Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel (Modern Southeast Asian Literature) (2 page)

In 2007, the diary of Dr. Dang Thuy Tram was published. That book, taken from the body of a young woman killed during the war and then preserved and returned by an American soldier, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The diary is filled with idealism, innocence, and hope, as well as selflessness and self-sacrifice: ideals that remind people of qualities that now seem hopelessly lost, as when Đông sees people praying at a pagoda, their faces “dark and credulous, tormented by ignorance. They’d come to the temple to burn incense, to listen to the prayers and chants, to give donations, and then to ask for blessings from heaven. They strolled around the temple garden, stuck joss sticks everywhere, and wedged in a prayer—wishing for nothing but their own desires, nothing but the good life. If they had one house, then they wanted to build three. Turn one million into four hundred million, four hundred times . . . demanding four hundred times as much, what else could [one] be doing besides planning a robbery? In reality, there are thieves who, before every job, very sincerely go to the church, temple, or pagoda to ask for blessings. And after they’ve done the deed, they return to express their thankfulness and confess their sins.”

While Dr. Dang’s diary evoked what people liked to hope may have been the best in themselves,
Apocalypse Hotel
reminds them not of what has been lost, but what has never been realized. In the Sylvia Plath poem “Mirror,” the speaker, the mirror, says that it can only reflect what was actually there “unmisted by love or dislike,” even though the person gazing into it tries to “turn to those liars / the candles or the moon.” It isn’t until one has the courage, as Đông eventually has, to stare into the mirror in the full light of day that one can see one’s flaws, see what is unmisted by what should be, and perhaps reflect on what could be. It is the courage of the author to see with that clarity of vision that in the end accounts for this novel’s abiding resonance and popularity in a Vietnam torn apart by war and struggling to find its new identity in a world without the narrowly defined but certain purpose that can make war so attractive and peace and freedom so difficult.

Wayne Karlin

ONE

D
uring the summer of that year the beach of Bình Sơn was shaken by the reported death of a young lady who had gone swimming with some male friends. Every summer, on some beach, a victim would drown: the annual tax the beach pays to the ocean. That summer she was it. Who knows, maybe next year it’ll be me. The beach tax collector is strict as fate. In fact, he is exactly like fate—he collects what is owed without any warning. In the summer heat, people impulsively hop into their vehicles and drive to the beach for a swim. They stop off for a quick dip and without any warning become the poor souls who have to pay that year’s tax for the whole damn beach.

But the person who died that summer wasn’t, as rumor had it, a young lady. The deceased was actually a young man. As a close companion of the victim, and as a witness, I feel I have to correct this misinformation. But it is my fervent hope that my report will correct much more important matters than the sex of the victim.

That morning Phũ had called me up on the phone. “Hey, Uncle, the three of us guys just decided to head over to Bình Sơn. Can you come?” Ten minutes later, Phũ drove up in his Toyota Corona. The four of us cruised down Highway 1, heading south. Thanks to Phũ’s—my nephew’s—car, we would all go on these freewheeling trips anywhere within a radius of a few hundred kilometers from Hanoi, as easily as other citizens of the capital would drive their motorbikes down to Four Seasons Ice Cream, next to Hoàn Kiếm Lake. It was all thanks to the tactful lobbying of my older brother. It was all thanks to the private hotel that he started. It was all thanks to the government’s giving permission to have private cars with white license plates. Long live white license plates!

I remember that Phũ was behind the wheel that day. Cốc was sitting next to him. Bóp and I were sitting in the back. Cốc turned his head around to tell us a dirty story. As he spoke, a tiny mist of saliva sprayed from his mouth, visible as a puff of breath in the depths of winter. No matter where he was, or with whom, he always emitted such a mist. Nevertheless, among the mobs of young ladies that surrounded him, not a one avoided his face. They would raise their own faces proudly and defiantly, their infatuated eyes fixed on the beautiful and ruthless visage of the man emitting this fine spray. Neither did we avoid his face. The distance from the front to the back seats wasn’t too small, and saliva can’t transmit AIDS—only respiratory diseases. That wasn’t something we worried about with Cốc, whose lungs were strong enough to pump air through all four of our bodies.

