Mãn

by Kim Thuy

  tranh

  painting

  LIFE WAS COMING AT ME like a canvas Julie was unrolling before my eyes. New colours, new shapes revealed themselves as I progressed, as the roll was unwound. And as if by enchantment, images appeared that sketched a scene or illustrated a moment. Suddenly, the painter’s movements became audible and palpable. In the same way, a voice emerged from my name—mãn—written in jade green on the plates, on bags, on the front window. The first group of twenty who came to the workshop amplified that budding voice as they took home recipes and repeated stories told around the table. The vibrant life of that adventure launched another life, the one that had finally come and settled in the warmth of my belly.

  ảo tưởng

  illusion

  JULIE AND MY HUSBAND combined efforts to find me permanent kitchen help. Hồng was scarcely older than me but already had a teenage daughter. She had met her Québécois husband in a Saigon café; she was a waitress, he was a client. He had shown her his Canadian passport and she had agreed to the journey so that her daughter could stop smelling tobacco smoke and feeling the sweat of strangers’ hands on her smock when she came home from work in the middle of the night. He was in love with Hồng, in love with his time in Vietnam, where his hundred dollars were worth a million dongs, where a thousand dollars let him live the experience of eternal love. He had long dreamed of her when he went back to his apartment full of empty bottles.

  Had she known Andy Warhol, Hồng would have appreciated the walls plastered with rows and rows of beer bottles like a piece of pop art. Unfortunately, all she saw was the entrance to a dark tunnel. She disappointed him by choosing skirts that were too long and shoes that were too flat, and he criticized her for leaving too early and coming home from the factory too late. Hồng was surprised to find out that the apartment didn’t belong to him and that his car coughed like an old man in the rain. But she was grateful for the bed for her daughter, so she rolled up her sleeves to erase the marks of her husband’s loneliness and to allow light into the narrow hallways, whose walls had absorbed the shock of closed fists and silenced fury.

  cỏ

  lawn

  HồNG WORKED DAY AND NIGHT, weekdays and weekends. She hoped that her husband would do the same, that he would look for more clients, that he would cut the lawns of more houses. There were days, though, when the sky was so heavy it was impossible for him to get up. That was how she met Julie, because Hồng had replaced her husband behind the lawn mower once, twice, several times. The last time, Julie had come outside, offered her a glass of water and suggested to my husband that she could help me out in the restaurant.

  New York

  New York

  AT FIRST, HỒNG KEPT her distance. I only heard her moving around, efficient, extraordinary. Thanks to her, I was able to leave the kitchen and go to New York with Julie and spend two whole afternoons in a gigantic bookstore where hundreds of cookbooks opened in front of us. We had very little time, so Julie took me to one restaurant for an appetizer, to a second one for the meal, and to yet another for dessert. She wanted me to visit as many addresses as possible in forty-eight hours. Julie knew Manhattan and its warehouses, which held paintings and sculptures that made me dizzy. How had Richard Serra imagined that rust-covered steel was sensual? How does a person transport a work of art twenty times bigger than my kitchen? How does a person think so big?

  cắn

  bite

  JULIE SHOWED ME SOMETHING outside my everyday life to make me see the horizon, so that I would desire the horizon. She wanted me to learn to breathe deeply, no longer just sufficiently. A hundred times, she repeated the same message, in a hundred variations:

  “Bite. Bite into the apple.”

  “Bite the way the file bites metal.”

  “Bite hard and make the most of life.”

  “Bite! Bite! Bite!” she said, laughing hard, as she pulled my hand to cross the street or while she was braiding my hair. She educated me in languages, in gestures, in emotions. Julie talked as much with her hands as with her wrinkled nose, while I could barely maintain her gaze for the duration of a sentence. Several times, she stood me in front of a mirror, obliging me to talk with her while we looked at ourselves, so that I could observe the stillness of my body compared with hers.

