Electricity

 

We spent the better part of a week with Toa (pronounced “twah” like three in French) but until that night at the bia hoi, we really didn’t know him from any of the other twenty-something young men we had met in Vietnam.

He was assigned to us as our real estate agent, taking us out to three or four potential houses a day. We had been to a few other agencies and so we knew quality when it crossed our path. instead of the usual dark, severely vertical buildings the others took us to, with horribly mismatched living room sets, french doors of cheap frosted glass, and chintzy formica kitchens, Toa took us to tastefully lived-in houses, both french and mediterranean style. Kitchens that shared ceiling space with spacious living rooms, wrap around patios and inner courtyards. huge potted plants and framed batiks that came with each address, gratis.

His agency was a class act all the way, with prices to match. By the third day out with Toa, I noticed my stomach clenching whenever the conversation turned to dollar amounts. We’d be in the master bedroom and I’d be running screenplays of morning tea-and-toast on the adjoining patio, or the office I’d convert into the full-fledged studio space that was but a pipe dream in San Francisco. and then the entire scene would be deflated by the price tag, which though ridiculously inexpensive by San Francisco standards, was still not in sync with the budgetary expectations we had of Southeast Asia.

But it was still a kick to go out with Toa. His English was excellent and he had a wry, deadpan sense of humor. He was also intuitive, steering clear of the Chinese hovels and eventually avoiding the expensive villas as well in order to show us the rentals he knew were within our price range. Besides, he paid the cab fare and if anything we could be looky-loo’s for the day, gaining insight into the housing possibilities we had little knowledge of in this country.

On the fifth day, we saw the one. A typical three-story vertical layout with the accompanying muscle-cramping stair climb. But the place had 11-foot ceilings which made each floor seem more spacious than simply a room on either side of the landing. Large patios off each floor, front and back. Ridiculously large French colonial furniture. If I lived another thirty years, I couldn’t imagine amassing enough knick-knacks to fill the floor-to-ceiling armoir that dominated the living room. But it was entertaining to imagine trying.

Keep a woman cooped up in your average closet-sized San Francisco apartment for long enough, and even a good sized duplex will look appealing to her. This house, however, was beyond anything I had imagined. Yet not, as it turned out, beyond my means. But we still had quite a bit of bargaining to do below the asking price.

The house was a bit further from town and miles from the picturesque gated communities that dotted West Lake to the north. It was on a quiet cul-de-sac with an equal Vietnamese to expat ratio. And the landlord seemed to like us, especially after Gary took the pressure of the English language off his cerebral cortex by speaking French. This was a language in which they could stumble along in an equally clumsy manner.

I wanted the house.  wanted the house with a desire I hadn’t felt for a material object in a long, long time. On that first afternoon, climbing and reclimbing the stairs, opening cabinets for the third and fourth time, mentally arranging furniture and placing personal belongings, I made note of the fierceness I felt for acquiring this house. I had to have it, there was no other alternative.

From somewhere outside myself, I felt my jaw tighten, my feet plant themselves ready for battle. I was fascinated and slightly ashamed by my resolve but not so ashamed as to uncross my arms across my chest or keep from giving Gary the look which meant we can’t blow this one. Over the last six weeks, I’d been more than willing to walk away from taxi cabs and bags of bananas when the bargaining volley hit a brick wall, but this was different. There could be no walls with this one.

We spent over an hour examining the house, top to bottom, with Toa, the landlord, and the landlord’s wife trailing close behind. Finally the five of us came to a standstill in the middle of the living room, facing each other in a small circle. Toa was translating for us, English to Vietnamese and back again. The asking price was $750. Gary and I discussed our counter-offer in hushed whispers sprinkled with the Thai language which served as our coded version of Pig Latin when we wanted to keep our conversation private.

We said $600 with all the feigned nonchalance we could muster. Toa translated to the stony-faced wife, the actual owner of the property, a fact that the husband apologetically made clear to us from the moment we stepped through the front door. She seemed affronted by our response. An incomprehensible flurry of Vietnamese surrounded us for what seemed like an eternity. I bit my lower lip, tried to keep a poker-face. Toa pulled us aside and said they were willing to compromise: halfway between 750 and 600 was the number 670. Gary, deep in the throes of market bargaining as if he were merely buying a pair of sandals, instinctively threw out the number 640. Toa looked at the wife’s glacial expression and shook his head adamantly. Okay, 650. Toa gave us a look as if to say, take the 670 and run with it. Gary put on his most charming grin and said, how about 660? Now both Toa and I were giving him the same look.

