by Philip Huynh
The waitress turned her back to him again, and he could tell from the heaving of her shoulders that she was taking deep breaths, composing herself.
“Well?” he said.
She turned to face him. “I learned my patience from my parents,” she said. “They met during the war, on the Ho Chi Minh trail. That’s where I was born, somewhere along the trail.”
“Dear heavens,” said Diem. “Soldiers shouldn’t have babies in the middle of a war.”
“They carried shovels instead of guns,” said the waitress. “They were the ones who spent the night fixing the parts of the road that the Americans bombed the day before. I remember sitting on the edges of the roads, watching. I never thought about it then, I was only five or six, but I can’t believe how patient they were, shovelling side by side when another bomb could drop on them at any time. One day it did.”
“I see,” said Diem.
“I don’t remember much about my parents,” she said, “but I do remember their perseverance. I owe my life to them, of course, but not only that.” She gestured to the sunlit world around them, the tasselled menu, the potted palm trees. “I owe this life to them. We all do.”
The waitress smiled widely at Diem now, baring her imperfect teeth and the crow’s feet around her eyes. She was, in fact, somewhat older than he had thought.
“Yes,” said Diem, and although thoughts were welling up in his mind from what she had just said, he could not find the words for them. “Um, I think I will order now.”
Other customers were now finding the patio. He turned to the menu, which was ostensibly Vietnamese but with touches of international flair to jack the prices up. Pho noodles with wagyu beef or braised chicken with organically grown Chinese ginger. That sort of thing. He ordered the most expensive item.
A different waitress brought him the food, an older woman with a frayed ponytail and too much mascara. Diem must have looked at her with open confusion, because she said, in English, “The other waitress is busy with customers.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said in Vietnamese. He chewed on tiny, limp vegetables and some sort of crab dish with the traditional nuoc mam fish dipping sauce on the side, fortified by a cognac infusion. Diem pushed his half-eaten plate away. Vietnamese cuisine was meant to be comfort food. If it was fancy and expensive, it was not Vietnamese.
“I’m sorry,” said the older waitress. “The food did not suit you?”
“I’ve been away a long time now,” answered Diem. “My stomach wants simple fare.”
The waitress smiled and brought him the bill. He was surprised that she neither recoiled nor betrayed any further curiosity towards him. He was, after all, an exile from the war and therefore the enemy come home. He tipped the old waitress generously even though she smiled right through him while looking up at the other customers who were starting to come in.
He returned to the streets. It was time to proceed to his intended destination, with no further distraction. He walked by the same type of chic boutiques that he had seen earlier in the day — or was he simply retracing his steps? He wasn’t sure. Everything was both repetitive and strange, and he needed something familiar to anchor him to this earth. It was possible that there was someone from his past in the crowd, but time would have worn both of them down beyond recognition. His sun-shrivelled peasant relatives, for instance. And despite decades in the cloud-world of Vancouver, when Diem had seen his reflection in the hotel that morning, he could not imagine what he had looked like as a young man. He had a fair but lined face from years standing out in the cold rain in Vancouver, from nights patrolling construction sites as a security guard. They were building condos all over Vancouver and its suburbs, and his job was to make sure no one made off with the equipment that the crew left overnight, to shoo away squatters. Years of night rain dripping off the sides of his baseball cap and down his cheeks would do just as well to rut the skin as sunlight.
But no, there was likely no one left who would recognize him anyway. They would have all passed on to the spirit world, if such existed. His mother was strict on these matters — there was a heaven and a hell and that was that. His father’s Catholicism was touched by a Vietnamese enchantment — where spirits of departed ancestors shared our world, seemed to linger under the branches of every tree. He made peace with his Catholicism by explaining that these earthbound spirits were wandering in purgatory. His father kept a secret altar in the house as a temporary haven for those who died without any loved ones to honour them with incense and offerings. There were many wandering spirits from the wars, and the living feared them.
