‘But I did,’ I told him. ‘I settled down while I was still a teenager.’
‘Yeah, but you saw the light. Took off, saw the world,’ he said, squeezing my knee beneath the table.
‘True,’ I said, because what would be the point of making the real truth of my untethered life understood?
I went back to his house and we had sex and afterwards I felt my face morph into the same smile I’d had after ordering an omelette and being served a duck foetus at a rural street-food stall. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I was thankful that my blundering attempts at communication had resulted in any food at all.
Mischa,
I thought it might make you feel better to know that I lost my shit in Saigon again. Not that I assume you’re feeling bad about me losing it the first time, just that I wanted you to know it wasn’t you (or not only you) that made me so miserable there.
Grandpa was wandering around with a grin on his face, smiling at the touts and the filthy backpackers and the American fast-food joints. I got so angry, started ranting to him about how the whole city was a sell-out, more capitalist than America. He slapped me into place. He told me I was arrogant and ridiculous. He said it was clear I understood nothing about Vietnam. We were in a and he held his finger in front of my face and said, ‘Vietnam should be gone. Should be nothing. Should be historical footnote. Why is it not? What is the number one value of Vietnam?’
I said courage and he scoffed so I said strength and he almost spat! ‘Self-preservation. That is it. That is first. Communist, capitalist, protectionist, socialist, democratic, nationalist – doesn’t matter if it keeps Vietnam alive.’
I argued, of course. I said it’s not true preservation if its essence keeps changing. If it has to sell out to survive can it be said to have survived at all?
‘Alive is alive,’ he said. ‘If it is alive, it can one day be better. If it dies, it will never be better. Already it is better than when I left. All the time it is better.’
I don’t know if I agree with him, but it doesn’t matter: believing that makes him feel better about everything he lost and everything that’s changed. That’s good enough for me.
C
The email stuffed me up with feelings I couldn’t name. I went for a long walk and the sharp chill in the air only made my hot, heavy mess of emotion murkier. I had forgotten how deceptive Sydney’s winters were. Bright sunshine and blue skies and a spine-stabbing cold. I realised I had missed autumn altogether. It had been cancer season since before I arrived. It still was. Figuring out what the surging wet heat inside of me meant and which parts belonged to Cal and which to Vietnam and which – goddamn it all – to other, older people and places and injuries would have to wait.
But not long after, at the end of a particularly terrible treatment day, Mel told Margi she must remember that suffering makes you strong. ‘Seriously, darling,’ she said, wiping flecks of vomit from Margi’s chin. ‘You’re going to be a fucking warrior by the time you’re through.’
Later, as Mel and I sat listening to the rattle-hiss of Margi’s sleep, I told her she was full of shit. ‘Suffering didn’t make me stronger. It made me sick and weak and scared.’
She reached for my hand, squeezed. ‘Because you were alone, Mishy. If you’d let us take care of you, you would have recovered properly, emerged better and wiser. Like Margi will. She’s suffering, but not alone.’
‘Maybe. It’s different anyway, I suppose. Margi didn’t do anything to deserve her suffering.’
‘And you did?’
‘No. Not deserve. But . . . I don’t know. See? Even after all this time, all the years as a punching bag and all the years since, I still don’t know why that happened to me. I’m not wiser. I’m not better. If anything, I’m stupider and meaner and weaker. I do whatever I like and tell myself it’s okay because I deserve to feel good after so long feeling terrible.’
Mel rubbed her thumb over the back of my hand in the exact way our mother used to. ‘You’re very hard on yourself. You should try giving yourself some credit for how far you’ve come.’
‘I don’t know. I think they have it right in Vietnam, I do. Suffering isn’t a rite of passage or test of character. It happens and then, if you can, you get up and move on. Not stronger or better, but alive.’
Mel looked across at Margi. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said, ‘that’ll do.’
