Ho Chi Minh’s hand is on the head of the little girl. He’s in black stone, and from seeing him the other day I remember his one arm outstretched on the tree stump where he sits and I remember his arm around the girl, who holds a flower. But I’m seeing this left hand now for the first time as I wait for Tien. His hand touches the little girl’s hair and at first glance, it’s a tender gesture, a paternal gesture. But I stare at this hand as I stand here waiting for Tien, with a rush of people around me and out in the street, and the hand is bothering me. It touches lightly, open-palmed, at the back and slightly to the side of her head, as if it is stroking her there, stroking her hair. A paternal gesture, too, I tell myself. But the girl seems so deeply absorbed by the flower in her hand, unaware of this touch, vulnerable in her ignorance, and Ho is not looking at her, his face is forward and there is a darkly adult look in his fixed eyes, his faintly ironic mouth. The sculptor wanted it both ways. Ho the gentle father figure and Ho the tough, focused leader of a revolution. But this look informs his hand and I fear for the little girl and I can’t see this anymore and I find my own hands clenching, hard.
I turn away. A little girl slides past and she catches my eye and stops and she holds up a book of lottery tickets.
“You buy,” she says.
“No,” I say. “Sorry.”
“You buy,” she says, coming close. “Good luck win money.”
“No,” I say.
Her hand is on me, on my wrist. I yank the arm away.
“Go away. Please,” I say.
“Fuck you,” she says and she moves off and I rub at the place she touched, hard. Rub her touch away.
I jitter around. Move off from the statue. A man has a case opened up by a bench and it’s full of packs of cigarettes. I draw near. I haven’t smoked in years. I coughed my way one spring run from St. Louis to Denver and I stopped cold. But I want a cigarette now.
“You buy,” he says.
I look at the brands, all Chinese or Vietnamese but all of them with names in English: Lord Filter. Ruby Queen. Park Lane. White Horse. Sunny. Hero. And there’s a brand in a white pack called Memory. My hand goes out and it’s trembling. I think Park Lane was the brand name that masked the marijuana when I was here. I pass it over, though I’m sure it’s just tobacco now anyway. I take a pack of Ruby Queen and a pack of matches and I pay the man and walk away.
I open the pack and tap out a cigarette and put it in my mouth. I stuff the pack in my pants pocket and strike a match. I touch the end of the cigarette and pull the smoke in and it tastes like truck exhaust and I wait for the nicotine to kick in, to smooth out the rough spots, to steady my hand, but it only grates in me and all I’m getting is a shitload of blurry nights with a shitload of interstate exit signs drifting past in my headlights, and I flip the cigarette away.
I’m more jumpy than I was before. Then I see her crossing the street, far away, down at Le Loi near the fountain. I see her though there’s a hundred people around her and a hundred people between us. I see Tien and she’s dressed in that white blouse with the big bow and the dark, tight skirt that hides her knees. The way I first saw her.
She comes into the square and for a brief moment she doesn’t see me. I think to walk away. As connected as I am to her by my love — and I am as connected to her as I am to the limbs of my body — I almost turn and walk away fast and find some place to hide and then get the hell out of this country without ever seeing her again and never ask another question of myself about what it was that happened. Go back and get into another truck and follow the black track of the exhaust burn in my lane till I fucking die. But I’m not quite scared enough to do that.
Then she sees me and she starts to hurry, cutting through the threads of Vietnamese strolling in the square, dodging people, and she doesn’t seem to be one of them at all, she’s moving in a different way, quicker, more focused. I think: Like an American.
And she is. Half of her is. That’s already known. Watching her move like this, coming closer, is no reason for the revving to start again. I curse my cowardice. I curse these rushes of fear. I wait for her touch.
But it’s not Saigon anymore, it’s Ho Chi Minh City, and Ho is watching us and his own touch is secret, it seems to be one thing in this public place but is another, I’m certain now. Tien is here and she’s breathing heavily and our hands flap out in front of us, not knowing what to do, and I don’t quite know how it happens but our right hands connect and we shake, like two strangers meeting and introducing themselves, or maybe like tour guide and tourist. We both look down at our shaking hands and Tien laughs, though it is low, sharp, full, I think, of my failure last night.
“Hello,” she says, still looking at our hands.
“Hello.”
“This feels so strange,” she says.
“Uncle Ho is watching,” I say.
She brings her face up, glances over my shoulder. She laughs again, softer now, and then she says in a whisper, “He is easily offended.”
“Good to meet you,” I say, out loud, not letting go of her hand, playing the little game, though it’s the last thing I want to do right now. “I’m Benjamin Cole.”
“I am your guide, Miss Tien,” she says, and she bends near. She whispers again. “Does this mean we can start over?”
I know she’s asking if we really have to go to Nha Trang, if we can’t just take another tour of the city and then meet tonight and resume our love affair. But I can’t find a way to answer.
She says, “Out here. In this public place. Away from my room and all the. . things that are in it. Does it seem the same to you?”
Our hands separate. I say, “I still love you.”
“And I love you. But it is the other thing I ask about. The fear.”
I wait. I wait for some other answer than the one I know I must give. But there is nothing else. “We have to know for sure.”
She nods once. “Then I have reserved a car for us. I wish it was right now. But the soonest I could arrange was in three days’ time.”
“Three days.” It’s dumb repetition. I don’t know how to hold this feeling for three extra days.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “The city is full of Japanese businessmen until the weekend. They have booked many weeks in advance.”
“I understand.”
There are no words for a long moment and then she says, very softly, “Until then, it must only be a handshake for us. Is that not so?”
I look closely at her eyes. Surely if she is my daughter, I’d be able to look in her eyes and see something of myself and know. But there is nothing clear. And the fear won’t go away.
Tien nods as if I’ve answered her. She says, “I will see you on Friday. I will meet you with the car just over there, in front of the Rex Hotel, at eight in the morning. We can get very close to Nha Trang before the night.”
I say, “Are you angry with me?”
“No,” she says. “Not with you. I am angry with my father.”
What races in me now is gratitude for this woman. Her certainty lifts me, smooths the rough spots like I’d expected from the hit on the cigarette. I say, “I want to touch you now more than ever. You understand?”
“I wish not to understand until it can be more than words.”
“I love you, Tien.”
Her eyes fill with tears, but she lifts her chin slightly, keeps them from flowing. She offers her hand. “I will shake your hand for that,” she says.
I smile. She does too. I take her hand as if to shake but our hands do not move. We touch and people pass by, close to us. She releases my hand and goes off, past me.
I do not turn to watch her and suddenly she is near me again, at my side.