Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 3, Issue 2

by Emily Maguire

  Sometimes when I pass the breakfast room there is a boy in an oversized black suit standing in her usual place behind the hot plate. Always he calls out to me, Oi! You have breakfast now? And always I shake my head and keep walking. Today, though, because I am tired and cold and still shaken by the night visit I nod and enter the breakfast room and let him serve me a bowl of noodle soup and a cup of coffee.

  I am seated at the front table which is, like the others, bright blue plastic. Its surface is stained and scratched but in the centre is a slim vase of fresh, blindingly white flowers. I pull out my phone, take a picture and send it to my mum. She works in a florist and is proud of herself when we’re out walking somewhere and she can identify every flower we pass. I find it embarrassing usually, but right now I would like to know what this flower, which is whiter than anything could ever be expected to be in this grim-encrusted place, is called.

  Mum answers right away: Ooh, pretty! Never seen that one. I’ll have to ask at the shop. Breakfast room, huh?! Proud of you, girl. xx

  The boy sits across from me and smiles. He is about my age, I guess, although the lines around his eyes mean he might be older and the patchy fuzz on his jaw belongs to a teenager. I take a sip of my coffee and look past his shoulder to the street where tiny girls in navy-blue pinafores and red ties file past, their backs bowed under the weight of their book bags.

  ‘You don’t like pho?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m not very hungry,’ I say and saying it, again, here, still, exhausts me. I drink down the rest of the coffee in one gulp. It’s bitter and gritty and burns my throat and I am glad.

  ‘My grandma says you never eat.’

  ‘Mrs Nguyen’s your grandma?’

  ‘Yes. You should eat this. It’s good.’ He pushes the bowl so it touches my forearm. Its heat is a gift, but the meaty steam coming off it causes my stomach to clench hard.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Yes. It is good. Yes.’ He stirs the soup, smiling.

  The rank fishy smell that is everywhere out on the streets is now inside my nostrils. My stomach spasms hard hard hard and I bolt from the table. The climb to my room takes all my breath from me. My knees and ankles and lower back scream. I lie down until I can breathe again and then I do sit-ups until the spasms stop.

  At some point in the morning there is a knock on the door. I check the chain is across and then sit frozen until I hear footsteps on the stairs again. There is a slip of paper under the door. A number is scrawled across the top, then: Sorry you are sick. I can help find medicine. You call me. Thanh.

  * * *

  I wait until dark before going out, but Thanh must be watching the front door. I’ve only walked a few metres when he appears at my side.

  ‘Hello. Okay. I take you for medicine now?’

  I shake my head and keep walking, but he keeps pace with me. Does he plan to follow me into the Old Quarter to watch while I drink my vodka and slurp my soup? My stomach aches and my face and neck are hot. I need him to not be here.

  ‘Please,’ I say, not looking at him. ‘I don’t need medicine. I’m just having a walk.’

  ‘Okay. I’m Thanh.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘You should know. You work at my guesthouse.’

  ‘At house we call you “Bones”.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Yes. So your name?’

  ‘Trina.’

  ‘Tree?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ We’ve reached the tourist bar I go to each night. ‘I’m going in here now. Bye.’

  ‘No, Tree.’ He touches my arm. ‘This place not good. I show you better. What you like? Fish? I know best fish shop.’

  ‘No. I just want a drink. Vodka. In this bar.’

  ‘You should have food. And drink, okay, but it’s not good here. Rip-off, yes? I take you better.’

  The exhaustion comes over me again. Wherever I go I am still me.

  ‘Okay,’ I say and he slaps my upper back with an open palm.

  ‘Okay, Tree. Come this way.’

  He walks fast, looking over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure I’m still with him. When we stop on a sidewalk to let a bus pass I notice that his shoes are black and shiny with pointed toes. He grabs my hand and pulls me through the swarming motorbikes and above their engines and horns I hear his loose soles flapping against the road.

