Fishing for Tigers

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘We could run?’

  ‘Or we could skip right to the finding of a cool dark room and drinking beer part of the afternoon.’

  ‘Lead the way,’ he said.

  The Grog Hut was the closest pub with air-­conditioning and cold beer and for a millisecond I considered it, but the idea of introducing Cal to Julian and Mario was terrible. I got on with both of them well enough, but I get on with every­body well enough. That I can share a beer and a laugh with someone is no indication of their character. Julian and Mario, for example, were, like surprisingly many expats in Hanoi, unapologetically racist. Oh, they wouldn’t use that word for themselves, but they believed that Vietnamese men were lazy, backward and corrupt and that Vietnamese women were gold-digging whores. I don’t know what they thought of Vietnamese–Australian teenagers, but I had a pretty good idea as to what Cal would think of them, and given he was willing to confront an angry stranger in the middle of a street mob, there was a better than even chance he wouldn’t hold back when confronted with a couple of loutish expats.

  In fact, in Cal’s agitated state any bar likely to be populated by tourists or expats or drunks was a bad idea. I decided on a quiet bia ho’i whose elderly proprietor I nodded hello to every morning on my way to work. It was on the other side of the church district and by the time we got there we were both dripping.

  Seated on child-sized stools under the canvas shade, we fanned ourselves with coasters. A moment after Mrs Ly placed our beers on the rickety plastic table, a breeze swept through the lane, speckling them with ash.

  ‘Please tell me there’s not a crematorium around here.’

  ‘It’s only paper.’ I used the edge of my coaster to scrape as much as I could from each of our glasses.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s the first of the lunar month. First and the fifteenth, people burn money for the dead. Printed votive paper, really, but the dead can apparently spend it just fine. You didn’t notice all the piles of flaming notes as we walked here?’

  Cal looked towards the street and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. There’s so much to notice. I don’t register some things until later. I was in bed the other night, nearly asleep, and I realised that I’d seen a whole roasted dog in the market earlier. It’s a weird feeling. Like your brain’s taking photos without you knowing.’

  ‘Sensory overload.’

  ‘I guess. Have you tasted it?’

  ‘Dog meat? Sure.’

  ‘Really? Is it nice?’

  ‘Depends how it’s prepared.’

  He looked towards the counter. ‘Do they sell it here?’

  ‘No. Anyway, it’s bad luck to eat it during the first part of the month.’

  He drank his beer. ‘They have a lot of rules here. How do you keep them all straight?’

  ‘I don’t much of the time, but my work helps.’

  ‘I’ve read that magazine of yours. Dad’s got a heap of copies at his place. It’s kind of—’ He gave a demented smile. ‘You know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Propaganda,’ he whispered.

  ‘Only in the sense it’s positive towards Vietnam. It’s not pretending to be anything else.’

  ‘So you believe the things you read in it?’

  I emptied my glass. I felt thick and slow, as though it were my first week here. I knew I should order sugar-cane juice or coffee, but instead I raised my hand and signalled that we’d have more beer.

  ‘It’s not a matter of belief,’ I explained. ‘It’s about information and a perspective on that information. You don’t have to agree with the perspective or believe it’s the only one for the information to be useful.’

  ‘Spoken like a true propaganda apologist.’ He said it as though it was a compliment and I responded as if it was one. I felt my mouth softening, my rib-cage dropping.

  ‘I may be over-sensitive,’ he said. ‘My grandpa drummed all this stuff into me about the communist north and ­people who dared to disagree with anything the regime said being whisked away in the middle of the night. And then Mum’d correct him, tell him it’s not just the north, it’s the whole country because the regime got rid of all the non-­communists wherever they lived, and how they hardly ever need to whisk people away in the dead of night, because they have talented propagandists and a government-controlled media to paint everything as rosy and the guilt-ridden, lily-livered western nations endorse and encourage this picture and so people think they’re free when really they’re living in the Matrix.’ He drew breath.

  ‘What does your dad say about all that?’

