|
________________ THE GHOST HA TAY A
SHORT STORY BY ________________ |
|
UYEN NICOLE DUONG The ghost of Ha Tay (Dedicated to the soul of my aunt)
--“TELL ME ABOUT HER,” HE SAID, ROLLING THE “R” OF
THE LAST word, the refined European accent alienating him from the chipped, nineteen
seventy-ish furniture of my incense-filled, run-down workshop in mid-town
Houston. I was pressing my elbows
onto my humble veneer desktop, hunching my shapeless five foot three body
over it, when the towering tall white man handed me the rumpled, stained name
card that spoke of the long journeys and hard trips so different from the
first class cabin of international airlines.
I thought, instead, of slow, sleepy trains and noisy, rusty buses
crawling across Southeast Asia, carrying inside them compartments and wooden
benches where people and chickens competed for the same narrow space,
stopping along rest stations where peddlers waved dusty white rice cakes in
the haggard face of tired passengers.
I glanced at the
black bold type face that was supposed to identify my unexpected visitor and found, instead, the name of a woman: Jasmine Khai Coudert Brothers Paris. London.
Milan. New York City. I recognized the
name of the international law firm, which brought me back to my days at the
University of Saigon in the early 70s, when I was once famous enough to be
blacklisted by the government as an anti-war student, draft evader, and
anti-government columnist. Back then, I had heard of the French-founded,
oldest law firm in America, which sent its lawyers to Saigon to serve the
needs of American businesses -- from the international adoption of war
orphans to the acquisition of supplies and materials and the hiring of local
labor for defense contractors. I looked into
the deep blue eyes underneath curly lashes and thought of the Mediterranean
sea I once dreamt of as a boy growing up in Vietnam. The square angle of the jaw line spelled
beauty on a man not more than thirty five years of age, reminding me of all those
French movie stars who lived in Loire castles and symbolized my childhood
fantasies about travelling to old Europe.
Those days, I had dreamt, too, of the gleaming body of the Seine on
one autumn day, when yellow and red leaves flew in the air, dancing to the
vibrant music of Berlioz. “St. Exupery and
His Little Prince, that is your type,” I said. For a moment, he frowned, perhaps genuinely surprised, before
nodding his curly blond head. I saw before me the ardent, innocent, and
watery eyes of the grown up version of the Little Prince, tall and lanky,
already aging and tired of life at 35, yet still looking for his rose. One
Jasmine Khai. He had
introduced himself to me as Jean Paul Lambert, formerly with Agence France
Presse. I prided myself on belonging
to the same breed of men – the journalistic type. “You must know
her,” he said almost pleadingly. “She said she used to live here and would
return here.” He had not
forgotten the primary purpose of his visit.
He was a man desperately looking for a woman. In a split second, all cultural barriers
collapsed, and I saw so distinctly the faces of all the Vietnamese men who
had come to me looking for girlfriends or mistresses in the old country. They all looked alike, bearing in their
soul and on their face the despair of a lover. I grabbed the
old business card he had handed me with what was left of my right hand, three
banana fingers to be exact. The
missing two fingers had been donated to the American dream, I always bragged about memories of
the earlier days of my immigrant existence.
Straight out of a refugee camp, I ended up in Houston as a meat
chopper for a slaughter house. Occupational hazard led to my fond memory of
the ambulance chaser attorney – the first white man I knew in America, who
advised me to give up workers compensation in exchange for a lawsuit
settlement that helped me set up my workshop. My workshop was the price of the two missing fingers. I was waiting
for my visitor to inquire about the missing fingers, but no question came my
way. He stirred anxiously in his
chair, oblivious to my famous trademark – Uncle Ten’s missing banana fingers,
that was. He was a lover all right,
completely absorbed in the reminiscence
of his woman. “A lawyer?” I
probed. “Avocat de cours?” I added in
French. “Coudert has never had any
office in Houston.” I waited for a
reaction. There was none. I continued, “Maybe it’s just a woman….” “She isn’t any
woman,” he wasted no time cutting me off, his beautiful accented voice
sounding rush and impatient. I took
one more look at his boyish face.
