“You see,” she says, “a real man is different, not like the boys with mustaches who lurk outside our school. He can guess what you’re thinking, anticipate what will make you happy. When you’re with a man, you’re no longer a girl but a goddess, a sage, an ancient soul who has lived in every era, a wonder that he contemplates with all the intense curiosity of a newborn baby.”

Even though Huong has become my best friend, I never quite understand what she is saying. Her convoluted soul is divided between light and darkness, she is both blatant and discreet, and her life is full of mysteries despite everything she confesses to me. This Monday morning she has come to school exhausted and on edge. Although her hair is plaited, I can see evidence that it has been curled and then straightened. She is intoxicated with some joy that only she understands.

“The best demonstration of love a man can give,” she tells me, “is his patience as he watches a virgin maturing.”

I flush and find I can’t utter a word. She doesn’t seem at all embarrassed to be talking about something so intimate, and yet there is a grandeur, a heroism to her indiscreet confessions. There is a realm of life that I haven’t yet grasped. I feel like a blind person who has never seen the splendor of the sun.

“How can I get out of this darkness around us?” I ask Huong.

She pretends not to understand.

“How can I become a woman?”

She opens her eyes wide and cries, “You’re mad. Leave it as late as possible!”

20

Back to the civilized world.

The town of Ha Rebin is in the northern extremity of Manchuria, a strategic place in the Sino-Russian conflict. Our warships are challenging the Russian navy on the River Love, which is several kilometers wide.

When twilight falls on this noisy, bustling town, the domes of all the mosques, the crosses and virgins on the churches, and the sloping roofs of the Buddhist temples are all silhouetted against the bloodied brilliance of the sky. Russians, Jews, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, English, Germans and Americans live side by side in this cosmopolitan metropolis. Each of these peoples has found a way of recreating its own landscape and living according to its own culture.