FOR VIET READERS: anh phai song -- you must live -- khai hung & nhat linh

Anh Phải Sống

Khái Hưng & Nhat Linh

Trên đê Yên Phụ một buổi chiều mùa hạ.

Nước sông Nhị Hà mới bắt đầu lên to, cuồn cuộn chảy, tưong muốn lôi phăng cái cù lao ở giữa sông đi.

Theo dòng nước đỏ lờ đờ, những thân cây, những cành khô từ rừng về nổi lềnh bềnh, như một dãy thuyền nhỏ liên tiếp chạy thật nhanh tới một nơi không bờ không bến.

Ðứng trên đê, bác phó nề Thức đưa mắt trông theo những khúc gỗ ấy tỏ ý thèm muốn, rồi quay lại, đăm đăm nhìn vợ, hỏi thầm ý kiến. Người vợ, ngắm sông, ngắm trời, lắc đầu thở dài, nói:

- Gió to quá, mà đám mây đen kia ở chân trời đùn lên mau lắm. Mưa đến nơi mất, mình ạ !

Người chồng cũng thở dài, đi lững thững. Rồi bỗng dừng lại, hỏi vợ:

- Mình thổi cơm chưa ?

Vợ buồn rầu đáp:

- Ðã. Nhưng chỉ đủ cơm cho hai con ăn bữa chiều hôm nay.

Hai vợ chồng lại im lặng nhìn nhau... Rồi hình như cùng bị một vật, một định kiến nó thôi miên, nó kiềm áp, hai người đều quay lại phía sông. Những thân cây vẫn phăng phăng trôi giữa dòng nước đỏ.

Chồng mỉm cười, cái cười vơ vẩn, bảo vợ:

- Liều !

Vợ lắc đầu không nói. Chồng hỏi:

- Mình đã đến nhà bà Ký chưa ?

- Ðã.

- Thế nào ?

- Không ăn thua. Bà ấy bảo có đem củi vớt đến, bà ấy mới giao tiền. Bà ấy không cho vay trước.

- Thế à ?

Hai chữ "thế à" rắn rỏi như hai nhát bay cuối cùng gõ xuống viên gạch đặt trên tường đương xâỵ Thức quả quyết sắp thi hành một việc phi thường, quay lại bảo vợ:

- Này ! Mình về nhà, trông coi thằng Bò.

- Ðã có cái Nhớn, cái Bé chơi với nó rồi.

- Nhưng mình về thì vẫn hơn, cái Nhớn nó mới lên năm, nó trông nom sao nổi hai em nó.

- Vậy thì tôi về... Nhưng mình cũng về chứ đứng đây làm gì ?

- Ðược, cứ về trước đi, tôi về sau.

Vợ Thức ngoan ngoãn, về làng Yên Phụ.

° ° °

Tới nhà, gian nhà lụp xụp, ẩm thấp, tối tăm, chị phó Thức đứng ở ngưỡng cửa, ngắm cái cảnh nghèo khó mà đau lòng.

Lúc nhúc trên phản gỗ không chiếu, ba đứa con đang cùng khóc lóc gọi bu. Thằng Bò kêu gào đòi bú. Từ trưa đến giờ, nó chưa được tí gì vào bụng.

Cái Nhớn vỗ em không nín cũng mếu máo, luôn mồm bảo cái Bé:

- Mày đi tìm bu về để cho em nó bú.

Nhưng cái Bé không chịu đi, nằm lăn ra phản vừa chưởi vừa kêu.

Chị phó Thức vội chạy lại ẵm con, nói nựng:

- Nao ôi ! Tôi đi mãi để con tôi đói, con tôi khóc.

Rồi chị ngồi xuống phản cho con bú. Song thằng Bò, ý chừng bú mãi không thấy sữa, nên mồm nó lại nhả vú mẹ nó ra mà gào khóc to hơn trước.

Chị Thức thở dài, hai giọt lệ long lanh trong cặp mắt đen quầng. Chị đứng dậy, vừa đi vừa hát ru con. Rồi lại nói nựng:

- Nao ôi ! Tôi chả có gì ăn, hết cả sữa cho con tôi bú !

