The Time in Between (20 page)

“I came to your door and knocked. And then I heard water splashing and I knew that there was a body up here. And it was yours.”

“I don’t want you sneaking around this hotel looking for me,” Ada said. “Do you understand that?”

Yen walked toward the table and the chair. He tapped a hand against the tabletop and plucked a single cigarette from his shirt pocket. He asked if it was true that her father had drowned. That his body had been found on My Khe Beach.

Ada said that it was not his business.

Yen nodded. He said that everything was quite clear. It was clear that she had lost what she loved, and now did not believe that she could love anything else.

The base of her neck hurt with a fierceness that she had not experienced even at the height of her sickness. She whispered that he should leave. “Go,” she said. She closed her eyes and waited for him to disappear.

He walked toward the door, and just before he went down the stairs she heard him say, “Miss Ada, my father is dead too.” Then he left.

Later, Ada was sitting in a chair looking out over the harbor when Jon came up to find her. Far out at sea the contour of a distant island rose from the water. Jon sat beside her. He said he had been at Christy’s. Had a beer. And then another. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and laid down their father’s letter on the table. “And I read this.”

She looked at him, and then away.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“I wanted to.” She stopped talking.

Jon lit a cigarette, watched the smoke rising upward, and said, “So, you knew all along that he killed himself.”

“Lieutenant Dat said they believed it was a suicide.”

“How could you not tell me about it?”

“I don’t know, I was going to but I was sick. I wasn’t sure how you would handle it.”

Then he said that he could handle it just fine. Look at him. Wasn’t he fine? He said it almost made sense that their father had killed himself. It didn’t surprise him. Not really. “Does it surprise you?”

Ada said that she just felt really sad.

Jon said, “Remember those times he took us into the bunker and told us his war stories? Well, I guess they weren’t all true, were they. Or he didn’t tell us everything. Did he.”

Ada said that he had told them everything he was capable of telling. “He must have been tormented.”

Jon said that even if he was tormented, he shouldn’t have confessed like he did, in a letter. “What does he want us to do? Forgive him? For what he did, for what he’s now done? As if it’s that easy? Like a coward he tosses all this shit at us and then doesn’t hang around to discuss it. He didn’t even tell us why.”

Ada said that a person’s private horror wasn’t something to throw out for group discussion. The only reason he had confessed to them was that he knew he was going to kill himself. Ada talked about her sickness and the dreams she had had of their father, and how his voice had been so familiar and so lifelike that when she woke from the dreams she did not know what was real and what wasn’t. “Of course, I was feverish, but I still remember everything so clearly. I was holding a bucket and as it filled and water spilled over the top Dad took a large basin and held it under the pail and caught the water. He said that memory was precious and we mustn’t waste it.”

Jon didn’t answer. He waited and then asked, “What are we going to do?”

Ada said she didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine going home yet. “It would be like running away. He’s still here. The things he saw, what he was looking for, the people he talked to, they’re all still here.” She asked him if he wanted to go home.

He said that he couldn’t think beyond the moment. They sat there then and did not speak save for the occasional observation about their father, which evoked a memory and a rush of commentary, so that by the end of the evening they had exhumed a few scraps of their father’s life. It was, Ada said at one point, as if they were trying to pin him down.

That night Ada took out the novel her father had carried with him and looked more closely at the notes he had written. A few dates, the name Elaine Gouds, a sketch of a map of Danang, and some lines that read, “In Hue. It is raining. The room is damp and chilly. Ate fish the size of pencils. She is sharper than him by far. Than I am, as well.” Ada wondered if “she” was Elaine. One of the pieces of paper had the name of the author of the novel she was holding. And another had a street address, in Vietnamese handwriting, and a different name. Her father had never been one to write down his thoughts, and so all this recording, this keeping of notes, surprised her.

Over the next two days she read, and all the while she thought about her father and about his letter and the confession. When she was finished reading, she was not sure where or how the story fit into her father’s history. He had given no indication. He had been searching for something, she felt that. She imagined that he had sat on this very chair and looked up at the same sky and at some point he had moved in a direction of his own choosing.

