Single White Female in Hanoi (20 page)

There's a cigarette-smoking, uniformed guard at the gate of the publishing compound. I fancy I catch a glimpse of a rifle in the guardhouse behind him. He seems amicable enough though, baring me a few lonely brown teeth as I pass. He's guarding the premises of about ten publications and a printing press.

I walk the length of the sunny compound, past the canteen, outside which a large number of male workers in ink-stained blue overalls are smoking. At the far end I find a large neon signpost attached to the side of a featureless building. The signpost says: ‘National Economic Review.'

I'm here for an interview. Lee's name seemed to open doors for me. At reception I find two very affable guys waiting for me. The first to introduce himself is Alistair, the cheery head of the foreign editorial team. He's slightly chubby with long hair and John Lennon glasses. His face seems to default to a smiling position. The other is Charlie, his friend from the editorial team. Charlie, by contrast, looks dead serious; a sandy-haired giant whose attempts to smile seem blighted by a face resistant to muscle movement. But they're both wholly British – polite and sardonic, with the reddened eyelids of committed beer drinkers.

On the way to Alistair's office I'm taken through a room the size of an auditorium. I fancy the far side of the room is slightly blue from atmospheric perspective. There must be more than 60 people in the room, yet it's quiet as a library. Rows of computers, occupied by rows of Vietnamese people, fade off into the distance. In one corner of the room I spot a small clutch of foreigners frowning into screens. It's all highly intriguing.

But in Alistair's chilled office the atmosphere becomes more relaxed. We sit around on big sofas and talk about Hanoi. Alistair smokes and Charlie twirls his hair abstractedly. These guys are both long-term expats with an interest in local affairs.

I ask again about my hours. When I called, earlier in the week, Alistair told me I was in line to replace someone one day per week and as a casual. But now something's changed.

‘Actually,' Charlie starts, twirling his hair again. ‘There might be three full days a week because we've recently had to…er…' he looks at Alistair.

‘Sack a guy,' says Alistair brightly.

‘Oh.' I say.

‘We don't do that very often,' he adds.

‘He's been working here a long time, but he's turned out to be … er … a bit of a … ' Charlie twirls.

Alistair finishes for him. ‘A bit of a junkie.'

‘Oh,' I say again. There's a cog turning slowly in my head. As it picks up speed I ask: ‘Where's this guy from?'

‘Sydney town, actually. Up your way.'

‘Oh,' I say for the third time. The cog is whizzing round and round. I venture one more query: ‘… Don't suppose you'd care to divulge his initials?'

‘I s'pose so,' Alistair shrugs. ‘B.C. – Why?'

‘Brandon Costella,' I say slowly.

It was only a matter of time really. In my last contact with Brandon he'd turned up unexpectedly at my place in Sydney with pinwheels for pupils, toting his new pocket-sized Vietnamese wife, Hai. She was, in every observable way, indistinguishable from a 12-year-old. Only carbon dating could have upheld Brandon's assertion that she was twenty-five. She spoke no English, and in her shoes only came up to my chest.

I'd only met Brandon briefly before he moved to Hanoi in the late nineties. He was a friend of a friend - the friend who'd suggested Hanoi to me when I was looking for a destination. When Brandon returned to Sydney for a visit, soon after my decision to make the same move, he wasn't quite the guy I vaguely remembered. He'd become a junkie and had made some enemies in Hanoi.

In hindsight, I realise I judged rather too harshly his and his wife's inability to converse properly, which resulted from the lack of a common language, given the fact that I would soon be gazing longingly at illiterate Vietnamese men. In my living room they sat intertwined on the rug.

‘So!' he'd begun, looking at me sideways. ‘What's this I hear about you planning to move to Hanoi, and not telling us?'

‘Ahhh!' I'd replied in a dull panic.

‘I know everyone in that town,' he'd said. ‘I can help you get totally set up.'

‘Cool!' I'd offered weakly, remembering stories I'd heard of all the enemies he'd made in Hanoi.

He left me with a piece of paper with a number on it. He said he'd be there by the time I arrived. I'd rung the number once. A voice told me first in Vietnamese then in English that the line had been disconnected.

Now the trail was hot again. And I was taking his job.

‘How's he taken being sacked?' I ask.

‘Rather well. It's funny. We sacked him a fortnight ago, but he's been turning up anyway for short visits.'

‘He walks though the office, says ‘hallo' to everyone … ' adds Charlie.

‘ … then retires to the toilets with a glass of water and a spoon,' finishes Alistair.

‘How does he afford to keep
buying
the shit?' I ask, amazed.

‘Well,' says Charlie, twirling furiously. ‘He's borrowed money off all the Vietnamese reporters here.'

‘And the sad thing,' adds Alistair, still sanguine, ‘is that they earn in a month what the foreign subs get in a day here.'

‘How's his wife coping with all this?'

‘Wife – and baby now,' Charlie reminds me. ‘Yeah. It's a bit grim. Apparently they've been living on sweet potato, donated by the neighbours. He hasn't been paying the bills either so the electricity's been cut. They're living in this shithole on the road out of town, and now it's a dark shithole.'

