And he sensed that Van had been right in the frantic note that she had left underneath Francois Petain’s perfume bottle in the bathroom of the Riverside Hotel all those weeks or maybe lives ago. Not about herself; only time would tell with that. But about him. Now he was free. Someday he might even find a woman to love for a lifetime, yeu instead of thuong. There was still time for that. Van herself might return someday, wiser and more loving from her journey, and who knew what would happen if she did?

And yet what Van had said was inalterably true. He might love another woman, and he hoped that someday he would. But no woman could ever fully own his heart. Because he would always be in love with Viet Nam.

Viet Nam, Viet Nam. The whole land laughed at him with fresh delight every morning, winking playfully as it set out once again to betray him. It dangled its mysteries before him, puzzles that only deepened every time he tried to solve them. It embraced him so tightly that in a way he had become it, looking out at the rest of the world from inside its eyes as if he were Brer Rabbit, gummed up in the Tar Baby.

Viet Nam, Viet Nam. It had suborned him all those years ago like a wily beggar, luring him inside the tangle of its tragedies and stealing away his boyhood. It had wounded and punished him as he dared to believe he could change it. It had shown him that he could love and then relentlessly destroyed the very treasure it had offered him, finally driving him away as if he were a demonic madman. And after all the years in the wilderness it had welcomed him back again only to tease him, asking everything of him but giving nothing in return except his heart, the same heart it had once so cruelly stolen.

But despite it all he had remained, unable to end his passion for its jungles and its alleyways. Was that not a monumental sort of love?

Dzung was waiting for him at the curb, watching his movements with ever-careful eyes. His friend smiled shrewdly as Condley reached the car, having seen the right signs in his stride.

“So, she was with you, Cong Ly. The girl who died.”

“You always know, don’t you, Dzung?”

“About these things, I think.”

Dzung’s smile turned sentimental. His hands were cupped together in front of him and now he looked down at them. He opened them a bit and Condley saw that he was holding a small white pigeon. The bird looked this way and that as Dzung gently stroked its head with a finger.

“My father came to see me. He landed on the roof of the car!”