Saigon (25 page)

He walked without seeing the streets along which he passed and didn’t notice that both the Süreté agents were following him. They entered the foyer of the hotel openly a minute or two after Joseph had gone up to his room, and the nervous Annamese clerk on the reception desk, after one glance at their stolid faces, made the hotel register available to them without question. Knowing from previous experience what was required of him, the clerk turned away and busied himself with some mundane task while the agents copied into a notebook the name and address of Joseph Theodore Sherman of The Sherman Plantation, Charles County, Virginia, U.S.A. 

“Because the river is so peaceful and serene, the sages say the heart of Annam can be heard beating on its banks.” Lan turned to smile warmly at Joseph as their sampan glided southwards out of Hue on the glittering waters of the Huong Giang — the River of Perfumes. “That’s why the emperors chose these lovely glades outside the city for their final resting places.” 

Joseph smiled back at her and glanced around him, marveling inwardly at the richness of the natural color in the landscape. Under a clear azure sky the river was as blue as the silk of Lan’s ao dai, and all along its borders willow trees bent as though in homage to trail their pale tendrils in its sparkling waves; to the west the river was sheltered by the Annamite Cordillera, and the dense emerald-green foliage cloaking the shoulders of the mountains tumbled extravagantly down their slopes and across the valleys to the water’s edge. 

“I expect you already know, Monsieur Sherman, that we Annamese believe that the spirits of our ancestors continue to dwell among us after their deaths,” said Tran Van Tam politely from one of the rear seats. “But we believe too that the well-being of each family depends on the happiness of those spirits — and it’s our responsibility to see that they remain content. It’s the same for our nation too — and that’s why this region where the emperors have their tombs in the most beautiful and sacred in all our land.” 

Joseph nodded and smiled his thanks. To make his duties as chaperon for the visit to the emperors’ tombs less intrusive, Tam had brought along the girl he had agreed to marry at his parents’ command; plain, and shy, her chief virtue was that she was the daughter of another wealthy mandarin family, and she spoke only when Tam addressed her. In comparison, Lan’s beauty seemed to Joseph’s excited gaze more breathtaking than ever. A faint flush of color that he had seen rush into her cheeks on his arrival in Hue that morning had persisted; she had been visibly embarrassed by his appearance at her father’s official residence inside the red walls of the Imperial City and was still reserved in her manner when he called again to collect her for the afternoon outing. But once on the river, her eyes had begun to shine, and as the coolie on the stern rowed the sampan beyond the city, she eagerly pointed out the ancient landmarks that became visible one by one in the surrounding hills. 

“There’s the Shrine to the Venerable Lady of Heaven ... and that’s the Tower of the Source of Happiness . . and do you see the little Confucian temple almost hidden by the trees? It’s the Van Mieu — the Pagoda of Literary Culture.” 

Joseph smiled back at her each time, scarcely taking in her words; he was above all else delighted to find himself close to her again so soon, and he had to make a conscious effort not to stare. Her glossy black hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and the gentle wind ruffled it now and then, causing her to toss her head prettily and brush an occasional strand from her eyes with what to Joseph seemed movements of infinite grace and delicacy; she smiled at him sometimes in her exasperation with the playful breeze, and Joseph felt a simple glow of happiness take hold inside him. 

His decision to travel to Hue by the first possible train had been taken during the sleepless hours that followed his meeting with Ngo Van Loc. Throughout the long night, as new tortured images of the past invoked by his conversation with Loc flickered through his brain, the memory of Lan’s beautiful golden face in the malabar began to return more and more frequently until it assumed the force of an obsession; amidst the turmoil of deceit and suspicion in his mind, she seemed suddenly to personify the sweetness and purity he instinctively craved and before dawn he rose and packed his belongings to ready himself for the journey north. In the note that he left for Paul Devraux explaining his premature departure he had said only that no student of Asian history could possibly afford to miss the imperial ceremonies, and this half-truth had left him feeling guilty and ill-at-ease as he hurried to the railway station. The little wood-burning train that left before breakfast had taken nearly three days to cover the five hundred miles to Hue, stopping each night to deposit its passengers in wayside inns, and during the long, slow journey he had suffered renewed pangs of remorse at the thought that he was betraying Paul’s trust. But as the train drew nearer to Hue, the growing excitement he felt at the prospect of seeing Lan again had gradually overshadowed these thoughts and they had been replaced by a growing anxiety about how he would be received in the capital of Annam. To his great relief, however, although he had neither announced his coming nor received any invitation, Tran Van Hieu had welcomed him courteously at his residence. After inquiring briefly about the health of his family and thanking him elaborately once again for his rescue of the gibbon eleven years before, it had been Tran Van Hieu himself who had suggested that a visit to the tombs might be of special interest to a student of Asian history. 

