Fake House (19 page)

A person who’s been to hell loses his audience, naturally. Either that or he refuses to talk. In any case, we really don’t know who’s been inside the cave. All we can confirm is that it leads to the core of the earth, where all our dead live.

Most of our hellish stories are spun by inflamed and fiendish individuals whose only experience of the cave came in their sleep or as an act of the imagination.

I’ve often been tempted to go inside the cave to see the twenty-two men from our village who did not return from the war. We belong to a special club: the only ones to have seen the outside world; the only ones to experience blood, filth, and Hanoi together.

We are also the only ones to have been forced to learn someone else’s language.

Their vocabulary has corrupted me irrevocably. Before I learned the Vietnamese word
depressed
, for example, I was never, ever depressed. Likewise,
liver
. It was only after I learned this word that I found out I had a damaged liver.
Second helping, garage door, garbage time, megabytes, coupon
, and many other monstrous words have alienated me permanently from my fellow tribesmen.

A Vietnamese does not know what darkness is. With his 40-watt
bulbs, he has allowed day to encroach upon night. His children are born into a world where there’s no true night.

Once I made the mistake of telling a Vietnamese about the cave. He laughed noiselessly, slapped me on the back, and said, “If you can see the dead, then you must be dead yourself! You savages go down into a deep cave, where there’s no oxygen, and you sweat and sweat, and you get dizzy, and as you’re gasping for air, you collapse onto a few bones. These could be dog bones. Or maybe chicken bones. Or maybe the bones from a bat. But you yell out ‘Mother!’ in ecstasy, because you think these bones are your relatives! Which they are, no doubt, because only another savage would be stupid enough to crawl into a cave leading to the heart of a mountain, where there’s no oxygen!”

The hatred of our enemies defines us. If they were to love us completely, we would surely disappear.

The first man who went into the cave was chasing after a chewed animal. He ran after his prey for many days, pursuing the sounds of its hoofs echoing just ahead. They ran deeper and deeper into the mountain. Among the stalactite and stalagmite formations, which at times resembled birds, breasts, angels, and demons, the man also noticed what appeared to be crudely made furniture. The spongy ground was soaked with a suspicious fluid, and littered throughout with uncooked rice, hair, fingernails, foreign banknotes, and pages torn from a dictionary. He entered and exited countless chambers. In one he saw a mound of naked, sleeping men. In another, a talking statue. The light was dim and reddish, and always came from just around the corner.

The man finally cornered his prey. As he raised his spear to kill it, the chewed animal changed into his dead wife, who had died several years earlier. They embraced, their joy deepened by a touch
of dread. Their shared memories, once a closed book on the shelf with only its spine exposed, would now be reopened. The husband said, “Let’s go home.”

The wife answered, “But I can only walk out of here as a chewed animal, not as a person. You must carry me on your shoulder for the entire trip. And you must not let me touch the ground—not even once!—until we reach the mouth of the cave. Only then can I become a woman again.”

The man laid his spear down and lifted his wife onto his shoulder, the way you would carry a cadaver.

He whistled happily as he walked, not feeling his burden, but soon the man noticed that there was fresh blood dripping down his back and chest.
Did I spear her? But I don’t remember spearing her!
But it was very dark in there, and there was not much oxygen, so he could not think properly.

He tried to talk to her many times, but she never answered him.

After the second day she started to stink terribly.

After the third day her fur was gone.

After the fourth day he was carrying only bones and sinews, with the meat having rotted off.

After the fifth day he was carrying only her spine.

On the sixth day thinking he has been tricked by an evil spirit, he threw the spine to the ground in disgust.

Immediately he saw that he was standing just outside the cave.

From the cave’s mouth his wife called out, “Why have you abandoned me?” before disappearing into thin air.

A Vietnamese, lacking any intuitive understanding of natural laws and God’s sense of humor, would say the man missed the opportunity to be reunited with his wife by mere seconds. But
God, being more cruel and playful than man, had already come up with a more satisfying ending:

Had the man not hurled his wife’s (or the chewed animal’s) backbone to the ground, the next day would find him carrying but a single vertebra. And the next day, only a fraction of that. (Our language lacks specific words for what’s inside the body.) The next day he would be lugging around but a single cell on his shoulder. And the next day only a fraction of that.…

D
EAD ON
A
RRIVAL

I
cannot wait to tuck an M-16 under my arm and pump a clip into the bodies of my enemies. I can see them falling backward, in slow motion, leaping up a little, from the force of my bullets. Die, Commies, die! Each day I stare at them in the newspaper, lined up in neat rows, some with their clothes blown off, their arms and legs bent at odd angles. I look at their exposed crotches, at their bare feet. (I cannot help myself: If I see a picture of a near-naked person, I look at the crotch first, then the face, if I look at the face.) Their captured weapons are also lined up in neat rows. Our soldiers can be seen standing in the background, neatly dressed, with their boots on. I cannot wait to get me a pair of black boots. Our national anthem begins like this:

I’m willing to sacrifice my life and limbs for freedom and democracy.

My father is a police colonel. He answers only to Mr. Thieu, our president, and Mr. Ky, our vice president, and Mr. Khiem, our prime minister, and Mr. Loan, his boss. (Yes, that Mr. Loan, the general who shot a Vietcong on TV. The Vietcong was an assassin who had killed many people that day. He was wearing a plaid shirt, a “caro” shirt.) Mr. Loan is very famous, a celebrity in America and in Europe. It’s something to be proud of, having a father with a famous boss.

The Vietcong killed two of my uncles: Uncle Bao and Uncle Hiep. They killed my grandfather. That’s all they do. Kill! Kill! Kill! They’re born to kill. Mr. Thieu said, “Do not listen to what they say, but look at what they do.”

My father was born a peasant. He’s used to rustic ways. Although we have modern plumbing in our house, he routinely forgets to close the door when he sits on the toilet. If you walk into our house unannounced, you may catch him, just like that!, sitting on the toilet taking a dump with the door open.

My father encourages me to draw. He said, “Draw, Son, you’re good!” He gave me a big brown envelope and said, “Remember to save all your drawings.”

I would draw certain things over and over. A few months ago I drew tigers. I would draw a tiger over and over. Then I drew cowboys, a gunslinger wearing a plaid shirt (a “caro” shirt) and leather vest. Then I drew tanks, one tank after another. Lately I’ve been drawing ships.

There is a huge stranded ship in Vung Tau, with its prow stuck in the sand and its tail sticking out into the ocean. Inside this ship there must be thousands of fish that have swum in through the rusty gashes but are now stuck inside this huge stranded ship and cannot get out again.

Whenever I looked into the ocean, I would think,
There, just beyond my sight, is America. If the earth wasn’t so round, I would be able to see it
.

The earth is divided into twenty-four time zones.

If you go east, you lose time. If you go west, you gain time.

If you go far enough east, you lose a whole day. If you go far enough west, you gain a whole day.

If you go far enough west you will end up where you started and it will be yesterday.

We have several words for America. We call it “Flag with Flowers.” We call it “Beautiful Country.” We call it “Country with Many Races.”

So-called white Americans are really red (they look red). Black Americans are blue. Red Americans are yellow.

On Nguyen Hue Street is the tallest building in Saigon. I’ve seen it many times. I’d count: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve! That’s it: twelve! The tallest building in Vietnam has twelve stories.

I speak five languages. Aside from Vietnamese, I also speak French:
“Foo? Shoo tit shoo? Le! La! Le! La!” Chinese: “Xi xoong! Xoong xi!” and English: “Well well?”

The hardest word to pronounce in the English language is
the
.

When people say “I’m buying a house,” what do they mean by that? I mean, what store is big enough to hold a bunch of houses? Or even just one house? And how are you going to take a house home with you after you’ve bought it?

Although a dragon only has four legs, sometimes, when I drew him, I’d give him two extra legs.

The three nos of Communism: No God! No Country! No Family!

As me and my father were entering a restaurant—a fancy Chinese place where we go to eat lacquered suckling pig and swallow’s nest soup—we saw my mother leaving with her new husband. I mean, as my father opened the glass door, we saw her standing right there, with her new husband.

There is a middle-aged Englishman in our neighborhood. He’s always walking around, stooping a little—when you are so tall, you should stoop a little—wearing a pale-blue cotton shirt (with four pockets), a pair of gray slacks, and carrying an old leather briefcase. He has deep-set hazel eyes and a nose like a shark’s fin. He’s married to a Chinese woman and cannot speak Vietnamese. Every time I saw him, I’d say, “Well well?”

If it weren’t for the Vietcong, we’d probably be shooting at the Chinese. There are many Chinese in my neighborhood. They have their own schools and like to play basketball. There is a song:

Chinese movies are the best. I like
The Blind Swordsman
. He’s blind and fights with a sword that’s more like a meat cleaver. It’s only half a sword really. It doesn’t matter: If you know what you’re doing, you can kill many people with only half a sword, even if you’re blind.

In one movie, Bruce Lee, “The Little Dragon,” fought a huge black man named Cream Java. I thought,
This is not very realistic, is it? I mean, my man, Bruce Lee, can’t even reach this guy’s face to punch him in the face
.

When I draw, I usually aim for absolute realism.

My favorite American movie is
Planet of the Apes
.

The best American band is called the Bee Gees. The second best American band is called the Beatles.

The “Country Homies,” the hicks, don’t listen to American music. They’re embarrassed by it. It frightens them. As soon as you push “play,” they become disoriented. These hicks, these “Country Homies,” only know how to listen to folk opera.

This is how you get a cricket to fight better. You pick him up by one of his whiskers, then you spin him around a bunch of times. This will make him “drunk.” You can also hold him inside your palms and blow into his face.

Some trees are so old that their branches sag and sag and sag until they reach the ground and become new trees. These new trees, in turn, also become so old that their branches sag and sag and sag until they reach the ground and become new trees. What you have, then, is an entire forest connected at the top, an upside-down forest, with the first tree in the middle.

Catholics are the best. All the important people are Catholic. The pope is Catholic. The president is Catholic. My father is Catholic. All the saints are Catholic.

There are many Buddhist kids in my school, which is a Catholic school. If their schools were any good, why would they go to a Catholic school?

What’s a buddha?

I go to Lasan Taberd, an all-boys school run by Jesuits near Notre Dame Cathedral and JFK Plaza. In the plaza there is a large plaster statue of the Virgin Mary holding a globe with a little cross sticking out of it.

Last week I accidentally dropped all my colored pencils on the floor and Frère Tuan, our teacher, whacked me on the head with a ruler.

I like Frère Tuan. He called me Dinh Bo Linh once in front of the whole class. (My name is Dinh Hoang Linh.)

Dinh Bo Linh ruled from
A.D.
968 to 979. He was a village bully before he became a warlord, before he became the emperor. He was known as Dinh the Celestial King.

To the north was China—Sung Dynasty. To the south was Champas—savages.

In front of the palace was a vat of boiling oil. Criminals were thrown into this vat.