Now he walked past demonstrations of ancient folk games that he didn’t recall seeing before. Just then, Diem saw something out of the corner of his eye, something uncertainly familiar. It was as if God had turned Diem’s musings into a prayer and answered it. Something familiar about a man lying on a hammock in the middle of this street of quaint boutiques, calling out to Diem, his face covered by a bright-red cap. The cap.
“Hello, hello!” said the man. It was the cab driver. Diem stood helplessly as the man rolled out of his hammock and skipped towards him. Hadn’t they swept out the bums and their makeshift hammocks by now? thought Diem, before realizing that it was a boutique selling fancy crochet hammocks with spiderweb edgings.
“Are you fed up with this town yet?” asked the man. Diem recognized him by his crisply persistent voice and the cap with the Manchester United logo. This was the first time that Diem could make out the man’s face (a boy, really) — the flat nose and wide eyes that narrowed dramatically when he smiled, the swell of the cheeks.
“I’ve just started to walk,” said Diem.
“You shouldn’t have to walk,” said the man in a respectful, hushed tone that brightened Diem’s spirits. His name was Duc.
“I can walk just fine, thank you.”
Duc looked him up and down, pausing to admire his tie. “Where did you come from?” he asked.
At last. Someone had finally asked Diem the question that he had been waiting for.
“Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.”
As Diem expected, Duc’s eyes lit up. “So many of my friends have moved there.”
“No doubt.”
“They seem to be doing well.”
Diem waited for a remark on Diem’s own prosperity, but Duc said nothing more.
“Of course they are,” Diem said finally. “You know, I was one of the first in Vancouver. It was not much back then.” Without realizing it, Diem was pointing at his own chest.
“I’d like to visit.”
“Just visit?”
“To see the forests,” said Duc. “I hear you can drink the rain. And the fresh air. I hear that you can smell the forest inside the city.”
“Fresh air and clean rain. Simple tastes.” That’s why he was stuck in this country chasing after petty fares, thought Diem. “There’s something else you may not have thought of,” said Diem. “Over there, there are not so many wandering spirits haunting everyone.”
“Really?” said Duc. “That sounds wonderful. I’m always on my tiptoes here, looking over my shoulder. I don’t sleep well at night, especially. Only during the day.”
“I understand how that is, son,” said Diem. Sometimes Diem thought that he had fled Vietnam simply to escape those spirits. He slept much better in Vancouver, and credited the spiritlessness of the place. Almost spiritless. Diem believed that one soul had made it across the Pacific with him on the merchant ship, that of a departed aunt who had tailed Diem all over Vancouver, chiding him over his chronic bachelorhood. In Vietnam he had had many admirers among the village girls, but in Vancouver he was largely ignored. During a Kitsilano bar-hopping phase in the early eighties he would leave the establishments empty-handed and hear his aunt’s voice through the rustling maple leaves, spreading from star to star in the night (“You can’t just sit for them to come to you. You are the man. You are the tiger on the hunt, not them!”). He sidled up to women on bar
stools then froze after trying to introduce himself, as much from the prospect of his aunt’s ridicule as from trying to charm a lady through his thick accent and partially realized Nature of Things moustache. By the time Canada’s constitution was repatriated from Britain, he had shorn his bristles and given up on women.
“I can take you to the beach nearby,” said Duc. “Cheap. China Beach is nice even at night.”
“Thank you, but I’ll stay here.”
Duc nodded graciously and watched Diem disappear into the crowd. He could be some dispatch of the Communist authorities tasked with tailing him, for all Diem knew. As Diem proceeded along Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, past the buzzing zithers of traditional music, he thought he could see the red cap flit in and out of his peripheral vision.
Now Diem made his way to Hoang Dieu Street, so different from what it was in the 1960s. The buildings had been restored to the Politburo’s vision of eighteenth-century grandeur, except for the global brand names sprouting from storefronts. There were also more antique lanterns festooning the buildings now. His soul burrowed into his chest. He feared walking to the end of the street and not finding what he was looking for.
