Authors: Viet Thanh Nguyen
Nevertheless, the atmosphere inside the hotel’s cozy lounge was buoyant. Some entrepreneur had rented out the space to stage
Fantasia
, and the result was a refuge without any sign of refugees, the men sharp in tailored suits and the women delectable in ball gowns. Our aspiring bourgeoisie had found forty-hour-a-week jobs with overtime and, having padded their wallets enough to sit more comfortably, were now on the hunt for wine and song. As Bon and I settled into a table at the back, a winsome singer in a bolero jacket serenaded the lounge with a heartache-soaked version of Pham Duy’s “City of Sadness.” Was there any other way to sing about a city of sadness, the portable city carried by all of us in exile? After love, was sadness not the most common noun in our lyrical repertoire? Did we salivate for sadness, or had we only learned to enjoy what we were forced to eat? These questions required either Camus or cognac, and as Camus was not available I ordered cognac.
I paid for the snifters without a twinge from my dwindling settlement cash, being of the firm belief that money did not live until it was spent, particularly in the company of friends. When I spotted the grizzled captain and the affectless lieutenant standing at the bar nursing beers, I even sent them snifters of cognac. They came over to our table and toasted our comradeship, even though I had not yet brought up the matter of my return with the General again. That was my intent, though, and I was happy to buy us all another round. Cognac made everything better, the equivalent of a mother’s kiss for a grown man, and so it was that we indulged as the singers shimmied on the stage one by one. Men and women, they crooned, they wailed, they sighed, they belted, they moaned, they roared, and no matter what they sang or how, the crowd adored them. We were, all of us, even Bon, airlifted back in time by the lungs of the singers, across years and miles to nightclubs in Saigon where the taste of champagne, besides the usual flavors and hints, always carried a touch of tears. Too many tears, and one was overpowered; none, and one was not enslaved. But a drop of this elixir was all one’s tongue needed before it could utter only one name: Saigon.
That word was mentioned by nearly every one of the performers and by the emcee himself. This guide to
Fantasia
was a modestly built man modestly dressed in a gray flannel suit, the only shiny thing about him being his spectacles. I could not see his eyes but I recognized his name. The Poet was a writer whose works had appeared in the literary journals and newspapers, gentle and nostalgic verses about the textures of everyday life. I remembered one in particular about the epiphany to be found in the washing of rice, and while I could not remember the Poet’s epiphany, I remembered the urge in the poem to find meaning in even the meanest of chores. Sometimes, when I washed rice and sunk my hand into the wet grains, I thought of the Poet. I was proud to see that in our culture a Poet could be an emcee for a night of song and wine for the common people. We respected our poets and assumed they had something important to teach us, and this Poet did. He had written a few columns for Sonny’s newspaper, explaining the vagaries of American life or the cultural miscommunications between Americans and us, and in this vein he interspersed his introductions of the singers with brief lessons in our culture or the American culture. When it came time for Lana, he began by saying, Some of you may have heard that the Americans are a people who like to dream. It’s true, and although some say that America is a welfare state, in actuality it is a dream state. Here, we can dream of anything, can’t we, ladies and gentlemen? I will tell you what my American Dream is, he said, holding the microphone with the care one reserved for a stick of dynamite. My American Dream is to see once more, before I die, the land where I was born, to taste once more the ripe persimmons from the tree of my family’s garden in Tay Ninh. My American Dream is to return home so I can light incense at the tomb of my grandparents, to roam that beautiful country of ours when it is at last peaceful and the sound of guns cannot be heard over the shouts of joy. My American Dream is to walk from city to village to farm and to see boys and girls laughing and playing who have never heard of war, from Da Nang to Da Lat, from Ca Mau to Chau Doc, from Sa Dec to Song Cau, from Bien Hoa to Ban Me Thuot—
The train ride through our cities and towns great and small continued, but I had gotten off at Ban Me Thuot, my hometown, hill town, town of red earth, Highland country of the finest coffee beans, land of booming waterfalls, of exasperated elephants, of the half-starved Gia Rai in their loincloths, barefoot and bare breasted, land where my mother and father died, land where my umbilical cord was buried in my mother’s meager plot, land where the heroic People’s Army struck first in its liberation of the south during the great campaign of ’75, land that was my home.
That is my American Dream, said the Poet, that no matter the clothes I wear or the food I eat or the language I speak, my heart will be unchanged. This is why we gather here tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Though we cannot be home in reality, we can return in
Fantasia
.
The audience applauded sincerely and enthusiastically for our diasporic poet laureate, but he was a wise man who knew that we were gathered here for another purpose besides hearing him. Ladies and gentlemen, he said, raising his hand to still the crowd, may I present to you another American Dream, our very own Vietnamese fantasy . . .
Now known by just one name, like John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Mary, she stepped onstage clad in a red velvet bustier, a leopard-print miniskirt, black lace gloves, and thigh-high leather boots with stiletto heels. My heart would have paused at the boots, the heels, or the flat, smooth slice of her belly, naked in between miniskirt and bustier, but the combination of all three arrested my heart altogether and beat it with the vigor of a Los Angeles police squad. Pouring cognac over my heart freed it, but thus drenched it was easily flambéed by her torch song. She turned on the heat with her first number, the unexpected “I’d Love You to Want Me,” which I had heard before sung only by men. “I’d Love You to Want Me” was the theme song of the bachelors and unhappily married males of my generation, whether in the English original or the equally superb French and Vietnamese renditions. What the song expressed so perfectly from lyric to melody was unrequited love, and we men of the south loved nothing more than unrequited love, cracked hearts our primary weakness after cigarettes, coffee, and cognac.
