The Tapestries (42 page)
Beyond the trees she could hear the sound of the brook, small and silvery, running in the forest. Above her, the leaves floated through the air like the sampans on the river, and the fading sun was a red, festering volcano, ready to erupt. Her eyes were drawn to a small metal object reflecting the light on the bed of decaying leaves. She knew exactly what it was—his little gong, which he never let out of sight even when he was most intoxicated.
The wind felt cold against her skin. She clutched at her shirt as she took hesitant steps across the soggy loam. Above the heavy odor of decaying plants, Ven detected the stench of urine and vomit. He must still be nearby. She made a series of loud yelps, calling out for him. The echo returned without his reply.
She came to the thick bamboo floor on the bank of the creek. Beside the constant droning of the water current, the woods stood motionless in a brooding silence. She searched for him behind every bush and came up with nothing. She wondered if she should go back to the cabin and wait for him there. But her throat was scratchy and dry. The babble of the stream reminded her that she had not eaten or drunk anything since that morning.
She walked to the edge of the platform and knelt down, scooping up a handful of water and holding it to her face. The coldness seized at her skin. Instantly she saw a red ribbon of blood and stopped in frozen disbelief. Through the slats of the bamboo floor, she saw the body of the time-teller, stretched out in a trough of mud. He lay on his stomach, one side of his face resting in the water. Streams of blood seeped from his throat, wiggling like the tail of a carp.
Ven screamed and plunged into the creek. The water came up to her knees, frightfully cold for autumn. She crawled under the bamboo boardwalk and lifted Big Con with both her hands. His head rolled on the cradle of her arm; his teeth were chattering; his mouth was blue, as though he had just ingested an entire bottle of ink. At the side of his neck, a gaping dark wound slashed deep into his flesh. She touched the cut, trying to close it with her hand. Shakily, she called to him in her foreign, unintelligible voice. The time-teller moaned and opened his eyes.
“You came,” he whispered. “My scarecrow.” He gasped for air, struggling for consciousness. “I've…been waiting for you.”
Her tears fell on his wound and trickled down his chest, tiny violet blossoms like the wild weed on the door of his shack.
“Whooo…?” she fought for words, angry at her inability to pronounce the simplest sound.
Even through her tears he could read her. “It does not matter,” he rasped. “I was drunk, got in a fight…an old enemy…my own fault.”
He reached for her hand. The ridges on his fingertips were prominent from soaking in the water too long. “Good-bye,” he said.
“No! No!” In desperation, she pulled him closer to her chest, hoping the warmth of her body would bring him back to life. But she felt his body growing colder.
Don't go!
her mind screamed to him.
You and I are going to share a great fortune.
He raised his eyelids one last time to look at her. “I am the time-teller,” he said. “I know when it is time…especially for me.” His head rolled to one side.
Long afterward, Ven remained crouching in the water with his body wrapped in her embrace. She did not see the night falling, but she sensed her body sink into a world of black, or so it seemed. For the first time in her life, Ven was frightened of the dark.
A Taste of Gardenia
I
t was about six o'clock in the morning. Beyond the south entrance, the Imperial City was sub merged in an opalescent darkness. Another night had elapsed, and Dan had not moved from his position.
He could feel dawn stealing into the courtyard. A speck of sunlight, bright as a diamond, slanted through the curve of a palace rooftop to beam down upon him. At the booming of the cannon, the citadel roused.
Dan sat leaning against the stone wall and resting his head in the palms of his hands. He was aware of everything around him, and yet he was aware of nothing; he did not know whether it was a sunny morning or midnight or an interim of time between life and death.
The marketplace began to fill with people. They surrounded him with their loud arguments and their scuffling feet, and the noisy rustling of their coarse garments pulled him away from his quiet sanctuary. A pair of wooden sabots, chaste and elegant in their form, entered his range of vision. Red velvet straps were fastened across the insteps of the owner's petite feet. He was thinking of the scarlet rose petals he had once stitched on white fabric. He detected the sweet fragrance of gardenia, and joy infused his mind.
“I am sorry I could not get here sooner,” a soft voice above him breathed.
