Free The Turk Who Loved Apples by Matt Gross Page A

books and papers in English and Vietnamese. In one corner was a small shrine, with bowls of fruit and lit candles clustered around black-and-white photos of her ancestors.
    To eat, Ms. Thanh, her husband, her niece, and I sat on the floor, thin rattan mats beneath us and crisp newspapers spread out as a tablecloth. I crossed my legs awkwardly and felt the bulges of my ankles rubbing against the hard tiles below. I was not comfortable, but I tried not to show it.
    Many dishes came out of the narrow kitchen, brought by the niece, but only two have stuck in my memory: a small clay pot containing a slab of fish braised gently in peppery caramelized fish sauce; and a half-hatched egg, or ht vit ln .
    Now, I’d heard of half-hatched eggs before and had been curious to try one. The idea is simple, if gruesome. A duck egg is fertilized and its embryo allowed to develop for a few weeks. Then, usually, the egg is hard-boiled, and the mix of egg white and semi-developed duck is scooped out with a spoon. This was, I’d heard, a popular snack for kids on their way to school.
    What appeared before me on Ms. Thanh’s floor was not what I’d expected. Rather than being hard-boiled, the egg had been fried, so that the duck fetus was splayed out amid a yellow scramble, like a suicide-by-skyscraper in a spreading pool of blood. The duck was distinctly duckish—nearly fully formed, with a bulbous head and thin black feathers now floating free of its shiny, pale skin. As much as I loved eggs, and as much as I loved duck, this was not going to be easy.
    I cannot tell you how it tasted. I know that I either received, or scooped myself, some egg with some duck limb, and that I nibbled as best I could at its cartilaginous bits, and I remember being surprised at how easily the feathers went down. But as for flavor and texture? They escaped me, and I concentrated instead on the other parts of the meal—the rice, the fish, the jasmine tea—though I was terrifiedthat Ms. Thanh would notice and think me a coward or, worse, unsophisticated.
    Naturally, she and her family took no notice whatsoever, complimenting me instead on my skilled way with chopsticks, and Ms. Thanh began telling me about her life: troubles during the war years, naturally enough, followed by her college studies first in French (not her favorite), then in English. Literature was her focus, and Gone with the Wind in particular, for how it related to the experience of people in Vietnam: North vs. South, the disappearance of an older way of life, and the tricky intersection of love, obligation, and economics. She’d visited America before, on faculty trips, and would eventually go on to get her Ph.D. in English from UMass–Amherst, with Margaret Mitchell’s novel the focus of her dissertation.
    So much of what she told me at that lunch I’ve since forgotten, and I feel terrible about it, for Ms. Thanh would show incredible concern for me over the years. It wasn’t just the introduction to the Lucy Hotel or the teaching job that eventually materialized, but the way she asked after me, like a teacher worried about a bright, naïve pupil: Was I healthy? Was I staying away from the dangerous motorbike taxis?
    I can’t quite explain why she cared so much, since at that first lunch I’m sure I came off deluded and self-obsessed. Back then, I didn’t really know how to relate to people, to get them to talk, except perhaps by showing them how completely vulnerable and accepting I was. Did Ms. Thanh see this? Or was she simply amazed that this unsavvy American was trying to start a life for himself in Vietnam, to the extent that he’d nibble scrambled duck fetus without showing his distaste?
    There’s a lot to be said, I think, for repression. No one at the lunch needed to know how uncomfortable, confused, and lost I felt—least of all me. Instead, I muddled through, willing myself to enjoy, or maybe appreciate, the meal and