by John Shors
Noah nodded, relieved when she left him alone. He heard her turn on the water, and steam soon seeped beneath the bathroom door to merge with the room’s murky air. Sitting on the edge of one of the two twin beds, he thought about how he’d once loved her. He had dreamed about her, imagined what she might look like naked. Now she was naked and not ten feet from him, and he didn’t care. Nothing within him stirred. Not his curiosity. Not his ambitions. Not even a sexual urge.
He strode to the bathroom door, knocking on it softly. “I’m going to get a drink. Want to join me?”
“Thanks, but I’m ready for bed.”
“Well, good night, then. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“Good night, Noah.”
He took the extra key, closed the door behind him, ensured that it was locked, and awkwardly made his way down a nearby stairwell, wondering if the hotel had a bar. He hoped it did, for he didn’t want to venture out into the chaos of unknown streets—too many memories would be sparked to life by such places, memories even harder to face at night, when the earth’s darkness mingled with his own.
Back in the room, Iris finished her shower, put on a T-shirt and underwear, and climbed into the bed farthest from the door. Though her muscles felt inordinately tired, her mind raced. In Chicago, the sun had been up for just a few hours, and her body felt the conflicting pull of differing time zones. She lay awake, her eyes open, looking out the window into a country that had shattered and saved her father. She tried to slow her thoughts, the rapid beating of her heart. She tried to feel him, as he promised her she would.
But no matter how much Iris longed to sense his presence, to bring him into her, she felt alone and afraid. The city’s noises and scents were so foreign, so troubling. She began to panic, wishing that she hadn’t come, that her father had never started his center. He was dead, and perhaps his dream should have died with him.
Iris beseeched her father to find her, not to leave her alone once again. But his presence never entered the room, and she didn’t fall asleep until Noah finally returned, until dawn filled the air with its sweet, welcome light.
THREE
Hell and Handbags
Under the bridge, dawn came slowly, as if teasing of warm and pleasant tidings. Muted light seeped through the tin shanties on either side of the space directly under the bridge. The light was unnoticed at first, simply one more intrusion into a world not of Mai and Minh’s control. The trucks rumbling above, the giant cockroaches scavenging for food, the stench of urine in the early-morning air were such intrusions—realities impossible to govern or flee.
Minh woke first, as usual. He kept still, not wanting to bother Mai, who lay next to him. The two friends were on their sides, curled with their knees drawn up—a pair of twins still in the womb. Around them, a circular basket rose three feet high. The basket, made of tightly woven bamboo and waterproofed with sealant, was a traditional fishing boat that had one day floated down the river. Mai and Minh had swum out and retrieved it. When no one claimed it, they’d started sleeping in it, bringing pieces of discarded carpet from the city above to make their bed more comfortable.
For more than a year, Mai and Minh had slept in the basket. It comforted them the way a home comforts others. It had walls. It kept rats at bay. It contained a blanket and two extra sets of clothes. On most nights, a dozen or so people slept beneath the bridge. Each had her or his own bed—fashioned from boxes, from old scooter seats, from carefully sculpted sand and mud.
Mai stirred beside him and Minh carefully sat up, raising his head above the rim of the basket. Not far away, a legless veteran of the American War was tying a wooden block to the stumps below his waist. Upon this block, as well as on smaller blocks that he attached to his palms, he’d propel himself along the city sidewalks. The blocks protected him from glass and other debris.
Several children had risen and were bathing in the river. Minh knew them all, knew them to be discarded in some form or another. Thi, whose name meant “poem” and whose body had been poisoned by lingering chemicals from the war, had oversize eyes that looked as if they’d burst from her head. Phuong had run away from the orphanage that had housed him for three years. And Van, who’d been born in a back alley, had known nothing but the streets.
Minh watched the other children for a few minutes, then lay back down in the basket. He reached beneath a piece of carpet and carefully felt the section of bamboo that he’d loosened months earlier. Under this false bottom, under rocks and the silt of distant lands, was a plastic bag containing fourteen dollars. The money was the result of a year’s worth of secrecy, of deceptions that could cost him his life. Only Mai and he knew of the stash. Were Loc to find it, he’d beat the flesh from their bones. One day, so went their dream, the two friends would save enough money to flee Loc, to travel to a place where they could go to school and not fear the night.