Perhaps he wasn’t just any man.
I had been in
this workshop for twenty years and no white man had set foot in my territory,
let alone one that took me back to my own boyhood dreams, typical of
middle-aged Vietnamese men who loved and hated the renaissance culture of
Indochina’s colonists, just as they had embraced and, at the same time,
rejected the entrepreneurial spirit of America. It was 1999 and the big boys
of Texas who once occupied their high-rent offices in uptown and downtown
Houston had gradually moved into the Vietnamese neighborhood mid-town,
tearing down old buildings and putting up stucco facades for overpriced
condominiums and offices. They helped
change the face of Houston that way.
Yet I had held steadfast to my own little shop, refusing their offers
to abandon the sanctuary that land-marked my Vietnamese neighborhood. Outside my front gate, I put up a pole
with the South Vietnamese flag. On
the window, I imprinted a drawing of the ying and the yang, symbolic of my
Taoist philosophy. I put no sign or
name plate on the unobtrusive wooden door, protected by thick, black iron
fences and the intercom system that forced my unexpected visitors to announce
their names before they could gain entry to the square hole where I practiced
my trade. And art. I’d
like to think of my home-made, one-man-show newsletter, and all that came
with it, as a genuine art. The art of reading my people and making that
mystical connection to a former homeland.
Mine was the one and only Vietnamese publication that recounted the
unusual stories of a culture in exile, all those extraordinary tales no one
could verify, disprove, or refute. I
once typed all my stories and corrected typos with an ink pen, photocopied my
original on an old, beat-up Xerox machine, and distributed copies at Asian
grocery stores all over town. The format and appearance of my publication had
improved through the years, as I replaced the old IBM self-correcting
typewriter of the 70’s with a desktop computer connected to a laser printer
typifying the late 90s. I also purchased a better Xerox machine. The content
of my newsletter, though, had maintained its essential characteristics. There
were Vietnamese who thought of my work as gossipy trash. Others regarded it with awe, calling it
the borderline between science and spirituality. My fans were always conscious of my name -- I was the famous, infamous Uncle Ten, Cau
Muoi, former journalist in the old country, self-made entrepreneur, one-man
publishing house, Houston’s only Vietnamese psychic, private eye, and Jack of
all trades. All Vietnamese businesses
in Houston, regardless of size and type, had been my advertisers at one time,
supporting my leisurely lifestyle and the growth of my one-man newsletter –
the Vietnamese appetite for the bizarre and misfit. The publication was
almost as old as the history of Vietnamese resettlement in Houston, Texas,
since the communist takeover of Saigon in 1975. Uncle
Ten’s workshop could mean different things to Vietnamese, but it had never
been the visiting place for a white man.
Until this day. “Burn
an incense stick,” my grown-up Little Prince urged. Obviously he had heard of my routine. He had done his homework.
So I burned my incense stick, and prepared myself for meditation. --“WATER, PLENTY OF WATER, CHRYSTAL CLEAR, I CAN SEE
THE
bottom of a stream, all those smooth pebbles and white gravel lying silently,
witnessing, “ I said, squinting. All blinds had been closed.
Sun ray had no place in my hours of meditation. In the film of incense
smoke, the white man’s face had lost its boyish grin. The gravity of his expression confirmed I
was on the right path. I went on to
describe the epitome of a perfect Asian woman. Waist small enough to fit in some white man’s stretch of a
hand. Eyes wetted with
self-sacrificing tears and almond-shaped,
like boats that carried midnight dreams. Mouth too demure to become nagger of criticism or
complaints. A leaf-like stature
willowy in the wind but stoic enough to take the abuse of man and fate. I was describing my own dream version of
Madame Butterfly. --“Orchid. Mauve pink is the color of lips and
flesh,” I blurted out, and my visitor’s face became whiter than a sheet. --“Blueberry
fields,” I added, and watched him close his eyes. I told him what happened when mauve turned violet, and rose
lips and flesh turned purple. They
all blended in with blueberry fields.
