Single White Female in Hanoi Read online

  ‘When?’ I ask, shocked.

  ‘Er, now, nine year before.’

  ‘Nine years ago! He still can’t work?’

  ‘No. Cannot work again. He is … broken,’ Nguyet points to her head, ‘here.’

  ‘What work did he do before?’

  ‘He teach the cello, at the Conservatory, same my mother, but now she also finish.’ Nguyet looks down for a moment then at me again. ‘She must look after my father. After the accident my father at the hospital for one year.’

  I look at Nguyet in dismay. ‘One year!’

  ‘It was very terrible,’ she adds, unnecessarily.

  ‘Who paid for the hospital and medicine?’ I ask her. Vietnam has no equivalent of Medicare.

  ‘We must pay. Of course! Very expensive. After, my family have no money.’

  ‘Does your father still play the cello?’

  ‘No, never. He not play now. Or talk. Since the accident he never talk.’

  ‘Can he understand?’ I ask her.

  ‘Yes, he understand everything. There’s a long pause, then Nguyet adds. ‘He is always sad.’

  I feel the internal tug of a tear duct, so I change the subject. I ask about Lien. She’s 42, and comes from a nearby province. Her husband and two children live there, but she spends most of her time at Nguyet’s home, where she’s fed, boarded, and paid a small sum in exchange for domestic help.

  ‘Does she miss her family when she stays at your house?’

  ‘She miss her son very much, but not her husband. He drink and sometime he … er … battre?’ She swings her forearm over the table.

  ‘Beat,’ I say sadly.

  ‘Yes – he beat her.’

  I let Nguyet order, and soon our table is plied with delicious dishes. Over the course of the meal I learn Nguyet is single, 27 years old and overdue for marriage. We talk about many things but I get the feeling there’s something else unspoken, something Nguyet wants to tell me but can’t. My intuition is correct. Nguyet carries a dark secret, but she’s not ready to share it with me yet.

  Deluge

  While Nguyet and I are sitting in that restaurant, Hanoi is turning on its axis. Ageless geographical and astronomical forces are ushering in a new firmament. The rain that began harmlessly this afternoon was, in fact, the forerunner for a vast new weather system.

  After our meal we remain at the table digesting and chatting for nearly an hour. Finally we prepare to go, and I ask Nguyet to drop me off at ‘An’s Place’, my regular Internet spot in the Old Quarter. The rain has grown heavier and the last of the day’s light has slipped away somewhere behind the dense bed of cloud. The air is warm though, and some young guys on motorcycles are riding bare-chested through the downpour. My thin raincoat is hardly up to the task any more – it’s developed a leak or two in its hull. I’m damp through when I arrive at ‘An’s Place’, but the wall-mounted fan behind the computer soon dries me off.

  I jab away at the keyboard, stringing together anecdotes for friends. Beyond the entrance, the rain collapses out of the sky in dark sheets. The usual sounds of horns and shouting are either drowned out or temporarily allayed. Streetlights illuminate thick currents running along the swollen gutters. Occasionally, a cyclo pedals by, the rider shrouded in a plastic tent. I wonder uneasily how I’m going to get home.

  The attention of everyone around me is suddenly drawn by the appearance in the doorway of a grinning backpacker. He’s completely saturated. His T-shirt and pants cling to his lean frame as tightly as the fur of a soaked cat. Slowly, theatrically, he squelches the length of the shop, past the line of computer terminals, towards the counter at the back. Each footfall leaves a discoloured puddle as his gym shoes disgorge more fluid. A thread of liquid flows from each of his hanging fingertips.

  Two things occur to me. The first is how undignified and incongruous he looks. I know, in this instant, that no Hanoian would ever present themselves anywhere in public looking like this. In Sydney, this sight might attract friendly laughter and sympathetic groans. In Hanoi, it’s inappropriate, almost shocking, and carries the mark of a serious lapse of social carriage. Why couldn’t he spend the equivalent of US15 cents on a raincoat? Why didn’t he stand under an awning until he had dried off a little? Why doesn’t he look apologetic for the mess he’s making as he stands there?

