New Star Page 5

  “Sorry, airlines. We always have the highest rate of cancellations and delays,” they laughed.

  The government runs the airline and it is as inefficient as any government organization. My students perform the same jobs as any other airline employee working for the big international airlines, and they get paid shit.

  It’s flat out extortion. Their salaries are frozen and subject to government approval. If they go on strike or protest their low salaries, they’ll be made redundant. It’s that simple.

  The Communist Mandarins run the country with a tight fist, siphoning all the money into their and their cronies’ coffers. In my two years of living in Hanoi, I’ve seen foreign capital come and go.

  Vietnam vows to fight corruption in investment capital. Vietnam vows to lift restrictions surrounding foreign investment. The headlines cycle in The Vietnam News over and over again, and the only vow I see is in the increased amount of red tape and graft.

  Western companies invest, pay for the “necessary” permits to invest and then pay for more necessary payments to invest, until they have enough and pull out of Vietnam. Then Vietnam vows to eliminate graft involving foreign investment.

  Ad nauseam it goes — no different than the wreckage at the B52 Victory Museum on Đội Cấn Street. Glass towers get erected all around the city. Foreign companies put their offices in them, only to leave after six months. The office floors lay empty. Cubicles, desks and chairs remain bound in place. The dust and dirt collect on the windows, and the Communist Mandarins, with their Chinese gold-rimmed glasses, stash more foreign currency into their bank accounts.

  It trickles down to all levels. My last six-month work visa cost 110 dollars. Eighty dollars of which was to grease the necessary pockets at immigration, while the remaining thirty dollars was to pay for the actual visa. Before that, it was 200 dollars for the same six-month work visa; it all depends on each school’s contacts at immigration. The higher up the contacts, the less money paid.

  This is no rant. I dare you to look at the country of your origin; you’ll find the same level of corruption. The only difference is here in Vietnam the corruption is transparent. Whereas in Western countries, “funds are re-appropriated,” and prices are inflated, to line the pockets of politicians and military contractors, or in more visible cases, to pay for mafia protection.

  Nothing ever changes. The more things appear to change, the more they stay the same. No amount of scholarly study in cross-cultural comparison will ever get at the root of anything.

  19

  Across the street,

  a man whistles at canaries on his roof.

  I’ve walked around Hanoi with these two lines in my head. My notebook has remained untouched for weeks. My inspiration has waned with the moon.

  The lights all around the outdoor restaurant blot out the night sky. At our table, Big Tom takes another swig of beer and puts his fork into another snail shell.

  “These are the same kind of snails I ate for two weeks when I was here in the eighties, snapping photos for the CIA.”

  The pile of large brown shells and shards of ginger send their steam upward towards Tom’s imaginary friend in the sky — a ceremonial sacrifice for the bullshit we are receiving.

  “It was tough, roughing it like that.” Big Tom wipes his forehead with his handkerchief. “I could only surface towards daylight and sunset. I had to remain unseen. The secret police knew I was hiding somewhere near West Lake.”

  At this point, none of us dare to interrupt or contradict Big Tom. When someone believes their lies, they believe them to be the truth. I roll my eyes and look over at Mair and Drew, who both acknowledge the purgatory of our situation.

  Big Tom continues to ramble.

  “Swimming downstream was much easier than swimming up the Red River. You could imagine. After two weeks of eating snails and filling my canteen with any available clean water I was ready to be lifted out.”

  A PhD in theology and shit for brains. Big Tom spews the same stories with different details each time.

  I take another sip of beer and look over at Mark. He’s oblivious to it all, playing footsies under the table with Chau. As long as there is money coming into the school, Mark doesn’t care. He plays the charade of a concerned educator, leading our monthly pedagogy meetings, where he draws brainstorming maps on the whiteboard of all the key phrases he learned doing his master’s degree.

