Dragon House (6 page)

The taxi merged onto a busy road and Iris forgot the music. She’d read about the four million motor scooters on Ho Chi Minh City’s streets, and now it felt as if all of them suddenly descended upon her. The scooters were everywhere, darting around their taxi, driving directly toward them, running red lights, crossing roads as if daring the approaching traffic to obliterate them. The scooters carried about anything the mind could conceive. Entire families crammed together on the black seats—often with a baby in the front, a father behind, then an older child, and last a mother. The families laughed and chatted, weaving in and out of trucks and cars, missing other vehicles by less than an inch. Some scooters had reinforced racks behind their seats, and these carried refrigerators, baskets of live pigs, steel girders, televisions, crates of Tiger beer, wedding cakes, pets, and engine parts. Many of the drivers wore masks, though the fabric didn’t stop them from talking to one another, from asking directions as they dodged potholes and fallen debris.

Construction work was being done on the street, and sparks flew as boys wielded welding torches. A soldier held an assault rifle at the corner of a busy intersection. Buildings no more than fifteen feet wide rose up almost ten stories. A train rumbled across the street and their taxi stopped. Scores of scooters eased around the taxi, moving so slowly that drivers and passengers were able to reach out and touch the car, using it to balance their overloaded vehicles. The dozens of people who were no more than an arm’s length from the taxi were clad in traditional dresses, suits, fashionable club attire, and collared shirts.

After the train lumbered past, the scooters surged forward and a haze of exhaust enveloped the taxi. The grit seeped into the car and Iris instinctively held her breath. She saw Noah flinch as the taxi bounced over the tracks and wondered if he’d forever think about roadside bombs.

As they approached the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, the buildings changed from mold-ridden, teetering piles of concrete to gleaming glass structures and steel high-rises. The streets were wider, the potholes a memory. To Iris’s surprise, she saw dozens of uniformed workers hanging strands of Christmas lights on trees and building facades. From her research, she recognized the broad, white building that was Reunification Palace, and she imagined the famous North Vietnamese tank that smashed through its iron gates during the fall of Saigon. Somewhere nearby was the U.S. Embassy, which at the time was inundated with desperate South Vietnamese and Americans who were being rescued by helicopter from its rooftop.

Though Iris had traveled around the world through the thousands of books she’d read, she had never physically been abroad, had never felt her pulse race at the sight of her surroundings. She looked for comforting sights but saw none. Squares and parks were filled with statues of a triumphant Ho Chi Minh. Rivers were lined with shanties and bore what looked to be floating shacks. Nothing made sense, and despite her best efforts, she felt panic rise within her. Was coming to Vietnam a mistake? she wondered. How can I possibly hope to open his center when I’ve never even been overseas?

Needing to talk, she turned to Noah. “What do you think of it all?”

Noah watched a man chop off the top of a coconut and put a straw into the hole he’d made. Though also surprised by the sights around him, Noah felt numb to this new world. He was tired from the long flight, the seven beers he’d consumed, and a series of near-sleepless nights. A part of him recognized that these streets were vastly different from those of Baghdad, that here people seemed happy, eager to explore the night. But he didn’t care. He felt dead, and even though the world around him teemed with life, no sight could pull him from the depths of his own misery. His mother had been wrong to send him here. Nothing could cure his pain.

“Why did your father start the center?” he asked, noting that a glaze of tropical sweat already covered her forehead.

“I don’t really know,” she replied over the wails of a woman on the radio. “He never talked much about what happened in the war. But I think something bad . . . something terrible happened with some children. I think maybe he saw some die. And . . . as impossible as it sounds . . . he wanted to try to make up for that.”

The taxi pulled against the curb and the driver said, “We at Rex Hotel.”

Iris paid the man, ensured that a porter found their bags, and followed Noah into the lobby. The walls were covered with intricate bamboo renderings of birds and flowers. Iris had read that the CIA operated out of the Rex during the war and wondered about all that had occurred within its walls. After speaking with the receptionist, she handed over their passports and followed the porter to their room. He opened a door, stuck their key into a specialized slot in the wall, and the lights and air conditioner turned on. The room’s interior looked to have been made entirely of thin slices of bamboo. Intricate bamboo lamps and chairs, tables, and bed frames dominated the layout.