Một lúc thằng bé vì mệt quá, lặng thiếp đi. Hai đứa chị, người mẹ đã đuổi ra đường chơi để được yên tĩnh cho em chúng nó ngủ.

Chị Thức lẳng lặng ngồi ôn lại cuộc đời đã qua. Bộ óc chất phát của chị nhà quê giản dị, không từng biết tưởng tượng, không từng biết xếp đặt trí nhớ cho có thứ tự. Những điều chị nhớ lại chen chúc nhau hỗn độn hiện ra như những hình người vật trên một tấm ảnh chụp. Một điều chắc chắn, chị ta nhớ ra một cách rành mạch, là chưa bao giờ được hưởng chút sung sướng thư nhàn như những người giàu có.

Năm mười hai, mười ba, cái đĩ Lạc, tên tục chị phó Thức, xuất thân làm phu hồ. Cái đời chị, nào có chi lạ. Ngày lại ngày, tháng lại tháng, năm lại năm...

Năm chị mười bảy, một lần cùng anh phó Thức cùng làm một nơi, chị làm phu hồ, anh phó ngõa. Câu nói đùa đi, câu nói đùa lại, rồi hai người yêu nhau, rồi hai người lấy nhau.

Năm năm ròng trong gian nhà lụp sụp ẩm thấp, tối tăm ở chân đê Yên Phụ, không có một sự gì êm đềm đáng ghi chép và hai cái đời trống rỗng của hai con người khốn nạn, càng khốn nạn khi họ đã đẻ luôn ba năm ba đứa con.

Lại thêm gặp buổi khó khăn, việc ít, công hạ, khiến hai vợ chồng loay hoay, chật vật suốt ngày này sang ngày khác vẫn không đủ nuôi thân, nuôi con.

Bỗng mùa nước mặn năm ngoái, bác phó Thức nghĩ ra được một cách sinh nhai mới. Bác vay tiền mua một chiếc thuyền nan, rồi hai vợ chồng ngày ngày chở ra giữa dòng sông vớt củi. Hai tháng sau, bác trả xong nợ, lại kiếm được tiền ăn tiêu thừa thải.

Vì thế năm nay túng đói, vợ chồng bác chỉ mong chóng tới ngày có nước to.

Thì hôm qua, cái ăn, trời bắt đầu đưa đến cho gia đình bác.

Nghĩ đến đó, Lạc mỉm cười, se sẽ đặt con nằm yên trên cái tã, rồi rón rén bước ra ngoài, lên đê, hình như quả quyết làm một việc gì.

° ° °

Ra tới đê, Lạc không thấy chồng đâu.

Gió vẫn to, vù vù gầm thét dữ dội và nước vẫn mạnh, réo ầm ầm chảy quanh như thác. Lạc ngước mắt nhìn trời; da trời một màu đen sẫm.

Chị đứng ngẫm nghĩ, tà áo bay kêu phần phật như tiếng sóng vỗ mạnh vào bờ. Bỗng trong lòng nẩy ra một ý tưởng, khiến chị hoảng hốt chạy vụt xuống phía đê bên sông.

Tới chỗ buộc thuyền, một chiếc thuyền nan, Lạc thấy chồng đương ra sức níu lại cái gút lạt. Chị yên lặng đăm đăm đứng ngắm đợi khi chồng làm xong công việc, mới bước vào thuyền hỏi:

- Mình định đi đâu ?

Thức trừng mắt nhìn vợ, cất tiếng gắt:

- Sao không ở nhà với con ?

Lạc sợ hãi ấp úng:

- Con... nó ngủ.

- Nhưng mình ra đây làm gì ?

- Nhưng mình định đem thuyền đi đâu ?

- Mình hỏi làm gì ? Ði về !

Lạc bưng mặt khóc. Thức cảm động:

- Sao mình khóc ?

- Vì anh định đi vớt củi một mình, không cho tôi đi.

Thức ngẫm nghĩ, nhìn trời, nhìn nước, rồi bảo vợ:

- Mình không đi được... nguy hiểm lắm.

Lạc cười:

- Nguy hiểm thời nguy hiểm cả... Nhưng không sợ, em biết bơi.

- Ðược !

