The Rainy Season Page 17

  We park our bikes and spend half an hour wandering around looking for him. Eventually we find him sitting up against a pole, a tray of cigarettes at his side. He’s obviously out of it; his pupils tiny, limbs loose and disengaged. He looks like a big sleepy child ready to be carried off to bed.

  Co Ngoc speaks to him in Vietnamese. He grunts. She sounds angry at first and I move away to give them space. I watch a man push a wheelbarrow across the street loaded up with one enormous block of ice. He is trying to keep it balanced with one hand and his progress is slow and cumbersome. It starts to rain.

  I look back at Quy. He is pulling on a purple rain poncho. Co Ngoc has stopped talking. She hands him a wad of dong and squeezes his hand. He looks up at her and frowns, as if trying to focus, trying to be present.

  ‘Hey, Quy, have you done your homework?’ I ask, lamely.

  ‘Yes, Teacher, I do for you,’ he mumbles.

  I buy four packs of Boy Boy Boys from him and then we are saying goodbye and walking away, leaving him resting there against the pole in the rain.

  We go to a café and order tea. Co Ngoc’s face is Buddha blank but I know she feels fear and sadness like the rest of us. ‘Quy needs to see a doctor but he will not come,’ she says.

  ‘Why? Is he afraid?’

  ‘He says he has no pain.’

  She says this calmly but the words are bottomless.

  ‘What will the doctor do? Will they help him to stop?’

  ‘Chinese herbs can help make his body stronger and his mind stronger, so he can see clearly.’

  I shake my head. ‘You do such an amazing job, Co Ngoc, looking after them all.’ But I know this is not the point, she doesn’t want a pat on the back.

  ‘I am not their mother. I am only their friend. Their lives are very hard. They have great sorrow.’

  ‘He’ll be okay. He has a lot to live for. And he has a bed and friends like you, and the other boys, who love him.’

  She shrugs and smiles slightly. ‘Each person can only free himself.’

  On Friday night, Ariel picks me up on his Vespa to go to his friend Quan’s exhibition opening. I greet him with a big kiss, determined to be relaxed and positive, but I have a knot in my stomach that won’t go away.

  We arrive and are greeted by Quan, a young Vietnamese man with long glossy black hair, a goatee and crooked teeth. He is very grave and talks so quietly I can barely hear him.

  We drift around the paintings. There are lots of portraits of women in soft pastels with fuzzy edges. There are some more experimental ones, of clusters of distorted buildings reaching up into a red sky. Wandering around the small space returns me to the openings Mum used to take me to as a child. She seemed to be in her element in this sort of setting, to know what to say, to have purpose. It is too easy to forget those times, when together we were complete.

  Ariel introduces me to his friends, French and Vietnamese. I feel them weighing me up and it makes me awkward. There is one beautiful Eurasian woman he seems to know well. They kiss cheeks and speak rapid French. I hang back and pretend to study the pictures. Ariel is smiling; she rests her hand on his arm, laughing and gesturing. I start to picture him undressing her; I move to the other side of the room.

  Ariel comes up behind me. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

  ‘I feel like your friends are scrutinising me, seeing if I measure up.’

  He laughs. ‘I think this is, how you say, dreams in your head.’

  Because I’m uncomfortable I drink quickly. There is whisky and I take it straight. I start to feel defiant without really knowing why.

  The opening ends and a group of us go on to a bia hoi. I keep drinking. I start raving to the guy on my left, Hao, about what an amazing country Vietnam is then I get into an argument with Jean-Phillipe about French politics even though I know really nothing about it. I am loud and obnoxious.

  Ariel is further down the table. I see him watching me with a curious face; I hardly recognise myself.

  I stand up. I go over to him and hiss that I am leaving. Then I walk away, without looking back, from the table, his friends, from him, from what is unfolding.

  He follows me down the street, grabs my arm, frowning. ‘Ella, what has happened? Did something upset you?’ But when I look into his big brown eyes I can’t explain it. ‘Do you want me to take you back to your hotel?’

