by David Joiner
Setting his paddle across the kayak's nose, he dipped a hand into the lake and watched his fingers magnify. "It's cold. The bottom must be freezing."
"The whole lake's shallow. The temperature on the surface is the same as any place deeper."
Nathan glanced behind them. At the bottom of a sloping road, the Hanoi Club glittered in the dawn. The cramped, narrow houses along Yen Phu Street above, with cats lazing on the rooftops and yesterday's laundry billowing behind fenced-in balconies, seemed to exist on a different plane.
"Careful looking behind us. I don't want you dumping us into the water."
Earlier, donning their life jackets, Anthony had explained how he used to kayak on the lake every morning, back when he was trying to get a solid footing in real estate. "In the middle of the lake, with nothing to disturb me but the wind over the water, or the occasional fish jumping, and with the sky lightening like something dusty being blown clean, I felt like I was the only person in the world. It was an amazing feeling." He said he hadn't enjoyed peace like that in what felt like forever. He wanted to kayak more, but his schedule wouldn't let him. "Having two kids and staying out late most nights means sacrificing simple pleasures like this. Or maybe I've just gotten old."
Anthony had hardly fit in the kayak when they pushed it into the water. He'd taken the seat in back not by choice but because he couldn't squeeze into the smaller one in front. The way he manipulated his paddle, however, showed he possessed a good deal of strength, even agility. But after only a few minutes his breathing grew labored. Nathan asked how often he managed to exercise.
"These days, never." Anthony paused for breath. "You know my schedule. I'm in the office from seven in the morning to eight at night. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later. Beautiful's the day that ends in a swank, quiet bar. It's preferable to sweating on a treadmill."
Anthony's tone was full of a bravado Nathan didn't believe. Yet there was no denying that Anthony's schedule amounted to what he said.
"You should take better care of yourself."
"That's the tradeoff I've made. I want to change things. But it's not easy."
Nathan thought about what he'd recently sacrificed in his own life. In retrospect he wasn't sure the sacrifices had been worth it, but he'd shaken up his life like he wanted, and his relationship with Le, though a work in progress, gave him hope. He felt that he was inching closer to restoring the equilibrium in his life. He was also paying Anthony back, a little at a time.
"Two months ago you suggested that I'd sold my soul to the devil. Now I wonder if it happened. In a previous life or something."
Nathan had forgotten his comment until Anthony reminded him. He had a vague memory of the context in which he'd spoken, but for Anthony to recall it indicated that it had struck a chord.
"My point is that I've sacrificed a lot for success. Health and happiness are out of reach. Sometimes I feel like I can graze them with my fingertips. But getting closer will take a special effort."
There was no question that Anthony's life here was a result of hard choices. But what exactly had he sacrificed, and how did it make him different from anyone else? There was a difference between giving up something valuable and merely giving up.
As they paddled farther out, their view of the lake opened on both sides. To the left, where the land pushed sharply into the water, three turtles appeared to float amid an island of trash. As Nathan strained his eyes in the weak matutinal light the turtles transformed into human heads — a trio of snail catchers.
"Tired already?" Anthony said, splashing water onto Nathan's arm. "You're making me do all the hard work."
Nathan resumed paddling, glancing occasionally at the snail catchers until they dissolved in the distance.
Out of the blue Anthony said: "I've had enough of this shit."
Nathan assumed he wanted to return to shore. Concerned again about his health he tried to turn and see his face. But it was useless. Nathan could do nothing but sit where he was, facing the open water. "Enough of what shit?"
"My life here."
A fish breached the surface. Nathan gazed at the ripples it made, waiting for Anthony to explain.
"The good thing is I've learned what I want and know I'm capable of getting it. The bad thing is I've learned what I don't want and know I'm incapable of getting rid of it."
"What's the good thing?"
"Just being successful in the world. I know I stack up. And I know I'm able to determine what's worth risking in my life. I can see the risk and I can see the payoff, and I can make my way between them. I feel like even if I lose for a while, in the end I'll come out on top. I've never had that confidence before."
Nathan sensed he was leading up to something, though he couldn't tell what. In any case, he couldn't see what the relevance was to Anthony's life now. "What are you getting at?"
"Maybe I don't know. Or maybe what I say today isn't what I'll say tomorrow. But lately I've become sensitive to how short life is. I can't get it out of my head. And when I think about it, late at night when I should be sleeping, when all I have for company is a bottle of Chivas and the croaking of frogs out my window, it occurs to me that if I don't leave Vietnam soon I'll be destined to die here. My roots are deep, but they're not so deep yet that I can't pull them out and put them somewhere else."
Nathan wondered where Anthony's family fit into all of this. "Have you spoken with Huong about it?"
"I've tried. But she only thinks I'm complaining. And isn't that at the heart of everything?"
"I don't know."
"See, she's become a living metaphor for my life here. Our relationship's like a business, the sole aim of which is to put forth good face to the world. Who I am and what I need aren't things she's concerned with. To her, my being a man means giving everything to make my family rich and respected. But I've done that. So what's left? I've tried branching out from our ‘partnership' — I'll admit it, though it's only happened a few times — and I suspect she has, too. For a long time we've been running on fumes. But they're burned up now. Nothing's left."
