Stray Love (27 page)

That’s when I heard a voice calling from behind, breath ragged and loud. I turned and saw Anh. “Di
lai day,
“ she said, her slender hands pulling us away urgently.
Come, come now.

The air filled with a smell. It was unlike anything I had ever smelled before, a tangle of burning and decaying things. As we ran away, I could hear people screaming over the sound of chanting. There was a police officer blowing his whistle. I looked back and saw thick smoke and panicky birds rising into the sky. As we kept running, my chest began to tighten. I couldn’t catch a breath.

I had seen too little to have called it anything like an incident or an event. I had seen a crowd forming but its meaning was murky. Why did this
not seeing
feel so harrowing?

What was murky then has lost some of its mystery, though it is no less unthinkable. They say that early that morning a monk sat down on a small brown cushion at a busy downtown intersection. His legs were crossed in lotus position and his hands were folded in prayer. He wore a yellow ceremonial robe and his head was newly shaven. Two other monks in brown robes stepped forward and poured gasoline over him from a plastic container. The liquid sloshed over his head and robes and the seated monk pulled a small cardboard box from his sleeve and lit a match in his lap. The match immediately burst into flame, a pillar of smoke.

But what happened after, happened slowly, as though there were all the time in the world.

There were many descriptions. The monk wore
a coat of fire.
His lap was
a bouquet of red and orange.
There were flames the size of
handkerchiefs.

Reports indicated that everything burned except for his heart, which remained whole. His heart was set on fire two more times, but still it did not burn.

By the next day, at the intersection, someone had covered the blackened ground with white muslin, a skimpy square held down at the corners with large stones. Up close, a dark splotch rippled out past the careful cloth edges.

Sometimes when I draw, I keep my pen pressed down on the page until the ink crawls up the nib and darkens my fingertips. The road was like that, marked with a blot of ink where someone had pressed down too hard. It bled upwards onto my skin. I tried not to imagine what it took for a man to become a stain on a road.

Over the next week, the skies turned an ocean grey. When
the rains came, the black patch started to fade. By the end of the week, it was just a little discolouration, noticeable only if you really looked closely. The rains continued. It started with a light drizzle that muted everything more than ten feet away, then kept coming.

When I asked Anh how she found us that day, she said, “I had to follow.”

“But why? How did you know we were gone?”

“The General,” she said.

N
OW THE SKY IS DARKENING
. I am sitting alone in my studio. A few hours ago I was crying. It could be the monk and his unburnable heart, or maybe it’s the box of old
Peanuts
Iris and I unearthed from the closet.

When Iris noticed my tears, she didn’t ask for an explanation. She just walked over to where I sat, glanced at the halfstarted war scenes in front of me and said, “I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking you should do your own comic book. Not about the war. But maybe like Charlie Brown, about your life. It might help you.”

I looked down at my knees, defensive, ashamed. I never wanted this. To be seen this way by a child: messy, morbid, with a headful of memories that hobble me.

“It’s just an idea,” she said casually. “Anyway, why don’t you sit here and think about it while I go make us dinner.”

A few minutes later I heard a clatter and crash. “Don’t worry! It’s just a pot!”

But that was hours ago and now—a large pizza and seven rounds of Crazy Eights later—Iris is asleep. Kiyomi called earlier to say she will come for her this weekend. She has agreed
to stay on for a small birthday dinner, but then what? I know that from the moment she arrives I’ll have that dismal feeling of a countdown.

Everywhere I look, I see Iris’s things scattered about. Her large grey hooded sweatshirt. A black hairband.

Tonight, between our fourth and fifth round of cards, I rushed off to my studio to leave a voice-mail for Julian. I knew I had to do it fast before I lost my nerve. So in one breath, I told him that I am bailing on the project.
Sorry, mate, for any trouble …

I see now that Iris has left a Post-it note for me. (What is it with her and Kiyomi?) I peel it off the lightbox.
Congratulations, Marcel.
☺
Now you can draw whatever U want.

