The Heat of Sài Gòn

Hồ Chí Minh City, 2016

Dan picked up Linda’s suitcase and followed her out of the airport. He was surprised nobody had given him trouble. The immigration officer didn’t take the money Linda had slid into his passport, and no one had inspected their belongings.

A few feet from the exit, he paused. Too many people were standing outside. Once, in a dream, he was walking somewhere in the Mekong Delta when a man ran behind him and stabbed him in the back with a knife, shouting, “Return my wife and my children to me!” The man bore the same face as a farmer he’d seen kneeling and howling outside a burning home.

Linda turned. She smiled, stretched out her hand. She’d seen him pace their living room during the nights before their departure. He reached for her, tethered himself to her fingers.

Outside, all the people were looking past him, searching for arriving passengers, babies and flowers clutched to their chests. Several guards stood casually in dark green uniforms. None of them had weapons. The heaviness in his chest eased.

“Where’s our guide?” Linda stood on tiptoes to look further, then pulled Dan forward. She waved to a man who’d emerged from the crowd, holding up a sign that read Mr. Daniel Ashland & Mrs. Linda Ashland.

The man smiled, lowered the sign, hurried toward them. He was slim and looked fit, and it was difficult to guess his age. A big scar cut across his left cheek. “You can trust him,” Duy had told Linda. “He’s an old friend, my former comrade. An experienced tour guide, too.”

The man extended his arm. “I am Thiên. Welcome to Sài Gòn!”

“Thanks for picking us up, Mr. Thien.” Linda beamed. She’d followed her friends’ advice and addressed Thiên with a respectful title.

Darkness had fallen. A strong wind blew, ushering the smell of rain forward. Thiên waved for a taxi. In the car he handed them each a business card. “This has my mobile number. If you get lost, you call me. You call me anytime you need.”

Dan put the card into his breast pocket, telling himself there’d be no way he would let Linda out of his sight. Especially here.

Thiên gave Linda a copy of the itinerary, explaining their two-day program in the city before leaving for the Mekong Delta.

When they had planned the trip, Linda had suggested that they experience Việt Nam beyond the war. No visits to war museums or to the popular Củ Chi tunnels where tourists got a glimpse into the lives of Communist soldiers living underground during the war. Dan couldn’t agree more.

Linda had read the itinerary so often, she must have memorized it. Still, she switched the light on and studied the pages as if it were the first time she’d seen them. “Looks good,” she announced happily before putting them into her handbag.

Thiên gave Linda a small bottle. “Mosquito repellent. My wife made it herself, from lemongrass. She has a small shop. Please . . . spray your arms and legs every day as you go out. It’s rainy season, so there’s dengue fever.”

“Thank you so much,” said Linda, beaming. “By the way . . . Duy and Như sent some medicine for your mother. It’s in my suitcase.”

“Ah, they’re so kind. I wish I listened to them and tried to go to America. Too much corruption here. Little freedom of speech.”

“How bad is the corruption, Mr. Thien?”

As Thiên and Linda gossiped about local politics, Dan listened to the rain hammering onto the car. It had often rained like this. He’d been frightened of it, but Kim had said rain was her music. She would lie with him in bed, humming, her naked body a beautiful brown next to his white skin as raindrops tapped onto the windows of their apartment.

The street was almost empty. Through the thick curtain of rain, he saw two moving figures. A woman was pulling a child’s hand. They were running.

During the last time that he saw Kim, she had clutched his wrist tightly, telling him she was pregnant, and that she wasn’t lying.

He sank deeper into the seat, pressed down by the weight of guilt. He hoped Kim and the child had survived the war.

And he hoped Linda would forgive him, if he ever got up the courage to tell her. During the first year of his return, he had often thought about confessing his affair to Linda. But he feared she would leave him.