Tiếng "được" lạnh lùng, Lạc nghe rùng mình. Gió thổi vẫn mạnh, nước chảy vẫn dữ, trời mỗi lúc một đen. Thức hỏi:

- Mình sợ ?

- Không.

Hai vợ chồng bắt đầu đưa thuyền ra giữa dòng, chồng lái, vợ bơi. Cố chống lại sức nước, chồng cho mũi thuyền quay về phía thượng du, nhưng thuyền vẫn bị trôi phăng xuống phía dưới, khi nhô, khi chìm, khi ẩn, khi hiện trên làn nước phù sa, như chiếc lá tre khô nổi trong vũng máu, như con muỗi mắt chết đuối trong nghiên son.

Nhưng nửa giờ sau, thuyền cũng tới được giữa dòng. Chồng giữ ghì lái, vợ vớt củi.

Chẳng bao lâu thuyền đã gần đầy, và vợ chồng sắp sửa quay trở vào bờ thì trời đổ mưa... Rồi chớp nhoáng như xé mây đen, rồi sấm sét như trời long đất lở.

Chiếc thuyền nan nhỏ, đầy nước, nặng trĩu.

Hai người cố bơi nhưng vẫn bị sức nước kéo phăng đi...

Bỗng hai tiếng kêu cùng một lúc:

- Trời ơi !

Thuyền đã chìm. Những khúc củi vớt được đã nhập bọn cũ và lạnh lùng trôi đi, lôi theo cả chiếc thuyền nan lật sấp...

Chồng hỏi vợ:

- Mình liệu bơi được đến bờ không ?

Vợ quả quyết:

- Ðược !

- Theo dòng nước mà bơi... Gối lên sóng !

- Ðược ! Mặc em !

Mưa vẫn to, sấp chớp vẫn dữ. Hai người tưởng mình sống trong vực sâu thẳm. Một lúc sau, Thức thấy vợ đã đuối sức, liền bơi lại gần hỏi :

- Thế nào ?

- Ðược ! Mặc em !

Vợ vừa nói buông lời thì cái đầu chìm lỉm. Cố hết sức bình sinh, nàng mới ngoi lên được mặt nước. Chồng vội vàng đến cứu. Rồi một tay xốc vợ một tay bơi. Vợ mỉm cười, âu yếm nhìn chồng. Chồng cũng mỉm cười. Một lúc, Thức kêu:

- Mỏi lắm rồi, mình vịn vào tôi, để tôi bơi ! Tôi không xốc nổi được mình nữa.

Mấy phút sau, chồng nghe chừng càng mỏi, hai cánh ta rã rời. Vợ khẽ hỏi:

- Có bơi được nữa không ?

- Không biết. Nhưng một mình thì chắc được.

- Em buông ra cho mình vào nhé ?

Chồng cười:

- Không ! Cùng chết cả.

Một lát -- một lát nhưng Lạc coi lâu bằng một ngày -- chồng lại hỏi:

- Lạc ơi ? Liệu có cố bơi được nữa không ?

- Không ?... Sao !

- Không. Thôi đành chết cả đôi.

Bỗng Lạc rung khẽ nói:

- Thằng Bò ! Cái Nhớn ! Cái Bé ! ... Không ? ... Anh phải sống !

Thức bỗng nhẹ hẳn đi. Cái vật nặng không thấy bám vào mình nữa. Thì ra Lạc nghĩ đến con đã lẳng lặng buông tay ra để mình xuống đáy sông, cho chồng đủ sức bơi vào bờ.

° ° °

Ðèn điện sáng rực xuống bờ sông. Gió đã im, sóng đã lặng. Một người đàn ông bế một đứa con trai ngồi khóc. Hai đứa con gái nhỏ đứng bên cạnh. Ðó là gia đình bác phó Thức ra bờ sông từ biệt lần cuối cùng linh hồn kẻ đã hy sinh vì lòng thương con.

Trong cảnh bao la, nước sông vẫn lãnh đạm chảy xuôi dòng.

