That morning,
waking up in the United States, I was frightened to find that I had
turned into an American. Both the bathroom and the bedroom mirrors—two
severely realistic rectangles that refused to flatter anyone facing
them—assaulted my eyes with the face of a guy with blue eyes
and an aquiline nose. The image I saw, if decked out with a wide-brimmed
hat and frayed leather vest, could pass anywhere for a genuine cowboy.
I began to feel panicked, since I was sure I was really Vietnamese.
I had only come here for a six-month training session. Worse luck,
today I had planned to display myself before Nu’s family. She
was Vietnamese-American and loved the home-country Vietnamese qualities
she saw in me. When her grandparents and parents and aunts had heard
that Nu was in love with the genuine article, they had agreed instantly
to the match. Today the whole family would be gathering to view my
true Vietnamese characteristics and merits.
After a while, Nu came in. She was more terrified than even I had
been to see that her boyfriend had turned into an American. Luckily
she still recognized my voice, and was able to further identify me
by some particular marks on my body that not everyone knew about.
I rebuked her for urging me to eat so much McDonald’s fast-food
at last night’s dinner—my stomach was still bloated with
that damn hamburger. She blamed me right back for listening to two
entire Michael Jackson albums before falling into the deep sleep that
changed my race and nationality. It was useless to keep on that way
since soon I would have to meet her entire family. We decided that
I should just go ahead with it, even though we only had a fragile
ray of hope that they would approve me now.
We met. Nu’s father praised me for being an American who had
such fluent command of the Hanoi accent. He asked me which teacher
I’d had who had taught me the standard Hanoi pronunciation so
well. My situation being what it was, I didn’t think I could
just plough ahead with some unbelievable story. Instead, I just politely
asked permission to marry Nu.
Immediately, her paternal grandparents chorused their refusal. No!
She would not marry an American. Not her, not any one of their grandchildren.
Not the boys such as Bong (Catfish) or Be (Bull-calf), not the girls
such as Nu (Flower-Bud) or Na (Custard Apple). No one! Then her aunt
jumped headlong into our drama, like a hostile witness summoned before
a court. She would not permit Nu to marry me either. She held herself
up as an example of such a disgrace—hadn’t she soiled
her family’s name by marrying an American? Hadn’t she
been called the “American Office Girl” by people in Saigon,
when at that time working in an American office meant being a toy
for debauched foreign bosses? Having an American husband was really
satisfying, she admitted. But the more satisfaction, the more suffering!
Take her as an example. Her niece should not be permitted to follow
in her footsteps and stain the family’s honor.
In my country, in fact, the aunt’s dramatic protest would be
called being more royal than the king. Nobody in her day had tried
to control who she could love. But now that she had enjoyed herself
so much, she didn’t want to let anyone else have the same enjoyment.
As for Nu’s father, he still liked my standard pronunciation.
But he patiently explained to me that the Vietnamese community in
this city was so small that it had to be kept pure. As an expert in
chemistry, he hated impurities, such as his sister’s family.
At least that gave me some understandable explanation. But at the
same time, it shattered my intentions to marry Nu, and also my plans
to bring her to Hanoi where I could reintroduce her to the ways of
her country. My six month term had finished, and I left America with
my briefcase and with my bitter memories of love.
Airport customs and security officers have the reputation of being
very strict. However, the Americans, afraid of the illegal resident
problem, gave no problems to a Vietnamese with an American face, as
long as he was cheerfully leaving their territory. On the other side
of the ocean, my countrymen, eager in the spirit of friendship to
attract American and Western tourists, smoothed my way also. Of course,
in both places I did leave a little tip for the customs’ officers’
coffee and breakfasts.
For a time after I returned, my parents and the rest of my relatives
remained half in doubt about my identity, though finally they recognized
me. They simply figured that I had undergone cosmetic surgery in order
to beautify myself as a blue-eyed, aquiline-nosed, bearded foreigner.
Our neighbors all said that it was as if my family had won a bumper
prize at the lottery: with only a two bedroom flat for ourselves,
we were still managing to extract money from the well-lined pockets
of a real foreign tenant.
One day, feeling lonely, I took a stroll around the Lake of the Returned
Sword. Such a stroll had become an extremely adventurous affair for
me. With every step I took, I was urged to buy a map or get my photo
taken. Hao a iu, Tay ngo? Oan photo? Oan mep? Khong co ban do,
di lac thi chet cha may. All I could do was look at the Guillotine
Building, and then over at the Jaws Building.
Suddenly a man approached me, mumbling English words that were generously
helped along by his hands, which would surely exhaust themselves if
they got into a conversation of any length. He said he was touched
to hear his mother tongue spoken by a foreigner who was obviously
entranced by the architectural wonders of the capital city. He said
his name was Nguyen Toan Thich. Mr. Likes-It-All. He was by profession
an architect and delighted to meet me—a man clearly interested
in architecture.
