The Tapestries (20 page)

The rain he had predicted earlier was coming. As the weather changed, the distant sky collapsed like a deflated balloon. Flashes of lightning slashed across the Heavens. The willow trees above him writhed in the wind, and now and then a loud thunderclap boomed. The earth plummeted into darkness, until his embroidering became an impossible task.

Dan rose, placing his handiwork carefully inside his bag. Striding to the back gate, he scanned the cornfields for his wife. There was no one in sight. The main road that threaded the Cam Le Village's wide rural plain was now black with dust from the storm. Above it, the fog spilled its damp wisps over the rippling hills and terraces. He stood still, listening. The only sound now was the air moving; the drum had ceased its pounding.

Behind him, the prisoner shifted his thin legs against the uneven grass. Dan heard the scratching sound of Bui's back brushing against the willow tree's sturdy trunk and the popping of his knuckles as his hands wiggled to break away from the constricting rope. He turned around, and the prisoner flinched. The bruise on his right cheek was swollen and shiny, like the skin of a ripe persimmon.

“I changed your position and tied you against that tree so that you could be more comfortable,” Dan said. “Do not force me to restrain you the way Ven did.”

“I am sorry,” Bui whispered. His voice was lost in the bellow of nature.

“What did you say?” As Dan came closer to the bound teenager, the wind whipped at his hair.

“I am sorry,” the prisoner screamed. “My hands are falling asleep. I am cold and hungry. And above all, I am scared. The storm is coming. If I get wet, I will surely become sick. Just let me be. Do not torment me anymore with your threats.”

His mention of hunger nudged a painful twist in Dan's stomach. Raising a finger to the captive, he said, “Some supper will help you forget your discomfort. What I find will be yours to share. But while I am behind the kitchen wall, you must not try to escape. I will not hesitate to take your life to protect my liberty. Now stop your whining. It is an effeminate trait.”

Bui cast his eyes on the sewing box and said, “What could be more effeminate than your embroidery? A man should never touch women's tools, let alone create pretty flowered ornaments like a subservient housewife. Is that how you are trained as a slave in the house of Toan, to do needlework?”

Dan thrust his fist in Bui's face. “Be careful of your comments. We are not here to exchange opinions, or to make a false friendship. You are my prisoner. That position gives you no ground to mock me. Now keep quiet, or I won't feed you.”

He stomped behind the broken wall. The smell of coconut milk made his stomach grumble in anticipation. Ven's supper consisted of an earthen pot full of banana pies wrapped in bamboo leaves—his favorite meal. Through the crack of the kiln, he saw that the fire had died away. All that was left inside was a seam of gray ashes, still shaped like little lumps of charcoal. He took the lid off. Grabbing the container's cold handles with both hands, he carried it outside.

Spotting Dan returning with the food, the prisoner's eyes narrowed. He licked his lips, and his Adam's apple thrust up and down. Soon the scents of sticky rice and bananas filled the open air, blending with the rising mist. Dan placed the clay pot on the ground a few steps away from his captive. Bui leaned forward and peeked at the contents. He grimaced.

“Is this the sort of food that beggar prepared?” he asked. “It looks dirty. Don't you have any other dishes that are garnished with meat?”

Dan unwrapped a pie and held it in front of the prisoner. The outer layer of the sticky rice was glazed in a bronze coating of cooked banana juice. A few milky drops of coconut condensation were dripping down its side like tiny pearls. The vapor of its sweetness filled Bui's nostrils, and he swallowed noisily. Dan pushed his hand closer. The young lord leaned forward and devoured a piece of pie. His face relaxed in satisfaction.

Dan turned away, searching the distant fields again for his wife. A few chilly drops of rain fell on his face. He stood still in the earth's vastness and desolation. He did not feel the coldness of his exposed skin in the seething wind, nor did he notice the slicing rain. Behind him, the faint cries of the young lord grew quieter. Dan was aware only of the doomed land under his feet, and the sense of death that was rising from its muddy ground. He thought about how foolish he was, to have imagined that he might be left in peace to love the granddaughter of the enemy. Ven was right! His impulsive conduct had cost him and Ven what little was left of their freedom. Now the old vengeful magistrate was loading his rifle and recruiting an army of men, so that he could hunt them down like two escaped convicts.

