I needed a friend, and badly. I phoned Loan and asked her out to lunch at a nearby restaurant.
While she scanned the menu, I opened out:
"For the past few days, I’ve been unable to do anything. My mind is wandering all the time."
She did not deign to look up from the menu.
"Looks like you’ve fallen in love," she said.
"I’m afraid so," I replied.
She laughed, but her eyes remained intent on the menu:
"There seems to a love mania these days. None of my acquaintances have been able to escape falling in love."
In the afternoon, sitting in front of the PC in my office, I tried to look for letters sent to me by e-mail. At ten past two, there was nothing at all. At three sharp, none. Ten to four, Loan’s letter. It was not addressed just to me, but to all of us:
"We’ve got a first-hand report. Thu Thu’s fallen in love!"
I deleted it at once, and resolved not to check the mail again. It was not much of a resolve. At half past four, I opened the file again. Nothing! Repeated the manoeuvre at five to five, before going home. Nothing again. I gathered the unfinished documents to place them in my cabinet. If this situation lasted until the end of the week, I would certainly be sacked. Who would support me then? How could I let things go on like this? I would have to focus on my work.
The next morning I had to check the English translation of a consignment contract with RJ Company against its original, contact PIP to reconfirm an appointment between Mrs Nhu, our deputy head and a customer, and see off Mr Thoi, our boss, who was leaving for Ha Noi on a business trip.
The door to the Director’s room opened and our boss stepped out with an attache in his hand, closely followed by Mrs Nhu with his jacket on her arm.
"Here’s your coat," she told him.
"No, I don’t need it any longer," he answered.
Looking at them, I smiled. Mrs Nhu returned to her office.
"A good journey to you," I said to him.
"Thank you for your efforts in arranging things for me, and for having got the air ticket as well," he told me.
"It’s my business, sir," I replied.
Just then Mrs Nhu went out with her handbag on her shoulder and closed the door behind her. Both of them walked to the lift.
I’d nearly finished checking the contract when the telephone rang. It was Mr Thoi.
"I’ve left behind something important in my room. Can you go in and take a yellow envelope out of the breast pocket of my coat, and take a taxi to the airport? I’ve just checked in, but I’ll wait for you at the lounge door. Please hurry!"
His coat was hung on the back of his chair behind his desk. With the yellow envelope in my hand, I called a taxi.
He was standing in the corridor of the domestic terminal.
"Sorry for troubling you," he said. "These things shouldn’t be seen by others. You haven’t looked, have you?"
"No, no. I did not dare," I answered.
He winked as if I was an accomplice with him and stood close to me. He opened the envelope, took a few photographs out, and showed them to me. The first one was a half-naked man lying prone on the bed with a young girl kneeling at its foot, massaging his legs. The second was the same half-naked man sitting on the bed. It was Mr Thoi.
I looked up.
He smiled, saying, "These are nothing. Let’s look at some others."
He placed the photographs at the bottom of the pile and showed me the other photographs, shuffling them like a photographs. The very first one he pulled out was that of a naked man and woman making love.
"I’m sorry. I must... return to the office," I mumbled.
He winked again, smiled and placed his right hand on my left shoulder in an intimate gesture. I pulled away, glared at him and left.
In the taxi going back to the office, I looked at the hundreds of motorcycles going to and from on the road, and thousands of pedestrians rushing in different directions. That was life. People had to earn their living and so did I. As a greenhorn in the office, I had to face two terrible people: Mr Thoi and his darling, Mrs Nhu. When I started working, I was told that previously she’d been an accountant at the State-run factory where he was the deputy director. A few years later, they’d set up their own company. He became the director and she, the vice-director of the new establishment. Their relationship was rather complicated – partners in business, and a courting pair. Mr Thoi had his own family, while Mrs Nhu was a divorced woman without any children. I did not care about their affair. Working with Mrs Nhu, I always kept at a safe distance from her. The memory of him winking and smiling sent a shudder through me. Nevertheless, he was not as dangerous as his darling.
As soon as I got back to the office, Mrs Nhu called me to her room. There she asked me lots of questions and I replied frankly. She asked me what was inside the yellow envelope. I said that I did not know because I did not open it. She couldn’t think that he had opened it and showed them to me, but was suspicious because he had called me, not her on the mobile phone, when he discovered that the yellow envelope was missing. And she’d just left the airport along with the driver. She was unable to ask me why, of course. She just threw me a threatening look.
