Single White Female in Hanoi (27 page)

‘And another sex scandal at the Vatican,' Zac finishes, through a mouthful of pork scraps and fragrant herbs. He's fished all the solids out of his bowl of
pho
, leaving what looks like dishwater.

As long at Natassia remains in Hanoi, Zac has access to CNN. This makes him the harbinger of any major world news and the most vocal objector to her departure.

We watch a man ride past us on a bicycle, holding another, riderless, bicycle on his right and pulling a third one tied behind him. Six wheels all spinning.

‘So, nothing new in the outside world,' I volunteer.

‘Guess not,' agrees Zac. ‘But by this time next week,
e
xpect news of a fat man on a rampage of hedonism.' He lifts the bowl of liquid to his mouth and slurps contentedly. I watch him and share the same rush of anticipation.

It's December and an epidemic of departure has broken out among expats. Most of us will be back – we're just going home for Christmas.

Like me, Zac's booked a five-week trip back home to Australia, so has Aussie Bill, who'll take his Vietnamese girlfriend on her first overseas trip. The NER foreigner enclave will be almost cleaned out, with Bill and me in Oz, tall Charlie spending the festive season in the UK and Kiwi Anthony in Wellington. A former NER sub called Frank was hauled up from Saigon yesterday to help keep the paper alive over Christmas.

Zac has managed to arrange for a rent-free month while he's in Australia. He tells me it's normal practice in Vietnam. I try the same trick on Nga and get a blunt refusal.

‘You should find someone to rent your flat while you're away,' Natassia tells me.

‘Don't like my chances,' I muse. ‘By Christmas there won't be a foreigner left in Hanoi.'

With the smell of festive spirit in the air and half of us about to leave, the atmosphere among foreign staff at NER is uncharacteristically good. In the subs' corner, we wisecrack all day and expend less energy on stories, more on creating headlines. Burdened with a dry banking story, I get my best headline yet past the censors: ‘Shrinking dong no cause for concern'.

My favourite colleague, Aussie Bill, is particularly jovial, although for reasons that offer me no cause to celebrate. He's been head-hunted by a superior rival publication and is just filling in one day a week at NER until he leaves for the Christmas break. Since hearing of his departure, I've been bathed in self pity.

‘Take me with you,' I beg him.

Alistair, too, is returning to the UK next year. He's brought in a Walkman with little speakers and the ensemble sits beside his computer all day with Led Zeppelin screaming out of it. He's had enough of his job, it's clear. When the Vietnamese reporters enter his office to discuss stories they have to shout over the tinny, distorted strains of ‘Black Dog' and ‘Kashmir'.

Maybe it's the brisk weather, more likely it's the looming prospect of
Tet
– Vietnamese event of the year bar none – but even the Vietnamese staff are friendlier than usual. The women in desktop publishing laugh and offer us pieces of freshly-cut fruit every time we walk in there with new pages for them to lay out. Before, they just hissed at us, knives in hand, and went back to their fruit-peeling.

Khanh the photographer finally invites me into his office to look at his legendary jar of snake penises.

‘Very good medicine!' he tells me as we peer in at the forked strips of gristle floating in
Ruou
.

‘Medicine for what?' I ask him, knowing full well.

‘Yes,' he mumbles, and a blush swells up from his neck. I'm learning that Vietnamese men spend half their incomes on nostrums promising a harder dick, and the other half on girls who offer a quick hand job in a park. It makes no sense to me at all.

One person who seems unimpressed by all this frivolity is Frank, the taciturn sub from Saigon. Tall, fair, and fleshy, with transparent eyelashes behind rimless spectacles, he looks more like a merchant banker than a sub-editor. But he's been working harder than any of us since his arrival. It's unnerving.

‘He's a nice guy, you've just got to warm him up,' Alistair assures me. I shrug dubiously. ‘You'll hardly see him anyway,' he adds. ‘He's here to fill in for you, basically. You guys are going to cross in the mail.'

I muse on this for a moment, then ask ‘Where's he staying?'

‘He's at a hotel, I expect,' says Alistair, then breaks off to hum along with the guitar riff in ‘Communication Breakdown'. I slip out of his office unnoticed.

The next day I decide to give it a go. I collar Frank as he's shuffling past with the Banking & Finance page.

‘Frank. How's it all going here?'

‘Yes, fine,' he says, in an educated British accent, without moving his lips. He stands there for a moment looking uncomfortable, then seems about to walk off. It occurs to me that he's pathologically shy with women. This is a trait I've noticed a lot among single Western male expats, especially British ones.

