Fishing for Tigers (34 page)

I didn't even know he'd been to Hanoi, but it turns out he was born there, didn't move south until he was 10. He described streets that I know I walked down, though I didn't recognise the names. He wanted to talk about the sky and the trees and the milk flowers. He wanted me to describe the markets, what foods, what the women looked like, how it all smelt. Then he wanted to hear all about Saigon. I didn't have much to say, because, well, you know how it was there, but it turns out I didn't need to say much. Grandpa had ­stories he wanted to tell. Some of them were really sad, but lots were just about where he'd go to buy pineapples and where he and my grandma used to go on dates when they first met.

Anyway, one day he said he wanted to go back. Mum and my aunties got together to discuss it and everyone cried a lot. None of them wanted to go with him, but he couldn't go alone because he's half blind. So I said I'd take him and I regretted saying it straightaway but he was so excited I couldn't back out.

So a month ago we arrived in Hanoi. It was difficult at first. But we kept moving, went to Danang,
, Hoi An, Dalat, Mui Ne, Saigon. We spent a few days cruising up the Mekong River. Grandpa has found the weather hard to take – old men cannot afford to lose so much sweat, he says – but other than that he's been amazing. I've never known him to be so loud. He talks to everybody, laughs constantly, yaps away late into the night until one of us falls asleep.

But he says it's enough now. He misses his daughters and his bedroom and his kettle and teapot. Tomorrow we go to the travel agent in town to book his flight home. He's okay flying back alone. He knows I need to stay.

There's a lot more I want to tell you about this trip. I don't just mean there's a lot to say about it – I mean that there's a lot that happened or that I've felt that I want to tell only you.

Once I see Grandpa off I'm going to head back up to Hanoi. Unless you tell me otherwise, I'm going to assume you don't mind if I email you again from there.

C

I wrote:
All the times you said you loved me I tried to feel what I felt in an instant when I read that you love Vietnam
. I deleted that and started again.
I won't tell you otherwise
. I hit send before I had a chance to ruin it.

For the next couple of days I checked my email nine or ten times a day and then I told my brother-in-law I would go out with the friend he had been trying to set me up with since I arrived.

The friend was called Craig. We ate at a Thai restaurant and he talked about his job at a wildlife park and his hobbies which included online gaming and paintball. He said Brad had thought we would be perfect for each other because I, too, had never ‘sold-out' and ‘settled down'.

‘But I did,' I told him. ‘I settled down while I was still a teenager.'

‘Yeah, but you saw the light. Took off, saw the world,' he said, squeezing my knee beneath the table.

‘True,' I said, because what would be the point of making the real truth of my untethered life understood?

I went back to his house and we had sex and afterwards I felt my face morph into the same smile I'd had after ordering an omelette and being served a duck foetus at a rural street-food stall. It wasn't what I wanted, but I was thankful that my blundering attempts at communication had resulted in any food at all.

Mischa,

I thought it might make you feel better to know that I lost my shit in Saigon again. Not that I assume you're feeling bad about me losing it the first time, just that I wanted you to know it wasn't you (or not only you) that made me so miserable there.

Grandpa was wandering around with a grin on his face, smiling at the touts and the filthy backpackers and the American fast-food joints. I got so angry, started ranting to him about how the whole city was a sell-out, more capitalist than America. He slapped me into place. He told me I was arrogant and ridiculous. He said it was clear I understood nothing about Vietnam. We were in a
and he held his finger in front of my face and said, ‘Vietnam should be gone. Should be nothing. Should be historical footnote. Why is it not? What is the number one value of Vietnam?'

I said courage and he scoffed so I said strength and he almost spat! ‘Self-preservation. That is it. That is first. Communist, capitalist, protectionist, socialist, democratic, nationalist – doesn't matter if it keeps Vietnam alive.'

I argued, of course. I said it's not true preservation if its essence keeps changing. If it has to sell out to survive can it be said to have survived at all?

‘Alive is alive,' he said. ‘If it is alive, it can one day be better. If it dies, it will never be better. Already it is better than when I left. All the time it is better.'

I don't know if I agree with him, but it doesn't matter: believing that makes him feel better about everything he lost and everything that's changed. That's good enough for me.

