Lotusland Page 16
"Tell me again what I'll be doing up here," Nathan said, wiping away the fog his breath made on the window. He was tired of talking about the past.
Thirteen
The house was on an island on Truc Bach Lake. Two storeys tall and shaded by trees, both sides were wreathed with bougainvillea. The road in front was dusty from construction, but it too was shady, and made doubly cool by zephyrs off the water. There was noise here, but the overall feeling of quiet impressed Nathan.
"What do you think?" Anthony asked. "Not too hard on the eyes, is it?"
Nathan laughed at the suggestion. The house was better than Anthony had described.
"I tried to get you a place near me, but at the last minute the deal fell through." Anthony unlocked the door and held it open for Nathan. "It's the best I could do. I had to sign a long-term lease and pay for it two years in advance."
Nathan stood on the step, peering inside. "Two years?"
"You better not run back to Saigon next week. Not after this."
Nathan couldn't think what to say. He hadn't made a two-year commitment.
"Two thousand a month, 24 months paid in advance." Anthony handed him the keys.
Nathan cringed at the figure. "That's insane money."
Anthony laughed. "Don't you like it?"
"Are you kidding? I love it. But . . ."
"If I were single like you," he said, not letting Nathan finish his thought, "I'd never want to live anywhere else."
The first floor alone was bigger than anywhere he'd lived in Vietnam. Furnishings were standard in rented homes, and this one was no different. In addition to a sofa, two chairs, a dining table, and a roll-top desk, the house had a TV, DVD player, and stereo. It was spotless, and he slipped off his sandals to avoid tracking dirt onto the polished hardwood floor. He wandered to a narrow spiral staircase. The black metal rail was cool to the touch. Turning his hand over he half-expected to find it smeared with fresh paint.
"Where are the rats and cockroaches? I'm not sure I can live in a place that doesn't come with pets."
Anthony's expression told him not to joke about it. "You're going to make a better life for yourself. When you live in a cave for seven years it does things to you. A decent place to live can make all the difference. People respect you more when you live in a nice home in a nice neighborhood. I want you to know what that's like."
Nathan climbed the staircase to the second floor. After glancing into an office equipped with a fax machine, small copier and an antique escritoire, he stepped into the bedroom. A mosquito net descended from a hook in the high ceiling to a queen-sized bed. Beside the entrance to a marble-walled bathroom were another TV and DVD player.
"I don't deserve this."
From the bathroom came the sound of Anthony urinating.
Truc Bach Lake was visible through the balcony door. Nathan could only see a sliver, roofed by grey sky, but it was enough. Having a view of water felt like a luxury that belonged to someone else. The small lake ended at a narrow, well-traveled road. Beyond it spread the much larger waters of West Lake. He went out onto the balcony.
The view from his guesthouse in Saigon had been of a dirty road and a sidewalk filled with barbers. That the changes in his life could be so immediate and comprehensive was hard to believe.
Anthony looked at his watch. "I'm going to let you get settled. You've got a big day ahead of you, so rest up. Check out your neighborhood. See what you think of the girls on your block."
"What are you doing tonight?"
"I have a family commitment. I'd invite you to join, but it wouldn't be fun."
"That's all right. Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow."
"I'll come by at seven-thirty and take you to work."
Nathan stayed outside, watching motorbikes pass on the small road below. Where the road curved around the lake were a number of cafés and shops. The island's quietude provoked in him a moment of anxiety until he realized that in Saigon quietude was what he'd always longed for.
Above the trees in the distance, an airplane had begun its descent to Noi Bai Airport. Watching it high over the water he wondered where Le was at this moment, what she was doing, and with whom; wondered if she was filled with regret, or had found some new hope to dedicate herself to; wondered which was the greater struggle for her: the past, present, or future.
Unable to answer these questions, he felt like he'd never really known her. As he considered this, the incipient loneliness he felt in this house, in this city he didn't know, evolved into an unsupportable weight inside him. He couldn't help but dwell on the possibility that she'd already forgotten him. He stepped back into his bedroom as a light rain began to fall.
The house felt too big for one person, and whichever room he occupied, the others were loudly empty. He told himself that his loneliness had less to do with Le than with the fact that life in a new place was always hard at first.
A minute later the skies opened, and the thrumming of rain on the roof echoed throughout the house.
At six in the morning, having given up on sleep, he wandered onto his balcony to watch the sun rise over both lakes. To his left, neon Nokia and Tiger Beer advertisements blinked pink and blue on the water, and lights were starting to flicker on in neighboring windows.
The sky slowly gradated to a soft, powdery blue, dusted with broken clouds. From the near canopies of roe trees birdsong drifted to his ears, growing louder as the morning brightened.
He dragged himself back inside and got ready for work. Spotty sleep had left him tired, but the prospect of his first day at Anthony's company exhilarated him. The feelings lodged in his stomach like a vague sickness.