Here on the lake there was no need for Anthony to control what he said. Nathan was grateful to be in the front of the kayak, unable to meet his eyes.
"The things that happen to me here fall almost exclusively into patterns of bad and bizarre. They make me feel like I'm getting messages."
"Messages? From who, God?"
"I'm delusional, right?" He burst out laughing but stopped when the kayak nearly tipped. "Seriously, it's like some higher being's scripting what happens around me, giving meaning to every encounter I have and the freaky shit I witness every day. I've been trying to figure out what it all means, but the only thing I can come up with is that I'm getting messages. And that all I've got to do is act."
Seeming to sense Nathan's disbelief, he continued.
"I'll give you an example. An overt one. Two days ago Huong and I visited some friends at the Melia Hotel. My Land Rover was being repaired, so we took my old Vespa. As we left the hotel she remembered she wanted to buy something in the gift shop, so I said I'd wait for her on the sidewalk. When I paid the parking attendant and pushed my bike in front of the hotel, five young men approached me with a deliberateness I'd seen before and knew meant trouble.
"All five were well dressed — I'm talking imported silk specially tailored — and spoke English like they'd been educated in the United States. Actually, one said he had been, but he wouldn't tell me where. They strutted up and made a tight circle around my motorbike. They started asking me harmless questions but soon got hung up on my Vespa. They called it ‘a cheap-ass bike,' implying that I was poor. I didn't say anything; I've learned that in Vietnam ignoring insults is more effective than responding with my own. They wanted to take my Vespa for a spin and said they'd buy it if they liked it, as if they were doing me a favor. When they saw I wouldn't play along, the one who said
he'd studied in America put his hand on my steering wheel and leaned toward me.
"He said if we'd met years earlier — twenty years: he didn't even know his own history — his immediate reaction would be to kill me. He said at their ages he and his friends would be soldiers, and of course they'd carry guns. He made a gun of his fingers and pressed it against my temple. Then he said twenty years ago this is what our encounter would have come to, and his duty to his country would require him to pull the trigger. ‘I'd do it happily, too,' he said. ‘I'd blow your head off and be a hero.'
"I could've told him I had nothing to do with the war, that both my parents had marched in Washington against it, and I could've told him I helped found an orphanage in Saigon but withdrew my support when the Vietnamese in charge were caught embezzling the funds. I could've told him any of those things and more. But he wouldn't have listened. Instead I told him he needed to study his history, that twenty years ago he'd be harassing a Soviet engineer, not an American soldier. He and his friends started talking angrily in Vietnamese and a moment later they pressed even closer, to where I could smell the nicotine on their skin. Just then Huong came out of the Melia and hurried over. She put an end to everything right there. As we drove away they called her a whore and a traitor — not to her face, of course, but to her back."
Nathan had managed to angle his body enough that he could see Anthony as he spoke. His face had twisted horribly as he recollected the encounter, and the strange shape of his mouth made him seem more desperate.
"To me there's a message in an encounter like that. It's like someone inside my head is screaming for me to leave." He gaped at Nathan, as if searching his face for an explanation.
But it had happened to Nathan, too. In Saigon people had tried to run him off the road; had swung at him in traffic; had cursed him; stared at him menacingly and openly made fun of him in Vietnamese. In Hanoi he'd already been confronted twice by drunken soldiers sitting among friends — once on Tran Quoc Toan Street and once outside the History Museum. The difference was that he didn't let it get to him. There were no messages in these encounters.
He turned back to the front of the kayak. "But isn't that how it is wherever you're not like everyone else?"
Anthony was silent behind him, and Nathan could imagine his expression: one of hurt for Nathan's failure to sympathize more.
"Children have thrown rocks at me on the sidewalk, Nate. Women driving motorbikes with kids in their laps have tried to run me off the road. Only two weeks ago a group of boys no older than seven ran up to me screaming ‘Fuck your mother!' — in English. There was nothing I could do. They're children, for god's sake, and dozens of people around were watching to see how I'd react. I've never felt so helpless in my life."
"If you spoke Vietnamese . . ." Nathan stopped to make sure he put this right: "People respect you when you know their language. You become more human to them, more like themselves."
"I'd only get in more trouble if I knew how to speak my mind. Think of the foreigners you know who've responded to one drunken, abusive Vietnamese guy, only for all the Vietnamese around, who'd been entertained by the whole spectacle until then, to suddenly band together to beat and rob him."
"I don't know anyone that's happened to."
"Well, I do. And that's what would happen to me if I knew Vietnamese."
Uncomfortable with the conversation, Nathan started paddling again. In a moment Anthony joined him.
Soon they came upon a bank of high, crumbling mud. A beard of weeds rose and fell at the water's edge, and ragged trees stood ten, sometimes 20 feet along the ridge. Trash scattered the slope like the last vestiges of winter snow.
Eventually they reached an opening with a view of the water park. A white Ferris wheel dominated the sky. The wheel's red middle was spiked like a cog, making the whole look like the guts of an old watch. The Ferris wheel seemed to be asleep, and Nathan had the odd sensation that if they made too much noise it would awaken with a flashing of lights and a creaking of infuriated gears.
