The Rainy Season Page 15

  I smile. ‘Everyone has their off days.’

  I give Suze a hug and we go out to the Vespa, take off into the night. We ride fast through the dark, quiet streets of Ho Chi Minh City, all covered with flags. Ariel grabs my hand from his hip and pulls it around his waist; I can feel his warmth through the shirt. I close my eyes and slip my hand inside and caress his chest, his hard stomach. I push my hand down into his jeans. Ahhh, he feels so good.

  Back at his apartment, there is no ceremony. As soon as we’re inside we fall into each other, yanking off clothes, kissing and groping.

  We fuck in the living room, against the wall, slow and hard, then slide naked to the floor where we collapse, side by side, catching our breath. ‘I have been thinking of you all night,’ he says. ‘There was an Australian girl at the bar. I was speaking with her just to hear your voice.’

  ‘Should I be jealous?’

  He laughs. ‘Non.’ Then, seriously, ‘I want to be with you.’

  ‘Me too,’ I whisper. ‘I want to be with you.’ I run my hand up his thigh, over his big, square knee. I want to freeze this moment and stay inside it forever, stop time and go no further.

  He picks up my hand and caresses it. ‘Your skin is, how you say, transparency? Like white glass. I can see inside.’

  ‘I don’t know if I like that,’ I mumble. ‘There’ll be no mystery.’

  ‘Ella, I think we have no danger of this.’

  I leave Ariel’s and cycle to Speak Easy in gentle rain. I’ve barely slept, again, and yet all my senses are sharp and alive. I skim along on my sparkly red bicycle, dirty water spraying my feet, and smile at all the people in their fluorescent rain ponchos – a technicoloured dream.

  I have nothing prepared for class so I suggest our first excursion. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do this but we all go outside, climb on our bicycles and motorbikes, and ride en masse to Ben Thanh market. We spend two hours wandering around, naming things. Fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, nuts, spices. Through the clothing and fabric sections, the homeware, the endless miscellany.

  Outside, we eat barbecued corn while Minh entertains us with foreign accents. He is surprisingly good. Chien has brought a People magazine left behind on a plane so we all crowd around it and laugh and exclaim over the pictures inside. Mr Trung takes a group photo and we are all beaming.

  When I get back to the hotel, though, the tiredness hits me. I slump onto the couch opposite Hien while she brews us tea.

  She takes a milk fruit, trai vu sua, from the drawer and cuts it up, offering me half with a teaspoon. We both eat the creamy pale flesh and when we are finished she pours tea then takes something from the drawer in the desk and passes it to me. ‘I have photo for Miss Ella, look my father.’

  I sit up straight and hold it very carefully with the tips of my fingers. It is a grainy black and white shot of a young Vietnamese man with a square jaw, surprisingly thick bushy eyebrows, and a full mouth. He is wearing a suit with a wide lapel and a pale shirt. He looks stern but I think I see, in his eyes, the hint of a smile.

  ‘Hien, he is so handsome,’ I say, feebly. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Hang.’

  ‘How old was he here?’

  ‘He thirty years old in this picture.’

  ‘How old was he when he died?’

  ‘Thirty-two years old.’

  I nod slowly and exhale. ‘He does look like Long … very much.’

  She smiles happily. ‘My mother say Long same-same his grandfather – too lazy!’

  ‘You said you feel him close by, his spirit?’

  ‘Yes. Some time I talk with him. When I have problem he tell me what to do.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I say, wistfully, ‘that he is watching over you.’

  She nods. Then she gently plucks the photo from my hand and puts it back in the drawer, as if it is her job, now, to keep him safe.

  I call Hugh early in the week and ask if he’d like to meet for dinner. He says yes, there is somewhere he’s been meaning to take me, a real treat, but his voice sounds a bit strained, overly bright.

  He picks me up at seven Tuesday evening and we ride to a small nondescript house with no signage. We walk through the door into a room set up with shiny black tables, white napkins and chilled air. The restaurant serves cha ca, Hugh explains, a Hanoi specialty.

  ‘Geez, I’m lucky I have you to bring me to these secret places,’ I say, and for just a second I let myself pretend he is my doting father and I am the apple of his eye.