Linda centered him. He’d realized how loyal she’d been to him on the day of his return to Seattle from his one-year tour in Việt Nam. He had no memory of stepping off the plane, only of being suddenly in the arrival hall with a group of soldiers, all of whom, like him, looked dazed in their khaki Class A uniforms decorated by rows of ribbons, and silver pilot or aircrew wings or combat infantry badges on their chests. A crowd of people stood outside, Linda and his mom among them. Linda was rushing to him when someone shouted, “Look at those fuckers.” A woman and a man spat in his direction. “Baby killers!” someone shouted, “How many kids did you kill? And how many women?” As his mom started crying, he stood there, stunned. The people screaming at him weren’t carrying banners or signs. They looked like anyone waiting for loved ones. His countrymen.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Linda said later as she drove him and his mother home. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel. “Those people . . . they’re just ignorant. A bunch of rich, spoiled brats who’ll never be forced to really risk their own asses. Regardless of how I feel about the war, I can never resent you or anyone else who has to fight it. You did what you thought you were supposed to do at the risk of your own life. You’re a man of honor, Dan. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

A man of honor. He clung to her words, as if her saying it could make it true.

“She’s right.” His mom reached toward the front seat for his arm, her eyes welling up with tears. “I’m proud of you son. I’m glad, so glad you made it home.”

He had a month’s leave before reporting to new duties at Fort Wolters, Texas. In the weeks after his return, as demonstrations against the war raged around town, Linda stayed by his side, defending him ferociously when anyone put down veterans. They were working-class kids who had no choice, she would say. “If Dan hadn’t gone, someone would have to go in his place,” she told her friends. It took her three weeks to confess to Dan, as if admitting to an affair, that she’d been to several anti-war demonstrations. At some level, she felt her protest was a betrayal of him. He told her he was proud she’d gone; he would join her if she decided to go again. She never did when he was around. Perhaps a part of her remained disturbed and embarrassed that he’d been in the war. She told her friends and acquaintances that his only job had been to conduct search and rescue missions, and that he’d risked his life to save others. She truly believed that he hadn’t killed any civilians.

He never corrected her. If he let her define him, it would give him something to live up to.

Their marriage had survived because she considered him an honorable man.

“Mr. Thien . . .” Linda leaned forward in the taxi, her voice cheerful, “when we’re done with the city tour tomorrow, could you take me to the hairdresser my friend Jenna went to? She was there a few months ago and said the service was excellent and the price so cheap.”

“Everything here cheap for Americans,” said Thiên. “Madam also wants new clothes? I know good tailors.”

“Yes, but I’d like to go to the tailor Jenna recommended. He did such a great job.”

Jenna was a member of the veteran spouse support group Linda attended. She had visited Việt Nam with her husband and said the trip was better than any doctor, better than any medicine.

Outside, as their taxi approached the center of town, groups of people stood on the pavement, squeezing themselves into the narrow spaces under the eaves of houses and buildings. Several raced by on motorbikes, their heads covered by rain ponchos. Dan tried to look at their faces but everything was a blur. Would he recognize Kim if he saw her? Probably not. Years had passed and she’d look very different. Or she might be dead.

A cell phone rang. Thiên picked it up, speaking rapidly. Once the call was done, he turned around. “My granddaughter. She got nine out of ten in her math test.”

“What a clever girl,” said Linda. “How old is she?”

“Eight, Madam. I have a son and one granddaughter. How about you?”

Silence filled the taxi. “We don’t have any children,” Linda said finally.

“Oh, sorry, Madam. . . . Sorry I asked.”

Dan reached for Linda’s hand, intertwining his fingers with hers, hoping she’d feel comforted. What a pity they’d never been able to have children. By the time they considered adoption, Linda said she was too old to handle a young kid. He should have tried to change her mind, assure her how much he would help, and that she would make a great mother. She had no siblings, and with his only sister living in Australia and deliberately out of touch, sometimes he wished for a bigger family.

Perhaps Linda would never forgive him for the child he’d had with Kim. It would mock their failure to have children.

The rain’s drumming eased, then disappeared. A motorbike passed the taxi, carrying two adults and two children squeezed between them. On another motorbike a young woman embraced her lover, laughing with him. He and Linda had looked like that before the war, inseparable, laughter spilling out of them as naturally as the air they breathed. The war had robbed them of their youth, their pure joy.

