The Rainy Season Page 10

  ‘French. He liked you though, I could tell. You should ask him on a date.’

  ‘Nah. You’re imagining things,’ I say, though I feel a rush of excitement.

  We keep drinking and just before midnight, someone suggests we go out. Martin has a jeep so we all clamber in, piled high on laps, and he puts on the Smiths, full-blast, as we go hurtling through the black streets to the Q Bar.

  Inside the bar, the group disperses. Suze starts chatting with a reporter from the New York Times, Dave and Klaus retreat to a corner to kiss, and somehow I end up on my own at the bar, drunk, waiting for something to happen. I wish that Ariel would walk in. I want something to happen, something to take me out of myself, out of my loneliness.

  A Texan comes up and offers to buy me a drink. He’s an exporter of shoes and seems nice, kind of large and soft. We talk for a while – he is funny, he makes me laugh – and then he offers to make me a toasted cheese sandwich back at his place, with real bread and real cheese. I say yes. I don’t want the night to end. I don’t want to go home alone.

  I catch my reflection in the glass as we walk out and my face has a strange, hunted look.

  I wake before dawn in a panic, like I have to move, run – get the hell out of here. The American snores beside me, his mouth open and slack, breath of mothballs. There is dirt in the pores inside his ears. I remember his face looming over mine, his great thrusting weight. I remember him on the couch urging me to come closer, closer, and that later I felt like a doll, moaning when pressed in the middle, just waiting for him to finish so that he would hold me, hold me in his big arms.

  I slip carefully out of the good cotton sheets; he doesn’t wake. I quickly and silently dress, staring around the sterile, white room. There are shirts on hangers, an open suitcase of neatly folded clothes, a tube of sour cream Pringles, a framed photo of a pretty young woman – all the evidence of a person on a short stay away from their real life. And me, with my breath of wine and cigarettes, trying to catch a ride back.

  This is not what I want to be doing, I think frantically. This is not who I want to be.

  Outside, the street feels too big and too foreign, the sky and the sounds and the smells. I have no idea where I am. I am waking up in strange places with strange men and I don’t know how to stop. What is wrong with me? Am I encoded to self destruct?

  I flag down a cab. I don’t bargain with the driver. I tell him where to go and then sit back and thrust my fingers into the cracks that run through the warm vinyl seat. There’s a plastic neon Buddha attached to the top of the dashboard. It must be wired to the cigarette-lighter because the colour keeps changing from blue to green to red then back to blue, over and over. I wish life could be like this: you could get into a good rhythm and then just switch to ‘repeat’ – blue to green to red, Tim and me, over and over without an end. Why does everything have to end?

  I get back to the Van Mai and slink shame-faced up to my room while Hien is talking to a hotel guest.

  We were always waiting, Mum and I, for something to happen, for life to improve. We were like demented old people at a bus stop with no money for tickets.

  At fifteen I decided I hated her and for a time I didn’t care how much we screamed at one another or how much I hurt her. I came out of hiding. I watched Vietnam War movies at home, right under her nose. And still she refused to discuss it, as if it had nothing to do with us, and maybe it didn’t but I hurled it at her anyway. Where is my dad? I demanded. She insisted that she didn’t know. Her drinking worsened. Look at yourself! I shrieked. I told her I was ashamed of her and she told me she’d never wanted children anyway, that her own father used to hit her with a belt, and that my father’s leaving broke her heart. No wonder he left, I said. How could he stay here with you?

  We got nowhere: I learned nothing. And after we’d said the worst, and without either of us commenting, things went back to the way they were – our default position. I returned to the sanctuary of my bedroom, where I talked to Jess on the phone for hours at a time and listened to Boy George and Madonna, or, turned down low, Redgum’s ‘I was only 19’, which always made me weep; she pottered about the house getting drunk. She managed to get herself to work. Janet visited; I was glad she had a friend. We came together to watch TV or visit Nan and Pop – and maybe Pop was a bad father but he was always kind to me. When Mum was sick I tended to her and cooked meals for us both. Spaghetti with Paul Newman’s sauce and fish fingers with mash. I hated her and I loved her, achingly. Back and forth, up and down.

