WHEN XUAN VEERED the red Honda Dream off National Highway 1 onto a dirt trail that led into an old rubber plantation, Maia’s first thought was to hop off the backseat, dash for the main drag, and hitchhike to catch up with Na and JP. In her mind’s eye, she could see Na’s hair blowing like rainclouds, JP hanging onto the motorcycle’s rear grab bar for dear life, and No-No Pōpoki curling into a spiny orange ball in the front basket. Traveling on two motorcycles 136 kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City over hills and valleys and through farmers’ markets and rice paddies, they would arrive in the Mekong Delta before nightfall. That morning, Na had sped off with JP on the used Minsk he had bargained down to 250 USD, leaving Xuan and Maia to follow. They were all going to the River of Nine Dragons to look for Maia’s maternal grandmother. But now Xuan left the highway and lost Na and JP.
The dirt trail cut through the rubber forest, a colonial past buried deep in the red soil. The hum of the motorcycle’s engine momentarily halted the shadows of workers tapping the trees to drain their milky liquid into aluminum buckets. Beyond the old plantation, the trail widened and curved along muddy ponds of ivory lotuses. The motorcycle’s wheels skidded over the swampy ground, and the stench of algae rose with the morning sun. From time to time they would pass a roadside eatery, its menu painted white on the tree bark, inviting passersby to stop for Hủ Tiếu Nam Vang, Dừa Tươi & Bia Hơi.
The path gradually wound upward to an empty lookout at the foot of the mountain. A barefoot boy about seven or eight loitered nearby, hawking still life drawings of five fruits that looked like naked ladies. “Mâm ngũ quả!” he cried. “Mâm ngũ quả!” He had a three-patch hairstyle of the late sixteenth century and a cheeky singsong voice.
The lady’s head is a pomelo,
her eyes like longans,
breasts like peaches,
palms like Buddha’s-hands,
her garden, a fragrant wedge of jackfruit.2
Xuan ignored the boy and his portrait of a naked lady and parked the motorcycle next to the motley tents along the mountainside. The makeshifts fluttered in the breeze, but not a sound or movement came from inside. At the far end of the tents sat an enormous water-damaged wooden crate, silent and still like the mountain. Xuan walked to the crate and examined its faded print. BANGALANG 5-26-1830. He peered through the cracks into the pitch-dark interior. He kicked it. The sodden wood gave a long, hollow creak.
Beside the crate, Maia leaned on what she had first thought was a sun-warmed boulder. She was startled when she realized it was the rounded back of an old sleeping camel. She had never been up close to a great beast of burden. She gingerly caressed its graying head and stroked the tough leathery skin of its cheek. Its outstretched neck sank farther onto the ground. Its large eyes squeezed tight, shutting out the midday light. She did not question the camel’s presence at the foot of the mountain but found comfort in the steady rise and fall of its heavy, laborious breathing.
Xuan paid the fruit boy one thousand đồng to watch the motorbike and motioned Maia to follow. As they climbed the stones that were leveled in the slope, she silently rehearsed the reasons for her return. She chanted a mantra she had learned from a laminate pocket-sized picture of Quan Âm: “Nam mô A-di-đà Phật. Nam mô A-di-đà Phật. Nam mô A-di-đà Phật.” She cleared her mind in anticipation of what was to come. When she looked up, she saw a looming French cathedral with twin steeples. The red tile pitched roof with upswept eaves reminded her of a Chinese pagoda. The high tower’s eastern and western arches and angles fused seamlessly with the natural folds of the mountainside, shrouded in low-hanging clouds.
On the summit, three men in green public security uniforms were playing cards at a stone table under a flamboyant tree. They left the game as soon as they saw Xuan and Maia. The men’s sandals dragged over the ground and disturbed the red dirt that rose in a haze and fell on their gnarled toes. The smallest marched with heavy steps toward them as if weighted down by a great burden. “You’ve come on time,” he said, his accent from the northern countryside.
Xuan nodded at the small man, whom he called “Comrade Ty,” and acknowledged the other two at his heels. Pâté was stocky with a plump liverwurst face. Cross-eyed Lai had pale translucent skin that stretched over his stick frame. “They want to ask a few questions,” Xuan said.
A gust of wind blew a cloud of scarlet blossoms off the flamboyant branches. The blossoms fluttered and ascended like butterflies before falling. Beyond the front yard, the land dropped off steeply into rice terraces that bejeweled the earth with emerald and gold.
“Awfully pretty,” fat Pâté murmured. He took her hand and pulled her to the stone table. His chubby thumb stroked the top of her hand, his eyes on her jade locket. He suddenly reached over and yanked the locket from her neck. The chain broke and slipped to the ground. The jade was in his fleshy palm.
