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?"