“Don’t imagine they are just gloomy sepulchers,” he had warned with a smile. “Many of the emperors supervised the building of their own tombs and often used them during their lifetimes as country palaces where they could meditate in peace and tranquility close to nature. There you’ll discover the art and sculpture of the Orient wedded in perfect harmony to great natural beauty.” 

When the sampan coolie finally moored beside a long grove of sacred banyan trees, and they approached the tomb of Minh Mang, heir and successor to Emperor Gia Long, Joseph remembered Tran Van Hieu’s words. A breathless hush seemed to hang in the air above the red-pillared pavilions built across the center of a wide, crescent-shaped expanse of water known as the Lake of Scintillating? Brightness; lotus flowers clustered on its surface as thickly as freshly fallen snow, and in the distance pointed hills and mountains were visible, forested thickly with the same luxuriantly green trees that bordered the lake. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful in all my life,” said Joseph in an awed voice as he mounted the blue granite steps of the entrance gate at Lan’s side. “It scarcely seems real.” 

“Whenever I felt troubled as a little girl I liked to come here with my nurse—and somehow my worries always went away. I wonder if it’s lost its magic powers.” 

Her expression was unexpectedly sad and there was a faraway look in her eyes; glancing around, Joseph saw that Tam was already descending the steps in front of them with his future wife. “Is something worrying you, Lan?” he asked gently. 

She shook her head quickly and smiled. “No — but so many things change as you grow up, don’t they? It always makes me feel sad when I realize I can no longer go back.” 

The simple poignancy of her words moved Joseph deeply, and he took a step closer to her. 

“The burial mound itself is beneath that green hill covered with tangled trees, do you see?” She shaded her eyes and pointed along the wide terrace that bisected the lake. “To get there we have to pass through the Gate of Dazzling Virtue. In that temple on the other side, we’ll see the memorial tablets to the emperor and empress. The gardens have been laid out in the form of the Chinese character for ‘Eternity’ ...“ She broke off when she became aware that he was gazing at her instead of following her pointing finger, and the intensity of the expression in his blue eyes made her blush. 

“I’m sure no empress was ever more beautiful than you, Lan,” he said softly. “Seeing you here among these lovely old palaces makes me realize why your father and mother named you after the heroine in ‘The Tale of Kieu.’” He paused and smiled at her again. “Do you remember those lines describing Kieu...? 

‘Crystal-bright autumn streams, her eyes, 

Her brows curve like hills in spring, 

Flowers envy the brilliance of her face, 

Willows wish only for her grace, 

Compared to her beauty, the riches of 

An emperor’s palace are without worth.’” 

He continued to gaze wonderingly at her. “Those words could just as easily have been written about you, Lan 

She looked at him with startled eyes for a moment, then turned away and almost ran down the steps. 

Alarmed that she might fall, Joseph hurried after her and took her elbow to steady her. “I’ve been thinking about you constantly, Lan, since I last saw you,” he said breathlessly. “I’ve dreamed of you at night, too.” She didn’t reply or look at him, and when they reached the bottom of the steps he glanced anxiously ahead to check that Tam was beyond earshot. “I don’t seem to be able to get you out of my mind even for a minute.” 

She blushed deeply. “It’s not right to say such things to me, Joseph. We hardly know one another.” 

“But we’ve known each other for eleven years!” 

He smiled again, a dazzling, delighted smile which seemed to Lan to draw her towards him with the force of a physical embrace, and she glanced with agitation around the formal gardens. With the exception of the red-robed imperial guardians patrolling the terraces, the tomb was deserted; occasionally a blue-gowned mandarin appeared, moving reverently among the temples on some errand aimed at soothing the imperial spirits, but otherwise the antique pavilions stood silent in the middle of the dreaming lake as though hanging on their every word. “You must promise me, Joseph, not to say such things again,” she said distractedly. “Otherwise, I can’t permit us to walk apart from my brother.” 

