Thứ Sáu, 6 tháng 8, 2010

NHA TRANG SEA

A short story by Thai Ba Tan

"I’ve just seen my old husband, miss.”

Busy preparing some water morning glory for dinner, the young woman sitting by her side didn't respond.

Through the narrow door feeble sun rays cast an ochre light on the first-floor room and its walls of half-peeled paint. And she, with her poor eyesight, mistook the green leaves for yellow ones.

The young woman was fed up with the repeated sentence and no longer wanted to hear it: “It’s nonsense! If he is dead, it’s better to say that he is dead, why say you just saw him? You aren't a pair of young love birds, are you?"

“If not, then what are you?" she would answer to herself. "You’ve certainly enjoyed the night, haven’t you?”

In the end, facetiousness was the fall-back lifeline.

The child of poor schooling, she was coarse and greedy, but never cruel. Circumstances forced her to be that way: She sold vegetables in the adjacent street. She had a drug addict son and an alcoholic for a husband.

Here she was now looking after a woman of more than seventy who was ill and just waiting for death to finish her off. The woman's family said that she was suffering from cancer and had been hospitalised for two months, living on all kinds of oral and injected drugs.

Seeing that it was so costly (the in-patient fees already totalled VNÑ200,000), the family decided to bring her home. They had thought that without the maze of bottles and wires, she would die immediately.

But she continued to live, lying motionless, eating and drinking and relieving her bladder in one place. She would occasionally come to and mutter some nonsense.

At home, people had prepared everything for the funeral. Everyone was given a job. But the patient's body didn't seem to agree with them, inflicting more suffering on herself and onto others. Certainly she also hoped to die, but the Heavens wouldn't allow it.

At first, people would visit frequently, but the visitors tapered off, and ultimately only this young woman looked after her.

A widower for 30 years, the old woman had one son – who, too, was heartbroken after his wife abandoned him and took their son.

The son stayed at home to care for his mother for a week before heading back to work. He was tired of waiting around, cramped in the fetid room with his mum. Soon he moved in with a friend, leaving her alone and just popping in twice a day for a few minutes.

Everything was left in the hands of vegetable seller. But she had little to do.

The cleaning was quick and the patient's diet needs null. The most important thing was that she had to be there round the clock – save a few hours to herself – so to inform the son of his mother’s death.

At first she was paid VNÑ25,000 a day, but had it bumped to VNÑ40,000. She was happy to find a lucrative job, and was not being beaten by her alcoholic husband provided she gave him booze money.

Basically, she was the only person who wished the patient longevity. And that wasn't for altruistic reasons.

"I’ve just seen my husband, miss," the old woman repeated those words, directing them more to space than her interlocutor.

"Just keep silent to save your strength,” the vegetable vendor answered grotesquely. ”He died a very long time ago, how could you see him? You're imagining things.”

"No, I‘ve really seen him. Just like the time when we first really got acquainted with each other.”

"So what did he tell you?”

"He said nothing. He only quietly pulled off my clothes... ”

"How shameful!” the vegetables vendor lashed out. ”You are next to death and have only obscene thoughts."

She couldn't understand why she got so angry with the patient to whom she should have shown gratitude. She was still young, stout and still in life's fast lane.

"And what happened later?" she asked almost apologetically. "You must be very pleased, aren’t you?”

The old patient said nothing. Perhaps she was displeased. Or perhaps she was unconscious or back in the remote past again, that moment when her husband first did what the vegetable vendor dubbed "obscene".

*

**

Peace had just been restored, and a military unit from the south – but that had re-grouped in the north – was stationed for about a month at the quiet village of Phuùc Nhaïn, near the King Leâ canal.

Then one night came an eruption. A village girl and a soldier were caught red-handed were caught sitting together at Goø Chuøa at almost midnight.

What happened to the young man nobody knew. As for the girl, she was chastised and ripped apart by the youth and women’s unions two nights running.

"We love each other and didn't do anything wrong!” the girl said, feebly defending herself in their firing squad of questions.

"The why didn’t you ask permission from the associations to go out if you love each other? If you did nothing wrong, then why did you go as far as Goø Chuøa? And at such a late hour? This all sounds fishy."

Her defence was futile, no one would believe her.

But the truth was that they did love each other, and in fact “didn't do anything wrong” that night.

