A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (43 page)

Qu
c, 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. Qu
c had eight requests for the Western world concerning Indochina. Simple things. Equal rights, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. The essential things that he knew Wilson would understand, based as they were on Wilson’s own Fourteen Points. And Qu
c 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 advertisement in the newspaper “La Vie Ouvrière”: “If you would like a lifelong memento of your family, have your photos retouched at Nguy
n Aí Qu
c’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 advertisement.

“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 Hòa Hào.”

He could tell this from the simplicity of the table. There was only a red cloth upon it and four Chinese characters: Bào So’n K
Hu’o’tng. This is the saying of the Hòa Hào. We follow the teachings of a monk who broke away from the fancy rituals of the other Buddhists. We do not need elaborate pagodas or rituals. The Hòa Hào 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 Qu
c, 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.