The Deed: part 2

The follow up and conclusion to the story I posted in July. The deed part one can be read here.
comments welcome.

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I didn't really have to open the letter; I'd already known what Grandfather was leaving me. The house was mine for the taking, to do with as I pleased. A company had offered to buy it for a sum that could pay off all my loans. They wanted to make it into a boutique hotel, another neoclassical imitation of the Indochina past, this time with brighter pastels. They said the house had great bones, and the location in Hanoi was ideal for tourists. Bones. That was all that was left.

It was now dead noon. The light soon became unbearable. Shades were drawn.
"Sir, sir." My waiter interrupted me with his delicate, but insistent, English. "Is everything you like? Would you want another cafe?"

"Uh no, thank you. Although I would like a bottle of water, if you please. And the New York Times." I muttered, trying my best to not sound imposing.

"Certainly." He bowed.

I put the letter back into its crisp white envelope. Squinting through the bamboo slats of the drawn shade, I was surprised to see streets only moments ago choked with cars and motorbikes, now suddenly abandoned. It was as if a camera flash had gone off, freezing this moment, and the blinding light had vaporized all the bustle and noise and people to leave nothing but the gleaming mansions of new wealth, the stately paved roads lined with taxi cabs, the bleached white park benches, and leaves--curling high on trees draining parched earth.

"It's too hot today." The waiter spoke from behind me, breaking my reverie. "We have air-conditioning! Very lucky."

I thanked him for the paper and water, and scanned the room. There were more people in the restaurant now, tourists in baggy shorts and multicolored sandals who looked as though they've just emerged from a steam bath. Sweaty, overheated, they came in wearing white T-shirts soaked to translucency, with large oval swaths of perspiration around their armpits and necks, their skin a blistery red. At the patisserie counter their children were pointing, tugging at their parents' shorts as they picked out sticky, glazed pain-au-chocolat while clamoring loudly for ice-cream of various colors. The slight figured girl with short-cropped hair and a broad smile behind the counter was clearly overwhelmed. "This one? You want this one? Or that one?" She asked the blond children with their inquisitive green and blue eyes, pretty like the glass eyes on expensive import dolls, children with pudgy, sweaty fingers smudging the pristine glass panels with their incessant pointing. She exchanged knowing glances with their haggard parents, and found instant camaderie in their mutual exhaustion. It was okay, her eyes seemed to say. There was air conditioning now. Welcome.

The children were soon quieted with treats of ice-cream and french fries. The Beatles made a come back on the overhead speakers. 'Yesterday'. Still 'Yesterday'. I lifted the shade near my table; the light, although harsh, had been peaceful, and I was beginning to miss it. Already one hour past noon, the scorch of midday was still in full swing. A couple more tourists with children entered, this time waiting by the front door for seating because the restaurant was full. My waiter hesitated, then visited my table for a fourth time. Smiling.

I got the hint."Can I have the check please?"
"Yes sir," he responded.

My eyes were drawn to the new couple who had just entered. They were fair-skinned, with rosy cheeks and brilliant mops of golden hair draped on top of angular features betraying strong bones and good teeth. A young couple who spoke an inscrutable language--Swedish, maybe--they were unremarkable except for their gargantuan height. They had a son, a sprightly boy of six or seven who refused to stand still while his parents waited patiently, instead darting between the front windows of Givral framed by Corinthian columns, making faces at passers by.

His antics attracted the attention of a girl, not much older than him, who was selling lottery tickets outside. He made her laugh. I'd seen her wandering the streets hours before, across from Givral, furtively darting from corner to corner selling lottery slips for about 2 US cents a piece while avoiding the police who patrolled the area for unlicensed vendors and beggars. She, no doubt, had risked being harrassed by the police in order to rest in the shaddow of the giant red awnings that shielded the stately windows of Givral from the harsh summer sun. It was nice and cool underneath the shade, with window boxes still in bloom despite the heat.

She reminded me of numerous others, children who wandered the streets selling cigarettes or plastic trinkets or lottery tickets in threadbare pajamas and plastic sandals. They all had the same face: gaunt, shrunken, and blackened by the sun. They sell by begging for pity, appealing to anyone who made eye contact. They were often chased from gentrified areas like Givral so tourists wouldn't feel uncomfortable, and could instead focus on more important things, like which silk pillow to purchase. Gone too were the beggars who crawled on amputated legs and arms, the illegal rural migrants from Sa Dec who sold fake Gucci plastic sandals, the mothers with infants on their backs who offered Pho noodles for 50 US cents a bowl out of pots they carried on shoulder slings, the girls who peddled sugarcane chunks and tart cherries snacks for 10 cents a bag. They were all purposefully erased from images of this newly minted Saigon. High class, Western commerce, after all, needed a clean slate for business.