Listening to her sing, all I wanted was to immolate myself in a night with her to remember forever and ever. Every man in the room shared my emotion as we watched her do no more than sway at the microphone, her voice enough to move the audience, or rather to still us. Nobody talked and nobody stirred except to raise a cigarette or a glass, an utter concentration not broken for her next, slightly more upbeat number, “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” Nancy Sinatra sang it first, but she was merely a platinum princess whose only knowledge of violence and guns was derived secondhand from the mob friends of her father, Frank. Lana, in contrast, had grown up in a city where gangsters were once so powerful the army fought them in the streets. Saigon was a metropolis where grenade attacks were commonplace, terror bombings not unexpected, and wholesale invasion by the Viet Cong a communal experience. What did Nancy Sinatra know when she sang
bang bang
? To her, those were bubble-gum pop lyrics.
Bang bang
was the sound track of our lives.
Moreover, Nancy Sinatra was afflicted, as the overwhelming majority of Americans were, with monolingualism. Lana’s richer, more textured version of “Bang Bang” layered English with French and Vietnamese.
Bang bang, je ne l’oublierai pas
went the last line of the French version, which was echoed by Pham Duy’s Vietnamese version,
We will never forget
. In the pantheon of classic pop songs from Saigon, this tricolor rendition was one of the most memorable, masterfully weaving together love and violence in the enigmatic story of two lovers who, regardless of having known each other since childhood, or because of knowing each other since childhood, shoot each other down.
Bang bang
was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language,
anh oi
; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.
When Lana was finished, the audience clapped, whistled, and stomped, but I sat silent and stunned as she bowed and gracefully withdrew, so disarmed I could not even applaud. As the Poet introduced the next performer, all I heard was
bang bang
, and when Lana returned to the table reserved for the performers, with the seat next to her left empty by the singer who had replaced her, I told Bon I would be back in ten minutes. I heard him say, Don’t do it, you stupid bastard, but without further thought I began my walk across the lounge. The hardest thing to do in talking to a woman was taking the first step, but the most important thing to do was not to think. Not thinking is more difficult than it sounds, and yet, with women, one should never think. Never. It simply won’t do. The first few times in approaching girls, during my lycée years, I had thought too much, hesitated, and, as a result, flailed and failed. But even so, I discovered that all the childhood bullying directed at me had toughened me, making me believe that being rejected was better than not having the chance to be rejected at all. Thus it was that I approached girls, and now women, with such Zen negation of all doubt and fear the Buddha would approve. Sitting down next to Lana and thinking of nothing, I merely followed my instincts and my first three principles in talking to a woman: do not ask permission; do not say hello; and do not let her speak first.
I had no idea you could sing like you do when I first met you, I said. She looked at me with eyes that evoked those on ancient Grecian statues, empty and yet expressive. Why would you? I was only sixteen.
And I was only twenty-five. What did I know? I leaned close to be heard over the music and to offer her a cigarette. Fourth principle: give a woman the chance to reject something else besides me. If she declined the cigarette, as any of our proper young women should, I had an excuse to take one myself, which gave me a few seconds to say something while she focused on my cigarette. But Lana unexpectedly accepted, giving me the chance to fire up her cigarette with a suggestive flame, as I had once lit up Ms. Mori. What do your mother and father think of all this?
They think it’s a waste of time to sing and dance. I suppose you agree with them?
I lit my own cigarette. If I agreed with them, would I be here?
You agree with everything my father says.
I agree with only some of the things your father says. But I don’t disagree with anything.
So you agree with me when it comes to music?
Music and singing keep us alive, give us hope. If we can feel, we know we can live.
And we know we can love. She blew smoke away from me, though I would have been delighted to have her blow smoke in my eyes or on any part of my body. My parents fear singing will ruin me for marriage, she said. What they want for me is to get married tomorrow to someone very respectable and very rich. You’re neither of those things, are you, Captain?
Would you rather I be respectable and rich?
You’d be much less interesting if you were.
You might be the first woman in the history of the world who’s ever felt that way, I said. All this time I kept my gaze fixed on hers, an enormously difficult task given the gravitational pull exerted by her cleavage. While I was critical of many things when it came to so-called Western civilization, cleavage was not one of them. The Chinese might have invented gunpowder and the noodle, but the West had invented cleavage, with profound if underappreciated implications. A man gazing on semi-exposed breasts was not only engaging in simple lasciviousness, he was also meditating, even if unawares, on the visual embodiment of the verb “to cleave,” which meant both to cut apart and to put together. A woman’s cleavage perfectly illustrated this double and contradictory meaning, the breasts two separate entities with one identity. The double meaning was also present in how cleavage separated a woman from a man and yet drew him to her with the irresistible force of sliding down a slippery slope. Men had no equivalent, except, perhaps, for the only kind of male cleavage most women truly cared for, the opening and closing of a well-stuffed billfold. But whereas women could look at us as much as they wanted, and we would appreciate it, we were damned if we looked and hardly less damned if we didn’t. A woman with extraordinary cleavage would reasonably be insulted by a man whose eyes could resist the plunge, so, just to be polite, I cast a tasteful glance while reaching for another cigarette. In between those marvelous breasts bumped a gold crucifix on a gold chain, and for once I wished I were a true Christian so I could be nailed to that cross.