Postcards From Nam Read online

  POSTCARDS from NAM

  POSTCARDS from NAM

  UYEN NICOLE DUONG

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright ©2011 Uyen Nicole Duong

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61218-018-2

  Hymn to Life…

  “All I ever want to do is to set free two lovebirds, who sing, tell,

  and cry the tales of Vietnamese immigrants.”

  Dedicated to Vietnamese Boat People

  and my alleys of childhood

  Although this novella is fictitious, the idea that started this novella came from a real-life story. Dead at sea or living outside of Vietnam in memory of their past, those Vietnamese Boat People who once knew me as a young girl in Vietnam will always remain the impetus for my writing.

  UND

  Praise for Duong’s

  “Fall of South Vietnam” trilogy:

  About Daughters of the River Huong:

  “A touching novel—not only does it delve into the soul of the exile, of the marginal and marginalized, with its conflicts of identity and search for self, but also, paradoxically, elicitation of the unspoken, indeed of the unspeakable, where ve’cu and non-ve’cu blend to create a wonderful journey through a sensitive and beautiful, insatiable, admirable, brilliant, thoughtful yet troubled mind…I gladly learned that the novel was used for Vietnamese studies at Yale…”

  —Professor Andrew Lian, Vice President of AsiaCall and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages, Western Illinois University

  “…I contacted Dr. Sandra Cate, a lecturer in anthropology at San Jose State University, who assigns the novel in her seminar on Vietnam. Dr. Cate regards the novel, which considers millennia of Vietnamese history from the point of view of women, an important contribution to the literature of the Vietnamese Diaspora…[Duong’s] novel explores tensions of Vietnamese history, the French colonial experience, and the contemporary practice of law both in the United States and internationally…”

  —Dr. Thomas Russell, J.D., Ph.D. (Stanford), Law Professor and Historian, University of Denver

  About Mimi and Her Mirror:

  “…a powerful saga from a writer of talent giving voice to people from one of the most successful immigrant communities in American history. This is a book that should be read…I admire [Duong’s] expansive knowledge and her intellectual courage and skill to wed such seemingly diverse disciplines as law and art…”

  —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor, Department of English, Florida State University

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Without Terry Goodman and the staff of Amazon, this novella would not have been introduced to the reading public, in the best of form.

  I owe my creation of Nam to L. and his family. I just wish that L. would know and accept this piece of fiction as one beautifully drawn postcard.

  My special thanks to Raymond and the House of Van, for understanding the postcard I myself want to send…

  UND

  CONTENTS

  IN LIEU OF A PROLOGUE

  1. THE MYSTERY

  2. THE ALLEY OF DISTRICT EIGHT, SAIGON

  3. LOVE AND GINSENG ROOTS

  4. MY SEARCH FOR NAM

  5. AN ESCAPE ROUTE

  6. RASHOMON* AND A QUESTION OF HONOR

  7. RARE PEARL ON WHITE SAND

  8. THE REFUGE OF ART

  POSTSCRIPT: A TRIBUTE TO MIMI

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  IN LIEU OF A PROLOGUE

  “No free man needs a God, but was I free?”

  Vladimir Nabokov

  “I once thought destiny was whatever we made of it. I know now we all swim in the river of life. At times we swim on, only seeing the currents that become our course. At times, we manage to get out of the water, standing by the riverbank, watching the currents like an observer, seeing past the river that spells our journey. At times, we go upstream. At times, we float downstream. To think we can sever the river is to fool ourselves. Our past, present, and future all flow into that river. One cannot take a knife and sever a river from its source, or cut it into pieces. Hence, one can never sever the past from the present or the future. Nor can one shape water to fit one’s purposes, since water takes on the shape of its container. When someone changes the container, water changes its shape. It means the swimmer inside the container has no control over the shape she has become. After all, in the flow of the river—in that continuous journey of ours—we can never escape being the creatures of our past.”

  —Mimi, excerpt from Postcards from Nam

  1. THE MYSTERY

  My corner-unit apartment on the fourth floor of Parc Royale has a set of French doors opening to an L-shaped, black, iron-fenced balcony, overlooking both the courtyard and the busy Westheimer Street, one of Houston’s main thoroughfares. The architect who designed the Parc Royale complex has prided himself on creating the ambiance of the French Riviera. He sees Juan-les-Pins. I see only a four-story apartment hotel in Houston, Texas, with private balconies surrounding an enclosed courtyard, beautifully landscaped, with plenty of summer flowers and greens circling a sparkling swimming pool. The various shades of green vines and shapely bushes stand out against the egg-yolk color of the building’s wall space. Four stories of French doors, bay windows, and hourglass balconies overlook the oval-shaped swimming pool gleaming under spring sunshine. Next to the swimming pool, a water fountain, circled by black iron rods, displays Roman angels whose pointing fingers sprinkle darting streams of water onto the abundant assortment of pink flowers and green ferns that cling to the iron fence.

