by David Joiner
"Le's leaving Saigon tomorrow."
"Leaving for good?"
"She wasn't even going to tell me. She threw everything we had in my face like it was shit."
Anthony said nothing, and Nathan wondered if he felt that he'd done the same to him.
"I staked out her place tonight," Nathan went on. "I waited three hours to see her, but I should have just gone to Phu Quoc. She said she never wants to see me again."
"Why are you calling me?"
The question came out so forcefully that Nathan couldn't immediately answer. "Because we're friends."
He laughed. "You sure have a fucked-up notion of friendship."
"I know I do." The chastisement felt good. He was ready for it and wanted as much as Anthony could dole out.
"You've been a bad friend to me." He enumerated the ways Nathan had let him down. Nathan listened to every word.
"Everything you say is true," Nathan said. "I don't have any excuses. But . . ." He tried to fight down the tremor that had entered his voice. "But I found something I wanted in Le. As soon as I met her everything that used to be important changed."
"You still haven't told me why you're calling."
"I did tell you. I'm calling because I value you as a friend. And I'm sorry."
"Is that all?"
"What do you mean?"
"Nathan." Anthony paused. "If you turn me down again, I'll never forgive you."
A moment passed before Nathan realized what he was getting at. "Are you talking about the job?"
"It's the whole point of this call, isn't it?"
Nathan asked himself if the reason behind his call was not to rekindle their friendship but to ask Anthony to help him change his life.
"I'm tired," Anthony said after the quiet moment grew long. "Don't keep me up with prolonged suspense. Just tell me yes and I'll FedEx you a ticket first thing in the morning. A week should be enough to cut your ties and leave Saigon. I put off hiring anyone in the hope you'd come around."
"You'd do that for me?"
"I never liked Le, you know — never liked the idea of her — but I'm thankful she ended your relationship. I know you think she was cruel to end things like she did, but it's better this way. Don't get down. Soon you'll see you have small mercies to be grateful for. This job's only one."
"You never met her."
"I didn't need to. She was after your money, like Huong was after mine, like every Vietnamese woman's after every . . ."
"She didn't need money. Her uncle in Los Angeles was supporting her."
"It's all the same thing, Nate. If it's not money, it's a visa. If it's not a visa then it's something else. Never the heart, though. In those cloying love songs you hear in the cafés and on the state-run TV channels, maybe. But in reality, in the life that's lived around you, no one's ever after the heart. Remember this the next time you think you're falling in love."
Nathan's chest clenched. The feeling was so painful he had to massage it with his fingers. "Anyway," he said, "it's over . . ."
"Nathan."
"Yes?"
"Say you'll take the job."
In his head, Nathan realized, he'd been readying to leave since getting the news about Le. "I will," he said. "That's what I want."
"You said the same thing before, but this time I believe you. It'll be good having you around again. Huong feels the same way." Anthony went on, his voice more subdued. "My health's been bad, you know. I've had to take it easy the last few weeks."
"You? I didn't know." He suddenly remembered what Andrew had told him.
"That's because you never answered your phone or e-mails when I tried to contact you." He stopped to drink something. The pause made it seem like he was waiting for an apology. "It'll be good having you here. I might not be my old self for a while, but I'll come around."
"What's the matter with you?"
"I don't know." There was a sound of ice clinking in a glass. "Life gets stressful."
The wind picked up off the river, and Nathan bent his head to hear Anthony better.
"I should go. Huong just shut the bedroom door. If I don't return soon she'll lock it."
"Sorry to call so late."
"Don't sweat it."
"I didn't realize you were really sick. If I'd known . . ."
"Don't sweat it, Nate. I'm not dying or anything."
"And the job . . ."
"You don't know how to end a conversation."
Nathan laughed uneasily. "I guess I feel like a lot still needs to be said."
"Then call me again tomorrow and let's talk."
Nathan took his time going back to his guesthouse. When he returned to his room he opened his balcony door and looked over the flame trees on the street. Dawn would soon come and spread over the city, draining the lonely night into a blue abyss.
When a street sweeper made her slow approach Nathan went inside to find his tickets to Phu Quoc. Returning to the balcony he ripped them in half and tossed them onto the street. The sweeper stopped and looked up at him. Neither of them said a word, and when she continued with her work Nathan turned around and went to bed.
Eleven
"Who's it from?" Nathan looked at a clock on his wall and saw it was nearly noon. His eyes were heavy, and he pushed at his hair, which was matted from excess sleep.
The deliveryman only pulled impatiently at his sweaty uniform, saying nothing.
Had Anthony sent him something after he'd accepted the job at his company? It would be like Anthony to bulldoze him with gifts, with pressure tactics he could conveniently call kindness. But to send something now didn't make sense.
"Where was it posted?"
The man flipped through a pad of crinkled papers. "Saigon," he said.
The cardboard in each corner of the package was frayed, and the ribbon-made handles at the top had left grooves where the weight of the thing had rested while being carried. There was nothing on the package but Nathan's name and address. The man handed him the pad to sign.
