The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction (2 page)

“
‘Spirit!’
I called out, my voice so small against the storm.
‘What is it that you want?’

“The drowned man’s head flopped down to one side and it turned its rotting palms out to me, as if to show that it didn’t know, either.

“ ‘My husband and I have nothing to give you; no rice or incense to make an offering with. We do not know how to lay you to rest.’ A wave slopped over the side of the boat and I received a mouthful of salt water. I spat it out and continued. ‘We are just two wet and weary souls, like you.’

“I didn’t have to shout these last words, for the wind had begun to quiet down. The rain was no longer beating on my skull and the back of my neck.

“With the jerky movements of a puppet on strings, the corpse lifted its head once more and bent its knees. It had no eyes, no lips or cheeks, and there was only a little bony ridge where the nose had been, yet it still looked sad. Poor thing: lost, half-eaten, and a little too alive to be completely dead. It spun on its tiptoes, then began wandering away across the waves once more. Grandpa thought it went south, and I was sure it went west, though we were probably both wrong, for we were still dazed by the storm. It did not turn to look back at us, and after a while we couldn’t see it any longer.

“The waves were far from calm and the sky too dark for us to be optimistic, but Grandpa began steering us toward what we hoped was the shore. When we finally made it back to land we were shaking, but not for the reasons you might think. It wasn’t that
thing
we had met out on the water that frightened us, but the fact that we had gotten away so easily. Because what we suspected then was that there would be a price to pay later. I look at it this way: On that stormy day the spirits did not take us, but they wrote our names down in their book, and we knew they would eventually come collecting.”

“G
RANDMA
! W
HAT THE HELL
was that?”

“Watch your mouth,
con
.”

“Seriously, if Mom heard you talking like that, she’d think you were losing it and send you right to an old folks’ home!”

“Well, now you know why I never tell your mother any of my stories.”

“What am I supposed to do with a story like that? I’m going to fail history! And your papaya is giving me a stomachache!”

“
Con
, if you were listening you would have learned almost everything you need to know about your history. The first rule of the country we come from is that it always gives you what you ask for, but never exactly what you want.”

“But I want the real story!”

“That was a real story. All of my stories are real.”

“No! You know what I mean, I know you do! Why can’t you tell me how you escaped?”

“It’s simple, child: Did we ever really escape?”

T
HE ONLY PHOTOGRAPH
I have of my father doesn’t show his face. He and his two brothers stand with their backs to the camera before their father’s grave on a sunny day in April 1973. My grandfather was killed when a building collapsed during the bombings that December, and the incense on top of his tomb—just visible over my uncle’s right shoulder—is almost all burned down. All three of the brothers are wearing their traditional silk jackets and trousers, but the trousers are white and don’t show up well because of the brightness of the sun and the pale marble of the cemetery all around them. It tricks my eyes whenever I look at it—for a moment I always think they are floating.

The picture hangs in the lobby of the hotel now, on the wall before you reach the stairs, and like everything else in the building, it’s covered in a film of perma-grime. My family has owned the Frangipani Hotel on the corner of Hàng Bạc and Hàng Bè
since the thirties, when it was
L’Hôtel Frangipane
. Swanky name, shitty place. It’s in the Old Quarter, where all the buildings are narrow and crooked and falling apart, and some still have bullet holes from the sixties in their concrete sides. There’s a karaoke bar across the street, a massage parlor of ill-repute next door, and the Red River’s a couple of blocks east. The Frangi itself is a seven-story death trap, with four-footed things scurrying around inside the walls and tap water that runs brownish. If you slammed a door too hard the entire thing would collapse. It’s painted a sickly pale pink on the outside, and lined with peeling brown-and-gold–striped wallpaper on the inside. The large sign that hangs on the front of the whole mess with “The Frangipani Hotel” painted on it is crooked.

When Hanoi was bombed, the building was abandoned and five army officers and their concubines moved in. After the war, when what remained of our family began trickling back into the city, they found maps and diagrams scrawled in chalk on the walls and dusty boxes of ammo stacked in corners. I don’t know how they managed to get the place back—the government was still repossessing property and evicting people left and right in the postwar years. Maybe we were lucky. Maybe the place was even too old and nasty for the communists. I don’t know how we manage to stay in business now—Hanoi is full of newer hotels in less seamy parts of town, and why anyone would choose to stay at the Frangi instead is one of my favorite diverting mysteries to ponder while I’m working at this shithole.

I’m at the reception desk because I’m the only one who
speaks passable English, and my cousins Thang and Loi are doormen or bellhops, depending on the situation. Thang is the good-looking one—high, chiseled cheekbones, long eyelashes, the kind of red-brown skin that looks warm and like it would smell slightly spicy, the kind of smile that makes women weak in the knees. Loi has the face and personality of a toad. However, he can be useful because his ubiquitous presence dissuades our female guests from trying to sleep with Thang, and because he makes even me seem handsome by comparison.

Their father—my uncle Hung—is legally the owner and manager of the hotel. He and my father and their brother Hai ran it together before the war, but then Uncle Hai drowned in an accident that no one ever talks about and my
Ba
went insane and offed himself a few years later, so now it’s his. In his mind, Uncle Hung is a major player in what he refers to as the “Hospitality Industry,” and not in charge of a half-star hotel. He’s even started calling himself “Mr. Henry” in an attempt to better connect with the Western guests. However, he can’t really pronounce “Henry,” let alone “Frangipani,” so watching him greet guests and introduce himself is endlessly amusing.