  ‘I don’t talk to him about Mum or Grandpa or argue their views or anything. Dad knows the general vibe there is one of negativity and he always tries to show me the positive, I guess, to counteract that. Or maybe he’s not trying to do anything. Maybe he really does think this is paradise.’

  ‘And what do you think now you’ve had some time here? Forget politics. How do you like Vietnam?’

  He shrugged one shoulder and began to rub at a cloudy patch on his glass. ‘It’s good. Weird. Sensory overload, like you said. I haven’t got my bearings yet, I guess. It’s cool when Dad’s not at work and he can take me around on his bike, but the rest of the time, I’ve just been wandering. Oh, and—’ He held both hands in the air as though about to lead a cheer. ‘Yesterday, just after Dad left for work, I was mooching about the house and the doorbell rang. Guess who?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Cal slammed his hands on to the tabletop. The glasses jumped and Mrs Ly frowned.

  ‘,’ Cal said, as though he’d been saying it all his life, and Mrs Ly beamed. ‘Oops,’ he said to me and smoothed his palms over the tabletop. ‘Well, anyway, it was Collins.’

  ‘Henry’s friend?’

  ‘Yeah. He had a day off and had been to the gym on some street I’d never heard of and he thought he remembered Dad saying we lived in this complex and – well, you get the idea. He asked me out for coffee.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I swear. Stood there with his gym bag and wet hair and asked me out. I mean, I know I’m hot and all, but that’s just . . . Anyway, I said I couldn’t, that I had plans, and he said something about calling in again soon. I wish I’d just told him I’m not gay, but it seemed rude somehow. So now I have to make sure I’m out of the house whenever Dad’s not home just in case Collins drops in again.’

  ‘God. Are you really worried? I mean, do you feel unsafe? Because I’m sure your dad—’

  ‘No. Don’t . . .’ Cal rubbed his neck. ‘This sounds stupid, but I didn’t tell Dad. I don’t want him to know. He might be weird about it. He might . . . I don’t know what, but I don’t want to have the conversation. I’d rather deal with it myself.’

  It sounded unconvincing, suspicious even. The logic of the preemptive, self-protective liar. I had an urge to grab his hands and squeeze them tight, to tell him I understood perfectly. I’d hidden things from Glen all the time. Innocent, ordinary things – a neighbour popping over to borrow a screwdriver, a workmate asking for a lift home – because there was no way of knowing how he’d react.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘But, listen, if he keeps hassling you, let me know. I’ll sort him out, right?’ I tried for reassuring eye-contact, but Cal’s gaze was focused on the tabletop. He was clearly sorry he’d told me at all. ‘In any case,’ I said, as brightly as I could manage, ‘it shouldn’t be a hardship to be out and about in Hanoi in autumn. If I was you, I’d head to the backpacker district. Find some playmates your own age to go exploring with.’

  ‘That’s where I was headed.’ He grinned. ‘Before you grabbed me off the street.’

  ‘Oh. Well. Don’t let me hold you up.’

  He looked at me like I was a cool stream. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m good here.’

  There’s a moment I remember from my first week in Hanoi. It was the fourth or fifth day and I had spent the morning on th
e back of a real estate agent’s motorcycle going from gorgeous executive apartment to barely habitable rooms and back again with not a single middle-of-the-market, affordable flat or house in between. Matthew had told me I could trust this agent not to rip me off, but I was beginning to worry that this incessant back and forth from luxury to squalor was a strategy, the object being to make me feel so hopeless about my quest that I would happily overpay for the first realistic option he showed me.

  It was lunch time, which, I had already learnt, meant that within an hour the city would be stiller than at midnight. Shop-fronts would close and street vendors would drape their carts or baskets with towels and find the nearest patch of shade in which to sleep. Even the drivers would stop their smoking and touting and curl into commas on the back of their motos.

  The smell of steaming and grilling pork filled the thick air, and the estate agent shrugged and told me it was time for lunch. He would meet me back at this spot in two hours. My mind was still sluggish from jet-lag and grief and the swampish humidity, and he jumped onto his moto and merged into the sea of lunch-rush traffic before I could respond.