When he looked up, Dan saw a vision, bathed in the glow of the ruddy, pulsating dawn. The sunlight was behind a human outline, and for an instant, it blinded him. He sat up at once, unable to believe what he was seeing. It was her, Tai May! She seemed to rise out of the glorious sun. His fingers unconsciously pulled at the collar of his tunic, straightening it, and then he smoothed out his hair.
She was smiling. Her jet-black hair, fiery in the sun, framed her small face. At a slight tug of her hand, the hair fell loose over one shoulder. The beauty in that gesture was enough to make his head spin.
“I am not too late, am I?” she said, blushing a little because she was staring straight into his eyes.
“Is it really you?” he asked, touching her neck. Her skin was smooth and soft, and he could feel the pulse of a tiny vein. She leaned closer and placed her lips against his. He could taste the gardenia at the tip of his tongue.
They drew apart, both beaming. The sun was bursting out of the sky and embracing them with its intensity. “Oh, Mouse,” she said, “put your arms tight around me so I can feel you.”
“I am yours,” he replied, holding her firmly. “I will show you how great my love for you is, and how it has deepened through all the years we waited for each other. No one on Earth can pull us apart now. Come with me!” He ran his fingers down her back, and the touch made her shiver even more.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“Far from here,” he said, reaching for the bicycle. Its silver frame caught the sunlight. As if he were reciting the words to a poem, he said, “As far as this metal horse can take us—to the end of the world.”
S
he felt the steering handle under her palms; it was cool. One of his arms was wrapped around her waist, while the other covered her wrist and wove into her fingers. They were sharing the same saddle. She could feel the roughness of his unshaven chin against the nape of her neck, and inside her something that she had never noticed came alive for the first time. She leaned back into his chest; his muscular legs thrust at her side. She was wrapped inside the rippling body of her lover as the bike crunched the gravel on the road.
“Look, Mouse.” She pointed at the single rosebush along the stone wall. “Can you see that last rose of autumn?”
“No, darling,” he said, his breath hot against her ear. “It is the first rose of spring.”
I was six days old when my grandfather first told me his life stories. I was lying in a small bamboo cradle suspended by ropes from a high wooden beam. From the window, the summer sky shone like an inverted ocean, motionless except for a few distant clouds. Hummingbirds fluttered over the garden fountain, then disappeared into the pomegranate trees.
While the ceiling swayed he would speak to me in a melodic tone, always with the same introduction: “During the winter months, the Perfume River was chilly, especially at dawn.” In my recollection, the world of my grandfather was simple, irregular, and deliberately void of anything material. No photo albums or mementos helped illustrate his tales, only his soothing voice, flowing in the river of his memory.
At times, my grandmother would join him. In the background, she would pluck the strings of her lute and sing Vietnamese folk songs. Between the two of them, my childhood was filled with wonder. I could always close my eyes and allow myself to be transported back to a time when my grandfather was a child. While in the rest of the world, children grew up with fairy tales, I lived in my grandfather's stream of consciousness, feasting on his thoughts, feeling his emotions, and absorbing his legacy.
When I was older and able to retain some of the plots, we ventured into our garden. By that time, the trees had been replaced with rose vines on white trellises. The hummingbirds had moved on, and the new tenants were butterflies. No matter what direction I looked, the sky would be drenched in a sea of ocean blue, forever concealing its secrets.
I was at the age when everything seemed complicated, and giving something a name only added to my confusion about its nature. I could not understand why a dog would be called “dog” and a cat “cat.” The stories took longer for my grandfather to tell because of my endless questions. But with great patience, he always explained them to me in meticulous detail.
This state of communication between the two of us was heightened as time passed, because of my love for him as a storyteller and also because of his zest for living. I remember the excitement I felt the first time we waited together for the midnight cactus to bloom. I marveled at the sight of the plant's tender buds and the way they reached for the moonlight with long, tapering, and delicate sprouts, uncurling like tendrils of a fern. To purify the air, my grandmother had lit sandalwood bark in a copper urn nearby. Listening to my grandfather, I could almost see the music of his voice swirling in the smoke. But the endless wait was impossible to endure. Before long, I fell asleep on his lap.
