Mrs. Doan, on the morning of the engagement visit, sat alone in the formal room drinking tea. She could hear her three daughters singing in the kitchen as they prepared lunch for the afternoon’s guests, their song an old ballad about a fisherman who fell in love with a dolphin and drowned pursuing it into the sea. A silly song, really.
Thu, the bride-to-be, sang as though she were on stage, her voice loud and playful, lilting above those of her sisters, extravagant as always.
Mrs. Doan tried humming along, but soon lost the melody. She was remembering herself at twenty, not long before her own marriage to the Colonel, and it occurred to her that she used to sing every morning, no matter the weather, no matter her mood. Any song would do, and indeed she had carried this habit throughout her girlhood and into the first years of her marriage. It shocked her now to have forgotten.
She dipped a finger into her tea. She felt its tepidness like a clammy handshake. Mrs. Long, her sister, was coming any minute now to help with preparations, and Colonel Doan and Mr. Long were sure to return soon from their morning walk. That would leave only an hour before Thu’s fiancé and his family arrived, and that much less time for her to sit here alone and prepare herself for today’s reunion with Xuan.
She peered again at her wedding photo on the coffee table, housed in its silver frame alongside the two portraits of her long-departed parents. The Colonel, stately in his impeccable black suit, was holding her hand aloft as if offering it to the photographer, while she smiled widely in her scarlet aó dài and headdress, a radiant figure against the white walls of the church. People often remarked on how little they had changed from that day twenty years ago, how gracefully they both had aged; but while Mrs. Doan had by no means lost her beauty, she always felt the compliment was intended really for the Colonel. Outside of thinning hair and a few creases under his eyes, the Colonel was still the elegant and handsome soldier, with all the health of a wife eighteen years his junior. She, on the other hand, had grown more angular in the face, her skin harder and darker, as though someone had taken her younger self and chiseled a likeness out of a block of granite. She ran a finger along the dusty silver frame. It was not envy or nostalgia she felt, but something more akin to abandonment. If she could whisper it into her own ear, she’d say this: that the photograph, like all photographs, held images of the dead, entombed in the freeze of time, the fixture of an expired moment, and that the girl in the scarlet aó dài and headdress especially was a girl who looked like Mrs. Doan but would not, if pulled awake here into the present, recognize her.
“Shouldn’t you be busy doing something?”
Mrs. Doan startled at the voice of her older sister. Mrs. Long had arrived with a tin of French biscuits which she set loudly on the coffee table.
“Come now, Phuong,” Mrs. Long said, “you could have at least bought some flowers for the room.” She was wearing the red silk blouse they picked out together in Saigon last month. On any other day, Mrs. Doan would have borrowed it herself, but it annoyed her now that her sister, who rarely wore clothes this expensive or formal, had chosen today’s occasion to do so.
“You act like they’re royalty,” Mrs. Doan said dryly. She did not yet feel like moving from the couch. She watched her sister adjust the family portraits on the cabinet. “The boy’s parents know who the Colonel is. That should impress them enough.”
“Well that shouldn’t keep you from making them feel at home. You said you liked the parents when they came last week, didn’t you?”
“It was just the father and an older brother. And they were fine, I guess. The father seemed too formal when he asked the Colonel for his blessing. It was like he was reading something. No sincerity or feeling at all.”
“Don’t be so judgmental, Phuong. Give them a chance. They were probably just nervous about speaking to the Colonel.” Mrs. Long came and sat on the arm of the couch, next to Mrs. Doan. “So the rest of the family is coming today?”
“Yes. Six of them at least. Hopefully the mother isn’t as shy as the father. You might be right about them being nervous, but can you imagine how awkward the engagement party would be?” Mrs. Doan shook her head at the thought.
Her sister glanced at the kitchen and her voice softened. “So Xuan is coming?”
Mrs. Doan nodded at her teacup. “The boy insisted. Apparently Xuan is his favorite uncle. That’s what Thu told me. Today will be his only appearance since he’ll be out of town for the engagement party and the wedding. Conveniently out of town, I’m guessing. Thu barely knows him and yet she says she’s very disappointed.”