  ‘I don’t need you to take me home,’ I mutter. ‘I don’t need you to look after me.’

  ‘I don’t want to look after you.’ He looks bewildered. ‘I want to be your lover.’

  I fight the urge to cry out, with frustration. ‘I have to go,’ I say again, as if this is the only thought I can hold on to. Then, ‘Will you come?’ I am like a crazy yo-yo.

  I wait by the Vespa as he says goodbye to his friends and we ride silently through the city streets. It is 17 June, the first day of the World Cup, and cafés overflow with people craning to watch the opening ceremony on TV.

  Back at his apartment, we have angry, confused sex and it’s like I’ve won some small victory but it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t bode well.

  I am sitting up, composed, when he wakes. I have been waiting. ‘I’m sorry about last night.’

  He stretches out. ‘Forget it. We were drunk.’

  I reach out and gingerly touch his stomach then pull my hand back. I long to tell him all that I love about him – his interest in the world, in people, his photos, his body, his earnestness and kindness – but I know that I won’t.

  ‘Did you like the paintings?’ he asks.

  ‘They were really good,’ I say, as if this might help.

  ‘I think he has talent. He will become better.’

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘last night. I don’t want to be like that.’

  ‘You were not so bad.’ But he is looking at me curiously again, puzzled.

  ‘I think I’m feeling a bit unsure about where things are going with us.’

  ‘And when you are unsure, this makes you angry?’ he asks, half-smiling.

  He is watching me intently and I wish I could just take it all back, rewind to a month ago when everything was new and full of hope.

  ‘I think maybe it scares me to feel vulnerable,’ I say.

  ‘You are afraid to be hurt again?’

  I shrug, look down at my hands. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why I have to make things so difficult.’

  He sits up and leans over me to get cigarettes. I can smell his sweat; it’s sexy and good.

  ‘Ella, this time with you is so good. Honestly, I did not expect it,’ he says. ‘You are in my head all the time. I want to know your thoughts. I want to learn all your stories. I can’t be near to you without touching you.’ He lights our cigarettes. ‘We cannot make each other … how you say, guarantee? Neither of us can know where we will be six months from now. I want to be with you. That is all. For the future, anything is possible.’

  ‘I want to be with you too,’ I murmur.

  ‘Perhaps it is not so complicated then?’

  He smiles, holds me in his unwavering gaze. Dust motes sparkle around us like morning stars and here I am again in his arms, struggling to suspend my disbelief: trying to wriggle back, in my mind, to a time when I still believed I could make myself a happy ending.

  I spend the weekend alone, declining Ariel’s invitation to meet for lunch on Saturday or come by the bar. On Sunday I do some lesson planning and then cycle to Speak Easy where the guard lets me in with his huge set of comic book keys. I sit in an empty classroom and use the school’s single tape player to start the slow job of transcribing Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction. I try to focus on anything but the roaring in my head, the feeling I am racing down a long, dark tunnel towards oblivion. I eat dinner at the Smiling Café and look over Chanh’s homework, drinking until I can creep numbly home to bed.

  On Monday, Hugh and I meet for lunch at the crab restaurant.

  ‘Have you spoken to the kids?’

  He pours me a b
eer. ‘They rang last week.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was okay.’

  ‘Okay? How was it left?’

  ‘Elizabeth and I talked for a long time. I think she understood – a little. She apologised. She thinks I overreacted. She’s going to talk to the kids about their plans.’

  ‘Hugh, that’s good! It’s good that you talked to her.’

  He shrugs. ‘There’s been a lot of talking over the past few years and it doesn’t seem to get us anywhere.’

  ‘It’s still better than cutting yourself off, just disappearing. And it sounds like you got somewhere.’

  He shrugs, flashes me his special sad smile. ‘It’s strange, I hardly even feel like a father these days. Just a lonely old man.’