“What’s inside?” he whispered. His knees started to bounce.
“My father’s ashes.”
“Sister,” the leader said, “you’ve returned for what purpose?”
The locket was passed from Pâté’s clumsy fingers to Cross-eyed Lai, who tried to pry it open with his long pinky nail. “Đéo mẹ!” Cross-eyed cursed when his nail snapped. He pulled out a pocket-sized stiletto and wedged its sharp tip into the octangular jade case.
“I’m collecting stories on Hòn Vọng Phu.”
Pâté’s legs stopped bouncing. “Hòn Vọng Phu? The trilogy Hòn Vọng Phu 1, 2, and 3—‘The Army Departs,’ ‘Eternal Waiting,’ and ‘The Husband Returns’?” His patchy moon face beamed at her. “We’re the Public Security Trio, third place in last year’s Mekong Songfest. Comrade Ty is our lead man!” He pounded a marching rhythm on the stone table with his fists, and in a deep baritone, he sang the first “Hòn Vọng Phu,” in which soldiers depart for war. Cross-eyed Lai dropped the jade locket into his back pants pocket and joined in with a high-pitched voice, his bony fingers intricately picking the strings of an air guitar.
“Pâté! Lai!” The leader shushed them after the first verse.
“Curtains?” Pâté asked in a small squeak. He turned to her and said, “Sister, you don’t listen. We’ll all be drenched.”
Pâté and Lai disappeared into the temple and returned with two red curtains. They tore the curtains lengthwise into strips and then braided and knotted the strips into a thick long cord. With a quick movement, Lai twisted Maia’s arms behind her, and Pâté tied them with a red band. They roped her ankles.
Pâté and Lai walked to a giant blue globe perched on a pedestal beneath the gutter of the temple roof. On the side of the globe, a painted long leaf-shaped eye stared out amidst white clouds. The top had been broken to catch rain.
The men tossed one end of the cord over an upswept eave about ten feet above. It hooked on the eave and dangled four feet from the ground. The other end lay slack.
The leader kneeled down, and with surprising strength, he scooped her over his shoulder and carried her to the globe. They tied her bound ankles to the slack end of the rope. The leader pulled the other end and hoisted her off the ground. Pâté and Lai pushed the giant eyeball beneath her.
Her world was inverted.
Blood rushed to her head as her body dangled over the sphere’s jagged edges. She smelled salt. She straightened her posture like a soldier marching off to war, but she was in black peasant pants and tied upside down with red ropes. When she looked into the sphere, she saw petals drifting like dismembered butterflies. She thought of her father and his fight. Her head became heavy and hot as blood pulsated faster and faster toward the steady hum of whirling blades chopping air.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Her father commanded the pilot to lift off from the burning land. Her mother curled around her, covering her from the scorched bodies and homes ablaze. Her grandmother and aunt huddled beside them. As the Huey maneuvered southward for Saigon, the summer of fire ignited a flame in her young heart.
“We don’t need to do this,” the leader said.
The first time they dunked her, she squeezed her eyes shut. When they raised her, the leader’s face was inches from hers.
“Who sent you? Why have you returned?”
The intervals in the water became longer. Each time she was hauled up, her interrogator appeared paler against the darkening clouds.
The last time they dunked her, she ran out of breath. She tried to curl upward to lift her head out of the sphere, but she had become weak. Fluid oozed into her ears, up her nostrils, beneath her eyelids, and coursed through her body. She heard distant voices. Persevere and join hands with others. Limbs untied, she reached out, bare fingers grasping still water. Her legs drew up close to her body. Curled into a ball, she spun in the briny fluid and settled into the curve of the sphere. She saw Xuan through the glassy eye.
“It’s over,” Xuan said and laboriously fished her out of the colossal eyeball. He carried her and ascended steps, dripping wet. Put me down. She wanted to resist; no words came. Sunrays from a long leaf-shaped eye shone over the great arched entrance. Except for the bullet holes that broke the exact centers of the stained-glass windows, the temple appeared intact and vivid under the lowering sky.
They crossed the threshold. Once they were inside, she heard lively conversation that became louder. She shivered uncontrollably when Xuan laid her on the cold tile floor beneath the golden light that glowed from the vaulted ceiling where people lounged on a lofty pyramid-shaped lantern. Now and then, they would glance down at her. She strained her ears to listen but could only catch fragments.
“She’s rather pallid,” said the woman carved from white marble to a red-haired girl. The woman was sitting coyly on a lotus blossom, her thin stone legs dangling over its petals.