The more he thought of Tai May, the more his heart ached. For nine years she had been so much a part of his life. He was conditioned to protect her. How could he fathom a world without her smile, her voice, or her presence? Above all, he could not forget the long kiss they had shared. He wished he could simply go back to being her slave, loving her in silence. At the same time, he wanted to run away, to hide from all of his troubles. Until Ven returned, he had no place to go. He and the boy were both prisoners in the haunted mansion.

“What are you waiting for?” Behind him, the hostage cried out. “Give me some more of that peasant food.”

chapter twelve

The Toad and the Goldfish

V
en
felt the midday sun beating down on her head as she left the ruined mansion. She clutched at the knife under her shirt as she plodded along the outer ridge of the road. The sunken fields on both sides of her path gleamed with puddles of water that lapped up and spat out her shadow intermittently.

At the bend in the road, she paused and looked back. On the verdant mound of the kitchen floor, her husband stood with his dark hair tossed by the wind. One of his hands fumbled inside his knapsack. She knew every item in it, treasured tools of needlework she had watched him carry on his back for years. They had once belonged to her; now they were his.

He had loved the hand puppets she had made for him out of old clothes when he was a child. Yet she was certain that his inspiration did not stem from her or the simple toys she made with a few colored threads. His desire came from that slender girl from the house of Toan.

One spring day two years earlier, he had come to her for advice. His eyes had glinted with a strange fever; his cheeks were rosy, and from the excitement in his voice, she could tell that the boy was sick with an illness more powerful than she could cure. He could not stop smiling. His teeth glittered like ivory, reflecting the bright sun. Her heart ached with spite.

“Ah! Ah! Did you know I took the young mistress, Lady Tai May, to the Trui market yesterday?” he had said to her in his cracking, adolescent voice. He shifted his weight from side to side in agitation. “You cannot guess what we saw at the market, can you?”

“No, sir, I really cannot.”

“Roses,” he blurted. “Beautiful red roses, just like the ones we used to have in our garden before the fire. I bought one bloom for my mistress with my wages, but the heat made it wilt.” He paused and drew near her, then asked in a whisper, “Ven, will you teach me how to embroider? I want to make a flower for my mistress that will remain fresh for eternity.” That was when she knew he had forgotten his blood feud with the Toan family.

The same afternoon, she gave her husband the sewing kit. It was a birch box that she had spent more than two years carving with lively images of plum and bamboo trees, using the only tool she had—the antler of a roe deer. A few days later, she had bought him the first fabric. And then she taught him how to embroider, hiding her jealousy inside the silken threads they had chosen together. Like tea leaves steeping in hot water, Ven's emotions swelled in the brew of her censorious silence.

Now, even with the town in mayhem and his life in danger, he still wanted to embroider. It was almost more than she could bear. He was right to have blamed her for sending him into the enemy's house. In her perfect plot for revenge, she had not envisaged the power of that girl, or the way her husband blushed each time her name was mentioned.

An old song, like a faded memory of her childhood, rose to the tip of her tongue:

The female toad gave birth in a goldfish's pond.

The young tadpoles looked just like goldfish's fry,

So the goldfish adopted them and brought them up.

“What happened to our children?” the toad cried to his wife.

In the middle of the night, he came to the pond and asked for his sons back.

But the goldfish humiliated him, saying that they

Could not be his offspring, for toads were land animals.

A tree frog listened to the quarrel nearby and said to the toad,

“Why argue? Every species reproduces its own kind….

“Calm yourself, and do not continue with this dispute,

Let the goldfish bestow care on your children;

One day, when their tails fall off, they will return to you.

And that is the natural way.”

Hot air leaped across the fiery ocean of cornfields, scorching her face. Thinking of the toads, she wished for her husband to return to her, not only for the cautious weekly visits when he could escape his duties at the Toan mansion, but also as her sole contact with anything resembling a family.

