Read Catfish and Mandala Online
Authors: Andrew X. Pham
Catfish and Mandala (18 page)
He goes back to his bowl and starts scarfing down everything in sight, zigzagging across the table and popping morsels into his big mouth. He chopsticks a morsel into my bowl in a gesture of friendship. Madame gives me a stewed egg. Driver picks me a choice piece of fish. Mechanic spoons me some vegetables. We eat a hearty meal. The crew heaps on me the standard questions every Vietnamese asks about the West, and I answer them between mouthfuls, my bowl never empty.
Half an hour later, Driver groans to his feet, rubs his belly, and drags his bones over to a hammock hung from mango trees off to the side of the diner. At the sight of Driver slouching into the hammock like a dead man and draping an arm over his eyes, the crowd, suffering in the noon sun, clearly swindled, moans. By twos and threes, they stagger like captives into the shade of the diner and order peasant lunches of steamed rice with pork chops sautéed in fishsauce and scallions. Even tight-pursed elders eke out a dime-bill for iced tea.
I swing onto a hammock next to Driver, who peeks at me from beneath his arm, apparently feigning a nap.
“What's it like in japan?”
he whispers without shifting his reposed position, keeping up the charade for the benefit of his passengers.
“What's it like in japan?”
he whispers without shifting his reposed position, keeping up the charade for the benefit of his passengers.
I feel funny telling a traveling man about traveling, and, in fact, telling a second party about the culture of a third party, a little like snitching, gossiping. But I oblige anyway, giving him a look at Japan, the jewel of the East, through Western eyes. Perhaps Western eyes have rose-colored lenses particularly suitable for adventurers because my tales of mountains after mountains of skyscrapers and glass and concrete and asphalt and smog, overrun with a bewildering sea of people, excite him.
“Sometimes, I wish I could go,”
he says, eyes looking off to someplace devised by his wanderlust.
“I just want to rip out the seats on the bus, put in a table and a bed. And ten fifty-gallon drums of diesel. And drive. Drive all the way to Hanoi, then right into China, then up and up and up through Russia until I see snowâyou know, I've never seen snowâand then just go West. Aim for the sun and drive at it ⦠Drive until I hit Poland and France and right into the end of the world, right into England.”
He pauses, perplexed.
“You think there's a road like that, a road over all that land, over all those countries?”
I tell him there probably is and if there isn't, a couple of side trips wouldn't be bad either. Adventure is but a collection of detours. He asks me how I got the courage to go. I say I'd realized that the surest way forward was to burn all the bridges behind. I am really good at that. He rambles on about all his
“crazy notions,”
yakking passionately about exploration and adventure. He does all this without moving, so that, to everyone else, he is still napping.
he says, eyes looking off to someplace devised by his wanderlust.
“I just want to rip out the seats on the bus, put in a table and a bed. And ten fifty-gallon drums of diesel. And drive. Drive all the way to Hanoi, then right into China, then up and up and up through Russia until I see snowâyou know, I've never seen snowâand then just go West. Aim for the sun and drive at it ⦠Drive until I hit Poland and France and right into the end of the world, right into England.”
He pauses, perplexed.
“You think there's a road like that, a road over all that land, over all those countries?”
I tell him there probably is and if there isn't, a couple of side trips wouldn't be bad either. Adventure is but a collection of detours. He asks me how I got the courage to go. I say I'd realized that the surest way forward was to burn all the bridges behind. I am really good at that. He rambles on about all his
“crazy notions,”
yakking passionately about exploration and adventure. He does all this without moving, so that, to everyone else, he is still napping.
“Fuck, I must sound pretty crazy wanting to take off like this.”
“Don't worry about it.”
