Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

Returning to the story of his journey, Pham writes that the morning after camping in the dunes, he rides back to Phan Thiet to catch the train north. At a way station, officials detain him and demand almost six times the normal fare (for the ticket and bribes) because he is a Viet-kieu. He’s running out of money and doesn’t have what they want, but he thinks the train is the only way to get to Hanoi now. Riding his bike is too dangerous, and he’s weak from his recent bout with the stomach flu. The officials keep him in the station when the last train of the day rolls in. Just before it leaves, the stationmaster asks if he is ready to pay up. Defeated, he thinks about retreating to Vung Tau and scrapping his plans to go north. The conductor later takes pity on him, however, and says he will help him.

During the night, he tries to get Pham aboard trains that come through by saying they are cousins. Three turn him down, not wanting to take the risk. Finally, in the morning, he finds one that will accept Pham because one of the workers owes him a favor. The conductor, Hoang, reminds Pham not to let on that he’s a Viet-kieu or they will kick him off. The cargo supervisor, Tung, takes him to the cargo hold. They negotiate a fee and tell Pham to stay out of sight.

The next morning, Tung, whom Pham names “Redeyes” for his bloodshot drinker’s eyes, invites him into his cabin, where other workers gather around drinking rice wine. It’s a gesture of friendship, and Pham wants to gain their trust, so he joins in. They bond over shots. Soon, and while drunk, Pham confesses that he is a Viet-kieu. He writes, “Redeyes chuckles and says he knew I was lying the moment he set eyes on me, but, hey, what are friends for?” (209). They bring out food and continue to eat and drink until Pham vomits, sick from the alcohol. He naps during the day, waking to watch scenes of the countryside pass. When dusk comes, they all share a big meal and Pham tells them tales from his travels.

Pham gets sick again and has a hangover the next morning. While he’s lying in his bunk in the cargo hold, several workers cover him with blankets, on which they put luggage and baskets of fruit. Cops are coming for an inspection and they warn him to be silent. Pham hears a cop ask what is in some bags, and he knows they are talking about the pile on top of him. Redeyes says it’s nothing much, just gifts for his family, and taps out cigarettes and asks about the weather as a distraction. Then Pham hears him giving the cop money; they chat some more, and the cop doesn’t mention the bags again.

Shortly after, they are on their way again. Pham drifts off to sleep, and when he awakes, they are nearing Hanoi. They say their goodbyes over more rice wine, and two of the workers take him to help get past the station police. One takes his panniers, another walks the bike, and they sneak behind trains to the back gate. All is clear, so they head for the exit. Just then, they hear “Halt!” and several policemen emerge. 

This chapter continues with Pham’s father being arrested for child abuse. Taking advantage of a power outage one night, Chi escaped from the juvenile detention center and snuck back home, hiding in the yard. Pham and his younger brothers, Huy and Tien, noticed her outside and brought her some food and clothes. She told them she couldn’t come home, or their father would get into more trouble because he was being tried on child abuse charges. Instead, she said she would go to San Francisco, where she could hide out by blending in with the large Asian population in Chinatown. Pham gave her all the money he and his brothers had—a little more than two dollars—and she thanked them. When a noise came from inside, she dashed back into the shadows, saying she’d return in a few days. But she never did. Without Chi around, things returned to normal and charges against Pham’s father were dropped. They moved away and became more Americanized. As Pham writes, “we buried Chi into ourselves, locked her into the basements of our minds” (215). 

This short vignette describes a time back in Vietnam when Pham and Chi were home alone while their parents were away working. He was only five and she was 10. They were eating day-old food, sitting on a divan, when it began to rain heavily outside. They rushed out to play in the water with the other kids, laughing and splashing. Pham pulled down his shorts and peed into the water. Then Chi did the same, bragging that she could also pee standing up—and peed even farther than him. Pham writes that adults stood in doorways, looking at the innocent kids with envy.

Pham returns to the story of his train ride. Nabbed while sneaking out the back gate, he and the workers await the police who are walking across the station yard to them. The worker he calls “VC” nods to the other, who immediately takes off with the bike, and then he tells Pham to keep quiet and let him do the talking. VC turns to the main cop, smooth and obsequious, telling him that Pham is his cousin. The cop doesn’t believe him and thinks Pham is Chinese, grilling him and demanding to see his identification. Pham knows that if he shows this, their ruse is up, but he does anyway. Just then the cop’s superior shows up and asks Pham about his travels and his ties to the area. Pham tells him the truth about the bike trip and that his father is from Hanoi. The cop welcomes him to Hanoi, and all is okay. Pham and VC head out the gate where they find the other worker with Pham’s bike. Pham bids them goodbye and rides toward Hanoi.