THE KING OF ROMANTIC TERROR: GUY DE MAUPASSANT'S TRESS OF HAIR

English translation from the original French version
published under the fair use exception to copyright law:

A Tress of Hair

The walls of the cell were bare and white washed. A narrow grated window, placed so high that one could not reach it, lighted this sinister little room. The mad inmate, seated on a straw chair, looked at us with a fixed, vacant and haunted expression. He was very thin, with hollow cheeks and hair almost white, which one guessed might have turned gray in a few months. His clothes appeared to be too large for his shrunken limbs, his sunken chest and empty paunch. One felt that this man's mind was destroyed, eaten by his thoughts, by one thought, just as a fruit is eaten by a worm. His craze, his idea was there in his brain, insistent, harassing, destructive. It wasted his frame little by little. It--the invisible, impalpable, intangible, immaterial idea--was mining his health, drinking his blood, snuffing out his life.

What a mystery was this man, being killed by an ideal! He aroused sorrow, fear and pity, this madman. What strange, tremendous and deadly thoughts dwelt within this forehead which they creased with deep wrinkles which were never still?

"He has terrible attacks of rage," said the doctor to me. "His is one of the most peculiar cases I have ever seen. He has seizures of erotic and macaberesque madness. He is a sort of necrophile. He has kept a journal in which he sets forth his disease with the utmost clearness. In it you can, as it were, put your finger on it. If it would interest you, you may go over this document."

I followed the doctor into his office, where he handed me this wretched man's diary, saying: "Read it and tell me what you think of it." I read as follows:

"Until the age of thirty-two I lived peacefully, without knowing love. Life appeared very simple, very pleasant and very easy. I was rich. I enjoyed so many things that I had no passion for anything in particular. It was good to be alive! I awoke happy every morning and did those things that pleased me during the day and went to bed at night contented, in the expectation of a peaceful tomorrow and a future without anxiety.

"I had had a few flirtations without my heart being touched by any true passion or wounded by any of the sensations of true love. It is good to live like that. It is better to love, but it is terrible. And yet those who love in the ordinary way must experience ardent happiness, though less than mine possibly, for love came to me in a remarkable manner.

"As I was wealthy, I bought all kinds of old furniture and old curiosities, and I often thought of the unknown hands that had touched these objects, of the eyes that had admired them, of the hearts that had loved them; for one does love things! I sometimes remained hours and hours looking at a little watch of the last century. It was so tiny, so pretty with its enamel and gold chasing. And it kept time as on the day when a woman first bought it, enraptured at owning this dainty trinket. It had not ceased to vibrate, to live its mechanical life, and it had kept up its regular tick-tock since the last century. Who had first worn it on her bosom amid the warmth of her clothing, the heart of the watch beating beside the heart of the woman? What hand had held it in its warm fingers, had turned it over and then wiped the enamelled shepherds on the case to remove ,the slight moisture from her fingers? What eyes had watched the hands on its ornamental face for the expected, the beloved, the sacred hour?

"How I wished I had known her, seen her, the woman who had selected this exquisite and rare object! She is dead! I am possessed with a longing for women of former days. I love, from afar, all those who have loved. The story of those dead and gone loves fills my heart with regrets. Oh, the beauty, the smiles, the youthful caresses, the hopes! Should not all that be eternal?

"How I have wept whole nights-thinking of those poor women of former days, so beautiful, so loving, so sweet, whose arms were extended in an embrace, and who now are dead! A kiss is immortal! It goes from lips to lips, from century to century, from age to age. Men receive them, give them and die.

"The past attracts me, the present terrifies me because the future means death. I regret all that has gone by. I mourn all who have lived; I should like to check time, to stop the clock. But time goes, it goes, it passes, it takes from me each second a little of myself for the annihilation of to-morrow. And I shall never live again.

"Farewell, ye women of yesterday. I love you!

"But I am not to be pitied. I found her, the one I was waiting for, and through her I enjoyed inestimable pleasure.

"I was sauntering in Paris on a bright, sunny morning, with a happy heart and a high step, looking in at the shop windows with the vague interest of an idler. All at once I noticed in the shop of a dealer in antiques a piece of Italian furniture of the seventeenth century. It was very handsome, very rare. I set it down as being the work of a Venetian artist named Vitelli, who was celebrated in his day.

"I went on my way.

