The Darkest Little Room (8 page)

‘Đừng hỏi
… Do not ask.'

She wore a white
ao dai
and the jade butterfly clip was in her hair. I wondered but did not ask where she got the dress. She must have seen the question in my eyes. She blushed and said that it had been a gift.

‘Anh nghĩ rằng em nhin rat ngu ngốc
… You think I look silly.'

I shook my head. I turned away toward the dark, to a barge gliding along the water so she would not see my face.

‘You are beautiful. Did your mother give you the dress?'

‘She is dead. I think she is dead.'

‘A man then?'

I was jealous.

‘An old woman.'

Thuy smiled sadly and the wind blew her hair across her eyes and I thought truly she is the most beautiful girl there has ever been.

‘Em sẽ không đi bar
… Little sister will not go back to the bar tonight. I am keeping you with me.'

She laughed and then tears came to her eyes and she wept like a child.

‘Anh la nguoi đàn ông tot
… You are a good man,' she said. There were notes of hope and expectancy in that statement that made it sound like a question. She switched to English and spoke a phrase that seemed awkward and rehearsed, as though garnered from a dictionary so that I should take its full meaning ‘But you must intend what you state to me.' Then in Vietnamese.
‘Anh hiểu không?
… Does brother understand?'

‘There is something I do not understand.'

It had bothered me all night.

‘The German I mentioned last night. He swore to me that he saw you wounded. Beaten.'

At once tears trickled down her cheeks and she turned to the river.

‘Tell me what this all means. Is it truth or lie?'

‘Do not say such things or I will leave. I will leave right now.'

‘Was it you he saw?'

She was silent.

‘He claims to have a picture of it. Are you the girl in his picture?'

She stared into my eyes.

‘Nguoi ở que của em nói thật
… The men of my village spoke truth.
Em la phù thuy.'

‘Sister, you are not a witch.'

‘But I am.'

And I knew by her eyes that she had told me what she believed was the truth. She grimaced as though the pain of the wounds in Hönicke's lost picture were upon her.

‘There are nights I do not know, and nights when I know it is me.' She looked again to the river that was swollen tonight with the rains in the north. She wiped her tears. ‘But the wounds … I do not know. They are curses, or miracles. Do not ask again.
Nhưng anh Nói thật không, anh sẽ dua em đi?
… But will you truly redeem me?'

‘Yes. If you are honest with me.' Her eyes sparkled. I lowered my own. ‘No. Even if you lie to me. No matter what you are. You can lead me to the gates of Hell and I will stay beside you.'

‘Anh tae hua?
… Do you promise this, brother?'

‘
Tae hua
… Now come and stay with me. Do not go back.'

‘I must return to the bar once more and never again. I came tonight to hear you make a promise. When I come to you next you must take me out of here forever. Out of the bar, out of this city, out of the country.'

I nodded.

She wanted me to hail a taxi, but I insisted I ride her back to District Four. She sat silently with her arms around my waist and her chin on my shoulder watching the afternoon city rush by and then she spoke into the wind.

‘Joseph.' She spoke my name like notes of a forgotten song sung by a long-lost sister.
‘Em là cô gái anh đang tìm sao?
… Am I the girl you have been looking for?'

‘Yes.'

We crossed a second bridge and she seemed to talk to the water.

‘Lần sau anh gặp em
… The next time you see me will be tomorrow at nightfall on the bridge near Pham Ngu Lao. It will be Friday, the day of Christ's wounds. Then you will see what you did when you left me alone.'

13

I sat at the cafe the next day trying to concentrate on a piece I must write on a bilateral trade deal between Vietnam and Thailand when I felt a tap on my shoulder, a thing that always annoyed me but especially given my recent habits of work. I had made two serious enemies that I knew of since arriving in Saigon – Mr Bao and that secretary to the Minister for Culture whose name I had forgotten. Both their faces and the face of the bloated manager of Club 49 flashed in my mind when I turned and saw Hönicke.

‘I've got friends in the police force,' I said. ‘Don't think they won't lock you up.'