It was a confirmation of receipt. The sender's information was in a small box — a looping script blown to the right. There was no name other than a florid signature at the bottom he couldn't read. When he saw the address, however, one mystery, apparently solved, became a bigger one.
Immediately he knew it was a painting. But what did Le mean by sending him a painting he'd neither bought nor asked for? Surely it was worth several hundred dollars — a large sum in Vietnam.
As soon as the deliveryman left, Nathan dragged the package to a chair and ran his hand over the cardboard, looking for an opening. His eyes stopped on the handwriting in the center of the package, each letter thickly drawn, pregnant with deliberation. His name appeared darkest of all, as if she'd traced it over and over.
The painting materialized in slashes as he tore away the wrapping. Soon the picture emerged: a night dappled with stars; moonlight reflecting off the wings of bats circling the sky; a silvery, snaking river flanked on both sides by rioting foliage; a nude woman floating on her back, her grotesquely long neck jutting up as if for a last glimpse of whatever the current was carrying her away from.
It was a morbid tableau and he couldn't understand why she wanted him to have it. The likeness of her was as strong here as it had been on the walls of her gallery. The strange neck sprouted from her shoulders like a flower stem. As in the other paintings, her profile was as faultless as a photograph.
Wedged between the painting and frame was a small envelope. A hollow feeling descended on him, and all he could do was gaze at the envelope's barber-striped border and the words Air Mail — Par Avion stamped in an upper corner.
Taking a deep breath he shook the letter out and began to read.
Dear Nathan,
I remember how much you admired the lacquer paintings in my gallery and how enco
uraging you were about my art. It's because of you that I'm leaving Saigon to find myself again. I won't tell you where I'm going, but my decision to leave is the only choice I feel I have left. It's time for me to find myself again. I told you the truth when I said that I'd give anything to be an artist. And it's even truer that you gave me strength through your own example, letting go of a good job for something you hoped would give you more happiness.
You must find it ironic that I'd write about truthfulness when you think I lied to you all along. If in fact I told you lies it was only to protect secrets I couldn't have you know. I was afraid I'd expose them, one after another, and my fear pressed so hard on me I thought it would overwhelm me and I'd tell you everything. In the end, that's why I left like I did.
I hate myself for hurting you, but it's nothing compared to how I feel for putting so many walls between us. I can't blame you if you don't believe me, and I'm sorry if that's the case. Perhaps you've decided I was cruel and selfish, but I was only trying to spare you. You deserved more than I could give, but it's only now that I can admit this.
I hope to see you again. But what does a hope like that mean now? I'd rather wrap my hopes in silence, to preserve them, and I want you to know that if you don't hear from me again it's because I think it's better for us both. Silence, you should know, doesn't necessarily mean the end of something.
Love,
Le
He opened his desk drawer. Old letters and postcards from the U.S. were crammed into a folder. For a moment he wanted to look through them, to review the months and years lived by friends so far away he was sure that time and distance had dislodged him from their hearts. But the thought terrified him and he shut the drawer.
He stuffed Le's letter in an empty coffee cup, then took a lighter from his windowsill and pressed his thumb on the metal edge. A flame shot out and danced in the wind from his fan. He touched it to the letter.
Smoke rose from the cup and grew thick. Pieces of ash swirled around him, drifting onto his desk. An odd thought made him smile: during his seven years in Saigon, in all the squalid and depressing places he'd lived, not once had he had a smoke alarm. Some of his landlords had asked if he cooked or smoked. When he said he did neither, they assured him he was safe.
In Hanoi, he'd have to make sure he had one. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Twelve
Saigon was easier to leave than Nathan expected. There was no telling when he'd be back, and part of him thought he never would. The ambiguity surrounding his departure made him feel curiously empty, as if the sum-total of his experience here had amounted to nothing.
A dull, spitting rain fell ceaselessly during his final week in Saigon. Day after day the sky was bloated and grey. The city looked like it had absorbed all that was unclean, and rain was the only means of washing it away.
On his last day, staff at the magazine he'd worked for sent him off with a less than rousing cheer, and at night an acquaintance he bumped into insisted on buying him a beer, then half-heartedly tried to drag him to a massage parlor.
"I forgot you don't go in for that kind of thing," his friend said petulantly after he'd given up trying to persuade him.
"Go ahead," Nathan said, not wanting to end his last night on a bad note. "Don't let me ruin your fun."
"It's not fun. It's something to pass the time."
They shook hands awkwardly and wished each other good luck.
"I reckon it's only a matter of time before I see you again down here," the man said. "Everyone knows Hanoi can't hold a candle to Saigon."
On his way to the airport the next morning Nathan realized he was leaving no "footprint" of his time in Saigon. He didn't know if he should feel depressed or liberated by the idea that were he to come back one day no evidence would exist of the life he once led here. Aside from a few friends, he'd be treated like a stranger in a city he knew better than any other in the world.
These days the only traces most foreigners left were underused belongings, humdrum gossip and old lovers. Bullet-pitted buildings and Amerasian children were the legacy of an earlier, sadder era. In a way, he tried to tell himself, leaving no trace here was a sign of success. There was purity to the notion, as if he'd succeeded against the odds to avoid something regretful.
