Lotusland Page 5

  "Only five hundred dollar for you," the salesgirl said. "I think you like?"

  "Who painted this?"

  The girl pointed to the name in the corner.

  "I can't read it. What does it say?" Could Le have painted this? Her business card indicated that she owned a gallery, not that she was a painter.

  The girl squinted. "I can't read it, too."

  Anthony's voice drifted up from the phone. Nathan stood back up, half in a daze now.

  "You okay?" Anthony said.

  "I think so," Nathan said. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

  Anthony asked if the job offer was generous enough.

  "It's plenty generous."

  "Good. To be fair, though, I should probably give you a couple days to think it over."

  "I don't need a couple days."

  When Anthony spoke again, his tone was admonishing. "I don't want you saying yes now and then telling me no the day you're supposed to come up. But if it's yes, absolutely yes, I'll tell the other people I've been considering for the job. If you balk, they'll snatch it up in an instant."

  "It's yes, Anthony."

  "I need you to be certain."

  "I am certain."

  "Then I'm glad, Nate. Really glad."

  "When do you need me to start?"

  "It's up to you. The sooner the better, though." Thinking about it he concluded: "Let's say a month from now. Six weeks if you absolutely need the time."

  "All right."

  Anthony let out a long sigh, as if he were relieved to hear this. "I can't wait to have you up here. Like I said, I've got big plans for us."

  As soon as Nathan hung up he bent down to see the painting again. "I know her," he told the salesgirl, pointing at the painting. He realized immediately that it would be impossible to explain what he meant. In Vietnamese he said, "Can you tell me who the painter is and how to contact them?"

  His switch to their native tongue surprised them. All three of them gasped.

  "You speak Vietnamese like a Vietnamese. But you have Ho Chi Minh City accent."

  "Yes. I've lived there a long time. Do you think I could get the painter's information?"

  The girls looked at each other and then at the driver, who stared at Nathan as if he couldn't fathom how Vietnamese had come from his mouth.

  "I'm sorry," they said in English. "We cannot tell you."

  "Why not?"

  "We cannot because if you buy from them direct it bad for our business."

  "I don't want to buy anything," he said, refusing to revert to English. "It's just that I know the girl in the picture . . ."

  "You know her?"

  "Yes."

  "And you want to meet the painter?"

  "That's right."

  A confused look came over the girls' faces. "I don't understand."

  They looked at Nathan expectantly, then suggested again that he buy the painting.

  Nathan smiled, waiting to get control of his frustration. "I just want to meet the painter."

  The girls came together to discuss the situation. The driver continued staring at Nathan, then suddenly pointed at him and laughed.

  "I'm afraid we don't know who the painter is," one of the girls said.

  "Don't you have a record of where your paintings come from?"

  "No."

  "People just randomly bring them here?"

  "Only our boss has record."

  "Then can I meet your boss?"

  "He very busy. He go Hong Kong two weeks."

  Smiling anew at one girl and then the other, he silently counted to five. "Why don't you speak to me in Vietnamese?"

  They laughed but didn't answer. Eventually they started sweeping up the cardboard pieces. The driver took two hand-rolled cigarettes from a tin case and offered Nathan one. Nathan shook his head. "Thank you," he said. "But my doctor says they cause impotency." He watched the man shrug good-naturedly then stepped through the door and outside.

  He visited all the galleries on Trang Tien Street to check for paintings of Le. An hour later, on the corner opposite the Opera House, he realized the time and hurried back to his hotel to check out.

  He couldn't get Le out of his mind. He was eager to see her again, and planned to visit her gallery the moment he got home. Somehow the mystery of the painting excited him even more than Anthony's job offer. As he prepared to return to Saigon with the task of wrapping up his life there, the offer paled in importance to the chance he had of getting to know her.

  By the time he arrived at Hanoi Station, dusk had fallen and the sky was low and filled with storm clouds. The rain this time was harder and lasted all night.

  Four

  Nathan parked his motorbike in front of Bac-Nam Gallery and approached the entrance. The sun's glare banked off the glass door and front window so that he couldn't see inside. He was excited to meet Le again, and just as eager to inquire about the painting he'd seen in Hanoi.

  Inside, like something chiseled out of one of the portraits on the wall, Le stood in a corner of the gallery with her clasped hands pointed down her body. She wore a faded denim skirt and a sleeveless white sweater with a collar that dipped midway down the slope of her breasts. The gallery's light emphasized her high cheekbones, the warm shadows of them, and turned her pink hair reddish. He felt a blooming warmth go off inside him.

  Beside her a customer gazed at a painting as if something had flown away from him into the scene of river and bamboo forest. He was speaking to Le, but her eyes were focused on Nathan.

  As Nathan crossed the gallery he looked at the paintings on the wall. Few had women as their subjects, and in those that did, none resembled Le.

