Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel (Modern Southeast Asian Literature) (20 page)

“So go ahead, go watch them.”

“I will, of course, but I’ll wait until the next time you come down here or I go up to Hanoi.”

This one-of-a-kind folk art, this unique product of the northern rice paddy delta culture had finally made it to the South. And it had been southernized in a charming, natural way. The puppets pulled in their nets to southern folk music instead of northern cheo music. It was charming, even adorable. Adorable, like the southern boy laughing heartily at the frolicking puppets. Adorable, like the time Duy led her around back behind the stage to watch the artists tidying up the puppets after the show. He asked how the puppets managed to pop out from the water so quickly, and how they could float on the surface and move around in so lifelike a manner.

Later that night, Duy took Mai Trừng back to her room at the hotel. They lay holding each other, just talking. They spoke neither of the future nor any concrete plans. Yet at the bottom of his heart, Duy really wanted to talk about exactly those things. Both of them understood that they needed each other. They understood that they both had to remove everything standing between them for them to come together with total abandon.

So all the barriers between the two of them dissolved into nothingness. “I need you in my life,” Duy said simply. He didn’t say anything about love. The word love is so easily said, and so often shamelessly squandered, that it’s become barren. It’s a sterile word that no longer moves even the most sensitive of hearts.

“I need you, too,” Mai Trừng said simply. They cuddled up together softly. Lips found lips, flesh found flesh, hot breath found hot breath. They mingled, becoming a single temperature, a single rhythm of breathing, a single body.

But.

They never reached the final step, the real intermingling, the real dissolution. Duy suddenly sprang up as if something inside of him had been torn asunder. His body arched and contorted, as if he were torn fiercely from her. Then he curled up in the shape of a shrimp. Horrified, Mai Trừng bounded up and flicked on the light at the head of the bed. It revealed the naked, sturdy body of a young man convulsed with agony.

Duy didn’t scream; he didn’t moan. He ground his teeth and bore the agony. His eyes filled with tears of pain he couldn’t suppress.

“It’s my fault. It’s because of me. It doesn’t have anything to do with you . . .”

Mai Trừng couldn’t hold back her tears, either. She almost never cried. And when she did cry, she cried without tears. This was the first time she’d shed tears. She cried for her lover who wasn’t allowed to love. He couldn’t act on his love, and he thought it was his fault. And she knew if he continued to try and pursue this love, it would only mean more pain, suffering, and failure.

She couldn’t explain it to him so that he would understand.

She couldn’t handle the thought of leaving him.

And with these thoughts, she left Saigon. She couldn’t keep living in these cities to witness, day after day, people writhing in pain right in front of her face. She decided to retreat from a world that only spread disaster upon her, and which, in turn, forced her to spread nothing but disaster in return.

And what about people like Duy? She did not understand why a man like him should be included among those that had to face punishment.

EIGHT

I
stayed in a hotel that served the tourists who came to Cửa Lớn to swim at the beach. I didn’t come here to swim. But it seemed I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do. Indifferently, I watched the people in swimsuits holding onto their little inner tubes and running in and out of the water. They were jumping up and down, capering in the waves like clusters of seaweed being washed up onshore. Maybe I would cast myself out onto the sea on a long-haul ship again. Those kids splashing around down there could never, in their wildest dreams, imagine that kind of long journey, that kind of adventure.

The truth is that I didn’t want to go home yet. Something was clinging to my legs. The next morning I climbed back up the mountain back to the Bảo Sơn Pagoda, where Mai Trừng took me to meet the old venerable nun. “Please let me introduce Đông, my friend who came down from Hanoi to visit.” The feeble-eyed venerable simply replied with a “Na Mô A Di Đa Phật;
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very good, very good,” and then gave Mai Trừng permission to show me around the rest of the temple’s grounds.

We went to sit back down on the big fairy chessboard rock.

“I had the dream again last night,” Mai Trừng said.

