Mãn by Kim Thúy Read Free Book Online Page A

join the Vietnamese community seniors’ club.
    And so Maman injected new life into our restaurant by adding recipes to our menu now and then, which continued to follow only our regular customers’ wishes and the happenstance of our memories.

    hồng

    pink and sometimes red
    HỒNG AND HER DAUGHTER became members of the family when they moved into the apartment that had been used as the children’s daycare. She had left her husband when Julie caught a glimpse of the bruises scattered over her body. Hidden by long sleeves and dark trousers, it was possible to forget them. The
bravo
s and the
thank you
s of the customers also erased the unwitting abuse and the oblivious insults that alcohol poured onto her. She pushed forward head-long, ignoring her nights, disregarding blows, using her body as a shield to protect her daughter from the threat of being sent back to Vietnam, where she thought she would no longer fit in. It was easy to close her eyes because the only two mirrors in the dark apartment reflected more the explosion of anger than her silhouette, which appeared there in fragments. She had forgotten what she looked like in one piece until the day she saw herself in Julie’s eyes when she accidentally opened the bathroom door as Hồng was taking off her chef’s jacket.
    We went in a four-car convoy, two women and six men, to rescue Hồng and her daughter from a reality that had become a way of life, a habit. Her husband never put to the test the army that stood upright behind her that night and every night thereafter. Before we had time to sort through photos and arrange them in albums, Hồng’s daughter had started her first year in medicine at university and we were launching the first cookbook from our atelier-boutique-restaurant.

    sách

    book
    THE LAUNCH WAS GIVEN a lot of media coverage thanks to our faithful and enthusiastic admirers, and above all thanks to Julie’s network, which included radio and TV as well as print. A successful broadcast would generate a flattering review. Before the first newspaper article had been framed, magazines filled our precious rigid suitcase made of leather and wood that seemed to have crossed the Indian Ocean, trod the Silk Road or survived the Holocaust. It was set on a folding stand in the window, wide open, rich with all the praise that might come from as far away as the United States and France. In the
Weekend à Montréal
guide, our atelier-restaurant Mãn was among the essential addresses, while for Frommer’s it was an experience not to be missed. Quebeckers’ interest in Vietnamese cuisine was growing along with the increased opening of Vietnam’s doors to mass tourism. That wave of enthusiasm turned our business into a home base, our book
La Palanche
(The Yoke) into a cultural reference and me into a spokesperson. Readers praised the recipes but often wanted to talk to me about the tales and anecdotes that had inspired our choices.
    The story of the little nine-year-old girl imprisoned for several months after trying to escape by boat explained the taste of tomato and parsley soup better than the picture next to the recipe. We had chosen it in honour of Hồng. She was that little girl, separated from her father and her older brotherduring their arrest. Minutes before her father pushed her into the crowd crammed onto the boat, he had told her that in no circumstances was she to identify him. She had to tell the police she was travelling alone with her twelve-year-old brother. She’d ended up in the women’s prison, isolated from the men’s by sheets of metal. Her brother had dug a small space under it so he could hold her hand during the night. In daytime she would go all the way to the end of the camp, where only a wire fence separated them. That way, her brother could keep an eye on her. Their father kept as far from his children as possible, changing his name and lying about his address.