  He smiles. ‘We don’t need to order, they only serve one dish. Would you like wine?’

  ‘Mm.’ He calls to the waiter. ‘How have you been?’ I ask.

  ‘Fine, fine, and how is it going with Ariel?’

  ‘Really good. To tell you the truth, I think I’m falling in love.’

  ‘Ella, that’s wonderful.’ He smiles, a big generous smile, but when the wine comes I notice he drinks deeply, and he is jangling his keys.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ I say. ‘I’ve been missing you.’

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ he says. ‘That’s good.’

  Noodles and condiments arrive at the table and Hugh explains that the nuoc cham is flavoured with a rare liquor taken from the scent glands of a water bug, ca cuong, found only in rice paddies. It takes dozens of these insects to make just one drop, more precious than gold. He asks the restaurateur to bring over the tiny vial. The man carries it gently in the palm of his hand, as if it were a live grenade. I put the clear, priceless essence to my nose but can’t smell a thing.

  Fish and dill are brought to the table and cooked in a pan over a burner. We put together bowls of food. It is fantastic, but I notice Hugh is drinking faster than normal, faster even than me. He orders a second bottle of wine then tells me, mirthfully, about a neighbour who’s filled the space between their front doors with a forest of potted bonsai, replete with lakes and miniature footbridges, tiny wooden people. Apparently the neighbour comes out each morning and rearranges things, just slightly, just so. A parallel life over which he has total control. Ha!

  We laugh and then fall silent.

  ‘Hugh, has something happened? Are you okay?’

  He doesn’t answer for a while. ‘I think the time has come to move on.’

  I stop eating. ‘From Elizabeth?’

  ‘All of it. You know, I’ve been thinking: this is where I live now. This is where I have my business. Why am I holding on so hard?’ I can tell he’s a bit drunk; I’ve never seen him drunk before, not even slightly.

  ‘Did something happen?’

  ‘Last week I called home, on Toby’s birthday. And he just happened to mention they were going skiing over their next break.’

  I look at him blankly.

  ‘They knew I was coming back to spend it with them. I haven’t seen them in over six months. None of them thought to include me in the decision. I’m not part of their lives any more. It is as simple and final as that.’

  ‘Oh, Hugh, that’s not true. They love you. You’re their father. Maybe there was a misunderstanding.’

  ‘I have to start letting go.’

  ‘Don’t let go of your children, Hugh.’ I hear the sharpness in my voice. ‘You don’t have to let go of them,’ I say more gently. ‘They’re children; this isn’t their fault.’

  ‘I just miss them so much. I miss our life together. Sometimes, Ella, I feel like I can’t go on.’ His voice breaks, and for the first time I see him cry, this grown-up man, a father, in the middle of this cool, calm restaurant.

  I stare down a table full of curious diners and then wrap my arms around Hugh and hold him in a tight embrace. And I cry silently with him, because it breaks my heart too, how much he loves his children and longs to go home, and yet somehow he can’t.

  I don’t see Ariel for a few days. He is busy taking photos so I teach and hang out with Hien, eat my meals at the Smiling Café, take a long, quiet walk down the river with Hugh and get my hair cut, but all the time
I am thinking about Ariel and waiting to be with him again.

  On Thursday a letter comes from Mum that is long and sprawling and says nothing at all. I read it through twice because I have started, just lately, to feel a kind of astonishment that not once since I told her I was coming here has she mentioned my father. The longer I am away the more spectacular this seems. I throw the letter in my backpack and decide not to write back.

  On Friday afternoon after class, Co Ngoc asks if I’d like to come with her to visit Thanh in hospital. The rain has abated. She pulls me along on her scooter to a big coffee-coloured building. Inside, it’s hot and crowded and smells of rice and disinfectant. Co Ngoc explains that the hospital can’t provide food for patients so families have to come each day with their tiffin carriers of rice and vegetables and soup.

  We walk down a corridor that appears to function as Casualty. It is full of wounded people and their tortured moans. There is an ashen-faced young man leaning against a wall to keep from falling down; a woman in a yellow top with blue flowers lying unconscious on the tiled floor; a man squatting with his head in his hands, hair matted with blood. I can’t see any staff, any trolleys. I flash to the hospital scene in Born on the Fourth of July, the blood-curdling screams, foaming mouths, last rites.