  From the window of the lobby, I can see the yellow jasmine flowers that spring out of the green vines crawling all over the peachy walls. The dancing spring sunshine puts the rhythm of a brand-new day onto my feet. I pass through the long corridor that connects the chandeliered lobby to an exercise room where two women are walking the treadmills, their eyes glued to the TV monitor at the upper corner of the recessed ceiling. The touch of the French Riviera luxury manifests itself in the peachy lobby walls, abundantly decorated with ornate lamps and reproductions of French Impressionist paintings portraying white-skinned maidens in bonnets and gloves, and plump matrons sitting by white window frames that open onto green pastures.

  I walk down the corridor in my leisurely mood. The mauve and green carpet seems to float under my feet until the row of mailboxes appears at the end of the walkway, filling my eyesight now with brass numbers engraved onto aluminum doors. I open one aluminum door with my key, and my hand sweeps through the box. Junk mail and print advertisements from neighborhood stores gather at my fingertips. These days I expect no mail and no connections to the outside world. I am working on my next writing project, and I want to be left alone. I keep no friends and have no visitors. The isolated life moves on in a hatefully normal manner. The monthly rent check is picked up by the building concierge. Grocery is delivered, and laundry bags are tossed down a chute. Yet, I don’t feel whole. For the first time, writer’s block haunts me and I become incapacitated. I stare at the computer screen for hours and produce only one single paragraph. I sadly realize that in the process of writing, I have become my own demon.

  I am about to bundle up the junk mail and throw it away, but
something else lies in between those layers of flyers and envelopes, catching my eyes, and I frown at the possibilities.

  I see it. I recognize it. My heart throbs at the sight of the single item, standing out in the mass of junk mail.

  So he has found me again, at last.

  For years I have not expected to receive, again, this type of oversized postcard. The familiar piece of cardboard brings back memory of days past, a routine that has long been abandoned. I can call it art, L’Art Brut, although it may not be substantial enough to be framed and hung. I will settle with calling it an oversized postcard, homemade, hand-drawn. One cannot find such a postcard in any store.

  As usual, there is no sender’s name or a return address. No surprise. I already know who it is from. The postal date shows the card was mailed from Thailand.

  After a break of so many years, he has resumed his earlier habit.

  I turn the card over and read the handwriting on the back:

  Dear Mi Chau, I have always wanted to build us a house. Nam.

  Beneath his signature, Nam has drawn a caricature of a house. Four vertical lines. Some horizontal lines connect to curves, forming a roof. A dome shape stands in the middle, signifying an entrance. At first sight, the sketch resembles a child’s work, but a discerning eye will recognize the subtle sophistication in the graceful strength of those simple lines.

  I have always known him to be an artist.

  I take another look at the postcard and scrutinize the image—faces of children, in red ink, leaning against fences in black ink. The young imprisoned behind fences, longing for life, in a combination of red and black strokes.

  I run down the corridor, up the stairway back to my apartment, and resume an old habit. I toss the postcard into my cosmetics box, as I used to do years ago.

  It was 1988 when I received the first postcard from Nam, postmarked in Bangkok. The postcard was created on cardboard paper, twice the size of a regular postcard.

  Those days I was living and working in Washington, DC, absorbed in the life of a young lawyer in the Capital City. Life was hectic, structured, yet normal, and could even be good, although my six-figure annual salary had to be earned with the sweat of long nights of library research and the tedious drafting of legal arguments under the supervision of a fraternity of egomaniac males. My lawyer job was merely a continuation of the same rigid and intensive routines of law school, which together characterized my existence in America. I was supposed to celebrate that life, since it defined me as the first-generation immigrant’s daughter, one of the first Vietnamese women to obtain a law degree. Vietnam was a blurred past—something I did not consciously think about.

  Until the first postcard from Nam arrived.

  Who was Nam? I had no idea.

  My uneasiness grew as I could not recognize the postcard sender’s name or handwriting. I racked my brain and still could not put my finger on the mystery. The postcard had a disturbing effect on me for reasons beyond the mysterious sender. In the salutation line, Nam addressed me by my Vietnamese first name, Mi Chau. Those days, no one in my circle of friends and acquaintances called me by my Vietnamese name. Part of me considered that name buried. Even my family had become accustomed to calling me by the Americanized version of Mi Chau: Mimi.

  I had become Mimi.

  The postcard did more than just revitalize a name. The sender spoke as though we had known each other for a long time:

  Dear Mi Chau. Are you alone there? I am alone here. I always want to take care of you. Love, Nam.