C

The email stuffed me up with feelings I couldn't name. I went for a long walk and the sharp chill in the air only made my hot, heavy mess of emotion murkier. I had forgotten how deceptive Sydney's winters were. Bright sunshine and blue skies and a spine-stabbing cold. I realised I had missed autumn altogether. It had been cancer season since before I arrived. It still was. Figuring out what the surging wet heat inside of me meant and which parts belonged to Cal and which to Vietnam and which – goddamn it all – to other, older people and places and injuries would have to wait.

But not long after, at the end of a particularly terrible treatment day, Mel told Margi she must remember that suffering makes you strong. ‘Seriously, darling,' she said, wiping flecks of vomit from Margi's chin. ‘You're going to be a fucking warrior by the time you're through.'

Later, as Mel and I sat listening to the rattle-hiss of Margi's sleep, I told her she was full of shit. ‘Suffering didn't make me stronger. It made me sick and weak and scared.'

She reached for my hand, squeezed. ‘Because you were alone, Mishy. If you'd let us take care of you, you would have recovered properly, emerged better and wiser. Like Margi will. She's suffering, but not alone.'

‘Maybe. It's different anyway, I suppose. Margi didn't do anything to deserve her suffering.'

‘And you did?'

‘No. Not deserve. But . . . I don't know. See? Even after all this time, all the years as a punching bag and all the years since, I still don't know why that happened to me. I'm not wiser. I'm not better. If anything, I'm stupider and meaner and weaker. I do whatever I like and tell myself it's okay because I deserve to feel good after so long feeling terrible.'

Mel rubbed her thumb over the back of my hand in the exact way our mother used to. ‘You're very hard on yourself. You should try giving yourself some credit for how far you've come.'

‘I don't know. I think they have it right in Vietnam, I do. Suffering isn't a rite of passage or test of character. It happens and then, if you can, you get up and move on. Not stronger or better, but alive.'

Mel looked across at Margi. ‘Yeah, well,' she said, ‘that'll do.'

Mish,

When Grandpa and I first arrived in Hanoi and Dad told me you were in Sydney, I was pissed off. Dad thought it was because I was disappointed I wouldn't see you or because I was upset that I hadn't known you'd been living across the city from me all that time. It was both those things, I guess, but it was more than that. I felt like you'd failed or given up and I felt like it was my fault because you were so happy until I came along.

Anyway, what I was trying to say in that last email, is that I'm sorry I judged you for valuing self-preservation. I'm sorry I nagged and pressed you. You were happy here and that should have been enough for me.

Margi picked up a lung infection and had to spend two weeks in the hospital. I sat by her bed as often as I was allowed to. We watched TV and I read to her, and while she slept, I read to myself. When the nurses kicked me out I walked the hilly streets surrounding the hospital. It still felt odd to be able to walk whole blocks without having to step down onto the road or weave through a cluster of diners slurping their soup. Odd, but getting less so each day. I had thought I'd never again get used to this vast, clean, quiet world, but it was happening so fast, so easily.

Silence is an answer (I remember saying this once before).

C

You shouldn't take things so personally. Silence to you, but frenetic activity for me.

Anyway, what was the question?

M

No question. I wrote some stuff and hoped you'd write back.

But now I do have a question: what frenetic activity?

C

My sister is sick. Taking care of her is my priority.

M

Sorry – I did know about your sister. Feel bad I didn't even ask how she was. Is she getting better?

Actually, yes, she is getting better. Her recent infection has cleared up & the chemo is finished which means she can now eat without throwing it all up immediately. In a month the doctors will go back in and check that it's all gone. It'll be a long month.

I need some distraction: tell me all about you & Hanoi.

M

One day I feel I am at home, or not really at home, but exactly where I'm supposed to be. Then the next day every­thing is hard and people seem hostile and I feel more an outsider than ever. On the hard days I walk through the Temple of Literature and try to be more like you. Calm. Accepting. I'm bad at this, but I'm trying.

The other day, I went to Quán
and lit a candle for your sister. Then I went to the
near your old house and had a drink for you. I realise neither of these things helps, but I thought knowing I did them might.

Cal.

In this new life, a day at the beach meant three cars packed to the windows with children and eskies, balls and kites and towels and sunscreen, and an hour and a half's drive through long-weekend traffic. It was worth it to see Margi, model-thin and pale, digging into the sand with both hands, helping Tom construct a castle.

I napped beneath a giant umbrella, waking to find myself buried from the knees down. Seeing me awake, Lucy straddled my belly and leant forward so her nose was almost touching mine.