Single White Female in Hanoi

by Carolyn Shine

  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.

  Island of green, in a blue stream

  The only thing standing between me and my ten o clock class at Global is the last twenty five metres of my street.

  I rinse the last smear of breakfast omelette from my plate and stare ruefully at the wall above the sink. Twenty five metres of lurching horror. Last night’s indiscretion would feel a lot more like a dream if it hadn’t left me with a case of galloping agoraphobia. I clean my teeth, don my coat. It all just seems like such poor luck.

  But at the end of the street I find Oanh completely surrounded by customers as she ladles out pho. I wait flinchingly for one of her customers to spot me and grab her, finger pointed in my direction, screaming ‘there she is!’ in Vietnamese. But no one even seems to notice me. There’s no sign of Quan.

  After the class I stop by Nguyet’s place. Her wordless father greets me at the door with a warm smile and I hold his arm affectionately. Nguyet is just finishing with a young piano student.

  I enter the music room and sit down. The little girl turns around on the stool and stares at me with undisguised shock. A foreigner in the room! I feel like a two-metre-tall golem. The student exclaims something and Nguyet reprimands her, turns and apologises to me. The back of my neck prickles again with paranoia.

  When I tell Nguyet the Quan story she grips my wrist and shakes her head.

  ‘You must move from your house!’ She gets up and paces the living room, thinking. ‘Ok,’ she says finally. ‘Tomorrow I will buy pho and I will talk to Oanh. Try to learn her emotion. Maybe she don’t know.’ Nguyet has eaten pho at Oanh’s stall several mornings a week for years, and I trust her not to act like a bumbling undercover agent. I nod gratefully.

  But when I pass their room the next day, I know my time has come. Oanh is sitting out the front with the rat-faced hairdresser from next door. I concentrate on walki
ng normally, breathing through my nose. Biting my lower lip, I glance at her and our eyes make contact. She waves at me, grinning.

  ‘Xin Chao em!’

  I nod and scurry off, wracked with a new anxiety. It was the politest possible greeting. What does this mean?

  Night falls and it’s the coldest night so far. I wear a hat and scarf even in the house. Nguyet comes to pick me up. I need to change piles of Vietnamese dong into dollars. Most of the people I’ve asked tell me it’s illegal and risky, but Nguyet says she knows a place way across town where it’s safe. I don’t understand this, but I’m not complaining.

  ‘This morning I talk to Oanh. She normal, happy,’ Nguyet smiles at me. ‘I think she don’t know.’

  ‘Did you see Quan?’ I ask her.

  ‘Yes. He was there also. Fine. I think everything okay.’ A grin dimples her round cheeks. ‘Maybe he think he dream only!’ She starts giggling. ‘He remember and think – too incredible! I must be dream!’ I giggle too. Quan must be pondering the odds of his memory being plausible. It would be roughly on a par with being kidnapped by aliens. But the memory of his daughter sobers me again.

  I’ll never learn for sure what Oanh thinks. From now on, she’ll not only be friendly – she’ll be extra-friendly, although her girlfriends will glare at me. I’ll be forced to consider Zac’s unpalatable hypothesis.

  ‘I suspect she can’t believe anyone in their right minds would want to fuck her husband for free, least of all a rich, attractive Westerner.’

  For Oanh, I suspect I’ve become a badge of honour. But from this day, whenever possible, she’ll be my xe om driver. Quan will begin to recede.

  Nguyet and I head out into the night and from the bike, the cold air bites at us like a battalion of bulldog clips. It’s the bone-numbing wind of legend. I put my frozen hands into Nguyet’s pockets and press my face into her back for protection from the wind. Five more days till Sydney. My mind is a maelstrom of emotions – affection for Hanoi, excitement about seeing my friends and family, and unease about how it will feel to be back in the first world, which I can no longer imagine.

  We arrive and I discover we’re at a government bank. We’re directed by an official down a small corridor into the back of the building. Money counting machines hammer away noisily around us. Nguyet gets me to wait three metres away while she hands my brick of Vietnamese Dong to a uniformed cashier who counts it and hands her a receipt. A small man directs us to a small room and we’re told to wait. I find the wait a bit nerve-wracking. My experiences so far in Vietnam, particularly whenever trying to renew my three-month visa, have not disposed me to trust officials. Eventually we’re called to a different cashier and collect the neatly bundled dollars. The exchange rate is surprisingly high.

  Nguyet takes me home, and it’s not until we’re at the compound gate that she finally clears her throat, and makes the announcement.

  ‘Carolyn! Me and Binh, we get married in March.’ I hug her delightedly. I have no idea her marriage will spell the decline of our friendship.

  Shopping List 4 Oz

  Ear plugs (lots)

  Dental floss

  Tampons

  Tin opener

  Potato peeler

  Lip balm

  Beroccas

  Blue-tak

  Hot water bottles (lots)

  I add Violet Crumble and tea-tree oil, following requests from friends.

  On my last night in Hanoi, Aussie Bill invites me to a massive Bia Hoi across town with Giang and his wife, Han. Giang and Han are journalists who work with Bill at his new job, and have become friends. I can see why immediately. They’re light-hearted and well-educated, with that appreciation of irony that comes with having spent time overseas. I sense I’ll be able to pick up new cultural knowledge tonight.

  We battle the gut-churning stench of cooking dog on the way in. In his first revelation as cultural ambassador, Giang explains to me that it’s the Mam tom sauce that goes on dog that’s the main culprit. Mam tom is a creation cooked up from rotted shrimp. I’ve met many Westerners now who boast they’ve eaten dog, but not one who could say they enjoyed it. Yet it’s fair to say that Hanoians, in general, are obsessed with it. Groups of young men ride in convoy to dog restaurant villages on the outskirts of the city at the start of each lunar month. It’s a mateship ritual with quasi-religious dimensions. Even the delicate female reporters at the newspaper admit they like to eat dog meat. One reporter, although not one renowned for producing reliable information, has told me: ‘Dog meat is the favourite food of the Hanoi people.’

  ‘Do you eat dog?’ I ask Giang. He shakes his head and screws up his nose. ‘I cannot tolerate the smell,’ he tells me. Han agrees with him.

  We sit at a long table in the beer hall and beer and peanuts arrive immediately. I peer around and see the place is rather up-market. There are several women sitting at tables among the men, and even a Western woman like me barely rates a stare. It’s a sign of social changes taking place now in Hanoi, Giang explains.

  But the only ruou available here is snake, gecko or goat’s ball. I break my own beer-drinking record and down two beers. Giang sinks three and goes red in the face. He spends time writing down plenty of new vocabulary for me in my note book, then we start singing songs from our childhoods. Finally we decide he should teach me a traditional Vietnamese song. He chooses one and writes down the lyrics in my note book. It’s sung by a woman to her man.

  Bang long di anh

  Ve voi que em

  Mot cu lao xanh

  Mot dong song xanh.

  Agree to go with me

  Back to my village

  An island of green

  In a blue stream.

  We sing it over and over until it’s engraved forever on my memory. A beautiful, haunting melody. After the beers I loosen up and order the gecko ruou. By the time we leave we’re all a bit wobbly on the motorcycles. The melody and its meaning repeat over and over in my head; ‘An island of green in a blue stream.’ As the icy, coal-soaked wind snaps at my ears I think of the cobalt blue of the Pacific, the clean air and the open spaces, the fresh smell of a rainforest. My island of green in a blue stream, that’s how Australia feels to me right now.

  I see cold people

  The Vietnamese have a curiously familiar metaphor to express happiness. ‘Bay tren chin tang may’ – ‘flying on nine floors of cloud.’ It’s especially apt as I descend into Hanoi, because I’m filled with a happy anticipation undampened by the nine storeys of dense, featureless cloud between the plane and the runway.

  But the view from the airport bus window is not the lovable mayhem of my apparently embroidered recollections. I study the grey, teeming streets in dismay. I see thin people, I see poor people, above all, I see cold people.

  Hanoi looks just like a third world country in the throes of winter.

  I ring Zac as soon as I get home. He’s been back from Canberra for a week and sounds relieved to hear from me.

  ‘How’s the neighbourhood, no dramas?’ I ask him.

  ‘Big drama,’ he says.

  ‘What kind of drama?’

  ‘This kind,’ he replies and takes a deep breath. Down the phone line comes a spine-chilling series of squeals followed by an awful gurgling, retching noise.

  ‘Poltergeist?’ I suggest.

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘I give up,’ I say, eventually.

  ‘That’s the sound I now wake up to at six every morning,’ he explains. ‘The sound of live, adult pigs being hung upside down and having their throats cut. The sound of fresh hot blood splashing into plastic buckets.’ He lapses into a disgusted silence.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘The next door neighbours. They’ve opened an abattoir in the front of their house.’

  I try to make a sympathetic noise but I fail and instead, a horrible snigger escapes me. ‘How could this happen to you, of all people?’ I manage.

  ‘Yes,’ Zac sighs drolly. ‘The irony isn’t entirely
lost on me.’

  I ring Kiwi Alexa. She tells me about the New Year’s Eve party I missed at Justin’s new house and drills me on how it felt to be back in the first world.

  ‘Was it weird?’

  I think about it for a while.

  ‘To be honest, no,’ I tell her. ‘When I was in Sydney, everything just felt normal. Hanoi sort of … fell out the bottom of my mind. The two places are so different, they’re … ’ I reach for the right words, ‘mutually unimaginable. Like, when I was in Sydney and tried to imagine Hanoi, my mind just hit a blank wall.’

  ‘That sounds disappointing,’ she says, with feeling. ‘I must remember to take more photos.’

  Then I get a phone call from an expat wanting piano lessons for her daughter. Someone gave her my number and told her I teach. She has a friend too, who wants lessons. By the end of the day, I have two piano students.

  The next day I start dispensing the hot water bottles. I fill the first one with boiling water and take it down to Ba Gia. She takes it gratefully, although it’s clear she has no idea what it is.

  ‘Hot water. Can use many time,’ I try in my foreigner Vietnamese. ‘From Australia.’

  She flashes her black teeth at me benevolently and puts the hot water bottle on the shelf near the tea set. I fill the next one, wrap it in a small blanket, and take it down to the Nam Bo, praying to find Hien alive. My last efforts to save her, with help from the Hanoi Family Clinic, like the others, showed great promise, then melted away to nothing. This was just before my return to Sydney.

  She is alive, but on the pavement again, asleep inside a pile of cardboard boxes. She looks sicker than ever, her skin dry and mottled. The Nam Bo’s marble doorway is now a stall for Banh Chung, the traditional Tet cake. The blanket I gave her is nowhere to be seen. One of her homeless friends sees me and insists on waking her. She wakes up painfully, but when she sees me her eyes light up.

  Hien takes the gift solemnly, holds it to her chest and grins in delight at the warmth. I try to explain the usage and she nods. As always, I slip her money. Guilt money.