"Why did the remembrance of that piece of furniture haunt me with such insistence that I retraced my steps? I again stopped before the shop, in order to take another look at it, and I felt that it tempted me.

"What a singular thing temptation is! One gazes at an object, and, little by little, it charms you, it disturbs you, it fills your thoughts as a woman's face might do. The enchantment of it penetrates your being, a strange enchantment of form, color and appearance of an inanimate object. And one loves it, one desires it, one wishes to have it. A longing to own it takes possession of you, gently at first, as though it were timid, but growing, becoming intense, irresistible.

"And the dealers seem to guess, from your ardent gaze, your secret and increasing longing.

"I bought this piece of furniture and had it sent home at once. I placed it in my room.

"Oh, I am sorry for those who do not know the honeymoon of the collector with the antique he has just purchased. One looks at it tenderly and passes one's hand over it as if it were human flesh; one comes back to it every moment, one is always thinking of it, wherever ore goes, whatever one does. The dear recollection of it pursues you in the street, in society, everywhere; and when you return home at night, before taking off your gloves or your hat; you go and look at it with the tenderness of a lover.

"Truly, for eight days I worshipped this piece of furniture. I opened its doors and pulled out the drawers every few moments. I handled it with rapture, with all the intense joy of possession.

"But one evening I surmised, while I was feeling the thickness of one of the panels, that there must be a secret drawer in it: My heart began to beat, and I spent the night trying to discover this secret cavity.

"I succeeded on the following day by driving a knife into a slit in the wood. A panel slid back and I saw, spread out on a piece of black velvet, a magnificent tress of hair.

"Yes, a woman's hair, an immense coil of fair hair, almost red, which must have been cut off close to the head, tied with a golden cord.

"I stood amazed, trembling, confused. An almost imperceptible perfume, so ancient that it seemed to be the spirit of a perfume, issued from this mysterious drawer and this remarkable relic.

"I lifted it gently, almost reverently, and took it out of its hiding place. It at once unwound in a golden shower that reached to the floor, dense but light; soft and gleaming like the tail of a comet.

"A strange emotion filled me. What was this? When, how, why had this hair been shut up in this drawer? What adventure, what tragedy did this souvenir conceal? Who had cut it off? A lover on a day of farewell, a husband on a day of revenge, or the one whose head it had graced on the day of despair?

"Was it as she was about to take the veil that they had cast thither that love dowry as a pledge to the world of the living? Was it when they were going to nail down the coffin of the beautiful young corpse that the one who had adored her had cut off her tresses, the only thing that he could retain of her, the only living part of her body that would not suffer decay, the only thing he could still love, and caress, and kiss in his paroxysms of grief?

"Was it not strange that this tress should have remained as it was in life, when not an atom of the body on which it grew was in existence?

"It fell over my fingers, tickled the skin with a singular caress, the caress of a dead woman. It affected me so that I felt as though I should weep.

"I held it in my hands for a long time, then it seemed as if it disturbed me, as though something of the soul had remained in it. And I put it back on the velvet, rusty from age, and pushed in the drawer, closed the doors of the antique cabinet and went out for a walk to meditate.

"I walked along, filled with sadness and also with unrest, that unrest that one feels when in love. I felt as though I must have lived before, as though I must have known this woman.

"And Villon's lines came to my mind like a sob:

     Tell me where, and in what place
     Is Flora, the beautiful Roman,
     Hipparchia and Thais
     Who was her cousin-german?

     Echo answers in the breeze
     O'er river and lake that blows,
     Their beauty was above all praise,
     But where are last year's snows?

     The queen, white as lilies,
     Who sang as sing the birds,
     Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
     Ermengarde, princess of Maine,
     And Joan, the good Lorraine,
     Burned by the English at Rouen,
     Where are they, Virgin Queen?
     And where are last year's snows?

"When I got home again I felt an irresistible longing to see my singular treasure, and I took it out and, as I touched it, I felt a shiver go all through me.

"For some days, however, I was in my ordinary condition, although the thought of that tress of hair was always present to my mind.

