Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE W e cremated Mai Trừng’s parents’ bones in the garden of the pagoda . The bones went into two large cast-iron pans filled with gasoline . The gas burned everything down completely until the bones were reduced to ash. We had to keep adding more oil to the pans. Night fell, but the bones still hadn’t finished disintegrating. Mai Trừng and I had to sit beside the big flaming pans. We were going to leave the temple a few days later. Mai Trừng planned to go back to the world of the living. I planned to go back to sea. But plans might change. Nothing is ever for certain. Both places, the real world and the sea, have hidden undercurrents, fierce waves, and tidal waves. They’re both full of chaos. They both have people who are fed up with being human , and people who are happy to be nothing more than that. I let my eyes wander down to the sea, sparkling with phosphorescent waves. Behind an outcrop of rocks were more points of fiery light, like flowers dissolving and reforming. The flames formed an oval shape and distorted circles. The women of the night were making burnt offerings, legs held at 25-degree angles, votive offerings flaming in their hands. Of course, from the mountaintop, you couldn’t really see anyone. You could see only the flames spinning around and around in circles, like a fire dance. Suddenly a ball of fire erupted where the road ran along the woods of casuarina trees. It clearly illuminated a gang of people howling and running from said pillar of fire. It clearly illuminated the fact that the pillar of fire was actually my own burning Toyota Corona. I’d left the car down there, planning to pick it up later and drive it to the inn. I sprang to my feet. But it was too late. Apoc a l y p se H o t e l 124 The car had exploded. Flames rolled out onto the surface of the road, then climbed onto two nearby trees, which caught fire and burst into flames like two torches. Mai Trừng stood up and held onto me. We’d both become powerless. The only thing we could do was stand there and watch the flames. Who was the arsonist? Yên Thanh? Hooligans who’d come to the beach to party and gratify their perversities? Or maybe the peasants who’d lost their land had returned for revenge on people with money? To them, every beachgoer is someone with money, living the high life, someone who comes and goes, leaving behind garbage and waste on their land and bastard children and intractable diseases for the local women, and poisoning the living ways of their men and children. Suddenly the pagoda bell tolled in panic. And it tolled in terror. The bonze had been robbed of her peace. The enraged bell poured down into the air. It was no longer a tinkling pile of crystal shards. This time it was a clanging rain of metallic iron and steel fragments. The whole world collapsed beneath this metallic downpour. The whole world was flooded with a metallic deluge. The human world seemed to be on the edge of the abyss of annihilation . An earthquake in Japan. Huge floods in China. Tidal waves in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia. Terrifying and abnormal heat waves in France, England, and the United States. Thousands had died. So what else can one think except that the dark hole of oblivion had begun to appear? Beneath the mountain, to the right was the fire dance of the prostitutes, whirling points of flame. Down to the left, my car still glowed and smoldered . High upon the mountaintop, two fires burned in two iron pans. And the silence of the night continued to be rent as if by stray shards of shrapnel. Early the next morning, I returned from the town, where I had reported the burning of my car. The pagoda was in an uproar. Someone was guiding the half-blind bonze to the bell tower. She groped her way to where the bell hung. Her two emaciated, trembling hands reached out into empty space. Her hands tried to feel for the bell. She couldn’t believe that it was no longer there. Only the night before she’d struck the bell again and again. She’d hit it frantically. Like she was possessed. Like someone...