Brown, Pam

The Hanoi Cycle

1. This road begins in dust and noise. A crazy man in a threadbare shirt throws a broken brick onto the bonnet of this rusting Russian car. I am the blonde foreign devil sitting alone in the back seat.
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3. I remember a book by Edward Said in which I discovered the theory that a culture defines itself in contrast with some alien and fanciful entity. I redefine my culture every time I leave it, and, here, in Hanoi, I become the alien and fanciful entity, briefly.
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5. In preparation, I have learnt to count in Vietnamese, to say “thank you, hello” and “excuse me”. I know something about the modern history of this place and I admire Hõ Chi Minh. Also, I have a letter from Sue, who lives here, which says “In Vietnam, everything and anything can happen.”
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7. The first morning. From the window I watch the lone fisherman squatting in a tiny boat working with a net. From dawn until nightfall he moves around the little lake beating the sides of the boat to drive any fish towards the net. In the drizzling rain, in the breeze, on the humid days, he is there. Every day except Sunday.
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9. At the State Department Store there are few customers and not many bicycles for sale. I buy a durable bike — Thõng Nhát — Reunification brand.
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11. Sue buys a basket for the bicycle. Then, after some discussion, she learns that it cannot be attached to the bike as there are no screws, nor are there any screws for sale anywhere in the State Department Store. Sue returns the basket and gets the money back.
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13. Geckos run across the walls, attracted by the fluorescent light. Mosquitoes float silently around my deep, deep dreams. Cycling and cycling all night long.
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15. At the Foreign Languages Teachers College when I am introduced as a “poet” the whole class bursts into enthusiastic applause. This cheerful spontaneity is almost overwhelming.
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17. In Sydney, they laugh and snigger and you have to work incredibly hard to find their hidden hearts.
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19. Poetry here is a positive tradition, even if, at times, didactic.
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21. Lý Thuòng Kiêt, who repelled the Chinese invasion in the eleventh century, and Hõ Chi Minh, who repelled the French and the Americans and founded the Vietnamese state this century, were both poets who used their poems to rouse the people to join the armed struggle.
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23. These days, one of the teachers tells me, young men write poems to their sweethearts.
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25. Fleshy green nymphaea bob at the edge of the little lake into which we sometimes throw organic scraps. This morning I take some stale baguettes down to the lake and I am stopped by a woman who asks to have them.
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27. No one talks about dòi mói — the government’s new programme of renovation. When I mention these musical little words to a local teacher she throws her hands up to her cheeks and laughs at me.
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29. Here, life is lived by a combination of Confucianism and communism which to my alien and fanciful perception, operates in an unpredictable, joyous chaos.
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31. One night, while we sleep under diaphanous mosquito nets, a rat throws peanuts around the flat. In the morning we find a red carnation which the rat has picked from its stem without overturning the vase. Selected for its beauty, we decide.
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33. At the Evening College an older student, who lectures in Politics at Hanoi University, says that he was once an interpreter for Hõ Chi Minh. We conduct a conversation about this revelation with twenty other students listening, as is the way of language classes.
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35. And he concludes with a statement, “All that and the war against the United States of America is in the past now.”
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37. This is it—it is chronological. History, here, is literal. There is no analytical interpretation, no parataxis in the narrative. Probably, you could live here for many, many years in the absence of what Europeans know as cynicism.
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39. After work, the college director takes a small group to dinner. We sit on low wooden stools drinking, smoking, talking, laughing and eating tough pieces of chicken in aromatic noodle soup. I feel that everyone is brimming with life. I toss the chicken bones onto the floor, as is the custom.
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41. There is a day for everything.
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43. The days which favour me are the day for being careful of what one says and the day for expecting nothing.
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45. There is an animal for every day.
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47. My experience is that small events go haywire on monkey day. On pig day there is a sense of great integration and on goat day I am able to solve perplexities.
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49. In Hanoi, everyone calls a rat a mouse.
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51. I am an alien and fanciful entity, born in the Year of the Rat.
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53. At the Women’s Publishing House I am presented with a bunch of pale, fragrant roses.
