The Rainy Season Read online

  As they work, I flick through the newspaper. A US$9 million National Informatics Technology Programme has been launched, a major step in Vietnam’s modernisation. The Japanese have struck oil off Vung Tau, and the US is to purchase two hundred thousand tonnes of Vietnamese rice.

  Further in, a feature laments the new class of rural poor that’s sprung up in the northern delta as a result of agricultural privatisation. There are calls for the state to contain these negative outcomes of market reformation, to provide social security and prevent exploitation by the new rich. And surely this is what a Communist government should be good at but the state seems focused on filling its coffers, taking care of its own, periodically scooping up the homeless from the city streets and trucking them off to camps in the country to keep the surface spic and span.

  After class I tell Co Ngoc I can’t make it to soup with her boys tonight. I’ll try to get there next month. I give her the first few songs I’ve transcribed for Duc and eight copies of a word search then cycle listlessly back to the hotel.

  In the evening I go to Suze and Dave’s to watch a video. When I arrive, Velvet Underground is playing and there’s an open bottle of red on the coffee table. I sink down onto the couch.

  ‘So things went pear-shaped,’ Dave says, stretching out on his back on the floor.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ I ask, quietly, as if it’s something I no longer have the right to do.

  ‘He isn’t happy.’

  ‘Did you play chess?’

  He nods.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘We didn’t talk much. It was one of those games.’ Dave sits up and starts rolling a joint. I can see he’s considering what to tell me. ‘He said Vietnam has changed for him since he met you. And he wanted to know who it was.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘I said I didn’t know.’

  I rub my hands over my face.

  ‘You could try talking to him again,’ Suze says.

  ‘No.’ There doesn’t seem any point. ‘What about you?’ I ask her. ‘Have you heard from Hoang?’

  She shakes her head glumly. ‘As my mom would say, probably it’s all for the best.’

  I sigh. ‘She’d probably be right, too. Are you missing him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Dave passes her the unlit joint and a lighter. ‘Here, an ancient and proven cure for everything.’

  We watch a pirated Four Weddings and a Funeral and eat smoked oysters and crackers from the import shop. The video’s been shot by hand-held camera in a cinema and from time to time the focus slips and the screen fills with the back of someone’s head. The sound is terrible. I lie in a stoned stupor, barely taking it in.

  ‘Come on, let’s go out,’ Suze says when the movie ends.

  I shake my head. ‘Not me. You two go.’

  ‘Come on, honey, a few drinks, a game of pool, a little rumba.’

  I smile. ‘Could I stay here? I don’t want to go back to my room.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Have fun,’ I call to their backs.

  They go. I hear the bike roaring off down the street. I finish a letter to Jess then lie back on the couch with my eyes closed, and replay the day of the wedding, the day it all began. I break it down into short, exquisite clips, opening with Ariel in the doorway to my room, with his damp hair and naked wrist, leaning down to kiss me on each cheek.

  Eventually I drift off, curled up in a ball, pretending it’s all still ahead, that I haven’t already fucked up.

  For the next week I go out every night. I make each one last, eking them out, hour by hour, bar by bar. I drink at the Long Phi, the Hammock, the River Bar, the Q Bar; the Hot Rock Café and Downunder Disco; Apocalypse Now and Good Morning, Vietnam.

  Early on, I run into White Water John. ‘Mate, I heard what happened with your fella. I feel bad.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘How’s the leg?’

  I pull up my pants and show him the tapestry of small scabs. ‘I’ll be taking my next lesson sober.’

  He smiles. ‘It was a good night though.’ He looks at me, questioningly, but I don’t respond and we move apart.

  A few times, I ride to the Blue Dragon and look in. Once, I see him. He’s talking to someone – a man – and smiling. He looks impossibly out of reach, as if we are separated by some impenetrable, translucent skin. I cycle straight to his compound and let myself in. The rat dog yaps. I leave a pack of Boy Boy Boys on his doorstep. I think about Chanh’s note: I hope you understand me. I feel like a stalker.

