| Muller | Hitchhiking Vietnam
Page 71 |
After the funeral I found myself at the young ladies' table, being served heaping bowls of rice topped with horse meat and snowy white pig fat. I dug into my portion of the feast with plastic-smiled determination, smearing layers of rice onto the gobs of fat and swallowing them, surreptitiously fishing around in my mouth for stray bits of horse bone. I discovered the bottom of my bowl with infinite relief, and looked on with paralyzed horror as the woman beside me used her chopsticks to dig several pieces of glistening fat from the center platter and lay them into my bowl. She smiled at me and topped it off with a tablespoon of fish sauce. I ate. I ate the horse meat that slipped onto my plate when I wasn't looking. I ate the seventeen day eggs, crisscrossed with bluish veins and shedding sodden feathers, that appeared magically on my plate whenever I looked away.
And I drank. My tiny tea cup was an endless fountain of milky rice whisky, powerful enough to light a fire. At last, with my head swimming and worse still to come, I covered the cup with my hand and begged them to stop. Eight pairs of eyes fastened themselves to my face. "Don't you like it?" They asked. The dreaded question. I thought fast and hazily. Loved it. Fantastic. Only, I was - what was that damned word? - pregnant, and whisky wasn't good for the coming child.
They sat back, smiled and nodded knowingly. I sagged with relief. They talked briefly amongst themselves, and then began to ask me questions.
My mother had always warned me that one lie requires two to uphold, and those two need four. That night, under the relentless, grueling curiosity of my hosts, I built a pyramid to rival the Egyptians. I grew an elaborate family tree, contracted and cured illnesses, won and lost fortunes. By the time the tables were pulled back and the fire stoked, I had lost track of the details and knew only one thing for sure - that I had best not return to this place until my face was long forgotten and I might have the chance to start over again.