They didn't dare to even hold hands. And that “obscene" act only happened later, on the eve of the unit‘s departure, also at Goø Chuøa, but luckily far from any witnesses.

That night only he spoke, while she timidly sat by his side and listened. He told her about his village in Nha Trang with a white sand beach.

“As for the water, it is crystal-clear, so limpid that you can see every pebble tens of metres deep underwater," he said. Of course, she took every word at face value and imagined a beach more beautiful than the picture she had pasted on the wall in her room.

"In two years I will take you, as a bride, to my village and we’ll bathe at that beach. We won’t go in our clothes like here, but we’ll wear bathing suits. Sound good?”

“Yes! But it could be very shameful!”

Her village, too, was only a few kilometres from the coast. The water was clear but not blue, though, and the beach was filthy, full of garbage, buffalo dung and even human excrement.

She had never bathed in the sea, much less pranced around in bathers. She was a shy country bumpkin who'd never left her district, and she ached to one day bathe with him on that fairytale Nha Trang beach.

In her head it was lined with coconut trees as tall as the sky that cast shadows on the blue water as vivid as ink. And there was a splendid rainbow with seven colours like in children's books.

No one was there, save the two lovers and the schools of colourful fish swimming around them. Fleshed out with repetition, the dream became a close, tangible reality in her mind. And she believed that she would soon become the princess living at the side of her prince on Nha Trang beach.

But while awaiting paradise, she had to endure hell on earth.

A few months after her lover's departure, she went before a village-wide meeting for being pregnant out of wedlock – a situation that, at the time, meant life-long disgrace for her and her parents.

Stationed far away in the northwest, when her lover learnt the news he immediately wrote a letter to the commune People’s Committee, affirming that they really loved each other and that he would be on furlough soon to hold a wedding.

The villagers weren't convinced and continued to castigate her for not "conforming to revolutionary ethics and the new socialist ideal”. But they slapped her with a petty fine of 100 kilos of sticky rice and a 60kg pig.

It benign punishment for what earlier would have earned her a beating, a shaved head painted with lime and a placard with "Pregnant out of wedlock” hung from her neck.

"You are really in luck! Without the revolution you would have endured an ordeal!” they told her.

She regretted bringing disgrace to her mother, but remained indifferent to their words.

She deliberately paraded her belly in front of everyone, angering villagers who demanded her punishment be doubled. But she believed in her Nha Trang dream.

Her child came and went, a victim of illness. And it wasn't until a year later that her lover took her away as his wife, though to Ñieän Bieân, where she worked as a cook in his unit. They lived there until 1970, when he was transferred to Haø Noäi and given a 18sq.m room in the city's old quarter.

Her fantasy of bathing in Nha Trang sea never came true. They would have to wait until re-unification, but he didn't live to see the day, dying of an infection before he could bring his wife to his native village.

The son she had given birth to in Ñieän Bieân was growing up quickly, and she entertained the idea of him taking her there. But she couldn't go there by herself, it would be meaningless. In her dream there were two people.

Now that one was no longer, she no longer lived in reality. She became indifferent to everything. Perhaps that was why she didn't raise her son in a proper way. She loved her son, of course. But that love could not compare with her marital love and their dream of the Nha Trang waters.

*

**

"I’ve seen my husband again, miss,” the old woman said, slightly shifting her weight. She didn't know, and didn't want to know, anything about her interlocutor.

The vegetable vendor was in midst of drinking the patient's milk on the sly. Startled by the old woman's abrupt announcement, she wiped her mouth and gingerly put the tin of condensed milk in its place.

"Why do you see him so much?" she said, ill at ease. "And you took off your clothes again?"

"No, he and I flew on the Nha Trang sea... "

"You also went there to fly together? What a story! Are you happy?" she smiled ironically, trying to picture the emaciated skeleton of a woman flying.

"Delighted. The sea was beautiful. It was all blue and pink. Even the schools of fish flew with us. We flew and flew, and finally he helped me take a seat on the rainbow on the horizon. I was afraid, but was very pleased. So beautiful... "

"This old woman is crazy," the vegetable vendor mumbled and quietly began sucking on the tin of milk again.

The sun was far from setting, but the small room with one window didn't have enough light. The weak voice of a vendor advertising his phôù was both silly and pathetic. The nurse turned on the light. As she was on her way out the patient called her back

"Eh, miss!”

"What do you need? Have you wet your trousers? I’ll get a change of clothes ready now,” she said rudely.

