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  The blood of the mountain people flowed in his veins. He owed his loyalty to the Cham culture and was determined to defend that language, which was in the process of disappearing. Vincent devoted himself to this group as much as to the populations of red-headed cranes and laughingthrushes, because he had made it his profession to protect the vulnerable. When he showed me the reaction of the mimosa pudica leaves, which closed up at the gentlest touch to protect themselves from predators, he convinced me that I was wrong to believe I was as invisible and common as the grass that grew between cracks in the cement without attracting the attention of anyone besides shy young girls. He compared me to the rare udumbara flowers, which the Buddhists said appeared only once every three thousand years, whereas in fact they hid by the hundreds beneath the skin of their fruits. Sometimes they escaped to blossom on a leaf, on a wire fence, or in my entire body after our first kiss.

  WEST LAKE HỒ TY

  WHILE I LIVED in a space as empty as the echo that circulated there in response to a rare noise, in Vincent’s home every object spoke and told its story. They came from different places, different times, different cultures, but were melded, woven together like a nest. The long cushion set on a wooden bench with the finely carved back was filled with kapok gathered, worked, and sold by an Indonesian family with whom he had stayed; the teapot hidden in a coconut whose interior had been shaped to fit the curve of the ceramic pot and retain the water’s heat belonged to the monk who had lived in this “hut” before him; the cutting board came from the trunk of a hundred-year-old tree fallen during combat, which Vincent had helped to move. In the garden he had hung up, in the form of a cross, two enormous stalks of bamboo, on which he had suspended a dozen cages that had imprisoned the rare birds he had bought from collectors in order to return them to their natural habitats.

  In the evening, a woman he called his “Vietnamese mother” lit candles inside the cages to illuminate the garden before going back home. I saw in her wrinkled eyes that I was not the first woman to marvel at the starfruit, to be bewitched by the perfume of the yellow-hearted white flowers of the frangipani, and to fall in love with the rice-husk colour of the loose curls at the nape of Vincent’s neck. He heated water in two enormous kettles to fill a cement reservoir for gathering rainwater, which he had transformed into a bathtub. It was in this bath, constantly rewarmed with water from the kettles, that he asked me to go with him to London for a fundraising event where he would put up for auction the naming rights to his next discovery. He knew from experience that people are prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands, to immortalize their passage on earth.

  LONDON

  IN THE WHISPERING GALLERY of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Vincent’s voice travelled across and set its stamp on the thirty-four metres of wall separating us, uttering two of the most time-worn words in the French language, but words that had never been addressed to me. Before I could reply, he’d already taken my hand to run to the British Library, where he showed me the Magna Carta, the manuscript of Alice in Wonderland, and the first book ever printed. He was as at ease in a T-shirt as in the tuxedo with cufflinks he wore to present before a packed hall his birds and their story. He took his audience on a journey, describing the life of the forest, as if every tree had its own personality, and every animal a destiny, and that together they lived in harmony, as enemies, as lovers…He ended his slide show with the photo of a giant flower, twice his height, which bloomed only once every ten years, for only seventy-two hours. He provoked a burst of laughter and applause in concluding that men, being what they are, had called it “Titan’s phallus.” He had to hold me by the waist so as not to lose me in the crush of women who saw in him the reincarnation of Tarzan, with his handsome face, his jade eyes, and his protective shoulders. Over and over, he introduced me with the same words used by Jacinthe: “Please meet my lovely Vi”; “Je vous présente ma belle Vi”; “Darf ich Ihnen meine wundervolle Freundin Vi vorstellen?”

  CORNWALL

  DURING OUR CAR TRIP to the Cornwall coast to sleep at the mythic Headland Hotel at Newquay, I asked him why. Why me? He said that he’d seen me braiding the hair of the little girl who sold ant eggs three years earlier in Cambodia. He’d expected to find me that evening at the Grand Hôtel d’Angkor restaurant, where almost all the foreigners converged, but he’d looked for me in vain. As usual, from fear, from timidity, from ignorance, I’d preferred to eat alone in my hotel room with a book.

  Life gave us a second chance much later, in Hanoi. Vincent had glimpsed me through the half-open door to the room he had just left, where the first meeting between my boss and the minister of the environment took place. He could tell that I’d been settled in the capital for only a short time since, in contrast to the powder blue or sky blue of Vietnamese silk, the royal blue of my dress still evoked the bold colour of the French flag. As well, my pink cheeks betrayed my rapid Western gait and my ignorance of the slow pace of a country in the process of change. He would have liked to reach me right after he had learned the location of my office from the assistant to the minister of the environment. Unfortunately, along with other colleagues, he had to leave for an extended period of time to explore a recently discovered grotto. He interpreted this third chance encounter at the embassy as a sign.

  In the forest, amid dozens of animals of all sorts that appeared and disappeared around him, the colour of a feather, the length of a beak, the form of a nest, would catch his eye and reveal to him the features of a species. As for what had captivated him about me, it was my ability to bend my legs, to curve my back, and to hunch my shoulders to match the fragility of the young merchant who was preparing portions of ant eggs with the help of small green leaves.