  The second thing that occurs to me is that he probably wants to use a computer, and it’s obvious that in this state he would destroy any electrical item he laid hand to. I watch closely the faces of the two sisters who run this place, for signs of concern or animosity. They show no reaction. Their faces as they watch the guy walk towards them are expressionless. But this very lack of expression reveals something. I’ve come to know these women a little and they are usually very friendly with foreign customers. Their friendliness lacks a little in sincerity, but it’s a pleasant change from the frequent indifference of staff in many businesses here.

  From his back pocket, the Man from Atlantis produces a piece of wet paper. He leans on the counter, smiles.

  ‘Hello, I am wondering could you tell me where is the Emerald Hotel?’ he says, in a thick German accent. There’s a pause during which only the whoosh of the wall-fans and the pounding of the rain outside are audible. I notice a few locals have gathered at the door to stare in.

  ‘Here is the address,’ he proffers the sopping scrap of paper.

  The sisters are obliging, and even offer a smile as they send him off in the right direction. Once he’s dispatched, however, their expressions change and during the rapid whispered exchange that follows, the disgust and fury I anticipated is visible on their faces. This is the first time I’ve caught a glimpse of a Westerner through the eyes of a local.

  Beyond this fluorescently lit room, the night lies in wait like a beast of prey. The rain is ceaseless. I defer my journey home for as long as possible, until I’ve pored over every communication in my inbox, until I’ve written rambling and mostly unsolicited missives to everyone I know, until my eyes feel raw from staring at a monitor and my buttocks are welded painfully to the hard moulded plastic chair.

  At 11pm I make my last appraisal of the street from the dry haven of An’s Place. It resembles a Monet painting. Edges seem to have melted away.

  I slip into my raincoat and step out. But where are the xe om drivers? The streets are virtually deserted. There’s a cyclo driver begging me for business, but I conclude that I’ll stay drier spending six minutes on a motorcycle than fifteen in a pedal-powered rickshaw. I walk a block and find a couple of xe om drivers under an awning drinking local rice spirit and smoking cigarettes. The first driver won’t take me anywhere, but his mate, who’s about 20 and breathtakingly beautiful, agrees to take me, despite the fact that he doesn’t have a raincoat. The older man hands him a sheet of plastic, which he wraps around himself, and we’re off.

  As we turn out of the Old Quarter and onto the main road of a new neighbourhood, we enter spin cycle. The rain is lashing at us and has blown the driver’s plastic sheet open. He needs both hands on the handlebars to negotiate the road, the sides of which are now several centimetres under water, so, at his invitation, I put my arms around his torso to hold the plastic in place. Under the wrapping, his body feels lithe and smooth.

  The new neighbourhood has drainage problems. The water now covers the road and it’s impossible to know where the potholes are. Other vehicles are moving slowly. At last we turn into Nguyen Thai Hoc, and I see we’re now at the epicentre of the problem.

  Traffic has stopped functioning. Where the road and sidewalk were earlier today is now a single river, bound by the locked metal doors of the businesses on either side of the road. Motorists are walking their bikes through the crotch-deep water. But my arms are wrapped around a determined man. He keeps the revs high and we enter the water with the bike still running.

  The surface is centimetres from the underside of the saddle when our engine finally stalls. My driver puts his feet on the ground on either side to wa
de the bike the last hundred metres. The whole scene is completely surreal. Other cyclists going in either direction struggle past us on both sides, drifting chaotically through the dark water. Single shoes and plastic sandals float across the surface like tiny watercraft. I’ve brought my feet up onto the saddle so that no part of me is submerged. This makes me feel like a spoilt princess, but I don’t need the harsh light of day to know what surrounds us. It’s my nemesis – the brown soup.

  We turn into my cul de sac and the road’s surface strains out from under the meniscus. We’re back on terra firma. After a few hard kicks, the bike’s engine springs miraculously back into life.

  At my gate I tip the driver an American dollar I find in my wallet. He’s delighted. Wide-eyed, I study his smiling face, just discernible in the darkness and driving rain. He’s gorgeous. He eyes me back with what looks like equal interest and seems reluctant to leave. Thoughts of inviting him in cross my mind, but I don’t. I’m now almost as saturated as the German backpacker, and anyway, I’m really not sure it would be a good idea.