Linda rolled down the window. The wind rushed in, carrying with it the fresh smell of rain.

A boy who sat behind a motorbike waved. “Hello! How ah you?” he called toward their taxi.

“Oh, hello there.” Linda waved back, smiling.

“I am fine, thank you. And you?” The boy beamed as the taxi sped away from his bike.

“People here are so friendly.” Linda responded to another child’s wave.

“Because you are nice. To unfriendly people, we can be nasty.” Thiên laughed. “We have a saying . . . hmm . . . I hope I can translate this . . . When go with Buddha, we wear Buddhist robes, when we see ghosts, we wear clothes made of paper.”

“It sounds good, but what does it mean?” Linda asked.

“In the company of Buddha, wear Buddhist robes, in the company of ghosts, wear ghost clothes?” Dan offered a translation.

“We make a perfect team!” Thiên clapped his hands.

The taxi turned onto a big boulevard lined with trees and lit up by streetlights. Dan was amazed to see all the fancy shops, recognizing international luxury brand names. Even under the hands of the Communists, Sài Gòn looked rich. There were hardly any homeless people sleeping on the pavement, unlike Seattle. It was incredible how he’d been brainwashed about Communism, its danger to humanity. During his military training, he’d been told about the domino theory, that if one country fell to Communism, others would follow and Communism would take over the world.

How naïve he’d been about the war. In fact, he’d known nothing about Việt Nam when he signed up for the service. He had imagined the country as an exotic place. Although it was 1968 and the anti-war movement had already started, he’d been too distracted with problems at home to pay attention. And secretly he’d dreamt of being a hero. Heroes were born out of wars and there he was, feeling proud he would join one of the most powerful armies in the world to rescue the pitiful Vietnamese from the savage Communists. But his reading later about Việt Nam taught him that the Vietnamese didn’t need pity. They had fought courageously for independence against the Chinese, the Mongolians, the French, and the Japanese.

It had taken him years of such reading to understand that he’d been sent to Việt Nam to save it from the Vietnamese, and saving the Vietnamese meant killing them. By the millions. Learning all this made him angry, made him drink, but it also made him nod at the truths his reading kept revealing. There was one book that made him scream in outrage and throw it against a wall—the one by Robert MacNamara. He still remembered the eleven reasons the former Secretary of Defense gave for America failing in Việt Nam, among them “our profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of the people.”

Not just ignorant, they’d been arrogant and racist. General Westmoreland, former commander of U.S. forces in Việt Nam, had said: “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.” Dan shook his head. If Westmoreland had met Kim, what would he say to Kim’s love for life and the many things she’d done for her family? Would he be able to look Kim in the eyes and tell her that life was cheap for Vietnamese?

“Here we are. Majestic Hotel!” Thiên announced as the taxi pulled to a stop.

Dan hesitated at the sight of people and motorbikes outside; then he took a deep breath, pulled his backpack onto his shoulder, and stepped out.

Hotel Majestic looked as magnificent as ever, with its domed glass windows, its elaborate entrance where a guard stood. Painted a pale yellow, the building now had a bright red Communist flag flying above its name. He gazed at the rooftop, recalling that it had one of the best views of the city. He had to take Linda up there, tell her tales about the foreign journalists who used to hang out at the rooftop bar during the war.

To the right, Tự Do—the Street of Freedom, now called Đồng Khởi—the Street of Uprising—stretched out before his eyes, lit up by colorful lights. Were some of the bars still there? During his final month here, he’d been a frequent customer. The girls had been younger than Kim, undemanding and not pregnant.

“This hotel was built by a Chinese Vietnamese businessman in 1925,” Thiên gestured toward the Majestic. “His Chinese name was Hui Bon Hoa, but we called him Uncle Hỏa. He was once Sài Gòn’s richest man. His family constructed thousands of buildings, including the current Fine Arts Museum.”

“That’s amazing,” Linda said. “And how interesting that this hotel looks just like some of the buildings I saw in Paris.” Linda tilted her head, looking up to the lit windows of the higher floors.