  RED RIVER SÔNG HỒNG

  WHEN WE CAME BACK FROM England, Vincent continued his excursions into the forest. His extended absences made me doubt the true existence of the evenings spent at his side, jumping when an acrobatic rat dropped into the wok of the vendor of sautéed crab vermicelli; watching a dragonfly land on his mortar’s pestle while he was grinding up a mixture of spices; going to sleep under the mosquito netting whose four corners were attached with threads of different colours, rolled around rusted nails hammered crookedly into different walls and beams. Had I not received every morning from the hand of a messenger the photo of a bird with its description, along with a photo of a part of me, I would have thought that I had dreamed my life or created a mythic character to provide me with a dream life.

  Vincent reminded me not to sit sidesaddle on moto-taxis if the driver seemed drunk; not to buy meat from the merchant who chased away flies by spraying his strips of pork with Raid; not to leave anti-mosquito spirals lit while I slept; not to exchange dollars for dongs on street corners; not to eat the same woman’s pho every night…On the other hand, he forgot to warn me that the Red River overflowed its banks during harvest season. The water rose in only a few hours, forcing the people living beside it to save their refrigerators on little aluminum boats built by artisans in the next neighbourhood. They dove into the water to unplug the television or to lift up a piece of furniture. Without the earthen dyke surrounding Hanoi, the city would have been submerged long ago. That dyke had survived a number of wars, but I wondered if it would support the new construction on its back for much longer. For that reason, one day the authorities cut off the houses that extended beyond the limits of the dyke, leaving a surreal landscape of open living rooms, split kitchens, amputated bedrooms with their residents continuing to live there as if onstage, in a play. I lived a few streets from the dyke. I was certain that the wooden beams blocking its openings would give way under the pressure of water and chaos. From my balcony on the sixth floor, I made a list of the dozens of ways to die, and electrocution easily came out on top, since hundreds of tangled electrical wires were suspended in a disorderly and precarious manner all over the streets. Lightning frightened me, because I had to go out on the balcony to empty the water that flowed freely into the ap
artment, cascading down the six floors of steps inside the building.

  That night, I would have liked to have a god to whom I could entrust Vincent. I also wanted to call my mother to apologize for having always disappointed her. On my last visit, she died a little whenever I pronounced Vietnamese words newly acquired in the North, with a Northern accent. Her friends lamented the fact that she had raised a daughter who’d gone back to serve Communism, that I had become a red princess, a traitor to the memory of the Southern soldiers. If I were to be struck by lightning, I wanted her to know that I had met mothers who had not chosen to send their sons to the front, who had not chosen their political allegiance, who had only hoped that their children would survive them, just like her. But I did not call her. Because I would have worried her with my fear in the middle of the storm.

  Vincent cut short his expedition when he heard about the torrential rains. He forced me to come to him, because my mattress was still damp on account of the water leaking from the roof. The hundred-year-old tiles of his little house seemed to drain away water more effectively than recent constructions, modelled on Soviet architecture. I took shelter in his arms, tucking my head into the hollow of his collarbone as if the storm were still rumbling away behind the shutters. Every time I opened my eyes that night, Vincent’s gaze met mine as if he had not slept, as if I were one of his birds, which he observed with kindness and patience. “Tell me about the storm, my angel.”

  hollow of the collarbone

  I TOLD Vincent how I’d transported the little refrigerator from the ground-floor office to the first floor, how I’d pulled the mattress in front of the balcony to block the water coming in under the door, how I’d resorted to repeating the Sanskrit mantra that my Buddhist grandmother had taught me.

  I also told him how Monsieur Luân, a highly placed official, had left his mark by licking my ear at the end of our meeting in my office. Had I not heard Hà’s voice in my head, I would have frozen like a fawn in the headlights instead of reflexively walking to the door and leaving. Hà often told me that it was not my buttons done up to the neck and at the wrists that would protect me, but the strength I would draw on to disengage myself.

  Whispering Hà’s words into the hollow of Vincent’s collarbone, I realized that my mother had taught me above all to become as invisible as possible, or at least to transform myself into a shadow so that no one would attack me, to pass through walls and melt into my surroundings. She insisted that in the art of war, the first lesson consisted of mastering one’s disappearance, which was at the same time the best attack and the best defence. Until I saw the light shining like crystals in Vincent’s beads of perspiration, I had always thought that my mother preferred her boys out of habit, out of love for my father. My voice echoing in the circle of Vincent’s arms finally led me to understand my mother’s desire to have me grow up differently, to launch myself elsewhere, to offer myself a fate different from her own. It took me two continents and an ocean to grasp that she had had to go against her nature to entrust the education of her own daughter to Hà, another woman, far away from her, and her exact opposite.

