I am a Catholic and I must say that this made me smile. The Lord of the universe, the Man of Sorrows, turned into the Lord of the Mattress, the Mattress Man. But even so, I understood what this owner was trying to do, appealing specially to those of his own kind. This is good business practice, when you know your sales area. I have done very well for myself in Lake Charles in the laundry and dry-cleaning business. It is very simple. People sweat a lot in the climate of southern Louisiana, and there was a place for a very good laundry and dry cleaner. I have two locations in Lake Charles and I will soon open one in Sulphur. So it was this that interested me as I drove through Texas, as it always does. I am a businessman. It is my way.
And if I was a man who believed in symbols and omens, I would have been very interested toward the end of my journey when I came to a low highway bridge that took me across the wide converging of two rivers, for as I entered the bridge, the sign said, LOST AND OLD RIVERS. These two rivers were full of little islands and submerged trees and it was hard to see how the two ran together, for they looked more like one sprawling thing, like perhaps a large lake, something that was bound in and not moving, not flowing. Lost and old.
I had not given much serious thought to Mr. Chinh, my wife’s grandfather. I knew this: My wife loved him very much. We are all like that in Vietnam. We honor our families. My four children honor me very much and I honor them. My wife is devoted to me and I am devoted to her. I love her. We were very lucky in that our parents allowed us to marry for love. That is to say, my mother and father and my wife’s mother allowed it. Her father was dead. We still have a little shrine in our house and pray for him, which is the way of all Vietnamese, even if they are Catholic. As Catholics we understand this as the communion of saints. But my wife has no clear memory of her father. He died when she was very young. He drowned swimming in the South China Sea. And after that, Mr. Chinh became like a father for my wife.
She wept the night before my trip to the airport. She was very happy to have her grandfather again and very sorry that she’d missed all those years with him. I heard her muffling the sound of her crying in the pillow and I touched her on the shoulder and felt her shaking, and then I switched on the light by the bed. She turned her face sharply away from me, as if I would reproach her for her tears, as if there was some shame in it. I said to her, “Mai, it is all right. I understand your feeling.”
“I know,” she said, but she did not turn back to me. So I switched the light off once more and in the dark she came to me and I held her.
You must wait to understand why it is important, but at this point I must confess one thing. My wife came to me in the dark and I held her and her crying slowed and stopped and of course I was happy for that. I was happy to hold my wife in the dark in this moment of strong feeling for her and to be of help, but as I lay there, my mind could not focus on this woman that I love. My mind understood that she was feeling these things for a man of her own blood who had been very important to her and who then disappeared from her life for more than a decade and now was coming back into it. But these are merely bloodless words, saying it this way, things of the mind. And that was all they were to me, even lying there in the dark. I made those words run in my head, but what was preoccupying me at that moment was an itching on my heel that I could not scratch and the prices of two different types of paint for the outer shop of the new dry-cleaning store. My wife was a certain pressure, a warmth against me, but there was also a buzz in the electric alarm clock that I was just as conscious of.
Do not misjudge me. I am not a cold man. I drew my wife closer as she grew quieter, but it was a conscious decision, and even saying that, I have to work hard to remember the moment, and the memory that I have is more like a thought than a memory of my senses. And it’s not as if the itching on my heel, the buzz of the clock, are any more vivid. I have to work extremely hard to reconstruct this very recent night so that I can even tell you with assurance that there was a clock in the room or that there was a foot at the end of my leg.
But you will see that it is Mr. Chinh who has put me in this present state of agitation. After a time, as I held her in the bed, my wife said, “My tears are mostly happy. Don’t worry for me, Khánh. I only wish I was small enough and his back was strong enough that I could ride upon it again.”
At the airport gate I looked at the people filing through the door from the jetway. The faces were all white or Spanish and they filed briskly through the door and rushed away and then there were a long few moments when no one appeared. I began to think that Mr. Chinh had missed the plane. I thought of the meal that my wife was preparing at home. She and my children and our best friends in Lake Charles had been working since dawn on the house and on the food for this wonderful reuniting, and when the door to the jetway gaped there with no one coming through, that is the only thought I had, that the food would be ruined. I did not worry about Mr. Chinh or wonder what the matter could really be.
I looked over to the airline agents working behind their computers, checking in the passengers for the next flight. I was ready to seek their help when I glanced back to the door, and there was Mr. Chinh. He was dressed in a red-and-black-plaid sport shirt and chino pants and he was hunched a little bit over a cane, but what surprised me was that he was not alone. A Vietnamese man about my age was holding him up on the side without the cane and bending close and talking into his ear. Then the younger man looked up and saw me and I recognized a cousin of my wife, the son of Mr. Chinh’s nephew. He smiled at me and nodded a hello and he jiggled the old man into looking at me as well. Mr. Chinh raised his head and an overhead light flashed in his glasses, making his eyes disappear. He, too, smiled, so I felt that it was all right.
They approached me and I shook Mr. Chinh’s hand first. “I am so happy you have come to visit us,” I said.