  Another night, I find myself at the Apocalypse with Suze at four in the morning, sitting up at the bar, closed in by the black walls, the oozing blood, like a great, pulsing womb. I’ve been drinking so much I no longer feel drunk, just heavy and slow; when ‘Ruby Tuesday’ comes on I start to cry.

  ‘You’re not doing so well are you, honey?’

  ‘No.’ Because I know it doesn’t make sense, what I have done, so I see no way out. I feel like there is something broken inside me that can’t be fixed.

  I rest my head on Suze’s shoulder and gaze around this grimy bar, dedicated to the dirty war. From the very start I felt at home here. It felt familiar and right – like all the books I used to read, all the movies I watched. Saigon. Shit. I’m still only in Saigon, Martin Sheen muttered in that first claustrophobic scene of Apocalypse Now. I lost track of the number of times I watched that movie.

  Maybe I am comfortable amongst the guns and grenades, the seedy graffiti, because here I am in it, I am drinking in the dark and gloomy imaginings; here, I am not resisting. Maybe here is where I feel closest to my father.

  And yet – fuck it – I don’t want to be here forever.

  On Sunday morning, still half drunk from the night before, I clamber onto my bicycle and ride one-handed, gripping a bottle of Coke with the other, to Vo Van Tan, to the War Crimes Exhibition. I ride fast, recklessly, humming the theme tune to Hawaii Five-O as if to buttress myself against the evil ahead.

  There is no queue. I lock up my bike and finish the Coke. A woman takes my money, hands me a brochure and points me through a gate. I wish Tim was here. Aside from anything else, he understood. But apparently it is something I have to do alone.

  Inside, it is eerily quiet – no tour groups today. Bits of old warplanes and assorted armour are scattered on dry, yellow patches of grass that break up the hive of glum-looking buildings. I don’t know where to start, so I stand in the safety of the sun and look at the brochure: Crimes of War of Aggression in Vietnam. I skim the few paragraphs of text inside on the number of bombs dropped, the devastating, deadly chemicals sprayed across the land, the money spent by the US on destroying Vietnam. The US was fighting a war of attrition: they thought if they killed the enemy faster than they could be replaced they would eventually give up and retreat. It didn’t work but several million Vietnamese died in the process. I know this stuff. It is tattooed on my brain. I brace myself and go into the first building.

  It is like entering some kind of mind-fuck torture chamber. I walk quickly, taking it in almost against my will – the bombs, the weaponry, the guillotine, the cages – and then I get to the photos. Most are grey and grainy and somehow this makes them worse, like the people in them are disintegrating right before my eyes. Heaped piles of dead and mutilated bodies; small children running for their lives; a man being dragged along the rocky ground behind a tank; another mid-air, thrown flailing from a helicopter. Scarred faces and charred trunks. A group of American soldiers grinning above a pile of assorted limbs and another soldier proudly holding up a decapitated head. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t. But as I scan the photos, half recoiling, half hungry, I realise I am looking again for my father, as if I might find him here on these terrible walls, and I am at once disappointed and relieved that I cannot.

  I go back outside and sit on a bench and light a cigarette. I am having trouble breathing. I feel like I am going to start crying or laughing, o
ne or the other, like I’m not going to be able to stop myself. I suck hard on the cigarette. Muted sounds drift in from the street – Saigon life carrying on – but my head is full of smoke and guts and noise. It is too real; that is the fucking problem. ‘And what next?’ I mutter aloud. I am here and I have seen it. I have opened the door and the dust is billowing in. And yet the questions still remain: What did my father do in the war? And what did the war do to my father?

  I sit in the courtyard for half an hour then walk quietly out. I grab a banh mi and four Tiger beers and cycle to the Saigon River and I drink, alone, even though I’ve got that achey feeling again, maybe the start of another fever. I slowly wash the dark thoughts away, just like my mother taught me.

  I arrive at Speak Easy on Monday so hung-over it feels like I’m radioactive. I am definitely getting sick again, and is it any wonder? I missed my lessons on Thursday and Friday, leaving short, oblique messages with Oanh, and as I park my bike and slip into the building I keep expecting Miss Jenny to appear in front of me with her jaws snapping.