Anthony pointed his paddle to an area bordering the water park. It was light enough now to make out the lotuses there, thousands of them floating like an island.
"In the spring it's a sea of pink and white. When the flowers open at dawn, dozens of women in short boats sing together and collect dew from the petals. Restaurants buy the dew to make lotus tea. It's the most perfect thing I've ever tasted."
A dike ran behind it and, as Nathan strained his eyes, he realized that more lotuses grew in the water beyond that.
"It sounds like a scene from Three Seasons."
"What ever happened to the lotusland I once knew?" Anthony said. "Vietnam's changed forever."
"It's only a lotusland for foreigners."
"Not any more. These days plenty of Vietnamese have enough money and time to indulge in the pleasures this country offers. You've got money now, Nate. I'll turn you into a lotus-eater before I'm done with you."
Nathan found the comment strange, considering he still owed Anthony money.
Anthony's breathing had become more labored, but from the corner of his eye Nathan saw Anthony's paddle slice expertly through the water, propelling them ahead. The burn in Nathan's forearms had spread to his biceps and shoulders. It was hard keeping up with Anthony, and he wondered if Anthony was trying to prove something.
The broken land became higher ground where vegetables grew in neat rows. There was a thatch hut where it ended, and people sat before it at miniature tables. An old woman was wiping a glass case in which cigarette cartons were stacked beside bottles of soybean milk and soft drinks.
Anthony told Nathan to stop paddling. "Can you smell that?"
Nathan inhaled the misty, still-cool air and found it tinged with something like hickory. "Coffee?"
"That's right. Let's get two and take them back out on the lake."
As they approached the shore, a dozen children appeared and rushed up to them. Two bold little boys grabbed the kayak's side and made as if to push it under water. Anthony splashed them. They backed off, uncertain of his intentions.
Nathan caught the woman in the hut looking down at them. "Still want coffee?" he said over his shoulder.
"Yeah, but be quick."
Nathan cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled for two iced coffees.
"I take milk," Anthony reminded him.
"I thought you took brandy."
"I will if she has it."
Nathan relayed Anthony's request to a little girl nearby.
Watching her run away, he was impressed by her attentiveness — until she ran past the hut and, starting to scream, toward the houses behind it.
He called to the woman again. When she nodded, he glanced at the other children. Amazement plastered their faces. He could almost hear questions forming in their minds: who was this white man in a kayak, and by what magic had he spoken Vietnamese? Just like that, they were as well behaved as lambs.
Above them the old woman called a boy over and told him to deliver the iced coffee she'd made. The boy hurried down the dirt hill.
"Hold the coffee while I paddle us away from here," Anthony said.
Nathan took the coffee and explained that they'd be back later to pay.
Anthony pushed his paddle against the shallow bottom and they drifted backward. Nathan waved to the kids as the kayak retreated. His wave, combined with the prospect of them leaving, triggered mayhem on the shore.
"Here's fine," Nathan said when they were a hundred meters away.
"Not yet." Anthony was puffing hard, sending the kayak a full meter ahead with each thrust.
When Anthony finally laid his paddle across the kayak, the hut on the ridge looked like a cardboard box dumped there by one of the enormous houses behind it. The wind here was stronger than close to land, and small waves raced beneath them, sloshing the coffee in their glas
ses.
"There's no brandy in mine."
"We can go back if you want. I know how much you enjoyed being attacked by those kids."
"The last thing I wanted was to be trapped back there. Ninety per cent of my life's devoted to not getting trapped. You don't have that worry yet, but if you take things further with Le you'll know what I mean."
A cloud passed over Nathan's mind. "There's no point speculating."
"Haven't you ever felt trapped here?"
"Not like you're talking about. I haven't put down roots."
"Let me tell you, it's no way to live. I'm trapped like water in ice. Every part of my life's ensnared: my house, my business, even my children — Huong's name's attached to them all. If I leave her, she gets everything. If she leaves me, she'll take everything. I'm being bled at both ends."
Nathan grew cold.
"I'm thinking of leaving. Back to the States. Becoming a business consultant would be the easiest thing. I've got good contacts here and I know my way through a thousand legal loopholes. But part of me just wants to disappear, in some place big and empty where no one will ever bother me again."
"Are you being serious?"
"About leaving? I've been toying with it for a while, but recently I've put out feelers. I don't know how many chambers of commerce I've already contacted."
The kayak slowly turned, and Nathan found himself facing the city. Dark pastels streaked the sky over Hanoi. A minute ago, when he faced west, the sky had still been dark. It teetered between night and day, and the colors stretching between the two lines were strangely unbalanced. The entire sky looked like it needed to be violently shaken.
"What about your kids?"
Anthony didn't answer immediately. "They have to go through an early period of being Vietnamese. Later they'll realize they'd rather be American. I figure I've got a decade before my obligation as a father really hits. Maybe longer: they don't have to choose their citizenship until they're twenty-one."
Anthony had said the same kinds of things back in March, when Nathan first agreed to work for him. There was no question Anthony was serious.