Single White Female in Hanoi Page 17

  When the long meal is over, the five of us walk down the alley that leads from the restaurant to the street. Today’s thick cloud cover has crazed and fallen to pieces, revealing a murky purplish backdrop. It’s a moonless night, and I can make out Mars up there, an unblinking reddish beacon. It occurs to me that I’ve never seen or heard a plane in the sky over Hanoi.

  Nguyet and Binh collect Binh’s motorcycle from the attendant, bid a warm goodbye and zoom off together. They’re both in trouble with their families, having missed their ten thirty curfew. It’s already twenty to eleven. Alexa unlocks the Chinese bicycle she bought from someone on the street last week, hugs me, wishes me a good trip, and pedals off down the tree-lined street. It’s back down to me, Zac and Natassia. We hang at the kerb. The street is relatively quiet. Zac doesn’t speak.

  ‘Well,’ I offer. ‘That didn’t go too badly. They’re nice, aren’t they.’

  ‘Caz,’ Zac begins, frowning. He’s raking the ground with his foot. ‘You didn’t tell me your friend Nguyet was the hottest chick in Hanoi.’

  ‘I guess I didn’t realise,’ I say, genuinely surprised.

  ‘She’s got a proper arse!’ he rhapsodises. ‘So rare in Vietnam. And big tits, and her skin … How come you never talked about her before?’

  ‘Honestly, I didn’t notice her dimensions, Zac.’

  ‘You really don’t see that often in Vietnam,’ he continues, dreamily. And she’s really nice too.’

  ‘I think you just saved yourself with that last comment.’

  ‘What’s she doing with the poof. Don’t tell me he’s her boyfriend.’

  ‘No, you’ve just blown it again.’

  ‘Just tell me. Is that, er, guy, her boyfriend?’

  ‘He’s just a friend,’ I tell him. Then, perhaps mischievously, I add: ‘She’s single.’

  ‘Hey! Tomorrow you will be in Thailand!’ Natassia cuts in, giving Zac an exasperated look. ‘Are you excited?’ She hasn’t been out of North Vietnam since she arrived, eight months ago.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It feels kind of weird. I keep thinking that when I leave Thailand I’ll be going back to Australia, and then I remember I live here now.’

  ‘Does Global know how long you’re away?’ she asks me.

  I grin. ‘As a precaution, I wrote all the classes, dates and times that I’ll be missing on a piece of paper and I handed it to Lan two weeks ago. Two days later I asked if she’d done anything about it and guess what?’

  ‘She lost it!’ Natassia cries.

  ‘Yup. That place is a marvel. I wrote it all out again. God knows why. So I expect you guys’ll be getting some frantic phone calls over the next two weeks.’

  ‘Not me!’ says Zac smugly. ‘My phone hasn’t worked since the flood.’

  As we stand there, two dong nat women come past on their night shift. They wear cloth masks over their faces, and gloves. We move back onto the sidewalk as they wordlessly sweep the day’s refuse from the gutters and heave it on pans into the mobile skip. Within a minute they’ve moved on with their metal barrow of garbage, leaving the gutter spotless.

  ‘Is there anything I can bring you back from Thailand?’ I ask my friends.

  ‘Uh, actually …’ Zac starts, after a moment’s deep thought. He scratches his ear.

  ‘They’ve got KFCs in Bangkok. I don’t suppose, just before you get on plane home, you could … ’

  ‘Correct,’ I interject.

  ‘Damn,’ he says bitterly, jumping on his bicycle. ‘When are the fucking communists gonna see the light and give their people the right to eat American fast food?’ He starts pedalling and turns to call out. ‘Hey. I’ll see you in two weeks. Have fun. We’ll do a Daewoo buffet when you get back.’ I watch his silhouetted bulk slowly diminish as he rides off into the mist that hangs over the street.

  Natassia and I smoke and wait for xe oms.

  ‘Did Lan ask you to buy her a present from Thailand?’ she asks me.

  ‘How did you know?’ I respond, impressed. Actually it was Miss Thu who had initiated the request, smiling her perfect smile at me and saying ‘I hope you will bring me a nice present from Thailand.’ But Lan had jumped in fast, squealing ‘me too!’

