If I knew how to end a conversation, if I could distinguish true truths, personal truths from instinctive truths, I would have disentangled the threads for you before tying them up or arranging them so that the story of this book would be clear between us. But I have followed the advice of the painter Louis Boudreault, who advised me to play with the threads in the artwork he created for this book. Some threads stayed where they were despite the veering to the left and the ups and downs when the painting was moved from Monsieur Boudreault’s studio to my home. Others imposed themselves by coming away from the canvas in the middle of the night, as I listened to the silences and testimonies of the soldiers, the combatants, and those who refused to fight; while I erased thousands of words in blocks, in paragraphs, in sentences, so as not to underscore some, to highlight others too boldly, and in the end to betray the delicate balance that maintains us in love. And in life.
I would have taken so much pleasure in describing for you the crown that Emma-Jade wore when she was the homecoming queen at school; in telling you what she chose as a tattoo (“What you seek is seeking you”) for her shoulder blade; the positioning of her legs around Louis’s waist when he carried her on his back to take her to bed.
I would also have liked to give you news of the family of John, the pilot who saved Tâm; of Naomi’s daughter, Heidi, who has five Vietnamese brothers and sisters; of the aged My Lai survivor who invited the American soldiers to come back so she could forgive them.
I would have comforted you with examples of prisons transformed into tourist sites and “five-free” nail salons that contribute to the reduction of cancer by no longer using varnish containing formaldehyde, toluene, dibutyl phthalate, formaldehyde resin, and camphor.
I avoided saddening you with the soundtrack that reveals President Nixon’s order to proceed with the bombardment despite the hesitation of the general who came to inform him that the sky was too overcast to avoid civilian casualties; and the document that presents the reasons for which the war had to go on:
I tried to interweave the threads, but they escaped, and remain unanchored, impermanent and free. They rearranged themselves on their own, given the speed of the wind, the news streaming by, the worries and smiles of my sons. The pages that follow constitute an imperfect ending, with scraps and figures drawn from life.