by Kien Nguyen
They reached the end of the hall. Her room was located on the far corner of the second floor, above the entrance to the tea shop. She motioned for him to wait as she turned the doorknob. The first thing his eyes registered was the moon, round and yellow, a melted ball of wax that splashed its light on him through the window.
“We are here, at last,” she said. “A thousand apologies for that dreadful hallway. That cheap bastard Van Tong has tried to run this brothel without a maid service. Sooner or later, we will all succumb to more illness than the rats that live behind those walls.” “Who is Van Tong, the tea shop owner?” She nodded. “Yes, that brute you met downstairs.” “Is that so?” he mused. “I was under the impression that he was one of the employees, a bartender or bodyguard.”
Camille pushed the door shut, and the room brightened as the dark hall disappeared. Dan was aware of a faint fragrance of lilac. She tiptoed closer to him. Her feet—Dan noticed for the first time how small they were—tapped against the wood floor, beckoning for his attention. At the same time, her hands were on his shoulders, lingering for a moment before they slid down his arms, so slowly that he could feel himself respond with gooseflesh.
Looking up at him, her face was covered with so much powder that it seemed like a white mask. Crow's feet radiated from the corners of the eyes, which held no hint of emotion. Dan pulled away. Where did her spirit go? Where was the empathy that people like her were paid to provide? The mask embraced him with its hollow look, lacking all capacity to understand.
“The song,” he reminded her.
“Is that all you really want?” she asked. “You are paying me a lot of money.”
He nodded. Without Tai May, the coins had no value to him. The Jade Pin was his connection to her. The cycle of desire, reunion, and departure that he had experienced was a traditional aspect of life in the citadel. Forbidden love, hidden behind silken screens, had befallen the king's mandarins and concubines throughout history, and had been immortalized in literature and songs. Romantic frustration was part of the privileged life of the royal fortress. How could he, a lowly embroiderer, be bold enough to challenge the age-old customs? His only consolation was his song, which no one could steal from him.
The truly distasteful thing was getting the music of his heart out of this woman. Like the burnt wick of a candle, she stood inches away from the window. But he had come so far to get so close. His throat was constricted; he could hardly speak. “Just the song.” He saw her lift the lid of a carved box on the mantel and pour his coins inside.
“The lute is in my bedroom. That way.” She shut the container and aimed one of her fingers past his left shoulder. Dan turned. Through a semitransparent shade that separated the inner compartment from the room where they stood, he saw the outline of a bed covered with a red satin quilt. Behind it, his shadow was reflected in a wall of gleaming mirror.
A breath of wind crept through the window, and the thin curtain responded with a lazy twirl. The metallic glint of reflection faded to black for a fleeting second, and it seemed as if the mirror had just blinked at him, like the eye of some monstrous beast. However, when the same thing happened for the second time, he saw what was really happening: her movement back and forth from the window had intermittently blocked the moon and caused the illusion.
“With your permission,” he said, his voice flat. “I would prefer to stay in this room while you play.”
“Do as you please. I must change my dress into something more comfortable before I faint from this heat. I do not require you to do the same. I am certain that you are obliged by your own strict moral code to keep your garments on. However, if it is getting too hot in the room, you can open another window.” She paused, then asked him, “Could I offer you some refreshment? All that I have is a glass of brandy.”
“No, thank you,” he said, having no idea what brandy might be. Probably some type of foreign tea, he guessed.
He saw her silhouette against the patches of light behind the sheer drape. Her naked arms were raised toward the ceiling, her body wiggling, her dress slipping past her breasts like a moth bursting out of its cocoon. Dan turned away, his cheeks burning.
He searched the room, keeping his eyes focused on its design and furnishings. Everything was set up in the Japanese style, with low tables and elongated cushions instead of chairs. A red scarf was thrown over a lamp to dim its light. There were pictures on the walls; strange sketches in black pencil. He saw portraits of a young boy in several of the drawings, along with the name “Camille” signed at the corners and personal remarks that made little sense to him. The rest of the portraits were a collage of unfamiliar men, some in uniform, others in suit and tie.
Dan realized that the paintings were just a part of Camille's larger collection—memorabilia of the lovers who must have passed through her life. On the mantel, next to the money box, lay an ascot left by some English gentleman. To its right were a captain's hat, a French clock, some smaller frames containing old coins, and other bric-a-brac. The objects were arranged like trophies, hiding untold stories below their sullied surfaces. He tried not to think about their meaning as he waited for her, avoiding contact with the mementos by keeping his hands folded together on the front panel of his garb.
Finally, the sound he had waited for coursed into the room. Her voice rose, high-pitched and grief-stricken.
With a baffled face and a turbulent heart,
Phan Sink paced to and fro, in and out, in vacillation.
Her anguished voice, its intonation, its phrasing, accompanied by a familiar lute. He closed his eyes and saw a glimmer of the veranda of his home. Smelled the roses in the garden.
