Daughters of the River Huong

by Uyen Nicole Duong

  But he must have construed the poetic words more profoundly, as the mandarins had intended. He sat up in bed and arranged the sheets around his waist. He said he was a powerless king, that it was just a matter of time before the monarchy would end, that to be a citizen of freedom was better than being a king in slavery and bondage. He lowered his head, and I might have seen tears in the corners of his eyes. Something broke inside me to see tears on a lion’s face.

  That night, I became pregnant.

  10. MONSIEUR SYLVAIN FOUCAULT, THE FRENCH RÉSIDENT SUPÉRIEUR

  Despite the good news of my pregnancy, I continued to be saddened by the knowledge that to me, the king of Annam had remained a total stranger although my womb bore his seed. I wanted to travel within his mind the same way he had traveled my body. I wanted to understand his fear.

  I turned to Son La for help, as usual, telling him one day that perhaps I had seen the king’s tears. The eunuch’s wrinkled face immediately turned grave and somber. He pondered for a while, and then looked at me with profound sadness.

  “A son, my lady, is important to you. To him, there is also the State of Annam.”

  “What about the State of Annam?”

  “We are not free, my lady. What happened to the Chams a long time ago is now happening to the Viets. Annam is under French protectorate now. Our king is…just a king.”

  Son La finished his sentence with a touch of irony. I gave him a blank look. Sighing, he took out a small book and showed it to me. It was completely different from the Confucius books from which I had learned to read and write. For one thing, there were no characters.

  Son La opened the book and pointed to the painting of a skinny, bearded man, scantily dressed, stretching his limbs on a cross, his head dropping to one side. “This man is called Jesus Christ. Many people, including the Vietnamese, believe he is the son of God. A different God, one worshipped by French priests.”

  “Why is he hanging there?”

  “According to the French priests, he is a sacrifice for all mankind.”

  Son La went on to explain to me how Catholicism had brought the French to Vietnam and how our king, the son of Heaven, had become jealous and fearful of Jesus Christ, the son of a Western God. The result of the conflict was the colonization of Vietnam by the French. The emperor of Vietnam was reduced to the king of Annam, controlled by a French résident supérieur. This led to the king’s uprising and the massacre of Hue, which had killed Son La’s father. All of these occurred before my Buu Linh occupied the throne.

  Son La concluded that no one could predict what would happen to the Annamese monarchy.

  “The Can Vuong, the King’s anti-French Loyalists’ Movement, headed by the mandarins, is now gradually changing to the Cach Mang, the Revolution.” Son La closed the book of Jesus Christ. His voice had gone tight and quick when he mentioned Cach Mang.

  “What does that mean, Cach Mang?”

  “It means changing Heaven’s mandate. There are Confucian scholars who no longer believe in Heaven’s son. They are seeking other ways to gain independence for Vietnam. One scholar advocates following the Japanese model. Another scholar advocates the demolition of the monarchy. The king, controlled by the French résident supérieur, is seen by them as a puppet.”

  A puppet? I thought of myself on my wedding day, being dragged through the bathing routines, then along the corridors that led to the conjugal bed where I was wrapped in silk.

  “Who is this French superieur?” I asked.

  “A Frenchman by the name of Sylvain Foucault. We call him Monsieur Foucault, and your royal husband resents him with all his heart.”

  Through Son La, I learned more about my husband and his conflicts with the Frenchman, as well as the intricate chaos of my time.

  Several kings of Annam and their royal concubines had a passion for the opera, and various troops were allowed to perform inside the Citadel. My husband, in particular, was an opera enthusiast. Son La had been serving on the king’s opera-viewing committee for years. He and other court personnel formed liaisons with the various opera troops to set up royal performances and to research the art. Occasionally, he was even allowed to leave the Violet City and tour Hue as part of this opera recruitment and research mission. The mission enabled Son La to reach out to old friends of his actress mother, who became the resourceful eunuch’s network of spies. Son La loved the job, as it allowed him the opportunity to see and listen to the outside world. Without Son La and his opera network, I would have been just one of those longing concubines of the Violet City, shut off from the world, idle and unconcerned even if hurricanes had reached the Port of Thuan An and swept away half of the capital.