  The gallery was unlike others he'd seen, particularly those along Dong Khoi and Le Loi streets that catered to tourists seeking expensive re-creations, rather crude in both subject and material. Here there were no bare-breasted maidens bathing in a river, or lying in hammocks with babies suckling from them; or girls dressed in traditional áo dài, glittering parasols in hand, carved into a jade-green countryside. The paintings here were something else. Immediately one caught his eye: a portrait of a girl in a pink summer frock.

  The girl's features were blurred, her face like something viewed through a heavy downpour. The fragility of the lacquer, the delicate eggshell limning the soft edges of her clothes — the rare beauty captivated him.

  Le skipped up to him when the customer had gone. "I wasn't sure you'd come. I thought you might go back on your promise to help me."

  He stopped to remember if he'd promised anything, but then quickly determined that he hadn't. He'd been careful with what he said on the train. It was possible that she was manipulating him, but it seemed more likely that she believed what she wished to believe. Still, he was here, and he'd reasoned through it to the same result. He wouldn't pass up what she suggested "paying" him — yet if he helped her, he told himself, it would be out of kindness.

  "You aren't going to break your promise, are you?"

  "I can help you learn English. But your visa's a different story."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I have no influence at the consulate. I'm hardly worth their trouble."

  "But you said you'd help." Before he could protest or clarify what his position had been she added: "We had an agreement."

  "I'm being honest. I don't know that I can do much. But I'll try."

  He saw this satisfied her, for she demurely looked down and smiled.

  "I spotted you in Hanoi, you know," he said.

  She looked at him in surprise. "Why didn't you say hello?"

  "You wouldn't respond to me."

  She gave him the look of confusion he was waiting for and then he told her about the gallery where he'd seen a painting that looked just like her.

  "Why didn't you buy it
? I would have liked to see it."

  "But was it you?"

  "How can I know? I wasn't there with you."

  Before he could question her further, she asked him what he thought of the paintings in her gallery.

  "They're impressive. I especially like the one of the faceless girl."

  "There's one in back that I think you'll be interested in."

  She glided through a door behind them, where several paintings leaned against a brick wall, crowding two easels and a wheeled table filled with paintbrushes, paint tubes, and colorful plastic jars. A painting in front showed a lotus pond full of red-crested cranes, their black tufts flowing, and their beakless faces those of Vietnamese women.

  When she was in front of him once more she turned the painting so he could see it. It was a simple profile of a woman in a long white dress. Her neck was long and stem-like and stood out grotesquely between her collar and expression of calm. The face was tilted upward and to the side, as if looking through the gallery door. Behind her was a line of trees, black as after a fire.

  His eyes went from the painting to Le. "Turn your head," he said. When she did, he lifted the painting so he could see her and the portrait side by side. "It's you." There was no denying the likeness. When he realized it was she, the grotesquely thin neck disturbed him more.

  "But I have pink hair. The girl in the painting has black."

  "It must have been black before it was pink."

  "Actually, it was blue."

  He stared at her. "Did you paint this? And the one in Hanoi?"

  She smiled, saying nothing.

  "If you did, I'm impressed. On the train, you didn't tell me you painted."

  "Why would I have told you?" she said. "Besides, you never asked."

  It was true; he hadn't asked her. But by shutting herself away in her room for half the trip, she'd hardly given him the chance.

  She gazed with him at the painting. "If it were in an American gallery," she said, "do you think it would sell?"

  "There's no predicting taste, but yes, I'm sure it would." The more he studied the painting, the more astonished he was by her skill.

  "How did you become a painter? And is that little room back there your studio?"

  "It's a storage closet," she said. "But sometimes I stay late after work and paint. As for how I became a painter, why don't I tell you tonight over dinner?"

  There was a charm behind her way of talking to him, and it drew him closer to her.

  "I'll be back at seven."

  "I close at eight."

  "I'll be back at eight then," he said, laughing with her.

  As she lifted the painting and carried it back, he gave it a final glance. He could barely make out the girl's thin neck, and her head seemed to float above her body as if about to fly away.

  "Look at that," Nathan said, pointing over the side of the boat.

  Concentration nearly drew Le's eyebrows together as she laid her chopsticks across her rice bowl and turned to the river. "Look at what?"

  At first he thought she was joking. Then he thought she'd gone blind. "That enormous boat strung with yellow lights. It's decorated to look like a shark."

  She looked again. "Not a shark. A giant fish." She tilted her head, thinking about it. "Maybe a shark."

  "Whatever it is, it's ridiculous."

  "It's clever," she said in all seriousness. "But I prefer this boat. I like live entertainment."

  In her wide, lustrous eyes he could see the lightshow unfold behind him. It almost seemed like the music was meant to distract passengers from the boat's late departure.

  On the landing dozens of people huddled together to watch the boats come and go. Although the bright downtown towered behind them, none of the people looked like they belonged there. There was something backward in how they dressed and gaped at their surroundings. In their faces was a bewilderment he'd known when he first arrived in the city. It was unsettling to recognize a part of himself in these people and he'd be glad to leave them behind. They'd been staring at him and Le since they were seated.