‘Where are you staying?' I ask him.

‘Ah, I'm at a hotel in the Old Quarter.'

‘I was wondering whether you might be interested in sub-letting my place while I'm away.' I ask him.

He is. It turns out the timing of my trip is perfect for him. We talk price and conditions. Everybody's happy. From now on, Frank offers me a nod, economical but unmistakably congenial, whenever he sees me.

The social calendar is filling up. Zac finally calls a house-warming party. Natassia and I turn up at the appointed time wondering what to expect. We find Zac hunched excitedly over a pile of DVDs. He's bought some fruit, two bottles of soft drink, and a barbequed duck. The duck drips spinal fluid into his lap halfway through the first DVD and even he is deterred, wrapping it up to give to his maid.

For Zac's house warming, the three of us watch videos till one am. The next day he flies out. I immediately feel his absence.

Next is Natassia's farewell party. We hold it on the Saturday before her departure, in her room – the roof is too cold now. We order a keg of
Bia Hoi
and a couple of bottles of vodka. She whips up her last Russian Salad, as unappealing as all the others. I place it gently, sentimentally, on the table as the crowd begins to assemble. Charlie, Alistair and Bobby from NER turn up with a reluctant-looking Frank. They put a beer in Frank's hand and he settles down. I chat with him early in the evening, when everyone is still sober. We talk about his life in Saigon. He tells me he doesn't much like Hanoi – hinting that he had some kind of bad time when he was living here. But he confirms his interest in sub-letting my place. We arrange a few details. I decide he's a nice guy and drift off.

My Linh is there again, invited by German Laura and overjoyed to see me. She tells me more about her writing and how it's been banned by the government. I'm confused as to why, since she describes her stories as ‘romantic'. I'm coming to the conclusion that she's a pornographer. At 26, she's a very young one. She seems to mingle well, although I note that she doesn't flirt with Western men. When I look at photos later I find she's in every one of them. Unexpectedly, she's very photogenic. All up, My Linh is a mystery with one equally mysterious jarring note – Natassia doesn't like her.

‘She's weird,' she says.

It's another great night – a de facto farewell for many of us who are leaving this month. At two am, there's still a core of us left, mainly my NER mob plus a sundry group of guys who are in love with Natassia, and the young female expats from downstairs.

I'm sitting with Natassia when someone has a loud and prolonged sneezing fit. It breaks through all conversation. When I turn around I notice it was Frank, who's sitting in the armchair. He looks a bit dazed, like anyone would after sneezing twenty times in a row. I realise I haven't spoken to or noticed him since our chat at the beginning of the night. I ask him how he's going, but he doesn't seem to hear me.

Bit by bit, the hubbub of talk returns to the room. Alistair, Bobby and Charlie say a fond and, in Bobby's case at least, reluctant farewell to Natassia. A few drunken hugs are exchanged. A minute later I notice Charlie bent over Frank, telling him it's time to go. Bobby and Alistair lurk behind the armchair looking a bit worried. Charlie talks quietly to Frank for a few minutes.

‘What's going on?' I ask Bobby.

‘Oh, nothing,' he says guardedly.

‘Something seems to be wrong,' I point out.

‘Yeah. Frank's … drunk, I think. And he doesn't want to get up,' he reveals, with glaring understatement. Frank looks catatonic.

‘Do you think he's going to throw up?' I ask, concerned. In the background, I hear young Gisela saying brightly, ‘Come on, time to say goodbye'.

‘Er, no. It might be … something a bit more serious,' is the reply. Then, ‘I think he might have some … er … pre-existing issues.'

Bobby obviously knows more, but I don't get a chance to interrogate him further because at that moment Frank springs back into life, but as a new character. He lets out a blood-curdling yell and jumps to his feet. He's nearly two metres tall.

‘You don't know what it's like,' he suddenly accuses Gisela and her terrified girlfriends on the settee opposite him, in a deep unfamiliar rasp. He points a huge shaking finger in their direction. The voice seems to be booming out from somewhere and someone else. In a flash I understand why professional exorcists still get gigs. ‘You don't know what it's like to say goodbye.' He snatches his glasses from his face and I notice, with cinematic horror, that behind the transparent eyelashes, his eyes have rolled back in his head.

Frank proceeds to verbally monster the young women on the settee. His anguished oratory goes on for some time. Nobody moves. It's the speech of someone in terrible pain. I feel like an intruder just hearing it. After a minute, the other NER guys spring into action. With great difficulty, they wrestle Frank out the door and onto the landing. Someone, probably Bobby, calls out ‘please leave this to us.'

