Fishing for Tigers (29 page)

‘Nah, mate, thanks.' He pushed on.

A few doors down I spotted a pub I remembered from my last brief visit here. ‘I need an air-con break,' I told Cal.

We found a booth and ordered beer and bottled water. Cal poked the edges of a wet-looking sore on his knuckle. ‘Did this coming out of the airport. Little scrape against the wall. Now look.'

‘It's the climate. Wounds tend to fester. You should cover it.'

Cal shoved the knuckle into his mouth and bit down.

I watched a man at the bar, fiftyish, white hair, dressed in a crisp pale blue shirt, perfectly pressed beige trousers and expensive runners. He was twirling a pink umbrella in a bulbous glass filled with something thick and orange. A young Asian woman wearing a skin-tight black dress slid onto the stool beside him and smiled widely at the drink. He put his face to her ear and she squeezed his arm.

‘Disgusting,' Cal said.

‘Maybe they're in love.'

He snorted. ‘Yeah, she's in love with his money and white skin and he's in love with her tight Asian body.'

‘Like us, then.'

‘Fuck you.'

A wave of vertigo passed over me. I pressed the heels of my hands into the seat.

‘I mean, you're not exactly rolling in it.'

‘What?'

‘Money. You don't have much. The white skin, though, yeah. I admit that does it for me. Big time.'

‘I don't know if you're joking or being ironic or what.'

He looked at me, shattered and ravenous. ‘Mischa.'

‘Yeah. I know.' I rubbed his shin with my foot. ‘It'll get better.'

Saigon did not care that it was December; the heat was relentless. At breakfast, Cal thrust the
Vietnam News
at me, open to the weather report.

‘Look at Hanoi,' he said and seemed to melt down into his seat. Hanoi had dropped ten degrees in the week we'd been gone. School children would be wearing brightly coloured ski-jackets over their uniforms. The moto drivers would have knitted caps peeking out from under their helmets. And I, like the other
tây
s in town, would wear t-shirts and jeans and rejoice at my ability to walk a block without sweating out half my body weight.

I was to return in two days and tried hard to hide my jubilation from Cal, who was as morose as I'd ever known him to be. I was as anxious to get away from his sulkiness as I was to lie in my big bed and listen to the bells of St Joseph's.

‘I have an idea. Let's indulge ourselves. We can take a taxi to
, have lunch somewhere flash, wander through the designer malls.'

‘If you want.'

‘Well, what do you want to do?'

He swirled his chopsticks through his
. ‘Don't care. What you said is okay.'

He brightened once we reached
. ‘This used to be the rue Catinat, you know? From
The Quiet American
?'

He had bought a photocopy of Greene's novel from a legless boy across from our hotel. He'd also bought
Catfish and Mandala
and
The Sorrow of War
. I'd wondered out loud whether the street pedlars would sell those titles if they were able to read them. Cal had given me a pitying look. ‘They'd sell whatever the tourists buy. They're trying to survive, not curating a politically correct post-colonial reading list.'

But today, strolling along the wide, clutter-free streets of
, he was unselfconsciously excited. He pointed out landmarks from his reading, told me snippets of history and anecdotes. In a French patisserie we drank American-style iced coffee, our glasses overflowing with whipped cream and rich New Zealand ice-cream. The drinks cost more than the previous night's dinner, but half as much, Cal reminded me, as they would cost in Sydney.

‘It's like we're not even in Vietnam,' Cal said, watching through the chilly glass as two women in sky-high heels and exquisitely tailored pantsuits exited from the Caravelle Hotel and hailed a yellow cab.

‘It's as much Vietnam as Hanoi. Or the Crazy Buffalo.'

‘Yeah. Shit. I sound like one of those orientalist wankers. “Oh, I want to see the
real
Vietnam. I want to drink snake blood and eat dog and, like, wear a
nón lá
while walking through rice fields.” '

‘You'd look good in a
nón lá
.'

‘I look good in everything.'

‘And in nothing. Mmm. Nothing except the pointy hat. I think I need to see that.'

‘Hey, lady, calm down. I'm not your cheap Asian sex toy.'

‘What if I get you an akubra instead? Will you be my cheap Australian sex toy?'

He shrugged. ‘I suppose that'd be okay.'

Back outside our hotel we were approached by a shoe-shine boy. He dropped a child-size plastic stool at our feet, shook his head at Cal's flip-flops, then thrust his brush and pot of oil at me with a hopeful smile and a glottal grunt. When I said no, he touched my sleeve and nodded at my dusty boots and forced another painful-sounding grunt from his throat.

‘No,
,' I said, and took a step toward the hotel.

‘Go on, Mish. What's the harm?'

‘No.' I began to walk away. Cal grabbed my upper arm and yanked me back. ‘Ow! What's your problem?'

‘Just let him clean your shoes. Please?'

‘No!'

The boy waved his brush at me, grinning widely.

‘I'll pay for it, okay?'

‘It's not about that. I said no and—'

‘Okay, yes, please,' Cal said to the boy. He pushed me back toward the stool and I would have had to kick both of them and overturn the boy's already open pot of oil to escape.

The boy knelt on a flattened detergent box and rubbed my boots. Across the street the legless bookseller stacked and re-stacked his plastic-wrapped photocopies of war porn and French colonial romances. Asian girls in tiny shorts and white men in pale billowing shirts filed past. A coconut seller, her face swaddled in blue cotton, wheeled her cart up the centre of the road, never flinching as the motos roared around her. Cal kept his hands on my shoulders.

‘
,' I said when my boots were clean. I jerked away from Cal's hands and stepped in front of him when he tried to pay. I don't know how much I gave the boy. I took notes from my purse and he smiled and clicked what I suppose was thanks.

In the elevator, Cal said sorry. Walking up the two airless flights to my room, he demanded I say something. In my room, he stood with his back to the door and called me a cold bitch.

I sat on the unmade bed and took off my boots.

‘I couldn't take it anymore, Mischa. You always flick those guys away like they're nothing, like they're shit stuck to your shoe. I know I was out of line down there, but Jesus, I can't take it. That could be me! Do you understand that? You look down on him like he's a bug, but how am I different? Seriously? If that guy could speak – if he could speak English – would you bring him up here and suck his dick? If his skin was a bit lighter? If he didn't need to clean your shoes to feed himself?'

I sobbed suddenly. And although I saw that it was distressing to Cal, I couldn't stop. He came and held me, he apologised, he begged my forgiveness, he told me how much he loved me, he cried too, he washed my face and took off my pants and shirt and pressed ice cubes to the back of my neck and eventually, I suppose, we must have fallen asleep.