Old Man

by David A. Poulsen

  The old man looked at the building some more, then reached out and touched the brick wall, left his hand just resting against the wall for a couple of minutes. Then he backed up toward the taxi, but he kept his eyes on the building.

  He turned, climbed in the car and said, “Let’s go.” Then turned to look out the window again. He didn’t look at me or say anything to me.

  We drove for a while longer. I noticed something else. Another sound. Loudspeakers. Not everywhere and not all the time, but every once in a while you’d hear these loudspeakers. Sometimes it was music; other times it was people talking, in Vietnamese, of course, so I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Mostly it was men talking, but sometimes it was a woman. When it was a woman’s voice, I got the feeling maybe it was like a commercial for something. The men’s voices, I couldn’t tell. It seemed harsher though, like the preachers on those TV shows where they tell you to smarten up your life and send money.

  One thing was for sure. Ho Chi Minh City had like a major night life — clubs, lots of them. I could hear some of the music as we went by. Some oriental, some American. Even some oldies rock and roll. As we went past one place I could hear and see the band, all Asian guys pounding out a version of “At the Hop.” My mom loves that oldies stuff, so I know a lot of the songs from hearing them at home. These guys weren’t bad. People were dancing, and they were pretty good too.

  Next was a karaoke place. I could see through the windows, some people dancing, some just watching. Two girls trying to sing “Roxanne,” the Police song. They sucked.

  We drove a little farther, going pretty slow because of the traffic. That’s when it occurred to me — it was Saturday night here. See, I told you I’d lost a day of my life. I was thinking Friday.

  Something else I didn’t expect — that Vietnam would be all about partying on a Saturday night. Then the old man said, “This is good right here.”

  I looked around. Terrific. No hotel in sight. So we were going to haul our stuff around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City in the middle of the night for a while. This was getting to be more fun all the time.

  The old man paid the driver, and a minute later we were standing in the middle of a brightly lit street. Big-time crowded.

  “Now what?” I started to organize my stuff into walking mode. “You forget that we had a hotel, or did you lie to me about that? We just going to wander the streets until morning.”

  “The Rex isn’t far from here. We need to eat first.”

  “A lot of guys might have dropped their bags off first then walked back to this charming little spot for dinner.” I waved my arm around to indicate the charm.

  “Yeah, we could’ve done it that way, but we didn’t, so now we eat, then we’ll head for the Rex. And, by the way, you complain way too much.”

  He pointed to what looked like an outdoor lunch counter. People were sitting at seats that faced into the part where the cooks were making stuff. There were some benches a few feet back from where the people were eating. Every time somebody finished eating and stood up to leave, someone from the benches would race in there like this was the most exclusive restaurant in Asia and you were lucky to get in. It looked pretty dumpy to me. Especially compared to a lot of the places I’d seen as we were driving around. No band in this place and no karaoke.

  I kept my mouth shut. I’d hate to be labelled a complainer. Especially when we were having all this fun.

  We took over one of the benches, got our stuff gathered close around us, and watched the backs of the people who were eating. I tried to get a read on who’d finish next from the way they were sitting and making little eating movements. Couldn’t really tell.

  It started to rain. Perfect. Not hard, but even soft rain’s still wet. The people at the counter who were eating were under a sort of canvas canopy. Out of the rain. The people at the benches — as in us — weren’t.

  I looked over at the old man. He seemed to be, I guess you’d say, intense. Alive. Interested. Not at all bothered by the rain. He turned to me and said, “It rains a fair bit in Vietnam, so get used to it.” Heading me off before I could complain.

  Sure, nothing to it. I’d get used to the rain just like I’d get used to hauling luggage around the streets of the city on foot in the middle of the night and sitting on a bench getting wet and cold waiting for a turn to eat at a place that looked like the ol’ health inspectors just might have missed it. Hell, anybody would get used to that, right?

  We sat there for about fifteen minutes. Some people left. Others took their places at the counter. Finally, it looked like it was getting to be our turn. A couple of people finished eating in front of us, and I got ready to make my move. The old man put his hand on my arm. He nodded at a really old lady and a kid maybe my age. They were at the next bench to us, and I was pretty sure they’d got there after us.

  They stepped forward and took the two spots at the counter. Didn’t even look at the old man to thank him or anything.

  “That was stupid,” I said. “That old lady already has like a million wrinkles. The rain isn’t going to do anything to her.”

  The old man smiled. “We’re next.”

  Our turn finally came, and we took a couple of seats at the counter. I wasn’t all that comfortable, mostly because I had jammed everything I owned in where my feet were meant to go. I was sure we were surrounded by bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff. We were sitting with our backs to the street, which I didn’t like either because I figured that made things even easier for bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff.

  The old man didn’t seem all that worried about it. He was concentrating on ordering. There was no menu, just signs on the wall and hanging from the ceiling above where the cooking was going on. The signs were in Vietnamese, which meant I couldn’t figure out squat that was on them. The Vietnamese alphabet is like ours, as opposed to the symbols that are the Chinese and Japanese alphabets, but that only helps to a point. French uses the same alphabet as us too, but if you’re not French, you still can’t read it.

  There were a couple of pictures of food, but I didn’t recognize any of it. The old man studied the signs.

  “What do you suggest?” I asked him

  He didn’t answer, and it was pretty loud in there, so I tried again, louder this time. “What’s any good?”

  “Noodles.”

  “What if I don’t like noodles?”

  “Then you shouldn’t have got off the plane.”

  “There’s a lot of stuff written up there. It can’t all be noodles.”

  “I’ll order for you.”

  “Are you going to tell me what it is, or will it be a surprise?”

  The guy who seemed to be taking orders came along just then, so I didn’t get an answer. The old man did some pointing, held up four fingers and threw out a few words in Vietnamese. The order guy said some stuff back. It sounded like he was giving the old man hell for something. Then he looked at me, not real friendly, and walked away, shouting in the direction of the people who were cooking.

  “So what am I having?”

  “Noodles and fish.”

  “Is the fish cooked?”

  The old man shrugged.

  “Will it be dead at least?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You speak very much Vietnamese?”

  “Some. I used to be pretty good. But I’ve forgotten a lot.”

  That was it for conversation. The old man didn’t seem to feel like talking, and I was too tired to try.

  I’ll say one thing — the place got the food out really fast. It was maybe a minute or so before I was staring down at a plate full of noodles and some things sitting on top of the noodles that I assumed — and hoped — were chunks of fish. It was all steaming and, actually, didn’t look or smell, that bad. I took the chopsticks and moved some of the noodles ar
ound, checking for anything that crawled. I didn’t see anything.

  For a few minutes the old man and I just ate, no talking. The thing is I’m okay with chopsticks, but I kind of have to work at it. So I was concentrating pretty hard.

  “Not bad,” I shouted after I’d worked my way through some of the noodles and one piece of the fish. “What kind of fish is it?”

  The old man didn’t answer. He pointed at one of the pictures, which was exactly zero help. I got the feeling that whenever he thought I might not like the answer to one of my questions, he just didn’t bother to respond.

  He chewed for a while, then looked at me. “You play any baseball?”

  “What?” It wasn’t the conversation I expected to be having in that place at that exact time.

  “Baseball. You play any?”

  “Little League.”

  “You any good?”

  “Not bad, I guess. I played shortstop and once in a while catcher. Our team made it to the city finals one year. But we lost. I made an error in the last inning. Probably cost us the game.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “I thought we had a rule about saying shit.”

  “We have a rule about you saying shit.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  The old man swallowed some more noodles and nodded. “You’re right. No more shit. Eat.”

  We ate. But before I could finish, I was falling asleep. Sitting there surrounded by noise and chaos, I was afraid I’d slump forward head first into the noodles. The old man said something about Vietnam being a big-time baseball country. I was too tired to answer. Or care. He stood up, paid the guy who’d taken our order, and stepped back from the counter. I barely got my gear pulled out from under the counter before two businessmen-looking guys (what kind of business happens at midnight on a Saturday night?) piled into the seats we had just vacated.

  We stepped out into the street. “Want me to carry something?”

  I shook my head. “I’m good.”

  He headed off in what I hoped was the direction of the Rex Hotel. We were maybe ten minutes getting there, and there was constant noise and movement and light going on around us the whole time. But I don’t remember much more than that because I was in a total zombie state for most of the walk.

  2

  Which is probably why I don’t remember much of that first look at the Rex Hotel either.

  I woke up the next morning a little confused. The light was streaming in on top of me from a large window next to my bed. I didn’t have a shirt on, but I was still wearing the jeans and socks I’d had on the day before. I couldn’t remember getting undressed for bed. I guess that’s because I didn’t, not really.

  I sat up and looked around. I was alone in the room. No sign of the old man. There was a clock on a shelf that jutted from the wall near the window. Ten sixteen. I was like whoa, I never sleep that long.

  I got up and went into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. When I came out, the old man still hadn’t come back from wherever he’d gone. I got dressed, unpacked my clothes, and turned on the TV. I was still trying to find a channel that was in English when the old man came through the door.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty’s finally up and moving.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “I don’t usually sleep in like that.”

  “Don’t sweat it. Jet lag. Let’s go get some breakfast.”

  “Is it going to be sort of … normal food?” The idea of noodles first thing in the morning was enough to make me give up eating for as long as we were in Vietnam.

  “Bacon and eggs normal enough for you?”

  I did the fist pump. “Oh, yeah.”

  We ate in the rooftop restaurant. It was outdoors with a pretty cool view of the centre part of the city. That surprised me too, the city itself. Seeing them in daylight, the buildings weren’t what I expected. I mean, inside me, I knew it wasn’t really going to be all huts and grass shacks. But still I hadn’t expected this.

  For starters, everything was bigger than I thought it would be. And the architecture was a lot different from what I expected. Some Asian looking buildings, pagodas and stuff, some fancy what looked like European architecture and some really modern looking places like you’d see in Los Angeles. That is if you ever got out of the airport and actually saw Los Angeles.

