The Pearl of the Orient (Kindle Single) Read online

  Meanwhile, Behaine spent much time that summer traveling the boulevards between Paris and Versailles. He wore his cause like a capuche. He met and negotiated and persuaded. He stood before the clergy and said, “We must, with unquenchable ardor, propagate our sacred religion.” He stood before the French foreign minister, the comte de Montmorin, and said, “We must control the Strait of Malacca.” His politesse was perfect and by autumn he had paved the way for what would be called, at its signing, the 1787 Treaty of Versailles.

  With the treaty signed, Behaine and the prince would soon depart. The day before the prince was to leave, the dauphin grasped Cảnh’s hand exactly as he had on their first meeting—when the queen had promoted their acquaintance—and led his friend to the terrace. Their thin fingers meshed. They strolled through the Parterre du Midi and past the dry fountains and the prince felt that he would give anything, Saigon and gold and all the pearls in the world, for just one minute of speech.

  Suddenly, the prince felt his feet tingle. He squeezed the dauphin’s hand and the slippers began to lift. The dauphin had lost so much weight that he was hardly heavier than the puppet. Cảnh held him close, as if to protect him. The boys ascended above the fountains, ascended until they hovered above the courtyard, until even the great rooftops of Versailles looked like the vitreous pieces of a mosaic.

  They floated among Fragonard clouds. They surveyed the roads leading away from Versailles, the miles and miles of green fields.

  “You may have pearls,” the dauphin said, his voice a weave of pride and melancholy, “but someday all of this will be mine.”

  The puppet, abandoned under the Adonis willow far below, said, “The sun soon sets for the sons of Marie Antoinette.”

  Prince Nguyễn Cảnh kicked his feet. The boys were high above the world. They could see over the apple orchards, over the streams. They laughed at their weightlessness and pearls fell, torrential as a downpour from the clouds. The prince believed, for a moment, that nothing could ground them, that nothing could bring them back down to the feasts and fêtes and immaculate marble of the palace. The prince believed that the dauphin would not die and that life had nothing to do with plot, and device, and a precise sword. For a moment, the prince believed that nothing could make them return to earth, that dark dream.

  Pearls fell. The children descended.

  The story of this luxurious rain spread through the countryside of France and became, over time, a fairy tale of the Ancien Régime. Mothers would gather their children around hearths and say: “Once upon a time, in the reign of Louis XVI, not long before the Revolution, the sky opened over the people of France like a sign from God and released pearls.”

  * * *

  As the ship sailed eastward, the Jesuits’ tight spell began to loosen. The prince, whose voice had been stopped for nearly three years, opened and closed his mouth freely. To his surprise, pearls did not fall. Soon, the puppet’s prognostications waned. It lay limp in a box below deck. The sailors—many of whom had signed aboard for fortune—felt that fate had cheated them.

  The slush of waves collected and receded around the frigate. Behaine and the prince sat on the smooth foredeck.

  “Warm,” said the Prince.

  Behaine looked up.

  “The sun is warm!”

  “Yes, it is rather warm,” Behaine said encouragingly.

  “The sun is warm—but the breeze is marvelous!”

  “Yes, a marvelous breeze. I didn’t think you had language in you.”

  “The breeze smells of home.”

  “The balsa?”

  “The lemongrass.”

  “We’ll soon be there.”

  The prince opened and closed his mouth: no pearls. “The treaty has been signed?”

  “France is your ally,” Behaine patted his knapsack. The treaty and a sealed letter for the lieutenant of Pondicherry were safe inside.

  The prince, suddenly maudlin, said, “Years have passed. My country must surely have changed.”

  “Your French is superb, child. I didn’t realize you understood it so well.”

  “What if the Tây Sơn have conquered the South?”

  “The Lord is with us: we have the treaty.”

  The prince stood at the ship’s prow. Minutes felt like hours and hours felt like days.

  “What of my mother? My father? My brothers may be dead from fighting.”

