Bronze Drum by Phong Nguyen

Author:Phong Nguyen [Nguyen, Phong]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2022-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

The Letter

Now that Trưng Trắc and Thi Sách had tasted each other’s bliss, they sequestered themselves in the dark womb of their chambers, acquainting themselves with the scents, tastes, and touches of the other. Trưng Trắc thought at first she might miss the coded language, the furtive touch, the riddles where their clandestine love had once resided, but she did not. She took great pleasure in the explosive joy of the unfettered body and mind. Thi Sách had begun to allow lamplight into the room, and the lovers would read aloud from scrolls relating ancient myth, philosophy, and tales of war, which were comfortingly remote. Other times, they would crouch across from each other naked, admiring and anticipating, or falling into laughter over nothing.

When they left the chamber, it looked like a two-headed creature emerging from a cave. They clung to each other, and covered their eyes from the too-bright sunlight of the daytime. They would stumble into the dining hall, eat from the same bowl, and retreat into their den. Trưng Trắc began to wonder how she had spent her girlhood playing war games and trying to thrash her sister with a stick. It seemed a great mystery and absurdity, all of a sudden, her life until that moment.

In the comfort of utter acceptance from her beloved, she could try on a thousand ways of being in the world without condemnation, without expectation that she would have to hew to a foolish consistency.

One childhood joy, song, returned to her. On the rare occasion when she was on her own, in the baths or in the meditation room, she found herself slipping into a cheerful melody. Even sad songs had a buoyancy now that she had never noticed. Once wistful, now jaunty, these beautiful tragedies seemed somehow necessary in order to offer to the world their sublimity.

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