Cốc could never be satisfied telling any story that had a bit of sexual innuendo without bringing up the thing itself. His real name is Công, but his clique all called him Cốc, which he would pronounce a bit off, so as to turn it into the English word
Cock
, which refers to a male chicken and also that thing that wriggles between a guy’s legs. Both meanings suited Cốc just fine.

During his first year of university Cốc had been discovered by a movie director. The director was both experienced and well qualified, but he’d allowed himself to play second fiddle to a novice French director and jointly direct a movie. During the filming, both the inexperienced French director and the experienced Vietnamese director tried in vain to get Cốc to stop spraying saliva. The crew’s special effects man was likewise unable to find a cure for that veil of mist that hung perpetually front of Cốc’s face. The upshot was that Cốc had to take a role without any lines. A party of Legionnaires was driving by in an uncovered vehicle, returning from a raid. It was imperative that in the vehicle there could be seen an Asian face, lips pursed in an action hero’s scowl. Cốc was placed in this role: all he had to do was to sit clutching his gun and smiling scornfully, his eyes aglow with cruelty, and his hair wild in the wind.

Those few moments in a Western-made film raised Cốc to such a level of popularity and fame that two young female classmates had to get abortions. His fame rose to the point that a gaggle of would-be directors competed with each other to get Cốc to sign movie contracts with them. Their movies featured men and women fistfighting while hanging from trees, making out on the ocean floor, having sex in airplanes, and parachuting after each other from cliffs into the ocean below.

After a few years of this, audiences grew more knowledgeable and finally woke up to the fact that they were being treated as children by such movies. As the shock of maturity hit them, Cốc walked away from the movies with both fame and money: a net worth of almost twenty thousand dollars. Having arrived at this level, Cốc wasn’t foolish enough to turn around and go back to the university just to become an engineer or a small-time civil servant. Almost every young man dreamed of being like Cốc. Of fame and fortune arriving at their doorsteps through some stroke of destiny. They would show their faces on the street, linger in public places, or pay their respects at holy places—always praying that some powerful celebrity would spot them, clap them on the shoulder, and invite them to be in a film or to be a model.

That would be the way to the good life. No more worrying about hardships like homework, examinations, term papers, or theses.

The clique of film directors withdrew from the scene. Next it was the turn of the music agents. I remember how his buddies would tease him about his husky, “rusted-out” voice. But the reality was that all any pop concert really needed to succeed was a famous face, a flesh-and-bone superstar (not just some special effects superstar), especially when the superstar raised his voice to sing a few songs.

Cốc would ring me up on his cell phone. “Come over and watch me sing.”

That night, Phũ, Bóp, and I watched Cốc from the wings so we could help him make a quick exit if need be. The audience whistled, cheered, and clapped violently as he came onstage. His program consisted of songs that hit bottom in Saigon, but had now been recycled as “retro” and become popular in the capital. Cốc waved to the audience, smiling his scornful smile, while a Saigon musician cued: “One, two; one, two, three . . .” Cốc was about to open his mouth to sing when the cell phone at his side squeaked to life. He coolly reached down and switched it off, shrugging in apology.

An explosion of appreciative laughter burst from the audience. The easygoing band started replaying the intro. A voice with a Saigon accent began again: “One, two; one, two, three, four!” And Cốc started to sing.

After that, we sat many a night behind the wheel of Phũ’s car, following Cốc to half a dozen fashion and music variety shows. It was all very trendy. Awkward models tried to imitate the moves and attitudes of European and American models, mimicking everything from their swaying walk to their deliberate way of moving their arms and their way of stopping and sneering at the audience. They were able to attract the interest of spectators only in a country that lacked a real entertainment industry. Naturally, during these competitions between the beautiful, the fashion models also had to partner up with superstars like Cốc. A handsome guy would escort a contestant, the pair becoming the perfect couple from the moment they stepped onstage. From day one, Cốc refused to partner with Contestant Number 5. This girl had a good figure but was slightly bucktoothed and had bad breath. Instead, Cốc chose Contestant Number 12, who hailed from a hilly region of the country. Who had a hot body. After their first promising performance in front of the judges and the audience, Cốc cuddled up to Number 12 and led her backstage by the hand so he could make his move: “Don’t go back to your place tonight. Come sleep at my place.”

