Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel

EIGHT

EIGHT I stayed in a hotel that served the tourists who came to Cửa Lớn to swim at the beach. I didn’t come here to swim. But it seemed I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do. Indifferently, I watched the people in swimsuits holding onto their little inner tubes and running in and out of the water. They were jumping up and down, capering in the waves like clusters of seaweed being washed up onshore. Maybe I would cast myself out onto the sea on a long-haul ship again. Those kids splashing around down there could never, in their wildest dreams, imagine that kind of long journey, that kind of adventure. The truth is that I didn’t want to go home yet. Something was clinging to my legs. The next morning I climbed back up the mountain back to the Bảo Sơn Pagoda, where Mai Trừng took me to meet the old venerable nun. “Please let me introduce Đông, my friend who came down from Hanoi to visit.” The feeble-eyed venerable simply replied with a “Na Mô A Di Đa Phật;1 very good, very good,” and then gave Mai Trừng permission to show me around the rest of the temple’s grounds. We went to sit back down on the big fairy chessboard rock. “I had the dream again last night,” Mai Trừng said. She’d told me about this dream before. During her time here, she’d repeatedly dreamt of a shadowy figure that came to lead her away. It led her along a long wide road before it turned down a small path into the forest and led her through thorny, clinging underbrush. Then she flew over a lush green forest in which there were still some clumps of tree trunks that had been burned bare from the war. Arriving at a dried-out streambed, the shadowy guide disappeared. And Mai Trừng would awaken disoriented , her heart pounding in anticipation. She felt as if there were a supernatural premonition about the dream, but she couldn’t be sure. Apoc a l y p se H o t e l 112 “Last night, I got to the streambed again. It was the fourth time I dreamed of it. This time I climbed up onto some big, round, water-worn boulders that looked like giant fruits. I sat there upon one of the stones. The guide waved at me to keep following. But before I had time to stand up, the shadow disappeared . . .” She bowed her head slightly. Her hands clutched at her face, which was immersed in some distant world. I sat silently, unsure how to help. Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps stamping heavily in our direction . Mai Trừng shook herself and snapped back to reality. Giềng was carrying a basket of freshly steamed sweet potatoes. “Have some, you two,” she said, bringing the basket over to us. “The specialty of this area is this particular kind of potato. Its insides are saffron colored and firm, sweet, and buttery. If you take it with good strong green tea you’ll never forget the taste.” I’d met Giềng, a woman of average height with unusually large feet, the afternoon before. She always went barefoot, each day shouldering several loads of water from the foot of the mountain up to the pagoda. It was the middle of a drought. Not a drop of moisture in the sky. For years the pagoda had just used rainwater gathered in a large cistern. But now the rainwater was exhausted, and they had to depend upon the efforts of this devoted , hearty peasant. Touched, I gave Giềng my pair of size 42 Bata shoes.2 She tried to thrust her thick feet into them, but couldn’t. Her feet must have been at least two sizes larger. Her feet didn’t fit her body; they were heavy and sorrowful, covered in scars, wounds, and painful calluses. Giềng planned to leave at once, but Mai Trừng quickly grabbed her by the hand. “Aunt Giềng, Auntie Miên told me that, in the old days, near your checkpoint there was a stream. Do you remember it?” “That’s right, there was a stream. Sometimes the three of us would even go there to swim and wash. And that’s where your father gave his life.” “Do you remember how to...