I sat at Givral away from direct sunlight, trying my best to avoid a tan. It was over 100 degrees outside, with 90 percent humidity, the kind of weather that made cotton shirts cling in perpetual films of sweat. Curious, though, while the air around me tasted of damp earth, as if anticipating a summer storm, there was no cloud in sight. My waiter--gaunt, wafer-like, slightly comical in his over-sized black pants and ill-fitting tuxedo top, his face a shade of burnt umber framing a sharp, protruding nose beneath glassy blood-shot eyes--bowed as he delivered my coffee. He mustered a slight smile, crooked and shy, as the light bounced from the edge of my silver spoon to the deep valleys receding from the corners his eyes. He asked me for how long was I visiting, in heavily accented, but still understandable, English. I told him two weeks.
Vietnam was becoming a new country. My generation, children who left after the war, had joined the ranks of tourists pouring back to this place of a thousand newness. Cell phones and internet, I-pods and cars--these were the shiny fruits of globalization in the modern Vietnamese economy, an arranged marriage of convenience between Western capitalism and socialist impulses that still littered Saigon's government-sponsored billboards. Fighting to rise above the din of KFCs and Calvin Klein ads, these banners often portrayed forever smiling, androgynous children in dark school uniforms against red backdrops of sickles and stars. "Children are our future!" exclaimed one such banner, overlooking the rotary in front of Saigon Market Square. The banner was right, of course. The war had been fought in the name of countless Vietnamese children for their future peace and prosperity. The children had to smile and be grateful; it was the dutiful thing to do.
My Vietnamese surprised my waiter. He thought I was Korean. In the new Saigon, he was right to be cautious; foreigners were a fact of life. I told him two weeks, and maybe an extra couple of days, depending on whether I was to head North to Hanoi to view the property. He nodded knowingly. "Another land deal," he asked in Vietnamese, "Are you coming back to live? If so, welcome!"
"Too many uncertainties," I mumbled a non-answer.
He understood; I didn't want to talk about it. A quick, slight bow, and he was gone.
The white heat outside seemed to have intensified since I sat down, but I was safe here. This old restaurant, I was told, had survived three governments, unmarred by the upheavals and bloodsheds, protected inside its own bubble of colonial elegance for nearly a century. My grandfather took me here when I was five, for ice-cream and air-conditioning, rare and expensive treats back then. Two commanding Corinthian columns still framed the entrance to this grand bistro, columns whose creamy marble gleamed in the midday sun thanks to recent renovations. Instead of looking out onto run-down shops, Givral now faced the five star Park Hyatt across the street, with its exquisite facade of white, modernized colonial splendors and rusticated masonry, impulses reminiscent of the old French Indochina that, for a time, had to be publicly forgotten in this socialist republic. If my grandfather had lived to see it, he would have been happy, perhaps, that we now had more ice-cream dining options in this freshly air-conditioned Saigon.
He was what brought me back here, back to Saigon. I palmed the envelope delivered to me this morning by his caretaker, feeling the thick stationery with its reflected whiteness glittering in the sunlight in ways that pained me. The brightness was overwhelming. In between sips of coffee--an intense, bitter brew that burned on its way down--I closed my eyes. I slowly succumbed to the darkness, allowing the world to dissapear beyond my senses as the Beatles' "Yesterday" floated around me. An eternity soon passed. I opened my eyes to see the envelope still there, on the table, waiting. I reached for it. Amidst the muted din of cityscape rushing past me, to the soft hum of air-conditioning as the Beatles strummed on, I began to read.
