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thought he was crazy because every day he stood under the rose apple tree, where he recited words in French and their definitions. His dictionary, which he had held close to him throughout his childhood, had been confiscated, but he went on turning the pages in his head. I just had to say a word to him through the fence that separated us and he would give me the definition. And one time, he had given me the rosiest of the rose apples from the bunch that hung just above his head when I gave him the verb
to sniff
.
    â€œSniff: to breathe in through the nose in order to smell. To sniff the air. The wind. The fog. To sniff the fruit! Sniff! Rose apple, in Guyana known also as love apple. Sniff!”
    After that lesson, I never ate a love apple without first sniffing the glossy, fuchsia-pink skin, its innocent coolness nearly hypnotic. And it’s why I quite naturally chose that fruit out of the dozens of other exotic fruits made of plaster that Julie had arranged on a big plate in the middle of the reading table. I brought it to my nose and its sweetly fresh perfume seized me as if its white flesh were tender and real. Julie burst out laughing. “If you want to smell something real, come here.”
    She opened the glass door of a big cupboard holding dozens of small glass bottles filled with spices:star anise, cloves, turmeric, coriander seeds, powdered galangal … The inevitable bottles of fish sauce were there too, along with vermicelli and rice wrappers.
    For months, Julie toiled in the workshop non-stop, but also with me, on me. She persuaded me to organize a series of Vietnamese cooking lessons and tastings. I went along with her because her enthusiasm was irresistible.

    tranh

    painting
    LIFE WAS COMING AT ME like a canvas Julie was unrolling before my eyes. New colours, new shapes revealed themselves as I progressed, as the roll was unwound. And as if by enchantment, images appeared that sketched a scene or illustrated a moment. Suddenly, the painter’s movements became audible and palpable. In the same way, a voice emerged from my name—
mãn
—written in jade green on the plates, on bags, on the front window. The first group of twenty who came to the workshop amplified that budding voice as they took home recipes and repeated stories told around the table. The vibrant life of that adventure launched another life, the one that had finally come and settled in the warmth of my belly.

    áº£o tưởng

    illusion
    JULIE AND MY HUSBAND combined efforts to find me permanent kitchen help. Hồng was scarcely older than me but already had a teenage daughter. She had met her Québécois husband in a Saigon café; she was a waitress, he was a client. He had shown her his Canadian passport and she had agreed to the journey so that her daughter could stop smelling tobacco smoke and feeling the sweat of strangers’ hands on her smock when she came home from work in the middle of the night. He was in love with Hồng, in love with his time in Vietnam, where his hundred dollars were worth a million dongs, where a thousand dollars let him live the experience of eternal love. He had long dreamed of her when he went back to his apartment full of empty bottles.
    Had she known Andy Warhol, Hồng would have appreciated the walls plastered with rows and rows of beer bottles like a piece of pop art. Unfortunately, all she saw was the entrance to a dark tunnel. She disappointed him by choosing skirts that were too long and shoes that were too flat, and he criticized her for leaving too early and coming home from the factory too late. Hồng was surprised to find out that the apartment didn’t belong to him and that his car coughed like an old man in the rain. But she was grateful for the bed for her daughter, so she rolled up her sleeves to erase the marks of her husband’s loneliness and to allow light into the narrow hallways, whose walls had absorbed the shock of closed