Fishing for Tigers (3 page)

‘His mother won't let him visit me. She's worried I'll keep him here, I think. I visit him two or three times a year. Every time he seems to have grown half a foot. He's twelve now and almost as tall as me. Lovely boy, though I'd never say that to him. He's at that age, you know, wants to be a lot of things but lovely isn't one of them.'

I'd never been interested in children, not even my nieces and nephews. I certainly couldn't have interest in the unseen, unnamed child of a man I'd just met. Yet I remember Matthew speaking about him, remember the exact look in his dark, watery eyes. It's not significant, I know that. It's because it was my first day in Hanoi, because I'd swooned in the street and been revived by sugar water and beef noodle soup and now everything was sharp and vivid and searing. I remember the nostril-stinging steam from the pot of broth on the stove, the twinge in my lower back and ache in my thighs as I perched on the child-sized plastic stool, the extraordinarily constant tooting of horns. I remember Matthew's khaki lizard-print shirt and tan linen trousers, the way the wiry, black hairs on his forearms glistened with sweat. I remember the barefoot toddler chasing a gecko across the concrete floor and his mother, fanning herself in the furthest corner of the room and smiling every time his body crashed into our plastic table. And I remember that Matthew told me he had a son who was twelve and lovely.

After lunch, Matthew had walked me to my hotel, which was, incredibly, one street back from where we'd eaten. ‘Every­thing's close here, as long as you know where you're going. Two blocks that way,' he said, pointing, ‘is Hoàn
Lake. Nice place to sit when it all feels a bit too much.'

‘Thank you.'

His sweat dripped in two almost straight lines from each temple, but he seemed not to notice. ‘If you're up to it, a bunch of us are going to the bar at the Metropole tomorrow night. It's the priciest bar in the city and full of wankers, but it's, uh, it's my birthday actually, so . . . Well, we'll be there pretending to be rich and oblivious. You might enjoy it.'

‘Okay,' I said, having no idea what or where the Metropole was and no real intention of finding out by tomorrow night.

‘Tell you what,' Matthew said, retrieving a set of keys from his pocket and jiggling them. ‘Since you'll still be finding your way around, I'll come by and pick you up. Seven-thirty?'

‘Okay,' I said again and Matthew smiled and turned and seemed to melt into the crowd. I nodded to the smiling man at the desk and climbed the four flights of stairs to my room where I stripped off my sweat-soaked clothing and laid myself out to dry under the slow ceiling fan. I wondered what Glen was doing, who he was taking his rage out on now.

The following night, Matthew picked me up on his motorcycle which he drove like a local, weaving in and out of the traffic, ignoring lights and lines, missing other vehicles and pedestrians by millimetres. By the time we arrived at the Metropole I was shaking.

‘You'll get used to it,' he said. ‘It looks crazy but it's actually very safe. Everybody's paying close attention, not relying on other people obeying rules.'

Later I'd discover that thousands of people die on these roads every year. Later I'd see a woman flip over the handlebars at an intersection and have her head smash open like a watermelon. But that evening I clung to Matthew's assurances and to the casualness with which everybody I met there talked about driving through the city. It can't be that bad, I thought, if all of these clever, sensible people are okay with it.

Of course, most of them weren't clever and none of them was sensible, but it took me a while to figure that out. Every­body I spoke to that night had a convincing explanation for what they were doing there and I left thinking that I had stumbled upon a community of laid-back, self-­deprecating saints. Genuine doers-of-good who still enjoyed a drink and a laugh. I assumed they were all so welcoming to the frazzled, explanation-less stranger out of pity and kindness. To be fair, there was a bit of that. But mostly they were so warm because they recognised me as one of them: a damaged fuck-up unable to thrive in her own land.

I'm not saying all the foreigners in Vietnam are like that. Some of them are genuine and kind and altruistic. Some of them have a deep love for the Vietnamese culture and language and landscape. Some of them are kick-arse corporate whizzes doing their multi-national expansionist thing before jetting off to the next new boom-town. But the people at Matthew's birthday party, the people who would become my social world, were in Hanoi because it was the only place they'd found where they could get away with being who they were. The only such place with five-star hotel bars, anyway.

Six years later, the
KOTO
get-together ended like so many others before it. The restaurant closed and we all bundled onto
or into taxis, and waving and shouting we went our separate ways. The night sticks in my mind, though, not because it was the first time I met Cal, but because it was the first time I'd known Matthew to be happy. Not that I'd thought of him as
un
happy before then. Happiness is relative, surely, and for those first years of my friendship with Matthew I had nothing to compare his to. He could say the same about me, which must make it worse for him.

