Catfish and Mandala (17 page)

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Authors: Andrew X. Pham

BOOK: Catfish and Mandala
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5 a.m. The night couldn't have passed quickly enough. I want to be away from here. Away from Kim. I want to go north. I want to go to Hanoi and forget, but I need to pay homage to one more place in South Vietnam. I need to find Minh Luong Prison, perhaps even more than touring the rest of the country. Somehow, I have long thought of it as the end of my journey—as if by finding Minh Luong and returning to the exact spot where I had watched my father working the minefield, I will have come full circle. I spent the night mulling over my choices and nursing beers on the balcony. An hour before daybreak, I strap on my backpack and strike out for a brisk four-mile hike to the market, where a fleet of minivans shuttles people into Saigon hourly, sunrise to sunset. Hanoi must wait.
A wolf-faced man and his partner collect my two dollars and pack me into a minivan along with thirteen other people, including the driver. Two torturous hours later, they drop us at Ben Thanh Market in downtown Saigon. I take a motorbike taxi out to the main bus depot at the southern fringe of the city. It accommodates all the traffic to and from the Mekong Delta.
I trudge up and down the dusty, diesel-slicked lot the size of four football fields, inquiring for the next bus out to Rach Gia. The place
is a hive of activity, sellers hawking food, last-minute gifts, and whatnots, porters moving cargo, travelers hurrying to their buses, motorbike-taxi drivers pestering for fares, and mechanics banging away, repairing buses. A constant stream of noisy, fuming vehicles moves through the gate in both directions. Most of the raw materials that sustain Saigon are channeled through three major bus depots. Farmers bring in produce and livestock from the countryside. Young men and women come to the City looking for work even as Saigon sends its manufactured and imported goods out to the provinces. The frenzy seethes with ant-like industry.
Busing in Vietnam is a freewheeling enterprise, somewhat akin to the stagecoaches of the old American West. Privately owned buses, driven by the owners and their relatives, go bumping from town to town hailing freight, livestock, and produce and picking up riders standing on the side of the road like hitchhikers. A stripped-down traveling show, they roar along, working every minute, shooting from village to village, laughing and cajoling a livelihood from the highway boredom. They haul on a skeleton crew of four—any more and there are too many mouths to feed, any less and they're liable to be cheated by their customers. The driver is always and only the driver, keeping his eyes on the road and muttering prayers to the Buddha mounted on the dashboard. There couldn't be a more serious lot of drivers in the world. These guys deal in life and death daily, their whole family riding on their performance, the bus their vehicle, the whole family's savings and possibly their coffin on wheels. In my brief travels here, I've seen several dead buses, smashed, rolled belly-up, and disemboweled by salvagers.
I board the next bus out of town, trusting myself to its plastic deity. It is going to Chau Doc, then Rach Gia. Like most others, it is a Russian-made death trap, halfway into its own graveyard. I negotiate my way to the back of the bus, climbing over luggage, crates, and tin tanks of fishsauce. The bus has been gutted and crudely regaffed to double its passenger capacity, the thinly upholstered benches crammed so tight that even small Vietnamese have trouble sitting without knocking their knees. The floor is decked with wooden planks sporting gaps big enough to swallow a boot.
Combing the aisle checking passenger tickets, the bus driver arches an eyebrow at my accent: Viet-kieu, eh? Yes, I tell him. He tows me back to the front of the bus. Sit right here, then, the best seat in the house. No, not there, here right behind me. He steers me into the seat and whispers in my ear. You don't want to sit back there. Too noisy. Sit here, good view for sightseeing and you can stretch your legs. He shows me where to put my legs, right beside his seat, inches from the stick shift. You're the first Viet-kieu on our bus, he tells me excitedly, grinning around his cigarette, his teeth chewed up and stained like spent spark plugs. Why don't you rent a car instead? Too expensive, I tell him, this is more fun anyway. He looks at me incredulously then starts mining me for information about the bus business in America.
