by Lan Cao
His voice is barely audible. I can hardly hear him but I can feel the scratch of his nails, against the length of her back. He speaks wistfully, almost covertly. He tells her he has never stopped missing her and her sister. Mai lies still, clasped inside his embrace. She tells him she loves him. James sighs. He strokes her hair into place, a fledgling to soothe, ragged ends to heal. There is strange comfort in watching them and listening to their voices. The night seals itself off to the rest of the world.
He shifts position, rolling on his side and onto his elbow. He tries to move her closer to him, and even though she lies still, he does not take this as a rejection. He edges closer to her and massages knots in her back.
A strong wind moves through the trees. It starts to rain. James pulls her with surprising delicacy into a fetal position closer to him. Mai senses everything around her. The faucet drips. The clock ticks. A door closes across the hall. Either she lacks the nerve for reflection—the kind that serves to restrain temptation—or she is overcome by a rush of longing.
She wants to shed her skin; she wants to be close to him, for the entirety of his body to be fitted against hers. He clears his throat and hums a descending line that hangs stealthily until it fades into a simple heartfelt declaration of “Yesterday.” Mai lies back, ignoring the tide of contradictory impulses within, watching attentively as he hums a few notes, his fingers strumming an imaginary guitar held in his arms.
Mai loves the melody, its phrasing like light and shadow. A flush works its way through her and she feels a hotness on her cheeks. It is as if something tightly reined within her has begun to loosen and is waiting for release. The heart, redeemed and reconfirmed, stumbles and swerves. There was that life then and there is this life now, although it seems almost impossible for both to coexist at the same time.
She feels a warmth radiating from his body, his breath rising and easing, rising and easing. So this is what it feels like to be moved.
Mai and I are overpowered. Here, with the sound of the wind rustling through the plants outside. Here with the darkness making its way stealthily through the mysterious imperatives of the heart. Something perilous and strong moves through us. We feel it all—the certainty of old devotions; the weight of impermanence; the age-old human flaw of wishing for more than what can be instead of accepting with gratitude what has been given.
Mai’s heart is coaxing her on to a new place. James’s face is slippery with sweat. She hears her own breath next to his. She leans close to him, her face touching the soft curve of his neck and sometimes the sharp edges of his clavicle. She can feel him alternately squeezing and releasing her hand.
And then I hear a cry in the echoing silence. It is a jarring cry for the grieving that remains unfinished. I know Mai is already preparing for the inevitable good-bye that lies before them. By the time she realizes it, James is on top of her. Her head sinks into the pillow. She softens her body, allowing herself to be pinned down and submerged as she inhales his essence. A different life is bound to lie between them but for now they have this.
His hand seeks her out and clutches her hair, even as he is on top of her, barely moving. He can tell she has been alone all her life.
Hours of darkness hold them together through the night. She savors these minutes. Already she misses him and the blind perfection of lovemaking. Already she sees tonight as a memory, even as it turns around and courses its way back into her body.
• • •
When Mai leaves the following morning, James is still asleep. A tapestry of darkness is just beginning to lift. The sun is barely up, a mere speckling of orange. The walls are washed in the pale, gray palette of dawn. She moves about stealthily in the bathroom as she gets ready to leave the room.
Her heart quickens as she takes a long look at him. Mai is fully dressed but she lingers. There is a flicker under his eyelids, a sign of troubled sleep perhaps. The sheets are bunched and knotted against his stomach and she can see his chest moving up and down in quick, ragged breaths. She bends down toward him and kisses his forehead. He does not pull away. Even in his sleep he seems to be leaning toward her. She closes the wooden shutters so he will not be awakened by daylight.
James, she whispers, not out loud but only to herself. The s in his name is drawn out, like an eternal, sibilant whisper. Even his name carries its own aftereffect; already it is a purple mark foundering deep inside her soul. She knows he is lost to her, and she leaves the room carrying his heart inside her. How surprising, she thinks, that later in life, she is feeling what others feel in their early youth—a sensual jolt and wonder. No matter what happens next, she knows she will be lost to him forever. It is a miracle that she has found him at all. More cannot be asked.
• • •
Later that night she returns to her hotel and checks out. She is told a man had been waiting for her and that he had written her a note. “I will wait for you at Ben Thanh Market,” it says. “Or come to the orphanage.” At the bottom of the note are the name and address.
She moves into another hotel two streets away. She stays there for more than a week, trying to sort her way through the befuddled grip of her emotions. She ignores his nearby presence in the sprawling market. It is a familiar feeling, nursing yourself back from the precipice of ruined love, the misaligned and scattered selves splintered within. Sometimes these feelings are about James but sometimes they barely attach to a person at all. At those times she is just displaced, weighted down and beset by an intense hunger for life that stirs within, a hunger that can scarcely be met.
When love is experienced and released, where does it go? How does it balance itself on the pinprick of the moment? This much is clear to me. We don’t recover from love forged in childhood, in history. We carry it with us. Or more precisely, it just sticks to us. And it is never really forfeited or lost.
