by David Joiner
Behind her the living room was dimly lit. The walls changed color with whatever was on TV. He wondered who was watching it — or if no one was and Huong had left it on to keep herself company.
Nathan messaged Anthony on his phone.
Thanks for tonight. It didn't go anywhere, though. Nice girl, but I guess I'm not ready yet. What are you doing?
Down the front of Huong's pajamas, silver coin-shaped patterns shimmered in the moonlight. For an instant she appeared as a strange, hovering reflection of the lake. Though he was observing her from afar, he thought he'd never seen her so enticing.
She'd been nicer to him tonight than she had for some time. Perhaps it was only a matter of seeing her away from home, where she could set aside the struggles of marriage and family. Or maybe the pressures of a public outing had made her kinder than usual. Or maybe he'd been wrong about her all along. Everything he heard about her, after all, came from Anthony.
After waiting several minutes for Anthony's reply, he sent another message.
Where are you? If you're home, look outside. Huong's on the balcony and I'm parked along the water watching her. If there's a goddess of red lanterns, I think you're married to her. Care to join me in my admiration?
But that message, too, went unanswered.
He waited behind the tree until Huong returned inside and one by one the lights of the house went out. The string of lanterns swayed in the wind. For a few moments longer he watched the dark house, then started his motorbike and headed home.
Eighteen
At 5:45 in the morning the patio behind Le's house appeared to have just been swept, and newly washed clothes dripped from a line. Nathan stepped toward the banyan tree but stopped. The lake was placid beneath the clear, paling sky. Beyond the shore, ducklings followed their mother past the formless lip of water.
A door opened behind him. Le came forward holding two cups of tea.
"I'm surprised to see you," she said, offering him one.
"Why? You invited me."
She sipped her tea, and over the rim of her cup her eyes smiled. He saw he'd done well for himself by getting here this early.
She led him into her studio and pointed him toward a small desk and chair like a child might use in school. The broken canvases, empty paint jars, and dried brushes on the floor were a veritable obstacle course, but he solved it and settled into the paint-splotched seat.
Immediately he sketched in his notebook the layout of the room, then wrote a caption below it.
Her studio is surprisingly spacious. Lacquer paintings are propped against the walls, coated with dust. Canvases everywhere are filled with images: people working in rice fields, tending ducks in a stream, burning incense in temples. In the background of many paintings West Lake spreads like a somber mood.
He glanced again around the room. He felt like he wasn't just sitting in a corner of her studio, but in a corner of her mind. A breeze leapt through the window, and it passed over him like the breath of someone intimately close.
"Let's start at the beginning." She walked to a pile of boards on a shelf against the wall and selected a rectangular piece of wood, neatly cut to scale. "Lacquer painting always starts with vóc. It's the foundation on which everything stands. For a lacquer artist, choosing vóc is like adopting someone into your family."
She spelled the word for him, including the single tonal marker. He took down everything she said, stopping her whenever she used a word he didn't know.
"After selecting the vóc, there are traditions you must follow to make it obey your vision and turn out how you want." She lifted the vóc for him to see. "A craftsman cuts it, then covers it with a mixture of sawdust, clay, and lacquer. This strengthens it and protects it against warping. Vóc is an important element, and you have to choose it with great care."
She went to a worktable overflowing with sketchpads, paint-stained strainers, and porcelain urns containing paintbrushes, knives, and scrapers. Beside the table was a metal cart full of labeled jars.
"These are my materials."
She wheeled the cart toward him, showing him what the jars held: black and reddish brown lacquers; four kinds of red pigment; gold and silver leaf; mother-of-pearl; varicolored snail shells, and the hollowed-out eggs of different birds.
"These materials are basic, but producing them is complicated. Some are so expensive that even one painting, if it turns out badly, could bankrupt me." She waited until he finished recording her explanation. "Have you been to Vinh Phuc province?"
"Not yet."
She nodded at his notebook, and he realized the gesture meant he was to write down what she said.
As she continued her work she spoke slowly, pausing to allow him not only to transcribe her words, but also to structure the material coherently, which proved helpful when later he revised it.
Vinh Phuc is 80 miles northwest of Hanoi. For Le, traveling there is a pilgrimage. Without the unique rocks and trees found in Vinh Phuc, Vietnam's lacquer tradition would be entirely different from what it has become, and inferior to the lacquer traditions of China, Japan, and Korea.
Vinh Phuc possesses a unique type of cây sơn tree, the source of lacquer used in Le's paintings. The tree is tapped midway through the sun's rise, a window of no more than an hour. Once dry, the sap is processed into a black lacquer called sơn then and a reddish-brown lacquer known as sơn cánh gián (named for the wings of a cockroach).
When she told him that Vinh Phuc is renowned for having Vietnam's best secret-keepers, he looked up and asked what she meant.
"Do you have a lot of secrets?"
"Probably no more than anyone else," he said. Given their past together, the question set him slightly on edge. "Why?"
