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

The story my father told of the gentle dragon and the fairy princess had always been different from the ones about ghosts that I sought in the candlelight to chill me, though my father did believe in ghosts, as do many Vietnamese people and even some Americans. But the story of how our country began was always told in the daylight and with many of our family members gathered together, and no one ever said to me that this was just a made-up story, that this was just a lovely little lie. When I studied American history to become a citizen here, there was a story of a man named George Washington and he cut down a little tree and then told the truth. And the teacher immediately explained that this was just a made-up story. He made this very clear for even something like that. Just cutting down a tree and telling the truth about it. We had to keep that story separate from the stories that were actual true history.

This makes me sad about this country that was chosen for me. It makes me sad for a whole world of adults. It makes me sad even for Lieutenant Binh as I remember his questions that followed, all with a clenched face and a voice as quick and furious as the rifles at our sides. “Is this the dragon who slept with the fairy?” he demanded, though the actual words he used at that moment of my own true history were much harsher.

“He married a fairy princess,” I said.

“Who married them?” the lieutenant said.

I couldn’t answer the question. It was a simple question and it was, I see now, an unimportant question, but sitting in that clearing in the middle of a forest full of men who would kill me, having already fired my rifle at their shapes on several occasions and felt the rush of their bullets past my face and seen already two men die, though I turned my face from that, but having seen two men splashed with their own blood and me sitting now in a forest with the fear clawing at my chest, I faced that simple little question and I realized how foolish I was, how much a child.

The lieutenant cried, “Is this the fairy princess who’s going to lay eggs ?”

And in a moment as terrible as when I first felt the fear of my adult self, I now turned my face from the lieutenant and I looked across the clearing at the tree line and I knew that someone out there was coming near and I knew that dragons and fairies do not have children and the lieutenant’s voice was very close to me and it said, “Save your life.”

I don’t know if some time passed with me sitting there feeling as crumbly and dry as the tree trunk I leaned against. Maybe only a few seconds, maybe no seconds at all. But very soon, from the tree line before me, there was a flash of light and another and I could only barely shift my eyes to the private sitting next to me and his head was a blur of red and gray and I was as quick as my rifle and over the trunk and beside my lieutenant and we were very quiet together, firing, and all of the rest is very distant from me now. Half of our platoon was dead in those first few seconds, I think. When air support arrived, there was only the lieutenant and me and another private who would soon die from the wounds he received in those few minutes in the clearing.

Not many months later the lieutenant came to me where we were trying to dig in on the rim of Saigon and he said, “It’s time.” And all the troops of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam were streaming past us into the city, without leaders now, without hope, and so I followed Lieutenant Binh, I and a couple of other soldiers in his platoon that he knew were good fighters, and I did not understand exactly what he meant about its being time until we were in the motorboat of a friend of his and we were racing down the Saigon River. This was the last little bit of my childhood. I was holding my rifle across my chest, ready to fight wherever the lieutenant was leading me. But the lieutenant said, “You won’t need that now.”

He was taking me and the others into the South China Sea and when I realized I was leaving my country and my wife and my unborn son, I was only able to turn my face to him, for I knew there was no going back. He looked at me with a quick little smile, a warm smile, one man to another, and a nod of the head like he thought I was a good fighter, a good man, a man he respected, and all of that was true, and he thought he was helping me save my life, and maybe that was true, but maybe it wasn’t true at all. You must understand, though, that I did not choose to leave.

My son, I love you. Your mother does not love me now and you have a new father. Has she told you about me? Are you reading this? I pray you are; with all the little shiny pebbles of my childhood faith that I can find in the dust, I pray it. And I am writing to tell you this. Thousands of years ago a gentle and kindly dragon grew lonely in the harsh wide plains of China and he wandered south. He found a land full of beautiful mountains and green valleys and fresh, clear rivers that ran so fast in their banks that they made a singing sound.

But even though the land was beautiful, he was still lonely. He traveled through this new country of his and at last he met a beautiful fairy princess. She, too, was lonely and the two of them fell in love and they decided to live together as man and wife and to love each other forever. And so they did live together in the beautiful land and one day the princess found that she had laid a hundred eggs in a beautiful silk pouch and these eggs hatched and they were the children of the dragon and the princess.

These children were very wonderful, inheriting bravery and gentleness from their father and beauty and charm and a delicacy of feeling from their mother. They grew and grew and they were fine, loving children, but finally the dragon had to make a very difficult decision. He realized that the family was too large for them all to live together in one place. So he called his family to him and told them that even though he loved them all very much, he would have to divide the family into two parts. His wife would take fifty of the children and travel to the east. He would take the other fifty children and travel to the south. Everyone was very sad about having to do this, but they all understood that there was no other way.

So the princess took fifty of the children and went far away to the east, where she became the Queen of the Ocean. And the dragon took fifty children far away to the south, where he became the King of the Land. The dragon and the princess remained with the children until they were adults, wise and strong and able to take care of themselves. Then the dragon and the princess vanished and were reunited in the spirit world, where they lived happily together for the rest of eternity. The children married and prospered and they created Vietnam from the far north to the southern tip and they are the ancestors of all of us. Of you, my son, and of me.

For a time in my life, the part of me that could believe in this story was dead. I often think, here in my new home, that it is dead still. But now, at least, I do not wish it to be dead and it does not make me feel foolish, so perhaps my belief is still part of me. I love you, my son, and all I wish for you is that you save your life. Tell this story that I have told you. Try to think of it as true.

Let’s say I got onto a bus, a Greyhound bus, and you saw me coming down the aisle, an Oriental man. Your eye wouldn’t be practiced enough to know by looking at me that I’m Vietnamese — I’m just Oriental at first glance — and you certainly wouldn’t know that I have a special story to tell, a story about ghosts. All you see is a late-middle-aged sort of shabby Oriental man, a little frayed at the collar and cuffs, his hair a little shaggy over the ears, and he’s heading your way and there is a seat next to you. As he approaches, would you raise your newspaper to cover your face or maybe turn to look outside even though we are sitting in the New Orleans bus station and there’s nothing to see out there but a sidewalk and a driver throwing some suitcases into the baggage compartment? This way he would know he wasn’t welcome in that seat, and being an Oriental gentleman, he would know how to take the hint and walk on past and sit someplace else. Or would you keep your eyes on him as he approaches and maybe even give him a little smile so he knows he’s welcome to sit in that empty seat? It’s just far enough to Biloxi that it’s good to sit next to someone for the trip. Biloxi is where I go to see my daughter about once a month, and if you would keep your eyes on me to let me know it’s okay for me to sit next to you, I would tell you a true story about Vietnam.