  It was hot already, but there were some clouds around that looked like there might be some rain.

  The waiter spoke English, and the old man ordered three orders of bacon and eggs, “one for you, one for me, and one for backup” was how he put it. This time I totally agreed with his food order.

  I ate and the old man ate, but his eating wasn’t like mine. It was like he was sitting on something itchy. He kept moving around, looking around, and sometimes he’d just stare at something like he was trying to memorize it. Or remember it. A couple of times he shook his head. So maybe he wasn’t trying to remember. Maybe he was wanting to forget.

  “So I figured it out,” I said as I dabbed toast in runny egg yolk.

  “What did you figure out?”

  “Why we’re here.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “You fought here in that war, the Vietnam War. The one the U.S. lost. You and Tal probably fought together. And now you’ve come back here to see what’s happened to the country since you left. Am I right? Is that it?”

  “Something like that.” He was still looking around while we were talking, but then he looked at me. “This hotel and especially this restaurant were a big deal with American soldiers, especially officers. I came here a few times. It was a good place to forget … forget what was happening when you weren’t in places like this.”

  “Were you an officer?”

  “No,” he sipped coffee. “But sometimes the grunts … the regular soldiers, came here. Not often. A few times.”

  “Nice place.”

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t say any more. We concentrated on eating again, and he seemed less jumpy, less intense for a while. We shared the backup order of bacon and eggs. Ate everything. Sat back afterwards like stuffed hogs.

  3

  I have to admit it was a pretty good day. It was like the old man suddenly realized he had a kid with him, and it might be nice to do some stuff that a kid might like.

  First, we went to the City Zoo, but we didn’t stay long. It pretty much sucked. I’d been to zoos back home, and they were all better than this one, even the smaller ones. The City Zoo in Saigon didn’t have many animals, and the ones that were there didn’t look like they got fed all that regularly.

  I could see the old man was feeling bad that the zoo wasn’t great, so I said something about the gardens and the flowers being real impressive, but I don’t think he bought it.

  Next we hit the Reunification Palace. When I hear palace, I think old. Like Buckingham Palace. This palace wasn’t actually all that old, 1960s. As we wandered through the halls and the grounds outside, I read some of the plaques that explained stuff. It was designed by a Vietnamese architect who got his training in France. Before the war and during the war, the place was known as the Presidential Palace, but when the North Vietnamese overran the country in 1975, their tanks smashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. And pretty soon the place got renamed — the Palace of Reunification.

  I noticed that references to the war didn’t exactly heap a lot of praise on the Americans. Lots of stuff about how they used cluster bombs to slaughter women and children and committed every atrocity you can imagine. The old man didn’t spend a lot of time looking at that stuff.

  More of the same when we crossed the street and went into the War Remnants Museum. Not a happy place. And if you’d fought on the side the old man had, it had to be tough going through there. It wasn’t all bad. There was a cannon that had a range of twenty miles, a tank, and a helicopter — all in the grounds around the museum. It was American equipment that got left behind when they pulled out. I think the old man wanted me t
o learn something about the war, but this wasn’t what he wanted me to learn. Inside the museum there were endless pictures of all the bad stuff the Americans did to people and to the countryside during those years. That was another short visit.

  Next stop was Dam Sen Park, sort of Disneyland-Vietnam. The best thing was the elephant ride. Real elephants. The old man and me, we both went for a ride. It was cool, I have to admit. I asked the guy running the elephant place if mine had a name. He just shrugged like he didn’t understand me. I named mine Elly. I told the old man, and he named his Fant. Buddy movie stuff.

  I was getting hungry, so we went to the downtown area called Cholon, Saigon’s Chinatown. The old man told me Cholon means “big market.” To me it was big chaos. Plenty of shouting, people in a major hurry, lots of Asian architecture, pagodas, and statues of dragons, and these lion-dogs that sent jets of water into goldfish ponds.

  “This is where we came for excitement when we had time off. Opium dens, sex, gambling — it was all here. Looks like they’ve cleaned it up some since then.” The old man had to shout that whole speech so I could hear him over the human noise.

  “So which ones did you do?” I yelled back.

  “All of ’em. The opium less often than the other stuff.”

  We found a place that looked like it had pretty good food. We were right … the most amazing won ton soup ever. Not that I’ve had it a lot — Mom and I don’t dine out a bunch — but I’ve had won ton soup a few times and this stuff was awesome.

  We didn’t talk — or yell — much during lunch, and it wasn’t until we were out of the busiest part of Cholon that we tried conversation again.

  “There’s something I want you to see,” the old man said. “It’ll take us a little while to get there.”

  We walked for a while, then got on this bus and sat about halfway back. I wanted to ask the old man where we were going, but by then I knew better. He’d tell me if he felt like it. We drove through the city, and this time it was my turn to stare out the window. I can’t say I was liking Saigon, but it was definitely interesting. Okay, maybe I was liking it a little.