The Time in Between (28 page)

“Do you speak English?” Ada asked.

The woman waved her hands vigorously.

Ada reached into her bag and pulled out the novel. She held it up and said Dang Tho’s name and then she said her own name. “Dang Tho,” Ada repeated. She poked a free finger at the novel. “The writer of this book. Does he live here?”

The woman shook her head. Her face was in the shadows. She said,
“Va, va.”
Then she spoke quickly in Vietnamese and her hands moved with her words.
“Xin loi,”
she said, and then said it again. Then she stepped backward as if to say good-bye. She glanced into the air and then smiled, said
xin loi
once again, and shut the door. Ada looked at the door and the number on it. She put the book back into her bag, then descended the stairs and went outside.

She wandered through the streets, past vendors selling cigarettes and fresh guava, past an ice-cream shop, and on past a small market where flies rose and fell to the thump of a butcher’s cleaver. She walked aimlessly, unaware of the traffic or the men who called out to her. She found herself in a deserted part of town, walking down a narrow lane that led to other narrow lanes. A man stood in a small doorway, holding his hands over his mouth, picking his teeth. His eyes followed Ada as she passed. When he called out to her she ran, turning corners at random until, finally, she stumbled and fell against the wall of a house.

It was dark now and rain had begun to fall. She stood under a ledge that offered little protection and the rain quickly soaked her shirt and jeans. A man in a green raincoat passed by on a bicycle. Ada saw his brown feet in rubber flip-flops. A teenage girl, holding an umbrella, stopped before her and then, without speaking, took her arm, and Ada allowed herself to be pulled down the lane to a small house where she was offered a towel and a plate of milk fruit. She used the towel to dry off her hair and neck and arms. There were small flies crawling on the green fruit. An older woman appeared and leaned forward to serve tea. Ada drank slowly, testing the flavor. The girl did not speak English. She smiled and pointed at herself and said, “Huy,” and then picked up the milk fruit and put it into Ada’s hand. Ada said no thank you and placed the fruit back on the plate. Music, sharply mournful, came from somewhere at the rear of the house. Ada stood and gestured that she would leave. The girl called out loudly and a young boy appeared, holding a camera, as if he had been waiting for this moment, and at the doorway, before Ada left, he took a photograph of her standing between the mother and the daughter.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, ADA DRESSED BEFORE DAWN, LOCKED up the house, and took a taxi to the airport, where she and Jon had arranged to meet. He was waiting for her. They took the early flight out of Hanoi and arrived in Danang in time for a late breakfast at their regular spot. Ada was wearing her father’s ring on her left thumb and she twisted it now, studying her brother. She told him that the night before, in the grand bed in Hanoi, in the three-story house, she hadn’t been able to sleep. There had been strange noises downstairs near the entrance, and she had been afraid to go down to check. The fear, and the way it had found a space somewhere near the top of her throat, was how she had felt just before she had looked at their father’s body.

“Dad loved us,” she said. “I believe we are most alive when we are being thought about by others who love us.” She paused. “Do you understand?”

Jon said that it could be true.

She said that she pictured their father as a mirror giving them back a reflection of themselves, and now that he was gone their reflection had vanished. “And so when Dad died, part of us died too. Or me. Part of me died. I feel that way. You don’t have to believe what I’m saying.”

Jon stirred his coffee. Lit a cigarette. “Your thoughts,” he said. “They go into strange places.”

She said that her friend, Hoang Vu, seemed to like it that her mind went into those places. She told Jon that Vu had met their father and seemed to understand something of what he was feeling. Vu drank too much, but he was a tender man, and his vision for the world was generous. She said that she had stayed at his house for a few nights, after Jon had left for Hanoi.

“He likes you,” Jon said. “I’m happy for you.” Then he said, “Ada, listen. I’m not going back with you. I’ve decided. I’ll stay on for a bit in Hanoi and take some time to sort things out. You know.”

Beside them, a young woman dropped sugar into her coffee and stirred it with a tin spoon. The soft hair on her forearms reminded Ada of Del. She watched the woman and then turned to Jon. “I want to get flowers. Not too many and not too colorful. A subdued bouquet.”