  I get into class and apologise for my absences, then we play a few successful games of Hangman and some I-spy. I tell them I have another headache, perhaps a migraine, so this gets us onto medical terminology and we even manage a role-play of a doctor’s visit, with Minh playing doctor. Ngu gets me to lie down on the floor and Mr Trung is the pharmacist. The women from the pea pod act as my family, speaking to the doctor on my behalf. All in all, we have a laugh.

  After class, Co Ngoc asks if I’d like to join her for pho chay. I take some painkillers and we head off.

  Madam Nhu starts dunking the noodles as soon as we walk in.

  ‘Em khoe khong?’ she asks me.

  ‘Khoe.’ I’m well, I lie. ‘Ba khoe khong?’

  She nods and her eyes twinkle. ‘Khoe lam.’

  We sit down and the tra da comes and the soup. I try to eat, I know I have to, but my stomach is tight and empty and my jaw aches from clenching. There is a dull thud, thud, thud behind my eyes.

  I ask Co Ngoc about Quy. She says she took him to the doctor yesterday. He has some medicine; she hopes he will take it.

  ‘How about Thanh? Is he well?’

  ‘Yes, he is well.’

  She says he has started making fabric flowers to sell at the market. Without education or training, most without a permit of residence, ho khau, it is hard for her boys to find any kind of work.

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ I say.

  She shrugs in her no-nonsense way. ‘This will be good for Thanh.’

  I nod. Yes – I guess Thanh is just one boy.

  ‘Next week,’ she says, ‘I will go to a farm nunnery in Dong Nai, some hours from Saigon, to rest and study. If you want to, you can join me.’

  ‘Really? How long are you going for?’

  ‘Ten days.’

  ‘I’d have to check with Miss Jenny. Could I let you know?’

  She nods. ‘You look very tired, Ella. Your face so white. I think a rest is good for you.’

  I tell her about breaking up with Ariel, yet as I’m saying it I have the sensation of telling a story, trying to make it fit – because it is more than Ariel. I know that.

  ‘It is good for you to be alone now,’ she says. ‘You are a long way from your home. You are a strong.’

  I smile. ‘No, Co Ngoc, I don’t think I am.’

  ‘This is just what you feel,’ she says. ‘Not what you are.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ I really don’t know.

  ‘Everything the difference.’

  On the way back to the hotel, my bike gets a puncture. I’m on a street I often ride along but don’t know well and I have to walk three blocks to find someone to repair it. I squat, head pounding, while the man sets to work submerging the tube in a tub full of water.

  He’s been at it a few minutes when I notice a quiet sort of keening. I look up to see a young woman standing outside a grocer’s, two shops up. She has this look of almost comical bewilderment, as if she is utterly, utterly lost. I think she must be drunk – I have seen that look before, on my mother’s face – but then she moves a little and I realise her hands are tied behind her back, attached to a pole.

  ‘Vi sao?’ I ask the man fixing my bike. I indicate the woman. How can this be happening? In public?

  ‘Dien!’ he says, smiling, twirling one hand over the top of his head. Crazy!

  He finishes fixing the bike. I try not to look at her. There is nothing I can do. I pay him and ride back towards the hotel, stopping on Pham Ngu Lao to buy a bag of the green stuff, rau ma, for my liver.

  TWENTY

  ‘Well … I’ve done it,’ Hugh announces, enigmatically, as soon as we’re seated.

  We’re at Buffalo Bill’s, Tuesday night. The MD is at a table nearby but we haven’t acknowledged one another.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘They’re coming – Catherine and Toby – in their next term break.’ He has this huge grin he is trying unsuccessfully to contain.

  ‘What? Hugh! That’s wonderful!’

  He laughs. ‘I figured in the end that I had nothing to lose. I asked them and they said yes – Elizabeth said yes. It’s only for a week.’

  ‘When? When is it?’

  ‘In six weeks. They’ve cancelled the skiing.’

  I shake my head with disbelief, picturing his spare room, all ready with the twin beds. So they will be reunited, the father and his children. ‘Hugh, this is such good news.’

  ‘I wanted to thank you, Ella,’ he says, formally, ‘for your friendship. It has meant a lot to me these past months.’

  ‘God, Hugh. Same-same! I don’t know what I’d have done without you. This is already the second heartbreak you’ve nursed me through.’

