Since Tâm had worked late at the dinner, she was allowed to skip the breakfast shift. She planned to go to a morning service to observe Father Mạc, but she was so tired she slept through it. She awoke to the cheerful chatter of women in the front room. She dragged herself out of bed, threw on some clothes, and sneaked out to the front room. Bác Anh and Bà Thảo were nattering like magpies. As Tâm yawned, Bác Anh broke off their conversation.
“Good morning, Linh.”
Tâm’s eyes widened. “How did you know I was here?”
“I heard you yawn.” She paused. “Also, there’s your scent. It’s not bad, not at all, but it is distinctive. It’s Linh.” Bác Anh smiled.
Tâm smiled back before she realized Bác Anh couldn’t see her. A scent of her own? Was it sweet? Foul? Bitter? She thought of Mai, whose name she’d stolen for her new Party name. Did they share the same scent? She made her way to the kitchen and poured tea. The women resumed their conversation. Tâm joined them. Three people were the most that could comfortably fit in the tiny front room.
“Yến is so shy,” Bác Anh was saying. “She never used to be. But after her brother was killed in a Viet Cong ambush, it changed her.” She looked in Tâm’s direction. “That’s when she began her missionary work.”
For a moment, Tâm felt like Bác Anh could see straight through her: fears, thoughts, secrets. Her pulse started to speed up. She cleared her throat. “I know what that feels like. American soldiers massacred everyone in my village, including my baby brother. And my parents.”
Bác Anh nodded as if she already knew. But how? Had she, in some unguarded moment, told Yến about the attack? She couldn’t recall, and that unnerved her. Bác Anh went on. “We have all lost people dear to us in this abominable war.”
Tâm’s muscles loosened, and she breathed more easily. She was just suffering a flash of paranoia. Still, she had to be more careful about what she said and to whom.
“Yến likes you, Linh,” Bác Anh said. “I wish you could get to know her better. Maybe it will help her become more like her old self. I have tried, but I am just her old blind mother.”
“You are a fine mother,” Bà Thảo declared.
Bác Anh shook her head.
“I can try,” Tâm said.” Perhaps she and I could go out for a meal.” She usually ate her meals in the kitchen. It was one of the benefits of working in the kitchen. But she could spend a few đồng at a restaurant in Tay Ninh. “I used to work at a restaurant in Saigon,” Tâm continued. “Chinese food. Very elegant. Is there one here you would recommend?”
Suddenly she bit her lip. She had been careless telling them she worked in a Saigon Chinese restaurant. They could ask around and find out which one it was. And discover who she really was. Then, just as suddenly, she relaxed. She now knew why she’d been instructed to use a Party name. They didn’t know her real name, and they never would. Still, a stab of guilt nicked her. She liked Bác Anh and Bà Thảo. She was ashamed at her own deceit.
Over the next few months Tâm and Yến took walks around the temple complex during breaks, shared meals, and once in a while went out for ice cream. Tâm found she liked the young woman. Unlike Mai, Yến did not chatter all the time. Their silence was easy and natural. But Yến did not have a cheerful disposition, and Tâm tried hard to elicit a smile from her.
Their relationship was the inverse of her and Mai’s, Tâm thought. She had been the grumpy one. In retrospect, Tâm wondered if Mai’s constant chatter was not just about Mai and what she wanted or thought she deserved. Perhaps part of it had been Mai’s attempt to draw Tâm out, like Tâm was doing with Yến, so they could feel closer.
She wanted to find out more about Yến’s missionary work and why she was doing it, but she needed to tread carefully. They were not close enough yet; she didn’t want Yến to use Tâm’s curiosity as an excuse to shut down.
Tâm had returned to the dead drop three days after she left the note. A message, presumably from General Minh via Lieutenant Khuyên, told her to keep doing what she was doing in Tay Ninh. There was no need for her to further surveil the two men whose names she had reported.
Relief washed over her; she hadn’t wanted to go to Da Nang or Hue to spy. After a decade of war, a deep fatigue had overspread Vietnam. It was rarely expressed; nonetheless, it was dispiriting. The truth was that Tâm felt like a stranger in her own land. What had seemed so clear to her, so compelling before, was now muddied. Both the North and the South seesawed between victory and defeat, each proclaiming victory when in reality there was nothing to celebrate. All Tâm saw was suffering and sorrow. Thousands of young men and women killed; each side responsible for unspeakable acts of cruelty and brutality.What had happened to her country?