As Linda mentioned French architecture, Dan thought about the terrible things the French had done to the Vietnamese. They’d colonized the country for decades, divided its people, caused the First Indochina War, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Then he noticed how Linda’s innocent words had instantly snapped his mind to the subject of French colonialism. That was the thing about being here. In America he could pretend that world history had nothing to do with his life. But as soon as he stepped back into the hot air of Việt Nam, he knew that notion was bullshit.

A young bellhop in a white suit rushed to them, whisking their suitcases away. Dan and Linda walked to the entrance, where a guard bent his body as he opened the door for them. Dan bowed in return. He didn’t like how some other Western guests ignored the doorman, behaving as if they, like the architecture, hadn’t changed since the old French colonizers.

Inside, the air was cool and smelled of rose perfume. Linda gasped at the impressive entrance hall. At the long counter to the left, two receptionists looked stunning in their áo dàis. Dan searched their faces. They were young enough to be his grandchildren but had no Caucasian features.

As Linda and Thiên checked in, Dan walked to the glass window and gazed out at the road, studying the faces of those who passed.

Linda arrived at his side. “Our room is on the highest possible floor. River view!” She gave him one of their two key cards.

“See you in half an hour . . . for dinner,” Thiên said.

Upstairs, the bellhop opened the door to their spacious, air-conditioned room. The bed looked luxurious, covered by a white duvet on which rose petals had been scattered. Dan felt a pang of guilt. They could never afford this type of hotel back home.

A lacquer vase stood on the dressing table, filled with red roses. Kim had often decorated their apartment with fresh flowers. She’d always gone on about how cheap they were, harvested during the night, brought into the city by farmers all the way from the countryside. She’d talked about those farmers with such tenderness and he knew she’d have preferred to be working on her rice field instead of at the Hollywood Bar.

Linda took off her shoes and stepped across the room toward the glass panel of a large window. “Look at this view!” The Sài Gòn River was a dark snake dotted by ships lit up with lights. Between the river and the hotel was a large road filled with motorbikes traveling in opposite directions.

At the door, Dan gave a five-dollar tip to the bellhop, whose face brightened as if he’d just earned a hundred bucks. Dan bolted the door, securing it with the metal chain. He relatched the window that faced the river as well as the glass door that led to a small balcony.

At home, he was always the last to go to bed. He couldn’t sleep without double-checking all the doors and windows. When they bought the house more than ten years ago, the first thing he did was install an automatic alarm system. But in his nightmares, the VC could always disable it.

Sitting on the bed, Linda studied her red and swollen knees. “I couldn’t sleep on the planes at all, could you?”

He shook his head, reached into her handbag for the tube of Bengay. He brushed the hem of her dress high up onto her thighs and felt a stir of desire. It had been months since they last made love. His nerves before the trip hadn’t helped.

He lathered a layer of the medicine onto her knees and massaged them. “Make sure you drink enough water. The last thing we want is you getting sick.”

As Linda took out her phone and snapped picture after picture of the view, Dan rested his head on a pillow. He wanted to close his eyes for a minute, but on the wall opposite the bed was an oil painting of children in a field of flowers. The children were running toward him, laughing. An image of Kim, pregnant, flashed in his mind. Was the child he’d had with Kim a boy or a girl? Had his child been forced to run for its life from the Communists’ revenge? His child. It was the first time he allowed himself to use those words. His child.

A long time ago, when his sister Marianne left home leaving only a note saying that they were not to look for her or contact her ever again, he had sworn to his mother that he would be a good father. Marianne had blamed them both for enabling the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of his dad, a drunk who often hit his wife and two children. But at least his dad had been there for him throughout his childhood, had brought food home and kept a roof over their heads, had helped send him to school.

He feared he had turned out worse than his father. What kind of person was he to have walked away from his own child, from his pregnant girlfriend?

Being here was pushing him toward the course of action he’d been thinking about since agreeing to go on this trip. He should look for Kim. He should try to find out what had happened to his child. If his child had survived, he or she would be forty-six this year. He might already have grandchildren. Maybe even great grandchildren. They might be here somewhere, within his reach.

He had to find them.