“Soaked like a field mouse,” Xuan mumbled and stripped off her wet clothes. He took off his shirt, and using it like a cloth, he tried to pat her dry. He pulled her hair back and placed a sweaty palm over her forehead. He then put his ear on her chest and listened for a minute. He left suddenly, his footsteps fading. Moments later when he returned, he wrapped her in a cool cottony sheet.
“I’d never be caught in yellow,” the red-haired girl said to the white marble woman. She fingered her polished bob. She was suited in black armor. “Couldn’t he find something else to cover her?” She hoisted her spear and leapt from the lantern onto a golden dragon. They floated across the blue starlit ceiling.
Xuan pressed hard against her chest and released, pressed and released, making her insides coil and tumble in painful waves. He pinched her nose and blew warm smoky breath into her.
“I was once a man,” the marble woman said. “Did you know I was a man a thousand years ago?”
“I think I am a man; therefore, I am,” claimed the chap with a head full of chestnut curls. He spoke deliberately to no one in particular.
“I’m with you. Whatever you are, I’m with you.” A voice reassured him, echoing in her head, but she couldn’t see the speaker. It wasn’t the bald gent with an egg-shaped face, for he was arguing with another bald fellow who wouldn’t look at him but peered instead into the distance. Two elders in flowing imperial gowns, half-listening to their argument, grumbled about three submissions and four virtues.
Xuan pried her mouth open and poked a finger down her throat. He straddled her and resumed pressing on her chest, hard and fast. He breathed into her mouth and scolded her for swallowing too much dead water, coaxing her not to keep it in.
The red-haired girl in black armor was playing with the dragons and piercing clusters of white clouds with her spear. The man with the egg-shaped face smirked. “To be or not to be.”
“Fine words. Fine words,” commended the elder in the blue imperial gown. “Then again, fine words don’t necessarily mean true virtue.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed the man who was peering into the distance. “Impossible without a violent revolution.” He looked down at her.
She wanted to agree but her throat was blocked. Her lips trembled.
The red-haired girl was making rainclouds with the tap of her spear.
Lightning struck.
Voices thundered, and the rain came, rapping against the tile roof and glass windows, splashing cold beads onto her face.
“Accept, child. Let things go their own way. Don’t impose your will on nature.” A soothing voice coaxed her into a float-like sleep like a boat adrift at sea until she shuddered and coughed and waves of water surged from her body.
“Ah, the girl is awake.” Xuan was sitting on his haunches beside her. He wiped the corners of her mouth with the back of his hand. “Get dressed. I’ll be outside.”
At the door, he called, “Nous partons, adieu Oncle!”
A Vietnamese voice croaked back, “Vous fermerez la porte, s’il vous plaît.”
Maia reached for her clothes and saw the jade locket in the pile. She tore a thin strip of the yellow curtain, drew it through the locket, and tied it around her neck. She put on her damp clothes and became aware of the raw welts around her wrists and ankles.
Light slanted through the holes and cracks in the lattice windows along the walls. At the center of each window, a left eye set in a triangle stared out. Apart from an old sweeper grumbling in French about the persistent dust blown in from outside, the temple was deserted under the glowing lantern suspended from the ceiling.
Xuan’s eyes fell on her locket when she emerged on the steps. “You shouldn’t carry the dead with you,” he said.
At the foot of the mountain, they found the Honda Dream intact, except for a missing rearview mirror. The fruit boy was nowhere in sight. The motley tents had been taken down, and the wind dispersed traces of what remained, only an imprint of the crate and camel tracks were left on the ground.
The trail along the lotus ponds through the rubber forest to the highway had turned into muddy rivulets after the rain. Xuan had not uttered a word to her since they left the mountain. He muttered to himself, his mouth moving ani matedly, as if to assure his points would get across. She could not make out his speech, even leaning forward, but smelled smoke and the drizzling jungle, sometimes a musky pine.
She held onto him as they picked up speed. The wind stung the welts on her wrists and ankles. Bright colors and long leaf-shaped eyes appeared, and voices whirred in her head. Light and hollow, she slipped into the flowing surroundings along the rain-swept highway. She was a tiny tadpole twirling in a brook, a rice grain ripening in the field beyond, a raindrop on a leaf tip waiting for the sun.
She was an orphan—no link with the past, no apparent threat to the present regime. This was how the Independent Vietnam Coalition had rationalized her selection as the replacement after Vinnie Huynh’s disappearance. A young woman could pass through Tan Son Nhat International Airport more easily than a man, they had predicted. Her not breaking under a second interrogation proved to them that she could detach herself from her bodily existence and be still amid the spinning world.
The ferry was set to leave when Xuan and Maia arrived at a Mekong tributary.
“Sold out,” the ticket man said. “The next comes at four.”