  He looked beyond the crowd and thought it was better that night had fallen. Night masked the city's filth. On the busy streets and sidewalks where it remained most visible, all the neon drew one's attention away from it. Saigon was almost beautiful at night.

  With the start of a new song their boat finally lurched from the dock, its engine popping from the exertion. On the opposite bank, among billboards shining brilliantly over the water, Nathan spotted a giant Eurowindow advertisement. Looping across the bottom were the words Cửa sổ nhìn ra thế giới: Windows looking out onto the world.

  Bats skimmed the river's varicolored surface, their angled wings absorbing the advertisements' reflections before corkscrewing back through the nighttime rainbow.

  The city slid away. Boson Port emerged where District One became District Two, and soon they were passing huge ships and petrol islands and tall derricks rising into the sky. The music from their boat echoed off the steel hulls they drifted past.

  "This is more than I expected," Le said. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. "I didn't realize that a dinner cruise was part of our arrangement."

  "This has nothing to do with that. I just want to know you better."

  She released his hand to pour him more beer. "You don't have to woo me. I'm true to my word if you're worried about that."

  Her matter-of-factness took him aback. Was it from a lack of imagination that she couldn't see the value of an outing together? Or was she blinded by the single-mindedness of her ambition?

  "I'm not the one who needs to worry." He waited until he had her full attention before continuing. "If our arrangement means we have to be strangers, you'd better find someone else to help you. I never agreed to that."

  She looked at him in surprise. "I don't want us to be strangers, either. I just meant that you don't have to second-guess me. When I say something, it's true."

  A waitress in a teal-green dress, and so much powder on her face that she resembled a caricature of a Chinese opera singer, replaced their empty rice dish with a full one. The boat was graced with a few minutes of tranquility as the singer stepped off-stage.

  Le leaned forward and pointed to a docked cargo-carrier they were passing. "I like that ship."

  There was nothing special about it as far as Nathan could tell. Anyway, what was there to admire in a cargo ship?

  She pointed at the French flag flying atop it. "It's beautiful at night, billowing in the wind."

  When asked if she had a particular affinity for France, she shook her head and said her heart was set on America. He felt compelled to dig deeper into her affection for his country. He was convinced that her plan to go there was rooted in false hopes.

  "You don't have apprehensions? It's a big change to leave Vietnam and move to America."

  "What are you asking?"

  He chose his words carefully. "What I'm asking is: how do you uproot yourself from the only life you know and move to America? And how do you afford it?" It felt gauche to ask, but in a poor country it was practical to think about money.

  "I don't know. Maybe the same way you did when you moved to Vietnam."

  He couldn't tell if she was joking. "That's different."

  "How is it different?"

  "America's expensive, for one thing."

  "Everyone knows that. Anyway, I can survive on less money than Americans can."

  He didn't doubt that, but she was still being naïve. "Is survival all you want? In America you'll get by only by doing things that make you sacrifice your life, doing work you hate, all day and all night, in conditions that would appall you and for a salary that barely puts food on your table. If you're planning to open a gallery — and especially if you want to make your living as a painter — I don't see how you'll be able
to."

  "I thought you didn't want to talk about business."

  "I just have one point I want to make," he said. "Then I'll stop."

  "What's your point?"

  "My point is . . ." Conscious of his strident tone, he cleared his throat and went on with a softened voice. "It's a lot more complicated being an immigrant in America than it is building on the life you have here."

  "You managed to do it."

  He leaned back at the harshness in her voice. "Le," he said, staring at her across the table. "First of all, it's easy for me to make a living here. English teaching jobs are a dime a dozen. And second, I didn't immigrate to Vietnam. No one immigrates to Vietnam."

  "Isn't what you're doing the same thing?"

  The absurdity of her question annoyed him, but then it shocked him that he could be so dismissive. For all intents and purposes this was in fact his home. The difference was that, while he might choose to live in Vietnam, he'd never relinquish his citizenship. "I'm living here," he answered, "not immigrating."

  Her eyes narrowed, and her voice, once she'd regained enough composure to respond, was defiant. "You don't even know me. The only difference between us is that you were born with privilege. Me? I was born in a dirty hospital with no electricity, no medicine, in one of the poorest cities in the world. People here were starving when I was born. That's the biggest difference between us. That, and your passport lets you go anywhere."

  If this were to be their first fight he hoped it wouldn't unfold before all these people. But he couldn't help himself from talking some sense into her. He picked at his food, feigning equanimity.

  "But because I'm from America," he said gently, "I know it's often hard there for newcomers. Making a life there isn't as easy as people think."

  "I've heard all this before from my uncle."

  The word she used — chú — rang hollowly in his ears. Was she referring to a blood relation or someone who simply fell under the category of "parent's younger brother"? Everyone called Ho Chi Minh "Bác Hồ." Although bác meant "father's older brother," it was, in this case, only a respectful form of address. The term she used with him, anh, meant "older brother," just as em, the term he used with her, meant "younger sister." There were more than 20 forms of address in Vietnamese, and he still hadn't figured them all out.