‘Just let me sit down,' the German whimpered.

‘Why are you still here? Aren't you a travelling businessman? Or was that a lie, too?'

‘Every man is a liar to some degree.'

‘To what degree are you?'

‘What I am does not matter. It would not interest you anyway. It rarely interests me. But what I am right now is concerned for that girl.'

‘Drop that will you?'

Hönicke ran his hand over his grey stubble and sighed. He had the eyes of a man who had not slept in twenty-four hours. The hatchet mouth of a liar. I told him so.

‘But there is one thing I have not lied to you about.'

He pulled a folded photograph from his wallet and threw it onto the table.

I picked it up and held it in my palm, as though if I pressed too hard I might aggravate the wounds.

‘The camera was in my suitcase the whole time. I had the picture printed this morning.'

It was her. How could I mistake her for another? She was beaten and wounded as Hönicke had said …
like Christ on the scourging block.
Like the girl who had washed up in the dark across the bridge in Binh Thanh.

I felt ridiculous tears come to my eyes that I was determined not to let fall in front of him.

‘When was this taken?'

‘I told you. Three nights ago.'

‘Have you doctored this, you whoring bastard?'

‘How would I do that?'

I had seen some pretty sophisticated tampering by news photographers. The lighter the touches the more convincing the result, but after only a few significant alterations pictures began to get a pixelated, plastic look about them. The girl in the photograph was wounded all over and in three dimensions.

‘Why did you pick me?'

‘Why not? I am trying to get help for this girl whom I cannot help. For a variety of reasons, I cannot help her. But you–'

Relief came to Hönicke's face now that he had passed on the photograph; as though he had been relieved of the weight of a sin.

I held up my phone and pretended to answer a call and snapped a photograph of Hönicke in order to show it to Thuy.

‘Excuse me,' I said, for through the camera lens I had seen Zhuan come into the cafe. He approached our table and Hönicke frowned nervously and left just as soon as he saw I meant to talk to this man.

‘Who is your friend?'

‘No one. A tourist.'

Zhuan sat down and ordered Pernod and said we must talk theatre: about a new troupe of water puppeteers he had discovered.

‘Flying dragons, dancing girls, wily tigers … We must go!'

‘But not tonight, Zhuan.'

He saw the concern in my face. He lit a cigarette.

‘You're not in trouble are you?'

‘No. Only very busy.'

‘You know I think of you as a younger brother. Who was that man?'

‘I'm alright.'

‘Well, there is something other than theatre I would like to talk to you about.'

‘I am truly busy, Zhuan. Perhaps tomorrow.'

‘But your girl–'

‘My what?'

Zhuan looked at me with bemusement.

‘The girl who washed up in the outskirts.'

‘Yes, of course. Go on.'

‘I thought you should know that she was shot by two different revolvers. The police found blood on the bank for one hundred metres, stones dislodged. She wasn't dumped in the river. She was running along the bank and then shot and then left there.'

‘Thank you, Zhuan.'

‘I'm trying to say that it is likely the girl was running from somewhere and someone very near the place where she died. That the place you are looking for may be right there on the river instead of the city.'

‘But there is nothing out there, Zhuan.'

‘There must be. I tell you this because you asked me to tell you what I knew and because I assume you are still trying to find out what got the girl killed. But I would also ask you not to– '

‘I know. Again, thank you.'

He furrowed his brow.

‘Please talk to me. I can help you.'

I wondered how much I should say.

‘If I do, you must not pass what I tell you on to anyone.'

‘Please, Joe.'

So I told him about Thuy: about the mystery of her wounds and her drug habit.

‘Don't let her persuade you to buy the drug yourself. There are bored police in this city just itching to take down an unprotected foreigner like you.'

‘So what do I do?'

‘How bad is she?'

‘Three tenths of a gram a day. Being Saigon I suppose it's cut with sugar and quinine – about ten percent pure. That's not so bad, is it?'

‘Bad enough. But if you really must buy this girl drugs, then let me arrange it for you.'

‘I could not ask you.'