I would have said more—I had a little speech in my head about my wife’s love for him and how she is so sorry she is not at the airport and how much his great-grandchildren want to see him—but my wife’s cousin cut in before I had a chance. “This is Mr. Khánh,” he said to the old man. “The one I told you about who would meet you.”
Mr. Chinh nodded and looked at me and repeated my name. He spoke no more and I looked to the cousin, who said, “I’m Hu’o’ng,” and he bowed to me very formally.
“I remember you,” I said and I offered my hand. He took it readily, but I knew from his formality that there could be things I did not know about Mr. Chinh. It is the custom of Vietnamese, especially of the old school of manners, not to tell you things that are unpleasant to hear. The world need not be made worse than it is by embracing the difficult things. It is assumed that you wish to hear that all is well, and many people will tell you this no matter what the situation really is. Hu’o’ng struck me as being of this tradition—as surely his father must, too, for this is how an otherwise practical people learns an attitude such as this.
But I am a blunt man. Business has made me that way, particularly business in America. So I said to Mr. Hu’o’ng, “Is there something wrong with Mr. Chinh?”
He smiled at me as if I was a child asking about the thunder. “I came with our dear uncle to make sure he traveled safely. He is very old.”
I suddenly felt a little uncomfortable talking about the man as if he wasn’t there, so I looked at him. He was leaning contentedly on his cane, gazing around the circle of gates. I bent nearer to him and said, “Mr. Chinh, do you like the airport?”
He turned to me at once and said, “This is a fine airport. The best I have seen.”
The man’s voice was strong, and this reassured me. I liked his appreciation of the airport, which I, too, admired, so I said to Mr. Hu’o’ng, “Is he a little frail, physically?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Hu’o’ng, happy, I suppose, to have words put in his mouth sufficient to answer my blunt question. I did not like this cousin Hu’o’ng. But I was compelled to ask, “Will you be coming to Lake Charles to join us?”
“N
o. I must decline your gracious invitation. I return by a flight later this day.”
I was blunt again. “You came all this way never to leave the airport? Just to return at once?”
Mr. Hu’o’ng shrugged. “It is my pleasure to make sure our beloved uncle arrives safely. My father said that if you should wish to discuss Uncle Chinh’s permanent home after perhaps a week or so, he will await your call.”
I didn’t know the details of ail that, except that I was prepared for my wife’s sake and the sake of our country’s family tradition to make him part of our household. So I just nodded and took Mr. Chinh by the arm and said a brief good-bye to Mr. Hu’o’ng, and the old man and I started off for the baggage check.
Mr. Chinh was enchanted with the airport, gawking about as we moved, and his interest was so intent and his pleasure so evident from the little clucks and nods he made that I did not try to speak with him. Twice he asked me a question, once about where they would take the luggage, answered by our arrival at the carousel, which caused him to laugh loud when the bell rang and the silver metal track began to run. Mr. Chinh stood at the opening and he watched each bag emerging through the plastic flaps as closely as a customs inspector. The second question was if I had a car. And when I said yes, he seemed very pleased, lifting his cane before him and tapping it down hard. “Good,” he said. “Don’t tell me what kind. I will see for myself”.
But in the parking garage, he was baffled. He circled the car and touched it gently with the rubber tip of his cane, touched it several places, on a taillight, a hubcap, the front bumper, the name on the grill. “I don’t know this car,” he said. “I don’t know it at all.”
“It’s an Acura,” I said.
He shook the name off as if a mosquito had just buzzed his head. “I thought you would own a French car. A Citroën, I had predicted. A 15CV saloon.”
“No, Mr. Chinh. It’s an Acura. It’s a very good car,” and I stopped myself from telling him it was from Japan.
Mr. Chinh lifted his shoulders and let them drop heavily, as if he was greatly disappointed and perhaps even a little scornful. I put his bags in the trunk and opened the door for him and we made it out of the airport and back onto the two-lane highway before any more words were spoken. I was holding my eyes on the road, trying to think of small talk, something I’m not very good at, when Mr. Chinh finally said, “The inside is very nice.”
I didn’t understand. I glanced over at him and he was running his hand along the dashboard and I realized that he’d been thinking about the car all this time. “Good,” I said. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Not as nice as many others,” he said. “But nice.”
There’s no car interior short of a Rolls that is nicer than my Acura, but I nodded at the old man and I told myself that there was no need to debate with him or entertain him but just to be cordial with him. Let him carry the conversation, if he wished one. But the trip looked very long ahead of me. We hadn’t even gotten out into the country of stump grinders and fruit stands. It was still franchised fast food and clusters of gas stations and mini-malls and car dealerships. There were many miles to go.
Then up ahead I saw the work of a clever man, a car dealer who had dangled a big luxury car from the top of what looked like a seventy-foot crane. I said to Mr. Chinh, “There’s something the Citroëns don’t do,” and I motioned the man’s attention to the car in the sky. He bent down and angled his head up to look and his mouth gaped open. He said nothing but quickly shifted to the side window as we passed the car dealership and then he turned around to watch out the back window until the car on the crane was out of sight.