“She still has no idea?”
“Of course not. The Colonel would never tell her. And I imagine Xuan, for his own sake, would not have mentioned it either.”
Thu appeared from the kitchen, still humming, and hurried over to her aunt. “Your blouse, Auntie — it’s beautiful!” She caressed the fabric as though she were petting a puppy.
“Yes, yes — and look at you!” Mrs. Long beamed.
Thu had had her hair frizzéd yesterday and could not stop twirling her finger through the new curls.
“Thu, stop playing with your hair–” Mrs. Doan exclaimed. “And put it up if you’re fixing the food. I found a strand of curly hair in the chicken just last night. What would his family think?”
Thu’s smile wandered away, her hand dropping to her side. She looked confused but replied softly, “I will, Mother. I’ll put it up right now.”
Touching her niece on the elbow, Mrs. Long said, “Here, take these biscuits and set them out on a nice dish.”
Thu picked up the tin obediently and left the formal room. Mrs. Doan felt badly for snapping at her, but was soon eased by the sound of her singing anew in the kitchen. “That girl sings like she’s in an opera,” she muttered, chuckling to herself.
Her sister joined her now on the couch and took a sip from her teacup. They sat in silence for a moment before Mrs. Long, in a near whisper, said, “You won’t be bothered by it, will you?”
“I don’t know, Lien.” Mrs. Doan heard herself utter her sister’s name with unintended severity.
Her sister sighed heavily. Her voice went dull. “We should have discussed this. Good Lord, when I heard he was the boy’s uncle… Of all the boys Thu could’ve fallen for in this town. But I figured his coming would just be awkward. I didn’t think that after all these years it could still upset you. You can’t tell me you still have feelings for him–?”
Mrs. Doan shook her head impatiently. “No, no, stop being so suspicious. That’s not it at all.” She could not look at Mrs. Long.
“Then what’s got you so upset?”
Mrs. Doan shook her head again. She set her teacup carefully on the table. “I’m just remembering myself back then. How I felt. And what I did.”
“Stop it. We all fall in love when we’re young. You were only twenty. You were someone else entirely.”
“I know. That’s what’s bothering me.”
Mrs. Long frowned. “I don’t understand.”
For the first time that morning, Mrs. Doan smiled, to herself. She could see it the way her sister might have: it was a smile borne not of amusement or any measure of joy; it was a smile, rather, of dark amazement. Then it vanished, and she offered her sister a blank face. “He wrote me a letter.”
“A letter? When?”
“Two days ago. Come into the bedroom.”
Part Two
Phuong,
Perhaps you already know why I’m writing you. If you have no idea, then I hope you’ll understand for me once you’ve read everything. In any case, I won’t pretend that this letter is appropriate. Enough time has passed that writing these words — your name alone — is as strange for me as it must be for you to read them. But since we are soon meeting again, I feel I must be honest, as I had failed, long ago, to be with you. I only hope your sister told you everything back then.
During these past twenty years, from time to time, I’ve been made aware of you and your family. Long before my nephew ever met Thu, a friend had told me of your three girls and how smart and beautiful they were. I also know of the Colonel’s success. He deserves it after his time in the camps. Even in my envy, I never once wished a man like him any misfortune. In fact, I passed the farm a few years ago and was very impressed by what you’d both accomplished.
But I want to explain something. The truth is that I did successfully forget you. Don’t misunderstand, I was miserable for the first few years. Once you married, I knew it was too late, and I’d look at my wife and regret everything I had stupidly lost with you. But then, as time went by (and let me confess this), I began imagining that you were dead, that you no longer existed in the world, and that helped me. Eventually my regrets turned elsewhere. As you may or may not know, my marriage has lasted, but only out of habit and convenience. My wife and I love our children — that is all. I admit I married her in part for her family’s wealth, but all it has provided me is the means of occasionally escaping her. Working for her father often requires that I travel to other cities, sometimes for weeks, and it’s during these times that I am most content. My flaws are known to you and many others, so I don’t hesitate in admitting that I’ve had the company of various women over the years, even now and then a professional girl. If anything, I’ve sought these women out.
