Daughters of the River Huong

by Uyen Nicole Duong

  Call an ambulance, someone said. Over my head.

  Wait, André. Why couldn’t you wait?

  21. POSTCARDS

  The package from Dominique arrived from Paris about a month later. That night, I emptied the contents onto the bed. Old black-and-white photographs and postcards, yellowed and curled at the edges and corners, cascaded down from the brown envelope. The first was the picture of a costume-clad Vietnamese teenager, perhaps fourteen years of age. The emperor boy. His brocade gown was embroidered with shapes of dragons, clouds, moons, suns, and stars. A metal belt pulled the cloth together around his waist. His boots were studded with gems. He wore a fitted crown, curved up on both sides of his head, marked in the center with a large gemstone. Swallowed in the grandeur of his clothes, the teenage boy stared uncomfortably at the camera, restricted in his armchair, lost and dazed in his environment. His gaze was defiant and stubborn, his lips, tight and pouting. He did not smile.

  The caption under the postcard said,

  Coronation, His Royal Highness Thuan Thanh, King of Annam.

  The small legend at the bottom of the postcard showed a credit line attributing the picture to the collection of Foucault Gallery, 53 Rue Jules-Ferry, Hanoi.

  I reached for the largest postcard with gold trim, inside an intricate cover made out of silky fabric, the gathered layers of which were sewn together with red and gold thread. The ensemble of postcard and cover seemed so fragile and old as though they could immediately crumble under human touch. I raised the oversized postcard to my eyes. Surprisingly, from the feel underneath my fingers, I realized both the folded cover and the picture inside had been laminated with plastic. Someone in France who had taken care of the collection must have wanted to protect and preserve the special image.

  The postcard consisted of two pictures of the same lovely woman. In the first picture, the woman sat sensuously in the middle of a carved lacquer divan, looking over her shoulder, her naked back turning toward the camera, her hair woven into a chignon that hung low at the back of her neck. The strings of her camisole dropped down her hourglass back, accenting the smallness of her waist, which curved into the roundness of her hips like the silhouette of a cello. She turned halfway toward the camera, the corner of her eye glancing amorously at the photographer’s lens. The pear shape of her perked breasts was displayed alluringly underneath the soft camisole. A dozen diminutive young men and women gathered around the divan, either kneeling or sitting on the floor. The men were dressed in traditional Vietnamese costumes at the turn of the century, the sheer organza fabric of their loose-fitting ao dai draping over their crisp, wide-legged pantaloons. The women, all petite and childlike, wore identical satin silk Vietnamese ao dai, trousers, and gold pendants. Their hair was parted in the middle, sleekly combed, and tied back in a bun. Their hands rested docilely in their laps, and they looked sideways, demure, shy, and self-conscious before the camera. The beautiful and stately woman who sat among her entourage had her naked feet dangling down the divan, her dainty toes almost touching the edge of an oval-shaped blue-and-white ceramic sink. Her hands, bejeweled with numerous carved bracelets, gripped the divan’s edge.

  In the second picture that occupied the remaining half of the oversized postcard, a closer view of the woman showed her upper body, her arms wrapping around her shoulders, covering up the shape of her breasts. Again, the strings of her camisole dangled down her naked back. As in the first photograph, she turned sideways, displaying the distinctive jawlines and elegant profile of her face.

  The caption under the postcard said,

  Un coup d’oeil, La Concubine Mystique du Roi Thuan Thanh.

  A side glance, The Mystic Concubine of King Thuan Thanh.

  I hurriedly went through the rest of the black-and-white photographs. The same woman in the postcard was featured again and again in various poses, both in long shot and in close-up. She stretched on the divan, either alone or among the group of costumed men and women who gathered docilely around her.