I expected Mr. Chinh to remark on this. Perhaps how no one would ever do such a thing to a French car. There would be no need. Something like that. But he said nothing, and after a time, I decided to appreciate the silence. I just concentrated on covering these miles before the old man would be reunited with the granddaughter he loved. I found that I myself was no longer comfortable with the old ways. Like the extended family. Like other things, too. The Vietnamese indirectness, for instance. The superstition. I was a good American now, and though I wished I could do more for this old man next to me, at least for my wife’s sake, it was not an unpleasant thought that I had finally left Vietnam behind.
And I’d left behind more than the customs. I don’t suppose that struck me as I was driving home from the airport. But it is clear to me now. I grew up, as did my wife, in Vng Tàu. Both our families were pretty well off and we lived the year around in this seaside resort on the South China Sea. The French had called it Cap St. Jacques. The sand was white and the sea was the color of jade. But I say these things not from any vivid recollection, but from a thought in my head, as real only as lines from a travel brochure. I’d left behind me the city on the coast and the sea as well.
But you must understand that ultimately this doesn’t have anything to do with being a refugee in the United States. When I got to the two rivers again, Old and Lost, I could recognize the look of them, like a lake, but it was only my mind working.
Perhaps that is a bad example. What are those two rivers to me? I mention them now only to delay speaking of the rest of my ride with Mr. Chinh. When we crossed the rivers, I suppose I was reminded of him somehow. Probably because of the earlier thoughts of the rivers as an omen. But now I tried once more to think of small talk. I saw a large curl of rubber on the shoulder of the road and then another a little later on and I said to Mr. Chinh, “Those are retreads from trucks. In Vietnam some enterprising man would have already collected those to make some use of them. Here no one cares.”
The old man did not speak, but after a few moments I sensed something beside me and I glanced and found him staring at me. “Do we have far to go?” he asked.
“Perhaps an hour and a half,” I said.
“May I roll down the window?”
“Of course,” I said. I turned off the air conditioning and as he made faint grabbing motions at the door, I pressed the power button and lowered his window. Mr. Chinh turned his face to me with eyes slightly widened in what looked to me like alarm. “They’re power windows,” I said. “No handle.”
His face did not change. I thought to explain further, but before I could, he turned to the window and leaned slightly forward so that the wind rushed into his face, and his hair—still more black than gray—rose and danced and he was just a little bit scary to me for some reason. So I concentrated again on the road and I was happy to let him stay silent, watching the Texas highway, and this was a terrible mistake.
If I’d forced him into conversation earlier, I would’ve had more time to prepare for our arrival in Lake Charles. Not that I could have done much, though. As it was, we were only fifteen minutes or so from home. We’d already crossed the Sabine River into Louisiana and I’d pointed it out to Mr. Chinh, the first words spoken in the car for an hour. Even that didn’t start the conversation. Some time later the wandering of his own mind finally made him speak. He said, “The air feels good here. It’s good when you can feel it on your face as you drive.”
I naturally thought he was talking to me, but when I said, “Yes, that’s right,” he snapped his head around as if he’d forgotten that I was there.
What could I have said to such a reaction? I should have spoken of it to him right away. But I treated it as I would treat Mai waking from a dream and not knowing where she is. I said, “We’re less than twenty miles from Lake Charles, Mr. Chinh.”
He did not reply, but his face softened, as if he was awake now. I said, “Mai can’t wait to see you. And our children are very excited.”
He did not acknowledge this, which I thought was rude for the grandfather who was becoming the elder of our household. Instead, he looked out the window again, and he said, “My favorite car of all was a Hotchkiss. I had a 1934 Hotchkiss. An AM80 tourer. It was a wonderful car. I would drive it from Saigon to Hanoi. A fine car. Just like the car that won the Monte Carlo rally in 1932. I drove man
y cars to Hanoi over the years. Citroën, Peugeot, Ford, Desoto, Simca. But the Hotchkiss was the best. I would drive to Hanoi at the end of the year and spend ten days and return. It was eighteen hundred kilometers. I drove it in two days. I’d drive in the day and my driver would drive at night. At night it was very nice. We had the top down and the moon was shining and we drove along the beach. Then we’d stop and turn the lights on and rabbits would come out and we’d catch them. Very simple. I can see their eyes shining in the lights. Then we’d make a fire on the beach. The sparks would fly up and we’d sit and eat and listen to the sea. It was very nice, driving. Very nice.”
Mr. Chinh stopped speaking. He kept his face to the wind and I was conscious of the hum of my Acura’s engine and I felt very strange. This man beside me was rushing along the South China Sea. Right now. He had felt something so strong that he could summon it up and place himself within it and the moment would not fade, the eyes of the rabbits still shone and the sparks still climbed into the sky and he was a happy man.
Then we were passing the oil refineries west of the lake and we rose on the I-10 bridge and Lake Charles was before us and I said to Mr. Chinh, “We are almost home now.”
And the old man turned to me and said, “Where is it that we are going?”
“Where?”
“You’re the friend of my nephew?”
“I’m the husband of Mai, your granddaughter,” I said, and I tried to tell myself he was still caught on some beach on the way to Hanoi.
“Granddaughter?” he said.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories Page 4