by Kien Nguyen
Among the newcomers was the famous Monsignor de Béhaine—the man whose vision had inspired many French priests, including François, to journey to the Far East. Henri was by now familiar with the monsignor’s background, from his unwavering belief to his devotion to the missionary work. According to his teacher, the monsignor’s power of healing had saved François from the clutches of cholera. This and other tales of miracles had helped raise this man above all other clerics.
One evening before supper in the galley, the monsignor expressed his desire to bless Henri. To earn this generous act, the boy had to recite the first five verses of the Bible in Latin. Henri had already learned that no one disputed the monsignor’s commands and desires, or opposed his opinions.
They were standing face to face. Henri was a few phrases into the recitation when the older priest reached for the crown of his head. The boy started at the unexpected contact and fell silent. As the pressure continued, Henri raised his head, allowing the fingers to brush through his hair. His eyes fixed on a jagged scar that ran across the monsignor’s neck.
Then he felt the strength of the monsignor pushing down on him, as if making a dog sit. He fell to his knees.
De Béhaine’s hand slipped down Henri’s collar and grasped the green wool stockings. He gave a tug. Henri saw the precious gift being pulled from his body. He uttered a cry and reached for them. Disbelief mixed with panic at the thought that he might lose his beloved possession. The monsignor slapped Henri’s hand away.
“No priest should be allowed to own such colorful articles of clothing, let alone to wear them inappropriately like any common sailor,” de Béhaine said, looking sternly at the novice.
Henri wanted to leap up, to snatch back his stockings. Instead he opened his trembling hands. With shame and panic, he begged, “May I please have my things returned to me? I promise I will put them out of your sight.”
“No, you may not,” the monsignor replied. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the stockings overboard. “You are a novice,” he said. “First you must learn the lesson of detachment. Material things should have no value or meaning to a priest.”
The boy watched the last thread of his past disappear. In his eyes, the monsignor had acted more like a common man than a saint.
CHAPTER EIGHT
South China Sea, 1773-1774
The sea had many voices. In his private berth, Pierre could listen to all of them. Unlike other passengers, he had not grown accustomed to the roar.
To ease into sleep under such conditions was difficult. It had been two weeks since he had embarked on the Wanderer. He was leagues from shore. All night the waves slapped against the rough outer boards of his cabin. Sometimes they were great watery columns; sometimes they were splashes, murmurs, and retorts that sounded almost human. He learned to anticipate the lull that followed the last wave of each interval. The rhythm was never monotonous to him.
In the bulkhead outside his room, an oil lamp was burning. He kept his door open in order to admit its light, which shifted from one grimy wooden wall to the other. The confined space was cold and drenched in sea dew. His bony frame shivered, his mind drifting. The relentless insomnia trapped him in his past.
Lord, hear our prayers and be merciful to your daughter Mathilde, whom you have called from this life. Welcome her into the company of your saints, in the kingdom of light and peace.
He saw himself at the age of ten, standing by his mother’s bed. A white shawl was draped over her head to cover her eyes. Her ashen skin sagged downward to freeze her face in a ghastly grin. His father, in red breeches and dirt-colored shirt, stooped and examined a stump—her right leg had been severed. A moistened animal bladder sealed the wound to stop the bleeding.
Leaning over Pierre’s mother and praying loudly, Father Jean-Paul drew a red cross in the form of the Greek letter tau on her forehead to indicate that she was a victim of Saint Anthony’s fire. A smell of rust permeated the air. In Pierre’s arms, his two-year-old sister, Mercedes, gasped as though she were suffocating. He looked down and loosened his clutch on her.
Without turning around, his father shouted, “Mademoiselle Tournelle, where are you? Help me with the children. Get them out!”
The governess nudged Pierre toward the door. He took one last look at his mother. Everything about her was immobile, except for her shadow, which quivered in the lantern light.