  He stops in front of a road-side stall. A glass cabinet holds smudged bottles of pale yellow liquid. Beside it, a woman squats, fanning some kind of brick oven. Burnt fish swims into my throat and I gag. Thanh is squatting in front of the woman, pointing up at the cabinet. My stomach heaves and clenches, heaves and clenches. I walk away as fast as I can. When the calls of ‘Tree Tree Tree’ get too close I jump into a nearby taxi and tell the driver ‘airport’ because it is the only place I can think to go.

  * * *

  In the taxi I am filled with the same fluttery, directionless panic I had the first time I left home. I was seventeen then and my mother and I had been at war for several years already. Her weapons were cheesy casseroles, freshly-baked pies and self-help books left open on my pillow; mine were ever sharper bones, visible hickeys and silence.

  I tracked down Dad in a halfway house in Redfern. He was drunk, of course, but he recognised me. He hugged me and stroked my face and teared up a little. He mumbled on about his plans to get sober, get a job and all that. I waited for him to comment on how thin I was, but he never did. That was the first time I’ve ever been surprised by myself, by my own disappointment and need.

  I moved in with an older boy I’d been messing around with. He was a pot-head who could guts down a family-sized pizza in under ten minutes and was fascinated by how little I ate. ‘I swear to God,’ he’d boast to his friends. ‘She’ll go a day on half an apple. Not even the whole thing! Half! And she’s fine!’

  I was fine. Without the need to hurt my mother I drank less, slept more and rarely shoplifted or rode in stolen cars. I got a job as an usher at an old movie house frequented by uni students and homeless men. I made friends with the snack shop girl. One morning she made me a mug of milky tea and I drank almost a third of it. After that she made me tea every morning and afternoon and soon I could drink a whole creamy mug full as though it were water. My skin cleared up and the fuzz on my stomach and face became sparser.

  One winter’s day the movie house hosted a Nightmare on Elm Street Marathon. I watched them all, one after the other, from my stool near the exit. I sat mesmerised as a series of glowing, shiny-haired, sharp-boned teenagers were ripped to bloody shreds in their sleep. I remembered sitting in Mr Forbes’s office reading about sleep paralysis. One article told how the man who created these films had been inspired by those stories of Khmer refugees dying in their sleep after complaining of terrible nightmares and avoiding bed for days and days.

  At home that night I told my boyfriend about the movies and the Khmer men and about the night I woke up and knew there was something evil in the corner. I told him that it happens all the time, all over the world. People go to sleep and wake up frozen in fear. Sometimes they die.

  He laughed at me, of course, and told his ever-present posse of co-stoners that I believed Freddy Krueger was real. A few mornings later I woke with a thin, curved welt from the base of my left ear to the tip of my right collarbone, as though a scythe had been held firmly against my skin and then withdrawn without pressure.

  My boyfriend denied making the mark, which faded to nothing before bed that night. Weeks later, though, one of his friends said ‘hey, Trina, has Freddy come for you again’, and I felt worse than when I’d half suspected a demon visitation.

  * * *

  The taxi pulls up at Noi Bai Domestic Terminal and I pay and climb out. I wander through the terminal, reading the departure boards: Hue, Danang, Nha Trang, Saigon, Ca Mau. Dad has been to all of these places, I think. Right now he is somewhere near the Cambodian border, close to the place wher
e he fought. I don’t know if that is far from here, if it is north or south. I don’t have any idea where I am in relation to any other place. I am a short, sweaty sleep from Hong Kong. A long, dream-heavy night away from Sydney. For all I know, Dad could be an hour’s drive or a day’s flight away. I don’t know how big this country is or where it fits in the world. It doesn’t seem right that I am allowed to be here knowing so little.

  I go back outside and head for the taxi rank then remember that most of my cash is stashed in the back pocket of my suitcase, under my bed at the guesthouse. I have 50,000 dông left in my pocket. Barely enough for a bottle of water at the airport shop.

  I have dealt with situations like this one before and although many things are different here, there are some things which are never different anywhere. I take Thanh’s note from my pocket and dial his number. It takes a few minutes for me to explain who and where I am, but once he understands he is all efficiency. ‘Take taxi,’ he says. ‘I’ll wait in front. You pay me later.’

