Chapter One

She lives in a suburb of Heaven. As if all the deposed royalty of the world have come to live near each other. I have driven between the immense houses, expecting the police to move me on, found Mrs Renoir’s house halfway up a hill, watching through its vast, black windows the sea. I touched a button at the gate. ‘Name?’ said the gate. ‘I am Nguyen Tran Manh,’ I said. The gate waited. ‘I have come about the job with Mrs Renoir.’ It buzzed and swung open. I left my car outside for shame. If these people are not royalty, why are they in palaces? Perhaps there has been a revolution. I’m familiar with revolutions: yokels with guns living in palaces. But Mrs Renoir is no yokel.

‘Yes?’ she says. I squint into the radiance of her beauty. She wears mostly white, as if readied for surgery or death. Her skin is strangely brown for so rich a person. ‘Yes?’

Apparently sensible words leave my mouth, because she turns with a small tinkle of jewellery and bids me follow. She walks as if bearing a pot on her head. We enter a room whose walls are mostly glass, and sit overlooking a garden. Or perhaps a park. ‘There’s quite a lot of work as you can see.’ To one side lies a glimpse of swimming pool. She has not yet offered me tea, yet talks already of the job. To a man completely unknown to her family. ‘My last gardener just up and left. A dreadful man.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

‘Yes,’ she sighs. Perhaps she has made enquiries. Through some contact in the Immigration Department she has already investigated my family. ‘An unsatisfactory type of fellow. You’ve no idea.’

‘Of course.’

‘Did whatever came into his head. Very shoddy.’ She looks at me, smiles with select parts of her mouth. The house is deeply quiet.

‘Most regrettable.’

‘Yes. It is.’ She studies me above her smile. ‘I’m  sorry, Mr., er, Nguyen. Tea? Coffee?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Which?’

‘Tea or coffee.’

‘I see.’ She presses a button in the table, then picks up my letter and reads. In another part of the garden, an old man is sitting in a chair, staring. The breeze flicks at his hair, waves it across his face. He doesn’t move. Is he dead? ‘It says here, Mr, er, Nguyen, that you are about to begin work in a, er … a factory.’

‘That is true.’ I study her feet, embarrassed. She wears only white tights and a gold bracelet on one ankle. There is something gold on her little t-shirt. Would she be safe in the streets?

‘I do wonder why you’d want a second job. Won’t you be tired? Working afternoons and weekends? It seems a dreadful lot to me.’

I look out at the old man. Older than my own father, he yet holds himself very still. Such strength of will. If not strength, then what? ‘The money would be very useful to me.’

‘Oh!’ Her face is a mask of concern. Maybe she will help me.

‘I must sponsor my family here, very soon. But it is too expensive for me, even for the first parent. And they have a Points Test. It means I must stay in work for at least six months, though a year is better. And I do not trust this factory. Also I must become a citizen of your country. That’s worth more points.’

‘Oh dear.’ She tilts her head, smiles kindly. ‘How difficult for you.’

‘And other debts I have. To come here I had to borrow ten teals of gold to bribe the officials. It’s a lot of money for me. But worth it, I think.’

She reaches into an ornament, withdraws a cigarette. ‘Do you?’ Her fingernails are like polished diamonds. ‘I do hope so.’ She draws on the cigarette, watches her smoke circle up like tendrils, points with the cigarette at the old man. ‘My father-in-law, by the way. He needs my attention from time to time.’ She ashes into a bowl, smiles again with long elegant teeth. A full set. ‘But of course the garden is what we are concerned about.’

‘If I employ you.’ Suddenly she stands and pulls open the glass door. Heat pours in. ‘Come and see, anyway.’ We go down along a path cut between flowering bushes, overhanging roses. The lawn seems to be made of some carpet material. ‘I think this tree needs watching,’ she points to the tree, below which the old man sits staring. ‘Some kind of disease of the bark. It should really go.’ She gazes up into its branches.  A limp smile crumples the old man’s face. I make a small bow.  He nods. His old neck hangs like a scrotum.  ‘Now do look around for a bit.  I’m just fiddling with our ghastly pool pump.’ She goes off through some bushes.