Which was my situation nearly five years ago on one particular trip to Dalat. My wife and I had hardly spoken to each other in over a week, which was common for us. Some silly argument about the children. Whatever it was, I was more than happy to go away for a few days.
When I arrived in Dalat, I handled my business affairs quickly and left myself two days to enjoy the city freely. It was very strange, traveling alone in a city full of tourists. The sight of newlyweds on their honeymoon was especially significant, though I was not, as you might think, saddened by it. Oddly enough, it made me feel outside myself, as though I was at liberty to do anything. I decided then to visit the Prenn waterfall and take a hike in the forests. In my experience, the prettiest women are often found at these tourist sites, foreign women especially, and the peaceful environment lends itself to sudden intimate conversations with strangers. I say all this at the risk of offending you, but I must be honest since this story requires it.
Before starting out, I had a light meal at the foot of the mountains, in a café filled with tourists, mostly old couples and families with children. My table was in the back. Eventually I must have fallen into some daydreaming (as I often do nowadays) because I felt awakened and sat up straight in my chair. I never believe people when they say they can feel someone watching them, but that was the sensation that had seized me, and, sure enough, when I peered around the crowded café, I spotted the person: a woman, sitting alone in the far corner, leaning on an elbow and staring at me. It took me a moment to realize it, but I swear that woman was you. It had been fifteen years since I’d laid eyes on you, or honestly even thought about you, but the woman had your every likeness. She even sat with her shoulders a little hunched like you used to. I figured it was one of two things: a woman who looked a lot like you and was interested in me, or it was you, yourself, recognizing me after all these years. Either way, my curiosity was strong.
So I decided to find out and was ready to make an approach. But then you (or the woman) stood up and walked out of the café and disappeared into the crowds before I could follow. I remember feeling disappointed, to a surprising degree, the fact that I’d never be sure who the woman was. I could have gone looking through the park, but then it also felt like I had just escaped something, so I tried to think nothing more of it and set out on my hike.
About two hours into the hike, I stopped for a rest by a stream. I’ve always liked the forests in Prenn for their giant pines, and it was nice to sit down and look up at their towering trunks. A few other hikers passed now and then in the distance, but I was mostly alone on the forest trail. I had been sitting there on a rock for about five minutes, a bit drowsy from the hike and all that peacefulness, when a figure appeared further down the stream on the opposite bank. It began crossing the shallow waters, moving closer and closer to where I was, until I realized that it was the woman from the café. She had not noticed me yet, and so I stood up and peered directly at her, willing her to look my way. And then she did and I saw no change on her face. She was walking with purpose but no hurry and finally stopped three meters from me in the shadow of a pine tree that swallowed us both. Her shoes and the bottoms of her pants were soaked.
She was closer to me now than she had been at the café, but I was still uncertain if she was, in fact, you. She looked about your age. She had your round face and high cheekbones, your puckish lips and the same wide and eager eyes I remembered from long ago. And yet she also looked taller, darker and more hardened, with hair too thick and curly to be yours, and a face too inexpressive. How many changes, after all, can twenty years account for? I could not rule out that this was simply some strange woman who had been following me for her own private reasons.
I was about to say something like Who are you? or Is something wrong? But then she walked right up to me, put a hand on my chest, and then kissed me full on the lips for what seemed like an entire minute. I must have kissed her back, but I was too stunned at the time to even close my eyes.
When she pulled back, she immediately turned and hurried away. I could only watch. There are certain things that even selfish men like me do not forget, and so it had struck me all of sudden that she did not kiss like you did. Something about it felt cold and angry. I suppose I was convincing myself that she was not you and at the same time fearing (or was it hoping?) that she was, and this kept me dumbfounded. She was almost fifty meters away before I finally yelled out, “Wait!” But she did not look back. I followed her into a thicker part of the forest, away from the stream, but just as I was gaining some ground, she disappeared behind a tree, and by the time I reached it, there was no trace of her anywhere.