  I was floored every time Julie repeated words in Vietnamese. She imitated accents with the flexibility of a gymnast and the precision of a musician. She pronounced the five versions of la, là, lạ, lả, lã, distinguishing the tones even if she didn’t understand the different definitions: to cry, to be, stranger, to faint, cool. The challenge I’d devised was much too easy for her, while the exercise she’d suggested in turn required an enormous effort from me. Learning songs by heart was not a demanding task in itself, but singing them out loud took all my courage. Julie made the sounds come out by loosening my tongue.

  “Stick out your tongue. Try to touch your chin. Turn towards the left … now, towards the right. And again.”

  She roared with laughter at the sight of me putting my hand a few centimetres from my mouth during those exercises, making me giggle every time. Julie’s laugh was tremendously warm, tremendously charming, but she would also shed abundant tears, unlike Vietnamese women, who cry as silently as possible. Only professional mourners hired for funerals could gesticulate and display pain on their features without being considered inelegant.

  ma

  ghost

  MY HUSBAND NEVER KNEW that on the nights I wrote to Maman, I cried. Or if he did know, he preferred to console me by always having booklets of stamps in the drawer. Maman didn’t reply very often. Maybe because she didn’t want to cry either. I heard the echo of her silence, though, and the burden of everything that couldn’t be heard. At night, when we used to share the same bed, the sound of Maman’s tears sometimes escaped the corners of her closed eyes. I would hold my breath then, because with no witness, sorrow might exist only as a ghost.

  Most Vietnamese believe in the existence of wandering souls who haunt life, who watch for death, who stay wedged between the two. Every year, in the seventh lunar month, people burn incense, paper money and garments to help the ghosts to free themselves, to leave the world of the living, which has not anticipated a place for them. When I threw the false paper money, orange and gold, into the fire, I hoped for both the ghosts and Maman’s sadness to disappear, even if she denied the ghosts’ existence with the same fervour as the Communist Party, which condemned the people’s fear of those roving spirits, unidentifiable and with no witnesses.

  It’s true that Maman’s face, like my husband’s, showed neither pain nor joy, to say nothing of pleasure, while I could read everything on Julie’s. When she wept, full of affection, at the birth of my son, her heart was drawn on her cheeks, her forehead, her lips. In the same way, she was moved when she carried children just arrived from faraway lands to greet their new destiny in the cocoons carefully woven for them in Montreal. She took their photos and gave them greeting cards signed by her friends in the adoptive parents’ group. She was the first to say, “I love you,” to my baby who was still curled up in my belly. She was also the one who took my husband’s hand to place it against the little foot that was imprinted on my stretched skin. Then, despite his stiff body language, she was quite ready to take him in her arms when he agreed to sponsor Maman for her immigration to Canada.

  Đông-Tây

  East-West

  IT TOOK SEVERAL YEARS and countless photos of my two children to persuade Maman to join me. Unlike my boy, my little girl arrived very quickly, at the same speed as the multiplication of catering orders for private and corporate parties. My husband had bought the duplex next door to enlarge our living space. At the same time, Julie was building a large kitchen under the workshop and she turned the two apartments above us into a daycare for her daughter, my children, and now and then the children of friends who found themselves without a sitter. Two ladies from the Philippines took turns helping out during partie
s that ended too late or mornings that started before dawn.

  In the kitchen, Julie had hired Philippe, a pastry chef, to reinvent Vietnamese desserts, because our traditions regarding cream, chocolate and cakes were limited to a few, very basic recipes. As a matter of fact, Vietnamese call birthday cakes bánh gatô, with bánh meaning “bread-cake-batter.” We had to import the word gatô because cake comes from a singular culinary tradition. We had to learn how to use butter, milk, vanilla, chocolate—ingredients that were as foreign to us as the cooking methods. Lacking ovens, Vietnamese women baked their cakes in a cauldron covered with a lid on which they placed chunks of blazing coal. The cauldron was set on a terracotta barbecue the size of an average cachepot so the mixture could be elevated and baked without burning even if the temperature couldn’t be constant or the heat distribution uniform. I was very surprised, then, at Philippe’s thermometer as well as his stopwatch and his set of measuring spoons, not to mention implements as mysterious as they were impressive. I ran my hand over the contents of the drawers and shelves with the fascination of a child stepping into a cockpit.