  I was afraid to go far in case I never found my way back to that place, which I know now was the intersection of and Phan and famous for the guidebook-promoted ‘tourist friendly’ street-food restaurant on its corner, but which then looked to me like every other yellow-walled, madly potholed, fish and sewerage stinking street. Across the road was a restaurant that appeared to have an actual door and transparent glass windows, behind which I thought I glimpsed proper tables and chairs. The promise of a comfortable seat and the chance there may even be air-conditioning propelled me off the kerb and into the swarm of motos.

  As I had been told they would, but had refused until now to believe, the motos kept coming right at me, elegantly swerving at the moment before impact. I kept my eyes on the restaurant door and put one foot after the other and breathed in petrol fumes and hot air and then I reached the opposite kerb which was as smashed-up as the one I had left and my face busted into a grin that felt ridiculous but which I couldn’t stop.

  Suddenly I didn’t want the restaurant with its dusty blinds and English menu offering CocoCola and Piza. I swung left and walked until I found a bánh mì cart. I ate the bun with dripping pork squatting next to an old man with missing teeth and a pinky nail as long as his thumb. We smiled at each other and I knew that everything was going to be okay.

  I’d never wondered since how I had looked to that man, how my beaming awareness of the navigability of my future looked from his side. But now, six years later, Cal said Nah, I’m good here and I felt I had completed a journey. I understood the smile of that old man, the pleasure of witnessing trepidation slipping into wonder, of being connected with someone at the start of a path that you had forgotten even existed.

  After our second drink I paid the bill and offered to walk Cal back to the Old Quarter. After we’d been walking a minute or so he commented on how nice the early evening air was and asked if I knew of any other open-air pubs.

  ‘Are you kidding? Outside of the tourist areas they’re all open-air.’

  ‘So, lead the way.’

  In the second bia ho’i, the blushing teenager who served us asked Cal in halting English where he was from.

  ‘Australia.’

  ‘Australia? Because you look like Asian.’

  ‘Yeah. Asian–Australian.’

  ‘Yes. Where you from?’

  ‘My mother is Vietnamese. My father is Australian.’

  ‘Ah!’ She clapped her hands, beaming. ‘Yes. I thought maybe Vietnamese, but you are more handsome.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You have very nice nose.’

  ‘Nose?’

  ‘Yes. Do you speak Vietnamese?’

  ‘Nah. I can say, xin chào, cám o’n, and, ah, tam biet. That’s it.’

  The girl had been counting the phrases on her hand. She waved four fingers in his face. ‘Only four!’

  He laughed, shrugged, the picture of charm. ‘Wait, four – I know that, too. , right? Yeah, so that’s five I know – I mean, .’

  ‘You know , so you know sáu!’ She turned her flushed face to me. ‘Because sáu mean six. So he said Vietnamese for five which means he knows six things. But now he know sáu so he know bày – actually seven. You understand?’

  ‘Yes. Very funny.’

  ‘Hey, what’s your name?’ Cal asked.

  ‘I am Nhu.’

  ‘It’s nice to meet you, Nhu. My friend and I would like to have, um . . .’ He screwed up his face as though concentrating hard. ‘Hai bia.’

  ‘Two beer, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. Ah, what is your name, please?’

  ‘I’m Cal.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Cal. Now I bring for you hai bia two beer.’ She ducked behind the grimy plastic curtain dividing the customers from the kitchen.

  ‘Sweet girl,’ I said.

  Cal rolled his eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I look Vietnamese except handsome. What the hell?’

  ‘Her English wasn’t great. I’m sure she meant—’

  ‘Nah, I get it, she was being nice. It’s just . . . I’m getting sick of the whole “where you from” thing. It’s the same as at home. They don’t want to know where was I born and raised, they want to know where am I from. What kind of nip am I? But then, I’m the same. I always wonder with other Asians, always have to stop myself asking. It’s even weird when I meet other Vietnamese Aussies. If they’re my age or younger than me, we do it to each other. We each know that the other is probably Aussie through and through. We know how frustrating it is to always be explaining a lack of accent or language, but there’s still this – this assumption we make about each other, about why we’re here.’ He flicked the air. ‘Not here. Australia.’