She’d told me about this dream before. During her time here, she’d repeatedly dreamt of a shadowy figure that came to lead her away. It led her along a long wide road before it turned down a small path into the forest and led her through thorny, clinging underbrush. Then she flew over a lush green forest in which there were still some clumps of tree trunks that had been burned bare from the war. Arriving at a dried-out streambed, the shadowy guide disappeared. And Mai Trừng would awaken disoriented, her heart pounding in anticipation. She felt as if there were a supernatural premonition about the dream, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Last night, I got to the streambed again. It was the fourth time I dreamed of it. This time I climbed up onto some big, round, water-worn boulders that looked like giant fruits. I sat there upon one of the stones. The guide waved at me to keep following. But before I had time to stand up, the shadow disappeared . . .”

She bowed her head slightly. Her hands clutched at her face, which was immersed in some distant world. I sat silently, unsure how to help.

Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps stamping heavily in our direction. Mai Trừng shook herself and snapped back to reality. Giềng was carrying a basket of freshly steamed sweet potatoes. “Have some, you two,” she said, bringing the basket over to us. “The specialty of this area is this particular kind of potato. Its insides are saffron colored and firm, sweet, and buttery. If you take it with good strong green tea you’ll never forget the taste.”

I’d met Giềng, a woman of average height with unusually large feet, the afternoon before. She always went barefoot, each day shouldering several loads of water from the foot of the mountain up to the pagoda. It was the middle of a drought. Not a drop of moisture in the sky. For years the pagoda had just used rainwater gathered in a large cistern. But now the rainwater was exhausted, and they had to depend upon the efforts of this devoted, hearty peasant. Touched, I gave Giềng my pair of size 42 Bata shoes.
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She tried to thrust her thick feet into them, but couldn’t. Her feet must have been at least two sizes larger. Her feet didn’t fit her body; they were heavy and sorrowful, covered in scars, wounds, and painful calluses.

Giềng planned to leave at once, but Mai Trừng quickly grabbed her by the hand. “Aunt Giềng, Auntie Miên told me that, in the old days, near your checkpoint there was a stream. Do you remember it?”

“That’s right, there was a stream. Sometimes the three of us would even go there to swim and wash. And that’s where your father gave his life.”

“Do you remember how to get there?”

“It’s been so long. After the war no one had a reason to go back. I can’t remember the way.”

She shook her head and started to head back to the temple with her shoulder-pole and the two containers of water. Mai Trừng kept clinging to her hand. She spoke as if she were following a path in her own memory.

“I’ve been to the stream in a dream. But the stream has dried up. And in the center of the streambed there are some big boulders. There are three huge ones, like three mangoes running into each other . . .”

“That’s it!” Giềng shrieked nervously.

She told us that the three girls had always thought of those rocks as their own. When they would strip down to bathe, each would sit upon one of the rocks, just like three little mermaids. But the three of them never swam at the same time. One would bathe while the other two would hold their guns and keep watch on either side of the stream.

“How could the stream have dried up?” Giềng asked, as if speaking to herself, as if she were remembering regretfully. “You’ll have to dream again, then, and remember the road; that’s sure to be miraculous. Oh, the only thing I remember is that the area was known as A Si. But I can’t remember the way.”

I hoped that she was right, that Mai Trừng would be able to follow the old trails and find a trace of her parents. But I had a feeling that, for Mai Trừng, each dream was really a grueling journey. Those who voyage in their dreams exhaust themselves as much as those who scale gorges and ford rivers.

The next morning, she told me that she’d dreamed of the three mango-shaped rocks again. After that she’d followed the edge of the dried bed upstream. Arriving at large patch of trees overgrown with lush green moss, she turned right toward the rocky side of a mountain. There she found the remnants of a decomposing thatch hut. She heard the voice of her guide ring out, low and warm: “So, child, you’ve found the road; now you must take it.”

It was clear. Mai Trừng had to follow the road. There she would find her parents’ graves. I opened my notebook and recorded the name of the region, A Si, the mile-marker number designating the left turn off of the highway, the landmarks to find the dry streambed, and the way from that landmark upstream; and Giềng was able to confirm the route up from the streambed. In her limited recollection, there was still that distance.