She picked up her pace, as if to leave her troubled thoughts behind. The song continued to stream from her mouth, softly as first. And then like the humming wind, it soared through the air:

Those goldfish were truly thieves.

Greed like a blob of pond scum had blinded them,

Without giving them time to think.

The tadpoles became toads and went home to their parents.

And while the goldfish cried over his losses,

The family of toads was reunited and lived happily together.

She was floating with her song beside a bright checkerboard of golden fields when tramping feet thundered behind her. She stood rigid, yet fully aware of her surroundings.

“Where is this dumb beggar going in the middle of a curfew?” asked a mocking male voice.

With a slow gesture, she hooked the handle of her knife inside her waistband and turned around, her hands knitted together against her stomach. Dark veins bulged along her forearms, highlighting her muscles. Her eyes took in the muddy tips of the men's shoes and then the dark-blue socks around their ankles. She counted four pairs of soldiers' clogs scuffing the dirt in front of her in their usual intimidating way. One of the men, the captain of the guards, slammed his fist at her shoulder, forcing her to take a step back.

“We asked you a question. Must we stand here all day while you stare at the road?” No, sir…

“No, sir, what? You are under arrest for breaking the curfew. Did you not hear the warning drum?”

“Yes, sir. I heard it loud and clear. Can you tell me what has happened?”

“We are looking for an escaped slave from the house of Toan, who may also be a kidnapper. No one is allowed to roam the streets until we find him.”

“Why do you trouble me? I am not a slave,” she whispered. From under her lowered lids, she was watching their every move. She saw the leader's shoes shuffle closer until the front of his brown shirt pressed against her nose. His skin oozed the unmistakable odor of opium, sweet and acrid.

One of the soldiers seized the meaty part of her arm in his gnarled fingers. “Listen to us, she-monkey,” he said in a thick voice. “You do not talk to Mr. Sai, the town's police chief, in that tone of voice.”

The rest of the men closed in around her like a pack of stag-hounds. Their nostrils puffed air in excited bursts, as though they were waiting for a signal from the master of the hunt.

Ven looked up at the leader's face for the first time. He had prickly black hair, and dark-brown specks of tar dotted his large yellowish teeth. His eyes were half shut; his face was puckered into an idiotic, hallucinatory grin. Using both hands, he scratched his head repeatedly—a gesture that reinforced her impression that he was sleepwalking.

No one moved while the captain's attention wandered across the fields and finally back to Ven. His eyes lost their glazed look as he ordered, “Who has the rope? Tie her up.”

Ven brushed away the hand on her arm and plunged forward. Before she could get far, the captain of guards was blocking her path. More hands, like the hooks of a fishnet, seized her. She struggled to break free.

Sai raised his sparse eyebrows to form two exaggerated half circles. With his fists he delivered a series of punches to her chest. The skillful blows of the experienced guard were unlike any she had encountered in common fights. She had no breath to scream; her lungs could produce only a chain of muffled hiccups. With his eyes still half shut, her captor clutched the scruff of her neck, pulling her upward, while the other men twisted her arms against the small of her back. Holding her in that position, they wrapped a rope around her wrists and fastened a knot. The captain released his fingers. Ven fell to the ground, immobilized.

The soldiers yanked her to her feet. She stood before Sai again, red-faced, with a trail of saliva trickling down her chin.

“Why are you running away?” he asked.

“I don't have to answer any questions,” she said. “You have no right to arrest me.”

“Do you defy us?” There was something eerie in the way he referred to himself in the plural.

Ven tried her best to project an air of meekness. “No, sir,” she mumbled.

“We think you did,” he barked.

The blows rained down again, harder this time, pummeling her chest with a dull agony. The men released her arms, and she fell flat on her face. Flashes of lightning exploded in her eyes. On her tongue, she was aware of the metallic, earthy soil, which reminded her of the taste of blood. She choked, unable to speak.

“Stubborn brute, why are you silent all of a sudden? Let us hear your sharp tongue once more,” the captain said.