The Darkest Little Room (16 page)

A man on a motorcycle pulled up at the crossing and Hung turned him back and returned to the shelter.

‘Twelve years. You must have seen a lot in that time in a town like this.'

He gave a wry smile

‘Đung.'

‘Have you ever seen anyone try to get tiger parts through here?'

‘Có thể
… Perhaps.
‘Các bạn nhà báo không?
… Are you reporters?'

‘Không, chỉ du lịch
… No, only travellers,' I said. ‘Only curious. Though Minh Quy here is a tour guide.'

I took a pair of tin cups out of my rucksack and rubbed them clean with a lens cloth and poured from a bottle of cheap cognac I had brought from Saigon.

I nodded toward Minh Quy.

‘He and I will share.'

‘This is rice wine?'

‘Much better.'

The man nodded.

‘Truly Chinese rice wine is poisonous.'

‘Agreed.'

I raised my cup.

‘Truly, friend, you must have seen some action at this border.'

‘I have,' said Hung throwing down the entire contents of his cup and grimacing. I poured him another and checked the bottle and hoped he would slow down.

‘They say weapons and drugs come through here.'

‘Not at this checkpoint.'

‘No. Of course not. But perhaps there are older roads either side of the checkpoint. Other ways to cross.'

Hung shrugged.

‘
Cái này chỉ là nghe nói
… This is merely hearsay,' I said. ‘But they say girls pass through, also. Girls for the brothels in the big cities in China. Well what a thing? I do not know what I would do if I saw such a thing.'

‘Who says this?'

I shrugged.

‘People. Newspapers.'

‘I would not believe anything I read in a newspaper out of Saigon.'

‘Well,' I tried to bait him, ‘Chinese newspapers say it is only the Vietnamese who traffic girls through here. But I do not believe it. I would bet men from all sides are involved.'

‘You are very interested in these girls, friend.'

‘Who would not be interested in the idea of a truckload of pretty girls?' Minh Quy smiled. ‘Here.' He poured us all another drink and glanced at me and spoke English.

‘Slow down.'

The border guard grinned.

‘And yet,' I said, ‘I think the girls would not look so fancy by the time they got here. They are kidnapped. Starved and dehydrated.'

‘Friend, you would have to clarify what you mean by “kidnapped” to make what you say have meaning. There are stolen wives who end up happier than Saigon wives. And if a father sells a daughter, then that is his affair.'

‘It is against the law.'

He smiled.

‘The law of Saigon does not always reach here.'

I look across at Minh Quy and saw his eyes silently pleading with me not to express surprise that a government employee had said such a thing.

I nodded.

‘If a truckload of girls was to pass through here, would it typically be going to He Kou only, or on to Kunming or Ruili, or somewhere further?'

‘Who are you, friend?'

‘I am sorry. I am only curious. What could I do about such a situation, anyway?'

The border guard threw down the last of his drink. I wanted to tell him he was wasting it, drinking it like rice wine as he did. But relations were already strained.

‘Nothing, friend. You could do absolutely nothing at all. And now, I think, it is time for you to go back to the town and wait until tomorrow. The colonel would be here by now if he was coming. It is nearly seven and no one in greater authority than me will come. You will go back to the town.'

I showed him Thuy's picture.

‘Bạn đã nhìn thấy cô ấy không?
… Have you seen her?'

‘Không
… No.'

‘She may have come through here as recently as this afternoon. With men. Maybe two men: one middle-aged, one young.'

‘I have not seen her.'

‘And you will not let anyone through the border?'

He glared at me.

‘I apologise. But where do people cross who want to avoid border guards?'

‘Không the
… It does not happen.'

‘No, of course not,' I smiled, bitterness getting the better of me. ‘
Ở đây có khach san không?
… Is there a guesthouse nearby?'

‘
Có thể
… Maybe. I have never looked. There are some in the town.'

We walked off to a nearby cafe with a view of the checkpoint. We saw men on motorbikes returning home to Vietnam with empty panniers and ganh poles and a few young army grunts. All were turned back, despite their pleading. The night was cold.

