He had not visited the tiny, French-built university in all the years since Mai had died. Even the thought had been too painful, like staring too long into the sun or putting one’s hand inside a flame. His life had changed inalterably on the first day that he watched her pass through this very gate, in her white ao dai with her hair flowing down her back and her schoolbooks tied in a strap and clutched against her chest. And it had changed again just as dramatically the last time he had walked out of it, following a memorial service held by her former classmates. Her family had watched him throughout that service, blaming him and yet unable to denounce him, for to publicly denounce him would have been to admit that Mai had loved him, and their only satisfaction was to keep that recognition from him as she disappeared into her grave and they faded from his life. But their unforgiving eyes had scarred him more deeply than any war wound.

Walking inside the gate, he found himself glad that he had come. So much had changed since he last stood on this spot. And yet as he looked around him, he found that on the surface almost everything inside the gates had remained the same. It wasn’t the same, he knew it. But he knew also that one had to look closely and understand deeply to comprehend that it was different.

Classes had just ended. A sea of young women wearing the white ao dais that marked them as students poured out of the buildings, ready to leave the campus through the gate that he had just entered. They reached him and flowed endlessly past him, as if he were walking through a valley of flowers or a heaven crowded with young angels. They smiled curiously at him as they passed, amused at his silent, remembering stare, and then went back to their playful chatter, forgetting him in the instant it took to reach the gate. Their white ao dais were nunlike, and yet ineluctably inviting. Their long hair cascaded down their backs, marking the white silk of their identical dresses like necessary vestments. Their voices were musical as they laughed and teased in that difficult, tonal language that had over the long years become almost as normal to him as his own.

As the girls flowed through the gates he found that Mai was with him, laughing also, whispering her delight. He felt her buoyant presence. Yes, he decided, Mai was here, and she was happy. He had been in Viet Nam long enough to believe that such visits were possible.