Along with his seven brothers and two sisters, he had attended her funeral. Everyone wore black, including him. The women hid their faces under long, dark veils. Origny was cool in the morning. The sky dripped down sheets of mud-colored rain onto the cemetery where they had gathered. Father Jean-Paul intoned a liturgy. Pierre was teetering on the edge of the grave and could see his reflection on the slick black wood of the casket. His mother seemed so distant. He could not endure the thought of her lying in the open field for an eternity, her round face melting, her body becoming a puddle of carrion.
Voices were whispering. Among them, he heard Mademoiselle Tournelle wailing, What is going to happen to the children, having no mother? The oldest one is barely ten years old.
His father tapped the crown of his head with his large hand. Pierre will assist me with my work at the hospital, won’t you, my boy?
Mommy, please don’t leave us, whimpered his sister Theresa, clinging to the tail of their father’s coat.
The ship staggered and plunged in the weltering sea. Above him the masts groaned to the whistling gale. He sat up, looking into the indistinct hallway. His lungs gasped for air, but the bitter salt condensed in his throat. He felt trapped. The walls around him flowed into a wooden coffin, and the fear of being buried alive drew him into the past that was seizing him.
He rushed toward the door.
On the main deck, the world was peaceful. Despite what Pierre had felt from his berth, there was no storm in progress. The sea was rolling and slick, like crude oil. The sky was dull, with only a sliver of a crescent moon, creating a darkness that seemed to have no end. Walking fore and aft on the deck were two sailors on their watch. Behind them, and fencing them in, was a black rim of gunwale with a metal railing. Beyond that, he could see, by the fluttering sails, that the wind was growing stronger. The clear air calmed him, but the steady moan from above was still unnerving.
One of the seamen emerged from the darkness, his movement startling Pierre.
The man was bare-chested despite the coolness. A cotton bandanna was wrapped around his large head, and a small corner of it hung over one eye. When Pierre stared at his face, the sailor nodded.
“No one is allowed to walk on deck after midnight except us crew,” he said. “You should turn in for the night, sir.”
“Let me be,” Pierre said, annoyed at the disruption of his solitude.
“But, sir . . . up here it could be dangerous.”
“Go back to your post,” snapped Pierre. “Even your captain would not use such tone to me.”
His haughtiness found its aim. He could see the sailor’s muscular arms rippling in the dark and the flash of his teeth. Good! Get angry, he thought, and felt his own rage abate. Straightening his robe, Pierre walked away. The path to the stern felt wet and slippery under his bare feet.
“I blame you, Petijean, for your men’s insubordination,” he muttered, his voice lost in the creaking of the spars. In a more grating tone he added, “That sailor should be flogged.”
There wasn’t a cloud or a star to be seen in the sky, but the ocean was twinkling. When he looked over the rail, he thought he saw the reflection of his own shadow. The wind returned, as abrupt and powerful as he had anticipated, threatening to scrape him off the gunwale and into the watery pit. Pierre gripped the handrail, dizzy with fear, until he regained his balance. To be thrown overboard in front of the sailor he had just insulted would be more irony than he could bear. In one instant he would lose not only his life but also his work and his ambition. A thin laugh escaped his throat.
All caution, he moved away, rea
ching the center of the deck by holding on to the rigging. The watchman had moved to the other side of the ship, invisible in the thick night. The wind cried again. This time, he heard a voice. The sniffing and words of entreaty were unmistakable.
Pierre strained to listen. His hand clutched the crucifix around his neck. The cry seemed to be coming from the sails over his head. He looked up and saw a dark figure perched among the yards, booms, and ropes that connected to the main mast.
He lifted his hand to his mouth. Nothing could have surprised him more. It was Henri, the novice François Gervaise had recruited in Marseille. How and when did he climb a post ten feet above the ground without being caught? The lad seemed too distraught to be aware that he had been discovered. The weeping that broke from him was piteous. Mother . . . Mother . . . was all Pierre could hear.
