“I’m so sorry,” I said.

A long, uncomfortable pause, then Dai Nam spoke again. “My brother cried to me, ‘Mama!’ before he took his last breath. This broke my mother’s heart, for she felt she’d lost her son twice. At the funeral, when I looked at his small body lying lifeless in the tiny coffin, I suddenly realized the brevity of life, remembering how happy I’d felt when I was carrying him on my back, and how fast my happiness fled!

“Then my mother found out she was sterile due to an infection in her tubes that she’d caught from my father. This convinced my father even more that I was his curse-his all-destroying star-and that I had not only cut off his offspring, but his family name. He began to abuse me more. Whenever my mother tried to stop me from overworking, my father would yell at her, ‘Stupid woman, let this creature do what her fate allots her! Don’t you know she has to labor for our family to redeem the evil deeds accumulated in her past lives, or else she will be doomed even more in her next?’

“When he uttered the word ‘doomed,’ he’d roll his eyes as large, and open his mouth as wide, as if he were actually witnessing my doom. Then he would hit me with whatever he could lay his hand on-a shoe, a pan, a broom, even a chair. And I would burst out crying. ‘What are you crying for?’ he once yelled. ‘Is your father dead? Of course you wish me dead, don’t you? You’ve already destroyed your brother and now you want to destroy me so that you can have more graves to kowtow to. But I won’t let that happen! You hear me?’ He slapped my face. ‘I don’t know what I did in my past life to have you as my punishment!’

“After the death of my brother, my mother slept by herself every night. My father rarely came home. We both knew that he spent his nights in the whorehouse. He also stopped bringing money back for the family. He said he’d rather throw his money into the gutter than squander it on me-a money-losing shrew, or my sickly mother-a medicine cauldron. Then my mother had to work as an amah to support me and herself. She died when I turned fourteen.

“Then my father had to take me back with him, and by that time he had already been living with the widow for more than two years. Of course the widow didn’t like me, so she made me do all the chores, not only at her house but also at her prostitution house-cooking, cleaning, scrubbing the floors, washing clothes, waiting on her favorite money-bringing prostitutes, everything except shopping, for fear that I’d cheat her of her money. I only got one meal a day of cold leftover soup or thin, meatless congee made from broken grains. She wouldn’t let my father live in her house for free either; she made him work as a guard at the prostitution house.

“Finally when I reached nineteen and thought myself strong enough, I planned my escape-to swim to Hong Kong, my dreamland of freedom. I failed seven times before I made it on the eighth attempt. In Hong Kong, I also succeeded in finding my great-aunt, who took me in, bought me a Hong Kong identity card, and enrolled me in a charitable Buddhist school. Later I attended a Buddhist college, then went to beg in Thailand. When I returned to Hong Kong, a nunnery learned about my ordeal and offered to sponsor me to write a dissertation based on my experience. That’s how I’m here.”

After she finished her account, Dai Nam’s spirit seemed to come back to the room. She sipped her tea and said after some silence, “I still have nightmares of my escape to Hong Kong…one time I was almost drowned and another time almost eaten by sharks…”

I gasped, then blurted out, “Then is…the scar on your face-”

“No, that has nothing to do with my escape; it was cut by a little boy, a neighbor’s son.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She paused.

And I was surprised, for the first time in this terrible narration, to see sadness flicker in her eyes.

“I was ten, playing by myself in front of our house, when a neighbor boy came over, picked up a piece of broken glass from the floor and cut my face, just like that.”

“You mean you were not in a fight?”

“No, not at all. I was playing by myself, and so was he. Then he just came up and slashed me. You may not believe it. It sounds so strange, but that’s exactly what happened. His parents rushed me to the hospital, where I had a tetanus shot and eighteen stitches. Later when his parents asked him why he did this to me, he said he didn’t remember the event at all. They beat him severely anyway. Since he was only six, everyone wondered where his strength came from. As you can see, my wound was long and deep. It should have been the work of someone much older. Some neighbors said he must be possessed by a demon. So the parents hired a professional exorcist to fix him. He made the boy drink water boiled with magic figures, he scribbled sutras on the boy’s face with red ink, and chanted incantations for him for hours-with the result of giving him a high fever for a week.

“As Buddhism says, his deed was merely wuming, no reason. There’s no reason for a little boy of six…nor for an adult like my father.”

Dai Nam paused to study the submerged tea leaves. “But it seems now that my father regrets what he did to me. I received a letter a week ago written for him by his old neighbor. He said he’s in his terminal stage of lung cancer and probably won’t make it through Double Nine Festival. He wants to see me before he dies. That’s why I have to go back right away.” Dai Nam turned to look at me. “Meng Ning, if you don’t mind, can you come over here once a week to take care of the altar and make offerings to the Buddha while I’m away?”

“Of course I will.”

Dai Nam refilled my cup. Savoring the bittersweet taste of the newly brewed tea, I began to tell her about my family, the death of my little brother, and my father, who had gambled away everything. When concluding my story, I said that, unlike her father, my father had never abused me.

Dai Nam surprised me by saying, “Maybe we were sisters in our past life. It’s just that our father liked you because you’re beautiful and talented, but hated me because I’m a boor.”

Chan Lan’s loud and comical “Have children, many many!” jolted me back to the nunnery-the here and now. Now the sun had vanished and the street lights cast deep shadows. Nuns or not nuns, I thought, our lives are like shadows fleeting past the splendors of this floating world.

14. Under the Paris Sun

A few days after my visit to Dai Nam in the Golden Lotus Temple, I received a call from the French consulate, asking me if I was ready to go back to the Sorbonne for my oral defense. I was. Besides, if I went to Paris now, I could at least leave behind my confusion for a while. As I packed, I felt pangs of sadness that Michael had never called. Maybe Yi Kong was right after all-men are not trustworthy. Nor would they feel magnanimous after being turned down and their egos wounded.

The next day, with an uneasy mind, I boarded the plane.

Paris looked as if I’d never been away. I felt a little strange that it had not changed, because I had. I had been at one time innocent, curious, and eager for life. But now I felt as if I’d been holding a lamp that had lighted many paths, but missed the one home.

It was six-thirty when I stepped from the taxi and walked to the entrance of La Maison d’Asie. The sense of strangeness grew because this was where I’d first lived when I came here to study. In the twilight, I climbed up the stairs to the entrance, silently greeted by the two stone lions standing guard before the building.

I took the key from the man at the reception desk, went to my room on the third floor, put down my luggage, then headed straight to the communal bathroom to take a shower. After fifteen minutes, refreshed from the scalding water, hot steam, and the pleasant smell of sandalwood soap, I went back to my room, changed into my pajamas, and sat in bed to prepare for my oral defense the next afternoon. I could study only halfheartedly, distracted by thoughts about Dai Nam. While I tried to imagine what had happened to her, I also could not keep from thinking about Michael and his haiku proposal: