The Time in Between (24 page)

Vu looked at his hands as if to verify their size and shape. “You don’t want to know more,” he said.

“But I do.”

He said that he would tell his story but he would dwell only on simple facts. He put out his cigarette. As he spoke he stared out the window and his voice was soft and Ada could feel her hair move as he exhaled. He said, “I grew up in Hanoi. I was a boy and then I was a man. I became a man at eighteen, when I fought in the war. When I came back to Hanoi from the war in 1975, my father was very happy. He gave a party and invited many guests to our small apartment. Some of them I knew, some I did not. My father gave a speech. He rattled on about the glory of victory and the strength of the victors. At the end of his speech he spoke about how fortunate I was. He raised his glass in a toast and people called out. Much was made of my survival. My wife, Ly, was dancing with one of our neighbors, a police officer. Yes, Ada, I was married. I was very young. Too young. In any case, my wife, Ly, had been dancing with this man all night. At one point my father said to me, ‘What is that man doing, dancing all evening with Ly?’ I looked at my father and said that I was no dancer and it was a good thing that she had somebody. I had been drinking
cung,
and then I switched to whiskey and then someone handed me vodka.

“The following day my wife said that I was a different man than before the war. My father defended me. My wife said that I drank too much. In fact, I was drinking when they had this argument. We continued to live as a husband and wife and she stayed in our house—she made money and brought it home—however, sometimes at night I woke and the hollowness of the house and the unhappiness of my wife made it hard for me to breathe.

“There was a famous historian who lived across from our apartment. His name was Nguyen Khac Vien, and in the mornings before I went out I could see him typing by the window. He had many books on the wall and there was a woman who served him tea and sometimes she stood beside him and talked. She was younger and quite handsome. Children came and went out of his apartment. I was curious about him because he was many things I was not. He was respected, he was an intellectual, he was offering the world something new. He had weight and privilege that had been earned. One day he was not there and my wife said that he had TB and was quite ill. I looked for him, but his chair by the window was empty and I thought that even a man who had studied in Paris and could translate from various languages and who would be given a king’s burial, even that kind of man had to die. And then one day he was back, and feeling the time was favorable, I went over to knock on his door. His wife invited me in for tea, and I sat with the famous man. We drank tea and he spoke slowly. He had collected an enormous anthology of Vietnamese literature beginning before A.D. 1000, and as I opened the book and paged respectfully through it I had a brief but important idea: I saw my own life as inconsequential and small.”

Vu stopped talking. “I am boring you,” he said.

“No, not all.” Ada said that she wanted him to go on. She said that she loved the sound of his voice.

“And the story, the essence? That is nothing?” He smiled.

“Of course it is. I meant that your voice makes the story richer. Please.”

“As my father indicated earlier in his speech, I survived the war. Of course, we won the war, but even so I felt no joy. I suppose I should have spent time with the men from my brigade, the ones who survived, but I didn’t. The few I might have shared an hour with lived in the countryside, but I did not see them. I have not told anyone how I survived, because I myself do not know. My wife said that it had to do with when I was born, the year of the goat, but I knew that Khuc, who was in my brigade, and who had both legs blown off by a land mine and then bled to death, was born in the same year, and so I did not put much faith in my wife’s words.”

The train had halted at a siding. There were a few small shacks and there were children standing in the shade. Two dogs copulated near a bicycle. They ran in circles while a young boy beat them with a stick. Chickens bathed in the dust. Ada, holding Vu’s arm, did not say anything, but she was aware of the movement of his muscles beneath his thin shirt.

When the train finally jolted and began to move again, Vu said, “My mother sold bread. Early in the morning she would ride her bicycle down to the bakery and put bread in her basket and then ride through the street calling,
Ban mi, oy.
It was humiliating for a woman who was well educated to have to work like a peasant. But when she lost her job because of the war, she began to deliver bread.

“My father was the director of a linguistic institute. He came home one day and told me that if I wasn’t going to work I should write. When I asked him what I should write about, he said the war. I should write about the war.

