Single White Female in Hanoi (30 page)

And what of tonight? In Hanoi, at least there'll be partying at the lake. Probably drinking, presumably some fireworks at midnight. What could be worse than spending New Year's Eve with your parents, when you could follow my traditional example and be playing music with friends, your brain happily gummed up on party drugs? But my reflection starts to oxidise and spoil. It's all equally meaningless, I conclude, with a sour jolt.

Culture, tradition, ritual, superstition; they're just ways of filling the same existential void. I've never felt so far from home in my life. I feel stretched and woozy inside and my mind is spiralling downwards towards panic. I suspect acute, comfortless homesickness, but today I can't remember what home
is
, or what it ever felt like.

Our last house-call takes us to the house of My Linh's oldest uncle, his married children and their toddlers. The three generations live in two connected rooms lit by low-power fluorescent tubes and walled with pock-marked cement, which has been painted turquoise.

In this poor excuse for a bomb shelter, my spirits are restored. For more than an hour, My Linh translates as the uncle and a sonin-law, leaning forward and bright-eyed with excitement, ask me question after question and answer mine. They ask about Australia – the culture, the climate, the topography, the government and about the differences between their world and mine. Finally, through My Linh's translation, the uncle begins to ask about the American War.

‘The Viet Cong – we won the war, but we lost more than one million soldiers. More than the Americans, yes?'

‘Yes,' I tell him. ‘The Americans lost about 60,000 men.' He sits with this for a moment, nodding, taking it in.

‘Tell me. Do you think my people are brave, or crazy?'

‘I think they were following orders, that's all.' I watch as My Linh struggles to translate this.

‘I think maybe we are crazy.' For a moment the uncle looks bereft, and I wonder at his war experiences. ‘So many dead men.'

By evening back at the house, the visitors are pouring in. My Linh's mother has gone for a nap after working at the markets all day, but the others are inexhaustible. I sit on the teak chair and smile through aching cheeks. Thanh, the younger brother holds my hand, trying to warm it up. In the 36 hours I've been in the village I haven't yet removed the top half of my clothing and I don't intend to. For as long as I can remember, I've been cold and the sky has been the same preternatural thatch of white.

As midnight approaches, the visitors trickle off and Mum is woken up. The event of the year is nigh. We sit together on the bamboo mat surrounded by red and gold boxes of sweets and candied fruit and a bottle of Vietnamese ‘champagne', which is a strange orange colour.

For the opening act the TV is turned down and Thanh begins the shaking of the bottle. He shakes it vigorously for about five minutes, during which time, to the amusement of the family, I back off into the furthest corner muttering ‘you're nuts'.

When the TV shows fireworks exploding over Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, we know it's midnight. The family scream and yell for a minute then I adopt the crash position near the bed as Thanh coaxes out the cork. There's a small pop, which causes a round of excited exclamations from my hosts, then glasses of the stuff are disseminated.

I put it to my lips and activate the drinking muscles, but can't induce the stuff to enter my mouth. Who was it that gave the Vietnamese the idea of making champagne? Presumably defeated French colonialists, as a vindictive parting gesture, one of many. The label bears the legend ‘Best Quality' but the stuff tastes like Ganges water that's been filtered through a rancid dishcloth then adulterated with a small amount of cheap Riesling.

Afterwards, my hosts have some fun putting the cork back in the half-empty bottle and shaking it for long enough that there'll be a detectible sound when it's loosened again. Then I hum and goldfish along as the family sings Vietnamese songs for another hour or so, mainly dedications to Uncle Ho, whose altar is beside the bed with a fresh glass of ‘champagne' sitting on it. The family insist I shoot a half a roll of film of them balancing empty sweet boxes on each other's heads. Even My Linh's tired mother is laughing big belly laughs. I look around and notice the shining eyes and the flushed glowing faces and I realise, with envy, that these guys really are having the time of their lives.

Somewhere above Noi Bai airport, the plane finally breaks through the malignant morass of cloud and I see wonderful, beautiful blue sky.

And my forgotten star, the sun.

