Fishing for Tigers (26 page)

‘Where you from?'

‘Hanoi.'

‘You travel Hanoi to Saigon, yes?'

‘No. I live in Hanoi.'

The man rocked back on his heels. ‘What? You are crazy!'

‘That's true.'

‘Ah, I was going to ask for you to marry, but I cannot marry crazy Hanoi
tây
.'

‘Too bad. That's why I came to Saigon, to find a nice man to marry.'

He laughed and I recoiled at the stench of rot coming from his open mouth. ‘Ha, ha. Yes, because Hanoi men like this.' He scowled. ‘No good husband there. Saigon husbands much happy.'

‘Well, I better go and find one then.'

He stood and watched me get to my feet. ‘I have Honda. I drive you your hotel.'

‘My hotel is on
. How much?'

‘No, no pay. I take.'

The balls of my feet stung and my back was wet and I had paid almost double what I should have to the driver I'd hired this morning because he'd pretended not to understand my request for change and I was too embarrassed to argue with him in front of a bunch of wide-eyed tourists waiting at a bus stop.

‘Are you sure? I can pay.'

His face morphed into the Hanoi Man scowl. I had insulted him.

‘Okay, yes, thank you.'

He clapped and scuttled off down the path toward the main road. He limped heavily to the left but still I barely kept up. He shouted something to three young men drooped over a row of motos and they stood and watched us approach. When we'd reached the bikes one of the boys rolled a dusty, Soviet-era Minsk from the pack. The man muttered angrily making several fast hand gestures, meaningless to me. The boy shrugged and replaced the bike, while his friend rolled out a newer, almost-shiny Honda. The man thrust his notepad at the third boy and leapt onto the bike.

‘Okay crazy Hanoi
tây
.
, yes?'

‘Yes, please.' I told him which hotel and climbed on behind him, aware, suddenly, from the parking boys' leers, that they thought I was a prostitute. Or given the obvious fact I was far wealthier than the man, perhaps they thought me just another old white slut, desperate enough to pick up war veterans in a public park. They leered but did not seem surprised or scandalised.

Is this what happened here then? All these years I could have been making cock runs down to Saigon. Matthew and I could have been travel buddies, meeting up each day for lunch at the pub, to compare notes on the rough trade we'd exploited the night before.

‘I have a friend waiting for me at the hotel,' I told the man.

‘Okay.' He started the bike, kangarooed a few feet, stopped. He reached back and took my hands, pulled them around his waist. My fingers locked low on his stomach, my arms sinking beneath the arches of his ribcage. ‘Okay, good.'

Traffic was thick. Faces slid past slowly enough for me to register the distrust. I rested my head against his back, and closed my eyes. My cheek bounced off his shoulder blade, my hair whipped back behind me like a flag. I had enough cash in my wallet to pay for a dentist or a proper set of drawing pencils and an easel. I would barely miss it. In a month, I would have forgotten I ever had it.

We stopped at the lights near the Crazy Buffalo and he leant back into me a little and sighed. Then we roared off again and within seconds juddered to a stop outside my hotel. I climbed off the bike and said thank you. I opened the zipper of my bag, determined to insult him for his own good, but he was too fast. He patted my rummaging hands. ‘I wish you to find nice husband,' he said and, without looking at me, clunked the bike back out into the stream.

That night Cal and I ate overcooked pasta in a restaurant recommended by the receptionist from our hotel. Our table was in the back, between the obviously badly plumbed toilet and the door to the adjoining karaoke bar.

‘Have you done karaoke in Vietnam yet?'

Cal gave me a look of pure teenaged disdain. ‘Karaoke. Are you serious?'

‘Sure, it's pretty big here. I'm not much of a singer, but I used to go along with this Canadian guy I was dating. He was pretty good.'

‘Ugh. I have visions of some forty year old in a denim suit, belting out eighties rock ballads while you wave a lighter in the air.'

I laughed. ‘No, no. This was proper Vietnamese karaoke. Marcus said it helped his language skills. I don't know if that was true, but I did enjoy the delight of the Vietnamese patrons when this tall white guy got up and started crooning “
Long Me
” like he'd been raised with it.'

Cal dropped his fork into the bowl of spaghetti, splashing watery sauce on the front of his shirt. ‘ “
Long Me
”? That's another cultural reference I'm supposed to get.'

‘It's a sentimental favourite; not a national anthem, more like . . .' I thought back to my teenage years, karaoke night at the local RSL club. ‘Ironically enough, it's kind of like “Khe Sanh”. Some old song that everybody knows and when they get drunk, they sing it as though they lived it. In the karaoke bar we went to in Hanoi, it was always played over this background video of a mournful-looking old woman outside a bamboo hut. I must have seen that video and heard the song fifty times before Marcus explained the lyrics to me.
Long me
means “mother's intestines” – the song's about the physical ache in the guts mothers have when they lose their children. I thought it was weird that Marcus sang it with such sincerity and emotion, given he knew what it was about, but he said the subject matter wasn't important, that participating in social rituals was the key to cultural adhesion, or something.'

