The Darkest Little Room (6 page)

This Minh Quy said of the owner of Club 49.

I took a draught of beer.

‘Do you think he would kill me if he knew I was coming after him?'

‘Not in person.'

‘That seems discourteous.'

‘You're not paying me to lie to you. In fact, you're not paying me at all?'

‘Your money's coming.'

Minh Quy's wife and ten-year-old daughter had gone to the kitchen to wash up after the evening meal of
ga chien,
Vietnamese barbecued chicken, so we drank and smoked with the pleasant sound of the ladies chirping like birds and making fun of me – of the difficulty I had sitting cross-legged – coming from behind the wall.

‘They don't believe you can understand.'

I smiled.

‘I went to Club 49.'

‘What did you find?'

‘The girl. Perhaps the girl.'

Minh Quy raised his eyebrows.

‘Was she as bad as the German said?'

‘She didn't look as maltreated as I do. She looked fine for a prostitute.'

‘They do tend to look fine. That doesn't mean they aren't sick. You know what they say: pick the prettiest, cleanest, freshest-looking kid in a brothel and she's the one with the really evil diseases.'

‘I know. I can't say what this girl did or didn't have. Probably the lot by your rule. She's the prettiest girl I've ever seen. But she was not abused. At least not the way Hönicke said.'

‘Buy her a necklace. If the silver goes black on her neck it means she's sick.'

‘You Viets,' I smiled. Quy did not say such things all in jest; he was a man of the twenty-first century, but like so many of his countrymen his mind straddled earlier ages. ‘Anyway,' I said, ‘I never got that close to her. She had me kicked out.'

‘Are you sure it was the girl?'

‘Her eyes were as Hönicke described: green and wet like the Perfume River.'

‘I thought he said the Ma?'

‘Yes. You're right. Like that river. But I have never seen eyes like that in a Saigon brothel before – when bar girls wear contacts they are more garish. And this was the club he named.'

I told Quy my theory on why Hönicke had lied. I had formulated it last night half-drunk in bed. I decided his story was part of an elaborate fantasy – as childish as it was sinister – the fantasy of a man who is excited by the idea of beating a beautiful young girl yet lacks the courage to actually ask for it or do it; but if he can get someone to believe his story then it confirms the fantasy just a little further into reality …

‘That might be true.'

‘There is another thing, Quy.'

‘Yes.'

‘I knew a girl who looked exactly like her.'

‘Impossible.'

‘I know.' I looked down onto the street, the shadows lengthening along it. ‘I know.'

‘Are you alright?'

‘Maybe I'm going mad.'

‘Joe, you are just–'

‘I'm not joking, Quy. Maybe I am.'

He stared at me.

‘You should take a few days off. Get a boat down to Thailand and sit on a beach for a few days.'

‘Maybe. But in the meantime keep your ear to the ground,' I said.

‘Yes.'

I thanked Quy's wife and walked home.

I stopped in at the Cafe Hoang for a Pernod and watched the amber clouds that the ice water made drift about my glass. Out the window I watched the park crumble into the dusk and then the dark was relieved by electric light. I was about to get up when Hönicke walked in.

‘I was hoping to find you here,' he said.

‘You've missed me. I'm leaving.'

‘No, wait! What about the girl?'

‘I'm too tired for your bullshit, Hönicke. If that is your name. What the hell are you playing at?'

‘Nothing.'

‘What do you have to do with that girl?'

‘What? Me? Nothing, I swear!'

He looked angry and frightened.

‘Nothing! My God I–'

‘Alright, alright. Don't get hysterical.

‘But did you find her?'

‘Do I look like a fool to you?'

‘What?'

‘Play your morbid games with someone else.'

‘You did not find her?'

‘I found her. And you need never worry about her or your darkest little room anymore. She was fine.'

‘No, she cannot be. In the photograph–'

‘Yes. Now that you mention it, where is that photograph?'

‘I have not found it.'

