Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains

by Yasuko Thanh

  “Ah,” she said. “The exterior of them, the seeds like whiskers on a man who’s forgotten to shave.”

  “Or,” he said, “areolae. The small swellings around the human nipple. From a certain angle, this fruit introduced by the French, sown by the French, grown by the French, distributed by the French, resembles a nipple. Promiscuous.”

  Dong’s hair was sloppily brushed away from her forehead and into a ponytail, which was then twisted into a tilted chignon, falling out of a tortoiseshell comb. In that moment he realized with an undeniable feeling in his stomach that his happiness was now wrapped up in his ambition to be with her.

  “Do you know what it’s like to be invisible?” he said. “My father looked right through me. My friends were paper masks, kites, animal-character hats. They seemed imbued with personalities, they even talked to me. Yet reality told me they must be factually bereft of any souls as they were made in a factory, of paper and glue. Every night when I went to sleep, I felt so empty. I wore six tunics to bed. I still shiver! Yet you, you make me feel like I’m here.”

  She laughed. “When I was a child, anything shiny delighted me: spoons, serving trays, dinner plates, buttons, bracelets with clasps, my mother’s thimble, a windowpane’s reflection, a water spill on a wooden floor. I’d accept my mother’s anger in return for the joy of running my fingers through a spilled cup of jackfruit juice. You, you make me feel … shiny.” She looked down, as if guilty of something. “Anyway, I have something to tell you. I lied to you at the temple. I had a job as a nanny. But I don’t now. My ma and ba sent me to a good school.” She learned French, arithmetic, history, geography, how to write Vietnamese quoc ngu characters. Some in her class now worked as clerks for the government. “But it just blurted out of my mouth. I didn’t want you to think that I was lazy. Sometimes being sick makes me feel so useless.” The French family had let her go. They’d been afraid of her coughing. The blood on the kerchief. “I don’t blame them.”

  She cared what he thought? Maybe this meant something. Dare he believe it even for a moment?

  She proceeded to have a fit. Her body curled forward, tensed and jerked as she coughed. Her face paled as her lips purpled. She held on to her sides, sweating. She sounded like an orangutan and barked. She rubbed away tears. The coughing turned to laughter along the way. She leaned on her elbow, looking at him. “How much longer can my adopted parents go on supporting a grown daughter?”

  “You are talking too much,” he scolded. “Talk less. Better yet, don’t talk at all.”

  Finally her coughing subsided. He took the tasselled canopy off the roof of the car so they could look at the stars. “Am I a traitor to prefer strawberries to dragon fruit?” she whispered. She circled the strawberry with her tongue in the moonlight.

  “Am I a worse traitor to supply you with them?”

  The hem of her pants stopped two inches above her ankle bone. The roundness of her tibia in moonlight thrilled him. A few mosquitoes whined close to his head. Farther away, the usual cacophony of insects and the crash of the waves. Above them a thousand stars. She took the bowl from him and cut the strawberries into thin slices in the dark. The leather seat grew warm and sticky through his clothes. She bent forward and rummaged through her bag, returned with something between her hands.

  “Don’t cut yourself.”

  She giggled. “I can do this with my eyes closed.”

  “You might as well be blind.”

  “It’s easy to be blind.”

  He squinted. She appeared to be dipping the strawberry slices into something. “Don’t look.” She turned off the oil lamp.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Feeling.”

  Georges-Minh could hear the scraping of something by his feet, granules against the floorboards when she dipped the fruit into the bowl.

  “Relax.” She tittered and pulled off his sandals, put strawberry slices between his toes. The heat of his body made the sugar drip. She placed slices between each toe, strawberry-toe, strawberry-toe, until every gap was filled. “Lie still!” She bent forward and her hair tickled the tops of his feet. He trembled but tried hard not to move too much. Just as he tried not to laugh. Just as he tried to pretend he knew what was coming next. What if she left him there? Anything spilled became a feast for red ants; he’d be covered in a matter of minutes.

  She put the sugar bowl on the rumble seat behind them. He listened to her lick her fingers. She pushed him back and climbed astride him, then, fighting the urge to cough, faced his feet, and leaned forward, her hands on his ankles. Her hair brushed his legs. It cascaded around his feet. She began to nibble the strawberry slices. When no fruit remained she began to lick his toes.