  ‘Old? Ha! Hugh, you’re a fantastic father. Whatever happens, nothing can change that. They know where you are and how to call you, they know you love them and want to see them. I would love to have a father like you.’

  ‘Are you close to your father?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him since I was five.’

  He raises his eyebrows, questioning, concerned.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I say, quickly, ‘for another time.’

  The food starts coming. All around us, the comforting sound of crab claws being crunched.

  ‘How is your handsome French friend?’

  ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.’ But then I tell him everything, it comes pouring out – the fear that has seeded inside me, that I can’t seem to shake.

  He listens patiently. ‘But, Ella, he has told you he wants to be with you.’

  ‘Yes, but also that he can’t make any guarantees.’

  ‘But that’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know, but whenever we’re together now it’s like I can feel it slipping through my fingers.’

  Hugh sighs. ‘Ella, you have to try to let go of what’s happened in the past.’

  ‘How?’

  He smiles. ‘I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I work it out. Maybe you could start by trying to be clear about what is happening now. You and Ariel are crazy about one another. You don’t want to sabotage this for yourself.’

  I smile forlornly at him and he smiles forlornly back.

  I teach my afternoon class then cycle to the post office to call Mum. I have a rare impulse to reach out across the divide. She doesn’t answer.

  I don’t want to go back to Room 513 so I go and hang out at the second-hand bookshop. Thien’s daughter brings iced coffee and Thien holds forth on market reform and the widening gap between rich and poor.

  ‘The people need to win back their freedom. Yes. But is this the only way?’

  It’s another of his rhetorical questions so I just nod, thoughtfully. The longer I am here, the less I think I understand. Ho Chi Minh fought for his people’s independence, and yet those who govern in his name have curtailed the fates of so many. And now the Vietnamese are winning back their personal liberties only because the country is overrun with foreign investors wanting to screw them. Standards of living improve yet most Vietnamese still live in extreme poverty. Where, between these poles, lies the elusive freedom?

  I cycle back to the hotel and eat banh mi and Vegemite downstairs on the brown couch while Hien does paperwork and nibbles her seeds. Pham stops to steal my cigarettes and I buy the paper. The street moves and sways. Maybe I just need to take things more slowly, I think. Maybe then everything could be okay.

  I go up to my room. It’s too quiet. I fill a teacup with vodka and sit on the bed with the newspaper. Between articles on Vietnam Motors assembling BMWs and the new ATMs to be installed nationwide is a piece on the MIAs.

  US military last Tuesday sent home the remains of 16 men who died during the Vietnam War in the largest repatriation since the United States and Vietnam began joint searches for those still missing in action.

  Sixteen small wooden boxes were loaded into larger aluminium cases and carried aboard a Starlifter military jet parked at Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport … an honour guard saluted each case as it was loaded onto the plane.

  Washington has moved towards normalising relations with Hanoi, announcing last month that the two governments will soon exchange liaison offices but it is still demanding the ‘fullest possible accounting’ of MIAs before full diplomatic ties are set up.

  I swallow my vodka and lie back on the bed. I close my eyes and picture the welcome ceremony at the other end, stars and stripes, women weeping; the careful, tender unloading of boxes from cases; more saluting, perhaps, for the dusty remains.

  What would you feel if they were returned to you? After years of waiting and hoping for news, would your heart have to break all over again? Would it be worth all the fresh grief to finally lay them to rest?

  On Tuesday, Ariel calls and we arrange to meet at his apartment after he has finished work. When I get there at eleven he is boiling water for tea. ‘Will you have some?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ I go to the fridge and get a beer.

  ‘This was a very bad day. Merde! My boss has promised he will arrange a new visa but now they have refused. I have been for two hours at Saigon Times to negotiate a contract. They say they can organise the visa. I will believe this when it is in my hand.’

  We go out into the courtyard and sit down side by side on the bench.

  ‘I am absolutely tired,’ he says, rubbing his hands over his face. ‘Sometimes this life here can be crazy. Sometimes you want just to have a simple communication.’

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He laughs. ‘I am sure.’

