Every day at 9 pm, the Vietnamese fisherman steps off of his quaint vessel. He crosses the decaying deck and walks across the small strip of beach nestled between my Wal-Mart lawn chair and the crest of the Gulf, clothes caked in dried mud-water. The inch thick slice of skin at the top of his brow is golden brown, holy flesh that remained uncovered from his mesh hat. From what I’ve gathered, he has no family, nor means of transportation to ferry him about town.
He exists solely in his apartment, on the water, and on the runway between land and sea. His skin is taut over a lived-in handsomeness, fit from the lifting and pulling. His diminutive size does not detract from his stature, nor do his humble clothes. It only adds to his mystique. In my eight months in this chair, snug amidst the odd backdrop of industry and nature, I have yet to see him utter a single word. In fact, his mouth remains frozen at a constant mid-point, never twitching, frowning, or smiling.
At every opportunity, I try to uncover anything I can about this mute son of a bitch. His lack of substance is a constant reminder that I cannot muster a back story befitting this Asian prince. He is an empty vessel, just waiting to be filled with motivation and coming of age—I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything satisfying enough to stick. I have my favorites, but nothing to save to the hard drive.
Of course, I would never think of approaching him to fill in the holes. It makes it too real. Nor could I, if a sudden bout of spontaneity befell me, because Catfish over there speaks absolutely no English. So every chance I get to subtly interrogate the other tenants of our humbly crumbling apartment complex, I go digging for the good stuff. And if they have no answer, I’ll try to rewrite his story.
Karen, the elderly proprietor from 4C who likes to show me her paintings, had me vacuum her couch this afternoon, to rid the plaid beast of dog hair. I decided to probe her for the details on our mystery man.
“Mr. Tran?” she asked. “Oh, he’s a sweetheart.
“Is that so?”
“Well, he’s not much of a talker, if you know what I mean,” she offered, elbowing me as she chuckled. “But he pays his rent on the first, and he always waves. When he first moved to the building, I brought him a plate of chocolate chip cookies. He didn’t seem to understand anything I was saying, so his niece translated for us—but he seemed to appreciate the gesture.”
Aha! A niece. I knew it. A link to the outside world. I pressed her for more details, but because she’s so old, her stories are always jumbled with equal parts accuracy and bullshit. This seems as good a time as any to test out a Catfish back story, and Karen was the perfect person to try it on.
Her general lack of knowledge on any subject not covered by Judge Joe Brown or the Bible ensured that even if I did not get all of the details right, it wouldn’t matter. In fact, sometimes I throw my own inaccuracies right back at her. Partly to test her current understanding of the world and partly to mess with her.
But details aren’t as important in this important stage of development. I was concerned with the overall story arc. I’ve been kicking this one around for a few days. So let’s see how the Prince of North Vietnam flies with Karen.
“Do you know what Jen told me about Mr. Tran?”
Karen’s eyes grew wide, and her head comically pivoted side to side. Once she determine the coast was clear, she leaned in. “What’d she say?” she whispered dramatically. This would be too easy.
“Well--” I said, offering the appropriate theatrical pause before launching into the epic tale of Catfish. “Apparently, Mr. Tran was the Prince of North Vietnam before the war broke out.”
“Whaaaaat?” Her body contorted oddly, as if the information was actually coursing through her torso and limbs, slowly spreading throughout her. The embryo of a sly smile crackled around her mouth. I had her on the line.
“It’s true,” I began soberly. “He was born into wealth, but he wasn’t affected by it. He was completely humble. Everyone in the Peking villages adored him, but the war started suddenly with a coup, and his family was ousted from power. The communist uprising burned down the royal palace, the Tran palace, and murdered over a thousand servants.”
”Oh my God! Over a thousand?”
“Yeah, it was terrible. They made Mr. Tran watch his father’s murder. Poor guy was only ten years old.”
“How did they kill his father?” she demanded. “How did they kill the king?”
“They shoved hot coals down his throat!”
“Oh, Jesus!” Karen gasped, as Choco the unimaginatively named Chocolate lab barked in the background. “Oh God Almighty!”
She kept invoking the Holy Trinity, in all variations you can think of. As swimmingly as this is going, I might have to wrap this up faster than I’d like. The poor woman is going to run out of biblical references.
“Yeah, but Mr. Tran was smart enough to escape,” I whisper, reshaping our tragedy into an espionage thriller. “And you know, this one Southern Vietnamese guard, he saw Mr. Tran and felt sorry for him. He decided to show him mercy and let him sneak out a side door. The others were too busy killing people to notice him. He snuck out of the palace, and ran across the courtyard to the imperial gates, where there were even more usurpers, killing stragglers in the palace. He slid down the hill into the moat—and the moat is a huge drop from the land, maybe thirty feet—he stayed in the water for three days.”
“Three days? He just sat there?”
“Yep. No food or water. This was all before the American retribution. Finally, these Southern Vietnamese, they gained control of the kingdom. So the Prince, he swam down the moat to find a place where he can climb out...and he climbed out of the moat and walked across the entirety of North Vietnam to the coast. The whole time he’s hiding in the shadows, because he’s a wanted man. The prince, you know; so he only travelled at night, right?”
“Of course.”
“And he found a fishing boat on its way to Thailand. He hides on the boat, and by the time the Thai guys figured out he’s on the boat, it’s too late to turn back. So they took him in as a protégé. And he’s been a fisherman ever since.”
“Wow.” Karen sighs. Her right hand, the one rested gently on her chest, finally felt safe to drop down to her side. She shakes her head in disbelief. “That is incredible. I cannot even imagine how terrified he was.”
“Yeah, I mean, think about that. How conflicting would it be to be a fisherman for the rest of your life? On one hand, he’s lived his whole life on the water. On the other hand, the trauma from those three days in freezing moat water? It’s crazy. He only does it because it’s the only job he could get, what with his not speaking English and all.”
“And you said Jen told you all of this?”
“Yeah, we hung out a few times right after I moved in. I guess she was visiting Mr. Tran for a few weeks or something.”
“Poor Mr. Tran.”
“I know. He has amazing strength to be able to go through that.”
Okay, admittedly, Karen is not the most discernible audience. She’s old, lonely, and a little mentally frail—and she has shockingly little understanding of world geography and history. But the best performers know you have to shift your material to the crowd. Play to your audience, you know? This woman wanted heroics, theatrics, she wanted fucking phantasmagoria! And I delivered it. I was really putting on a show, fists gripping a phantom sword slicing through the air to illustrate the slaughter, and hands miming the shoving of hot coals down the poor King’s throat.
Next time might not be so simple. I think I’m going to present my neighbor across the hall with my new one. It’s all about how Catfish works 20 hours a day to save money for his wife, who still lives in Vietnam. He sends over half of his paycheck home every month to help pay for his wife’s medicine, which is super expensive because they don’t have insurance, and that’s why he lives a frugal life. I don’t know. I still haven’t worked out the details yet. I think she’s going have cancer. It may even be terminal.
