Then I reach for my silk robe hanging on the back of the door, but my hand hesitates and falls. I realize that I like being naked. He will be happy to find me naked when he comes through the door.
I step into the room. I have not done my prayers. I think to take that robe now and do this thing for my father. But I do not. I want to remain naked. My eyes fill with tears, and this surprises the part of me trying to figure all this out. I know I want Ben to hurry now. I know I am afraid he will not come here. I am afraid he has gotten on an airplane and gone back across the sea and he will forget me and I will wait naked in this room all night and all day tomorrow and the next tomorrow and the next until they find me dead here like this. If there is something more to these tears, or to this trembling that wishes to start in my hands, I am not ready to think of that. It is surely enough for now that I am afraid Ben has left me.
I could light just the incense. He deserves not to have to wait for that. I move toward the shrine and then I stop and my face grows hot and my hands fall to cover me and the trembling has begun in them and it is because I think he can see me like this. My father can. I have been naked in this room many times before, of course, and it never occurred to me that he was here. But surely I knew. I would pray, my nakedness covered, but barely, by my silk robe, I would let loose the smoke of the incense like a lover looses her hair, and I would finish and rise from where I kneeled and turn, and many times I would let the robe fall from me at once. It is often very hot in this room and the air is thick with rain that has died and turned into spirit and has filled the air unseen, like my father. And at those times my words had hardly faded from the room—he was still here where I called him to be—and I exposed my naked woman’s body, and so it was for him. I turn and hurry into the bathroom and close the door and I lean against it. Do I truly believe these things? Has my father lived with me all these years, watching? Did he see me touch Ben last night? Did he see my nakedness just now?
“Go away,” I say, aloud. Gently. I do not want to hurt his feelings. “Please,” I say. “I want a living man.”
I wait to see if he will go. I cannot tell.
And then I hear Ben coming in, the latch lifting, the hinges creaking.
I turn and I throw open this door and Ben is there. I am no longer ashamed in my nakedness. Because of him. He has taken any shame in this away from me. He is caught there, the door closing behind him, his hand still on the latch, his face turning now to my sudden appearance. He straightens and faces me. His eyes are wide and sad. I move quickly to him and I open my arms and I leap up for him to catch me and clutch me to him, knowing he will, and he does, his arms cross my back and press me hard against him as my legs go around his waist.
“Oh my god,” he says.
I think he says these words because he is so happy for me to be like this in his arms. I want him to carry me about the room, to spin with me and dance with me, holding me off the ground. But he does not move. He holds me close to him and he is breathing heavily, I can feel him, I put my face against the side of his throat and I wait and I can feel his heart there and it is beating very fast. I pull at his shirt. Pull it up out of his pants so that the part of me that only he knows can kiss at his skin. The cloth rumples across me there, a button touches me like a fingertip and is gone, then there is the mat of hair on his stomach against me and in all of this I am like a woman I never knew I could be, a woman so free like this about her body. I know very clearly that in this feeling I am being counterrevolutionary, my country would be ashamed of me. But I do not care. I am free, I am perched here high on a tree and I need only to leap one more time in order to fly, and it is because of him. And this is a strange and contradictory thing: clinging to him, I feel I can fly; devoted to him completely, I feel free.
“I love you,” I say.
“You’re a woman,” he says, very softly.
I know at once what he means. I let go of him with my legs and I climb down to stand on my own feet. He is right, and he is the man I love, to say this thing to me. I want to walk beside him to the bed. In Vietnam we have a society where men and women share their work equally and they should share their bed equally, and I am surprised that this man raised from childhood by an imperialist government can know this. It makes me want to jump up on him again.
“I love your smile,” he says, touching my cheek with his fingertips. It would be hard to explain the thing I have just smiled about, so I simply turn my face and kiss the fingertips that have touched me and then I take the hand in mine and bring it to my side and I tug at him so that we can walk together across the room to the place where we will make love.
He yields, he moves, but he feels very heavy. We go to the bed and he stops me before we lie down and he pulls me to him and presses me close. There is something in him, some feeling I do not understand. A quick dark thing is rushing into my head, and I say, “Is it only my smile?”
I feel his head move. He is looking at me, trying to see into my eyes, but I keep my face against his chest. I want the answer to this question first. Then I realize he does not understand what I mean. Still not looking at him I say, “Is it only my smile that you love?”
“No,” he says.
“I am sorry to ask this,” I say. “I am still a selfish girl.”
“It’s not selfish,” he says. “I thought we settled that last night.”
“And now I am sorry again. I should say I am a selfish woman. We settle that only one minute ago.”
He holds me gently away from him and we look into each other’s eyes. I want very much for us to make love now.
I let go and curl backward onto the bed, propped up a little with the pillow against the wall, and he eases down beside me. But he does not lie beside me, he does not touch me, he sits there as if he’s waiting for something to happen, something to be said. I wait, too. The light is fading in the room.