  Student centered. Engaged learning. Computer-assisted learning. Learner autonomy. The circles are always the same, and his final comment is always the same: “You guys are doing a great job. Keep up the good work.”

  The reality of it all is I’m sick of it all. I’m sick of working for a scumbag. I’m sick of living in Hanoi, and I’m sick of the charade I’m playing.

  Deep down, I’m going nowhere fast. None of the wisdom I’ve gained helps. I spin in the same rut.

  Tonight will be no exception. We’ll finish eating and drinking at this restaurant, and Mark will take us to a swank hotel bar with karaoke girls.

  We’ll continue to drink and get pissed. Sing bad versions of “It’s a Wonderful World,” “My Way” and other karaoke classics, while the girls will take turns sitting on our laps and feeding us nuts and fruit.

  Mair will leave after a drink or two. Drew will sing songs and try to avoid having any contact with the girls. Chris will drink with us until the end and go back to the Canadian ambassador’s residence, while Mark will have ditched Chau before we’ve gone to the hotel bar. Then Big Tom and he will leave with four or five karaoke girls.

  I’ll leave with one because I’m bored and drunk. I’ll pay for a taxi to my place. We’ll go to my room and have drunken sex. I’ll pass out and wake up with a splitting headache, wondering if my cash is still hidden.

  I’ll get out of bed, feeling every ounce of gravity, stumble down the hall to the bathroom, take a piss, then pull the laundry detergent box down from the shelf to see if my cash is still there.

  I’ll go back to the bedroom. The girl will have her clothes on ready to go home, demanding fifty more dollars than what we agreed upon.

  We’ll get into an argument. She’ll threaten to call the police, and I’ll give her an extra ten dollars. She’ll smile, thank me and leave.

  It goes like this every time we have a work party. I continue to drink hopelessly, already knowing the outcome of the evening.

  20

  The smell of cheap perfume and stale cigarette smoke lingers in the bedroom, while the midday sun overpowers the maroon drapes, sending reddish rays of light all over the room.

  My head spins at a rate that feels faster than the earth’s spin. My eardrums reverberate; my mouth tastes metallic and dry. I feel the need to retch, but my stomach refuses.

  I have vomited three times in my life. The first time when I was five, I drank Coca-Cola immediately after brushing my teeth, the second time when I was six, I drank orange juice right before brushing my teeth, and the last time when I mainlined a shot of heroin when I was seventeen, while I was working as a dishwasher.

  The head cook was a junkie, and she said it would make the busy night go by faster.

  But the only thing that went faster was my head in the toilet, heaving barely digested food all over the white porcelain.

  The follies of youth don’t seem far away, as living in Southeast Asia reduces men to being perpetual teenagers. The hormones of puberty come back along with a self-destructive sense of invincibility.

  Luckily, I gave the girl an extra twenty dollars in advance. There was no argument; she gave me her cellphone number in case I felt the need again.

  I stumble out of bed downstairs to the kitchen and mix some vodka and orange juice, then back upstairs to my room and light a bowl.

  21

  Chu Nguyen puts his hand on my thigh, as is the custom here when men are close to each other. A sign of mutual respect, no sexual advancement at all.

  I smile and beckon the waitress to order a couple more beers. The la
rge-scale green industrial fans blow violently, scattering peanut shells across the bia hơi.

  “Have you heard from Dave?” he asks, grabbing a cigarette from his pack.

  “No, I haven’t. You?” I reply.

  “I got an email the other day. Mai left him. She ran off with a rich Vietnamese guy in California.”

  Shocked. My jaw drops, as the waitress plops two mugs of beer on our table.

  “I told him a million times. She wanted that U.S. visa. He was a sucker to marry her and take her to San Francisco.”

  “So, what’s Dave doing about it?” I ask.

  “He filed for a divorce and he’s selling the house. He wrote about becoming a hermit near Mount Shasta.”