"No, I want to ask you for a favour.”

"What is it?”

"Please bring me the vase on the altar!”

"The black porcelain urn with a lid?”

She had no clue what the old woman was on about, but out of curiosity she went off to find the urn, which turned out to be as big and heavy as a watermelon. Thinking something valuable must be inside, she took off the lid and stuck her hand in, but just some votive papers and coarse ashes were inside.

"What on earth is this?” she asked as she handed it to the patient.

The old woman clutched the urn to her chest, two teardrops appearing on her wrinkled cheeks. Stroking the vase with her two hands, her lips moved as if she intended to say something but couldn't get the words out. She then opened the urn and sprinkled the corners of her mouth with the ashes.

The heavy urn seemed to choke her, and instinctively the nurse seized the porcelain container and returned it to its place on the altar.

"Now, you can take off for wherever," the dazed patient said feebly, her face in ecstasy.

It had been a debacle keeping her husband’s ashes around. When her husband died in 1972 she insisted on having him cremated, which meant pouring petrol on his body and burning it. What wouldn't burn was ground to powder. She demanded the ashes be kept in an urn, placed on the family altar.

Everyone opposed it, particularly her son, who believed it would bring misfortune to the family. But she called the shots. And for the last few decades every day she burnt joss sticks and chatted with her husband, never forgetting to rub her fingers on the urn.

A friend visiting once stepped into the house and spun round, saying: "I feel that the presence of a dead person in this house."

She quietly pointed her finger to the urn on the altar. He understood and advised her to put it in a grave. Her son took the opportunity to pressure her to get rid of the urn, but she refused.

People said it was because of the urn's contents that her family fell into ruin. The son wasn't a bad guy, but he was no paragon either. His work was befuddled with drama, and he had no wife or children. As for her, she constantly fell ill.

But she never blamed the urn, insisting it be kept in the house until now.

*

**

That evening her son came for a visit. The hired nurse was still out, making him lose his temper.

He turned to his mother and asked her with an unnatural eagerness: "Are you better? Have you eaten anything? How are you feeling now?”

The old woman lay quiet, eyes opened wide, and nodded slightly. Uncomfortable in the rancid quarters, her son let out a series of sneezes as he paced the room on the tenterhooks.

"What do you want me to do for you, mum?”

The old woman wanted to sit up, but couldn't gather the strength, then she motioned for another pillow to be propped underneath her.

"Take a chair and sit down. I have something to tell you."

"Yes, please tell me what you want.”

"Perhaps I’m going to pass away. I want you to promise to do something for me. Please. Do you promise?”

"Yes. I promise to do anything and everything you tell me," he quickly answered, this time sincerely, as he knew this would be her last breath.

"Over there is the urn with your father's ashes. After I die I want you to cremate me and mix his ashes with mine. Then take the urn to your father’s native village. Take a boat far into the open sea and drop the contents of the vase into the water," she instructed him.

"All my life, your father and I dreamt of bathing together in the sea off Nha Trang. It never happened while our flesh was alive, but I've kept his ashes here for this reason alone.

"That’s all. Please help me. Otherwise I won't be able to close my eyes when I die," she said.

The son raised his mother’s emaciated hand and put it on his cheek, her faint pulse igniting the sincere love he felt for her.

"Please, mum, relax a bit. Of course I'll do what you ask."

"If so, I have no other wish. Now go home, leave me alone. It doesn’t matter.”

"No, I'm staying on with you all night,” he said, choked up.

The old woman turned, closed her eyes and slipped back into her own world. When the vegetable vendor finally returned, the son gave her a perfunctory reprimanding. He stayed on for a while before going out for dinner. Promising he'd return, as absent-minded as he was, he stepped out of the house for good.

*

**

That night the old woman died.

No one knew precisely at what time, because as a rule the nurse went to bed and slept until five o’clock in the morning. When she woke, she noticed her patient wasn't breathing and ran to the telephone.

The woman’s body was cremated as she had asked. But as for mixing the ashes and scattering them across the blue waters of Nha Trang, he couldn't do it.

Ten years ago, without her mother knowing, he had buried his father's remains in a grave at Baùt Baït. The ashes in the urn were false ones. So instead he buried his mother's ashes in a grave near her husband's.