"Whenever I came into the house I had to see it and take it in my, hands. I turned the key of the cabinet with the same hesitation that one opens the door leading to one's beloved, for in my hands and my heart I felt a confused, singular, constant sensual longing to plunge my hands in the enchanting golden flood of those dead tresses.

"Then, after I had finished caressing it and had locked the cabinet I felt as if it were a living thing, shut up in there, imprisoned; and I longed to see it again. I felt again the imperious desire to take it in my hands, to touch it, to even feel uncomfortable at the cold, slippery, irritating, bewildering contact.

"I lived thus for a month or two, I forget how long. It obsessed me, haunted me. I was happy and tormented by turns, as when one falls in love, and after the first vows have been exchanged.

"I shut myself in the room with it to feel it on my skin, to bury my lips in it, to kiss it. I wound it round my face, covered my eyes with the golden flood so as to see the day gleam through its gold.

"I loved it! Yes, I loved it. I could not be without it nor pass an hour without looking at it.

"And I waited--I waited--for what? I do not know-- For her!

"One night I woke up suddenly, feeling as though I were not alone in my room.

"I was alone, nevertheless, but I could not go to sleep again, and, as I was tossing about feverishly, I got up to look at the golden tress. It seemed softer than usual, more life-like. Do the dead come back? I almost lost consciousness as I kissed it. I took it back with me to bed and pressed it to my lips as if it were my sweetheart.

"Do the dead come back? She came back. Yes, I saw her; I held her in my arms, just as she was in life, tall, fair and round. She came back every evening--the dead woman, the beautiful, adorable, mysterious unknown.

"My happiness was so great that I could not conceal it. No lover ever tasted such intense, terrible enjoyment. I loved her so well that I could not be separated from her. I took her with me always and everywhere. I walked about the town with her as if she were my wife, and took her to the theatre, always to a private box. But they saw her--they guessed--they arrested me. They put me in prison like a criminal. They took her. Oh, misery!"

Here the manuscript stopped. And as I suddenly raised my astonished eyes to the doctor a terrific cry, a howl of impotent rage and of exasperated longing resounded through the asylum.

"Listen," said the doctor. "We have to douse the obscene madman with water five times a day. Sergeant Bertrand was the only one who was in love with the dead."

Filled with astonishment, horror and pity, I stammered out:

"But--that tress--did it really exist?"

The doctor rose, opened a cabinet full of phials and instruments and tossed over a long tress of fair hair which flew toward me like a golden bird.

I shivered at feeling its soft, light touch on my hands. And I sat there, my heart beating with disgust and desire, disgust as at the contact of anything accessory to a crime and desire as at the temptation of some infamous and mysterious thing.

The doctor said as he shrugged his shoulders:

"The mind of man is capable of anything."

Literature Network » Guy de Maupassant » A Tress of Hair

FOR APRIL 30: OF BOND AND BONDAGE

THE “DIARY” OR ‘MEMOIR’ FORM OF CREATIVE FICTION

A SHORT STORY:

OF CULTURE, BOND AND BONDAGE: THE 51-49% SPLIT
(MEMOIR OF THE VIETNAMESE WOMAN WHO BLINDLY LOVES)


BY Ng.Uye^n Nicole Dương, copyright 2009

(This is part of the unfinished memoir of an educated Vietnamese woman who had married an American male, her career counterpart in the U.S., with whom she had no children.)
------

I once had the best home-made Vietnamese crepe (called banh xeo in the Vietnamese southern dialect) at an urban public housing complex. The mother of a young Vietnamese college student invited me to their home. They had lived in the public housing complex for 10 years. She worked at a restaurant to support her son in college.

In that small kitchen, she stood and cooked. She was about 5 years older than I. Very petite and youthful-looking, like most Vietnamese women.

Her son had looked me up at the University where I taught. Then he came in to see me. He was not one of my students, but he offered to help me with my research about Vietnam, free of charge. He spoke accented English, and told me he wanted to become a medical doctor only to do research and to help his people. Intelligent and ambitious, he said he was born post-1975. Under communist Vietnam, he never went to school. He fished instead, and became a "boat person" at the age of 12. In America, he relied on the Vietnamese Catholic Church to learn a sense of community, and the priests taught him how to read and write Vietnamese. American public education took care of his English.

