The Darkest Little Room (22 page)

35

I entered the hotel and met an untidy and overweight woman. The woman was surprised to see me.

‘Đêm nay, có không có phòng
… There are no rooms tonight.'

This was plainly untrue.

‘
Tôi nghi có
… I think there are.'

‘Không
… There are none.'

‘You would not leave me in the cold on a night like tonight. I will be gone early in the morning. I cannot see on these roads in the dark.'

‘And yet there are no rooms.'

I remembered the driver's licence of the man I had just shot.

‘Mr Hung Le sent me. He has had some trouble getting here. And there are men he would like me to meet tonight.'

‘Hung Le ha?'

‘Yes.'

She eyed me and handed over a key.

I sat at a downstairs table smoking and watching the door with a ball of lead in my stomach. In an hour I had been the only one to come through the door.

‘
Tôi đang đi vào phòng của tôi
… I am going to my room. There are men coming some time tonight … men with whom I am to do business.'

‘Biet roi
… I know.'

The room was stale and cold. I sat on the end of the sour single bed with its coarse grey pillow and watched the wind blow rain across the neglected cemetery and blow rubbish to bank against the mesh fence of the bus station where pretty blue arc lights were lit against the eastern sky and the night had come.

I heard a vehicle on the mud road beside the hotel. Doors slid so it must be a van. Footsteps sounded downstairs and then came a man's voice. They must have come in from the cemetery and through the back door. Then an Audi pulled up on the opposite side of the road in front of the hotel and two men in dark clothes got out and I heard the men talking in the lobby. Then there was someone on the stairs.

I peered into the empty corridor. I tried the room across the hallway. The door was locked. I broke the lock from its timber housing with the heel of my boot and went inside. I peered through a crack in the door into the hallway and pulled my revolver from my jacket and put my thumb on the hammer and locked it.

Two broad-cheeked, head-shaved Vietnamese men in leather jackets stood at the front door of the room I had paid for. They took pistols from their pants and kicked the door in.

I could shoot them through the crack in the door, I thought. But I did not know who was downstairs. I did not know how many men had got out of that first van. Even if I shot two here and left three downstairs then I would surely die.

I put my revolver in my jacket and walked into the corridor and shouted nonsense in English and hoped the confusion might buy me a little time.

One of the men asked who I was and when I answered in English he shot me in the shoulder and I fell against the wall.

The dog-faced man who shot me pressed his acrid mouth close to my face.

‘Anh là ai?
… Who are you?'

‘Bạn của Hung Le con hoang
… I'm Hung Le's friend, you bastard.'

‘Where is he?'

‘He has police trouble.'

‘He is captured?'

‘No,' I said.

‘Where are the Laotian girls?'

‘Not here.'

‘Then why are you here?'

‘To tell you that, you stupid son of a whore.'

He backhanded me.

‘It is only that I am not certain of your story that I do not kill you. The minute I know who you are I will do so.'

He picked me up by the collar and I walked with him down the stairs into a dimly lit room behind the kitchen where five men sat with girls.

The pain of the wound was spreading into my back and neck and head. My shoulder was stiffening and would not stop bleeding and I was suddenly frightened. The man sat me down against a wall between two girls.

‘We wait,' said dog-face. ‘Where is Li?' he said to his associate.

The associate grunted something I did not hear.

In the middle of the room was an electric heater that burnt your ankles and left your head cold. The woman of the hotel switched on an electric light and by it I saw the dead-eyed girls in a corner, broken by fear and hunger. They had seen so much terror they were numb to it as my shoulder was numbing to the bullet wound, the nerves dying around the metal. Just six girls, I thought. And I knew now there was no market out here like Siem Reap. The kidnapper who drove me into this country had spoken truly and the trade was everywhere and nowhere, in transitory places like this, a hotel that did not belong to any city, mountainous borders, transit centres, sidings and the highways at night.

I looked up at dog-face.

‘Ôi
trời, anh xấu quá!
… God, you're ugly!'

