bathroom was on, and I listened: scrape scrape, tap tap, sniff, snooort . I gave a sigh, rolled over, went back to sleep.
Â
Hayes had been dead for a week and I was sitting alone at the bar in the Rex Hotel with nothing to do. One of thesuited thuong gia approached me with an envelope. I presumed they recognised me from my attendance at the roulette with Hayes. Inside the envelope was a single piece of paper, with an address in English written on it.
This is how I wound up back at the roulette. I attended simply as a spectator, not a competitor. The spectator role has never been unfamiliar to me. For most of my life I have existed not as an active participant, but as an observer.
Besides, I had no weapon to take to the game with me. In a foreign country youâll find it difficult to get your hands on a lot of things, weapons included.
I studied the faces of the men who had gathered in the roulette hall, watching their every subtle movement. When a gun went off, I would not watch the man pulling the trigger, but instead I would focus on a member of the crowd and wait to see if they flinched at the suddenness of the explosion. Every man had his own reaction. I saw men flinch, I saw men wince in imaginary pain, I saw some open their eyes wide with terror, I saw others stare blankly as if no emotion registered with them at all.
There were a lot of Westerners gathered here and I noticed that most of them did their best to keep to themselves. More Westerners competed than Vietnamese. The Vietnamese were keen watchers and gamblers. They would often cheer at the end of a match, like fans at a football game. But I couldnât shake the feeling that they were cheering the stupidity of the Western men.
I moved among the crowd unnoticed. It was necessary to have a drink at all times. I doubt whether I might have been able to handle a place like that in full sobriety. With a drink and a cigarette I could sit off to one side in thesmoke and shadows and the rest of the room seemed like a hallucination, viewed through a piss-yellow filter.
To see a man blow his brains out isnât as shocking as it might sound to some. Weâve just about all seen it before on the television. I was a child during the Vietnam War and I remember the images on my television screen and on newspaper covers. Soldiers leaping from helicopters under fire. Little peasant girls wandering naked and bloody down devastated streets. Jimi Hendrix, âMachine Gunâ playing over it all.
Itâs hard to come to terms with the fact that the war actually happened, when all youâve ever known it to be was images on a screen and words on a page.
Two matches down for the night and another two to go. In a way, it didnât surprise me that eight men were willing to risk their lives in a game like this. There was money involved, of course. Thereâs always money. It has a habit of making the world go round.
For me, it wasnât about the money. Iâd caught a glimpse of something my first time round that I wanted to see again. It was my desire to be filled with that sensation again: watching a man die, feeling the thrill rush through your body.
I went outside for some fresh air. There was an entry fee at the door but you could get a stamp so you didnât have to pay on re-entry, just like a nightclub. The stamp didnât say anything legible, though, so when bodies were discovered with the stamp on their arm it made no real sense to the authorities.
The burly men standing by the double doors gave a nod and let me out into the cool night. It had rained earlier in the evening and I could still catch the wet scent in the air.
The warehouse was in a narrow street lined with uncollected trash. There had been a homeless boy here when I had arrived, scavenging for food. With the warehouse doors closed behind me it was hard to hear anything of what went on inside. The building was not soundproofed, but around us there were nothing but
Â
Hayes had been dead for a week and I was sitting alone at the bar in the Rex Hotel with nothing to do. One of thesuited thuong gia approached me with an envelope. I presumed they recognised me from my attendance at the roulette with Hayes. Inside the envelope was a single piece of paper, with an address in English written on it.
This is how I wound up back at the roulette. I attended simply as a spectator, not a competitor. The spectator role has never been unfamiliar to me. For most of my life I have existed not as an active participant, but as an observer.
Besides, I had no weapon to take to the game with me. In a foreign country youâll find it difficult to get your hands on a lot of things, weapons included.
I studied the faces of the men who had gathered in the roulette hall, watching their every subtle movement. When a gun went off, I would not watch the man pulling the trigger, but instead I would focus on a member of the crowd and wait to see if they flinched at the suddenness of the explosion. Every man had his own reaction. I saw men flinch, I saw men wince in imaginary pain, I saw some open their eyes wide with terror, I saw others stare blankly as if no emotion registered with them at all.
There were a lot of Westerners gathered here and I noticed that most of them did their best to keep to themselves. More Westerners competed than Vietnamese. The Vietnamese were keen watchers and gamblers. They would often cheer at the end of a match, like fans at a football game. But I couldnât shake the feeling that they were cheering the stupidity of the Western men.
I moved among the crowd unnoticed. It was necessary to have a drink at all times. I doubt whether I might have been able to handle a place like that in full sobriety. With a drink and a cigarette I could sit off to one side in thesmoke and shadows and the rest of the room seemed like a hallucination, viewed through a piss-yellow filter.
To see a man blow his brains out isnât as shocking as it might sound to some. Weâve just about all seen it before on the television. I was a child during the Vietnam War and I remember the images on my television screen and on newspaper covers. Soldiers leaping from helicopters under fire. Little peasant girls wandering naked and bloody down devastated streets. Jimi Hendrix, âMachine Gunâ playing over it all.
Itâs hard to come to terms with the fact that the war actually happened, when all youâve ever known it to be was images on a screen and words on a page.
Two matches down for the night and another two to go. In a way, it didnât surprise me that eight men were willing to risk their lives in a game like this. There was money involved, of course. Thereâs always money. It has a habit of making the world go round.
For me, it wasnât about the money. Iâd caught a glimpse of something my first time round that I wanted to see again. It was my desire to be filled with that sensation again: watching a man die, feeling the thrill rush through your body.
I went outside for some fresh air. There was an entry fee at the door but you could get a stamp so you didnât have to pay on re-entry, just like a nightclub. The stamp didnât say anything legible, though, so when bodies were discovered with the stamp on their arm it made no real sense to the authorities.
The burly men standing by the double doors gave a nod and let me out into the cool night. It had rained earlier in the evening and I could still catch the wet scent in the air.
The warehouse was in a narrow street lined with uncollected trash. There had been a homeless boy here when I had arrived, scavenging for food. With the warehouse doors closed behind me it was hard to hear anything of what went on inside. The building was not soundproofed, but around us there were nothing but
Similar Books
