Stray Love (17 page)

This time I felt a warm shiver pass from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes. A warm rising between my legs. Years later, she would say she remembered that kiss as the moment I became hers and she became mine.

The next morning, Stasha arrived to take me to the airport.

T
HE PLANE LIFTED ME HIGH
above the English Channel through layers of mist and cloud. It roared with deafening purpose. Suddenly, my life had a beautiful arcing trajectory.

By the time the plane had crossed over France, the cabin was filled with a blue fog of cigarette smoke. I sat in an aisle seat close to the front (following Oliver’s emergency preparedness instructions). I practised tilting my chair forward and back, clicking my seat belt open and closed. I reviewed the cardboard flight instructions on how to don a life-vest and assume crash position in the event of disaster, and adjusted the name tag I had been given to wear because I was underage and travelling alone. Between brief stopovers in Rome and Singapore and Tokyo, I ate two meals, read my favourite
Peanuts
comic, flipped through an old copy of
Time
and listened to random light music offerings through a stethoscopic pair of headphones. I thought of Oliver waiting for me.

In Tokyo, I was led to another plane and my be-bunned British Airways hostess, Rachel, was replaced by a be-bunned All Nippon Airways hostess, Hiroko, who brought me colouring books and wax crayons, not realizing I was too old for that.
She gave me extra blankets and a small pillow to rest my head. When it was time for takeoff, she made sure my belt was tightened before taking her own seat at the front of the plane. The airplane bumped and rumbled along the airport strip. Near the front of the cabin, an oxygen mask fell down and swung around until another flight attendant hurried to put it away. Once we reached cruising altitude, I fell asleep.

I awoke several hours later to the
ping
of a seat-belt sign and an announcement asking passengers to remain seated. The plane was shuddering. It dipped. It dipped again. It tossed and pitched. I looked around anxiously. My coins were rolling along the aisle. They were the ones Mrs. Bowne had given me and they must have slipped from my trousers pocket. I smiled apologetically at a vexed priest seated behind me.

The plane was descending through rising sun. While I gripped the armrests, Hiroko came by and crouched down beside me. “Just imagine. In a short time you’ll see your father.” She gave my hand a gentle squeeze: “Are you excited?”

I nodded and closed my eyes to the plunging sensation in my chest, a tumble of heart. I leaned to my left, felt inside my trouser pocket and discovered one remaining coin. I held it at the centre of my damp palm, made it lucky.

We touched down at Tan Son Nhat airport a few minutes later. The plane taxied along the potholed runway, slowing as we passed an area of American planes, a heap of sandbags and a row of Vietnamese soldiers in oversized uniforms. Then it came to a stop, the doors opened and humid air came pouring in.

In unison, a plane-full of seat belts clicked open. Through the window, I saw the horizon with its distant row of swaying trees. In the heat, the signs on the tarmac were floating, the print lifting up and down as if bobbing on an invisible ocean. I
gathered what coins I could find scattered around the cabin, and clutched my satchel in my hands as I disembarked.

Outside, the sun was a sizzling pancake, a burning yellow dot on a blue pan. Everyone was peeling off vests, tossing jackets over their bags and hurrying out of the airplane. I stood by the exit, waiting for Hiroko to escort me to the terminal.

As I waited at the top of the stair ramp, I noticed a police officer in a white uniform down below and waved at him. He had a nice face with friendly eyes; he waved back. Then I watched him turn his head in the direction of a helicopter, which was just landing on a bare patch in the middle of an adjoining field. The lawn was rippling and the blown grass kept changing direction.

Something caught the police officer’s attention and, gripping his holster, he began walking quickly towards the field. A boy and a soldier were standing in the middle of the grass. The boy was covering his eyes with his hands as if he were scared or trying to remember something. Behind him, the helicopter was preparing to corkscrew back up into the sky. I could see the blades starting to spin, the boy’s black hair whipping in the air, his shirt ballooning then deflating. I noticed that he was barefoot.

As the helicopter lifted, the wind sculpted a column of spiralling dust, rising nearly a hundred feet off the ground. From a distance, it looked solid. Then, just as suddenly, the column collapsed. The air cleared and the boy uncovered his eyes, and that’s when I saw that his hands were tied. The police officer, who had reached him by this point, placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder, nodded at the soldier and began roughly directing the boy towards the terminal. I watched, hardly believing,
as the officer pushed and slapped and even kicked the boy, who did nothing to resist.

