Restless Soul - Alex Archer [96]
The map shook in his hands.
Annja felt bad for him…but not bad enough to let him out of the Jeep. Annja might need his help to translate and to find the antiques shop in Hue, which he’d admitted to visiting on more than one occasion to see his “uncle” Lanh.
Her stomach rumbled, apparently taking issue with the food she’d bought a half hour earlier and wolfed down. Annja had wanted to keep her strength up and so had ordered, in effect, three meals. Next to a gas station was a noodle shop, and her reluctant passenger had ordered neua gai, steamed chicken on rice. She’d been hungrier, ordering the same, plus loog chin plaa, fish meatballs, which had a softer texture than beef meatballs, and giaw plaa, dumplings stuffed with chopped fish. Normally, Annja had a cast-iron stomach, but with every rut and bump in the road she hit, her meal threatened to make a reappearance.
“It is seven hundred kilometers,” Nang said, oblivious to her discomfort. “From Chiang Mai to Hue.”
“Good to know.” Annja had filled up the tank, and the two jerricans in the back; she didn’t know when the next service station would present itself. “Tell me more.”
“Hue has a population of…” He paused and leaned forward, trying to read the tiny print as they bounced along. “Three hundred and fifty thousand, a little more. It covers five thousand square kilometers.”
A big city. Good thing she’d brought Nang with her, after all, as navigating a large foreign city she’d never been to might be daunting.
“It has many districts. Phong Dien, Quang Dien, A Luoi, Nam Dong, Huong Thuy, Vang…”
She let his voice trail to the back of her mind. She’d pay more attention when the subject became more interesting or relevant.
She knew the dirt road they drove down was not on her map, but that she’d eventually come to something larger that would be. The grass that lined the edges was tall and broad and a brilliant green that gave way to paler green trees in the distance with wide, sweeping fronds. It was more of the primitive beauty that she’d noted around the Thins village, but the village she approached looked much poorer. The homes were made of severely weathered planks that looked as if a strong wind would take them down. Several of them were two levels high with rickety-looking outer stairs leading to the second floor. The villagers who made their way between the buildings were dressed simply, many of them in white, and none of the men wearing shirts.
The next village looked little different, though there were children playing. They wore colorful shorts and shirts that had seen better days.
“This part of the country is poor,” Nang told her.
The road narrowed and rice fields appeared on both sides. Men and women worked them, and a boy led an ox across the road, forcing Annja to slow. There were puddles and deep ruts, and the Jeep bounced with the passing miles. Far to the south were forested mountains wreathed in gray clouds. One formation looked like the humps on a camel’s back.
“Nang, tell me some more about Hue.”
“Uncle Kim would take me to the palaces on the bank of the Perfume River when I was a child. Emperors and mandarins had built them. More than a hundred very old buildings along that river. Tombs of the Nguyen kings there also. Lanh took from some of those tombs. My favorite was the Khai Dinh tomb, but the Gia Long and Minh Mang I also remember.” He was relaxing, talking about the city, but only a little. The map still shook in his hands. “Good food in Hue—mostly vegetables, though. Beautiful pagodas. Tourists like the pagodas. He took me to Da Nang also, my uncle Kim. It is north of Hue and not as rainy. Hue is a very rained-on city.”
Lovely, Annja thought. An opportunity to find myself in another torrential downpour. She’d been rained