A Good Scent from a Strange Moutain Part 10

But they had something else in mind. At some signal between them they began to walk away from each other, but they just kept walking. Frank went over the edge of the hill and disappeared. Vinh kept going until he splashed through a narrow stream and came up to the edge of the woods. I understood now that this was some kind of little war game. They were going to stalk each other or something. Maybe try to capture and control the brick building. When this. .h.i.t me, I suddenly grew aware of Vinh's red s.h.i.+rt, how it would stand out among the trees. But, as it sometimes happens between husbands and wives, Vinh seemed to have the thought just as I did. Or maybe I sent it to him. I don't know. But he stopped at the trees and looked back, looked briefly for Frank, and when the man was not in sight, Vinh took off his red s.h.i.+rt and rolled it up and put it under his arm.

My husband's chest and arms are quite strong, really, and I tilted my head at seeing them suddenly like this, across a field, against those trees, the breeze coming off the bay, and I felt a little wiggle of something in me, a snaky little romantic feeling that started in my chest and then, as Vinh moved into the woods and the dark skin of his broad back faded into the shadows, the feeling slithered out of my chest and down inside me real fast and I looked out to the sea and closed my eyes.

Here I was in this little pose and if someone was watching me who knew what to look for in people, she would wonder if I was thinking of Vinh as he once was, or maybe someone else altogether. The answer was that I was thinking of neither of these. As soon as I closed my eyes, I was aware only of myself; I stepped out of myself and saw me, and that was all that was in my mind. The romance was gone right away. I'm sometimes too observant for my own d.a.m.n good. It should've been Vinh as he once was who I was thinking about. That would have been nice, that moment.

But instead I remembered Eileen sitting in this same way nearby, and I opened my eyes. The hillside and the brick building and the woods were deserted. I glanced over to Eileen and she was lying on her back, her forearm over her face. She seemed to be asleep.

I looked back down the hill and that feeling of being let down that I'd had earlier came back. The whole scene in front of me kind of blurred. Even all the things that my mind knew were beautiful seemed flat all of a sudden, like a postcard you'd buy in a hurry at the airport.

But I did wonder where the men were. So I looked harder. Frank had claimed the sh.o.r.e and the hillside, and I figured it would be easier to spot him at this point. The slope went down and then rolled over a crest and into another slope I couldn't see, and beyond, there was the meadow with the naked foundation in the center. Farther on was another crest and another invisible slope, this one dropping down to the sh.o.r.e and the sea. I figured Frank was on one of the far slopes and I waited for a few moments and he was staying out of sight and so I peered into the woods where Vinh had gone.

It seemed like a pretty silly game to me. I wasn't sure what they were doing. They weren't exactly stalking each other, or they probably would've both gone into the woods. But maybe they were stalking. Frank had to defend his earlier actions out here in the open, going down the path and all. Maybe he was the force that had taken the beach-like those first Marines coming ash.o.r.e in a Nng or something. And Vinh was the other side-would he actually play the part of the Vietcong, who he hated? Perhaps. Perhaps if this American had given him no choice, he would play the Vietnamese no matter what the politics. I didn't know. And I guess it's important to realize that I didn't know what Vinh would do in this situation. The man in the woods was hidden from me, too.

Then I saw Frank. His black s.h.i.+rt and shorts would have been good camouflage in the shade of the trees, but against the meadow he was very clearly visible. He was moving in that low glide of his and he crouched behind the stone foundation. He peeked up and looked in the direction of the brick building, which was maybe a hundred and fifty meters across the meadow and up a roll of the hill. I didn't know what he was waiting for, if the point was to go take the building. Vinh was nowhere in sight, and I didn't know what Vinh was waiting for either.

The truth be told, my husband was in the airborne, but I think he was mostly back at the base camp giving orders and organizing supplies and looking after paperwork. He is a businessman, always has been and I guess he always will be. And Frank said himself he was a helicopter mechanic. These men weren't fighters, in spite of their nearness to a war.