  “That sucks.” I grab my beer and take a long slow swig. Even the flies are flitting about the table in a lethargic manner. The air is stale, heavy with humidity. The monsoon season is about to hit, affecting men and beast alike.

  Weeks of mugginess have swollen my hands. I’m barely able to release the handle of the mug. The usually bustling geckos have crawled down the ochre walls to a bit of shade close to the white-tiled floor.

  “I hate to say I was right, but you can’t trust those country girls. You have to marry someone close to your economic class…”

  “Or be prepared to spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time,” I finish Chu Nguyen’s statement.

  “Exactly,” he laughs, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray.

  The lump in his throat, now the size of a golf ball, vibrates with his laughter.

  “Have you seen a doctor?” I ask, concerned.

  “Yeah. They have me on some pills for it. They say it’s fine and not cancer.”

  “Good,” I reply and take another sip of beer.

  Chu Nguyen raises his hand off my thigh and firmly puts his hand back onto my thigh.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you something. Now that I’ve finished my book about Buddhism, it’s time to move on.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I’ve only known Vietnam my whole life. I’m seventy-two. I just want to sit on the banks of the Seine and breathe the Parisian air.”

  “You’re still thinking of moving to France?” I ask.

  Chu Nguyen shakes his head yes. “I sold my house and I bought my ticket. I’m leaving in a month.”

  “Congratulations!” I say and clank mugs with Chu Nguyen.

  “My sister and brother-in-law have an extra room in their house I can use. I’ll buy a beret and a cane, and look like a regal old man watching life go by. I can do nothing more in Hanoi.”

  Chu Nguyen takes a sip of beer and smiles.

  “Uncle Ho and his gulag couldn’t kill me. I’m not a young man anymore, but I can still go to a place that appreciates intellect. Screw these dog henchmen. Vietnam will become another manufacturing center like China, where the local population is exploited as cheap labor.”

  I swat a mosquito away and put my hand on Chu Nguyen’s thigh.

  “You deserve it. All I ask is that you keep in touch,” I say.

  A tear in my eye — life moves forward as all rivers move forward to a greater body of water. We finish our beers, and I walk with Chu Nguyen to his motorbike.

  He kickstarts the engine and drives away into the dusty humid air.

  22

  Back at New Star, Sarah has gone and left. Her sister Sally had enough of Vietnam, and Sarah made enough money to continue their travels.

  Mair continues to flit across Hanoi, teaching the rich Korean expat kids. The money is there for sure, but who wants to teach kids who don’t want English forced upon them?

  Drew still hasn’t got laid, and he’s depressed. Tranh went off and got married to some rich Vietnamese guy she had only known for a couple of months.

  It is a maddening place. The longer you stay, the less you know. Teachers come and go, not knowing why they came to Hanoi in the first place. A cultural malaise for sure. We all show up in the “Pearl of the Orient” with that sense of adventure and wanderlust, and then gradually the virtues and values we brought wither away.

  The stagnant humidity creeps into your soul, blurring your vision with mirages of beauty, lust, intoxication and heartbreak. It’s best to not get attached to anything, and if you’re lucky, you make some money and leave. Otherwise, you’re in for something unknown and dark.

  You have to remember it’s their land; they have fought off the Chinese, the French and the Americans. What makes you think one person can make a difference or be any different than any previous foreign invader?

  The callousness is on every street. Children with no hope sell postcards to tourists while other children wander from bia hơi to bia hơi, trying to eek out some subsistence by shining shoes. Girls and old women from the country push loaded bikes, full of fruit and vegetables all day. Amputees and Agent Orange victims scurry about with elbows and knees on homemade carts, begging for money.

  I question why I am here, and I question the divide I see every day. If there were some compassionate divine being, like their Buddha or Jesus Christ, would we still have all this despondency?

  Over 5,000 years of recorded human history and we still can’t figure out how to live together. War after war and conflict after conflict does nothing other than cull our brothers and sisters, while hardening the survivors from having any feeling of empathy.

