The Lovers

7

Looking for Duras weaves three strands of memoir into one: my lifelong infatuation with the French writer Marguerite Duras, a journey through Vietnam and Cambodia tracing her footsteps, and a musing on mothers and melancholy. (Read prev chap here).

The bus for Halong Bay picks me up at nine. Mr TF only had to pull out the brochure one more time to convince me to go. It’s in the opposite direction to where I’m heading but I justify adding it to my itinerary as name of the boat is Marguerite (surely that’s a sign) and who knows when I’ll be back this way again?

Our coach is full of European families and couples and we still have some hotel pickups to make. Our young bespectacled guide, Tip Diep, ‘call me Mr Tip’, introduces himself and tells us we have a three-hour trip ahead of us. At one of our last hotel stops, an Anglo man in his late fifties with the pink scrubbed skin of the well-to-do and his tall, younger lover, maybe early forties (my guess, South American — I’m making her Costa Rican) get on.  To their annoyance all the seats are taken but Mr Tip whips down some single folding chairs in the middle of the aisle and so they sit one behind the other as close as they possibly can, her long fingers sneaking their way inside the collar of his shirt and oh, so lightly massaging his pink skin neck. The rest of the bus, still strangers to one another and intent on the view outside, can’t help but cop an eyeful. The Lovers continue the conversation they began in their five-star, matching gowns, private plunge pool, room. Miss Costa Rica rests her head tenderly on his shoulder. Dr Pink (I’ve decided to make him a Doctor of Philosophy) reaches his hand back to stroke her cheek, the air between them charged and zinging.

          As we head out of the city I decide it has all the markings of an illicit affair and it is just their bad luck to have encountered an avid note taking, detail obsessed writer on their hideaway tour. I already have my notebook out to capture the passing landscape but have been somewhat distracted by the Lovers. Looking up for the first time from her devoted attentions, Miss Costa Rica turns and glances my way at the very same time as I am scribbling ‘her intimidating stare could flatten the strongest opponent, her features androgynous, almost mannish and yet she is a tall dark-skinned beauty. Her haughtiness held in check, dark hair tied back, strong features softened by pearl earrings, beige Bermuda shorts and silk-lined T-shirt, a fine fringed shawl which she wraps about her with style.’ She turns back, whispers in Dr Pink’s ear and they lower their voices. Not that I can hear anything anyway except the incessant beeping of the bus horn every time we are about to pass any vehicle. But I take her hint and decide to give the Lovers a break in favour of the exterior view, my pen still moving in bumps and dips across the page of my blue exercise book.

          Did MD do this when she was young? Take notes, make jottings, as she travelled her Indochine roads, or was it only years later that she recalled all the detail of her childhood? Outside the bus window the landscape is changing from urban to rural. We have already crossed the great Red River and now here is another as wide and vast as the last. I can see mini pagoda graves in rice paddies watching over the crop, tall billboards-to-be with blue and orange Christo-like plastic wrappings flapping in the wind, skinny unpainted houses in clumps of towns and villages surrounded by iridescent green seas of newly planted rice. Pink lotus blooms leap out of large ponds. Another town with tall pencil-thin buildings painted and decorated on one side but left bare on the other. A ragged yellow star flag flapping in the breeze. Giant elephant leaves rearing up from ditches. Barn-like buildings with great chimneys along a riverbank stretching into the hazy distance. Dredges moving like snails across murky waters. A busload of tourists passes, bored faces staring back at us. Another big town where women petrol attendants with scarves covering their faces look like gasoline bandits.  Boulders of pink marble standing in a field next to a factory, marble statues in its yard waiting to be dispatched. The delicate lace ironwork of an old house standing in the middle of nowhere. Then we arrive at the Happy Room.

          The Happy Room is a tourist rest centre with toilets, snacks and souvenirs. This one is much nicer than some we have already passed; big metal sheds with multitudes of tourist buses parked outside. Our Happy Room is tree-shady with old style buildings and traditional craft being demonstrated by pretty girls wearing the silk áo dài. I’d love to try one on but I’m too self-conscious even though it’s my kind of style: sexy without having to reveal flesh. It looks much better on them anyway I think to myself as I eye off a delicate lime silk table runner. The young assistant really wants to make a sale but remembering my pledge to travel light, I ‘um and ah’ before suddenly deciding ‘yes’ then thrust too much money in her hand and race back to the car park to join the others.

          Back on the bus everyone is more friendly and talkative than before. Mr Tip cracks some jokes and the Lovers have swapped seats. Now he sits behind her massaging her shoulders and whispering sweet nothings in her ear while she reads her book. A government propaganda billboard with figures in a revolutionary stance flashes by — the first I’ve seen so far. Another phenomenon I’ve noticed since we left Hanoi seems to be accelerating — stencilled names and phone numbers on walls. I guess it is some kind of grassroots advertising but the one who is winning is KCP TONG 46782.  Either a lonely bachelor or an award-winning entrepreneur, he has spread his seed everywhere – around every corner, on any bit of spare wall, on gas stations, shops, homes, old signs, fences, gates, garden walls. Others have too, but KCP TONG stands out. I want to call the number and find out who KCP really is but for now I’ll put him in my story ideas folder. Who knows, KCP could become my next hero.