I scanned the tree line and then I saw Vinh. He was sliding around a tree, and it struck me that I was watching this old movie. These men were crouching and hiding and sneaking around like all the old movie actors in all the old war and spy and detective movies ever made, all those wonderful old unreal movies. that made my hours after midnight so peaceful. Vinh was a heavy sleeper and I had good hearing and so I could watch these films in my bed. I would pull the sheet up to my nose and lie there on my Posturepedic mattress and I was in the United States of America in an era of peace and prosperity in spite of the deficits and I could hear the wind outside as a Louisiana summer storm blew in and I was safe and I was cozy and I was watching a whole world of men with steel pots or fedoras on their heads and they were in the middle of big trouble, but boy, could they sneak around and glide around, and they were never going to get hurt by anything, you knew that for sure.

Vinh slipped out of the woods and I realized that Frank didn't see him because the brick building, was between the two of them. Vinh stood by the little stream and he looked up to the top of the second floor of the building and sighted from there down to his feet on the bank of the stream. Then he laid his rolled red s.h.i.+rt next to a rock and he crouched low and stepped over the flowing water.

I looked at Frank and he was moving. He was going around the far side of the foundation in his low crouch and he was heading, I guessed, for the building. Meanwhile, Vinh was edging his way around the near end, his neck craned hard to his left so he could catch early sight of Frank if he should suddenly appear. But Frank was circling wide now to approach from the other direction, and so the men were still unaware of each other.

Vinh made it to the side staircase that led to the upper floor. He climbed it quickly but he slowed abruptly and ducked down as he neared the top. Then he peeked over to make sure that Frank wasn't already there, and when he saw that the place was deserted, I swear I could see his body actually ripple in delight. He scrambled up on top of the building, went to the back edge so he could view his red s.h.i.+rt by the stream, and he dug into his pocket and placed some of his stones beside him.

Frank was high-stepping down a slope and he disappeared as soon as I saw this. I waited, and then a few moments later, his head popped up at the crest of the hill at the far side of the brick building. The head disappeared again and then popped up once more.

"Aren't they lovely?" This was Eileen's voice. Needless to say, the sentiment surprised me. I turned to her and she was still on her back but she had moved her forearm off her eyes. She was looking up into the sky. I followed her gaze. There were some high, white clouds.

"That one is the head of a pony," she said. The head of a pony. Do I sound like that sometimes? I bet I do. Eileen and I probably respond to the same things. Not even the head of a horse. She saw a sweet little pony. Of course. A lonesome little pony, and the little girl makes a long-distance phone call to the pony and it isn't lonesome anymore. If they filmed that and put it on between the soaps, I'd weep at that one, too. The little pony shaking its forelock in delight as someone holds the phone up to its ear. I'm a sucker for any of that. But at this moment the pony struck me as pretty uninspired. Dumb, even, seeing a pony in the cloud and getting dreamy-voiced over it.

But I said, "It sure does" as sincerely as I could and I turned to see Frank spank across the gra.s.s and throw himself-out of my sight now-against the far wall of the building. Vinh raised his head and looked over his shoulder. He had probably heard the impact. I waited and I expected to see Frank ease his way around the comer and come along the front wall. But he was apparently suspicious of the front, because I waited and waited and so did Vinh, though he eventually turned his face back to his s.h.i.+rt at the stream.

Finally I saw Frank. Vinh tipped me off by suddenly lowering his head. A moment later I saw Frank slip up and press himself against a tree at the back of the building. He was looking toward the woods now, and I wondered if he saw the s.h.i.+rt. Even as I thought this, Frank did a double take. A real double take, a little bit like the cartoon characters, though Frank's eyes didn't bug out. His face extended forward and he looked at the red color, and connections were going off in his head.

He looked all around and he studied the tree line carefully and then he dug into his pocket and armed himself with a rock-I could imagine him whispering to himself, "Lock and load, troop." And Vinh was all this time sneaking little glances over the edge of the roof, his rock already in his hand. I wondered if it was the big rock that Frank had made him throw down. I figured it wasn't, however. Not at this point. Vinh even held the stone up briefly, perhaps to see if it was the roundest one, the one he could throw most accurately, and it didn't look from this distance like the big one. I was glad. I was sure if he used the big one that Frank would get very angry.

Frank was slung low and creeping up to the stream, eyeing the red s.h.i.+rt very carefully. He stopped just across the stream and he looked at it and he c.o.c.ked his head and finally he even straightened up. I don't know what he was thinking. So it was Vinh's s.h.i.+rt. Did he expect that to help him find the man? Obviously Vinh wasn't in the s.h.i.+rt. But I think Frank was very pleased with himself for finding it. It seemed meaningful to him. Then Vinh's stone hit him right on the point of his left shoulder.