  “Have faith, my child. Have faith. The future, like the breeze, is marvelous.”

  “I hope my father is well. The dauphin was very sick. I’m afraid he won’t live much longer.”

  “You certainly have a lot to say this afternoon.”

  “It’s been three years!” The prince felt words like a pressure through his body. If they had come out pearls, the ship surely would have sunk.

  “Go ahead, then. Talk to your heart’s content.” Behaine lit a pipe. The sea opened like a silk scarf. The future would be marvelous: he had the treaty!

  The prince continued, “I hate pearls. I detest them. They are the ugliest things in the world. From now on, I want only words.”

  They sailed for days and nights and more days. The sky turned from blue to gray to black to blue to gray.

  In Pondicherry, French clerks and naval officers played tennis on the Mission House lawn. Indian children retrieved balls and served tea. The midday sun dried the air until it cracked. The three Jesuits stood above a hole in the earth, sweat staining their cassocks purple. Rice-paper umbrellas provided tepid shade over the Jesuits as they examined pieces of celadon pottery, recently unearthed. Still more Indian children, their turbans bright as sugar candy, dug with sticks and cups at the bottom of the hole.

  “Attention child! You may cause breakage,” the portly Jesuit said.

  “We want no more damage.”

  “The value of these artifacts is incalculable!”

  “They are Greek!” The redheaded Jesuit said.

  “Ancient. Many, many centuries B.C.”

  “Imagine—before Christ our Lord and Savior,” the third Jesuit said.

  “How destitute the world was.”

  “How uncivilized.”

  “How dark and ignorant.”

  “Attention child! You dig desultorily.”

  Behaine and Prince Cảnh, whose ship had dropped anchor in the bay, approached the Jesuits. The prince’s frockcoat and breeches, heavy with buckles, clanged like tocsins.

  “Bonjour!” Prince Cảnh called.

  “And who are you?” The portly Jesuit inquired.

  “The boy looks familiar—”

  “It is the prince!”

  “And the archbishop. Welcome!”

  “Welcome! You are looking plump.”

  “And fashionable.”

  “Versailles is the very origin of worldliness.”

  “He is so meaty! It can’t be the same child!”

  Indeed, the prince had grown since his departure from Pondicherry. The food and sport of Versailles had made him strong and tall and confident. The Jesuits were amazed; they hardly recognized him. They left the Indian children to excavation and walked to the Mission House.

  “Civilization has done wonders for your constitution.”

  “France agrees with you.”

  “French cuisine is an elixir.”

  “Ambrosia.”

  “Certainly hearty.”

  “Do you recall,” the portly Jesuit asked his brothers, “calf sweetbreads en papillote?”

  “Did the banished Adam forget paradise?”

  “Or Westphalian hams?”

  “If nothing else, the Westphalians do that one thing perfectly.”

  The redheaded Jesuit turned to Behaine.

  “What news from Versailles?”

  “There is unrest,” said Behaine.

  “We’ve heard — the Estates General!”

  “The duc D’Orleans!”

  “In God’s name — the king is lenient with him.”

  “What, brothers, will becom
e of France?”

  Behaine was anxious to sail for Cochinchina, yet the lieutenant refused to see him. They remained at the Mission House, where the prince talked and talked and talked. He spoke to the cooks; he spoke to the clerks. He talked until he became sick of his own voice and then he propped the puppet on his lap and performed ventriloquism. The puppet told stories of war and adventure and lost love. Sometimes the two of them argued. The puppet claimed that the queen’s eyes were blue; the prince insisted that they were green. The Jesuits proclaimed the prince the finest storyteller they had ever heard. Weeks passed and Behaine often wished for the pearls’ return. He found relief in the banquet hall. He walked the beaches with Alexandre de Rhodes. Finally, the lieutenant summoned them to his mansion in Pondicherry.

  The prince and Behaine walked to the lieutenant’s quarters together. They sat, waiting, until a graying man with red breeches stepped to the podium.