I’m not sure how to end this story or even how to end this letter. I can’t imagine us beginning to discuss this at the engagement visit. I figured we would hardly talk anyway. But here it is. I have no reason to lie about such a story, and I’m prepared to believe it was simply one of many ridiculous encounters in my life. But in case it was not, I felt I had to tell you, if only to ask, since I’d probably never have the chance in person: was it you?
Mrs. Long looked up from the letter. Mrs. Doan — forever her little sister — was sitting on the bed with a calm, reckless gaze on her face. Loud voices had erupted in the formal room. Mrs. Long carefully folded the six handwritten pages and said, “Well? Was it you?”
But before she could get a reply, Thu appeared in the doorway. “Father and Uncle Long are back. I think Father hurt his foot, Mother.” Then Thu rushed away.
Mrs. Doan looked at her sister and stood from the bed, but Mrs. Long reached for her wrist and whispered, “Tell me, Phuong — was it you?”
“Later. I’ll tell you later.”
“Why not now? A yes or a no — that’s all I want.”
“That wouldn’t be enough. The Colonel is calling me.” And she walked out of the room.
Part Three
Mrs. Long remained on the bed, unsure of how she should feel and what, if anything, she should do. She felt a ghostly giddiness taking over, a visitation of old guilt, old fears. She hoped for a moment that the Colonel, whatever happened to him, had hurt his foot badly, enough only to warrant a trip to the hospital so that they could cancel today’s visit.
She slipped the letter back into Phuong’s makeup drawer. Usually, in a situation like this, she would spring into action and take care of the problem as best as she could, or at least try first to understand it. But how to understand this — the devouring anarchy of someone else’s passion?
She fell back on Phuong’s bed and closed her eyes. It was clear she had been unprepared all along for this reunion. How foolish of her to think that time was all it took to turn anguish into sorrow, sorrow into mere nostalgic folly. With or without this outlandish letter, the specter of the past would have emerged as soon as he walked into the door: Xuan, that once handsome and admirable young man, the first to ever keep her young sister awake at night, to make her ignore all her friends in the neighborhood, to make her jump at the very sound of his shoes on the front step. Phuong had met him as though in a movie. She was only nineteen at the time and had been walking home alone from school, from her first day as a teacher, and in the rain she had slipped and twisted her ankle. Somehow he had come upon her, seen her weeping and limping through the mud, and so he lifted her onto his back and carried her three blocks home. She must have fallen in love the moment she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her cheek into the back of his head. He left her in the care of her family, but only after offering to get a doctor and being warmly turned down. He came back the very next morning with an ankle wrap and a crutch he bought in Saigon, and ended up staying the afternoon. It turned out he was a medical student at the university, the son of a restaurant owner in the city. Not only was he tall and handsome and slightly reminiscent of a popular actor at the time, he was also unusually well-spoken and well-educated, with enough charm and sincerity to forgive the overwrought affection he showed so openly for Phuong. Their mother was pleased. Their father, had he been alive, would have been pleased. And Lien was pleased.
Mrs. Long was just Lien back then, Lien the Big Sister, three years older than Phuong and constantly wary of Phuong’s weakness for getting carried away. Give Phuong a puppy and she could love it to death. Watch a movie with her and she would either laugh too loudly and cry too long. When they played games as children, she was always the first to lose and run crying to their parents. Once they lost their father, Lien embraced her role — her obligation — as the stronger one, the one in control and who saw things clearly. Her sister often accused her of being made of stone, but Lien was wiser, after all, and sometimes one must sacrifice feeling for the benefits of wisdom. She saw to it that Phuong never hurt herself with her own unwieldy passions, even if it meant withholding from her things she need never know.