‘Sounds like a tosser.'

‘Nah. He was sweet.'

Cal stabbed his fork into the bowl, twirled some spaghetti, dropped it again. ‘Yeah? Why'd you break up with him then?'

‘I didn't.'

‘No, I suppose you wouldn't.'

I pushed my uneaten pasta aside. ‘Meaning?'

‘It's just that I heard your husband used to beat you up and if you didn't leave him, then . . .' That fucking adolescent shrug.

I made eye contact with the hovering waiter and made the check sign. He nodded and dashed towards the kitchen. I smoothed the napkin in front of me.

‘Obviously I did leave him.'

‘But not for ages. Not until he nearly killed you.'

The waiter brought the check and despite the inedible food, I gestured that he should keep the change. Leaving the restaurant immediately was worth much more than 50,000
dong
.

On the street, Cal caught me by the elbow. I shook him off. He put both arms around my waist and held me still against him. He kissed my neck, murmured
sorry sorry sorry
. The street was packed with tourists, many of them wearing almost nothing, many others trailing very young Vietnamese girls, but still I felt a rush of danger. I gently disentangled myself, but let him keep hold of my hand.

‘Did your dad tell you that?' I asked after a few minutes of calm.

‘No. Listen, I shouldn't have said anything, please—'

‘Who?'

He sighed. ‘Collins.'

‘Him? Jesus. He doesn't even know me. How would he . . . Fucking gossipy fucks I call friends.' Adrenalin flooded through my arms. My hands and throat felt swollen. If Cal hadn't been holding on to my hand and if the road in front of me hadn't been swarming with motos I would've run and run until I couldn't anymore.

‘It was ages ago, Mish, before you and I were together. Some stupid throwaway line. I thought if it was true that you'd tell me eventually, so I never brought it up. I wish I hadn't brought it up now.'

‘Me too.'

A man cut in front of us, blocked our way forward. It took me a second to realise he had only one eye and no hands. Around his neck was a glass jar with a few low-denomination bills clinging to the sides. ‘Please,
monsieur, madame
. I cannot work. Please help.'

Before I could respond he stepped forward and caught Cal's face between his smooth stumps. ‘
.' He looked like he wanted to spit. ‘You come back for nice holiday
?'

‘Here.' I waved a wad of notes in the air. He dropped his stumps and I shoved the money into his jar. He sneered at Cal, then turned to me, nodded sharply and lurched off into the crowds.

‘You okay?' I asked.

‘Me? Christ. He's the one without any hands.'

e were catching our breath after making love when Cal told me he was thinking of going back to the War Remnants museum tomorrow. ‘Dad said we missed the best bits. Upstairs, apparently there's an exhibition of photos taken by the ­foreign photographers and reporters who died here. He said it's more balanced and subtle than the horror propaganda downstairs.'

‘I thought you said the photos downstairs should be essential viewing?'

‘Yeah, but Dad had a good point, too, about how ­photos can lie in the sense that you can choose what to show and what to leave out. At least with the upstairs exhibit you know the context, that these were guys from our side, trying to document the truth.'

‘Our side?'

‘What? Is that wrong?'

‘I've never really thought of myself as being on a side, I suppose.'

Cal scratched his jaw. ‘No, you wouldn't.'

‘Ouch. What was that tone?'

He sat up on the edge of the bed and looked out at the Crazy Buffalo. The neon turned his skin deep rose. ‘You pride yourself on the fact you get along with everyone, and that sounds great, like you don't judge anyone, but the more I think about it, the more I think that really sucks. You know the only people who get along with immoral scummy losers, Mischa, are other immoral scummy losers.'

‘You get along with me okay.'

‘Not lately.'

‘No. That's true. You've been a brat and I – immoral scummy loser that I am – have continued to be nice to you.'

He turned to face me, sitting up on his haunches, looking like he might overbalance and tumble to the floor if either of us moved. ‘Why have you?'

I wanted to lay him out on the tiles of that shitty cubicle of a bathroom and turn the cold tap on full and lie with him there until our flesh puckered and wrinkled. I wanted to rub aloe into his burnt shoulders and tea tree oil into his inflamed zits. I wanted to take him back to Hanoi and sit with him in the gardens of
where history heals instead of horrifies.

‘You can't even answer me! But I know why. You're nice to me because you're nice to everybody! You're pathologically nice. You treat me the same as you treat everyone else.'

‘That's not true.'