Frank spun around and I could hear his curse even from this distance. Vinh immediately jumped up and raised his arms in the air in victory. Frank rubbed his shoulder and then he darted away, behind a tree, and then to another, and then he ran to the near side of the building and pulled up and pressed himself against the wall. Vinh was clearly agitated. He thought he had already won. He flapped his arms in exasperation and I could see Frank was ready for more war. He had a stone in his hand as if to throw it. He looked up above him and dashed to the foot of the steps and again pressed back against the wall. Vinh called out something that I could not hear. Probably Frank's name. Probably telling him that the little game was over.

But Frank was creeping up the steps and obviously wasn't answering my husband, and finally Vinh dug in his pocket for more stones and moved into the center of the roof. He figured that Frank was on the way up. This time Vinh looked very carefully at the contents of his pocket and I knew even before he held it up that he had the big stone.

I stood up, afraid for them both. But there was nothing I could do, of course. Frank figured he was just wounded, since Vinh had only hit him in the shoulder. Vinh figured the war was over and was really angry when it turned out that it wasn't. I wanted to call out to them, but I could find no words. This was a distant event, farther from me even than the Hollywood studio-set wars I watched from under the covers. It was as far from me as my husband was far from me; as far as that secret, silent part of him that was so difficult a thing between us.

Frank stopped just before his head was ready to show itself to Vinh. My husband was now poised in the center of the roof with the big rock in his right hand and c.o.c.ked back over his shoulder, ready to throw. Frank waited and I could feel him mustering his strength, focusing on one leap into the open, his own rocks flying. Just like in the movies. But for a moment I wondered if Vinh would kill him, if Vinh would fire at the first sight of the man's head and hit him in the temple with the big rock and that would be the end. I could not draw a breath. "How lovely," Eileen Sighed.

Then Frank clambered up the final few steps, very slowly, it seemed to me, although his legs and arms were obviously straining to make this a lightning strike. Hold, hold, I cried in my mind to Vinh's arm. Don't aim at the head.

Frank's first stone or two flew wildly past Vinh and Vinh did wait, he waited and set himself and he threw the large stone and it hit Frank in the pit of the stomach. I knew this because Frank doubled over and then there was a moment of suspension. Frank's knees bent and he put one hand on the surface of the roof so he didn't fall over, and Vinh stayed in the crouch he'd a.s.sumed after the throw. The two men were suddenly frozen there, like props left over from the movie.

"How truly lovely," Eileen said.

Then Frank lifted his face a little and I guess he saw the stone that Vinh had used. It must have been lying there before him. He looked up at Vinh and I think he said something, probably some angry name, and then he lunged forward and Vinh tried to sidestep him but only got partly out of the way and Frank glanced off him, scooping wide with his arms, but Vinh was turning away and slipped Frank's grasp, although he did fall backward, even as Frank spun and hurtled on and also fell on the rooftop.

I hoped that that was the end of it, but both men bounced to their feet very quickly and there seemed to be no question of what to do now. They rushed at each other immediately and Vinh, being smaller, got under Frank's grasp and he b.u.t.ted Frank in his stomach with his head. Frank fell backward and Vinh fell on top of him and they rolled over immediately, first Frank on top and then Vinh, and arms were flailing and legs and the two men were fighting hard.

"A great white duck," Eileen said. "I had one just like it when I was a child."

I looked into the sky and sure enough, there was a white cloud pa.s.sing overhead that looked like a duck. You could see its bill and its long neck and even its wings.

I sat down and chose curtain number three-the sea. I glanced at the men, still rolling around on the roof, and I chose the sea. The sea was bright and flat and it crumpled along the sh.o.r.e and I just watched that for now. How silly it had been for me to think I'd understood them. Neither of them could stomach the feel-good culture. But that was hardly all of the feeling between them. They had shared something once, something important-rage, fear, the urge to violence, just causes, life and death. They'd both felt those things in service of the same war. And neither of them wanted to let go of all that. But even finding this connection between them didn't really explain everything.

Don't ask me what did. I watched mostly the sea for the next few minutes, and when I finally peeked back in the direction of the brick building, I saw them sitting about ten feet apart, their backs to each other, their legs spread and their arms lolling in exhaustion. Frank was facing the woods and my husband was facing the sea. He seemed to be looking very intently out to sea. Just like I was.