But at the time, Lien reasoned that it was best for once to believe in things as they appeared. Everyday for weeks, she watched Xuan arrive early in the morning with the newspaper for her, tea and fruit for their mother, and a new book to read to Phuong as they sat together on the couch or on the porch. And she approved. Perhaps she was happily envious as well (it would be two years yet before she became Mrs. Long). He began bringing his books from school to study with Phuong. He began joining the family for lunch and sometimes dinner, often buying the food himself, always careful not to overdo his generosity lest they be offended. He knew they were poor. He knew their father had died five years before in the war. He offered to fix their stove and an old radio that had not worked in years. One day he spent four hours building a small desk for Phuong where she could write and do her schoolwork. Once her ankle healed, they went on walks across the countryside, often spending the day by the river reading to each other. He even attended Sunday Mass three times with the family and on one occasion wore a brand new suit. Repeatedly he apologized for not bringing his parents to meet them, explaining how busy they were these days with the restaurant in Saigon; but the apology, it seemed, was confirmation that he would soon propose, and silently, along with their mother, Lien approved.
Then, two months into the courtship, he stopped coming. A phone call one afternoon cancelled an outing to the river. A call the next day explained that he would be detained at school for at least a week. Three weeks passed without a single word from him. Lien watched with no surprise as Phuong began skipping meals and crying herself to sleep at night.
At the time, the family had a neighbor, Mr. Tran Van Doan, a former colonel in the Army who had recently returned from three years in the Phú-Quốc camps. Their father had been his comrade and mentor in the war, and ever since his death, Mr. Doan (no one publicly called him Colonel in those days) had made it his duty to watch over the family. He had not yet fully recovered his health, but he was a strong and enterprising man and in two years had begun a small fruit farm in town. He frequently visited the house: a shy but polite man, handsome in his own right, always well-dressed and meticulously groomed, always sincere once one could engage him in conversation. It was he who found Phuong her teaching job at the local school, he who installed a telephone in their house so they could call him if they needed anything. And after a few weeks of Xuan’s absence, it was he who took Lien aside and shared his misgivings all along about the younger man’s character. He had been at the house to see how things began with Xuan and Phuong. It was inappropriate, he said, to woo a girl so vigorously, so unabashedly. And who was this boy really? Where was this family he spoke of? No one in the neighborhood had ever seen or heard of him. And what, of all things, brought him to this small country town that rainy day — a medical student from a wealthy family so far away in Saigon? Lien listened politely but had no real cause yet for concern. Mr. Doan, she knew, nursed feelings for her younger sister. His visits were out of genuine kindness to the family, but their regularity was out of love for Phuong. His hesitation, his embarrassment, was due in part to the eighteen years that separated them, but those long, pensive stares said more than any confession ever could. Phuong, of course, would have nothing to do with him, citing his reserve as a lack of passion, his age as proof that he would never change. Still, Mr. Doan came and offered his quiet generosities. Only when Xuan became a fixture at the house did he begin staying away.
Then the letter came, a full month after Xuan disappeared. A mere five sentences stating that he could no longer visit Phuong, that school now took up all his time, and that despite her wonderful friendship, he must now, with deep regret and apologies, stay away indefinitely. He explained nothing more. Lien could hardly bear the sight of her sister eagerly reading the letter and then sinking at once into tears. Lien read the letter herself and felt the instant pang of guilt. How stupid she had been — how blind! She should have known better than to trust a man without knowing his family or anything about him beyond what he himself claimed. And then to allow her younger, more impressionable sister to be seduced so wholeheartedly, so irreversibly.
For days, Phuong hardly ate a thing or spoke a word to anyone. As soon as she came home from teaching, she would crawl into bed and remain there into the night. Every hour or so, Lien would check on her and find her weeping quietly into a pillow. Lien planned to go to Saigon and hunt down Xuan, but her mother forbade her: “Nothing more futile in the world,” she said, “than to force a man to love you.” And so there was nothing Lien could do but comfort Phuong with empty words, feed her what she would barely eat, and hope for the healing passage of time.
Late one night, a week after the letter, Lien awoke alone — Phuong’s side of the bed was empty, her blanket tossed onto the floor. Lien looked all through the house. The kitchen was empty, the front room couch was unoccupied, the television turned off, the windows closed. Without waking her mother, she ran outside and searched up and down the neighborhood, nearly bursting into tears (for the first time in her life) at every turn. She finally found herself at Mr. Doan’s doorstep, and without pause he suggested they go to the river where Phuong and Xuan had spent so much time.