  Son La became my eyes and ears for political events and underground news, and he helped me understand the chaos of my time.

  From Son La, I learned that armed resistance and anti-French literary movements led by the mandarins had filled the nation with tension. Inside the Citadel, my royal husband and Monsieur Foucault carried on their silent and bitter cold war. In between the two of them, the royal cabinet, Co Mat Vien, administered the bureaucracy plagued with power struggles and petty politics, while the real power over the country rested with the French.

  That was how the Annam court moved into the twentieth century.

  To the world outside the Violet City, my marriage to the King had become a myth. Because of how uniquely I had been brought to the palace, I had become symbolic of the king’s connection to commoners. My arrival in the West Palace also added to my husband’s image as the unconventional, anti-French king, almost a cult figure searching for the deeper roots of Annam—its Cham heritage.

  The anecdotes fed to me by Son La through his opera network described my husband as a stubborn teenager who had come to the throne at fourteen years of age and who, in his young adulthood, had turned into a serious scholar of Confucian philosophy and ancient literature. To keep up with his time, he cut his hair and also learned French.

  From the beginning, my husband disappointed the French résident supérieur. After the young king’s coronation, the superieur built a bridge inside the Citadel and honored the young king by naming the bridge after his dynasty. The fourteen-year-old king was not at all pleased. He felt it was an insult to bestow the dynasty name on a bridge frequently walked upon by French protectorates. During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the résident supérieur jokingly told my husband, “If and when this bridge collapses, you will have your country all to yourself and the protectorates will respectfully withdraw.”

  My husband, according to Son La, said nothing in reply, but the young man remembered Foucault’s boastful promise.

  Foucault did more than just name a bridge after the king of Annam. During the coronation of the fourteen-year-old king, Foucault also had photographs taken of the teenager sitting awkwardly on the throne. The Foucault family owned several commercial enterprises in Vietnam, including a publishing house in Tonkin and a tourist agency. The Foucault family made the photograph of the young king into a postcard and marketed it in Europe and Africa to attract tourists to Indochina. The postcard also traveled among anti-French patriots who wrote the word puppet across the face of the photograph. The young king of Annam had become a commercial commodity for French colonists and an object of ridicule among Vietnamese dissident poets and freedom fighters.

  It was not until my husband turned sixteen that he discovered he had appeared on a postcard for commercial gain. Humiliated, he issued a decree ordering the discontinuation and destruction of all such postcards. The unwritten norm of royal protocols in Annam allowed all royal decrees to be reviewed and vetoed by the French résident supérieur. It was alleged that when Foucault saw the decree, he laughed and threw it in the trash basket.

  My husband heard the news. He did not touch his meals for two days, and then left for a hunting trip to the jungles of central Vietnam. He allegedly fired at trees and then broke out crying in the jungle.

  During the same year, the bridge named aft
er my husband was damaged during a monsoon hurricane. My husband went to see Foucault.

  “Now that the bridge has collapsed, will Monsieur Résident Supérieur keep his promise and give independence to Vietnam?”

  Foucault was stunned. “Your Royal Highness, if I ever made such a promise, it was made in jest.”

  “Just when did you learn to make statements in jest regarding the affairs of Vietnam?” the young king angrily retorted.

  It was then that Foucault fully realized the crowning of the insolent teenager had been a mistake. The relationship between the colonist-bureaucrat and the young Vietnamese king was openly hostile thereafter.

  A free spirit, my husband grew up into a young man with a passion for the opera. He played the drum with royal opera troops and frequently escaped the palace at night to travel outside the Citadel in civilian clothes. Rumors continued to spread about my husband’s bizarre behavior, including the story of how he had found me and brought me to the palace. His way of picking and choosing a bride and his insatiable sexual appetite became the incessant gossip of the Violet City and among the citizens of Hue.