“You didn’t sleep well, did you, Minh the Restless?” Mai asked softly, her eyes still closed.
Minh watched dust drift down from the bridge above as a heavy truck strained the pitted concrete. He wondered who’d be under the bridge when it fell someday.
“You’re like a boiling pot of pho,” she added, rising to survey the morning. “Never resting. Never sitting still for a minute. Are you like the pho, afraid that you’re going to be eaten?”
Minh smiled, never having been compared to a pot of noodles. He wiggled his head back and forth, pretending that he was being boiled.
She giggled. “Maybe I’ll toss some onions and sprouts on you tonight while you’re sleeping. I’ll prepare you just right, and slurp you up.”
Happy that her face carried a smile, Minh pointed to their game of Connect Four.
“You think it’s time to go play?” Mai asked. “Ah, I’m so tired of selling fans. Why don’t I play? You sell fans and find foreigners for me to play against. I’ll just sit and drop checkers. And I’ll be Mai the Magnificent.”
Minh shook his head and rose to his feet. The other children had finished bathing in the river, and he wanted to clean himself before the adults entered the water. Mai followed his lead and the two friends carried their extra set of clothes to the water’s edge. After carefully setting the clothes aside, they strode into the river. The water, as brown as dirt, gently tugged at their ankles, then legs, then waists. They stripped to their underwear and began to clean their shirts and shorts, wringing the pollution and grit from them. Over the past few months, they’d seen dead snakes, cats, and even a water buffalo float past. But since the rainy season had ended, the river tended to steal much less life.
“We should find a mosquito net,” Mai said, scratching at her neck.
Minh shrugged, knowing that if they ever found such a sought-after net it would be promptly stolen. Better just to sleep under their blankets than to worry about mosquito nets. Still, he wished that Mai didn’t attract so many flying pests. Maybe he’d try to find her a net after all.
“What should we get today with our dollar?” Mai asked, for one crisp dollar bill was all that remained from the previous day’s winnings, and they had to decide whether to buy noodles, bananas, dragon fruit, bread, or rice.
Minh wanted to save the dollar, to add it to their secret stash. But they’d eaten nothing for so long that he felt weak, and so he pretended to slurp up a noodle.
“Pho it is,” she replied, darting underwater to rinse her hair. She then rubbed her scalp, her gums, her privates. “What about going to the war museum?” she asked. “I bet I could sell some fans there. The new tourists will go there first, like they always do, and they won’t have seen too many fans by then. And you might get a quick game or two. We can sit beneath that big tree and it won’t be too hot. Well, what do you think, Minh the Teeth Scrubber?”
Minh stopped cleaning his teeth and shook his head. He didn’t want to be near the war museum, as he’d seen what was within its walls.
“I don’t like it either,” Mai replied. “But you can’t be so picky, Minh. We need to—”
“She’s right,” a man said, stepping to the water’s edge.
Minh turned toward the raspy voice, instinctively lowering himself deeper, as if the river were a mighty shield that could protect him from every danger. Loc hacked and spat in Minh’s direction. Gathering his will, Minh forced himself to look at Loc—a large man who always wore a New York Yankees baseball jersey. Loc’s face was prematurely aged from years of smoking opium. His bloodshot eyes wandered slowly. His fingers were burned and battered. A mole on his chin sprouted thick hairs that fell halfway to his neck.
“Get over here,” Loc said, pointing at his own chest.
Mai was closer to shore and bravely walked forward, feeling naked in her underwear. Loc reached for her hair and pulled her roughly ahead. She whimpered but made no effort to resist him. Seeing her in pain, Minh stepped faster. Loc’s hand swung out with surprising speed, striking Minh on the side of the head. Minh’s ear rang. His vision blurred. He felt as if someone had thrust a steel pole into his brain. Still, he didn’t fall, for he knew that if he did, Loc would kick him. And kicks hurt even worse than cuffs.
