by David Joiner
The church bell chimed in the distance four times. Before the sound faded away the woman stepped outside again.
"We should think about going home," he said.
But Le appeared not to hear. She was eyeing the vase again. "Do you think this is valuable?"
"I'm sure it's worth more than the woman realizes. Or maybe she knows but doesn't care. It's in excellent condition for something several hundred years old."
"If you think it's valuable, we should come back at night and dig for more."
He assumed she was joking. "If we dig far enough we might reach Angkor Wat. Think of the treasure we'd find there."
She looked at him. "Why did you say that?"
The hurt in her voice surprised him. "Were you being serious?"
"Of course. It's obvious there are more vases waiting to be dug up. These people are too lazy to do it, so why don't we?"
"Because it's not our land, for one."
"That's why we do it at night."
"And because you'd have to do it by yourself. This is her property and what's on it — or beneath it — is hers. Anyway, I'm not that desperate for money."
"You don't have to be desperate," she said bitterly. "People make a living digging up old pieces of pottery, don't they?"
"They're called archaeologists," he said in disgust. "And they do it without wanting to enrich themselves."
His harsh tone had no impact on her. "Do you think she'd sell this to me? Would it be foolish to offer as much as three hundred thousand dong for it?"
He disliked the thought of giving the woman twenty dollars for this ancient, beautifully preserved vase. "I'm sure it's worth more than that."
"Yes, but do you think she knows?"
He was tired of her mercenary single-mindedness. She was trying to cheat this woman out of something with more sentimental than monetary value. The woman evidently didn't care what the vase was worth. If she did, surely she'd have dug up everything around her long ago. "Ask her," he said. "I have no idea how her mind works."
"I'm going to take this. I bet she won't even notice it's gone."
"What?"
"You heard her say more could be dug up. What does she do
all day but nap in a dirty hammock, hoping for a few customers?
If she wanted, she could dig up hundreds of these." She stopped when Nathan laughed unkindly, but quickly continued. "It's nothing for her to let one go. She only appreciates it as something to stick flowers in."
"You can't just take it," he said, hurling the words at her.
But Le was already fitting it into her bag. "Leave some money on your chair. She'll be happier with that than this vase."
He yanked her bag away, spilling her cell phone, sketchbook and pencils, and a number of other articles. For good measure he tossed her bag onto what had fallen out. "Give me the vase." He smiled as she glared at him. "Are you deaf?" He rose from his chair and lifted the vase from her lap. When he had it he walked out to the woman and handed it to her. "What do I owe you?"
As he paid, the woman commented that he and Le made a good couple. Nathan forced himself to smile.
"We don't get a lot of pink hair here." She finally figured out the folded bills in her hand and gave Nathan his change. "There's an albino fellow who sells half-hatched eggs near Buu Long Mountain," she went on in a friendly way. "His eyes and skin are pink; his hair has no real color. It's like the fiber on a coconut husk."
Nathan stepped away, commenting: "Pink's not her natural color."
The woman looked at Le and seemed to consider this.
He returned to where Le sulked in her chair, her bag and its contents not yet picked up. In a hurry to leave he bent down and did it for her.
Only when he started back to his motorbike did she get up. But rather than follow him she headed for the woman. With the sun beating at his face Nathan shielded his eyes to watch. The woman lifted the vase while Le pointed something out. He was too far away to hear them, but he knew what Le was doing. A moment later she fished her wallet from her bag. Not wanting to see the woman succumb to whatever pressure Le put on her, which was surely nothing compared to the pressure of being poor, Nathan walked the rest of the way to his motorbike.
But when he tried the ignition nothing happened. After ten tries he realized his battery was dead.
A few minutes later the crunch of shoes on the road told him Le had finished her transaction. He didn't know what he'd do if, entering his view, she was carrying the old Khmer artifact. She hugged him from behind, forgetting the old indignation, and made it clear she hadn't obtained it.
"She wouldn't sell it. But if I'd tripled my offer I'm sure she would have."
Nathan wasn't sure if she'd given up or was hoping he'd lend her money. "My motorbike's dead. I have to push it into town and find a mechanic. You want to come with me or wait here?"
"Come with you."
They started down the path, keeping in whatever shade the trees offered.
At the main road she stopped and looked at the darkening sky. "It's getting late."
"We're not far from Saigon. Even if it takes them four hours to fix we can still get home before midnight."
"They won't work that late."
"They work late everywhere when there's business."
"If it takes long," she said, "we'll have to spend the night."
He looked at her, hoping to discern an invitation. But her face, peering soberly down the street, indicated only practical concern.
As it turned out, no local mechanics had what he needed. Unless he wanted to take a bus back to Saigon and return the next day, they'd have to wait until morning. By the time they gave up it was already after seven o'clock.
Finding a place to stay was easy, as the area, popular with tourists, had several rundown hotels. No one hassled him about not having his passport, nor was sharing a room with Le a problem.