• • •
It is early but Mai makes her way to Ben Thanh Market. She will return to the very spot where she first saw James. The note says he will wait at Ben Thanh Market but that was written more than a week ago. And certainly at this early hour he will not be there even if he still plans to wait. Still, she is filled with hope. Vendors are just beginning to set up. She finds her way back to that spot where she first saw James—by the bun bo Hue noodle cart. The vendor she is looking for is there, fanning herself with a conical straw hat. When Mai asks, she is immediately told where the American lives.
That evening, spurred by a freighted sense of urgency, she takes a cyclo to Hai Ba Trung Street and, after crossing several intervening alleys, arrives at a cul-de-sac called Alley Number 9. The sidewalks are wet. The moon looms overhead. Mai walks silently along the reticulated backstreets, in search of the 100 block where she has been told his house can be located. She hurries past a disordered row of crude, boarded-up buildings, some abandoned and vandalized, their scabby timber pulled off and left in a junk heap of tires and other unwanted items. A motorbike spews gravel as it screeches to a sudden stop with a gasp of the brakes before a repair shop festooned with multicolored pennants. The road, grudging and forlorn, is beaten and rutted and bears the deep imprint of wheeled vehicles. The houses here are of weathered clapboard and cement. Small and narrow, they stand haphazardly next to each other. Some are enclosed by a crisscross of chicken-wire fencing, others by concrete knee-high barricades choked by red spikes of dry, thorny stalks and edged by a sludge of brown slime. A small boy eyes her and beams a big grin.
Mai identifies his house by its pale yellow-ocher walls, hot-pink bougainvillea bush, windows with two broken slats temporarily fastened together: slippage fixed by cords and strings. Butterflies float among the flowering bushes. Birds cast a shadow across the sky as they break the horizon and approach the neighborhood. A ragged doll partially covered by leaves and dirt lies facedown near the bottom step. It is late but the street is still crowded with cyclos and bicyclists. She finds a spot across from the house, behind a row of
motorbikes parked on the sidewalk, and sits there to watch. She fits her body inside shadows big enough to hide her.
Here is James’s life, unveiled like a slow heaving confession in the shaded fringe of dusk. She hears the voice of a little girl and the occasional chirps of crickets asserting their nocturnal presence. Through the mosquito-netting curtains, she sees his silhouette, as if etched against the ivory gauze. The little girl is climbing onto his lap, pulling his hair tenderly. Mai sees her face, sweet, adoring. She is a flower. He offers her a spoonful of something and she pushes the offering away to pursue something of greater interest, painting her father’s face instead. After a brief struggle in which she bobs and fidgets, he capitulates with a show of resignation, pledging solicitous stillness so she can adorn his face at will. In the background a woman sends her shadows back and forth as she moves across the room. But what Mai focuses on is what she has many times conjured in her mind, James and the little girl. She has fashioned a paper crown and placed it on his head. In exchange for his cooperation, she is making a show of being more tractable, accepting his offer of food with minimal fuss. The bluster of play subsides. A smell of caramelized pork comes from the open window. Mai takes a deep breath, inhaling and holding it as if for a lifetime.
James walks with the girl toward the refrigerator. He opens it and holds her in midair, suspended inside a cold blast. They both laugh. After a few minutes, James closes the door and hoists the child up on his shoulders, father and daughter in sweet complicity. The girl points at the window and James glances out with a dark questioning. Still carrying the child on his shoulders, he walks out the door, to the level patch of grass in front. Mai feels as if someone were holding her and squeezing her tight.
“Over there, Daddy,” the girl exclaims, struggling to wriggle free. James submits to her wishes. He eases her down his back but keeps his arm half-clasped around her body. The little girl twists loose and runs to the bottom of the steps. She scoops up her doll and shakes it clean of dirt, rearranging its hair and dress before embracing it. She reassures the doll that they will sleep together tonight. She puts the doll in a sitting position and squats down to talk to it. This is the little girl who will rescue him. She is changing him already, Mai thinks. Things won’t fall apart. Light from the house is at his back, emitting a soft glow, absorbing him in its vast repose. Something is marrying him to the night. And in turn, it, the evening, the place itself, is opening up, embracing him in its fold.
James hangs a cigarette between his lips, cupping his hand over it as he strikes a match. After several tries, the sulfur tip flares. A stray cat yowls as it slowly strides along the street with proper melancholy and presumptuous propriety. The little girl takes a few inquisitive steps forward, calling out to the cat, and then running toward it. Meow, meow. James’s eyes follow his little girl’s every move. He edges closer to the street, confronting, scanning for her movement.
“Khanh, come back,” he calls when the little girl ventures too far for his comfort. Only a short flight of steps separates the house from the street. “Khanh.”
The name claws at Mai’s heart.
James takes a long drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke settle in his lungs. A woman’s voice, more harsh than necessary, I think, calls for him. The voice is beckoning him in flat but heavily accented English. James in turn calls for his child. He finds her by the curved walk. He taps her bottom before scooping her up and carrying her against his chest back into the house. Before he enters, he turns briefly toward us as if to impart a final, valedictory glance.
