Ellie leaned forward to better see the photo on the museum wall, of a dead American boy sprawled out on a footpath in Ohio. There weren’t any lights on in the museum, only sunlight coming through the windows. Highly unprofessional: no halogen bulbs, no lasers to set off alarms if someone gets too close to the exhibit, no mysterious plastic-cased boxes tracking humidity. Museums are different here, she thought with the front of her brain, where the words were formed and articulate. Museums here are so exotic and authentic. It was how she and her friends made fun of the tourists, who would sit in the bars in the backpacker quarter and talk loudly over crinkle cut chips and flat cheeseburgers. The tourists would explain to each other how Vietnam was different to Home. Authentic. Exotic. A land of contrasts. Everyone likes to feel superior to someone, she thought with the front of her brain, while the sloppy back-brain was thinking what are you doing here what are you doing here what.
She’d been in Ho Chi Minh City for six months, but this was Ellie’s first visit to the War Remnants Museum. The visit seemed like a good idea at 5am, when she was leaving Kyle and Pat’s place. It was the third weekend in a row she’d stayed up until dawn with the same group of people, and she felt tired and nauseous over it. She thought it might help to go somewhere she’d never been before, so she went and sat at a plastic table at the pho place across the street from the museum, and ate noodles until it opened. A good idea maybe, but now her skirt was stained with beef broth and her favourite top was soaked in tropical sweat. She was also, possibly, the tiniest bit still-drunk. The whole effect was a little much for a Tuesday morning at a war crimes museum.
She was gathering the energy to go home when two boys, about her age, probably on a Southeast Asian backpacking trip to celebrate graduating with a BA in Commerce or Sports Marketing, stepped between her bench and the photograph. They wore khaki shorts and leather flip-flops. Solid coloured polo shirts. It could have been a uniform except one boy asserted his individuality with a University of Southern California baseball cap.
‘Check this out,’ said one to the other. American accent. He read the informational card aloud, pronouncing the words as if he’d just thought of them. ‘So there was this protest at this college in Ohio, right? And the army fired on the students. Four of them died. Did you know about this?’
The other one shook his head. ‘I never heard about that. It goes to show how much gets censored at home, you know? You never see this in history textbooks.’
Ellie nodded, unseen behind them. Censorship indeed. All the intelligible parts of her high school trigonometry text must have been censored too. Ignore them, thought front-brain. Go home.
‘What a crazy time to go to college,’ said the capped boy. ‘I mean, how could you concentrate on school with the war in Vietnam?’
‘It would be hard. Like, really hard.’
She hated the word hard: it started like a laugh, the jaw movements were reminiscent of a dewy-eyed cow chewing on cud, the word was shaped like a bed for God’s sake. It bothered her when people chose it over its better synonyms. Challenging, that’s what he meant. He meant it was an experience that would catch in his throat, one studded with hurdles no matter what angle you approached it from.
His friend nodded. ‘That’s probably why so many people dropped out to protest, right? Can you imagine feeling so strongly about something that you’d drop out of college for it?’
‘Actually, I think I would have if I’d been in college back then. I’d drop out and join the protest.’
‘Seriously? You’d be behind a whole year when you came back. That’s a whole year of your life.’
‘I think I’d still do it.’
The other one gazed at him, eyes all glassy and in love. ‘Shit man. Wow.’
Ellie’s fingers curled and uncurled like she was squeezing the acid out of a lemon. Her heart filled up with ball bearings and sank into her stomach. Her breathing was uneven, which might have been the fault of the ball bearings pulling her under. Under what? She wasn’t sure. Her internal narrative was starting to rhyme though, which usually signified trouble.
‘That generation, they had more fun,’
Sighed Idiot 2 to Idiot 1.
‘What do we have? That Afghanistan War?
Those kids in the sixties, they had way more.
What happened to acts of moral defiance?
Their world leaders had it down to a science.’
Idiot 1 shook his head sadly.
‘Such a shame things aren’t going more badly.’