‘Apart from the fucking.' He looked away on the last word.

‘That's a pretty big exception. And even without it, you're wrong. I'm not keen on confrontation, that's true, but these days I'm excellent at walking away from it. Yet you'll notice that I haven't walked away from this stupid argument, that I haven't told you to get dressed and get out of here after you've shouted at me, insulted me. Believe me, I wouldn't be like this with anyone else.'

He crumpled a little. ‘But why?'

I was struck by the expression on his face. Transparent as ever. He wanted me to save him, to give him a reason to end this fight and come back to bed. More than that, he wanted me to give him a solid excuse for staying in a relationship that he clearly knew was bad for him. I wanted that too.

‘Because you're the best person I know. Have ever known, I think. You try so hard to be good and fair and to think deeply about all these hard things that most people ignore. Sometimes that makes you a total pain in the arse, but that's good, too. Because otherwise you'd be perfect and that would be fucking unbearable.'

‘I'm not a good person, Mish. I'm lying to my dad, who's injured and trusting and needy. And to my mum, whose heart I'm breaking just by being here.' He lunged at me, kissed my neck and face, clutched my ponytail in both hands. ‘And I'm so mean to you. I don't know why, but I am and I hate myself.'

‘It's okay. I can take it.'

‘You shouldn't have to.'

‘So stop doing it. Be nicer.'

He kissed me so hard, then. It was like he'd never meant it before.

I was drifting off to sleep when he started talking again. ‘I remember scripture class at school, I must have been eight or nine. The teacher asked if we thought most people in the world are good. I said yes and that was wrong. I don't remember anything else from scripture. I still don't know if I believe it.' He shifted, brushed his lips over my ear. ‘Do you?'

‘It depends on what you mean by good, I suppose.'

‘What do
you
mean by it?'

‘I don't know. Doing no harm, causing no pain. Or trying not to, anyway.'

‘I think that describes most people. I do.'

‘Me too,' I said.

‘Really?'

‘Yes. What time is it?' I sat up. The Crazy Buffalo had gone dark. I reached over the edge of the bed and fumbled for my phone. It was almost 3 am. ‘You need to go.'

‘Dad'll be knocked out for hours still.'

‘Just in case, though.'

Breakfast was served each morning between seven and ten at fold-out plastic picnic tables in the hotel lobby. Since the first morning here, Cal and I had been meeting down there at eight-thirty. This morning he didn't turn up until a few minutes past nine. I had finished my
already and was about to go back upstairs and call him.

He slumped across from me, red-eyed and already sweating, and told me that after he'd left my room he'd sat in the empty stairwell and called his mother.

‘I told her I was in Saigon. I didn't tell her about Dad's accident, just that we came here to look around. She wasn't upset. She was interested. Wanted to know where I'd been. What it was like. I told her it was very different to Hanoi and she liked that. We got talking. She told me things she never has before. The year before she was born, there was this big battle, really famous, the
Offensive. The Northern army stormed this palace fortress thing. It was at, um . . .'

‘
.' I pictured the bomb and artillery scarred walls of the Imperial city. On a short break last year, I had sat under the flag tower and eaten a delicious lemon sorbet.

‘Right.' He glanced at the nearby tables, then slid his chair closer to mine. He was almost whispering. ‘So, my grandpa's sister and her family got caught up in it. The whole family, mother, father, three children under the age of six, they were all killed. Clubbed to death and thrown in a mass grave.'

I shivered as the air-conditioner blew freezing air down the back of my shirt. I think I said ‘Christ' or something equally pointless.

‘I asked her how I never knew about this and she said she only found out a month ago. Her father who she has lived with all of her life, and she never knew half his family was massacred. Mum said it was because of me. Me being here has cracked him open.'

I patted his hand; he pulled it away, brushed the non-existent fringe from his forehead.

‘She told me something else, too,' he went on, his whisper as loud as ordinary speech now. ‘Something I'd forgotten. When I was ten I had nightmares about my dad being killed in Vietnam. I think I must have seen some American movie on TV and got it in my head that Dad was stuck in the middle of the war that Mum and Grandpa and my aunties escaped from. Apparently I started talking about going over to rescue him and she had to explain that the war was over, that he was in Vietnam by choice. I was really distressed, though, and so she got this travel book about Vietnam from the library and showed me all the pictures: beautiful Ha Long Bay and smiling people in colourful markets and pretty girls on bicycles. It calmed me. I forgot about having to rescue Dad.'

A teenager dressed in a waiter's white pyjamas put a plate of cut fruit on our table. The dragonfruit I tried felt like sand in my mouth.

‘That must have been very difficult for your mum,' I said.

‘Yeah.' Cal stabbed a fork into a slice of watermelon. ‘She really fucking hates this place.'