The guys seem vaguely amused, in a wry sort of way, by all this, but I feel only anger that Brandon's dragged a local girl into this mess by marrying and impregnating her. None-the-less, I'm aware that for some reason, none of this seems as damning here, in Hanoi, as it would have back in Sydney. I begin to see how expats exist in a state of grace. Bad behaviour is ignored or celebrated. Brandon has become just another zany character to discuss at the
Bia Hoi
. It strikes me, suddenly, how liberatingly disconnected we all are here. The dramas and melodramas of Western life have stayed over in the West. In our community, at least, nobody's old enough to die of cancer, nobody's looking after their ailing mother, or arguing with their father. We're living in an elite society devoid of parents, old people and sick people; a society where people appear, young, healthy, fully-formed, and completely free of background information.

‘Well,' I say, sitting up and looking at Alistair. ‘Would you like me to work a trial-half-day or anything?'

‘Oh, no.' He goes ‘hmmmm' for a few seconds, then says: ‘I don't suppose you could start this week?'

I'm hired! I have only one more question. I'm figuring if this is a communist country, then the government probably owns the press.

‘Who owns this paper?'

‘You mean which ministry? The Ministry of Planning and Investment.'

‘Are they scary?'

‘Ahhh, they're not too bad. They've got a couple of censors in this office,' Alistair waves a finger towards the glass door leading into the enclosed vastness beyond. ‘But I wouldn't worry about them too much.' I squint at the bent heads, wondering who among them are the colluders. ‘They tend to put red lines through anything they don't like,' he adds, ‘but mostly, the reporters self-censor their work.'

This last piece of information has cast a thrilling pall of exoticism over my new job. I'll be working for a communist government that plants stooges in my office.

Alistair and Charlie decide a lunchtime beer is in order and invite me to the local
bia hoi.
They nod at the guard as we wander out of the publishing compound and walk about 50 metres to a crowded outdoor stall. We sit on the low plastic stools and three large watery beers arrive immediately, along with some unshelled peanuts. The guys wave at a couple of red-faced Vietnamese at other tables and they smile back. Regulars. A large proportion of Vietnamese flush red after a couple of drinks – it's a terrible giveaway. The staff are very friendly too. There's a lot of smiling going on. The pavement beneath us is carpeted with peanut shells, cigarette butts and bits of meat. There's a strong smell of meat in the air, and sitting there, beside the busy road I spot a rat tearing along the gutter. But I smile. I feel more connected, more acclimatised than ever. These things hardly bother me any more.

The indoor part of the establishment is little more than a hole in the wall. Possibly a kitchen hidden away, a cash register on a pile of wooden crates, and at the very front, almost on the street, a glass display counter with various dishes on the glass shelves inside, representing the menu. Every now and then there's a wagging motion in my peripheral vision from something sitting on the top. It happens when somebody walking past knocks the counter.

The wagging thing eventually catches my eye and I see it's the wagging tail of a dog. I react very slowly. Where I come from happy dogs wag their tails. This is not a happy dog. It's not even a dog. It's half a dog. It's been skinned and barbecued to a golden brown colour then expertly bisected so that only its back half is on display. From where we sit we have a cross-section of its abdomen. Packed inside its ribcage, the offal is strangely grey. Its intestines have been partially removed and artistically arranged on the plate in front. I stare at it for a long time.

Until this moment I've been nonchalant about dogmeat. I've worked out that Hanoians love it and as a vegetarian I've refused to pass judgement on dog-eaters any more than on pig-eaters, a group which includes most of my friends. Even now I remain the calm observer. I say nothing and let the conversation roll on. But later in the day, the image returns to me and it comes tinged with the memory of Natassia's culture shock. It's undeniable – the tail-wagging doggie has left a distinctly unsavoury taste in my mouth. Suddenly I don't feel quite so connected and acclimatised. Was this how Natassia was feeling?

I glance to my immediate left, where my new colleague, a softly-spoken Aussie in his late fifties called Bill, is tapping away, cigarette between pursed lips. His face is composed. I try to catch a glimpse of what he's editing but without being obvious, I can't.

I look back to the text on my own screen in rising despair. ‘
For auto, motorcycle or even train, their most scared object is bicycle.
'

‘Most scared object?' I mouth the words to myself.

‘Many bicycle drivers have been a moving horrible for all other drivers, throwing like a javelin from the dark alleys or the sitting down until some money paid from the bicycle drivers carelessly true or false …
'

‘A moving horrible?' my lips work soundlessly.

Above my computer screen looms the young but unkempt face of Bobby, who works facing me. His face is a little scrunched up in concentration and I can see a column of smoke rising from a point beside him. He hasn't made any overtures of assistance. Beside him is an unfriendly woman whose name I haven't learnt yet. Nobody's talking. I want to talk to Charlie but he's cloistered away in some little room off the vast one we work in. I try to focus my mind – to home in on the meaning, but the harder I try, the more I panic and the less I comprehend. I light a cigarette and try again.