A breeze passed over her neck. She shivered.

6

MR. THANH HAD VISITED WHEN SHE WAS SICK. HE HAD COME WITH his son, Trang, and so the feverish memory of the two figures had not been a dream at all. Thanh had left her a marble ball the size of a baseball. It was black and red, and when she held it in her hand, it felt solid and smooth. He had also given her a note in which he said that he was very sorry about her father and that he hoped she would feel better soon.

He came again with his son one morning. Stood by the stairs that led to the rooftop and called out her name. She was happy to see him. He gave her gifts of mulberry wine, lotus tea, and fresh figs. He folded his hands and said, “How are you, Ada?”

She was sitting in a chair and she called him closer. He took two steps and stopped and then half-turned, gesturing at his son. “Have you met Trang?” Trang shook hands with Ada, and she apologized for her paleness, for her lack of strength.

“No, no,” Trang said. “My father keeps dragging me along, hoping that I will meet you. It’s all rather embarrassing. I am sorry.”

Ada waved this away, turned to Thanh, and asked if he knew anything about a boy called Yen. A boy who seemed to be around constantly, she said.

Thanh said that he didn’t know any Yen but that he might be a pimp or an orphan or a scoundrel or a beggar. “Or he might be all four,” Thanh said, “which is more possible. If you like, I can find the boy and have a word with him.”

Ada shook her head. “No, that’s not a problem. He seems so precocious and yet so helpless.”

“Boys like this are always seeming helpless. They aren’t,” Thanh said.

A light wind blew across the rooftop. Thanh held up a palm to the sky and commented on the sun and the lovely plants beside the table and the good fortune of being able to sit here with her. He said that the figs he’d brought were very special. His wife had found them in the market. Ada thanked him again and then she held up the novel she had found in her father’s suitcase and said, “My father was interested in this book and, I think, in the man who wrote it.”

“I know this.” Thanh took his glasses from his shirt pocket, put them on, and lifted his shoulders.

“My father. Did he tell you anything about himself?” Ada asked. “About who he was and what happened to him during the war?”

Thanh said no. Though they had gone to a village south of Danang at the base of the mountains, in Quang Ngai Province. Charles had wanted to go to a village there. They had hired a car. “He did not say why he wanted to go there.”

“He had been there before. This would have been a difficult thing for him. He didn’t tell you this?”

Thanh said, “His face was the same face. He walked slowly. He did not talk much. He might have been worried. On the way home he said that there had been nothing to indicate the past. He said it quietly. I think he was talking to himself and so I did not ask him what he meant.” He studied Ada and then said, “I want to invite you and your brother to eat with us on Sunday afternoon. There will be others, and my family wants you both to come. You have had a loss.” Then, brightening, he said, “Trang will be there. He will be delighted to see you again.” He looked over at his son, who was standing beside the rain barrel. Thanh continued, “It will be special. We will meet at my sister’s house on My Khe.”

“Okay,” Ada said. “Thank you.” And she smiled at Thanh’s enthusiasm as he wrote down the address and explained how she and her brother should get there. And then he excused himself and said good-bye, backing away and turning at the last moment as he guided his son through the narrow doorway that led down the stairs.

THE ROAD TO THANH’S SISTER’S HOUSE PASSED THROUGH AN AREA where merchants sold wicker furniture and artists displayed water-colors of Vietnamese scenes. Close to the mattress factory a fruit vendor squinted out into the harsh sunshine as she held a baby in the doorway of a shop. On past a metal factory and across the Han River into My Khe and then along the sandy road where boys played soccer with a tin can and the brown waves of China Beach roiled in the distance.

Ada and Jon were squeezed into the narrow seat of the cyclo. They did not speak. That morning they had phoned Del and told her everything they knew. Del said that this was what she had feared, that their father had seemed so distant in the last year, and why hadn’t they done something. She said she felt so removed from everything. “Are you all right? It must have been just awful for you both,” she said.

“I’ve been ill,” Ada said. “I’ve been floating in this delirium.” She looked at Jon. “Dad’s death is hovering somewhere beside us. It all seems untrue. Though, of course, it’s all terribly true.”