There's a lot of yelling. I follow it to the door and find Charlie, Alistair and Bobby piled on top of Frank trying to restrain him. There's blood on the floor. Bobby reaches up and slams the door, leaving the rest of us to pace Natassia's room in shock. Someone turns the music off. Someone says ‘Fucking hell.'

We sit there in silence, listening. Periodic bouts of animalistic yelling and struggling come from the other side of the door. Everyone in the block must be lying awake listening in terror.

‘What do you do?' asks Gisela finally.

It's the question on everyone's mind. What do you do when a foreigner wigs out at two am in Hanoi? Call a local hospital? Not likely. Is there a psychiatric institute of some kind? Nobody knows. Probably not. Mental illness is taboo and invisible in Vietnam. They wouldn't speak English anyway. What do you do?

We open the front door and survey the scenario. Frank seems calmer. He's crumpled into a corner. There's a bleeding gash over one eye. In one bloody hand are his glasses, crushed to junk. Charlie is still sitting on his chest.

It takes the guys about half an hour to cajole Frank down the six flights of stairs. He's as mad as a meat-axe, whimpering, screaming, shouting gibberish. At the bottom they hail a cab and manage to get Frank into it, but before they can decide on the destination, he's jumped out again and fled into the night. A search party is dispatched. The taxi driver takes off with a roar. After another twenty minutes or so, we have to admit defeat.

Frank is missing for the rest of the weekend. Nobody knew which hotel he was staying at.

When I see him next it's Tuesday. He's at work, at NER. The rimless spectacles are gone and he has a nasty cut on his forehead. He works hard, quieter than ever. Sometime after lunch I approach him.

‘How are you feeling?'

‘I'm fine. I just wish I hadn't lost my glasses.'

‘What do you remember?

‘Nothing. I woke up at dawn on Sunday by the river.'

‘What did you think?'

‘I thought I'd been mugged. Charlie's er, filled me in.'

I feel terrible, mainly because of what I have to say next.

‘Frank,' I begin. ‘I'm really sorry to do this, but I'm a bit freaked out by what happened, and now I don't feel so comfortable about letting you stay at my place.'

‘Don't worry,' he shakes his big head sadly. ‘I don't blame you at all. For what it's worth, that was a very unusual event. It hasn't happened in a long time.' He breaks off, probably remembering the last time, which I'll later learn was back when he lived in Hanoi. ‘It's just when I drink spirits.'

I feel bad, but I stick to my guns. The trauma of Frank's episode and the feeling of total helplessness it caused are still fresh in my mind.

Ahead of me, partly obscured by the swirling crowds, I can see Thanh, Tan and Thu, the other
xe om
drivers. They're on the bench at the end of my street, sipping tea, smoking, waiting for trade, and I know they've seen me.

I keep walking, avoiding eye contact. Peripheral vision tells me Tan is half up in anticipation that I'll jump on his bike. As I draw level with Quan's room I glance to my right and, to my guilty relief, he's in there, watching TV.

‘
Oi
' I call out, and he's up, grabbing the keys to the bike.

‘
Di dau
?' I try not to look at his lips as he turns the bike around.

‘To House of Swiss,' I reply, in Vietnamese, climbing onto the back of the bike. I nod apologetically to the other
xe om
drivers as we pass them on the way out. Their disgruntlement is becoming increasingly obvious.

On the way to Natassia's place, gripping Quan's muscular body between my thighs, I my push my brain to its linguistic limits and beyond.

‘Today, Swiss friend go travelling. Not at Hanoi any more. Long time not will return.'

‘Go where?' He's understood me!

‘To Ho Chi Minh City, then Cam Pu Chia, then Lao then Thai Lan, and My An Ma,' I manage, triumphantly. In Vietnam, Cambodia is still Kampuchea. For the first leg of her trip, Natassia is going by train with her neighbour Laura to Ho Chi Minh City.

‘Ahh. Are you sad?'

‘Of course.'

‘Now, you go to say goodbye?'

‘No. Help carry things. After, say goodbye at Hanoi train station.'

It's the longest, profoundest conversation we've had. He leans back into me as we ride the length of Lover's Lane, between the two lakes. I inhale his smell, as subtle and sublime as
Hoa Sua
. He smells like fresh laundry that has dried in the sun. Ants are stampeding over the surface of my heart, around the inside of my solar plexus. Bikes and trucks veer towards us dangerously, but with Quan at the handlebars, I feel invincible.

