The Road to Nirvana
Dan's living room, a blue rectangle with one window open to the front garden, contained only a few pieces of plain furniture. On the main wall, hanging from the ceiling almost to the floor, was a tapestry embroidered in black silk thread on white canvas, as stark and dramatic as if it had been brushed with coarse strokes of India ink. The room was always dark, and the image was too large for Ven to see it wholly. She had been here for five days, distracting herself from memories of the time-teller by studying the artwork.
At first she had thought it was an old Chinese scroll painting, depicting the evanescent details of life: a bamboo forest, a flock of sparrows, or maybe a misty valley in springtime. However, tonight in the hoary moonlight, as she sat in a chair next to the window, the black dots and lines in the tapestry above her merged into the figure of a young maiden. The girl's hand held an elegant lute. The long, idyllic slopes that Ven had taken for a brook running through groves of bamboo were the girl's dress. And the bamboo leaves were her eyes, seeming to demand a response from inside the room. Ven recognized that face, those long fingers, and the silky black hair that flowed like a watercourse. It was the girl from the house of Toan.
In the center of the room, sitting on a leopard-skin rug, Dan was ruminating over a blank piece of paper. Sketches of discarded brush-work, crumpled into irregular balls, lay scattered on the floor. A finely pointed feather was poised between his fingers; nearby sat a block of ink and a lantern. For hours this evening no sound or movement had come from him. Ven understood his concentration. Once he committed his vision onto paper, there was no turning back. The ink line, once laid down, could never be altered or erased. The moonlight flowed through the slats on the window and slid across him like a striped shirt. She wondered if she should open the shade so he would receive more light.
As she raised her hand toward the wood slats, he surprised her by asking, “Tell me, Ven, are you thinking of the tutor?” A corner of his eyebrow rose. He handed her the pen and said, “Come and sit next to me! Write down your thoughts if you would like to.”
From her youth she remembered delicate sheets of paper, covered with black marks, as they passed through the hands of the scholars—friends and acquaintances of her father. The time-teller had taught her the Western letters, scrawling them on the sand with a stick or using a piece of charcoal to mark a board. Never had anyone given her such paper, which had the smell of freshly cut wood. She got up from her seat and received the wet feather with both of her hands, fearful of dropping it on the animal skin.
“Go on,” he said.
The tip felt as light as a toothpick in her fingers. Dan put his hand on hers and guided the pen down the paper. She sat awkwardly on the floor beside him, thinking she had never held anything so delicate. She moved the pointed tip of the writing tool, slick with ink. The first mark came, wobbly and graceless, sweeping across the blank page like the path of a scratchy broom.
“That one is not your best stroke,” Dan said, pulling back his hand. “Now you try, alone. Forget about the brush and ink when you write. Just picture the letters.”
Ven gripped the frail handle more firmly. With a surge of confidence, she began to make small dots and lines by moving her wrist as Dan pinned the paper down with his palms. Like magic the letters took shape, a curve here, a straight line there. To Ven it was as thrilling as the first buds of spring. “A…B…C…” Her hand glided across the page. “D…E…”
Next to her, Dan burst out laughing. “The alphabet,” he said. “How modest of you. Can you put the letters together to form a word?”
“THE MAP…”
His eyebrows furrowed. “What about the map?” he asked in a restrained voice.
Ven unfurled one of the crunched-up wads of paper. Shapes and shadows formed a landscape, similar to the tattoo they had seen on his father's back long ago.
Dan snatched the paper back from her. “This accursed map,” he said, smoothing it across his knee. “I have been re-creating it both from memory and from observing its partner on my mother's back. Together they form a diagram that leads to my father's treasure. By studying the riddle written at the bottom of the drawing in the old vernacular language, I guessed part of the secret. But without the first map, it is useless. I plan to embroider it into a tapestry, to teach my children someday about their ancestors' legacy.”
“Tellme its secret,” she wrote.
“Do you remember the verse on the first map?” he asked.
She nodded. He recited it, and she mouthed the words with him, approving his recollection. “The priests make charms out of nature by aligning the constellations, the sun, and the moon. Then they hold the constellations in their hands, and peering at the sun, they find the road to Nirvana. Many invalids shall be cured at the door.
“I remember what my father said about the riddle,” Dan said. “It was a famous poem in the early seventh century describing the Taoist rites in the history of the Sui dynasty. Since my father was a true believer that long life and good fortune could be achieved by magical means—the principles of Taoist philosophy—it is understandable that he chose this verse as the clue to his treasure. Look at the first group of characters: The priests made charms out of nature by aligning them with the constellations, the sun, and the moon.” His hand brushed over the red dots on the map that he had drawn. “These drawings are descriptions of nature, and the red marks represent the constellations, the sun, and the moon,” he said. “If we superimpose the two maps on top of each other, following the alignment of these dots, I believe we will see the whole picture.”
Ven moaned. Her forehead was damp from anticipation as she listened to his voice.
“And the second phrase,” he murmured. “Then, they hold the constellations in their hands, and peering at the sun, they find the road to Nirvana. This must refer to the way to the hidden treasure. By holding the drawings in the sunlight, we will see this path clearly.”
He scratched his head with a sigh. “The last line: Many invalids shall be cured at the door. I do not understand the meaning of this sentence, but it sounds like a warning of some sort. Invalids shall be cured—what about healthy people?” He shrugged and tore the picture in half. “Ah, let us not dwell on this matter any longer. It is unfortunate that we only possess a partial diagram. My father has carefully made certain that without one of the two maps, the other would be just a mystery.”
“Make a tapestry,” she wrote, “for the Nguyens' legacy.”
“You approve of this idea?” he asked. “So much blood has been shed, I fear to create another fallacy about the treasure to pass on to the next generation.”
She shook her head vigorously. Dan scrutinized her facial expression. She tried to form a smile in response to his glare.
“Dear Ven,” he said solemnly, “there is an important question that I must ask. You lived near Magistrate Toan for seven years, so you must understand his strength as well as his limitations. If you wished to take revenge on the old man, you must have had countless opportunities to do so. Yet, you waited for me to return. Why, Ven? “
She looked away. Her smile faded.
“Please do not refuse me the answer—tell me why you spared his life,” he said.
She dropped the pen on top of the stack of paper, lifted her hands to her face, and looked at him in silent panic. The bright moon passed through the wooden slats, streaking on both of them. He thrust the brush back into her hand.
With a loud bang, the front door was flung open. Against the dark background of Dan's garden, she saw a round, wrinkled face lit to pastiness by the frail beam of a lantern.
“Do you know, sir,” asked the visitor, “that your gate is never bolted? Generally I have to announce myself to the host in order to be led inside, but not at your doorstep.”
When Dan saw the intruder, he burst out, “Mr. Ung, come inside where it is warm.” Turning to Ven, he said, “Here is a dear friend of poor Lady Chin, Mr. Dinh Ung. You must remember him from the Truong Tien Bridge.”
The memory of his presence, along with the palace guards, on the riverbank was still fresh in her mind. She fell to her knees and knocked her head on the wooden floor, inches away from his black velvet slippers. Stealing out from the open tips of the shoes, his toenails were glossy with red paint: his guilty little pleasure. The eunuch gasped at the unexpected display of obeisance. He took a step back, almost tripping on the high threshold, but recovered.
“Raise her, please,” he said to Dan. “I am, after all, just a low-ranking eunuch, who does not deserve such reverence.”
She felt herself being lifted off the ground. “Do not fret,” Dan whispered in her ear. “Mr. Ung is a friend.”
He led her back to the chair next to the window. She could feel his fingers wiping the dirt off her forehead. “This is Ven, my guardian and friend,” he told the old man.
Ven stiffened as she heard how casually he converted her from his first wife into his custodian. Or was that how he had always viewed her?
What could she expect from him? What could she expect from anyone? A surge of guilt flooded her chest. For the first time since she had left Cam Le, Ven began to understand how her lover, Big Con, must feel. She recalled the muddy pasture by the river, his crouching position, his cries, the way he had grabbed at his head to try to contain his tormented love for her. Big Con was right. By abandoning him—a damaged person—she had abandoned herself. A longing for his presence ate at her like acid. If she could only explain to him why she had come to the city with Dan! But that was impossible; the time-teller was far away, and she was so close to what she wanted to achieve in the citadel.
The old man's voice broke the silence, gliding toward the highest pitch. “I beg the young master's pardon for keeping you waiting the past few days, but the funds deposited by Lady Chin required some legal clearances before I could withdraw them from the treasury. It has all been handled now. I am here to pay out her estate, the sum of fifty thousand silver coins.” He reached inside his gray satin robe and, to Dan's surprise, removed a stack of paper. “The money is here, in the form of imperial banknotes. It is a luxury to have such credit and not have to carry so many coins all at once. That is one good thing we have learned from the French. You must see it to believe it.”
“I believe you, Mr. Ung,” said Dan. “And I am grateful to both Lady Chin and you. I will always remember her for her generosity.”
“Then you shall keep this money. It is yours!” He shoved the banknotes in Dan's hands and turned away.
At the entrance, the eunuch paused and scratched his naked scalp. “There is one other thing,” he added. “Before you went away with my lady, you left me a document—your will and testament.”
“I remember,” said Dan.
“Well, sir.” The old man was nervous. “There was also a letter for Lady Tai May, the opera dancer, in case…in case…”
“In case I did not return,” Dan interrupted.
At the sound of the familiar name, Ven went limp inside. How could she be so blind to what was so obvious? The girl's image appeared all over the apartment, in drawings, in the tapestry, every day. She would have confronted him about this deception if she had had a tongue. However, even if she could speak…she was now so far removed from his life, it was impossible for her to be authoritative. Her mind echoed, What happens to those tadpoles that were captured by the goldfish ? Will they ever realise their true origin and run away from the captors? That story was told to her by her mother, who had learned it from her own mother growing up, and that was the only happy ending she knew. Ven felt as though she had run a longdistance race, and while she was still far from the final destination, she had burned up all her fuel. Nevertheless, she couldn't stop now.
“Please, sir.” The old man fell upon his knees, clutching Dan's hands. “Forgive me for reading that letter. My curiosity and my loyalty to my lady were so great that I could not help myself. But I swear I would have delivered it to the young miss, if you did not return.”
Dan's face twisted in annoyance. “May I please have the letter returned to me?” he asked.
“Indeed,” the old man said, wiping his eyes with the hem of his tunic. “I shall deliver it to you tomorrow morning. But I have more to tell you before I leave. Miss Tai May and her troupe will be leaving the citadel tomorrow. The Royal Court has dismissed them from their duties. The emperor replaced them with another group of artists, formed and educated in France. The new performers are widely acclaimed for their acrobatic acts and the tricks they do with trained tigers. From reading your letter, I've learned how important the young lady is to you. I feel compelled to report the news of her departure, so that you can make the necessary arrangements to meet her before it is too late. No longer the emperor's property, she is now a free woman.”
“Mr. Ung!” cried Dan. “Can this be true?”
The eunuch got up from his kneeling position and said, “That is what I heard on leaving the Imperial Palace a few hours ago. If you still want me to deliver that note to her, I shall try my best to accommodate your wishes. It is the very least that I can do to regain your friendship.”
“Oh!” Dan exclaimed, grabbing the old man in his arms and squeezing him tight. “Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ung! This is wonderful news! You must discard the old letter, and I will compose another to her immediately.” He turned his face to Ven so that she could see his smile under the light. “Can you imagine that, Ven?” he said in a triumphant voice. “I have nothing more to ask of Heaven—now that I will see Tai May again. Tomorrow I shall tell her how much I love her and that I will devote myself to her until the day I die. Better yet, I will tell her now, using this pen and paper. I must let her know that my passion for her is still burning brightly, in spite of time and adversities.” Turning back to Ung, he said, “Please take a seat, dear Mr. Ung. This will take but a few moments.”
He dipped the feather's tip in the inkwell, smoothed out a piece of paper, and began to write. All Ven heard was the steady scratching of the quill on the page, digging at her head like a termite's crunching. The eunuch inspected his reflection in a mirror that was hung by the door to ward off evil spirits.
Rising from her chair, Ven stood in the moonlight, watching him. She knew at once that it was Heaven's will to place her in this room at this hour, so she could stop his obsession with the girl. Now was her chance. She had to bring a perfect ending to her story, the only way she knew how.
Dan rose gracefully from the floor. In his hand, the sheet of paper was still wet with black ink. He blew at it impatiently. Ven rushed over and snatched the letter from his hand. She must show him that she—his sole custodian—opposed this forbidden union of the two enemy houses. She hid the paper behind her. Dan grabbed her shoulders. She stared in his eyes, just as she had done throughout his childhood, expecting him to surrender to her will. But instead of fear she saw a wall of anger and a blaze of defiance, and for the first time in her relationship with Dan, she had to look away.
“Listen to me, Ven,” he said. “I understand how you feel, although I never felt the same way.”
You don't know how I feel, she heard herself screaming in her mind. You do not know how deep my devotion to you is. He continued. “You are bound to an old belief system, and you follow its rules so blindly that you cannot see the coming of your own doom. Time has changed for the two of us. You must free me to discover life for myself. With you, I have always played the passive role of a voyeur, watching life from a safe distance. You solve every puzzle, every calamity for me. You even came close to dying once to let me live. For such a long time I carried this infection of fear in me, and I have infected everyone I have touched. I cannot do that anymore. I am all grown up, and—”
He burst out in tears. “I don't need you anymore.”
His words collapsed upon her like a falling tower. She released her fingers, letting the letter slip away. The eunuch caught it before it hit the floor.
“Go back to Tutor Con, my dearest Ven,” Dan said. He put his hand on her shoulder. “I must go and see my mother before the night is over. This unexpected inheritance will help me redeem her freedom. When tomorrow comes, my life will change forever.”
