His brown eyes had turned glacial, and they were affixed on mine still, his whiskers vibrating furiously over his tightened lips. I watched the Western man rise and walk away as the last ray of the afternoon sun died out on his gray suit. I shivered.
His face had become the Face of Brutality.
14. CONQUERING THE FACE OF BRUTALITY
The following month, the head eunuch made a special announcement. The eight-year-old Prince Vinh Quang, son of Bang Phi, the Concubine of Egality, would soon be crowned the new king of Annam. The selection of Vinh Quang had already been endorsed by the French Protectorate Government. Prince Vinh Quang was the youngest of my husband’s twenty-eight sons, believed to be the most docile. For the coronation, the troop had to fetch him. He was crawling under a table.
The French résident supérieur had also made the decision to cut the royal budget. Because Thuan Thanh had abdicated, certain of his concubines and children would have to leave the Violet City. My name was at the top of the list.
The head eunuch had a meeting with me to deliver a short and impersonal message. I could keep all of my jewelry. I could take the lacquer divan as a token from my husband. Acting on Mai’s advice, I had hidden the jade phoenix beneath my camisole.
No allowance would be coming from the court or the protectorate government. I would have to find a means to support myself, my daughters, and my two servants. In preparation for my departure, the head eunuch had asked me to choose a new place of residence. He showed me a map of the outskirts of Hue.
In those few seconds, I envisioned the life I wanted for my daughters. The Perfume River was my origin, but my daughters would not paddle passengers across rivers.
I looked at the map, and the name Quynh Anh caught my attention. I had heard the name of the small hamlet from Son La’s opera network. A quite famous opera troupe had started there. Since I had learned to read, I knew Quynh Anh as a literary name with its roots in ancient Chinese, meaning the crystallized essence or glistening spark of a dewy flower that blossomed at night and opened its petals into the early morning hours. I thought of my encounter with my husband under a full moon on the Perfume River and of how I had stood at the window, night after night, hoping to find the same moon hovering over the Violet City. I asked the head eunuch about the village of Quynh Anh. He said the villagers raised silkworms and produced silk of the finest kind in central Vietnam. Quynh Anh was also the birthplace of several scholars and officers of the court, among whom are a mandarin of the first rank, Hong Lo Tu Khanh, who had served as my husband’s astronomer, and Nguyen Tung, the admiral of the Vietnamese Royal Fleet, which guarded the Port of Thuan An before the arrival of French colonists.
I asked the head eunuch for details about the duties of these two officials. Despite the French presence, the Nguyen kings continued their tradition of Te Nam Giao, an annual ceremony that took place in the outskirts of Hue, in which the king would pray to Heaven for the good of his people. The king’s astronomer was responsible for organizing the ceremony in accordance with the configuration of stars. The Vietnamese Royal Fleet existed in name only, although Admiral Nguyen Tung was still in command. The French, with their cannons, gunpowder, seagoing vessels, and navy force, controlled the port.
These two court officials had a reputation for their integrity and loyalty to the monarchy. They made their birthplace, the village of Quynh Anh, famous. I envisioned them as the future teachers and father figures for my two daughters. And my son. I could build a life for my children in the village of Quynh Anh if I learned to profess the silk trade. What’s more, from Quynh Anh, I could always count on Son La’s opera network to help keep me informed on the fate of Annam. After all, my son—the son of the only royal concubine to whom King Thuan Thanh had entrusted the dynastic jade phoenix—would certainly be the crowned prince of Annam.
So I told the head eunuch I would like to move to Quynh Anh, and I would trade my jewelry for gold taels, enough to buy myself a small silk farm.
It is my last night in the Violet City.
I stand by my half-moon window to take one last look.
I cannot forget the whiskered face of Sylvain Foucault, his chestnut eyes, and the threatening anger they hold.
I know outside, the Face of Brutality is still waiting.
PART THREE:
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FEMALE WARRIOR?
SIMONE
1. AFTER THE SÉANCE: THE MISSING AUNTIE GINSENG
(Hue, Vietnam, 1965)
“Wait, and wait patiently…”
The message from the Mystique Concubine, spirit of the Perfume River, spoken by Mey Mai, stayed on with me.
