Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

This chapter continues the story of Pham’s life in California, now in 1989, when he is in college at UCLA. The chapter begins with Pham driving up from Los Angeles to pick up his maternal grandmother for the event. The family was gathering to pay respects to Grandpa Pham, his paternal grandfather, on the anniversary of his death. His grandmother did not have to go—she actually didn’t get along with Grandpa Pham when he was alive—but wanted to be part of the family event.

The gathering of over 40 people took place at the house of Grandpa Pham’s widow, his second wife, who lived there with her two daughters and their families, and her unmarried son. Pham describes the place as ramshackle and somewhat uncared for. When he arrived with Grandma Le, everyone else was already there. His mother stuck to the kitchen to avoid her brothers-in-law; they didn’t get along because two of them opposed her marrying Pham’s father. When the food was ready, they arranged it around the altar to Grandpa Pham and then took turns paying their respects and lighting incense—the oldest first, working down to the youngest.

When it came time to eat, Pham, now in college, could’ve sat with the men, but he preferred to stay with his cousins in an upstairs bedroom. He piled up two plates with food, grabbed a beer, and watched a football game with them. Pham explains that he was starving because he was so low on cash that he had been living out of his car at school and eating very little to save money. After a bit, the adults’ conversation grew noticeably louder. Pham went out to get more food and investigate. They had been talking about the increasing Vietnamese population in the Bay Area, and Pham’s father had criticized his sister Huong for the government benefits she took, accusing her of abusing the system. She shot back that no one in the family had criticized him for how he had once made his money, implying something illicit.

At that point, Pham’s mother joined in and his uncles told her to stay out of it, that it wasn’t her business. She angrily replied that it involved her family, so it certainly was her business. Then she stormed out and drove home by herself. From there, criticism turned to the wife of the youngest Pham brother, Hoang. His wife had stayed home because she didn’t get along with her husband’s family. Grandma Le moved to the door and Pham ushered her out to drive her home. When they got to the car, Uncle Hoang flew out the door yelling, with his brothers Hong and Hun in pursuit. Hoang got partway down the driveway before he turned and threw rocks at them, sending them back inside.

On the ride home, Pham asked his grandmother what his aunt had meant in criticizing his parents about money. Grandma Le, however, changed the subject, talking about what she missed in Vietnam. Back at her house, he made her tea as she prepared for bed. Again, he asked her what the fight had been about, and again she demurred. When he was about to give up and leave, she put her tea down, took his hands in hers, and said, “This is what happened . . .” (258). There the chapter ends. 

Pham begins this chapter with an encounter he has on the road after leaving Hanoi on his bike. Three drunken young men on a motorbike start to shadow him. It’s in the country, with nothing but rice paddies and few other travelers. Pham smells trouble and alters his speed in an effort to shake them. But they speed up or slow down accordingly. Then they go zooming past and one kicks Pham’s rear panniers, almost causing him to crash. He’s relieved that they continue going after that. Before long, he sees them up ahead, stopped by the side of the road, and fears an ambush. He slows down and unzips a pannier where he has a knife. As he approaches, he speeds up to try to slip past them, but then sees they’re all standing along the field relieving themselves. He laughs to himself as he passes untouched.

The reprieve is brief, however, as they jump back on their motorbike and speed after him. Pham stops and dismounts, remembering a friend’s advice that when a fight is inevitable, turn and face it. He waits with his hand near the open pocket containing the knife. When they arrive, he greets them with a smile, politely addressing them as “brothers.” They realize then he’s a Viet-kieu and start asking him about his ride—where has he been and if he’s afraid. He jokes with his answers, taking out his knife and saying that’s how he deals with attackers. Then he takes out a pack of Marlboros, which he brought for just such occasions, and offers one first to the leader and then the others. They’re impressed by the American brand and loosen up. They chat for a while before the men invite Pham to go drinking. He begs off and they shake hands goodbye.

Back on the road, Pham feels a little sick and realizes how hungry he feels. His snacks are nearly gone, and he’s parched in the baking sun. The next village is 15 miles away. Shortly, he catches up to a man in a cart drawn by an ox and grabs the cart to get a free ride and rest. As they chat, another cyclist pulls alongside them: an older Vietnamese man with one leg. He pedals by pushing down hard, releasing the pedal to rotate on its own, and then catching it on the upswing. Pham is amazed. The man invites Pham to his home. “Over two months in Vietnam, it’s the first time someone’s invited me home without his hands out,” Pham writes (263).

Pham calls the man “Uncle Tu,” who in turn refers to him as “nephew.” Tu lives alone in a hut surrounded by a large vegetable garden. There the man makes him tea while he cooks a dinner of clay-pot catfish, a traditional Vietnamese dish, along with rice, eggplant, and string beans. Pham is overjoyed by the feast and eats heartily. After they drink more tea, the old man hangs up two hammocks, one crisscrossing above the other, the only way to fit them both in his one-room shack. They drift to sleep as the old man peppers Pham with questions about America.