Outside Natssia's block I ask him to wait while I go to fetch the bags, but he offers to come up with me.

We find Natassia smoking, but calm.

‘I see you've brought a friend,' she grins to me. She gives us each a cigarette and invites us to sit down, I sit, Quan remains standing. The room is packed up. All her photos are off the walls. The fridge door is open, revealing shelves emptied of the last bars of Swiss Chocolate. Her unbelievable collection of bags and shoes is gone. ‘He looks cute today.'

‘What do you need us to take?' I ask her, rubbing my temples, which are aching.

‘Not too much, these two bags,' she points to two bulging laundry bags, ‘and this suitcase? I hope you don't mind looking after them for me.'

‘Of course not. I'm holding them hostage so that you'll have to come back.'

‘I'll be back,' she promises.

‘Do you have a headache?' Quan asks me in Vietnamese. I tell him I do.

‘Anything else?' I ask Natassia. She nods and points to a bamboo lamp and a stuffed toy dog.

‘Where the hell did this come from?' I hold the dog up by a large floppy ear.

‘Present, from Teacher's Day.'

Quan moves over to me and to my incomparable joy, starts massaging my head. He uses acupressure points. His hands are strong and sure. Natassia is trying not to crack up. ‘What, he's a doctor too?'

‘Apparently,' I reply.

‘I think he likes you!' She looks as amazed as I feel.

‘
Con Cho
, (dog)' says Quan, smiling at the stuffed toy as he lays hard into my shoulder muscles.

‘I live in hope,' I tell Natassia. She gives him the dog as a gift.

When Quan is finished we gather our new cargo and prepare to leave. ‘I'll see you in an hour at the station, yeah?' Natassia says as we start the long lug down the stairs.

One laundry bag goes in the front basket, with the floppy-eared dog on top. The suitcase, Quan ties across the frame of the bike, between the handlebars and the saddle. We climb on. I take the other bag on my lap and hold the lamp in one hand. I check my watch. I'm expecting My Linh at my place in forty five minutes. She's picking me up to take me to Natassia and Laura's see-off at the train station.

Back on
Pho Yen The
we pass the
xe om
drivers, and Quan's beautiful daughter, who's sitting outside his room with a friend, as we ride all the way up to the
cul de sac
and into my compound. I didn't realise Quan knew where I lived. My mood has changed now, there's a steady pump of adrenaline. Quan parks the bike outside my door and I realise he's going to help me carry the stuff in. This is the point I've had to labour greatly in my fantasies to get him to.

I take a laundry bag and open the downstairs door. The key is shaking a bit now in my hand. Quan easily takes the rest of the stuff, and silently follows me up the stairs. We reach the landing and he doesn't put the stuff down, just stands there, so I unlock the living room door, and gesture for him to enter. His eyes rove the room hungrily. It's his second ever time in a foreigner's place. The first time was half an hour ago at Natassia's. We put the stuff behind the sofa. Then he moves back out into the landing and stands there again.

It's uncomfortable, so I ask if he wants to see the other room. Of course he does. I unlock the bedroom door and show him the room. His eyes scan it, taking it all in. Then he moves back to his standing pose at the top of the stairs. But he doesn't make to leave. I notice he's holding the stuffed dog. There's another horrible pause where nothing happens. We just stand there. The only audible thing is my heart.
It's now or never.
The adrenaline is slowly poisoning my body and mind, fogging everything over. Time starts to break off in droplets. I move over to him and put my arms around him.

There's no response. Just a frozen mannequin. After a couple of seconds I break away, already feeling the slow horror of my blunder. I lower my head and watch his feet, expecting them to turn and leave now, but they're still standing there. When I sneak a look up at him, he's looking straight back at me, his expression inscrutable. I wait for some kind of sign. Never in my life have I had less of an idea of what another person is thinking. Finally he straightens up a little, leans back slightly and lifts his chin. Before I know it I'm in front of him again. I lean forward and kiss him softly on the cheek, the ear, the neck. At last I feel something awaken. He backs me against the wall and grabs my buttocks, my breasts. I kiss his beautiful lips, and again, despite the discovery that they're hard as scar tissue.

Then we're on the edge of the bed. I've closed the door. He's removing his fisherman's trousers. He's hard. His skin looks so smooth. I reach out to touch him but he turns and hitches up my silk skirt, slides my underwear down. Before I can get in another kiss, he's entered me.

Even a fruit fly takes four minutes to copulate. Quan's work is done before I've worked my knickers down to my right foot. It's probably just as well though, because he's barely into the post-coital glow when an angry ululation from the compound causes him to leap from the bed and virtually back into his trousers in one movement, wiping his cock on the way. Two seconds later he's torn out the door and disappeared.