Leaving Ven behind in his apartment, Dan moved through New Town with the single-mindedness of a stalking panther. Though the streets were alive with noise and motion, he had little awareness of their raucous vitality. A drunken coolie jostled him, but he never faltered, nor did his nose turn away from the smells of rotten fruits, decaying fish, and overflowing sewage. From a dark wall came a voice: “Five pennies to have your fortune told.” Ignoring every distraction, he strode to the tea shop on Morin Street.
Crossing into the front parlor, he stopped to catch his breath. The glass wall with its man-made waterfall sent tiny bubbles swimming in the air like silver coins. The light was dimmed to almost black, and the rotating ceiling fans made the room so cool that his skin became covered in gooseflesh. The room was alive with the sounds of customers enjoying the company of the female employees.
Dan walked to the end of the room, where the man with the black beard stood behind the counter. He slammed his fist against the bar's surface with a loud smacking sound to get the bartender's attention.
“Well,” the burly man said, looking up and wiping an empty glass with a dirty rag he hooked at the end of his sleeve. “It is you, Dan the farmer. How are you doing this evening? I imagine you are looking for Camille. I'll send for her.”
Straddling a barstool, Dan said, “I am here to conduct a business transaction. As you know, up to this time, it has been Camille that I came to see. However, tonight the meeting I am requesting must have your presence as well as hers. I must warn you, it is your signature that I want.”
Setting the glass on a rack at his side, the bartender narrowed his eyes. “You wish to speak to me? What sort of business?”
“Tell me, do you possess a bill of ownership for every woman that works for you in this brothel?”
The man bristled. “You are incorrect in using the term ‘brothel.’ This is the finest tea shop in town. Still, I must confess that I do need to obtain proper police documents and ownership licenses for the girls.”
“Aha,” Dan said, nodding. “Knowing your strict moral code, I assume that you will not surrender these bills bearing your released signature unless you first receive a substantial sum of money in exchange for them.”
There was a moment of silence as the bartender's eyebrows rose. Then he burst out laughing as if Dan had said something funny. “Why?” he asked with sudden friendliness. “Are you trying to negotiate for Camille 's freedom? If so, how much are you thinking of?”
He paused and looked up at the sound of a woman's nervous laughter. Under the churning yellow and orange lights, Camille stood wearing an elegant black dress, like a deity of destruction, fragile but ferocious. Her dark eyes shone from her powdered pale face.
“Van Tong,” she said, breaking right through their conversation, “you failed to inform me that my customer is here.”
She glided to Dan's side. Her hand caressed his collar as she said, “You speak as though you have just stumbled upon a great treasure. Do not disclose to strangers your vital business, since they may cause you more harm than good. Come into my room! We shall talk where no one can hear us.”
“No one leaves my station,” said the bartender. His massive hand caught Lady Yen's shoulder. “What have you been hiding from me, Camille? I am beginning to think that this young farmer is your new lover. Is this so? I demand a straightforward answer.”
Turning to Dan, he said, “Yes, you shall pay me for her freedom—if, as I hope, you have enough silver coins to help me procure a new girl who is blessed with as many talents as she has. If not, I must content myself with Camille. In this business, one cannot afford to be parted easily from such a valuable property.”
Camille wrenched away. The tight knot in her hair became undone, and it spilled down her arching back like a school of snakes.
“Take your hand off me,” she hissed. “I wish Hell would open this minute and swallow you whole, damnable brute. Do you wish for a straightforward answer? Here it is. This is my son, and whatever cash he brought to this place shall belong to me. You are not my keeper.” Her exploding words brought the room to silence.
The bartender raised his brows until the whites of his eyes became opaque. He breathed in her face, “Be careful! You are not being truthful to either of us. Forgive me for being the messenger of bad news. Have you informed your son that I, Van Tong, am your legal husband? Judging from his behavior, I think he was led to believe that you are just one of my whores.”
His words stabbed her with enough venom to make her collapse on top of a barstool. In the stillness of the cavernous room, Dan said to her, “Is that true what he said, madam?”
She covered her face in her hands. The bartender cleared his throat and snickered, wagging his fingers. Her silence was enough to confirm Dan's suspicion.
He rose; anger magnified in his voice. “Where is your heart, Mother? You have forsaken me once again! When I was just a child, you chose your life over mine. I came here with the intention of saving your honor, but now I see that even the gods in Heaven could not rescue you. Here is the treasure that you were waiting for.” He reached inside his tunic for a banknote and threw it on the counter. “This is a bill that is worth twenty thousand silver coins, intended to procure your freedom. I am turning it over to both of you. I hope you will kill each other over this money. As for you, madam, I shall expect you to keep away from me. And someday when I have children, I shall teach them a new legacy of my ancestors, that I was born under a rock.”
He backed away from her, holding the rim of the bar for support. Camille stifled a sob, watching her son stagger to the door.