My lie would soon be discovered. All it would take was a corrupt policeman in Bac Ha, having found Hung Le's body, to make one phone call. Surely someone had seen me drive that car out of the station. Maybe the police had already picked up the pair of girls I had ‘freed'. I was bleeding and thirsty and weak with not eating and with the bullet wound and with the long and terrible day in which I had killed a man and would likely die and I did not feel I could stand a minute of being tortured or even waiting any longer for death to begin.

I called out to dog-face again. Hoping I could insult him well enough to make him kill me.

‘Anh có khuôn mặt giống một mông tát
… You have a face like a slapped arse,' I said.

He spat in my face.

‘At least get me a drink of water, you bastard.'

I thought I would try to stand and make a run at dog-face and force him to shoot me when a man in a dark coat came through the door and his coming woke me from my delirious half-sleep. He threw his coat at dog-face and took off his hat and I heard one of the thugs speaking obsequiously to him and in my delirium I thought, this must be him. Trong. The one I had hunted. I knew this was the end and curiosity made me look up and squint at him. I thought he would put a gun to my head, though before he did I would at least get to see his face. But he only stood and stared. I should have recognised him before, expected him, but I was too sick, and this was too strange. We stood staring blankly at each other across the room for I do not know how long.

‘Get this man some water!' he ordered dog-face. ‘Get it now!'

He came and knelt beside me and took off my jacket and inspected the bullet wound. I smiled and whispered near his ear.

‘Hello, Zhuan.'

He did not answer. He stared into my eyes. Then across the room.

‘Who shot him?'

Dog-face looked frightened. He whimpered something barely audible.

‘Khi!
… You ape!' said Zhuan to the cowering man. ‘Go and get that hag from her television and tell her we want bandages and carbolic.'

The woman of the hotel brought me water and carbolic acid.

With kind words Zhuan enlisted one of the girls to dress my wound.

I was untied and bandaged and Zhuan and I sat in the circle of men like brethren slave traders. I thought how easily he could have denounced me, yet he did not.

An unshaven man in cheap flannel entered the room with two girls in their mid teens. It is strange what seems important as the blood drains out of a man's body: you would think he would be contemplating profundities, reflecting on his life and perhaps God, but instead I thought how all of these man apart from Zhuan did a fine job of hiding their wealth if this trade in girls was as lucrative as it was supposed to be; and how the man who came in now looked like a long-out-of-work plumber. I smiled and then laughed and spoke English.

‘The toilets here are awful,' I said. ‘See to them first.' He scowled at me. I laughed again. ‘Parking attendants make more money than you in my country … ice-cream salesmen. Better if you were a plumber.'

Two more men came. I was listening to Zhuan and the others talk for quite a while before I realised they spoke English, and I could understand. They spoke with a variety of accents: Vietnamese and Laotian, and there was a man from Shanghai.

I smiled and spoke to Zhuan.

‘How wonderful that we all understand one another here. This is the dream our politicians have been having for a century. The free trade in unrestricted currency of everything we most desire in the darkest little chambers of our hearts.'

‘Don't talk. You're becoming delirious. And you are putting yourself in danger.'

He motioned to the girl to hand him the bandage.

‘Does she seem human to you now?' I said, nodding toward her. ‘See how she helps us!'

‘Drink this!'

He gave me a cup of water and I felt a little stronger.

‘
Trong ở đâu?
… Where is Trong?' Zhuan asked dog-face.

‘Đang đến…
Coming. He called before to say he is coming.'

‘If he does not I will kill you.'

‘Đang đến
… He comes.'

The trading began. One by one the girls were stripped to their underwear and auctioned. The girl who had helped dress my wounds was not pretty and was sold for $600 to the Laotian. A fourteen-year-old girl with long legs made $2000. There was no auctioneer, rather the deals conducted in a manner of civil agreement between all parties while they drank rice wine from dirty glasses. I sat in a daze watching. They had given me back my revolver along with my coat. What fools, I thought. I might take Zhuan and dog-face down before one of the others killed me, but I was feeling so light-headed I had no energy for killing and sat watching the thing happen before my eyes with the fascination of a half-sleeping man leaving and re-entering a dream.