  Slowly, Philippe brought me into his world. He started with hazelnuts, plain, roasted, whole, ground—because I adore nuts. From Chinatown, I would bring him pandan leaves to share with him their intensely green colour and their scent: in Thailand, taxi drivers place a fresh bouquet under their seat every two or three days. As Philippe was already familiar with lychees, I offered him their cousins, longans, whose glossy seeds often serve as a metaphor for a pretty girl’s eyes, and rambutans, with their red peel and hairy surface like a sea urchin, but soft to the touch.

  My Vietnamese-style banana cake was delicious, but it looked frightening, sturdy and uncouth as it was. In no time, Philippe softened it with foamy caramel made from raw cane sugar. Thus he married East and West, as with the cake with whole bananas fitted into baguette dough soaked in coconut milk and cow’s milk. Five hours’ baking at a low temperature forced the bread to play a protective role for the fruit as the bananas slowly delivered up the sugar in their flesh. Anyone lucky enough to taste that cake freshly baked could see, when cutting it, the crimson of the bananas embarrassed at being caught in the act.

  màu

  colour

  PHILIPPE ENHANCED AND ENNOBLED the desserts that the Vietnamese call simply by the number of colours in the ingredients: chè three colours, chè five colours, chè seven colours. Each merchant has her own interpretation of the dessert, which is usually eaten as a snack on the sidewalk at a corner, sitting on a small stool when school lets out, or between two destinations with friends. I think that meeting someone for chè usually means a date in a café, except that there it’s made with blends of mung bean paste, tapioca in the shape of pomegranate seeds, red beans, black-eyed peas or the fruit of the nipa palm, all topped with a mountain of crushed ice. A good many secrets were shared between two spoonfuls of chè and a good many love affairs were born in that place, which often had no address.

  In our workshop, when they tasted Philippe’s creations, the clients’ confidences scented the air, and sometimes they kissed passionately as if they were alone, set back from time. I had never seen people so much in love so close up before. Nor had I ever heard “I love you” spoken aloud, as Julie did every day. She never hung up the phone without saying “I love you” to her husband and her daughter. I sometimes tried to put into words my gratitude towards Julie, but I was never really successful. I could only show my affection through everyday acts, such as preparing for her, during her numerous appointments and before she even felt the urge, the lime soda she adored, or by unplugging the phones in her office when I made her take a fifteen-minute nap, or by rubbing a turmeric root on a freshly healed sore to prevent it from scarring. I thanked heaven when I had the chance to look after her daughter for five, seven or ten days so she could join her husband in Turkey, Japan or Sri Lanka. I could offer her only my friendship, because Julie lacked nothing, she had so much to give and she gave everything to everyone. She was a merchant of happiness.

  mùa

  season

  THEY SAY THAT HAPPINESS cannot be bought. What I learned from Julie is that on its own, happiness multiplies, is shared, and adapts to each of us. It was within that happiness that the years accumulated one after another, paying no attention to calendar or seasons. I could not say at what moment exactly Hồng took the helm of the restaurant kitchen. I only know that, very early one morning, I opened my eyes and saw a world so perfect it made me dizzy. Beside me, my husband’s face was pressed into the pillow, rested, peaceful, and wrapped in a nearly palpable film of calm and stillness. In the adjacent rooms, my children were fast asleep. I had the impression I could hear their dreams, where even the monsters seem playful or are transformed into gentlemen. Maman had chosen her domain at the end of the corridor joining the two apartments. She involved herself in the children’s homework as rigorously as a substitute teacher. I often caught her smiling discreetly when they called her Bà Ngoại, maternal grandmother. During school hours, she insisted on helping Hồng in the kitchen and refused to join the Vietnamese community seniors’ club.