The gentle wind carried an aroma of incense,
And his sudden attack of anguish evaporated. He began to think of her…
His mind whirled. The song was so sad. He remembered waiting for his father to come home from a long journey. A lazy afternoon. The light, clinking sound of laughter. The singing struck every nerve of his body. Where had he heard those notes, those words, that sound before? It was as if someone had lifted a shroud off his eyes and darkness had turned to light. He…remembered. Of course, all those signs, the details that clattered inside his head…the tight knot of hair, those delicate feet, the drawings of the boy—images that led him back to the cradle of his youth. He saw, but he had also closed his eyes to things he did not want to see.
He made an abrupt turn to face her, leaning against the mantel for support. He did not realize he had knocked down some of her relics with the back of his hand, nor did he hear them hit the floor. The music stopped. She sat on the bed atop the red quilt, her fingers poised in midair. Fearfully, she lifted her eyes from the fretted neck of the lute and looked at him. She seemed to say something to him, but her voice was muffled, as though she were screaming through a wall. What was she saying? Van Tong? Why would she mention the tea shop owner at a time like this?
“What is your name?” he cried to her.
“Camille.” She, too, raised her voice. “Don't you remember?”
“No, that is not true. Your other name!” He lunged toward her, heedless of the curtain between them. She looked purple to him through the veil. Her arms were wrapped around her chest, trying to cover her nakedness. He yanked the fabric away. “In my other life, my father called you Lady Yen,” he said, and watched her face contort with anguish.
“Of my hundred names in this profession, no one has called me that in seventeen years,” she wailed.
“Sixteen,” he corrected her.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He fumbled inside his collar until he found the piece of jade that had hung around his neck for as long as he could remember. The heat and oil from his body had polished it to a warm glow. It dangled at the end of a gold chain, sparkling in the light between his two fingers. “I am Dan Nguyen, your son,” he told her.
She threw her head back and uttered a dreadful howl, with her hands extended toward him. Her body collapsed in
his arms, slackening. In the reflection on the mirror, Dan caught a glimpse of something that almost made him swoon as well.
Spreading across her naked back, vivid in its details, was an elaborate tattoo. A coursing river and its bluish waves streamed down her spine, dotted occasionally in red marks. On both sides of this waterway, mountains, with their undulating crests, loomed in and out of seemingly moving clouds. In the center of this panoramic landscape, a monk bowed to a seated priest. And underneath them, in the old vernacular characters, was scrawled the second verse of the ancient poem: “Then they hold the constellations in their hands and peering at the sun, they find the road to Nirvana. Many invalids shall be cured at the door.”
The last bit of the treasure map his enemies had sought so recklessly over the past sixteen years was now before him, as real as the woman who bore it.
chapter nineteen
The Red Dream Hotel
Clutching his mother in his arms, Dan Nguyen was transfixed by the reflection of her back in the mirror. There, in front of him, was the tattoo that completed the map he had beheld on his father's back at the time of his execution. Now he had the missing piece. He stored the images and the verse in a quiet part of his mind to be studied later.
Dan eased his mother down onto the springy mattress. As he wound the red quilt around her bare body, she seized the tip of his collar and held on, only letting go with reluctance when he peeled her fingers away. He noticed that her feet, though small, were no longer bound.
“My son,” she moaned. “My own son! Wretched fate! I am being tormented by my past misdeeds.” Her lips were shaking uncontrollably.
“You must not try to talk,” he said. “Breathe deeply and slowly.”
“Leave my room at once.” She buried her head in a pillow. “I cannot bear to look upon you.” Her voice trailed off into deep sobbing.
Raising his voice, he said, “I do not have any intention of reproaching you, madam. For sixteen years we have been strangers to each other. Let us not begin our first hour together with bitter words. We have the rest of our lives to express our regrets. For the time being, I thank Heaven for our reunion, and that we did not perish under the enemy's hand like my father and his first two wives.”
She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. “Death,” she whispered, “has many faces, and I know them all too well, for I, too, am dead inside. But tell me, how did my husband die?”
“The worst possible way, madam,” said Dan. “I saw him in his last moments on Earth, on his knees and facing a grave. He died at the hand of Magistrate Toan, by means of decapitation. There was no mercy in the act. For almost ten years after his execution I lived as a slave in the enemy's house. I had to flee when my identity was exposed.”
“Oh, no, no!” she gasped. “Please stop! This is much too much for my poor heart to bear. Just take your money and go away.”
He shook his head. “Destiny has brought me to your door. I will not leave here until you answer my questions.” He paused. Lady Yen was leaning back against the wall, her eyes as vacant as the mirror behind her. She stole a glance at a corner, where a thick rope hung within reach. He could read her impulse to pull this emergency cord and summon help.
“Very well, then,” he sighed. “If you want me to disappear, you must tell me your story. Be sure to explain why you abandoned me, your own son. Was I too much of a burden for you to handle? Was my life not worth rescuing? I deserve to know the truth.”
“No,” she whispered, as she collapsed on her side. Her face was hidden behind her thick black hair. She put her hands against her ears as if to block out his voice. “Do not ask me these questions,” she said. “I beg you. Spare me my last shred of dignity! The mother you are looking for is no longer here. She is dead. I, on the other hand, am just an empty shell, void of the past. For you, I have nothing and remember nothing. If you insist on humiliating me, I will have no choice but to alarm Van Tong, and he will get you out of my room.”