  Then, a month after I finished high school, at just seventeen, I moved into a damp, rundown little terrace in Carlton with Jess. I was free, at last. I never looked back. It was like climbing out of the salty wet, stifling insides of a giant clam shell into the bright blue day. Jess and I shopped at the supermarket and cooked meals from recipe books. We ran each other bubble baths and slept in each other’s beds so we could talk all night. I wore thick black eyeliner and smoked cheroots and kissed a different boy every weekend.

  Until I walked into that Tuesday tutorial at nineteen and saw Tim, and, right from the start, I knew I would do anything to have him. This is it, I told myself: this is it. We waited until the end of semester, for the sake of appearances, then slammed into one another like magnets. We were in love! I loved him and he loved me! We made our home together, so fast, Book curled into us with his engine hum of a purr, and I was so happy sometimes it hurt.

  On Sunday, Hugh suggests a day trip to Vung Tau. I hesitate because it makes me nervous, the idea of getting so close to where my father was. But it’s a day at the seaside, I tell myself, and it is always good to see Hugh.

  We ride out of town on his Honda early on Sunday morning. After half an hour we’re into paddies and open sky. We pass the odd bamboo hut on stilts, a boy herding a flock of ducks; women in black clothes and conical hats, working the rice. For breakfast we stop at a stall on the side of the road and eat omelettes and banh mi. Afterwards, the woman brings a plate of mangosteens and Hugh shows me how to eat them. They are delicious.

  It is late morning by the time we reach Vung Tau. As we come into town we pass a giant white statue of Jesus on the mountainside, looking out over the sea. The statue has a mournful, ominous air. In the town proper we park the bike and walk straight down onto the beach. Hugh tells me the port was once called Cap Saint Jacques and was used for centuries by foreign merchants before the French turned it into a seaside resort. I nod but I’m only half-listening. I realise I am holding my breath. I’m feeling the sand under my feet. I am frowning with concentration. I am wondering if my father stood on this bit of beach, if it was a safe area. I am scanning the buildings along the shore for some sign of ‘Vungers’ – a town full of soldiers on R in C, Rest in Country. Where is the Peter Badcoe Club? The Grand Hotel? This was Australia’s main supply base. The field hospital was here. Ships were unloaded and tired men came here to drink and fuck and die.

  My father was here, he was definitely here.

  I’m on the verge of telling Hugh. It’s pressing up and out of me. I even open my mouth but the sound won’t come. I swallow. The habit of not telling is too strong. There is too much shame – and fear. The war was a disaster; we won’t mention it; it will upset people. Terrible things happened. Just say he was a chef. Just say he went away. It can be our little secret.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Hugh asks.

  I nod. I notice we are walking along a shore covered with litter, and that it smells like a sewer, just as it did in 1969, but laughing families flap in the shallows and, further out, round bamboo boats net for fish. It is a peaceful scene.

  ‘Could you tell me about your children?’ I ask Hugh. ‘Would that be too hard?’

  He sighs. ‘I was thinking, the other day, about when I moved out. Toby called me every night for a month. I’d pick up the phone and there’d just be this silence so I’d know it was him. Then I’d ask him a question and that’d be it, he’d be off, he could talk for an hour or more.’
/>   ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘His big passion then was the solar system. He knew everything about the planets, where they are in relation to the sun, how big they are, how hot, which ones have the conditions conducive to life. He was like that – always collecting facts. At the age of five he could explain, in great detail, how dinosaurs evolved into birds.’

  I smile, waiting for him to go on.

  ‘Anyway, the calls became less frequent, and shorter, and now it’s hard to get him to talk at all.’

  I look at him, his smile twisted with grief. I put my arm around him and gently pat his back. He is thin. ‘Hugh, can I ask you something?’

  He nods.

  ‘Why are you here, so far away from them?’

  His body tenses; I can feel it under my hand. ‘It’s complicated,’ he says. ‘I needed to make a clean break. And there is the business.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just I know how much you miss them.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ he says again, and I wonder what he means.