‘He may be straight,' said Minh Quy. ‘And even if he isn't, this is a very public checkpoint. Without doubt there are other ways to cross the border.'

We walked back into Lao Cai town and our driver was not at the hotel where we left him. I tried to call him and his phone was switched off or out of range.

Minh Quy squatted and spat.

‘Bastard.'

But I was happy.

‘I hope someone shot him for his car.'

In the town in the dusk middle-aged men sat against stone walls with their heads in their hands, one was struggling to keep dry a mat of tobacco he was selling under an arc light. A little boy played in a weed-ridden rice field below power lines. An old woman wrapped in scarves hauled water from a well for the evening meal and the air was coarse with the smoke of cooking fires. We walked until we found a cheap place that would put us up. These border areas were haunted by kidnappers and I looked with suspicion at a man smoking in the house yard with two little girls at his feet. But then one of the girls hugged the man like a father and I wondered once more if I was going mad.

I gave 200 000đ to the wary middle-aged woman who answered the door of the spartan guesthouse and served us thin robusta coffee. The woman switched on a tiny television set in the corner of the lobby. Freezing rain began falling in the blue dark outside, all along the war-haunted roads and over the Hmong villages and on the mountains of China.

A moustachioed man in a rough coat burst in the door, glared at us and exchanged a few sharp sentences with his wife. He took a bolt-action rifle off his shoulder and sat it on a rack above the television.

I was hungry and there seemed to be nothing to eat in the house. The woman poured more coffee. She sang scraps of old song: an unpretty chant that broke off into breathy humming where her memory failed. But just when I thought we must put our coats on and go looking for dinner the woman bought out a claypot fish stew with chilli and scallions.

The man sat down to eat and invited us to do the same and he pointed to a bottle of rice wine surrounded by thimbles.

‘Uong đi
… Drink.'

‘Cảm ơn
… Thank you. Perhaps later.'

I hoped he would not insist. I looked out the window to a truckload of salted hides.

‘Anh là thợ săn hả?
… You are a hunter?'

‘Đung roi
… Yes.'

‘What do you hunt?'

The man shrugged.

‘Deer, pigs, monkeys. Whatever the forest holds.'

The man looked at Minh Quy and then back to me.

‘What is your business here?'

‘We are looking for a kidnapped girl.'

I took the photograph out of my wallet and handed it to him.

The man looked at the picture then handed it back.

‘Girls are not kidnapped here. That is a myth that the government in Saigon uses to justify bullying us.'

‘Perhaps,' I said. ‘But I have suspicions. I believe there is a slave market close to here.'

‘A slave market!' The hunter laughed.

I nodded.

‘And I believe this girl may be taken there in the coming days. She has been traded through it once in her life already.'

‘Who is paying you to do this work?'

‘The girl's parents,' I lied, and at once the man guessed I lied, for the parents of girls in the catchment of kidnappers do not have money to pay investigators from Saigon who are accustomed to the fees paid by wealthy Western women for reports on their husbands' business trips.

The man picked up the photograph again. Held it to the dim incandescent light in the centre of the room.

‘Đep lam
… She is very beautiful.'

‘That is not my concern.'

‘It is one of your concerns. It makes your chances of taking her back off whoever has taken her much less.'

‘I am not afraid.'

The man smiled mirthlessly.

‘There are no kidnappers here. But there are young and bored police and gangsters who will take offence to you. Are you armed?'

‘No.' And I zipped up my coat so he would not get a glimpse of the revolver in the inside pocket.

‘Why not?'

I smiled.

‘I might kill someone.'

‘Nguoi nuoc ngaoi!
… Foreigners!' he laughed. ‘When did you stop breeding men in your countries? If you survive the failure of that policy, come back and see me. I can arrange something for you.' He pointed to the rifle that sat above the television set.

I thanked him.

‘But I think that an auction of girls will shortly take place in this border country.'

