Fishing for Tigers (35 page)

‘I'm trapped,' I said.

‘Good,' she said. ‘Now you can never, never, never leave.'

On the drive home, Margi and Lucy slept and Joel, blunt as only seventeen-year-old boys can be, asked me what I was going to do once his mum didn't need me anymore. ‘Are you going to find your own place or what?'

Brad told him to hush, then said, as though he was changing the subject, ‘I was reading an article in the
Herald
the other day about how few Australians are bilingual. Reckoned that anyone with a second language could have their pick of jobs in tourism and customer service. Bet there'd be a big demand for Vietnamese speakers, Mish.'

‘Probably.'

‘You should check out the listings on—'

‘I don't speak Vietnamese, Brad.'

He blinked. ‘But. You lived there forever. You must have picked some up.'

‘It's not the kind of language you just pick up,' I said.

‘Oh,' Brad said.

‘You'll just have to find a job speaking plain old English then,' said Joel.

Your candle lighting worked! Margi's been given the all-clear. Or, actually, she's been given the all-clear-for-now, because cancer is a mean bitch that may well come back again, but for now, we're celebrating.

Thank you, too, for the bia. I miss it, even though beer here is so much colder and stronger and in-every-single-way better. I miss the experience, you know? The grotty stools that strain beneath my weight and home-blown glasses with air bubbles in their bases, the giggly teenage servers and the scowling grandmas behind the register. I miss red fried peanuts and crispy whole sardines and moto drivers telling jokes I can't understand but know from their faces are dirty.

M

sucks. I only liked it bcause it's something Idid with you. Today I went with dad & all them & was bored aand annoyed . Sometimes you need to say what you need to say and that is that I am loving Hanoi without you but some things I loved with you I hate now so I know it was just you I loved.

Mish,

If you haven't read my last email yet, please delete it unread. I was drunk.

Cal

Too late, sorry. It made me laugh, if that makes you feel better. Also, it made me think about something – about why I loved Hanoi so much. I went there because I knew no one and I loved it so much because I could be totally, utterly alone there. I didn't have any responsibility. No one expected anything from me and no one would be angry or hurt or disappointed if I failed to do something or unexpectedly did something else. Except at some point that became less true and I didn't notice until I had already hurt and disappointed and angered.

And I came back here & am in the same position again. Enmeshed. Having conversations about my life and decisions with people who will feel things about the outcome. Scared to disappoint and hurt and anger.

M

Still an emotional retard then.

FFS, Mish – I don't know your family but I bet they're nothing like your thug ex & I bet none of them are like me. Enmeshed isn't enmeshed, is what I'm saying. You get it?

C

The first time my husband punched me we had both been drinking. In the morning, we promised each other we wouldn't drink so much anymore and that way things would never get so out of hand again. The second time we were both sober. Also, the third time and most of the times after that. He would still drink sometimes but alcohol was as likely to make him romantic and kind as it was hateful and violent. He broke my ribs, my wrist, my ribs again. He took me to black-and-white movies and wrote songs about me and some nights we talked and laughed until the sun came up. He raped me and ruptured my spleen and told me he loved me every day.

Mel says you don't hurt someone you love but I think she's wrong. Hurting someone is an act of intimacy; it means they've got to you, got inside you. You lash out because you can't bear the unfathomable need. You bury the hook deep, and even though you despair at the damage, you leave it in there because it means you're in control.

I'm not saying it's right or even inevitable, but if hurting someone means your love for them is void, then there's even less love in the world than we think.

But here's the important thing: you don't need to deny love to decide it is destroying you. You don't need to pretend it isn't real in order to turn your back on it. You can say,
I believe in your love for me but who said love is always a good thing to have around?
You can say,
I love you but I love my life more.

You haven't replied. Hope you're not shitty with me for telling it like it is, retard.

Do you remember Mai – the girl from the Goethe Institute who ditched Henry that night? Dad & I went to an exhibition there and she and I got chatting. We've been hanging out a bit. She's teaching me Vietnamese, or trying to. She explained to me about pronouns, how they're all kinship terms, how you can't address someone in Viet­namese unless you know what their relationship is to you and whether they're older or younger. That's why they always ask your age and if you're married and all that personal stuff right away. But it's not just a matter of correct usage; it's about connections. Every time you address someone you are reminded of your relationship to them. Nobody is just ‘you', everybody is a sister or brother or aunt or uncle or whatever to someone else.

Anyway, you probably know all that but it made me think about how you and I would address each other in Vietnamese. Are you my big sister or my
em
?