  ‘What about Catherine?’ I ask. ‘What’s she like?’

  He shrugs, hopelessly. ‘For years she wanted to be a vet. She was one of those girls obsessed with horses – posters, books, pony club. She’s lost interest in all of that. I don’t know what she likes any more, who she wants to be.’

  ‘She’s thirteen, isn’t she?’ I remember that age, when I first started to dream of escape.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She probably doesn’t know herself who she wants to be.’

  Then he says, in a rush, ‘I’ve been wondering if I should ask them here … for a holiday. I don’t know if it’s a terrible idea.’ It’s like he’s talking about a first date. I wonder if they have any idea how lucky they are to be loved like this.

  ‘Have they been here before?’

  ‘No. Elizabeth and I never came.’ His voice flattens again. ‘Shall we go and find somewhere to eat?’ he says. ‘There are a few good places.’

  We turn and walk back to a restaurant on the beach. It’s old and rundown; I wonder if it was here twenty-five years ago, if my father could have eaten here.

  We take a seat and order. Hugh looks sad so I tell him about my students. I describe Minh, the youngest, always first to put up his hand and make people laugh; Mr Trung, with the lightly shaded glasses and grave demeanour, Minh’s counterbalance; the five women who work for the same company, who stick together like peas; and Co Ngoc, with her wise, open face.

  Hugh listens and asks questions. He seems genuinely interested. I don’t talk about my other life, the dark one, because this is different here with him. We eat rice and fish and drink a couple of beers; he tells me some Vietnamese jokes; we laugh; and I forget, for whole minutes at a time, that what binds us is our loneliness and our longing.

  ELEVEN

  Co Ngoc invites me to join her for soup after class on Thursday. I say yes even though I’m hung-over, again, and only got four hours’ sleep. I gulp the last of my Coke, pull on sunglasses and follow her outside, into the warm, meaty air.

  Twice now we’ve walked together to a nearby café but this afternoon she instructs me to unlock my bike and wait. She disappears around the corner, returning seconds later on a tomato-red Honda Dream, robes hitched up, engine humming. I smile with surprise. It’s a funny sight.

  She taps her right shoulder and looks at me expectantly. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘You want me to hold on?’

  She nods.

  I’ve watched bicycles being towed along by motorbikes – it looks tricky and I’m only just mastering riding alone. But I’m too hung-over to muster up any serious concern for my personal safety. I get on, clamp my left hand onto Co Ngoc’s shoulder, and we take off into the confusion.

  She starts slowly and it’s hard to keep my balance but as she speeds up it gets easier. The traffic naturally compensates for our new width, folding around us like batter. Whoosh – faster and faster – until we are flying along, and I have that delicious sensation of letting go. Maybe I should be a biker, I think, with tight leather pants. Join a gang and ride fast through beautiful places; never be alone again.

  I’d planned to play some pool at the River Bar last night with Suze then go home to bed but Dave bought a bottle of whisky and we ended up at a table outside, drinking, making ourselves carefree and brave. Dave had just spoken on the phone to his father and his father had cried, begging his forgiveness for casting him out, and now Dave cried, telling us about it. Later, Suze’s boyfriend Hoang turned up but he wouldn’t stay and talk with us. He wanted to be alone with her now. He pulled her away and spoke to her roughly and I felt like punching him but she took off with a grin on her face so I just waved her goodbye. Maybe we all are an itchy mix of fragile and strong.

  Then White Water John turned up, fresh off a tour, and told us a long story about an elderly American couple who drove him to distraction with their terrible Vietnamese. They’d done a short course before leaving home and insisted on speaking the native language in every encounter, but their pronunciation was so bad that no one could ever understand what they were trying to say. It was funny at first, he said, but after ten days…

  Some time after midnight, White Water John and I moved on to the Apocalypse – the black hole at the end of the night. We sat there at the bar and kept drinking, and drinking, and I could feel the sheer doggedness of it, as if we were trying to get somewhere, get something back, or maybe just elude ourselves. Most of the expats I’ve met here are on the run from something, are a little unhinged. Sometimes I think I’ve found the one place on earth where I can feel normal as I completely fuck up. In the early hours, White Water John talked about his mother dying when he was a child and how he has never been in love; I think he tried to kiss me. I didn’t get back to the hotel until after four.