I’m still flushed with adrenalin and dread at having given up such an important job. It occurs to me that if I don’t sort myself out soon I will die of meaninglessness. That is the price of avoiding the things I find troubling. Because this is the strange thing: It’s not as if I don’t have something to say about war, its horror and humour, its swirling illusions and its emotional aftershocks. If I were to write a book, I would call it
The Disasters of War and Love.
Because, in my life, the two, war and love, are so entwined, it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

I look back at Iris’s note. Even the stupid happy face makes me smile. Iris. You are perfect. Sit, draw beside me. Show me how it goes again.

O
LIVER’S USUAL HABITS OF COURTESY
fell away as his mood darkened. The phone rang but he ignored it and encouraged us to do the same.

“We have to do something about Oliver,” announced Anh one evening after he had gone to sleep.

“What can we do?” I asked.

I wanted to tell her that the cracks in Oliver’s head were not his fault. He was made motherless by the Blitz. He had problems that went
way back.
I wanted to say that he wouldn’t always be odd; he would improve. Here was a man who had interviewed Nehru and the Dalai Lama. He had met famous spiritual guides
in person.
How could he not find his way?

“Macee, I’m worried. I don’t know what to do. There is so little money now. Is there someone for helping?”

Money had been tight lately but Anh’s tone told me that the situation was now officially desperate. I looked over at Dinh, who was whispering in his mother’s ear. He had climbed back into his cave of silence again. I knew it had to do with his father, whose photo he now carried with him at all times, pressing it to his cheek while he slept. When he handled that picture, I could feel his thoughts. I could feel him wondering,
Does my father remember? Has he forgotten?
Even though I thought I liked him better quiet, I was wrong. A world should not be a place that makes a boy fall silent from worry.

The next morning when we were all sitting around the table having breakfast there was a pounding on the door. At first Oliver acted as if he had lost his hearing. We all sat stone still. But the pounding continued, ten or eleven knocks. The person clearly wasn’t going to give up. ”
I know … you’re … in … there!
“

Just as I began to imagine the door caving in, Oliver stood to answer it. I followed him.

Joseph was standing there. His shirt was untucked. His forehead was beaded with sweat.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

“Well, here I am,” said Oliver.

Joseph examined Oliver. “You trying to grow a beard?”

Oliver gave a shrug.

“You don’t answer the phone. Your editor says you’ve missed all your deadlines. He’s given up. Do you want to tell me what this is all about?”

“No.”

“Ach, Oliver, please. I don’t know what to say to you any more.”

“Don’t say anything.”

Joseph gave me a look that said,
Are you okay?
And I nodded:
I’m okay.
I had grown to love Joseph, his wackiness and gentle teasing, his curiosity about me.

I watched Oliver rest a hand against the wall. It had been a long time since he had exchanged this many words with anyone and he seemed drained.

He gave a tight smile and, in a warmer voice, said, “I’m sorry, Joseph, but I have to say goodbye now. There’s work to be done.”

“Fine.” Joseph nodded. “I know when I’m being ejected.” Then he winked conspiringly at me. “But I’ll be back.”

I thought I saw a flash of relief at being dismissed on Joseph’s face just before Oliver closed the door.

Oliver sighed and made his way back to the table. I waited for a moment, then cast Anh a look:
Should I?
She gestured in response,
Yes, quick, go.

I ran down to the lobby and caught him just as he was leaving.

“Joseph …”

He swung around, a questioning look on his face.

“Anh sent me. We need your help.”

He stepped forward and brushed a curl of hair out of my face. “Yes, you do,” he said. “I think it’s time we contacted the home front. It’s time for reinforcements.”

Joseph sent cables to Mrs. Bowne and Pippa and Stasha, intervening as he had promised he would. But the waiting that followed was dreadful. Anh and I moved about in a state of nervous expectation. In the mornings, we eyed the clock impatiently, waiting for the mail to arrive. In the evenings, we sat near the phone. The rest of the time, we watched Oliver, who continued to peck the keys of his typewriter haphazardly, and hoped for a resurrection.

A week passed and still there was no response to our S.O.S. Then, just as we were about to give up, I received a letter from Mrs. Bowne. I tore it open and found £200 tucked inside, which I gave secretly to Anh. Two days later, a square box arrived addressed to Oliver. Inside the box was a nest of tissue paper. Inside that was a single 78-rpm record in a plain paper sleeve.