We took separate cabs, the two couples, back to the beautiful Fiesta Vallarta Hotel. Vinh had come up the hill first and he was a mess. He had forgotten his red s.h.i.+rt, but he wouldn't have been comfortable wearing it over all the abrasions anyway. Eileen screamed when she saw him. "It's all right," I told her. "They're both all right." I didn't say any more. I just went with Vinh along the path and left Eileen on the hilltop ready to kill Frank, I think. She was already a.s.suming the worst.

I didn't say anything to Vinh as we walked back to the beach or rode in the taxicab or crossed our hotel lobby and entered the elevator or even when we first stepped into the room. Nor did he say anything to me. When our door clicked shut and we were out of the eye of the public, I turned to him, but he averted his face and dipped his head and I knew he could say nothing about this anyway. Still, I yearned to know what it was that he felt, what he may have learned.

He said, "I'm going to wash up."

"Do you need some help?"

"No," he said. "Thank you."

I nodded and he stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.

I crossed the room and the curtains ruffled before the open balcony doors. It was getting on to late afternoon now and the light looked very nice on the floor beneath the curtains and so I opened them. The sunlight was suddenly thrown against the wall and the shadow of a potted plant on the balcony was pressed there, too, like it was trying to sneak in without anyone noticing. A silly impression, a hangover from the scene I'd witnessed at Mismaloya. I sat on the end of the bed and looked at the wall. The light was really very nice. A pale, b.u.t.tery yellow, and the plant dipped and rose there, the broad, shapely leaves of a croton.

I'm not sure why all this was occupying my mind. Maybe because of Vinh's silence. Maybe it was the weariness that had come over me again. All this fresh air, hilltops and beaches-I wasn't used to it. It made me want to sleep. I thought to lie down on the bed, but I heard the water running in the bathroom and I waited. I sat on the end of the bed and I waited, and the shadow of the croton crept across the wall and then at last the bathroom door opened and Vinh stepped out.

He was dressed in gray slacks and sneakers and one of the short-sleeved dress s.h.i.+rts that he usually wears to work in the hot Louisiana summers. His hair was wet and combed down neatly and the battle showed on his face only in a dull red abrasion the size of a silver dollar on his cheek. He looked at me for a moment and I strained to see some clue there of something, anything. His mouth was relaxed but unsmiling. His eyes were steady on me and all I could sense was that whatever he had felt this afternoon was not yet put aside. Then he moved to me and stood over me where I sat on the bed. I felt I should stand up before him; perhaps he would take me in his arms. I was about to do that, but before I could, his hand came out and brushed a lock of hair off my face.

That was all. Was he trying to say that since he was cleaned up now, I should pull myself together as well? I didn't know. Then I thought there was something nice about his hand, but before I could identify it, he took the hand back and said, "I'm going out."

I nodded and he turned and he was across the room and out the door quickly, closing it behind him with the softest of clicks. I lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling and I wished it was a sky full of clouds, full of ponies and ducks, and I put my forearm over my eyes. But the thinking did not stop. Where was he going? I had lived with my husband for nearly twenty years, and I should have been able to guess where he was going after the events of this day. At first I thought he was going to Frank's room to make up with him. But that didn't feel right. Perhaps tomorrow, running into them as if by accident in the lobby. That would be the time to shake hands. My husband would not seek the man out at this moment.

Then the thought struck me that from all of this purging of the war, he was now free to do something special. There had been tenderness in his hand when it scolded my stray lock of hair. I thought that perhaps Vinh was going down to get into a taxi and go to Liz and d.i.c.k's bridge and buy me a copa de oro, a cup of gold. He had denied me a flower earlier and all of sudden he realized it; he had even denied me that flower in chorus with the man who he went on to fight to some resolution on this day. I tried to imagine Vinh coming through the door and bringing the flower and putting it into my hair, the very hair that he had arranged before he left.

But this was the thought of a woman who could weep over television commercials. I realized that very quickly, lying there alone on the bed in the Fiesta Vallarta Hotel. And then I thought that Vinh would never return. He had walked out of this room and he had decided never to come back to me. He had put his pa.s.sport and his ticket into the pocket of his gray slacks and he had walked out forever.