  “I always want to take care of you.” It felt strange to hear such a statement, especially when I was living alone in a big city, supporting myself, progressing and practicing the art and craft of being a modern, independent woman. Somehow the statement sounded familiar, as though I had heard it before, and could take comfort in it. Someone knew my Vietnamese name. Someone knew my address. Someone spoke to me, from Thailand, in such a familiar manner, as though I were a dear friend.

  I prided myself on being rational. Perhaps one of my friends had gone on a vacation in Thailand and decided to make a practical joke. I called around, checking with the people I knew. No one claimed authorship of the postcard.

  I could have thrown the postcard away. Or I could have turned it over to the police. I did neither. Instead, I put the postcard in my cosmetics box. I wanted to preserve the original artwork on the front of postcard. It invoked in me a sense of nostalgia, and I could not understand why.

  The first artwork was an incredible drawing of dozens of human hands, crowding each other, in many shapes, forms, and gestures—strong, fast, impulsive strokes, darting directly at the page, with the spontaneity and swiftness so vastly different from the intricacy of long hours of devotion and the detailed precision manifested in the work of well-trained portrait artists. The images, done in red and black marker, denoted motion in chaos. In those sharp angles, crooked lines, and awkward gestures, I saw stark beauty.

  I also saw in it other things.

  Like aggression.

  Anger.

  And anguish.

  “Nam” became a mystery, but I did not have the time or patience to play Sherlock Homes. Those days I was busy playing successful-immigrant-cum-Miss-Yuppy-Lawyer instead.

  The hectic pace of my life went on, and I forgot about the postcard until about three months later, when another one came, again postmarked in Bangkok, with the same handwriting. This time, the artwork was more soothing, yet still bizarre. It showed people standing, walking, and lying on the sea, under a big blob of red ink occupying a corner, apparently representing the sun. Besides red and black, the artist used dark blue marker to portray the troubling waves of the sea.

  This time the message from Nam was poetic.

  Mi Chau, why can’t the sea be like your velvet long hair? Love, Nam.

  Against my rational judgment, I could not help but be touched. My velvet long hair had been cut short into a bob to accommodate the hectic pace of my lawyer job. I concluded Nam must have been some Vietnamese male living in Northern Virginia or Maryland, who must have seen me somewhere, somehow, and perhaps even developed a crush. He was either crazy or wanted to be cute. With a little cleverness and patience, he found my address. He either took a trip or moved to Thailand and decided to send me self-made postcards. The process of rationalization helped put my mind at rest.

  The postcards kept coming periodically and I kept throwing them into my cosmetics box and closing the lid. They worked their way gradually into the idiosyncrasies of my life and became a normality, as though I had tugged myself under layers of a comfortable emotional blanket, and the mystery of the postcards fit neatly under another fold. I got used to hearing from Nam. His artwork moved me. Even the words had their effect. The men I dated in America had forgotten the beauty of words. They said mundane things like “Oh, it’s a nice dress. You look dazzling.” No one wrote poems. No one said anything lyrical. The little phrases written by Nam were a nice change of style and pace.

  Rationalization kept popping in to help me keep a reality check, as my analytical profession had taught me to do. Out of safety precaution, I talked to the building concierge and security guard, asking them to watch out for any male who might have followed me around, to the door, in the garage. One never knew where the source of danger could come from. The precaution made me feel safe.

  But my heart told me a different story. I did not believe a man who could draw the ocean in blue marker so exquisitely, and who compared my hair to all that turbulent yet mysterious sea, could be a psychopath.

  But who was to say the postcard sender was a man? Nam is a unisex name. It means “south.” Viet-Nam means the “Viet” inhabitants of the south.

  At the end of 1988, another postcard arrived. This time I was alarmed.

  The artist drew a huge piano with a skinny human figure in torn clothes underneath. The short hair suggested to me the figure was intended to be a male. The man was red, the piano black. Black and red marker ink,
again. Drops of red ink scattered all over the floor. Black strokes emanated from the piano keyboard, denoting angry sounds.

  Nam’s message was lengthier this time:

  Mi Chau, don’t be afraid. I found out the name of that tune. “Für Elise,” written by a German man named Beethoven. His music is dark and grand, like the sea. When will you play again, and will I live long enough to hear? Love, Nam.

  “Don’t be afraid.” Somehow that sentence sounded soothingly familiar, as though it were déjà vu. Clearly, I must have said it to my younger brother, Pi, many times during the process of growing up. Yet it felt as though someone else must have spoken it to me, some time ago, in a blurred past.

  I looked again at the image of the piano. In Vietnam, I had an upright piano and practiced two hours a day. In America, I bought a baby-grand piano, but my busy work kept me from playing, and the piano stayed stoic in my living room as a beautiful piece of furniture, patiently awaiting my touch. I never played. The tunes I used to play as a child in Vietnam got buried away in my subconscious, together with other memories of Vietnam.