The porter showed them how to work the shower, radio, telephone, and television. Iris tipped him and he left. Noah walked to the window, peering out. Iris hadn’t showered in more than twenty-four hours and could hardly wait to freshen up. “Can I take the first shower?” she asked, feeling awkward about sharing a room with him, but not having much of a choice, as the hotel was completely booked. She’d made her reservation long before she knew he was coming with her, and she didn’t want to send him to another hotel.

Noah nodded, relieved when she left him alone. He heard her turn on the water, and steam soon seeped beneath the bathroom door to merge with the room’s murky air. Sitting on the edge of one of the two twin beds, he thought about how he’d once loved her. He had dreamed about her, imagined what she might look like naked. Now she was naked and not ten feet from him, and he didn’t care. Nothing within him stirred. Not his curiosity. Not his ambitions. Not even a sexual urge.

He strode to the bathroom door, knocking on it softly. “I’m going to get a drink. Want to join me?”

“Thanks, but I’m ready for bed.”

“Well, good night, then. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

“Good night, Noah.”

He took the extra key, closed the door behind him, ensured that it was locked, and awkwardly made his way down a nearby stairwell, wondering if the hotel had a bar. He hoped it did, for he didn’t want to venture out into the chaos of unknown streets—too many memories would be sparked to life by such places, memories even harder to face at night, when the earth’s darkness mingled with his own.

Back in the room, Iris finished her shower, put on a T-shirt and underwear, and climbed into the bed farthest from the door. Though her muscles felt inordinately tired, her mind raced. In Chicago, the sun had been up for just a few hours, and her body felt the conflicting pull of differing time zones. She lay awake, her eyes open, looking out the window into a country that had shattered and saved her father. She tried to slow her thoughts, the rapid beating of her heart. She tried to feel him, as he promised her she would.

But no matter how much Iris longed to sense his presence, to bring him into her, she felt alone and afraid. The city’s noises and scents were so foreign, so troubling. She began to panic, wishing that she hadn’t come, that her father had never started his center. He was dead, and perhaps his dream should have died with him.

Iris beseeched her father to find her, not to leave her alone once again. But his presence never entered the room, and she didn’t fall asleep until Noah finally returned, until dawn filled the air with its sweet, welcome light.

THREE

Hell and Handbags

U
nder the bridge, dawn came slowly, as if teasing of warm and pleasant tidings. Muted light seeped through the tin shanties on either side of the space directly under the bridge. The light was unnoticed at first, simply one more intrusion into a world not of Mai and Minh’s control. The trucks rumbling above, the giant cockroaches scavenging for food, the stench of urine in the early-morning air were such intrusions—realities impossible to govern or flee.

Minh woke first, as usual. He kept still, not wanting to bother Mai, who lay next to him. The two friends were on their sides, curled with their knees drawn up—a pair of twins still in the womb. Around them, a circular basket rose three feet high. The basket, made of tightly woven bamboo and waterproofed with sealant, was a traditional fishing boat that had one day floated down the river. Mai and Minh had swum out and retrieved it. When no one claimed it, they’d started sleeping in it, bringing pieces of discarded carpet from the city above to make their bed more comfortable.

For more than a year, Mai and Minh had slept in the basket. It comforted them the way a home comforts others. It had walls. It kept rats at bay. It contained a blanket and two extra sets of clothes. On most nights, a dozen or so people slept beneath the bridge. Each had her or his own bed—fashioned from boxes, from old scooter seats, from carefully sculpted sand and mud.

Mai stirred beside him and Minh carefully sat up, raising his head above the rim of the basket. Not far away, a legless veteran of the American War was tying a wooden block to the stumps below his waist. Upon this block, as well as on smaller blocks that he attached to his palms, he’d propel himself along the city sidewalks. The blocks protected him from glass and other debris.