This I believed for perhaps ten minutes, and they were the worst ten minutes of my life in America. I suddenly knew that it was I who had withdrawn from Vinh. I had embraced this culture with such intensity that it isolated me from him, made it impossible for him to find a way to touch me anymore. Even Frank, this poor American living in the past, knew enough to pull away from the excesses of the empty-headed culture around him. That must have been terrible for Vinh, that even this man who he would fight was more accessible than his own wife. I was, for about ten minutes, as black and still as the water that ran beneath the river shacks of Saigon. My skin felt like it could be wiped away with the slightest touch, like the skin of the leper beggars who did not even have a river shack. Could I not remember these things?

But then something in me said, Wait. It's not just me. Vinh, too, has been distracted by the American culture. He is a seller of Swedish meatb.a.l.l.s and c.o.c.ktail franks, after all. He wears his dark gray suit and he studies his spreadsheets and he flies here and there carrying a leather briefcase with all the other Americans and he makes much money from food that people eat with toothpicks. But in Vietnam, in the war, there was pa.s.sion. And there is a pa.s.sion still inside him. He did fight with this man today.

I lay there for a few minutes more and I don't know what it was, exactly, that moved me to think about stepping onto the balcony. The sunlight on the wall had darkened into peach and I stood up and faced the breeze from the bay. It was lovely out there, with the sun nearing the horizon. A tight little family of pelicans drifted past and I moved through the sliding doors and leaned on the bal.u.s.trade. I watched the pelicans wheel off to their right and head out to sea.

But my eyes stayed with the sh.o.r.e and a parasail rising there. I sent my body out to float with the sailor. I didn't need to be on the parachute myself; I could stand here and let myself separate from my body, from all the strangeness that had come upon me, that made up my life, and I could glide in the long angle of this sun and feel at peace. And so I watched the parasail swing around and head this way. The chute was red and yellow and it was as high as my balcony now and I closed my eyes briefly, remembering the green wake of the boat far below me, and I rode over those waves smoother than any s.h.i.+p.

I opened my eyes and the parasailor was drawing almost even with my hotel, right at my eye level, and I, of course, expected to see the dangling bare legs of someone in a bathing suit. But these legs were clothed in long gray slacks. And my eyes went instantly to the face and it was Vinh. He was holding the ropes and at first I wondered if he was being an airborne soldier again. But it was very much different from that. I had failed to understand his face when he was standing before me, but this much I could tell now as he glided past me strapped to a parachute. He was looking down with the calmest of pleasures. The angle of his head, lolled to the side like I was scratching his neck up under his ear like I used to; the loose hold of his hands on the ropes with one elbow even tucked comfortably into his side; the slight boyish kick in his legs: all this told me he was enjoying himself. He was high above Puerto Vallarta and the sea and he was happy now.

And finally he was eye to eye with me. The boat went on down the coast, into the glare of the sun, but then it swung around, and when Vinh came past once more, he turned his face to the Fiesta Vallarta Hotel and he saw me on the balcony and he smiled. I could see the smile very clearly, and when I waved at him, he raised his hand and threw me a kiss. He drifted past and I looked out to the setting sun. Just like in the movies. A beautiful sunset at the end of this very strange day. Night was coming on and my husband was about to return to earth. And so was I.

A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN.

H Chi Minh came to me again last night, his hands covered with confectioners' sugar. This was something of a surprise to me, the first time I saw him beside my bed, in the dim light from the open shade. My oldest daughter leaves my shades open, I think so that I will not forget that the sun has risen again in the morning. I am a very old man. She seems to expect that one morning I will simply forget to keep living. This is very foolish. I will one night rise up from my bed and slip into her room and open the shade there. Let her see the sun in the morning. She is sixty-four years old and she should worry for herself. I could never die from forgetting.

But the light from the street was enough to let me recognize H when I woke, and he said to me, "o, my old friend, I have heard it is time to visit you." Already on that first night there was a sweet smell about him, very strong in the dark, even before I could see his hands. I said nothing, but I stretched to the nightstand beside me and I turned on the light to see if he would go away. And he did not. He stood there beside the bed-I could even see him reflected in the window-and I knew it was real because he did not appear as he was when I'd known him but as he was when he'd died. This was Uncle H before me, the thin old man with the dewlap beard wearing the dark clothes of a peasant and the rubber sandals, just like in the news pictures I studied with such a strange feeling for all those years. Strange because when I knew him, he was not yet H Chi Minh. It was 1917 and he was Nguyn Ai Quc and we were both young men with clean-shaven faces, the best of friends, and we worked at the Carlton Hotel in London, where I was a dishwasher and he was a pastry cook under the great Escoffier. We were the best of friends and we saw snow for the first time together. This was before we began to work at the hotel. We shoveled snow and H would stop for a moment and blow his breath out before him and it would make him smile, to see what was inside him, as if it was the casting of bones to tell the future.

