnam, and eventually to the car that will take me past casinos and resorts. Back to where everything is under construction.
On the ship, I find Chuck sitting in our regular spot—on the deck near the bar. I ask the question that’s been on my mind all day.
“No, I didn’t find her,” he answers. “I didn’t think I would, but I’m glad I came.”
He looks disappointed, but claims not to be. Once they return to the ship, the other vets check in with Chuck—all with the same question. Some of them ask silently, with raised brows. Others have more questions: “Was she there? How was it? Is it what you remember?”
They linger over memories with their drinks, and I give them some time alone. I wasn’t part of their experiences, and feel as it I’m trespassing on their memories. The ship’s engines growl, and we slowly pull away from the dock in Da Nang. I pick the pink flower from behind my ear and turn it over in my fingers for a few minutes before letting it flutter down into the East Vietnam Sea. For Tia, wherever she may be.
Jill K. Robinson is a freelance writer and photographer. Her work has appeared in the San
Francisco Chronicle, AFAR, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, American Way, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Robb Report, Coastal Living, Travelers’ Tales books (The Best Travel Writing and The Best Women’s Travel Writing) and more. This story will also appear in an upcoming issue of The Saturday Evening Post. She still craves cao lau, but perhaps without the added punch. Follow her on Twitter @dangerjr.
KEITH SKINNER
Breathe In
A last-minute dash into a dodgy looking market leads to some lasting insights about Italy and its people.
“We won’t find anything for dinner here,” I whispered to my wife, Chris. “Look at that pitiful tomato.”
I pointed to a solitary, withered blob in a wooden crate outside the shop. There was little else to suggest the entrance led to a grocery, other than the word Alimentari painted carelessly on a weathered board. Shops in Tuscan hill towns usually have colorful outdoor displays to lure customers inside, but this market tucked into a corner of a sunny piazza had no alluring bin of flowers or vegetables, no baskets swollen with panettone or shimmering bottles of limoncello. Only the slumping tomato and the afterthought of a sign.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Chris whispered back. “It’s siesta time and the other place is already closed. We’d better hurry while this one’s still open.”
Peering inside, I could barely make out the shop’s dark interior. The sunlight streaming in illuminated a small shelf of produce along one wall. Opposite the shelf, a bare, incandescent bulb dangled over a narrow counter. A small, battered ice cream freezer sat in front, emitting a dim, fluorescent glow. Perched on a stool behind the counter, with arms crossed, sat an elderly, white-haired woman in a threadbare sweater.
We were in Montisi, a village in the Crete Senesi region of Tuscany. It had a single main street that was so narrow in places, even the tiny Piaggio trucks had to maneuver carefully to avoid scraping the walls of adjacent buildings. We were renting an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town. After four days, we had yet to adjust to village siesta time. On several occasions, we had rushed around to shops or cafés only to find them closed. Our tardiness today had put us in a bind. We were leaving the village until evening and needed groceries for dinner. This pathetic little market was our only hope.
Fighting every instinct I had that it was a fool’s errand, I stepped across the thick stone threshold into the cave-like room.
“Buon giorno,” said the old woman halfheartedly as she shifted on her stool.
I returned her greeting, then glanced furtively around the room, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light. There wasn’t much to see; the store’s provisions appeared limited to the paltry offering I’d seen from outside.
As I studied the shelf of vegetables, I could feel two pairs of eyes boring into my back like tiny heat lamps: the old woman wondering what could be taking so long, and Chris, willing me to invoke some spell to magically make more produce appear. I disregarded a yellowing cabbage and instead plucked two small potatoes from a box. If nothing else, we could bake them, though I held little hope for scoring a stick of butter.
“You’re supposed to let her choose the produce. Remember?”
Chris was referring to the part of Under the Tuscan Sun where Frances Mayes learns the etiquette of buying produce at an outdoor market. I should have told the old woman I wanted two potatoes and let her pick them out. I glanced back at her self-consciously. She seemed content to let me help myself.
I grabbed an onion, a bulb of garlic, and a limp bunch of spinach and placed them on the counter. I glanced down through the glass top of the ice cream freezer. It was actually a small dairy case containing milk, cheese and a few other items. I added a carton of milk to my meager supplies.
The old woman looked at me with patient eyes, a faint smile hovering lazily in the corners of her mouth. She looked cold and tired. She was probably anxious for siesta: a pot of hot tea then a nap on a sunny terrace, far from this gloomy dungeon.
I peered into the shadowy corners of the shop, searching for some sign of more merchandise. There was another doorway farther back, but it was dark and unpromising. Out of options but still determined, I asked, “Dove è il pollo (Where is the chicken)?” I managed to butcher the language and sound plaintive at the same time.
“Ah, sì,” she replied, showing a sudden burst of energy.
