Floating Like the Dead

by Yasuko Thanh

  Elke gave Herr Müller another beer. “I always ask Elke if she has enough clothes,” he said, “because she could wear my wife’s. They are the same size.”

  Elke turned her gaze to Da-Nhât, unsure of how he would react – she had never seen him angry before – but he just nodded. She could feel her cheeks burn as she continued to smile.

  “That dishes are very beautiful,” Da-Nhât said, pointing with his knife to the china on the buffet.

  “Sigrid painted those,” Herr Müller said.

  “So beautiful. Will your wife be joining you soon?” The smile dropped from Herr Müller’s face. Berbyl and Joachim both looked away. Elke couldn’t believe he had tossed the question into the air as casually as if Sigrid were merely making tea in the next room. She was suddenly ashamed for all the times she herself had wondered when Sigrid would return. No one she knew would ever ask such a personal question, force open a space that had never been open before.

  “Sigrid is recovering,” Herr Müller replied quietly. “Our baby was stillborn.”

  After lunch Da-Nhât asked Elke if he could accompany her as she fetched the cows from the far field. She nodded, heartened by his excitement, and they set off down the road holding hands, his backpack bouncing on his shoulders. Yet her own thoughts kept returning to Herr Müller, the way he’d risen from his chair at lunch, placed his fingers on the wooden table, and turned to look at Da-Nhât, a strain in each word as he said, “It’s been a real pleasure.” Something in the room had cracked open, and she thought she heard a sound like a stream of air rushing into a vacuum.

  “How do you get the cows to follow you?” Da-Nhât asked.

  “Hmmm? Oh, it’s easy.”

  “Do you whistle?”

  “If they fall behind, you hit them a little on the rump with a stick. But they know where the barn is. They mostly come on their own.”

  They walked on and the sun moved lower in the sky, hanging above the thatch-roofed houses where storks rested. Da-Nhât picked up a stone and tossed it into the air again and again. “How are the Müllers? Are they treat you nice?”

  “They’re a good family.” She laughed and touched his shoulder. “Why? Were you worried about me? You were, weren’t you?” She felt her cheeks flush and was grateful for the cool wind. She loved how it swept through the field, the long grass that grew on the gentle slopes rising up on either side of the road, beyond the dried-up creek that now, in August, looked like a pebbly foot trail. At night this same wind blew so ferociously against the window panes it made a knocking sound, as if it too was trying to escape.

  The field was almost in sight. “I bought a lock for my room,” she said.

  Da-Nhât stopped walking.

  “And now my key is gone.”

  He looked alarmed. “Do they steal something? Has anyone tried to hurt you?”

  “No, no, no. Nothing like that. It’s just … I mean, I doubt it was Herr Müller. But the key is missing. Maybe it was Berbyl. Or Joachim, he looks at me sometimes. I can’t say. All that I know is that it’s gone.”

  “And you think it was Herr Müller?”

  “No.” She shook her head in frustration, suddenly unsure of what she wanted from Da-Nhât.

  “Shall I talk to Berbyl?”

  Elke knew Berbyl resented how her father continued to offer Sigrid’s dresses to her. But it was more than that. She often wondered if Berbyl blamed her for her mother’s absence. The last thing Elke wanted was to make things worse between them. “Forget it. Don’t mention it to her. I can always buy another lock.”

  He gazed at her with a strange expression she couldn’t make out. Then, bending toward the ditch, he plucked, strand by strand, a handful of flowering grasses that he brought to his face before giving a sigh. “I, I remember in room of university residence, look at you picture smiling at me, you blonde hairs like snow, so young. In my country they say the moon is full of blond-haired womens and that is why it is so bright.”

  “I know,” she laughed nervously. “You told me at my parents.’ ”

  Afterward, in his hotel room, he had asked about her past boyfriends before encouraging her to pose nude for his camera. She’d knocked over his lamp while getting into position; then her knees wouldn’t stop shaking no matter how much she tried to appear poised, the way she imagined Parisian girls would be, posing gracefully in the curtain-filtered light. She’d wanted so much to please him.