I tell him about Frank, an eighty-five-year-old retired farmer I met while riding through Napa, California. I had stopped on his porch to ask for some water from his garden hose. “Damn. Damn,” Frank said over and over. “I wish I was a young fella again. Bicycle. I used to do that when I was a boy. I'd make me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and I'd ride my bike on down the road and over the bridge outside of town to the edge of the woods. I'd always wished I could keep going. Wondering what I'd see round the next bend.” And he is still wondering, although he is too sick and poor to go far beyond his porch and his oxygen tanks. “What do you like to drink?” he asked me. Water is fine, I saidâFrank was proud of his water, a well he'd drilled himself some forty years earlier. “A real drink, I mean. Beer, wine, whiskey?” It was summer so I said I'd fancy a slushy margarita. Frank dug into his high-draped white trousers, pulled out a fiver, then stabbed me with it saying, “Drink one on your trip for me.” I accepted his money, drank a margarita to Frank twenty miles down the road, then fell flat on my ass because in my dehydration, the tequila lambadaed straight to my head.
Driver laughs himself off the hammock. By the time we leave, practically all the passengers have spent money in the diner. I see the proprietor discreetly pressing a rolled bill into Madame's hand as she comes out of the rest room.
With the passengers barely in their seats, Driver guns the bus down the road and is back humping the horn, never laying off more than a minute. Soon after we take off, a little boy pisses all over himself and the bus reeks. Madame, finger jabbing over the heads of the crowd, vows to charge the mother extra if her kid whizzes again. The whole miserable bus, packed tighter than eels in a bucket, grumbles in agreement. Still, Bagman and Mechanic hang out the doors and scoop up more passengers. They make a game of bagging people on the fly. One little guy, shouldering a heavy bag, flip-flops frantically after the bus like a threelegged dog. Bagman and Mechanic reach down and monkey-yank the man aboard without losing their cigarettes. The poor guy is huffing open-mouthed with either terror or exhaustion, but then he suddenly grins. This and his narrow face and popping jawbreaker eyes make him look like a Chihuahua. Madame sits Chihuahua next to me and tells both of us to lift our legs for Bagman to slide Chihuahua's luggage, a huge block of wood, into our foot space. Now we are both crouching in our seats. I tell myself it could be worse. We could be sitting on the five-gallon drums of stinking fishsauce sloshing in the aisle like the two new passengers. Chihuahua-man says he used to be a deer and boar hunter, but he hasn't seen much game in the last five years so he's turned to cutting rare hardwood and selling it to artisans and carpenters in town, one cord at a time.
“Fuck!”
he exclaims with his everlasting fat grin.
“It's better than churning mud or busting rocks for two bucks a day.”
I present him with a new baseball cap Kim gave me. He puts it on over his moppy jungle of black hair. A couple of sizes too big, it slips down and catches on his ears. He grins, happy. He is such a jovial, naturehappy guy, I feel like giving him a hug and calling him my lost brother, but don't want to startle him. So I show my teeth and dip my head in a bow of sorts. He returns the courtesy and we perch together, looking out of our rattling cage at naked kids playing in the Mekong tributaries, the color of Dijon mustard. Since Saigon, the land has been a hundred
and fifty miles of rustic farms and thatched huts. Brown mud and clayish red earth peek through like stitching in the mat of intense, lush green, almost violent, a hundred shades of green. In the distant rice paddies, plodding water buffalo are moving rocks; white ducks drift like patches of snow. But it is hot and humid and the smell of the land is thick in the air. From certain angles, it is a testament to coffee-table books. I count my weeks in Vietnam: broken roads; children playing hopscotch on the asphalt; peasants drying their pickling vegetables and fans of joss sticks on the side of the road; unbroken strings of shanties fencing both sides of the highway for hundreds of miles. And I see it all equaling a land of abject poverty, the smiles of its people its only hope.
“Fuck!”
he exclaims with his everlasting fat grin.
“It's better than churning mud or busting rocks for two bucks a day.”
