Chapter one
This a hotel room, with the smell of perfume and ambiguous warm light. This kind of perfume reminds me of the men with suits and their fake smile. The smell of it is neither rose nor fig. This is something artificial, beyond nature, covered with gold and is hollow inside. Just outside the blind, a palm tree spreads its leaves and holds the dropping rain. The Mekong sleeps quietly in the palm of Saigon, the muddy river flowed peacefully in the secret, unspeakable darkness. Through the gaps in the folds of shutters, I see the mother of Saigon flowing with pace, the glittering flash of waves shines and vanish at last. It is just an ordinary humid Friday night, Saigon, 2001, me sitting alone with the wild thought running. It’s Early morning, the city is waking up, with the noise of the corner vendor. Waking up. I rolled those two words on my tongue, guessing that I’ll never complete this movement. So does my father.
He died a week ago.
I had a vivid picture running through my mind. My father, sitting in the bathtub, dead. His body was thick like the whale, and the pool of the perfume is the ocean. Of course, he didn’t die in this room, but this hotel room I’m in, reminds me of my father’s death. My memory and present intercourse, overlap, and form a new order, the third space. I look around this bathroom, which is shining and bright. It seems like total paradise, with warm yellow wallpaper and shimmering lights, which blocks the madness, darkness, and sadness away. I even think of my mother’s womb. It probably like the bathtub, which gives me a reassuring feeling. Laying in the bathtub is like re-entering my mother’s womb, where I am protected, and no one could harm me. My father, died in the bathtub with a three-piece-suit on. There was little blood, and the warm water licked his wound on the wrist, warmly embrace his whale-like body. I felt dizzy, standing in this hotel bathroom, encountering my father’s death scene out of the blue. It was suicide, the bath whispering to me, you know what’s going on. Within a second, the blood seemed to gush out of the tub and the toilet. Red, moist, with the taste of rust. I felt a strong impulse of throwing up, not because I’m feeling sentimental about my father. It’s the connection that I found inside me, the interflow of my father and me, between death and life. It never fades away. Every time I smoke, I shout, I cry, I feel him. He is growing inside of me, gently eaten up my conscious. The bathtub looks back at me with a wicked smile. I throw up and spit out the bile until my stomach is empty. I formed a habit of pushing myself on the edge.
It’s just the usual nightmare, breaking out through the unbearable darkness and silence, sweaty and uncatchable. In the midst of the absolute silence, the crickets were heard outside the window, as if from a dark cave. This montage of sounds and pictures drives me crazy. The volcano explodes in the early morning window, rumbling. The ghost of the country, eyes covered, saliva dripping down to the yellow earth. There is a pain inside the pupil. I’m talking about the night, the pupil of the ghost, I’m scared, scared. This great fear has the power of a tsunami, I whispered again, I am afraid, I am afraid, and I will continue to stay that way. The fear is constant. I said one more word. I said: love. He spread out his big white palm, stood in the corner of the shining hotel room, and said, there is no way out. I blink, I say: love. Thus, I blink in the mist of tears. I’ve been staring at his white palms. I’ve been here before, before time.
I fetch out a cigar and go for the lighter. Due to the dream, my back is wet and sticky. It takes me three tries to light that cigar with shaky hand. A strong smell of tobacco fills up the room and washes up my veins. The reality comes back to me like waves. The end of the cigar shines in the darkness like a blinking eye. Smoking is never my style of thing，but I could never ease the urge to grab one. Maybe I am still imitating my old man. He only smoke Marlboro and will offer me to purchase it for him. It was a long time ago. The room has lightened up a little, the rest of the place is covered with ambiguous light. There are quite a lot of bottles placed on the shelf. Bombay Sapphire, Absolute Vodka and Ballantine. I’m not picky on liquor as long as they can take away my consciousness. “You had bad dreams.” She emerges out of the mist. “It’s about my childhood.” I lied. “I bet it’s wonderful.” “Of course, only if you find my dad who died in the bathtub charming.” She blinked with doubt. “Sometimes I cannot follow your trace of thought, Joe.” I give her the sweetest smile that she’ll ever get in her whole life and put the bottle down. I told her she doesn’t have to unless she has the interest to be my psychoanalyst. She says: “If you dream of your father’s death, then you must hate his gut.” I raise an eyebrow, not denying. “You will make a very professional therapist.” We both laugh out loud. Oh, childhood, we’ll never climb to the top of that mountain, won’t we? It’s all about childhood, the violence hidden in the green bushes, rock’n’roll in one lonely room, the fresh Nosebleeds and bruising in 4 a.m. We haven’t spoken a word since then.
She stays with me for one night. In the morning I walk her to the door gate. A stranger is waiting outside, biting his bleeding fingers. He seems around six inch tall, with white shirt, skinny like a skeleton. I can even see his bones shining inside his translucent skin. He seems to be, sad. Skin white, eyes sharp, reminds me of the delicate china cup. He is wearing cologne, the basic type. I fail to resist the impulse of smelling him. All of the sudden, I see that bloody bathtub again. This is that smell, like gold, like silk. Like my father. I don’t have the duty to open up to a total stranger. But I did anyway.
“Orange juice?”
“I might need a little extra something in my juice.”
“Whiskey that is.”
He nods and sit down at the bar, seems to be neurotic and fidget. So am I. We remain silence for quite some time. During this time, I rule him out as a killer. If he comes here to take my weak life, he should have done it a long time ago. Even if he did that, I wouldn’t mind, I might even give him a thank-you card six feet under. He did not speak for a long time but looked at me quietly. I felt his eyes run through my flaxen hair, my gray hoodie, and the veins and cuts on my hands. Jesus Christ, he’s like a human X-ray machine, scanning out my soul. Suddenly he started crying, and I didn’t know what to do, so I lit a cigarette and waited for him to settle down. I hope this guy’s not gonna say something like: “you look exactly like your mother.” I’m not ready to meet my mother’s old lover yet, and this isn’t the Harry Potter Show.
“You look exactly like your father.”
Chapter Two
They met in Saigon, 1982. Around that time, my father just moved to Vietnam to start his first business there, about processing and manufacturing. Vietnam’s labor costs back then reached its historical price floor, he grasped this opportunity and became one of the Vietnam’s richest businessmen. Since I was born, we lived in an atmospheric villa, with blue exterior and white, creamy trim, just beside the Mekong River. These are just later stories. I asked him how Saigon was different 20 years ago than it is now. He said Saigon was always wet, the huge leaves were always green, and the old people always looked sad. Other than that, nothing remains the same in Saigon. They were close for a while, and then they drifted apart. Harry returned to France in 1985, my father married the following year, and I was born the same year. Harry was slowly spitting out each word, holding a smoky gun in his left hand and taking a puff as he spoke. It was hard to see his features through the gray smoke, and as the smoke rose, so did his emotions. He is a middle-aged man with bags under his eyes and a lot of hair, and I couldn’t imagine what he looked like 20 years ago, walking with my father through the hustle and bustle of Saigon.
Lou 
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