by Lan Cao
Mai too is feeling the pull and push of feelings crowding in her chest, surging and receding. Lured by hope, she has come here after reading the magazine story to search for James. Almost against my volition, I lean against the wall, a respectable distance behind him, and watch. An electric fan rustles cool air about. The man is drinking a beer, laughing at something the vendor said. He is smoking and inhaling deeply as he reaches for a bowl of soup.
The man must have felt our eyes on him. He turns, his face flushed with the full sun and glazed with sweat. He is absolutely himself, in an offhand, handsome way. Everything jams and stalls. I know even before I see.
For years Mai has blamed me for his death. But here he is now, alive, in this single, well-aimed moment among all the unfixed, infinite number of moments in time.
On his arm, immortalized in a cobalt blue tattoo, is the date of our sister’s death. That day when God of omnipotent power looked down and did nothing, choosing instead to dispatch salvation to some other select few. I see the date, pixel by pixel, as if it were held in the lens of a digital camera.
He stands and picks up his knapsack. He is turning toward me, and when he sees my face he freezes. I am not sure if he is surprised to see me, or if he takes my appearance, though startling, as something long anticipated.
There is a brief faltering. James stands up, rocks on his feet, and looks quizzically at Mai, cocking his head to one side as he fixes her in his heart and mind. And then he says something and smiles. Eventually I hear: “You look just the same.” There are tears in his eyes. His voice is lucid, with a grave undertow. “Mai,” he says, with an upward inflection.
Tears well up beneath my eyelids. Mai squeezes her eyes shut. I feel the tremors in her knees. It is James’s voice. It is the missing voice, emerging from an acoustical silence. He is here, outside her imagination. She sees him as he is now, a man who appears to be in his midfifties, though he must be older, juxtaposed against his younger self almost forty years before. With that one word, she is pared down and stripped, made not invisible but too visible, seen at last but too much so for comfort.
He calls her name again and again. Somehow he has survived, I keep thinking. That we are both here and alive owes more to luck than to our own judiciousness. I realize he is talking but that one simple thought, that he is alive, cracks and glows and fills my head so completely that I hardly listen to what he is saying.
Mai follows him. They head nowhere in particular. I am surprised that she wants to put her hands on him, on his arm and his face, whether to feel his flesh or to comfort she doesn’t know. He interweaves his fingers with hers. They walk calmly to extend the sweetness of the moment, slowing down the rushing world. She lays a finger on his arm to fix his attention on bootleg CDs of Rolling Stones classics. She cannot find the words to fit her feelings. So she tells him she is amazed by the audacious display of counterfeit movies and music in plain sight. She tells him that it must be a violation of Vietnam’s obligations under World Trade Organization law and he chuckles.
She wants to say “I thought you died,” but the words resist. The spoken word, language, feels awkward, a clumsy attempt at translating untranslatable feelings from a deep emotional well. What matters is the healing presence that being next to him brings. What matters is the fact that he is here. That we are all here. The world that was certified by subtraction is restored for now to its proper balance.
He recounts for Mai the facts of his life, the random trail it has taken. Of course it matters what has happened to him all these years. But it is his mere presence that I am drawn to.
You stare at the face of a loved one you have not seen for so many years. You remember that last moment in time when you saw him and you see a broken mosaic of images—the perverse persistence of that one day. A day that has now flattened and faded. A chimney, a kite, a rifle. You imagine his wound and the depression it made on impact. You are pulled by the whipping tangle of that memory back to that time. You are trailed by your past, carrying it with you like an evershadowing present.
There is a long moment of silence. “They had mistaken me for dead when I was shot in your garden and dumped me onto a truck.”
The words are too much. Mai feels as if she too has received a wound.
I think about the compulsive secret Mai and I share, that we have a stone in our heart where our sister used to be. She taught us love and pain and hurt. I still insist it all began with our sister. But of course, who is to say what is the first cause or the last cause?