I might have seen a tear dropping from the lash curtains covering the
blue eyes of an emotional man. If his
eyes were the sky, it had turned stormy at the sound of my words. All due to the deep, purplish color of
blueberry fields. --“So
you know her,” he said. I
deliberately stayed quiet, neither refuting nor affirming. I was Uncle Ten, man of cosmos. I was supposed to know everything. That was understood. When
the lash curtains unveiled and he opened his large blue eyes to stare at me
again, I saw the turmoiled emotions of memory relived, and knew it would be
his turn to speak. --“She held the key to my room,”
he said. “And that was how we
met. In Hanoi’s Metropole Hotel.
Nineteen ninety four, the year the U.S. lifted its trade embargo against
Vietnam.” “IT WAS MY FIRST TRIP TO INDOCHINA AND I FOUND IT TO BE A strange
land. My daily thoughts and images
were registered in my mind like an express train traversing a stormy night,
cutting through thunder and rain. Even the plush, yet somber furniture of the
newly renovated Metropole had that flashback effect on my mind -- I felt
constantly in a dream, especially at around 10 o’clock at night, when I
floated through the hotel lobby toward the music bar. There I would review my
notes for the day over a glass of after-dinner liquor, widely awake as an observer,
yet dream-like as a participant. “I had never
been able to rationalize, dissect, or understand that dream-like state. “The dream-like state stayed
with me even in broad daylight when I rushed through the small alleys of
sleepy Hanoi, in and out of rundown government buildings and villas where Ho
Chi Minh portrait smiled his paternal smile upon his socialist-bureaucrat
descendants. It was Uncle Ho’s same
signature smile, in war and in peace. “The dream-like state persisted
when, at sunset, I ran along Hanoi’s misty, pacifying lakes and rustic
temples, capturing into my pupils the vestige of France in what was left of
old Indochina. You see, I was born in
Paris, in 1965, son of an aging father who married late and had spent time in
Indochina. The colony to me was once
a set of black and white photographs, which turned into life only after I
began my international assignment with Agence France Presse, all happening at
a time when France had just returned to her favorite colony by buying and
renovating what she once owned almost a hundred years ago: the landmark Metropole Hotel in central
Hanoi. “I made my home in the
Metropole and learned my routine quickly, accepting my hypnotic, dream-like
state as part of what Indochina had instilled in me those days. “Every Wednesday night, the
music bar of the Metropole had a special quartet that featured the piano, the
flute, the violin, and the cello in an array of popular classical and modern
pieces. The quartet played everything
from Pachebell’s Cannon in D to Le
Docteur Zivago. The young, skinny
classical musicians of Vietnam who became Metropole lounge performers
impressed me with the way they held their instruments against their slender
frame, much more profoundly than with the sound they made. The poignant
dignity they portrayed could only be matched by nostalgic Indochina
herself. “One such Wednesday night
became memorable, when I looked up from my notes and found a young woman
singing with the quartet. She looked
so out of place, dressed in Western clothes – a long, black, clinging knit
dress and matching cardigan. She was
not exceptionally beautiful, especially in a country full of beautiful and
slender women moving like butterflies in their graceful, body-fitting ao
dai. I didn’t find them particularly
attractive. Too fragile and naďve,
like the young limbs of children or vases that could easily break. I didn’t want to handle anything with that
much care, especially in my constant dream-like state. “It
was the woman’s long black dress and penetrating eyes that defined her. The rest of her, except for the black
dress, black eyes and flowing hair, seemed almost transparent in my blood
shot eyes at eleven o’clock at night amid the Cuban cigar smoke of the
travellers who congregated at the
landmark Metropole. She could be
either twenty six or thirty nine, the bearer of those dark eyes looking down
my soul, yet leaving no memorable first impression. Even her voice, clear and
vulnerable, sort of like the Greek singer Nana Mouskouri, filled my ears one
second and then dissolved the next, leaving the vibrato almost surreal. She was singing in Vietnamese. In a song, the language sounded less
monosyllabic, less clipping, more melodious and pleasant. A local singer she
was supposed to be, but somehow she looked and acted foreign and out of
place. “Having
gulped down my whisky that night, I was ready to go back to my room when she
caught my eyes. After she ended her
song, I picked up my key from the table. Fate crept in and I dropped my key. I looked around my chair.