Usually, when one of my countrymen meets a foreigner who speaks Vietnamese,
he takes the opportunity to talk much more than he usually would,
as if he was accumulating compound interest. So it was now. Likes-It-All
informed me that he’d obtained a temporary contract, contingent
on approval, to design a large private hotel. He had come up with
a high-rise that incorporated French architecture. But the daydreaming
pigs who made up the jury of experts that had final approval of the
project couldn’t recognize French architecture even when it
stared them in their faces. Was this the French design for a large
building, or was it a design for a crematorium that was able to incinerate
their entire families? they’d wanted to know.
Likes-It-All pulled me down next to him, onto a stone bench in the
park. Greatly agitated, he drew out the design from his bag and showed
it to me. Actually, to me, the building, which included Greek style
white marble pillars, Gothic arches, and a mosque-like dome, didn’t
look like a crematorium at all. In its attempt to reunite and reconcile
the architecture of all ages and all nations, it would serve perfectly
as the international headquarters of the Architects Association.
Likes-It-All asked me to go with him to appear before the jury of
experts. I wouldn’t need to speak much. The jury wouldn’t
take the word of any local architect. Only a foreign expert would
be able to persuade them.
Then Likes-It-All complained to me that he had three daughters and
his wife at home: four emancipated women who treated him like a yellow-skinned
slave. Four wild ducks who quacked noisily if he didn’t provide
the money for their clothes and cosmetics whenever they needed it.
If he lost this contract, they would never again allow him to sit
huddled in a corner watching the evening football game, with the television,
of course, turned to its lowest volume. If he blew this contract,
never again would they let him shout joyfully, like a real man, whenever
there was a spectacular goal.
I would have left if Likes-It-All had tried to bribe me with a percentage
of the contract. But I felt a kinship to this dominated man. He was
a lonely man, as lonely as I was, regarded as a foreigner on my own
home soil.
The chairman of the jury of experts had a doctoral degree in architecture.
After his appointment as the leader of the nation’s architects
he, by then a graduate in optics as well, had been sent to our fraternal
country of Germany for two weeks to defend his thesis, although he
didn’t know even a word of fraternal German. The chairman shook
my hand in a friendly fashion and took me at once to view a bedsheet
sized diagram of Likes-It-All’s building design. Dear French
comrade, he said, but was interrupted by the vice-chairman, who prompted
him that France was a capitalist country. Sorry, dear French expert,
he corrected himself, and asked me to judge whether what I was looking
at was genuine French architecture. I nodded decisively. Yes, French
architecture! The vice-chairman began to question me closely. What
age did this piece of French architecture belong to? Smoothly, I answered
that it was a good example of nineteenth century French architecture,
influenced by the architecture of Greece, plus Rome, plus Western
Europe, plus Turkey, as would be seen by Mr. Eiffel. My words buzzed
into the ears of all of the experts on the jury, and soon they began
chorusing, French architecture, right, French architecture!
The design was immediately approved. The formal contract was immediately
signed. Another contract naming me as their expert consultant was
also drawn up and immediately signed by me.
Afterwards, Likes-It-All brought me to his house for a victory party.
The faces of his three daughters and his wife looked at me like warped
shovel and hoe blades displayed in a store selling used farm tools.
If I were Mr. Likes-It-All I would have suffocated in this polluted
environment reeking of the roll-on underarm deodorants the four women
used. The mother, the oldest, was also the one with the gaudiest makeup
and the boldest clothing style. Her dress had long splits up its seams,
right to the most sensitive zones. Her shoes also came as somewhat
of a surprise to me. Their toes were like big oranges, twice as big
as their heels. It must have been a new fashion from the south of
Britain, so unique and modern that no one else had yet had time to
imitate it.
Directly, Likes-It-All and his wife, with the three used hoe blades
nodding in agreement, said they were willing to have me choose one
of them, free of charge, to become a Westerner’s wife. It would
honor their family, they said, if I agreed, but only of course on
the condition that the couple would love each other and behave with
each other “like a glass full of water.” Did I understand
that Vietnamese saying? I did? Then I must really be a corner ghost.
I knew everything. Swiftly and noisily they ate, and gave me permission
to marry one of the girls. Swiftly and quietly they disappeared and
left me and the oldest daughter sitting together in the room. She
told me her name was Champagne Nguyen-thi. I joked insipidly that
her younger sisters’ names must be Hamburger Nguyen-thi and
Sausage Nguyen-thi. Oh, she exclaimed, I really must be the corner
ghost! Since the three daughters had been born during the time of
centrally-subsidized coupons, their parents had named them so to assuage
their craving for Western foods. What did I crave? she wanted to know.
Surely I must like a bold and formidable girl such as herself. When
she was just fifteen and her boyfriend was sixteen, they both wore
white mourning headbands and rocketed around the streets at night
on a Win motorcycle with its brakes torn off. Her boyfriend had crashed
into a tree and died on the spot, his head smashed open. She had flown
through the air for a distance, then jumped up as if nothing had happened.
She had dashed back, snatched her boyfriend’s gold chain off
his neck for a souvenir, and ran away. Now she only wanted to marry
a Westerner like me. A kind, gentle Westerner who would help her strive
for self-improvement and accumulate good deeds. A Westerner who would
take her to his country and teach her to speak a foreign language.
Or at least to accurately sing some songs, such as Gioten, tuymen,
ongxem (Je t’aime, tu m’aime, on s’aime).
Would I like to come and sing karaoke with her? She was a vet karaoke
singer; vet, that was the chic word people in Saigon used.
I was afraid of karaoke. I was afraid of the vet. I was very afraid
of the formidable girl. I rushed out of the room, intending to flee
this place.
It wasn’t so easy. Miss Hamburger had barricaded herself in
the next room with a tape measure. She was a seamstress. If I didn’t
like the formidable vet, certainly I would love her, a soft girl who
only threaded yarn into a needle. Her elder sister sauntered in from
the first room, as if nothing had happened. No matter, she said, something
that fell through a sieve would eventually be picked up and put back
into the washbasin—she would regard her sister’s husband
as her own, so she hadn’t really lost anything. Then she disappeared.
Miss Thread-Yarn-Into-a-Needle decided she needed to make some trousers
for me immediately. She began measuring my buttocks, hemming and hawing
and taking her time with those sensitive buttock measurements. Finally,
I had to grab her encroaching tape-measure while I still had things
I could take with me as I ran for my life.
I now hoped I would be able to escape through the front door. But
as I went into the dimly lit corridor someone suddenly embraced me.
It was Mr. Likes-It-All’s wife. Since her daughters were defeated,
she said, she was determined to win. Otherwise her family’s
honor would be stained. I decided to confess to her that I wasn’t
really a Westerner; I was only a domestic brand who had undergone
cosmetic surgery when I was abroad. Mrs. Likes-It-All immediately
changed her tune, and began calling me big brother and herself little
sister. Big brother and little sister had the same tastes, she said.
Little sister also loved cosmetic surgery and had had her nose ridge
raised like a Westerner’s. Her fondest dream was to be turned
into a Westerner, inch by inch.
Now I saw a way I could change tactics and get rid of this woman.
I reversed myself and said that actually I really was a Westerner,
and I didn’t like Western style beauty that came from a surgeon.
A genuine Westerner liked only pure and original beauty—Giao
Chi beauty.* Did I really? Mrs. Likes-It-All said doubtfully. Yes,
really, I replied firmly. Mercilessly, she at once removed one shoe,
peeled off one sock and laid her bare foot in the most brightly-lit
part of the corridor. Look, big brother, she said.
Mrs. Likes-It-All’s foot explained why the toes of her shoes
looked like large oranges. The big toe stuck out from the other four
toes at a right angle of 90 degrees. It was the foot of the ancient
Giao Chi, who always had to have special shoes made for themselves.
At this point, my only option was to take advantage of her inattention
and flee.
I had to flee for a long time. I had to flee from every place. I could
not make people believe that I wasn’t a Westerner, that I was
only a domestic brand, as domestic as all my neighbors, as all the
other 70 million people of my country.
One day, towards the end of the year, as I was sitting sullenly at
my window, a neighborhood girl passed by. Why aren’t you going
shopping for your family’s new year celebration, Khoa? she asked
me. Khoa is my name. But my neighbors had stopped calling me by it.
To them, I was Mr. Westerner Tenant. I told the girl that I was a
Westerner and so had no reason to prepare for the Tet festival.
The girl shook her head. Maybe the others on the block thought so,
but she knew I was Khoa, not a Westerner and not Chinese. She paused.
I remember, big brother Khoa, a few years ago, she said, how you would
sing while you were waiting in the line to get water from the block’s
tap tank. She had learned the songs I sang then by heart. And now
she had heard Mr. Westerner singing those same songs while he waited
to get water:
One morning, I suddenly felt that life was meaningless;
Though someone was nearby, it seemed he was far away...
The voice she had heard certainly was not the voice of a Mr. Westerner.
It could only be the voice of big brother Khoa.
I was stunned. I was puzzled. Anxiously, hopefully, I asked the girl
if she thought there was a way I could get back to myself. Yes, she
said. Perhaps there was. Perhaps one day a fairy would appear who
honestly loved me, not because I was a Westerner or for hundreds of
other reasons. Only when I met that sincere love would the curse be
lifted to me, and I would return to being who I was before. I had
not believed in fairy tales for a long time. But now, secretly, I
hoped this one would come true. The girl would ask me to stretch my
arms out through the window. She would take my hands and tell me to
shut my eyes. I would feel her pulse, throbbing from her hands into
my veins. Then I would hear my heart beating lightly. Gradually it
would beat more strongly. Gradually, it would beat more passionately.
And I would open my eyes and see that I had been returned to myself.