In the nearest town, he finds a hotel and then goes next door for dinner. Back at his room, he goes to bed, safe from mosquitoes for once under a net. Half an hour later, someone pounds on his door, yelling, “This is the police. Open up!” (221). The policeman tells him to bring his papers and go downstairs, where they meet with the hotel owner. Foreigners cannot stay there, the cop tells him, because it is unsafe. He tells Pham he will escort him to another hotel down the street. Pham knows that hotel is much more expensive but, despite his protests, the cop orders him to be ready to leave in half an hour. When he leaves, the owner explains he was looking for a small bribe. Since Pham offered none, he had to follow through; now he will get a kickback at the other hotel for bringing them a foreign guest.

Pham won’t go along with it and packs in a hurry to leave, taking to the streets on his bike. He happens upon a night market closing up. Riding in the dark through narrow roads, he crashes into a bin pushed by two trash collectors. They help him up and ask what he’s doing there. When he explains, they take him to a nearby inn, where he finally gets to spend the night in peace.

The next morning, he bikes into Hanoi amid a throng of commuters and students. He buys some rice cakes and goes to the nearest park. Then he goes in search of the tourist area, knowing that a lot of ex-pat backpackers come through. He meets up with a group of young people from all over the world and stays put for a while. They explore the city together, with him as translator, and he enjoys being with Westerners again, just hanging out. 

During Pham’s stay in Hanoi, he visits the mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh’s body lies. It has become a tourist attraction, and Pham describes the more casual Westerners mingling with sober, mournful-like Vietnamese. Much of the chapter then details Ho’s life. Despite the differences between North and South Vietnam during the war, all Vietnamese respect Ho for his ability to cast off the colonial powers of France, Japan, and the United States. He worked himself up from humble beginnings, traveled widely in the West, and then returned to Vietnam at age 51 to fight for his country’s independence.

Pham befriends a deaf and mute boy he calls “No-name” who hangs around the foreign-tourist district where Pham is staying. No one knows where he lives, but all the foreign ex-pats who come through take a liking to him. Pham describes how No-name will appear out of nowhere and follow them around, flashing a big happy grin. He writes that the boy “is no Oliver Twist who picks your pocket. He is much more dangerous. He steals your heart, and when you leave, your heart breaks as roundly as his” (232). Pham stays in Hanoi longer than he would have because of No-name.

Most mornings he and No-name meet at a café for breakfast, and No-name insists on paying his share. One day, through his unique series of gestures, he asks Pham about a particular woman, one of the tourists he had come to know. When Pham indicates that she left to return home, the boy turns away and quietly weeps, putting his head down on his folded arms. He leaves before eating anything. Pham knows that one day he, too, will disappear like the other tourist, disappointing No-name. He concludes, “And some morning, somewhere a world away, I will look at the sun angling through a window and I will think of a boy called No-name” (233).

This chapter returns to the story of Pham’s youth in California and starts with the words, “We’re gonna rumble tonight” (234). They were spoken by his friend Cu-Den, referring to a fight planned for that evening with a group of Mexican teens. By then, in 1985, Pham was a junior in high school. His family had moved out of their rental in San Jose and scraped together enough money to buy their own home. He was supposed to be doing homework with his friend, but no one else was home, so they just hung out and had something to eat.

The Mexican kids were angry about getting blamed for stealing equipment from the school gym a few days earlier—something that Pham’s Vietnamese friends were actually responsible for. The school was nearby, and Pham explains that he and Cu-Den were at the latter’s house when a few other kids they hung out with burst through the door, yelling at them to turn off the lights. The carried duffel bags of stuff from the gym and said the cops would be in the neighborhood any minute. They bragged to Pham and Cu-Den that their strongest friend, Lee, had torn the door to the gym off its hinges when none of the others could budge it. They were broke and wanted to sell the loot for some money, but Pham and Cu-Den were hoping to go to college, so they hadn’t joined them for fear of punishment.

Pham explains that his relationship with his father had deteriorated over the years. He and his brothers were constantly fighting; as the oldest, he tried to boss them around and they had begun to fight back. One day a few years earlier, while they were all in the car with their father, one brother started a scuffle with another and their father wrongly blamed Pham. He stopped the car, ordered Pham out, and drove away. Pham had to walk 10 or 15 miles home, which took all day. Once he was back in the neighborhood, he passed their house and climbed a hill nearby. He considered running away like Chi had, but it got dark and cold, and he eventually went home. From then on, however, he avoided his father and hardly talked to him. 

The kids planned the fight that night for ten o’clock, scheduled late due to their night job. Pham and Cu-Den were both on the tennis team but needed money for uniforms and equipment, so they and another friend named Manh worked as office cleaners for Manh’s uncle. They had fun at work that night, drinking soda from the office refrigerator and teasing each other about girls and their love life. Manh’s uncle got them burgers and fries on the way home and, sitting around eating back at Cu-Den’s house, talk turned to a girl at the high school who had passed as a boy some years back (referring to Chi). Pham’s friends had both heard of the story, but when asked, Pham feigns ignorance. He changes the subject by grabbing a baseball bat and getting the others psyched for the fight.