Lotusland

by David Joiner

  "I remember something about a famous doctor's son. But he went to America to study and never came back." She smiled at Nathan. Apparently giving him the benefit of the doubt about his Vietnamese ability, she said to him: "Oh, it's terrible getting old. One's memories seem to float in muddy water."

  Nathan smiled back at her while Le remained firmly silent. She seemed paralyzed, unable to walk away.

  "I'm sorry to have bothered you," Van said. "I must be remembering someone else after all." She hugged her granddaughter to her shoulder. Grabbing the handle of the carriage, she headed off.

  When the woman was out of earshot Nathan said: "Why didn't you tell her your name? She asked twice."

  "Why should I tell a stranger my name? She was crazy."

  "You could have told her your first name. What was the harm in it? She just thought she recognized you."

  "I was a little girl back then. And with black hair, not pink. How could she recognize me after so long?" She laughed at what she evidently considered the absurdity of it. "Anyone who knew me back then, if they saw me now, would think I'm wearing a disguise."

  "But was she wrong about everything?" Nathan persisted, wondering what might have transpired if Le hadn't removed her wig. "Did she really mistake you for someone else?"

  "What do you think?"

  "I don't know what to think. You even told her that your mother had died 15 years ago."

  "Well, I lied. I didn't want to talk to her about my family."

  "But I can't understand why any of this would upset you."

  "You can't understand, no."

  "But you could help me."

  "I don't want to help you."

  He glared at her. To not want to help him was selfish beyond comprehension. What had she done for him, anyway? Was only he expected to give? He disliked thinking of their relationship as an exchange, but if what they had was in fact a relationship then he expected an opportunity to take once in a while. If she didn't want to help him, what did that mean?

  He was angry to be shut out. But he had time, especially now that the consulate had hinted she wouldn't get a visa. And with time, he had chances to bring her closer.

  The first raindrops began to fall, splattering in the dust with the sound of snapping sticks. In no time it fell in torrents. They ran inside a Chinese-style pavilion. Laughing at what a mess the rain had made of them, they brushed the water off each other's clothes and faces.

  Cement benches lined each wall, and Nathan sat on one the rain hadn't drenched. The red walls looked like they hadn't been repainted since the war. Lovers' names and the dates they'd trysted covered half the open interior. Scratched in lopsided hearts were names of lovers; or, in some cases, wished-for lovers:

  Phương love Bắc 14/02/04

  Biển love Sương 8-8-03

  Nhượng và Trung (Tây Ninh và Tiền Giang) 8-11-04

  Trần + Beckham 20.3.03

  Khanh ai shiteru Tomoko 14/02/02

  He too might once have scratched his name beside Le's on this wall. But it felt childish now; a foolish exercise in declaring something that could disappear before the last letter was written. He wondered if any of these people remained together.

  Rain ran off the peaked roof in silver rivulets. Le sat on his lap and he pulled her close, wanting to put his arms around her and breathe in what was like a gentle rubbing of frangipani on her skin. He noticed her reading the names on the wall.

  "I have to go back to work," she said.

  Nathan didn't know if she meant now or if she was simply reminding herself of the fact. "But it's raining."

  She slid off his lap. "Would you ever marry a Vietnamese woman?"

  At first he couldn't answer. "If I loved her. And if I knew she loved me."

  "But for you, happiness means staying here?"

  "To me happiness means many things. It isn't specific to one place."

  "What's it specific to?"

  The answer came quickly enough. "To whomever I love. And to whatever I make of my life."

  Her lips curled doubtfully. "You don't want to be rich?"

  "Rich would be fine. But I'd prefer just not to be poor."

  "You're not ambitious."

  "I am ambitious. Maybe I'm a little left of centre, but being rich isn't as important to me as how I live. If I don't have the freedom to make my own decisions, I'll never be happy."

  "Life's easier for you than for me — you were born into privilege." She paused to let him respond, but he wouldn't deny what she'd said. "I wonder if I'll talk like you after living in America a long time. Or if I have children there, if they will."

  "Maybe your uncle already does."

  She didn't reply.

  From the distance came a shock of thunder. A long, low rumble followed. The sound continued: a rolling toward gradual silence. Then another clap of thunder. And afterward that long tired rumble.

  "I want to be with him. He has no one to care for him."

  "What about his family?"

  She took a moment to answer. "He never married."

  Rain leaked from a crack in the roof and she kicked at it idly.

  "It's letting up," he said.

  "I like rain. Does it rain much in Los Angeles?"

  "It's between a desert and the ocean. It hardly rains there at all."

  "Then I'll miss the rain." She walked out of the pavilion. Cupping her hands, she tried to catch the water that dripped from the trees.

  "What will you do if the embassy doesn't give you a visa?" he said when he was next to her.

  "I'll have to find another way."

  He started to ask something more, but she pressed her fingers to his lips and stopped him.

  "No more questions. I've been answering questions all morning."

  For the first time he saw the weariness in her eyes. Probably last night she'd hardly slept. Respecting her wishes, he still wondered over her reluctance to talk about this uncle who wanted to give her a new future. He couldn't help think this was a strategy of hers. But a strategy for what? Could she use him more easily if he didn't ask about her past and future?