Cal

Technically, I think I am your aunty – your father's ‘sister'. But I can't imagine us ever speaking Vietnamese to each other, so it's a moot point.

Tell me about Hanoi right now. Late autumn. It's glori­ous, right?

M

Nice dodge. Fine, I'll be blunt: I'm coming back to Sydney NEXT MONTH! I'm going to work at my aunty's shop for a few months, saving money for when uni starts again. I've changed my enrolment: going to study Vietnamese and – get this – nursing, so I can come back here in the long term and do something useful.

You'll be amused to know that Collins is now absolutely convinced I am gay. ‘A hot eurasian nurse who spends more on his hair than on food; please, just because you don't want to bonk me doesn't mean you're straight.' He's funny like that. Attributes stereotypes to everyone else while fitting none of them himself. Except the stereotype of a boorish expat, of course. Nah, he's alright actually. Better than Henry who is being a total dick about me and Mai.

Back to blunt. Okay, so I've had a thing with Mai, but I'm coming back to Sydney and I want to see you, but before I do I need to know – for real, Mish – are you still my
em,
because I will always, always be your
anh.

Cal

P.S – Hanoi is as beautiful as I've ever seen it. You don't need me to describe it: it's your home and when you close your eyes you're here. I know that about you.

I shut off the computer, call out to Margi and Brad that I'm going for a walk. I grab my keys and step out the front door, stride across the newly mown, mint-green grass. A shard of light bounces off the roof of the sparkling SUV in the driveway and into my eyes. I blink away the blindness and keep walking. I can't remember ever feeling this young.

A late Saturday morning in spring and the street is as alive as it ever is. Men with pale chests and red faces mow their lawns while their wives pull in and out of the long, wide driveways loading and unloading children wearing cricket whites or ballet shoes or party dresses, carrying expertly wrapped birthday presents or canvas grocery bags and paper sacks of rapidly cooling burgers and fries.

I walk on the smooth, level sidewalk and the soles of my flip-flop-clad feet miss the challenge of pavements cracked open with the force of the future. The air smells like grass and gentle, mannered backyard barbecues. I want fish sauce and sewerage and charcoal and pork. A car I can't see beeps its horn and I wish someone was with me so I could tell them how funny that is. A single horn, heard by the entire suburb.

By next month I will be home. I will miss my sisters and their families and they will know it because I will tell them during the frequent phone and video calls I will make. I will visit every year and I will nag until they visit me. I will know what Margi looks like squatting on a plastic stool and drinking
bia
. I will light incense with Mel at Quán
Temple. I will show off by chatting to my neighbours in Vietnamese, by taking nephews and nieces for rides on the back of my Honda, by cooking over an open fire using ingredients bought at the wet market that morning.

Maybe, if my family is visiting the country I shouldn't belong to but do at the same time as the man who I shouldn't have loved but did is visiting, I will introduce them to each other. By then, I will know which kinship terms to use and when I use them we will all know what we are to each other.

Acknowledgements

The first draft of
Fishing for Tigers
was written during an Asialink residency in Hanoi in 2008. A New South Wales Writers' Fellowship, funded by Arts NSW, enabled me to return to Vietnam to finish the novel in early 2012. I greatly appreciate the assistance of both these funding bodies.

Of the many books I drew inspiration from during the writing of this novel, I am particularly indebted to
Wandering Through Vietnamese Culture
. I am also grateful to
for patiently answering my questions about Vietnamese folktales and poetry, and for introducing me to so many other wonderful Vietnamese writers.

To my friends and colleagues at
Publishers: for your warmth, patience, humour and careful corrections of my misunderstandings and mispronunciations,
.

Thanks, too, to my Aussie, British and American friends in Hanoi for gossip, educational arguments and mojitos. I can't think of a better way to thank you than to leave your names off this page and thereby save you from being linked to any of the disgraceful shenanigans of the expats in this book.

Fishing for Tigers
would not be the book it is without the thoughtful editing of Judith Lukin-Amundsen and Emma Rafferty, and the commitment and enthusiasm of my publisher, Alex Craig, and my agent, Charlie Viney. Thank you all.

In the last year of writing, conversations with ­Carolyn Shine influenced this work in small but important ways. I am grateful for her insights and friendship and desperately sad that she is gone.

The generosity of my friend and colleague Bernard Cohen and my sister Rebecca Davis enabled me to not feel too bad about disappearing for months at a time to research and write this book – thank you both.

And to Jeff, thank you for supporting my enthusiasms, calming my fears, indulging my repeated need to take
one more
research trip and making it all feel worth it.