Pham wakes up feverish and sick, and Uncle Tu immediately makes him tea and calls a neighbor boy to go fetch the village’s silver coin. The old man blames the spirits for making Pham ill, saying they were trying to drive out an entity foreign to the village. The boy returns with the coin, and the man prepares a traditional remedy: warming Pham’s back with hot oil and using the coin for the cure known as “scraping the bad wind” (266). Pham is skeptical but lets the old man proceed and finds it strangely comforting. He falls back to sleep, waking in time for supper, over which they discuss the war. The old man says he feels no hate toward Americans. They were all boys, and the Americans lost in a foreign land didn’t belong in it. Though he killed them as a young man, he says he would accept them as visitors today, making them tea and welcoming them like brothers. 

This chapter returns to Pham’s life in America, picking up the story in the early 1990s, when he was working as an engineer and studying for an advanced degree. He had a girlfriend named Trieu, and they had dinner every Friday night with her father and his second wife. The father’s first wife died in the war, and he put Trieu up for adoption when she was young. An American couple in Georgia raised her, and then she searched for her biological father later. Now she was spending a year with him to learn about her roots.

Trieu’s father had been a colonel in the South Vietnamese army, and he continued to strategize about ways to return to his country and subvert Communist power. Pham then relates what happened during one of their Friday dinners. Colonel Van rambled about his latest plan for Vietnam, something to do with solar power to win over the peasants. Trieu spoke no Vietnamese but seemed to adore her father, so Pham put up with him and his crazy ideas for her sake. He didn’t fully trust him, though, because the colonel wanted Trieu to reunite with and marry her rich ex-boyfriend.

After they ate dessert and the night came to an end after midnight, Pham said his goodbyes. When he kissed Trieu, however, she whispered, “Stay tonight, please. An, I don’t feel safe” (274). Pham was confused because he’d had no hint of her fear all evening. Colonel Van was holding Pham’s coat, waiting, so he left. However, he only drove a few blocks away, parked his car, and sneaked back to the house. He waited for everyone to go to sleep, and then slipped through the back window to Trieu’s room, which she’d left open for him. As they snuggled in bed together, she explained that her father had touched her inappropriately in the car earlier that day. This angered Pham, but Trieu refused to talk about it more. She soon fell asleep, but he lay there wide awake. Pham was up and out extra early while Trieu still slept, but he lingered in the yard outside the colonel’s window, angry and wishing he could harm him somehow. Then, suddenly, Van appeared by the window smoking. He yelled out after spotting Pham, who flew across the yard, through the neighborhood, and back to his car. 

This chapter continues the story of Pham’s cycling trip after he reaches the former imperial city of Hue. It mostly involves a cyclo driver named Tin. (A cyclo is like a pedicab, only the passenger seat is in front of the bicycle.) Tin convinces Pham to go for a free ride since there wasn’t any business at the time. They ride around the city together, with Pham even taking a turn at pedaling. Tin, he writes, is so poor that the cyclo doesn’t have brakes; going downhill, Tin dismounts and drags his feet to slow the vehicle. Tin wants to introduce Pham to his uncle, a father figure to him since his own father died, and they go have tea at the man’s house. Pham meets Tin’s aunt, too, and learns that Tin is married with three young children. When they return to Pham’s hotel, he gives Tin money despite their arrangement, telling him he wants to hire him the next day for a tour.

In the morning, Tin picks Pham up and takes him down to the river, where they hire a woman with a canoe to take them out on the water. The boat is quite rickety and actually leaking, so Tin spends much of the time bailing water. Back on land, Pham tips them both generously, giving a little extra to Tin for his family, and Tin expresses his gratitude. They agree to meet again for dinner. After cleaning up, Pham heads to the market to buy candies to give out to beggar children. There he bumps into Tin’s aunt and invites her for a bowl of noodles. She starts complaining about her nephew, unwittingly giving away the truth: Tin is a recent college graduate, unmarried with no kids. His aunt thinks he’s lazy and wasting time—no woman will want to marry him if he doesn’t get a real job like his brother and sister. Pham feels used, and that he can’t trust any Vietnamese because poverty has made them all seek a handout.

After the experience with Tin, Pham disengages a bit and stops seeking out Vietnamese to befriend and learn from. He begins hanging out with more Western tourists, like he did in Hanoi. He meets a former history professor who, because he was on the wrong side in the war, cannot find work. The man gives tours privately when he can find someone to hire him, as Pham does. They visit the countryside, during which the professor relates the story of The Tale of Kieu, a 200-year-old poem about a prostitute named Kieu. The professor explains that she influences the national psyche because, although she had to do horrible things, her dignity remains intact because she does them out of selfless sacrifice. That, he explains, is the story of the Vietnamese people.

This one-page chapter relates a brief memory of Pham when he was four. He was sitting under a table covered in a white sheet, on the concrete floor where it was cool, pretending to play cowboys and Indians. A man and woman entered the room, giggling. He stayed quiet because he wasn’t supposed to be in there and would get in trouble if caught. From his low vantage point, he saw red high heels on the woman’s feet and black combat boots on the man’s. They spoke a language he did not understand. Then they were on the table, which shook and moved while they made noises. An (Pham) was scared.