“He seemed surprised at my rejection of that idea. He was sitting across from me, drinking tea. He said that I might like to work as a librarian at a teachers’ college. I said that I could not be a teacher or a librarian. He said that I wasted money on drink. He had never said this to me before. The pride he used to feel for me was gone. Now all I saw on his face was disgust.

“After that, I drank every day. I began to carry my notebook with me to the café, though I never wrote anything good or important. My father, when he saw me with my notebook, told his friends and neighbors that I was a poet. My wife mentioned this one night. She whispered that my father was very sad because his son was useless. And so now, to save face, he had begun to call me a poet. ‘Is it true?’ she asked.

“In order to please everyone, I enrolled in biology at the University of Hanoi. I told my father I would do my studies in a political school. This pleased him and he wanted to give another party. My mother convinced him that we should wait until I had graduated.

“At school I was restless and bored. I had a colleague who wanted to raise chickens by feeding them only jacinth. I thought this was absurd and so I fed poison to the chickens, killing them all. For this farce I was discharged from the school.

“My father called an old friend of his who was a professor of art at a college in Hue and asked if I could work there as a librarian. The friend said that this was not possible; he already had two employees in the library. However, perhaps I would like to be a student. My father presented this proposition to me. I was sitting at home, my writing notebook beside me. There was a blue pencil stuck between the pages. I was twenty-six years old. My wife was pregnant. I agreed.

“The fact was I knew something about drawing, but not much. And so I had much to learn. I moved to Hue by myself and went home once every three months. I still suffered from nightmares. On the nights I was home, my wife shook me awake and asked me who I was talking about. I had been calling out various names, and they were the names of my dead friends. I dreamed about ghosts and dead women. I did not tell my wife about my dreams.

“In the darkness, my wife at my side, I was aware of my father snoring beyond the thin wall, and the rasplike breathing of my grandmother. My wife took my hand and placed it on her belly. She did not speak, but I could tell that she was pleased.”

Vu lit a cigarette and closed his eyes. Finally, he said, “I am thirsty. Perhaps Chi will have something good to drink.” He sat up straight and put on his shoes. Ada shifted and watched as he tied his laces. She saw the back of his neck, the hollow between the ligaments.

He said, “The story was much too long.”

“It wasn’t long enough.”

“Yes?”

“What happened to your wife?”

Vu laughed. “She married the dancing police officer.” He moved his hands and arms in a poor imitation of a dance and said, “There was no baby.”

Ada waited for an explanation, but it was not forthcoming. Just that simple fact: no baby.

It was dark when they arrived in Hue. In the taxi, riding from the station to Chi’s house, Ada sensed that the driver was going in circles, and that the scenes passing by were ones she had seen not more than a minute earlier. She turned to look at Vu, who was completely calm.

The house was outside of town. It was large and dilapidated, with broken windows and doors falling in and warped wooden floors.

Chi was a big, overweight man. He was wearing silk pajamas and holding a cat in his lap. Chi asked Ada where she was from and how old she was. He turned to Vu and said that she was beautiful. Vu shrugged. There were paintings stacked against the far wall and Ada asked if she could look. Chi lifted a pudgy hand and said, “But of course.”

The style was very different from Vu’s. Most of the works were abstract with a lot of color, and she found that they did not appeal to her. Vu called out that Chi was famous. His paintings sold for over a thousand dollars each. Chi seemed pleased with this announcement. Ada smiled and pretended to study the work while Vu and Chi huddled closer together and poured glasses of vodka. She heard words that she thought she recognized—
why, yes, no,
and
happy
—and once she heard Vu say her name. He turned to her then and translated. “Chi lives alone. He said we can stay for the night. He said you are welcome to look around the house.”

She didn’t want to stay for the night. She wanted a hotel room with a private shower. But she nodded at Vu and said, “Okay.”