She needed to stop before they turned around and caught her counting off syllables on her fingers. The only thing that worked to break the momentum was self-sabotage: purples, oranges, silvers and pints. Then the poem would come crashing down. Silver! It was like jamming a branch into moving bicycle spokes.
The trick was a puerile thing her therapist at the university counselling centre thought up. Ellie could have thought of it herself, but hadn’t realized rhyming was a habit to break, on a par with nail biting or bed-wetting. Except the therapist hadn’t called it a bad habit, she’d called it an escape mechanism. And, on another day, a defence mechanism. Some whimsical barrier between her and her non-rhyming reality. A lunatic’s twofer! What a deal! Lines scraped out of the bargain barrel. She could script the late-night advert with perfect clarity. Sad all the time? Angry and broken? Order your own set of poetic devices to hide behind! Now with iambs! But wait, there’s more! Call in the next five minutes and receive your complimentary Escape Analogy, normally retailing at $34.95! Because there’s no life raft as buoyant as a simile!
The therapist smiled, toothy like a crocodile. ‘I’m going to write you a prescription for anti-depressants,’ she’d said. ‘Try it out for a few months and come back if you don’t feel better.’ Which seemed like a cavalier thing to prescribe rape victims. Why was she the one being treated anyway? She was the good one, playing by the rules vis-à-vis respecting other people’s bodily sovereignty, and yet she was the one bearing all the consequences. Ellie was certain the incident would have been better addressed with a castration. She had his name, she could find out his class schedule, but the police had been a bit perfunctory, if not outright disapproving. Of her drinking, of her wearing a skirt, of her wasting their time. She had to get her own revenge, which took the form of tearing the prescription into atomic pieces and dusting them into the nearest duck-filled stream. Looking back, it was hard to say whom she thought she was punishing.
The boys moved to the next photo (‘Did you know it was illegal to burn draft cards?’). How nice for them to be allowed that kind of ignorance. How nice for them to walk blindly and trust that every step is going to land just so. No stumbling over the unexpected, no one taking advantage of their unpreparedness. How tremendously nice. Life’s not fair, she reminded the anger machine in her mind. It was worthless to talk at a machine though; the gears just kept clicking and creaking.
After a shower and a nap, Ellie woke with a carved-out feeling in her chest. She wasn’t sure what would fix it, but was confident the cure would either be Western food, beer or seeing someone she knew. She got dressed, grabbed her motorbike helmet and locked the gate behind her. The traffic in Vietnam was authentic and exotic: a cluster of motorbikes and boxy cabs and high school girls in conical hats riding bicycles. It schooled like fish, according to every guidebook every written which, Ellie had to admit, was apt.
She turned off the main road, away from the flowing mass of bikes, and passed through alleys crowded with vendors and touts, mendicant kids and unloved dogs. The backpackers’ quarter stank like a mix of sun-rotted beach debris (from the dried squid vendors), grilled onions (from the congestion of restaurants), perfume (from the boutiques and the hookers) and sewage (from the sewage). She stopped at a restaurant serving beer, cheeseburgers and banana pancakes all day long. It was one of the favourite expat spots, not least because Huy, the bartender, was a very competent drug dealer.
It must have been too early in the day though, since none of her friends were there. The only people she recognised were Huy and the boys from the museum, who were sitting at a small table reading laminated breakfast menus through air bubbles and scabs of dried sriracha. It was only semi-surprising to see them there. It was a big city, but it operated like a small town if you were a foreigner.
She walked to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic and a chicken sandwich. After Huy made her a drink, he disappeared into the kitchen. Alone and bored, Ellie listened to the boys’ conversation behind her. They were telling each other a story about that time they were in Cambodia last week. And then the karaoke place/Turned out to be a brothel/And we weren’t about to pay/Not for the whore who sat on my lap/Not for the one who called me mister/Not for the things we’re supposed to get for free. The call-and-response format was poetic, on the verge of rhyming even. She sucked on her drink.