          The bus hits a bad bump in the road and we all groan and exhale loudly. The Lovers laugh. She leans her long arms back and runs her fingers through his hair. He rolls his puppy dog head from side to side as her digits make love to his scalp. He knows, as the rest of the bus does — she wants him — now.

           It reminds me that this is how we must write, urgently, intently, lustfully. Like our characters, we writers must be driven by a gnawing, unresolved desire to conquer the impossible as if our life depended on it. We must write with the intensity and passion we would save for an illicit affair, sneaking away every second we can, sending secret messages to ourselves, stealing time away from those dear to us for our surreptitious liaisons with our demanding love. Of course, it’s not always easy to seduce a blank page. You have to set the atmosphere, adjust the lighting, put on some music, incense or scented candles — whatever it takes. But when you get the vibe just right and you and the page start to flow and time passes in effortless pleasure, that’s when writing is not just better than sex, writing IS sex. I can recall my best writing sex as clearly as my best lovers — moments when I wrote in a vanishing of time so complete I forgot who and where I was. Remembering such moments, you wish for them again and deceiving yourself, think you have to be in the right place, right moment, right frame of mind. The greatest thing about writing is that unlike sex, it’s available any time, any hour, day or night, and always there for the taking. And when you do start taking it, it shows. People look at you in a new way, saying how well you look and commenting that you must be getting ‘some’ lately. You smile, nod and reply in a low conspiratorial voice, ‘Yes, I am — every day!’ *

         As a young white girl in the French colonies MD was accustomed to feeling the gaze of men upon her. From an early age she knew the meaning of desire before she ever experienced it.  I’ve seen that knowing look in some of her girlhood photos, but not all.  There is of course the one used on the silver grey cover of a later edition of the English translation of The Lover, taken around age fourteen; a Lolita-esque visage with painted lips and darkened eyes, hair parted on the side in the Charleston style, looking so directly at the viewer —it is at once disconcerting and intriguing. Like a child playing adult, her confidence could be mistaken for a precocious sexuality but perhaps it’s simply that this girl knew what she wanted, even if right now she didn't know how to get it. At other times she appears as wholesome as the girl next door. Snaps of her in a garden with her younger brother Paulo, dressed for a day out, another in white beret, sitting on the edge of a low wall, another with her brothers and cousin on a visit to France.  There’s an air of the playful flirt in these candid shots of Marguerite with brothers and school friends, and contrary to all the tales of her miserable childhood, of all the people in the photos, she is the one who is always smiling, exuding confidence and apparent happiness.

          I have no way of knowing how seriously Marj flirted with boys of her own age or even considered the attentions of anyone older but she would have had plenty of opportunity to explore her unspoken urges at local dances and balls, dancing all the waltzes and quicksteps she also knew how to play — kissing a boy at the local tennis club on a wisteria-scented, moonlit night. It would have been in Maryborough, one of the North West Victorian towns where Marj lived in her teens. In the mid-thirties it was the virtual dance capital of the state.  Dances were held every night of the week at the Workers Hall or the Railway Station, a grand Queen Anne style building with gables and a clock tower, built in 1890.  Even the Catholic Church ran a dance night. Girls and boys from all over the district walked, cycled, or came on horseback to hear Ron McNiece and his Rhythm Masters roll out the beats. Refreshments were served but there was no time for supper, you just had to keep dancing!

          While Marj was keeping her dance card full in Maryborough, MD’s options in colonial Indochine were a little different: fancy bars, hotels, multi-level Chinese restaurants, even an outpost port canteen in Ream, Cambodia, all had dance tunes playing for their patrons. In her early novel, The Sea Wall, the Ream canteen is a place where travellers, rich planters and French civil servants meet to socialise and let off steam.  In the absence of an orchestra, a wind up phonograph provided the music. Published in 1952, The Sea Wall is the earliest telling of MD’s girlhood love affair with an older wealthy man —in this version of the story he is the son of a rich white planter. Set in Cambodia and later Saigon, the MD character, Suzanne, also dances with her brother at the canteen. It makes her mother happy to see them together like that, for in spite of all her other failures, she remarks that at least she can be proud of her children. * In The Lover the girl dances with the rich Chinese man and the younger brother at The Fountain, an expensive bar, built over natural springs outside Saigon.  The Chinese lover has taken the whole family there, after treating them to a Chinese banquet. MD’s brothers don’t appreciate the gesture; they offer no thanks and treat him rudely even though he pays the bill. The mother also, is simply too tired and falls asleep. The Chinese lover has no choice but to tolerate their bad behavior. He is after all blinded by his love for the young French girl, even though he knows the affair is doomed. 

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* The Sea Wall P 76.  The reality that her children were surly and badly behaved eludes the mother in this moment of reverie.