DAUGHTERS of the RIVER HUONG
UYEN NICOLE DUONG
DAUGHTERS of the RIVER HUONG
Stories of a Vietnamese Royal Concubine and Her Descendants
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
This book was published, in a slightly different form, by Ravensyard Publishing, in 2005.
Text copyright © 2010 Uyen Nicole Duong
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by AmazonEncore
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN: 978-1-935597-31-5
To my family and the Vietnam I left behind
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My thanks go to Terry Goodman, who discovered my works; David Downing, Emily Avent, and Wendy Jo Dymond, who diligently read my manuscript, raised questions, and refined even the smallest of details; Sarah Tomashek, who helped bring this book to readers; Raymond Tanloc, who helped conform this book to his home, Paris; and last but not least, the late maternal grandfather of my niece and nephew, Uncle (Bac) Hoi of the Nguyen Phuoc royal family, whose knowledge of his ancestors and Vietnam’s royal past has helped inspire this novel. The creation of the character Madame Cinnamon is a gift to my niece and his granddaughter, who is the namesake.
CONTENTS
Main Characters’ Names and Context
Prelude
Part One: Reminiscence from New York City
Simone
1. The Marriage and Christopher
2. Lotus Ponds
3. Mey Mai’s Séance
4. Spirit of the Perfume River
Part Two: Tales from the Violet City
Huyen Phi, the Mystique Concubine
1. The Wait of a Royal Concubine
2. The Face of Brutality
3. That Paddle Girl
4. The King of Annam
5. The Eunuch Son La
6. Conjugal Bliss
7. The Luxury of Words
8. Confidantes: A Learned Eunuch and the Shrewd Chambermaid
9. The Pregnancy
10. Monsieur Sylvain Foucault, the French Résident Supérieur
11. Hatred and Independence
12. The Exodus
13. The Encounter
14. Conquering the Face of Brutality
Part Three: What Happened to the Female Warrior?
Simone
1. After the Séance: The Missing Auntie Ginseng
Dew
3. White Magnolia
4. A Way Homeward
Part Four: Hue, Saigon, Paris, and Manhattan
Simone
1. The Child Performer and Her Nightingale
2. Twist—Love between Generations
3. The French Villa on Nam Giao Slope
4. André Foucault and His Baudelaire
5. Birthday in Hue
6. Dominique Clemenceau
7. Farewell to Hue
8. Saigon
9. The Tet Offensive—Madame Cinnamon and the Communist Spy
10. Yellow Roses and Baudelaire
11. The Maiden Who Practiced Singing
12. My Secret and Paris
13. Requiem in the Garden of Luxembourg
14. Refugees in Diamondale—November 1975
15. That Day in April
16. Winter in Diamondale—November 1975
17. His Black Rose
18. The Perfect Widow
19. Rendezvous in New York City
19. The Phone Call
20. Requiem in New York City
21. Postcards
Part Five: The New Vietnam
Simone
1. House and Trees, Mother and Daughter
2. Ho Chi Minh City 1994
3. Looking for the Marble Floor
4. The Lacquer Divan
5. The Coffins of Cinnamon
6. Mai Anh
7. O-Lan
8. Hue Recitavo
9. Last Gifts
10. River, Coffins, and Memory
11. Hope, Love, and Exile
Appendices
I. Chronicle of Vietnam as a Nation
II. History of the Extinct Kingdom Champa and the Southward Expansion of Vietnam
MAIN CHARACTERS’ NAMES AND CONTEXT
First Generation
Huyen Phi (1880–1930)—the Paddle Girl from Hue’s Perfume River who became the Mystique Concubine to the king of Annam, 1895–1910
Thuan Thanh (1870–1945)—king of Annam, formerly Buu Linh, the Crowned Prince, who reigned as king, 1884–1910
Son La (1840–1935)—eunuch, servant to Huyen Phi, the Mystique Concubine
Mai (1890–1968)—chambermaid to the Mystique Concubine, nanny to Dew, later a rebel, revolutionary, spiritual medium, and fortune teller
Sylvain Foucault (1865–1950)—Résident Supérieur, State of Annam, French Indochina
Second Generation
The children of the king of Annam and the Mystique Concubine:
Que Huong (1906–1976)—Princess Cinnamon, Grandma Que to Simone
Sam Huong (1906–1949)—Princess Ginseng, daughter of the Revolution
Que Lam (1911–?)—Prince Forest
Third Generation
Mi Suong (1934–)—Dew, daughter of Princess Cinnamon, wife of Hope, mother of Simone
Tran Giang-Son (1934–)—nicknamed Hope, professor, husband of Dew, father of Simone