  She knew her nakedness wasn’t wrong because this Elke could only exist here, in this hotel room with this man. This Svengali. Hadn’t her mother, buttons done up all the way to her neck, licked his finger? In Da-Nhât’s hotel room, she was someone who could live without her mother, free as the sunshine now painting her belly stark white. She was a virgin, this Elke never having met the boy she slept with last year whose parents owned the shoe store on Stargarderstrasse. “No,” she had told Da-Nhât, believing it truthfully. “You are the first.”

  If she continued to be this Elke, Da-Nhât’s white-haired moon girl, he might take her away, farther away than any German boy she knew would go.

  “I think I will know soon, about the job in Hamburg,” he said.

  “Why not a job in Paris,” she said. “You already speak French. Or Canada. A German wife won’t help you much in Germany.” As soon as she’d said it, she realized she’d been hasty, brought the proposal out into the open too soon, like camera film suddenly exposed to light.

  He just smiled and started humming, walking ahead of her.

  When they got to the pasture, they found the gate ajar and all the cows were loose. Together they ran after them, switching the cows with willow branches, while the animals ran every which way, their full udders bouncing and their teats spraying milk. Twenty minutes later, they got the herd headed in the right direction.

  “You have milk on your face,” he said.

  “So do you.”

  They laughed and she wiped his cheek with the sleeve of her sweater.

  They were still laughing when they saw Herr Müller in the yard.

  “Come, let’s put the cows where they belong,” Herr Müller said, his shoulders slumped, when they had crossed the yard. “Then I’ll show you the milking machines.”

  Herr Müller toured Da-Nhât around the barn, pointing out this tube, this vacuum, that teat cup. Then he took Da-Nhât by the elbow and led him to one of the stalls. Elke trailed after the two men with her hat and her willow switch still in her hands. She bit her upper lip as she watched the manure stain Da-Nhât’s shoes – Oxfords she was sure were worth more money than her mother earned in a month of cleaning houses.

  The shaggy brown Holstein bellowed in her stall; Herr Müller rested his arm on her back. “Elke,” he called. “Please tell Joachim to come.”

  She nodded. The day was hot, cicadas buzzing in the poplar trees. She looked across the yard, past threshing machines and bales of hay. Joachim wasn’t in the yard but on top of the barn, his legs dangling over the edge of the low-sloping roof.

  “Come down,” she yelled. “Your father wants you.”

  He spit.

  She stuck out her tongue and regretted it instantly, realizing her action was unbefitting a professional.

  Joachim grinned. He stood up and slowly swayed his hips, left, right, left. She held both hands up to her eyes, squinting at his dance. Then he pulled out her key from his overall pocket and dangled it in the air, her secret flashing in his hand, before putting it back in his pocket again.

  Joachim! She clenched her hands around her apron and opened her mouth to yell, furious that Joachim had caught her out, but Herr Müller would hear, and how would she explain the lock? She swallowed her anger instead.

  “Come up,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “If you don’t come up, I keep the key.”

  “Are you sure?” she said. “I have a boyfriend who knows judo.”

  Joachim mimed a martial artist.

  From across the yard, she heard the Holstein mo
an. “Just come, you silly boy.”

  After he came down the ladder, he took off his shirt and stood bare-chested in his overalls. She could have inscribed her name in the dirt on his shoulders.

  “Why do you lock yourself in?” he asked.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Your father wants you.”

  Joachim held his arms out like Frankenstein’s monster. “Are you scared of me?”

  She opened her hand, her palm stretched out toward him. “Give me my key.”

  “No,” he said. “I want to know about the lock.” A breeze blew between them, in the space between the barn and the house. A bird twittered and pecked at some fallen grain.

  “Are you really going to New York with him?” He rolled a stalk of grass in his mouth. “I’d like to see Yankee Stadium one day.”

  “But your mother will be lucky to have you here, to help her when she comes home.”

  “My mother’s strong.” He looked in the direction of the barn. “It’s my father who hides his troubles.”

  She rested her hand on Joachim’s forearm. “If there’s anything I can do.”

  He pulled his arm away. “You want the key?” he said, suddenly a teenager again. “Take it.” The key lay in the middle of his dirt-creased palm. As she reached for the key he snatched his hand back and then hurried toward the barn. She followed, surprised and confused at his reaction.