  He fought the urge to laugh out loud. “Shhhh.” The sensation reminded him of a pet Pomeranian he’d had as a child who used to eat from his hand and when the treat was gone continued licking. She took each of his toes in her mouth in turn. With his eyes closed she could be anyone. “Dong …” They got undressed. Her tongue travelled from his toes to his head via his private parts. His body filled with stars.

  The following evening, Chang took Georges-Minh to a party, saying he knew someone there who would pay them not to poison anyone, a wealthy businessman in whose interest it was to keep the French colonialists happy.

  “Have you been talking to people about the plot?” Georges-Minh said as they walked down the street, passing a performer crooning for pennies on the corner, his hand outstretched. “You’re a traitor to the cause.” Everywhere people bumped into each other. Were they drunk? Infected? Or was it his imagination?

  “Come on, lighten up. We can just go in for a bit and drink his free wine,” Chang said. “Have you started to believe you’re a real revolutionary? When has our group ever done anything besides play cards?” He laughed at the shock he saw in Georges-Minh’s face. “What? Think about it, do you honestly think we’re actually going to poison people?”

  “So you’re going to take this man’s money?”

  “No. He’s kind of handsome. I might sleep with him to make you jealous. Oh stop—I’m joking.”

  Chang wondered if there would ever come a day where he and Georges-Minh would walk into a party as a couple, greet the host, order some drinks. Probably not. The reason Georges-Minh would never truly love him, Chang reasoned, impressed by his own philosophic calm in the face of such disappointment, was that in the first place, Georges-Minh was in love with Khieu. Second, Georges-Minh wouldn’t admit he preferred men to women. Third, he was now hiding behind a woman he might possibly marry. Fourth, more than once at meetings Chang had seen his pupils no larger than pinpoints; Georges-Minh claimed long hours at work. Chang knew better.

  As they walked to the party, Chang was satisfied simply that Georges-Minh had finally agreed to accompany him somewhere. Even though he knew if it hadn’t involved the poisoning plot and Khieu’s well-being, Georges-Minh would have refused.

  Georges-Minh wondered where Chang had met the man. His apartment, from the outside, was nothing special. A brick deal above the Bridgeworks, Canalworks, and Railroads offices.

  Inside, however, he had to admit the place was posh, the rooms elegant, plush, spotless. As were the guests. Georges-Minh got himself a glass of wine from the bar, where the host had hired someone to serve as a butler. He recognized an executive from the cement factory. The man waved and Georges-Minh waved back. What did Georges-Minh care what Chang did? Chang grasped the hand of the man who would pay them to halt the poisoning. Pulled him in close so their groins nearly touched.

  He’d expected to feel angry, betrayed on behalf of the group. The man was good-looking, suave—in a ranting, rhetorical way. Maybe Chang liked that sort of thing.

  Georges-Minh’s head burned. Must be the cheap wine. He got another glass from the bar, drank that, got another, and drank that, too. He pretended to admire the furniture. Chang would be the one left with no family. Unmarried, no eldest son. He’d be the one looked down upon by society. A pansy
. No one to carry on the family name. No one to perform his rituals when he died. He’d become a confused spirit, a wandering spirit, a ghost with no tomb to call his own. Popping out at intersections, scaring cyclists.

  He forced himself to laugh. Maybe he would become a common thief in the afterlife. Living off leftovers, stealing plums from iceboxes, dancing by the light of votive candles on the roadside. Cold porridge. Even going hungry. Georges-Minh would have the last hurrah. He would not go childless, not without an eldest son who would perform his death rituals, burn his paper money, send him properly into the afterlife.

  Chang came padding across the thick, expensive rugs, his face flushed. “He wants to meet you.”

  “Who, our host?”

  “Who else?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Georges-Minh waved to the man, their host, across the room, held up his wine glass, smiled cheekily, and took a sip. The man raised his glass and sipped as well. “I don’t want to. My head hurts.”

  “Another flu?”