  BURMA MYANMAR MYAN MA

  ~

  wonderful country

  I HAD NEVER been at all curious about visiting Burma before the day Vincent awaited me at the Rangoon airport for the weekend of the Water Festival and the Buddhist New Year. He’d been working in that country for some time, trying to convince the government of the purely scientific nature of his organization, whose sole objective was to protect the environment in regions at risk. His organization functioned the way birds do, paying no heed to frontiers and migrating from one region to another, unconcerned about the political regime in power. In Burma, the military junta imposed absolute obedience on the populace, to the letter, with an exception made for automobiles, which were permitted to have the steering wheel on the left or on the right. The leader in power set great store by the advice of astrologers, who recommended changing the direction of traffic in the streets in the name of the country’s security, even if the public buses opened their doors on the opposite side. The collective good had to trump the individual good where peace and order were concerned.

  Fortunately, Bagan seemed to have been protected from the leaders’ mood swings. Perhaps its three thousand temples safeguarded it from the course of time and the uneasiness of the people seated uncomfortably on the pointed summits of the pyramids. Vincent wrapped me in the cocoon of this city, where everything seemed to move to the rhythm of the wagons pulled by daydreaming mules. To celebrate the start of the Burmese new year, tradition decreed that people be cleansed of their sins of the past year by sprays of perfumed water. In Bagan, you used the palms of your hands rather than pumps and cannons with powerful jets, as in Bangkok or Rangoon. We bought sarongs at the market, and also a length of bark from a nutmeg tree, whose yellow powder protected the skin from the burning sun. Men slathered their faces with it, while women drew circles on their cheeks out of simple vanity. Vincent drew dozens of patterns on me, while I in turn applied this powder to his arms, his legs, and his back, writing a thousand words of love with my finger. He took hundreds of photographs of us, for our future children.

  CAIRANNE

  BAGAN’S SLOWNESS called to mind that of Cairanne, in France, where Vincent’s family had a second home surrounded by vineyards. Vincent wanted to plan a visit to our respective families in Quebec and Cairanne, one after the other, during the Christmas break at the end of the year. I had told only Hà that I’d found my “Louis,” that I’d become the woman she’d always dreamed I would be, that I now saw life from a lookout on its dizzying heights. I was gliding on the wings of Vincent’s birds. He himself had helped me to grow my own wings, by calling me “my angel” and by orchestrating flights for me: by airplane, by parachute, by hot-air balloon.

  I no longer feared that my mother would stop speaking French to show that she disapproved of Vincent. I only wanted to share with her this sudden lust for life that I was experiencing for the first time, but circumstances didn’t give me that opportunity. She suffered a mild heart attack that confined her to a hospital bed one week before the date planned for my visit to Quebec. I stayed near her at my brother Long’s during her convalescence, which made it impossible for Vincent to come, and for me to go to Cairanne.

  Hoa had given birth to the first baby in our family a year earlier. My mother would have liked her grandson to bear the complete name of her sole and eternal love, Lê Văn An. My brother had kept only the “Lê,” contending that our father had forfeited this privilege the day he’d allowed his wife and children to struggle on alone. Long would have liked his father to have witnessed the success of his restaurant business and his many honours for innovation and leadership. And that he should feel regret for having been absent. Long’s rapid rise had frightened my mother, who remembered what her father had said when she became Ða Lạt’s major producer of orchids: “Success often brings unhappiness.” She still blamed herself for having worked too hard and, above all, for having loved too intensely. If she had denied her husband his escapades, if she had allowed him to come to her instead of constantly anticipating his desires, if she had wept to his face and not in hiding, perhaps he would have been able to assume his role as head of the family. She had tried to compensate by strengthening Hoa’s ability to offer Long a haven of absolute calm and serenity after his turbulent days of meetings and of women who took too much interest in him. On the other hand, she often insisted on taking the baby so Hoa could go to the hairdresser regularly, exercise every day, and accompany Long to social events. Living in one of the two parts of the bi-generational house designed by Long, she could easily withdraw and involve herself according to what was required. She monitored Long’s homecomings. If he arrived too late too often, she prepared his favourite dishes. She called him at work without making demands, without mentioning that a family was waiting for him, without reminding him that he should resist his desires. She simply brought the dishe
s to Hoa, and hoped to hear a laugh or two through the walls.

  PRINCETON

  AS FOR LỘC, my mother rarely visited him. He had stayed to work at Princeton after his post-doctorate in oncology. She could not resist noting with sadness that his American wife fed him mostly frozen food. Lộc cooked better and much more often than Sheryl did. My mother understood that they took pleasure in discussing molecules and collaborating on one article or another. To her mind, their conjugal partnership enhanced their professional relationship and vice versa. But she kept her opinions to herself, out of respect, and largely because of a lack of understanding. She contented herself with filling the trunk of Lộc’s car with prepared dishes, preserved in coolers. Out of love, Lộc carried it all off and, at the border, lied when the customs agent asked him if he had any food.