"Your English is good."
"I worked for the American army. That's why."
"What years?"
"The bad years. 'Sixty-eight to the time they left. I was a cook at Camp Eagle. First Airborne." He explained that this camp was about ten miles outside Hue—the U.S. troops stayed away from the city.
When I finished eating, he said that if I came back the next day he would have eel soup for me. It was his grandmother's recipe.
Mr. Son was waiting for me the next night. I had looked forward to seeing him, because he was my age and spoke English, and he had been in Hue when I'd last visited, in that haunted and suspenseful period between the American withdrawal in 1972 and the fall of Saigon three years later.
Again I was the only customer. I drank beer and Mr. Son sat with me and served me eel soup and explained his grandmother's recipe. She had been a cook in the royal palace from 1917 onward, when an emperor of the Nguyen dynasty had ruled from there.
Madame Son's eel soup: In a large pot, add a quantity of pork bones to a lot of water and simmer with vegetables for five hours. Strain and save the stock. Sauté onions and garlic in another large pot. Add delicate mushrooms, chilies, spices (anise and cardamom), green beans and white beans, and chopped eel. Add the stock. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about an hour.
I ate it and we talked about the war. He said it was odd, but few people mentioned it anymore. Most people were too young to remember, or had been born in better times. The war, he said, was a miserable time, but he had learned to be a chef then and had enjoyed his work.
"I liked the Americans," he said. "They were good to me."
On a salary of about $30 a month—$300 in military scrip; the U.S. Army in Vietnam had printed its own money—he had started at the bottom in the kitchen.
"First, because I could write English, I made lists. 'Beans,' 'bread,' 'meat,' 'flour.' And I did some easy cooking. Spaghetti is easy. Hamburgers—easy too. The men ate the food."
He drank tea while I had the eel soup, which was spicy and thick from the beans and the chopped eel.
"Many of those men died," he said. "And many of my friends also died."
"What did you think?" I asked.
"It was terrible." He made a face. "And there was nothing here in Hue. Nothing! Just trouble. No people. Fighting now and then, and bombs."
"The American soldiers had left by the time I got here."
"They just went away." He was smiling, not in mirth but at the horror of it. "That was '72. The end of my work. I didn't know what to do. We all waited, and then it came—the VC."
"Where were you then?"
"Here, but I didn't stay. I ran. I had a motorbike and hid in the countryside. My house here was ruined. There were no records. No one knew what I had been doing. When I came back to Hue the soldiers found me."
"Were you scared?"
"Yes. I said to them, 'I like peace!' It was true."
"No prison time?"
"No prison." He got up and opened another bottle of beer for me. Then, settling again on his stool, he said, "The years after that were very bad. From '75 to '78 we had no food, no money, no clothes, nothing. It was almost worse than the war."
Those were the years of the American trade embargo—which lasted until 1994—when, petty-minded in defeat, we had hoped to make the Vietnamese regret that they'd won the war, and had punished them by withholding aid and food. And we had stood by while China invaded the north and became an army of occupation. Those were the first years of America's friendship with China, the hovering presence and ancient enemy of Vietnam.
While we were talking, Mr. Son's elderly father walked in from the street. He was a small, finely made man with a kindly face, a wispy beard, and bony hands. He was slightly built but seemed healthy.
"No smoking, no drinking," Mr. Son said of his father.
The man was in his early eighties and, as a lifelong resident of Hue, had seen a great deal—at least one emperor of the Nguyen dynasty at the royal palace, the French colonials, the Japanese, and the ructions of numerous battles, of which the massacres and beheadings of Tet in 1968 represented just one episode of many upheavals.
"He looks like Uncle Ho," I said.
"Ho was a good man," Mr. Son said. "He grew up near here. Even when he was important he wore simple clothes, not good ones." He laughed, thinking of it. "Just like you and me!"
The old man was smiling now. I commented on that.
"My father worked for the Americans. They liked him," Mr. Son said. "Things got better. They're good now. We're happy."
THE DAY TRAIN TO HANOI
