The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction (12 page)

I
T TOOK ME ALMOST
a full minute to realize that Sister Emmanuel had stopped speaking. The egg rolls lay finished in rows on the tabletop; the old nun’s hands were still. Through the window I could see that the sun was now red and bobbing on the edge of the horizon.

“That seems like more than enough, doesn’t it?” she finally said. She paused, and then something that could have been a smile twisted her mouth and she continued, gesturing at the egg rolls, “They’ll never be able to eat all of these.” She started to cover them with aluminum foil. Because I could not find
anything to say, I took the mixing bowl over to the sink and began to rinse it. My fingers felt clumsy and stiff.

“When do you fry them?” I asked eventually.

“Later,” said Sister Emmanuel. “They’re much better served hot.” There was a pause before she added, “On Thursday I will need to make another batch for the parish potluck.” She left the kitchen without another word.

That night, for the first time since my initial vows, I did not say my prayers.

On Thursday Sister Emmanuel was waiting in the convent kitchen, seated at the table, which, to my surprise, was empty. “Hello, Sister,” she greeted me serenely. “Do not sit down just yet.”

My hand hovered awkwardly above the chair I had been reaching for.

“I would like you to assemble the ingredients for me. Do you remember them?”

I couldn’t help but feel that this was some sort of test. Though I had only a dim notion of what went into the egg rolls, I feared that if I failed to complete the task, she would not continue her story. Trepidatiously, I began selecting ingredients from the refrigerator and cupboards, trying to think back to what I had seen and smelled in the kitchen during our last meeting. Sister Emmanuel’s face, or the few parts of it that weren’t concealed by the glasses, betrayed nothing as I placed each of the items on the table. I finished by setting down the chopping knife, the cutting board, and the mixing bowl. Then
I stood waiting for her judgment with my hands folded. Every so often my fingers twitched nervously.

Sister Emmanuel scanned the collection. “Very well done, Sister,” she said. “You only missed one ingredient.” Disappointment welled up in my chest. “A small thing,” she continued, rising from her chair and crossing the room; “a humble ingredient, and easily overlooked.” She returned from the refrigerator holding a single egg. “But this is what binds the entire creation together.”

The shell glowed yellow in the afternoon light. She cracked it into the bowl and then resumed her story.

I
N THOSE DAYS
the law did not look kindly upon anything that could be termed the “unnatural,” for it was believed to have a dangerous effect on the general public. If the police had known that the notorious Red Woman of the North would be passing through town they surely would have tried to apprehend her, for she claimed to be a powerful seer with the entire spirit world at her disposal. But she was wily and she was feared. She went by a hundred different names, and in the stories they told of her she was sometimes a wizened old crone, sometimes young and sylphlike. Sometimes she was not wholly woman, and usually she could change shape. She had never been caught.

The news of her arrival spread quietly, quickly through the village. It moved like a disease: exchanged with the vegetables at the marketplace, whispered between neighbors, passed
around on scraps of paper at the local school. Red Woman was stopping for a single night during her journey down the coast. She would demonstrate her power to communicate with the dead, and even to grant them speech again, for a price. There would be only one show. The old temple after sundown; one piaster per person.

Nhi and Vi were thirteen, just becoming beautiful, and the news had made its way to them from one of the young, shaggy-haired fishermen at the docks who stared for too long and raised their voices whenever they passed. At moonrise, they made their way to the Cham temple on the hill. Vi and Nhi linked arms as they approached, Nhi sweeping a long branch in front of them on the path, for snakes. There was rustling jungle to either side of them, and a noisy silence in the darkness like the sound of a held breath. A light, faintly fishy breeze was blowing in from the sea—monsoon season was still a ways off. When they reached the crumbling archway they each handed a coin to a little man wearing old army fatigues, the pants rolled up to the knees. He grinned at them as they entered, and they were treated to a view of his many missing teeth.

For hundreds of years the nearby banyan trees had been slowly strangling the temple—their roots grew up through the bricks and around the columns like long gray fingers. Inside, in the middle of the central chamber, a fire on a grate cast ruddy light on carvings of monkey guards, grinning demons, and dancing goddesses. Nhi and Vi took a place on the floor and looked around at the other villagers who had come:
mostly men and curious children, but there were some women there, too—both young and old—and the twins knew that several of them were there to try to speak with their husbands or sons who had been soldiers. These women stood near the back, where the shadows hid their hollow faces.

In front of them all, before the fire, squatted the largest, darkest woman they had ever seen. She had shoulders as broad as a water buffalo’s, and sinewy forearms that were folded in front of her chest. The firelight flickered off her russet-colored face, immobile as the stone carvings on the wall, and points of flame were reflected in two black, glassy eyes. Her eyebrows were shaved off, and she wore a red silk scarf twisted turban-like around her head. Behind her loomed the tall sandstone sculpture of a grimacing creature that looked to be half lion, half dragon.

The smiling man waited a moment longer for stragglers, counted the money, and stowed it away in a hidden pocket. He strode in, arms spread wide, and spoke.

“Mesdames, messieurs! Welcome!” He had a strange hiss in his voice, and Nhi and Vi weren’t sure if it was his missing teeth or an accent they could not place. “Thisss night, can you not feel the spiritsss? They are, hmmm …” He paused, closed his eyes, and sniffed at the air like an animal. Then he opened his eyes again, winked, and darted sideways into the darkness of the temple recess. There were confused murmurs from the audience, and people looked around, waiting for him to reappear. Then they heard a chuckle coming from above them. He was seated astride the neck of the lion-dragon, leaning his
elbows on its stone head with his hands laced under his chin. He leered down at them, flashing his black gums. Then he continued: “They are … everywhere—they swarm. And perhapsss your own loved one is among them, ah? With a messssage for you, hmmm? Or perhapsss they have something that mussst be finished …” He let his words die out slowly and allowed an uncomfortable silence to fill the space before whispering, “Now, the misstressss of the spiritssss; the woman who can crosssss between our world and theirs.”

