Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel (Modern Southeast Asian Literature)

by Ho Anh Thai

  This feast—which stretched so far beyond the limits of the bearable—finally ended. The squad of scouts dumped Hùng’s corpse back down onto the bank of the stream, gathered their comrade—half-living, half-dead—and left.

  The three women carried Hùng’s corpse back and buried him near their hut. Hoa moved in and out of a daze, as if something had broken in her. She brought flowers to his grave and moments later would go out, take the flowers back off of the grave, bring them to the hut, and stick them in a cup of water.

  More than eight months later, the three of them were hoarding powdered milk and dried food to prepare for the child’s birth. They’d resigned themselves to the powdered milk. But they knew that the dry foods would be necessary as well. That way, if they ran out of milk they could cook them into porridge. They stockpiled whatever they could beg off of the generous soldiers driving through the area. Everyone was worried. Everyone sympathized and showed compassion. Anyone who had anything gave it freely. Not a single soul refused.

  At the same time, nobody dared to report the pregnancy to their unit. Hoa was showing. And she was scared. She was scared that she’d be disciplined and sent back home. The whole nation was surging forward, all of its momentum rushing toward the front. Even young girls of fifteen and sixteen were writing applications in blood to join the war. She would be a solitary big-bellied woman, returning to the rear, heading against that flow of soldiers. It was an image she just couldn’t bear. Nonetheless, she was still secretly proud to be bearing, within her body, a single drop of the blood of a soldier such as Hùng. That drop would grow into a person, and revenge him.

  Neither Miên nor Giềng had any idea how to deliver a baby. They carefully questioned every man that came through the station. “It’s easy,” one guy told them. “I’ve been forced to deliver babies twice, because the hospital was far and my old lady gave birth too quickly. We didn’t even have time to step out the door and my old lady was already yelling, ‘Honey, honey, it’s already out.’ I had to stick my hands out to catch it so the baby wouldn’t fall onto the ground. I also cut the cord myself, and buried the placenta with my own hands.”

  Other soldiers gave them alcohol, antibiotics, and bandages and advised them to sterilize the scissors and knives beforehand.

  Then one night Hoa’s labor pains began. She gritted her teeth tight, and let the tears overflow silently as she bore the pain. The two other women lit a large fire in the middle of the hut, started a pot of water boiling and tossed the scissors and knives into it. Hoa squirmed until morning but still couldn’t give birth. Finally, Giềng lit three sticks of incense and quickly ran out to stick them in front of Hùng’s grave. “Oh, brother Hùng, you were wise in life and are powerful in death; come to the aid of your child and its mother and we will burn incense for you regularly and give you anything you want.” The whole incense pot suddenly burst into flame.7 Giềng ran back, crying out about what had happened, telling Hoa that brother Hùng was helping them, to go ahead, give birth now.

  A violent tremble ran down Hoa’s body. The sound of a baby’s cry rang out. At the same time the firewood in the stove cracked and burst. Flames leaped into the air, reaching out to the sheets of parachute cloth hanging from the walls. They caught fire and ignited. The pot of boiling water overturned into the stove. Giềng quickly snatched a blanket and tried to beat out the flames, as Miên shouted, “Give me the scissors!”

  Giềng abandoned the fire and frantically groped around the smoke-filled stove. She pulled out the scissors, which were caked in ash, and handed them to Miên. There was no time to wash them again, so Miên cut the baby’s umbilical cord with the soiled blades.

  “Where’s the thread?” Miên called out again.

  Giềng again turned away from the fire, which was now spreading up to the window, and ran to find some string. After she’d given Miên the thread she spun around and once again flung herself at the fire. The parachute cloth was burning all around, creating a glowing halo of fire that encircled the newborn child. Newborn infants all look pretty much the same: chubby and pinkish, grimacing like monkeys, with pale white eyebrows and eyelashes. But this child was different. Every facial feature was already etched distinctly. It was a beautiful face, set from the moment she came into the world.