They found her thirty meters from the riverbank, standing motionless in water that reached her hips. She was staring into the darkness, her back to them, her hands submerged at her sides, her nightgown blooming over the surface of the water and undulating away from her, like billowing smoke, along the crest of the night current. Before Lien could call out twice to her sister, Mr. Doan was already in the water, wading toward Phuong until he reached her from behind and wrapped an arm around her waist. She collapsed onto his shoulder and so he lifted her entirely into his arms, bearing her drenched, limp body onto land. He then carried her all the way home as she wept wearily into his chest. The entire time, she was saying, “All I want is an explanation, it is all I need from him, it is the only thing I will ever want.” Lien followed them both from behind, too numb to say or explain anything.
Phuong spent an entire week in bed, paralyzed by an intense fever and on the verge several times of slipping into unconsciousness. At one point they called the priest to the house in case last rites were necessary. But then, just as dramatically, she recovered. Mr. Doan had been there everyday, bringing food, sitting quietly in the front room with his cane and his newspaper, entertaining Lien or her mother with conversation when they were too tired to sit with Phuong. He had called the doctor himself, a well-known physician from the city, and insisted on paying for everything. He often stayed until the evening. On the morning that Phuong was able at last to sit up in bed and speak clearly, she called him into her room to thank him. They were left alone for over half an hour, and Lien could hear nothing of what they said.
Two weeks passed and Lien was called one afternoon to Mr. Doan’s house. She arrived and found him standing by the window and Xuan sitting on the couch with his hands in his lap, staring at them. Mr. Doan had tracked him down in Saigon at the university and forced him (he would never say how) to come back and explain himself to Lien. It would then be her decision to do what she wanted with the revelations, which were the following: that Xuan had been engaged for two years to another girl, that their marriage was planned for the coming month, that the wealth and status of both their families required that he go through with it, and that, in fact, this girl was already two months pregnant and this made it impossible for him to break the engagement. It was the news of the pregnancy, he insisted, that had caught him by surprise and prompted his disappearance a month ago. He didn’t know what else to do. He had been too ashamed and cowardly to confront the family, especially Phuong, with the truth. His actions were unforgivable, but deceiving them had never been his intention. He had come to town to visit a friend, and for some time away from school. (The friend, he confessed, after a look from Mr. Doan, was an old girlfriend.) Then, without ever expecting to, he got carried away by his own rescue of Phuong, by the friendship that ensued, by the kindness and love the family showed him and which he had never known with his own family. Was he so wrong to indulge in this, to pursue it, however foolishly? Phuong, after all, was unlike any girl he’d ever known, so honest and passionate in her feelings that it actually made him believe in the purity of his own. He had no idea that his fondness for her would turn so quickly, so drastically, into what he now claimed to Lien, with sheepish regret, was love. His excuse was ego. Youthful folly of the worst kind. Perhaps he had never known his own intentions, but Xuan understood now the weight of his mistake and expressed his regret and shame with that same fervent sincerity that Lien still remembered from his time with the family.
She listened without saying a word, without giving him the satisfaction of her anger. In truth, she had to fight the stirring of sympathy for him — that quiet eagerness in his voice, his apparent thinness since she last saw him. But this also clarified her own naïve faith in him those months ago. When he finished, she remained silent, and so he stood from his chair and approached her. Bowing his head and admitting that he had no right to ask for anything, he asked her to relate to Phuong all he had said, and to promise to tell her two final things: that his fondness and admiration for her had been genuine from the very beginning, and that he would truly be sorry for the rest of his life for what he had done and what he had lost. After a long moment, she nodded, but only for the sake of her sister. Phuong would have wanted to know. Xuan thanked her with a dramatic bow. Then he walked out the door and would not be seen again by her or Mr. Doan for the next twenty years.
Mrs. Long opened her eyes and stood heavily from the bed. Two whole decades and she still felt the fatigue of responsibility. It occurred to her that Xuan’s last words had made her his messenger and the vehicle for his cowardice. The Colonel had probably told him about that night at the river, of what Phuong almost did because of him. Most likely it was the strategy for bringing him back to town. Would he have returned otherwise? Would his confession have been so impassioned? Only four people were left in the world who knew of what happened that night, and all four of them would soon be sitting together in the room outside this bedroom door. What would happen if no one, after all these years, had changed?