She hopped off the stool and came around the counter, burbling in a warm, Italian lilt. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but followed dutifully behind her as she walked back through the darkened doorway. She waved an arm in the shadows for a moment, then the tinny sound of a pull chain unleashed a hundred watts of light on a largish room lined with shelves. There were cans of vegetables, loaves of bread, coffee, boxes of crackers and cookies, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, cooking oil. A large freezer occupied the center of the room. The old woman had been sitting in near darkness to conserve electricity. Any local would have known this. Only her clueless American visitor suffered such confusion.
She rummaged around in the freezer, then pulled out a small frying chicken. She held it up high, arching her eyebrows victoriously, and said something indecipherable, perhaps the Italian equivalent of voilà.
As she closed the freezer and reached for the light cord, I held up my hand, signaling her to wait.
“E el vino?” I asked, hoping to complete this modest feast with a bottle of wine. I stressed the word vino, stretched it out, let it dangle expectantly in midair. There was no wine in sight, but I was feeling suddenly lucky. After all, I had just seen a chicken materialize out of thin air.
The woman said nothing, but motioned for me to follow her. We passed through a doorway into another darkened room. Once again, she fished in the air for a pull cord. Once again, the tinny sound yielded bright light, illuminating a room that served as a small enoteca. Bottles of local reds lined the shelves: Vino Nobile, Brunello, Dolcetto, and Negro Amaro, as well as wines from nearby regions. Feeling pressed for time, I resisted the urge to study the labels closely. My hand hovered briefly over a Chianti then came to rest on a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino, or Baby Brunello, as it was often called.
“Oh no, signore, è speciale!” the old woman said in a deep, somber voice. She was warning me that it wasn’t table wine, but rather a more expensive variety reserved for special occasions. We were in Brunello country, but the locals drank simple wines with their meals, usually something lighter made either by themselves or their neighbors. Table wine ran five or six euros. The Baby Brunello was twenty.
“Va bene . . . umm . . . celebrazione,” I reassured her in my best broken Italian. It was indeed a special occasion. If nothing else, we could celebrate finding enough food for a decent dinner. But we were also in an idyllic place, enjoying a rustic farmhouse that overlooked the vineyards and olive groves of Tuscany. That was reason enough to splurge for a special bottle of wine.
As we walked back toward the front of the store, she patted the frozen chicken, burbling again in her motherly Italian. Though I couldn’t really understand what she was saying, I was certain she was advising me about how to cook the chicken. I imagined her saying: You’ll want to rub this with olive oil and salt, then lots of garlic. Then stuff it with bay leaves and lemon wedges. Use lots of rosemary. Don’t overcook it now.
When we reached the counter, I glanced back at the two previously dark rooms and shook my head in disbelief. The dingy little grotto we had entered so tenuously was really a sprawling emporium and the listless old woman, a warm and lively surrogate mother.
That evening, after we’d returned from our sightseeing, I rubbed the chicken with coarse salt that I found in our kitchen, then with olive oil that had been pressed from the trees outside. I added a generous dose of crushed rosemary that I’d picked from the bush by the kitchen door.
In a short time, we were sitting down to dinner in the spacious dining room of the old stone house. Other parts of the house could be dark and cold, but the dining room was always bright
and cheerful. The double doors to the garden were open and a soft, warm breeze blew in over the rolling hills outside. The smell of roast chicken mingled with that of spring grass and olive trees and pungent sage. The sun was low on the horizon and a rosy-golden hue was spreading across the sky. As we ate our simple meal and sipped our vino speciale, I felt a deep sense of gratitude. The food, the wine, and the magnificent landscape had merged into a single, pervasive sensation that provoked all of my senses. It was something to relish, something to savor.
Savor, from the Old French savorer, means to taste, but it also means to breathe in. That’s what was happening at that moment: I was breathing in everything around me and making indelible recordings of the experience.
We never returned to the little market in the piazza, but I found myself recalling that day at other times during our trip, times when I felt reticent about sampling something or eating in a restaurant that was a bit frayed at the edges. I would picture the kind old woman and the two dark rooms in my mind and remind myself that there is really only one way to experience Italy. Don’t doubt. Don’t hesitate. Just breathe in. Deeply.
Keith Skinner writes fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, and travel stories. His story “Inside the Tower” about Robinson Jeffers was a 2014 Grand Prize Bronze Solas Award winner. He published the hyper-local blog Berkeley Afoot, and his work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeleyside, and The Woven Tale. He is currently at work on a historical novel set in nineteenth-century Mendocino County. He lives in Berkeley, California.
KY DELANEY
Paddling with Marigolds
Death sat on her shoulder reminding her that everyone is going to die. Even herself.
“We burn the bodies and then float the ashes with marigolds, the flower of the dead,” the owner of the kayak shop told us as we drove over a river on the shuttle to the Mahakali River where he’d drop us off for our two-day expedition. “Nepalese believe in reincarnation—the river takes us to better place in next life.”