“I need more money,” Loc said, speaking loudly, as if addressing everyone under the bridge. His voice, ruined from years of sucking on his pipe, sounded as if it emerged from a hole in his throat. “You need to win more. You hear me, you motherless half boy?”
Minh nodded, his knees weak.
“You two brats want protection?” Loc asked. “A place to sleep? Then win more games and sell more fans. Four dollars a day isn’t enough. I want five.”
Mai risked a glance into Loc’s eyes and saw that he was reeling from a crash, from whatever it felt like to no longer be within a world fashioned from poppy seeds. Before he could strike Minh again, she said, “You can take our only dollar. The dollar we kept after paying you last night. We were going to have some pho, but you—”
“Give it to me.”
Mai hurried to their basket, removing the dollar from within a fold of their blanket. Loc grabbed the bill, and with a grunt, dumped the basket upside down. The blanket and sections of carpet fell on compressed mud. Loc rifled through the pile, searching for anything they might have stashed away.
“We’ll win today,” Mai said, trying to distract him, to keep him from finding the loose piece of bamboo.
“Where?”
“What?”
“Where will I find you?”
She thought quickly. “Tonight? At the train station. We’ll be with foreigners.”
Loc glared at Minh and through the haze in his head remembered finding the abandoned toddler, remembered cutting off his hand so that he’d be a better beggar. Though Minh had almost died, Loc had been careful, and had managed to stop the bleeding and ultimately heal the wound. “I know why she left you, half boy,” Loc said, craving his pipe, fueled by the repressed aches of his own childhood. “You weren’t good enough for her. But you’d better be good enough for me. You’d better win.”
Minh nodded, trying to keep tears from his eyes.
“He’ll win,” Mai answered. Then, seeing the misery on Minh’s face, she added, “And he’s as good as anyone.”
Loc hacked, spat on their bedding, and then stumbled away from the underpass and into the web of nearby shanties. Mai left Minh alone, knowing that he wouldn’t want attention in front of so many eyes. And so she cleaned the befouled bedding, rearranged the interior of their basket, and put on her spare set of clothes.
Soon the two friends were back aboveground, in a realm where sounds and light weren’t subdued. They saw uniformed children riding bicycles to school, a beautiful woman in Western clothing getting her photo taken, and a boy selling flowers from a crate on the back of his motor scooter. Shanties disappeared. Hotels and banks rose skyward. Mai gripped the stub of Minh’s bad arm. He held his game.
Minh’s head still hurt from the blow, and his steps were unsteady. He tried to watch the children on their bicycles, to pretend that he was among them. But his pain was too great, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Mai saw his state and led him to a bench, where they sat and stared. Nearby, government workers wrapped Christmas lights around the bases of hundred-year-old tropical trees.
“Forget about Loc,” Mai said, stroking Minh’s stump. “What does he know anyway? You’re Minh the Marvelous and he’s got nothing but opium in his head. He couldn’t beat you in a game for all the dollars in the Sheraton. He shouldn’t even be in that big, strong body, but on some fisherman’s hook.”
Minh rubbed his aching ear. Even though he knew Mai was right, he couldn’t forget Loc’s words, for he often asked himself why his parents had left him. Is it because of my deformity, he wondered, like Loc always says? Is it because I’m stupid and ugly and worthless? Is that why I have no father, no mother, no uniform to wear to school? Why I sometimes want to swim beneath the brown water and never reappear?
Suddenly tears came and Minh could not stop them. They came like waves come to a shore, like birds flock to a branch. They welled from deep within him, bringing pieces of him into the air. As men strung Christmas lights, these pieces of Minh cooled. They fell to the dirty ground. They absorbed dust. And in the heat of the coming day they vanished as if they’d never existed.
THE PLANE WAS SO HIGH THAT to him it was unheard. Its bombs fell toward Earth as if stones dropped from a bridge, silent orbs of hurtling steel that erupted in massive balls of fire and death. The walls of his home exploded around him, light turning to dark, comfort to pain. A monstrous crashing of concrete filled his ears, his every pore. Into the darkness he went, tumbling, striking unseen objects. He tried to escape this darkness, but his arms and legs were quickly pinned, his body becoming immobile.
