Train to Hue

A friendly grandfather, grandmother and their g-daughter are on the train going to Saigon to visit friends and relatives. Born in Hanoi, she’s been studying in Czechoslovakia for seven years. Sprawling Hanoi is new for her.

We roll though night lulled by the rhythm of click-clack rail language. At 4 a.m. a bone white moon dances with clouds and silent stars over rice paddies, forests and black mountains.

I went to the dining car for java at dawn. I saw a Hobbit inside a dark blue hooded sweatshirt framing wisps of brown hair, angular face and perfection facing a woman.

Wow you are a beautiful elf, I said. She looked up, smiling. Thank you.

I join her and her mom. They were away from Switzerland for five weeks, doing the SE Asia circuit. Simone, 19, is sincere and direct with piercing green eyes. She will begin a Hotel & Tourism management school in Zurich in the fall. She’s been traveling the planet since the age of two.

Her mom is a journalist and businesswoman. No nonsense. World wise. She leaves to find her husband.

We talk about the hospitality business and attention to detail. It’s called MBWA, I said, Management by walking around. I worked in Hyatt, Shangri-La and Ramada International operations. It’s about guest service and marketing. Get out of your office and on the floor. Get a head in the bed.

I’m really excited to learn so much, she said. You will make an excellent General Manager. I hope so, if I do I will give you a meal and bed.

Her stepfather wanders in after dreaming. He’s a professional cellist, teacher, diver and photographer. We talk about music. The cello is closest to the human voice, he said. In an opera when the music drops in a romantic or high drama point it’s the cello you hear. He mentions Jackie Du Pre and her genius. She did it all at 42 yeah, it’s strange for me and other professional musicians, after the performance and all the applause it feels so strange to return to a hotel room alone.

We met by chance on purpose with destiny dancing in the wood paneled dining car, a memory of an era with slow meandering train travel.

Hue was the ancient imperial capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945. We walked to the Citadel near the Perfume River and across a bridge toward long walled interiors. It’s filled with exhibits, temples, rooms, black and white photographs, art objects and paintings. One image shows an arena where they staged fights between elephants and tigers.

It rains heavy and the women disappear. Sam and I shelter under a pagoda roof with a young Vietnamese couple. She teaches poetry. Sam asked her to tell us a poem.

Thunder & Lightning. She jumps. Rain pours on fields, old marbled stones inside green.

Initially shy she recites a poem. It is musical and mysterious. It is about love and two people missing each other. Her voice is strong. She feels this poem through her, it is her life and history, all the creation stories and songs and poetry she learned growing up. Her voice is angelic. Her melody, rhythm and voice flows as rain thunders. Lightning flashes and dances. We applaud her performance. She is retiring, relieved.

Sam and I sing and perform Singing In The Rain for them, circling around stone pillars, twirling with the lyrics, feeling the music. Rain dance. They laugh.

The intensity of the rain slows. We walk through drizzle. The sun reflects diamonds off stones inside shallow water pools. Prussian blue skies decorate mountains. Sun drenched fields lie emerald green. A solitary gray elephant stands near a banyan tree anticipating a golden stalking tiger.

We walk over a bridge, over a river, over a world.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

V Train

At dusk I severed a Hanoi alley to a lake for fresh air and sky to sit at a motorcycle repair shop with iced java. Two females dressed to kill using their hot naked sex passed on a cycle negotiating potholes, dust, and rocks with SMS direct.

A woman burned paper money in an old can to celebrate her new house, prosperity, honor and respect for her ancestors. Your location cannot be determined, said SMS.

On the balcony with pink flowering bougainvillea I enjoy green tea and white yellow clouds with quick rainstorms sharing whistle songs with free raptors as others died on balconies in cages.

After two weeks avoiding whizzing whirling dervish motorcycles, I ventured to the train station before high noon. It is a long faded yellow French cement block. I passed a window with a red sign, Brigade Leaders Collect Team Tickets Here.

I am a leader without a brigade. The narrow room has bolted blue plastic seating and numbered glass windows. At the end of the room next to the W.C. a huge mirror in a heavy brown lacquered frame creates an illusion of surreal space.

Counter #2 is where foreigners get tickets. Options include soft sleeper, soft seat, hard seat and no seat. I’m taking the SE1 overnight train from Hanoi to Hue, the ancient capital on the Perfume River known for art and architecture. Resplendent.

Omar asked me to burn his book A Century is Nothing at Phu Bai south of Hue in a symbolic fire ceremony.

I would like a ticket to Hue please. One way.

A woman behind thick glasses said, Soft sleeper.

It wasn’t a question it was a statement. She knows foreigners taking the night train want to sleep, have children take care of them when they are old and dying of loneliness while cooking over coal fires or forest shards admiring natural scenery before it’s gobbled up by corrupt companies as powerless locals improve their standard of living by hustling a little middle class economic dream.

Tonight, said the woman, sharply.

No, Sunday please.

She pointed to a calendar on the counter.

Number 19.

Yes.

She punched in the numbers. She pulled out a pink ticket.

That’s 533 Dong or $33. She showed me the number on her calculator. I paid. She handed me the ticket and dropped crumpled bills on the counter like leaves fluttering from a dying tree. Boredom enveloped her.

It leaves at 1930.

Thank you. Track #9 Car #1 Room 15/16.

Where are you from? said a Hanoi pedicab man.

I am a ghost from everywhere.

What is your country?

My country is my hand – see, five rivers.

How does it feel to be moving or sitting free and anonymous with laughter dancing down all the days? Excellent. Where do I park this empty vehicle?

*

Memory spoke: My mind is empty, said the sad old man in his small dusty Istanbul leather shop. My mother is 65. She has cancer. She has tried chemo and radiation therapy. I don’t know what to do. People come into my shop asking questions, What’s this price, How much is this, too many questions. How can I help them, what can I do?

Perhaps, said the stranger, You should just be with her. Give her the comfort she needs now. Give her water. Give her your love. Sit with her.

Yes, he said with sad deep eyes, It is difficult to be here now, gesturing around his shop crammed with shoes and bags and leather aroma.

*

A Turkish train chased moon, seawater and oil freighters. Two veiled lovers held hands at a station. Heavy green and purple grapes draped fences around barbwire stations. A sad long-faced man waiting for his life to unfold stared at the ground.

He’s married to his mother and her tomato-based history of love, regret, unemployment and zero opportunities.

A commuter ferry sailed across the Bosporus in elemental light. Visions of a Blue Mosque, spires and silver domes sparkled as blue waves swelled hearing artists carve Churning The Sea of Milk at Angkor Wat in the 9th century.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged