Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"Another story," she said, smiling again. "One of my brothers went to the army recruiter. He came home crying, because he didn't have enough age or weight. He was just a small boy—too young. He kept crying, 'I want to be a soldier!' My other brother was accepted. He was so happy to be given a chance to fight."

"What did your parents think?"

"They were happy. My mother was so happy she went to a lot of trouble to find the right ingredients for spring rolls for him. It wasn't easy in Hanoi then! She had to search everywhere. We had a party. Everyone was happy, my brother most of all, celebrating that at last he was a soldier. He was about seventeen."

We were standing beside the big windows of the museum, the Buddhas and porcelains behind us, one of the more formal and completely European-looking neighborhoods of the city out the window. The rain-streaked panes gave the old French buildings across the courtyard the blur and muted color of an impressionist painting.

"It's a beautiful city," I said.

"Hanoi is losing its beauty," Mrs. Vuong said. "It was so quiet before. It was smaller. Just bicycles. No motorbikes. Now it's noisy, and the people are not Hanoi people. They're from the countryside. They don't know the city."

She thought a moment, adding, "And we are changing. We were poor but we had spirit. I knew my father so well. I knew his life. I knew what he needed. My children don't know what we've been through. I try to tell them. It's impossible for them to understand. I can't explain it to them."

"But aren't these good times?" I was thinking of the markets that were packed with consumer goods, full of food. I was also thinking of the vitality of the country, the tremendous sense of pride, no visible poverty—nothing like the present-day wreckage of Cambodia and its demoralized people.

"Yes, there's more money, more food, but less spirit. I read books, but my two girls are always using computers. They don't read. They love American films." And with a kind of wonderment and resignation, she said, "They want to go to America."

"It's easy to get there now," I said, but I was just gabbling. I was thinking of the bombing, the hunger, the death, the severed finger with the wedding ring on it, the party for a soldier, with specially made spring rolls on platters, celebrating the departure of a teenager, off to fight Americans.

"The world is small," Mrs. Vuong was saying.

I said, "Do you hate me?" and realized as I was saying it that I was becoming tearful, which was a kind of nausea too, I suppose, absurd self-disgust, as my eyes filled.

"No, I don't hate you," Mrs. Vuong said, but that made me feel worse.

She was looking serene, as she had when I first saw her, the small slight figure in the museum, like a dancer. But now she was a little distracted, probably thinking of her daughters in front of computers.

"That was a different time."

***

PASSING THE OPERA HOUSE the night before I left Hanoi, I saw people gathering on the steps for a performance, a play advertised as Huyen Thoai Cuoc Song (Myth of the Living), by the Vietnamese playwright Le Quy Duong.

Finding the ticket office closed, I walked around outside and looked for an explanation. The only English-speaker was a tall, smiling young man in a suit and tie. He had the look of someone who had a ticket. He was beaming from the top of the long flight of steps in front of the floodlit opera house.

"How do I get a ticket to this play?" I asked.

"You can't," he said. "It's by invitation only."

"What a shame. Is it a musical?"

"Some music. Some film. Mixed media."

"In Vietnamese?"

"No. Body language," he said.

"I'd like to see it," I said. "Who is Le Quy Duong?"

"I am Le Quy Duong," he said.

"So why not invite me to your play?" I said. "I'm a writer too."

He looked amused at my presumption and gave me an envelope with an invitation inside.

His play was, as he said, mixed media, full of gongs and drums, with dazzling lights, mime, masks, and floating smoke. The opera house was full. I sat back and tried to divine the creation myth amid the swordplay, the prancing skeletons, and the love story. The thing had gusto and was so full of life, so plumped with startling events and sonorous music, that it didn't need explanation.

Afterwards, as I was walking to the lobby, a man said, "Can you be interviewed?"

"You know who I am?"

"You are the man who..." He faltered, then said, "Le Quy Duong says you speak English."

"That's me. I speak English."

I praised the play and then headed into the street, and not twenty yards from the opera house a motorcycle skidded to a halt next to me. The beauty on board revved her engine, hitched herself forward to make room for me, and said, "You want boom-boom?"

I thanked her and kept walking.

***