Several children had risen and were bathing in the river. Minh knew them all, knew them to be discarded in some form or another. Thi, whose name meant “poem” and whose body had been poisoned by lingering chemicals from the war, had oversize eyes that looked as if they’d burst from her head. Phuong had run away from the orphanage that had housed him for three years. And Van, who’d been born in a back alley, had known nothing but the streets.

Minh watched the other children for a few minutes, then lay back down in the basket. He reached beneath a piece of carpet and carefully felt the section of bamboo that he’d loosened months earlier. Under this false bottom, under rocks and the silt of distant lands, was a plastic bag containing fourteen dollars. The money was the result of a year’s worth of secrecy, of deceptions that could cost him his life. Only Mai and he knew of the stash. Were Loc to find it, he’d beat the flesh from their bones. One day, so went their dream, the two friends would save enough money to flee Loc, to travel to a place where they could go to school and not fear the night.

“You didn’t sleep well, did you, Minh the Restless?” Mai asked softly, her eyes still closed.

Minh watched dust drift down from the bridge above as a heavy truck strained the pitted concrete. He wondered who’d be under the bridge when it fell someday.

“You’re like a boiling pot of
pho
,” she added, rising to survey the morning. “Never resting. Never sitting still for a minute. Are you like the
pho
, afraid that you’re going to be eaten?”

Minh smiled, never having been compared to a pot of noodles. He wiggled his head back and forth, pretending that he was being boiled.

She giggled. “Maybe I’ll toss some onions and sprouts on you tonight while you’re sleeping. I’ll prepare you just right, and slurp you up.”

Happy that her face carried a smile, Minh pointed to their game of Connect Four.

“You think it’s time to go play?” Mai asked. “Ah, I’m so tired of selling fans. Why don’t I play? You sell fans and find foreigners for me to play against. I’ll just sit and drop checkers. And I’ll be Mai the Magnificent.”

Minh shook his head and rose to his feet. The other children had finished bathing in the river, and he wanted to clean himself before the adults entered the water. Mai followed his lead and the two friends carried their extra set of clothes to the water’s edge. After carefully setting the clothes aside, they strode into the river. The water, as brown as dirt, gently tugged at their ankles, then legs, then waists. They stripped to their underwear and began to clean their shirts and shorts, wringing the pollution and grit from them. Over the past few months, they’d seen dead snakes, cats, and even a water buffalo float past. But since the rainy season had ended, the river tended to steal much less life.

“We should find a mosquito net,” Mai said, scratching at her neck.

Minh shrugged, knowing that if they ever found such a sought-after net it would be promptly stolen. Better just to sleep under their blankets than to worry about mosquito nets. Still, he wished that Mai didn’t attract so many flying pests. Maybe he’d try to find her a net after all.

“What should we get today with our dollar?” Mai asked, for one crisp dollar bill was all that remained from the previous day’s winnings, and they had to decide whether to buy noodles, bananas, dragon fruit, bread, or rice.

Minh wanted to save the dollar, to add it to their secret stash. But they’d eaten nothing for so long that he felt weak, and so he pretended to slurp up a noodle.

“
Pho
it is,” she replied, darting underwater to rinse her hair. She then rubbed her scalp, her gums, her privates. “What about going to the war museum?” she asked. “I bet I could sell some fans there. The new tourists will go there first, like they always do, and they won’t have seen too many fans by then. And you might get a quick game or two. We can sit beneath that big tree and it won’t be too hot. Well, what do you think, Minh the Teeth Scrubber?”

Minh stopped cleaning his teeth and shook his head. He didn’t want to be near the war museum, as he’d seen what was within its walls.

“I don’t like it either,” Mai replied. “But you can’t be so picky, Minh. We need to—”

“She’s right,” a man said, stepping to the water’s edge.

Minh turned toward the raspy voice, instinctively lowering himself deeper, as if the river were a mighty shield that could protect him from every danger. Loc hacked and spat in Minh’s direction. Gathering his will, Minh forced himself to look at Loc—a large man who always wore a New York Yankees baseball jersey. Loc’s face was prematurely aged from years of smoking opium. His bloodshot eyes wandered slowly. His fingers were burned and battered. A mole on his chin sprouted thick hairs that fell halfway to his neck.