The owner is a woman in her fifties with a round, generous face, white and soft like a steamed pork bun. Swathed in yards of expensive red satin of a peasant cut, she waves a prospective fare aboard, saying in a quacking voice (a tone my mother often condescendingly refers to as that of a fishmonger): No, no we go straight through. This is the fastest bus there is. You can't get to Chau Doc any faster if you fly like a bird. We're safe, of course, we're safe. This here is my brother (pointing at Driver). He has been driving since he was old enough to get a license. His mother delivered him on a bus. It's natural for him.
I stifle a laugh. Driver plays his poker face. I have heard this line so often I figure the only people driving buses are the ones born on them.
They are a smooth crew, the four of them: the driver, the owner, the mechanic, and the bagman. The owner collects the cash and handles all financial matters, from buying petrol to bribing cops. The mechanic doubles as a relief driver and a baggage handler. The bagman, their barker, leans out the open door when the bus is under way and shouts fares-destinations to prospective passengers standing on the side of the road. Most crew are family members or relatives. Fares are standard. Buses equipped with air-conditioning, televisions, or karaoke machines charge about twenty percent more.
Passengers arrive sporadically, carrying anything from luggage to live chickens. The bus eventually leaves ninety minutes after its scheduled time, filled to seating capacity. Just as we pull out of the gate,
two men bang on the door and swing aboard. The bus owner, whom I call Madame, casts a distasteful glance but doesn't ask them for fares. They stand next to the driver. As the bus lists out onto the street, the crew becomes nervous, craning their necks on the lookout for cops. Even the passengers seem agitated. Along the side of the busy road, a string of seven buses have their engines in idle as traffic cops scan passengers and prod luggage.
Faster, Madame urges Driver. He thumps the accelerator and the crew heaves a big sigh as the bus grunts past the busy traffic cops. Around the next turn a cop steps out from a soda kiosk and points at Driver, who obediently edges the bus to the side of the road. Bagman jumps off and lopes toward the cop, wearing a big friendly grin. He pumps a couple of bills into the cop's waiting palm with everyone watching. The cop nods Bagman back on the bus, thumbs up to Driver. Again, the bus shudders and farts into motion. Half a mile later, the incident is repeated and this time Madame is pissed, yelling to her passenger witnesses:
Oh, my God, what's going on. The cops got all their relatives out here collecting or what? They can't peel and gut us twice like this. How are we supposed to eat?
Cops usually collect anywhere from five to thirty percent of the bus's net income.
No sooner than we clear the city, the duo who boarded the bus at the gate open their satchels. One man pulls a bullhorn on the passengers, the other brandishes long ticker tapes of pills in cellophane. The pitch begins.
May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Please quiet down. Quiet, please. QUIET! Thank you, everyone. Hey, sister, you there, make your kid shut up. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever had a headache that just won't go away? One of those that feels like a spike driven from the base of your skull through the top of your head?
I groan, feeling the very pains he is describing. The smoothskinned, sharp-eyed man fires off his singsong pitch in a nasally tenor, the battery-amplified words shot out like bullets from a Gatling gun. My head is three feet away.
The drug is positively a miracle of science,
he claims. I try turning my head away from the horn.
Everything you'll ever need to cure everything.
My eardrums are about to implode.
Let me tell you about Doctor Nguyen Le Van Truc, the esteemed doctor of Saigon who
invented this miracle drug. Look, look here is a photo of him.
I try to politely cover my ears.
You. You, uncle in the green shirt. What ails you? Backache, you say? Well, this drug will cure your backache. Make you feel like a kid again.