“Mai,” he says. He is pulling her hand, leading her through the foot traffic, warning her about the buckled sidewalks and the skittering pebbles. Occasionally he stops to buy a beer or a pack of cigarettes. The vendors all seem to know him. He inhales deeply, pulling smoke into his lungs, making a long satisfied sound.
I look at him, not to see what he looks like but to take him in. I too have felt the way he must have. For us both, there is the life before the war and the life after. And the one after, the one we try to bend and shape and reconfigure, filled with methodical pursuits tied to no great unifying purpose, hardly seems worthwhile.
James puts his hand gently against the back of Mai’s neck. “Look,” he says. He pulls several photos from his wallet and goes through them as if he were dealing cards. He chooses one from the lot and hands it to her. There we are, caught by the camera’s flash, James, our sister, and Mai, pinned in time and place. I see Mai on the edge of the photograph, pressing herself close to the center so that she would not be accidentally excluded when our Chinese grandmother shot the picture.
“You have kept it all these years,” Mai says softly. She runs her fingertips lightly over the wrinkles. He brushes a stray hair from her forehead. He gives her a gaze that is focused and intense, to be received on privately different terms. After tragedies and travesties, he is here, aiming a beacon into the heart, where our mutual loyalties remain undiluted.
James takes Mai’s hand to his cheeks. And then he puts her hand to his head and squeezes her palm. She does not recoil. She rakes through his hair and feels a deeply indented concavity of sunken skin depressed against bone. It is hard, like deformed metal covering an old, terrible wound that must still throb. I can only guess what he endured after 1968.
In the outdoor light, the other scar, on his underarm, glistens and flashes. Mai stares at it, a cicatrix smoothed by time. In the heat, the still tender tissue bubbles pink and red against a web of fine blue veins.
Mai grips his arm as James thrusts his hands in his pockets. The sky, thick and striated, is turning purple. They make their way along crosshatched streets, through the long parabolic curve of peak-hour traffic, through the scrimmaging density of motorbikes and pedestrians, to amble along Tu Do Street with its rows of silk and handicraft stores.
Air conditioners drip onto sidewalks. Mai stops at the Givral restaurant, amazed that she still remembers the place vividly. They move on to Brodard, where they buy a cup of orange and durian ice cream. Soon they are by the harbor, next to a black statue of a national hero who led an important fight against the Chinese. A line of light glimmers in the distance where sky and river meet. The water pulses and glistens. A haze makes its hot, ragged climb, rising from its skin as the sky fades into dusk and the horizon is foreshortened by a hovering mist. They walk side by side along the paved banks, his palm against the small of her back. Water laps at the riverbed. James occasionally stops and turns his body so he is directly in front of her. He smiles. “You were a child. A wonderfully perfect little child. And now . . .” He puts his arm around her. Mai beams.
It slips from him automatically: “You have your mother’s face.” He puts one hand on his heart as if to cup it.
Mai bites her tongue, overtaken by so many feelings churning among the warren of partitions inside her. We are usually double-chained and padlocked, but here in Saigon, Cecile and I are sprung. All of us are amazed to have fou
nd James alive, and when we are unified our common emotion turns out to be strong, like a swelling of the senses. It is a rare moment of coherence among us.
I know what Mai is feeling. For the first time in a long time, she stands before someone who sees her as she was. Innocent. Perfect. Child.
Streetlamps shed pools of light along the boulevard. The air is fragrant. Fruit trees are laden with ripened fruits waiting to be picked. The first mangoes of the season hang from trees. Tamarind pods burst open, their shells honeyed by the sun. I am not sure where we are but it is beginning to get dark and the day’s heat has long peaked and is finally receding. Night is coming soon, but of course they will not part. They are joined together by something enormous. They are both aware that every filament of their newly found connection needs to be nurtured.
James takes her arm and guides her down an unobtrusive side street to a local eatery. Mai is not hungry but is eager to go with him. He assures her she will love the food. The waitress gives James a questioning glance and arranges a tray of fried squid, dumplings, beef morsels, and French baguettes on the table. When the electricity goes out, the waitress lights candles and hands James a bottle of beer, which he uses to wash down a handful of pills. Soft shadows slide along the walls. Light reflects against James’s watch. Extra candles and flashlights lie on the table. Mai shoots him a rogue glance. It is only now that she is taking the time to look at him. Through his tank top, she can still see the hard, ropy muscles that jump when his back moves. He was always physically active when we knew him. But there are perceptible advances of aging. His hair, though thick, is graying. But he is still lithe and compact. New lines and the perpetual shadow of inadequate sleep have formed around the eyes. His face, burnished by the years, is still angular and chiseled but clearly careworn.
A hard breeze flattens the candle flame. He cups his hand over it, shielding and steadying the smudge of light from the wind, prolonging its glow in the darkness. He sits with his hands almost touching hers, expelling plumes of smoke through his nostrils. The candles have nearly burned away so James inserts new ones into the holders and lines them up, creating a sieve of light. There is no talking, only a brooding silence as he crushes his cigarette in the chock-full ashtray.
As she finishes off the last dumpling, he peels a green mango, slices it for her, and slips a morsel into her mouth.
A big round moon, shrouded and moody, shines down on them.
He opens his knapsack and removes a three-quarters-full bottle of Dewar’s White Label scotch.
They are in a darkness that covers fear and makes talking easier. Something happens; Mai can talk. “Tell me something,” she finally says.
He tells her about his years of loss after 1968. Mai, I, we, all of us are rapt, listening attentively. He explains that there was the long period of time spent in a veterans’ hospital and a rehabilitation center. He talks about his cross-country wanderings and the years living at home with his mother on Long Island, doing odd jobs. He says something about a disreputable existence and shakes his head as he tries to sum up his life. “Everything was temporary. Nothing stuck to me. I caused my mother untold worries, broke her heart. I spent my time watching movies at home on TV. When she died, I upped and left. Wandered about for a while and then came here. To try and make a go of it.” He gives her a long, focused look, then adds, “And to stay.
“This is where my daughter was born,” he whispers.
Mai is stilled. She tries to give shape in her mind to the word daughter.
“I’ve been given a new life here. Look at her,” he says, pulling a photograph from his wallet and putting it under the pale light.
Mai looks at the photo. There are traces of Asian features in the little girl’s face.
“Where she was born is where I am putting down roots.”
Instinctively, Mai pulls away, not trusting herself to speak. So this is how he has been brought to this moment, she thinks. A hot flare rises from her cheeks. She imagines James holding the child, now four years old, he says, and she muses about the quiet, meaningful life that now moves through him.
It always comes back to the mother and so he tells her. “The child’s mother, my wife,” he says, “tried to escape by boat with her mother in 1980 and they were caught and imprisoned. She was only four then and her mother wanted to give her a future away from Vietnam. Her father was a soldier for the South and did not survive his reeducation camp years.”
I see the watchfulness in his eyes as he tells Mai about the mother of his child and her life of frailty and torment. “Every day she puts on makeup and goes to work at Apocalypse Now. It’s one of the most famous clubs in Saigon.” James’s voice becomes a monotone, pitched low. “She is a good mother,” he adds, nodding for emphasis. His voice, gritty from cigarettes, is breaking as he tries to loosen the inhibition and finish the thought. He is struggling to put the words together. After a moment’s pause, he pulls a pack of Marlboro from his trouser pocket. He flashes Mai a smile and confesses that he needs a cigarette to figure out what he wants to say.
The smoke burns Mai’s tear ducts and stings the back of her throat.
