Mãn Read online

  quạt

  fan

  IT WAS UP TO MAMAN to pull the cord that made the fan move from left to right at a steady rhythm so as to drive away the heat without interrupting her father’s siesta. Maman loved that special moment with him; she was certain that the gentle, repetitive movement reassured him, confirmed that family harmony existed.

  Sometimes, when he was so preoccupied he couldn’t sleep, he would ask her to recite Truyện Kiều, the story of a girl who sacrificed herself to save her family. Some say that as long as the poem, with its more than three thousand lines, still exists, no war can make Vietnam disappear. Maybe that is why, for more than a century, even an illiterate Vietnamese has been able to recite entire stanzas.

  Maman’s father demanded that all his children learn the poem by heart, because in it the poet depicted, among other things, purity and selflessness, two shades essential to the Vietnamese soul. As for Maman’s mother, she always came back to the first lines of the poem, which remind the reader that everything can change, everything can topple in the blink of an eye.

  One hundred years, span of a human life,

  A combat zone where fate and talent clash, ruthless

  The ocean roars where brambles once grew

  In this world the spectacle clutches your heart.

  Why be surprised? Nothing is given without compensation.

  The blue sky often rains its curses on beauties with pink cheeks.

  nhân dạng

  identity

  MAMAN SAW HER LIFE turned upside down when the first shot was heard in an ambush between two shores, between East and West, between the resistance clamouring for independence and the current regime that taught Vietnamese students to say “our ancestors the Gauls” without seeing any inconsistency. She was on one of the Mekong ferry boats when the first bullets struck passengers. Everyone fell and took cover instinctively. And instinctively, she raised her head during the first silence as preparations were being made for the second burst of fire. Her neighbour, an elderly man with missing teeth, leathery skin and bright eyes, looked down as he ordered her to throw all her papers overboard: “If you want to survive, get rid of your identity.”

  hai làng đạn

  two lines of fire

  AFTERWARDS, CHAOS. Children sobbing as they begged their parents to wake up, hens clucking and struggling in their wicker baskets, objects falling then landing and gliding from left to right and right to left became entangled to create the cacophonous melody typical of panic in the face of the unknown and, even more, the known. The conflicts lay in the cracks of normality. They breathed the same air as the girls skipping rope and they shared the spaces of the boys who were playing at cricket fights. People learned to give money to government officials by day and rice to the partisans by night. They crept between two lines of fire, careful not to set foot on one boundary or the other, invisible and changing depending on the time. They remained neutral by embracing both, like a father who loves his two warring sons.

  Maman, without identity papers, could go on being neutral when armed men told her to get up and follow them. She took only three steps before fainting because she had seen her white tunic coloured with blood-red stains. She thought she’d been hit, but it was the blood of other passengers, including the neighbour who had been impassive in the face of orders given at the butts of rifles and the barrels of guns.

  kiên nhẫn

  patience

  MAMAN WOKE UP IN the corner of a straw hut, surrounded by familiar sounds. Nearby, crackling coals, the rustling of water palms and the whispering of discussions were punctuated by the yapping of dogs and the steady whack of a knife on a plank of wood. The scent of chopped lemongrass caressed her nostrils like a mother’s hand on her cheek. In this way, she stopped being afraid. Still, she opened her eyes on a world that was strange and unknown to her. In the village, there were no longer “women” or “men,” no “aunts” or “great-uncles,” only comrades. She became Comrade Nhẫn, a name she gave herself before opening her eyes for the first time, a name that had no baggage and no family. The name came to her almost naturally because she’d repeated it hundreds of times over basins of her brothers’ and sisters’ soiled laundry. At each of the spots and dirty marks they’d made deliberately to spoil the whiteness of the white cotton and to challenge the effectiveness of 72 percent soap like that from Marseille, she said very softly, “kiên nhẫn”—“patience”—her personal mantra, or rather her personal accomplishment, because she was finally able to hear the gently captivating melody created by the rubbing of wet and soapy cloth.

  For five years she lived in this village as Nhẫn, a name that carried a message, like all the others. Some had chosen Determination (Chí). Others had preferred Fatherland (Quốc), and still others had dared to pick Courage (Dũng) or Peace (Bình). All had given up Orchid (Lan), Prosperity (Lộc) and Snow (Tuyết).

  Perhaps she could have escaped and gone home, because there were neither fences nor barbed wire around the village. No one had tortured her. No one had tied her down. No one had interrogated her. What they demanded was simply some essays and presentations on patriotism, courage, independence, colonialism, sacrifice. They hadn’t asked for her parents’ names, the number of her brothers and sisters, and, most important, never asked for her real name, because members of the resistance had left their families for a collective cause that overshadowed their individual lives. Unlike her, most had joined the resistance of their own free will. She was ashamed of never having felt the same unconditional love for this country which was hers as well. She was ashamed of wanting to stay within the invisible boundaries because she wanted to spare her family suspicions and accusations of treason if she went back to settle with them after living on the other shore, on enemy land. She stayed there for herself as well, to avoid living. In the village, she just had to follow.

