Fire Summer. Thuy Da Lam
quả!” he cried. “Mâm ngũ quả!” He had a three-patch hairstyle of the late sixteenth century and a cheeky singsong voice.
The lady’s head is a pomelo,her eyes like longans,breasts like peaches,palms like Buddha’s-hands,her garden, a fragrant wedge of jackfruit.2
Xuan ignored the boy and his portrait of a naked lady and parked the motorcycle next to the motley tents along the mountainside. The makeshifts fluttered in the breeze, but not a sound or movement came from inside. At the far end of the tents sat an enormous water-damaged wooden crate, silent and still like the mountain. Xuan walked to the crate and examined its faded print. BANGALANG 5-26-1830. He peered through the cracks into the pitch-dark interior. He kicked it. The sodden wood gave a long, hollow creak.
Beside the crate, Maia leaned on what she had first thought was a sun-warmed boulder. She was startled when she realized it was the rounded back of an old sleeping camel. She had never been up close to a great beast of burden. She gingerly caressed its graying head and stroked the tough leathery skin of its cheek. Its outstretched neck sank farther onto the ground. Its large eyes squeezed tight, shutting out the midday light. She did not question the camel’s presence at the foot of the mountain but found comfort in the steady rise and fall of its heavy, laborious breathing.
Xuan paid the fruit boy one thousand đồng to watch the motorbike and motioned Maia to follow. As they climbed the stones that were leveled in the slope, she silently rehearsed the reasons for her return. She chanted a mantra she had learned from a laminate pocket-sized picture of Quan Âm: “Nam mô A-di-đà Phật. Nam mô A-di-đà Phật. Nam mô A-di-đà Phật.” She cleared her mind in anticipation of what was to come. When she looked up, she saw a looming French cathedral with twin steeples. The red tile pitched roof with upswept eaves reminded her of a Chinese pagoda. The high tower’s eastern and western arches and angles fused seamlessly with the natural folds of the mountainside, shrouded in low-hanging clouds.
On the summit, three men in green public security uniforms were playing cards at a stone table under a flamboyant tree. They left the game as soon as they saw Xuan and Maia. The men’s sandals dragged over the ground and disturbed the red dirt that rose in a haze and fell on their gnarled toes. The smallest marched with heavy steps toward them as if weighted down by a great burden. “You’ve come on time,” he said, his accent from the northern countryside.
Xuan nodded at the small man, whom he called “Comrade Ty,” and acknowledged the other two at his heels. Pâté was stocky with a plump liverwurst face. Cross-eyed Lai had pale translucent skin that stretched over his stick frame. “They want to ask a few questions,” Xuan said.
A gust of wind blew a cloud of scarlet blossoms off the flamboyant branches. The blossoms fluttered and ascended like butterflies before falling. Beyond the front yard, the land dropped off steeply into rice terraces that bejeweled the earth with emerald and gold.
“Awfully pretty,” fat Pâté murmured. He took her hand and pulled her to the stone table. His chubby thumb stroked the top of her hand, his eyes on her jade locket. He suddenly reached over and yanked the locket from her neck. The chain broke and slipped to the ground. The jade was in his fleshy palm.
“What’s inside?” he whispered. His knees started to bounce.
“My father’s ashes.”
“Sister,” the leader said, “you’ve returned for what purpose?”
The locket was passed from Pâté’s clumsy fingers to Cross-eyed Lai, who tried to pry it open with his long pinky nail. “Đéo mẹ!” Cross-eyed cursed when his nail snapped. He pulled out a pocket-sized stiletto and wedged its sharp tip into the octangular jade case.
“I’m collecting stories on Hòn Vọng Phu.”
Pâté’s legs stopped bouncing. “Hòn Vọng Phu? The trilogy Hòn Vọng Phu 1, 2, and 3—‘The Army Departs,’ ‘Eternal Waiting,’ and ‘The Husband Returns’?” His patchy moon face beamed at her. “We’re the Public Security Trio, third place in last year’s Mekong Songfest. Comrade Ty is our lead man!” He pounded a marching rhythm on the stone table with his fists, and in a deep baritone, he sang the first “Hòn Vọng Phu,” in which soldiers depart for war. Cross-eyed Lai dropped the jade locket into his back pants pocket and joined in with a high-pitched voice, his bony fingers intricately picking the strings of an air guitar.
“Pâté! Lai!” The leader shushed them after the first verse.
“Curtains?” Pâté asked in a small squeak. He turned to her and said, “Sister, you don’t listen. We’ll all be drenched.”
Pâté and Lai disappeared into the temple and returned with two red curtains. They tore the curtains lengthwise into strips and then braided and knotted the strips into a thick long cord. With a quick movement, Lai twisted Maia’s arms behind her, and Pâté tied them with a red band. They roped her ankles.
Pâté and Lai walked to a giant blue globe perched on a pedestal beneath the gutter of the temple roof. On the side of the globe, a painted long leaf-shaped eye stared out amidst white clouds. The top had been broken to catch rain.
The men tossed one end of the cord over an upswept eave about ten feet above. It hooked on the eave and dangled four feet from the ground. The other end lay slack.
The leader kneeled down, and with surprising strength, he scooped her over his shoulder and carried her to the globe. They tied her bound ankles to the slack end of the rope. The leader pulled the other end and hoisted her off the ground. Pâté and Lai pushed the giant eyeball beneath her.
Her world was inverted.
Blood rushed to her head as her body dangled over the sphere’s jagged edges. She smelled salt. She straightened her posture like a soldier marching off to war, but she was in black peasant pants and tied upside down with red ropes. When she looked into the sphere, she saw petals drifting like dismembered butterflies. She thought of her father and his fight. Her head became heavy and hot as blood pulsated faster and faster toward the steady hum of whirling blades chopping air.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Her father commanded the pilot to lift off from the burning land. Her mother curled around her, covering her from the scorched bodies and homes ablaze. Her grandmother and aunt huddled beside them. As the Huey maneuvered southward for Saigon, the summer of fire ignited a flame in her young heart.
“We don’t need to do this,” the leader said.
The first time they dunked her, she squeezed her eyes shut. When they raised her, the leader’s face was inches from hers.
“Who sent you? Why have you returned?”
The intervals in the water became longer. Each time she was hauled up, her interrogator appeared paler against the darkening clouds.
The last time they dunked her, she ran out of breath. She tried to curl upward to lift her head out of the sphere, but she had become weak. Fluid oozed into her ears, up her nostrils, beneath her eyelids, and coursed through her body. She heard distant voices. Persevere and join hands with others. Limbs untied, she reached out, bare fingers grasping still water. Her legs drew up close to her body. Curled into a ball, she spun in the briny fluid and settled into the curve of the sphere. She saw Xuan through the glassy eye.
“It’s over,” Xuan said and laboriously fished her out of the colossal eyeball. He carried her and ascended steps, dripping wet. Put me down. She wanted to resist; no words came. Sunrays from a long leaf-shaped eye shone over the great arched entrance. Except for the bullet holes that broke the exact centers of the stained-glass windows, the temple appeared intact and vivid under the lowering sky.
They crossed the threshold. Once they were inside, she heard lively conversation that became louder. She shivered uncontrollably when Xuan laid her on the cold tile floor beneath the golden light that glowed from the vaulted ceiling where people lounged on a lofty pyramid-shaped lantern. Now and then, they would glance down at her. She strained her ears to listen but could