I told Mai Trừng that I would go with her. She silently took my hand.

I went out and bought a shovel and crowbar set. Two machetes. Two raincoats. A few lengths of nylon fabric. Canvas shoes and rubber boots for both of us. Flashlights and butane lighters. Water and canned food. Mosquito and leech repellent. Everything went into two tourist backpacks. In addition, I had a compass ready on my wristwatch.

Then it was the time to get on the road. The two of us, with Ki, drove in one car. We returned to what was, in former days, the road down to the war. We looked like two provincial officials on assignment. As we drove deeper into the highlands, the road became deserted. Now and then we passed groups of minority tribespeople scattered along the way. Their complexions were dark, tawny, and coarse. Soon the road faded into oblivion, the people faded into oblivion, the entire highland forest faded into oblivion.

After two days, we approached the A Si region. It was time to leave the car behind. I drove it into a small highland town—actually, just a cluster of houses along the sides of the road. Everyone, children and adults, ran out of their houses to gawk at the car, which was for them a rare and luxurious sight. None of the guesthouses wanted to take responsibility for watching the car. In a town like this, an automobile was like a flying saucer from another planet. People would crowd around, hang off walls, climb trees, and even climb onto the roofs of houses to stare at it. All day. All night.

In the end, I had to drive to the local police station. I produced my identity cards, my driver’s license, and my certificate of ownership. I told the officers that Mai Trừng was going to find the graves of her mother and father, who had given their lives in the A Si area during the war. The station chief agreed to watch the car for us. He told us that, if we needed, he could recommend a soldier from the area, by the name of A Dai, as a guide.

What could be better?

We humans strapped on backpacks, shovels, and crowbars, and—along with Ki—climbed onto four Minsk
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motorcycle taxis, and headed up into the mountains of A Si. As we passed a mile marker Mai Trừng yelled out for the drivers to stop. She announced that she recognized the right turn, just like the one she’d seen so many times in her dreams.

We let the motorcycle drivers head back to town. A Dai carried Mai Trừng’s backpack and tools for her. He and I walked ahead, wielding the machetes to carve a trail through the trees, underbrush, and clinging vines. After we’d gone a short distance, Mai Trừng started to get confused and embarrassed.

“No, no, this isn’t working; you have to let me go first.”

A Dai said that he vaguely remembered a dried-up stream somewhere around there. And he insisted we let him go first and try to find the way. He turned straight down a very lightly worn path on the right without waiting for an answer. But Mai Trừng called out after him, “I recognize the way.”

She pointed to the left. There was no trail in that direction. Just tangled vines. It took us a while before we were able to hack our way through the forest and open up a pathway.

We struggled through all the way to lunchtime. Mai Trừng surged forward and then fell back, slashed her way through to the right until she came to a ravine, then cut back left until she discovered a long-forgotten path. Grass grew tall and thick, covering everything. As if in a trance, she kept walking straight ahead. Walked like a sleepwalker. Actually, she walked like someone was leading her by the hand. We followed after her as closely as we could, but we almost lost her more than once.

Around two-thirty in the afternoon we came to the streambed.

It was exactly like Mai Trừng’s dream. Exactly like Giềng’s memories. In the streambed were countless stones, worn smooth. And sticking up out of them was a group of three large boulders that looked like mangoes stuck head to head. I suddenly imagined those three mermaids, white and soft, sitting on them. They smiled mysteriously behind a veil of smoke and fantasy.

The stream was just a river of white stones, shimmering and sparkling. Some were the size of fists, grapefruits, or pumpkins. Scattered here and there were stones as big as water jugs. Largest of all was the cluster of three head-to-head mangoes. They were all part of this dried-out rock stream winding its way through the forest.

Mai Trừng sprinted across the streambed. When she reached its left bank, she raced along its edge. As she was running, she suddenly slipped and stumbled once, flung herself up, and then collapsed with a gut-wrenching scream. She lay with her back upon the ground, her body quivering, her breath ragged—like someone being gutted. Her hands and feet were frozen, as if someone were holding them tightly.