Mish,
When Grandpa and I first arrived in Hanoi and Dad told me you were in Sydney, I was pissed off. Dad thought it was because I was disappointed I wouldn’t see you or because I was upset that I hadn’t known you’d been living across the city from me all that time. It was both those things, I guess, but it was more than that. I felt like you’d failed or given up and I felt like it was my fault because you were so happy until I came along.
Anyway, what I was trying to say in that last email, is that I’m sorry I judged you for valuing self-preservation. I’m sorry I nagged and pressed you. You were happy here and that should have been enough for me.
Margi picked up a lung infection and had to spend two weeks in the hospital. I sat by her bed as often as I was allowed to. We watched TV and I read to her, and while she slept, I read to myself. When the nurses kicked me out I walked the hilly streets surrounding the hospital. It still felt odd to be able to walk whole blocks without having to step down onto the road or weave through a cluster of diners slurping their soup. Odd, but getting less so each day. I had thought I’d never again get used to this vast, clean, quiet world, but it was happening so fast, so easily.
Silence is an answer (I remember saying this once before).
C
You shouldn’t take things so personally. Silence to you, but frenetic activity for me.
Anyway, what was the question?
M
No question. I wrote some stuff and hoped you’d write back.
But now I do have a question: what frenetic activity?
C
My sister is sick. Taking care of her is my priority.
M
Sorry – I did know about your sister. Feel bad I didn’t even ask how she was. Is she getting better?
Actually, yes, she is getting better. Her recent infection has cleared up & the chemo is finished which means she can now eat without throwing it all up immediately. In a month the doctors will go back in and check that it’s all gone. It’ll be a long month.
I need some distraction: tell me all about you & Hanoi.
M
One day I feel I am at home, or not really at home, but exactly where I’m supposed to be. Then the next day everything is hard and people seem hostile and I feel more an outsider than ever. On the hard days I walk through the Temple of Literature and try to be more like you. Calm. Accepting. I’m bad at this, but I’m trying.
The other day, I went to Quán and lit a candle for your sister. Then I went to the near your old house and had a drink for you. I realise neither of these things helps, but I thought knowing I did them might.
Cal.
In this new life, a day at the beach meant three cars packed to the windows with children and eskies, balls and kites and towels and sunscreen, and an hour and a half’s drive through long-weekend traffic. It was worth it to see Margi, model-thin and pale, digging into the sand with both hands, helping Tom construct a castle.
I napped beneath a giant umbrella, waking to find myself buried from the knees down. Seeing me awake, Lucy straddled my belly and leant forward so her nose was almost touching mine.
‘I’m trapped,’ I said.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now you can never, never, never leave.’
On the drive home, Margi and Lucy slept and Joel, blunt as only seventeen-year-old boys can be, asked me what I was going to do once his mum didn’t need me anymore. ‘Are you going to find your own place or what?’
Brad told him to hush, then said, as though he was changing the subject, ‘I was reading an article in the Herald the other day about how few Australians are b
ilingual. Reckoned that anyone with a second language could have their pick of jobs in tourism and customer service. Bet there’d be a big demand for Vietnamese speakers, Mish.’
‘Probably.’
‘You should check out the listings on—’
‘I don’t speak Vietnamese, Brad.’
He blinked. ‘But. You lived there forever. You must have picked some up.’
‘It’s not the kind of language you just pick up,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ Brad said.
‘You’ll just have to find a job speaking plain old English then,’ said Joel.
Your candle lighting worked! Margi’s been given the all-clear. Or, actually, she’s been given the all-clear-for-now, because cancer is a mean bitch that may well come back again, but for now, we’re celebrating.
Thank you, too, for the bia. I miss it, even though beer here is so much colder and stronger and in-every-single-way better. I miss the experience, you know? The grotty stools that strain beneath my weight and home-blown glasses with air bubbles in their bases, the giggly teenage servers and the scowling grandmas behind the register. I miss red fried peanuts and crispy whole sardines and moto drivers telling jokes I can’t understand but know from their faces are dirty.