No sooner had he entered the room than he fell exhausted onto the bed. His face and arms were sunburned; he could feel it most painfully on the tops of his ears. Even a shower felt like too much effort.
Le climbed on top of him and started rubbing his shoulders. Lying on his stomach with Le's knees below his armpits, he could see a portion of the room: an orange plastic chair pocked with cigarette burns, a worn green carpet, and a chipped wooden dressing table with a complementary plastic comb on one side. In the corner was a bathroom with a frosted glass door. He closed his eyes, newly aware of a karaoke parlor next door. The faint, off-key singing went away as Le chopped at his back with the edges of both hands.
"What should we do tonight?" she said.
"I haven't thought about it," he mumbled into a pillow that stank of cigarettes.
She straightened up, still straddling his back. "Maybe we could have an exciting little adventure."
At these words hope flared in his heart. For how many weeks had he seen her? How many times had the same hope come to him only for it to be dashed against the invisible wall that always separated her from him? He hated to think this way, but he couldn't help it: he'd helped her with her visa and her English — more, he was sure, than she'd expected.
"What do you have in mind?"
"I was thinking that if we went back to that café at around midnight, we could dig up more vases."
Nathan rolled onto his back, forcing her to slide off of him. He felt like there was nothing he could say that he hadn't said already.
"It would be easy to get a shovel, and in two or three hours, with both of us digging —"
"What's your obsession with these vases?" Her behavior struck him as being utterly out of character, and part of his anger stemmed from his inability to understand this side of her.
"You said yourself they're valuable."
"I have no idea, Le. We don't have any idea what that vase is worth. Or if she
was even telling the truth." By the way Le crumpled the blanket in her fists he knew she was angry. He couldn't help feeling repelled by her greed. "And so what if they're valuable? I'm not involving myself in any black market for antiquities. And what if we're caught? People get executed by firing squad in your country for political corruption and selling drugs. Can you imagine what would happen to me as a foreigner?"
"You worry too much. If anyone catches us, once we explain what we're doing they'll want to help. They'll want in if they stand to gain something."
Nathan would never be convinced to do what she proposed. And yet he was certain she was right: she could pull this off because there was some demon driving her on, and because in Vietnam schemes like this were commonplace. The more elaborate they were, the more attractive they seemed to people.
Once when he was in Hue he met a cyclo driver who asked him what he knew about Mexican freighters. Nathan had laughed at the question, admitting that he knew nothing. Deadly earnest, the man explained that he was planning to sneak aboard one. He'd hide in the hold, carrying nothing but a few gold bars, a loaded gun, and bags of dried fruit. When the ship docked in Mexico he'd find someone to exchange his gold for a U.S. passport.
"I know about the coyotes," he said. "I pay them three thousand dollars and they take me over the border in a fruit truck."
Nathan asked if he had that much in gold, but the man waved off the question.
In his fifties he was short, gaunt and brown like the Perfume River that flowed through the city. A look of poor health draped his lank, leathery face, and a milky cataract trickled down one eye.
He said that because of his association with the losing side of the war he'd suffered intolerably the last 30 years. In a show of aggressive, overplayed bravado he claimed he'd kill to get to America. Getting caught, he said, wasn't an option.
"I'm ready to die. It's better than suffering the rest of my life here." He grew agitated and, his good eye gleaming feverishly, asked if Nathan thought he could succeed.
But Nathan wouldn't encourage him. "Not a chance," he said. "You'll end up in one of four places: a Vietnamese jail, a Mexican jail, or an American jail . . . or six feet underground."
As if Nathan had committed an injustice by speaking honestly, the man glared at him and then started pedaling down the street.
"Đụ má," he called over his shoulder, not realizing Nathan understood the profanity.
The memory aggravated Nathan's resentment toward Le, and he tried to dissuade her on moral grounds. "What about the woman? Won't you be stealing from her?"
"I asked her if she owned the land around her café and she said no, but that she'd been living there for years. She has no claim to anything."
Nathan could easily imagine the machinery of her thoughts turning inside her head. Hers was a witless plan, totally lacking in circumspection.
"You know what will happen if you get caught, don't you?"
"What?" The tone of her voice was challenging.
"The consulate will find out." He watched her eyes flicker and a hateful half-grin twist her beautiful mouth. "Even if you're merely accused," he went on, making this part up, "they'll rip up your application. If you're convicted of a crime, you'll never be allowed to leave Vietnam. No country will give you a visa if you have a criminal record." He could see she hadn't considered the repercussions if her scheme went awry. "It's a stupid risk."
She bent her head and was silent a long time.
"You can't need money that badly, can you?"
She sank down on the bed with her back to him. When she spoke, it was to the wall. "I could pay you if I had money."
"Pay me for what?"
"For the help you've given me."
Nathan shook his head, not wanting to be reminded of their agreement.
"I don't want your money. I've helped you because I like you."
"I like you, too. But being able to pay you would make things less complicated."