I couldn’t find the key. ‘Is
this what you are looking for, Monsieur?’ “I
heard the question asked in perfect Parisian French. “I
looked up and found a pair of black patent leather sandals, on a pair of feet
the size of my palm, with seductively painted red toe nails. Above them was
the hem of a black dress. I was stooping on to the carpeted floor, and she
was standing in front of me, too close for comfort, the Vietnamese singer, a
figure in a long black dress with flowing hair. She was holding the key to my room. “You
see, I might have been constantly in my dream-like state, but somehow the
colors, images, lines, and angles of what I saw that night remained perfectly
real, frozen in memory. They formed the moment we met. “MY MIND THOSE DAYS WAS
LIKE THAT TRAIN PASSING THROUGH the night with its rhythmic motion,
amidst thunder flashing against a distorted, blackened horizon. She was the only real thing in that
horizon of dream. We used to meet
every Wednesday night after her performance.
She showed me her American passport and gave me the business card you
now hold in your hand. She told me
she was a lawyer travelling from Houston, Texas, to Hanoi, Vietnam to
re-establish an office for Coudert Brothers after its nineteen-year absence
from the country. What was a Coudert
lawyer doing in the Metropole Hotel, singing Vietnamese music? I once asked, and she answered with a
question. What was a young French
newsman doing in a music bar at eleven o’clock at night listening to
Vietnamese love songs he could not understand? Le cauchemare, mon pere, et L’Indochine, I could have said, but of course she had
no business knowing about my nightmare or my father, and I had no business telling. Agence France Presse and Coudert Brothers
brought us together, she said, and I readily agreed. We were two adults from two separate
places, intertwined by history, roaming an exotic place for a past of which
we knew nothing, she added. Again, I
readily agreed. “It was such an odd feeling
to have this stranger, a Vietnamese woman you just met, hold the key to your
room, open it, slip in, and stretch herself down on your bed. From that point on, she became the steam
from an herbal tea pot, colorless yet distinctive. She permeated into the
air, filling my space, my soul, unable to break, neither yielding nor
conquering, never letting go. Making love to her was like descending into
myself, without seeing a path. I returned to the center of me, in a web I
could not understand. “Naturally, there came a time
when Wednesday nights in the Metropole became the core of my existence in Hanoi, and being without her
meant being engulfed in a total void.
My former life in Paris seemed so far away it existed no more. In that
state of mind, I discovered one night how she had always held more than just
the key to my hotel room. “I followed her once from the
Metropole hotel out to the cemented alleys of Hanoi. We walked under Hanoi’s moonlight, with
her running ahead of me, laughing backward, in the same clear voice that sang
those incomprehensible songs during our Wednesday night routines. “Move on, Jean Paul,” she said, and I moved toward the trace of
moonlight that shone onto her heels.