Anthony arrived in his Land Rover at exactly 7:30.
"So?" he said as Nathan climbed in. "How was your first night?"
"Like being in a nice hotel."
They approached the island's small bridge. Food vendors congregated here, huddling over their goods in the chill air.
"Have you eaten?" Nathan said.
"I never eat breakfast."
"Well, I do. Can we stop so I can grab something?"
"Here? Why don't we go someplace civilized?"
"There's no point going anywhere if I'm the only one having breakfast. Anyway, I don't like eating with an audience."
Anthony told the driver to stop. Nathan stepped out and bought a baguette stuffed with fried egg, paté, and vegetables. He felt Anthony's eyes on him as he briefly conversed with the local customers.
"Mind if I eat in here?" Nathan said as he got back in the car. But Anthony was already on the phone.
When Anthony hung up Nathan asked if he always got calls that early.
"The first calls come at around seven. You'll get them, too, pretty soon."
"Not if I keep my phone off."
Anthony ignored the remark. "I hope you're ready to work. I'm guessing real estate requires more time and energy than writing."
"That's because you don't write."
"I don't write because I don't have the time or energy after work."
Nathan knew that Anthony would only try writing if everyone else was doing it and making gobs of money. "I'm going to have to pencil in some writing time, even if it means sacrificing sleep."
"Things are happening at the agency," Anthony said with a tone of friendly warning. "You're going to be busy. Busy and tired."
It wasn't long before the driver pulled through a gold metal gate and parked in the shade of several areca trees. The villa was a deep rich yellow, though mildew spilled from the clay tiles of the sloping roof, streaking the stucco above the topmost windows. The dark green shutters on all three floors were open, and inside Nathan saw ceiling fans spinning.
"This villa's nicer than a lot of embassies around town. But maybe I feel that way because it's mine." He draped an arm around Nathan's shoulder. "If you tel
l me you're disappointed, I'll make the guardhouse by the gate your office."
By rights, Nathan thought, Anthony should be proud. His friend's transformation from struggling teacher to successful businessman was almost impossible to comprehend.
"How'd you swing this place?"
"It's my job."
Anthony clapped him on the back and led him inside.
The first thing Nathan saw was a group of people sitting around a large meeting table, looking uncertainly from him to Anthony. A phone rang in the background, and a young woman ducked away from the group to answer it.
"I've arranged your official welcome for this afternoon," Anthony said, leading him along. "You can introduce yourself to everyone then."
Another half dozen employees were milling between their cubicles and the tall, binder-filled shelves against the wall. Nathan was surprised Anthony had so many employees, even if he couldn't have been paying any of them very much.
A few days before, Anthony had divulged to him that his highest-paid employee only made three thousand. Now that Nathan worked here, he'd placed a moratorium on salary increases. Year-end bonuses, too, would be smaller than before. Nathan had told him he was uncomfortable being the reason for the staff's decreased pay, but Anthony insisted it was nothing to worry about.
"Let me show you your office."
Nathan followed him up a marble stairs.
"You and I are up here," Anthony said when they reached the second floor. "Above the fray, so to speak."
He continued toward a closed door. Anthony's name stretched across a gold plate in the middle of it.
The office was spacious, and light streamed through its thinly draped windows. Like in many Vietnamese homes and offices, the ceilings were 12 feet high. Air pushed down from rotating fans and an enormous Japanese air-conditioner was mounted above the door like the head of hunted game. Anthony's office alone was large enough for a dozen people to work in.
Anthony pointed to a door across the room. "That's the bathroom. It's got a shower and a bathtub fitted with jets."
"I could live here," Nathan said, surprised again by the outward signs of Anthony's success.
"We could be flat mates if you did. I've been known to spend the night here myself."
"Why? Your house is down the street."
"It's a necessary escape sometimes."
When they left Anthony's office and entered another large room, Nathan was seized with trepidation. He had no relevant experience to bring to this job. To go from travel writing to real estate management felt like a sideways jump that would leave him sprawled on his back.
Anthony pulled the curtains open. Sunlight streamed in, and the brightness awakened the room from slumber. Before him was a wide desk, a bookshelf-lined wall, a table and small refrigerator, and a long sofa for receiving guests. Two oil paintings leaned against a wall, waiting to be hung.
"Think you can work here?"
Nathan nervously laughed. "I just hope I don't screw up." His eye caught four thick binders of company literature on his desk.
"What's to screw up? I run a tight ship. I'm the one who keeps it afloat, not you or anyone else. If you remember the pressure's all on me, you'll be fine."
"There'll be pressure, I'm sure."
"Look, I started this from nothing. The pressure for me to succeed was a lot worse back then. The fact is I learned by making mistakes. You have the good fortune to follow the path I already cleared."
"You've got a stronger constitution for business than me. I worry I don't have what it takes."