On that first night when he came to me in my house in New Orleans, I finally saw what it was that smelled so sweet and I said to him, "Your hands are covered with sugar."

He looked at them with a kind of sadness.

I have received that look myself in the past week. It is time now for me to see my family, and the friends I have made who are still alive. This is our custom from Vietnam. When you are very old, you put aside a week or two to receive the people of your life so that you can tell one another your feelings, or try at last to understand one another, or Simply say good-bye. It is a formal leave-taking, and with good luck you can do this before you have your final illness. I have lived almost a century and perhaps I should have called them all to me sooner, but at last I felt a deep weariness and I said to my oldest daughter that it was time.

They look at me with sadness, some of them. Usually the dull-witted ones, or the insincere ones. But H's look was, of course, not dull-witted or insincere. He considered his hands and said, "The glaze. Maestro's glaze."

There was the soft edge of yearning in his voice and I had the thought that perhaps he had come to me for some sort of help. I said to him, "I don't remember. I only washed dishes." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I decided it was foolish for me to think he had come to ask me about the glaze.

But H did not treat me as foolish. He looked at me and shook his head. "It's all right," he said. "I remember the temperature now. Two hundred and thirty degrees, when the sugar is between the large thread stage and the small orb stage. The Maestro was very clear about that and I remember." I knew from his eyes, however, that there was much more that still eluded him. His eyes did not seem to move at all from my face, but there was some little s.h.i.+fting of them, a restlessness that perhaps only I could see, since I was his close friend from the days when the world did not know him.

I am nearly one hundred years old, but I can still read a man's face. Perhaps better than I ever have. I sit in the overstuffed chair in my living room and I receive my visitors and I want these people, even the dull-witted and insincere ones-please excuse an old man's ill temper for calling them that-I want them all to be good with one another. A Vietnamese family is extended as far as the bloodline strings us together, like so many paper lanterns around a Village square. And we all give off light together. That's the way it has always been in our culture. But these people who come to visit me have been in America for a long time and there are very strange things going on that I can see in their faces.

None stranger than this morning. I was in my overstuffed chair and with me there were four of the many members of my family: my son-in-law Thng, a former colonel in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and one of the insincere ones, sitting on my Castro convertible couch; his youngest son, L'i, who had come in late, just a few minutes earlier, and had thrown himself down on the couch as well, youngest but a man old enough to have served as a lieutenant under his father as our country fell to the communists more than a decade ago; my daughter Lam, who is Thng's wife, hovering behind the both of them and refusing all invitations to sit down; and my oldest daughter, leaning against the door frame, having no doubt just returned from my room, where she had opened the shade that I had closed when I awoke.

It was Thng who gave me the sad look I have grown accustomed to, and I perhaps seemed to him at that moment a little weak, a little distant. I had stopped listening to the small talk of these people and I had let my eyes half close, though I could still see them clearly and I was very alert. Thng has a steady face and the quick eyes of a man who is ready to come under fire, but I have always read much more there, in spite of his efforts to show nothing. So after he thought I'd faded from the room, it was with slow eyes, not quick, that he moved to his son and began to speak of the killing.

You should understand that Mr. Nguyn b.i.+.c.h Le had been shot dead in our community here in New Orleans just last week. There are many of us Vietnamese living in New Orleans and one man, Mr. Le, published a little newspaper for all of us. He had recently made the fatal error-though it should not be that in America-of writing that it was time to accept the reality of the communist government in Vietnam and begin to talk with them. We had to work now with those who controlled our country. He said that he remained a patriot to the Republic of Vietnam, and I believed him. If anyone had asked an old man's opinion on this whole matter, I would not have been afraid to say that Mr. Le was right.

But he was shot dead last week. He was forty-five years old and he had a wife and three children and he was shot as he sat behind the wheel of his Chevrolet pickup truck. I find a detail like that especially moving, that this man was killed in his Chevrolet, which I understand is a strongly American thing. We knew this in Saigon. In Saigon it was very American to own a Chevrolet, just as it was French to own a Citroen.