Mai and I stand still together in the purple presence of the evening, watching the little house return to its internal torque. The woman takes the child from James, then returns her to him before their backs turn and they disappear from our line of vision. Slowly the house recedes and dwindles as lights are dimmed, then turned off. Darkness takes over. I think Mai knows what she is witnessing. It won’t do to hold on to the form of things. This is a scene she has entered late and from which she will leave early. Still, we both feel something move through us, maybe a realization that we can accept something less than perfection.
• • •
Mai stays in Saigon for a few more days and then, before leaving, decides on the spur of the moment to take a drive outside the city. You don’t have to go far from Saigon to see the country. The rice fields surprise her. They lie flat, without much ceremony, embracing a piercing, green consciousness.
She has hired a driver to take her around. The road, one among many arterial feeds that surround Saigon, is newly paved but there are long, drawling stretches of rutted asphalt. There are no monuments, no tourist attractions here. Nothing majestic. Only the dramatic compression of green in quadrilaterals. She is not sure why she is doing what she is doing, only that it feels right.
Mai remembers how our mother was pleased when the pale green of her jade bracelet deepened over time into the rich, verdant green of a rice field, which for her augured health and prosperity.
She does not know what to do or where to go. She merely asks to be driven. The engine rumbles and its internal bearings click smoothly each time the driver shifts gears. Everything is peaceful now, though years ago this was the site of ferocious military campaigns. The hard eyes of history can still be felt. The names of towns, some painted, others in grouted signs, appear parabolically through the windshield, but Mai and I remember them through the varnish of war, as battlefield names only. The highway unravels its black asphalt strip flanked by bright emerald green. Mai and I both remember that our father talked often about rice fields, that he once solemnized and imbued them with formidable characteristics—defiant, hard-spirited. Here they are—something immense and simple. Despite the intervening years of triumph and loss, goodness can still be found here.
Although Mai has no conscious memory of the countryside—it was not safe to drive far from the capital city during the war—she feels something so familiar here, as if she were going toward a known place. Toward a still point. That point in the present that carries a scent from the past but is not afraid of it and so welcomes the future without fear.
Suddenly, she (and I too) see why the fields are so familiar. The realization comes as a surprise. Mai asks the driver to stop. She steps out. The air smells of palm thatch and tropical wetness. We are surrounded by green, like the interminable white of a Virginia snowstorm. Despite the elemental difference, this vast green is but an alternate version of the wintry white expanse when harsh lines and edges are muffled and softened. Its beauty too sinks right into your skin. Boundaries are erased here, contours blurred and diffused.
Far away, beyond the sculpted curve of a hill, Mai sees a small thatched house clinging to its shadow, rising foglike from the field as if it were a reflection of life’s true, miniaturized reality. Something about it, an injured, ill-fated aura perhaps, touches her to the core. She has been opened up and my sudden window into her is matched by her window into mine. The barricades between us have weakened, perhaps for good.
Mai too wants what I want—for us to be reconciled and integrated in a shared web. When we return to Virginia, she will get the help we need to heal. Right now, we both feel it, a full immersion into the furious center of the other’s life.
The countryside opens itself fully to us, as if everything we see before us now has already been seen and felt through the ages. It is something intensely and viscerally familiar, like an inheritance passed down from parent to child. Mai and I marvel at the way a small thatched house soaks in this landscape and this rice field, fully exposed to the battering elements. Stripped to its essentials and fully aware of its impermanence and vulnerability, there is not even a possibility of pretense or posturing. Despite its weary pride, one large monsoon would knock it to the ground.
We linger in this moment, immersing ourselves in its attendant spirit. Mai sees a group of children playing hide-and-seek among concrete markers bearing the name
s of soldiers from an old war that still haunts today’s many battles. The same way rows and rows of gravestones haunt the weed-choked earth, spirits from generation to generation float, wounded and invisible in the air. Now and then there are high-pitched shrieks of laughter and jubilation. Palm tops stir and sway against the sky.
This moment we want to prolong soaks in the shadows of life, then. The future bends backward to mirror the past. We can almost see our sister and mother and father, in a row, all dead but not. Mai thinks of James. She knows I do too. And the name alone makes her smile.
Acknowledgments
To my parents, and to John Fritz Freund, Margaret Freund, and Christine Wolf, whom I remember with love and gratitude; the Vietnamese International School, which gave me a treasured repository of memories and dreams and an understanding of that which is true and lasting (Rat and Buffalo).
I thank Le Phuong Mai, Jessica Fraser, William W. Van Alstyne, and William C. Gordon for their thoughtful reading of manuscript drafts, their encouragement, and their steadfast presence in my life. I also acknowledge with gratitude these friends for fidelity and enduring friendship through crises, transitions, and the ordinary passage of time: Nancy Combs, Khoi Nguyen, Himilce Novas, Arthur Pinto, Peg Wagner, and Cynthia Ward.
For historical details and insightful analysis, I relied on the following excellent books on the war in Vietnam: Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (2006); Bui Cong Minh, A Distant Cause (2005); General Bruce Palmer Jr., The 25 Year War (1984); and Lewis Sorley, A Better War (1999). I also learned much about the treatment of trauma from Dr. Sarah Krakauer, whose work reflects not just wide-ranging professional knowledge but also deep wisdom and sensitivity.