But there it was, the third-to-last storefront — Mr. Fang’s tailor shop. The oriental lanterns over the awnings were a new touch, but there was the same announcement in Chinese carved into a wooden banister, the same single elevated step onto the brick floor where silk dresses beckoned. He knew he would not find Mr. Fang inside, nor likely his spirit, since this shop was just a minor occupation for Mr. Fang, one of his many business interests. Forty-five years ago it was run by his daughter.
A young woman greeted Diem with a plastic water bottle and a small white towel. Inside, he pressed the towel against his eyes to soften the sting of memory. It was the same parquet floor with potted ferns and red lanterns hanging from the ceilings, the same teak panelling and mannequins arranged around the floor in dark suits and evening dresses — an eternal cocktail hour for headless colonials.
“How may I help you?” she said in English.
There is nothing you can do, he wanted to say. Instead, he answered in English: “Are you the owner of this store?”
The woman shook her head, then smiled and covered her teeth with a hand. “Oh, you are Vietnamese!” she said, and switched to their native tongue. “I can tell by your accent.”
Diem cowered in his suit, could feel the presence of his aunt behind him. “Is Miss Fang still here?”
“I don’t know of a Miss Fang,” said the woman. “Madame Nguyen owns this store.”
“Well, then, is she here?”
“I can check. Do you have a message?”
“I’m just an old customer.” Diem’s throat was dry and he took a sip of the water. Left alone, he drifted past the mannequins in bespoke dress towards a smaller space in the back, where bolts of uncut silk lined wooden shelves. The smell had always jarred him. The silk was smooth as ice, the colours so bright and liquid, yet it all smelled of fish.
He felt a whisper on the back of his neck, and he turned to see a woman in crisp white trousers and a green striped shirt (silk, of course) with flaring collars. She hadn’t changed, not really. Yes, her face was lined, her pallor bone-white, but that simply accentuated her beauty, the high cheekbones and diamond chin that was a Vietnamese birthright, her large, coal-black eyes now set in stark relief. She looked all the more elegant for not trying to stand in the way of Time. The surprising difference, if any, was with her hair, not the white streaks but rather how it ended in a bob around the shoulders. It used to be much longer.
She offered her hand, palm down as if it was something steady to hold on to. “Can I help you?” she said.
He took her hand briefly, just to test reality. She did not introduce herself, nor did she ask Diem for his name. She did not mention that her father had once hid Diem in the attic of this shop.
She was an obedient daughter, had come up to the attic to leave Diem food on days when the tailor couldn’t do so. The first time she saw him up there, she seemed confused by this lanky son of a wealthy village elder hiding out like some common refugee. Diem had, in fact, deserted his South Vietnamese army squad while it was passing near his family’s village on its way to the central highlands. Desertion was not uncommon among ragtag draftees, who were sent to the battlefields without knowing how to fire an M-16. His orientation had taken place in what seemed like a converted school near Hue, sitting cross-legged and listening to a sergeant read passages from a US Army training manual without ever lifting his head.
Diem was a deserter, but he was no coward, leaving more out of hunger than fear. He was a willing draftee without knowing how the hunger would eat at him. After three months he was sick of the vacuum-packed rations of rice and soy sauce they distributed, which he suspected were US Army leftovers from the Korean War. He never planned to run away. The M35 truck was driving at night near his village, and he knew the lay of the jungle and paddies blindfolded. When he jumped through an opening in the canvas cargo cover, he heard only laughter; his superiors thought it was just another private falling out of the back of the deuce-and-a-half after nodding off. The truck didn’t even slow down. They assumed he would run after it, but instead he disappeared into the forest. He just wanted a home-cooked meal.
“I’d like a suit.”
She tapped her tongue against her lip. She seemed taller, but really it was just his stoop against her perfect posture.
