The Sweetest Fruits

by Monique Truong

  When my brothers returned from their university years in Padova, they began calling the British “the Occupiers.” They would call Charles, an officer and a surgeon in the British Army, something much worse.

  When Old Iota wanted to know more about my father’s family, I had told her that it was as small as his heart. It was God’s will that his own father and mother were long passed by the time their three grandchildren were born. My father, their only son, inherited the house above Kapsali town, the farmland in the interior of the island, and whatever else kept food on our table and my mother and then Kanella by his side.

  By and by, I understood that Kanella was a very good cook but that she was an even better broker of my father’s consent. Long before my years inside, Kanella’s household duties had been reduced to those of the kitchen. She still walked down to the marketplace every morning, but on the way back a porter was with her. The foodstuffs were not any heavier. Kanella was just no longer a beast of burden. She also had two women who came every morning to sweep, dust, launder, and assume the chores that had once been hers. These women, who only spoke Romaic and only spoke to Kanella, came to the house during the hours when my father was in the belly of Kapsali town conducting the business of owning what he referred to as the Cassimati Estate. I should have known that “estate” was a bloated term, same as “villa,” same as “nobility.” There were tracts of land, but they were shrinking with each passing year, sold to cover expenses that I dimly understood then. For instance, where was Padova; what was a university; and why had my brothers returned from these locales so changed in clothing and in manners but more like my father than ever before?

  After I met Charles, or “Assistant Staff Surgeon Charles Bush Hearn,” as he had introduced himself, he answered these questions and many others for me. His knowledge of the everyday mysteries of my own family and my own island impressed me. He offered me unfamiliar words for familiar things. I had never even heard of the “United States of the Ionian Islands” before him. “Where is that?” I asked him. To his credit, he did not laugh or deride me for my ignorance. That would come later.

  “Where is here, Sióreta Cassimati,” he replied, sweeping his arms around him. “You, Sióreta, are an Ionian Islander under the amical protection of the United Kingdom,” he added, bowing his head in my direction. He listed these islands for me, slowly, as though he were pausing to consider whether their names befitted them. He began with Cerigo, which he said was a far distance from the others and the farthest one south.

  Corfu

  Paxos

  Cephalonia

  Zanté

  Ithaca

  Santa Maura

  Charles could have been naming the distant stars. These islands did not exist for me until that very moment, when he brought them into being with his breath.

  Patricio, do you remember how the creatures and the objects of your first years of life came into being once I named them for you? Remember when a boat was not yet a “boat,” a bee was not yet a “bee,” a cup not a “cup” until I taught you their names? Remember how your eyes opened wide, as if I were the one who created the boat, the bee, the cup? That was how I must have looked at Charles back then. Your father’s language has given you other words and names now, but I gave you the first ones. Remember, Patricio, your tongue grew nimble mimicking the sound of my voice.

  I was not a young woman when I met Charles Bush Hearn. I was an old maid. At twenty-five years old, the next roof over my head would have been a convent’s. I was being dressed not for God but for His Son.

  Kanella did not tell me my fate. The two women who worked for her told it to each other, as they scrubbed the tile floors of the Villa Cassimati on their hands and knees.

  I should have been at the Third Hour service that morning, but I awoke late to find roses in my bed. I got up to call for Kanella, but when I opened my bedroom door I heard the women’s laughter and then their words, both being traded without restraint as they must have thought that the house had no ears but their own. I did not recognize the story they were telling as my own, at first.

  “The rich are heartless,” a voice, smooth as the tile floor, asserted.

  “Well, you know what they say. The poorer you are, the bigger your heart!” a voice, coarse as the bristles of a scrub brush, declared.

  Laughter.

  “My heart is the size of a honeydew.”

  “My husband’s heart is the size of a watermelon!”

  Laughter.

  “Her father’s heart is an olive pit.”

  “A lemon pip!”

  Laughter.

  “They say there have been offers, but he does not want to pay her dowry.”

  “You mean his cook does not want him to pay!”

  Laughter.

  “You know what they say about the cook?”

  “She cooks best with her clothes off!”

  Laughter.

  “The cook has it all figured out.”

  “The cook found the only Bridegroom who does not ask for a dowry!”

  Laughter.

  “Rich father. Poor daughter.”

  “Heartless!”

  I stood in the doorway waiting. I heard only the scraping of the bristles against the tiles. The sound of their labor, uninterrupted by mirth, told me how pitiful the last line of my story was to them.

  I tried to recall what these two women looked like; how old they were; whether I had ever been told their names. I could recall nothing about them except that one was taller than the other. They were faceless to me. How was I not faceless to them?

  I went back to my bed of roses and closed my eyes. When Kanella returned from her morning errands, my fate tellers were gone, and the house smelled of lye and thyme. I was dreaming of St. Catherine of Alexandria. She had visions of the Mother of God and the Divine Child, who in His infancy had accepted Catherine as His pure bride. As His betrothed, her faith grew stronger. Her defense of her faith grew stronger as well. The Roman Emperor beheaded Catherine for both crimes. The Angels then took her body up to the Mount, where it was later found, perfumed and invested with miracles.