I glance at the old man’s pale face. ‘How do you do, sir?’ I say.

He blinks, stares. His cheeks and nose are red, as if he has sat too close to fires. But in his eyes I see the spirit has withdrawn, leaving the body floundering, its eyeballs awash in tears. Direct sun falls on the backs of his blistered hands. Perhaps she has not noticed, his busy daughter with people to employ. I study this garden: within a year I could save the sponsorship fee. Have my parents here. My own family, whom I love. I watch the old man obliquely, as befits his age. A fly explores his face, leaves disgruntled. I sit.

I was five, the first time my mother sat like this. Down on the earth beside our front door, like a beggar, not touching the flies that came and went on her face. I stood gazing at her. ‘What do you want?!’ she snarled.

‘I heard you singing.’

‘Good for you.’ She snuffled, gurgled. ‘Oh! The old temple priest!’ she sang, ‘He has no hair!’ She howled, and smacked her foot on the ground. My ears burnt with shame, amazement. I went inside. Perhaps Mrs. Renoir has such a feeling for her father-in-law.

My father was reading through his serious glasses. My grandmother was cooking. ‘Pa-pa, what is wrong with ma-ma?’ He licked one finger and turned a page. ‘Nothing, Manh. Go and play.’ Through the wall came the bawk of my mother being a hen.

I asked my grandmother, frying rice, her head steaming. ‘What did your father say?’

‘Nothing, Ba-noi.’

‘Then nothing is the matter.’ Screech went my mother like a piglet. Perhaps they could not hear her. Perhaps she was dead, a wandering ghost come to torment them. Some animal spirit in disguise. I went and poked her.

‘Hey!’ She swung round, slapped my face. ‘Hands off, little dog!’ Her slap was real enough; the sting of words sharper.

‘What is the matter, ma-ma?’

‘Nothing!’ She frowned at her hands, stared as if they were the skull of a lost friend, ‘nothing at all.’ Her mouth became a small, white bump. I wanted to kiss it, if only to quieten her.

‘Pa-pa will worry.’

‘Ha!’ She sneered. Maybe some disgrace had driven her from the house. But what shame could be so bad?

Once, my mother had been rude to a rich customer. ‘Come back when you’re grown up! she shouted, pointing out the door.

‘What are you doing, you fool?!’ shouted my father. ‘An important man!’

‘An ignorant man.’ She stood with hands on her hips, like a statue in the park. ‘He wanted a kiss. ‘

My father’s face clamped shut. ‘Still, an important man. You should use tact. Grace.’

My grandmother, who had been watching, struggled to put

away her smile. She touched ma-ma on the arm: ‘Your husband’s wish, Nga. You should obey.’ Yet perhaps there was something in her eyes, I think, something other than duty and shame. Perhaps she did not see it herself.

We sat to eat. My mother stumbled in from her front step, humming, thudded into a doorway. A bottle clanged on the floor and rolled away. Without waiting, my father began to eat. Ma-ma circled the table like a blowfly. ‘Are you staying in tonight, Hoa?’ grandmother asked my father.

‘No. Another meeting.’ We ate while my mother pulled herself around the room from chair to chair.

‘Hail meetings!’

His face went like a stone. My eyes began to burn. ‘Soup, Ba-noi?’ he said to grandmother.

We ate as if perhaps ma-ma had died. Even now I can recall that sadness. What good can such remembering do me? ‘The Cao Dai is strong,’ said pa-pa, ‘but needs more guns. More warriors.’

Ma-ma gave a brisk salute. Grandmother shook her head. ‘How can you justify this? Buddhists killing. Even priests. What kind of temple is that?’

‘One that will survive.’ He continued to eat, as if he said this a dozen times a day. ‘If we sit in the cool of temples, chanting, pretty soon bombs will come through the roof.’

Ma-ma made a long whistle, ‘Boom!’ her fist shook the plates. ‘Ka-boom!’

‘Manh, more rice?’