The flight to Hanoi lasted less than two hours. Given so many historical and cultural differences between the north and south, he'd forgotten only a thousand miles separated Saigon from the capital. The flight's brevity surprised him.
Standing at the baggage carousel, he recalled the vast grid of farmland that had grown larger out his window as the plane descended. It was Red River country — rice paddies that stretched to unfamiliar mountains and small, tile-roofed houses spotting the flooded green — the cradle, as the north saw it, of the country's civilization. The Saigonese often conceded this to Hanoi, though they staunchly claimed for themselves a southern culture, untrammeled by northern influence. Northerners, his Saigonese friends liked to tell him, were different from them: colder, stricter, less trustworthy, worse at business but more rapacious, unfunny, cruel, uncharitable, arrogant, firm in their rejection of modern ideas and practices. But he never put much stock in these pronouncements. The one northerner he'd known well was Le, and she hardly fit such a profile.
His only expectation of what awaited him in Hanoi was that it would be different.
Anthony met him at the exit with a white balloon in his hand. Filled with helium, it bobbed above his head.
"Some woman was selling these things on the highway. They were cheap as hell, so I bought her entire inventory for my kids. They're in the back of my Land Rover, probably losing air."
"It's like you're picking me up for a date," Nathan said, reaching for the balloon.
"Think of it as a gesture: what's mine is yours. Have I ever been less than generous with you?"
Nathan felt uncomfortable at the reminder that Anthony had given him so much already.
Once they'd pushed past a pack of waiting taxi drivers, Nathan noticed, as he had on his previous visit, that the air was different than in Saigon. It was like drinking a glass of water only to find that afterward he was still just as thirsty.
The smell of rain hung in the air. The clouds the airplane had descended through appeared to have fallen and grown thicker. The weather wasn't merely warm, like he expected, but humid. By the time he reached Anthony's Land Rover he was blotting his forehead with his sleeve and tugging the back of his shirt where sweat made it cling to his skin. When he got inside he asked the driver to turn on the air-conditioner. The man was someone different than when Nathan last visited.
"Hien was undependable," Anthony explained. "One day Huong found him in a guestroom with one of the maids. We got rid of her, too. Unfortunately, her sister also worked for us. She complained so much about the dismissal that we threw her out as well. Last I heard, the girls' father sent them both to Taiwan to be housemaids."
Vietnam was exporting more workers overseas, many of them contracted as maids in Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. It was hard to imagine women from the Vietnamese countryside leaving their sheltered lives to become maids in foreign countries. Of course, these women didn't make the decisions themselves, but were following the directives of parents. It was also how dozens of them ended up in Cambodian brothels.
"How's the family?" Nathan hadn't heard Anthony complain about his home life since they'd resumed communication. That, along with the 30 balloons in the back seat, made him think that things must have improved. Anthony seemed to be making a fatherly effort.
"We're like different species with overlapping territory. We're still learning how to co-exist."
On both sides of the highway, beer and cell phone billboards rose from the rice fields, blighting the ubiquitous green. The landscape took hold of Nathan's imagination, and he didn't have much to say. He only realized he was thinking about Le when Anthony
broke the silence with a proffered thought about her.
"It's just my opinion, but what happened with Le was a blessing in disguise."
"It didn't happen like I wanted it to. I feel like it ended poorly when it didn't have to."
The driver punched the brakes, jerking them forward in their seats. He turned and apologized, but Anthony had his eye on Nathan and didn't respond.
"What did you expect?"
"I'm surprised at myself, that's all. I didn't think it would get to me so much."
"It was just a matter of time. Better for it to happen now than later down the road."
The words made his loss feel more irretrievable. But there was truth in what Anthony said. And he sensed that truth, if he believed in it, could be a shield against pain.
"Just forget about her and move on. You made a good decision by coming here."
"I hope I don't regret it."
Anthony slapped him on the knee. "I have a new rule I try to follow. I won't let myself speak or even think certain words. One of them is forever. Another is unhappiness. So is trapped . . . helpless ... and the most important one to avoid is the word you just mentioned."
"You forgot suicide."
"I didn't forget," Anthony said, turning to face him. "We all need last resorts." His serious face slackened a bit. "That's one of those sacred words. You need a certain amount of courage just to get it off your tongue."
"It's an extreme rule, isn't it?"
"What's the matter with it? I thought it would resonate with you."
Nathan paused to consider the advice. In the end, he disagreed. To live like that was no good. If he ever started to, he'd know it was time to leave Vietnam.
"Some ideas seem innocuous on the surface. But they'll bore into you if you let them. Think about it. It's the only way you'll survive here."
It wasn't any way to survive, Nathan thought, turning back to the window.
They were approaching a wide river. A sign before the bridge passing over it read Sống Hồng: the Red River. Factories in the distance spewed white smoke over the otherwise agrarian countryside. Across the river, the transformation from countryside to city began in earnest.