"Sure you do," Anthony said, waving his hand impatiently. "You're just jittery because it's new. All this job requires is commitment. There's nothing special about that. Anyone with half a brain can do well here."
Anthony was right, Nathan guessed. But it wasn't his intelligence he was concerned with.
"Seen enough?"
"I don't know what else I should want to see."
Anthony smiled. For a moment he seemed to be asking himself if Nathan indeed had what it took to succeed.
As they walked out of the office Nathan said: "I'm impressed with this place."
Anthony shrugged. "It's an investment. I'm stuck in Vietnam, so I might as well work in a comfortable environment."
"What I mean is you've done well for yourself."
"My company's only been around for four years, but yes, we've done well. Real estate's still a relatively untapped industry here. People don't know what they're sitting on. Plus the tax laws are full of loopholes. It's a goldmine, Nate. I got here at exactly the right time to take advantage of it."
"You dropped off the map for a while, and then the next thing I knew you had a real estate business going. For a while I thought you were like Robert Johnson and had met the devil at the Crossroads."
Anthony laughed, and it reminded Nathan of late March when Anthony could barely manage a smile.
"You think I sold my soul to the devil so I could run a real estate company in a poor Communist country?"
"I have no idea how it happened. Whenever I asked, you gave me some cryptic, dismissive answer."
"Did I? I'm sure I was just busy when you asked."
"So tell me now."
"There's really not much to it. I called a friend in Malaysia who wanted to set up a real estate business in Vietnam. He flew here and I told him that no matter what happened I wanted in."
Anthony leaned back in his chair and went on. He said he had been worried that his Malaysian friend might not come through, but after several weeks he called and offered Anthony three hundred dollars a month to start.
"That must have been hard for you and Huong."
Anthony smiled and shook his head. "It didn't last long."
"What changed?"
"Our luck. Along with everything else."
Despite the business getting a few breaks in the beginning, he said, the mother company's board of directors made a connection between losing money and the overt corruption in Vietnam and after six months they dropped the country from their investments. By the end of the first year all the foreign real estate investors had withdrawn their overseas managers and thrown in the towel.
"That was all the opening we needed. My friend and I picked apart the businesses, and it wasn't long before developers whose contracts had turned worthless asked us to take over their properties. Occasionally we served as a joint-agent with a company set to crumble. When that happened we were already positioned to take over. We were like vultures watching them die."
In just a few months, he continued, they had become Hanoi's veteran real estate company. A large firm in London eventually approached them; their backing made business pick up as never before.
"I became a legally certified agent through them and now I'm a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Along with a fifteen-year operating license from the Ministry of Property and Investment, I guess that makes me legit."
"What happened to your friend?"
"He came into money when his father died. He did the wise thing and dropped out. Then, wise or unwise, he handed everything over to me."
Nathan had more questions, but something had started to clamp tightly around his head and he couldn't find his voice. Already he felt overwhelmed, but there was something else he was getting lost in.
"Stop thinking about her."
Anthony was right. Without realizing it, Nathan had been wondering what Le might think if she could see him now.
Fourteen
The forecast for Sunday morning was passing clouds, with skies clearing by afternoon. Still, following lunch, the air smelled of rain and stretches of road were wet from showers. Nathan drove downtown. He found himself in the vicinity of the gallery where, several months earlier, he'd spotted a portrait Le had painted. Curiosity propelled him there once more.
As he inspected the paintings, he began hoping to find another self-portrait of Le. He shook his head at this awareness, and yet his eyes shot from one painting to the next. None were of Le.
Again, however, a number of paintings had not been hung, for the walls lacked space. Instead, dozens of paintings stood in vertical rows of four and five along the floor. It was in the third row, the second painting back, that he experienced a shock almost as great as the first time he visited the gallery — here was another portrait of Le, emerging from a pond of lotuses, hovering between two faceless women collecting and bundling the flowers in short canoes.
When it became apparent that neither girl working there was going to help him, he removed his cell phone from his pocket and bent down to take two photos of the painting. The second shot was a close-up of the painter's name in the corner. With an idea firmly in mind, he turned to the window and looked outside. Not finding what he wanted on the sidewalk, he decided to walk across the street and wait at the head of a narrow alley. From a drink-stand there he could sit and observe the gallery at his leisure.
Hot coffee came even though he'd ordered iced tea and as he sipped it he wondered if the people here knew the gallery's deliveryman. Over the next 15 minutes the odd motorbike pulled onto the sidewalk across the street, but none were delivering paintings, and none belonged to the man he was looking for.
The drink-stand was obviously not a place where foreigners often came and, after half an hour, he'd become the centre of attention. Even now, after so many times, it wore him down.
He had e-mailed Le his new cell phone number several weeks ago, but when she didn't respond he called Thao at Bac-Nam and asked if she knew how to get in touch with her. But she had no idea. Coming across Le's painting, then, was perhaps his only chance of finding her.