Once Upon a Mulberry Field

by C. L. Hoang

  “You know last tune she played?” Vivienne whispered back in her raspy voice.

  “Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’? She did an outstanding job with it.”

  “It is her signature. She always ends with it,” Vivienne said. “Mme Yvonne is smart lady, she used title for her name. So that was Elise playing piano. It is good name, yeah? She started here a month before Lee Anne.”

  I lowered my voice even more. “Don’t stare. But I think Dean is very impressed with her.” Out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t have helped noticing how entranced Dean had been throughout the impromptu concert. His gaze hadn’t left Elise’s face for a moment.

  “You think?” said Vivienne with a cryptic smile. “I was hoping.”

  I had no inkling what she was alluding to until later when she and Lee Anne returned to our table with trays of refreshments, accompanied by none other than Elise herself. We all stood and congratulated the talented pianist on her masterful performance. Up close, she seemed even younger and prettier than I’d realized, yet there was no hint of the shyness or naïveté that her tender youth and delicate appearance might have implied. She was at ease and gracious without being forward, and spoke good English, albeit with a distinct French accent like Mme Yvonne’s. True to form, Dean was less than effusive during that initial encounter with Elise. However, his inquisitive eyes didn’t try to elude hers, a small but perhaps telling sign that didn’t escape Dick.

  Later that afternoon Dean had to leave early, and after dropping him off at Tân-Sơn-Nhất, Dick and I grabbed one last drink together in the smoky airport lounge.

  “He likes Elise all right,” Dick declared, sounding mighty pleased with himself. “What say you, Roge? Any chance they’ll hit it off?”

  “Aha,” I said. “Someone decided to play matchmaker, I see.”

  It turned out the idea had been germinating in Vivienne’s head for some time. Having learned from her boyfriend of Dean’s self-imposed celibacy, she’d taken it upon herself to arrange an introduction, but the opportunity hadn’t presented itself until that rainy Sunday afternoon.

  “Why Elise?” I asked, still unconvinced of Dean’s positive response. “Yes. She’s obviously very attractive and talented, and nice as all get out—”

  “But—what?” Dick retorted. “I don’t recall our guy objecting to any of that.”

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “It’s not like he hasn’t been around attractive women before. Au contraire. What made you guys think it would be any different with Elise?”

  That was when Dick shared her story with me, but not before swearing me to confidentiality. “I couldn’t have written more compelling fiction if I tried,” was his opening comment.

  Elise came from a prominent family in Huế, the former imperial capital under the Nguyễn dynasty. She had royal blood in her veins, since her mother was a Công Tôn-Nữ, a great-granddaughter of an emperor from the waning years of the nineteenth century. Among Elise’s blue-blood cousins were Bảo-Đại, the last emperor of Việt-Nam, and Madame Nhu, the “Dragon Lady” of South Việt-Nam’s political scene in the early 1960s.

  “She’s as close to a real-life princess as I’ll ever know,” Dick mused.

  Like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holidays, I thought, still taken by their resemblance.

  Elise’s father himself belonged to an elite family in the ancient capital. The grandson of a senior mandarin at the imperial court, he had achieved high status in the city as a well-to-do businessman. The key to his success was his family’s long-standing association with the French colonial administration. Educated for a number of years in Paris, he remained a staunch admirer of French culture who wished for his offspring to follow in his privileged footsteps.

  And so, when Elise turned fourteen, he made the difficult decision over protest from his worried wife to send their daughter to stay with relatives in Sài-Gòn. This was to afford her the finest education money could buy. She enrolled at the prestigious Lycée Français de Jeunes Filles, the French high school for the city’s upper-class young ladies, which was later renamed after famed physicist Marie Curie. It was never a secret that Elise’s father harbored high hopes and ambitions for his precocious daughter. After high school, she was expected to sit for and pass with flying colors the selective entrance exam to the National Music Conservatory next to Tao-Đàn Park. There, according to her father’s plan, she would hone her skills and fully develop her budding talent as a concert pianist.

  “How often does life unfold according to some blueprint?” Dick asked rhetorically, maybe harking back to the tumultuous early history of his own family. I nodded in sympathy as I mulled over my personal circumstances, the unexpected events that had conspired to drop me here at the heart of a brutal conflict I wanted no part of.

  In Elise’s situation, her tidy life took a sharp turn during her last year in high school. Destiny came knocking at her door in the seductive form of a tall, handsome music teacher from the south of France. He was single, dapper, and deadly charming, the quintessential French lover. She was a lonely young woman away from home with a sweet romantic bent like many of her peers, also his favorite and most talented student. The inevitable happened. The two became caught up in a torrid and reckless love affair that erupted in a damaging scandal. Overnight, Elise was summoned back home to Huế, where she stayed through Noël of that year, grounded until things cooled off, or so her parents had hoped. To be allowed back to school after the holidays, she promised she would sever all contact with the music teacher.