"Because lacquer artists are protective of what they do. In Vietnam, secrets are important. Maybe you think that's strange, but if we didn't keep secrets our lacquer traditions wouldn't exist. Even now, while I can show you the techniques I use and explain the process generally, secrets are still important. Lacquer artists have to accept this, otherwise they'll fail." She looked at him hard. "It's true in life, too."
"One of the most interesting things about lacquer," she says, "is that the production of certain materials is shrouded in mystery."
In the mountains around Vinh Phuc there exist two kinds of special stone: thần sa and chu sa. In the homes of artisans these stones are ground into powder and poured into a small container. This container is placed in a larger container and heated. When the contents of the outer one begin to boil, the container inside reaches a temperature that separates the powder into four distinct layers of red pigment: sơn trai, sơn tươi, sơn thắm, and sơn nhì. According to the demands of the image, any of these pigments can be mixed and used to paint the vóc.
She unscrewed a jar. After showing him the red powder inside, she opened several other jars so he could see the rich colors they contained. "I could paint a hundred years, but still I'd never know the secret to making the right pigment."
It takes an entire week to make enough pigment to fill a small teacup. Only one family in Vietnam knows the secret to making these pigments, which are considered more valuable than gold, and they have risked their lives to protect it. When French colonialists tried to force them to divulge their methods, the family refused. They remain steadfast even today and will not sell their pigments overseas. The pigments are made exclusively for Vietnamese lacquer paintings made in the traditional style.
Only one village in Vietnam produces the gossamer-thin gold and silver leaf so essential to Vietnamese lacquer painting. The village, too, is tight-lipped about their methods.
"Secrets are important in Vietnam," she says. "One slip of the tongue can mean betrayal, and then the whole universe may crash down. History offers many examples. Countries, families, relationships, art — they're all vulnerable."
From where she stood he could see a dark splotch of
paint on her cheek, like a birthmark she'd managed to hide from him until now. He imagined that if he could peel it from her face he'd find a window to her soul that revealed everything about her — and perhaps learn the truth about her feelings for him.
She dusts a thin paper with chalk and uses it to trace an image of everyday life to the vóc. Next she mixes together the sơn nhì and paints it over the tracing: a figure of Ong Tao, the Chinese Kitchen God. Gold and silver flakes are then sprinkled over the top like snow. As she spreads them with her brush, they become embedded in the tracing lines (now filled with the wet sơn nhì), helping preserve the image and make it brighter.
It is the layering of lacquer, a process rooted in an age-old tradition that younger artists have mostly abandoned, which brings the vóc to life.
Weather permitting, she will dry the vóc overnight on a rack. Ironically, only in humid conditions will lacquer from the Vietnamese cây sơn tree dry.
"In no other country will Vietnamese lacquer respond the same to the air and weather," she said, not without pride. "In no other country will it perfectly dry. No one knows why, and so this is a secret, too."
She removed a vóc hanging beside the one she just finished and brought it to her worktable. "This one's ready for a second layer of lacquer."
She applies the second layer, sprinkles it with gold and silver leaf, and, prior to drying, fits the vóc with cheesecloth to protect it and prevent it from expanding. The vóc can be polished only when dry.
When she was done, she hung it to dry, and returned with another painting she'd been drying the last few days. Vaguely, he could make out a woman's face in the vóc.
She repeated the process a third time, carrying out the final polish with a stone that was soft yet rough.
"Like the intestine of a chicken," she said, rubbing it against his arm. "Painting means applying one thing onto another, but polishing is an act of removal. Let me show you."
She pushed the black stone back and forth across the painting. After a few minutes the polishing had taken away some of the sprinkled gold and silver leaf, but it had also pushed the leaf irrevocably into the vóc, making it brighter and deepening its hues.
"One can polish too little or too much. Good artists develop an instinct for when they've produced the right colors. Only when the colors appear sufficiently rich does a painter know to stop."
She polished until the colors had indeed grown deeper. The face in the painting began to emerge.
Polishing requires more time and patience than painting. A single vóc often takes two months to complete.
If things don't go as planned — for example, if a lack of humidity prevents the vóc's paint from drying and the whole layer must be scraped off and done again — often they can be fixed. Most times you're given a second chance.
These rough methods, which produced such delicate work, fascinated him. The layering and constant polish required patience and muscle. Doing this every day, he saw, had made her strong. Her arms and shoulders were toned and, when she pressed down on the vóc, her thin muscles stood out against her skin.
On the far end of the cart were six jars of shells. She removed one labeled vịt and poured from it enough to cover half her palm.
"Shells are another unique aspect of Vietnamese lacquer painting. When using shells you have to take into account their thickness."
To keep the plane of the vóc clean and smooth, she digs a few millimeters of space with a flat knife. Then she presses and glues down the eggshell. With a hammer she taps the pressed-and-glued shell until it is broken into fine pieces. After this she applies another thin coat of lacquer.