Then, when the motorbikes out in the street are filling my head like my own fears, rushing with a nasty sound around and around the block and not going anywhere, I say, “I guided a husband and a wife from Germany today. I do not think they love each other.”
And he says, very low, “Can I ask you some questions?”
I say, “Quickly. Please.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” I say.
He lifts his chin just a little bit, thinking something out.
Suddenly I believe I understand. I say, “You’re not too old. Vietnam girls respect an older man.”
He turns to me.
“More than respect,” I say. “A Vietnam girl can respect an older man and she can feel passion for him, too.”
“You sound like my mother again. The way you explain yourself.”
“It’s okay that way too. Think of me like I am forty-
six.”
He smiles. “No. I’m too old. That’s good. Too many years have gone.”
I am not understanding again.
“It’s 1994,” he says. “I was here in 1966. Don’t you see? That’s twenty-eight years.”
Yes?”
“You’re twenty-six.”
I am lost. I concentrate on these numbers that seem so important to him and there is a hissing in my head, some little sound from a dark corner in me, but I try to think only about the numbers. I say, “Almost twenty-seven.”
There is a little flinch in him, a catching. “Twenty-seven? Yes? All right. It’s still all right.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “We are closer in age. That’s good too, isn’t it?”
“When is your birthday?”
“May 15.”
“May? Next month?”
“Yes.”
“Look,” he says, almost sharply. “It’s all right. Really.”
“I know,” I say.
“I was here in
1966.” Then he hesitates. “I came in February. I left after a year. It was 1967.”
I wait for him. He is thinking hard again. I am not thinking at all. I do not feel comfortable with numbers. The hissing has stopped. Then he turns to me abruptly.
“Tien,” he says. “Please tell me about how you know your father is dead.”
“My mother told me this thing. When she left me with my grandmother.”
“Your mother told you.”
“Yes. She did not want to, I think. But my grandmother made her.”
“She didn’t want to. Good. That’s good.”
“Why is that good?”
“Your grandmother knew that he was dead?”
“Yes.”
“Did she talk about this, too?”
I try to think. “I can’t remember. I don’t think so.”
“Then you don’t know what your grandmother knew. Was she there when your mother told you?”
“No.”
“Your mother could have lied.”
“We spoke of this last night.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Is this the thing that worries you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I ask this and for a moment it is still like I do not know the answer. All through these words we speak to each other on the bed, I have played the fool to myself. Now he simply fixes his eyes on me and I know. His brown eyes like mine. I grab the hand with the fingertips like mine. I have gone cold. There is a tumbling in me. I lean forward, my head goes down, I thump into his chest, my forehead there, and I pull back instantly. Suddenly I cannot touch him, and that is not a thing I can live with, I know that at once, the hissing has returned and it fills my lungs, this sound, and I cannot breathe.
“What?” he says. “Do you know something?”
I know nothing. This is his fear, I cry to myself. It can’t be true. It isn’t true.
“What is it?” he says.
I can barely shape words now. “Tell me your worry. Now. Please. I have this thought. A terrible thing. Tell me.”
God forgive me, all I want to do is put these things aside and touch her. I should have done that when I first came through the door. She is a woman. She is not my child. She is no one’s child.
But perhaps no forgiveness is necessary. I haven’t figured out the months exactly, but it feels wrong. The time feels wrong. And how could we meet like this? How could we feel like this if it was true? But she deserves to know my fear. For the sake of all the love I feel for Tien, I can’t keep such a secret from her, even if it’s a foolish thing, as insubstantial as a dream I would wake from out on the road, sleeping in my rig in a rest stop in the middle of some dark night and I wake and I can’t even remember what it was only seconds ago that made my heart pound like this and made this cry come from my mouth but there is only the smell of the earth and hay and the vinyl of the truck cab and there’s just the tick of metal and a wind rush of some semi going by trying to make up time. There was never anything left of a fear like that, whatever it’d been, after I sat up and shook my head. That’s all it will take now.
I say, “When I was here during the war, I was . . . with a woman.”
“With her? You mean you sleep with a Vietnamese woman?”
“Yes.”
“Was she a bargirl, this woman?”
“Yes.”
Tien draws the sheet up around her. I’ve not been looking at her body. Not till I can just put this thing away for good. But I regret her gesture now. I’m anxious to get this over with.
“That was long ago,” I say. “Please.”
“Before I was born.”
“Yes. A year before. More than that.”
“More than a year?”
“Yes.”
“Then . . . Oh, Ben, I am a foolish girl.”
She throws back the sheet and puts her arms around me. I hold her close. I lay my hands on the bareness of her back.
She says, “I think a terrible thing.”
“It’s what I was thinking.”
She puils back, looks at me. “How can this be?”
“It can’t. I don’t think. I’m not sure about the time. Should we stop and figure it out carefully?”