James lifts his eyes. The brownish filter tip hangs from his mouth. He takes a deep drag and stares into a vacant space and begins to talk. His voice hoarsens. “Since our first meeting, my wife had looked to me to take us out of Vietnam in order to fulfill her own mother’s hope for her,” he says. “I’m sure that was my appeal to her.” He clears his throat. “But especially now, after the birth of our child. It has become a matter of her future, our daughter’s future,” he adds, throwing the weight of his voice into each word, “that we have to leave Vietnam.”
He reaches across the table and holds Mai’s hand. “You know I cannot return to America, don’t you?” Mai says nothing. “And so we are still here, much to her chagrin.
“I know it is a big disappointment for her,” he continues ruefully, taking in a long drag of smoke. “With a few strokes of the pen and forms from the American Embassy, my signature would confer American citizenship on her immediately,” he murmurs. “And we could all take a plane and land in the U.S.” At last he raises his head and stares straight at her. He foresees the hooks and snares of judgment, and to soften it, he inserts his own self-assessment. “Maybe what she says is true. Maybe I am hard-hearted,” he concedes.
James tells Mai how his life has been a spiral circling back into itself, a snake swallowing its own tail. But he will not leave Vietnam. “Saigon is a gentler place,” he says, “for people like me. A less judgmental place.” He smiles. “There are many drifters here and I am just one of them.”
He takes a deep swallow of his scotch and gives her a quick smile. He tells her he teaches English a few days a week at a local school. “More than that,” he says, “would be too much for me. I don’t think my wife understands this. But you do. I know.” He looks at her through the flutter of candlelight, as if to study her. “Maybe you found the American Dream. But it’s not for me. I wouldn’t even know how to look for it.” He sits there, biting a corner of his lower lip.
Mai listens and says nothing and I note when she lifts her head that she is tearing up. His story hollows her. James has taken his slender prospects and planted them here, in Saigon. He has found love, perhaps even the kind that rushes through the heart and yanks it loose, and it has given him a child.
He has managed it. He has outmaneuvered death and made it across the crags and precipices of war. He has thrown himself into the jostle of marriage and turned himself over to this seemingly undramatic task of making a home and settling down.
Mai struggles to simulate the requisite expressions of surprise and congratulations. Instead all she can manage is a suddenly sensed sadness and a question. “Where are they?” she asks.
James says that his wife has taken their child to visit her ailing mother in Ba Xuyen Province deep in the Mekong Delta. He is not sure h
ow long she will be gone.
He does not bring his wife up again.
James puts his hand on Mai’s cheek, wiping away her tears and leaving a warmth on her face. She smells smoke and beer coming from him. Her throat burns but she whispers that she is happy for him even as she looks away. He is leaning toward her and hooking his finger into hers.
You remember, she wants to say, but she does not want to turn her head and risk looking him in the eye. He nods again, as if he were replying to her unasked question. Of course he remembers the hooked fingers. In comforting her, he becomes confident and self-assured, not the drifter ground down by old wounds. With his appearance the dead have awakened; our sister dances as Mick screams, our mother with her face beaming and flushed drinks tea with her Chinese friends, and our father shows us his polished boots.
When they stand up to leave, he kisses the top of her head, wraps his arm around her, and leads her off. Almost by habit or instinct, she consigns herself to him, following him in silence down slanty alleys, making several turns through this and that street, past old lampposts oxidized copper and orange, and then onto the main boulevard. She hears his footsteps by her side. He leads her to a park bench across from the old French Opera House. There is a shimmering growth of green, slightly damp from the rain, beneath their feet. An occasional soft breeze breaks through the stagnant hot air. Lampposts shed pools of light that are too slim to illumine the expanse. But it is the dimness of night that comforts, shelters, and even elevates the spirits. I know that for Mai, darkness is a release. Under the glow of a nearby streetlight, she is visible but inconspicuous. They are alone but not really. They are in the city’s center and so there are footsteps of people strolling by, conversations, and obliging laughter. Street vendors can be glimpsed along the edge of lamplight, carrying the burden of unsold wares home. They are resilient and dogged but weighed down by poverty and fatigue.