Catfish and Mandala (39 page)
Read Catfish and Mandala Online
Authors: Andrew X. Pham
“But don't you see the reactions on their faces when they see our squalor? Don't you hear the things they say about us? Don't tell me you've never heard it.”
He looks uncomfortable, drawing deep from his nicotine stick, sighing the smoke to the stars. Then to his credit and my everlasting respect for him, he says quietly, facing the sky,
“I do. I can't help it but I do. I take them out on the Saigon streets, you know, the poor parts because they ask me. They want pictures. I see them flinch at the beggars, the poverty of Vietnamese. The chicken-shacks we live in.”
“I do. I can't help it but I do. I take them out on the Saigon streets, you know, the poor parts because they ask me. They want pictures. I see them flinch at the beggars, the poverty of Vietnamese. The chicken-shacks we live in.”
A wordless lull falls between us. We're both drunk. I am irritated at having to delve into a subject I avoid, and feeling mean-spirited I have goaded him onto equally disconcerting ground.
“It's very hard being a tour guide. Sometimes I feel like a pimp.”
He switches into his tour-guide English: “Here, look at this, sir. Yes, ma'am, these are the average Vietnamese. Yes, they are poor. Yes, sir. Here is our national monument. Very big. Very important to Vietnamese. You impressed? No, not so big?” He shrugs, saying,
“I know they've got bigger monuments in their countries. Older, more important. What do our little things mean to them?”
He switches into his tour-guide English: “Here, look at this, sir. Yes, ma'am, these are the average Vietnamese. Yes, they are poor. Yes, sir. Here is our national monument. Very big. Very important to Vietnamese. You impressed? No, not so big?” He shrugs, saying,
“I know they've got bigger monuments in their countries. Older, more important. What do our little things mean to them?”
The silence tells me we are moving too far into no-man's-land. One more cigarette. More beer. Tusking the smoke out of his nostrils, he seems to brace himself, gathering force like a wave, building before cresting white. As his beliefs come barreling out, I know the crushing impact of his words will stay with me, for in them I catch a
glimpse of myself and of the true Cuong, the Cuong that came before and is deeper than the suave Calvin facing me.
“Vietnamese aren't ashamed of our own poverty. We're not ashamed of squatting in mud huts and sleeping on rags. There is no shame in being poor. We were born into it just as Westerners are born white. The Westerners are white as we are yellow. There is already a difference between us. Our poverty is minor in the chasm that already exists. A small detail. The real damning thing is the fact that there are Viet-kieu, our own brothers, skin of our skin, blood of our blood, who look better than us, more civilized, more educated, more wealthy, more genteel. Viet-kieu look kingly next to the average Vietnamese. Look at you, look at me. You're wearing old jeans and I'm wearing a suit, but it's obvious who ⦠who is superior. Can't you see? We look like monkeys because you make us look like monkeys just by your existence.”
glimpse of myself and of the true Cuong, the Cuong that came before and is deeper than the suave Calvin facing me.
“Vietnamese aren't ashamed of our own poverty. We're not ashamed of squatting in mud huts and sleeping on rags. There is no shame in being poor. We were born into it just as Westerners are born white. The Westerners are white as we are yellow. There is already a difference between us. Our poverty is minor in the chasm that already exists. A small detail. The real damning thing is the fact that there are Viet-kieu, our own brothers, skin of our skin, blood of our blood, who look better than us, more civilized, more educated, more wealthy, more genteel. Viet-kieu look kingly next to the average Vietnamese. Look at you, look at me. You're wearing old jeans and I'm wearing a suit, but it's obvious who ⦠who is superior. Can't you see? We look like monkeys because you make us look like monkeys just by your existence.”
“Is this truly how Vietnamese see us Viet-kieu?”
“Some call you the lost brothers. Look at you. Living in America has lightened your skin, made you forget your language. You have tasted Western women and you're probably not as attracted to Vietnamese women anymore. You eat nutritious Western food and you are bigger and stronger than us. You know better than to smoke and drink like Vietnamese. You know exercise is good so you don't waste your time sitting in cafés and smoking your hardearned money away. Someday, your blood will mix so well with Western blood that there will be no difference between you and them. You are already lost to us.”
I listen with dismay as his observations fall on me like a sentence, but I can tell in the back of his mind he is saying: And I want to be more like you because that's where the future is. He must suspect I am doubting what he has told me the first time our paths crossed:
“Vietnamese are Vietnamese if they believe they are.”
“Vietnamese are Vietnamese if they believe they are.”
Calvin and I bid each other good night, each going his own way He has to resolve a fracas of intoxicated Australians in his charge back at the hotel. In our drunkenness, our conversation crossed forbidden boundaries and we are both depressed. Maybe it is just the beer wearing off. I pedal down to the beach for some sea air. As I coast along the ocean boulevard, a gorgeous girl, unusually tall for a Vietnamese,
dressed in the traditional
ao dai
like a college student, tails me on her expensive motorbike, a Honda Dream, the Vietnamese Cadillac. Hello, she says in English. Hello, I smile. She thinks I'm Japanese or Korean. How are you, she asks me. Good, I sayâalways glad to talk to students eager to practice their English. And you, I say to keep the conversation going, how are you? You are very pretty, she tells me. No, I chuckle, standing now with her on the dark sidewalk, you are pretty. Very pretty. Pretty enough, I fancy silently to myself, for me to fall madly in love with. My heart dances ahead of me with improbable possibilities. Wild schemes streak through my head ratting out ways for me to stay in Nha Trang longer to make her acquaintance. Maybe get a job here. There are so many foreign companies, it should be easy. And on and on. Hopeful. I am smiling.
dressed in the traditional
ao dai
like a college student, tails me on her expensive motorbike, a Honda Dream, the Vietnamese Cadillac. Hello, she says in English. Hello, I smile. She thinks I'm Japanese or Korean. How are you, she asks me. Good, I sayâalways glad to talk to students eager to practice their English. And you, I say to keep the conversation going, how are you? You are very pretty, she tells me. No, I chuckle, standing now with her on the dark sidewalk, you are pretty. Very pretty. Pretty enough, I fancy silently to myself, for me to fall madly in love with. My heart dances ahead of me with improbable possibilities. Wild schemes streak through my head ratting out ways for me to stay in Nha Trang longer to make her acquaintance. Maybe get a job here. There are so many foreign companies, it should be easy. And on and on. Hopeful. I am smiling.
Then she says, “You go with me?”
“Yes, sure. Where? Anywhere! Let's go!”
“You go with me very cheap. You go. Me very cheap, very good. You go with me very cheap. Very, very cheap. I make you happy.”
My smile feels waxy. I turn away, looking at the surf rolling on the white sand, the moon pearling us all. She parrots it over and over.
No, yes, maybe, later, I must meet a friend now, see you soon, bye, I blurt for the sake of blurting and I ride away from the tourist boardwalk with my money, my opportunities, my privileges, my life. I look back once and see her glossy cherry lips mouthing those words to me, a red wound in the neon night of Nha Trang.
Chi â Me
It was dark.
Christmas lights winked merry in the neighborhood.
But we felt no cheer.
It was only Chi-Minh and me, our final moment. We were ambling down broken sidewalks in the cold.
I said something. Hard times, he said, hard times. Dead leaves crunched beneath our feet. Wood smoke trapped the night but there was no fireplace warmth in the air. You all right? I asked, trying to catch his eyes in the gloom.
Slow, heavy steps. Sighs. Silence. Our hands deep in our empty pockets. Big dark trees blotting out the stars.
Minh, you remember the star fruits we used to eat on the roof? âYeah.âMe, too. I thought I caught him smiling. But it was
dark.âStar fruit and chili-salt, good wasn't it? he said.âYes, pretty good. You know, they're importing star fruits: you can buy them in any supermarket now.âBut, he shook his head, not as good as the star fruits from Grandma's tree.âNo, I admitted, never that good.
dark.âStar fruit and chili-salt, good wasn't it? he said.âYes, pretty good. You know, they're importing star fruits: you can buy them in any supermarket now.âBut, he shook his head, not as good as the star fruits from Grandma's tree.âNo, I admitted, never that good.
You, okay?âYeah.âYou sure?âHard times, just figuring things out.
We came to an intersection. The streetlamp had burnt out. Winter leaves piled the gutters like old letters from forgotten seasons. Headlights swept across us. Abruptly, we felt naked. We should have made the crossing, or we should have turned the corner. But we didn't. We stood there uncertain. I should have placed a hand on his shoulder.
Lonely, he said.
Your ex ⦠?
Just figuring things out.
Take care of yourself, okay?
Yeah.
We gotta hang out together more. Soon, okay?
Yeah, sure.
It was my season of unraveling. And his as well. I couldn't remember all, what it was he said. Nor what I said. Maybe he wished I'd said something. And I him. Perhaps we should have shared our troubled hearts. But in the endâmy long-staying memoryâI heard only the wavering catch in his voice.
It was my season of unraveling. And his as well. I couldn't remember all, what it was he said. Nor what I said. Maybe he wished I'd said something. And I him. Perhaps we should have shared our troubled hearts. But in the endâmy long-staying memoryâI heard only the wavering catch in his voice.
Some nights I lie in moonlit fields, thinking of him, star fruits, and dying angels.
Blue-Peace
The road goes on and on before me and there is nothing to do but to get on it and push the pedals round and round. The days march at me single file. I have grown accustomed to the pocked asphalt rolling beneath my worn tires. Dysentery has left me on a lasting high, a feeling of someone whose fever has just broken and is taking his first breath of fresh air. It seems I have gone through all the colors, through all the land I knew.
After Nha Trang, the land dries up. The sky hurts with a whispering blue. The air chafes, a marine tinge, rough on its hot grainy edge. Down by the strung-out coast, the sea lies open, three shades deeper than the bright above. The road is black and broad, curving round sandstone mountains and cutting straight through the flat beige stretches.
Suong rongâ
dragon bones, squatty Vietnamese cactiâcast the vast empty into a shallow prickly graveyard. They say dragons came here to die. The land scorched itself in sorrow over the great beasts' passing.
Suong rongâ
dragon bones, squatty Vietnamese cactiâcast the vast empty into a shallow prickly graveyard. They say dragons came here to die. The land scorched itself in sorrow over the great beasts' passing.
Somewhere near Ca Na, I duck into the thatched shade of a roadside café perched on stone pilings by the water. A waitress brings me an espressoâVietnamese chicory-roasted coffee, a gift, a legacy of the colonial French.
A tool of subjugation, a crutch in the Vietnamese
progress
, Calvin had fumed at me, hating the image of idle, jobless Vietnamese men lounging in white plastic chairs, espresso presses before them, the black drops oozing down painstakingly He had forsworn this rite of his countrymen, opting for the teas of the older ways. I sip the mud, preferring it without the sweetened condensed milk Vietnamese adore. It is good, bitter, but wholesome like this desert shore.
A tool of subjugation, a crutch in the Vietnamese
progress
, Calvin had fumed at me, hating the image of idle, jobless Vietnamese men lounging in white plastic chairs, espresso presses before them, the black drops oozing down painstakingly He had forsworn this rite of his countrymen, opting for the teas of the older ways. I sip the mud, preferring it without the sweetened condensed milk Vietnamese adore. It is good, bitter, but wholesome like this desert shore.
There is magic in this place: I could be anywhere. The turquoise idyll, the tittering waves. On the mustard sand, coils of bleached rope lace broken seashells and bamboo crab cages. A skinny sand-colored dog woofs, warning the boys against sticking their heads in the traps. Way out, a one-man fishing boat sputters, zippering white on blue.
For some unexplainable reason, I leave my bike and belongings at the café without concern and run down to the beach, my backpack heavy with beer, candies, and cupcakes I bought from bus-stop vendors. I stroll along the chewed-up coast, boulder-hopping from one beach to the next for the sheer joy of it. Chi and I had done this long ago during one of our family vacations. We scrabbled along the rocky shore and climbed up a cliff where we looked down on the hulking wreck of a mighty freighter jutting out of the jade water. The waves frothed white around it, and, in the westering sun, the rusted hull had this bright coppery color that looked like cheap orange soda held against light. Chi said it was the most beautiful color she had ever seen.
The crab-cage kids find me napping in the sun. I hand out candies and cakes. One of the boys grabs two cupcakes and runs off chattering. Soon he comes back, a watermelon balanced on his shoulder. A girl uses a sharp stone to open the melon. We eat it in gobs, scooping out the red foam with our fingers, sticky juice running down our necks. I hold a watermelon-seed-spitting contest, awarding prizes to all contenders.
They spit the black seeds, they shoot them in sprays of saliva. They swallow their ammo, giggling and reminding me of the first time I won a watermelon-seed-spitting contest. Decades ago at a Christian summer camp, I flew a seed a magical thirty-two feet, five inches to claim a gold medalâmy bursting joy made from the cap of a babyfood jar. After two years in the States, I had learned that I could earn
forbearance, if not acceptance, from my peers if I made myself unobtrusive. Mediocre grades, adequate athletics. A moderate disappointment to the teachers. So it was special for meâthe only nonwhite kid at a camp of three hundredâto receive their applause. I remember thinking then that maybe this America wasn't so bad after all. And that the last time I had seen a crowd of Asian faces I was in Vietnam.
forbearance, if not acceptance, from my peers if I made myself unobtrusive. Mediocre grades, adequate athletics. A moderate disappointment to the teachers. So it was special for meâthe only nonwhite kid at a camp of three hundredâto receive their applause. I remember thinking then that maybe this America wasn't so bad after all. And that the last time I had seen a crowd of Asian faces I was in Vietnam.
But now, I miss the white, the black, the red, the brown faces of America. I miss their varied shapes, their tumultuous diversity, their idealistic search for racial equality, their bumbling but wonderful pioneering spirit. I miss English words in my ears, miss the way the language rolled off my tongue so naturally. I miss its poetry. Somewhere along the way, my search for roots has become my search for homeâa place I know best even though there are those who would have me believe otherwise.