  ‘I guessed,’ she explains. ‘They always do this.’ She puts out her cigarette and lights another one. Her nicotine levels reached a critical low over dinner. The Nang Tam is possibly the only non-smoking restaurant in Hanoi.

  ‘And what about students?’ I muse. ‘I told one of my UNCO classes I was going to Thailand and they all asked me for presents too.’

  Natassia laughs. ‘You’re not going to, are you?’

  ‘I don’t mind. I was going to just get them each something small.’ ‘Carolyn! – They take advantage of you.’

  I muse on this for a moment. I hadn’t thought of it this way. ‘I’m a sucker, aren’t I?’ I observe. I really am hopeless at resisting requests. Introverted and delicate-looking, the truth is, Natassia’s much tougher than I am in these situations. She has a rock-solid moral compass, unlike me. These days more than ever, I find myself pondering the concepts of truth and rightness and coming up full of doubts and confusion. Natassia’s right-and-wrong gauge is clear. If she believes something is wrong, she won’t do it, and she expects the same of others.

  The next morning I take a taxi to the airport. Crawling along my little street I find myself glued to the window. Travelling in a sealed vehicle is now a novelty. I feel invisible, like I’ve left already and I’m looking back on my old life via some video link-up. My neighbours are just centimetres away, on the other side of the glass window, but they don’t see me – this morning I’m just another foreigner in a taxi, as anonymous and irrelevant as the day I arrived.

  I see Xuyen ride past on her bicycle, and the kids playing ball and I experience a warm flood of nostalgia. This is my street. When I return home from Thailand, it will be to this address, this street, in this city.

  We pass Oanh’s Pho stall, still at crawling pace. It’s peak hour for Pho consumption, and the plastic tables are crammed with families slurping breakfast. The footpath beneath them is littered with paper serviettes, toothpicks and inedible bits of meat thrown to the ground. I smile at the craziness of it.

  Lastly, where the street junctures into Nguyen Thai Hoc, I see the wooden bench with the xe om drivers sitting on it. There’s Thanh and Tan and Thu, the regulars, smoking, drinking tea. Thu is reading a newspaper, wearing his olive pith-helmet.

  Beside them is Quan, leaning, shifting spanner in hand, over a motorcycle. He straightens up as I pass but doesn’t see me. I notice the arch of his muscular back, the way his short hair is trimmed at the sides. I’ve avoided him since that trip to the restaurant near Natassia’s place, but it’s been easy, since I’ve barely seen him. At the sight of him so close, my heart lurches disobediently. I still want him. The crush is stirred. The crush is not shaken.

  I find myself fantasising about him all the way to Bangkok, barely even distracted by the continuous retching noises of an airsick Vietnamese woman behind me. But once in the city, all thoughts of Hanoi are forgotten. I find, to my amazement, that Bangkok and its inhabitants are now as familiar to my Western eyes as Europe. Somewhere during the short flight we crossed the bamboo curtain and left the Orient behind.

  Message from a chicken

  Returning to Hanoi, despite its essential unworldliness, is now a homecoming. After ten days away, I arrive back bearing gifts for everyone and with new stories to tell, eager to catch up with Zac and Natassia.

  Naturally they have new stories too. Natassia has a new lover, Guillaume – part-black, part-Asian, reared in a rough neighbourhood in a French colony in the Carribbean. She seems totally blasé about the relationship though. More excitingly, she has hired an Angel 80 – an eighty-cc motorcycle with a sexy purple logo – from a place in the Old Quarter. It turns out she’s an experienced rider. This opens up myriad new possibilities for our social life.

  Zac, meanwhile, has fallen
out dramatically with Lan at Global. His opinion of her has been in decline for some time, but now the two are openly hostile towards each other. Worse, his maid, who’s a fervent Christian, has thrown out his Japanese porn mags again. He has a new gripe too.

  ‘Caz,’ he says morosely. ‘I’m afraid this country is turning me into a feminist.’

  He claims he has twice found himself apprehending local men seen chasing their wives with iron bars in his neighbourhood.

  And there have been other changes in my absence. Firstly there’s my brand new bedroom, re-configured by Nga and Tuan. I find them standing in my apartment deep in discussion when I arrive back from the airport. Nga beams at me proudly.

  ‘You see! We change your room. I think better now.’ With the bed now in the centre, the room seems perversely larger and I’m forced to admit that the layout is genuinely improved.