‘
The number in this street was really huge and the chasing stage was also operated much more interesting, due to many of the violated people was students. And student still is student, they have got money and were also the most firm object to be fined.
'

Somebody seems to be getting chased. There are some bicyclists involved. I glance at Bill again.

‘I'm sorry Bill,' I grimace.

‘Got some gobbledegook there have you?' he smiles.

I tilt my screen towards him and he shifts his chair closer. I see him grin a little as his eyes rove downwards.

‘You've got yourself a Bich Mai special,' he concludes.

‘Is she a real journalist?' I ask him.

‘Journalist! Hell no.' He chuckles. ‘She's a niece of The Big Guy Upstairs. Used to be the book-keeper here. Can't speak much English at all. Probably not much chop in her native tongue either.' I digest this for a moment. Alistair and Charlie have briefed me not to refer to Nguyen Hung – ‘The Big Guy Upstairs' – by his real name. He has a code name.

‘We refer to him as Malcolm,' Charlie told me.

‘Where do you start with a story like this?' I ask Bill. ‘It doesn't seem decipherable.'

‘Oh – you'll get better. It's doable, but it's probably not a good starter. Why don't we swap? I've got a fairly straightforward story on clinker here.'

‘On
what
?'

‘Clinker.' He glances at the screwed up mass where my face was, and expands further. ‘It's a common topic here. It's some kind of cement. None of us are sure what, exactly, but the price goes up and down a lot, and a couple of the reporters here seem to be a bit obsessed with it.'

He shows me how to close my 525/bicycle file and transfer it into his folder on the mainframe then, on his own computer, he moves a file called 525/Clinker into my folder. I thank him devoutly, open the file and set to work.

‘
Beginning to produce from 1997, with capacity 1.4 million tonnes clinker per year, CHVN continuous producing effective and having devedent. According to a official of CHVN, company only sell 746,000 tonnes in 1997, but 1,342,00 tonnes in 1998, 1,677,000 tonnes in 2000 and 1,026,000 tonnes in eight months of 2001.
'

My eyes are starting to glaze again. I massage my temples and blink a few times.

‘
Productivity plan of clinker are 1.2 million tonnes per year but in 2000 achieved 1,280,000 tonnes per year, with total investment capital are $262 million to now…
'

My eyes sink slowly from the screen down to the edge of the desk, then further until I'm focussed into the depths of my own lap.

My exciting new job has exploded into a million little fragments of words, both known and unknown. They float down around me like confetti at an ill-fated wedding.

I catch myself glancing at my watch. It's mid-morning already. My output so far has been one story. The story was mysteriously perfect. In fact, it seemed to be quoted directly from some promotional material for a new resort.

‘Fancy a quick coffee up the canteen?' asks Bill. He's intuited my distress. We wander across to the canteen where I find a small handful of Vietnamese reporters from our paper sitting around a white guy. I feel almost a rush of relief as we walk inexorably towards him. The suspense is over. The white guy is Brandon Costella.

He sees me and his jaw drops theatrically. Then he rises and greets me like a long lost friend. His brown hair is long and unwashed.

‘Carolyn Shine! I don't believe it.' He turns to the reporters at his side and explains: ‘My old friend from Sydney,' then back to me. ‘How are ya and whadaya doing
here
?'

‘I'm working. As a sub.' I want to elucidate. It's the first time in Hanoi I've seen a face from home. I want to tell him about all my experiences in this city, and about my first day at NER. I want to tell him that my output so far has been one story, that I feel stupid because I can't make head or tail out of the other stories, that the atmosphere is weird and unfriendly in there, but I can't. I don't want to encourage a friendship.

‘So! Sounds like you've snapped up my old job. How'd you manage that?'

I watch him closely. No rancour, it seems. Just happy to see ‘an old friend from Sydney'. He peppers me with questions at such speed that he doesn't give himself time to notice how elusive my answers are. I notice he's sweating badly.

Brandon fails to get my phone number, but writes his on a scrap of paper for me. He tells me he's already scored a new job – as the creative director of an advertising agency. Amazed, I congratulate him. I want to ask how his wife and baby are but I'm afraid of the answer. I keep the conversation as impersonal as possible. Eventually he begins to chat with Bill, who's his former colleague, and I step inside and order the coffees. They're made from cold black liquid poured from an old plastic La Vie water bottle into a charred saucepan and boiled together with some UHT milk. The result is fumey and as vile as Bill warned me it would be.

Cluey as hell, Bill seems to have noticed that the only place in the world I want to be less than back at the computer, is right where we are now. He tells Brandon we have to get back to work, and we zoom off, sipping dedicatedly at our coffees.

In the afternoon I discover the secret of success as a sub at
National Economic Review
. It's caffeine. The canteen coffee is so riddled with the stuff it behaves like a hit of crystal meth. With improved concentration I can extract gist from almost anything and turn it into a story. The job looks set to be a stinker, but at least the money's good.