Tuan was a happy child. His mother, Mrs Phan, used to say he was born smiling. Every day she took him out into the paddy fields on her back, where he lay gurgling contentedly at the sky while she planted the rice. Later she clapped her hands when her son grinned at her with his even, white teeth. 

As he got older, she enlisted him in the backbreaking work on the Mekong Delta. He dutifully bent alongside her, planting the seedlings in the river mud. But here's the strange thing. The plants that Tuan set in long even rows didn't grow at all. It took some time to realise this because there were so many workers on this bank, but the gaps in the fields became obvious. Mrs Phan switched him to work on the germination tanks, where the little sprouting seeds were left in the dark, but in his hands they shrivelled; if he planted seeds out in nurseries, they too turned brown and died under his beautiful long tapering fingers. 

The other villagers blamed his mother for producing a boy who not only didn't pull his weight in the collective but had jeopardised all their efforts in germination. They shook their fists at him as he passed. Tuan was deeply ashamed.

Mrs Phan consulted a local village health worker, who examined his hands carefully; she smelt them. 'It's the oil in his skin,' she announced. 'There is something about it. It's a chemical imbalance.' She packed him off to Ho Chi Minh City to go to a large hospital.

Tuan was now, at sixteen years old, in the first flush of his beauty. He was quite small and slight, with high cheekbones, and his smile revealed his perfect teeth. It was not long before a senior official from the German embassy spotted him in the Ben Than market. Tuan noticed his interest over a stall of mangosteens, displayed his ready smile, and Anton was hooked. 

He set Tuan up in a small flat in the European quarter, because the age difference would have caused comment if they'd moved in together, but in truth his interest was as much fatherly as sexual; and besides Anton had a long-standing problem in his nether regions. This did not deter Tuan. He liked to curl up and lay his head on Anton's large soft paunch, his enchanting smile on his lips. He felt at peace in an unsure world. 

One day he was idly running his hand down Anton's stomach, following the line of coarse red hair. It came to rest on Anton's inert member. It wasn't that Anton was under-endowed; delicately Tuan explored the dimensions, and his actions in a strange way reminded him of planting rice. He pushed his fingers exquisitely into the base of Anton's belly, to the root, as if he was setting a seedling in the rich Mekong loam. Anton opened his eyes in surprise. Something was stirring which had been long dormant. Tuan murmured encouragement, rolled over and looked into Anton's face with his dark, dark eyes. Gently he caressed Anton with a grin, who answered with the pent-up force of years of frustration. 

Later they lay hot and sticky with the sheets cast off. Tuan beamed contentedly up at the ceiling.

At last he had found something which he could make grow.

Howard Bradshaw