| Muller | Hitchhiking Vietnam
Page 89 |
The bus slalomed wildly back and forth, chattering over the washboard road like a runaway jackhammer. A bag of sawdust had apparently burst under the onslaught of several dancing wooden planks, and filled the interior like a desert sandstorm. I crawled forward to the last tier of passengers, sitting mute and expressionless, their hands clasped over plastic carry-alls to shield them against the dust. An elegant young woman slid over a fraction of an inch in invitation and immediately began bombarding me with heavily accented English. "How many creatures are in your relative family?" she asked, then without waiting for an answer, "When do you drink whisky?" Long before she reached, "Do you dance without pants?" I recognized the outlines of a grade-school grammar book. We finished her long-overdue homework and got down to business.
No, she wasn't married. Nor, she told me proudly, was she gainfully employed. She had just spent the day visiting her "darling", an unemployed postal worker living in the city. They planned to marry as soon as he found the money to purchase himself a job. At present she was living with her retired parents on a tea plantation in the countryside, waiting.
"What do you do all day?" I asked.
"Nothing," she replied, carefully tucking her callused hands into her lap. She refused to speak to me further, though I tried several times to draw her back into conversation.
