A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [2]
I don’t want to disgrace my clan. I don’t want my gracious and genial hosts to see me stumble or fall. I don’t want to get hauled away from this meal on a stretcher, my head hanging over the side of the sampan, drooling bile into the black water. I’ve got something to prove. We may have lost the war. We may have pointlessly bombed and mined and assassinated and defoliated before slinking away as if it were all a terrible misunderstanding – but, goddamn it, we can still drink as good as these guys, right?
Looking across at Grampa, who’s refilling his glass while a toddler crawls onto his lap, I’m not so sure. Screw it. I’m having a good time. I smile at the old man and hold up my glass. I like him. I like these guys. Since coming to Asia, I’ve never met such a great group of people. It’s been food, folks, and fun like I’ve never experienced. These are, by Vietnamese standards, party animals – warm, generous, thoughtful, kind – occasionally very funny, sincere in both their hospitality and their fierce pride. I don’t want to leave. I want to do this all night.
One of the younger war heroes at the other end of the tarp suddenly stands up, and the other guests stop chattering as he breaks into song. Accompanied by a clapped-out guitar, he sings, his palms held together as if praying, looking out over our heads, as if singing to someone in the jungle. It’s beautiful, a heartfelt, sweet-sounding, absolutely haunting invocation, and in the dim light from the single bulb, he looks angelic. No one makes a sound while he sings, but I manage to whisper a question to the translator on my right.
‘What’s he singing about?’ I ask.
‘It is a patriotic song,’ he says, ‘about the people of this village, the farmers and their families who hid the soldiers and helped them during the American War. About the difficulties they faced. And their courage.’
‘Oh,’ I reply.
I know the song is basically about killing my kind – and not too terribly long ago – but I’m absolutely riveted. I’m charmed. I’m flattered. I have been treated, in the last few hours, with never-before-encountered kindness and respect. Uncle Hai gives my knee another squeeze. The old man across from me smiles and raises his empty glass to me, summons a younger man to refill it, gestures that he should do the same for me. A swollen moon appears from behind puffs of cloud, hangs heavily over the tree line beyond the river. Other guests are arriving. I can hear them in the distance, their sandals and bare feet padding softly along the hardened silt, emerging from the darkness to take places around the tarpaulin.
I wanted the perfect meal.
I also wanted – to be absolutely frank – Col. Walter E. Kurtz, Lord Jim, Lawrence of Arabia, Kim Philby, the Consul, Fowler, Tony Po, B. Traven, Christopher Walken . . . I wanted to find – no, I wanted to be – one of those debauched heroes and villains out of Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, Francis Coppola, and Michael Cimino. I wanted to wander the world in a dirty seersucker suit, getting into trouble.
I wanted adventures. I wanted to go up the Nung River to the heart of darkness in Cambodia. I wanted to ride out into a desert on camelback, sand and dunes in every direction, eat whole roasted lamb with my fingers. I wanted to kick snow off my boots in a Mafiya nightclub in Russia. I wanted to play with automatic weapons in Phnom Penh, recapture the past in a small oyster village