  mìn

  mine

  AT FIRST, SHE FOLLOWED the routine of those in charge of the kitchen and the health care group. Later, once her feet were protected by calluses and toughened scars, she would walk for weeks to translate chemistry textbooks from French to Vietnamese for workers who manufactured mines in the heart of the tropical forest. One day, she received an order to follow a female comrade wearing a brown Vietnamese shirt. She took Maman to the market, where a woman dressed in a faded lavender-coloured smock gave her a yoke. At one end, the basket contained Chinese water spinach, at the other, yams. Those enormous roots made the yoke tip back when she hoisted the bamboo carrying pole onto her shoulder. Maman lost her balance in the first seconds before she learned how to synchronize the rhythm of the two weights with her steps. She crossed the checkpoint on the bridge by blending into the crowd. A few streets from the bridge exit, she lost sight of the woman in the lavender smock. But a little farther along, another woman called out to her, grabbing her arm.

  “Little sister, are your yams nice and starchy today? They look good to me. My son just had a tooth pulled. I want to make him some yam soup as a change from rice soup. He’s a fussy one. But he’s a good boy! I really don’t like grating yams. It always makes my hands sting. Can you help me? Can you come to the house and grate them for me? Come! Come with me.”

  By following the woman, she was starting, unwittingly, her work as a spy for the resistance.

  cha

  father

  SHE SLEPT IN THE woman’s kitchen for several weeks, then was moved to another house where she might prove useful. During the journey, which took her through a durian plantation, in the midst of those heavy, prickly fruit that fortunately fall only at night, she spotted her father in conversation with two men. She felt a spontaneous urge to run towards him as she used to do when she was a little girl. Her guide saw Maman’s conical hat slip towards her back, revealing her eyes, which betrayed her impulse. Before she could turn her body in the same direction as her eyes, Maman heard: “Đừng.” The guide did not say “No” or “Stop” or “Walk,” but “Restrain yourself.” Ma
man looked away. Her father seemed to have aged a great deal in five years. He still had the imposing posture of a judge, but his cheeks sagged now as if they’d lost the muscles for smiling. She was afraid he would see her because that would give him one more burden to carry, one more situation to resolve and, above all, hundreds of answers to give to the authorities.

  It was the last time Maman saw her father: beneath the durians, which the Vietnamese call sầu riêng. Until that day, she had never thought about the name formed by those two words, which means literally “personal sorrows.” One forgets perhaps that those sorrows, like their flesh, are sealed hermetically into compartments under a carapace bristling with thorns.

  trắng

  white

  AS FOR ME, I never knew who my father was. Mean-spirited gossips suspect that he is white, tall and a colonizer because I have a delicate nose and luminous, pale skin. Maman often told me she’d always wanted that whiteness for me; the whiteness of bánh cuốn. She would take me to the vendor of Vietnamese crepes to watch her spread the rice flour mixture onto a piece of heavy cotton placed directly above a gigantic cauldron of boiling water. She spread the liquid by turning her ladle onto the cloth to cover it completely. In a few seconds, the cream was transformed into a thin, translucent skin that she would peel off with a bamboo stalk sharpened into a long, thin paddle. Maman claimed that she was the only mother who knew how to wrap her daughter in that crepe while she was napping so that her skin could be compared with the shimmer of snow and the brilliance of porcelain. In the same way the lotuses preserve their perfume despite the stench of the swamps where they grow, I must never allow rude comments to soil that purity.

  Maman also knew the secret of how to change the shape of the nose. Some Asian women try to increase the prominence of their nasal bones with silicone implants, but Maman just had to gently pull my nose nine times every morning to Westernize it. That’s why my name is Mãn, which means “perfectly fulfilled,” or “may there be nothing left to desire,” or “may all wishes be granted.” I can ask for nothing more because my name imposes on me that state of satisfaction and satiety. Unlike Guy de Maupassant’s Jeanne, who dreamed of grasping all the joys in life when she left the convent, I grew up without dreams.

  bếp

  kitchen

  MAMAN HAD BEEN ABLE to create a peaceful life for us between two worlds. I found that divided space again in Montreal, in my husband’s restaurant kitchen. The movements of life outside were kept on hold by the constant noise of the exhaust fan. Time was marked by the number of orders inserted in the slit of the metal bar and not by minutes or hours. In summer, it was the relentless heat that distorted the very notion of time. In winter, the fire door that opened onto the yard was permanently closed, turning the kitchen into a strongbox. The man who cleaned the filters in the exhaust fan was the only person who brought back some life to the space. He came once a month. He always knocked very loudly, as if he were in distress—though he was in a hurry only because his long list of clients demanded speed and his wife, clean hands with no oil. He was the one who taught me to use the weather as a greeting.

  “Nice day.”

  “It’s hot.”

  “It’s hailing.”

  “It’s snowing.”

  “It’s windy.”

  “It’s raining.”

  câu hỏi

  questions

  IN SOUTH VIETNAM, we never talk about the weather. We never make comments, perhaps because there are no seasons, no changes, like in this kitchen. Or maybe because we accept things as they are, as they happen to us, never asking why or how.