The monsignor stood leaning against the mast. The first time he had encountered Henri, he was not impressed, mostly because of the novice’s age. He remembered feeling furious at François’s decision to bring one so young to a place as dangerous as Annam. Weakness and inexperience could pose a major threat to the mission’s survival. This evening’s discovery confirmed his apprehension. Still, the thought of Henri dangling while François slept, unaware of his novice’s plight, left him boiling with rage. How irresponsible of that priest.
He decided not to intervene. The first rule he had learned as an explorer was that upon encountering trouble between the natives, it was best to leave matters in the hands of God. The boy was François’s problem.
Pierre turned and went back down to his cabin.
After seven months at sea, François noticed a growing restlessness among the passengers and crew. Even in January, the temperature was unbearable. Each day, the tropical heat burned the deck and stripped the wood of its dark varnish. The sea was shimmering; all he could see was blue or orange, and as brilliant as the sun. And the billowing waves were relentless. They constantly tossed loads of seawater over the Wanderer’s deck, discouraging his explorations. With each knot the brigantines sailed, France and all of her familiar comforts receded farther into memory.
In the heavy swells, the ships drifted. Their motion was directed by the wind and the ocean’s currents. Many of the missionaries had been struck with seasickness, including François. The acid from his stomach reached up his throat, spoiling every morsel of food he tried to swallow. Even the sea vapor, which he had once found so invigorating, made him ill. Every day, he covered himself in wet cloth and salted water. Every night, he sweated in a damp berth that he shared with his novice, Henri, and three of the seven Portuguese monks.
The monsignor seemed to have no difficulty adjusting to the harsh conditions. With the skills he had learned during his past expeditions to Annam, he used folk medicine to treat such ailments as headache, stomach troubles, and kidney complaints. Seeing that François and the others were seasick, he introduced a remedy to strengthen their bowels.
“The treatment is simple,” he explained one morning after catechism. “One must cut and search into the bellies of large fish for the smaller fish they have consumed but not yet digested. Remove one of these fish, clean it well, then cook it in a broth of fish sauce and pepper. Eat it with rice at supper. This will impart vigor to the stomach so that you will feel no nausea while crossing the ocean.”
He nodded at François. Henri, wrapping his arms around a wooden column twenty paces away, looked on with a frown.
Miraculously, the medicine worked. After his first meal of the fish-within-a-fish, François suffered no more seasickness. During the day, he strode the length of the ship with his novice. He scanned the horizon, looking for land. But all he could see was an empty sapphire sea stretching out to infinity.
Behind their vessel were the Saint Raphael and the Saint Ignatius Loyola, each floating a half league from the other—close enough for François to see the figures on the other boats, but too far away for him to hear their conversations. Ahead was the Hercules, leading the way.
At night, the air turned chilly. Tucked under a blanket on a hammock slung between coils of rope, Henri tossed and sniffled in his sleep. Sometimes the priest would find tears on the youth’s cheeks, which he wiped gently with his thumb. François found himself caring for the boy as precisely as he tended to his paintbrushes.
Like the Portuguese Dominican monks, he was bearded now. His wavy brown hair was shoulder length. The two younger nuns, Sister Natalia and Sister Lucía, had abandoned their black wimples and habits. Instead, they wore short, sleeveless dresses that they had made from a bale of cloth—a gift from Monsignor de Béhaine from the market in Pondicherry. With the leftover fabric, they cut triangular scarves and wrapped them around their shaved heads to ward off the blazing sun. Despite the heat, the oldest nun, Sister Regina, hid herself in the heavy folds of her order’s prescribed garb.
The constant exposure to salt air and heat, the cramped space onboard, and the excessive humidity drained the energy from the passengers. The oldest monk, Brother Jorge, battled scurvy and exhaustion. During his last hours, he shrank in a corner of the deck as though trying to hide in a crack in the gunwale. François watched the monk’s rotting teeth, blackened like segments of a leech, drop from his mouth. Monsignor de Béhaine tried to heal the dying man with spiritual communion and folk medicine. In the end, the captain and two of his seamen shrouded the monk’s still body in a canvas sheet and tossed it overboard, while de Béhaine chanted a prayer. The others surrounded him, heads bowed.