  And so Maman injected new life into our restaurant by adding recipes to our menu now and then, which continued to follow only our regular customers’ wishes and the happenstance of our memories.

  hồng

  pink and sometimes red

  HỒNG AND HER DAUGHTER became members of the family when they moved into the apartment that had been used as the children’s daycare. She had left her husband when Julie caught a glimpse of the bruises scattered over her body. Hidden by long sleeves and dark trousers, it was possible to forget them. The bravos and the thank yous of the customers also erased the unwitting abuse and the oblivious insults that alcohol poured onto her. She pushed forward head-long, ignoring her nights, disregarding blows, using her body as a shield to protect her daughter from the threat of being sent back to Vietnam, where she thought she would no longer fit in. It was easy to close her eyes because the only two mirrors in the dark apartment reflected more the explosion of anger than her silhouette, which appeared there in fragments. She had forgotten what she looked like in one piece until the day she saw herself in Julie’s eyes when she accidentally opened the bathroom door as Hồng was taking off her chef’s jacket.

  We went in a four-car convoy, two women and six men, to rescue Hồng and her daughter from a reality that had become a way of life, a habit. Her husband never put to the test the army that stood upright behind her that night and every night thereafter. Before we had time to sort through photos and arrange them in albums, Hồng’s daughter had started her first year in medicine at university and we were launching the first cookbook from our atelier-boutique-restaurant.

  sách

  book

  THE LAUNCH WAS GIVEN a lot of media coverage thanks to our faithful and enthusiastic admirers, and above all thanks to Julie’s network, which included radio and TV as well as print. A successful broadcast would generate a flattering review. Before the first newspaper article had been framed, magazines filled our precious rigid suitcase made of leather and wood that seemed to have crossed the Indian Ocean, trod the Silk Road or survived the Holocaust. It was set on a folding stand in the window, wide open, rich with all the praise that might come from as far away as the United States and France. In the Weekend à Montréal guide, our atelier-restaurant Mãn was among the essential addresses, while for Frommer’s it was an experience not to be missed. Quebeckers’ interest in Vietnamese cuisine was growing along with the increased opening of Vietnam’s doors to mass tourism. That wave of enthusiasm turned our business into a home base, our book La Palanche (The Yoke) into a cultural reference and me into a spokesperson. Readers praised the recipes but often wanted to talk to me about the tales and anecdotes that had inspired our choices.

  The story of the little nine-year-old girl imprisoned for several months after trying to escape by boat explained the taste of tomato and parsley soup bett
er than the picture next to the recipe. We had chosen it in honour of Hồng. She was that little girl, separated from her father and her older brother during their arrest. Minutes before her father pushed her into the crowd crammed onto the boat, he had told her that in no circumstances was she to identify him. She had to tell the police she was travelling alone with her twelve-year-old brother. She’d ended up in the women’s prison, isolated from the men’s by sheets of metal. Her brother had dug a small space under it so he could hold her hand during the night. In daytime she would go all the way to the end of the camp, where only a wire fence separated them. That way, her brother could keep an eye on her. Their father kept as far from his children as possible, changing his name and lying about his address. He never turned around, even when he heard them, sitting on their heels on soil dried by the pacing prisoners, crying from fear and hunger. He hoped that their innocence and their loneliness would allow them to be freed before him. His wish was granted. The children went back to the house, whereas he remained, even after the prison had been shut down for years.

  Hồng’s final memory of her father is a faded yellow plastic bowl filled with clear broth and a piece of tomato and a few bits of parsley stem. He had placed it in a corner of the yard, going past her brother, who had held on to the bowl in the circle of his folded legs and waited for Hồng to arrive at the fence to make her drink a little of the tomato water. She had never tasted anything so delicious. Since her liberation, she had been trying to re-create those tastes by making the soup at least once a week. No matter what variety of tomato she tried, she never managed to reproduce the indelible but elusive memory of those few sips. And so we immortalized the recipe in memory of her father.