‘What makes you believe this?'

‘I have sources.'

‘Have you spoken with the police in town?'

‘I am not a fool.'

The man smiled and began cutting corns from his feet with a pocket knife.

We ate and he drank. The hunter fell asleep in his chair, then rolled onto a hard flat bed.

The woman stoked a stove and took two thin pillows and two blankets to the stairs.

‘
Chúng tôi sẽ không ngủ
… We do not intend to sleep,' I told her.

‘Muỏn gì?
… Then what?'

‘Only to rest, and to ask you where people who do not wish to be seen cross the border.'

‘There is no crossing the border on a night like tonight.'

‘The people I am chasing will not care about the weather.'

‘If they are Vietnamese they will. Rest!'

‘If you do not tell me I must–'

‘Must what?' said Minh Quy. ‘Go out and ask a policeman? Walk the jungle in the dark?'

‘Nghi!
… Rest!' said the old woman. ‘And cross in the morning.'

She showed us to a room with two beds and then went to her own bed downstairs. I could not sleep, thinking again how once Thuy was on China's eastern seaboard she would be lost. I looked at my phone. God, why didn't she message?

In the hour before dawn the woman came to our room. I woke and she was sitting in dim light that came in from a street lamp and staring at me. I sat up. She whispered so as not to wake her husband downstairs.

‘
Có một đuong
… There is a road,' she said, ‘an ox track at the northern outskirts of town. It comes down out of the woods and over the creek beside a ruined temple. I have seen men lead girls up that road. It is a way to an old war road that is a covered way into China.

I nodded. The woman still stared painfully at the photograph I had left on the table beside my bed.

‘If you follow that road, do not return to this house. My husband cannot know I told you of it.'

‘Do you mean he–?'

‘Không
… No. But this is a small place.'

‘How many people here know what goes along that road?'

‘Mọi người…
Everybody.'

‘That cannot be.'

‘Mọi người'

I could always resign myself to the existence of a monster – evil in isolation from the greater body of Man. The shocking thing was acquiescence to evil, without satanic splendour, the quiet, dull, gradual acceptance of horror that most, if not all, Men were capable of.

Dawn broke dimly into a blanket of grey sky without rain. The prematurely old woman stopped us at the door. She took a faded photograph from inside her coat and put it in my hand. The photograph was of a dark-skinned Vietnamese girl. The girl could not have been more than twelve. The woman began to weep. Tears ran through the wrinkles in her face like water down ancient stone.

‘
Chúng tôi đã rất nghèo
… We were very poor. She was too young to get pregnant. She would forget.'

And I wondered if she meant the sale or herself.

‘When?'

‘Three years ago. We were very poor. Then came the floods, two years together, and …' She lowered her head. ‘We were very poor.'

‘Three years?'

‘Yes.'

I sighed.

‘
Có thể
…' she said hopefully.

‘
Có thể
… Yes, maybe.' I said to her.

And I thought, no. There is no hope.

‘Is this your only photograph?'

‘Yes.'

‘You keep it,' I said. ‘She will have changed much.'

‘
Tên là Hang
… Her name is Hang.'

‘Alright. Hang.'

‘Near the ruined temple,' she said, taking the photograph back and wiping her tears with her sleeve. ‘Across the creek. Then up into the mountain and then down to the river. But be warned, the mountain is controlled by the gang. Very bad men.'

26

We took the woman's path out of town and into the mountains. We walked through pines and stands of star anise on a mat of brown needles and it was simple to walk until the rain came. When the rain came the pine needles were washed away and we walked in mud.

We came to a field of rock. A cold stream ran swiftly and silently in hollow clay banks. We sheltered from the rain beneath an overhang and drank water from a leather bladder Minh Quy carried. He took a .22 mm semi-automatic pistol out of his knapsack.

‘I bought it off our friend this morning when you went for a piss. I thought I'd wait till there was no chance of giving it back before I showed you. The men we are hunting will be armed. Better we are too.'