  Co Ngoc slows to a stop outside a tiny noodle soup shop, a rusty sign out front advertising Pho Chay. A boy takes charge of our bikes and we enter the dim, moist room. Up the front, an old woman with hair pinned into a neat white bun sits witch-like beside a cauldron of bubbling broth. Co Ngoc greets her, pressing her hands together in the prayer position and bowing her head. The woman nods back, smiling ever so slightly.

  There are only five tables: Buddhist nuns sit at two and the other three are empty. In the small area behind the tables a motorbike rests on a stand with both wheels off, in the process of being repaired, and beside this two children squat side by side on a low wooden platform in front of a mute karaoke video, words in both Vietnamese and English snaking across the screen. It feels like being in someone’s living room.

  We sit down at one of the tables. ‘Madam Nhu was the first person in Saigon to make vegetarian pho,’ Co Ngoc tells me. ‘She has been in this shop for fifty years. There are other places now but they are not so good.’

  ‘Fifty years?’ I say, massaging my temples. ‘She must have seen a lot.’

  We watch Madam Nhu take a long bamboo ladle and scoop up rice noodles from a basket on the floor, lowering them into the cauldron to warm.

  ‘How do you feel about how Vietnam is changing?’ I ask Co Ngoc.

  She shrugs. ‘I am happy Vietnam is at peace. We do not know what these changes will bring. I hope they will make life better for the people.’

  Madame Nhu brings the steaming soup to our table with a plate of fresh herbs, lime and chilli, which we tear, squeeze and drop into our bowls. I taste the broth. It’s nothing like the chicken or beef versions, it is fragrant and earthy, richly flavoured with aromatic herbs and roots and strange fungi. Big chunks of daikon nestle among the noodles, long silky brown mushrooms, spongy white ones, and fingers of some chewy soybean derivative made up of many layers, like the bark of a tree. It is easily the best thing I have tasted since I arrived; it’s like eating an old-growth rainforest.

  While we eat, I ask after one of Co Ngoc’s boys, Thanh, who has just been admitted to hospital with tuberculosis. He is very sick. For a week she has been try
ing to locate someone from his family but hasn’t been able to find any of them. In the past couple of weeks, over coffee, she has talked to me about all her boys: eight teenagers who were put back on the street when a small Vietnamese NGO withdrew funding for the over-fifteens. Co Ngoc had been working in the NGO’s safe-house but left to care for the boys who outgrew it and were released back on to the street – three orphans and the other five homeless through poverty or abuse. Co Ngoc rents a single room for them in a house near her pagoda with the money she earns tutoring Chinese, her third language. The boys sleep there, though often she won’t see one or other of them for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. She tries, as much as possible, to keep track of where they are, to make sure they are eating, to find them odd jobs. Once a week they all gather so she can teach them basic English.

  ‘Do you think I could join you some time?’ I ask her now, shyly. ‘I could come and do some activities with them.’

  Her eyes light up. ‘Yes, that will help their confidence. Each month we have a lesson here, to practise conversation, and they can also eat. If you want to you can join us next time.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  After the soup, Madam Nhu shuffles over with a halved dragon fruit on a saucer. It looks like a tropical sea creature with its bright pink skin, green spikes and speckled white flesh. She urges me to try some and when I do, she smiles broadly, as if I have done something clever. I beam back at her, so grateful, suddenly, to have met these kind women.

  When Madame Nhu goes back to her stool by the cauldron, Co Ngoc teaches me the Vietnamese name for dragon fruit, trai thanh long, making shapes with her hands to match the tones. Then she tests me on some words and phrases she taught me last week. But while I can hear the difference between the last two of the five tones, I can’t make them sound different. We both laugh at my whiny attempts. I notice that Co Ngoc, usually serious and blank as an old sage, laughs like a little girl.

  While I am still chuckling, she looks directly at me. ‘Ella, I think, inside, you are sad.’