by David Joiner
"Huong will get mad if she sees you wearing that," she said.
He pulled the shirt off. "He won't need these anymore, anyway."
Nathan made his way quietly back downstairs.
Huong was at the window when he reached the bottom step.
The TV cartoon grated on him immediately, and for a moment he thought he'd actually kick in the screen to kill the noise.
"How was he?" Huong said.
Nathan cleared his throat, trying to compose himself. When he didn't respond, she turned and studied his face. If there had been calmness in her expression it was gone now. She motioned for him to sit down but he stayed where he was, leaning against the banister.
"Is that how it is for him?"
"Is that how what is?"
"His room's like a morgue."
"What are you talking about? I've brought in nurses, doctors, whatever he's needed. He's getting good care."
Nathan forced himself to enter the living room, though the idea of getting near her repelled him. "It's like you're waiting for him to die. To die and leave you his money." He watched her mouth drop open and said accusingly: "That's what it is. Isn't it?"
She clamped her mouth shut with one hand as if she were going to cry out.
He went on, unable to stop himself. "He was right about you. You never loved him. You only wanted what he could give you."
"He was going to leave us. Had something happened to me, do you think he'd have stayed? Yes, he's unlucky about his health, but do you consider me bad for staying with him now? How can you blame me after what happened?"
Nathan looked out the window but saw nothing. What would Anthony have done, he wondered, if their situations were reversed? He didn't have an answer.
"And what about you, Nathan? What happened to the love you once felt for him? What did you give after taking so much?" She yanked open the door and waited for him to walk out. Resentment emanated like heat from her eyes. "It happens, Nathan. We're all guilty of the same things. Anthony was, too. The girls he went with, his drinking, my children . . ."
Nathan didn't know how he made it outside and along the path toward the road. Binh stopped feeding the caged parakeets Anthony kept and called out to him. But Nathan didn't answer. He hurried to the gate and down the walled lane until he reached his motorbike.
As he raced around the corner it hit him that there was no taking back what he'd said to Huong, and even if he was confident she'd accept an apology, he wasn't ready to offer one. But without this, how was he to see Anthony again? Nathan started trembling so violently he had to pull to the side of the road.
He took his time getting to his office, where he dug around the bottom of a closet for an old briefcase. Then he removed his personal effects from his desk and stuffed them into the fake leather interior.
When he left his office and walked outside, no one asked where he was going or what time he'd be back. He was sure Xuan would call him after finding his office keys on his desk, but two days later she still hadn't done so, and he realized then that he was free.
Twenty-Eight
Three weeks later Nathan received an e-mail from Reuters saying that his article had been accepted and to expect another communication soon with minor editing suggestions. The e-mail also requested instructions on how he preferred to be paid.
In his reply that night he thanked them for the good news and provided the ABA code for his bank account in Hanoi.
Almost as soon as he sent it the power shut off. Wanting to see if the outage had affected the whole neighborhood, he slid behind Le's easel and looked out the window. The world was plunged in darkness. He scrounged inside his bamboo drawers for a candle and matches. The mittens he'd just pulled on were too bulky to strike a flame, so he shook them off and did it with his bare hands.
His guestroom was cold and drafty. The window shutters rattled with every biting gust of December wind. He had moved here the day before Huong sold the agency.
He had expected to miss the house on Truc Bach Island, but when he moved here, cater-cornered from the Temple of Literature, the guestroom immediately felt like home in a way the other place never did. The hardest thing he'd had to give up was the view of both lakes. But here, from his window over Van Mieu Street, he was compensated for his loss by the sight of the Poet's Balcony beyond the temple's wall.
Guessing that the outage would last some time longer, he grabbed his coat and hat. He was about to go out for dinner when he heard someone climbing the outer stairs and stop in front of his room. Because he lived on the top floor, whoever came this far up meant to see him. He opened the door and found Xuan warming her hands with her breath.
"Am I intruding on you and Le?"
"Not at all," he said, letting her inside. "She just went home."
"Sorry I'm late. I had a lot to do."
Every Sunday she would visit Anthony and then update Nathan on his condition. The first time she came here, Le was over, too, and they'd insisted that Xuan go down the street with them for dinner. At the small food-stall they took her to, Nathan gave her a copy of Thoreau's Walden and asked that she read it to Anthony, a little at a time. She'd agreed, thinking it would improve her English. The following Sunday Xuan told him that she hadn't understood what she'd read to Anthony, but she enjoyed it nevertheless.
Whenever Anthony regained consciousness, she'd tell Nathan. Only then would Nathan go back.
They sat at the small table that had come with the apartment. He relit two candles, then poured hot water from a thermos into a teapot. She was slightly winded from climbing the stairs; in the icy air her breath came out in clouds.