  “You are twenty-five,” intoned St. Catherine, as she unlocked the heavy doors of a convent. Inside, there were cages, not of birds but of roses.

  “You are twenty-five,” repeated the voice, but it was Kanella’s, as she lifted up my bedcovers. “You are too old to allow this to happen. Mark out the days and learn to foretell,” she scolded. She left the room and returned with a change of bed linens. As she stripped the sheets, I stood by the shuttered windows watching her work. My words had left me again. In their place was the hymn to St. Catherine, “Let us praise the most auspicious bride of Christ. . . .”

  Kanella was right. I was too old. I had to learn to foretell.

  The following morning, I saw Charles for the first time. I was certain that God gave him to me, so I loved him upon first sight.

  Even at nine in the morning, the church in the Fortezza was full of shadows. Lit by candles that gave off more smoke than light, the air inside was heavy with beeswax and incense. I thought of this weight as the breath of God. I breathed it in, deeper and deeper, until I felt light-headed, until I was a dust mote, floating. I saw miracles that morning that I have not told to another soul. I saw the Icons blinking, first St. John of Chrysostom and then St. Basil. I saw the Theotokos—you know her as the Mother of God, Patricio—nodding off to sleep and waking with a start, jostling the sleepy-eyed Divine Child upon her lap. I witnessed Jesus on the Cross sneezing soundlessly. This made me weep for him more than the sight of his wounds. I longed to cover his bare shoulders with a shawl and to cup his cold feet in my hands.

  Elesa, we will never finish if you continue to lay down your pen. You do not have to believe me in order to write what I say. Believing me is not part of our arrangement. Patricio will believe me.
He is the only one who must.

  In the Orthodox Church, Patricio, we do not have pews. We stand in the nave for services, the women and girls on the left side and the men and boys on the right. The curls of smoke from the censers were forming lace doves, which hovered near the Holy Altar as they often do, but that morning a dove broke from the flock and flew toward the far right edge of the nave. My eyes followed, and the dove took me to the face of a young man with large round eyes, thick curved brows, and a head of brown curls swept to one side of his forehead. His face was pleasing but so pale that I thought that he was frightened. I wanted to see the rest of him, but I caught only the red jacket of his uniform as he turned and departed through the front doors of the Church. Connected by a thin, strong rope, his body pulled mine out of those same doors. My legs were certain of what they had to do. They followed Red.

  I had never left in midservice before. I had never even considered it as a possible act. Like flight, to leave—Where would I go?—was beyond the borders of my thoughts. I was breathless that morning because I knew that I would do it again.

  Red was walking toward the center of Kapsali town, his strides long and purposeful. He was already past the Villa Venieri when I closed the church doors behind me. I would not be able to follow him, if he went much farther. I broke into a run, something that I had not done since I was a little girl. The road sloped downward and I reached him faster than I thought I would. He stopped and turned toward me. My legs, removed by the Angels, disappeared, and the rest of my body fell into a heap of flesh and fabric. A cry came from me, more out of surprise than pain.

  “Sióreta, Sióreta?” he inquired, as he knelt down beside me.

  I hid my face in my hands. Where are the Angels now? I wanted to know.

  The Angels knew that they were no longer needed. My silence was enough.

  Red thought that I was in too much pain to speak. He picked me up in his arms and began to carry me back toward the church in the Fortezza. I peeked through my fingers and thought this would not do. We will be seen. “Please, over there,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. He leaned his head into mine. I dropped my hands, and we were face-to-face, his breath on my cheeks. I pointed him toward a narrow path, which led behind the Villa Venieri and wound its way along the high walls of the adjacent villa. There the path opened onto a spit of land with a view of the Ionian Sea. Long ago someone had placed a bench, painted a middling blue, facing whatever color the water was that day. The view was unremarkable. Who on this island had not seen the sea? The bench served no purpose, except to prevent someone from walking off the overlook on a moonless night. Unfrequented and shade bare, the bench’s only witness was the Ionian. The Angels took my legs, but they had given me foresight.

  Cradling me in his arms, Red sat down on the bench.

  Keeping my voice low in order to keep his breath on my cheeks, I whispered, “I am hurt.”

  He asked if I was in pain.

  I answered with my given name.

  He asked if my ankles had given way.

  I told him my family name.

  He asked if he could lift the hem of my dress past my low boots.

  I told him my age.

  He assured me that he was a surgeon.

  I told him that I was unmarried.

  He undid my bootlaces.

  I hid my face. I did not want him to see me smile.

  He pressed his fingers gently around my bared ankles.

  I sighed into my hands.

  He slid me from his lap and placed me next to him on the bench. He asked if I would take my hands from my face. I did and I pressed it into the red of his sleeve instead. He laughed low and said, “Sióreta, Sióreta . . .”

  We continued in this manner until the church bells began to chime again. We had repeated ourselves often because his Venetian was a shadow language. I understood the general shape of what he wanted to say but not the finer details.

  When I told him that I had to return home, he asked when he could see me again.

  “Tomorrow, here, at nine,” I answered.

  He laughed low again and said, “Sióreta, Sióreta . . .”

  Before I left, he kissed my hands, first the left and then the right. I felt the kisses on my ankles, as if his lips had touched me there.

  Charles called me “Sióreta Cassimati” until the day he kissed me on the lips. I would say until the day I allowed him to kiss me on the lips, but I do not see the reason to tell an untruth.

  Elesa, one day you will hear “kiss” and not suffer that flush of shame on your face. It is all the acts that follow a kiss that you must guard yourself against until matrimony. On Santa Maura I know you will be welcomed into a family of women. Your mother had told me that she was the youngest of eight sisters, but these women will not tell you what I will. Consider this ship your Padova, Elesa.

  Put down your pen, my dear. What I will tell you now is for your ears only. Your mother, if she were alive, would want you to know the ways of men. Patricio will not need me to teach him. He will learn all of this in due time.

  After the kiss, I was “Cara Rosa, Cara Rosa.” Charles always said it twice. He told me that it was the most beautiful couplet he had ever written. I asked him what a “couplet” was.

  Our courtship followed a simple routine. We met on that bench every morning, except for Saturdays and Sundays, at the hour of nine. Then we met less often, but at the same hour, near the stables in the Fortezza in a small room where the shelves were lined with saddle soaps, chamois cloths, and brushes. The door to this room had a lock and Charles the key.

  The first morning Charles took me to that room it was raining. He had waited by the Villa Venieri and signaled for me to follow him back up the street of villas and into the Fortezza via a side entrance that I had never used before. Our courtship on the bench was only in its second week, but I trusted him entirely. I trusted that to follow him was better than standing in the rain, in the church, or in the courtyard of the Villa Cassimati, staring up at the birds. Charles walked quickly, but I could not. I needed to keep a distance between us. My umbrella hid my face but could not hide that I was a woman.

  Once in the Fortezza, we passed an area where there was a group of Cerigote washerwomen. Their manner of dress—loose tunics slipped over their heads and tucked into their full skirts—differed from my own, which, according to the seamstress, was “in the mode of the young ladies of Venice.” I could not even feign that I was one of them, if I were to be questioned. The downpour that morning had the washerwomen rushing to and fro, removing the last of the Occupiers’ laundry from the lines. They were far too busy to pay me any attention, I thought. I did not care about the British soldiers seeing me. Cerigote eyes and Cerigote mouths were what I knew I had to avoid.

  When Charles reached his destination, he turned his head to make certain that I would know where to go. Then he unlocked the door, went inside, and waited. I walked toward that entryway with purpose and certainty but without haste.

  Write that down, Elesa. Here, let me repeat it.

  I walked toward that entryway with purpose and certainty but without haste. That is what fate feels like, Patricio. You cannot stop your movement forward, but your heart is calm, your steps are steady, and your mind is clear of questions and doubts. Fate took me to the man who would become your father, and now fate has taken me away from you, my blessed second. Doors open and doors close, and we must be prepared to enter or leave.

  Patricio does not need to know what followed, Elesa.

  Before I could knock, the smell of horses and men rushed out of the opening door, and I slipped in. My dress was drenched from the bottom up, the hems of the skirt and petticoats soaked through. Charles lifted me up by the small of my waist, seated me on a wooden table, and repeated an act from our first meeting. He unlaced my boots.

  The next morning, the sun shone, and we met
again at the bench on the overlook. Charles could not let go of my hands, but he found it difficult to meet my eyes. After a long silence, he asked if I was in pain.

  “Yes.”

  “Cara Rosa, Cara Rosa, do you have regrets?”

  “No.”

  After another long silence, he asked, “Will you meet me there, again?”

  “When?” I asked him.

  I was spare with my words when I was with Charles, as the fewer that I used, the better we understood each other.

  Charles, with hand movements and a small sketch of the island, said that he was being sent to the northern tip of Cerigo and would not be able to meet me again for a fortnight. We then agreed to meet at the room near the stables upon his return, rain or shine.

  The following week brought with it steady rain. I resumed my mornings at the Third Hour service. I prayed that God had not taken Charles away from me. I looked for signs of his promised return. I looked for lace doves and sleeping saints. I found nothing in the church in the Fortezza except the smell of rising damp and rotten teeth. On either side of me were low-hanging stomachs and descended bosoms. Around me was what I would become. I prayed for rain on our appointed day because rain or rather my umbrella would hide me again. Then the Angels visited me, and I prayed for full sun instead. “The more Cerigote eyes who witness you in the Fortezza, the better,” the Angels counseled. “You want to stay in your father’s house?” they wondered. “You want to marry the Son of God?” they taunted. “He already has brides all over these islands,” they said.

  The number of Angels is not important, Elesa. Is that what you have been sitting there wondering about all this time? If you must know, there were three, but I never saw them. I only heard their voices.

  My mind was raw and bruised with worry. By the end of the first week, I could not remember Charles’s family name. I could not remember his full rank. Did he tell me he was a surgeon? I took out the calling card that he had given me, and I stared at the words, begging them to tell me what they knew. They refused, as always.