The hammered shell must be small enough for the artist to proceed to the polishing stage. Polishing requires not only delicacy, but also calmness and a willingness to spend the time needed to get it right. A work of art cannot be forced.
Le said that when she was just starting out she lacked the necessary patience. She either rushed or skipped important steps. Or she gave up, losing confidence when the images didn't come out how she wanted. It took years for her to get to this point.
She lifted a green petrol bottle from her cart. "This is for toát —the final application." She poured the petrol in a bowl and mixed it with cánh gián lacquer.
When satisfied with her mixture she brushes a thin layer of it over the painting. The layers protect the wooden board so it does not shrink, expand, or otherwise warp. The layers act like armor against moisture, insects, and viruses. Thus, the vóc is durable, and can outlast its creator by three or four hundred years.
Like every other step, layering ends with the vóc hung on a rack and dried overnight.
In the corner of the room was a tap and basin, and Le went there to scrub her hands with lye. The room filled with the sound of running water, and Nathan returned his attention to his notebook, continuing where he'd left off.
Anyone familiar with the state of lacquer painting in Vietnam will recognize that Le is making her way as an artist balanced on the edge of the ‘old days,' when the sway of tradition could put off the chase for riches.
Traditional lacquer painting, a laborious process often lasting several months, is giving way to cheaper, faster methods of production. The idea, of course, is basic to modern life: the more paintings you churn out, the more money you can earn.
But there is a danger in this, for as one contributor to this process falters or disappears — the craftsman who cuts the board, the family that produces the pigments, or the village that makes the thin gold and silver leaf — traditional Vietnamese lacquer painting will inevitably weaken and die. Although Le would never admit it, she is a living storehouse of her own culture.
Nathan admired Le's determination to create traditional lacquer art, and there was no doubt that her move to Hanoi paved the way for her to succeed in this. Perhaps she had come to realize that her talent was singular and might one day provide her with something more life affirming than she had craved in Saigon.
He couldn't dwell on this idea for long, for, still scrubbing her hands, Le began to speak about her training at Dai Hoc Nghe Thuat.
At the Fine Arts University, where she trained for four years, students came from all over Vietnam to study lacquer painting. But come graduation, all that her peers had learned was how to produce cheap, imitative paintings as quickly as possible. Le, however, was different. Her teachers noticed her dedication to traditional methods and praised her. She was an old soul, they said, and they predicted that in the long run she would come out ahead of the rest.
When Nathan asked what she thought had made her a successful artist, she denied her success.
"Success comes not only from what you produce," she says. "Even more, it has to do with how true you are in following the traditions to which your paintings owe their uniqueness, their very life. In some places, pictures painted by elephants fetch a high price, but does that make the elephant successful? Does that make the elephant an artist?"
Even the most casual visitor to Vietnam will notice the abundance of lacquer paintings in galleries around Hoan Kiem Lake and the Old Quarter — tourist areas, almost exclusively, just like in Saigon. Dozens of similar landscapes and scenes, done in the same uniform style, hang on peeling walls. Scores more are piled in corridors and spill forth from backroom offices. While some are beautiful, Le would never wish to stamp her name on them.
"For some of my friends," she went on, drying her hands on her shirt, "painting is a way to become rich and have high status. While money and fame can be nice — and I, too, wanted both at one time — in the end they're only trappings. Since moving back to Hanoi I've learned that art is a way of being. It's a kind of freedom."
Had she told him this before, he would have doubted her sincerity. But he believed what she said, and it made him happy that he could.
One didn't often come across this attitude in Vietnam, particularly since — 12 years after the U.S. embargo had be
en lifted and with the country pushing hard to accede to the World Trade Organization — Vietnamese society now valued earning over nearly everything else. Hanoi and Saigon were becoming affluent enough, quickly enough, that it was easy to buy something new to replace and banish the old. Society was wearing thin at its seams, though that didn't mean it was falling apart.
When asked what her relationship is to her painting, she looks through the window at the lake.
"It's less a relationship than a sameness, like my reflection in the window of a moving train." She stops to reconsider the analogy. "But it's more accurate to say I'm a passenger on a train that is my painting. And the train is nothing but a figment of my imagination. In other words, my painting and I are one and the same. One exists within the other and carries it along."
At the end of a day, when she steps back from her work, she cannot account for the passage of time, cannot remember what has transpired between her brush and canvas.
"It's like giving life to something. And having given something life, part of me lives within it."
Nathan didn't know how to explain the feeling, but indeed there was something of her in all her paintings. Did it lie in the harmony of color, perspective and imagery? Or was it more prosaic, evidenced by how life flowed from the center, by how the commonplace was inspirited by her vision and skill?
"Tell me," he said. "How is a painting given life?"
"It's a secret even to me. I know there's life in a painting only when I've finished it."
Sometimes before she paints she sees the image in her mind; other times not. But one is always there within her.
"I've known much loss and sadness. But painting is a constant, and no matter what happens in my life I'll always be able to create. I believe that strongly and it puts me at ease."