Though hungry, I covered my plate. ‘I think ma-ma is waiting to sit down, pa-pa.’

‘That is her problem.’

I looked at my mother: hairs slashed her face; her chair and bowl sat waiting. I stood. ‘Ma-ma? Please?’

‘Oh no, little one. I am not worthy to sit with the great Nguyen Minh Hoa! A man so important the birds ask his permission to break wind!’ She made a low bow, bumped her forehead on the table.

‘Cabbage!’ My father stood, thrust out his plate before him. ‘Ba-noi! More cabbage!’

My mother grabbed up her bottle, and banged from the room, unfed, driven by the nameless disgrace.

These are the parents, thirty years later, I hunger by the gift of sponsorship to bring here. A family together again in one house. Wanting peace. Yet like a country still at war with itself. A war, by rights, long finished.

In the heat, Mrs Renoir’s father-in-law stares out at the garden like a stone Buddha. Bushes and flowers fill his eyes. I can see the sun is burning his hands, and he begins to tilt sideways in his chair; I nudge him upright. ‘Your daughter-in-law will be back soon, sir.’ But the patio door bangs shut as Mrs Renoir disappears inside. The old man sits broiling in the sun.

I prise him to his feet. He is a suit of bones and skin. ‘Let me move you to the shade, sir.’ We rattle up the steps, his breath gurgling. There is no better place: I settle him in a chair directly before Mrs Renoir’s window.

Sideways, so she can see his face. The door smacks open:

‘What are you doing?!’ Her mouth curls; perhaps she is unwell.

‘I thought he would be better in the sha .. ‘

‘You thought what?!’

‘His skin, I .. ‘

‘”Skin”?’ She squints at him as if he has been dead for weeks. ‘Do not bring him up here! Again! Is that clear?! Unless I expressly say so!’ Her perfect nostrils flare. I look away from her shame, waiting for her to regain herself. ‘Now kindly put him back. Somewhere shady.’ I stare into her beautiful face, into her fear, into the slight glaze of madness there. What manner of person is this to work for? She slams back inside. “Animal spirits,” grandmother would say. But who can tell. And what has my family ever done to animals? What was so bad?

I lead the old man down, step by step, slow as water dripping. I lay him out over a chair. He may be dead before I come again.

Carpark

In the carpark, a vehicle grunts to life, pants through its gears, hungry for something. I glance up, but I am thinking of my homeland, how my father and I would sit against the quiet shore of Misty Lake each morning, watching sunlight steam on its face like fire smouldering on water. I carry our lake wherever I go, its waters in my blood, and thoughts of my father.

The car growls through its carpark, closer.

My father insists now on living in a north-west facing house, otherwise he will never come to live with me. ‘North­west is my direction, Manh,’ he writes. ‘That is what my age dictates my house must face. Otherwise our family will split apart. No forces will be able to keep it together. And the kitchen especially, must face north­west. I cannot live in any other house. Then the qi energy would be turned into “sha-qi” breath of ill-fortune.’

I have written that there are no mountains near this city. Very few in this country. He is astonished. ‘Where do these people get their dragon energy from?’ But my father is always finding reasons to keep us apart. As am I. Such is the nature of fatherlands.

The car slows, turns into my lane.  Yet everything persuades me I am again strolling  in Nguyen Hui Street.  Like the chirrup of a bicycle bell, or light flashing on the glazed faces if cars.  Like walking in the furnace of Ben Thanh Market.  I begin to thirst for a cup of rice water. Perhaps some sweet chuoi nuong. ‘Oi! Slant!’ the car shouts. Suddenly it runs at me fast and squealing. I dive between cars. ‘FUCK OFF BACK WHERE Y’ COME FROM!’ it howls away.

I stand, shivering in the blazing light. Where I come from? I watch the brilliant car surge into the street. I never see them coming. Back where I come from? I would give my life to do so. I imagine crawling back into my mother’s womb, that soft land. And from there maybe back into the place in Heaven where my ancestors gather, eager to be born. Just how far back off should I fuck?

And what if nothing is there? An empty place – my fatherland?