  King Thuan Thanh was as infatuated with jungle hunting as he was with the opera. This dangerous hobby quite often put the lives of his domestic staff at risk, as he relentlessly pursued man-eaters like leopards and tigers. News traveled to the countryside that once the king had fired a pistol shot at the booted feet of one of his cabinet ministers to test how the mandarin would react. The king missed the minister, but the shot was shocking enough to send the poor old man leaping high into the air before he collapsed in tears.

  His Royal Highness’s exoduses outside the Citadel became more and more frequent, almost always ending up with beautiful women being brought to the palace. The rumors went on and on, portraying less his concern for state affairs and more his insane behavior, incessant demands, and bizarre habits. Foucault was reportedly quite concerned with the young king’s lavish spending and the growing budget needed to support his entourage, including his women.

  There was other news as well. Certain mandarin scholars believed Thuan Thanh faked insanity only to bypass French surveillance. Stories traveled about how the king frequently sent back to Foucault and the royal cabinet documents left unsigned or marked with changes. He questioned French authority by citing previously executed treaties in the margins of the documents that he was asked to sign, pointing out how the documents violated those treaties. Outside the Citadel, his citizens whispered tales about his secret trips to Tonkin to make contacts with anti-French resistance forces, and how the French résident supérieur likewise gave secret orders to isolate the king of Annam inside the Violet City as a form of house arrest.

  In such a climate, I quietly prepared for the birth of, hopefully, my son.

  11. HATRED AND INDEPENDENCE

  I had no idea how Mai’s prediction was broadcast, since Mai had sworn herself to secrecy, but by the fifth month of my pregnancy the speculation about the anticipated arrival of a son born to a Cham concubine had traveled like electricity around the Violet City. My husband already had several sons born to other concubines, but none had been made a crowned prince, and never before in the history of the Nguyen dynasty had a son been conceived by a concubine of Cham descent.

  Those were the happy and hopeful days of my life in the Violet City, despite the fact that during my pregnancy, my husband stopped coming to my boudoir. He would soon return, when his son was born. I delighted at the thought.

  It was a clear, moonlit night when I decided to dismiss all my chambermaids. I wanted an evening all to myself. Mai had asked to retire early, and I was left to walk the courtyard alone. I returned to my boudoir and decided to prepare my own bath.

  The chambermaids had boiled water, perfumed it, and poured it into a large porcelain bowl. I started to pour water from the bowl into the tub. At the bottom of the porcelain sink, I saw numerous dots of brown and black dirt. The water was full of them. I paused, took another look and the dirt appeared to move. I looked again. The dirt spots were indeed moving. I rubbed my eyes and then stared without blinking. The dirt spots appeared larger, this time wiggling and swimming vigorously.

  I dropped the porcelain sink and screamed.

  Only Son La heard me, and he rushed in, finding me struggling in the mess of shattered porcelain and water, with dirt spots moving and swimming at my feet. He took me into his hands and began rubbing off the dirt spots. “Oh, Heaven,” he blurted.

  I saw his face turn green and then everything around it began to turn black.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Mai’s and Son La’s faces staring down at me.

  “They were leeches, my lady,” Son La said. I saw anger in his eyes.

  “Leeches?” I cried.

  Having grown up around water, I knew about those slimy, stubborn creatures. They sucked upon flesh and engorged themselves with human blood. They clung to the skin and did not let go. Farmers often got bitten by them, and only a heavy application of raw limestone liquid directly upon the parasite could disconnect their hungry mouth from human flesh. They traveled swiftly in water and could invade orifices of the human body. They were nearly impossible to kill. To incapacitate the creature, one had to nail it on a surface and dry it under direct sun until it became dehydrated and dysfunctional. But the moment it hit water, the creature could revitalize. Chop one in half, and each half would turn into a new leech.

  I could have been sitting in a tub full of young leeches that would have invaded my body and destroyed the baby inside my womb. Who could have done such a thing inside the West Palace? It could have been anyone. Mai knelt down by my bed, kissed my feet, cried, and told me how sorry she was to have left me alone.

  I told them I was once the paddle girl on a wild river and was not afraid of leeches.

  Together, Son La and Mai cleaned up my washroom, talking among themselves as they performed the task. When they came out, they had a plan to deal with the situation. It needed my approval and cooperation, they said.