He pointed to a cluster of plastic tables and stools beneath the shadow of a tamarind tree where they could wait. On the trunk hung the vendor’s menu painted in a flowing white script: Hủ Tiếu Nam Vang, Dừa Tươi & Bia Hơi.
They watched the last passengers boarding the ferry. They saw a marble-skinned woman and a red-haired girl. They spotted a chap with a head full of chestnut curls and a bald gentleman with an egg-shaped face and another bald fellow and two elders in blue imperial gowns. A middle-aged bearded man with a staff stood apart from the group. The motley travelers wanted free passage for their old camel and wooden crate.
“Big but not heavy,” said the fruit boy from the mountain. “There’s nothing inside. The empty crate floats, and Charlee swims like a swamp buffalo.” The boy led the camel into the red muddy water and climbed atop her hump. They began across the river. The sun glared off the mirror in his hand. Behind them, the ferry lugged the crate that bobbed in and out the Mekong like a remnant of a shipwreck.
“Foreigners,” the soup lady muttered, “finally rounded up and kicked out.” She set a plate of fresh herbs, chilies, and limes on the table and offered Xuan loose imported cigarettes without names.
He had ordered three soups, two beers, and a coconut. He placed a soup, beer, and cigarettes before the empty seat between them. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for a lighter, lit a cigarette, and took a long drag.
Maia watched him from the corners of her eyes as she mixed the noodle, immersing the chopped scallion and cilantro and sliced raw onions into the steaming broth. He appeared less distant. She had first thought his name, which meant “springtime,” was ironic but now seemed almost fitting. She wondered whether it was she who had changed. Maybe it was all that time in the eyeball, all that water she had drunk and coughed up. She knew enough to guard herself against him. He had taken her to the interrogation and pretended to care afterward. In spite of her caution, she felt her inside shifting, like the earth around dormant seeds about to sprout.
She realized then that he had been talking to her father’s ashes.
She stirred her soup and watched a shrimp, all curled up, back slit open and tail intact, spin along the edge of the bowl. Calamari cut cylindrically and fish processed into dumplings bobbed around her bamboo chopsticks. She added fresh mint leaves and chili to the bowl, turning the broth red. The soup filled her mouth, rushed down her throat, and warmed her.
“My father doesn’t smoke or drink,” she said.
“His soul gets lost if you don’t tell him where you’re going.”
A long, narrow canoe brimming with fruits and vegetables sped past them down the river to the floating market. Beyond, small thatched-roof sampans were anchored some distance apart. They were homes of those who made their living dredging silt from the delta’s riverbed. On a sampan where wisps of smoke rose, a young girl on her haunches cooked the family’s afternoon meal. When she stood up, the wind blew her sun-bleached clothes against her thin body and tousled her shoulder-length hair. She tilted into the wind like a carved figurehead guiding the sampan.
“During the war, we didn’t sing quan hò and fall in love in the field,” Xuan said. “We followed the Party’s three delays.”
If you don’t have a child, delay having one.
If you aren’t married, delay getting married.
If you aren’t in love, delay love.3
“Did you?” Maia asked.
“The trail had just been bombed,” Xuan said, “so our unit spent the night at a way station. She was sixteen with eyes like longan seeds. She was scrubbing white cloths against a river boulder when we arrived. I offered her the sandalwood soap my mother had given me. She tossed me a marble stone from the river. I strung my hammock for her, but she said I needed the rest. The following night, she guided us through the jungle, white cloth flitting through the trees like fireflies.”
The loud popping noise of a tugboat’s engine signaled people to gather at the riverbank. They rolled up their pants legs and waded into the murky water with bundles of fruits and vegetables. A pickup truck with a mound of red dirt, an old sky blue Vanagon, motorcycles of various models, and rusty bicycles all jostled forward as the ramp lowered. Xuan pushed the Honda Dream onto the ferry, signaling her to keep close. They wedged themselves between a motorcycle with a brace of ducks tied by their feet from the handlebars and a bicycle with a basketful of rambutans on the rear rack. As the tugboat pulled the barge across the river, a cool breeze touched Maia’s cheeks. The breeze bore the smells of the Nine Dragons and the people around her. Their skin, eyes, and hair resembled hers. She was among her people, yet she felt a world away.
Nearby, a blind man strummed on a recycled aluminum guitar and sang “Nắng Chiều,” a prewar ballad of late afternoon light. A woman hawked bright fiery flowers, whose ethereal scent intermingled with the pungent living river. “Flowers from Sadec,” she called, weaving through the crowd and coming up to Xuan. “A yellow rose for the girl?”
Xuan bought a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, which the woman wrapped in a decade-old sheet of newspaper and then placed in the Honda Dream’s front basket.
“Flowers for the dead,” he murmured.
They ferried across the Mekong.