  Behaine said, “I have brought the Treaty of Versailles. I request, in the name of the king, ships and arms and men.”

  The archbishop placed the treaty on a platter. A servant carried it to the lieutenant, who unrolled it. “This says that France will aid King Nguyễn Ánh in his fight against the Tây Sơn. In return, France will receive Paulo Condor and Callao islands.”

  “That is correct,” Behaine said.

  “In addition, France will claim future trade rights to all of Cochinchina, including the use of the Mekong River.”

  “Which, of course, opens trade with China.”

  “And rights to the port of Tourane.”

  “Our strategic outpost against the British.”

  “And protection of all French subjects residing in Cochinchina.”

  “Where there is trade, there will certainly be Frenchmen.”

  “And protection and religious freedom for all missionaries.”

  “That, sir, is a most important clause.”

  The lieutenant rolled the treaty, retied the ribbon, and slid it like a sword through his watch fob and into his pocket.

  “Still I do not see good coming from this.”

  Behaine bowed. He said, “A treaty is a treaty.”

  “True,” agreed the lieutenant. He thought: What a mountebank this Behaine is!

  The archbishop pulled the sealed letter from his knapsack. “I have this missive from the king.”

  The lieutenant accepted the letter. He said, “And where is the prince? I hear he does tricks with a wooden puppet.”

  The prince stepped forward. He said, “Yes, sir. Would you like a story?”

  Behaine said, “He’ll talk your ear off if you let him.”

  “Here is my ear, then. Tell me the story of your journey.”

  The prince and the puppet began to speak and their stories unfolded in scenes that, over the course of the afternoon, expanded—one part opening from the next—and yet remained connected, like a hand fan made of colorful, patterned silk. The stories inspired laughter, then tears, then chuckles, then protests. The men hooted and clapped. When the prince fell silent, the lieutenant demanded another story. Prince Cảnh held the puppet before him. He said, “The puppet will relate a riddle.”

  “What is the nature of the wheel, or an orb, or the contemplative mind?

  What marks the completion of the sun’s motion through the elliptic of the sky? What did Satan instigate and the dark angels complete? What, dear sir, will bring the downfall of King Louis XVI? Answer this riddle if you can.”

  Nobody dared to mention the French Revolution. The room was silent except for the clap of a roof tile in the breeze.

  Later that evening, the lieutenant leaned back into his chair as he read the letter.

  Monsieur Lieutenant,

  I write on behalf of the king. We ask that you survey the strength of our navy in Pondicherry and assess the worth and viability of the archbishop of Adran’s mission in Cochinchina. The king asks you to use your judgement and proceed as you see fit in regard to the 1787 Treaty of Versailles.

  In His Majesty’s name,

  Comte de Montmorin

  The lieutenant went to his balcony. The beaches met the ocean and the ocean met the sky, three layers pale as gradations in shale. He surveyed the strength of the French navy in Pondicherry. He assessed the worth of the archbishop of Adran’s mission. He used his judgment. He brought a match to the rolled 1787 Treaty of Versailles and let it fall into his bronze chamber pot. He thought, What fun it will be to make Behaine wait.

  For months, the lieutenant begged Behaine to be patient. He said, “So much needs to be done! Ships must be built, men must be conscripted, and cannons must be purchased.”

  Yet, Behaine saw the number of carracks unused in the port of Arikamedu; he saw how the king’s navy loafed and played tennis and caroused Pondicherry. He wondered, When in the history of France has a lieutenant disobeyed his King so shamelessly? The world was changing and Behaine could do nothing but wait.

  Years passed and by the end of 1789, news of the Bastille reached Pondicherry. The prince’s riddle of the Revolution had come true, and the treaty was in danger. Behaine continued to walk the beaches. One afternoon he pulled the prince from the palm shade and into the sun’s glare.

  “I will not give up God’s mission,” he said to the prince.