"How's he doing?"
"Better. The doctors hope he'll come out of his coma in the next few days. He's lost a lot of weight. And his beard makes him look old and frail."
"Are they taking good care of him?"
"Why do you always ask that?" She smiled oddly at him. "They seem to be. His room's clean and full of light and fresh air — the same whenever I've visited. A nurse was there, too. She turned him over at one point to stretch his arms and legs."
"Did you read to him?"
As she righted her purse in her lap and opened its clasp she said: "I got halfway through The Pond in Winter but couldn't finish."
"If you're that far, I'm sure you'll finish it next time."
She pulled the book from her purse and set it on the table. "That's something I need to talk to you about."
He felt a small sinking inside him. "What's on your mind?"
She tucked her hair behind her ears, though it hadn't been in the way. She hesitated, and seemed nervous when she spoke. "Do you remember I applied for work at three companies in Ho Chi Minh City? Well, one of them offered me a job. A real estate company in Phu My Hung wants me to start working for them right away."
"I see," he said. "Down to the big city, is it?"
"It's a good opportunity. I have a train ticket for Wednesday morning. I spent all yesterday packing and celebrating with my family."
"You'll leave that soon?"
She nodded. "This is the last time I'll see you for a while. I want to wish you good luck and happiness in your life." They were quiet for a minute. "I asked Huong about you."
He tensed up at the mention of Huong's name.
"She says you can come whenever you want. She knows you reacted before from your heart, but she insists you misinterpreted the situation."
Nathan didn't say anything.
Music suddenly began playing from her purse. She reached inside for her phone. "A-lo? Yes, mother, I'm on my way . . ."
While she spoke Nathan opened Walden and glanced through the final pages. He was about to close the book when he came upon a passage that penetrated his dullness.
. . . if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he ha
s imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
When Xuan hung up he dog-eared the page and replaced the book on the table.
He asked her about her new job, but she didn't know much. She appeared to have taken the job for the salary, which was nearly twice what Anthony had paid her. She asked if he thought she was doing the right thing, and he said that for her it sounded like she was. His words seemed to please her.
She looked at Le's easel. After studying the unfinished sketch, she asked about her. He said she was working hard these days on her painting.
"What are you doing for work? Are you still writing?"
"That's all I want to do. And I tutor English some evenings to cover my rent."
"But is it enough?"
"For me it is. I'm writing an article about the Temple of Literature. And I'm thinking of writing a book."
"About what?"
"About Agent Orange. About the people who've been affected. About the Vietnamese who are suing the U.S. military. And about the developments coming out of that movement."
"That sounds important."
"What's important is that it's worthwhile. Whatever I do, I need to care about it."
She blew into her hands again, and he felt badly that he couldn't make her more comfortable.
"You and Anthony are different," she said. "I didn't realize how much until now."
"But we're the same, too. Or once we were."
When she'd finished her tea, she said she had to go. He opened the door and walked her to the stairwell. A Vietnamese sitar was playing somewhere and they listened to it. Studying her face as she looked off into the night, he wondered why he'd never noticed how pretty she was.
"The power's been out a long time," he said. "I'm helpless in the dark like this."
"You should marry a Vietnamese woman. She'll take care of you and keep you company."
He felt a surge of feeling toward her. For a moment he thought she understood him better than he understood himself. "I thought of doing that once."
"You don't want to settle down?"
"Maybe someday. But I'm still young, and I feel like I can do anything I set my mind to. Nothing's holding me back now. Not even myself."
"What about Le? Are you serious about her?"
"Yes. But we need more time to figure out what we want."
"I'm sure you will soon." She reached out to touch his arm. "Goodbye, Nathan."
"By the way," he called out when she'd descended a few steps. "Congratulations. Your news surprised me and I forgot to congratulate you."
"Thank you," she said. "I hope you see Anthony soon. I can't do it anymore."
She walked down the stairs. At the bottom she looked up and lingered for a moment. Then she waved and walked away.
He stood there afterward, staring at a part of the sky that glowed weirdly where the power hadn't gone out.
The news of Xuan's leaving made him feel she was taking Anthony away, too. She'd been his only connection to him.
She thought he didn't visit because he didn't want to deal with Huong. Apparently Xuan didn't know that he'd tried to go back but Huong wouldn't let him in. The last time he went, Binh had met him at the gate and told him she was thinking of hiring a guard. When Nathan asked if it was because of him, Binh just scratched his head. Nathan hadn't told Xuan this. He'd worried that if she knew, she'd back out of their arrangement.
Twenty-Nine
Dang Thai Mai Road ended with a long stretch of temple stalls and lakeside restaurants, their clay-tile rooftops colored with soot and dead leaves. Opposite the temple and across the bulldozed land, French-style villas had been thrown up like carelessly tossed dice.
