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marriage. I don’t know if she agreed because he saved her the four hours of bus trips every day or because she had decided to let herself be loved. But the wedding went ahead.

    mâm

    trays
    I VOLUNTEERED TO HELP with the preparations for the engagement party because my sun-brother’s father worked sixty-hour weeks at a factory that made brake pads and another ten hours delivering pizzas, while violent migraines and painkillers reduced his mother to the state of a drunken reed, constantly disturbed by drafts. Sometimes the mere breath of a murmur on her cheek was enough to rattle her and cause the map of her life’s journey to appear on her forehead. It was unthinkable, then, to use her living room for wrapping the gifts in the traditional translucent red paper to take to the bride’s house, since the sound made by every fold, every movement, would be enough to slash open her skin. To spare her the crackling, rustling and commotion, we chose the restaurant dining room as headquarters.

    hạnh phúc

    happiness
    ON THE EVE OF THE engagement party, the room was aglow with red—not the red of love but that of luck. Superstition dictated that each gift be wrapped in that colour, which represents good fortune, because all newlyweds need a lot of luck to find the balance that allows two individuals to build a single shared life, one that will support others in turn. We wish them not love but happiness in duplicate: the word is written twice, one linked to the other, mirrored, cloned. Since no one dares take a risk, each tray of gifts, without exception, is covered with bright red cloth, embroidered with the word
happiness
, not plural but doubled.
    Luckily, newlyweds don’t burden themselves with the worries of those who have lived the ordeal before them. They are just here for the party and they believe that happiness inevitably comes with marriage, or the opposite.

    trầu cau

    areca nuts
    TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE NEXT PART , to the natural cycle of life, my husband had mobilized clients who were friends to form the delegation that would carry the platters of gifts on the morning of the ceremony. The lacquered suckling pig had been entrusted to the strongest, while the others divided up the platter of boxes of tea, bottles of wine and biscuits. The cousins were responsible for the jewels, the small teapot filled with rice alcohol, and the platter of betel leaves and areca nuts. Today, very few Vietnamese still chew areca nuts, but all the same they symbolize the beginning of an encounter. Less than a hundred years ago, the Vietnamese received their guests with a mother-of-pearl wooden box containing a cylindrical mortar for crushing the nut before it was rolled up in a leaf lightly covered with lime. Regular users say the mixture provides the same stimulation as coffee, while those with weak hearts talk about dizzy spells or even intoxication. The effect is achieved by slow chewing, which colours the saliva red—the red of drunkenness, the red of love—because this red tells the story of an eternal union.
    According to legend, twin brothers were in love with the same girl. The first married her. The second, choked with sorrow, left the village so his brother wouldn’t notice. The broken-hearted brother walked until he was exhausted, until he was transformed into limestone. The other twin took the same road in search of his brother. He dropped dead of fatigue nextto the rock and metamorphosed into a betel palm. His wife followed his tracks and in the same place was turned into a climbing vine with heart-shaped leaves, wound around the trunk of the palm tree that shaded the rock. I have often wondered how that love triangle had been able to become the symbol of a happy marriage, because the end proved so sad. I think we misunderstood our ancestors. They placed the platter of betel at the head of the procession because they wanted to warn the newlyweds of the danger of impossible loves,