  The next group of photographs showed scenes of various French chateaux, with their steep slate roofs and harmonious facades of pale stonework, their round corners underneath the spikes, reflecting over sparkling tranquil lakes and ponds and nestling among little poplars and willows, specimens of fine oaks, fertile meadows, and striking green hills. Against those landscapes of castles, bushy trees, and vast gleaming lakes, the same woman, dressed in Western attire, stood next to a stocky, whiskered Frenchman. In some of the pictures, they were holding hands. In other pictures of Paris cafes, the same woman, fashionably dressed in flapper style of the thirties, sat forlornly in an iron chair underneath cafe awnings. The same whiskered Frenchman stood behind her, either holding an umbrella or resting his hand on his thick waist.

  I turned the scenes of France upside down and moved my shell-shocked eyes to the set of the immense lotus ponds and dainty curved roofs of the Violet City, savoring memories of my beloved Hue. Among these photographs, I found a portrait of the same woman.

  I could see her face more clearly. In the portrait, the woman looked about forty years old, the trace of maturity and life experience undeniably reflected in her stately gaze at the camera. Her dark hair was sleekly pulled back into a tight chignon behind the strong, square jaw, which contrasted distinctly against the soft oval chin. The dainty neckline of her ao dai’s mandarin collar slightly opened in the middle. What was seen of her dress, around the delicate shoulder blades and over the roundness of her breasts, suggested a very fine, silky fabric. Her face had become more mature and fuller, her eyes serene and sad. Gone was the amorous flirting with the camera. I scrutinized those widely opened eyes, limpid and probing, too big and too deeply set to typify the slanting shapes of northern or eastern Asian eyes commonly found in the Koreans, Japanese, or Chinese.

  I recognized my own eyes in those photographs. It was also the face. The woman had the same face as mine, as though I were in the portrait, only dressed a different way. I turned the picture over and read the handwriting in dark, blue ink on the back of the photograph, already smeared in several places:

  Mon amour, ma reine, ma tendresse, ma douleur, torture de mon âme, crie de ma conscience, chagrin de mon coeur. SF.

  My love, my queen, my tenderness, my pain, torture of my soul, cry of my conscience, chagrin of my heart, SF.

  The handwriting was strong and fierce, the ascending strokes connecting together with grace and definitude, the descending strokes refusing to end, culminating in ink dots, already smeared and blurred with time.

  I could not deny the reality that existed before I was born, the secrets I did not wish to know.

  I pulled my strength together to overcome the shock, and browsed through the rest of the photographs. In a number of them, the same woman was seen with two identical little girls.

  I picked up other photographs of the two little girls and tried to study their faces. In one picture, the girls leaned cheerfully on both sides of the whiskered Frenchman, who was dressed in shorts and a khaki shirt as though he had just come back from a safari. The three of them stood in a Vietnamese garden full of tropical trees and landscaped bushes.

  In another photograph, the girls wore traditional Vietnamese silk pajamas, posing demurely in a studio setting, their braided hair falling on both sides of their face, their almond eyes staring at the camera. There, I could see their facial features more clearly.

  I saw, again, my own face on the two little girls. They looked just like the young me, the serene little girl who sat on the stairs in Tan Tan’s photography studio in Hue.

  My fingers trembled as I turned the picture over to look at the handwriting on the back:

  Cong Chua An Nam: Huong Sam va Huong Que.

  Ginseng and Cinnamon, the princesses of Annam.

  I fumbled next across a portrait photograph of a teenager, sweet and innocent, smiling with both her almond eyes and her heart-shaped lips, her long hair falling lusciously to her shoulder blade, the lapel of her pajama top accented
with a strand of pearls. The back of the picture stated,

  Nam Tran Cong Chua, Cong Tang Ton Nu Huong Que, 1921.

  The Princess of South Sea Pearl, Cinnamon Fragrance, 1921.

  It was a picture of Grandma Que, taken when she was fifteen.

  But the face was mine, that sullen fourteen-year-old teenager who listened to André reciting Baudelaire in my mother’s patio in Saigon.

  Shivering, I turned off the light. For the rest of the night, I drifted in and out of the scenes and images from four generations, hearing in my head the choral music of Beethoven’s “Elegischer Gesang.”

