Cultural Cringe

I undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit, of course :)

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Kayleen White

Cultural Cringe

The clichés she’d read all described heat as a thing that hit you from the outside, as “a wall of heat”; but this was different - this was an monster that reached inside you and pulled a plug to instantly deny you all energy, almost as if your very life force was being held hostage against you leaving this place.
She was proud of her strength – she liked it, liked being strong, competent, in control of herself and able to move with a lithe energy. But that had left her now, and the only litheness was in the people around, the people who knew this heat, who lived in it and grew up seemingly immune to it’s insidious attentions. Thank God she hadn’t had her period as well on this trip.
She had a job to do, so she still to play a role: the capable foreigner who was here to pass on her knowledge, and show how to work the foreigner’s equipment. She’d been well briefed by her boss, so she’d been polite, she’d waited in queues, she shown respect to the elderly – she’d even been taught a few words of Vietnamese.
Cháo bá, for the women, and cháo ông for the men. Hello.
She supposed it had helped, but it had been her downfall, as well.
Her boss had been very clear about how she was to conduct herself: “Remember, while you’re in Há Nôi, you’re not just representing us, you’ll be the basis by which all Australians are judged. Right or wrong, many of these people won’t see another Australian, another person from Úc, and I’d like to think that they’d have a good impression of us.”

So be polite, and restrained, and conduct yourself well – and here’s a few token words to show that you’re a safe, semi-civilised foreigner. But the words had grown, and the growing had been her downfall. It seemed right, somehow, to get to know people you had to talk to them – although she’d communicated well with the Chinese workers with nothing but a few diagrams and the language of working with machinery in common.
At least there’d been no problems with her being a woman – not like back home. No fights with traditionalist parents or possessive brothers here.

Thuyên probably had parents – and, given what she’d seen of families here, she would have had many brothers and sisters. What had they thought of her coming to the city? Did they known she worked in a hotel, cleaning the rooms of foreigners?

It wasn’t a big hotel. It was a small place, looking much like the other constructions thrown casually up in the thirst for growth and recovery. Occasionally she saw some of the older buildings that had survived without damage, and sometimes the buildings that were basically still just standing ruins of war. Inside, the place was neat and clean, and the paint plain and well enough patched – the rich timber furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl actually contributed to the sense of elegant decay she felt, but the staff had gone out of their way to make her feel welcome. They’d even started making the noodle soup she had for breakfast for her – the pho bá and pho ga. And it had been Thuyên’s broad, wonderful smile that welcomed her to her first breakfast there.
Thuyên.

She’d wanted to learn more of their language, the language with the tones that were so hellishly difficult for people from Úc, as they called Australia, so she’d started chatting with the young man who was then cleaning her room – work at the site she had come there to attend to was erratic, and she often had many hours to pass as she chose, whether that was wandering the streets buying postcards from the street beggars, hiding from the monster in her air conditioning, or learning – or teaching. The night porter was more assiduous than she at seeking words - English words for him.

They all seemed to want to speak English so desperately. Her boss had said you pick the generations by their second language: the oldest generation spoke French, the next Russian, and now they were choosing English – the key, to them, of being part of the glamorous, prosperous western economy. She wanted to see their culture, like the thousand year old university, with its stone carvings with the names of graduates: they wanted the key to her economy.

Thuyên was a key – a lithe, graceful key in her loose, flowing slacks and blouse, whose cool and effortless movements in this sweat box dripped an unconscious sensuality. The young man had struggled, and then he had brought in Thuyên, and said, in his faltering way, that she was another cleaner, knew more of the English language and could better teach her.

Thuyên had said her English language skills came from her husband, but having met her husband, his skills were, sadly, a bit overrated. She understood his attempts to bluff his way into jobs on the alleged strengths of his English, though: almost everyone here was poor, by her standards, and getting jobs with connections to the west was a way out of that trap. She admired his bravery, and his commitment to his family.
Her boss had said “You won’t get to meet any of the local people in their homes, of course.” Well, she had. She’d made a deal with Thuyên: teach me your language, and I’ll take some photo’s of your kids. It had given her more time with this shy beauty – more time to torment herself.
She didn’t know what the local views on lesbians were, but given their general conservatism, with the insistence on long sleeves and slacks (she’d been warned that bare limbs were considered disrespectful), and the recent years of puritanical communism, she suspected the views were rather dim.
And she was a stranger in a their land. If she got into trouble, who would help her?
She would normally have just shut that part of herself down for this short trip, but there had been something in Thuyên’s manner, something that she read as a hint – or maybe it was just her desperate longing. Sometimes she tried to reason with herself: what would she have been like, if she’d grown up in a culture torn by war, and fanaticism, and poverty? At other times she just called herself a fool.

But there had been yesterday, when Thuyên’s words had failed her – or maybe it was the accent. She hadn’t understood at the time, but later she had thought, was I being asked if I had a boyfriend or a girlfriend in Úc? The thought had left her in an agony of un-satiated lust – and a battle royal with her conscience. She’d never had this much trouble before, being celibate for a week or two – and any girlfriends at home had seemed quite pleased by her fervour when she came home, but now she ached, and was so tempted … She just didn’t know – it was all the doubt and uncertainty of sussing out whether any desirable woman was lesbian, or bi, with all the terrifying uncertainties of a culture where she was told to expect a dossier on her – and she couldn’t even speak properly to her!

Well, the philosophers said to live in the moment; and her moment now was the agony of waiting till tomorrow’s torture, tomorrow’s macabre three headed dance with manners and caution on one hand, desire and Thuyên on the other, and her in the cultural no-woman’s land in the middle.

© Kayleen White, 2007