  * * *

  It is only eleven, but here that is the middle of the night. The street is dark and still. As we pull up in front of the guesthouse, the screen on Thanh’s phone is a guiding light. He leans in the driver’s window, handing over a wad of dông as I climb out the other side. The driver asks Thanh a question and the answer causes them both to laugh, low and dirty. The taxi leaves and it is just me and him on the dark street. My teeth chatter and he giggles, then motions toward the side of the guesthouse.

  ‘We go back way so we don’t wake Grandma.’

  He follows me into my room where he turns childishly shy, sitting on the edge of the bed and pretending to read a magazine I’ve left open on the floor. I lie on my side, facing the wall.

  After a few minutes he lies beside me and after a few more his hand falls on my hip. I don’t know how much time passes like this. I feel myself sinking into sleep and then his hand is untucking my shirt. I stay still, let his fingers find their way under my bra, let him tug at my left nipple. I wait for his lips on the back of my neck but all I get is his hot breath. My nipple starts to hurt, so I move his hand down to my stomach. He is still. I wait and wait and wonder if he has dozed off. I shift my hips, willing his hand to move with me and it does, sliding down beneath the waistband of my jeans. He stops there and I bite down on nothing. It occurs to me that this must be what desire feels like. That this might actually be desire. I lie still, wanting my want to make itself known.

  ‘Tree?’ he whispers. ‘Tree?’

  I don’t move or speak and neither does he. I think of all the things I could do: say his name, unbutton my fly, ask him to kiss me. I could roll away, see if he’ll chase me across the narrow bed. I could flip over, straddle him, grind myself against him until he begs me to fuck him. I could push his hand down down and squeeze my thighs tight and get myself off on his sandwiched wrist-bone.

  I am expert at hunger, at letting it build and build until nothing can be as satisfying as the longing itself, but Thanh is clearly not. He sighs like a labourer whose lunch break is over and rolls me on to my back.

  ‘Okay?’ he asks, unbuttoning my jeans with one hand and holding his cock with the other.

  ‘Yes. Okay.’

  After, we stand at the window and he drinks a bottle of warm beer he has snatched from the kitchen downstairs. It is almost dawn and the traffic is starting to swell. The bikes move together like a pack of zebras across a plain, splitting to one side when the roaring beast of an SUV approaches.

  I wait for the call of the angry ghost but it never comes.

  * * *

  Thanh borrows a bike from his cousin and we whip through the city for an hour or more, circling lakes and statues and careening down claustrophobically narrow alleys while I dig my fingers into the soft flesh of his waist. Every few minutes he shouts a fact about himself over his shoulder. His parents live in a village three hours away. He is studying English and computer science here in Hanoi, which is why he lives with his grandma. He had a girlfriend who he was going to marry but she won a scholarship to study in Germany and so he is single now. He is twenty-two and plans to be living in America before he is twenty-five.

  He stops at a park that is larger, greener and emptier than I thought possible here. Thanh tells me that in the early morning and evening it is filled with exercisers and children, but during the day there is no one.

  My legs are shaky as I walk across the grass in his shadow. It feels strange to be out in the open like this, walking without having to step up or down or around.

  ‘Lenin,’ Thanh says, pointing at the statue up ahead.

  ‘Oh. What did he do again?’

  ‘Something something revolution something.’

  He leads me to the cluster of trees behind the statue and drops to the ground. He lies on his back with his arms over his face. I sit beside him and take some photos of the patterns the sun coming through the treetops makes on his arms.

  ‘Enough,’ he says and takes the phone from me. He tugs on my arm. ‘You should relax, lie down. Nobody around here.’

  I remain upright and ask him to tell me about Vietnam.

  He sighs. ‘Okay, sure. Like, history, cultural activities, what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Um, where’s Cambodia?’

  He laughs. ‘You want me to tell about Vietnam or Cambodia?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it close?’

  ‘Sure, sure. Like this is Vietnam.’ He sits up and rakes his fingers through the grass, but the lines disappear right away. He continues as if the shape remains. ‘Up here is us, Hanoi, right? And down there is Saigon. And over here, this is Cambodia border.’

  ‘I think that’s where my dad is.’

  ‘Ah, he find girlfriend?’

  ‘No! He’s married. He was a soldier, you know and—’

  ‘Ah, yes. Many war tourists in Vietnam.’

  ‘He’s not a war tourist. It’s like, a healing thing. It messed him up, the war here. His whole life has been terrible because of what happened.’

  Thanh traces the invisible map over and over. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. But, it was bad. Wasn’t it? I mean, you must know something about it. About the war and all that.’

  He shrugs, looks up at Lenin, down at the grass. ‘It’s not important. Very long ago, Tree. Only Americans, Australians think about this war. So many other things happened in all these years. Like, forty years, right? So many things happen.’

  I know nothing. Really nothing. I don’t even know what questions to ask and so I say nothing.

  His fingers pull at the grass. ‘My cousin study in America and he tells me this story from one of his college class, right? So there was this special, ah, I don’t know the right word, like, ah, a project or something. A special plan. Some American army planners they make this recording, like a CD but not, you know, because it was old times. But they make this recording from horror movies, right, like—’ He rears up over me, his hands dragging down my face—‘ooooh and aargh. Like horror noises and also they make Vietnamese man record things like “Oh, I am a dead soldier, I will wander forever because my body is blown to the corners of the earth and I cannot rest.” But in Vietnamese, right? So other soldiers understand this. And then they play this recording over the jungle with all the soldiers, living soldiers and dead soldiers all in the jungle and this recording makes them feel the ghosts are all around. Makes them so frightened.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘Yes, but listen: this is so funny, because American students in his class, they get upset and some are even crying! Yes, really crying in the class and one of the girls she tells the next day, “oh, I had such bad dreams from this story. Bad dreams of all the ghosts in the jungle.” And the other students say “oh, poor girl, you.”’ Thanh laughs and looks back up at Lenin. ‘My cousin say American students are crazy, but I want to go anyway. I don’t care about some crazy students. Best education there, yes?’

  ‘I don’t
know. I suppose. What would you study?’

  ‘Anything. Anything in America is better.’ He brushes his fingers over my knee. ‘Hey, Tree, what you think? My English is good, right?’

  ‘Yes. Better than most people here.’

  He grins, proud like a child. ‘Yes, because I always practice. I say to my grandma she should only have English-speaking tourists because then I can practice all the time. She likes the Europe tourists, but I can’t practice with them. When I hear finally Australian is coming I was so happy I could practice and then she tells me it Australian girl and I am double happy about this, because Australian girls are very friendly, yes?’

  ‘I’m not friendly. I ran away from you when you followed me.’

  ‘But then you phoned me. You came back to my house.’

  ‘Because I had to.’

  ‘Ah. And today why you come with me?’

  I lie down. The grass beneath me is cold, but the sun is warm. I have spoken more in the last half-hour than I have for weeks and I am suddenly, instantly tapped out.

  Thanh pokes at me a few times, says, ‘Why, hey?’ but I don’t respond. I hear him walking away and then coming back. He nudges me with his pointy black shoe and I roll onto my side. ‘Ah, you’re no fun,’ he says and goes away again.

  I doze off, waking to his hand inside my underwear.

  ‘Stop it. Someone will see,’ I say and he stops, sighs.

  ‘I think we go back now.’ He stands, wiping his hand on the front of his jeans.

  I follow him to his bike and although I nuzzle the nape of his neck he remains stiff-backed on the ride back and barely looks at me when he drops me at the guesthouse.

  * * *

  Walking has become more difficult as Tet approaches. Tet, Mrs Nguyen explains, is the most important holiday of the year. Everybody must get their house in order, pay off their debts and mend any broken relationships before the new year breaks. Also, you must make proper tribute to various gods and to your ancestors. This is why the streets have become minefields. Every few metres I must step on to the road to avoid treading on a shrine or a smoking pyre. Burnt scraps of paper hang suspended in the thick, wet air. I suck in ash with every breath.