  Less appealing is the sight of the empty space on the refrigerator where my Sony Discman used to sit. It’s been stolen – stolen by someone with a key. For the reminder of my time at Pho Yen The, I hiss ‘thief’ under my breath whenever I encounter Nga’s teenage brother, who slouches past me in a baseball cap, avoiding eye contact. Nga refutes the possibility that her brother would steal anything, and suggests I’ve lent the CD player to a friend and forgotten, but takes the keys off him anyway. I never learn his name. He doesn’t speak a word of English, and seems to have no interest in learning. He lives somewhere in the compound. I suspect he sleeps up in Ba Gia’s airless wooden loft with his mother, Xuyen. The laundry area on my rooftop is also their laundry area, so that the nameless brother regularly pads through the landing that separates my bedroom from my living room on his way up the stairs to the roof.

  Nga never offers me recompense. But I don’t pursue the matter, since she cries poor, and seems very upset by the whole turn of events. She still drops by to visit me, and we chat as warmly as ever.

  One day she turns up with a piece of paper bearing Hilary Clinton’s signature. Pho Yen The has a special piece of history, I learn.

  A couple of doors from my compound, at the very end of the culde-sac, is a foreign-owned ‘lifestyle’ shop called Dome. It’s the only establishment of its kind in Hanoi and it’s a honeypot for wealthy expats and tourists alike. The shop sells high-quality furnishings and trinkets, displaying the prodigious handicrafts of the villages around Hanoi. Inside the vast, scented and air-conditioned shop, a visitor can lose themselves in a sea of watery silk, wrought metal, woven matting, beading and embroidery. I often wander up to Dome on a hot day to marvel at the wares and revel in the cool air.

  Naturally, during Clinton’s historical 2000 visit to Vietnam, Hilary was brought to Dome for a spot of shopping. The walk from the car to Dome took her right past the compound gate, where she had a brief, translated conversation with Nga’s great aunt, the venerable Ba Gia, and supplied her autograph for Nga.

  Hilary’s signature is accompanied by a piece of bad news. I’ll no longer have domestic help. Tam, the beautiful young peasant girl with whom Nga cleans my place each weekend, is gone.

  ‘She have some family trouble at her village and she must go home.’

  ‘When will she return?’

  ‘Maybe she don’t return,’ Nga tells me, her face solemn. ‘I think now she must stay to look after the family.’

  ‘Ooh,’ I wince. I’m not too optimistic about my chances of keeping the place habitable and hygienic unaided. I haven’t got to know Tam. She usually came while I was out teaching and she spoke no English. But I could appreciate she had rigorous cleaning skills, especially for a sixteen-year-old. Nga picks up on my apparent sympathy.

  ‘Yes. I am very sad,’ she tells me. ‘Tam live with us for one year and she like family – you understand?’ I nod. ‘I try to help her,’ Nga continues. ‘I teach her to cook so she can get a better job in the future. But now, she is gone.’ I look at Nga and wonder at the complexities of the woman. Warnings from friends have served to make me permanently suspicious of her motives. Did she teach Tam to cook for the girl’s future, or so that she could take over cooking duties for the family? If Nga wanted to improve the girl’s prospects, what about letting her go to school where she could learn to read and write?

  Hien, emaciated and racked with tuberculosis, is looking worse. I find her in the Nam Bo doorway, as usual, fanning herself weakly with a broken bamboo fan as the sun angles straight into the marble doorway. Her skin is dry and cracking, and the light is fading from her lively eyes. She’s suffering headaches nearly every day. I can see this even from the other side of the road, since this part of the world has developed a special semiotic device.

  Hanoians seem to suffer more headaches than the rest of humanity. At this time of year, they blame it on the heat. Aspirin is relatively expensive and often regarded with suspicion, so that the preferred option is the local remedy. This involves applying a sticky white mentholated plaster to each temple, and going about your business. A walk down a busy street, especially on a hot day, will always reveal a few plastered temples.

  One day last month when I turned up at Natassia’s place with a headache, she offered me a couple. I dubiously attached them to my throbbing temples and waited in vain for some relief. The only effect, as far as I can make out, is that while wearing them, a person has the satisfaction of knowing all who lay eyes on them will be aware of their suffering. The plasters transform a headache into a visible affliction. If a problem shared is a problem halved, this makes perfect sense. But Hanoians swear by the things, reminding me that, as a skeptic, I’m forever immune to placebo.