  In the coolness of the barn, the smell of hay was sweet. Straw caught in her socks and scratched the exposed skin of her legs. Suddenly the willow switch still twisted around her wrist made her feel awkward, so she unravelled it and set it down on the straw by the door. She offered the Holstein her hand. The cow licked it like a dog. When she pulled her hand away it was green, and, in disgust, she rubbed her palm against her skirt.

  Da-Nhât watched intently over Herr Müller’s shoulder as he readied the vial of bull sperm. Then Herr Müller rolled up his sleeves and jammed his arm elbow deep into the cow’s vagina. The cow bellowed. Joachim helped his father steady the cow. Herr Müller pushed and prodded. Elke stood very still.

  “To make her pregnant,” he said, shrugging a little with his words.

  Da-Nhât smiled. He set his backpack down on the straw between his feet, opened the buckles, and withdrew a camera. He began to adjust the focus and then stopped. He hung the camera around his neck and bent down to look for something else in his pack.

  “Could … you wait a moment?” he asked Herr Müller.

  He withdrew a French-German dictionary, an argyle sweater, a fountain pen, a hard-boiled egg, and a leather journal, placing each item on the ground next to him, near the cow’s hind leg. While everyone looked on curiously, Da-Nhât stood up and checked his pockets.

  His brow furrowed as he bent down once more. “Sorry. One moment.” Joachim and his father shared a puzzled look.

  When Da-Nhât found what he had been searching for, he replaced the sweater, the egg, and all the other items in his pack. Then he mounted the flash bulb to the top of his camera. “You may begin.”

  As the sun was setting, Herr Müller enlisted Da-Nhât’s help in loading the truck with potatoes, though Da-Nhât was a slight man who barely weighed more than the sacks themselves. He raised twelve into the truck, impressing Herr Müller, who wiped his hands on his trousers and told Da-Nhât that if he wanted to stay, he’d give him a job.

  When Müller drove away, Da-Nhât circled around the tire tracks in the dust to where Joachim stood. “You have something of Elke’s?” Da-Nhât said, holding his hand open.

  Joachim smiled, stepped back two paces, and flashed the key from his overall pocket before closing his fist around it.

  Joachim ran. Da-Nhât followed.

  They ran toward the pasture until all she could see were two shapes tussling in the grass. She wondered whether the crib would remain empty, whether Sigrid would drag it back to its proper place near the bed. She wondered if she would marry Da-Nhât. If she could be happy apart from her mother, her family, her country. Who would she be in America? And what kind of a man would Da-Nhât become if they stayed? What would she regret?

  But watching the boys on the bright green field, it was easy to push aside her worries, and think of nothing but fall’s approach carried on the blossom-scented air, and the creamy skin of her own white hand covering her mouth.

  THE PEACH TREES OF NHAT TAN

  I know the Mekong River, how it flows full to overflowing during the rainy season, the poor clinging to her banks near our city of Saigon.

  I know how to make a poultice from the powdered marrow of tiger bones or the roughest part of a bear paw, how to pound it smooth until the sinews are supple.

  I know how to prepare a balm to soothe all burns, with a scent that tingles the nose the way the air does after an ambush of rain.

  I am a healer.

  Today, I eat crocodile with a new set of carved ivory chopsticks. But there was a time before. Before my family regained its fortune; days with no money and few ways to earn it, when my family was hungry and hardly better off than those who died in the famine of 1945. When my eldest son drove a cyclo through the streets, my second son sold peanuts at the train station, and my youngest son worked the tourists arriving from Hanoi; sometimes old men bought him a soda for his troubles. My father-in-law earned coins by weighing people with a bathroom scale in the flower market on Hang Luoc Street, in the ancient quarter of Saigon. My mother-in-law and I sold traditional medicine from a cart, while I carried my daughter on my back.

  There are countless ways of saying the word mistress. But I can’t let myself feel hate for her, even when I want to, because hate is too simple. Even in the throes of love, I could never allow myself any purity of feeling; this was my failure.

