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I had accomplished what I had set out to do -- I had finally secured a vague affiliation with a local research center -- and yet I felt completely unsure. Even more than before, my research project began to seem like an excuse for keeping distance between me and this lovely, unsettling place.

At 5 a.m., I finally got out of bed and went onto the balcony. The tiles were warm under my feet and the sky was lavender. I was wearing silk pajamas that I had bought in the Old Quarter, and a warm breeze ruffled them as I leaned out and watched old men in striped boxer shorts striding down the street on their morning walks, children playing badminton under the trees. The temperature was perfect; it felt as if there was no temperature at all. Leaving. I was leaving this too soon.

Also Visit our Vietnam: 25 Years Later site for more articles like this one.

At 7:30 the next morning, I was just finishing my coffee when I saw Tuyen peering in the long window in the entryway. I rushed over to open the door. The tranquil street of a couple of hours ago was a cyclone of motorbikes and honking old Volga sedans. It was dusty and humid; it would be a scorcher today, but one of those days that would leave a sultry, warm evening behind, which I would miss. I would be shut up in an airless plane, on my way home.

Tuyen untied two packages from the back of his bicycle and handed them to me.

"Oh, why did you --" I started.

He drew his finger across his throat brusquely. Was he telling me to shut up? "I didn't get you anything --" He made that movement again. I unwrapped the first package: a tiny sculpture of a boy on a water buffalo, made entirely out of seashells and heavy epoxy. It was precious in its ugliness. The second package was wrapped in Christmas foil. Inside I found a fuzzy white muffler. Oh! He had been trying to tell me it was a scarf!

"You said it gets cold in California. I don't want you to get cold." I just stared down at the scarf in my hands. Where did he find a scarf at the end of summer in Hanoi? Tuyen took the scarf from me and wound it around my neck, holding onto the ends and pulling me closer.

"So you are ready to leave now?"

"Not really. I don't know."

"You will write to me."

"Of course I will." I smiled slowly at him. "But you had better practice your English."

"No! You practice your Vietnamese," he said to me in Vietnamese. "From now on, we speak only Vietnamese, because your Vietnamese is terrible," he joked.

"So I'll see you in nine months, then," I said, looking hard at his face. I didn't even have a photo of him.

"Nine months. Nine months. OK."

We stood there awkwardly for a few minutes in the open doorway as the morning traffic sped by. I had no idea what came next, so I simply pulled him closer and touched my cheek to his hot one for a brief second. He squeezed my hand, got back on his bike and was soon lost in the crowd.

I never wrote him, paranoid about my language skills, but four months later, I came home to find a tattered little envelope of flimsy airmail paper. It was postmarked a month before. Inside, Tuyen had written in flowery Vietnamese:

"Sometimes I go to our bench by the lake where we used to sit and talk for hours. I think of the fruit we used to eat, the bitter orange that was still so sweet and pleasurable ... the taste remains with me. It warms my heart in the middle of this cold winter."

I smiled, imagining him standing barefoot on a balmy beach in Vietnam, wearing a scarf, gazing out at the Pacific that divides us.
salon.com | April 27, 2000

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