From my window seat I experience a moment of childlike wonder. The sun makes things glisten and sparkle. It makes shadows. I move my hand into the patch of light that falls on my lap and study the darker patch it creates. I notice the penumbra of muted light around it. The sun makes fibres shine and dots them with those tiny granular rainbows. I let my dark hair fall across my face and peer though it at the constellation of dancing discs. The sun makes me glad to be alive. I blink into the blue and watch the mysterious translucent larvae drift down my field of vision. The sun is warm. It soaks into me like hot tea into a sugar cube, and liquefies the hard crystals on my spirit.

When I disembark at Vientiane the air is a heavenly 32 degrees. It's embarrassing how close I come to kissing the tarmac.

‘I'd like to say I'm glad to be back,' I tell Zac over espressos at the Kiwi Cafe. ‘But it wouldn't be honest. I've just left behind 32 degrees and a large, handsome holiday fling called Mat.'

‘And you came back
here
?' he asks in disbelief.

I shrug. ‘Hey – how come
you
didn't get to Laos?'

‘Well, actually, I had a better offer,' he tells me.

I squint at the big man. He is subtly changed. Winter has improved him. Height seems to have replaced width as his most imposing feature. The sweaty polo shirts are gone. The sweat's gone. He's in dark, loose-fitting street gear and it suits him. He seems unusually relaxed. His eyes are clear and his baby face has a look in it I haven't seen before.

‘You didn't!' I shout. He grins convincingly. ‘Who is she? Anyone I know?'

‘No way. She's a chick from Vinh province.'

‘Name?'

‘Ly.'

‘Student?'

‘Student?' he snorts. ‘I guess she is. I'm teaching her to read and write … ‘ He pauses for effect, ‘Vietnamese.'

‘And in return?' I ask him, riveted.

‘She's teaching me a whole lot of Vietnamese I didn't learn at uni.' He scrapes at the dried foam on the sides of his cup with the teaspoon. ‘You'll be impressed to know there really is a word for cunnilingus?'

I am. ‘Would you mind sharing it with me? I'd like to think I'll need it someday.'

‘You never give up do you.'

‘That's a bit rich coming from Hanoi's number one sexpat.'

Zac smirks, flattered. He really hasn't had the success rate to call himself a sexpat.

‘How was Tet in the provinces?'

‘I'm not ready to talk about it yet,' I shudder. ‘I'm going to need the help of a recovered memories specialist.'

My Linh chooses a different kind of café for our first post-Tet coffee together. She rides me to a region deep in the Old Quarter, a thicket of narrow streets, barely penetrated by backpackers. The air at the intersection is intense with the combined smells of Chinese medicines and cooking fish sauce. Above us, nine storeys of cloud are hanging on for dear life as the suggestion of spring steals the chill from the air.

The café is a new one, built for the new, upmarket Hanoian – the aspirational with a mobile phone and a painstakingly developed taste for black tea and pizza. The chairs are full-sized, adult ones, at full-sized tables. The menus list a full selection of Lipton teas.

We sit downstairs beside an open window overlooking the part of the sidewalk reserved for patron parking. A bored, chain-smoking attendant is minding the bikes.

My Linh stirs spoon afer spoon of sugar into her orange juice.

‘I enjoyed meeting your family,' I tell her.

‘Yes! They are very happy when they meet you. Do you print the photos yet?'

‘Oh, no,' I've forgotten about the photos. They'll be a catalogue of my misery. ‘I'll take them in tomorrow.'

‘We can send to my family.'

‘Yes, I'll make two copies.' Hopefully there'll be a couple where I appear to be smiling. I gaze out at the intersection. At the kerb, an old man with a beautiful face is squatting, stirring ice-cubes into a jug of arrowroot milk with a chopstick. His brow is furrowed. The cigarette in his mouth has a pellet of ash poised on the end. I wait for it to drop off into the milk but it stays there. The image makes me smile and I picture My Linh's handsome father with one arm around his wife, the other around My Linh's two sisters. Smiling, vibrant, attractive. Radiating love. I turn to My Linh.

‘Your father is unusual I think, for a Vietnamese man.'

‘Why unusual?'

‘I don't know, he seems so happy. Always laughing. And he still loves your mother!' My Linh says nothing for a moment. Outside, the man is still stirring his milk. I notice the log of ash has disappeared from the end of the cigarette.