I present him with a new baseball cap Kim gave me. He puts it on over his moppy jungle of black hair. A couple of sizes too big, it slips down and catches on his ears. He grins, happy. He is such a jovial, naturehappy guy, I feel like giving him a hug and calling him my lost brother, but don't want to startle him. So I show my teeth and dip my head in a bow of sorts. He returns the courtesy and we perch together, looking out of our rattling cage at naked kids playing in the Mekong tributaries, the color of Dijon mustard. Since Saigon, the land has been a hundred
and fifty miles of rustic farms and thatched huts. Brown mud and clayish red earth peek through like stitching in the mat of intense, lush green, almost violent, a hundred shades of green. In the distant rice paddies, plodding water buffalo are moving rocks; white ducks drift like patches of snow. But it is hot and humid and the smell of the land is thick in the air. From certain angles, it is a testament to coffee-table books. I count my weeks in Vietnam: broken roads; children playing hopscotch on the asphalt; peasants drying their pickling vegetables and fans of joss sticks on the side of the road; unbroken strings of shanties fencing both sides of the highway for hundreds of miles. And I see it all equaling a land of abject poverty, the smiles of its people its only hope.
In the late afternoon, the bus groans into Chau Doc. Driver complains that the engine isn't running well. Mechanic will be tinkering with it all night, so they'll leave for Rach Gia first thing tomorrow morning. Sleep on the bus, Driver urges me, there's plenty of room. The combination of diesel fumes, fishsauce, urine, and chicken feathers is making me nauseous. I beg off to look for a room. To get into town, I decide to try a mini-rickshaw hinged to the seat post of a regular bicycle. In the rural south, bicycle rickshaws are more practical. Unlike big-city cyclos designed for short distances, say, under five miles at a snail's pace, the country bicycle rickshaw easily belts out ten miles a haul over unimproved roads.
The sun slashes down mercilessly; my skin browns like caramelizing onions. The dead river air smells bloated. Without much debate, I commit the mistake of hopping on a bicycle rickshaw without settling on a definite price. How far to the closest inn? Pretty far in this heat, sir, the skinny man replies around his cigarette. How much? Whatever you think is appropriate, sir. I nod.
He hauls us onto a sandy road that reminds me of some dusty Mexican mining towns. I mention that it is very hot.
“White people smell,”
he says without preamble,
“especially when they sweat. Most of them use cologne and perfume and that chalky stuff they rub in their armpits. But, oh, God, they can really stink.”
I laugh and offer that maybe it has a lot to do with their diet. Maybe Vietnamese stink pretty bad as well because we eat so much fishsauce. But we can't smell each other because we all eat the same thing. He snorts and delivers me to an inn
a hundred yards from the station. I feel about as brilliant as a jackass, handing him a fifty-cent billâseveral times the going rate. His chummy face sours as though I have wedged him a slice of lemon.
“Oh, come on, Big Brother, can't you be more generous than that?”
I explain that I could have just walked the distance. He raises his voice demanding more. People crane their necks in our direction and I feel the flush of embarrassment rising on my cheek. To stem off his tirade, I sheepishly surrender another fifty-cent bill. He pockets it quickly and bawls,
“Come on, how about two dollars. Give me two U.S. dollars. You're a Viet-kieu, be generous to your Vietnamese brother.”
“White people smell,”
he says without preamble,
“especially when they sweat. Most of them use cologne and perfume and that chalky stuff they rub in their armpits. But, oh, God, they can really stink.”
I laugh and offer that maybe it has a lot to do with their diet. Maybe Vietnamese stink pretty bad as well because we eat so much fishsauce. But we can't smell each other because we all eat the same thing. He snorts and delivers me to an inn
a hundred yards from the station. I feel about as brilliant as a jackass, handing him a fifty-cent billâseveral times the going rate. His chummy face sours as though I have wedged him a slice of lemon.
“Oh, come on, Big Brother, can't you be more generous than that?”
I explain that I could have just walked the distance. He raises his voice demanding more. People crane their necks in our direction and I feel the flush of embarrassment rising on my cheek. To stem off his tirade, I sheepishly surrender another fifty-cent bill. He pockets it quickly and bawls,
“Come on, how about two dollars. Give me two U.S. dollars. You're a Viet-kieu, be generous to your Vietnamese brother.”
I shake my head and zip into the inn, leaving him cursing me outside. Beat and dizzy with a full day of diesel exhaust, I take a room and order a meal. After a boy delivers the food, the owner invites himself into my room, strolling in with southern informality. I ask him if he would like to join me for an early supper.
“No, no. Thank you. It's very kind of you. My wife expects me for dinner. If I don't have a big appetite, she'll think I have a mistress!”