That gathering sticks in my mind – in my conscience – because I laid my head on Matthew's shoulder and felt him revivified by Cal's presence. I wonder if he looks back and remembers a similar change in me not long afterwards. I wonder if he remembers me coming to life and now that he knows why he wishes I had stayed dead.

ver those six years in Hanoi, I had five addresses not counting the hotel I stayed in when I arrived. My last house, tucked down the back of a courtyard at the end of an alleyway behind the cathedral, had hot water and air-conditioning but ­neither could be guaranteed on any given day. The kitchen was a sink and stove-top in one corner of the living area. The fridge hummed loudly next to my TV. There was a rosy-tiled bathroom with a temperamental shower and an upright toilet which needed unblocking every month or so.

And there was the reason I loved it enough to put up with everything else: a bedroom that covered the entire second floor, with windows as tall as me on two sides. They were double-glazed but could not silence the bells of St Joseph and the constant rumble of the traffic. I often spent whole weekends in bed, eating honeyed cashews out of a cellophane bag and reading paperbacks from the English-language book exchange.

When I was married I fantasised about this kind of aloneness. I spent a lot of time physically alone back then, but I was accountable for that time and could get away with only a very small amount of reading or TV watching. An entire day spent in bed would have been unforgivably self-indulgent. Even when Glen was on one of his trips, I would need to report my activities hour by hour. For a long time it didn't occur to me to lie, and then when it did, I quickly discovered what the consequences for being caught in a lie were, and so reserved my deceit for covering up essentials like phone calls from my sisters.

In my Hanoi bedroom, with the ever-present background hum of three million people and the knowledge that my landlady, all of my neighbours, the local Communist Party rep and probably the police were keeping track of my every move, I felt truly alone. Free and safe from judgement.

It didn't last. I suppose I began to take the benign interest for granted and flaunted my freedom, inviting suspicion and scrutiny. I never discovered exactly what my neighbours knew or how they knew it, only that they had turned against me. Scorn and disgust are among those emotions easily expressed without language.

Three days after Cal arrived in Hanoi, Matthew organised a picnic lunch in
Tù Giám Park. It was a Saturday and, by the time we arrived, all the gazebos had been claimed. We managed to score a patch of grass on one side of a banyan, so we had some shade at least.

Henry had brought along a workmate, a New Zealander in his early forties who wore a white linen suit and introduced himself as Collins.

‘Colin, is it?' said Kerry, sliding her sunglasses down her nose.

‘Collins,' he said, emphasising the s.

‘Collins just arrived from Kuala Lumpur last week,' said Henry.

‘Promoted to Hanoi,' Collins said. ‘How's that for an oxymoronic phrase?'

‘How's that for a moronic suit,' Cal, who was sitting to my left, reading a yellowing paperback, murmured.

‘Promoted from what to what?' Matthew asked, unloading a basket of mini-baguettes from his Foster's beer cooler.

‘Head of IT in a small, modern, professional office to Head of IT in a wastefully large, colonial office staffed by people who think networking has something to do with fish.'

‘Sounds like they're lucky to have you,' I said.

‘What?'

‘Oh, they are,' Henry said. ‘We all are. That department's useless. I could get better tech support from my housekeeper.'

‘Ah, but your housekeeper is the amazing Giang and there's nothing she can't do,' said Kerry.

‘You have an actual housekeeper?' Cal asked.

‘So do we, kiddo. Who do you think has been cleaning the place and stocking the kitchen before you get out of bed each morn— each midday?'

Cal blinked. ‘You?'

‘He's only been here a few days,' Henry explained to Collins.

Collins squeezed into the space between Cal and Kerry, put a pink hand on Cal's shoulder. ‘Something you learn quickly in Asia. The value of a good housekeeper.'

Cal turned to his father. ‘So everyone here has a housekeeper?'

‘Pretty much,' Matthew said.

Cal nodded towards an old man swinging his arms and legs in tai chi motion. ‘So he'd have one?' He pointed to a woman dressed in a green canvas apron, picking up rubbish with black-gloved hands. ‘And her?'

‘Well, no, but you know I didn't mean that.'

‘You said everyone.'

Matthew sighed. ‘Yes, I did. I meant all of us here. We foreigners.'

‘I was determined not to, at first,' Kerry said. ‘My posting before this was in Malawi and I managed to do everything for myself there. But here it really is very difficult. Buying food at the markets, organising repairs or deliveries, even garbage pick-ups – if you've got white skin and not much Vietnamese it's tricky and expensive. Having a housekeeper, if you find a good one, is like having a personal assistant. Not so much about cleaning as about day-to-day life stuff. I can scrub my own toilet, but hell if I can figure out how to get my air-conditioner re-gassed.'