  They retraced their way across the zoo. Puddles on the asphalt reflected the sun shining through the clouds, and from somewhere they heard water flowing from a catchment area. The air, cleaner after the rain, smelled of trees.

  "Tonight," she said, "I want to do something special for you."

  "What kind of special?"

  "You'll see." She stood on her toes and pecked his cheek.

  They came upon a small monkey outside its barred cage. Soaked to the skin, it sat beside a trash receptacle, eating a discarded sandwich.

  "Look, it has no tail," Le said.

  Nathan saw that the monkey indeed lacked a tail, while the ones in the cage in which it belonged all had one.

  "It has no tail, just like me."

  He looked at her, wondering what she was talking about. "Like you?"

  "In Vietnam, a person without anyone depending on them is called a monkey without a tail."

  She waved the monkey over, but her movement scared it. It clambered over the wall of its cage and slipped through the bars.

  Le lingered for a moment, watching something in the distance. Her eyes were fixed on the exit. Van was there, walking with her granddaughter.

  When they were out of sight Nathan suggested they continue.

  Seven

  Out his window he saw her waiting for him beside her motorbike. Watching her remove a cigarette from her handbag and approach a sidewalk barber for a light, he realized he hadn't seen her smoke since their journey on the train.

  He was hurrying on a shirt when his cell phone vibrated. The words ‘Anthony calling' flashed on the screen. Nathan guessed that he'd just received his e-mail in which he explained why he'd been out of touch. He'd c
oncluded: "If you haven't already, please forget about me working for you and hire someone else. As for the money I owe you, I'll pay it soon. That's a promise I'm staking our friendship on."

  He pocketed his phone and went downstairs. By the time he handed his room key to the guesthouse manager, the vibrating had stopped.

  Le flicked her cigarette to the ground as Nathan crossed the street. She wore a shapeless combination of black trousers and a long black shirt, sleeveless and shiny beneath a streetlight.

  "I'll drive," she said.

  He climbed on behind her as she started her motorbike.

  She turned right on Ton Duc Thang and soon passed the western edge of Boson Port. When they hit Nguyen Hue and were heading toward the People's Committee Building, the street became packed as if some huge, chaotic demonstration was underway. Young people on motorbikes, bumper-to-bumper in paralyzed traffic, waved Vietnamese flags and banged together whatever made noise: bamboo shafts, metal soup ladles and trash can tops, plastic grilles torn from fans, steel hubcaps unscrewed from parked cars.

  "What's this?" he said. "A national holiday I forgot about?"

  "A soccer match against Cambodia."

  "Then the whole city's going to be like this." When she didn't answer, he suggested they return to his guesthouse. "It'll be quieter there."

  "Where we're going is quiet."

  She turned off of Le Loi onto Nguyen Thai Hoc. Soon they were crossing Ong Lanh Bridge into District Four.

  Her nearness was intoxicating. She'd clung to him the first few months they'd seen each other, for he was the one who always drove. But tonight was different: she controlled the wheel. When the clogged streets thinned out and she hit fourth gear, and it seemed like they'd lift off the street if he held out his arms like wings, he leaned into her and locked his hands over her stomach. With his thumbs against her ribcage, he thought of how close they were to her breasts, and how easily he might slip a finger beneath her waistband.

  He asked where they were going, but an oncoming truck blared its horn and drowned out his question. A blast of wind from its passing shook them violently, cutting down their speed. He didn't ask again. Traffic was too heavy; too loud to speak and be heard.

  They crossed the Te Canal, and drove on until District Four became District Seven, and then District Seven became Nha Be.

  Suddenly it was rural, and the intermittent marshland, with its canals and rivers, reminded him of the Mekong Delta. They passed over another bridge, its surface a patchwork of rotting boards. Although barely wide enough for a car, it was full of other motor­bikes, pedestrians, vendors pushing food-carts, and lovers hugging by the rails.

  It was then that the activity around them fell away, and the night became a passage they were fated to travel — it didn't matter where, for this was already a destination he could be happy with. It was a piece of the puzzle to his life in Vietnam, and being able to connect it to other experiences enlarged his sense that he belonged here.

  Eventually, the road became bordered with small eateries and shops and neon nhà nghỉ signs. The words literally meant ‘rest house,' but were, in most cases, love hotels. Anthony once told him what they were like: the rooms unclean, the lobbies and halls dark and dank, and the walls so thin you could not only hear couples fucking, but you could even hear them breathe.

  They passed three nhà nghỉ's in the space of a block, and he was surprised to see Le look toward each one.

  When the last one was behind them, and the road had grown dark with walls of nipa palms along both shoulders, she pulled over and stopped.

  "Are you lost?" he said. When he touched her, she was trembling.

  Without answering, she made a U-turn and headed back to the gaudy brightness. She chose a small, crowded eatery, which from the street had little recommending it.

  They sat by the window. Cigarette smoke hovered around them, and Vietnamese pop music, too loud for conversation, skipped on the stereo. Across the street, the Nhà Nghỉ Tình Xa glowed with strings of red lights streaming down its façade.