She went upstairs and found rooms that appeared not to have been used in a long time. There was dust everywhere, and in one bedroom two mattresses stood against a closet door. From the window there was a view onto a cement courtyard. There was a large tree and a swing hanging from a thick branch. At the edge of the courtyard sat an abandoned truck, quite large, with its bed raised and rusty. It was ancient and army green. Beside it a jeep with no wheels and in front of the jeep, two misshapen bicycles. She continued her tour of the house and searched for a room that might pass as a place to spend the night. There was one room with a mattress on the floor and a mosquito net folded over a wire that stretched between two walls. The mattress had no sheet, just a wool blanket. She stooped to touch the blanket and then the mattress, which felt damp.

Downstairs again, she went out the back door and into the courtyard. There was a pig in a pen, and a few chickens scratched at the dirt inside a wire enclosure. It had started raining and she was cold and hungry. She went inside and sat down beside Vu, who was gesturing with one hand and talking. She placed a palm on his leg and said, “I need food, I’m hungry.”

Vu said something to Chi and Ada heard the word
doi.
She nodded and smiled.

Chi drove them in his old Mercedes to a restaurant on the other side of town. Ada was sorry that she had not changed out of her short skirt. The air-conditioning was on and she wanted to say that she was cold but instead she bit the inside of her cheek and stared out at the wet streets.

At the restaurant she decided to drink. It would loosen her up, and perhaps Chi would like her better if she were more talkative. She drank a hazy-looking liqueur that Chi had recommended. It was harsh and bitter but she drank it bravely and Chi looked at her with admiration.

He said something to Vu. Vu shrugged.

“What did he say?” Ada asked. She knew it had been some reference to her. Perhaps about her body, or what she was wearing, or the fact that she had drunk the liqueur. She was feeling warmer and welcomed the possibility of something.

Vu said it wasn’t important. “He talks too much.”

“Tell me.”

“He said that I am too old for you.”

Ada, as if she had been waiting all day for this statement, said, “Only twenty years.”

“I am a drunk.”

“I can learn to drink.”

“I like to drink alone.”

“You can. I will be in the next room, and when you call, I will come.”

“You are a silly girl.”

“I’m happy.” Then she said
vui,
and then said it again except with the word
very
preceding it. She smiled. Saw that she could have what she wanted.

Chi was watching them. He was eating a brownish soup with squid and shellfish and using his fingers to pick the shells from his mouth. There was a candle on the table, and each time the rain and wind blew in through the open door, the flame flickered and almost went out. At one point Ada cupped her hand around the flame and felt the heat.

They drank and ate and talked in a mixture of Vietnamese and English. Sometimes, because he said he found it easier than English, Chi spoke French.

“Do you understand?” Vu asked.

Ada said, “A little.”

“He’s a show-off,” Vu said. “And a worse drunk than me.”

This was true. As midnight passed and the bottles were opened and emptied, Chi’s tongue sped up. He stood at one point and recited something in English, looking from Vu to Ada. “The Substituted Poem,” he said, and his eyes widened. His tongue clicked over consonants: “I hope my wife can keep down her rutting. Up north, I’ve had to put up with this sad dangler, down south, she’d better sit on her yawning clam. I hope it’s tight and tortuous still, like a gopher hole.” He paused. “And there is more,” he said. He closed his eyes. Sat down.

Vu apologized to Ada. “He is not a very good reader of poetry. Nor of women.”

SHE FELL ASLEEP BENEATH THE MOSQUITO NET IN THE ROOM with the window that looked out on the courtyard. Chi had given her a kerosene lamp and she felt, for a moment, that she was back on her father’s land, in the bunker, waiting for the bombs that would never come. She had brushed her teeth in the kitchen where the water ran weakly from a small spout. She had not asked for a sheet, assuming that there would not be one in any case. She laid two T-shirts on the mattress and covered herself with the wool blanket. Vu’s voice rose to her from the main floor. She fell asleep thinking about rats, willing Vu to come to her. When she woke it was quiet and very dark. She heard Vu breathing. He was lying on his back on the floor outside the mosquito net, still in his clothes; he had used his shoes for a pillow. She slipped her hand out of the netting and touched his head and the hair that fell to his shoulders. In the dark, she felt for the buttons on his shirt.