Building two beautiful graves with photo, flowers, stele and all, he was satisfied and considered himself a pious son marching onward with tradition. But then, sometimes he felt some pangs of guilt about deceiving her and not carrying out her wishes.

"My parents were old and were still romantic! If I drop the ashes into the sea, the fish will eat them, won’t they?" he took comfort telling himself. "And in the future how can the grandchildren know the place to burn joss sticks?"

But the guilt never subsided.

Thứ Ba, 3 tháng 8, 2010

A Rose for Le Trinh

A Rose for Le Trinh

A short story by Thai Ba Tan

It was ten to eight and the curtain bell was ringing inside the Municipal Theatre. The latecomers were coming by in a rush, climbing the stone steps to the iron door where a fat lady usher stood, urging everyone to go inside. At eight sharp, the iron door slammed shut. The usher stepped aside and cast a faraway vacant look into the night.

There were only a few people left in front of the theatre: some peddlers, a young man in military uniform straddling his bicycle with his feet lightly touching the ground, a young girl in a bright pink jacket walking back and forth, and me.

I wasn’t walking back and forth because I wasn’t nervous. And I wasn’t nervous because I wasn’t waiting for anybody. I was just unhappy because I couldn’t afford a ticket to hear a famous Russian pianist, an artist I greatly admired.

It was late February, just after Tet, and it was cold and drizzling. The streets were filled with yellow lights. The young man left on his bicycle. The girl lingered, waiting for the man who was supposed to come. I stood by the iron door, hoping for an angel in the form of a music lover to give me one of his extra tickets.

The girl didn’t have a hat on, and the ends of her curly hair were marked by dew-like raindrops, reflecting all different colours in the lights. I didn’t look at her long. I didn’t want to make my interest so obvious. But when she walked past me I saw a pretty, thin white and graceful form. A straight nose and deep eyes. I was absolutely sure she kept two tickets in the handbag she carried by her side, and I asked her for one.

But she said something I wasn’t expecting.

“Do you want to take a walk with me?”

I was twenty-eight, an amateur writer and an amateur romantic, and I was in love with an amateur singer who was becoming more and more well-known after a string of competitions and concerts. She was pretty too, but there was one thing we did not share. She didn’t like classical music. And so I always went to the Municipal Theatre alone, even though I had to go to all those concerts of hers that I hated.

The girl in the pink jacket was a little confused when I had a hard time giving her an answer. But in a few minutes, we were walking side-by-side down Trang Tien Street and around Hoan Kiem Lake.

The city was beautiful and quiet. After some moments of silence, I said, “You’re waiting for somebody, but he hasn’t shown up, no?”

“I’m waiting for my husband,” she said. “This happens all the time. It’s no problem. I’m used to this sort of thing.”

“And to get even with your husband, you’ve decided to go for a walk with me, a total stranger.”

She didn’t say anything. I felt awful for what I had just said and I didn’t say anything either. She was strange, like something out of a work of fiction. She wasn’t easygoing or adventurous. There was something very pure about her, and very serious. Why did this married woman ask me to take a walk with her? Did she want something? Who was she and what did she need from me?

The truth was I was very happy just to be with her, a beautiful Ha Noi girl. I didn’t spend too much time agonising over any of these questions.

We dropped by Thuy Ta coffee shop and had ice cream. It was 10.30 when we got back to the theatre. I offered to take her home, but she refused.

Then she held out her hand and I touched it. So small and soft and warm. It was the first time I had touched anything like it.

“You’re lovely. All this time together and you haven’t asked me one stupid question. I like people like that. And I like you. If you come to the theatre again, I’m sure we’ll meet. So goodbye and thank you.”

She went and stood at the corner of the theatre and a moment later, a black sedan came by and took her home. She was a strange girl without a name. And I was just a strange man without a name as well.

We did talk about some things. She told me her husband was an important government official, twenty-five years her senior. Her parents forced her to marry him. The fact that she didn’t love him didn’t bother her so much as the fact that he made her feel so low. She came from a well-educated family, but her husband didn’t understand her. He didn’t respect her or her work. (I asked her about her job, but she didn’t answer). When we said goodbye, I felt completely in love, even though we hardly knew that much about each other.

A week later, I saw a production of Giselle staged by a French director at the Municipal Theatre. And there she was, not in front of the theatre but right on stage, Giselle, a woman who had to suffer so much before she could find happiness. The playbill said her name was Le Trinh. She had graduated from the Soviet Union’s most famous ballet school in the very city I had studied in years before. I was amazed and moved and I kept my eyes close on that magnificent goddess throughout the evening. This woman had actually asked me to go for a walk with her just a few days before and I had actually touched her hand.