God, they were so loud in that empty bar, and her headache was pulsing at each of their words. She wished they would stand up and take their noise to literally any other bar on the street. She could tell them they were too loud. Or she could murder them. She laughed a bit, into her straw, blowing bubbles into the gin. She’d need a weapon. Something authentic and exotic. A sharpened chopstick, an old land mine, a hungry stray dog. Maybe she could get her hands on some Agent Orange and dose their pho with it.
Of course, if she really wanted to teach them a lesson, they would have to live through the experience. It could be a drugging instead. She could slip something into a pair of drinks and send them over. Give a little wave and a precious smile from across the room. Cheers to you chaps. Bottoms up. Wait fifteen minutes and then shove their semi-conscious selves into a cab. Pay the driver extra for a little discretion. The boys would wake up in a blank-walled hotel room in some satellite suburb, wondering if they still had both kidneys. It would be stupidly easy and less messy than murder. And it would teach them a valuable lesson about trusting strange girls in bars. Ellie just wasn’t sure where she could find roofies on such short notice.
One of the boys stepped up beside her and she flinched at the sudden appearance, baselessly worried that he’d been able to hear her thoughts. The surprise ebbed though, and was replaced with awareness: the bar was vast and empty and he was standing awfully close to her if all he wanted was Huy’s attention. He called out an order for two more Tiger beers as Huy came in from the kitchen, carrying a plastic crate of pint glasses.
‘I like your shirt,’ he said, while waiting for the beer. She looked away, as if unaware he was speaking to her. After her moment to ooze with gratitude passed, he touched her forearm lightly. ‘I said I like your shirt. It’s a nice colour.’
‘Yes, merci.’ Her voice dressed up in a French accent. This happened sometimes, usually when she was drinking. It wasn’t always French. It could be Russian or English or Scarlett O’Hara southern.
He looked her up and down. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Here. I live here.’
‘Cool. So you’re an expat?’
She nodded. She was part of a clique of individuals whose most salient quality was where they were not. She kept her clothes in her suitcase; she hadn’t decorated her bedroom walls. The heaviest thing she owned was a bottle of shampoo. She was an expat. More than that, she was the ultimate paradigm of expat: she had come to Vietnam for the most flighty and freewheeling reason available, which was a surplus of air miles and a deficit of anything else. Most of the other expats had, at the very least, ambition. They had resumes and blogs and graduate school plans.
‘Cool. So you teach English or … another language?’
‘No, I’m a writer.’ Hard roll on the first r sound.
‘Awesome.’ He was cute, if she was being superficial and objective about it. ‘What kind of things do you write?’
‘Poetry.’ She chewed on her straw, composing, then released the mangled plastic from her teeth. ‘Stay at the Plaza/Four nights for the price of three/Breakfast included.’
He laughed. ‘So you’re in marketing?’
‘Zat was a haiku,’ she said.
‘That’s funny. What’s your name?’
‘Elodie.’ It was her name in high school French class.
‘Pretty. Is it French?’
She nodded.
Huy passed over the beers, and the American boy grabbed one in each hand. ‘Do you want to come sit with us?’
She glanced back at the friend, who was pretending not to mind being left alone. He picked at the label of his empty beer bottle, meticulously peeling it off in even strips. ‘I don’t drink with strangers,’ she said. ‘Eet’s a dangerous habit.’
‘There’s an expression in English.’ He edged closer, so their arms were almost touching. ‘A stranger’s just a friend you haven’t met.’
‘We have expressions too,’ she said. ‘Je vais te tuer.’
‘That’s pretty. What’s it mean?’ He edged closer.
She shook her head and smiled. ‘Eet wouldn’t translate. But maybe you take French lessons and you figure eet out.’
He practically vibrated over the opportunity to pass off another hackneyed expression as original flirting. ‘We’ve got a saying for that too: the best place to learn a foreign language is in bed.’
‘Good one,’ Ellie agreed. ‘Subtle.’ She pronounced it to sound almost like suitable.