“Please, be gracious and listen.” He knelt at the side of her bed. “I will not allow you to forsake me twice in a lifetime.”
Her tears felt warm on his hands. She reached for his silk headdress and unraveled it. His hair fell across his shoulders, dark and long. She brushed her fingers through it.
“I cannot say what you want me to say,” she said. “The truth has been bottled up so deep, locked in me like I am now locked inside this bordello. Are you going to take your revenge out on me? Can you not see that I am suffering for the sins I have committed? What will satisfy you, besides my pitiable profession and my dreadful solitude? When will you believe that I am now settling my crimes with the gods?”
“But you must explain,” said Dan. “Why are you selling your body? And why are you alone?”
“Because I am worthless as a human being. Because I have no skill or talent to be independent. And because I renounced my own son when he was most vulnerable.”
“And why was I renounced? Why did you leave me behind to face a destiny that was worse than death?”
“Because,” she screamed, “I wanted you to live!”
Her words seemed to exhaust her. Tears mixed with dark mascara ran down her cheeks in muddy tracks. “I wanted you to live,” she repeated. “I knew my limitations. You would have already been dead if you were in my care. I gave you to that peasant because I trusted her instinct, her survival skills, and most of all, her single-minded devotion. I knew she would save you, as she would be able to blend in among the other farmers like a locust in the grass.”
Dan stiffened. “You did not know that, madam. That peasant sacrificed her own safety on several occasions to save me. And in the end she died, so that I could live. Did your gardener give his life for you?” He fell silent, aware of the malice in his voice. To hide his embarrassment, Dan passed his hand across his brow and wiped away the perspiration.
“On the contrary,” she said. “I entrusted my fortune to him and required nothing in return. He was a gambler. Most of the Nguyen family's legacies I took with me were spent to feed his addiction to laying bets. I found out, when it was much too late, that he owed several casinos in town an enormous sum, more than twenty thousand silver pieces.”
She took a deep breath and continued, “To pay off this debt and save him from a dreadful end, I had no other choice but to sell myself to this brothel. What folly! He left me after I repaid his debt. My blind love for him carried me so far as to become a prostitute, only to be discarded. My gardener found shelter in another woman's arms, while I have spent the last fifteen years considering myself dead to the world. Now that you are here, my heart has awoken to beat again, only to suffer with the agony of the past. Oh, Heavens, help me!” She again gave way to sobbing.
“Stop your tears. Your troubles are coming to an end, madam,” Dan said, standing up. “I will find a way to release you from this place. No other man shall walk into the tea shop and ill-treat you again. This is a promise I intend to keep.”
“How?” she cried. “Unless you are a rich lord, I do not see how you will find twenty thousand silver coins, plus fifteen years of interest, to redeem my freedom.”
“Oh, but there is a way,” he said pensively. “The tattoo on your back, do you understand its meaning, madam?”
Her anguish faded. He could see then that she knew, as a sparkle of awareness crept into her eyes. He watched her fingers toying with the quilt's silken fringe. The clock ticked in the silence.
“How did you know about the tattoo?” she said finally. “You were only a small child when we parted.”
“Madam, I knew about the buried treasure. The tattoo, the map…I knew its secret.”
She gazed at the floor and did not answer. What was going through her mind? If only he could show her his true intention. If only Ven were here. “If you do not trust your own son, whom can you trust?” he asked.
He reached for her, and he could sense her again retreating. Her powdered face was inches away from him, impassive, stubborn.<
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“Do you want me to disappear?” he asked.
“I don't know,” she said, hesitating. “Do you have a copy of my husband's tattoo?”
“No, and I don't remember its details, but I know who has the original.”
“You must tell me then.”
“Very well,” he sighed, giving in. “My father's skin, which bore the first half of the map, is in Magistrate Toan's possession. I watched him as he removed it from my father's body.”
“You must get it back,” she said. “That man is our mortal enemy. Kill him before he escapes his Karma. And make certain that you see his blood spill. I trust you to carry out our revenge. Only you…” She shifted her eyes away from his face. Gathering her composure, she continued in a voice so soft he had to strain to hear her. “Only you, the last standing Nguyen, can restore our family's name and legacy.”
“I am not, by any means, a killer,” he whispered.
“How else can you reclaim your heritage?” she asked. “Can you ask the devil to return the map with peace and politeness? Or do you think that we can get justice by approaching the Royal Court to restore our name and property?”
“I will find a way to retrieve it, with no more bloodshed. Trust me when I tell you this: If violence were truly in my blood, I would have found a way to destroy him and his family long ago. I was a slave in his house for nine long years. That alone gave me countless opportunities. But there I was given shelter, food, and an education, and there I fell in love with an innocent girl.”
“They destroyed us!” she said. “They killed your father. I am in a whorehouse, and you grew up as a slave. There was no mercy in the act—you said so in your own words. Blood can only be washed away with blood. Surely the gods in Heaven have kept you alive for that purpose. Don't you understand the principle of revenge?”