  I get into my flat dripping and exhilarated from the adventure. But standing under a warm shower, the driver’s smile burns like a phosphene in my mind’s eye. What would have happened if I’d asked him in? Would it have been a difficult situation given that he doesn’t speak any English? It’s too early in my Hanoi days to know of the low odds of him being genuinely interested. I just assume he’s like any other hot-blooded guy his age.

  The downpour continues in spasms through the night, ringing off the corrugated iron overhangs around the compound, splashing violently onto the concrete below. The sky has lost control of its insides. In the pauses between squalls, the compound sighs and creaks.

  The drone of my overhead fan evens out much of the sound and I sleep deeply, my dreams taking me far away from the watery cocoon that enfolds me. But when I wake in the morning and see rain still falling, I’m dressed, raincoated, and heading out the door with my camera within minutes.

  My bulbous end of the cul de sac looks normal. As usual, the kids call to me from the bitumen where they’re playing.

  ‘Hello? What your name?’

  But it’s Friday. School has been cancelled, it appears. Beyond the kids’ domain, the usual sundry item stalls are operating. Further along, I see the weather has not dampened attendance at Oanh’s Pho stall. Sheets of khaki and blue tarpaulin have been strung along the side of the buildings to keep the diners dry. They sit over their bowls of noodle soup – chopsticks in their right hands, spoons in their left, slurping, talking, pointing at the foreigner. Business as usual.

  Then, several metres from where my street joins Nguyen Thai Hoc, I hit the banks of a new reality. In front of me, an opaque river flows. Commuters are battling their way to work through the rippling expanse on bicycles and motorcycles. Cyclists’ feet work invisibly beneath the surface, while the motorcyclists are mostly walking their bikes through the water. Vendors have rolled their trousers up to the top of their thighs and wade along in the shallows where the footpath used to be.

  I watch an elderly newspaper seller carry his plastic-wrapped bundle of newspapers across the road. He wears the traditional olive pith helmet worn by xe om drivers, Quan included. His trousers are unrolled and soaked to the thigh. On either side of him, women weave across the street in conical hats and raincoats, their lower halves submerged. A white van passes, sweeping a tide out around it. Brown waves lap at my feet.

  By the light of day the colour is clear. Clear as mud. The gutters have risen.

  I think of the many businesses along Nguyen Thai Hoc that use toxic chemicals. There are spray painters, welders, refrigerator mechanics, motorcycle repairers and fibreglass cutters. I’ve seen these workers pour liquids into the gutter. Also along the sidewalk are meat and chicken vendors. Their by-products drain into the gutter too. The gutter is where the populace bend to spit, where litter is thrown, where babies are held to urinate, where syringes and the occasional dog turd are swept.

  I take some photos and as I turn to go, a shoe-shine boy wades by, chest deep, wooden toolbox on his head. He looks imploringly at my leather sandals. I look imploringly at him – or at least, the third of him that is visible. I want to fish him out and clean him up. The stoicism around me has astonished me. I don’t see tempers fraying. I don’t see despair. I just see people getting on with their lives.

  By a stroke of luck, I have no classes today. I climb the stairs to my place with a resigned acceptance. I won’t be going anywhere until the rain stops and the tide recedes.

  Which is exactly what happens early in the evening, after a day spent on my bed reading. Realising there’s been a two-hour dry spell, I rouse myself and mount a reconnaissance trip to the end of my street.

  Dry land.

  It’s as if someone has pulled a plug on the earlier scene. There’s not a hint of the morning’s mayhem. This is another stroke of good luck because I’ve realised I’m out of food at home, and would have gone to bed hungry. I phone Natassia and persuade her to meet me for dinner at the Nang Tam.

  Over a table of food I describe to her the earlier state of Nguyen Thai Hoc.

  ‘The poor shoe-shine boy, walking through that horrible brown soup. I just wanted to take him home and sterilise him.’

  Natassia frowns down at the mushroom soup, which is also brown, and cocks her head. ‘Sterilise? That means he can’t have children, yes?’