Hiroko had freshened up, with a red ruffle of scarf, creamy nose and pink lips. She was holding a hand-drawn cardboard sign that said Marcel in black letters. Sun-dazzled and nervous, I allowed myself to forget the boy I had just seen. As I followed her down the ramp, Hiroko held the sign aloft, even though it was just the two of us at the far end of the long tarmac. I imagined that I was a famous statesman, a member of The Beatles, a cardinal with the Vatican. I pictured crowds of fans, friends, paparazzi waiting to greet us, when, in reality, there was no one.

The shuttle bus had left without us so we walked for a long time. Hiroko managed quick short steps in her high heels and tight pencil skirt, dodging dips and holes in the ground. The international jets gave way to domestic jets, gave way to camouflaged American warplanes, gave way to cargo aircraft. Trucks sped here and there across our path. A huge aircraft unloaded military trucks at what looked to be a large steel hut.

It was only as we neared the terminal that I spotted him. He was standing in profile, almost skeletal from a distance.

Finally he turned. His gaze swept past me, scanning the distance, not seeing immediately. Then he stopped moving. Now he was smiling, straightening himself for me. His long arm was raised, waving.

We walked towards each other. I watched him undulate like a genie as he moved through a shimmer of heat.

“You’re here,” he said, when we finally stood face to face. He gave me a quick once-over, took in the striped boatneck shirt Stasha had bought me. “Nice,” he said. “Very nautical. Very French.”

I reached out a hand, waiting for a handshake. But he surprised me by stepping forward to give me a hug.

I couldn’t believe how much Oliver had changed. In a good way. He looked years younger than the last time I had seen him, almost boyish. He was clean and lightly tanned. His hair had grown past his ears and was wheat coloured from the sun. It was combed to the side in a way that suggested he had taken extra care and consulted the mirror that morning. My hair, in contrast, was bushy from the humidity.

But when we entered the crowded terminal, my perception changed completely. All of a sudden he was too tall, too pink, too blond, too thin. With a jolt, I realized that for the first time in my life, I fitted in more than he did.

After collecting my suitcase, we flagged down a metered white Citroën driven by a man with a plaid polo shirt. The seats had been re-upholstered with a plastic material that crinkled and stuck to our skin in the heat. A Vietnamese flight attendant with a polka-dot blouse sat in the front seat, sharing the ride. The plaid and polka dots were familiar patterns, not foreign.

Through the window of the cab I noticed that the streetlights were the same as in England. The lines painted on the roads were the same. And the pigeons. The trees, however, were different. Some had leaves that flashed silver underneath when the wind lifted them. Others had long feathery fronds and clusters of fruit. The air was so warm and humid, even the concrete sidewalks looked fertile. Flowers and grass were growing from the cracks.

We dropped the polka-dot flight hostess off near a post office that resembled a giant railway station and had a huge
clock. Oliver explained that it was designed by the same man who had built the Eiffel Tower. Then the cab turned the corner into an area of shops.

The neighbourhood was clanging open. Steel shutters were being rolled up. Glass windows were popped back into their frames and buffed and polished with newspaper. Old women and men set up stalls and displays on old tarpaulins; unloading garbage bags full of flip-flops, playing cards, steel helmets and embroidered slippers of yellow, green, blue, violet silk.

I was suddenly overcome by all the things I had never seen or drawn before. How did one draw a market crowd? A woman squatting? A street sweeper?

At a red light, I watched a boy and a woman constructing a fruit stand from old cardboard boxes. When the boy spotted me, he picked up a grapefruit and pretended to pelt it at me. Then he picked up two more and started juggling them. The spheres of fruit were too big for his hands and dropped to the ground. One, two, three. Laughing at his own clumsiness, the boy bowed, theatrically, as if he were the star of a show. Then the light changed and the taxi continued on its way to the hotel.

My heart was thumping with excitement and panic. What were the rules here? How was I supposed to behave? I turned to Oliver, who was winding his watch. A drip of sweat ran from his hairline down his cheek. We had been apart for so long, a part of me was waiting for him to make a big reunion speech. I was disappointed that he seemed distracted so soon.