“A special occasion?” she asked, taking out her measuring tape. She didn’t ask him where he had come from. He did not recall if he had ever told her he was headed to Canada before that night when he escaped from Vietnam.
Once, sometime before he fled the country, she had invited him downstairs for lunch. The store was closed for the midday siesta and her father was gone. They had known each other for a month, and by now she was sneaking magazines and novels up to him. They sat at a table in the small courtyard in the middle of the house. The table was lit by a spotlight of sun almost directly above them, and they were surrounded by the shadows and silhouettes of old teak furniture. It was hot and she acted bored, letting her cao lau noodles sit in their shallow broth while she stared into the gloom. From somewhere in the back came the muted hum of sewing machines. They might have talked about a novel she had lent him.
After lunch she said he could nap in the living room, which was cooler than the stifling attic. When he woke up, the house seemed empty. He turned a corner, trying to find the stairway back to the attic. Instead, he found a room with thin curtains draped on the far end, against which an indiscernible silhouette was thrown up from a dim light on the other side. Then the silhouette disappeared. He walked towards the curtains, found an opening, and stepped into a pool of steam and refracted light coming from a corner. She was standing in the dark, naked, or mostly so, looking out a small opening of sunlight through another set of curtains, a book in her hand that caught the light, sweat on the soft side of her wrist. Her hair went past her shoulders, maybe wet, but he wasn’t sure. She looked at him with a sealed smile, her eyes half-closed as if she had forgotten her nakedness, or as if he was a simpleton and it didn’t matter. He excused himself, found his way back to the stairs with his hands. That was the closest he had ever come to experiencing the supernatural. Later, she laughed at him for pretending the moment had never happened. “You were asleep,” she said. “So I picked up a roman.”
Now she told him to take off his blazer and tie and slid the tape measure down his arm.
“I’m visiting my parents’ village,” he said.
“Your parents?”
“Their souls, really.”
“Of course.”
“I’m from Canada,” he said, as if to explain why he had not seen his parents while they were still alive.
“I can tell that you are not from around here, at least not for some time.”
He smiled. At last a hint of recognition. Playing strangers was just her game.
He t
eased her. “I’m here to write a poem,” he said.
“You don’t need a suit for that.”
“A toad poem.”
“I see. So you need a suit for your coffin.”
“You know, I could never understand the ending of that story.”
“All the folk tales come from a seed of truth,” she said. “Think of all the poets who died young. It’s more romantic to say that it was heaven’s price for genius, isn’t it?”
“Than what?”
“Than reality. That poets usually die from being crazy, poor, or drunk.”
“I’m not crazy,” said Diem. “I’m not really a poet.”
She smiled. “I didn’t mean that.”
He put a finger on one of the wooden rods on which the silk bolts hung, and his finger drifted down rod to rod. He chose the black silk, because it struck his eye among all the vibrant colour.
“You’re taking this seriously,” she said. She measured his dimensions, it seemed to Diem, not for his suit but for his coffin. He held his breath when her face drew near his as she wrapped the tape around his collar, and he thought about what his life could have been.
“The shirt you are wearing is much too large,” she said. “We can alter it as well, no charge.” She told him to unbutton his shirt, and he could try on a replacement in the meantime.
“Another thing,” she said, whispering in his ear, “the colour of your belt should match the colour of your shoes. It’s the little things that spell success.”
She placed a bunch of pins between her lips and began marking off the sleeves. Diem’s cheeks got hot. “Thank you,” he said. “This is how I want my parents to see me, as a success.”
She spat out the pins. “Do you even know where they are?”
“I’m sure they are in heaven now.”
“So no longer in purgatory?”
“I’m sure of that.”
She stepped away from him and looked down at her hands. “It’s horrible to spend your afterlife wandering aimlessly among strangers, isn’t it? Why wouldn’t we do everything to save the ones we love?”