We were on the way back from Mey Mai’s séance, and the cyclo passed by the lotus ponds again. I immersed myself into the mass of twinkling pastels and fell into a full, heavy sleep. Among the lotuses, I saw the edge of brilliant green jade in the shape of a phoenix, standing against the flying golden dragon. The phoenix sat on the chest of a woman who looked like Grandma Que. With her eyes closed, she floated on a mossy green river sparkling under silver lights. Her red brocade smock opened up and floated on the water like a parachute, and gradually turned into a slender boat. And then the boat changed into the shape of a coffin. A floating coffin.
“The Mystique Concubine, Her Royal Highness, please wake up and talk to me,” I whispered with all my heart, imitating the voice of Mey Mai. I watched her dark lashes until they moved and her eyes flew open.
“Wait patiently,” she intoned.
I woke up as the cyclo came to a sudden stop at the familiar white colonial villa under the shade of a tall magnolia tree. Grandma Que lifted me off the sedan and led me into the house, passing by the row of orchid baskets hanging in front of the French bay window.
“Home!” Grandma Que called. “Look how beautiful—and built by the Mystique Concubine herself!”
After dinner, Grandma Que retired to her quarters on the other side of the courtyard, and I knocked on my parents’ bedroom door. The door swung open and I announced immediately that I had met the Spirit of the Perfume River. I repeated Mey Mai’s words: there would be another massacre in Hue during a Lunar New Year celebration, and I would escape from it.
Dew, my mother, the only daughter of Grandma Que, was sitting on a sofa before a fruit bowl, peeling a guava. She dropped the knife.
My father, who had opened the door for me, frowned. “You’ll be escaping all right, young lady—from all this nonsense started by your superstitious grandmother.” Ignoring the hurt look on my face, he turned to my mother. “Your mother took the girl to a séance inside the Citadel.”
He darted out and I stayed on with my mother. She had bent over to pick up the knife from the floor. Her fingers trembled upon the handle. She did not look at me, and her silence meant that she was deep in thought. I told her that I was sorry to have been the source of any trouble, and she assured me that it was not my fault.
“Was it Grandma’s fault, Maman?” I began to cry.
“No, no, no. Of course not.”
She told me that perhaps my attending Mey Mai’s séance was something destined to happen, sooner or later, and she was trying to figure out a way to explain this destiny to my father, who would never understand.
Standing by my parents’ bedroom window, I looked out to the interior courtyard and saw Grandma Que’s quarters lit up. She met my father on the porch. I flung the bedroom window wide open and craned my neck out to listen better. It was obvious my father was not giving any deference to the Spirit of the Perfume River. He accused Grandma Que of spoiling my mind with superstition, and she accused him of acting like a Western man who paid no respect to ancestors. After a while, they were both talking at the same time.
I rushed into my bedroom and shut the door. I went to bed, and within moments I was seeing small ripples on the surface of a river under the clear, bluish moonlight. I was walking alongside the river, inhaling the freshness of rainwater and the clean, natural scent of tree bark and red soil. I drew
into my lungs the pungent scent of betel juice and dried boket nuts when their bean shells were broken. I gazed into the calming water. Its darkness became a velvet cloak stretching across to the other side of the river, where I saw the almond shape of a paddleboat moving slowly and silently in the hot air of a tropical night.
That summer, I spent most of my time wandering in the garden, chasing butterflies and reading folk stories underneath longan trees. I devoured plenty of longan fruits; my hair and shirt smelled like syrup, and my face and hands were perpetually sticky from longan juice. Between feasts, I thought of the woman lying in the red coffin, and I whispered alone under the patchwork shade of those trees.
“The royal Mystique Concubine, please let me see you again,” I prayed.
Occasionally, she would appear in that open floating coffin and speak to me. A few times, she even stepped out of the coffin as it turned back into a boat. She took my hands and led me onboard. The boat carried bundles of sparkling silk threads. Two little girls sat among the bundles of silk. They were about my size and looked identical in their black silk trousers and pink blouses, with matching pink bows on their hair.
The Mystique Concubine smiled. “Meet my twin daughters, Ginseng and Cinnamon,” she said.
But before I could say hello, one of them fell into the water and disappeared.
“It was Ginseng who fell. She was always the careless one,” sighed the Mystique Concubine.
A few weeks later, my mother caught me crying one day under the longan tree and asked me why. I shook my head, and she took me inside the house and wiped my face with a steamed cloth. She told me not to be silly, and it was about time I should begin acting like a big sister to set an example for my younger siblings, Mi Chau and Pi. The steamed cloth sent heat through the pores of my face. I leaned my back against my mother’s lap for her to wipe my neck.
“Cinnamon is Grandma Que, but where is Ginseng?” I asked. “I think she fell into the Perfume River and died.”
“Who gave you that idea?” My mother sounded alarmed.
“What happened to her, then?” I asked in my tiny voice.
My mother frowned and said nothing. She began fiddling with the corners of the steamed cloth. A moment of silence passed before she took my hands. She led me to her bedroom and we both lay down. One of her arms became my pillow. With her other hand she waved a straw fan slowly over my swollen face as she talked.
“I was named Dew—Beautiful Dew, Mi Suong, the purest kind that clings to flowers at night and in the early morning before sunrise. Aunt Ginseng picked the name for me before I was born, before she was sent to Hoa Lo, the death row prison in the north for revolutionaries and patriots of Vietnam. I only saw her twice; the last time was right before she died.”
That night, I learned from my mother how the soul of her only aunt, Princess Ginseng, had blessed the magnolia tree.
DEW
2. AUNT GINSENG, DAUGHTER OF THE REVOLUTION
(Hue, the Protectorate State of Annam, French Indochina, 1949)
The first beautiful woman I met in my life was my own mother. The villagers of Quynh Anh called her Princess Cinnamon. The silk merchants called her Madame Que. I called her Ma.
The silk traders and villagers of Quynh Anh who came to the house to take orders from Ma and to help her prepare festivities for ancestor worship ceremonies said the skin of her cheeks was smooth like porcelain, glazed with a healthy sheen of pink, like lotus petals. They said the stream of her black hair was shinier than polished lacquer, and they compared her slender frame to the loveliest of willow trees that bent graciously in the strong wind without breaking. They alleged that as a young girl, Ma once took a nap under a magnolia tree, her stream of black hair spreading around her head, emanating the fragrance of cinnamon oil, which she loved. A snake was enticed by the fragrance and crawled into the stream of her hair. Struck by the beauty of Ma’s face, the snake became spellbound, frozen as though it had seen a goddess. When Ma woke up and moved her head, the snake silently crawled away. Even the meanest of creatures would be awed by Ma’s beauty, they said.
I was the ugly daughter of a beauty. The silk traders and villagers said I was a cute and nice little girl, but no one described me in terms of porcelain, lotuses, lacquer, or willow trees. My nose was too flat, my mouth too full, my skin so pale it almost reflected a bluish shade. Only my eyes resembled Ma’s, which the traders and villagers compared to longan nuts in autumn ponds.
Ours was a household full of women and no men. Ma had all kinds of domestic help, all coordinated by Nanny Mai; like a fortress of humans, they surrounded Ma, catered to her needs, and supposedly protected her. Yet, unknown to Ma, the servants gossiped, feeding me with information about certain things. For example, the servants disputed the traders’ overblown ideas about Ma’s beauty. Even Nanny Mai would join in and agree that Ma was not anywhere as pretty as the Mystique Concubine herself. Or Ma’s twin sister, my aunt Ginseng.
Ma told me the Mystique Concubine had died at the height of her beauty, falling into a deep slumber from which she never emerged. Her soul just simply flew away, escorted by nightingales. Ma was twenty-four years old when the Mystique Concubine passed on. Aunt Ginseng had already left home, too busy fighting in the jungles of north Vietnam to return home for her mother’s funeral. Like Lady Trieu of ancient Vietnam fighting the Wus from China, Auntie Ginseng wore her golden armor, pointing a sword to the sky, riding an elephant. Every little girl born in Vietnam (even a product of French elementary school like me) knew the legend of Lady Trieu, who pledged she would ride the wind to save her people from drowning in slavery. The enemies were looking for Aunt Ginseng all the time, so I had to keep the secret that I had an aunt who had followed the footsteps of Lady Trieu to fight a war that would liberate the people. I was never to mention Auntie Ginseng to anyone outside the household.
“I don’t understand why your mother has to tell these tales,” Nanny Mai said one day.
“Your grandmother died in a fire in the middle of a war, and your auntie has been in a French jail up north for having spied for Ho Chi Minh troops. There’s no such thing as a young woman riding elephants nowadays.”
When I repeated Nanny Mai’s words to Ma, she went after Nanny Mai and slapped the poor woman in the face. “How can you betray me so?” Ma uttered through clenched teeth.
Nanny Mai collapsed into tears and apologized over and over again. Seeing the red marks on Nanny Mai’s cheeks, Ma knelt down on the floor and begged for the nanny’s forgiveness, apologizing to the woman who had helped raise both her and me. Shocked to see Ma on the floor, Nanny Mai asked me to ignore the bad stories she told me earlier, saying she was very sorry to have confused me, confirming that indeed my aunt was a woman warrior riding elephants like Lady Trieu and that my grandmother died on her lacquer bed, in her sleep. I watched the two grown-ups with amazement and amusement. I knew, even then, that not only did Ma have beauty, but she also had a genuine, fierce flare for the dramatic.
Despite the number of female servants, Ma insisted on doing certain things herself. Like taking care of the altar room.
It was in the altar room that my father, an Annamese mandarin, presided together with his father, the Hong Lo Tu Khanh, a first-rank literary officer and astronomer of the Nguyen Court, next to Admiral Nguyen Tung, who had adopted Ma. They all “lived” in an array of black-and-white photographs framed in rosewood carvings, which Ma polished every day with fresh lemon juice to make the rosewood shine.
All photographs and silk paintings were placed lower than the photograph of my emperor grandfather, King Thuan Thanh of Annam, taken at his coronation. Later, I discovered the same picture had made its way into history books. My grandfather had become a legend in Vietnamese history as an exiled, anti-French king, admired by generations of Vietnamese patriots. But in the picture sitting in that smoky altar room, my emperor grandfather looked like a boy and did not seem much older than I. He didn’t even seem all that handsome or smart, just a dazed boy
dressed up in fancy clothes. At least he was a real person. His wife, the dead Mystique Concubine, on the other hand, was preserved in a silk portrait. There were no photographs of her anywhere. In the silk painting, she looked surreal, and I could not imagine her face.
Much later, there was a time when I turned sixteen and was about to leave home to study at the French couvent in the highlands. This was a costly and complex arrangement that Ma had taken great pains to accomplish, since the couvent wasn’t for just any girl. Before I left, I asked Ma whether she loved my father. She looked at me as though the question was totally inappropriate, as if love were a concept meant to remain unspoken forever.
I couldn’t remember exactly when Ma first took me to the altar and made me learn those names and faces of those dead men, including my father’s. In early childhood when the children I played with asked me where my father was, I would say automatically that he was on the altar. Ma would burn incense every day and place plenty of fresh fruit there. The ancestors’ spirits could only consume the fruit symbolically, so I got to eat it all, getting all the blessings of my ancestors by devouring their leftovers, each time Ma rearranged her tray. My mother discouraged me from eating all that fruit, which had become holy offerings to the dead. But I still devoured those offerings behind her back.
Three items on the altar received Ma’s special attention. She polished them with cinnamon-scented oil and covered them with a satin red silk cloth. I often watched her handle them with utmost deference. Occasionally she let me touch them. Just a light touch. The bright green jade phoenix that shone under candlelight, and the two ivory plaques, each bearing carved red Chinese characters, spoke of Ma’s royal and mandarin heritage. The jade, as well as the elephant tusks from which these plaques were made, must have been thousands of years old, Ma said. The older they were, the prettier they got. The phoenix, a gift from King Thuan Thanh to his Mystique Concubine, identified my grandmother as the uncrowned queen of Annam. The two ivory plaques were like ID cards, held by my two mandarin grandfathers, commemorating their lifetime career and loyalty to the Nguyen Court.
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