  He leans over and kisses me but it’s awkward, like we are strangers. I know we both feel it. The bats sail overhead and a bicycle skids by on the wet road outside the gate.

  After a while he stands up. ‘I will take a shower,’ he says. ‘Will you join me?’ His tone is cautious – I have made this happen.

  ‘In a minute.’

  As soon as he’s gone, the emptiness gusts through me like a mean wind. I stay out in the dark for a long time, arms wrapped around myself, as if I were cold. He comes out once more; I say I will be in soon. He stands for a while just looking at me then turns and goes back inside.

  When finally I go in he has fallen asleep, naked on the bed, legs scissored like he is running. He looks beautiful and peaceful. It’s nearly one in the morning.

  I perch on the edge of the bed. ‘I have to go now,’ I whisper, softly. He opens his eyes, sleepy and confused. ‘I have to go,’ I say again.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just have to. I’m sorry.’

  He sits up and rubs his eyes. He looks pissed off, for the first time. It makes my stomach lurch and yet there is also this weird sense of relief.

  ‘Will you tell me what is wrong,’ he says, ‘that you have to leave in the middle of the night?’

  I don’t answer. I stare at the floor. I know I am behaving like a child; I can’t seem to stop.

  ‘I don’t know what you want, Ella. Do you want us to stop seeing each other? If you do, just say it.’ He glowers at me, angry and hurt.

  I smile then, like a fucking lunatic. How do I explain that the more I feel for him, the worse it is; that I cannot be here any more when I want to be here so much. ‘I don’t want it to end,’ I say, truthfully.

  ‘Then tell me what is wrong. You have become so far away. We talk but we do not find each other.’

  ‘I think I need some time to think … I have some stuff I have to work out in my head. I think I need some time alone.’

  He looks at me steadily, unsmiling. ‘Okay.’

  I get my bag. He doesn’t try to touch me, doesn’t move from the bed. I close the door behind me and feel a deadening deep, deep inside.

  Maybe it’s better this way, I think. This way, no one gets too hurt.

  EIGHTEEN

  I keep my head down. I hang out with Suze and we paint our toenails and watch pirate
d videos rented from the embroidery shop. I use her tape deck to transcribe more Guns N’ Roses and cook a curry on her stove with spices from the Indian stall at the Ben Thanh market. I try to stay busy but I wake each night with my heart racing and can’t get back to sleep; I can’t stop thinking about those MIAs who couldn’t find their way home. I retrieve the Easy Vietnamese phrasebook from my pack on top of the wardrobe and take to carrying it around, getting it out on the pretext of checking some word but always returning, compulsively, to the emergency expressions – Help! I am lost! What is this place?

  On Friday night I go to the Smiling Café for dinner. At the next table, Allan sits with his back to me. I’ve still not found any pattern to his table-hopping and now I think it’s just that he refuses to have one; spending his days in a café where custom is transient, where he leaves no mark.

  I exhale, loudly; he doesn’t respond, and suddenly I feel like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him hard. I would like to scream into his leathery, war-worn face: What happened to you? What did you do? What made you this way?

  I stand up abruptly and walk over to his table, with my beer, and sit down opposite him. ‘Don’t you get lonely?’ I ask.

  He lifts his head slowly and I recognise that he is drunk. He tries to stare me down with those Clint Eastwood eyes but I don’t drop my gaze. I note that in appearance he is the exact negative image of my father, all blonde, sky-eyed brawn to my father’s pale, thin darkness. But if I saw my father now, would I even recognise him?

  Allan doesn’t answer but goes back to his fried chicken and rice.

  ‘Isn’t there anyone at home that you miss?’ I demand.

  He smirks. ‘I think you know already, El-la, that life is not that simple.’

  I shrug. Then I say, quickly, ‘Could you tell me just one thing, any thing, about the war? Isn’t that why you are here?’

  ‘No,’ he barks. ‘Go rent a movie.’

  ‘I’ve seen them all.’