‘And you truly don't know a thing more about the girl than you've told me?'

‘No.'

‘One way or another you're a lying bastard.'

‘No, wait. I–'

‘Go to hell.'

I got up from the table

‘You will see,' he called out the door after me.

‘I did see. The girl you spoke about was fine and the place you said she worked did not exist.'

I went home and lay down in the air conditioning and watched a storm roll over the tops of the buildings outside my window and the lights atop the buildings flash in the deep Saigon dark. I could not sleep and I knew I must go to her.

11

I sat with a Heineken at a roadside cafe opposite the club. I followed her when she came onto the street.

After repeated visits to the same brothel you begin to see that the same dresses are worn night after night, you imagine how dour the place must look in the daylight, and the girls who seemed so startling at first lose a little of their lustre. But the girl was more beautiful tonight than the night before.

She stood and waited for me at the door, and I thought, at least she does not go in and call for the muscle.

‘I'm not drunk,' I said. ‘But–'

‘Do you want a drink now?'

I was surprised.

‘Yes.'

We went in. The snake-faced man behind the bar eyed me but the girl waved to him to say it was alright and I grinned at him.

I paid for two Japanese whiskies and the boy at the bar poured me a glass of the whisky and poured the girl a glass of water with just enough whisky to tint it. We went to a private room upstairs. This, she said, was ‘her room'. There was a collection of her personals before a mirror. Many nights she slept here. I sat against a wall.

‘You know me.'

‘Do I?'

‘You were Ny?'

She hesitated. As though fetching a name from memory.

‘My name Thuy.'

‘Yes. That was the name they called you. Your family and girlfriends. After Thuy Kieu, the legendary princess in the poem.'

She laughed without mirth.

‘Why would they call me that?'

‘Because you were beautiful. Because you could sing old poetry.'

I looked into her eyes that were green under the incandescent light. God, there can be no mistaking them.

One of the other girls came in. She said,
‘Chi nên đưa người đàn ông này đi
… Sister should take this one. He is young.'

‘Đúng rồi, nhưng em bệnh
… Yes, but sister is sick with the cold.'

‘Ngay cả như vậy
… Even if you are …'

‘Thuy wore a green vinyl dress and her eyelids were covered in aquamarine eye shadow. She wore fake lashes and red lipstick and there was glitter in the corners of her eyes. Her eyes came from the central highlands; her pale amber skin from the far north – and she had a Chinese nose.

‘Are you from the north?'

‘Once I was from the north. I do not have home.'

‘You are very beautiful.'

She nodded and looked away, as though I had commented on the weather.

She looked up.

‘What day is today?'

‘Wednesday.'

She nodded again.

I let sentiment get the better of me.

‘You know, you must not work here.'

All at once she was angry, and I knew I had spoken the single most intolerable phrase a man in a South-East Asian brothel can ever speak to a prostitute.
I love you
– which some of the worst-treated prostitutes in the world hear nightly – is kinder and less ridiculous.

I apologised.

‘But, Ny–'

‘Why you call me that?'

I sighed. I played my hand and spoke Vietnamese.

‘Well, if you refuse to be her …
Anh đang tìm một nơi
… Brother is looking for a place …
một nơi đặc biệt
… a special place. A place where girls are beaten. Is it here?'

She threw the whisky-coloured water in my face and stood up to go. I grabbed her arm.

‘Ngoi đi
,' I said. ‘Please sit down. Please.
Em chưa hiểu anh
… Sister does not yet understand me.'

‘Không có
… There is no such place.
Tại sao anh hoi điều đó?
… Why do you ask that?'

‘Xin lỗi
… I'm sorry,' I said and gently took her arm. I whispered: ‘
Tôi là một nhà văn
… I am a writer – for newspapers. I am not here for a girl.'

‘Hãy nhìn xung quanh!
… Look around!' she said. ‘Ask whether the place you speak of is here.'

‘Please sit down.'