  Cal shook his head, the angst replaced by a calm smile as the girl returned with a tray carrying two beers and two shot glasses filled with cloudy, pale liquid.

  ‘For you, because you are Viet, you have special .’ She placed all four drinks in front of him. ‘Your friend can have too,’ she added without taking her eyes off Cal.

  ‘, Nhu,’ he said and she gave a little curtsy.

  ‘Welcome please,’ she said. No doubt her interrogation would have restarted then, but five rough-faced men had taken the front two tables and were shouting their orders. ‘Excuse,’ she said, and began shouting back in Vietnamese.

  I started to warn Cal about the brain-melting strength of northern Vietnamese rice-spirits, but he tossed his down before I could finish. He coughed twice, rubbed his eyes and then pushed the second shot glass towards me. I threw it back. Not bad as far as went. The acid burning was almost undetectable beneath the pleasurable whoosh of my blood.

  ‘You know what’s the worst?’ Cal leant across the table causing it to wobble beneath him. I grabbed our glasses; he went on, oblivious. ‘The worst are the Vietnam vets. It’s got so I want to lie whenever a bloke over fifty asks me where I’m from. I have lied, Mish. I’ve said China, I have, because I don’t want to deal with it, you know?’

  ‘With what?’

  He threw his hands up, his body back. His jerking knees causing the glasses to dance again. ‘The confessions. The bloody guilt. One time I was in a food court, eating my burger, minding my business, and this bloke – after the “where are you from” thing had played out – starts telling me about his tour. Starts crying. Talking about dead Vietnamese kids. Body parts kept as souvenirs. I listened for a bit, but what am I meant to say? “It’s okay, you’re forgiven”? I mean, I wasn’t there. Haven’t ever been there.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Hadn’t been here. You know? It’s got nothing to do with me.’

  I had become aware of the silence of the men at the next table. They were my age, maybe older. With their rubber sandals and sweat-stained, collared shirts they might have been moto drivers, which meant they might know some English. Perhaps Cal’s increasing vol
ume had alerted them. Either way, we had become the focus of their attention. I was acutely conscious of my bare calves and arms, of my red hair, my audacity in drinking beer here with a boy who could have been one of their sons.

  ‘It’s like—’ Cal started, but I put my finger to my lips and he stopped, blinked at me. ‘What?’ he mouthed.

  I counted out enough dong to cover the drinks and added an extra couple of thousand. ‘,’ I called toward the curtain, as I stood. Cal followed me into the street.

  When I no longer felt the men’s silence around my throat, I told Cal he needed to be careful what he said and how he said it. ‘You don’t know who’s listening, how they’ll take it.’

  ‘Sorry. I forgot where I was.’ He watched his feet as he walked. ‘Talking to you, I forgot I was here.’

  At the third bia ho’i of the night – it was on the next street and Cal was sitting down and ordering beer and before I could object – Cal asked me if I had a boyfriend. ‘No,’ I told him, in a tone I hoped would end the discussion.

  ‘What about Dad? Does he have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Ask him yourself.’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  ‘I’m telling you to ask your father.’

  ‘Does this topic make you uncomfortable, Mischa?’

  ‘Why would talking to you about your father’s sex life make me uncomfortable?’

  ‘So he does have a sex life?’

  ‘Stop it, Cal.’

  ‘Shit. Is it with you? Are you two fuck buddies or something?’

  ‘No.’ I took a too-large gulp of beer. My eyes began to water.

  ‘Do you have a fuck buddy, Mischa?’

  ‘I’m not sure I even know what one of those is, exactly. Sounds nasty.’

  ‘Nah. It can be nice. If you like someone, get on well with them and that. Why not get off with them sometimes, too? It’s just fucking. Doesn’t have to be a huge deal every time.’ His eyes were trying to focus on mine.

  ‘I think it’s time we called it a night. Do you know how to get home from here?’

  ‘Come on, Mish. I can’t go home like this.’