  That, predictably, wouldn’t come to pass. By then, facing considerations of his young career, the French teacher had sobered up and tried to break off the illicit relationship, but Elise had hopelessly fallen for her former mentor and couldn’t keep away from him. In a last desperate move to squash the scandal, the school transferred the teacher to Lycée Yersin, a small institute in Đà-Lạt, a tiny resort town in the highlands two hundred miles northeast of Sài-Gòn.

  Over the murmur of the air conditioner in the airport lounge, Dick let out a long breath. “What one wouldn’t do for love. Or infatuation. Whatever you choose to call it.” I sat in stunned silence, waiting for him to continue.

  Elise somehow managed to track down her former teacher. In a brazen act of revolt against the traditional value system within which she’d been nurtured her entire life, she dropped out of school, stole out of Sài-Gòn with a small suitcase, and trailed him to Đà-Lạt—an amazing feat for a privileged young girl who’d never traveled anywhere on her own. Against all odds and counsel, in spite of themselves, they resumed their doomed affair for a brief time until the young teacher panicked anew and put in for an immediate transfer out of the country.

  Dick shook his head. “That was the end of the road for Elise. She dragged herself back to Sài-Gòn, broken-hearted and covered in disgrace. Next came a bout with acute depression, followed by a failed attempt at suicide. But all that mess was just a precursor to bigger storms ahead for the poor child.”

  When she was released from the hospital, Elise learned she’d been expelled from her school. The whole episode had tainted its heretofore sterling reputation, and she was deemed unfit to return. Worse yet, the scandal had become gossip fodder among the upper social strata in both capitals, Huế and Sài-Gòn. Angered and humiliated by the dishonor she’d heaped on the family, Elise’s father disowned her despite tearful pleas from her distraught mother and grandmother. To compound her problems, the relatives who’d provided her room and board asked Elise to move out after her father cut off her financial support.

  “This all took place a year and a half ago,” Dick clarified. “Since then she has subsisted on meager income from various odd jobs, combined with what little help her mother could sneak to her behind her father’s back. An acquaintance hooked her up with Mme Yvonne, and this gig may well be the best thing that’s happened to her in a while.”

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nbsp; “It’s mind-boggling to think what she’s been through already, at her age,” I said. “I hope she doesn’t give up on the piano, no matter what. Some serious talent there.” Then I squinted at him. “And how did you unearth all this history, Mr. Reporter?”

  “I rely on my excellent source. Vivienne.” Dick chuckled. “She tries to look out for the new girls—Elise, Lee Anne, and a few others. Takes them under her wing, so to speak. There’s great sympathy and rapport between them, you know. It’s not like it’s everybody’s first choice to work at Mme Yvonne’s. Yet it’s a dire necessity for all of them.”

  “And the Lonely Hunter fits how, in this big picture?” I asked.

  “That’s the reason I’ve shared Elise’s story with you, man.” He shook his head in mock chagrin. “Don’t you see? They’ve both loved and lost before. Paid a huge personal price for it, actually. That understanding alone can bring them together, not to mention they’d make a great-looking couple. They seem clearly cut out for each other.”

  “You may have a point there,” I conceded. “Wouldn’t it be poetic justice if it works out between them? My fingers are crossed.”

  We fell silent, staring out the tinted glass window onto the busy tarmac. Then I pursued the open opportunity and asked him, for the first time, “And how’s it going with you and Vivienne?”

  Dick shrugged without saying a word. Then, just as I was giving up, he spoke. “Would you find it ironic if I told you I actually know much less about her than I do about Elise or Lee Anne, or even Mme Yvonne?”

  He struck a match and lit a Pall Mall. “Nasty habit I’ve picked up,” he acknowledged, even without my chiding him about it. “But hell. At eleven cents a pack at the PX, it’s about the only vice I can afford anymore.” His eyes looked tired behind the thick glasses. “What can I tell you, man? I’ve never been one to figure out women.”

  “I thought you guys got along famously,” I ventured.

  “As what? Best buddies?” He snickered at the idea. “Sure we do.”

  He hesitated, then appeared to want the burden off his chest once and for all. “It’s true we get along swell, Vivienne and I,” he said. “It’s no act on her part either, that much I’m certain of. That’s what’s so damn frustrating about the whole thing.”

  I could only imagine how heavy it must have weighed on his mind, since he’d never been comfortable broaching such personal subjects before, going back to our high school days.

  “Oh hell, Roge,” he continued, his eyes avoiding mine. “You know damn well I want more of a relationship with her. And you’re right. Don’t need to remind you I never had much success in this department. But this time, it matters to me. I really do like her.”

  “And you’ve told her, I presume?”

  “Never had even a shadow of a chance. Problem is, she refuses to discuss anything of a private nature. This may sound crazy to you, but I don’t know squat about her. All we have is the moments we share when we’re together. No past. No future.” Glancing back at me, he flashed an ironic smile. “She likes me, yet I can’t ask her anything about herself.”

  “Take this from me, for what it’s worth,” I said to him as nicely as I could. “She’ll open up to you when she’s ready. Remember back when we were kids, how long it took before you even mentioned about Manzanar and what happened to your family? It’s no different here. She may be dragging around some baggage she’s not yet prepared to deal with.” I then reminded him of the incredible hardships already endured by both Elise and Lee Anne despite their youth. “But they all have their own ways of coping. Not everyone’s willing and ready to sit down and pour out her life story to you. Give it time.”