  My lips silently mimed the German lyric. “Sanft wie du lebtest hast du vollendet…” “Finally, your heavenly spirit will return home. You lived gently, the same way you finished.” I spoke to those loved ones who had lain down under the mosses and ruins of the past.

  I mourned in silence for all those gentle, departing souls that had made up my history.

  PART FIVE:

  THE NEW VIETNAM

  SIMONE

  Ombra mai fu di vegetabile cara ed amabile, soave piu…

  (There never was a plant’s shade more dear, amiable, and mild…)

  —G. F. Handel

  1. HOUSE AND TREES, MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

  (New Jersey, 1994)

  Nineteen ninety-four. It was time to leave the United States.

  It was a spring day in early April when I stepped to the balcony of my house in New Jersey and looked down at my front yard below with a different eye. My pink saucer magnolia tree had blossomed. The redbud tree, too, had lost its pale green leaves and had turned violet pink with its clusters of tiny flowers burdening those brown, flower-laden branches.

  I no longer saw America. The journey into the past would have to be made.

  I left the balcony, went back inside, gathered white bed-sheets, and headed downstairs to the living room. Soon, the bed-sheets would cover up my piano, velvet armchairs, and collection of porcelain dolls. All the books in my study would be placed in carton boxes; all art frames and mirrors crated, rugs rolled up, and china wrapped in foam. I had sold my house, and this was my moving day.

  I had my mother with me that day. She was sitting in the living room looking up at me. She had moved into the house in New Jersey to help me plan my move from the East Coast. That meant cooking for me and helping me with household chores while I buried myself in folding up my Manhattan law practice.

  She was sitting near the fireplace in my contemporary Italian loveseat, looking small and lost. I could see her clearly as the sunshine darted from the mini-blinds to her sallow skin and painted parallel lines onto her face. She had on a pair of Vietnamese black pantaloons. In such traditional Vietnamese attire, she belonged somewhere else, in an ancient Confucian house with rosewood pillars and embroidered satin scrolls. If she had been in Hue that day, she would have rolled her hair inside a velvet turban, or worn it in a bun behind her neck. But she was in America, and her hair was cut short, style-less and chin-length, like a young girl’s hairdo framing the face of an old Asian woman. Her teeth slightly protruded underneath her wrinkled lips, and her nostrils flared.

  My mother rose slowly from the loveseat, her small stature edging against the Andy Warhol poster hanging on the wall, and I recognized once more how out of place she was. She walked with small steps to the front door and out to the front yard, and I followed her. For the first time, I noticed how slow her movements were and that her back was slightly stooped.

  For months, she had cooked my meals in the kitchen, moving around in the smoke and mist that emanated from steamy, boiling water and sizzling oil and broth, chopping kai lan and scallions and stirring brown sauces over the stove. In those moments, she perked up, lively and animated, and in the beginning of her stay with me, I had assumed she would always be that way. Later on, I discovered that she was only comfortable in the kitchen cooking Vietnamese food, where she came alive in the smoke and smell of Oriental spices and vegetables. The rest of the time she sat or tiptoed around the big house like a shadow, quite often escaping my notice, although occasionally I saw her small stature pass by my study. She was too careful, moving from room to room, as though fearing my furniture and afraid of disturbing me by making noises with her heels. So, she either sat still in her room or passed from room to room like a ghost. I noticed, too, that in the morning it took her hours to make her bed. Yet when I casually looked into her room, I saw that the comforter was not tugged underneath the pillows. Instead, she had folded the comforter and placed it at one end of the bed, the Vietnamese way. Perhaps conscious that she was not making the bed the right way, she preferred keeping her door locked. So I stopped looking in.

  We stood in the front yard of my New Jersey house, mother and daughter, and when I looked over, I could see the thinning top of her salt-and-pepper hair. She had turned to look up at me, and I no longer saw the pair of eyes that reminded me of Grandma Que. I had assumed our eyes would remain black forever. But that day, I noticed for the first time that the irises of my mother’s eyes had faded into a grayish color, like the irises of very old people, and the corners of her tired eyes looked watery.

