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By Root 278 0

whether he wrote it at all. "It is time for you to come home to Viêt-Nam," he declared in a breathtaking evocation of the Old Man's voice, complete with his spine-snapping ability to stifle and to control. But the lines that followed made it clear who had held the pen: "You are my brother and that is all. I do not offer you my forgiveness because you never had to apologize to me. I think of you often, especially at the Lunar New Year. I hope to see you home for the next. A good meal and a red packet await you. So do I." The letter was dated January 27, 1934. It had taken only a month for his letter to arrive at the rue de Fleurus. He offered no explanation for his delay in writing except to say that everything at home had changed. He wrote that it would have been better for me to hear it all in person. What he meant was that paper was not strong enough to bear the weight of what he had to say but that he would have to test its strength anyway.

At the edge of that sheet of paper, on the other side of the globe, my brother signed his name. And then, as if it were an afterthought, he wrote the words "safe journey" where the end should have been.

I folded my brother's letter and kept it in the pocket of my only and, therefore, my finest cold-weather suit. I wore them both to the Gare du Nord that day. The suit was neatly pressed, if a bit worn. The letter was worse off. The oils on my fingertips, the heat of my body, had altered its physical composition. The pages had grown translucent from the repeated handling, repetitive rereading. The ink had faded to purple. It was becoming difficult to read. Though in truth, my memory had already made that act obsolete.

The first photograph of the journey was taken there at the station. It shows my Mesdames sitting side by side and looking straight ahead. They are waiting for the train to Le Havre, chitchatting with the photographers, looking wide-eyed into the lens. They wear the same expression as when they put on a new pair of shoes. They never immediately get up and walk around. They prefer to sit and let their toes slowly explore where the leather gives and where it binds. A pleasurable exercise for them, I am certain, as they always share a somewhat delinquent little smile. I am over there on the bench, behind them, on the left-hand side. I am the one with my head lowered, my eyes closed. I am not asleep, just thinking, and that for me is sometimes aided by the dark. I am a man unused to choices, so the months leading up to that day at the Gare du Nord had subjected me to an agony, sharp and new, self-inflicted and self-prolonged. I had forgotten that discretion can feel this way.

I sometimes now look at this photograph and wonder whether it was taken before or after. Pure speculation at this point, I know. Though I seem to remember that once I had made up my mind, I looked up instinctually, as if someone had called out my name. If that is true, then the photograph must have been taken during the moments before, when my heart was beating a hard, syncopated rhythm, like those of the approaching trains, and all I could hear in the darkness was a simple refrain:

I do not want to start all over again.

Scanning the help-wanteds.

Knocking on doors.

Walking away alone.

And, yes, I am afraid.

2

LIVE-IN COOK

Two American ladies wish

to retain a cook —27 rue de

Fleurus. See the concierge.

TWO AMERICAN LADIES "wish"? Sounds more like a proclamation than a help-wanted ad. Of course, two American ladies in Paris these days would only "wish" because to wish is to receive. To want, well, to want is just not American. I congratulate myself on this rather apt and piquant piece of social commentary. Now if only I knew how to say "apt" and "piquant" in French, I could stop congratulating myself and strike up a conversation with the beau garçon sitting three park benches away. The irony of acquiring a foreign tongue is that I have amassed just enough cheap, serviceable words to fuel my desires and never, never enough lavish, imprudent ones to feed them. It is true, though, that there