Late into the night, I was awakened by a strong scent of perfume. I opened my eyes. The moon seemed to shine through a layer of rice paper. The sandalwood had burned out. We were still in the garden, but now the wind was softer and almost liquid with humidity. At first I thought it was the moon that had the smell like the inside of a temple. But then I saw the blossoms on the cactus. The outer sheaths that had once been pinkish were now red—vermilion—like blood flowing over the white petals. I remember the very moment when the moonlight became a part of the flower's pistils. I watched as the entire tree emitted an iridescent glow. My grandfather was silent. And when the fragrant mist disappeared, all of the white petals withdrew into the plant. The brief courtship between the moon and the flowers was over.
Living with my grandfather, every day was a surprise. I never knew what his next lesson would be. It could be a story he read from an old book, or a tale he told of his own experience, or my likeness that he embroidered in one of his tapestries, or a discussion of the plants and herbs in the garden.
In the morning, he would wake me before the sun rose to go to the pond where the lotus plants thrived. I can still feel the cold sand under my bare feet as I ran a few paces ahead of him, carrying a child-sized teapot. While he collected the morning dew from the lotus leaves, I would hunt for tea that was hidden deep inside the blossoms.
For a long time I didn't know how the tea got there. I imagined that the plants manufactured their own tea, or perhaps it was placed there by a water nymph for the taking. Years later, it dawned on me that my grandmother had been putting the tea leaves inside the lotus buds the night before, so that they could marinate over night. Even after the mystery was solved, the enchantment lingered in me whenever I reminisced on those days. Like a child looking for Easter eggs, I would run from flower to flower, searching for my treasure, disappointed each time I found an empty bloom.
When he had gathered enough water off the leaves, and my little pot was one-third full, we returned home. Outside the kitchen, my grandmother had prepared a terra-cotta stove with burning coals, ready for his ritual. It was his own ceremonious way to pay respect to the higher power of nature. As the water boiled, its steam became a thick mist, erasing all that was real around me. A new setting would emerge, narrated by his voice—a world that had once belonged to him, a world that he now handed over to me. After telling me a story, he would ask me to repeat it over and over again. I did not know whether it was a test to see if I was listening, or his way to keep the past alive.
I asked him, “Who was the beautiful dancer, Tai May?”
“She is here,” he replied.
“Really?”
“Yes, only now her name is Grandma.”
“What happened to Ven?”
He stirred the fire with a bamboo stick. Sparks of ember crackled. “After she took the maps, she vanished. I never saw her again. Your grandmother and I returned to live in the Cam Le Village. For many years that followed, on the morning of my every birthday, I would wake up to find a small tray of my favorite food on the front stoop of my house.”
“Banana custard packed in rice with coconut juice?” I asked.
He smiled. “She was the only person who knew how to prepare it to my liking. This went on for many years, and one day it stopped. I knew then that she had died.”
“What about the treasure in the maps?”
“I don't know if Ven ever found it. It didn't matter because I have found my own fortune. It is the family that I have now.”
G
randpa, I never forgot you or your story. Wherever you are, I am still listening.
In memory of Christine Jampolsky and my grandparents
With heartfelt thanks to Judy Clain, Fiona and Jake Eberts, Michaela Hamilton, Brenda Marsh, Peter Miller, Claire Smith, my brother, Jimmy, and sister, BeTi
Special thanks to Do Phuong Khanh, Kathleen Bui Mai Khanh, Vu Quang Ninh, Nguyen Xuan Nghia, and Dinh Quang Anh Thai
Additional thanks to Kathy Bishop, caumo Hoa Buu, Christine Crownin, Doan Thu Doan, Pi Gardner, Michelle Hillman, chu thim Hoc, Bob and Sally Huxley, Tom John, Bill Richards, Camilo Sanchez Julia Szabo, and Patricia Urevith
And thanks to everyone at Little, Brown; PMA; Corbin and Associates; Little Saigon radio;
Viet Tide
newspaper; and Thuy Nga Productions