Love Like Hate (28 page)

That morning, a still-angry Kim Lan appeared to announce that Hoa no longer had the key to the motorbike. She was not to leave the house at all, not even to go to the New York School. To make sure his sister would be too ashamed to go outside, Cun barged into the room with a pair of scissors to snip clumps of hair randomly from Hoa’s head. He snapped her head back with one hand and clipped with the other as he called her a slut and a whore. Hoa was too exhausted to scream or resist this dangerous man, her brother. Her father was still sleeping and she wasn’t sure if he would defend her in any case.

11
PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

F
or years Sen had left Kim Lan alone to educate Hoa. She knew more about these matters, he reasoned. She had finished high school while he had never gotten past the sixth grade. He also understood Kim Lan’s wish to find Hoa a Viet Kieu husband. The only problem was that every other Vietnamese mother also wanted a Viet Kieu son-in-law. Viet Kieu sons-in-law were so desirable that people were actually paying them to marry their daughters. The idea was to use a Viet Kieu son-in-law as a ticket to get a family member to America. Two decades after the Fall of Saigon, the airlift had begun again, with a Viet Kieu son-in-law as the single-passenger jet taking Vietnam’s daughters straight to the land of dreams. He was a three-legged bird with bright plumage swooping down from a glittering sun to pluck his teary-eyed maiden from the smoldering ashes. Once in America, the daughter could rake in the bucks and recoup the initial investment a thousand times over. She could also bring other family members over. The going rate for a Viet Kieu son-in-law in 2004 was around twenty-five thousand bucks, half of which usually went to a middle man. It wasn’t a foolproof racket because US immigration authorities were becoming expert at sniffing out these fake marriages. To make them less fake, the fake couples often went through the rituals of a normal courtship—a stroll through the Saigon Zoo, sunbathing in Vung Tau, a romantic meal in a restaurant—but telescoped into a few days and treated merely as photo opportunities. A
wedding reception had to be staged, complete with fake guests, or guests could be borrowed from a
real
wedding. The fake couple would crash someone else’s reception at a busy restaurant, snap a few quick photos, then disappear before anyone knew what was happening. They also had to stand in front of the altar, clasping incense sticks in front of their foreheads, to ask for blessings from their ancestors. The idea was to have convincing photographic evidence to trick US immigration.

When is your husband’s birthday?

What is the color of his underwear?

What is your mother-in-law’s name?

What does your husband like to eat?

Does he smoke or drink alcohol?

Are you a Communist or a terrorist?

Have you ever been paid for sex?

Sometimes these fake couples even fucked for real because the Viet Kieu sons-in-law—who held the trump card, after all—were simply too horny not to. To these dudes, the wrongness of it all was no deterrent, but only a bonus thrill, belated bangers and mash and payback for all those nights of kneeling in front of the computer in some ice-packed, deep-frozen city of North America, mooning at digitized pussies. Sometimes the girl got pregnant, resulting in a quick abortion, or not. A pregnancy was actually welcomed by some families, since it provided a more definitive proof of the staged marriage’s authenticity. In any case, the poor had to borrow astronomical sums if they wanted to play this game. Sen thought that this Viet Kieu business was too risky a gamble. After dinner one night, while picking at his relatively new dentures and spitting discolored flecks of imperfectly masticated animal tissue onto the floor, Sen decided that a much safer bet was to find a Taiwanese son-in-law. He already had one in mind.

12
A CEO

B
y 2004, the Taiwanese had become the ugly foreigners in Vietnam. They were rich, they swaggered and the prostitutes loved them. Some had come to do business but most were there only to shop for a woman. A few had picked out their brides on the internet, and were in Saigon to pick up the goods. Unlike many Viet Kieus, the Taiwanese didn’t charge, but paid relatively good money to marry a Vietnamese woman. Most of these bachelors were old, ugly, diseased or handicapped. The Vietnamese press loved to ridicule this phenomenon. One article began:

A surprising thing about the groom, T.D.C. (a Taiwanese), was that, although he was not famous, he was always accompanied by two “bodyguards.” They were always by his side to assist him … take each step. That’s because he was ninety years old! No one will dare toast “a hundred years of happiness” to the newlyweds. The bride, N.T.L. (from Bac Lieu), was only thirty
.

The goal of the brides was to live in a nice Taiwanese house and to send money back to their parents regularly. These fantasies were darkened somewhat by rumors of women who went to Taiwan only to be sold to whorehouses, and of women being forced to sleep with a father-in-law or brother-in-law. To play it safe, some women would defraud their suitors by disappearing after a sumptuous wedding.

“An immigrant is an unenlightened ignoramus who thinks one country better than another.” So wrote an unenlightened Ambrose
Bierce. But how does one compare two countries? By income, the average Taiwanese made $13,320 in 2003, thirty times more than the average Vietnamese. The life expectancies for Taiwanese were age seventy-four for men, eighty for women; for Vietnamese, sixty-eight and seventy-three. Suicide rates were not available for either country. Further, it has often been noted that the average Taiwanese tends to laugh louder and longer than the average Vietnamese, slap his thigh with more gusto, and become much more boisterous when drunk.

An optical scanner for measuring the gleam in the eye was invented by Dr. Hideo Suzuki of Kobe University. The more gleam, the more happiness. Scanning eyes from across the globe, Dr. Suzuki was able to determine that adolescents anticipating their first sexual experience had the most gleam, and Vietnamese of whatever age, in any situation whatsoever, the least. (Those who doubt Dr. Suzuki’s findings should rewind to the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics, when the Vietnamese delegation entered the stadium absolutely stone-faced, without any gleam in their eyes whatsoever, their deadened demeanor a bizarre contrast to the joyful exuberance displayed by the crowd as well as the athletes and officials from the other 201 nations.)