  The prince looked dazed, as if half asleep. He said, “You are right. We should return.”

  “The lieutenant will not comply with the treaty. Your father has been betrayed.”

  The prince dropped the puppet to the sand. He said, “I understand. We must return.”

  “I will simply buy the ships and arms and men myself,” Behaine said.

  The archbishop walked to the Mission House. He found a large celadon pot from the time of Alexander. He walked to the palm shade and he put the pot next to the prince. From that day, the prince collected money for his storytelling.

  * * *

  From the Bay of Bengal to the Strait of Malacca and into the South China Sea, the prince remained silent. As they neared his home, he realized that he hadn’t thought of his family in years. He had not missed his mother. He had not missed his father. He had fallen into storytelling as if into an opium dream. A great absence filled his heart: He felt as though he had abandoned his dynasty. He longed to collect again the words he’d released under the palm tree. He’d spoken enough in the years at Pondicherry for a lifetime. So many words gone! He pulled the puppet’s strings and the wooden mouth clapped. He wondered at the value of words, the lack and the abundance of them. What they conveyed and retained. What they’d cost him. Unlike device and plot and the precise sword, words brought nothing so stable as conquest. He felt a sudden affinity with the puppet: words had simply moved through him and returned to the world. The power of his voice had never been his own. He stood on the ship’s prow and vowed on the graves of his ancestors that he would speak no more.

  The prince watched the purple horizon for signs of land. He had been gone five years, half of his life. When they arrived at Paulo Condor Island, Behanie was received like a victorious warrior. They feasted and slept and the next morning the prince and Behaine rode up the Mekong in a shaded sampan. Peasants called out the news of King Nguyễn Ahn’s success as they passed: the Nguyễns had defeated the Tây Sơn. The sound of his native language, toned and clipped compared to the fluid, mellifluous French, shocked the boy so profoundly that his tongue turned to pastry sugar and melted sweetly away. His people called for him to speak, but he refused. The people of Cochinchina wondered at the prince’s silence and suspected that he had been maimed by the foreigners or by the sea or by the strange puppet he carried with him incessantly. The soft seductiveness of silence, the same silence that had created such a sensation at Versailles, surrounded him once again. People followed him like a saint. They called him the “Silent Prince.”

  When they reached the Nguyễn palace, Behaine and the boy knelt before King Ánh. Much had changed in their absence. The king was flushed with health and dressed in fin
e Chinese silk. He laughed loudly. His demeanor was calm, his countenance smooth.

  “You have brought the treaty?” asked the king.

  “I have brought aid.”

  The king reviewed the dissolute mercenaries.

  “This is France?”

  Behaine felt his failure acutely. He said, “I did what I could.”

  “Then there is no treaty?”

  “There is no treaty.”

  The king took Behaine’s hand and said, “You will always be honored as our friend. Your efforts to aid us will be remembered forever among my people.”

  Behaine was ashamed. He had achieved nothing. Five years of his life gone! What he did not realize was this: King Ánh was pleased by the archbishop’s failure. In the missionary’s absence, the Tây Sơn had weakened and the Nguyễn clan, strong with sons, had taken Saigon for the seventh time. It was a miracle. The ghost of Triệu Au, protectress of warriors, had smiled over the Nguyễn clan. Even the Trinhs had retreated. In the end, the king had no need for aid.

  A grand celebration was prepared in Huế the following week.

  The Silent Prince rode with Behaine through the streets of Saigon. The prince’s father and mother and brothers rode in palanquins ahead. The elephants moved slowly. The canopy allowed sun and shade alternately. The procession traveled up and down hills, through villages and cities, until the Imperial city of Huế lay in indigo shadows before them. It was there, in a grand ceremony, that Nguyễn Ánh proclaimed victory over the Tây Sơn and the Trinhs. He revived his country’s ancient name and proclaimed himself Gia Long, emperor of Vietnam. He raised his arms to heaven; the sky burned brilliant pink.