The dealer's compatriot works the aisle, shaking people awake, dangling his string of pills in their faces. There are a few takers. After all, a string of ten pills costs less than a bowl of noodles, about as cheap as medicine gets. The tirade of medicinal benefits keeps getting longer. Then I hear the real breakthrough: It cures cancer, all cancers. More buyers. A fair quarter of the passengers have coughed up cash for the miracle medicine, but not enough to please the pair. They go on the aggressive, publicly interrogating passengers individually to see why each failed to jump on this spectacular one-time offer. Thirty minutes into the intimidation program, they have extricated money from three-quarters of the passengers. The peasant woman next to me explains in my ear that the pair are part of large gangs that prey on buses throughout southern Vietnam. If the bus owners don't let them aboard, they'll slash the bus tires. Buses have been known to be put to the torch by gangsters. She has seen them slash a girl's face.
Madame acts as though the snake-oil salesmen aren't raping her passengers. Driver concentrates on the road. Bagman and Mechanic sit dejectedly on crates, putting up with the salesmen without a word.
“What about you?”
Snake turns to me.
“You're
a
Viet-kieu, aren't you?”
I nod.
“Buy some of this medicine and take it home with you.”
It is an order. I shake my head.
“No, thank you, Brother. I don't need any medicine.
”
“DON'T you shake your head at me!” Snake roars. “If you don't want my medicine, don't buy it, but don't you dare shake your head at me!”
Oh, shit. I scramble to my feet, thinking: It's going down. They're going to make an example of me. Snake's partner is moving slowly up from the back of the bus. There is no time to look for the pepper spray I'd tossed into my backpack. I brace myself against the seat, trying to keep an eye on both of them.
“You Viet-kieu think you're better than everyone else, don't you!”
“Sorry, Brother. I don't want any trouble.”
“You don't have to shake your head at me, you son of a bitch!”
Snake is working himself up to a frenzy.
I know his type too well. I've dealt with this kind since I was a kid fresh to America. When you cross paths with anyone who doesn't take kindly to your kind of gook, Chink, nip, you must come at him swinging. It doesn't matter if he beats the crap out of you, you've got to fight back or it will only get worse. The only thing that will save you is the bottomless rage that burns in your deepest pit.
“FUCKING ASSHOLES! You-wanna-fight? Come-on-youmother-fuckers! COME-ON!” I bring up my fist, churning, ready to swing. Burning with fury, I have no idea I am cussing them in English.
They pause. People ogle me as though I am an alien that has just inadvertently dropped its mask.
Before Snake recovers, Madame wedges herself between us. I can't see her face but I hear the edge in her.
“Brother,”
she says, eerily calm,
“this is my cousin. I will buy a pill string for myself.
” She holds out a fifty-cent bill. Bagman and Mechanic are on their feet, poised to back up their mistress.
A moment of silence inflates the bus. All eyes on our showdown. Snake stares at Madame, murder plain in his eyes. I can see him weighing the odds, calculating.
“Very smart decision, Big Sister,”
Snake declares, and takes her money with a flourish.
“Smarter than your cousin.”
Snake smirks at me.
Snake orders Driver to stop. The pair jump off. As we pull away, they cross the street to hail another bus, heading back into Saigon. Madame pats me on the shoulder and takes her seat, clearly as shaken as I am.
Four hours out, Bagman licks his chops and bellows,
“Bridge stop,”
which in Vietnamese means rest-room break. Our asthmatic vehicle wheezes into a dirt lot in front of a roadside diner built specifically for bus traffic. Barely large enough to host one busload of diners at a time, it is a corrugated tin roof on wooden poles with picnic tables on packed dirt.
“Everybody out!”
Bagman bellows.
“We're locking up the bus for your protection. Come in the shade and have lunch.”
I accept Madame's
invitation and join the crew at their table as an honorary guest.
“Eat up,”
Driver encourages me with a wink.
“It's on the house
.” On cue, the proprietor marches food to the table and we dig into it with gusto.
Most of the passengers refuse to dine and squat on their hams in the parking lot, glaring at the crew. Impatient, Bagman gets up and waves them inside.
“Come on, have lunch. Get out of the sun everybody. Rice here is good and cheap.”
No one budges. Bagman throws up his hands in disgust.
“Go ahead, sit in the sun if you like, but we're not leaving for another hour and a half.”

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