And Mr. Le had taken one more step in his trusting embrace of this new culture. He had bought not only a Chevrolet but a Chevrolet pickup truck, which made him not only American but also a man of Louisiana, where there are many pickup trucks. He did not, however, also purchase a gun rack for the back window, another sign of this place. Perhaps it would have been well if he had, for it was through the back window that the bullet was fired. Someone had hidden in the bed of his truck and had killed him from behind in his Chevrolet and the reason for this act was made very clear in a phone call to the newspaper office by a nameless representative of the Vietnamese Party for the Annihilation of Communism and for the National Restoration.

And Thng, my son-in-law, said to his youngest son, L'i, "There is no murder weapon." What I saw was a faint lift of his eyebrows as he said this, like he was inviting his son to listen beneath his words. Then he said it again, more slowly, like it was code. "There is no weapon." My grandson nodded his head once, a crisp little snap. Then my daughter Lam said in a very loud voice, with her eyes on me, "That was a terrible thing, the death of Mr. Le." She nudged her husband and son, and both men turned their faces sharply to me and they looked at me squarely and said, also in very loud voices, "Yes, it was terrible."

I am not deaf, and I closed my eyes further, having seen enough and wanting them to think that their loud talk had not only failed to awake me but had put me more completely to sleep. I did not like to deceive them, however, even though I have already spoken critically of these members of my family. I am a Ha Ho Buddhist and I believe in harmony among all living things, especially the members of a Vietnamese family.

After H had rea.s.sured me, on that first visit, about the temperature needed to heat Maestro Escoffier's glaze, he said, "o, my old friend, do you still follow the path you chose in Paris?"

He meant by this my religion. It was in Paris that I embraced the Buddha and disappointed H. We went to France in early 1918, with the war still on, and we lived in the poorest street of the poorest part of the Seventeenth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. Number nine, Impa.s.se Com-point, a blind alley with a few crumbling houses, all but ours rented out for storage. The cobblestones were littered with fallen roof tiles and Quc and I each had a tiny single room with only an iron bedstead and a crate to sit on. I could see my friend Quc in the light of the tallow candle and he was dressed in a dark suit and a bowler hat and he looked very foolish. I did not say so, but he knew it himself and he kept seating and reseating the hat and shaking his head very slowly, with a loudly silent anger. This was near the end of our time together, for I was visiting daily with a Buddhist monk and he was drawing me back to the religion of my father. I had run from my father, gone to sea, and that was where I had met Nguyn Ai Quc and we had gone to London and to Paris and now my father was calling me back, through a Vietnamese monk I met in the Tuileries.

Quc, on the other hand, was being called not from his past but from his future. He had rented the dark suit and bowler and he would spend the following weeks in Versailles, walking up and down the mirrored corridors of the Palace trying to gain an audience with Woodrow Wilson. Quc had eight requests for the Western world concerning Indochina. Simple things. Equal rights, freedom of a.s.sembly, freedom of the press. The essential things that he knew Wilson would understand, based as they were on Wilson's own Fourteen Points. And Quc did not even intend to ask for independence. He wanted Vietnamese representatives in the French Parliament. That was all he would ask. But his bowler made him angry. He wrenched out of the puddle of candlelight, both his hands clutching the bowler, and I heard him muttering in the darkness and I felt that this was a bad sign already, even before he had set foot in Versailles. And as it turned out, he never saw Wilson, or Lloyd George either, or even Clemenceau. But somehow his frustration with his hat was what made me sad, even now, and I reached out from my bedside and said, "Uncle H, it's all right."

He was still beside me. This was not an awakening, as you might expect, this was not a dream ending with the bowler in Paris and me awaking to find that He; was never there. He was still beside my bed, though he was just beyond my outstretched hand and he did not move to me. He smiled on one side of his mouth, a smile full of irony, as if he, too, was thinking about the night he'd tried on his rented clothes. He said, "Do you remember how I worked in Paris?"

I thought about this and I did remember, with the words of his advertis.e.m.e.nt in the newspaper "La Vie Ouvriere": "If you would like a lifelong memento of your family, have your photos retouched at Nguyn Ai Quc's." This was his work in Paris; he retouched photos with a very delicate hand, the same fine hand that Monsieur Escoffier had admired in London. I said, "Yes, I remember."