"Complicated how?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
"No," she said. "You're not poor like me."
"Le . . ."
She got up and went into the bathroom. Through the door he heard the bathtub fill with water.
She was still bathing when he drifted to sleep.
When he woke up the next morning the room smelled of garlic and fish sauce. He saw on the dressing table two Styrofoam boxes in a plastic bag. She'd apparently gone out to get dinner and brought him back something to eat.
Six
Spring had come, and with it butterflies in the early mornings; clear and cloudless skies; children flying kites at dusk; yellow and red sơ ri fruit sold on busy street corners; and intense, scorching heat — followed quickly by summer; not the end of sun (it never ended) but the start of rain, storms, two-hour squalls and flooded streets; children on school holiday; deeply green foliage; the wide flat tops of phoenix trees bursting with red flowers; more people on the streets enjoying the cooler, pleasanter nights; corncob stands proliferating, turning the chemical air farm-y and sweet.
Opportunity, too, accompanied the change of season. July had snuck up, and so had the progress of Le's visa application. The consulate had summoned her for a final interview. Never had he seen her so excited, yet he remained convinced she had little chance at getting what she'd banked her future on.
He felt that she'd built up her expectations like a house of cards: one without a safety net to catch her when they collapsed. He'd waited long for this eventuality, and his wait was nearly over. If he didn't catch her — for her fall might be that swift — he'd be there to help her to her feet.
Adjusting her black wig in a mirror, she'd become a perfect likeness of the long-necked girl in her paintings. He asked why she was wearing it.
With a barrette between her teeth she said: "For my final interview I want to be conservative." She shifted her eyes to look at him. "You're making me nervous."
He lingered in the doorway, taking her in. He was amazed that an entire season had passed since they'd met and, while he knew her much better now, and considered her his closest friend in Saigon, their lack of intimacy frustrated him.
Only the previous week he thought this had changed. As was often the case, however, her behavior one moment hardly predicted her behavior the next. Their recent outing to a bowling alley was a perfect example.
She'd beaten him on the last frame and, because they'd wagered dinner on the game, he had to take her wherever she said. They'd gone to a Chinese restaurant and ordered her favorite dumplings. Afterward they'd ventured to an upscale lounge. While sitting in a dark corner she'd lifted his arm across her shoulder and placed his hand beneath her shirt collar, then slowly straightened up so his hand slid down the warm swell of her breast until her nipple pressed his fingers. She'd let him touch her for several minutes, but as soon as she pulled his hand away it was like nothing had ever happened.
He felt that their closeness in the lounge had merely been her attempt to fulfill an old promise. It had been a long time coming, and he wanted more. Sometimes he told himself to stop helping her until she reciprocated, but when the time came to follow through he found he couldn't pressure her this way.
When he shut the door to the back room, Thao, the girl Le had hired to manage the gallery on this day, put down the Korean fashion magazine she was flipping through and motioned him over.
"Are you excited?" she said. "She's going to your country. And when you move back you can see each other there."
"Talk like that's a little premature . . ."
Thao seemed unprepared for this response. She smiled uneasily. "You don't think she'll get a visa?"
"Few people do."
She stared at him disbelievingly.
Her blindness to the odds Le faced surprised him. Thao had apparently never considered the possib
ility Le might fail.
He went to the lacquer painting in which the subject was Le. It was the same one she'd shown him three months before: a woman in a white áo dài, her neck impossibly long, her face turned toward a burned forest behind her. In a corner was a small sticker. Leaning forward Nathan saw written there: Sold to Mr. Yamashita.
"Are you a painter, too, Thao?"
"No," she said, almost sheepishly. "I'm hopeless with a paintbrush. I can't even use chopsticks properly."
"The face looks just like hers, don't you think?" he said, pointing at the painting. "From a distance it could be a photograph."
"She's beautiful. But I don't like the way her face looks there."
"What do you mean?"
She shrugged. "She has a bright future, so she should look happier. If a professional artist painted me, I'd make sure I was smiling. I'd do everything possible to appear sexy."
A moment passed before Nathan realized this was a joke. "Has she ever talked to you about her uncle?"
She shook her head. "I didn't even know she had an uncle. I'm just here because I'm good at selling things and Le trusts me."
"You know her well?"
"I've known her a long time, but not well. To be honest, I was surprised when she asked me to work here."
A few minutes later Le emerged from the back room.
"Come here," Nathan said. "Since this is the first time I've seen you with black hair, I want to see you next to the woman in your painting."
"There's no time," she protested. "I should be at the consulate early just in case." She hurried out of the gallery before he could stop her.
As he drove them through the city, Le leaned into him and nuzzled his cheek, keeping her mouth close to his ear. "I haven't forgotten how much you've helped me."
"If I thought you had, I wouldn't be driving you to the consulate."
She abruptly withdrew from him. In the handlebar mirror her face appeared stiff and resentful. But anything might account for that look: the hot wind; an unpleasant smell; anxiety over her interview; anything.