He heard the cries of several of his siblings and he called for them. One of his sisters was moaning, the other full of whimpers. His big brother coughed weakly. No words or pleas emerged from his parents or little brothers. They were as silent as the rubble surrounding him. He tasted blood on his lips and shouted for his sisters. Their voices called back to him, but these voices were no longer familiar. They sounded distant and hollow, as if connected to him by thousands of miles of old telephone wire. He knew where his sisters were going and he screamed at them not to leave. They couldn’t go to such a place. Not now, when they were so young, when their dreams were unfulfilled. He tried to crawl from the tomb around him, but on all sides he was pinned. The weakening sobs of his siblings prompted him to claw at concrete, to try to move what was unmovable. He shouted for help until his throat ached. Sirens wailed. A dog barked. Voices seeped into the tomb, but they weren’t the voices of his loved ones. Those had gone silent, though he still pleaded for them to speak. Light filtered down upon him. Later, in this same light, he saw their faces. Yet now their faces were like fresh paintings that had been cast into the sea, crushed against rocks by uncaring waves.
The light evolved, seeping into him, pulling him from the past. He awoke, stirring on his bamboo mat. Now that his dream was over, he found it hard to recall the faces of his family. So many years had passed. Too many.
Squinting, Sahn searched for his glasses. Even with their aid, the details of his room were unclear. A bright fog seemed to fill the air. This fog stole the clarity from his sight, as if he were looking through a camera that was out of focus.
Sahn ate a breakfast of cold rice and thin slices of mango. He then tidied his room—watering plants, sweeping the floor, hanging his blanket outside a window to bask in the sun. As he worked he thought about his dream, wondering why his unconscious so often reminded him of what he’d for so long tried to forget.
Standing in front of a large mirror, Sahn carefully dressed in his uniform. He’d ironed his olive-colored pants and shirt the previous night. He had also shined his shoes, belt, and the wide, black brim of his cap. A yellow star adorned the red ribbon that encircled the lower part of his cap. Sahn was proud of the star, proud that he wore it. The star had defeated a monster.
Before stepping into the day,
Sahn paused in front of his fish tank. Several brown blurs sped about the tank, rising to the surface as he tilted a can of food. He watched the blurs eat, then left his room and locked the door behind him.
Sahn carried no gun. A black baton hung from his belt. He’d swung it twice in thirty years. As always, Sahn did his best to search the streets for criminal activity. He ignored taxis that darted through traffic lights, as well as scooters that drove the wrong way down busy boulevards. Even though more than a thousand people died each month on his country’s roads, nothing he could do would change that. And so he made it his mission to seek out those involved with crimes he could stop—offenses such as drug trafficking and child prostitution. Yesterday, his commander had told him about a crate of elephant tusks that was rumored to be in the city. Sahn’s beat included Le Cong Kieu Street, which housed scores of antique stores. For years the owners of these stores had paid him a monthly fee, ensuring that he wouldn’t report their stashes of ancient treasures that had been smuggled out of China. Still, even though Sahn turned a blind eye to such dealings, he wouldn’t stand for certain things. And a crate of elephant tusks was such a thing.
Sahn walked straight and without haste. Soon he was on Le Cong Kieu Street. The power must have gone out, for the antiques stores were unlit. Sahn navigated down the narrow sidewalk. He pretended to peer into the distance, though he could discern only his immediate surroundings. Moving into a darkened shop, he eased his way past piles of silk scrolls and bronze statues. The store’s owner, a young man who seemed perpetually afraid of him, strode in his direction.
“I am looking for elephants,” Sahn said softly.
“Elephants?”
“What dead elephants would be missing.”
“Captain, I haven’t heard about any ivory. I swear it.”
Sahn wished he could see the man’s expression. “If you do hear of these elephants, you’ll tell me. You’ll tell me and then I won’t stop by your store for many months.”
