Day 8

A new day dawned upon the imperial capital, a day of freedom and solidarity, of high humidity and low unemployment, of bustling urban activity, moderate air quality, and an optimism so thick and protective that sunscreen and motorcycle helmets were deemed useless. The sense of industry and destiny was pervasive. It got on everything. It clung, spread, seeped, and crawled into every pore in every concrete wall, every crack in every sidewalk, and there it nourished a surprising variety of fungi, algae, and bacteria. What these microorganisms contributed to the general vibe is still poorly understood. What we know for certain is that it was greatly underestimated. Very rarely, if ever, was my general good mood attributed to them. My friends, or rather I should say my friend, for I only had one, would inexplicably say to me, “You’ve got a bit of extra spring in your step. Have you got a new girlfriend?” Never, not once, did he say to me, “You’ve got a bit of extra spring in your step. Have you got black mold in your shower?” But the fact was, both were true.

That was yesterday.

Today, I sit rigid in the darkest corner of a crowded cafe, straining against this irrational sense of promise. I came to Huế four days ago to continue a seduction, three months in the making, that will most likely lead to marriage, the adoption of a child, an exponential increase in my material expenses and, in a year or two if I’m lucky, occasional sex. But there are no ends to which I will not resort in the ruthless pursuit of carnal pleasure. In a few moments I will share a coffee with my future wife, whose name and face I still have trouble remembering. I know that she has dark hair and a peculiar laugh, in equal parts heartfelt and pained, that seems to momentarily overwhelm a long-practiced melancholy. It is irresistible, but always slightly out of place, like a really good slice of pizza at a funeral. She is tall, dresses simply, wearing every day the same pair of jade earrings and her name, which I’m still having trouble remembering, speaks either of death or of endless happiness. She is already ten minutes late. I expect to see her sometime within the next hour.

I am a stranger in this city. I know only two people. The first is my beloved. The second is a man named Long, who I met in the taxi from Đà Nẵng. Him, I remember distinctly, thanks to the extreme physical closeness that we shared for those two and a half hours. We picked him up in southeastern quarter of the city center near Đà Nẵng’s only shopping mall and a number of empty lots that, from what I could understand of the urban planning notice, symbolize the city’s future prestige.

This area was also the site of a tragic collision between the American McMansion and Mediterranean stucco, so gruesome and destructive that the rubble still spans over twenty city blocks, soon to be available for lease at five billion Vietnamese dong per unit. Here, at ground zero, Long climbed aboard our shared vessel. He is a thin man, dark-skinned, of measured movement, somewhere between 30 and 65 years old. I first took him for a laborer, and for a man of dull wits, because he met my best attempt at a friendly greeting with a steady gaze and silence. Then, slowly and painstakingly, with the careful precision of a man shifting a tremendous weight with a long lever, came words in perfect English, “Hello. Where are you from?”

Long is an engineer. This was one of very few details that I garnered from our extended conversation, which played out like an amateur chess final with no time limit. We never made it past the opening moves. If there was any tiny fraction of what he wanted to express that he could convey in English, he satisfied himself with that fraction. He ignored the driver’s repeated admonitions to speak Vietnamese with me, that my Vietnamese was perfectly adequate. I assessed him to be a man of considerable willpower. He referred to the condo complex as “my houses,” and he worked on them for six days out of every week, only returning to his home in Huế to spend each Sunday with his family. He made it a kind of weekly celebration. I was invited. I would be a guest of honor, would meet his family, would drink his beer, would see his chickens. At these thoughts a dreamy smile took hold of his face. He put a special emphasis on the word chickens, and gazing into my eyes with an overwhelming warmth, proceeded to wring the neck of one such imaginary fowl. I presume that the joy he felt was that of sharing his wealth with a new friend, but until I have had the experience of slaughtering a chicken with my bare hands, I will be held short of definite knowledge.

Long informed me that we were aboard the safest taxi to travel the highways between Đà Nẵng and Huế. He took only this taxi, never entrusting his life to any other. Other drivers, he said, drove quickly, and placed their passengers at needless risk. This comment seemed inconsequential at the time, but grew to monumental import over the course of the journey. As we broke away from the confines of the city our driver began to demonstrate his prowess: no gap was too small, no speed too fast, no motorcyclist too close, no hellish cloud of roiling black diesel smoke too opaque to be blindly and violently pierced like the heart of some hated enemy. A single, indelible thought pressed itself across my mind: I must, at all costs, avoid these other drivers.

The journey culminated in a feverish sprint to Long’s house in the Lake District to the east of Huế city. It was night. As we quit the main road we were beset by a sudden thunderstorm. The quaint suburban sprawl that lined both sides of the highway turned out to be a kind of facade behind which was hid a low vastness of rice fields extending as far as the eye could see, admittedly not very far at that moment. The impression was of darkness and water in all directions, save below, where they were weakly contested by the dike road and the headlights. The impression was also one of incredible speed, but in the dark, on a one-lane road, unpaved and flooded, with traffic in both directions, with a windshield overwhelmed by torrential rain, any speed feels fast. We ground to a halt at a small rural neighborhood perched on an island above the rice paddies. Long proudly identified the vague shape to the left of the car as his home. He reaffirmed our date for barbecued chicken and we parted ways.

At last my future wife has arrived. I still do not fully remember her name. Her name is irrelevant. In the months that we have known each other, we have never called each other by name once. Now she will drink her tamarind juice, fondle her hair, and speak idly of Vietnamese marriage customs. She will speculate about what our children might look like, whether it would be better to be married this year or next year, who should come to the wedding. And then, when pressed in anyway about her feelings, she will say without guile that it is too early to say. We are just friends. We are just talking. But I know that we are more than friends. I have only one friend.

He, in the steadfastness of his love, warns me regularly of the danger I am in. He says that I should enjoy my happiness, my freedom, while it lasts, because these days will soon be behind me. Soon, I will know the harshness of reality. Soon, I will not be able to spend my nights alone. I will not be able to wonder with whom I can share my life. I will be interminably stuck with one person, the woman I love. He may be right. But I feel like I can imagine worse fates.