  We eat the bland chilli con carne and brainstorm things he could do with Catherine and Toby while they’re here – the Mekong Delta, maybe a couple of days up at Mui Ne. He is animated and funny, almost unrecognisable. I am thrilled for him and I ache with envy.

  After dinner, neither of us wants to go home to our lonely rooms, so we head to the Rex Hotel for dessert. We catch the lift up to the roof bar and find a table at the edge, order ice-cream and coffee. I look down at the black, winding river; the old buildings cowering amongst the new; banh mi stands lit up like Christmas trees; young couples out cruising on their Honda Dreams. A peacetime city.

  ‘My father fought here,’ I blurt suddenly. It comes out of the blue, so unrehearsed that I don’t have time to panic.

  ‘Your father?’

  I nod.

  ‘Was he hurt?’ Hugh’s voice sounds strained, shocked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I am speaking but my body is perfectly still. ‘He cried a lot.’

  ‘You’re not in contact with him, are you?’

  ‘He left when I was five.’ I expel a crazy little chuckle. ‘I’m sorry, Hugh! I don’t know why I’m telling you this now. I never talk about this, to anyone.’

  The ice-cream comes and we both ignore it. Hugh is silent; he is frowning hard. ‘Did you come to Vietnam because of your father?’ he asks, finally.

  I freeze, smile and frown at the same time. ‘It was Tim’s idea,’ I say, by rote. ‘But, I don’t know any more. I don’t know why I came. I’ve been obsessed with Vietnam as long as I can remember. He left a big gap, my father.’

  Hugh is still frowning. Is he so appalled?

  There is another long, tense pause then he clears his throat. ‘Can I tell you a story about my parents?’

  I nod and light a cigarette. Our coffee comes. The ice-cream is melting. Hugh starts, in a calm voice, to talk.

  He tells me his mother was a primary-school teacher in Saigon, his father with one of the first US Military Assistance Advisory Groups. They met in 1956 and he was born the same year. As far as he knows, they were actually in love and there was talk of marriage, but the US military made this difficult and when his father had to return to the States his mother asked him to take the baby.
She wanted him safe but she had to stay to nurse her sick mother; her father was dead and her brother training with the Americans. So Hugh’s father took his infant home – something extraordinary for the times – and promised to come back for her.

  Hugh pauses to drink some coffee and I take in, with fresh eyes, his thick black hair, newly trimmed; his smooth, ageless olive skin; his striking green eyes. The cup clatters when he returns it to the saucer. ‘He never came back. Apparently, the embassy tried over several years to find her but didn’t have any luck.’

  ‘Hugh …’ I reach for his hand. He looks over my shoulder into the night.

  ‘When I arrived here last year I managed to track down her brother, with the help of an agency. He told me she died in 1970, so she would still have been alive when they were looking.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Funny – she had a motorbike accident, nothing to do with the war.’

  ‘So you have no memories of her at all?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Photos?’

  ‘One. From her brother.’

  I exhale loudly. Neither of us speaks for a long time.

  He half smiles. ‘Like you, it’s not something I talk about.’

  I shake my head. ‘So we’re both children of war. That’s freaky.’ I realise that the feeling of recognition I always had with Hugh went deeper even than I understood. I thought of him as a father figure; maybe he is more like my big brother.

  ‘Yes, I guess we are.’

  We look at each other, both smiling slightly. ‘Ah, this is a crazy business,’ I say. I want to tell him – to tell us both – that it’s all going to work out. But I really don’t know.

  ‘It must have been hard to come back,’ I venture.

  He shrugs. ‘I think it was better to finally know.’

  I nod slowly, taking this in.

  ‘I was always wondering about her, and about Vietnam,’ he says. ‘Always. When my marriage broke down I think I was hoping to find some answers, some sort of connection with my birth country.’ He smiles. ‘It hasn’t really turned out that way. I don’t fit in here any better than I did back home. You know what they call half-castes here? Dust on the wind. And so I live like an expat … At school, in the States, I used to pretend I was Spanish. I’ve been denying who I am all my life. There is nowhere in the world I feel at home.’