We walked on, with me following her, as though the whole night had
just begun. “We
stopped in front of a tall, red brick wall, mossy and dull like the
complacent witness of the hundred
years that manifested themselves in the ancient quarters of Hanoi. I looked
up and realized we were in front of some old, hideous building, the familiar
French architecture no longer carrying its charm. She leaned her black clad body against the damp wall and
whispered to me. “Aren’t we home,
Jean Paul?” ‘Your
soul must have wandered around here a hundred years ago,’ she said, laughing
still. ‘Perhaps,’
I joined her in her folly. Everything
was possible in the dream-like state of Indochina. ‘Why
are we here, Jasmine?’ I pressed her against the wall and asked in between a
kiss. --‘Hoa
Lo,’ she said. “The name means a
burning fire stove,” she whispered into my ears. She let me know we were standing against the back wall of the
infamous Hanoi prison, built by the French to hold Vietnamese patriots. Later on it became the hell on earth for
American pilots. “I
looked down her oval face and found in the streak of moonlight a pair of
inviting lips, puffy in the shade of mauve pinkish orchid. I attempted to wipe the lipstick off with
my thumb, but there was no lipstick to smear. She said mauve pink was the lip color of Vietnamese girls. During French colonialism, they were all
captured and sent to Hoa Lo, where their mauve lips turned purple. ‘Into the color of blueberry
fields,’ she said. “I
looked into the streak of moonlight on her face again and thought those
orchid lips of hers, too, had indeed turned bluish lavender. “One
moment passed, and the next thing I saw was her silhouette running down the
blackened alley, her shiny heels stepping skillfully around little ponds of
rainwater accumulating on the alley, the hem of her dress dancing above
them. I followed her again and we
crossed many more alleys and dark, paved streets, before we reached the front
gate of an old brick house. She held
my hand and led me in, telling me we were in the house where her folks once
lived. “Almost a hundred years ago,”
she said. She kept on talking. No
longer in her flawless English or French, but in the clipping tonal sounds of
her native tongue. She was pouring out her soul. “We
slipped U.S. dollar bills to the children and adults with scrupulous eyes so
that they would go away, leaving us alone in the dark, humid house where I
watched her squat nude in the courtyard, under a stream of August moon. In the mossy courtyard less than ten feet
wide, near sewage and trash, she scooped rainwater from a slippery clay
container with an old powder milk tin can and poured it on her naked
self. If I had been an artist, I
would have painted the sight of her nudity, but I was no artist, and all I
could do was to carry her wet self inside the house, to the bamboo bed under
an opaque mosquito net, tugged behind an old curtain made out of some cheap
flowery cotton fabric. I held my
breath and toughened my muscles to the point of stillness. I could smell my own sweat and the
unsanitary smell of urban poverty, and the heat seemed eternal in that small
space, and every drop of water residue on her skin became a soothing source
of breeze to take me away from the filthy, stuffy deep alleys of poor Hanoi.
Onto a different world. That of raw
sensual love. I travelled in moments
too precious to be locked up in drawers of memories destined to fade into old
age. ‘There was a young girl who used
to live here,’ she said as I dozed off.
“They caught her father and sent him to Hoa Lo and he died there. The
mother took the girl to her village,
far away from here, but there was no hiding from fate, and something
happened to the girl later, toward the end of the war,” her words dimmed
away. “In
my usual dream-like state, my body reached out for hers and I seized her lips
when they turned from mauve to lavender.
I was making my way through the damp swamps and jungles of Southeast
Asia and all of the things they did to the Vietnamese patriots and American
pilots held in Hoa Lo were being done to me.
Every nerve ending in me rose and fell and I submerged in the
pain-pleasure-pain cycle that numbed my brain. Love’s tender secret, share it with me, I kept hearing her
voice. The pain-pleasure cycle stopped only after I turned my sweated body to
the first beam of sunlight that pierced through my eyelids. I regained consciousness that way, along
with the beckoning of the day. “She was standing nude in front of the only
window in that old house, singing to herself. Voi que sapete che cosa e amor. Donne vedete s’io l’ho
nelcor…You have the answer, you hold the key. Love’s tender secret, share it with me. Lady, I beg you, share it with me. The sun had not fully emerged outside and
her silhouette edged against the sheer curtain made out of some cheap white
lace that had turned yellow. But in the gray area where she stood in the
beginning of dawn, the lace appeared virginal. Quietly, I watched her
breathe: the curve of her waist and the smallness of her back heaving up and
down, resembling the fluid shadow of a brown cello edging against a misty
bridal veil. “From
the bed, I watched her turn and look at me in the middle of her song, her
pointed breasts protruding, her eyes full of tears. The sun was gradually
rising behind her, behind all that cello silhouette edging against lacy
veil. Lady I beg you share it with
me…So what’s your secret, Jasmine? I
yearned and yearned. “You will know
in time,” she said. “Up
until then, you see, I had only seen her at night. My heart somehow sank into despair as I watched the first
sunray sweep through her dim and pale face.
