Free Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel (Modern Southeast Asian Literature) by Ho Anh Thai Page A

The girls who couldn’t avoid his violent usurpation of their bodies also couldn’t avoid the plundering of their dainty things, and, in the end had to depart naked from the waist down. Phũ candidly told me the history of the first pair of panties, a lacy wisp that one could press neatly into the palm of his hand and stuff quickly into his trouser pocket as he said good-bye. This heavenly green pair was from his first transformation into a man. This brown pair represented an impressive set of breasts. This pink pair had pulled him in and, at the same time, had wanted to push him out. This tan pair had kept him in a daze, going at it all night, to the point that he couldn’t remember how many times he’d finished. The kind of sexual education that I’d given him from the age of fourteen was enough for Phũ to live a debauched life and never once have to face the consequences.
    Once, just after I arrived in Hanoi, Phũ pulled me out after him. Through the dark city streets, the darkened coffee shops, and the equally shadowy people sitting and standing in those shops, the two of us made our way up to the third floor of a building. Miss Brothel Mistress waited—makeup, perfume, and flashy clothes unable to hide her village background. I managed to get my hands on a virgin “stray ox.” 5
    “Half up front,” the madam demanded. “One like this will cost you for a threesome: two chỉ .” 6 Phũ didn’t care to bargain and signaled for the girl to enter the room. He pulled her shoulders forward, shoved her back, grabbed her chin to turn her face up to look into his eyes, weighing her like a set of precision scales. Then he signaled for the girl and me to undress. The three of us lay naked on the bed. The girl was held tightly in the middle, her warm body trembling now and then as if convulsing, but not daring to cry. Phũ was the first explorer, gently and calmly following the ocean shelf, 7 full of potential resources yet to be exploited. A wave of tremors racked the girl. Her right hand clutched me tightly as if clinging for her life to a piece of driftwood. Phũ’s face suddenly looked doubtful. He was scraping something down there on the ocean shelf, so that I thought he was expertly checking out his protection one more time. But his doubtful face suddenly was suffused with fury. He leaped up and kicked the girl in the face multiple times, one kick after another. Referring to himself as her father, he incessantly cursed her damn mother: “Your father wants to pull your mother out to do the kind of work that I’d been planning to do with you.” I grabbed his naked leg, so he wouldn’t totally crush her with his kicks. “Tell me now!” he yelled.
    “It’s been in there all week, since I’ve started,” she explained. “Every day Miss Tì makes me tell people that I’m a virgin so she can keep selling me to eager guests.” At just that moment Miss Tì pushed the door open and entered. These types of rooms usually need a back door for customers to escape, despite the paying of regular “taxes” to the police and other types of local security.
    Phũ shoved the stuff on his finger into Miss Tì’s face. “This is a fish bladder! 8 Try to trick your father, huh? Your father wanted to have a virgin so he would have a good yearly exam and you dared to give us a pierced basket instead, huh? Bring someone else in right now, and if you don’t have anyone else, then run out into the street and hunt down a stray ox for us. We’ll wait.”
    Miss Tì, with all of her talent for grabbing young stray oxen off of the street, could not rush out to do that just at the moment. Phũ grabbed her tightly by the neck and cursed her. Suddenly he realized that that this stout, pale, middle-aged woman was the perfect consolation prize and could be had at an unexpectedly low price. He yelled at her to get up on the bed. If there were no virgin, then a middle-aged woman would do, and if not, with a wave of his hand he’d have