Meatloaf in Manhattan (4 page)

‘Would you believe me if I told you my great-greatgrandfather was Robert E Lee?'

‘I would if you can name me three battles.'

‘Chancellorsville, Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg,' she rattles off, no hesitation.

‘Then I'll call you General.'

‘And never mention Gettysburg, soldier.'

‘You give the orders. Can I buy you a drink, General?'

‘Let's make it a Southern Comfort.'

‘I hope so.'

She winks. This is shaping up to be a crazy night in New York.

Later, in the cold, cold street, I have this young Robertelee girl on my arm, promising me a wild party in her dorm and a warm student bed for the night. Her two friends are drunk, throwing snow at each other.

‘Hot chocolate?' I say.

‘Great idea, Corporal,' she says.

‘Why, thank you General, sir,' I say standing to attention and saluting, ‘I've been promoted.'

‘For valour and attention to duty.'

‘At your command. I'm here to serve.'

‘So, take the Company for a hot chocolate break.'

‘I know the perfect place,' I say, looking up the street, the Ed's Diner sign still flickering in the now gently falling snow.

We crash through the door, like we're on a raid. We're drunk and laughing loudly. Charlene is sitting smoking at a table near the kitchen. When she sees me her expression turns from surprise to dismay. She gets the picture. I shrug my shoulders, give her a bad boy, crazy boy, look and then nuzzle up to the General. The sparkle has gone from Charlene's eyes. She seems tired and sad, as if the day has caught up on her. She walks over to our table, slowly. She looks at me once, straight in the eye, defiant, angry, disappointed. She says nothing, just takes our order and retreats to the kitchen. A couple of minutes later a man comes in from the street, grabs a sugar bowl from the nearest table and then hurries back out the door. We laugh at the madness of this city, as Ednottheowner brings our drinks, slamming my mug on the table, looking at me as if he has a cleaver in mind.

It's twenty past two in the morning. Charlene flips the sign on the door to ‘closed' and turns out the lights. The neon sign outside shudders and crackles, then gives up the ghost. She steps out into the street and shuts the door behind her. The snow is falling heavily and there's no one around. She shivers, remembering the broken heater in her small room down by the Battery and wishes she'd got it fixed last weekend like she meant to. She breathes in the sharp cold air as she turns the key to lock the door. From way up above large snowflakes fall on her hair as she stands and watches them float and dance in the light of the street lamp.

SHE CALLS HER BOY AMAZING

He will come to this world in darkness and in water.

Chi, his mother-to-be, is but a child herself, lost in the war, standing at the end of the jetty in Danang, on the coast of Vietnam. Buildings smoulder, bodies lie in the streets for the pigs and the crows. The old man with the three white hairs hanging from his chin taps her on the shoulder. He moves his fingers to his mouth. Yes, she nods, she wants to eat. He hands her a small brown banana and she gulps it down like a pelican might, skin and all. Rice, he says, pointing to the small rowing boat tied to the steps. The hairs on his chin quiver in the breeze, but no necromancer is he.

Sitting in the bow of the boat she eats with her fingers the sticky rice from a jagged tin. The old man begins to row towards a rusty hulk of a ship that rises up out of the waves. It has a strange flag flapping in the wind and the circling air is cold to her eye. The wall of steel looms larger as they approach. It makes creaking and sighing sounds that, if she were older, might warn of the danger ahead. They float alongside and the old man gestures for her to climb up the rope that hangs over the side of the ship.

On the deck, Chi is met by the eyes of the crew. Half-starved themselves, bedraggled and filthy, sea-madness in their faces, deep scars on their souls. The boatman whispers to the tallest of the men who hands him some banknotes, then pushes him away. The old man spits on the deck, then clambers back over the side to his boat below. She thinks she hears his oars dipping in the water.

As night sets in man after man does to her things that only men can do. In the years to come, in their older age, they will blame the insanity of the sea or else bury the memory under the thick black sand of the ocean floor. When the moon settles in for the night, and they are all finished and done, they drink rice wine to stave off the hunger and to forget who they've become. Then three of the worst of them take her by her arms and legs and toss her overboard, a filleted fish, debris for the seabirds.