Somehow I knew I would be bound to that face. I must have fallen in love. --“Why
are you here, Jean Paul?” the tearful almond eyes asked of me. “She
moved slowly toward me and fell onto my chest and my arms held her and I
cried my hot tears into the cooling mass of her hair. I cried into the darkness that imprisoned
me. Lady I beg you, share it with me,
her song still echoing, and I went on to tell her my secret about the old
Frenchman who died in the asylum outside Paris. During the last hours of his
life, the old man was still speaking incessantly of the blueberry fields,
where he had raised the rifle and aimed at the smooth forehead in between a
pair of dark girlish eyes looking up at him in terror. The bloody naked body jerked backward
once, the skull cracked, and then the pair of eyes, wide-opened, bewildered,
despaired and horrified, submerged underneath all that crystal clear
water. At some point, the open pink
mouth and warm mauve pinkish flesh would turn purplish. Into the color of the blueberry
fields. I might have stopped
telling. But the nightmare never
ended. “WEEKS WENT BY.
MY LIFE MOVED ON AND I RETURNED TO MY Hanoi routine with wire service
assignments and my transient newsman’s existence at the Metropole Hotel,
except that she no longer came to me on Wednesday nights. The quartet was
still playing in the music bar, but she was gone. I waited and waited for any kind of news. “The news finally came when a
handwritten note was delivered to my room one day. I was to hire a car and a chauffeur and she would meet me for a
day trip to the mountainous areas west of Hanoi. Her job in Vietnam was
finished and she would soon be returning to Houston, Texas. The handwritten note contained all of the
necessary instructions for my driver to follow. ‘We must have a proper
farewell away from Hanoi,’ the last line of the note said. “The car passed through the
red dirt hills near the dam Yen Phu overlooking the Red River, onto the
bridge of Phung Thuong, and stopped at the green foothills of the Tan Vien
range, where the dirt road leading to the foothills could no longer
accommodate four-wheeled transport.
She was standing by the dirt road waiting for me, dressed in black
satin pantaloons and a white silk blouse like a proper Vietnamese girl of the
olden days. A black silky shawl
covered half of her face and draped over her shoulders. I could hardly see the flow of her hair on
such a hard, windy day. “It was the second time I saw
her in broad daylight. “I got off the car and she
held my hand and led me into the hilly range ahead of me, almost reddish
against the mid-afternoon sun. She
told me we were in the province of Ha Tay, land of freedom fighters and
poets. An ox-pulled cart sluggishly passed by us, stirring up the red dirt,
competing hopelessly with curious moped drivers who bumped their vehicles up
and down the road, their head turning backward for a glimpse of us as an odd
couple – a tall blond Westerner and a Vietnamese girl dressed in a
traditional countryside outfit. The
villages and hamlets of north Vietnam spread themselves before my inquisitive
eyes and I followed, again, the dancing heels of my companion. I moved in a trance in the foreign
landscape of wet farm land, dotted with little, brown-faced people who bent
their skinny back over green rice paddies.
