The next morning the phone had not rung, and so he went out to get fried rice and two orange juices for his breakfast. The swarm of cyclo and motorcycle drivers that always rushed to meet him shouted: Does you forget her?
Never, he said.
Among them was one who closely observed him and his, affairs; this man slept in his cyclo facing the hotel, opening his eyes whenever anyone passed in or out. On that third morning without Vanna the cyclo driver smiled evilly and said: And last night you sleep your wife?
The other thrill-chasers drew in breath and listened.
It gave him particular pleasure to look the man in the face and reply: Of course. My wife is with me every night. She always has been and always will be. She's my wife.
Later she came back to him, that day or another day; he didn't remember anymore, and why should it matter? When he came into the lobby and saw her sitting tensely with another girl awaiting him he knew that none of it had been her fault, that the misunderstandings would never stop, that he would never ever stay with her, that he loved her violently (he was very ill now with the same headaches and fevers that she had), and he took her so gently upstairs and kissed her. There was another night when he had to bring the desk clerk up to interpret again and the man said:
Please, sir, she say to you: She afraid for old age have no house. She say please buy for her a nice house. She afraid now go your country, better she stay here.
How much would that be?
Forty pieces of gold.
And how much is forty pieces of gold in dollars these days?
Seventeen dollar, sir. No. Forty-two. No. One thousand fifteen dollar. No. One eight seven hundred.
Oh. I knew that all along.
He was extremely sick now and could barely stand. The only other thing that he later remembered was that the next time his wife disappeared he'd gone to a house of Vietnamese prostitutes to get shaved, wanting to imagine that she was shaving him like that first time, so of course he did not even get a woman but instead was presented to a very stern man who wielded an immense straight razor and suddenly he knew that the man was going to cut him. The man was almost finished now. The razor had rasped over his lip and across his naked sweating throat. The man was shaving his cheek now and he gazed into the man's face and the man smiled unpleasantly and by reflex he began to smile back and at once the razor sank deeply into his cheek.
On a melancholy night in the hills, my companion's stove sputtered and extruded wiggling yellow flames from behind the weeds. The moon was the only happy thing; and it was out of reach, above a slanting black ridge. Another ridge slanted the opposite way to meet the first in a V. This second ridge had been tinted greenish-gray by the moon in demarcation of its separateness. Whereas the first ridge could not be construed as anything but a silhouetted phantasm, the second ridge was as evil as doom. My companion did not see or know this, nor did I tell him, even when the ridge began to unlock itself: what would have been the use? Along its shoulder and down its front, black tree-balls waited out the night. I am generally fond of trees on account of their gentle unconsciousness, but these I feared. They squatted there with a purpose, as if they might be demons lurking with their heads on their knees, perhaps planning to inch down the hill come moonset, and get me. Either they would not harm my companion or else his fate was immutable, because he could not see them, so there continued to be no reason to speak out. Evil black cabins, gutted and stinking, hid like turds among the tall wet grass by the creek, or proclaimed their wickedness on the rock piles. Inside them, everything had been ripped from the walls. They were dark, and they stank. They were horrible. The walls had been cut with hatchets and blown out with shotguns. The windows were smashed, the stovepipes ripped out, and the thresholds piled with plaster. Every fixture had been gutted. The floorboards were stained with deer blood where lazy hunters had drained their kills. Flies had come and gone, but there was still a stale sweetish smell.