“Why should you think this? There were many bargirls for the American imperialist army in this city.”
“Please.”
She puts her hand over her mouth. “I am sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
She lowers her face. “This time it was not the state speaking.”
“No?”
“It was my jealousy.”
“Tien. Listen to me. What there is between us . . . I’ve never felt this way before. Not for a bargirl. Not even for my wife.”
“Is this true?”
“Yes, my darling.”
She rises up on her knees. Her nipples pass in front of my eyes, dark in the fading light, and they stir me, instantly. I yearn to touch my lips there. And now only the tiniest dropping of my eyes and I can see her softest place. I am nearly ready to do what I should have done when I first came into this room tonight.
She says, “Hands can look alike. There are only so many hands.”
“Yes,” I say.
“With so many girls. So many. For her to be the same, the girl who was my mother, the girl who was . . . What was she for you? This was a one-time girl?”
“No.”
“Two times? Three?”
I can hear her voice going tight. “Please. I’m about to turn into the evil imperialist power again.”
“Sorry.” She sinks back down to sit on the bed, though she doesn’t draw the sheet around her. I find myself trying to keep my eyes on her face once more. She says, “Did you love her?”
“I thought so.”
“Did she get pregnant?”
“Not that I know of. No. No, she didn’t.”
“Then I cannot be . . . what you feared.”
“No.”
“Please,” she says. “Can we make love now?”
My hands move to hers, take them. But I remember our fingers lying beside each other last night, the moons echoing, echoing. Was Kim pregnant? “I want to be entirely honest,” I say, trying to remember when it was that Kim and I parted. “I don’t know if she was pregnant. I met her a while after I came here. Perhaps in May. When I left Vietnam I hadn’t seen her for a few months. So . . . I don’t know.”
“You met her in May?”
“Yes.”
“May 1966?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was not more than a year.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Before I was born. When you slept with this bargirl.”
The thrashing begins. A physical thing, in my chest, in my throat. A thing in my head, too, now that the math has betrayed me. The two years between Tien and Kim are gone.
“I know,” Tien says. “You ask me her name last night, my mother. I tell you her name. This is a simple thing, is it not? Was this girl you sleep with named Huong?”
And now I am back to this. The thing that drove me nearly mad this afternoon. I say, “She called herself Kim,” and I watch Tien carefully. Her face instantly softens. She smiles.
She says, “You see? There is nothing to this fear.”
I have another chance, another clean chance just to go on with the rest of my life loving this woman sitting naked here before me.
Then she begins to explain her earlier words, to fix the tiniest misimpression. “I do not mean to criticize your life,” she says. “When you were here as a member . . . See? I am about to speak of imperialist powers again. When you were here in 1966, you were a young man,
a lonely man, a frightened man. I am glad you had a beautiful Vietnam girl to hold close to you. It prepared you for me? Yes?” She laughs lightly at this and already I am having trouble. I hear my mother’s manner in her and I’m crying out inside my head: this is not genetic, something like this, this is a learned thing. But then she laughs and she lifts her face and I even see something in her face, all of a sudden, I’m not sure what, something around her mouth, her chin, something. I turn my face sharply away from her.
I feel her hand on my shoulder. She says, “I am not laughing at you.”
“I know,” I say, moving my shoulder just a little bit, trying to make the gesture small, gentle, when it wants to be big, when I want suddenly to jump up and throw myself through that window Why? Why? It’s my imagination now, I tell myself. There’s nothing in her face. The way she explains herself can’t come from her blood. But I do say, “Was your mother ever called anything else? Around the bar?”
“I did not go around the bar.”
“You never heard a man call her . . .”
“No.”
“If I told you half the bargirls in Saigon called themselves Kim to the men they . . .”
“I would tell you to shut up now. Half the bargirls in Saigon still would have been twenty-five thousand bargirls. My mother’s name is Huong. She calls herself Huong.”
I am crying now. I say, “She holds some American GI in her arms and makes him feel like he is not about to die, makes him feel he is not alone in the world. That is okay, that is not making her an enemy of the state, that is a woman who can love a man very easy, can give him something worth a million times more than the few dollars he gives her because he wants her and needs her and so she can feed her child and her mother.”
Ben takes me into his arms. He rises to his knees and he lifts me, naked. These words have surprised me. The feeling in my body surprises me too. I understand. The way my body feels opened up: that secret part of me of course, but also the rest—my nipples, a place in the center of my chest, the palms of my hands, the soles of my feet—there is this gaping in me, a hungry space, I want to draw Ben into me like those dark stars they speak of, the stars you cannot even see in the telescopes because they burn black and they want to draw all the rest of the universe into them. Suddenly I understand my mother, I think, a little bit, the thing she might have felt with a man. I understand the men, too, the best of them perhaps, someone like Ben.
The Deep Green Sea Page 10