M
sucks. I only liked it bcause it’s something Idid with you. Today I went with dad & all them & was bored aand annoyed . Sometimes you need to say what you need to say and that is that I am loving Hanoi without you but some things I loved with you I hate now so I know it was just you I loved.
Mish,
If you haven’t read my last email yet, please delete it unread. I was drunk.
Cal
Too late, sorry. It made me laugh, if that makes you feel better. Also, it made me think about something – about why I loved Hanoi so much. I went there because I knew no one and I loved it so much because I could be totally, utterly alone there. I didn’t have any responsibility. No one expected anything from me and no one would be angry or hurt or disappointed if I failed to do something or unexpectedly did something else. Except at some point that became less true and I didn’t notice until I had already hurt and disappointed and angered.
And I came back here & am in the same position again. Enmeshed. Having conversations about my life and decisions with people who will feel things about the outcome. Scared to disappoint and hurt and anger.
M
Still an emotional retard then.
FFS, Mish – I don’t know your family but I bet they’re nothing like your thug ex & I bet none of them are like me. Enmeshed isn’t enmeshed, is what I’m saying. You get it?
C
The first time my husband punched me we had both been drinking. In the morning, we promised each other we wouldn’t drink so much anymore and that way things would never get so out of hand again. The second time we were both sober. Also, the third time and most of the times after that. He would still drink sometimes but alcohol was as likely to make him romantic and kind as it was hateful and violent. He broke my ribs, my wrist, my ribs again. He took me to black-and-white movies and wrote songs about me and some nights we talked and laughed until the sun came up. He raped me and ruptured my spleen and told me he loved me every day.
Mel says you don’t hurt someone you love but I think she’s wrong. Hurting someone is an act of intimacy; it means they’ve got to you, got inside you. You lash out because you can’t bear the unfathomable need. You bury the hook deep, and even though you despair at the damage, you leave it in there because it means you’re in control.
I’m not saying it’s right or even inevitable, but if hurting someone means your love for them is void, then there’s even less love in the world than we think.
But here’s the important thing: you don’t need to deny love to decide it is destroying you. You don’t need to pretend it isn’t real in order to turn your back on it. You can say, I believe in your love for me but who said love is always a good thing to have around? You can say, I love you but I love my life more.
You haven’t replied. Hope you’re not shitty with me for telling it like it is, retard.
Do you remember Mai – the girl from the Goethe Institute who ditched Henry that night? Dad & I went to an exhibition there and she and I got chatting. We’ve been hanging out a bit. She’s teaching me Vietnamese, or trying to. She explained to me about pronouns, how they’re all kinship terms, how you can’t address someone in Vietnamese unless you know what their relationship is to you and whether they’re older or younger. That’s why they always ask your age and if you’re married and all that personal stuff right away. But it’s not just a matter of correct usage; it’s about connections. Every time you address someone you are reminded of your relationship to them. Nobody is just ‘you’, everybody is a sister or brother or aunt or uncle or whatever to someone else.
Anyway, you probably know all that but it made me think about how you and I would address each other in Vietnamese. Are you my big sister or my em?
Cal
Technically, I think I am your aunty – your father’s ‘sister’. But I can’t imagine us ever speaking Vietnamese to each other, so it’s a moot point.
Tell me about Hanoi right now. Late autumn. It’s glorious, right?
M
Nice dodge. Fine, I’ll be blunt: I’m coming back to Sydney NEXT MONTH! I’m going to work at my aunty’s shop for a few months, saving money for when uni starts again. I’ve changed my enrolment: going to study Vietnamese and – get this – nursing, so I can come back here in the long term and do something useful.
