The Refugees(46)
Even after a week in Saigon, Vivien would appear no more of a native than on the day she arrived, at least in outdoor settings. On the streets, at sidewalk cafés, or hopping into a taxi, she was easily mistaken for a Korean businessman’s frazzled wife or a weary Japanese tourist, her frosting of makeup melting under the tropical glare. In certain indoor settings, however, she was clearly the mistress of her domain. This was the case at the restaurant Nam Kha, on the street Dong Khoi, where Phuong had worked as a hostess for the two years since her graduation from college. It was Vivien’s idea to treat the family to dinner at Nam Kha, a way to celebrate the halfway point in her vacation and something Phuong would never have suggested, the restaurant’s offerings being far more than Phuong or her family could afford.
“But it’s a crime, don’t you think?” Vivien said, glancing over the entrées. Their table was by the reflecting pool, across from which two young women sat upon a cushioned dais, wearing silken, ethereal ao dai and plucking gently at the sixteen strings of the zithers braced upon their laps. “You should be able to eat where you work at least once in your lifetime.”
“The real crime is five dollars for morning glory fried in garlic,” Mrs. Ly said. She sold silk at the Ben Thanh market and possessed the eyes of an experienced negotiator, smooth and unreadable as the beads of an abacus. “I can buy this for a dollar at the market.”
“Look around,” Mr. Ly said, his tone impatient. All the other guests were white with the exception of an Indian couple in the corner, the man in a linen suit and the woman in a salwar kameez. “These are tourist prices.”
“These are foolish prices.”
“Price aside, this is a good restaurant,” Vivien declared. Her voice was authoritative, the way she must sound in her examination room in Chicago. Not for the first time, Phuong imagined herself in her sister’s place, wearing a white coat in a white room, looking out a wall of windows at a haze of white snow. “What do you think?” Vivien nudged her knee. “Too outrageous for you?”
“Not at all!” Phuong hoped that she projected an air of confidence and ease, unlike her brothers. Hanh and Phuc were speechless, their silk-bound menus considerably more handsome than any textbook they owned. “I could get used to this.”
“That’s the spirit.”
The guests at the neighboring table rose, and on the way out, two of them paused beside Phuong, the brunette taking a photograph of the musicians strumming their zithers. “They’re just like butterflies,” she said in an Australian accent, squinting at the image on her camera. Eavesdropping on them, Phuong was relieved not to be the object of their fascination. “So delicate and tiny.”
“I’ll bet they never worry about what they eat.” Her friend flipped open her compact to inspect her lipstick. “Those dresses look stitched onto them.”
Night after night, Phuong had observed the customs of tourists like these, her degree in biology no more than a memory as she opened the doors of Nam Kha with a small bow. Having come to dine on elegantly presented peasant cuisine, the guests were suitably impressed by the Cham statuary, by the Chinese scrolls hanging upon the walls, and by Phuong herself, her slim and petite body sheathed in a golden, formfitting ao dai. Sometimes guests would ask to photograph her, requests that were initially flattering but now usually irritating. Still, she could not decline, as her manager had made clear, and so she would force herself to smile and tilt her head, a trellis of hair as black and silky as her trousers falling over her shoulder. Striking this or another pose, Phuong could pretend that she was not a hostess doing a foreigner’s bidding, but rather a model, a starlet, her sibling’s namesake. What she actually looked like she never knew, for while every-one promised to send her the pictures, no one ever did.
When she arrived, Vivien carried with her a schedule of the sights she wanted to see, complete with estimated travel times via train, bus, car, hydrofoil, or plane. President Clinton had come the year before, his much-celebrated visit reassuring her mother that Vivien could return safely, especially when armed with a US passport and dollar bills. So equipped, Vivien had overcome her father’s token resistance and paid for the family during all of their outings. “I’m the doctor, aren’t I?” she said. While Phuong was impressed by Vivien’s approach, as if vacationing were a job in which to seek promotion, she was not surprised. In the occasional dispatches sent by -Vivien’s mother, a picture had emerged of an independent young woman, the unmarried pediatrician who had backpacked solo through Western Europe and vacationed in Hawaii, the Bahamas, Rio. Mr. Ly, who made a humble living as a tour guide, reviewed the itinerary and said, “I couldn’t have done better myself.”
He was a man who rarely praised, except when it came to his first trio of children. His wife had absconded with them after the war, when he had been banished to a New Economic Zone and his mistress had come demanding money. Vivien’s mother had been ignorant of the other woman’s existence until then, and her response was to flee the country with her three children on a perilous trip by boat. Mr. Ly had learned of their flight in the middle of his five-year sentence, the loss leading to a spell of shock and depression that he had not shaken off until his return to Saigon. Life must move on, his mistress said, so he had divorced Vivien’s mother, made his mistress the second Mrs. Ly, and sired three more children. He often compared Phuong with her absent sister, which had cultivated in Phuong a sense of yearning for Vivien but also some undeniable jealousy. A weevil of envy resurfaced nearly every day of Vivien’s visit, for her father was behaving completely unlike himself, as if he were also competing at a job, in this case to win Vivien’s approval. Without question or criticism, he followed Vivien’s plan for visiting temples and cathedrals, shopping malls and museums, beaches and resorts, south through the Mekong Delta, east to Vung Tau, north to Dalat, and, within Saigon, from the dense, cacophonous alleys of the Chinese quarter in Cho Lon to the glamour of downtown’s Dong Khoi, where Nam Kha was the most expensive restaurant on the boulevard.