After the performance, I stood out of sight in front of the theatre and I saw her, in the same overcoat, with the same tall man in a black suit taking her to the same black sedan. I could only sigh.

I walked down the street, following the same path we had walked the other day. The night sky was clear and marked with stars. I stood forever by the The Huc Bridge on Hoan Kiem Lake, feeling the vague sense of love. This love was quite different from the love I felt for the amateur singer. It was a transcendental love, touched with a feeling of guilt. She was, after all, a married woman.

A few days later, I went to the theatre for a Beethoven concert, which included the first and sixth symphonies and the Coriolan. This time I had a ticket.

As I was entering the theatre, I saw her in jeans, leather shoes and a large woolen pullover. She had run here apparently. Her face was badly-lined and she was panting.

“Good evening, Le Trinh,” I said, trying to hide my emotions. “You’re not with your husband tonight?”

We walked along the street and stopped by Thuy Ta again for some coffee instead of ice cream. We talked about our days in the Soviet Union and this made us feel closer. But we didn’t say anything about our private lives. I took her back to the theatre only a few minutes before her husband showed up to take her home.

In the following months, we had many walks together. She let me hold her hand, but that was it. Sometimes she asked me about my girlfriend and we talked about my relationship as casually as we could.

Did she love me? Or was this just some rich beautiful lady’s game? Sometimes, it was awful to be with her. But I contained myself. She was married, and that was that. I kept a rose with me, but I never had the courage to give it to her.

Then for a long time, she wasn’t around, either on stage or in front of the theatre. Something strange was happening. I found out her husband had been arrested (God knows why) and was in some Central Highlands prison. She had gone to look after him.

I didn’t hear anything more about Le Trinh afterwards. Everything was gone, including my love for her. I got married and had a child. My life was smooth and I had nothing to complain about. I went to the Municipal Theatre on a regular basis and enjoyed any number of concerts and ballets. But I missed Le Trinh. I felt sorry for what had happened to her. I wondered where she was now and how she was doing.

One day, I got a letter from America.

I’m sure you don’t remember me. I’m Le Trinh, the woman who walked with you so many times around Hoan Kiem Lake some years ago.

Her style was natural and honest.

Now that I am so far away from you, it’s a little easier for me to tell you these things. I loved you! I loved you so much on those days we went for walks together and on those days we didn’t meet. I didn’t want to let you know these things, because I was married and you were still in love. Though I loved you, I couldn’t forget that I was married and that I had a duty to the idea of marriage. Besides, I couldn’t rob you from the girl who loved you and whom you loved. Those days we had together were some of the happiest in my life.

Even though I didn’t love him, I devoted my life to my husband until he died after three years in prison. I went to America afterwards as a refugee with some friends. I have a husband and a child, almost everything, except love. You’re my only love. If I had any courage to fight the prison of society’s social principles, I would have come to you.

Now that I’ve written this, I have no other wish to disclose my secret feelings. I didn’t want to and I tried not to write about these things, but I’ve failed.

Please forgive me,

Le Trinh

P.S: Please don’t write. There is no need. It will only make me suffer more.

That letter was dated 1989, fifteen years since I last saw her.

In May 2000, I visited the States with my wife. Going by the address on the envelope, I went to Le Trinh’s house. I went alone, of course. I didn’t want to meet her or talk to her. I simply wanted to see the house where she lived, from afar. It was a small house, as normal as any of the suburban houses in North Carolina. It was completely shuttered, but for two windows covered with thin white blinds. I walked in front of the house. I sat on a tree stump on the front lawn, and smoked a cigarette. Then I went back to my hotel.

I got a letter from America last month. Only a few lines in a man’s handwriting.

According to the deceased’s wishes, I would like to inform you that my wife, Mrs Le Trinh, died on ... of a heart attack. She asked me to tell you that she did see you sitting in front of our house, smoking, two years ago.

John Nguyen Van Bach

This is the whole story of Le Trinh, which I am sure I would never have written if her husband had not sent me that letter. I have nothing more to say, other than if I am ever in the States again, I will find her grave and place a rose on it, the rose I had never had the courage to give to her.

Translated by Manh Chuong