The other day, Mr. Henry decided to assemble the family for what he called a “staff meeting.” It consisted of him, Thang and Loi, their mother and her sister, who are the housekeepers, me, my mother, who cooks the complimentary breakfasts, and my grandmother—my
Ba Noi
—who either sits upstairs in her room and raves all day or is dragged downstairs by Mr. Henry and positioned in the lobby with a cup of tea to give the hotel a homey feel.

We gathered in the first-floor room where Thang takes his girls and Loi and I take naps on slow days.

“Why are we here? What are we doing here?” Ba Noi said as she sat down.

“I agree,” said my auntie Linh. “Why do we need a meeting, Hung? Couldn’t whatever it is have waited a couple of hours until dinner?”

“I think Ba Noi is just being generally senile,” I chimed in. “She probably doesn’t even know we’re having a meeting.”

Thang and Loi at the same time: “You’re a little shit, Phi, you know that? A real shit,” and “Don’t talk about Ba Noi when she’s in the room!”

I looked over at Ba Noi. She was smiling beatifically at a decorative vase of plastic flowers. Mr. Henry—who was wearing only boxer shorts and rubber sandals to his own staff meeting—tried calling everyone to attention. He cleared his throat.

“Valued employees!” he began. He had obviously rehearsed this beforehand. My auntie Mai turned her snort of laughter into a cough when he shot her a look. “Valued employees, I have called this meeting because I have decided that we must change our entire marketing strategy …”

I hadn’t realized we’d had a strategy, other than not to accidentally poison the guests, or, in Thang’s case, accidentally get them pregnant.

“… We need to add a little more class to our establishment …”

Uh-oh. The last time Mr. Henry wanted to add more class to the Frangi, he sank us into debt by installing a heinous plaster tiered-basin fountain in the middle of the lobby that breaks down every month or so.

“… And we need to reach out to the international corporate community! It’s the businessmen from Japan and Australia and Singapore and the USA who have all the money, and so we will convince them to come to the Frangipani Hotel! How will we do this?” Mr. Henry paused dramatically to stare around the room at us. “Easy!” He dragged a large plastic shopping bag from the closet and began to dole out its contents. With his drooping stomach, he looked like a budget Vietnamese Santa Claus. First he pulled out a large stack of looseleaf paper and handed it to Auntie Linh.

“What’s this, Hung?”

“Put a little in every room—it’s our new, monogrammed hotel stationery! I got it done cheap by a friend on Hàng Ma. Now, for the boys, something special …” He reached into the bag again, and as our eyes widened in horror, he slowly drew out two pairs of matching, mustard-colored trousers and jackets with unraveling gold epaulets and tossed them to Thang and Loi. “New uniforms! There, aren’t they smart?” Thang stared at the yellow atrocity, looking as if he might cry.

“Snazzy!” I whispered to him. “Imagine what a lady-killer you’ll be in that!”

But Mr. Henry rounded on me next. “Phi, you’ve got English and a bit of French under your belt, right? Well, there
should still be some room left up there,” he said as he tapped my forehead with a chubby index finger. He dropped a heavy book in my lap. “You’re learning Japanese now.”

I looked down at the book’s cover. Little cartoon children with purple hair smiled up at me. No way.

“Don’t you think there’s an easier way to do this?” I pleaded. “Maybe repainting the building a color that isn’t pink?”

Mr. Henry pretended he hadn’t heard me and added, “One more thing—I’m cutting down on your cigarette breaks. It’s a filthy habit, and a customer could come in while you’re not there. You’re down to four a day now.”

I’m still feeling sore about this—I’ve always taken as many cigarette breaks as I pleased, which is probably giving me a mélange of cancers, but it gets me away from the reception desk. During the day I’ll just smoke on the corner curb with Thang, but at night I always go around the block to Hoan Kiem Lake. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than leaning against the splintering red bridge that spans it, flicking my cigarette butts into the filthy green water, and staring at people.

Tourists swarm the place even in low season, dutifully snapping photograph after photograph of the ancient tower in the middle of the lake, and giggling Vietnamese teenagers take pictures of themselves on their cellphones. Around the perimeter, couples wander, holding hands, and groups of old women do tai chi to a cassette player warbling bamboo flute music. It’s the most crowded spot in the city, but it’s where I go to be alone. The water is smeary with the reflections of yellow,
green, and blue lanterns hanging from the trees at its edge. Sometimes kids will sit on the lower branches and try to fish, but everyone knows that there’s nothing to catch in Hoan Kiem but empty Coca-Cola cans and used heroin needles. Legend says that centuries ago, a giant turtle lived at the bottom of the lake, and it once gave a magic sword to a general to help him defeat the Chinese invaders. I’m supposed to tell the story to all the tourists who stay at the Frangi.

They say that the lake is the soul of this city. I think they might be right.

M
ONDAY MORNING
—I
WAKE UP
at six as always. I lie in my bed in room 703 for a few minutes and listen to the noise leaking in from the street: the usual motorbike horns, squawks from today’s unlucky batch of chickens on their way to market, the propaganda truck making its daily rounds, blasting messages about uniting for the Fatherland. Sunlight is invading the room and I know that the day will be a hot one. It’s time for me to get up.