The morning air was cold. Breathing it in Nathan imagined it must taste like the lake mist he could glimpse through the restaurants' hollow interiors.
He entered the compound. At the main temple dozens of women knelt on the hard ground praying. On the front altar above them stood the Court of Five Mandarins. From behind a gilded throne the Jade Emperor — a lacquered statue in a gold robe and tasseled red hat — gazed over the women toward West Lake. The temple was filled with incense and the sounds of mumbled prayers.
He made his way into the courtyard and past people praying at twin altars. At the far end, votive offerings burned in a large furnace. Beyond the smoke — the medium through which prayers were transmitted to heaven — Le was sketching at the water's edge.
"That was fast," she said when he came up.
"I haven't visited him yet."
He looked at her easel. Her charcoal pencil showed faintly in the morning light, but the longer he gazed at her work the clearer the image became.
She'd drawn the temple's mother goddess, Lieu Hanh, like she'd drawn herself in other paintings: a crowned but otherwise nude woman hovering over the temple, her long neck craned as if searching for something not yet drawn.
"Are you done packing?" she said.
He nodded. Tomorrow was the first part of a journey he'd make down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a long supply route North Vietnamese forces had used during the war. He'd received a small advance from an Australian publisher to write a book about the wartime use of Agent Orange. The money would cover his travel costs and some of the time he'd need to write it.
She sketched a little of the far shore. "I'm happy for you. You deserve this chance."
"No, I don't. I just got lucky."
"Don't sell yourself short. It's not luck."
"That's not what I mean. What's lucky is that the chance came when it did. I'm not lost now like I was."
"Maybe it's true that good things happen when you least expect them."
"You could say that about bad things, too."
She laughed. "You're impossible sometimes."
A month away was a long time and he didn't know how they'd weather the separation. Worry accompanied the thought, but the greater peril was that it might interfere with what he needed to do.
Need. For him work wasn't the only need. He needed Le, but he needed Anthony, too. He needed to commit himself more to the people in his life, for that was how he'd ever be happy. He realized that commitments accumulate, attaching to one another like links in a chain. Only then, when they're too strong to pull apart, would they become essential to his life. Only then would he have something worth caring for and protecting. That was one place happiness came from.
He looked around them. The temple appeared different at night when it was empty. At night he felt like the lake, its surrounding lights and their reflections, belonged only to him. There was a numinous quality to the place; rooted in the constant presence of incense, trees, water, and sky.
The temple had been built in 1573 to honor a celestial princess. And West Lake was said to have been created when a golden calf was lured by the sound of a tolling bell. The animal lost its way and circled around and around looking for its mother until its hooves created a basin that eventually filled with water.
Sometimes he wondered what West Lake had been like when the temple was constructed. Had life been so different then? Deep in the Vietnamese countryside, where fertile fields and fish-rich rivers sustained millions of people, where people still lived in thatch huts that had neither electricity nor running water, where the world's vastness remained a fantastic idea, life had hardly
changed.
Anthony had introduced him to this temple shortly after he moved to Hanoi. Looking back, that seemed like such a long time ago. Already it was March. In another week spring would officially arrive.
Back then they'd engaged each other in the kind of conversation they used to have in Saigon. It was the kind of mental exercise Nathan no longer had, and he missed it. Anthony had always been critical of Vietnam, but his was a thought-out criticism, and the things he said were usually well considered. Only after he moved to Hanoi and started his own business did this change.
Nathan imagined the maelstrom of thoughts that must be swirling in Anthony's head — with no way of being let out. In an instant, he felt like someone had punched him in the gut. It was a painless sensation, and yet he found it hard to breathe.
He heard Anthony speaking to him in an old conversation.
"This country's beautiful in its way, I'll admit that. But it's rushing headlong for nowhere."
"What crystal ball are you looking into?"
"Think about it. What Vietnam needs is pluralism, but it's not set up for it, not even without Communism. The whole country has a lousy concept of modernity. They don't cultivate a world outlook that determines how they live. Things like critical intelligence, tolerance, knowledge of and respect for science and scientific evidence aren't important here. Or if they are, it's because people have been forced to accept them without learning their value."
"Is the U.S. any different?"
"Absolutely. Those things make the U.S. the most advanced country in the world. Even if it falls off its throne, it won't take long for it to right itself again because it has what modernity requires. No matter how much economic progress Vietnam makes, it'll still be backward."
"But things change slowly. They have to or society buckles and falls apart, especially one as old and traditional as Vietnam. If you want pluralism you'll have to wait until China changes first. Politics here isn't politics like in the West. And things in the Middle East — things here thirty and forty years ago — prove you can't force it down anyone's throat."