  Le called to a waiter for two beers.

  Nathan wondered when she would explain what was going on. "I've never seen you drink," he said.

  She scooted her chair closer and rested her head on his shoulder. "I want to get drunk with you. Hopelessly, stupidly drunk."

  He knew now that he'd make love to her in one of these hourly hotels. He still couldn't imagine what kept her from spending the night at his guesthouse, where they'd have all the privacy they needed. And if she weren't to stay the night, it should be even less of a dilemma. No one would say anything to her or otherwise pose a problem. Something else bothered her, but he couldn't guess what. In the end it didn't matter where they went as long as they were together.

  When the beer arrived, they touched glasses. The cold trickled down Nathan's throat like an electrical charge.

  Her face reddened after a few swallows, and for the first time that night she looked into his eyes. He felt her searching — not for an answer to some mystery he embodied, but for a clue, maybe, as to what she'd find if she took him apart and studied him. Her gaze settled his nerves. He looked steadily back, but there was nothing he hoped to find that wasn't already before him.

  He ordered another beer and filled half her glass. Whatever would come next involved all his imagination, so the silence they shared was only silence perceived from the outside.

  When the waitress removed their bottles and Nathan gestured for one more, Le nodded her approval. But to him the heavy movement revealed sadness.

  "What's wrong?" he said, worried she was having second thoughts about being here.

  "I was just thinking . . . I'd like to go to Phu Quoc before I leave." Phu Quoc was an island south of Vietnam. It, too, had once been Cambodian, and the French and Americans had both used it as a penal colony. "I'm sure it's nothing special to you. You've been almost everywhere."

  "I've never been to Phu Quoc. Why do you want to go?"

  "My uncle escaped Vietnam from there. He gave away all his money for a seat on a fishing boat crammed with people — so many that there wasn't room for food or water. Pirates attacked them once, and several people drowned. They were at sea for four days. A Japanese cargo ship finally ran across them and took them aboard. He ended up at a refugee camp in Malaysia, and after ten months there he was allowed to go to the United States."

  "He fled, even though he was from the north?"

  "He moved south in 1954 when the Geneva Convention was signed. He was Catholic, though my father was Buddhist." Predicting Nathan's question she said: "He was always his own person, even when it came to God."

  "I'd like to go there with you."

  "I don't have money or time."

  The notion that she wouldn't get to America pushed into his thoughts. Likely as not, they'd have plenty of time to make the trip.

  "Wait here," she said. "I'm going to drive down the street, then come back and park behind that nhà nghỉ over there. In five minutes I'll message you to meet me."

  "Why make it complicated?"

  "I'm in control tonight." From her purse she removed a baseball hat and held it out. "Wear this."

  Nathan stared at the hat, not reaching for it. Wanting to be with her wasn't something to hide from. "I don't want it."

  "Take it," she said, shaking it at him.

  "I said I don't want it."

  "What if someone recognizes you?"

  "What if a giant spaceship falls out of the sky? It's not worth worrying about."

  She stuffed the hat into her purse and left him. He watched her drive down the dark road. With alarming suddenness, she disappeared.

  Her discreetness annoyed him. Surely this happened all the time on this road. What did it matter if a foreigner trysted with a Viet­namese? Besides, the distance from downtown protected them from familiar eyes an
d those who'd gossip about them. While it was nothing for him to bring her to his guesthouse — he'd suggested it numerous times — she rejected the idea. Her refusal confused and frustrated him; other foreigners in the guesthouse had Vietnamese girlfriends spend the night. The time when police barged into hotel rooms and guesthouses in the middle of the night to break up a foreigner and a Vietnamese was a thing of the past, at least in the cities. Again, he couldn't help feel that for her this was simply making good on a promise.

  A minute later she emerged from the dark road. Without looking his way she pulled up to the Nhà Nghỉ Tình Xa. A parking attendant pushed her motorbike behind the building and she followed him.

  Nathan's phone vibrated, and for an instant he worried it was Anthony. The message read: "In rm 5. Pls hurry."

  He passed two young men at a check-in table, ignoring their stunned silence. Room five was at the end of a dim hall, unlocked. The hall light slipped inside the dark room, showing Le on a bed with her back against the headstand. She was naked.

  He froze in the doorway, taking in the sight of her: her body blending in the darkness with the color of the sheets; her thin legs stretched out; her dark nipples gazing back at him like the eyes of a creature wishing to remain hidden. He shut the door behind him. The light disappeared, and with it the illumination of her nakedness.

  Finding her like this vaguely disappointed him, for he'd relished the idea of a slow progression toward intimacy, toward a shared vulnerability that would make sex feel like love.

  He undressed at the edge of the bed. When he lifted off his shirt she wrapped her arms around him and pushed her warm breasts into his back.

  He didn't like this darkness. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see them together.

  "Let me turn on a light."

  "No." She pulled him down on the bed, easily breaking his resistance. "This is me paying you back."

  "Don't say that." He strained to see her face.

  "But that's what I'm doing. I've said it all along."