She and Phuong had never spoken about it afterwards, though Lien had kept her promise and told her everything Xuan had said. The only thing she left out was his claim — his declaration — of lifelong regret. At the time, she simply could not believe it.
Part Four
But Mrs. Doan — who nowadays was Phuong only to her sister, herself, and the ghosts of yesterday — Mrs. Doan believed it without ever being told. Xuan could never possibly forgive himself, she thought, and would always regret losing the one woman who could love him so completely and foolishly. The promise of his pain helped ease her own, helped her embrace the impossibility of his return, helped her finally to vanquish him from her thoughts. And so she made herself believe in his regret, like a child believing in good ghosts — only she had no idea then that she would one day confront him again and that this faith in herself would dissolve, not merely from his return, but from the return of that nineteen-year-old girl who had loved him so. How must I feel? she asked herself. What is this wonderful dread in my chest, this terrible ache of rediscovery? For two days, such questions had lingered in her, like pangs of hunger, and they seized her even now as she entered the formal room and saw the Colonel lying across the couch, his leg elevated upon a pillow.
The girls were standing by his head with Mr. Long kneeling at the other end of the couch. Only when Mrs. Doan came closer did she see the Colonel’s bloody knee, his mud-caked pants, his face pale and taut with perspiration.
“My God — what happened?”
“The path through the apple orchards,” replied her brother-in-law, who was cleaning the Colonel’s knee with alcohol. “He slipped and fell into the ditch. All that rain last night, of course. We should have been more careful. I think his foot is broken.”
“Does it hurt badly?” she asked. Instinctively, without knowing what for, she felt his forehead with her hand. “And how about your knee?”
The Colonel shook his head, but she could see the pain in his face. His foot had swelled and turned purplish. When Mr. Long adjusted the pillow beneath his leg, he winced violently.
“How did you get him back here?”
“Some of the farmhands carried him. Calm down now. He’ll be just fine.”
“It’s nothing, Mother,” the Colonel spoke up with a quiet laugh. “I broke my foot daily when I was a soldier.”
Mrs. Doan glanced quickly around the room and turned to Thu. “Your aunt, go get your aunt for me.”
“Why don’t you go fetch the car, Thu,” Mr. Long said. “I’ll take him to the hospital.”
“But how about the engagement visit?” the Colonel said. He tried to sit up on the couch.
Mrs. Doan put a hand to his chest and scolded him, “Lie back down, Doan, you’ll make it worse!”
Mr. Long laughed. “Stop being valiant, Doan.” He turned to his two other nieces who were standing about and looking from their mother to their father. “It’s fine now, girls. Go back to the kitchen with you. Your father’s become a clumsy man, but he’ll be okay.”
Mrs. Doan sat down on the coffee table, across from her husband, and tried not to look at his foot or the gash on his knee. The sight of blood had always made her lightheaded. Her brother-in-law had gone to the front door to wait for the car. She tried to pick up the bloody towel on the table with the tips of her fingers.
“Is it very painful?” she asked him.
The Colonel nodded now. “Sorry about this. I know today is important.” He winced again. He turned to her with a feeble grin. “I’m an old man, Mother.”
She felt a surge of love for him. She was reminded of the first time she saw him when he returned from the camps long ago, an old man at thirty-eight, only a kind neighbor then, his gaunt face and dry self-conscious eyes. It did not take him long to regain his health and reclaim his youth. He had always been a strong, stubborn man.
But there was something else in this moment: what he had said a few days ago, when they were alone in the kitchen and finally acknowledged to each other the fact of Xuan’s coming. “I’m sure he’s ugly now,” she had said, joking as she always did when he fell silent. He laughed and stood from the table, patting her playfully on the shoulder. “Just don’t go falling in love with him all over again.” He continued smiling as he walked out of the kitchen, but she had heard the unintended severity in his voice. Although she had no memory of him ever acting jealous, her mother had told her long ago, from the very beginning, that a husband so much older than her would always silently question her love.