“We kept moving until I heard
the sound of a waterfall. ’There, Jean Paul,’ she
pointed, pulling her scarf down to show me her face. “I looked at the oval face
accented by those mauve colored lips I had come to love, just in time to see
the pair of dark eyebrows raising in a mysterious expression of challenge. I
followed the tip of her finger toward the horizon afar to catch sight of the
body of water, sapphire clear underneath the reddish sun. It was just a pond or a stream, not a
waterfall after all, although the melody of cascading water passing through
rocks jingled in the air, mixed with the pleasant chirping sounds of singing
birds. Beyond the sparkling water was
a purplish, deep blue forest, standing against a pale blue horizon
crisscrossed with darting arrows of reddish light streams. “It was a breathtaking sight. “A perfect place reserved for
love. Hers and mine, I thought. “She was much shorter than I
and, tilting on her toes, she reached for my face, her arms wrapping around my
neck. The mauve orchid lips quickly touched mine. Vaguely I tasted the tangy sweetness of blueberries. --‘Watch, Jean Paul, the
blueberry fields. Vietnamese
blueberries. The Sim Tim,’ her sweet
voice engulfed my ears. “She let go of me and walked
toward the purplish blue of the horizon. ’Jasmine,’ I called her
name. She stopped and turned and the
sweet voice continued along with the chirping birds: --‘The girl’s name was Khai,
Jean Paul. She was washing clothes by
the stream. Near the blueberry
fields.’ “I moved. She let go of the
scarf. It flew toward me. Backward, against the wind. I could hear her words in all that thin
air. ‘Three French legionnaires
found her. They tore up her clothes
and held down her limbs. They took turns,
Jean Paul.’ “The scarf hit my face. Gently, so gently. Yet, I bent down in pain. ‘They could just have left
her there. But one Frenchman raised
the rifle.’ “The scarf was covering up my
eyes and I could no longer see her face.
I heard her words still. --‘Blood spurted from her
forehead and she fell backward. Into the stream. The water was once so clear before it turned brutally red. Her lips, bruised and cut, were still the
shade of mauve pink.’ --‘No, Jasmine,’ I cried out
in vain. Through the scarf, I saw her
face. It was growing larger and larger, out of proportion. From the corner of my eyes, her lips
looked purplish blue. --‘The villager found her two
days later, floating down the stream, toward the blueberry fields. Her lips had turned purple, Jean
Paul.’ “I scraped the scarf off my
face and let it fly. I looked into
the horizon of blueberry fields and no longer saw her face. ‘Farewell, Jean Paul,’ I
heard her voice for the last time. “Sunset
was approaching. Darkness gradually
descended upon the Tan Vien foothills, and I found myself alone in the
wilderness, facing all those blueberries.
She was no where to be found.
There was no trace of her, except for that flying scarf. “I SPENT THE NEXT THREE YEARS OF MY LIFE TRAVELLING ALL over Vietnam looking for the owner of that
scarf. I longed for the familiar
shade of orchid pink in lips that turned lavender and then purplish at
nighttime. “I never found her. Nor those vivid colors and shapes that
haunted my memory since then. “I
headed next toward the United States. Orange County, California and then
Houston, Texas, land of the Vietnamese immigrants.” “FIND HER FOR ME AT ANY RATE, S’IL VOUS PLAIT,” MY GROWN-UP version
of The Little Prince said to me, his blue eyes searching urgently for a
promise. I was Uncle Ten, man of
cosmos. I should have made such a
promise. But I didn’t. He
left my workshop with a stint of hope, still, shown in the handshake and the turn
of the blond head at the door. The
blue eyes were still pleading for a common belief. Left
alone in my workshop, I sighed and felt genuinely sad. I should have told him the blueberry
fields were a common Vietnamese metaphor for love in wartime. All educated
Vietnamese raised in the aftermath of French colonialism knew this. Perhaps
my grown-up Little Prince knew this. Perhaps he didn’t. Blueberry fields
existed only in a poem, written by a Vietnamese romanticist during his
participation in the hellish battle of Dien Bien Phu. The poet-warrior dedicated it to a beautiful young woman who had died
during the Indochinese war. Growing up in Vietnam, I had never seen
blueberry fields. I mentioned the
term at the beginning of my meeting with Jean Paul, purely out of gut
instinct and my own notion of fantasy.
After all, I was Uncle Ten, Houston’s only man of cosmos. Duong NhuNguyen Nov. 30, 1999© UND |