Jon smiled. “Subdued. We will get a subdued bouquet.” He paid for their breakfast, and they left.

THE MAN THEY HIRED GUIDED THE BOAT OUT THROUGH THE mouth of the Han River and around the coastline past Monkey Mountain. A cool wind came in off the open water, and the man asked Ada several times if she needed a jacket. She shook her head. When they had reached the bay of My Khe, the driver slowed the engine and puttered in circles. They had gone to the hospital to collect their father’s ashes, and Ada sat now holding the cardboard box.

She felt a looseness and then a clarity, as if a lens had been placed before her eyes. She looked at Jon, who nodded, and she tilted the box over the water. The ashes caught in the wind and some came back to rest on her skirt, a light dusting. The driver said something, gesturing with his hand at the box and the water.

“A funeral,” Ada called out. She placed the flowers they had bought on the water and they floated away, caught on the swells.

The driver did not understand. He laughed and gave Ada a thumbs-up. Jon pulled a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from his bag. Opened it and poured. He gave a glass to Ada and then offered one to the driver, who waved his hand, then took it. Jon raised the bottle and said, “To our father.” Ada felt the spray of the water as the boat hit a wave. Jon refilled the man’s glass. “Don’t get him drunk,” Ada said. “We need to get back.” She brushed at her skirt and then looked at her hand, then leaned forward so that her words would not be taken by the wind and asked Jon if he was able now to cry.

He did not answer. He looked at her and then he looked out at the sea and his mouth appeared to move and then he said, “No.” He said it softly and at first Ada was not sure if he had spoken at all.

She asked him if he had cried at all since their father’s death and he shook his head and said that he had taught himself long ago, when he was young, not to cry.

“Oh, Jon,” Ada said.

In the distance, closer to shore, a small round boat appeared and disappeared.

IT WAS ONLY THE NEXT DAY, WHILE SHE WAS SITTING ALONE ON the rooftop of the hotel, that Ada cried. The evening before, she had said good-bye to Jon, and the finality of everything now came to her as a vast emptiness. She was alone, with her face raised to the sun, and at some point she became aware that only several weeks earlier she had been sitting in this same spot and she had not known, at that time, that her father was dead. Now, she knew. And she wept. She wept for her father and for his sadness that she once thought she had understood but could not now, nor ever, comprehend. And she wept for herself and for her loneliness, though at this moment she would not have wished to rid herself of that loneliness, because it came with a certain startling beauty.

In the afternoon she took the bicycle from its storage place on the main floor of the hotel, washed it, and then rode it to Vu’s house. When she got there, his sister Thien said that when she had come back to Danang, her brother was gone. She peeked at Ada from under the shadow of a straw hat that had a blue ribbon at the crown, and the blue reminded Ada of Vu’s socks.

Ada asked where he had gone.

“Away. I do not know.” Thien shrugged. The dog lay in the dust behind her. There was a trellis above the dog and vines grew from the trellis. Someone was running water behind the house. Ada looked beyond Thien toward the back.

Thien lifted her eyebrows and said, “My daughter. She is washing the clothes.”

“I want to give Vu his bike,” Ada said. She pushed it toward Thien, who stepped backward and said, “He wants you to have it.”

“I don’t need it,” Ada said. “I’m going back to Canada.”

Thien considered this, then she said, “Keep the bicycle. We have others.” Then she said that Vu had gone to the town of Quang Ngai and she smiled and shrugged.

Ada asked for an address. Or a phone number. Thien disappeared and came back and said the name of a guesthouse. The careful movement of her hand as she spoke, the shape of her fingers, mirrored Vu’s fine bones, and for a moment Ada was unsettled and wanted to reach out to touch Thien’s wrist.

“Thank you,” Ada said. And then she said good-bye.

ON THE WAY TO QUANG NGAI, HER DRIVER LIFTED A HAND AND pointed at the roadside and spoke for a long time in Vietnamese and then he fell silent. There had been a group of girls in colorful
ao dai
s and a woman holding flowers and a man and a photographer and behind this scene she saw tables and people and food and children throwing bright streamers into the air. And then the view had passed.