Her persona slipped only once in conversation, when she first sat down and the boys introduced themselves as Chris K. and Chris M., like they were addressees of primary school Valentine’s Day cards. ‘Really guys?’ she asked in a tone sarcastic enough to apparently pass for European. They took it as wonder over there being more than one Christopher on earth and responded with a long oral history of their relationship, beginning the day they sat next to each other in Econ 101.
‘You want to play pool?’ one of them asked, after Ellie had been fully apprised of their four years at uni together and the subsequent decision to spend a post-graduate month in Asia.
‘You go,’ she said. ‘I’ll get more drinks.’
She approached the bar at the point furthest from the pool table, so she could talk to Huy without being overheard. She ordered two beers and a gin and tonic before propping her forearms against the bar and leaning in. ‘Huy,’ she whispered. ‘I need some other stuff. Rohypnol. Do you know it?’
Huy shook his head.
‘It’s … ’ She stopped herself from calling it a date rape drug. ‘It’s something to make people fall asleep. So they don’t wake up for a while.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I know this. You want chloroform.’
‘No, it’s … ’ She paused; adjusted the plan. ‘You know how to get chloroform?’
He was already mashing the buttons of his mobile. ‘Twenty minutes,’ he promised without looking up.
Ellie distributed the drinks and perched on a nearby stool. She refused offers to play, but assured the Chrises she was happy to watch. To pass the time, she composed an operetta about a tenacious anthropologist embedded in the urban jungles of Southeast Asia. In the story, the anthropologist comes across a tribe of barbarians who have no concept of the linear passage of time. She watches them play some primitive version of pool and notes their bemusement every time one takes his turn and sees that the balls aren’t quite where he left them. This will cue the anthropologist’s first solo, an optimistic aria identifying this as the real-life manifestation of the theory behind her doctoral dissertation. She’ll be famous! For the sake of the story, the anthropologist will have to bring the barbarians into to her world of cause and effect and try to get them to play by her rules. Romance and drama ensue. Unoriginal—King Kong with a song—but it’s what the audience would want.
Near the end of game three, while Ellie was scripting the first romantic scene between the anthropologist and the more handsome of the barbarians, Huy waved her over to the bar. She excused herself from the Chrises.
‘You have it?’ she asked, sitting on a stool across from Huy.
He nodded and passed her a small glass bottle. It looked like water, but was unexpectedly heavy.
‘Do you know how to use it?’
‘You put it on a cloth and … ’ Huy wadded up the nearest dish towel and held it over his nose and mouth. ‘Easy.’
She shook the bottle and enjoyed the sensation of sloshing in her palm. ‘It’s not dangerous, right? Like, I can’t kill someone with this?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about it. It’s for thieves.’
‘People use it on thieves?’
‘No, thieves use it. When they sneak into houses at night. Make sure everyone stays asleep.’ He held the rag up to his nose again and fluttered his eyelids.
Ellie took a big swig of beer. She was probably more conscientious than the average burglar, which probably meant that the chances of an accidental OD were low. Still, it was a bit alarming that Huy didn’t know how to use it properly. She rolled the bottle’s round bottom against the bar, the ridged circle of glass ticking against the bar top. She waited for Huy to tell her to stop that, to put that away, but he just asked if she needed any ecstasy for the weekend. He’d give her a special price.
There was no good time to use the chloroform at the bar. Ellie also had to figure out a way to separate the Chrises, since she could only do one at a time. Though two unconscious bodies would pose a whole new set of problems; she was only strong enough drag them off into unfamiliar corners of the city one at a time. Leave one behind? Cleaving them like that might be appropriate. They’d definitely wake up more terrified if they were alone. But still: the problem of when and where. Wait for one to leave to use the toilet? Or invite one of them somewhere private? Options abounded, really. It was a matter of acting. Maybe the problem wasn’t logistical; maybe the problem was her. She’d never been good at being proactive. Her teachers always said so.