“I should be there,” Del said.

“No, there’s no need.”

“Tomas will pay.”

“He’s already given enough and anyway there’s no point now, Del. We’ll be home soon.”

“I should be there with you. I
am
a part of this family. I want to see my father.”

Ada said that she understood Del’s frustration and that she must feel helpless and far away. But they would be coming home soon. Their father had written them a letter in which he had explained some things about who he was and what he had become. She said that he had chosen to come to Vietnam and that he had chosen to die in this place. And then Ada said that they were going to leave the ashes in Vietnam.

“They’re only ashes. They’re not our father,” Del said. Then she asked, “Are you sure I shouldn’t come there.”

“No,” Ada said. “You shouldn’t. We’re fine. We’ll be home soon.” There was a delay and then a hollow chime and the word
soon
was repeated and then repeated again.

AT THANH’S HOUSE THERE WERE THIRTEEN PEOPLE. ADA AND JON, Thanh and his wife and his mother and Trang, and the American family, Jack and Elaine Gouds and their children, Jane and Sammy. Nicky, the bartender from Christy’s, was also there with his wife, Delphine, a Vietnamese doctor who had trained in France, and their child, Colin. Delphine was sharp featured and thin; she and Nicky spoke French with each other. Ada was introduced to a man named Hoang Vu, an artist, who was dark and silent, quite a bit older than Ada, and whose thin long face kept turning in her direction. He smoked and watched her.

Nicky, when he greeted her, had kissed her first on one cheek and then the other, and whispered that he was sorry. She said thank you and turned away, not knowing what to say. In the front room, before they sat down to eat, Jack looked at Ada and then at Jon and said that he had heard about Charles and he offered his condolences. The artist was sitting beside Jack and he simply nodded. Ada lifted a hand from her thigh and then let it fall back. She was aware of her mouth moving oddly. She said they were okay. They would be fine. And then Thanh said that he felt he had known Charles as a brother. “Older,” he said. He touched Jon’s arm and smiled and then told the group that they were ready to eat.

Thanh’s wife served tripe and headcheese and spring rolls and salad. There was also noodle soup, bread, watermelon, pickled carrots and cauliflower, and a certain dish of pork bits and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves. Ada nibbled at rice and prawn chips and she drank Coke through a straw and watched people silently. Trang was across from Jane and he went to great efforts to pretend he wasn’t watching her. Jack Gouds was sitting beside Jon. Once in a while he whispered something in Jon’s ear and Jon smiled and responded. Elaine Gouds was busy following her son, Sammy, who wandered from the table to the outside courtyard and then back again. When the children said they wanted to swim, Elaine volunteered to take them down to the beach. Ada said she would go along, and she got up from the table. Thanh motioned at Trang with the back of his hand and told him to go along. Nicky called out to be careful of the undertow. “No deeper than your waist.”

Elaine held up her glass of wine and said, “I’ll be doing this,” and as they followed Jane and Sammy and Colin out of the house she took a bottle from the table and carried it with her as well.

Out on the beach, when they were sitting on the sand, Jane took off her shorts and pulled her T-shirt over her head. She was wearing a red bikini that was strikingly brief. Trang, who was in pants and a dress shirt, kicked off his shoes and ran toward the water, stopped at the edge, and then ran back to the group. Jane glanced at him and then sauntered over to Sammy, who was digging in the sand close to the shore.

Elaine said, “I tell her to dress properly but she doesn’t listen. It ’s as if she thinks we’re still living in Kansas City, where girls can show their navels and not be seen as easy. The men here are awful to her. I’m afraid to let her go out on her own. Of course, Trang is an angel.” She refilled her wineglass and held up the bottle to check the level. She called out for Jane to watch Sammy.

“About your father,” she said.

Ada, as if she had been expecting this, looked up and said, “Thank you.”

“You’re going home then?” Elaine asked.

Ada looked down the beach. Two men had squatted at a distance from Jane and were watching her as she played with Sammy. “Yes, but we haven’t made any arrangements yet. Does one ever get used to this place?”