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55. At the Writers’ Association my colleague and I are described as “two swallows who come in the Spring”.
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57. When we ask about censorship they answer that there is none.
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59. Back in Sydney, I will receive a letter telling me that one of the women “writers of despair”, Duong Thu Huong, has been arrested but that there is little information about her misdemeanour.
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61. I have learnt to say “I am not a Russian”, the names of streets and lakes, herbs and various foods. I have learned “sold out” and “the globe is round”—”quã dãt thi trõn”–a proverb which means “we will see each other again”.
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63. I take some photographs of the wreckage of the huge B52 bomber shot down near the big lake in Lenin Park.
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65. Nearby I eat sweet and delicious frog legs. A dirty, skinny dog hangs around my feet for the tiny frog bones.
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67. After lunch I cycle to the beautiful banyan tree planted in memory of Hõ and pose for a photograph under it.
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69. At the Temple of Literature I light joss sticks and pray for good poetry for myself and my friends.
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71. I visit the Temple of Literature every few days. It is the only place I have found where solitude is possible.
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73. This beautiful temple was built in 1070 as a school dedicated to Confucianism. The teaching is that a person is essentially a social being bound by social obligations. Farewell Buddhism. Farewell transcendence.
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75. We have run out of rubbish bags. Sue selects Oscar and Lucinda
    from her bookshelves. She demonstrates the method of bag making by tearing up the book and gluing the pages together, in the local manner. This is one of the many Vietnamese solutions.
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77. On the roadsides there are small groups of women whose hands and arms are blackened. They have cotton scarves masking their faces from the fumes. Every day they work the pitch, make the bitumen, fill in the holes.
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79. At night, I avoid piles of wet, filthy rubbish as I cycle along without a light. Women with huge grass brooms sweep the rubbish from the gutters onto the road. It is shovelled into an ancient Russian truck.
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81. Women are Vietnamese technology.
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83. Before leaving Sydney. I had been asked to investigate the eighteenth century poet Hõ Xuân Huong. I find that she is well known to the Vietnamese. She was a popular poet who wrote boldly spicy poems castigating hypocritical monks and she dared to defend unmarried mothers in the face of the rigorous and punitive moralism of the time.
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85. However, Sue and I are puzzled by the so-called “suggestive eroticism” of her famous poem The Fan, which ends with a joke on phallocentrism; “Kings and lords just adore that little thing.”
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87. Vietnam needs a clean water supply, electricity, better housing and a cash flow. But, I suppose, it will get “progress” sooner or later.
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89. In particular streets every stall sells the same goods. Silk Street, Banner Street, Bicycle Seat Street, Scissor Street, Bathroom Street, Grave Street, Thermos Street, Wood Street. And a street which Sue fondly calls “Filth Street” — narrow and muddy and busy.
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91. Up in Paper Street lurid pink paper stencils hang everywhere, everything is gold and red for the temples. And in this tiny street in the old quarter many old and rickety blind people wander up and down with their sticks and their begging tins. At night they crouch around in small cooking groups like silhouettes of monkeys or scrawny cats on the footpath in the dark.
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93. Up in Paper Street you can buy fake money to offer the Buddha. The money you use to buy it is just as worthless outside this country, in the rest of the world.
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95. Early morning, still dark. I lie awake and listen to the terrible sound of pig slaughter. Loud, deep howling moans of pain and distress pour into the darkness as the pig is bled alive and slowly dies. This is the only sound at this time of day.
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97. Each day there are pieces of fresh pork on the wooden slabs at the nearby market. And often I eat the salty pork which is served at the “Rice for the People” kitchen at the little lake.
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99. At the theatre there are five hundred locals and no other Europeans in the audience. Everyone cracks sunflower seeds, chews cucumbers and talks throughout the performance, displaying an irreverent appreciation.
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101. The play, called Bitter Journey, is about dispossession and corruption during the war against the United States.
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103. Next week, at the Youth Theatre, there will be a production of Xechspia’s Oteno.
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105. A molotov cocktail kills the Russian embalmer. Uncle Hõ lies in a refrigerated glass box, all pink and ethereal and wise. The Russian custom. In his will, Uncle Hõ requested cremation so that his ashes might blend with Vietnamese earth.