  “Or the same one, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe later, then,” Chang said. He either didn’t get, or was deliberately not getting, the fact that Georges-Minh was going out of his way to insult the man. Or maybe Chang, as a good friend of Georges-Minh’s, was used to his funny moods. As if zeroing right in on the point, he asked, “So what’s with you and Dong, anyway?” Chang crossed his ankles and leaned against a door frame.

  Georges-Minh glared at Chang. “What do you mean, what’s with her?”

  “That’s what I’m asking, what’s with her?”

  Georges-Minh let his scowl linger.

  Chang finally raised his eyebrow and shrugged. “Lie to yourself all you want. It’s no skin off my nose.”

  “How do you know I’m lying to myself?”

  “You’re a world-class liar. A cute one, but still. Look,” Chang said casually, taking a swig of his drink, not even looking Georges-Minh in the eye but rather checking out another handsome man in a red bow tie across the room, “everyone can see it but you. It’s not just the Dong thing, it’s the whole revolutionary thing. The whole I-love-the-poor thing. You’re no ascetic. You’re a pleasure-seeker, a bon vivant. At least you used to be until you returned from university. Why don’t you drop the act? Or the act-s.”

  Georges-Minh patted his pockets for his cigarettes. His devastation, on realizing he’d run out, couldn’t be measured. He crumpled the empty pack and flung it to the floor. “Maybe I’m lying to you,” he said. “You ever thought about that?”

  “I don’t believe you,” Chang murmured.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “A man knows these things.”

  “My sleeping with you is simply a political statement,” Georges-Minh said.

  “That I doubt. You’re a reprobate. Pure and simple.”

  “Only women really count.”

  “I don’t count?” Chang’s face crumpled.

  “Not really.”

  “You mean since Dong?”

  Georges-Minh looked across the room. Was it because of Dong?

  “Whatever.” Chang tossed his hair, rumpled his fingers through it. Sighed, then smiled. The smile seemed forced at first, then he eased into it. He reached for Georges-Minh’s neck to rub it. “Why so hostile?”

  “I’m not, I’m just … I’ve been under stress at work.”

  “You’re always stressed at work. That’s nothing new.”

  “I’ve been … there’s something going around, a new sickness.”

  “Really? Do tell. Is it contagious? Are we in danger?”

  “We might be.”

  “Oh, my god, is it something spread skin to skin?” Chang edged flirtatiously toward Georges-Minh.

  How could Chang, Georges-Minh wondered, be so quick to forget, to forgive?

  “I don’t know. The Centre for Infectious Disease Control has more questions than answers right now. I saw three cases in three days and then seven more in the next week alone.”

  “How is it spread? Show me?” Chang pouted his lips and edged even closer.

  “That alone might not seem so bad, but each of them lost their memory afterward. Complete amnesia.” Not all had lost their memory completely; Georges-Minh exaggerated to shift the focus away from himself.

  “Complete amnesia? My god.”

  “They ended up in asylums. What a waste.”

  When they got to Chang’s apartment after the party Chang tried quickly to put his words in order while opening a bottle of wine. Georges-Minh had told him he’d been with other women, but somehow he’d never believed that his friend had felt any attraction for them. Yet since Georges-Minh had met Dong, their “love nights” at the clinic had dwindled, then stopped. It wasn’t that Chang had stopped visiting, but when he arrived, Georges-Minh had displayed less and less interest in touching him.

  Chang couldn’t bring himself to believe he had meant that little to Georges-Minh. And Georges-Minh continued to glance at his lips, his ass, his fingers, his forearms out of the corner of his eye.

  He wanted to talk but instead put his hand on Georges-Minh’s leg.

  “Chang.” Georges-Minh laughed but left his hand where it lay. “There was never an ‘us.’ ”

  “Does it matter?” Chang, caught off guard by Georges-Minh’s candour, hardly knew how to answer.

  “Well, it means nothing we did was planned. It means … it doesn’t mean anything.” Georges-Minh stood, crossed the room. Opened a window. Stuck out his head and breathed a long breath. “If two guys get together—something happens. That’s it. That’s the beauty. There’s no—this.” He stepped back into the room, waved his hands. “As soon as you bring this into the equation, it’s ruined.”

