Robert Butler - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Stories

My little one, I was once very young. I was sixteen and I was very beautiful and I met B o when he was seventeen. It was at the most wonderful time of year for lovers to meet, at the Mid-Autumn Festival. I saw him in the morning as I was coming up the footpath from the cistern. My hands and my face and my arms up nearly to my shoulders were slick and cool from my plunging them into the water of the cistern. The cistern held the drinking water for my hamlet, but no one had been looking and I knew I was clean because I had bathed that morning in the river and the water had looked so still and fine that I could not resist plunging my arms in and my face. When I came up out of the water, the sun that had been harsh with me all morning was suddenly my friend, tugging gently at my skin and making me feel very calm.

I filled my family’s jug and started up the path, and when I encountered this tall boy coming down the path with a strong step, my first thought was that he was coming to catch me and punish me for touching the water that the hamlet must drink. I looked at his face and his eyes were so very black and they seized on my face with such a fervor that I almost dropped the jug. I thought it was fear that I felt, but later I knew it had not been fear.

He lunged forward and caught the jug of water and it splashed him on the face and the chest and he laughed. When he laughed I grew weaker still and he had to take the jug onto his own shoulder and turn and walk with me up the path to my house. We did not say many words. We laughed several times in silent recollection of the falling jug and the splashing water. And we looked at each other with side glances as we walked. Sometimes I would look and he would not be looking; sometimes I knew he was looking and I did not look; but other times one of us would look and the other would be looking at just the same time and we would laugh again. At last my legs grew heavy, though, as we neared my house. I told him we now had to part, and as he slowly took the jug of water from his shoulder and gave it to me, he said that his name was B o and he was from a different hamlet but he was staying here for a time with a cousin and he asked if I would be out celebrating the moon tonight and I said yes.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is all about the moon, my little one. It is held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, when there is the brightest moon of the year. The Chinese gave us the celebration because one of their early emperors loved poetry and he wrote many poems himself. Since all poets are full of silver threads that rise inside them as the moon grows large, the emperor yearned to go to the moon. On the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month this yearning grew unbearable, and he called his wizard to him and told him he must find a way. So the wizard worked hard, chanting spells and burning special incense, and finally in a blinding flash of light the wizard fell to the ground, and there in the palace courtyard was the root of a great rainbow which arched up into the night sky and went all the way to the moon.

The emperor saddled his best horse and armed himself with a sheaf of his own poems and he spurred the horse onto the rainbow and he galloped off to the moon. When he got there, he found a beautiful island in the middle of a great, dark sea. On the island he dismounted his horse and he was surrounded by fairies who lifted him up and danced and sang their poems and he sang his and it was the most wonderful time of his life, borne on the shoulders of these lovely creatures and feeling as if he belonged there, his deepest self belonged in this place, so full of wonder it was. But he could not stay. His people needed him. There was another world to deal with. So with great reluctance he got onto his horse and rode back down to his palace.

The next morning the rainbow was gone. The emperor did all the things he needed to do for his people and one night he thought that he had earned a rest, that he could return to the moon at least until morning. But the wizard came at his call and sadly explained that there was no return to the moon. Once you came down the rainbow, there was no way back. The emperor was very sad, so he proclaimed that every year on the fifteenth night of the eighth lunar month, the anniversary of his trip, there would be a celebration throughout the kingdom to remember the beautiful land that was left behind.

My little one, you would love all the paper lanterns that we light on this night. They are in the shapes of dragons and unicorns and stars and boats and horses and hares and toads. We light candles inside them and we swing them on sticks in the dark and the village is full of these wonderful pinwheels of light, the rushing of these bright shapes. I saw B o again in such a light, with the swirling of lanterns and the moon just coming over the horizon, fat as an elephant and the color of the sun in fog. I saw him in the center of the hamlet where we had all gathered to celebrate and the lights were whirling and when our eyes met, he suddenly staggered under the weight of an invisible water jug, he carried it around and around in circles on his shoulder, a wonderful pantomime, and then he lost his footing and I could almost see the jug there on his shoulder tipping, tipping, and it fell and crashed and he jumped back from all the splashing water and we laughed.

At the festival of the moon, it is not forbidden for an unbetrothed boy and girl to speak together. We moved toward each other and I could feel the heat of the swinging lanterns on my face as the children ran near me and cut in before me, but B o and I kept moving and we came together in the center of the village square and we spoke. He asked if my family was well and I asked about his family and I was happy to find that the father of his cousin was a good friend of my father. B o asked if my water jug was safe and I asked if his shoulder was in pain from carrying the jug and we slowly edged our way to the darkness beyond the celebrating and then we walked down the path to the cistern and beyond, to the edge of the river.

This was perhaps more than our hamlet’s customs would allow us, but we did not think of that. I was a strongheaded girl, my little one, and B o was a good boy. I sensed that of him and I was right. He was very respectful to me. I felt very safe. We stood by the river and a sampan slipped silently past and it was hung with orange lanterns, the color of the moon from earlier this night, when it was near the horizon and B o did his pantomime for me.

Now the moon was higher and it had grown slimmer and it had turned so white that it nearly hurt my eyes to look at it. Nearly hurt them but not quite, and so it was the most beautiful of all. It was as bright as it could be and still be a good thing. And B o slipped his arm around my waist and I let him keep it there and the joy of it was as strong as it could be and still be a good thing. We stood looking up at the moon and trying to see the fairies there in the middle of the dark sea and we tried to hear them singing their poems.

My little one, B o was my love and both our families loved us, too, so much so that they agreed to let us marry. In Vietnam this was a very rare thing, that the marriage agreement should be the same as the agreement of hearts between the bride and the groom. You will be lucky, too. This is a good thing about being in America. A very good thing, and I wonder if you can tell that there are tears in my eyes now, if you can sense this little fall of water, surrounded as you are by your own sea. But do not worry. These tears are happy ones, tears for you and the life you will have, which will be very beautiful.