H nodded gravely. "I painted the blush into the cheeks of Frenchmen."

I said, "A lovely portrait in a lovely frame for forty francs," another phrase from his advertis.e.m.e.nt.

"Forty-five, H said.

I thought now of his question that I had not answered. I motioned to the far corner of the room where the prayer table stood. "I still follow the path."

He looked and said, "At least you became a Ha Hao."

He could tell this from the simplicity of the table. There was only a red cloth upon it and four Chinese characters: Bao So'n K Hu'o'tng. This is the saying of the Ha Hao. We follow the teachings of a monk who broke away from the fancy rituals of the other Buddhists. We do not need elaborate paG.o.das or rituals. The Ha Hao believes that the maintenance of our spirits is very simple, and the mystery of joy is simple, too. The four characters mean "A good scent from a strange mountain."

I had always admired the sense of humor of my friend Quc, so I said, "You never did stop painting the blush into the faces of Westerners."

H looked back to me but he did not smile. I was surprised at this but more surprised at my little joke seeming to remind him of his hands. He raised them and studied them and said, "After the heating, what was the surface for the glaze?"

"My old friend," I said, "you worry me now."

But H did not seem to hear. He turned away and crossed the room and I knew he was real because he did not vanish from my sight but opened the door and went out and closed the door behind him with a loud click.

I rang for my daughter. She had given me a porcelain bell, and after allowing H enough time to go down the stairs and out the front door, if that was where he was headed, I rang the bell, and my daughter, who is a very light sleeper, soon appeared.

"What is it, Father?" she asked with great patience in her voice. She is a good girl. She understands about Vietnamese families and she is a smart girl.

"Please feel the doork.n.o.b," I said.

She did so without the slightest hesitation and this was a lovely gesture on her part, a thing that made me wish to rise up and embrace her, though I was very tired and did not move.

"Yes?" she asked after touching the k.n.o.b.

"Is it sticky?"

She touched it again. "Ever so slightly," she said. "Would you like me to clean it?"

"In the morning," I said.

She smiled and crossed the room and kissed me on the forehead. She smelled of lavender and fresh bedclothes and there are so many who have gone on before me into the world of spirits and I yearn for them all, yearn to find them all together in a village square, my wife there smelling of lavender and our own sweat, like on a night in Saigon soon after the terrible fighting in 1968 when we finally opened the windows onto the night and there were sounds of bombs falling on the horizon and there was no breeze at all, just the heavy stillness of the time between the dry season and the wet, and Saigon smelled of tar and motorcycle exhaust and cordite but when I opened the window and turned to my wife, the room was full of a wonderful scent, a sweet smell that made her sit up, for she sensed it, too. This was a smell that had nothing to do with flowers but instead reminded us that flowers were always ready to fall into dust, while this smell was as if a gemstone had begun to give off a scent, as if a mountain of emerald had found its own scent. I crossed the room to my wife and we were already old, we had already buried children and grandchildren that we prayed waited for us in that village square at the foot of the strange mountain, but when I came near the bed, she lifted her silk gown and threw it aside and I pressed close to her and our own sweat smelled sweet on that night. I want to be with her in that square and with the rest of those we'd buried, the tiny limbs and the sullen eyes and the gray faces of the puzzled children and the surprised adults and the weary old people who have gone before us, who know the secrets now. And the sweet smell of the glaze on H's hands reminds me of others that I would want in the square, the people from the s.h.i.+p, too, the Vietnamese boy from a village near my own who died of a fever in the Indian Ocean and the natives in Dakar who were forced by colonial officials to swim out to our s.h.i.+p in shark-infested waters to secure the moorings and two were killed before our eyes without a French regret. H was very moved by this, and I want those men in our square and I want the Frenchman, too, who called H "monsieur" for the first time. A man on the dock in Ma.r.s.eilles. H spoke of him twice more during our years together and I want that Frenchman there. And, of course, H. Was he in the village square even now, waiting? Heating his glaze fondant? My daughter was smoothing my covers around me and the smell of lavender on her was still strong.

"He was in this room," I said to her to explain the sticky doork.n.o.b.

"Who was?"

But I was very sleepy and I could say no more, though perhaps she would not have understood anyway, in spite of being the smart girl that she is.