  Chang wanted to cry. The reasonable explanation was that Georges-Minh was confused. If Chang didn’t want to be judged, who was he to play judger? And if Chang loved Georges-Minh as he said, he should offer him his arms, not his admonishments.

  “Come here.” He sashayed across the room, trying to make light of the moment, and stretched open his arms.

  “Stop. What are you doing?”

  “Don’t push me away,” he whispered into Georges-Minh’s ear as he embraced him. “You were right, I was wrong. That’s it. Just relax.”

  It was only a matter of time before Georges-Minh had calmed down enough to allow Chang to begin stroking his hair and a second or two more before Georges-Minh had allowed him to take off his shirt and loosen his belt. Soon Chang was sucking his cock.

  “See, doesn’t that feel better? Not planned. Just something that happens. Now relax. In a minute all this will be ancient history.”

  Georges-Minh went to the Centre for Infectious Disease Control the next day. He wanted to talk to the French doctor. Outside a man was selling dead cobras in jars of rice wine solution. “Cure all your ills, buy some snake power, drink some tonic, bloom and flower.” The plasterwork-grey building had turned black where the shade of the hopea trees had caused a mossy fungus to grow and the plaster to crack.

  Inside, people bustled behind a wooden counter where Dr. Michaut sat sipping a coffee and reading a newspaper. Light filtered through a single dirty window. Behind closed doors, people could be heard speaking in other offices.

  Dr. Nguyen Georges-Minh had drunk too much the night before and his head hurt. In no mood for pleasantries, he leaped right in. “Dr. Michaut, I’d like to bring up a theory of sorts. At some point it might be interesting to collaborate. I’m going to propose, because using this better facility, but anyway, to the point, then. I haven’t yet treated a single child for the new paddy fever. None at all.” He patted his forehead with his handkerchief. Why was it so bloody hot in here? “They’ve all been post-pubescent.” He waited. “By the way, are we still calling it paddy fever?”

  Dr. Michaut appeared more interested in his morning paper and his coffee than in getting up from his seat. Was he overworked? Underpaid? Perhaps Dr. Michaut had his, what was it called, Contribu
tions to Male Hysteria paper on his mind. Georges-Minh forced himself to be civil. He had no choice—there was no one else to deal with. He had lain in bed last night, unable to sleep, and had spent the better part of dawn theorizing. The key lay in how developed the psyche was. The more at peace a person felt with who they were, not at war with a monster within, the more immune they seemed to be. He thought back to the words of his first patient—“I see a monster inside you”—and wondered why he, of all people, should be immune.

  As he tried to think of a way to relate these things to Dr. Michaut without sounding like a raving lunatic, Dr. Michaut put down his paper.

  “So, Georges, I’ve been working on that report some more, and I’d be curious to hear your opinion. The one I told you about, Contributions to the Study of the Manifestations of Male Hysteria? One colleague to another. I’m expanding the idea to include a discussion about the Vietnamese as teachers of moral vice.”

  “Come again?” Georges-Minh thought he’d heard wrong.

  “Cochin China and social depravity.”

  He thought the doctor must be pulling his leg. “How so?”

  “The Vietnamese as teachers of moral vice. Not meaning ones like you, of course.”

  “No offence taken.” Of course he took offence. What was this man on about? If only he didn’t need his help, his lab, his equipment, he’d pop him one in the jaw.

  “I don’t include you in these comparisons. You studied in Paris, like me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, at least when it comes to French soldiers and officers who are away from home. The Vietnamese, lascivious, have corrupted the French with desires that were never theirs. No wives or girlfriends, polluted by the fiery climate, lonely, bored, they enter the opium dens. In the dens, French wills are further sapped by the drug. The heat, the exoticism, far from France. The geography of perversion. The colonists indulge in pederasty. Anyway, my concern is not morality.” He waved the air. “As a medical officer, I specialize in disease control. Pederasty reduces the rates of syphilis.” He got up from his seat, approached the counter, and looked Georges-Minh in the eye. “Between you and me, to look at the con gai, the traditional prostitutes, with their lacquered teeth and their red spittle, like devils, well it’s no wonder. I’d choose a boy, too. Looks like blood dripping from their lips.”