I took it from Oliver, slipped the record out and read the blue label out loud: “You Really Got a Hold on Me.” I held the record to my chest and said, “I think Pippa sent you a love song.”

Pippa’s card was still in the box.

“Go on, Oliver,” I prompted. “Open the card.”

When he had finished reading it, he looked up, confused.

“She says she’s wired us some ‘mad money.'”

“Maybe she misses us,” I said, handing him the record. “Maybe she’s lonely.”

Oliver didn’t answer, but his face softened. He looked at the record. Then he sat up straight.

In the next post, I received a twine- and paper-wrapped
package of books from Pippa:
The Phantom Tollbooth, Just So Stories,
and
Through the Looking Glass.
I set them out on the empty bookshelf.

Anh began receiving gifts too. Arnaud had grown increasingly lovestruck. He came to visit in the early evenings and each time he arrived he seemed to carry something new. Baskets of fruit. Fresh orchids. A silk scarf. A Philips cassette player. And, once, even a feather duster.

Along with his gifts, Arnaud also arrived with news. He had become our primary link to the outside world after Oliver stopped going to the Caravelle roof bar and attending the daily press briefings at the Rex Hotel. Lately the news was all about the monks. Mass protests. Raids on the Buddhist temples. Antigovernment demonstrators tear gassed and arrested. Arnaud said the clampdown on the monks had become a symbol of what was wrong with the government: corrupt leaders, citizens robbed of basic liberties. Every day the news seemed to grow more disturbing. Areas of Saigon had filled with armed soldiers. Jeeps mounted with machine guns and klaxon horns were travelling up and down the streets. A 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew had been set. One night, in the middle of our meal, the electricity cut out. For a few days the phones stopped working. Then the airport was shut down to incoming travellers.

I was on the balcony towards the end of August when Arnaud arrived earlier than usual. It was a breezy sunny day. A week of rain had scoured the air and left it clean. Anh was showing Dinh and me how to eat a lychee properly by biting lightly through the rind at the stem end to create an opening, then squeezing the other end so that the fruit popped into our mouths. I couldn’t eat enough of them. It seemed miraculous to me that
such a sweet and perfect treat could come from such a coarse and unattractive shell.

It was in this happy sun-drunk state that I finally walked inside to get a glass of water and empty our bowl of lychee shells, blithely unprepared for what greeted me. I closed the French doors behind me. Then I made out the shadow of Oliver sitting at the table in front of Arnaud. Oliver’s head was bowed down. It was only when my eyes adjusted that I saw the look on Arnaud’s face.

“I just came in for some water,” I said, gripping my bowl.

“Come over here, Marcel,” Arnaud said, a forced smile on his face. “Put the bowl down.”

He pointed at a chair and I hesitated, scared now of Oliver’s waxen expression.

When I finally sat down, Arnaud took my hand. “Something happened to Joseph,” he said, as if to a small child.

I looked at Oliver as Arnaud continued. “Joseph was driving across a bridge. The roads can be very dangerous after a heavy rain …”

Oliver straightened his back. His eyes seemed to have receded into his head: two distant dots. He suddenly stood up and hurried off to the bathroom.

I looked back at Arnaud’s face, then at his mouth. I found it hard to absorb everything he was saying.

“Arnaud? Is Joseph—?”

“Yes, Marcel. Joseph is dead.”

Oliver came back and sat down. His face was damp and white. He turned to me and smiled a blank smile that made him look very sad.

“He shouldn’t have been alone in that car,” he said. “He was always a terrible driver.”

There were flowers floating in a bowl on the table, frangipani that Anh had picked from the courtyard. Yellow and white blossoms were sailing slowly here and there.

I looked sideways at Oliver and saw that there were tears falling down his cheeks. Brave, quiet tears. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him cry. It was upsetting, but at the same time it was somehow a relief and I began to cry too. I let everything stream out.

Somewhere behind me, I could hear the chiming of Anh’s new bangles, delicate silver hoops that Arnaud had brought her a few days before.