Eventually, the boys mentioned that they wanted to go see some of the city. She became their tour guide, and they visited all the hotspots highlighted in their Lonely Planet guidebook: the market, the post office, the cathedral. Authentic. Exotic. A land of contrasts. They reached peak cliché when the boys said they wanted to have a drink at the Caravelle Hotel, where the American war correspondents used to stay in the 60s. They settled into seats on the top floor bar, ordered overpriced drinks and a plate of fresh spring rolls. The war correspondents were all long gone, but the décor did play to expectations with potted jungle plants flanking the door and pith helmets nailed to the wall. Above their table was a framed photo of a US Army jeep parked in front of the opera house.
‘It’s fucked up,’ said one of the Chrises. ‘All this war stuff. It’s kind of gross to glorify it.’
‘Yeah,’ said the other. And then, to Ellie: ‘How is living here for you? Because of French colonialism. Is it weird?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Eet’s fine.’
‘Yeah, but … ’ He picked up a spring roll, dragged it through the dish of peanut sauce, and took a bite. He made her wait as he chewed and swallowed. ‘The French were here way longer than the Americans. Have you been to the War Remnants museum? It’s like … it’s like we get all this guilt as Americans, for the war and whatever, but what the French did was kind of worse.’
Ellie poked at the ice cubes in her drink with the plastic straw, trying to submerge them in the tonic. The blocks kept bobbing back to the surface.
The other Chris grabbed a spring roll and waved it around like he was conducting an orchestra. ‘Do you ever talk to Vietnamese people about the war? If I was living here that’s what I’d do. I’d make friends with Vietnamese people so we could have honest political discussions.’
People always had ideas about how to live other people’s lives. It reminded her of her former flatmate, with so many ideas about how Ellie could do things differently. If it were me, I’d just forgive him and get on with my life.
‘Do you know any older people here? People who lived through it? What do they think about you being French?’
As if forgiveness were the more virtuous option. No one learns by being forgiven. Justice is not served that way. No, the more virtuous route is to gather all that anger and wrong into your arms and carry it, no matter that it makes your steps slow and turns your elbows to jelly. Carrying it will make you strong, which is important because it’s the only upside to being the victim of anything. But wouldn’t it be better just to move your life along? No, the best way is to gather up the frustration, the feeling of exploitation, that bright, new fear of predation, and turn it into something bright red and glowing like lava, something external and apparent so that everybody knows that you are not, not, not someone who can be fucked with. Not without some serious ramifications, which would—
She realised that she wasn’t breathing anymore and exhaled. Purple.
‘Elodie?’ Chris K. waved a hand in front of her face. ‘What do the Vietnamese think about the French?’
Ellie dropped the straw against the side of her glass. ‘I’m not French.’ Her real accent sounded feigned and exaggerated. I’m nut Frinch. She tried again, enunciating slowly. ‘I’m not French.’
One of them half smiled. ‘Yes, you are.’
‘No. I’m from New Zealand.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘I am.’ Her hand was shaking and she stood, pushing the chair noisily out of her way.
‘And you guys were lucky that all I did was lie to you. Something really awful could have happened, spending all day in a strange city with someone you don’t know. It’s a fucked up world. People lie and cheat; people take what they want. Every opportunity they get; you should be more careful.’
He looked amused and propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. A dimple appeared on his right cheek. ‘If you’re from New Zealand,’ he said, ‘say something in Elvish.’
Ellie took the lift down to the lobby, with the intention of going home, but found the bright lights were making her lightheaded and anxious so she followed the discrete golden signs to the nearest toilets. The black granite floors were so polished she could see up her own skirt, flashing pink knickers with every step. She shut herself into a stall and locked the door. No one else was in the toilets, just soft jazz music playing over the speakers. She took the bottle of chloroform out of her purse and twisted the cap off. It smelled so delicate and faint and sweet, of rum and rotting fruit. She brought it closer to her nose but could feel the blackness edge in almost immediately and pulled it back. She inhaled the sweet, rotten, boozy air one last time before she screwed the cap on tight.