  The women at the market told me things I didn’t want to know. So did the other gossipers – hairdressers, waitresses, and cyclo drivers. Saigon, for all of its people, is not so large that it can hide someone like my husband’s mistress. You can’t help but talk about someone like her.

  My husband’s mistress. They smile at her at the Saigon River, where women bathe their children and scrub clothes on stones. They smile at her in the market, where, with manicured fingers, she flicks at melons to measure their sweetness.

  She moves like no other creature. There are other women who train their eyes to the sky and let their breasts lead their footsteps, and certainly other women sway as she does when they walk, with their backs curved in the shape of a bow. But it’s not just how she holds herself that makes her stand out. Nor is it the way she seems to float above the street – half-flight, half-dance – as if wind moves beneath the soles of her feet, carrying her over the ground like a fluttering peach blossom.

  She loves like a mouth, luring people in with gossip that makes them laugh so their bellies move. Perhaps she didn’t try to cause trouble – that is what I tell myself – but still, her words glinted as they wandered through the crowds, dangerous as a snake, her stories biting those who could not bite back.

  I used to study the charcoal sketches my husband drew of her body, and though I have never seen her naked, I know her breasts are as pendulous as yellow pears, and what lies between her legs as lush as a mulberry grove. At the time I thought, She has everything a woman could want. She is everything a woman should be. I told myself, She is not unlovable, like me.

  I was barely more than a schoolgirl when we married. Perhaps that was why I lost myself in my husband’s embrace with such ferocious speed, falling into him as if into a clear, deep pool.

  My husband – whose laugh I admired, in whose intellect I stood in awe, who commanded love and loyalty from all who knew him. The day my father introduced me to him and told me we were to be married, he pierced my heart with an intensity I thought – I dared think – I could claim.

  He possessed me with ease, and even after I learned of his mistress I continued to throw myself at him, like beads from a broken necklace.

  Before my children were born, I had b
een a healer, collecting medicinal herbs from the garden, using recipes my family has passed down through generations to prepare ointments and balms that I stored in ancient, hand-blown bottles from before the arrival of the French, stamped with Chinese characters. Those I labelled “morning glory” contained my special seeds collected from the vines that grew outside our window, good for calming the nerves, providing a restful sleep, or if taken in large enough doses, for letting you forget your worries and sadness. I tended the vines closely, and when it was time for the blooms to fade and the seed pods to form, I would place a bed sheet underneath them and, carefully snipping the tip of the pod open with scissors, shake the seeds loose. My method of waiting until the pods had almost cracked open before letting the seeds spill free distinguished my harvesting from other healers. It was the one virtue I had, this gift of patience, of waiting, of allowing the longed-for thing to grow stronger.

  I can still picture how the rays of the setting sun glinted off my husband’s face on the day, for love of him, I turned my back on the knowledge my family had passed down to me. How his features sharpened, his eyes narrowed against the glare as he came to stand next to me, next to the morning glory. My hands trembled with nervousness as I shook the pods, the black seeds spilling wantonly onto the white sheet, like lovers falling onto a bed. My husband thought my practice of making traditional medicine vulgar and primitive, and I wished I could open his eyes to the value of my skills.

  Proud of my ancestral knowledge, I glanced up from the seeds I’d gathered in my arms and asked my husband if he liked the colour of the blooms, which were red instead of the common blue. “And the shape of their leaves is like a heart too,” I said. “Look how high the vines reach.”

  My husband sneered at the heart-shaped leaves and the dried-out pods; then without meeting my gaze he said, “Your hands look like they belong to a farmer. Keep wasting your time in the garden and those are the only seeds you’ll bear.”

  After that day, I let the knowledge I’d inherited from my grandfather moulder, and when the seeds inside my old medicine bottles dried to dust I poured many of them out, emptying the seeds down the drain, myself with them. What I couldn’t bear to discard, I hid away in a closet. But even without my care, the vines under our bedroom window – fed by the soil and the sun – continued to flourish. And flourishing, they behaved like women in love, bending their foolish heads low, as if gossiping. But they also appeared sad, the oppressive heat forcing their already supplicant heads to bow until they nearly touched the ground.