"Why did you have to take a taxi, instead of riding your motorbike to the airport?" she asked.
I thought of telling her that he’d asked me to take a taxi, but, on second thoughts, decided not to respond. What was the point? I’d better not demand a refund for the taxi fare. From now on, I would have to confront them both.
The next day, a shower of letters were waiting in the mail. Everyone in the gang wanted to know:
"Hey! who’s the guy?"
I deleted all the messages. Usually e-mails from friends are harmless. But now it might cause some trouble, and I had to be on guard.
The telephone rang again. The door of the vice-director’s room flung open. One of our customers wanted to know how to rectify a technical problem. I transferred the message to the engineering section as Mrs Nhu walked past my desk towards the lift, then abruptly returned to her room. I gathered the minutes sent to me from various departments, grouped them in a list with different items and presented them to her. She told me that in addition to summarising the minutes, I had to put down my comments. I’d never done it before. If I did as she asked, I was asking for more trouble and making the situation worse. Anyway, I took the list back to my desk and re-arranged them in another way more suited to her taste.
The bell rang again. It was just a fax coming in a- four-page document describing the KLM company’s new products in English. I presented it to her and she told me to translate it into Vietnamese. This was another task that I’d not had to do before. What I usually did was to make a summary of the contents of a particular document and forward it to the concerned department, say, marketing. I had to use an English-Vietnamese dictionary to do the translation.
I was consulting several new words and expressions when the phone rang again. It was Mr Thoi. I asked Mrs Nhu to take it. A few moments later, the bell rang again. It was Mrs Nhu asking me to re-write a letter I’d finished the day before. She said it did not match her opinions. I wrote a new note, answered the phone, translated the document and amended the summary. But at five to five, everything remained unfinished.
I grouped the documents into different files and placed them in their pigeon-holes. When everybody had returned home, including Mrs Nhu, I returned to my PC which had not been switched off. I opened an MP3 file. Lionel Richie’s voice resounded warmly.
It seemed that a burden had been lifted off my shoulder. All the troubles of today were gone. Richie’s voice flooded the room. I picked up the receiver and phoned my lover. I could hear the phone ring on the other end and the sound of the receiver being lifted. In the background was the same song, Hello, but at different bars. "And in my dream I kissed your lips a thousand times." For a few minutes, I could not utter a word. My boyfriend at the other end of the line did not say anything either. We let the music mingle and let our emotions run in our veins and our hearts beat to one rhythm. Happiness, passion or some such similar emotion was surely appearing on my countenance. But they all disappeared in the twinkling of an eye, as I looked out of the window and saw Mrs Nhu stepping in. I hurriedly looked for the mouse to stop the music. The warm sounds of music came to an end and I heard the sound of the receiver being hung up abruptly. Mrs Nhu looked askance at me, but her voice was more warm this time:
"Thu, you haven’t gone home yet !"
"I’m just about to leave," I answered.
From the day I’d started working with her, I had never been so embarrassed. The fact that I stayed for a couple of minutes after the business hours was quite ordinary. What was strange was that she suddenly came back to the office. When she came and left was not my concern, it was her business and as the vice director she could do whatever she wanted. I said good-bye to her. As I reached the door, the telephone rang. My heart leaped. Maybe my lover was calling me. I was going to step back when she picked up the receiver. We stared at each other for a few seconds. Her countenance turned pale and her eyes sparkled with hatred. Yet her voice remained warm and soft:
"You’ve crossed out my mobile phone number in your small directory, haven’t you?"
I closed the door and ran to the lift. Whether or not she thought I was waiting for her darling’s call, I did not know. She might have thought that the previous call had also been his. They must have phoned each other again and again with suspicion, engaging the line and preventing my sweetheart’s call. I walked across the street to a public booth. I dialled his number many times, hoping to hear his voice and that of Richie singing, "I just called to say I love you." There was no response.
Maybe he had left his office. He might have been roaming the streets like me, looking for him among the multitude of people and vehicles. Amid the noise, the music from his heart rang out, warm and soft: "Where are you, my darling? What are you doing?... I want to tell you that I love you."
Translated by VAN MINH