“You’re scaring me—how can you speak so shamelessly?”

“How the fuck should I speak?”

Number 12 was horrified. She’d never imagined that this superstar, so refined and noble on the silver screen, could talk like this. “You coming or not?” A nauseating spray of spittle burst in her face.

“No!”

“Do you want to be a beauty queen or just some crippled has-been?” Cốc stamped on her foot. She held in a scream. Her toes seemed about to split wide apart in her high-heeled shoes. “How about it, do you want to become a cripple, dragging yourself down the runway? Tell me!”

“Okay, okay.”

But as Cốc was leading her from the studio she quickly snatched her hand away and sprinted in the direction of her friends and family, who had taken the train all the way to the big city to see her. The next day Number 12 insisted that the organizers match her up with a new partner. But Cốc was perfectly capable of repelling this feeble counterattack. The two stepped back out onto the stage together. The spectators roared. “Hurray for Number 12! Hurray for the superstar Hoàng Công!” (That was Cốc’s real name.) He still maintained that disdainful attitude that drove the audience wild. Waving his hands to greet the crowd, he lowered his voice so only Number 12 could hear him say, “Tonight you won’t get away. Don’t even think of it!” Number 12 was also waving cheerfully to the crowd. As she lightly grasped his hand, she suddenly realized that Cốc had a cold razor blade concealed in his palm. “Do you want me to slash your swimsuit, one slice down the back, one up the front, right where you’re wearing that pad?”

It was the voice of a murderer that would slice more than her bathing suit. Number 12 stumbled slightly and lost her shoe. Cốc gracefully rescued her from losing her footing altogether by supporting her elbow. The maneuver was almost totally hidden from view so that, to the audience, it just looked like Cốc was suavely escorting the young lady. Number 12 looked gratefully at Cốc and lowered her gaze with girlish coyness. “I’m on my period; aren’t you worried?”

“No problem.”

At the end of the second night of the pageant, Cốc hurriedly dragged Number 12 out the back door and rushed her back to his house. With another night of the contest remaining, she couldn’t risk doing anything to resist him. At three in the morning he took her back to the hotel and her bewildered friends and family.

The next night Number 12 was crowned beauty queen.

Afterward, she got a job working with a joint-stock corporation with French partners. Her life changed. After a time she began to brag to her friends and co-workers that she had had a close relationship with the superstar Hòang Công.

Cốc lay low for a while at my older brother’s (Phũ’s father’s) hotel, the Apocalypse. I, Phũ’s uncle, at the age of thirty-five, was a part owner of this hotel named for the end of the world. Phũ was on the board of directors. Bóp had passed an intermediate course in cooking and thus worked as the head chef of a group of specialty cooks. Cốc worked reception, using his superstar status to attract customers and to chat with them. When the occasion called for it, he also worked as a bellboy or performed live songs. Truthfully, the guests loved this; they loved his handsome and rather cruel appearance to the point that we almost changed the name of the hotel from the Apocalypse to the Hoàng Công Hotel.

The four of us arrived at Bình Sơn around midday. It was the beginning of the afternoon so we all tramped down to the beach, eager to start our vacation. I have been both a ship’s captain and a bookworm, so what I witnessed there shouldn’t have been that hard for me to grasp. I understand the vicious cycle into which human beings have inserted themselves. They destroy the environment by making holes in the ozone layer. The ultraviolet radiation leaking through the hole in the ozone makes the earth warmer. So everyone goes to the beach. In droves. They spend a day wrestling with the ocean waves. As night falls, they retreat to the citadels of their hotels and guesthouses or wander the twilit streets. Meanwhile the exhausted ocean lies there limp, panting out its dying breath like a virgin girl after being gang-raped. Now the ladies who deal in “powder and perfume” emerge to earn their living. Frankly, though, there is no powder evident. What there is for the most part is the salt and fish sauce stench of fisherwomen who no longer fish, the smell of the drought-stricken countryside, and the smell of the wet-nurse’s milk. “Child, stay at home, mother must go work,” is the lullaby the girls croon to their brats. And over all of it, knitting it together somehow, is the pervasive stench of cheap perfume.