‘It is good now,' she says finally. ‘But for a long time, many year, it was very bad.'

‘Really! Why?'

‘Because my mother give him three daughter.' My Linh sucks orange juice through the straw. ‘Very bad luck.'

‘But he loves his daughters!' I exclaim. His seeming unconcern over the bad luck of having had three girls is one of the things that charmed me.

‘No! When Doan, the oldest, was born, everything is okay. Because it is good luck to have a daughter first, before the son. But when I was born, he was not happy, so my parents try again for a boy, and they have Lien, my younger sister.' My Linh shakes her head, sucks up more sticky juice.

‘And, then?' I ask, bemused.

‘He want to divorce my mother. His mother tell him he must divorce her, say to him my mother is not a good wife.'

‘Oh jesus. It's not your mother's fault!'

‘Yes, but in Vietnam…the people, they think like this.'

I leave this alone. Aussie Bill has explained to me before that here in Vietnam, men blame women for producing daughters, despite the simply-explained fact that the X or Y chromosome in the sperm dictates gender, not the egg.

Outside, a yoked vendor is passing, blue bucket in her right hand. On her other shoulder, she's carrying an entire food stall– plastic chairs, bowls, boards, vegetables, charcoal-burner, wok with tofu still frying in it. My eyes flick back to the bike attendant, now slouched against the doorframe, drinking green tea. Cushy job. Why are all motorcycle attendants male? I wonder which of these two earns more.

‘But – your father loves Lien so much, I can see it!'

‘Now – yes. But he…he don't speak to her when she is young. Never touch her or do anything for her. When she get older, he realise she is so kind and nice, and now, he love her. But for years, the situation very terrible.'

‘What about when your brother was born?'

‘When my brother come, it get a little bit better.'

This revelation has unsettled me. I sip my iced coffee in silence.

I don't see much of Zac for the next fortnight. He rings every few nights to update me on the exquisite perfection of Ly's buttocks or to narrate stories of the extent of her
nha que
-ness.

‘I took her to a good restaurant the other night, and after the meal, she took a swig on her mineral water, swished it around her mouth and spat it onto the floor,' he tells me.

‘Bullshit! There's no way she could be that
nha que
.
'

‘Dude! She's from Vinh Province! I don't think you get it,' he growls, with surprising vehemence. My mind files away an indelible image of Vinh Province as a grassless cement strip among the paddies, teeming with rotten-toothed, multiple-toed peasants.

I track down a mutual friend who had dinner with them.

‘Penny, did Ly spit La Vie water onto the floor at Illy's the other night?'

Penny laughs for ages. Zac's fabrications fill her with delight. ‘I wish she did. That's a beauty.'

‘Well, I had to make it sound convincing,' says Zac when I chastise him for having the gall to get stroppy at me when I disbelieved a lie. But the thing with Ly is starting to bother him. Maybe he's finally starting to wonder whether an unmarried Vietnamese girl that sucks cock and does anal could really be a model of clean family values, but nothing about her is adding up, except her cash flow from some job she doesn't discuss. When I finally meet her I'm knocked out by her beauty, and her apparent affection for Zac. They almost look like a great couple. But the heavy makeup and perfume spell it out.

‘I don't know how to get rid of her,' Zac moans.

‘Look, if she was just in it for the cash, why would she pick a stingy prick like you?'

‘I don't know!' Zac moans even loader, burying his face in his hands.

‘You could tell her your wife is turning up,' I suggest, and watch his eyes light up.

‘That's the best idea yet. Can you role-play?'

‘Give me a break! She knows me anyway. Just tell her.'

‘It won't work. She won't go away.'

A week later, round at Zac's house I discover he's besieged. The phone rings continuously. He ignores it. Later, there's a prolonged knocking at the front door, then some low female keening. Zac slips an envelope with half a million dong under his door and retreats wearing a gallows grin. It's a pathetic show, but the fear is contagious. I stay the night in an empty bedroom, undaunted by the enormous rat running laps around the room. At dawn, the builders across the lane start hammering wood together and I roll onto my back, contemplate the blue of dawn projected onto the fresh moulded ceiling. Poor Ly, I think to myself. It's possible she really did fall for Zac.