She took my drink and stirred it with her finger. We sat in silence. Then she stared at me.

‘What city is this?'

‘Little sister is joking.'

‘Không.'

‘Saigon'

She nodded.

‘
Vài cô gái đã nói đây là Sài Gòn
… Some of the girls said this was Saigon. But it did not look the way I thought Saigon would look. But then, I only ever see this place and some shops near here. That bridge and the outskirts to north and the black river. So that must be Saigon River.
Ho nói cái nay la Saigon
… They told me this was Saigon but we had so many Chinese here last week I thought we must still be across the border.' She looked over my shoulder as though staring through the wall, to the festoon of orange lights that marked the tremendous concrete bridge out there in the dark. Truly at this hour this place could have been anywhere in Asia. And these were the only hours she knew.
‘Sau đó chúng ta chúng tôi có người Campu-chia
… Then we had Cambodians. I was afraid we were in Cambodia. No girl gets out of there.' She smiled sadly. ‘Well, if this is Saigon then I am far from where I born.'

‘Where is that?'

‘Thanh Hoa.'

I nodded.

‘Có chuyện gì vậy, anh?
… What is the matter, brother?'

‘Nothing. You say Thanh Hoa?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ho Chi Minh's home province.'

The girl smiled.

‘Ðung roi
… Bac Ho. He won the war. They call Saigon after him now.'

‘How long have you been here?'

‘Maybe two weeks.'

A fortnight in a city she could not call by name.

‘And before you were in China?'

‘Yes..'

‘Is here better than China?'

She shook her head.

‘You are her. You are the one I am looking for.'

‘All Asian girls look alike to you Westerners, no?'

‘Don't be a fool.'

She grinned at me.

‘I will take you out,' I said.

‘Yes. But I am sick tonight. Please find another girl.'

‘I do not mean to take you to a hotel. I mean to take you out of here forever.
Mai mai. Hiểu không?'

The girl raised her eyebrows.

‘Em hiểu
… Little sister understands.'

Her deep distrust of men, all men, could not be wiped away in an hour of talk at a bar. I guessed I was not one of the first dozen men who had made her similar promises. And yet she was here.

I went downstairs to get another drink and a little red light flashed in a corner of the room and all the girls put on yellow trench coats. An undercover policeman walked in and surveyed the room. When the Tet holidays came police shook down places like this to get money to buy party supplies, careful to tell their favourite girls not to come to work that night. But it was not near the holidays and the policeman tonight only scanned the room. Probably he was bored and wanted to get a look at the girls. I would have loved to have asked him what made him frightened to ask for a kickback of even a few hundred thousand from the bar, but he was already gone back onto the street and the barman collected the girls' yellow coats.

I came back to the private room.

‘How much is it to take you out tonight?'

‘One hundred US dollars. But please–'

I held her hand. She smiled a little.

‘Hôm qua anh ta đến dây vì một ngươi Ðức tên là Hönicke
… Brother came here yesterday because of a German called Hönicke. Do you know him?'

She shrugged.

‘Không biet
… I meet many men here.'

‘He told me you were beaten.'

Her eyes widened and a haunted look came to her face. She snatched her hand away.

‘Who are you?'

‘A reporter. I told you that. Who are you?'

She considered this in a moment of silence. She lowered her eyes.

‘Something awful.'

‘Don't ever let them convince you of that. You're as precious as anyone in this world.'

She laughed charily.

‘Is that what you think?'

I whispered in English, so she would not hear, ‘More so to me.'

I touched the silver crucifix that rested on her chest. Though I was not a believer, I could think of no better consolation than what I said then.

‘You are equal to a queen in the eyes of your God.'

She sighed.

‘There are places in the world so dark even God cannot find them. Where nothing is forbidden.'

‘Căn phòng nhỏ ít tỏi nhất?
… The darkest little room?'

She kept her eyes on her drink, tinkled the ice against the glass with her little finger.

‘Why would you say this?'