  “Heat some water,” Miên ordered calmly. In reality, she was as frightened as any of them. Giềng couldn’t give all of her attention to fighting the fire; at the same time she couldn’t just let the hut burn down. She carried in the thermos of hot water, poured it out into a basin, and mixed in some cold water. Then she abandoned Miên, who was washing the child, and returned to her battle against the blaze that was spreading to the hut’s bamboo walls. She threw water on the flames. She used the blanket to beat them. The whole hut was filled with smoke. The eyes of the three women as well as of the newborn baby were overflowing with tears.

  Finally, Miên finished washing the child just as Giềng got the fire out. Giềng turned to lovingly pinch the baby’s cheek, leaving behind an ashen smudge.

  “Go wash first, you’re covered in ashes!” Miên scolded affectionately, pushing Giềng out. Hoa turned to look at the two women and the child, and smiled feebly.

  When Miên left the hut, she buried the placenta next to Hùng’s grave and prayed to Hùng, asking him to bless the mother and child, and everyone there, with luck. She prayed for peace to arrive quickly, so that these women and the baby could return to their homes.

  Just over three months later, Hoa died unexpectedly. It was a dreadful death. Her mind had become so muddled and dull that she wandered into the minefield that she’d helped plant around the cave mouth—the mine field meant to prevent the enemy from capturing the storehouse if it was discovered. Hoa was disemboweled by one of these very mines. Miên and Giềng ran outside and tried to shove her heaving intestines, frothing with blood, back into her abdomen. Throughout, Hoa remained totally conscious. Repressing the pain, she sputtered out a request to the two women: “My sisters, raise my daughter for me. When the war’s over, take her to my village, or her father’s, and give her to her relatives to care for.”

  Hoa fainted for a moment, and then regained consciousness, as if she had passed away but then suddenly remembered something important and came back to say, “On her birth certificate, register her as Nguyễn Thị Mai Trừng.8 When she grows up, she’ll punish the wicked.”

  Miên confessed to me that at that time she’d been a bit frightened. Nonetheless, she’d had to respect Hoa’s final request and had named the girl Mai Trừng. She wondered if Hoa had truly believed that the war would stretch on so long that the child would grow up and carry a gun to avenge her mother and father? No, of course she would grow up during peacetime. And peace arrived. The rivers, the mountains, the sky, the earth, it was all ours now. Our people reunited with us. What wicked people were there left for her to punish?

  Looking again into the old schoolteacher’s eyes, I noticed that they were now completely dry behind her spectacles. I had studied with professors like this. They believed indiscriminately in the good heart of mankind. They clung to their naïve belief in humanity and decency. They believed that the bad could be reeducated. They believed that virtue could ensure the success even of a censored education, one without an open, straightforward dialogue that illuminated overly crude or sensational issues. She was the kind of person who, even this far into the 1990s, still didn’t believe that our society had working girls and drug addicts, or that organized crime controlled city districts and wards.9 What she regarded as sensationalized, exaggerated, vilifications of society drove her into a rage. The road of her life consisted of the path she walked from her house to the middle school. After school, she would walk back home straight along that same road, retreating into her ivory tower.

  Maybe it was exactly for this reason that she’d trusted me from the moment we met. She saw me as a good young man who had just bungled his way into a fight with his girlfriend, a fight that had driven her aw
ay.

  “Giềng and I buried Mai Trừng’s mother next to Hùng’s grave. So they were together again after just a short time apart. A year later, the station was discovered by American planes and bombed brutally. I lost a leg, and was evacuated off the line. Only Giềng remained there, with a group of reinforcements.”

  A crippled woman carrying a fifteen-month-old child returned to Hanoi. That was 1970. Miên went to study at the Teacher’s College, becoming a literature instructor and teaching about things that were good and beautiful, idealistic things that still resonated with generations of idealists. It was only during the era of the market economy that the subjects she taught lost a bit of reality. And too much reality existed in those extracurricular classes the students were forced into,10 and that she hated: classes in which the teachers coolly calculated their fees and “gifts,” and the students were no less skilled in monetary matters than their teachers.