He vaulted from the dragon and into the shadows again as the enormous Red Woman rose. In one fluid motion, she unraveled the scarf from around her head, releasing a curtain of dark hair that fell past her waist. She shook out the red silk in front of her, and there was a curious symmetry in the black shroud of her hair and the scarlet shroud in her hands. Red Woman spoke, her voice low, hoarse, and halting.

“To bring the spirits I must cover myself. They will only speak through the faceless; they will not be seen by our eyes …”

She lifted the cloth high, then lowered it over her head, where it draped fluidly down over her torso, turning the woman into a smooth pillar of red that glowed in the light of the flames. For several long minutes everything was still, save for the occasional animal scream from the trees outside the temple and the fidgeting of the audience within. Suddenly Red Woman began to chant in a low drone that echoed off the stone and vibrated deep in the chests of all in the audience: strange, rippling syllables that sounded as if they had three or
four pitches at once. Time was twisted with the sound, and no one was sure how many minutes passed before, with a sharp intake of breath, the chanting ended as abruptly as it had begun. Silence descended again. But then a new voice, high and quivering, from beneath the veil:

“Chim?”

At the word, Nhi’s shoulders immediately hunched up. Vi clenched her teeth and her eyes narrowed.

“Chim con? Chim? Where are you?” The figure in the sheet was now moving toward them with lurching steps.

“Such naughty little girls. You never listened. Tell me you’re sorry. Very bad. Very bad girls. Why won’t you come here? Chim?” It was right in front of them now, red and rippling and horrible. The villagers in the audience couldn’t agree on what happened next. Some said that it was one of the twins who yanked off the veil. Others said that they saw the fabric snag on the stone claws of one of the temple’s statues. There even were a few who claimed later that a long, thin shadow crept out of the forest and did it. But they all saw the same thing when the cloth fell away: Red Woman’s head was thrown back and her eyes were rolled up into her skull, all whites; her hands twitched and rhythmically clenched and unclenched. A trickle of foam was starting at the corner of her mouth.

In the audience some shrieked, some found their voices dried up in their throats, some leapt to their feet, others were paralyzed where they sat. None of them could tear their eyes away from the convulsing figure of Red Woman. “Help her!”
someone cried out from the back, but no one seemed willing to physically touch the woman, whose shaking was growing stronger.

It must have been during the commotion that the wind—cooler and saltier than before—began to pick up. It set the fire in the grate flickering violently but did not put it out. It lashed Nhi’s and Vi’s hair in front of their eyes. The red fabric rose from where it had puddled on the floor and wafted first into a far corner of the temple, where it fluttered for a moment from a spire-like carving, and then with another gust it was whipped away into the night. It was only then that Red Woman stopped shaking. Softly, for such a large woman, she dropped to her knees, then pitched face-forward into the fire. It was then that the man with the missing teeth leapt out from the shadows and yanked her back by the shoulders, but he wasn’t fast enough—the acrid stench of burning skin and hair filled the temple, and the seer was bellowing in agony with both hands clasped to her face. When she let her hands fall away, a wail of horror rose from the audience and echoed off the ancient stones.

Nhi and Vi were already on their feet and making for the jungle, but they turned to look back over their shoulders at the sound. Though they were halfway through the temple arch, they could still see Red Woman’s face clearly: The coals had seared away the flesh around one eye, and the socket was black and gaping like a second screaming mouth. In unison, the twins turned away again and ran into the darkness.

“W
HY
, S
ISTER, WHAT ARE
you doing?” Sister Emmanuel suddenly exclaimed.

“What? I’m not doing anything!” I protested.

Sister Emmanuel gave me a funny look. “Your hands, Sister,” she said softly.

I looked down at the tabletop where I had been resting my forearms. With a shock, I saw that my hands were moving strangely, clenching and then relaxing in a slow but relentless rhythm, the wrists rolling backward and forward each time my fingers tightened. I had been so engrossed in the story that I had not noticed.

Sister Emmanuel wiped her own hands off on a dishcloth and then placed them on top of mine. My body shuddered, and the clenching stopped. “Perhaps that is enough for today,” Sister Emmanuel said, rising from her chair. It took me an awfully long time to realize that I was alone in the kitchen.

We had not made a plan to meet again, but when I came to the kitchen the following afternoon, she was there. The egg roll filling was already prepared, but this time it had been divided between two mixing bowls. “Here,” she said, sliding one over to me as I took my place at the table. “You are ready to make them, too.”

I looked down at my clumsy hands. I had woken up several times in the night to find them moving of their own accord at my sides. “But I don’t know how!” I protested.

“Of course you do.” Sister Emmanuel readjusted her sunglasses,
then sank her hands into the bowl. “I have been teaching you.”

I
N THE YEARS SINCE
his wife’s death, Vu had grown increasingly detached from the world outside his routine of work, sleep, and two bowls of rice daily. He became a colorless, insubstantial man. Each morning the townspeople would watch Old Vu ride his rickety bicycle to the office—his back bent, his head lowered, his bony knees looking like they were about to pierce through the material of his baggy, grayish suit with every pedal—and each evening they would watch him ride home again. He never spoke to anyone, not even to Mrs. Dang when she came over with a plump hen to try to entice him into eating more.

“The man’s not long for this world,” she would say to anyone who would listen. “One day I’ll find him dead in that house, and I don’t know if my weak old heart will be able to take another shock like that—I was the one who found Huong, you know? Have I told you that story before? What a tragedy, eh? And a mystery, too—no one has any idea what killed the poor woman, no idea at all …”