André Foucault (1935–1990)—lawyer, teacher, writer, grandson of Sylvain Foucault
Dominique Clemenceau (1940–)—wife of André Foucault
Fourth Generation
Simone Mi Uyen (1955–)—firstborn daughter of Dew and Hope, singer, refugee, New York lawyer
Christopher Sanders (1930–1985)—American reporter in Saigon, who married Simone
O-Lan—housekeeper for Princess Cinnamon, Hue noodle seller, illegitimate daughter of Mai
Mimi Mi Chau (1959–)—second daughter of Dew and Hope, younger sister of Simone, in America, taking on the legal name of Mimi Suong Giang (pronounced Sean Young)1
Pierre (Pi) Phi Long (1965–)—son of Dew and Hope, younger brother of Simone and Mimi.
THE FAMILY TREE
PRELUDE
Petals of a Black Rose
Les plus rares fleurs,
Mêlant leurs odeurs,
Aux vagues senteurs de l’ambre,
Les riches plafonds,
Les miroirs profonds,
La splendure orientale,
Tout y parlerait
A l’âme en secret,
Sa douce langue natale.
Là tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.
The rarest flowers,
Mixing their fragrance,
In the vague scents of the amber.
The rich ceilings,
The deep mirrors,
Magnificence of the Orient,
Everything would speak there,
In the soul in secret,
Its sweet mother tongue.
There, everything is only order,
Luxury, peace, and sensual delight.
Semblait fourbi, clair, irisé,
Le liquide enchassait sa gloire,
Dans le rayon cristallisé.
And everything, even the black color,
Seemed to polish up, clear, made iridescent,
The liquid set its glory
In the crystallized beam.
Voici venir le temps où vibrant sur sa tige,
Chaque fleur s’évapore ainsi qu’un encensoir,
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir,
Valses mélancoliques et langoureux vertiges.
Here comes the time when vibrating on its stalk,
Every flower evaporates like fragrance from a censer,
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air,
Melancholic waltzes and languishing dizziness.
Le soleil moribond s’endormir sous une arche,
Et comme un long linceul traînant à l’orient,
Entends, ma chère, entends la douce nuit qui marche.
The dying sun falls asleep under an arc,
And as a long shroud trailing toward the east,
Listen, my dear, listen to the soft night that walks.
Excerpts from Les Fleurs du Mal
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
PART ONE:
REMINISCENCE FROM NEW YORK CITY
SIMONE
1. THE MARRIAGE AND CHRISTOPHER
(New York City, 1985)
I turned the key and opened the door to the apartment that was my home.
Christopher must have sent Lucinda home for the weekend. The lacquered clock chimed six thirty as I closed the apartment door behind me, my heels clicking and pivoting on the hardwood. I knew that, down the hall from where I stood motionless in the vestibule, he could have heard my turning and hushing the key out of the lock. Through his library window, the sun must have been paling to rose, the last trace lingering along the glass that separated him from Manhattan’s skyline. I know he’d been sitting there, waiting for the world to darken completely, his broad back humped in front of the long row of bookshelves.
A long time ago, he began his habit of shutting himself into the library when I formed my own morning routine. Ever since I arrived in New York City to live with him, at the beginning of the day I often woke up before he did. In the bleary early morning, I would turn away from him in bed to face a reproduction of Renoir’s couple dancing arm in arm. Morning after morning I scrutinized the dancers hanging on the wall: the man’s haggard face nestling against the woman’s plump, rosy cheeks, his uncombed raven hair against her swirling mass of chestnut brown strands. At some point in the formation of my routine, my husband caught on. He began sighing when I turned toward the wall. When that did nothing, he would rest his palm awkwardly on my shoulder, waiting for some kind of response. We would lie in silence waiting for the sun to rise, as if there were a chance it might not. Finally, he would get up, jab his arms into his robe, and head toward the dark library. I used to wait for his square-tipped fingers to start striking the computer keyboard.