  Dick sighed. “Let’s hope you’re right.” Then, completely out of left field, he asked, “So what’s going on with you and Lee Anne?”

  The very question, formulated in a dozen different ways, had been lying in wait in the back of my mind, all set to pounce when I least expected—during a cold shower, or in my half-awake state in the wee hours of the morning, or worst, while I was penning my weekly letter to Debbie. The frequency with which the question reared its head increased as the months rolled by and I found more opportunities to spend Sunday afternoons at Mme Yvonne’s.

  Yet none of that changed my pat answer.

  “We’re good friends,” I told Dick, doing my best to sound casual. “It’s fun helping with her English.” Then I slammed the door on the subject, to both him and myself. “You’re certainly aware she’s married, yes? You’re the reporter, Hayashi.”

  That shut him up, but the words had a hollow ring even to my ear.

  There was no denying I enjoyed our get-togethers in Mme Yvonne’s beautiful garden. It felt as though we were among old friends there, with the same regular crowd gathered on most weekends and people spontaneously pairing up with their favorite partners. The pleasant routine lent a touch of normalcy, even elegance, to a world gone berserk. Something fun and exciting to look forward to, far away from the devastations of war.

  But seldom had I dared to pause and give further thought to the situation. Until one rainy night before bedtime, when I realized with a knot in my stomach just how much I longed to be with Lee Anne, alone. No longer to be ignored was this crazy yearning I had to peel away the layers and discover for myself every lovely secret about her.

  For her part, she’d grown more confident in her job as a hostess and appeared to be making the most of this unique chance to practice her English. But I felt that the social stigma attached to such a job, within the traditional culture of Việt-Nam, remained her major concern. It must have wreaked much pain and anguish on her, not to mention the shame and guilt of having to conceal the truth from her own family.

  “I have not told them what I really do for work,” she admitted one day when we were alone at our table under the bougainvillea. “They will be shocked. This is not, how you say, respect—respectable job, you understand. Especially for wife of Army officer.”

  “So what did you tell them?” I asked.

  “I said I was secretary at USAID office nearby,” she replied, her cheeks turning red. “They were happy for me because it was a job I wanted. But you need to know someone in there to get interview, and I did not know anybody. So I came here instead.”

  “You did what you had to do. No one can fault you for that,” I said, looking into her eyes. “I can appreciate your family’s concern for you; that’s why I’m glad you’re working here for Mme Yvonne. No matter what anyone else may think, this is a decent job in a well-protected and safe environment. You know that’s true. You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

  We talked more about her family, then in a moment of openness I asked, “So how did you meet your husband?”

  Lee Anne reflected for a minute. “He is five years older than me,” she finally said. “His parents and mine came from same small town in the North.” She looked down at her folded hands. “My parents believe it is important for a good marriage that families know each other. Even more important during times of war.”

  I decided to push my luck. “Had you known him for a long time?”

  “We had met, but I was too young. He and his family waited until I finished high school to ask my parents for my hand.” She fidgeted in her chair. “I know you do not understand, but that is how things are arranged in our society. He is from good family, and very nice and responsible man, also officer in the Army. Everyone says I am lucky.” Then wistfully, she added, “It is not safe to be single woman in wartime. Very dangerous.”

  I fought off an impulse to reach over and take her in my arms.

  Sad but true, children have a way of growing up fast in trying times—a simple rule of survival. In Lee Anne’s case, she had transitioned straight from childhood into womanhood without the benefit of a regular adolescence with its playful rites of passage. For her, no such things as a sweet-sixteen birthday, or
prom night, or even a clumsy first kiss in high school. Overnight, she’d gone from innocent school girl to wife, and now, ready or not, to co-bread winner.

  There was still so much more I wanted to learn about her, but for the time being it felt as if I’d trespassed enough into her private life. For my own peace of mind, however, I ventured one final brazen question: “Are you happy?”

  She gave me a puzzled look but didn’t seem offended. “My husband’s father had died, so after the wedding we went to live with his mother,” she said, sweeping her long silky hair back over her shoulders. “My mother-in-law treated me like her own daughter. But she became ill and passed away last year. After that we moved in with my parents, so I am back at home again.” Then, with an embarrassed smile, “Now you know my life story. Very boring, yes? Nothing exciting like Gone with the Wind.”

  I thought it better not to press the issue, and played along. “You’ve read the book? It’s an American classic. I can see how you might relate to the story. Different time and place, but similar circumstances.”

  “I only saw the movie. It was marvelous,” she gushed. “I am looking for the book in English, not a Vietnamese translation. It is hard to find in used bookstores, but it is on my list to read. Also Doctor Zhivago.”

  As I watched her pretty face grow animated with such innocent joy and enthusiasm despite all the deprivations and challenges in her life, I thought what a shame it was that the child in her heart must grow up someday.