“Did you see that boy with the grapefruits?” I asked, to break the silence.

Oliver nodded. Then he told me the real word for the fruit and I said the word over and over to myself—
pomelopomelopomelo
—to make myself feel less nervous.

The truth was, I was almost speechless myself. I had never seen a city that looked so beautifully jumbled. There were old-fashioned ferries and plaited bamboo fishing boats swaying on the river, and merchants arranging fresh baguettes and leaf-wrapped rice cakes, which they sold from rickety carts parked along the broad boulevards. There were ancient cyclo drivers and boys on motorbikes zigzagging from lane to lane. There were girls with fancy hairstyles and sunglasses who might have been Asian Annette Funicellos, were it not for the traditional dresses they wore over wide trousers, elegant silk gowns with flaps that fluttered like the wings of excited moths. There were strange-looking pagodas, standing right beside brutal grey office buildings.

As the car approached what seemed to be the centre of town, I spotted more Americans and Europeans. Young and old, of various heights and weights, some with bristly crewcuts, others with floppy mops and sunburns that gave them a drunk look. I saw them in everyday clothes, drinking coffee, smoking cigars on outdoor terraces, strolling down the sidewalks in white or olive-drab uniforms followed by children who skipped around their legs, tugged on their shirts.

There was no question. The strangers here were white.

I saw a painting on the side of a church. In Saigon, even the angels had dark hair.

The Hotel Continental was cream-coloured, with a fancy French feel. But when I looked closer, that feeling started to crumble. I saw the bars on the bottom windows, the flaking paint, the cracked glass, the unevenly painted letters spelling out Continental Palace on a long cloth banner.

There were two doormen in front wearing white cotton gloves and holstered pistols. One of them bowed at Oliver as we stepped through the open glass doors into the dimly lit lobby. Making our way, I felt the cracked floor tiles wobble under my feet.

The lobby had a very high ceiling and a chandelier that glittered despite its missing pendants. There was a sitting area with four wicker chairs and a large fountain of flowers. Oliver saluted the concierge at the front desk, an old man dressed in a yellow porter suit, who waved enthusiastically when he noticed me. “Your son!” He removed a key from a hook and slapped it on the counter. Oliver walked over and picked up the key, slipped it into his pocket.

We rode the slow, grunting elevator to a juddering stop on the second floor, and then walked down the corridor to the second-to-last door. Oliver unlocked it and we stepped inside.

The suite was bigger than I had imagined it would be. It had been created by combining three smaller rooms and smelled of lemon furniture cleaner and faint diesel fumes. I walked around staring at the old photos of rice paddies and mountains on the walls while Oliver tipped the porter, who had arrived after us with my luggage. When Oliver was done, he showed me to a bedroom with two twin beds, both draped in gauzy mosquito netting. His own room was just off the sitting area.

The room he had set up for me was simply furnished, but he had clearly tried to make it more homey. There were several boat postcards taped on the wall, and two large shadow puppets dangling from the ceiling. On the dresser, he had placed a bent wire sculpture of a boy riding a bicycle and a book of Vietnamese folktales. I smiled at him, at the effort he had plainly taken. But he reacted with an embarrassed shrug and
clearing of his throat. Once he had helped me lift the suitcase onto the bed, he excused himself and went off to prepare tea.

I waited for the door to click shut, then opened my satchel and emptied its contents into my night-table drawer. Stasha had slipped in a stack of pre-addressed aerogram “blues,” which I placed on top. I quickly unpacked my suitcase, sloppily folding my clothes into the dresser.

When I was done, I joined Oliver for tea. The table at the centre of the main room was laid out with white teacups and saucers, wedges of almond cake, a bowl of sliced melon.

“I brought you a gift,” I said, handing him a tiny leather sack.

“Is it a gold nugget?”

“Almost. It’s a piece of shrapnel from your old collection. I polished it for you.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Do you like it?”

“Hmm, yes, it’s very nice.”

I sat down at the table and watched Oliver slip my gift into his shirt pocket.

“Everyone at home sends their love,” I said, while he placed food on my plate. I tried to remember all the things I had been storing up to tell him.