Phan Thiet, the town of my birth, the end of my journey, lies only a few hours' ride away, but the marching drums that have driven me onward for a year now have abruptly quieted. An unexpected lull. The finish line seems unimportant, secondary, symbolic. So when the sun is setting behind the desert, I do as I didâit seems nowâso long ago: I lay out my bedroll on the sand and wait for the stars to wake. First time in Vietnam no one invades my camp. I am alone.
A year ago, in the days immediately before I met Tyle, I had found myself camping on a deserted beach in Baja. One morning, I woke on that sandy rim of the Pacific with a sea tanginess upon my lips and the chill of the northerly in my bones. I opened my eyes and it struck me a silent-thunderous blow: the solidity of the sand, the futile passion of the surf, the pensive vastness of the sea, the swollen anger of the sky, all a chaos of gray.
A powerful melancholy clamped over me and cheated away my warmth. I curled in my blanket, staring at the fisting sky. In a fleeting moment, a rhythm paced through, the reason for all the reasons I had been searching. Like turning to catch a movement seen out of the corner of my eye, I reached for that sublime. But it was gone, fleeing through my fingers like shiny flecks of sand in a receding tide. I stood on the shore secure, comforted by an unwordable glimpse that was already fading into a hunch.
This feeling is with me now. Three nights and days, I sleep and play by the ocean. During the day, I look out on the water and let the memories roll over me. I swim in the ocean of morning gray and wade in the surf of evening gold. The blue here is so vast, no war could ever measurably sap it, not even the one in me. My faults, all my shortcomings, my wrongs against Chi-Minh, pale away, disintegrating, in this desert-ocean-peace. I remember the joy of our being near each other. I know my love for her now, refelt my love for her then and all the love I felt for her in the between years. It isn't forgiveness I seek. All my sins, my sorrows but a drop of ink in this blue vastness.
And my standing here and all the roads opening before me are not my tribute to Chi but her gifts to me.
I know now Crazy Ronnie was right. Hugging herself in the premature August chill, she stood at the foot of the stairwell of her urban hovel, bidding me farewell: “The perfection of intention. In the end, it is all that matters.” Just then the sun burned through the trees and baked the stucco facade of the apartment, and she was engulfed in this lustrous glow that I knew would be how I shall always remember her. And although I did not understand it then, I knew that what she said chimed with significance.
I wade into a blue-green pool, the warm water lolls soft and clean against me. I swim, rejoicing in my aloneness. Someone cries from the beach. A-lo! A-lo! An old woman laughs at me. I grin. She shucks her rubber sandals, stumbles in fully clothed, fat arms jiggling above her head, waving greetings. A-lo! Okay! Okay! she yells, exuberant.
I laugh at the sight of her, a portly grandmother splashing like a child, her white peasant shirt billowing in the water. We stand on flat stones, chest deep across from each other, beaming. She says something in English, but I can't understand her, so I keep smiling and nodding. She laughs, I laugh with her. She tries a phrase in French. I shake my head. Never thinking I could understand her, she prattles in Vietnamese, It is beautiful, no? Very beautiful, very peaceful here, isn't it?
I smile.
I smile at her from my anonymity, refusing to answer in our common tongue. I don't want her to leave. I don't want to disappoint herwith
my commonality, to remind her of our shared history. So, I let her interpret my half-truths. At this I am good, for I am a mover of betweens. I slip among classifications like water in cupped palms, leaving bits of myself behind. I am quick and deft, for there is no greater fear than the fear of being caught wanting to belong. I am a chameleon. And the best chameleon has no center, no truer sense of self than what he is in the instant.
my commonality, to remind her of our shared history. So, I let her interpret my half-truths. At this I am good, for I am a mover of betweens. I slip among classifications like water in cupped palms, leaving bits of myself behind. I am quick and deft, for there is no greater fear than the fear of being caught wanting to belong. I am a chameleon. And the best chameleon has no center, no truer sense of self than what he is in the instant.
No guilt. I realize suddenly, looking into her joy-gushing face. We stand on separate islands, nothing between us except our designs. And the perfection of our intention is enough. We: friends sharing a sea bath. Our skein of history casts no shade on this moment. I wish at once Tyle were here in my shoes under this sky. Maybe he would understand that his past wrongs can be mended with the totality of his regrets, a pure desire that things might have been different, a wish of wellness for the survivors. Forgiveness is a hollow gift when there is no mountain to move as compensation for the wrongs. For our truths change with time. There is nothing else. No mitigating circumstances and no power to undo the sins. No was. Only is. Between us, there is but a thin line of intention.
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