The auction was nearly over. I realised then that Zhuan had neither sold nor bid on a girl nor even taken a drink of the vile liquor the men shared. A man in a black felt coat came in from the storm outside.

‘Ah, Trong,' said dog-face with angry relief. ‘At last you are here! Mr Li has been waiting.'

‘Mưa, cơn mưa này … đù má mưa!…
This fucking rain!' said the man whose face I could not yet make out. ‘Fucking freezing. And the roads are like ice.'

He threw a black bundle into the centre of the room, knocking over the heater to shouts and whistles from the men who were becoming properly drunk on the rice wine now.

The man went to where he had thrown the girl and my hand went to my revolver but he pulled back the hood of the girl's coat and her black hair fell across her face and over her fierce hazel eyes that fixed Zhuan and then me with a look of bewildered horror. The shock woke me out of my sick dream. I was alive and in the room and it was no dream and Thuy was kneeling in black rags on the floor before me, close enough so I could reach my hand out and touch the dirty tears that stained her cheeks.

‘Bạn se phải trả rất nhiều tiền cho cô gái này
… You will pay well for this one, Mr Li. It has been a great trouble for me to get her here when she was already promised. Strip her off,' he said to dog-face and his mate.

‘Không,'
said Zhuan,
‘điều đó không cần thiết
… That is not necessary. Five thousand dollars. We have an agreement.'

‘Nó cần thiết
… It is necessary,' said the man I had hunted, who had bought Thuy from Club 49 before it closed, who sold babies, who killed sisters. I had expected him to drop a tail. Yet he could have been called pretty. Only his eyes were too far apart and when he spoke he hissed. ‘Why do you think I wanted to meet you here?' He turned again to the thugs. ‘Strip her off and let the others see.' Then to Zhuan: ‘I know why you like her so much, Li.' He grinned. ‘But how galling to have to buy back your own property! You must employ better staff.'

‘Đang nói về Tan
… You're speaking about Tan? I shot him.'

Trong pulled his pistol out of his coat by his thumb and forefinger and put it in his belt on show and grinned.

‘
Tôi rất tiếc khi biết rằng
… I am sorry to hear that. He was a good customer. But he gave you my name before you shot him?'

‘Yes.'

I stared at Zhuan, who spoke to the man under his breath in English so he would not understand.

‘And right now I'm wishing I had caught you up on the road and shot you too.'

He glared at the thugs.
‘Nếu bạn chạm vào cô ấy, tôi sẽ giết chết tất cả các bạn!
… Touch her and I will kill you all! Six thousand.'

‘Seven thousand,' said the fat man from Shanghai.

I spoke Mandarin, feeling for my revolver.

‘Ta bu shi yi ge chu nu
… She is not a virgin,' I said. ‘If you are buying her for medicinal purposes. She's not a virgin. I can vouch for that, add my testimony to that of this raping bastard over here.'

‘But she looks like one,' said the pink-faced Chinaman. ‘Who is this, Li?'

‘My associate,' said Zhuan. ‘Eight thousand.'

‘Nine thousand,' said the Chinaman.

The Chinaman was not bidding for the girl herself anymore. This had become a matter of national pride. The Chinaman referred to Zhuan as ‘the Viet'.

‘Ten,' said Zhuan.

‘Twenty,' said the Chinaman.

‘You fat, pig-headed bastard,' said Zhuan to the Chinaman.

‘You outbid me last time, Viet. You will not again.'

‘Twenty-five,' said Zhuan.

‘Fifty.'

‘You do not have it!'

The Chinaman took his briefcase from beneath his chair and opened it to reveal bundles of US notes that must have added up to twice that sum.

‘You bastard.'

‘Het roi?
… No more?' asked Trong.

‘I can give you more tomorrow. I can give you twice that much.'

‘Tomorrow I will be in another country. Do you have more tonight?'

‘I will give you a card. There is $100 000 on it. I swear I won't erase it.'