ONE
ONE D uring the summer of that year the beach of Bình Sơn was shaken by the reported death of a young lady who had gone swimming with some male friends. Every summer, on some beach, a victim would drown: the annual tax the beach pays to the ocean. That summer she was it. Who knows, maybe next year it’ll be me. The beach tax collector is strict as fate. In fact, he is exactly like fate—he collects what is owed without any warning. In the summer heat, people impulsively hop into their vehicles and drive to the beach for a swim. They stop off for a quick dip and without any warning become the poor souls who have to pay that year’s tax for the whole damn beach. But the person who died that summer wasn’t, as rumor had it, a young lady. The deceased was actually a young man. As a close companion of the victim, and as a witness, I feel I have to correct this misinformation. But it is my fervent hope that my report will correct much more important matters than the sex of the victim. That morning Phũ had called me up on the phone. “Hey, Uncle, the three of us guys just decided to head over to Bình Sơn. Can you come?” Ten minutes later, Phũ drove up in his Toyota Corona. The four of us cruised down Highway 1, heading south. Thanks to Phũ’s—my nephew ’s—car, we would all go on these freewheeling trips anywhere within a radius of a few hundred kilometers from Hanoi, as easily as other citizens of the capital would drive their motorbikes down to Four Seasons Ice Cream, next to Hoàn Kiếm Lake. It was all thanks to the tactful lobbying of my older brother. It was all thanks to the private hotel that he started. It was all thanks to the government’s giving permission to have private cars with white license plates. Long live white license plates! I remember that Phũ was behind the wheel that day. Cốc was sitting Apoc a l y p se H o t e l 4 next to him. Bóp and I were sitting in the back. Cốc turned his head around to tell us a dirty story. As he spoke, a tiny mist of saliva sprayed from his mouth, visible as a puff of breath in the depths of winter. No matter where he was, or with whom, he always emitted such a mist. Nevertheless , among the mobs of young ladies that surrounded him, not a one avoided his face. They would raise their own faces proudly and defiantly, their infatuated eyes fixed on the beautiful and ruthless visage of the man emitting this fine spray. Neither did we avoid his face. The distance from the front to the back seats wasn’t too small, and saliva can’t transmit AIDS—only respiratory diseases. That wasn’t something we worried about with Cốc, whose lungs were strong enough to pump air through all four of our bodies. Cốc could never be satisfied telling any story that had a bit of sexual innuendo without bringing up the thing itself. His real name is Công, but his clique all called him Cốc, which he would pronounce a bit off, so as to turn it into the English word Cock, which refers to a male chicken and also that thing that wriggles between a guy’s legs. Both meanings suited Cốc just fine. During his first year of university Cốc had been discovered by a movie director. The director was both experienced and well qualified, but he’d allowed himself to play second fiddle to a novice French director and jointly direct a movie. During the filming, both the inexperienced French director and the experienced Vietnamese director tried in vain to get Cốc to stop spraying saliva. The crew’s special effects man was likewise unable to find a cure for that veil of mist that hung perpetually front of Cốc’s face. The upshot was that Cốc had to take a role without any lines. A party of Legionnaires was driving by in an uncovered vehicle, returning from a raid. It was imperative that in the vehicle there could be seen an Asian face, lips pursed in an action hero’s scowl. Cốc was...
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