Then, when the motorbikes out in the street are filling my head like my own fears, rushing with a nasty sound around and around the block and not going anywhere, I say, “I guided a husband and a wife from Germany today. I do not think they love each other.”
And he says, very low, “Can I ask you some questions?”
I say, “Quickly. Please.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” I say.
He lifts his chin just a little bit, thinking something out.
Suddenly I believe I understand. I say, “You’re not too old. Vietnam girls respect an older man.”
He turns to me.
“More than respect,” I say. “A Vietnam girl can respect an older man and she can feel passion for him, too.”
“You sound like my mother again. The way you explain yourself.”
“It’s okay that way too. Think of me like I am forty-
six.”
He smiles. “No. I’m too old. That’s good. Too many years have gone.”
I am not understanding again.
“It’s 1994,” he says. “I was here in 1966. Don’t you see? That’s twenty-eight years.”
Yes?”
“You’re twenty-six.”
I am lost. I concentrate on these numbers that seem so important to him and there is a hissing in my head, some little sound from a dark corner in me, but I try to think only about the numbers. I say, “Almost twenty-seven.”
There is a little flinch in him, a catching. “Twenty-seven? Yes? All right. It’s still all right.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “We are closer in age. That’s good too, isn’t it?”
“When is your birthday?”
“May 15.”
“May? Next month?”
“Yes.”
“Look,” he says, almost sharply. “It’s all right. Really.”
“I know,” I say.
“I was here in 1966.” Then he hesitates. “I came in February. I left after a year. It was 1967.”
I wait for him. He is thinking hard again. I am not thinking at all. I do not feel comfortable with numbers. The hissing has stopped. Then he turns to me abruptly.
“Tien,” he says. “Please tell me about how you know your father is dead.”
“My mother told me this thing. When she left me with my grandmother.”
“Your mother told you.”
“Yes. She did not want to, I think. But my grandmother made her.”
“She didn’t want to. Good. That’s good.”
“Why is that good?”
“Your grandmother knew that he was dead?”
“Yes.”
“Did she talk about this, too?”
I try to think. “I can’t remember. I don’t think so.”
“Then you don’t know what your grandmother knew. Was she there when your mother told you?”
“No.”
“Your mother could have lied.”
“We spoke of this last night.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Is this the thing that worries you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I ask this and for a moment it is still like I do not know the answer. All through these words we speak to each other on the bed, I have played the fool to myself. Now he simply fixes his eyes on me and I know. His brown eyes like mine. I grab the hand with the fingertips like mine. I have gone cold. There is a tumbling in me. I lean forward, my head goes down, I thump into his chest, my forehead there, and I pull back instantly. Suddenly I cannot touch him, and that is not a thing I can live with, I know that at once, the hissing has returned and it fills my lungs, this sound, and I cannot breathe.
“What?” he says. “Do you know something?”
I know nothing. This is his fear, I cry to myself. It can’t be true. It isn’t true.
“What is it?” he says.
I can barely shape words now. “Tell me your worry. Now. Please. I have this thought. A terrible thing. Tell me.”
God forgive me, all I want to do is put these things aside and touch her. I should have done that when I first came through the door. She is a woman. She is not my child. She is no one’s child.
But perhaps no forgiveness is necessary. I haven’t figured out the months exactly, but it feels wrong. The time feels wrong. And how could we meet like this? How could we feel like this if it was true? But she deserves to know my fear. For the sake of all the love I feel for Tien, I can’t keep such a secret from her, even if it’s a foolish thing, as insubstantial as a dream I would wake from out on the road, sleeping in my rig in a rest stop in the middle of some dark night and I wake and I can’t even remember what it was only seconds ago that made my heart pound like this and made this cry come from my mouth but there is only the smell of the earth and hay and the vinyl of the truck cab and there’s just the tick of metal and a wind rush of some semi going by trying to make up time. There was never anything left of a fear like that, whatever it’d been, after I sat up and shook my head. That’s all it will take now.
I say, “When I was here during the war, I was. . with a woman.”
“With her? You mean you sleep with a Vietnamese woman?”
“Yes.”
“Was she a bargirl, this woman?”
“Yes.”
Tien draws the sheet up around her. I’ve not been looking at her body. Not till I can just put this thing away for good. But I regret her gesture now. I’m anxious to get this over with.
“That was long ago,” I say. “Please.”
“Before I was born.”
“Yes. A year before. More than that.”
“More than a year?”
“Yes.”
“Then. . Oh, Ben, I am a foolish girl.”
She throws back the sheet and puts her arms around me. I hold her close. I lay my hands on the bareness of her back.
She says, “I think a terrible thing.”
“It’s what I was thinking.”
She puils back, looks at me. “How can this be?”
“It can’t. I don’t think. I’m not sure about the time. Should we stop and figure it out carefully?”
“Why should you think this? There were many bargirls for the American imperialist army in this city.”
“Please.”
She puts her hand over her mouth. “I am sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
She lowers her face. “This time it was not the state speaking.”
“No?”
“It was my jealousy.”
“Tien. Listen to me. What there is between us. . I’ve never felt this way before. Not for a bargirl. Not even for my wife.”
“Is this true?”
“Yes, my darling.”
She rises up on her knees. Her nipples pass in front of my eyes, dark in the fading light, and they stir me, instantly. I yearn to touch my lips there. And now only the tiniest dropping of my eyes and I can see her softest place. I am nearly ready to do what I should have done when I first came into this room tonight.
She says, “Hands can look alike. There are only so many hands.”
“Yes,” I say.
“With so many girls. So many. For her to be the same, the girl who was my mother, the girl who was. . What was she for you? This was a one-time girl?”
“No.”
“Two times? Three?”
I can hear her voice going tight. “Please. I’m about to turn into the evil imperialist power again.”
“Sorry.” She sinks back down to sit on the bed, though she doesn’t draw the sheet around her. I find myself trying to keep my eyes on her face once more. She says, “Did you love her?”
“I thought so.”
“Did she get pregnant?”
“Not that I know of. No. No, she didn’t.”
“Then I cannot be. . what you feared.”
“No.”
“Please,” she says. “Can we make love now?”