  I become determined to find a way to help Hien. I have a new weapon this time – a Vietnamese friend who can surely help me. One who’ll be able to arrange for Hien’s relocation to a hospice where she can be treated.

  Nguyet listens attentively while I describe Hien, but then shakes her head. ‘Normal,’ is all she offers, although gravely. ‘You must not worry about this woman. Many in Hanoi, same.’

  But, although the day is a scorcher, I insist on taking Nguyet up to the supermarket. I want her to meet Hien, to talk to her. With obvious reluctance, Nguyet reverses her motorcycle out of the downstairs bathroom and we ride the hundred metres to the Nam Bo.

  Hien is crouched on the street beside the supermarket. She greets me and I crouch beside her. I point to Nguyet and say ‘Ban Toi’ – ‘my friend’ and Hien politely addresses her. Nguyet replies, but to my consternation, remains standing. They have a brief exchange, but Hien is too ill to raise her voice, making it doubtful that Nguyet catches half of what she’s saying over the roar and honk of the traffic. The look on Nguyet’s face tells me she’s doing this strictly as a favour to me. I rub Hien’s skeletal back and bid her ‘chao chi’ – as Nguyet pulls me away.

  ‘What did she tell you?’ I ask her from the back of the motorcycle.

  ‘Nothing. She say you her friend, very kind.’ Nguyet’s expression as she addresses me is full of warmth towards me, but weary.

  ‘Mmm. But did she say what I should do?’

  ‘I don’t think you can help her.’

  ‘Please help me Nguyet. This is important,’ I say. ‘In Hanoi, do you have the Red Cross?’

  ‘Red Cross? Yes. Near here.’

  How can I telephone them?’

  Back at her place, Nguyet makes a phone call to directory assistance, and gives me a number. An hour later, at my place, I make the call.

  The woman’s name is Mai. I tell her what I know about Hien, then ask for her advice.

  ‘I want to help this woman,’ I explain, ‘but I’m new in Vietnam, and I don’t know how.’ Mai is friendly and tells me to come down any time. I’ve checked the map – the office is not far past the Nam Bo. It’s now one in the afternoon and nearly 40 degrees outside, but it’s Friday and with the weekend coming up, I don’t want to leave this any longer. I want Hien in care before Monday. I tell Mai I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.

  I put on a hat and my white long-
sleeved shirt, pack my map and a photo of Hien, and set out on foot for the Red Cross. Passing the Nam Bo on the other side of the road I wave back at Hien who’s semaphoring at me with the bamboo fan. I wish I could tell her that help is on the way. All the more reason to accelerate my efforts at learning the language.

  I make it across to the far side of Crazy Junction – the improbable seven-way intersection beyond the Nam Bo – without incident. Then my navigation comes unstuck. I’ve picked the wrong street and I’m halfway to Hoan Kiem Lake before I realise what I’ve done. By the time I find the door of the Red Cross my tongue is virtually hanging out of my head.

  The building is an old French-built house. The façade looks poorly maintained. Mai is lurking in the entrance room, apparently waiting for me. She’s young but looks a little harried. I feel I’ve cut into her lunchtime, and she would rather be napping. I notice the interior looks run-down too, and seems to be a repository for broken chairs.

  She hands me a glass of chilled boiled water and leads me through the house into a large dark room set up like a conference room, where she turns on the fluorescent lights and the ceiling fans. I sit gratefully at the glass-topped hardwood table, enjoying the moving air and the feel of the cool glass. Mai sits beside me. Almost immediately, a kindly-faced man in his fifties appears from another doorway with a tray of tea and introduces himself as Hao. He sits opposite us. There’s a feeling of gravity about this meeting. It seems my concerns are to be taken seriously. I begin to relax, and allow myself some optimism.

  After a few minutes of small talk, during which I discuss my experiences and employment in Hanoi, the atmosphere begins to thicken. Hao occupies himself refilling my tiny cup every time I have a mouthful of tea. I wait for either of my hosts to bring up the subject of Hien, but they don’t. Finally I push my cup away from me and pull out the photo.