‘I'll have a courier deliver it to you here tomorrow. Upstairs. Not on the balcony. Enough for the week. Say half-past seven? The police are still in bed then.'

‘Thank you.'

‘In the meantime, what on earth do you mean to achieve by keeping a prostitute in your house?'

I told him I meant to go north with the girl to uncover a network of slave traders.

‘I think there is a trading house this side of the border.'

‘Does she know what you're up to?'

‘Not yet.'

‘And why would you do this?'

‘Redemption.'

‘I understand that. We all require it, even if I do not approve of your methods. But, Joe– '

‘And because there is a chance that girl who was shot on the river and Thuy are owned by the same people. Because such people and such places exist. Because the people I write for only ever get those wistful
cri de cœur
stories correspondents write, about how pretty the girls are and how sad it all is, so the readers can click their tongues and shake their heads at breakfast and the women go away and donate a few dollars to a Christian charity and the men secretly wonder how they might justify a business trip. I want to write something that shakes the seats of powerful men.'

‘She told you a slave market exists?'

‘More or less. There is more I need to ask her.'

‘Bar girls will tell you anything, Joe. She may be trying to protect her dignity, and to deceive you.'

‘Why?'

‘You've lived here more than a year already. Do you really need to ask that? For money of course! These bar girls are born liars. It's the job description in short: pretending feelings they don't have; pretending to be what they aren't.' Zhuan sighed. ‘Listen, there may still be slave markets, but I think not. There was one on the Cambodian border a year ago. You know that. And you know that it was closed down.'

I had reported on it. It covered an acre in the outskirts of Siem Reap, hard up against jungle. It was littered with pimps and dealers selling drugs, replica assault rifles, ivory and girls. You could trade in riel, dong, Australian or American dollars or Renminbi. But the Vietnamese government had choked off access to the slave markets across the border.

‘Even the two-bit trading floors in the border towns were closed down,' said Zhuan. ‘I cross the borders frequently.'

‘So say the authorities here.'

‘Yes.'

‘Which means they are never culpable. The problem belongs to another nation, to the mountain wilds that no one can control.'

‘With what poetical irony you put it! But it may be true.'

‘Then why when the foreign markets close down does the supply of Vietnamese girls into Cambodia and China not run dry? There are other markets, Zhuan. Just as large or larger than Siem Reap. Perhaps straddling countries. They supply all Indochina and parts of China with slave girls. Supplying the worst kinds of places, where no free human being would work. And men with means and connections are bringing girls from such markets into Saigon. They must be. Thuy spoke of a gang operating in Sa Pa. She said that she came here from a slave auction this side of a northern border. I want to find the place.'

‘Perhaps there's something in what you say. But, Joe, as for this girl's poverty, understand there is poverty and poverty. There are fathers in this country who sell their daughters on the streets, and they do not always do it for food.' He leant across the table. ‘Only two weeks ago a woman from Yunnan sold her young daughter to men who were making one of those real-life murder films, and she knew what the purchasers intended. It was the girl's own father who approached the gang. A woman further north sold her infant daughter for transplant organs. She paid back her gambling debts and bought herself a microwave oven.'

I had heard many such stories. They were well reported in Asia but never made the news in Australia as Australian journalists could never believe things so sordid could be true, and also because no one wished to upset political ‘friends', and the Australian public, according to this policy in their media, were not intelligent enough to make a distinction between one Chinaman and all Chinese.

‘What do you mean by telling me this?'

‘Only that every man's heart is black at its core. Certain men, like you and I, who make the civilisation of ourselves our goal in life, are able – not to escape that truth …' He looked out the window onto the street. I looked in the same direction and saw a filthy and sweating woman hustling tourists out of money for cheap cigarettes … ‘but to put some distance between it and ourselves. The pleasures of conversation, of Bach, books, coffee and cognac and opium, the promise of a girl … if one has these, then one has everything that it is possible to have. Now you, if you keep on your present path, may find yourself reducing the necessary distance considerably. And as they say in this country, when one lives with pigs one collects dirt.'