  Once, through the little square opening for serving the plates, I heard some lawyer clients say that you should only ask questions to which you already know the answers. Otherwise, it’s better to be silent. I will never find answers to my questions, and that may be why I’ve never asked one. All I did was climb up and down the stairs that connected my oven to my bed. My husband built the stairwell to protect me from the cold in winter and the vagaries of life outside in any weather.

  ăn hàng

  street food

  WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED, the restaurant menu was very basic, like those in street restaurants in Vietnam: one dish, one specialty. In Hanoi, the old district was criss-crossed by streets that specialized in a single product: Vermicelli Street, Tombstone Street, Metal Street, Salt Street, Fan Street … Today, bamboo ladders are sold on Sails Street and silk clothes on Hemp Street. As before, craftspeople still set up next to one another, offering the same goods as always. For a while, Maman and I lived on Chicken and Medicinal Herbs Street in Hanoi. Of the two rows of gà tần restaurants, we preferred the one with the second-floor patio that wrapped around a big banyan tree.

  đắng

  bitter

  WHEN MY HUSBAND fell sick for the first time, I prepared a dish for him that involved gently cooking chicken with lotus seeds, ginkgo nuts and dried goji berries. According to certain beliefs, a portion of eternity stays behind in the lotus, while the ginkgo strengthens the neurons, since its leaves are shaped like brains. As for the goji berries, books attesting to their medicinal virtues have existed since the days of emperors and princesses. The benefits of the dish are likely due to the attention devoted to its preparation. In addition to the long hours of slow cooking, the shell of the ginkgo must be cracked firmly but with restraint, to protect the whole of the tender flesh. And the green germ must be removed from the lotus seeds to get rid of their bitter taste.

  It’s rare that bitterness is totally eliminated, because it’s often found in foods considered to be cold, those that don’t inflame us— unlike mangoes, hot peppers, chocolate. It’s believed that we should cut back on tastes we enjoy too easily because they’re bad for us, while a bitter taste restores the balance. I could have avoided separating the lotus seeds in two to eliminate the germs, which may be drunk in infusions to bring on sleep. But I wanted to avoid extremes: extreme tastes, extreme sensations.

  cạo gió

  scratching the wind

  DURING THE THREE DAYS of my husband’s fever, I fed him, a mouthful at a time. In Vietnam, when we don’t know what has caused a death, we blame the wind, as if catching an impure wind could kill us. That’s why I asked him to take off his shirt so I could chase away the bad wind by scratching his back with a porcelain spoon moistened with a few drops of tiger balm. I had never looked at a man’s skin so close up. I drew his skeleton on it by rubbing between the bones and the length of his spine. Dark red blotches emerged on the surface, eliminating the heat and perhaps all the pains that had never been felt. I repeated those ancient movements to care for a stranger who had become my only anchoring point. I would have liked to know how to comfort him, run my hand over his skin. All I could do was warm him with the blanket that still smelled of the long journey from the Chinese factory to our apartment.

  cà phê

  coffee

  AS SOON AS HE was able to get back on his feet, he resumed serving Tonkinese soups to his customers. Many were bachelors waiting for their Vietnamese wives or to have the fare needed for plane tickets. Most came for a bowl of soup three or four times a week. They would arrive before opening on Saturday or Sunday morning for a filter coffee with my husband, and compared the length of time they had to wait with that of the drops of coffee that dripped onto the condensed milk in their glasses. I served the same breakfast to everyone, but I changed what was on offer every morning to the rhythm of my virtual visit to the streets of Vietnam.

  I read once that in Japan each town specializes in one kind of cake. Men travelling on business often bring home a box of desserts from the town where they’ve been. Sometimes a man doesn’t leave the town where he lives, only his wife, temporarily, to be with his mistress. The men allow themselves now and then to withdraw from their real lives, to take a vacation. In that case, there are shops that, anticipating those sorts of absences, offer men cakes from different towns.

  As in Japan and mayb
e everywhere else, Vietnamese towns and villages have their specialties too. So I only had to go back mentally to Chợ Lớn, the big Chinese neighbourhood in Saigon, to get the idea of preparing pork meatballs wrapped around a small piece of sparerib, steamed in a trickle of tomato sauce. This dish is unfailingly served with a baguette, as if France had always been part of Sino-Vietnamese culinary traditions. Week after week, clients who were friends of my husband received their plate or their bowl with ever-greater anticipation.

  One of the men came from Rạch Giá, a coastal town where a meal-in-a-bowl—a poached fish with vermicelli, embellished with shrimp eggs and caramelized pork—had been invented. Tears ran down his cheeks when I sprinkled his bowl with a small spoonful of pickled garlic. Eating that soup, he murmured that he had tasted his land, the land where he’d grown up, where he was loved.

  On busy weekend mornings, customers who were also friends were content with a bowl of rice covered with an óp la (fried egg) salted with soy sauce. This way they began their day off with a certain feeling of quiet happiness.