Kartika Review 14

The previous night Hoang had asked, “Why are you still here?” Mr. Le was taken aback. He thought his friend was asking him to leave. Then he clarified, “In Viet Nam. You live in America now. Why stay here for so long?”

“I won’t leave until I see Cu Rua,” answered Mr. Le. “The gods owe me their blessing.”

Hoang sighed heavily, rose and left Mr. Le on the temple floor. His robes disappeared through a door and a moment later reappeared from another, pen and paper in hand. The monk floated back to the ground, eased effortlessly into lotus, and scribbled. “I have something to show you, my friend. Instead of this temple, go here tomorrow evening.”

There was an address on the paper. Mr. Le had looked at Hoang with confusion. “This is the old gambling district.”

“It is.”

In the 40s, the district had been a seedy place where men secretly retreated to late at night, after their wives had fallen asleep, to gamble on card games and cock fights. Hoang had been a regular, although Mr. Le hadn’t known why until after the revolution broke out. There had been whispers in that the intellectuals traded coded essays through the card decks, whole discourses on rights and injustices. The coup had started on playing cards.

The address was folded into Mr. Le’s back pocket as he collected seaweed. When he was done for the day, the sun was still slung high into the sky. He waited on the water for an extra hour, hoping and praying for any sign of the turtle. His thoughts found drifted to Mrs. Le, the clouds forming a perfect picture of her. And this caused him to double over and weep. The surface waves formed a carpet of mitts to catch the sound of his cries. He cursed the gods before he left; he was owed this blessing. As Mr. Le rowed angrily back across the vast and godless surface of the lake, his eyes snagged on something in the water. Something moving. Something goliath burst open the skin of the lake.

Mr. Le sped his moped to Hoang’s address. The gambling district had dilapidated since Mr. Le left Hanoi. The buildings, squeezed tightly side-by-side, seemed to stand in sad deflated postures. Mr. Le wondered 12