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107. Apart from visiting my friend, I am not certain of why I have come to this beautiful, broken-down, mouldering old city. I do know that it’s not for information.
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109. In Hanoi, a French film crew is making a movie about the battle of Diẽn Bien Phũ.
110.  
111. In Hõ Chi Minh City, a French film crew is making a movie of Marguerite Duras’ book The Lover.
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113. Another French film crew is making a move called Indochine.
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115. The film-makers say it is a daily combat. The producers complain of extortionate demands for funds made by rapacious bureaucrats. The Vietnamese technicians and extras frequently threaten strikes, so bad are their living conditions.
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117. Catherine Deneuve, the film star, refuses to confide her impressions of her film or of Vietnam to the press.
118.  
119. Ooh lã lã. Ce n’est pas bon!
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121. In the misty rain, I wait at the gate for Hoa, the interpreter from the Writers’ Association. After about ten minutes I see her coming, zooming along the slippery road by the lake. She is bringing a copy of the huge and now out-of-print book, Vietnamese Literature. It is tied with string and dangles from the Honda handlebars.
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123. Xechspia’s Oteno seems high camp, and, again, the audience is entirely Vietnamese.
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125. There is a spirited dance scene with lago’s soldiers and their sweethearts which we cannot recall having read or seen before.
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127. I persuade my companion to leave and we cycle off into the night in search of Bulgarian wine.
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129. We share the wine on his balcony and I ask him about his family. The topic makes no difference but the experience of talking late into the night is familiar and causes me to lose sense of this foreign city, so that I experience ambiguous feelings of enjoyment and resentment.
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131. On West Lake the paddle boats are made from war debris. Old aircraft hulls have become painted swans and roses floating along on spent bomb casings.
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133. In Herb Street, the big brown paper sacks stacked around the footpaths are folded back to reveal many shades of beige and brown and ochre and red powders and chips and bits of bark and dried leaves and flowers. The sensational air is loaded with palpable congeries of scent.
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135. The boy in the partisan’s hat and worn jungle green cottons leans against the little tree waiting for a customer to buy the snake he has trapped in a wire basket. He is reading a dog-eared book. He looks up and when our gaze connects I realize I am looking too intensely at his beauty.
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137. Twice each day the small flat fills with the gushing and splashing sounds of water being pumped up through five flights of rusty pipe into a big metal vat. Today I celebrate the event by running to the fountaining tap with the plastic jug and tin basins to catch as much water as possible.
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139. The ponderous smoky exhaust from the battered old Volgas and buses is tangible. Hundreds of bicycles, scooters, carts pulled by buffalo, the newer cars of embassies and foreign agencies, old military trucks. Women with poles bouncing and balanced on their bony shoulders, men and women carrying buckets of water, cyclos loaded with live chickens in rattan baskets and pipes and parcels and huge rolls of paper, bicycles with live pigs tied onto the back, scooters carrying three or four people — whole families on a Honda. And everyone with a horn or a bell is hooting and ringing. Each intersection is a thrilling and horrible challenge through which I wobble or glide. The only rule is to keep riding — if I stop I will collect the teeming traffic behind. And, somehow, in the midst of this noisy chaos there is the slightly insane sensation of an inexplicable and confident stability.
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141. We rise in the middle of the night and make a necessary cup of Russian coffee. As we leave the little flat I stand on the balcony and listen to the terrible screaming of the pig slaughter. The lake is still. There is no breeze. The last morning.
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143. In the early morning darkness, on the way out of town, we cross the wide Red River. We pass the market gardeners cycling in towards the city with fresh produce — herbs and vegetables and fruits and grain — ready for the day’s trading. They will still be working late into the night.
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145. We sit in rows in the dim gloom of the run-down Nôi Bâi Airport. It is just before dawn. We each hold a boarding pass in one of three colours printed on the usual recycled paper with the ink not quite fast. After an hour or so an airport worker calls out “mãù vàng, mãù vàng” and holds up a yellow card. Mine is blue. When the time comes I board the second plane to Hõ Chi Minh City.