“Please forgive me!” Joseph felt a sudden, desperate regret. “I was so happy at seeing you again that I forgot myself.” 

She turned away abruptly and walked ahead of him. In the deep silence she was frightened that he might have been able to hear the sound of her heart racing inside her chest. A minute later she could still feel the touch of his hand, as comforting as his arm around her shoulders had been during those sudden moments of fright at the Cercle Sportif. Even in the sampan she had noticed herself suddenly at ease in his presence; she had become intensely aware of his strong, sunburned face, his good-natured smile, his broad shoulders that made him seem so powerful in comparison with the slight figure of her brother Tam. His closeness to her had produced again the same indefinable sense of physical well-being that she had first felt beside him in the malabar, but it had been the tender intensity of his smile as he quoted the lyrical passage of Nguyen Du’s epic poem that had made her pulse race so bewilderingly, and she determined to keep herself apart from him to try to still the commotion inside her. 

She bent with unnecessary concentration to study the inscriptions on the memorial tablets among the urn-wood pillars of the shadowy Sung An Dien, pretended to lay wondering fingers on the long-legged brass cranes before another altar, peered closely at the gold and jade ornaments, the urns and vases in each richly furnished chamber as though she had never seen them before; but during all this time there was barely a moment when she wasn’t acutely aware of his presence, wherever he moved around her. 

In his turn Joseph, anxious not to offend again, was careful to remain at a distance behind her as he wandered through the gardens and palaces. He too pretended to study the treasures of the tomb with care, but the motionless rows of life-sized mandarins and elephants carved from white stone drifted almost unseen past his eyes and the sculpted dragons and other mythological beasts entwined in the roofs and balustrades in reality received little more than a passing glance from him. As he followed her slowly across the lake towards the tree-covered tumulus known as the Mount of the Sun, the antique, weather-mellowed dwelling places of the imperial spirits remained beyond the real focus of his vision; to him the splendid pavilions were merely a sublime backdrop for the lithe, living figure moving beguilingly ahead of him, her long mane of hair flowing darkly down her back. In one of the shadowy temples when she thought she was unobserved, she knelt briefly before an altar in prayer, and coming in sight of her suddenly from the garden, his heart lurched inside him; with her head bowed over her hands, her kneeling figure seemed to radiate simple piety and goodness, and in that instant he knew he loved her. 

The realization made him tremble inwardly, and he wanted desperately to rush to her side and tell her of his feelings. But remembering the startled, uneasy expression in her eyes minutes before, he fought down the impulse and waited out of sight until she rose to her feet again. Then he moved quietly to her side, feeling a new sense of pleasure in their closeness, and together they viewed Minh Mang’s most intimate possessions — his great teak bed with its long pillow of decorated porcelain, his favorite jewels and weapons, the altars on which every morning fresh dishes of his favorite foods and beverages were set out by tomb guardians. They didn’t speak again until they were standing outside in the Garden of Eternity where azaleas, orange flamboyants and frangipani blossomed around twin lotus pools; the sun was still pleasantly warm, and the deep, thrilling silence was broken only occasionally by the muted calling of waterfowl from the lake below them. 

“This must be how paradise is, Lan,” said Joseph in an awed whisper. “It hasn’t lost any of its magic, has it?” 

She shook her head, but there was still a hint of melancholy in her smile. “It’s still an enchanted place — but perhaps as we grow up our worries grow bigger too. I don’t really expect my prayers to be answered this time.” 

Joseph frowned, “Then there is something bothering you?” 

“Yes.” She looked anxiously along the terrace and didn’t continue until she spotted Tam and his fiancée climbing the steps to the Gate of Dazzling Virtue. “I try not to think about it all the time — but my father was very upset by the trouble at the Cercle Sportif. Kim’s hotheadedness has caused trouble between them before. But after the tennis match he and my father quarreled violently. ... Kim insulted him and vowed to become a revolutionary. In the end my father ordered him never to return to our house.” The recollection disquieted her, and she tugged agitatedly at the bracelet of translucent blue jade on her left wrist, “It’s upset all my family, of course.”