He pops with mirth, laughing at his own joke.
He pops with mirth, laughing at his own joke.
“It depends on how you eat. A cook always appreciates a diner with a whetted appetite,”
I reply lamely, using a well-worn line. The double entendre hits him a second late. He claps his hands gleefully like a boy, and laughter rolls up from his round belly. I expect his laughter to taper off, but it grows. Soon, he is hammering the wall, hooting, spewing spittle. I try to cover my rice bowl, worrying that my host is a few bricks shy of a load. Nothing contagious, I hope.
I reply lamely, using a well-worn line. The double entendre hits him a second late. He claps his hands gleefully like a boy, and laughter rolls up from his round belly. I expect his laughter to taper off, but it grows. Soon, he is hammering the wall, hooting, spewing spittle. I try to cover my rice bowl, worrying that my host is a few bricks shy of a load. Nothing contagious, I hope.
Finally, he wipes the tears from his eyes.
“Brother, are you a tourist? Visiting relatives?”
“Brother, are you a tourist? Visiting relatives?”
“Neither. My bus broke down. I'm just here for the night.”
“Ah,
too bad,” he bubbles with genuine sympathy.
“This province is beautiful. I grew up here. A village up-River.”
too bad,” he bubbles with genuine sympathy.
“This province is beautiful. I grew up here. A village up-River.”
“Up the Mekong River?”
“Uh, yes.”
He looks puzzled as though there exists no other river in the world. Like everyone I meet who lives or makes a living on the Mekong River, he refers to it the way peasants refer to Saigon as the City.
“I was born up-River, but I traveled the length of the River many times.
” He pauses significantly, very proud of this accomplishment.
“I
ferried bananas down the Mekong for thirty-five years and saved enough to buy this place. Believe me, there is a lot of beautiful scenery here.”
He looks puzzled as though there exists no other river in the world. Like everyone I meet who lives or makes a living on the Mekong River, he refers to it the way peasants refer to Saigon as the City.
“I was born up-River, but I traveled the length of the River many times.
” He pauses significantly, very proud of this accomplishment.
“I
ferried bananas down the Mekong for thirty-five years and saved enough to buy this place. Believe me, there is a lot of beautiful scenery here.”
“Like what? The River?”
“No, no. The River is the River. There is a wonderful forest up near the mountain. There is a big temple there with a huge statue of Buddha. There is a garden, a pond, a trail for strolling, and a little waterfall.”
I keep eating and nod encouragingly for him to continue, though have no intention of sticking my head into another tourist trap. He announces that he has been noticing a steady stream of foreign tourists trickling into town, mostly through one of the two major hotels up the street. Word has been going around that the hotels are operating day tours up the mountain and around the River, and charging thirty dollars a Western head. He pops his eyes at me: Thirty American dollars a head! That is more than what his little inn makes on an average day. He wants to get in on the action, so he is going to offer me an irresistible deal: fifteen dollars for a full day's tour provided I advise him on every aspect of hosting tours for Westerners. How to attract Westerners to his tours? What do they like to eat, drink, and see? Do they like roughing it or do they prefer airconditioned minivans? How much will they pay? My corpulent host dreams of one day owning a minor monopoly on the tourist trade. He'll pick them up in Saigon, transport them to Chau Doc, lodge them at his inn, serve them food from his kitchen, motor them around the province, and deliver them back to Saigonânaturally, collecting every dollar they spend while in his charge from beginning to end.
I have heard this all before. Everyone has a plan for getting rich off foreigners. And as one who is privy to both worlds, I am perceived as a gold mine of free advice. I am used to entrepreneurs of every creed ribbing me: What the heck, Brother, they say, spill the beans. Let us in on the secret so we can roll in the dough. I have been propositioned many times, there is no graceful way to back down.
He is smiling the conspirator's grin. I wince and grab my stomach, doubling over, grunting.
He jumps to his feet.
“What's wrong? Stomachache? Is it the food?”
“What's wrong? Stomachache? Is it the food?”
“Maybe. Maybe it's something I ate on the bus,”
I moan, lying.
I moan, lying.
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