  Walking with an artificial leg, Miên had led Mai Trừng back to the home village of her father, which boasted a booming porridge and porridge-ladle production industry, since it was too poor to have enough rice. The whole village had been completely razed by American planes. She also tried taking Mai Trừng back to her mother’s land of earthen sticky rice cakes. But both sides of her family were in total and utter disarray. Many of her relatives were living hand to mouth, unsure where their next day’s meal would come from. Finally, Miên returned to Hanoi with Mai Trừng and told her husband that they would take care of her as if she were their own child. She told me that she also had a daughter of her own, who was now studying English at the Foreign Languages University.

  “Go to Mai Trừng. Talk to her. Just make her listen if you can,” she advised me as she was seeing me off at the foot of the stairs. And suddenly, I knew I could trust her words.

  SEVEN

  I had to hurry to catch up to Mai Trừng. I was running out of time. If I didn’t rush after her, I wasn’t sure that I’d even have time to beg for forgiveness. Who knows, perhaps she still thought that I was hunting her. But I wasn’t, and if she had some supernatural intuition, I hoped that she’d somehow recognize my heart’s sincerity and benevolence. There was no resentment or poison left there.

  I felt drained of energy. I was weakening little by little. But I knew that I would, with the help of Phũ’s Toyota Corona, keep trying to find her.

  I put two boxes of bottled water and two cardboard boxes of food in the back seat. Bread, canned meat, and some canned fruits and vegetables—enough water and provisions to last two weeks without having to buy a single thing on the road. I had no idea if the food along the way would be tainted with poison meant to kill me.

  I brought Ki—my only remaining friend and the most dependable as well—along with me. I wrote Thế a letter. I was going to leave it somewhere where he wouldn’t find it for a few days:

  Brother Thế, if something bad happens to me, don’t be surprised. I’ve sown the seeds of this storm, so now I am going to reap its harvest. The same was true for Phũ and his friends.

  I know this was cryptic. For materialists like Thế, cause and effect are clear, not like this murky half-light of reasoning.

  Nobody’s responsible for these disasters at all. Only Evil itself can be blamed for these cruel and obscure deeds.

  This was even more cryptic. Human beings kill, but no human is ever responsible for so many deaths. The responsibility flows from the existence of Evil. Thế, I knew, could never see his own friends and loved ones as evil themselves.

  I may return, if, for instance, I’m forgiven

  But who has the power to forgive in this case?

  Please, brother, don’t get worked up and come rushing down to find me.

  I didn’t need to tell him that, I knew he wouldn’t anyway.

  I wrote the note. Then I tore it up. He’d never understand this letter, written half as a warning, and half like a suicide note. The personal ID card and papers that I carried with me would be enough. If fate took my life, someone would call home and let Thế know what had happened.

  Instead, I very simply told him that I had something to do and would be gone for a few days. I didn’t say much. I didn’t explain. Many times before I’d gone off like this and Thế never questioned me. But this time I saw a look of anxiety flash through his eyes. By nature, he had a politician’s face. It never revealed his feelings. He never let himself get agitated. He never burst out with happiness, anger, or worry. The more nervous he was, the more this was the case.

  I drove the car down along Highway 1, working my way south. It was the same road that the teacher Miên, as well as Mai Trừng’s parents, had traveled so many years ago. And it was the same road Mai Trừng herself had just passed along. I didn’t know if I’d be able to follow her trail. But I had to find her before I could find forgiveness. If not, my life would last only a few days more.

  At lunchtime, I stopped in Thanh Hóa to eat lunch. At dinnertime, I stopped in Vinh to eat dinner. Then I stopped at a simple and clean boardinghouse. At each meal, even though I was tapping into my own provisions, I would let Ki eat first and drink first. Only when he was done with the meal would I start to eat. It was safe this way. I knew that my food hadn’t been poisoned. Anyone looking would have seen a man who loved his dog. A man sitting there and adoringly watching his traveling companion eat until it was full. But the loyal traveling companion in this case fell into the role of an expendable servant, of a suspicious tyrant’s chef. The truth was that I earnestly wanted to live. I still desperately valued my life.