It was late when she arrived in Quang Ngai and she knew that she would not look for Vu that evening. Her driver took her to one of the hotels that accepted foreigners and she took a small room on the third floor. Her window looked out over palm trees onto the entrance of a dimly lit café where four men sat at a stone table playing cards. She saw herself as standing at the edge of some great maw and the four men were on the far side, distant and unapproachable. Unable to sleep, she sat on the balcony and waited for the sun to rise. Everything, the stars, the half-moon, the palm trees, seemed placed upon a great and implausible backdrop.

In the morning, using the map the desk clerk had drawn for her, she set out to find Vu. The guesthouse was a string of dark rooms located next to a vast, French-style building in disrepair. An old man sat on a chair holding a heavy book, and she approached him and said Hoang Vu’s name. Because the old man seemed not to have understood, she repeated Hoang Vu’s name, this time with a different inflection. Still, nothing. She tried again, attempting the lilting tones that she had heard so often in the mouths of others. She found it absurd and disheartening that she could not speak correctly the name of her lover.

Finally, the old man said Hoang Vu’s name and he sighed and rose and led Ada down a narrow passageway to a closed door. He stepped back and bowed his head. Ada knocked. There was no answer. She knocked again and waited and looked down the dim walk and then at the old man beside her. She tried the door, it opened, and she stepped inside and called Vu’s name. He was not there. The room had a cement floor and a small cot. There was a mirror over a sink and a chair beside a wooden table. An open closet revealed a few articles of clothing. The old man hovered. Ada touched a shirt and pushed her nose against the cloth. Smelled Vu. She closed her eyes. Sat on the cot and through the open door she saw that the old man had disappeared. There was a candle on the table.

She lay back, and after a bit she heard footsteps and she sat up and saw the old man standing in the doorway. Because of the way the light fell behind him she could not see his face. In his hands was a tray that held a teapot and two cups. He poured the tea and held out a cup for her. She took it and said, “Thank you.” They drank in silence, and after, the old man poured her more. Again, she drank, the clink of the cups, the splash of the tea, the wordlessness strangely soothing. She left the room and the old man left with her. Ada thanked him and then said the name of her hotel. He lifted a hand from his thigh and waved.

She spent part of the day walking the streets of the town. Once, in a small lane, a man who was squatting at the side of the road rolled a rock at her feet. She ignored him and hurried on. She circled back to the hotel and passed through the lobby and climbed to her room.

That night, Vu came to her. When he knocked, she opened the door and he looked at her and said, “You are sleeping?”

“No, no. I’m reading.”

He was holding an unlit cigarette. He said the old man at the guesthouse had told him that a beautiful woman had come for him. Vu smiled. “The old man told me that I would be a fool not to hunt you down.”

She hesitated and looked back over her shoulder at the small room and then turned back and asked, “Should we go for a drink or something?”

They went down to the lobby of the hotel and sat on the vinyl couch close to the front window. The night clerk brought them whiskey and glasses. A rooster crowed, the clerk shuffled away on rubber sandals, and Vu poured drinks. He raised his glass and then drank. His suit was rumpled and he looked tired. He said, “I’m here with other artists on a government project.” He lit a cigarette for Ada and as he handed it to her their hands touched.

She said, “There are many things I love here. The rooster calling in the courtyard. I love that. Or having tea with that old man today. We didn’t say a word, just sat there.” Then she told Vu that she and Jon had let their father’s ashes go off My Khe two days before. She said that when she had been out in the boat with Jon, and she had looked back at My Khe, she had realized she didn’t really know this country. “But,” she said, “I have met people here who I will remember for a long time.”

Vu did not speak and Ada looked into his eyes as if to divine an answer to a question that had not been asked.

“Come,” he said, and he took her hand and led her up to her room, where they made love on the small bed beneath the mosquito net. The balcony door was open and the light from the streetlamp fell like a narrow shaft across their bodies.

At night it rained and the open door banged in the wind and when she got up to shut it she saw the single light from the café across the street. This time there were no men and the light swayed on its string and cast shadows across the empty table. She came back to the bed and sat on the only chair in the room and she watched Vu sleep. When she lay down beside him, he stirred and mumbled something in his own language.