  We did not report the incident, and in the following days, I participated in all rituals and protocols of the West Palace as though nothing had happened. Yet I could tell from the glancing eyes and the whispering lips that the royal community had heard of the terrible mischief. The whole Violet City was wondering how I could have survived the ordeal. I noticed eyes glancing up and down my tummy in blatant curiosity.

  The rumor had begun—spread by Son La and Mai—that I was well protected by the spirit of Mee-Ey, the ancient queen of Champa who watched over her land and descendants. I was so strong and so well guarded by the spirit that when the leeches hit my skin, they immediately deteriorated and became dirt.

  And, the rumor went on, my unborn son was also protected by Champa’s queenly spirit, who was demanding her land back from the Vietnamese. My son would become Annam’s greatest warrior. After such a rumor, Mai whispered into my ear one night, perhaps my unknown enemies in the Violet City—any of those jealous concubines and their loyal eunuchs who resented the forthcoming arrival of my son—would surely leave me alone. Who wanted to be cursed by the fierce and powerful spirit of Mee-Ey?

  I was not harmed by the leeches, but fate played another trick on me. I gave birth not to a son, but to twin daughters.

  After their birth, the king of Annam stopped coming to my boudoir altogether. I became the lonely Mystique Concubine who no longer carried her mystique.

  Still, the women of the Nguyen Dynasty lived on. I did, too, carrying a placid death in my heart. We, the royal concubines of King Thuan Thanh, survived by turning our energies to mundane purposes such as preparing, in the special Hue way, the fifty or so royal dishes at every meal—shaping them into artful flowers and leaves, and arranging them expertly on tiny translucent blue-and-white porcelain plates. We also performed the myriad tasks routinely planned around the queen mother, a diminutive old woman whose fragile frame was buried under layers of cloth, whose eyes had lost focus, and who lived in perpetual fear of s
unshine. In the ceremonial hall, when the eunuchs placed her on the pedestal for a court ceremony, she would clutch her shoulders, bringing her limbs together into a fetal position to escape the light. Perhaps at one time, before the arrival of French protectorates, the image of a queen mother was a figure of authority inside the Citadel. But those days were over, and in my time, my husband’s mother lived like a ghost and a reminder of the bad time when the throne had changed hands. It was known all over the royal courtyards that her husband, the late king Dai Duc, the father-in-law I never met, was placed on the throne while the French were shooting at our port. Three days later he was poisoned, and his cousin succeeded the throne. After his death, his favorite concubine, the beautiful lady Tu Minh, escaped the palace with her baby son, Prince Buu Linh. Tu Minh and her son Buu Linh spent fourteen years living as commoners in the villages of central Vietnam. My husband had been raised in the countryside, and thus had acquired his taste for the commoners’ life. On the day the French protectorates announced the selection of Prince Buu Linh as the new king of Annam, troops had to go to the countryside to fetch mother and son. The mother had tried to hide her son in a rice field. When they found him, she cried and lamented that Heaven had once more betrayed her. The royal troops had to drag her back to the palace, and she put up a fierce fight, murmuring all the way that the throne was the source of death.

  At my husband’s coronation, his mother was crowned Hoang Thai Hau Tu Minh (Tu Minh, the Mother Queen of Annam), the highest royal title accorded a woman of the Violet City. At the ceremony, the poor woman—once beautiful, cheerful, and kind—talked to the blank space in front of her, diminutive and terrified on the ostentatious throne with its carved images of flying phoenixes. Afterward, she turned mute. The fanciful clothes the ladies put on her and the salutes of the young women who bowed to her couldn’t shake her silence. At official ceremonies, I watched the royal concubines moving around their mother-in-law, never understanding what she wanted. Nobody cared. The direction for our daily lives came from the head eunuch. But the royal rituals went on, and at every occasion the queen mother was treated like the ink painting of Confucius, which we worshipped and bowed to without thought. Yet her dull eyes, jerking limbs, and trembling lips all rubbed fear into our skin. We became afraid of our own tomorrows. We all knew kings and queens could be killed, or, if they survived, go insane.