  I am no better than you, and you are no better than me. We are all victims of a convoluted system we’ve created. Every day we ignore this, every second we ignore this, the divide becomes worse.

  23

  “Everyone, this is Murray,” Big Tom says. “He just arrived from Korea, and he’s going to be taking over Sarah’s classes.”

  I look up from my lesson plan and see a stocky middle-aged man with pasty skin wearing a gray three-piece suit and yellow wire-rimmed aviator glasses. His nose and cheeks are red — a sure sign of a teacher who as Big Tom claimed likes to party.

  Two huge diamond rings permanently fixed to his swelling fingers, his perfectly quaffed graying red hair frames his ashen complexion.

  “Mike, here, will tell you about the Vietnam Airlines classes,” Big Tom says.

  I get up from my chair and shake Murray’s hand. The handshake is firm and hard from his two rings.

  I sit down and Murray sits next to me, as we go through Sarah’s lesson log.

  “These students are professional and expect a lot,” I say, noticing the smell of booze on Murray’s breath.

  Great. Big Tom has imported a whoring buddy. His failed attempts to get us to go whoring must have prompted him to bring Murray into the stable.

  “It’s pretty simple. Follow the sequence of the book and spice up the lessons with some activities, and give them a chance to talk to you,” I continue, trying not to shake my head.

  Murray pages through the lesson log with about as much interest as one would have cleaning out their sock drawer.

  “I’m sure we’re going to have some fun here. I’ve always wanted to live in Vietnam,” he says in an Eastern Canadian drawl.

  I nod my head in acknowledgment and show him around the staff room, pointing out all the textbooks and supplemental resources.

  Drew and Steve look up from their lesson plans and smirk.

  24

  The scene at my local bia hơi is the same as most bia hơi. Teenage girls from the countryside scurry around the beer hall in shower sandals, delivering beer and side dishes to men talking and smoking cigarettes. The TV blares for the attention of no one.

  I crack open a few steamed peanuts and watch the passing street traffic. My poetry flounders like bugs caught in a spider’s web trying to escape, only to run out of energy and die. The great designs I had to turn the third story of my house into a painting studio become further removed with each mug of beer and each passing day.

  An afternoon buzz on a Saturday, a day off work and a day off from myself. The beer fuels thoughts of indifference and flight. I know my time
in Hanoi is coming to an end, but like a love affair you knew was unhealthy from the start, I cling to a decaying photo with frayed edges.

  Thu Duong was here. I ran into her last week in the narrow maze of streets in Bach Khoa, near my house. Her long flowing black hair smelled of perfume and joss stick. She was playing ping-pong with some of her office coworkers at the local recreation center. Her tight white blouse exquisitely wrapped her thin torso, pushing her pert breasts to the fore.

  My knees felt weak as they came near her black trousers. We said our pleasantries and I asked how Phu was doing. She said they were planning to get married, and I asked her if she was excited. She didn’t answer, but instead looked above at the dust-covered fronds.

  Her tense and nervous body language said it all. She didn’t want to marry Phu; she was holding hope for me to step up. I languished in the cobbled street with my hands in my pockets. How I wanted to run my fingers down her back and say, “Everything will be all right.” But, I couldn’t. I couldn’t commit then, and I can’t commit now.

  It’s the demon I carry. I can’t commit to myself. I can’t commit to a place and I can’t commit to another person. I roam vacuously, holding images of people and places that I have left.

  I hold them dear like one would hold their prized possessions. It’s all I’ve got, these images. I know they’re gone and I know they’re finished. I tell myself that someday I’ll write about them, but I tell myself a lot of things.

  I stare at my empty glass and beckon the waitress for more beer and peanuts.

  I was never asked if I wanted to be born. I was just born into anonymity. Like the rest of you, I want nothing but ask of everything.

  The discarded peanut shells strewn across the lime-green tiled floor seem to be a good metaphor.