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The Perfume River
by tôn thất tuệ
Around the world, many rivers become the embodiments
of their hosts: Thames of London, Seine of Paris, Danube of Vienna, Moldau of
Prague, to mention a few…and Beethoven never forgot his 'father' Rhine. In my case, the Perfume River incarnates the City of
Huế, ancient royal capital of Vietnam. She is, herself, nourishing the mind of
generations after generations; she is spelling the term of endearment.
In 1802, after pacifying the whole country to become
the first king of the Nguyễn House, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh settled down in Huế and
sped up the construction of the royal citadel. Why did he choose a narrow strip
of land pushed to the sea by the Annamite Chain, the like of La Sierra, USA?
Historians provided with many convincing theories. But for the Hueist who wish
to claim the famous emperor to their camp, the prime reason dwelt in his love
of the Perfume River.
To compare with the Mekong in the South where Nguyễn
Phúc Ánh emerged as a prevailing warlord, the Perfume represents just a piece of
gossamer, having no commercial or strategic interests. Her values are imbedded
in her peacefulness and her romanticism. They are attributed not only to her
geographical disposition, but also in her witnessing a flow of historical
events with more vicissitudes than splendors.
In 1876, the great grandson of the dynasty founder was
outnumbered by the French expeditionary legion that fusilladed the capital.
This marked the total colonization of Vietnam. While the resistance was
smoldering, spot by spot in the whole country, the Perfume received a young and
dynamic king in a getaway sampan on her water. Duy Tân, disguised as a
commoner, left the Forbidden Palace, crossed the river toward the mountain to
raise the banner of the national recuperation. His dream was annihilated by
betrayal. He was arrested, and banished to the Reunion Island, North Africa;
many of his followers were beheaded. Then came the immolation of the ailing
monarchy. In 1945, the last king abdicated in favor of the new authority. In a
stone throw from the Perfume, Bảo Đại surrendered the tokens of the royalty:
the seal and the sword.
The worst scare to the water body was carved in 1968.
On the Monkey Lunar New Year, the Communist forces invaded the whole city. The
South government took it back in fierce battles. The usurpers ran away after
committing a mass murder. They killed in a hurry or buried alive those they detained
during their one month long occupation.
Of the new millennium just ushered, the maiden year of
2003 chronicled a large toll in the river but the Perfume was not guilty, not the
villain. The Annamite Chain, as a vertical cliff, retained all the moisture
from the Pacific Ocean then unleashed torrential rains into her and her sisters
in the Center of VN. The whole City of Huế was engulfed in a yellowish lagoon.
If Hue dwellers suffered quite a bit from this
catastrophic flood, it seemed that they enjoyed around August and September
mild chronic inundations that made the river closer to them by her swollen
bosom. Once the murky water siphoned off into the sea, the Perfume repossessed
her perennial limpid mirror reflecting the old royal wall punctuated with
watchtowers. The sandy bed and marine plants are noticeable like in a giant aquarium
endowed by the nature. A Western tourist, a century ago, wrote home that he
roamed a boat in the Perfume smoothly as in a small lake. Wooden sampans moved
slowly on the silver fluvial artery as if unfolding music scores celebrating
the sauntering crepuscule. Up to the 1970 there were almost no motorized canoes,
which helped boost the stillness.
But at times, roaring nautical ski boats infringed the
holy pastoral reverie. That kind of sport, province of the rich and privileged,
revealed the other aspect of the city which she reflected too as she reflected
the royal complex. Right at the beginning of the domination, the French started
to urbanize the undeveloped Right Bank. Administrative service, hospital,
treasury, school … swallowed rice paddies, as hungry lions dealt with innocent
gazelles. They built a river front sport club as well as churches for
themselves and for indigenous adherents to the new religion. Sumptuous villas in
European architecture, house to Gallic rulers, appeared in sub tropical
gardens.
The entire national power was shifted from the Left
Bank with a toy king to the Right Bank of His Excellence the Omnipotent Envoy.
At the wake of the political downfall, a poet referred to the Perfume as a
stream of tears mourning the defunct national sovereignty.
I share this collective infliction, but I grew up when
its acuteness has been somewhat alleviated by the latent healing effects of the
time. Hue became introvert, kept silent the most
possible.
I used to wander along the river, mainly when the sky
was somber, adrift like an autumnal dead leaf. One time I wondered what if I
had to leave the town and this river, and I said to myself I should die.
Ironically, after high school, I went down to the South for higher studies, was
assigned to government jobs, then got married, I never came back to see the
river, and I never die. (Actually I did come back but in many one day long
official missions which kept me in meetings and formal dinners).
If someone asks me which is the most speaking feature
of the Perfume, I would pick the swans crossing the river in school days; swans
in quotation marks. I would elaborate as follows:
On the Right Bank, there were two famous and adjacent
schools, one for boys and one for girls. (Forget, please, the one for boys, I’m
boy). The girls’ uniform was white; conical leaf hats, white too, are not
mandatory but all of them donned these. The campuses were situated right in
between two bridges. It was too far for a walk, that’s why young ladies in
white residing in the Left Bank decided to make a short cut. Roofless sampans
helped them. Each student played part of a feather of the colossal swans
skating smoothly on the undisturbed water.
This must have been the most immaculate
image since the time when time was created.
I’ve just returned to the ancient royal city, after
five decades, to discover that the beloved swans had been butchered. A bridge
was built right at the place where female students boarded the sampans. The
white uniform was crossed out from the school handbook. Walking then crossing
the river was not practical. Motorcycles replaced sampans instead.
I walk onto the new bridge. Watching the mountain in
the river, I got a chill. An old mystical revelation surged back to my mind. A
long time ago, shortly before the twilight, I was on the old bridge. I watched
the indigo mountains, and uttered these words: “the real master of my life is
the chain of mountain that plunges into the river, tainting dark the river to
be embraced by the river”*. I’ve kept trying to decipher the enigma. I hope that
I could fathom it, not analytically but intuitively and that the Perfume
River retains this mysticism
Now the drifter me, back as a tourist, as an outsider,
still was not immune from the sacred attachment to something unreal but real.
The prodigal son came back to enliven the remembrances of the time lost. May
his last visit, shorter than a blink of the eye, be transcended into eternity;
may the Perfume embalm the rest of his life, shower him with tranquility. But,
helas, wisdom has it that the devouring nostalgia stays incurable, incurable
forever.===
* ...ông thầy đích thực của đời ta
là ngọn núi chiều màu quyến rủ
rơi xuống sông và nhuộm thẩm dòng sông.
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