Interstitial
There are many places where I could begin. Even now, decades later, I see the sheen of a rushing river and a dark gloss wavering
across a child’s head. I grasp for both as if they were in front of me. In my studio, I paint to capture the scales of a gutted
fish on a cutting block, glittering like diamond shards. Most of all, I am haunted by the memory of her lips, red rosebuds
reflected in the glass as she read to me.
There is logic to all these scattered memories, I know. They will come together into a narrative that transcends my failures
of imagination. I only need to write what I know. Who am I writing for? Why am I writing? Here at the end, reasons feel incidental.
I simply record because I must.
But I suppose I will start with her, because it was she who brought me back to myself.
I met Justine seven years ago, in the spring of 1936. The flamingos had begun flocking back to the ponds. From a distance,
they looked like the dried shrimp floating in my mother’s winter melon soup, the same ones my sister picked out and dumped
into my bowl, because I liked them and she did not. Little Ng?c—what an injustice I have done to the only person who’d loved me without motive or expectation. But no, I must stay on task.
Near the shoreline of the Rh?ne, the birds were larger than expected. They flourished their pink-tipped wings, as if they’d
swiped my palette. If I were younger, I’d have run to them with open arms, the way we did as children. As an artist, I studied
them, wishing I could capture the jubilance of their flight.
Birds, what have they to do with anything? I’m only trying to capture it all before it fades. My mind goes where it wants,
herded by caprice rather than sense.
That May of 1936, I walked from the station in Arles, thinking of Emil, my friend and agent.
Before he deposited me at the train in Paris, he’d drunk most of my Cassis and eaten my carefully guarded sardines.
“While you are away, I will use your apartment as my personal larder,” he joked.
I did not find it funny, and then he poked at my stinginess.
He thought I was too serious; I thought he was cavalier about everything that mattered.
We bickered like a tired old couple whose allegiances were firm enough to bear the weight of quarrels large and small.
I forgave him everything, of course. His camaraderie, blunt as it was, was one I’d never found elsewhere. Our relationship
had always been complex, motivated by commerce as well as our mutual alienation as citizens of a cold world, yet I never doubted
that he cared for me for myself too. He alone has kept my secrets with staunch fidelity.
Before he left me at the Gare de Lyon, he said, “JuJu will seem worldly to you. She has the trappings of wealth and poise. But she is also fragile.”
“I have no intention of taking advantage of your sister.”
He shook his head. “No, no, I don’t mean that, my friend. Only that—well, she possesses a passion that can be difficult on
sensitive beings. It becomes a web, trapping the source of her affections.”
“I don’t plan on burdening her with my presence.”
“You won’t be able to help it. She will sweep you up like a storm. That is the kind of woman she is.”
I wasn’t interested in their sibling tensions. They brought about thoughts of my own Ng?c, who felt more distant from me with each passing year.
Finally, I said, “I’ll take care, Emil. I’m grateful to you both.”
And I was. I knew I would die of a slow and ugly rot if I stayed in that mouse-infested apartment, breathing in the fug and dissolution of that damned city.
Chased by my equally damned past. There was poverty of the pocketbook—I could manage that, poverty was habit now—and then, there was penury of the soul.
Truth be told, a part of me itched for the freedom Arles would provide.
I was a country child and I would always seek the unattended sovereignty of an open sky.
In the Camargue, it was a windy day for walking. Justine had offered to send a car, but I wanted to survey the town on foot.
I saw fishermen casting their nets along the rocks with reckless energy, and the sight reminded me of my father on the banks
of the Mekong, reeling as if he were embattled with the delta. These years later, I still pale under the imagined heat of
his glare. In me, he’d seen his deepest fears realized: a child who tainted the godliness of the family. I often wonder if
the bigger curse is to know one’s forebears completely, with unflinching exactitude, or to never know them at all.
My sister, hopeful little soul, offered panaceas to his fury: We’ll run away together. I’ll sing in the opera house; you’ll exhibit in the museums. Everyone will know our names.
The irony.
By the summer of ’36, I’d lived in France for almost two decades, more than half my life. I could not go back to Viet Nam, nor could I find it in my heart to make a home among foreign tongues and faces that did not know mine. I was more than
an island. I was a feather that could only land by the grace of the wind, no more in control of my fate than a child. And
it seemed my fate had led me to Arles.
As I pushed open the gate of Maison de Notre Rêve, Justine ran down the drive with unfeminine velocity, gusts stirring her
skirts and prying her hair from its pins. Unbidden, I thought of a stream of light flashing into a prison cell, illuminating
even the most miserable corners.
I was not, of course, the first to become arrested by her beauty—those auburn curls that brushed her face with the unconscious
shapeliness of a fern, the wide, intelligent green eyes, and that laughing mouth. You never felt as if she were laughing at
you; a person could be in on the joke with Justine.
I shook the dumbfounded expression from my face and greeted her solemnly. Despite Emil’s descriptions of his sister, I expected her to resemble the society women I’d seen in Paris with their pinched faces and cutting manners.
“Good morning, Madame Allard.”
“Please. Justine.”
I sensed her taking in my hair, the travel-dusted suit that was too large and too formal on me. I’d worn my armor so long
that it had welded onto my body, revealing nothing except reflective apathy. There was no judgment in her gaze, only friendly
speculation. I wondered how much Emil had told her about me.
“Justine.” I’d starched my voice with formality. “I am—”
“I know who you are, my dear.”
Those words were an immeasurable comfort. I read under them a kindred empathy that made my heartbeat falter. To be known!
“Let me walk you to the cottage,” she went on. “And we will learn more about each other.”
She and Marcel were new to Arles, having recently moved from Lyon. Though she missed her friends, the Camargue seduced her entirely with its beauty. Marcel was in imports, she told me,
and he was devoted to his work above all else. They’d been married almost four years without children; this fact did not seem
to perturb her, as it might have other women in her position. She’d named their estate—House of Our Dreams—with hope. In her
curt laugh, I understood that the naming was at least partially facetious to her. I did not pry, at least not yet.
I’d never met anyone so easy to converse with, aside from Emil, if you can call his haphazard confessions a kind of conversation.
I found myself telling her unexpected things about my childhood and my ambitions—not everything, of course. Some demons needed
to be kept at bay. She gleaned the substance of my revelations though; that I was alone in the most essential of ways.
Instead of pitying me, she reached for a solution.
She invited me to accompany her to the market.
Made plans to go down to the river to fish and swim.
She brimmed with ideas to reawaken my inspiration.
My work—or lack thereof—was treated with respect, but she did not dance around it.
That made it easy for me to confide in her.
“I don’t know that I will ever paint again,” I said.
“I’m not an artist,” she said, “but I grew up around farms all my life. I can’t help but think that fallow moments are but
a prelude to ones of industry.”
I snuck glances at her as we walked. The sun kissed the tip of her nose. She smelled like tuberose and mint and some ineffable,
sweet grassiness that teased my senses. Despite everything I knew I should do, I drew closer to her, in spirit if not body.
I would not say this anywhere but here, but what is a journal if not a glass room, a place for bald meditation?
I wanted her from the start.
As we approached the cottage, she took my hand in hers. “I don’t have many friends in Arles yet and I know you will be busy,
but will you visit with me sometimes?”
Did I think of Emil’s cautionary words? Perhaps, fleetingly. But did I mind them? Not for a second.
She leaned over and pressed her lips—dry, cool—to my overheated cheek. It was all I could do not to cry in relief. We made
plans to walk for the following day.
Later, alone in my bed in the cottage, studying the willowy stretch of shadows on the ceiling, I could only think of how Fate
circles like a butterfly, so innocently yet decisively. Against all odds, it had landed in my hands, bringing with it a woman
as vital and enticing as the flourishing wetlands to which I’d traveled.
May 12, 1943