  We pass through another door and along a corridor, up four flights of stairs and into the wards. Thanh is in a room with eight beds – all occupied. The room is bustling with people, talking and laughing; it stinks of unwashed sheets and old food but at least it is cheerful and noisy.

  Co Ngoc introduces me to Thanh and his brother, Binh. She was finally able to locate Thanh’s family in a slum across the river and every day since Binh has been at Thanh’s bedside, making up for lost time. There is a flurry of Vietnamese between the boys, and some laughter, directed at me, then Co Ngoc instructs them to speak to me in English. Thanh looks tired and pale and has dark shadows under his eyes. He is horribly thin. ‘Hello you want shoe-shine?’ he says all in one breath. They howl with laughter. Co Ngoc scolds him.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘bao nhieu?’

  ‘Ah, you speak Vietnamese very good,’ Binh says. He looks about twenty.

  ‘I have a good teacher.’

  ‘Where you from?’ he asks.

  ‘Uc dai loi.’

  ‘What your age?’ Thanh asks.

  ‘Ummm, hai muoi bon.’ More smiles and nods of approval.

  ‘Do you have husband?’ Binh asks.

  I shake my head and laugh. ‘And you? Do you have a wife?’

  Binh makes a mock-serious face. ‘No, because I love for only you.’

  There are fits of giggles then Co Ngoc says we should be quiet, Thanh needs rest.

  I ask Thanh why he chose the tattoo of a dove on his arm. ‘For peace,’ he says.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, nodding. ‘Of course.’

  ‘This one, love.’ He points to a heart on his shoulder, and then to a green dragon on the side of his thin neck. ‘This one, strength.’

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ I say.

  I notice Co Ngoc frowning and I see how worried she is for him. I step away from the bed and she speaks to him rapidly in Vietnamese, gesturing to the water on the table beside his bed, and saying something, I think, about noodle soup. Then she announces that it is time for us to go, she will come back later with his dinner.

  Co Ngoc and I say goodbye to the boys but Thanh takes hold of her hand and won’t let go until she pulls it gently away.

  ‘See you, Thanh,’ I say, as we leave. ‘Get lots of rest.’

  ‘So long, Miss Ella,’ he calls from his sick bed, in a pseudo American accent.

  Ariel and I ride out of town on his Vespa with visions of discovering a forest oasis or a little village specialising in peanut brittle. We ride for two hours, dodging potholes and all manner of traffic, and find nothing we want to stop for, eventually giving up when we hit an ugly, industrial town. It’s raining hard; there is thunder and lightning. We buy banh mi and go to the top of a small hill, overlooking a smoke-stacked factory, where we shelter under a pepper tree and make up stories of all the places we could have found, the places we somehow missed. We can’t stop laughing. We are soaking wet.

  When we get back to Saigon we go to his apartment to get dry. I have a round burn on the inside of my calf from the exhaust pipe, like a brand. Ariel rubs ointment onto it.

  ‘You haven’t told me much about your parents,’ I say. ‘Are you close to them?’

  His face darkens. ‘Actually, I have not spoken with my father in five years.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He has spent his life sitting in his fucking chair, with his newspaper. He has never loved my mother. She is, how you say, melancholic? I cannot forgive him for this.’

  ‘He’s a doctor, isn’t he?’

  He nods.

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She will never leave him.’

  ‘Are you close to her?’

  He shrugs. ‘She is still waiting for me to come home since I left five years ago.’

  I think, with a hollow feeling, of Mum’s back shed.

  Ariel goes into the kitchen and puts the kettle on then comes back to the couch. ‘And your mother?’

  ‘I guess you could call her melancholic too,’ I say, carefully. ‘She drinks a lot. My father left when I was five.’

  He frowns. ‘Do you still speak with him?’

  ‘No. We never heard from him again. He just took off. Vroom! He sent cards for a few years but then they stopped.’ But what else happened in this story? I am thinking. This is pitiful! There has to be more.