‘Speak for yourself,' said Collins. ‘For me, the best part about these postings is not having to clean anything except my own body.'

‘Oh, I can recommend a service to do that for you too,' Henry said and he and Collins clicked together their empty plastic glasses.

While Kerry mixed up a jug of iced lemon tea and Henry, Matthew and Collins discussed the Euro-zone ­crisis, I cut open the baguettes and filled them with the slivers of pork I'd roasted and sliced that morning and handfuls of shredded coriander and basil from Matthew's roof garden. Cal squatted beside me, watching.

‘Your servant got the day off?'

‘Of course not. She's back home polishing the silver and hand-washing my underwear.'

He smiled. ‘What's this then –
bánh mì
?'

‘Ah, well, it's inspired by
bánh mì
, but since I wouldn't want to give
bánh mì
a bad name, I call it what it is, which is pork and herbs on a bread roll.'

‘Fancy.'

‘No. But very delicious. Here.' I handed him a roll and he bit into it. Flakes of golden breadcrust fluttered to his lap. In four bites it was gone and his mouth was slicked with grease. He gave me a thumbs-up and licked his lips.

‘It's a shame Amanda couldn't make it today. She's a fab cook. You'll have to ask her to make you one of her pies or her choc-chip cookies. Tastes just like home, as they say.'

‘Not my home. That tastes like two-minute noodles with grated cheese on top.'

The others had gathered around and I began to hand out the rolls. Collins quizzed me on the origins of the ingredients, sniffed at the meat and crushed some basil between his fingers which he also sniffed. Finally he took a bite, chewed loudly and declared it would be better with a little shrimp paste.

‘I'll have to try that next time,' I said.

‘Not for me,' Cal said. ‘I like it exactly like this.'

‘Have you tried shrimp paste?' asked Collins.

‘I'm Vietnamese,' Cal said, exaggerating every syllable.

Collins laughed. ‘Oh, are you? I thought you just arrived from Australia.'

‘Yeah, we have shrimp paste there. We have lots of ­Vietnamese food there. Because of all the Vietnamese ­people. Like me.'

‘Of course. Silly me.' Collins patted Cal's back. ‘You're probably an expert on Vietnamese food.'

Cal shrugged him away. ‘Hey, Dad? Is this green stuff from our roof?

‘Teenagers,' Collins said to me and winked.

While we ate, the heat set in. As one, we inched backwards until we were each shaded by the banyan's branches. The relief was minimal. I leant against the trunk and wiped my face with a refresher towel. Kerry, Henry and Collins argued lazily about airline frequent-flyer programs. Cal held his book – it was
The Beach
– by the spine and fanned his face. Matthew snored softly near my feet, a line of ants trekking over the half-eaten roll in his hand.

A child dressed in a bright yellow jumpsuit walked around and around the nearest gazebo, one hand held by each parent. Watching them was a man so old that his peaked military cap could have been a personal memento from the French war, and beside him were a stout, grim-faced woman of middle-age and a teenaged girl nursing a swaddled baby. At their feet, a figure in pale pink pyjamas squatted over a steaming tin pot. I guessed that they were four generations of the same family, escaping the dank heat of their narrow tube-house. I wondered what they would make of our little group. We could be a family, too, if you didn't look too closely.

Cal slumped beside me and pointed to the red roof peeking over the stone wall on the other side of the park. ‘We walked past the front of that place on our way here. Busload of Japanese pouring out. Dad said it's a temple of something?'

‘Temple of Literature –
. First university in Vietnam, though now it's just a tourist attraction. Or mostly a tourist attraction. There's a Confucian altar that people still pray at. It's almost a thousand years old, or at least the vague outline of it is. Most of it's been built up and knocked down and re-built and added to over the years. Still worth a wander through, though.'

‘Cool. Come with me?'

‘Now?'

‘Why not? This is boring.' He jabbed his foot into ­Matthew's side. ‘Dad, Mischa and I are going to check out the temple thing.'

Matthew half sat. ‘Oh, Mish, you don't have to. Cal, it's only shrines and stone turtles. We can see it later.'

‘Go back to sleep, old man. You're a crap tour guide, anyway.' Cal stood and held out his hand to me. I took it and he yanked me to my feet.

‘As long as you really don't mind, Mish.'

‘No, it's fine. Nice and shady in there, at least.'

‘Righto.' Matthew lay back down.

‘Are you going somewhere?' Collins said, rising to his knees.

‘Nah. Just a walk,' Cal said, and still holding my hand, set quickly off towards the wall.