For a second underwater she has the urge to surrender, to give herself over to the salty swell. But deep inside she feels a life in the bud, a purpose, a struggle to be had. So she kicks her feet and swims upwards towards the moon, breaking the surface of the water with a mighty gulp of air. There in the distance is the shoreline, the early morning fishermen tending their nets and a sleeping port that will become her home.

The following spring her son is born. She calls him Ny, which means ‘amazing'.

They live by the train station, first alongside the railway tracks, barely staying alive, foraging for food in the bushes, picking up scraps discarded by passengers from passing trains. Then she fashions together a small hut from broken bits of this and that. At night she straps the baby to her back, and, under the cover of darkness, steals rice and vegetables from the fields that skirt the railway. In the morning she cooks the rice and moulds it into small bundles, then wraps them in banana leaves. Swooping up Ny, she heads off to the station to wait for the trains and to jostle amidst the hordes of hawkers. Unbeknownst to her, the tiny baby boy on her back is already cultivating amazing feats of mind and imagination. He cannot speak, yet he memorises the numbers of all the trains, the order in which they arrive and leave the station. He knows that the black and white flag means stop and the green means go. He traces the exact space in the air where the steam from the locomotive engine evaporates and he recognises each and every bird in the eaves from their song and the markings on their wings. While his mother thrusts her wares through the open windows of departing trains, he peers over her shoulder and checks the colour of the ladies' scarves. He has calculated which colours buy and which refuse. Blue is best and red is worst.

As soon as he can walk Ny totters along the platform and holds out his hand the way his mother has shown him. He's already closely observed how the beggars look. The empty eyes, the hangdog expression, the sunken cheeks. He copies exactly, right down to the lopsided angle of the mouth. His tiny wastrel act brings him many coins from waiting travellers. He hands the money to his mother; she smiles, and his heart feels warm and happy. At night when they sit together in their shack he watches the moths buzz around the lantern that hangs by the door. In the depths of his growing mind he recalls and recounts the patterns on their wings, unknowingly cataloguing species and genus. At night, as his mother sleeps, the wonder and minutiae of the world keeps him wide awake and peculiarly aware.

But all is to change one rain-sodden night as he and his mother wait for the last train to depart for Ho Chi Minh City. All the other hawkers have left as the engine shunts into motion. But Chi runs alongside the slow moving train in the hope of a final sale. One man (in a bad-luck red hat) takes the small bundle through the open window of the rear carriage and then chuckles when she asks for payment. Chi carries on running, hand outstretched, pleading with the man, who laughs in her face. Ny runs alongside his mother, wishing she knew that red is the worst colour to sell to. And then she slips, tripping her son in the process. In her last of so many selfless acts, she turns to Ny as she falls and pushes him backwards, propelling him away from the edge of the platform and the huge wheels of the train.

A voluminous belch of steam envelopes the scene. When it clears Ny can see the last carriage disappear around the bend at the end of the station. He sits alone. The rain is pouring, his knee is bleeding from his fall. Beside him, floating in a puddle, is the last of his mother's packets of rice. He shuffles forward and looks down onto the tracks. There is debris and water, a dead rat and a baby's rattle, but no sign of his mother. Did she, he thinks, jump onto the train at the last moment to get the money from the man in the bad-luck hat? The train is long gone, not even the sound of a horn or a hoot. Ny picks up the parcel and begins to nibble at the banana leaf. All night long he sits in the rain waiting for his mother to return.

When the next day dawns, Old Man Luc opens up his flower stall on platform Number One. He fills buckets with fresh water from the tap by the shelter and artistically arranges the lotus, kumquat, flowering peach and hoa mai. Then he sits on his stool to greet the passengers and to entice waiting families to buy a special bouquet for a distant relative arriving from the countryside. He hears the whistle from the night train from Hanoi and looks up to see the old locomotive shunt into the station. It is then he notices Miss Chi's boy alone and asleep on the platform. Slowly, for his back troubles him, Old Man Luc makes his way to where the boy is curled in a ball. As he gets close he sees the boy is shivering and that his face is covered in a sheen of sweat.