  But, during my second day on the road, I started to feel sluggish. I began to pay less and less attention to the road. And my body was also gradually becoming tired and worn, as if it were deteriorating. It was as if, as I drew nearer to Mai Trừng, I was also approaching death. How could it be happening so fast? Please, wait for me to find you, for me to tell you everything, for me to pray for your forgiveness. Then, after that, you can weigh the evidence and pass judgment.

  As afternoon descended, I arrived in the Cửa Lớn region. Farming and fishing were the two occupations of the area. Along the ocean people fished with nets, earning a meager income, their entire floating lives depending on the sea. A few years before, some city people and tourists suddenly discovered that Cửa Lớn had a wonderfully flat, spacious, gently sloping sand beach of the most beautiful sort, of the cleanest sort. So Cửa Lớn turned into a very famous beach area. People from all over the place arrived in droves. The fishery commune ordered its work teams to shift their activities to serving the beachgoers. The tourist trade offered a much higher income than did the tenuous dangers and hard work of fishing. The men began to rent out inner tubes and to work as lifeguards. The women went out to sell fish, swimsuits, and other essentials. As the tourists flocked in, so did the players looking for sex. When their massive demand eclipsed the supply of professionals, a “militia” of local women was mobilized to take on the task.

  The other half of Cửa Lớn—the farmers living just inland—were jealous of the fishing region’s sudden rise in fortune. Inland, where the land could be farmed, the people still planted vegetables, trees, and rice. They were resigned to their fate, offering their faces to the earth and their backs to the sky. During the war everyone had been poor. Now both the cities and the beaches were developing rapidly, and only the poor peasants remained destitute.

  I was driving through the agricultural area. Somber, suffering faces. Withered shoulders bending under creaking shoulder-poles. Ragged conical hats. Tattered clothing.

  Suddenly, I heard several gunshots burst from somewhere ahead. The rice paddy was filling with civilians with shovels and shoulder-poles. I could make out the yellow shirts of policemen who were spreading out in formation. A human stream came crashing up onto the road from the field below. Was there a murder? A robbery? I quickly stopped the car and then spun it around, planning to get as far away as possible. I wasn’t about to get myself tangled up in the chaos.

>   A group of peasants at once rushed over and surrounded my vehicle. They were struggling with each other to talk in a dialect that even if they spoke very slowly, I was unsure I would understand. Yet seeing two men soaked with blood, one holding his head and the other clutching his arm, I began to understand. “Excuse me, sir, excuse me. Please do us a favor and take these two guys to the hospital for us; it’s so far.”

  Ki was sitting in the front seat. I opened the back door to let the two men help the two injured people into the back seat. They moved my boxes of water and food to the floor between the seats, so they could rest their legs and sit. I drove off swiftly.

  The four men kept interrupting each other to tell what happened. The more than ten kilometer ride between the village and the hospital was long enough for me to figure it out. On average, the peasants of Cửa Lớn each had only around one sao (360 square meters) of farmland, not enough to grow the rice they needed to survive, and so they had to leave their villages to find extra work. They would make their way up the mountains and there destroy the terrain, digging out slate to sell. They had razed Núi Bút, Non Nghiên, and Hòn Bảng Mountains completely.1 Those three symbols of an era when the region was famous for the preparation for scholarly examinations had been so thoroughly destroyed that each year the scholars’ modern descendents manage to get only two or three kids from the entire district into universities. But even at that impasse, the peasants were not in peace. Recently the provincial leader decided to cut some hectares of land from Cửa Lớn to carry out an economics, trade, and tourism project. What economics? What trade? What tourism? Actually, those few hectares of land—the source of life for the peasants of Cửa Lớn—became a stopover for people on their way back from the beachfront. From there to the beach it was only a few kilometers. The tourists, looking for some fun after a day ducking and diving beneath the ocean, would flock there for rest and entertainment. And just like that, the peasants lost their farmland.