We agreed on $670 a month, everyone shook hands, we made a date to sign the lease, and then we took Toa out for dinner to celebrate.

We toasted the house and the bargaining process and anything else we could think of to raise our glasses to. At 25 cents a mug, the beer was free-flowing. After about the fourth round and twice as many twists in the conversation, the topic turned to childhood, specifically experiences with danger. Of course, we each had a personal anecdote of childhood mishap or injury. But Toa went first and he spoke for a long time without taking a sip.

He was the youngest of three brothers, and one day when he about five years old, he went to his favorite swimming hole with his brothers and some of their friends. He swam there every day during the summer and so he knew the water well. The places to dive where the water was deepest and the dumping sites along the shore to avoid. He had a favorite spot he went to every time, a corner of the shore where he’d play air-guitar with a loose wire hanging from one of the wooden poles that circled the area.

On this particular day he reached for his makeshift guitar string, and that’s the last he remembers. His only memory now a thick and pinkish scar running the length of his thumb and up across his pointer finger. That day, the wire was live. His brothers came running along the shore and pulled him out of the water, laid him down on the ground and rolled him in the dirt. They got him home and Toa spent several weeks with his right hand wrapped in a bandage.

A few days later, Toa’s family learned that a mistake in the neighborhood’s electric grid had activated the wire. But the current had flowed sporadically and so had spared Toa his life as well as his brothers who had reached into the water to pull him out.

Toa told the story as if haunted. He looked down at the scar for a long time and we sipped our beers in silence. Finally he looked up. The electricity, it went out of me. I don’t know where it went.

Three days later, we moved into our house. A crazy, hectic day of suitcases and taxi cabs and heavy shopping bags. Friends of ours were coming over in the evening to drop off their own bags before leaving on the night train for the northern mountains. We hadn’t even had time to properly introduce ourselves to the house, to let it get used to our voices and our rhythms and our peculiar smells, and already we were bringing in more strangers.

We were exhausted but we played host with Rebecca and Ashley as best we could. Poured drinks and laid out snacks and brought them up to the top-floor patio where we sat as awkwardly as they did on furniture that wasn’t yet our own.

The conversation flowed fairly easily though. We talked about Hanoi and all the idiosyncrasies of the city and its people. For some reason I was reminded of Toa, not only his story but how readily he opened up to us and how different this was from what we were used to in Thailand. Rebecca and Ashley were horrified at Toa’s story but they informed us of the sorry state of electrical technology in Vietnam. It seems everyone has a similar story and even in the more modern houses, there is some switch or socket with faulty wiring that will give a nasty shock.

It was after 10pm and we were supposed to be having a relaxing conversation kicking back in the lounge chairs, but I was still in arrange and rearrange mode so I was moving about the patio the entire time, getting rid of leftover junk and moving odd bits of furniture. I reached for a standing lamp to move it to the side and suddenly my left hand went numb and I couldn’t let go of the lamp’s neck. My hand was stuck as if glued and a slightly painful current was running down the length of my arm. I stood there for several seconds, in a state of mild shock, and then suddenly realized what was happening. I let out a scream and was able to throw the lamp to the ground breaking the bulb.

The next I remember everyone was around my chair making sure I was alright. I was stunned and my heart was beating a bit fast but other than that I felt okay. Rebecca and Ashley returned to their chairs and Gary put a towel to the socket and unplugged the lamp. The conversation continued disjointedly, with eyes darting nervously in my direction to make sure I was still upright and breathing. I was shaky and outside the voices but the feigned normalcy of the aftermath helped me to calm down.

The house was giving us crib notes: slow down, observe, listen. The basest of phenomena are your touchstones here. Use your instinct, have some respect.I

It’ll be awhile before I have the courage to plug an appliance. Yesterday I pushed a few of the speed buttons on the electric fan. Tonight i might try the night light in the bathroom.

I’m taking things nice and easy.