HOÀNG NGỌC BIÊN
Translated from the Vietnamese by Hoàng Thạch Thiết
Translated from the Vietnamese by Hoàng Thạch Thiết
 |
| Hoang Ngoc Bien by Nguyen Quynh |
1
I’ve been sitting on this bench
in the tiny park at the end of the biggest street in the Tamarind-Tree
District, a main street, for two days now, or about two days, maybe a little
more, maybe a little less, but let’s call it two days. Those who are fond of
trifling details – or sickly precision, as those who are not often precise
would call it – are likely to take issue with me about the word sit, for in
fact at moments when I was tired or my back ached too much – it hurt at the
lower part of my long back, at the lower end of the spine – I lay down, propped
up reluctantly at first by my hand cupped over one ear, the right one as I can
recall, so as to look as if I was not lying though in fact I was, then my hand
got tired, and I lay squarely on my back, my eyes directed at the blue sky high
above, looking, fascinated, at the vast blue expanse of the sky, the immense
space which can’t be found anywhere around us, and I seemed to cry out many
times, not just once at any rate, how beautiful…
If someone happens to read these lines, and who knows what I’m writing
will not survive for them to read, then they shouldn’t hasten to imagine a
picturesque park, the kind depicted in books and movies, with all sorts of
romantic sights of shade, chilly breezes, falling leaves, green lawns looking
like silky carpets, big tree trunks covered with hearts shot through by arrows
– all etched by sharp knives, spectacular conquests that ended in melodious
music or in – gasping. My park does not have those things. To be fair, it has
alleys and lawns strewn with dead leaves, and I could detect strange figures
clumsily carved on some lank tree trunks, some looking very much like hearts
(but only those in biology texts) there is no shade whatsoever because we can’t
call shade those tiny black traces dotting the alleys and the dried lawns with
exposed brown soil, and my conquest was not easy at all, nor was it by any
means spectacular: the train that was to have pulled into the station two days
ago is still nowhere to be seen. My loaf of bread, about one quarter of the arm
length and of which I only had a few bites each time I took it out of my red
bag, was still almost intact, since in preparation for a long journey on a
train bound for a place I’m not sure I know, I intended not to spend any amount
of my savings (which did not amount to much at any rate, if my knowledge of
financial matters is not as poor and obsolete as it is of other affairs) on any
food, however necessary, thus I have been eating my loaf of bread the way
people would their sweets; I would now and then take it out and suck it a few
times, smell the cheap roasted flour typical of the locality, then put it back
into the bag, resting assured that should it so happen that other epoch-making
events break out, I would still have something to last me for days…
So, as I said, I have been sitting on this bench for a couple of days or
so, and it is nowhere to be seen, the train that would, as I had been told,
pass by the little station beyond the park fence any day, any hour, any minute,
any time that is, the train for which I had made all sorts of preparation,
giving one object, selling another, and so on, objects belonging to me or to
others that were found in my home just by accident or by any other means I
wouldn’t bother to look into, keeping nothing except for the red bag now
resting on my back, gifts being sometimes actually forced on some people
against their will. The third day since I decided to come and sit on this bench
waiting for it I still haven’t seen any sign of the train. But I don’t think
they had deceived me, nor do I for a moment believe there are these days people
who have spare time to deceive people gratuitously while they could spend time,
a lot of it even, to harm others for their own profit, and while they are
favorably situated to do really big cons, as they put it – I’m certain of this,
if a measure of certainty could still come by in this world.
Therefore, as I believe I’m not being taken in, I have been sitting here
for two days, whiling away my time by checking every part of my body in a more
careful manner and comparing them, just incidentally, with what they had been
when I had done the same check at a military training center about twenty years
ago, at the time I had had a lot of time to spare for such things – and I
discovered quite unexpectedly things never dealt with in any textbooks before.
Anyway, let’s get back to more useful matters, to the present, for I say, the
past is the past, let bygones be bygones, the trifling details of the parts of
a person’s body are not necessarily so different from those of another’s as to
create a subject of discussion, and each part of course has its own history,
which at best is like that of any and won’t change, no matter how hard it is
altered and manipulated according to personal ends, or in fact romanticized,
for the truth will remain the truth.
2
One day
before leaving home I had ferreted out all the odds and ends in the house – and
frankly we had had nothing left but those worthless little items – and
displaying them all on the floor of the middle room where my father had
received his friends, I began what they would call a systematic review, old
newspapers being placed on the left, near the main pillar of the house,
photographs of the family, my friends and my old girl friend next to them,
followed by letters, documents of various kinds, then paper boxes of all colors
containing a miscellany of smaller articles including smaller boxes containing
in turn a miscellany of still smaller articles… Among the odds and ends laid
out on the floor, not for arrangement purposes, but rather to see what was to
be discarded and what to be retained, or more precisely what should go first
and what next –and all this job was to be done in the duration of one day that
I had left – I found a poem by my father which tells how much he had missed his
father and which I’m now carrying along in the bag together with more than half
a letter my mother had written to my father, who was at the time with the
Resistance Forces in the North, advising him to make sure he kept himself warm
when riding a bicycle in the jungle during the cold season, and not to
overstuff the backpack and make it too
heavy for his backbone, which might get dislocated as a result (the half letter
is also being kept in the bag as a birth
certificate, sort of , in case I’m asked about my identity, for I could then
produce my parents’ names: in the letter my mother addressed my father by name
and signed her name at the end of it), a newspaper article about liver trouble
someone in the family had cut out for later reference (I glanced through it but
could make out only a few words here and there), a number of letters, some
intact, others crumbled, still others with both unknown sender and receiver, a
few old envelopes stamped but unused, photographs of people known and unknown,
of relatives both on my father’s side and my mother’s, cousins and uncles and
aunts, almost all of them, and old coins, a tiny frame without a picture, a
small pair of scissors probably unusable, two tortoise-shell combs of medium
and small sizes, a few thin books of prayers with yellow covers, some
legally-related documents which are not birth certificates, a student ID with
my photo on it, a monthly bus ticket (out of curiosity I had a look at the date
and found out that it had expired twenty four years, ten months and some days
before!) and countless odds and ends I don’t think I should enumerate for fear
you would get fed up with it unless you already are without the enumeration.
What I liked best was the steamer the nursemaid had made from a piece of
newspaper for me and my brothers, with a naked part of a woman’s body exposed
right in between the two chimneys of the ship on the paper – an unwitting
mistake that had earned her a good scolding from my mother. I left home a few
days ago; recollection, therefore, is vivid of my excitement on coming across
one day before leaving home the photo of my elementary school girl friend, a
Chinese Vietnamese with deep-set black eyes who was probably the first to have
really taught me to suffer, in addition to the little girl next door, about six
years old, two years my junior, who had literally thrown down the drain all the
marbles I had collected for her almost every day, and who had laughed heartily
watching my painful face. Moved as I was, I still couldn’t remember how the
picture with jagged yellowish edges and silver coating managed to survive until
now, huddled safely among the photographs of my family, while my childhood
friend, I had come to learn, had gone through myriads of life’s ups and downs
and had ended up on a shore, the body badly maimed. Anyway, I have long decided
that emotional outbreaks like this are not to be tolerated, for we can’t neglect
big things in life just because of a few trifles. I say, the past is the past,
let bygones be bygones.
3
For the last
two days I haven’t had any opportunities to talk or say a word to any one. But
then, it is not quite such a misfortune not to talk to anyone, I say to myself,
thinking silence is better after all, in my present plight. At this point I should
apologize to everyone, because for quite a while now – but I don’t know exactly
how long this has been inflicted on me or who is to blame for it – I have got
into the habit of speaking indiscriminately with regard to the use of we / us
versus they / them – the words I don’t, or rather can’t distinguish anymore.
Now I say “ they” and someone who happens to stand nearby corrects me, telling
me to use “we”; now I say “we” and am told to say “they”; now I’m going to use
“they” when someone puts in “we”, saving me from making another mistake. Thus
I’ve been plunged into a linguistic confusion which I find fun when I am in a
good mood and which makes me feel somehow insecure when I am not, like on
holidays a flag is flown at every house while it is absent from our door,
leaving it naked the whole day and filling us with trepidation in anticipation
of a knock on the door followed by a request for an explanation. During this
time I must admit that I had a sense of relief, being free not only from fear
of misuse of those words but also from efforts to find an appropriate subject
for conversation, efforts not to speak in an erratic manner, so to speak, not
to frown on hearing what I don’t like to hear, in a word, free from being
judged. But it is rather tough, too, for someone waiting for a train like me,
for I had doubt to clear, questions big and small to ask as to whether to stay
or to leave, and concerns about time and so on which I can’t talk to anyone
about. It is not easy for me even to ask the time. One morning, for example,
looking out the park gate I saw a woman approaching, appearing harmless enough
to give me the confidence to venture a question about the time. Aware of the
possibility of my appearance being a deterrent I tried to put on an honest air,
readying myself for a form of address both polite and friendly, namely auntie….
No sooner had I stood up, however, than she
turned into another direction, and in no time bolted out of sight before I
could even open my mouth. It is true that there exist a lot of people I could
ask the time, but I must admit that I myself have somehow inherited a
groundless prejudice that deters me from asking the time – just the time –
those I could get enthusiastic answers from, for fear they might, before
answering, ask me back in an arrogant manner who I am, where I live, whether I
have just been released from hospital, why I am at this place at this time, and
then ask for, say, my ID card and so on and so forth.
The first night I stayed in the park I didn’t sleep, or hardly. The
evening had passed peacefully with some clouds coming over from nowhere, a
light wind blowing past, and I had the impression a few times that I heard a
sound like suppressed thunder, just an impression, and I thought it would rain
before nightfall, by midnight at the latest, but the clouds came and went, just
like that, as if they had wanted to give a warning – but would a person
seasoned to a hard life like me panic, too? Until now I am still carrying the
little red bag in which there is nothing really precious, but for me, and for
me alone I’m sure, nothing is more precious than the wrinkled half letter that
my mother had written to my father during the time he was with the Resistance
Forces in the North and my father’s poem saying how much he had missed his
father – the bag is not heavy but the mere thought of losing it, thus losing
the letter together with the poem, filled me with apprehension, and the greater
the apprehension, the heavier and heavier the light bag grew , and the
apprehension eventually turned into a sleepless obsession, as darkness
gradually covered up first the tress, the walks in the park, then the walls,
the fences, the lawn, the roofs, and finally the horizon – the space
surrounding me would have been a terrifying blackness if it had not been for a
few scattered dim yellowish lights… It
would be something of an exaggeration to say that I didn’t sleep the first
night, for I must admit that I did sleep, albeit without my knowing it – but
who on earth in the final analysis can sleep in full awareness that they are
sleeping, though? Early in the evening, unable to come up with something to do
in my situation, I looked out to the horizon beyond the railway station and
could see the red dot of the twilight sun behind the low house roofs. I was
looking at the sad twilight in bewilderment when I was startled by a song
suddenly emitted from a loudspeaker, a song about the whole world vibrating
with revolutionary exhortations of one kind or another, the song lasting barely
a moment, like a perfunctory job, just long enough to dispel the stagnant
atmosphere of a provincial district, and stopping dead half way through. After
that everything around me seemed to become calm, and I realized that I was
beginning to hear various subdued sounds in the silent night – a faint lullaby
coming from very far away that I could recognize because the singing voice was
native to my hometown; Buddhist prayers coming from somewhere a little nearer
that were impossible to understand – except for the words O Lord Amitabha
Buddha repeated all along because not only were the prayers not in my mother
tongue, but the regular “mo” beating that accompanied them mostly drowned out
the words, too; the quickening chiming of the bells toward the far side of the district that was
loud at first, then gradually grew faint until it stopped dead as if it had got
lost somewhere in the air.
4
After all I must admit that I did sleep the first night in the park, if
sleeping the way I did could still be called sleep. How I slept, however, I
don’t remember. Not until I opened my eyes suddenly and looked at the clear sky
high above, with the moon shedding its light sparingly around me, just enough
in fact to enable me to know that I was still at the same place on the bench
made of poor quality wood that had been bleached by the sun and rain and whose
curves on the surface I could see in the pale moonlight, and the night was
quiet and there seemed to be a few drops of dew (this was a guess I made at the
moment that I was not quite awake, when I felt something wet in the hairs in my
nose and my eyelashes: I couldn’t tell whether it was wetness or simply
coldness) not until then did I know for sure, if I wasn’t concerned about the
time or amount of sleep, that I had
slept, and reviewing what had happened during the night I was certain I had
slept, or dozed off, while waiting for the train to come, or rather, for the
train never to come. Did the night bring
any new discoveries about the park? No. The little moon that was suspended in
the sky, throwing its light over the park, could not light up everything around
me so I couldn’t name them as I would for distraction during the day – trees,
walks lawn, fences, houses, doors, plants and flowers; nor could it hide the
messiness, the untidiness exposed in the daylight, so even in the dark the
walks do not appear as walks, nor the lawn as a lawn, not the flowers as
flowers, the leaves as leaves. In short the trees are not trees, and the park
is not a park. Only the bench, made of low quality wood though it is, looks
like a real bench, both in the daytime and at night – the bench on which I
could from morning till night not only sit but lie down to look up at the clear
sky, thinking of the train, wondering when it would draw into the station, if
ever. But am I correct when I talk about the daytime and nighttime? The fact
is, I overlooked a few details I really don’t know if I should call major or
minor, but they are details after all, for it has long ceased to matter to me
whether things look this way or that in the daytime or at night. Well then,
after I had abruptly opened my eyes and to my heart’s content watched the open
space dotted with serene stars high above, each in its established place, I sat
up and looked round. The small windows let out a blurred yellow light that now
warmed up a starkly cold sight of the daytime; the tattered roofs of houses and
their ramshackle walls made of planks of wood which in the sun showed
intermittently through the defoliated hedges now wore a secretively and evenly
dark color; and those sorrowful figures scurrying in the sun and those worn-out
faces passing by in the street like daytime ghosts, suddenly disappeared in the
night, evaporating into thin air, the quiet of the night being in fact more
lively than the life of the day. I once at midnight went beyond the low fence
and strolled within the station, not to catch the train, no, not that at all;
the ups and downs of life have taught me never to be so optimistic, not even
that kind of frivolous optimism. The stroll was to get some fresh air, as
people would say, or some relaxation – but do they say that? The little railway
station serves as a meeting place for a small number of people gathered for
trade, even on days when no trains come or go, with the permission of the local
police, whether it is a permission free of charge or one with some strings
attached, no one really knows; the railway station is not very noisy, but
vibrating with voices, speaking voices as well as insulting shouts or swearing,
at times a quarrel or a fight, or just a practical joke by some idle folks, I
couldn’t figure out, or if I take a guess, it may be just an unfounded one;
anyway, the railway station was now as quite as a death scene with not a soul
around, with doors shut, with no lights inside, no sound heard, not even the
drop of a leaf. All might be said to be submerged in the dark, except for the
patch of ground near the rails – the only rails of the station – which stood
out in the moonlight, not very bright in fact, but quite bright compared to the
places now engulfed in darkness, as if all the light available here was
concentrating on this bright and broad patch, which was actually a reflection
of the tall dried grass fluttering in the moonlight, in the breeze whose barely
audible rustling sound I had to strain to hear.
The following night I made preparations, it seemed,
to go to sleep. In fact, I did a few things, (brushing teeth being excluded, of
course), with a view to comfortably settling down after that on the bench which
could now rashly be called mine, just for easy reference, lying squarely on my
back, not lying sideways with the head resting on a palm propped up by the
elbow, making the position look like lying while in fact it wasn’t. I had taken
a good look around to make sure no one would wake up to take a walk in this
practically deserted park, not even the local police who must, if still awake,
be engaged in their drinking bout, sprawling on seats, if not on the floor, and
at this late hour, at a sequestered district like this one, no one would bother
to think of teasing a non-entity like me. Out of a habit whose origins are unknown
I brushed with my own hand the surface of the bench on which there was no room
for any more dust after almost two days of use by my dusty body. I seemed to
make no other preparations for bed, apart from my decision to go without food
and drink, for hygienic reasons, and my checking one more time the loaf of
bread carefully kept in the red bag, my mother’s letter, my father’s poem, a
pair of short pants the color of horse dung, an old khaki shirt, and a brand
new white shirt still stiff with the intact starch, as yet obviously
unlaundered, with a “made in USA” tag in spite of which only a fool wouldn’t
know at a glimpse that it hadn’t been made somewhere near here, not far from
where I was sitting – the shirt that I intended to put on together with the only
trousers I was wearing, tucked properly into the trousers, surely, like a
student getting ready for an oral exam, when the train got me to the
destination – what the destination would be I still don’t know, or think of.
I’ve just been rather rambling, just for fun, for there was really nothing
worth speaking of about the following night, compared to the first night
sleeping out of home, as people would say (if sleeping the way I did could
still be called sleeping,) the night which was full of discoveries, at least as
far as I’m concerned; I’ve got to strike that cautionary note in case someone
who finds nothing interesting about what I told about the first night would
wonder how I could have called those trifles discoveries.
5
Whether for two days really have I been sitting
here, as I said, no one knows! If my memory isn’t that bad, I can say that from
this bench I have seen the sun rise twice, or one and a half times, if we can
say that about sunrise, for there are times when the sun rises very quickly,
tearing itself from the horizon in the blink of an eye, as if it means to take
us by surprise, or to panic us about what in literature is called the wings of
time, but there are also times when it takes an indefinitely long time to rise,
lifting itself so deliberately leisurely in fact as to make us nervous even if
we are well aware that it does it on purpose to take delight in witnessing our
reaction – and so the sun has risen one and a half times, as I wrote, and this
is quite possible, though I wrote for the sake of writing (for is there any
certainty that what I have written will survive for readers?)
Now I’m thinking of the woman who was an old friend
of mine, or so she may be called, for she once came to see me at the newspaper
office, if there is no reason I should hide the fact that I used to be a
journalist for a short time; at least she once had to sit in the guest room
waiting for me, a journalist, to ask me about buying a railway ticket, a ticket
for the train bound for the North, to be more precise, before proceeding to
bluntly ask for my help in getting her a ticket, and quickly at that, one of
any class, for the following day or the day after the following day at the
latest, in time for her end of the year business trip and for reunion with her family, said to be an artist
family. She had been in a circus together with her two or three brothers, all
circus performers, and all Eurasians – this I believe, as her face is
definitely a French woman’s, ninety something per cent French, if not a hundred
per cent, and if we don’t pay attention to those lingering weather-beaten
traces on her nose, her eyes, her hair, her smile. But why should I be thinking
of the woman who was with me no more than one day, altogether?
I’m now sitting on the bench made of poor
quality wood that has been bleached by the sun and rain, with the morning sun
shining directly on my face as if it means to expose my sleepy face, a face
that hasn’t been washed for the last five or six days or even longer. I turn my
gaze to the only faucet in the park, looking at it mechanically and aimlessly,
because if I were doing it intentionally, the intention certainly would not be
to find somewhere to wash my face, since a few days ago (two, three, or four
days?) I tried opening the faucet and what I saw coming out were just a few
tiny drops of reddish water, the first drop, and I waited a little while, then
the second drop, and I waited a little while, then the third one, and again I
waited still another while, I waited and waited, to while away the time, and
one drop, and another drop, and another drop, every two successive drops being
an eternity apart and tiny and consistently reddish or almost so: sometimes I
found the reddish color seemed to have become a little paler, but immediately I
realized that I was mistaken, so much so
that I caught myself at one point or
another grumbling o my god, how could I wait with this oozing. But grumbling
was just for grumbling’s sake, for to wash up or not to wash up is not the
question, and it may be said frankly that for the better part of last year I
washed my face only when the mood struck me, but as I’m rarely in a good mood
these days, it may be said also that
washing is an act of a purely psychological nature, very much like a phenomenon
we call being sexually aroused, being in heat…
No sooner had I realized I was looking in the
direction of the faucet than I diverted my gaze. No, I was saying to myself, I
have no time to think of trifling things like this one, though it is mere
thinking, nor can I by any means allow myself any romantic association of ideas
at this moment, like looking at the faucet recalling, just recalling rather
than pondering about, the times I have been in the mood for washing my face in
the past year: no, I can’t indulge myself so much at this moment when instead I
should devote myself whole-heartedly to getting prepared to catch the train
that is said to arrive at any hour, any minute, at any time that is, to pick up
passengers. I suddenly find myself making adjustments to board the train as if
it were to appear at any time at the little railway station separated from
where I’m standing by only a collapsed fence low enough for a person of short
stature like me to jump over in the twinkling of an eye without any risk of
getting caught amidst the dried branches of an indiscernible color clinging
around scarce entangled barbed wire to make up what is named a fence.
Well then, after deciding to
stop looking at the faucet so as not to slide into useless thoughts, what do I look
at? I look at nothing. More precisely, I look at everything. My eyes, now in
full control of themselsel, cast a circular, or rather semi-circular glance
ahead; this way I don’t have to turn my neck or my whole body round only to see
trifling things, and after that gratuitous semi-circle, as a habit I turn my
gaze down to my palms, which happen to be resting neatly on my knees with the
two little fingers pointing at each other at the place where my knees meet, and
I suddenly realize I have, without my knowing it, got into the habit of looking
only at the palm , never at the other
side of the hand (what this is called I don’t remember, but if “the back” (of
the hand) is not the word, then I must really have forgotten it) and this
spares me the sight of thick blackish
dirt collecting inside the nails which have turned brown because of smoking –
the nails that will become jagged like the points of little knives if I fail to
bite them off every two or three days – this being done both to while away the
time and to prevent disease – and I don’t want to scratch anyone when offering
my hand for a handshake if I could for some reason give up the habit of
ignoring handshake consistently. Speaking of handshake I’m reminded of my half
French acquaintance. On her visit to my newspaper office ages ago, on seeing
the person who turned out to be none other than myself coming out of a room,
sleeves rolled up, bushy hair and beard and all that, with an unlighted
cigarette of black tobacco between the lips, she sprang to her feet smiling
brightly – what a smile,I thought, a half French lady’s smile so different
indeed from that of her local counterpart – and like lightning, in an
apparently premeditated act carried out through a simple gesture, she put out
her hand for a handshake, thrusting the hand so close to me as to startle a
hardened person like me, and she said “anh must be… em am a
friend of…”, if my recollection is correct.
At that time, and today even, as I should state precisely, after almost
half a lifetime, hardly anyone would use that endearing form of address em
when speaking to me, for they have invariably been deterred from using it by my
appearance, my bushy hair and beard and all that, and I myself have never used
the corresponding male form anh with anyone, perhaps for fear they may
not like such familiarity, or because phonetically I find it unsuitable for my
rough pronunciation. But let’s drop it: could that dirt on the fringe of the
nails that I don’t quite see justify my speaking at length about an acquaintance
that has long since become a memory – a woman who was with me no longer than a
day, on and off?
Recently my memory has deteriorated considerably
compared to previous years. But I’m just thinking aloud, I’m not complaining
about it: birth, old age, illness and death are but a commonplace cycle, there
is nothing extraordinary about them for speculation. You age after living to
your heart’s content, then you fall ill after aging to your heart’s content,
then you die after falling ill to your heart’s content. It’s worth saying,
though, that in between the four stages of human life, there must be little
periods difficult to define as belonging to a specific stage, for example the
period, years ago, when I was for ever chased by police and MP, or rather I
took to my heels at their sight downtown – the time I
was not yet old but could hardly be called young, (and if I had run too slowly
or had been too slow to run and had been caught and brought to the police
headquarters, and if they had happened to dislike my face, or not my face as a
whole, but only the eyes on it, or the
nose, or the mouth, or the eyebrow, or my way of speaking and they had
unwittingly beaten me to death , then reported that I had done something
harmful to national security, or that I had acted against law enforcers, that I
belonged to the group of communism worshippers biting the nationalist hand that
fed them and so on, or simply that I had taken
my own life, if that had been the case, for whatever reason, maybe one
of the men being drunk) could I categorize it – that
period – as life or death, or both? Now I’ve been sitting here
two days waiting for my train, doing nothing, eating nothing, drinking nothing
(except for some saliva oozing a few times out of my tongue that I collected in
the middle of it and swallowed) so I while away the time ferreting out from the
deepest recesses of memory a few old stories, not to enjoy them as such –
my stories having no appeal – but to find
out about the order in which a person with a fading memory will forget things,
and about what eventually remains. What is it I have found that could be
summarized to serve as conclusions, as they put it? I haven’t found anything
definite. The days I lived in a provincial town, the house on the
bank of a river, the six-year old girl who never missed an opportunity to bully
me, the school run by Catholic nuns in immaculate white robes, the days people
in my hometown poured out into streets to cheer, and subsequently my family
evacuated to a village which had a river with clear water shaded by a lot of
trees, the pounding sound of rice being husked at night, women in the
neighborhood with rosy feet and trousers rolled up above the knees, French
soldiers coming out of their fort to carry out late afternoon raids amidst
shouts across the hamlet before withdrawing at the approach of the evening, my
grandfather in his thin white clothes lying crossed legs on the thick plank bed
in front of his opium set, meals with
tasteless potato leaf soup, relieving oneself in the paddy field using a lump
of earth as toilet paper, then jumping in the river for a swim clinging to a
banana trunk as a float, the days when
we returned home, the little elementary school behind a Buddhist temple, my little friend of Chinese
descent with deep-set eyes, a brush with death brought about by typhoid fever.
Enumerated at random as dictated by my memory, these prove that I still
remember quite a few stories, but I can only remember them in this jumbled way:
I can’t relate them from A to Z, or in a more systematic way. The lump of earth
business, for example, was a daily affair – the only difference being in the
way I suddenly rushed out to the field in response to that urgent nature’s call
– but can’t be related in detail as a story with a beginning and an end. That
was before my father was captured by the French and forced to return home,
which led to my family’s determined pioneering southward immigration. What
happened afterwards was commonplace, and even though I have invariably been
regarded by many people around me as a person with a weird way of living, one
not like anybody else’s, I believe that during this time anybody’s life was
like anybody else’s; their share of joys and sorrows was of course not equal –
but then is there any equal share of anything anywhere in the world?
Does unalloyed joy really exist in life? I doubt it.
The day my father returned home as a deserter, for instance – I say so because
some people said so, but I don’t think anyone knows for sure whether he was
taken home by the French or he returned of his own free will, or he let the
French capture him and take him home, or whichever – the day he could stay with
his wife and children under the same roof, eat meals in a cozy light, not like
the time he was by himself in the region held by the Resistance Force (true,
the light was dim, but still a family light), we were supposed to detect his utmost happiness, but we didn’t;
instead he moved about the house in a daze, even when he was in the company of
his beloved ones, as if he missed the
days and nights of cycling through the jungle, backpack on back, covering
distances of two or three miles or more, defying the bitter cold of the jungle,
to meetings on agricultural taxes; as if he missed those parts of a river so
shallow he had to carry his bicycle on his shoulder and wade out to the boat , those immense winds and sunsets
of the alluvial country or the voice of a psywar entertainment singer he had
met by chance at a trifurcation refreshment post along the way. It was clear
that he was not happy. That apparently lonely and deprived life had something
appealing to him, as on many occasions he made it known to everybody in spite
of himself; he suffered all sorts of hardships living it, but without it he
felt an acute loss of a very precious period of free life. But have I gained
anything sitting here at this moment, recalling old memories that are in point
of fact not mine? Yes: I can recall a few of my father’s memories, which
naturally are part of my origins, and forget the increasing heat of the park,
if only a little of it, the heat that was emitted from the bench on which my
wet trousers left two dark patches of sweat.
6
There is a plethora of memories. There are those
memories that dog us all our lives, and at the slightest evocation will come
flooding back from some remote, unknown source, engrossing us and pricking us
in the middle of the heart, squinting at us mischievously as they watch to see
if humans still wear that usual, blindly aggressive air of theirs when suffering;
there are those memories that can be so called simply because no one would
bother to try to find a more suitable word for them, but then not everything
has to have a name to themselves. But don’t you ever underestimate this kind of
memories. Though they don’t have needles to give us stabbing pain with pricks
like those of the other kind, they have their own unique characteristics, and
appearing out of nowhere they have something that can bring us moments no less
exciting, moments of sorrow inevitably (don’t we keep making fun of that smart
arrangement of God by claiming that He is really the creator of man’s first cry
at birth?) but also moments of joy – the kind that brings tears to our eyes and
also the kind that leaves us doubled over with laughter. Speaking of funny
memories of this kind, shall I put in a few words about my work as a
journalist? Honestly, I’m not a journalist by training, but even with
professionals, for that matter, there is no need to make such a fuss about it,
isn’t there?) Drifting along the chances of life I once landed into a tiny
advertising company located somewhere on the belt of the city like the location
of the park where I’m waiting for the train, but in what direction I don’t
think I remember, nor do I care to remember. The new job (can it be said,
incidentally, that I had had an occupation before?) helped me at the time to
discover what quite understandably took by surprise not only people who knew me
at all (and they didn’t try to hide their surprise) but myself, too, who had
never expected it in any way: I had artistic potential. When a little boy, I
learned from my father’s humbling disclosure that one of our ancestors had been
a craftsman earning his living by making votive offerings from paper before the
family embarked on a period of scholastic brilliance and social advancement
embodied by outstanding scholars and high-ranking officials in the royal court,
but how high their positions were my crowded memory today can longer record,
and my father would advise me that a useful trade was a mine of gold. I must
admit that not until my dexterity was discovered did I remember the remote past
of my family together with that a-useful-trade axiom which does not seem to
hold nowadays. That fleeting recollection, oddly enough, was what for a time
boosted my confidence (which is now gone for ever), to the extent that one day,
on being called an artist in a solemn manner by a customer, I failed to
remember that I should have felt staggered at it, and instead I made a gesture
very close to sticking out my chest, showing a few black hairs above the neck
of the checkered shirt. I the artist lived day in day out at the lonely company
until the so-called epoch-making turn of events when I had to give my
curriculum vitae, telling what I had done in the past, where I had lived, who
had known me et cetera, et cetera, and so, o yes, the truth had to be faced – a
truth likely to make a good subject for jokes – that I had become an artist
through and through. And on account of my freedom from previous association
with bad people or perhaps for many reasons combined I was assigned to a
newspaper. If I’m not taking too much of your time – as far as I’m concerned, I
may be said to have a lot of time at my disposal right now – I would like to add
that in the newspaper office, though I belong to the artists section, doing a
job related to something pretentiously called arts, it was hard to say exactly
what I was. My work in this section was not difficult for me; in fact it could
be said that I was familiar with it so I could virtually automatically do
whatever came my way. Many people apparently doing the same job who came to my
place from faraway places reportedly on inspection tours aimed at “grasping the
situation” declared that though I hadn’t attended any classes formally or had
any professional training, I did my job professionally and effectively, which
remark I really didn’t know whether to take as praise or prick as at the time
it was a short step from praise to prick and vice versa, and I wasn’t
interested either way. As far as I’m concerned, however, let me praise myself.
For whenever I have an opportunity to look at the photos that I have retouched
– yes, while few people will ever hear of retouching photographs as an
occupation, it definitely is, I can assure you, it’s even an art, as it’s
called by people around me; anyway, looking at the photos I’ve retouched by
adding some beard to this gentleman, removing some hair from that one, this
singer was not old enough and did not belong to the category of people entitled
to growing a moustache: I retouched him; that cyclo driver was not allowed the
liberty of going naked down to the waist, not even because it was hot,
especially when being interviewed by a journalist: I retouched him; that high-ranking
official had too thick eyebrows that made him look wicked, and my boss said:
I‘ll take responsibility for it, you just go ahead and retouch them, making
them thinner,and so on, I couldn’t help being surprised at my talent for
beautifying people. They had once, I can recall, given me the photograph of a
"good" doctor – first and foremost a Communism friendly one, as it
were – who looked young and innocent like a high school student, and told me to
retouch it speedily and extensively (the freakish fellow who had been so busy
working for two dozen years or so that he didn’t have the time for a photo,
they say, wouldn’t even now take a few minutes off to have one taken) in time
for inclusion in the newspaper the following day and in such a way as to make
the doctor look about twenty years older, and people out of nowhere flocked
around me and flooded me with widely differing suggestions, but fortunately
after the enthusiastic yet unsolicited brainstorming I managed to finish the
historic picture of the doctor who now looked grave and bore little resemblance
to the person in the flesh though he did look like someone familiar. Thus I put
new clothes on this person, and shaved off the beard of that one, and cut the
hair of another, and ended up becoming a so-called expert!
Shall I get back to the visit by my half French
friend to my newspaper office when I was startled to hear a female use that
form of address with me in a most natural way? No, my changed self said lucidly
to me, no, the past is the past, let bygones be bygones.
7
The afternoon when I first arrived at the park to
wait for the train, it was a bright sight, the horizon being aglow with a red
spot behind the low house roofs that looked like a fresh burn from a distance,
everything a golden color of fresh sunlight, the trees, the lawn, the walls,
the house roofs, the lampposts, the vehicles and the passers-by beyond, all
trembling in the heat of the late afternoon at an area deemed to be cut off
from the city when suddenly the heaven seemed to cave in and in no time the space
around me darkened and before anybody could predict, a fast strong wind blew in
from the river and sent the dry leaves
in the park – the dark brown leaves that must have lain on the ground for the past few days or even longer – flying round
and round in the air, mixing with the yellow leaves on the trees and filling
the space with yellow and brown dots in a continuous rustle, and I was being
left dumb-founfed by the unexpected movement of sounds and colors when out of
the blue an object struck me on the face, like a slap, from the left it seemed,
if I was not mistaken, an object which could be called heavy or light, as the
case might be, hard enough at any rate to cause a burning sensation on the
cheek and give out a stale smell of recycled paper, I guessed an old newspaper.
An old newspaper was for me at this moment not an old newspaper as it would be
at any other moment: immediately I had made the guess, without a fraction of a
second to spare I pressed both hands on my face to keep the piece of paper from
being blown away by the wind. The stale smell of the sheets of old paper mixing
with the smell of a printing ink which must have been a cheap one now became
all the worse as the slap landed squarely over my nose, but I suddenly took
delight in the quickness of my hands, which flattered feeling was a natural
one, but also in thinking o dear, I haven’t been informed about current affairs
in the world for ages, about who is dead and who is still alive, who has been
run over by a car and hospitalized and who has run over someone driving their
own cars and been imprisoned, who has fainted because of sun stroke while
watching a football match, who has been suspended from matches for
half a year for violating socialist sportsmanship, for foully cutting down
members of the friendly team and biting
their legs on the sly and so on. It was just what I thought, but I opened the
yellowing newspaper, which had in fact opened itself before slapping against my
face – wasn’t it so? – and saw only a rectangle of an uneven slightly black
color lying a little to one side of the page, the right side it seemed,
surrounded by words which had turned almost silver, completely illegible except
a few black dots which I could barely guess were letters impossible to string
together. At the unevenly slightly black area that I could without much
difficulty make out as a portrait I could get a glimpse of a wicked eye which I
thought at first in confusion was going to find fault with me, or to inquire
about my presence at this place of the district by questioning me and asking
for my ID card, my socialist labor registration or my travelling permit with my
photo on it, or simply asking me where I was working or the like, but soon
after that – how soon it was I don’t remember very well, three seconds or four
, or a bit longer I guess – I shook off the numbing stupor and remembered it
was an old newspaper and the eye or the human face the whole of which I couldn’t quite see was
just a sheet of paper and an old one at that – one that had yellowed miserably
and which I could, if necessary, crumple up, throw down on the ground,
then grind under my foot a few doyen
times to finish off. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I folded the newspaper
twice over along the existing creases, and on catching sight of the wicked eye
glaring at me, I located the whole face on the page and realized that the other
eye was lying across the vertical crease, blurred by the frayed fold and I
thought well, the eye looks so wicked because the face is robbed of the other
eye, thus I let myself absorbed into philosophizing aimlessly until the person
– none other than myself – who thought he was discovering some principle of
life discovered that he was not even beginning to discover anything. And I went
to fetch a big stone and carefully put it on the folded newspaper at my foot,
in case it might come in handy some time, I told myself smiling, just smiling,
and thought with delight about the sudden blast of wind being able to become
useful to us just when we need it. As the joy started leading me to
philosophize aimlessly about man’s permanent need of someone smaller than
themselves etc, etc. though it was not a human being but just an old newspaper
that had turned yellow miserably, I stopped thinking, criticized myself, and
ordered myself not to wander into illusory romanticism, or to venture into the
petty bourgeois abstract, but to boo modernism, and if I was not mistaken, I
heard myself in an intimidating voice tell me to live practically, although I
didn’t really know what it was to live practically.
8
No, I was not woken by a honking. At this time of
day, and I thought it was long past midnight, even the least civilized person,
or one most inclined to quarrelling or trouble making, or simply the most
mischievous one, and this kind of people are likely to be found anywhere around
us – at home, in the street, in government offices, at cultural centers,
university auditoriums, social organizations, associations, political parties,
even at entertainment spots – wouldn’t be likely to do the senseless act of
honking; besides, not everyone owns a car with a horn to sound anyway. A
mosquito must have flown past, then, I hastened to draw a conclusion to save
time, though I had a lot of it, an ordinary mosquito, not necessarily a black
water fever mosquito, universally so called, flying by just accidentally, met a
giant – a giant as compared to him alone – then examined the food situation of
the place, I mean the park, of course by searching my whole body hard for a
good point on the basis of something or other and somehow concluded quickly
that this was an anaemic prey not worth staying with for any length of time. Or shall I prick him,
just for fun? It wondered, and prick me it did, by the expedient of the moment
and just for fun, then gave a sideways look at my startled response and laughed
with delight, but I didn’t hear its laughter, for who on earth has ever heard a
mosquito laugh, anyway? In fact, as everybody will know, this is a product of
imagination, of pure imagination, so any resemblance to anyone’s circumstances
is to be taken as unintentional. This means things had almost certainly not
happened the way I related, for the startled reaction lasted only a fleeting
moment, faster in fact than a flash of lightning, if my calculation was not
inaccurate, leaving no traces to show I had just been teased on purpose and no
evidence to indicate the horn had really sounded or that a mosquito had ever
existed. Perhaps I had speculated relying on the time and hadn’t thought of another
possibility, that of, say, a fly in defiance of darkness, in a rather unusual
manner, or simply on account of its conspiratorial inability to sleep, and
cashing in on my being half asleep and half awake, coming down on my face and
lightly scratching my nostril, the left or the right one I couldn’t tell
definitely, and the unusually long hairs in it, being disturbed, had struck
indiscriminately in confusion against its wall and woke me up with a start. The
first thing I thought about it on opening my eyes was that it was the honking,
which guess might have been incorrect, then the mosquito, which might have been
wrong, too, thus only the fly was left, yet when I thought of the greatest
probability of what might have actually happened, I was still faced with a very
slim chance.
I was indeed half asleep and half awake, sleeping
without really sleeping and staying awake without really being awake. I could
be said, then, to be sleeping all the time, from morning till night, without
really sleeping at all, for I saw no difference between being awake and being
asleep, between keeping one’s eyes open and keeping them closed: some people’s
eyes may be closed without their failing hardly ever to see whatever happens
around them or at times as far out as at sea, or as high up as in the mountain,
in the West or in the East, in America or in Russia; others’ eyes, on the other
hand, may be wide open morning till night – so wide open in fact that they
appear to be staring at people’s faces as if ready to eat them up, or eager to
find out, for example, if they have anything left of their homes worth
confiscating – and still don’t see anything, or for that matter, recognize
anything at all, let alone understand them. To return to my fly, it may be
said, not necessarily reasonably though, that there are people fast asleep who
are able to know when a fly passes by. On the contrary – but well, the second
type of people are not worth talking about: we are better off ignoring them and
they, too, are better off being ignored, a close mouth catches no flies, that
sort of thing, but well—true, we have minds to think with, but I won’t engage
in thinking, such a taxing business! After all, it could be said that I slept
all day. Whenever I woke up – and who could possibly count the times I woke up
in the park? – I would cast a glance around as if to make sure I was still at
the old place in the park, separated from the station by a low fence, and as I
put things into perspective I would speak to myself in order to be able to rest
assured that I hadn’t been moved somewhere else for my own safety or for
someone else’s; I would check the red cloth bag to see if it was still there
(just a look at it because if someone had noticed it and snatched it away, that
would have been prompted by its appearance: there was nothing inside worth
their thieving attempt) and I would get back to my business, which was to wait
for the train that I believed would arrive after all, sooner or later, today or
tomorrow.
I had no idea how much longer I would have to
wait. The sun at noon was scorching and I perspired profusely, my clothes
sticking to the skin (I could see clearly through the shirt the big brown scar
stretching from the chest down to the middle of the stomach and the entangled
hairs encircling the nipple and the black navel as big as a nickel) and I was
still sitting, or rather half sitting and half lying, to be precise, on the
bench, doing the only important work of mine – waiting. I might have
exaggerated a bit saying the sun was scorching, for it was not that I was unaware
that once in a while, a gust of wind blew past – hot wind though it was, it was
still wind, and if it failed to make us feel the heat cooling a little, its
heat was of a different kind, and there still was retained at least in the head
an attractive wind, a psychological one, as it were, a rare wind that was
strong enough to make us feel it easier and easier to fall asleep, and before
peeling the sweat-soaked clothes on the skin
I had the time to think, let me get some sleep, just a little of it,
enough to replenish myself.
Whether I heard birds' songs, the
police's honking, or any similar sounds – the sound of a flute, in general
vague sounds that lasted a while, then stopped abruptly at the most unexpected
point – didn't matter to me, nor was it of any special interest; so much so, in
fact, that it seemed I had rolled half a circle with the intention of sleeping
some more to regain my strength. I can't remember. Right now, it may be said
that I don't want to remember anything. But not wanting to remember is one
thing, remembering is another: no sooner had I rolled half a circle to face the
direction with less sunshine, meaning to get a long, deep sleep so as to be
able to feel comfortable tonight, yes very likely tonight, when I step onto the
train to embark on my new life, a life I have been dreaming of, than something
urged me to stand up, not just to sit up, mind you, something that told me not
to bother to look in the direction of the station, clearly something that
showed me the times had passed when I had had to strain my sleepy eyes looking
longingly towards the railway station, the railway station that had just been
left behind, belonging to the past, and I in
the blink of an eye had embarked on another stage of a journey that will
last ad infinitum but which has not started as yet.
As I watch, dazed, the tiny black dot with a little
ashen trace that trembles in the sun, tails away, then disappears completely
behind a turn where a line of trees of a green or similar color partly shows,
the whole lot being no bigger than the tip of my finger when I open my hand
before me, I understand that I'll thus have to start all over from scratch, and
right at this moment of utter despair, the moment when you could dash your head
against the rock, I hear someone say it to me, or I think it myself, or perhaps
I say it to myself, a really meaningless sentence which echoes like a menacing
sneer: oh well, that's all well and good !
Translated by Hoàng Thạch
Thiết