On this day, Lucinda must have put out a fresh arrangement of irises and stargazer lilies on the hallway table to welcome me home. Christopher must have heard me walk past the mirror, past the slim table legs, past the patina-framed black-and-white photos of his grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins—the Sanders family I never knew. Soon, I would be pushing on the library door, and then I would be facing him for the first time in months.
Ten years had gone by since the fall of Saigon, and the young girl from Vietnam that had clung to him was a creature of the past.
The last fight between us, which happened about three months ago, was over nothing, despite all the drama. However, in its aftermath, there was a major merger and acquisition closing in my firm. Work on the merger could last for months, so I announced that I needed to stay in the Hyatt Regency adjacent to the office rather than riding the subway back every night to our condominium.
But then, just yesterday, Christopher had called and asked me to come home, although he must have known I was only two days from the closing that could determine my career. As a general rule, he never interfered with my work schedule, no matter what the demand was. He never objected when I had to stay away from home during my three years of law school to participate in study groups, or during my first year of law practice, when I had to pull all-nighters to meet the partners’ demands. He’d always behaved like the perfect supportive husband of a modern career woman.
On the phone, when he mentioned the jade phoenix and the two ivory plaques, I decided to cancel the rest of my hotel reservation. The phoenix and the plaque had once belonged to my family’s altar and had been locked in a safe-deposit box at Chase Manhattan for almost ten years. The only other previous mention he had ever made of them was to let me know that these heirlooms were there, at the bank.
On the phone he had said in his calm and casual way that it was about time these items be turned over to me.
Why the return? I had to find out. So at the end of my workday, after his phone call, I went home for the first time in three months. Since my workday didn’t end until ten o’clock at night, I knew I’d find the door to our bedroom closed, and I’d be spending the night in the guest bedroom.
In the morning, I found a note he had written for me, reminding me of my follow-up appointment with my psychologist. Her office had called our home as a reminder, and he was simply relaying the message. When he didn’t show up for breakfast, Lucinda said that he had had an accident and had not been feeling well.
An accident? Lucinda had nothing more to say.
I left for the subway in a state of uncertainty, not knowing what had happened in the three months we’d been apart. That morning, the yellow and red leaves of New York City blazed. I hadn’t seen them like that since I began law school at Columbia and the frenetic pace of studying had numbed everything. I had been glad for the intense work schedule then, since I didn’t have to think about my family, who had settled down in Houston, or about my husband pretending that the past he shared with my father in Vietnam did not exist. There had been a time in my former Saigon when Christopher knew my father as Hope, the journalistic stringer who helped newsmen of the Associated Press interpret South Vietnam’s culture and politics, and passed on news tips that helped the reporters grasp the complexity of the war. In addition to his teaching position at the University of Saigon, my father did the stringer’s job for Christopher without pay, believing that the West’s accurate coverage of the war would ultimately help the public understand the South Vietnamese’s cause against the Communists. This was the goal he shared with Christopher, my father once thought.
Instead of working, I spent the entire morning in Dr. Cookie D’Amico’s office, discussing with her again my recurring dream. I tried to describe the lush green rainforests turning swiftly into the low charcoal sky of the highlands, the sky brightened only by the wildflowers blooming beside the red dirt road. In my dream, topless Montagnard women with dark brown torsos climbed the winding slopes on bare feet. I could feel the sprinkling rain of the highlands and the ache in my knees when I tried to run uphill after the women. I ran until the foliage, and the cliffs telescoped into blackness and were replaced by the lithe bodies of the royal dancers of central Vietnam. They held buds of lotuses in their hands, and their legs bent into a diamond shape while their lovely heads tilted beneath gold and jade headpieces. Then a fog swept through the dancers and cleared to reveal a procession of coffins floating on a silent river. In the dream, I could feel intense heat rising off the coffins as they passed, heat that drowned my lungs and nostrils until I woke up choking.