A frail woman approached the girl from behind and scolded her. The woman, a street vendor cloaked in black pajamas and floppy sandals, herself carrying a basket of fruits, took the girl's right hand. She led the two of them away from Givral, toward the intersection. The girl, looking gawkish in worn pink pajamas two sizes too small, with bright darting eyes and a toothy smile, waved goodbye to the teasing Swedish boy behind the glass, slightly frowning as she departed. The boy paused and, facing the loss of his sole adoring audience, turned to his father. They uttered something inscrutable, after which the father reached for his wallet, withdrawing some cash. Excited, the boy grinned and waved wildly, gesturing the girl to come back.

"Your check, sir." The waiter said, smiling, still as efficient as ever. I proceeded to sign.

"Oh my god!" exclaimed the Australian woman to my right. Parents shushed their children. I turn toward the direction of their gaze out the window. It was as if a flash had gone off, freezing this moment, and the blinding light had vaporized all the bustle and noise and people to leave nothing but the gleaming mansions of new wealth, the bleached white park benches, and the little girl lying in the middle of the newly paved boulevard, her limbs haphazardly arranged, her head cocked to one side as if sleeping. Around her a scatter of red lottery tickets planted themselves like newly bloomed poppies. Lottery tickets continued to fall from the sky, having been tossed so high into the air they now fluttered aimlessly, a silence descending softly onto the bloody pavement.

My waiter rushed out the front door. "Someone should dial the police!" the Australian woman yelled. The crowd of tourists drew themselves to my window for a better view. Outside, traffic snarled as an enlarging circle of people gathered around the girl and the frail old woman prostrated on the ground, whose wails and shrieks can be heard echoing through the glass windows of Givral. I could see my waiter, his tuxedo frame nimbly filtering through the crowd, leading policemen toward the scene. He soon came back.

"What happened?" Inquired the Australian woman. "Did they catch the guy? He didn't stop! The motorcycle kept going! How awful! And where's the ambulance? Is there an ambulance coming?"

"I don't know, madam." Stammered the waiter as he reached for his bag, grabbing his wallet."They...we...no did not catch. She will go to the hospital. Everything...ok. Please...try to continue your lunch."

"How are you getting her there?" I yelled to the waiter in Vietnamese and startled him.

"In taxi. I will take her to hospital, in taxi, sir!" He replied quickly in English.


"Do you need any help?" I continued."I can go with...Do you need money? Here, I have..." I muttered, scrambled, looking for my wallet. The Swedish boy's parents, still aghast at what hasd happened, reached for their wallets and thrust up wads of cash. Other tourists followed.

"Would they take traveler's checks?" The Australian woman yelped, waving a fist full of notes.

The waiter turned to me. He gently pushed his hand against mine, thrusting money back towards my chest. "We don't need money, sir. But thank you." He told me calmly in Vietnamese. His eyes flickered with an exasperated gratefulness as if he had carried this conversation before. He then turned to everyone else, "Thank you all. You are too generous," yelled the waiter. With a dash, he was gone. He didn't take anyone's money.

It soon began to rain, a miracle breaking the sweltering heat. I watched from Givral's window to see that the crowd outside had dissolved as quickly as it had formed. Traffic thinned in the dissipating heat. Above, the sky turned an orange hue that deepened toward the horizon, and the wispy trails of clouds from earlier soon gave way to large, nebulous gatherings, gravid and gray with impending rain. With certainty the clouds bore fruit, hurling sheets of water toward this parched city. Downtown Saigon was strangely empty again, its gleaming benches deserted, its rivers of tar emptied of motorbikes and taxicabs, cleansed of blood and lottery tickets. Except for the occasional thunderclap and the pleasant drizzle of rain splattering across my window to the tune of the Beatles's greatest hits, there was no sound inside the restaurant. We had all been hushed by the rain, hushed by the uncertainties that marked our day, silenced by the inexplicable fortunes of our lives in light of the cruel fates of others. The numbness we felt was as pervasive as smoke, as though we blame ourselves for the wrongs of the world but were unable to articulate our guilt. And so we sat, in silence, as the Beatles strummed on.

The light had dimmed considerably. Apart from the spectacular bursts of lightning that flared intermittently, all was gray. As the rain continued to pour, water overflowing from the gutters began to wash refuse onto the pavement, bringing forth discarded newspapers and plastic water bottles and empty Coca-Cola cans once hidden from view. The roads slowly filled with bits of paper and plastic bags and orange rinds that floated like tiny rafts across dark waters as muddy as the Saigon river, a stream once swimming with bodies from a war long ago, whose sorrows today lay buried beneath its turbulent flow. The water soon spilled onto the footsteps of the Park Hyatt, lapping up at the white-wash masonry. There it deposited bits of trash in cracks and crevices unseen in the blinding brightness before, crevices that now, in this illuminating grayness, made the white walls appear grimy, dingy, and no longer glamorous.