Sen’s choice for a future son-in-law was A-Chen, a man of thirty-four, only twice the age of Hoa. He was actually a good-looking guy, with refined manners. He was a bit fat, but in a country of rail-thin men, his corpulence was a distinction. His only defect was a missing hand, the result of a childhood accident. Most important, A-Chen was the CEO of the Great Wall Toothpick Company. Great Wall toothpicks were simply the best. Whether round or flat, each was sculpted by hand by a master craftsman. Made exclusively from birch, each toothpick was veneered, flavored with mint and sterilized, before it was hygienically wrapped—also by hand—in biodegradable paper. To sculpt and wrap toothpicks by hand was too expensive a proposition in Taiwan, prompting A-Chen to set up shop in Vietnam. A-Chen’s right hand had been milled by a farm machine
when he was only five years old. That’s why he hated all machines and wanted all of his toothpicks to be made entirely by hand.

A-Chen had had another misfortune in childhood. At eleven, he stared at a solar eclipse for about three seconds. Since the retina has no pain receptors, he unwittingly destroyed his eyes forever. A few days later, his eyes became bloodshot and his vision blurred. Thereafter, he had to wear a thick pair of glasses, giving him an intellectual air that was entirely unearned and unwarranted.

When A-Chen first arrived, he lived in the Dien Bien Phu Mansion on Ly Tu Trong Street. For a furnished one-bedroom, he paid twenty-three hundred bucks a month. He didn’t mind it because it was designed according to the highest standards of luxury, comfort and taste. After work, he could relax with a body-toning session or chill in the outdoor kidney-shaped pool, with a perfect vodkatini in his hand. He could also lift weights in the fully equipped gym, sweat in the steam bath or sing in the karaoke room. Only later, after A-Chen had grown more comfortable with being in Vietnam and had learned to speak some of the language, did he move into a house near his toothpick factory—just down the street from Paris by Night.

As a businessman in Vietnam, A-Chen had a close-up look at the country’s economic mess. He had never known there could be so much capitalist exploitation in a supposedly socialist society. It amazed him that many Vietnamese had to work for a dollar a day to make $140 sneakers to be lusted after, and sometimes even bought, by other Vietnamese. If a worker wanted to buy a pair of Nikes he had just sewn, he would have to wait for half a year and not eat at all during that time. No such problem existed at the Great Wall Toothpick Company. A-Chen treated his workers fairly and gave them free toothpicks to take home for the holidays.

When A-Chen first arrived, he ate only in expensive restaurants. It wasn’t for the quality of the food, but because he didn’t want to be molested by vendors and beggars. Once he ventured into a regular noodle joint and was immediately surrounded by several desperate
people trying to sell him lottery tickets, newspapers, or a shoe shine. Unbidden, a young woman started to massage his shoulders. He waved these people away, but saw a girl in rags still standing there. About eight years old, she was holding a naked two-year-old boy on her hip. Both of their faces were darkened with grime, their hair disheveled and burned brown by the sun. Transparent mucus cleared a short, pink path down the baby’s face, from his nose to his upper lip. Buzzing flies orbited around their heads. He gave them several bills, only to be immediately surrounded by a dozen more beggars, coming from God knows where. He patiently gave money to each beggar in turn, but finally decided enough was enough, he would now try to enjoy his bowl of noodles. But as he ate, he noticed a leg stump pointing at the side of his face. He looked up and saw a middle-aged man, a vet or simply someone who had lost his limb in a traffic accident. One hand was upturned in supplication, the other bracing a dirty, nicked-up, duct-taped crutch. A finger or two was missing from each hand. The one-legged man said nothing, but would not steer his leg stump from A-Chen’s face. It was more or less a holdup. Quickly losing his appetite, A-Chen ate only the sweet pork, the battered shrimp and the wontons, leaving most of the noodles untouched. When he shoved the bowl aside to drink his iced coffee, the one-legged man quickly grabbed it to gulp down the leftovers, slurping the excellent broth with relish. As A-Chen got up to leave, the one-legged man finished the watery remains of his iced coffee.

Another time A-Chen was sitting in the back of a dark café, trying to sip a beer, when a tiny ragged boy approached. Before the boy could open his mouth, A-Chen gave him ten thousand
dong
. The boy refused the money and walked away, looking hurt and angry. It turned out he was a shoe-shine boy and not a beggar. Other beggars tugged at A-Chen on the streets, and cursed at him in Vietnamese, Chinese or English if he ignored them. A-Chen could not give money to every beggar in Vietnam. He could not save millions of people, he figured, but he might be able to save one.

Everywhere A-Chen went in Saigon he saw either socialist billboards boasting of heroic, exuberant workers, soldiers and peasants, or capitalist billboards seducing the masses with images of the affluent hitting golf balls or sipping martinis. As with all billboards, the people on them had nothing to do with the working stiffs milling on the streets, but the contrast between the superrace shown on Vietnamese billboards and the dazed and wasted specimens sprawled on the dirty sidewalks just below them was so startling as to be comical. An appropriate image on all Vietnamese billboards would have been a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

There were few beggars in Thanh Da, A-Chen’s new neighborhood, because there were few foreigners. A-Chen also found a few restaurants with second floors, where beggars don’t venture. Stopping in Paris by Night for a beer one day, he was delighted to meet Sen, who could speak Cantonese, and the two became fast friends. A-Chen wasn’t much of a chess player, but he enjoyed playing with Sen. Though he always lost, he didn’t mind. “I’m paying you for chess lessons. I’m slowly getting better, no?”