  ‘That’s another meaning. I expect one of the toxins in there did that already.’

  The sky is still inactive when Natassia and I leave the restaurant, but it feels as convincing as a kid holding its breath, playing dead. We find a xe om each and head off in different directions. I live a few blocks to the west, while Natassia lives much farther away – near the northern outskirts of Hanoi in a serviced studio apartment. She’s on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator, but the exhausting stair-climb is compensated by the sweeping views from her place. The block is sandwiched between West Lake, Hanoi’s largest lake, and the Red River, and her room has windows on all four sides. Her view is so different to mine, they seem to belong to different cities.

  Her area will not flood, but only 500 metres away is a slum neighbourhood on the banks of the Red River that becomes submerged every year. Residents live without power or running water for these weeks. The lower floors of their homes are completely underwater and all transport is by boat. Xe om drivers become ferrymen, navigating barges through the canals with poles, charging a fee to take locals to dry land. With the water ruddied by the alluvial deposits that colour the Red River, the area during the annual flood comes to look like a Martian Venice. But it’s not for the faint-hearted. Watching terrified elderly people being helped into barges is a confronting experience.

  Tales of woe

  The sky finally runs out of juice later in the afternoon, and, in my neighbourhood at least, the flood recedes and things return temporarily to normal.

  In the evening I head to a restaurant near Natassia’s place to meet her and Zac for dinner. I last spoke to Zac early this morning. The line was crackly as he told me his neighbourhood had flooded and the lower floor of his house was several centimetres underwater.

  Tonight I manage to score Quan as my xe om driver. We pass through town heading north towards Natassia’s place at sunset. This is the furthest Quan’s ever taken me and I become swept away by the romance of the trip. I look at the back of his beautiful brown hands on the rubber grips and sigh with longing. He has the broad, solid hands of a practical man and he keeps his fingernails short.

  The horizon is an effulgence of pink and crimson as we pass between West Lake and Chuc Bac Lake – ‘Lover’s Lane’. I survey the lovers lined up on their motorbikes, and throwing decorum to the wind, I wrap my arms around Quan. He doesn’t show much reaction, but then, he’s concentrating on the road. Snuggled behind him, I feel our connection is mutual. We’re from two different worlds, but joined, I feel certain, by a powerful chemistry be
yond culture and station, beyond our control, by a mutual empathy that can never be expressed in words. The ants are running wild across my heart as we pull up outside the restaurant. I dismount and turn to face him.

  That’s when I remember that I haven’t set a fare. Since getting to know them, I’ve always given my local xe om drivers a flat five thousand dong for any ride, whether only a block, or across town to the UNCO school, but this trip is further than that. I should have agreed on the amount before we set off. I know Natassia pays her driver 6,000 for the trip, but she’s a seasoned bargainer – I would have offered more. There’s an awkward moment while I pull out my wallet. I wonder whether he’ll charge me at all after what seemed such a romantic ride.

  So when he looks me in the eye, licks his lips, and says ‘Hai muoi nghin’ – ‘twenty thousand’ – I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face. Only greenhorn tourists on their first trip would pay a sum like that for a xe om.

  ‘You greedy arsehole!’ I say to him in astonishment. After a moment I reach for my wallet. ‘Here’s your money, I hope you enjoy it. You’ve just lost a customer.’ I shake my head slowly from side to side, hoping he’ll understand that he has made a terrible mistake.

  But whether he comprehends or even perceives my hurt, he shows no reaction. He takes the money, nods, and revs off.

  ‘Carolyn, what do you expect? He’s just a xe om driver,’ Natassia says by way of comfort, when I’m slumped at the dinner table. ‘How can he ever appreciate a person like you?’

  I turn to Zac, certain of his support, and notice he’s not paying attention. He sits quietly, and his face is dark.

  ‘Zac! What’s up?’ I ask him.

  ‘He had a bad weekend,’ says Natassia. ‘A very bad weekend. He was telling me about it.’

  I turn to Zac. ‘What happened? Did your place flood?’

  Zac turns to me slowly, dramatically.

  ‘Tell her about the eeeels,’ begs Natassia, two anecdotes later.