You’ll be amused to know that Collins is now absolutely convinced I am gay. ‘A hot eurasian nurse who spends more on his hair than on food; please, just because you don’t want to bonk me doesn’t mean you’re straight.’ He’s funny like that. Attributes stereotypes to everyone else while fitting none of them himself. Except the stereotype of a boorish expat, of course. Nah, he’s alright actually. Better than Henry who is being a total dick about me and Mai.
Back to blunt. Okay, so I’ve had a thing with Mai, but I’m coming back to Sydney and I want to see you, but before I do I need to know – for real, Mish – are you still my em, because I will always, always be your anh.
Cal
P.S – Hanoi is as beautiful as I’ve ever seen it. You don’t need me to describe it: it’s your home and when you close your eyes you’re here. I know that about you.
I shut off the computer, call out to Margi and Brad that I’m going for a walk. I grab my keys and step out the front door, stride across the newly mown, mint-green grass. A shard of light bounces off the roof of the sparkling SUV in the driveway and into my eyes. I blink away the blindness and keep walking. I can’t remember ever feeling this young.
A late Saturday morning in spring and the street is as alive as it ever is. Men with pale chests and red faces mow their lawns while their wives pull in and out of the long, wide driveways loading and unloading children wearing cricket whites or ballet shoes or party dresses, carrying expertly wrapped birthday presents or canvas grocery bags and paper sacks of rapidly cooling burgers and fries.
I walk on the smooth, level sidewalk and the soles of my flip-flop-clad feet miss the challenge of pavements cracked open with the force of the future. The air smells like grass and gentle, mannered backyard barbecues. I want fish sauce and sewerage and charcoal and pork. A car I can’t see beeps its horn and I wish someone was with me so I could tell them how funny that is. A single horn, heard by the entire suburb.
By next month I will be home. I will miss my sisters and their families and they will know it because I will tell them during the frequent phone and video calls I will make. I will visit every year and I will nag until they visit me. I will know what Margi looks like squatting on a plastic stool and drinking bia. I will light incense with Mel at Quán Temple. I will show off by chatting to my neighbours in Vietnamese, by taking nephews and nieces for rides on the back of my Honda, by cooking over an open fire using ingredients
bought at the wet market that morning.
Maybe, if my family is visiting the country I shouldn’t belong to but do at the same time as the man who I shouldn’t have loved but did is visiting, I will introduce them to each other. By then, I will know which kinship terms to use and when I use them we will all know what we are to each other.
Acknowledgements
The first draft of Fishing for Tigers was written during an Asialink residency in Hanoi in 2008. A New South Wales Writers’ Fellowship, funded by Arts NSW, enabled me to return to Vietnam to finish the novel in early 2012. I greatly appreciate the assistance of both these funding bodies.
Of the many books I drew inspiration from during the writing of this novel, I am particularly indebted to Wandering Through Vietnamese Culture. I am also grateful to for patiently answering my questions about Vietnamese folktales and poetry, and for introducing me to so many other wonderful Vietnamese writers.
To my friends and colleagues at Publishers: for your warmth, patience, humour and careful corrections of my misunderstandings and mispronunciations, .
Thanks, too, to my Aussie, British and American friends in Hanoi for gossip, educational arguments and mojitos. I can’t think of a better way to thank you than to leave your names off this page and thereby save you from being linked to any of the disgraceful shenanigans of the expats in this book.
Fishing for Tigers would not be the book it is without the thoughtful editing of Judith Lukin-Amundsen and Emma Rafferty, and the commitment and enthusiasm of my publisher, Alex Craig, and my agent, Charlie Viney. Thank you all.
In the last year of writing, conversations with Carolyn Shine influenced this work in small but important ways. I am grateful for her insights and friendship and desperately sad that she is gone.
The generosity of my friend and colleague Bernard Cohen and my sister Rebecca Davis enabled me to not feel too bad about disappearing for months at a time to research and write this book – thank you both.
And to Jeff, thank you for supporting my enthusiasms, calming my fears, indulging my repeated need to take one more research trip and making it all feel worth it.