  ‘Does this hurt you?’ he asks, looking steadily into my eyes.

  I shrug and stare down at the brand on my leg. ‘Sometimes … yes … yes, even now.’

  He leans over and gently lifts my face so that our eyes meet and his gaze is so tender that I can almost believe if I just fall into his arms, everything will turn out fine.

  I stand up, sad and strangely aroused, and lead him wordlessly into the bedroom. There will be no more talking for now. We make love silently, with our clothes on, only our jeans yanked down, and it is so erotic and intense it makes me want to cry. We fall asleep in the twilight wrapped around one another, damp and spent, like lost little children.

  I dream I’m at the John Denver concert with Suze and Dave. I’m waiting for Ariel but there are so many people I’m worried I won’t be able to see him when he arrives. I keep scanning the crowd for his face. Then I look up at the stage and notice that John Denver is smiling straight at me, through all the other people. It seems really weird until I realise, with a great rush, that he is actually my father. He still looks like John Denver but it doesn’t matter: I know it’s him and I know he knows me too. I am overwhelmed with relief – joy! I have found him at last. But when I try to work out what he is singing, with all that love in his eyes, I realise I can’t understand a single word.

  SIXTEEN

  In class, we work through a list of adjectives to express feelings and my students come up with examples of when they might use them. Chien writes: The passenger on the aeroplane is angry; Huong: I am joy to meet you. We end up discussing happiness – how to define it, how to find it. Everyone writes down three things that make them happy and then they read them out. Common ones are family and work. Minh puts down money, ice-cream and love; three people include karaoke. As we’re packing up, I realise it is a whole week since we opened the red book.

  I walk out of Speak Easy into warm, damp air, and there is the boy on the corner husking corn, the grumpy woman leaning in the doorway of the café, the fresh meat stall buzzing with flies – everything in its right place. I feel an unexpected wave of melancholy. Soon this boy will grow up and move on, the stall will close down, the woman will die. Hearts will be broken, lives unravelled. How does anyone feel real happiness when they know it can’t possibly last? What is the point when no one stays, nothing remains?

  I try to shake off th
e grey mood. I get on my bike and ride to the Russian department store on Le Loi to buy an electric kettle for my room. It feels like an act of faith, in the future. Then I cycle to Ham Nghi to buy wine. Ariel is cooking us dinner tonight; he has the night off. The shopkeeper and I chat in broken English and broken Vietnamese and I manage to understand that he is very well, has two daughters and likes soccer.

  It is exactly four weeks and five days since I first woke up in Ariel’s bed.

  In the courtyard of his compound after dinner, drinking wine: he is sitting on the concrete bench and I’m on the ground, leaning against his legs. The small dog wanders listlessly by; bats glide back and forth above our heads.

  I tell him about class and our analysis of happiness.

  ‘So you want to find a karaoke bar?’ he asks. ‘You want me to sing Elvis for you? Will this make you happy?’

  ‘I’d love to hear you sing Elvis. What about right now?’

  ‘Non.’

  ‘Come on, it’s dark. You’ve got a beautiful voice.’

  ‘Absolutely no. One night I will come with you and your students and drink many, many beers, and then I will sing for you, “Love Me Tender”.’

  I laugh. ‘I’ll remember you’ve said this. I feel happy just imagining it.’

  We sit for a while, looking up at the bats.

  ‘What about you?’ I ask, quietly. ‘What makes you happy?’

  ‘Do you need my list, Teacher?’

  I nod.

  ‘Many things … good food; to make love, of course. I like to be always finding new things, to be changing my ideas … I am happy to be alone, taking photos.’

  ‘Are you happy now?’

  ‘Being here with you?’ His voice is light, teasing.

  ‘Yes.’

  He touches the back of my neck; it sends shivers through me. ‘Can’t you tell?’ he asks, softly.

  I wait and wait, sitting there in the dark, his hand on my neck, but he doesn’t say anything more.

  We go inside and make love; I am not all there but he doesn’t seem to notice. He falls asleep but I am still wide awake. I lie very still beside him. I stare at his beautiful face, I stroke his arm. I have this creepy sense of being on guard, keeping watch over him, as if he might slip away when my back is turned.