The following morning, the captain announced that they had not far to go. The world around François was a hazy mist, vague and formless. Just when he thought he could no longer endure the incessant rocking of the ocean, he was roused by the lookout’s excited cry of “Land, ahead!” Straining into the glare from his hammock, François made out a series of gray lumps in the distance.
The captain heaved a sigh. He had utilized every inch of caulk available onboard to repair the ship. The white sails were tattered and mended in layers of large, discolored patches. The names of the ships had been washed by the seawater until only an outline was visible. As they drew nearer, the phantom flicker of approaching bamboo trees, the green of the rice fields, the dark figures of water buffalo chewing on grass, and human silhouettes bending over the earth were coming into focus. Everyone onboard watched the sights: they knew that within these shapes hung their new fate.
François fixed his gaze on the unknown land. A new world was waiting. Above him the wind abated. He noticed a hard-shelled husk of a coconut palm bobbing in the water, flanked by a large rotting palm leaf.
He heard Captain Petijean give the order for his helmsmen to drop the anchor.
“It’s over!” the captain shouted happily. “The journey is done.”
François drew out his crucifix and held it tight in his palm. For him, the journey was far from over. This day would mark the beginning—his beginning of a new life as a man of God among the heathens.
The sealed book of Indochina was about to be opened to him.
PART TWO
The Mission
CHAPTER NINE
At noon, François was leaning against the rail when he heard the sound of moving oars. Strange chanting was behind him and before him—eerie, anxious inflections rising above the rhythm of drumbeats. The Annamites were rowing out to meet the ships in their canoes.
The ocean had turned crimson. He wheeled about. The captain and his men were grinning. Small red torches whirled below as dark figures seized the ropes dangling from the Wanderer’s gunwales and shimmied upward. The natives’ shiny, blackened teeth clenched torches whose flames reflected in their ebony eyes. Sister Lucía made a fearful groan and drew behind the men, clinging to the arm of the oldest nun, Sister Regina.
“What are they doing?” François asked de Béhaine. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Captain Petijean. “Where are we?”
The first boarder reached the main deck. His copper-tinted skin glistened with sweat
. A piece of cotton, passed between his legs and around the waist, was his sole garment. Most of his head was hidden beneath an oversized conical straw hat, like a thatched rooftop. The blaze in the man’s hand sizzled. Something told François that he was about to be captured! He wondered if these heathens were cannibalistic.
“We are offshore at Quinion,” said the captain.
“Do not overreact!” added the monsignor. “These people are usually harmless, but you never know what cultural differences may cause them to be violent.”
“But why are they carrying torches in the daytime?” asked Brother João. He was a handsome-looking friar, a few years older than François. A lock of his dark hair fell over one eye, but he was too excited to notice.
“Remove your boots immediately!” commanded the monsignor.
François noticed that the crew members had already removed their footwear. Without questioning, he untied his laces. The captain had informed him of this custom before.
The monsignor explained, “The Annamites believe in many gods. If they cannot see your feet, they will assume we are white demons that floated in from the sea. Demons and ghosts in their culture are depicted as gliding through the air without feet.”
The first Annamite came forward, and so did Monsignor de Béhaine. He raised his palm in a greeting and said to the frightened clerics, “They use fire to purify any bad omens that come from the sea. Just allow them to carry out their rituals and breathe in the smoke of the sandalwood bark that they burn as incense. You will find it refreshing.”
The fire was in front of François, burning with the smell of sage and gingerroots. In its light he saw the face of the native for the first time. He looked with total wonderment at the man’s high cheekbones, his flat flaring nose, and his mouth full of gleaming black teeth. His appearance was indeed strange, but his expression seemed open and kind. François inhaled deeply.
