Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“So you respond with the word of Cambronne, and properly in this case. In fact, I meet you here entirely by accident, although you still should not have let me approach. I could have been two rough fellows with a big sack.”

“In full day in the middle of a crowded park?”

“Oh, yes, these chess players would have leaped to your defense, I have no doubt. Many unpleasant things may happen in the full light of day.”

She sighed, for this was familiar, and asked, “So, what are you doing here, Uncle Tran?”

He gestured with the bag. “I come for the peanuts. The man there on the corner sells freshly roasted ones, which I enjoy. So, truthfully, it was entirely happenstance that I found you here. What is that book in which you were so abandoned as to forget your caution? Hm! A fine writer, but with no political ideas, mere decadent sensuality; also, that is not her best work. Yet, in any case, it is better than condescending oriental fantasies by Kipling.”

“I like oriental fantasies, and I don’t care about condescending. Everyone condescends to someone. What I would really like is an oriental fantasy with decadent sensuality.”

“I’m sure, but then you would have something like Ouida, unreadable even by your deplorable standards. What is going on between you and your mother?”

An old interrogator’s trick, slipping the zinger in among trivialities, but it struck. Lucy flushed and said, “Nothing.”

“Not nothing,” said Tran, “a great deal, I think. Will you tell me about it? No? Then I will have to use my mystical oriental arts. First, you have been angry and sullen with your mother for some time. Americans tolerate this in their children, as I have observed on the television, and it is of no consequence-fireworks on Tet, as we say: boom, boom, and it passes, leaving everything as before. But today it is much worse. Your mother visited the Chens yesterday and was turned away, quite properly, but on hearing of it, you attack her with your tongue. Also, I find you alone and aimlessly wandering instead of plotting outrages with your two friends. The two events are connected, isn’t it so?”

“She ruined my life,” Lucy mumbled, staring down at a smear of old gum on the pavement between her sneakers. “I’ll never be able to go to the Chens anymore-”

“What, because you think your mother has lost face and you have to because she is your mother? This is absurd. You have done nothing improper, and in this case your duty is to go to them like a good foster child and offer support. As for what your mother did, it never happened. No one pays any attention to your mother, except as they do to a thunderstorm or an earthquake.”

“Really? So you think I would be welcomed at Janice’s.”

“I believe so,” said Tran. “Of course, as they are Cantonese, they may cut you up in small pieces and fry you with green onions and garlic.”

This brought a smile to her face, and seeing it, Tran felt a warm current in the place his heart used to be. His own daughter had never reached thirteen, having been incinerated by a B-52 along with his wife in 1968. He had no photographs of them anymore, and to his dismay their faces were fading from his mind. When he dreamed of his daughter now, she had Lucy’s face. Pathetic and sentimental, he thought, but there it was.

“Perhaps I’ll call her and go over now.”

“A fine idea, after you have apologized to your mother. In a harmonious world, parents should teach children, and it is an unfortunate thing when the child knows more than the parent about certain things. I have observed that this is more common in America than elsewhere, especially among those from foreign lands. Nevertheless, you must apologize. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Lucy. It had not occurred to her that her mother was in any way imperfect, and the knowledge both intrigued and appalled her.

“Now,” said Tran, “of what are you so afraid?”

Lucy’s heart performed an unpleasant leap. “What makes you say that?”

“In the instant you spotted me awhile ago, before you understood that it was me playing a game, you had a look of terror on your face and in the stance of your body. Is it possible that someone is after you in earnest, my child?”

Lucy waited some long seconds before answering. “You won’t tell my mother?”

Tran looked down at his devastated hands. “I believe I can keep a secret.”

“I can’t tell you the whole thing because I swore not to, but. . it might be a good thing if you watched my back for a while.” She placed her hand in his.

Tran nodded and rose, and they walked out of the park hand in hand.

“Who is Cambronne?” Lucy asked abruptly.

“Ah, Cambronne. Marshal Cambronne was the commander of the Old Guard at Waterloo. At school all of us little mites were taught that when the British called upon him to surrender, he said, ‘The Guard dies, it does not surrender.’ ”

“What is mites ?”

“Oh, that is just a word the French used. From Annamites. That is to say, we Vietnamese. You would say ‘gooks.’ But, naturally, we also knew this expression, ‘the word of Cambronne.’ ”

“You mean, he really didn’t say that heroic thing, he just said, ‘ merde’ ?”

“So it seems. Another thing among many that confirmed for us the absolute hypocrisy of the French. You Americans are insane, but far less developed in your hypocrisy. This is refreshing. I am proud to be an illegal immigrant in your country.”

The Chen family emerged from seclusion early in the afternoon of the next day and reopened their emporium, the police having finished with it. They did a remarkably good business for a weekday, as people in the community flocked in to demonstrate ethnic solidarity and assuage morbid curiosity. Lucy Karp walked in somewhat later, and after a brief conversation with one of the checkout bag girls, put on an apron, replaced her, and started stuffing. As she had promised, she had called her mother on the car phone and offered a formal apology, and said dutifully that she was about to visit the Chens. Her mother was still sufficiently stunned by her conversation with her own mother to accept this without asking any questions. Lucy’s tone had been cool and polite, which was in itself something these days.

In a break between customers, Lucy waved to Mrs. Chen, standing watchfully in her elevated glass booth, and Mrs. Chen smiled and waved back. Tran had been right, Lucy saw with vast relief. For her part, Mrs. Chen understood what Lucy was doing and understood its benefits to her daughter. As she had often before this, Lucy would take half a shift for free, so that the bag girl would work a half shift for Janice, thus giving Janice four hours of free time. Mrs. Chen had never had any free time when she was Janice’s age, and if Mr. Chen had his way, neither would Janice. Mrs. Chen had heard, however, that most American children did not work twelve hours a day, every day, during school vacations, and so she was prepared to be indulgent, as long as nothing interfered with the intake of cash. Not that the Chens were greedy, not compared to those operating a quarter mile to the south of the Asia Mall in Wall Street, but they had obligations. In China a vast Chen cousinage awaited opportunity, sponsorship, transportation to Gold Mountain, so that they in their turn could prosper and achieve glory and honor and add luster to the name of Chen. A few hours of leisure for her daughter, Mrs. Chen thought, would take little enough from this enterprise.

The two girls walked in companionable silence along Canal Street, both of them inexpressibly glad that normal relationships had been reestablished after the disaster.

“You want to go listen to music at Sounds Like?” Janice asked.