I blink and sigh. I've woken from dreams that were more real than this. There's just a small wet patch near the corner of the bed to prove this was real life. I pull up my underwear, press my skirt down around me and crawl further onto the bed. The stuffed dog is on the bed with me, orphaned in the dramatic departure. It sits upright, watching me with a stupid expression through one glass eye. The other, I now observe, is missing.

I hear footsteps on the stairs and glance back at my half open bedroom door in time to see Quan's daughter pause in the doorway and fix me with a withering glare. Then she's gone. I should get up and lock the doors but I can't move. I'm incapacitated by a belated, horrible attack of reality.
I've caused a man to commit adultery – and get caught
. How will Oanh, his wife, react? I curl up with the absurd stuffed dog, and wonder what the hell I'm going to do now.

I've been lying inert on the bed, hugging the stuffed toy, for less than five minutes when I hear the downstairs door creak open again and footsteps on the stairs.
It's Oanh
, I tell myself.
And she's coming to kill me
. I don't move.

My bedroom door is thrown open and My Linh bounds onto the bed, smelling of shampoo, wearing a spectacular white fur-trimmed coat.

‘
Chi
Carolyn
oi
!' she cries, and throws herself on top of me. She's holding a bunch of flowers. She's quarter of an hour early. Any earlier and things could have been more disastrous than they already are.

To get to the train station, we'll have to ride past Quan and Oanh's room.

‘My Linh
oi
, Do you have a boyfriend?' I begin, wondering how I'm going to work this up into an explanation for why a woman could be about to run at me with a meat knife.

‘Ah,' My Linh fixes me with her Chinese eyes. ‘Once I love a man very much, but his parent, they don't like me and we cannot marry.' She casts me a look of great wisdom.

‘Hmm, I see. And, did you make love?' I try.

‘Ahhh, yes,' she purses her lips knowingly. ‘Many time. Many time I love … yes. But I am not lucky. I am without a lover.' I've been nodding as she speaks, but I've stopped now. I'm not sure I follow her.

‘I mean, did you have sex?'

‘Oh, I understand you. Romantic!' She strokes my hand compassionately. ‘This boyfriend, he love me very much too. But now, I cannot see him,' she sighs, and seems lost in a memory. I sigh too, and pat her on the arm. I have no idea what she's talking about. This is how it goes with My Linh. When she doesn't talk I feel we're in tune, but as soon as we have a conversation I wonder if I imagined it. Now I can't decide whether she's shy, or having trouble understanding my English, or being deliberately abstruse to cover up the fact that she's not the worldly, savvy character she plays.

Whatever it is, I decide there's no point trying to explain my situation to her. So we go. I swallow my terror and engage her in a facile conversation as we cruise past Quan's room, keeping my head turned away. I don't hear the primal scream of a woman scorned. I don't feel the cold metallic shock of a blade slid between my ribs. As we turn into
Nguyen Thai Hoc
, I peek back and see the room is mysteriously closed and locked up. There's nobody around at all save some local women at the end of the street who break off from their conversation to stare at me unsmilingly. Paranoia hits me brutally in the guts.

At the station we gather on the platform and a cold rain begins to fall. Natassia and Laura are dressed lightly. When they disembark, in two days, they'll be in the tropics. Meanwhile, in coats and raincoats, there's My Linh, a Vietnamese boy who's in love with Natassia, and a couple of German guys, both of whom appear to be in love with Laura. Hanoi's expat community is losing two of its fairest. The Reunification Express, painted in shiny red white and blue, waits silently beside us, bound for the other end of the reunified Vietnam. I'm miserable at the thought of losing Natassia, but, struggling up through my parting sorrow is the scenario I've left back on
Pho Yen The
.

I pull Natassia aside and offer her a simple verb phrase that tells Who did What to Whom. I'm the ‘Who'. Quan is the ‘Whom'. Her stunned eyes widen. I tell her the whole story, and maybe it's the way I tell it, or maybe it's the stupidity of the whole thing, but when I get to the end, the two of us fall about in an explosive giggling fit. But a crackling torrent of Vietnamese through the speakers and the sound of engines starting up pull us back to reality.

The farewell is emotional and drawn out and everything a platform farewell should be. We all stand with hot tears running down our cold faces as the whistle blows the train away. Natassia fixes my gaze from the receding doorway, sniffing back her tears.

‘I hope you're cured now,' are the last words we hear. And I realise I am.