‘Here!' he calls to a porter, ‘five thousand dong for your help.' Luc gently holds the hand of the semi-conscious boy as the porter carries him across the street and up to the old man's rooms.

Over the following days Luc nurses Ny with all the tender care of a loving parent. His kindness is unwavering, his patience unlimited. In his fever Ny calls out for his mother, mumbling that she is waiting for him on the platform. When Ny recovers his strength, Old Man Luc takes the boy to the place his fevered mind had yearned for. And so, every night from that day onwards Ny sits at the same spot on the platform where he last saw his mother. Nibbling on a banana skin, he recalls the look in her eyes as she disappeared into the steam from the train. He imagines her in faraway places, building a new life for them. As each train arrives he seeks out the face of every passenger, certain that one will be that of his mother. Old Man Luc understands the needs of the boy. As each midnight approaches Luc takes Ny back to his house to sleep.

Gradually, imperceptibly, Old Man Luc and the boy grow to love each other and the man becomes the father Ny never had. During the day Ny helps at the stall, keeping the flowers refreshed, the buckets topped up with water. Whenever the flowers are blue he arranges them in the bucket so that the petals point to the place where his mother disappeared. Blue to counter the red of the hat of the man who spirited her away. Old Man Luc talks to his friends about the last war and the wars before that one. Passengers stand around, in huddled groups and singly, waiting for their train to come or go. Ny looks up at them and then fingers the flowers, willing them to buy. When a purchase is made Luc places the notes in a rusty tin box he keeps at the back of the stall. Most nights there is enough money for a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup from Madam Pham's shop on Duong Loi Street. Ny and Old Man Luc always laugh as they spoon in dollops of hot chilli sauce to keep out the cold.

Back at the room where they sleep, in the square by the ruined Catholic Church, next to the snake-blood shop, Ny listens as Luc tells stories from the past. He stores every word, every detail and image in his memory so he can rerun them in the dark of the night. He asks the deepest questions of detail and nuance. Ny is quicker to learn than a baby fox. Luc teaches him to read in classical Vietnamese, in awe of his capacity, never having met anyone, boy or man, who could absorb all around him with such hunger and vision. All Ny's senses seem to meld together. He begins to see people and things, happenings and weather systems by the colours they invoke in him. He knows every single detail of the room where they sleep. The precise shape of the cracks in the walls, the way the shadows from the street form on the ceiling, the paths the cockroaches take across the floor.

Old Man Luc notes well this remarkable child. It gives him pleasure to watch Ny exploring the jumbled piles that inhabit their rooms: old clocks, some ticking some silent; newspapers and magazines, some twenty years old and yellowing (like the old man himself). He observes Ny picking up a tin box, long buried under a pile of silk scarves. ‘Open it,' he says. And Ny prises free the lid. Inside are some stones, a bird's feather, and a beautifully embroidered cap. Luc smiles and begins another story to beguile his young charge and to add another sparkle to his spirit.

‘They were left,' he says, ‘by a traveller who stayed in this room many years ago. He was a wise man from the Hmong tribe, a voyager on a quest, who became famous in the region for his strange clothes and demeanour and for his silky jet-black hair, hair that reached far down his back. We would sit late into the night,' recalls Luc, ‘talking and gesturing, learning bits of each other's language and stories, having the best of times. He seemed like an ancient spirit, one who had travelled through many lives. I was privileged by his visit. One I have never forgotten. Then one night, without warning, he went away, leaving behind the tin you now hold.'

The old man watches Ny as he traces with his finger along the elaborate embroidery of the cap, threads of blue and purple silk, fashioned into the leaves and branches of a golden cypress tree. He strokes the feather and holds the smooth stones against his cheek. Luc laughs out loud and says, ‘Put the cap on your head, it's yours.'

‘And,' asks Ny, ‘the feather?'

‘Yes, yours,' smiles Luc.

‘And the stones?'

‘Yours also,' laughs the man.

A month later winter sets in and the water in the buckets at the flower stall freeze overnight. Old Man Luc warms his hands by the open fire in the brazier he has lit by the roadside. Ny squats beside him chewing on a bamboo shoot. Old Man Luc touches the lump at the back of his neck that he knows has outgrown treatment.