Mrs. Doan peered at the front door, impatient for Mr. Long’s return. She wanted to weep — to sob into her arm, or into a pillow as had been her habit in youth. But who would she be crying for? The Colonel? Herself — her younger self? An imagined self? A phantom?
“What happened?” a voice cried beside her.
Mrs. Doan jumped and saw her sister standing by the couch. The Colonel patted the air with his hand and quickly explained everything. Mrs. Doan thought she saw a look of satisfaction pass over her sister’s face.
The front door opened and Mr. Long entered with two farmhands in tow. Carefully, the farmhands lifted the Colonel from the couch and carried him outside.
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Mr. Long said over his shoulder, smiling. “I’m sure Thu’s beloved future husband and his family will understand.”
“Wait!” Mrs. Doan followed him to the door. “You stay here. I’ll go.”
“No, no. You, at least, should be here. Thu can’t be without both her parents on an engagement visit.”
“I want to go,” Mrs. Doan insisted and looked at her sister.
Mrs. Long immediately nodded. “Yes, she should go. All she’ll do here is worry. You and I can stand in for them both. It’ll be fine.”
Mr. Long hesitated for a moment, turning from one sister to the other, and then shrugged. He handed over the keys.
Mrs. Doan turned to go but then stopped. Her sister had not moved. Concern hardened her brow, and Mrs. Doan knew it had little to do with the Colonel’s injury. Mr. Long had disappeared outside. She took her by the arm and leaned towards her ear. “It wasn’t me. Don’t worry.”
“Why didn’t you just say that in the bedroom?”
“He must have imagined it, lied, I don’t know. But don’t let on that you know anything. After today, we won’t have to worry about this. Let him think what he wants.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
“I’ve been nervous and confused today. You know that. Perhaps for a moment there I wasn’t sure what I believed. I just didn’t know how to explain that to you.” Mrs. Doan pressed her sister’s hand. She turned quickly and walked out of the house.
Part Five
When she opened the door to the car, Colonel Doan looked up with surprise and shook his head. He sat with his back against the door and his leg set stiffly across the backseat, his foot iced now in a giant wrap. She jumped into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition.
“Thu will be upset with us both.”
“She’ll understand.”
He said nothing more, but she could see in the rearview mirror that he was smiling at the back of her head.
She maneuvered the car slowly over their bumpy driveway, through the path lined densely with breadfruit trees that they had planted ages ago. The tree branches brushed the side of the car, the only sound between them, like that of pelting hailstones in a storm. In the mirror, the Colonel’s calm, tanned face peered out the rear window. She knew what he was thinking. Their silence meant more to her than anything they had said to each other in the last twenty years. But if he were to say anything, anything at all, she would not be able this time to hold back her tears.
What she had told her sister was a lie, at least partly a lie. It was her. The woman Xuan saw at the café. She and the Colonel were in Dalat five years ago to visit friends, a trip they made every few years. She had been left alone at the café to rest. The heat had made her sick. Then she saw Xuan and could not stop staring. Then he saw her and she got up and left. All of that was true. An unexpected encounter years ago. A story worth telling no one. But now there is a woman in a forest. By a stream. With soaked shoes and a dark face and thick, curly hair. That was not her, could not have been her. Had he imagined it? Dreamed it? Made it up? It was impossible to say. But for two days she had avoided looking in the mirror, avoided touching her own face, as though terrified of what she would find, or what she wanted to find, and this same fear, the shadow of every private desire she had ever felt in her life, had kept her from telling her sister the entire truth: that after first reading Xuan’s letter, for a single rhapsodic moment, a moment that might one day seize her again like the sensation of falling in one’s sleep, she had wanted his story, every part of it, to be true.
“Why are you crying?” the Colonel said. “It’s only a broken foot.”
“I know.”
They drove on in silence. Above them, ashen clouds had blotted out the morning sun. A brisk wind made the trees sway around them.
“It’s going to rain again,” the Colonel said quietly. “It looks like evening.”
