Vietnam
A short story written some time ago:
When I first arrived in Vietnam, it was by hovercraft. Across the gulf of Da Nang stood the low, jungle hills of Pho Luk, where so many of the great battles between Americans and Communists had taken place. There seemed to be a mist hovering over the mounds in the sunshine, like great breasts of despair, mammary glands full of agent orange. My imagination reeled with the possibilities of clearing the mountain way, by jet-induced fire, to access the poppy fields, the lost papaver, the secret reason behind the wars, including the one in Afghanistan.
Canada couldn’t be further away, and yet, my Rogers cell was still receiving text messages. A girl who went by the stage name of Kandi back in Montreal had been pestering me for weeks to see her new show: a comedy epic called Betrayal in the Outlying Regions.
“ARE YOU GONNA COME SEE MY SHOW PLEEEZE” her earnest communiqué read. There had been no solid commitment on my part, particularly because, of late, my time in Montreal had been rather preoccupied by my trip to Vietnam. But Kandi was unrelenting:
“PRETTY PLEEEEEEEEEEEZE.”
As an ambassador to the great regime, I was shocked to discover that Vietnam was currently being run with the same severe restrictions and violations of amnesty as in North Korea and Stalinist Russia. There were almost no legal means for crossing the border, except in the role of “Official”, which I was: as Second Chief Undersecretary to Gao Nguyen, Canada’s de facto Vietnamese Delegation Chairperson. In addition to normal ingress/egress being prohibited, it was also unlawful to speak out against the current government, to access the internet, or to shake hands. So, one can imagine my surprise at the continued reception of Kandi’s unremitting texts (“COME OOOOOOOOOOON”); her devotion in very real danger of becoming pretext for my immediate arrest and indefinite imprisonment.
The sun was hot and the air was wet at the outdoor banquet prepared for Chairperson Gao and his entourage. The food was acutely bland, and distinctly lacking in the colours one would expect from jungle fare. Notwithstanding, we politely put piece after flavourless, grey piece into our gooey mouths, eager for the luscious taste of anything that might resemble a pineapple or a guava.
Another text came in:
“WHYYYYYY WON’T YOU COOOOOOOOOME????”
Fortunately, my phone was set to vibrate, sending electrical surges through my thigh and up my spine. I mused on the rumour that, apparently, there were still prisons in the hills where men were being shock-tortured.
A sumptuous, Maltese-looking woman passed by the table and looked at herself in one of the shiny, large water pitchers sitting at its edge. Her hair was long, straight and dark, and her chest was full, with ribcage nibbling out above her radiant, floral tunic. She went away, and the next few hours disappeared from my memory.
It is worth mentioning that I have a terrible memory. My friends back in Montreal would rib me constantly for my shameless inability to remember the most significant of events. In desperation they would attempt to cow and coo my defective brain back into recollection, but to little avail. The fact that I remember some of my South Asian experience is a testament to how consequential it was.
Call it malaria: it was hardly forgettable to find myself, all of a sudden, lost in Vietnam and in need of lodging for the night. The Canadian Delegation had left without me. It had surreptitiously become my objective to quietly clear up this diplomatic blunder and get the hell back home. In disbelief, I accosted one of the banquet stewards: a swarthy, East Indian looking fellow who certainly had tattoos beneath his flimsy, white, formal dress. I covertly explained my situation to him.
“You must understand,” he said solemnly. “You can’t just leave Vietnam.”
I understood, but that did nothing to alleviate my predicament. It was one thing to be left behind by your comrades and confederates, it was quite another to be stranded in a ruthless, totalitarian state with nowhere to sleep, with sickness, and with food that tastes like a rifle-hole. Undaunted by his dismissal of my plight, I re-accosted the Indian steward, and—an expert smuggler of persons—he took me under his protective, brown wing and led me away from the feasting area.
Through the town of Da Trung my companion (appropriately named Kankhar) led me; through alleyways and underground passages; through filthy parks and decrepit dens; and through a deplorable maze of rickshaw ridden, human-detritus-doused shanty boroughs until, finally, we arrived at his ramshackle dwelling. At one point, I asked Kankhar if the autocratic Vietnamese government understood the difference between Canadians and Americans, hoping to glean some advantage by my Canuck heritage. Glassy-eyed, he chose not to answer my question, and instead chose to look at my vibrating pocket, where another text had come in:
“HELLLOOOOOO?”
Inside his home there were a million cats, both living and dead. He kicked them aside like stacks of old newspapers as he made his way over to a large closet. This, he opened, revealing a vast collection of giant, empty fish tanks. He took a careful look at several of the aquaria, tossing out various rock and scuba-man decorations, until he found a suitable tank. It was clearly one of his old favourites, as it had his name, Kankhar, in black, sticker letters emblazoned on the front.
“Here,” he said to me, handing over the aquarium. “You will sleep in this.” From my reaction, he was compelled to proffer an explanation. “You must understand,” he said resignedly. “This will protect you from the scorpions and the malaria bugs.”
I understood; at which point, Kankhar went to another cupboard where he retrieved a not unsubstantial quantity of what I knew to be opium. He went over to one wall, where hung a number of large, colourful shisha pipes. He opted for the teal one, and sat down in the corner to smoke it. As he did, a number of his feline co-habitants approached the shisha mural and took down the remainder of the smoking implements. In a matter of moments, everyone was languorously inhaling the rich, blue fumes.
Now I understood it all: the likeness of Vietnam to Afghanistan, the beautiful woman who made my memories vanish, and Kankhar’s muted reaction to my query about Canada versus America. The fish tanks, the cats—all of it made perfect sense. There was finally some peace in my universe.
An obscene vibration shook my pant leg. Looking down, I reached to where the foul reverberations were coming from. I extracted the offending fiend and looked hard on it. It was my Rogers cell phone. There was one new message in my inbox.
“ARE YOU COMING TO MY SHOW YES OR NO?”
I took some time to consider my options, and looked about the room, to where Kankhar and his indolent friends lay back in sedate ecstasy. “You must understand,” I texted Kandi. “I just can’t.”
And some time later, as Kankhar prepared us for another voyage, I received her modest reply.
“YOU’RE A BIG LOOOOOOOOSER.”
© Adam Kelly Morton, 2009