  The pink magnolias that smiled radiantly in my front yard no longer spoke to me of America, but rather, reminded me of my mother’s life as a young woman in Vietnam. Back then, she loved a different type of magnolia. Big, white flowers that grew on very tall trees in the tropical climate, giving sweet-smelling, silky white petals that curled at the edge.

  “Do you miss your white magnolias, Mother?” I had to probe for a way to find out my mother’s wishes when I had a chance to return to our ancestors’ house.

  I knew what those white magnolias meant to my mother. The story she told me of her Aunt Ginseng, the night after the séance in 1965, was still as fresh as yesterday.

  But there was no answer, as if she were avoiding an answer that would simply acknowledge the obvious—the permanent place that white magnolias held in my mother’s own childhood. Slowly she was walking away from me, toward the row of spiky rose stems in my front yard. She stopped to examine and caress each bloom as though gently looking for defects. Among those long-stemmed roses, I saw my mother as who she really was: the quiet gardener, creating life and growth, even in transient places. I knew why my mother had chosen to become her family’s gardener, and her sadness when the fall of Saigon took that role away.

  When she first moved in with me to New Jersey, she had insisted on planting rows of roses in all colors along my living room windows. Since then, the roses she planted had bloomed. Initially, I tried to stop her, painfully aware of my need for a life change and the possibility that soon I would sell the house, and then all her gardening efforts would be wasted. She knew this. She knew, too, that her stay with me was temporary, and whenever the house was sold, she would be leaving, back to Texas, where the rest of my family had settled for the warmer climate. Yet quietly she called a charity working with senior citizens, and the social worker came over to take her shopping at the nursery.

  The roses came in white, yellow, deep red, and pink, among which one rose stood tall, displaying the unusual lavender touch to the edges of its petals. If Grandma Que had been around that day in New Jersey, she would have said that the beautiful lavender rose represented the spirit of the Mystique Concubine in exile.

  On the day of my move, among those bright colors, my mother walked my garden silently as though saying good-bye to the roses. She was mumbling something.

  “Roses are so impermanent. They wilt so quickly.” She had turned and raised her voice to tell me this. She said that when I settled down again in another house, I should plant a strong, tall tree that gave my life some sense of permanence and some comforting shade. “Although nothing is permanent these days, including tall trees,” she added.

  I wondered if she meant that there could never be anything permanent for an old immigrant living in exile like her, including the bond between mother and daughter, houses and trees.


  In America I had never owned the shade of a strong, tall tree.

  I rushed toward my mother and almost scratched myself against a tall, thorny rose stem in order to reach out and hold her hands. Her shoulders automatically jerked back, and she looked at me in confusion and amazement, her eyes dazed under their drooping, epicanthic folds. My years of living away from her, my lack of time to talk to her, and the orderly coldness of my house must have caused her to feel alien toward me. Such a house and my schedule as a practicing corporate lawyer were a far cry from the disorderly comfort of my childhood in District Eight, Saigon.

  “Maman.” I addressed her by the French word for mother, like in childhood. “I am not coming with you to Texas. The Americans are officially returning to Vietnam for business. I have volunteered to return to Vietnam to help open my law firm’s office there. I’m leaving next week.”

  We stood for a long time in the front yard feeling the morning breeze of springtime and inhaling the scent of blooming roses. I held her hands all this time. Faintly, I felt her trembling.

  “In Vietnam,” she began, quietly, “will you do something for me and go find—” She stopped in the middle of the question.

  I was expecting her to tell me to go find Grandma Que’s tomb.

  But she said nothing about her mother. We had never known where Grandma Que was buried. Perhaps the bond there was too sacred, and the separation at the fall of Saigon and Grandma Que’s death were all too painful to be articulated or mentioned in words.