Apocalypse Hotel: A Novel (Modern Southeast Asian Literature) Read Online Free Page A

Hanoian, she insisted, come out here for work. Actually, neither Cốc nor the woman had said their ages out loud, but with my sea captain’s eyes, and a lifetime’s experience, I could tell that Mai Trừng was about twenty-six years old, a few years older than the other guys. But the other guys were already flirting away—calling her em , little sister, and themselves anh , big brother. Then, without any signal, the boys stopped frolicking and began closing in on her. First Cốc grabbed Mai Trừng’s hand. Jumping past a wave, he gradually pulled her toward Phũ. She bobbed up and over another wave, tumbled over, and landed in Bóp’s arms. When she finally reached my hand, we had created a circle around her in the water. I read in her eyes a word of supplication, an image of terror just before death. I quickly pulled my hand away. Me. Someone whose eyes have been filled with treachery and hatred. Someone who had swallowed the death of his own child in silence. The truth was, at that moment, I’d suddenly felt that everything had lost its excitement. I led the woman back to Cốc, broke up the circle, and swam farther out. Nobody called after me. The circle had quickly become a triangle. The woman was being passed from one corner to the other like a ball. She finally came to rest in Cốc’s arms. With every surge of the waves, he was lifting and lowering her.
    I began to sense the dangerous undercurrent of all the joking around. In the water, submerged to her neck, she was being held tightly between Cốc’s legs, so that she couldn’t struggle or call for help. The other two were acting as his accomplices. As lookouts. As fenders-off of the people frolicking amorously in the waves around them. From the way that Cốc was moving, it was clear that he’d managed to slip his bathing suit down around his knees. Another wave lifted up the two bodies, their legs intertwined, his hands frantically trying to pull off her drawers.
    I had a clear premonition of something very bad. I was sure of it. But at the same time I knew it was too late to do anything about it.
    The incoming wave that broke over the couple hadn’t even had the time to dissipate into foam when Cốc suddenly shot out of the water so straight and so high that I could see I had guessed correctly about his swimsuit being down around his knees. He didn’t let out a sound. He squirmed and twisted and trashed violently back and forth, like a hooked shark.
    I dove into the water and rushed toward him. The girl’s face was stamped with an expression of pure horror. Cốc’s eyes had widened grotesquely and were bulging in their sockets; his naked body was writhing desperately. I had enough presence of mind to pull his shorts back up before the two other guys carried him back up onto the beach.
    “Someone’s drowned!” A dense horde streamed out of the water and swarmed onto the shore, like ants gathering around a dead bluebottle fly. Phũ was trying to pull Cốc up onto the sand so he could get the water out of his lungs. But Bóp stopped him. Seeing the absolute blankness in Cốc’s eyes, he figured that Cốc had just ejaculated prematurely. Bóp had his own personal experience with this problem. I thought there were two possibilities: either Bóp was correct or Cốc had been struck with the kind of seizure we call a sudden bad wind, which had grabbed him right at the moment of ecstasy.
    Cốc lay on his back on the sandy shore. His hips and pelvis arched up and then down, whipping against the sand over and over like a fish in its death convulsions. We chased away the human ants that were swarming uselessly all over the place, opening up an exit through them. Phũ slung our friend over his shoulder and ran to the emergency aid station near the shore.
    Before half an hour went by, the ants from the beach had spread the story of the drowning. But the sex of the drowned person had been changed. A man had been turned into a woman more quickly than