(For my memoir, I have to skip description of the delicious Vietnamese banh xeo.)

I left their house with a full container of banh xeo to go, and a bag of books. The young man had collected all kinds of Vietnamese books for me, all the books that I already read and knew pre -1975, like the whole collection of Tu Luc Van Doan (Vietnam’s first Independent Pen Club). The young man did not know that I had read all of those books pre-1975. He thought I was raised in America.

Something scared me about this young man.

He told me some Vietnamese man in California who allegedly headed a movement to free Vietnam had returned to Vietnam, had been arrested, and was awaiting sentencing as a terrorist. This was the young man’s hero. His mother believed that this Vietnamese Californian was leading a respectable resistance movement that would eventually overthrow the government of Vietnam, and we would all return home. As Catholic, the mother was hardcore anti-communist. They would send their minimum wage earnings to this "resistance" movement.

(Of course I know all this, the “resistance movement” business, simply because I have listened to first-generation Vietnamese talks, and have been sent their video’ed debates via the internet. For this memoir, I am skipping all about this “resistance.”)

I had sat there eating banh xeo and listening to the single mother and her son, these very simple Vietnamese who did not share my course of life. I wondered whether my American husband and other outsiders could understand all this. Would there be a day that any mainstream American could comfortably walk into this public housing project, looking at the delicious Vietnamese banh xeo and understanding why I was sitting there, eating and thinking about a dark world called my exile culture, the kind of complexity that perhaps no historian could intuitively describe...

But there was also Cuba, together with President Kennedy's Bay of Pigs. Before that, there was the Korean War, and before that, Mao's Long March that chased Chang Kei Shek to Taiwan...

Somebody should understand...


***

My thought went back to three other Vietnamese men I had met, and could not forget.

I thought of the Vietnamese musician who had written a song, a beautiful piece set to Latin beat, Bossa Nova. He had written the piece in a motel in HoChiMinh City during his first trip back home from America, after the Boat People crisis, after Vietnam's open-door "renovation" policy in 1986. The lyrics spoke of how he was not sure whether the place, his Saigon – the land on which he walked – would still be dear to him, still embracing him in its memory: bond and bondage, the missing child, the returning spirit who went looking and found other ghosts…

I had met him at a Vietnamese party, where he sang his song to pre-recorded Bossa Nova accompaniment. His voice was weak yet soulful. The lyrics carried the soul.

I never forgot the song. The song became the man.


***

There was another Vietnamese man whom I met during my last trip back to Vietnam, a guided tour. He was a fellow traveller. This Vietnamese man, in his 40s but looking 30-ish, told me how he had escaped – sleeping in front of some quay, some dock, waiting for the boat to come. When it came, the boat Evaded the darkness; yet it also INvaded the darkness, because after long days and nights of desperate waiting, he knew darkness as his friend; it enveloped him in its intimacy.

He couldn't let go of the darkness, so when the boat came with its silhouette and sound of rescue, the boat also became the violator of the man's safety blanket. The boat broke his intimate darkness and blinded him with lights.

Where did he end up?

He was stranded in Europe, finally settling in Norway, of all places…So the Vietnamese had spread themselves from Southeast Asia all the way to the ice land of the North Sea!

(For the memoir, I am cutting short his tale.)

The tour was his home-coming.

During the tour, not knowing how old he was and judging him by his young and timid manners, I addressed him the same way I addressed my students. I called myself "Co^" (auntie or professor) and I addressed him as "Em" (younger brother). He did not object. Becoming a college professor must have subconsciously entitled me to think of the whole world as within my tutoring.

As I listened to the story of his escape, in the place where we sat that day – the steps of the rail station from Lao Cai to Sapa in North Vietnam (we were playing tourists to Sapa via Victoria Station), I felt very cold as though I were in Norway, or sleeping on the harsh ground of a ravaged Vietnam in transition, on the night he escaped on the flimsy boat that split his intimate darkness into HOME and EXILE. And blinded him.

***

And then, there was the Vietnamese waiter in a restaurant in the Asian part of town, who at times mishandled my bills, conveniently or unintentionally adding a few dollars for himself. He, too, told me of how he had to escape so that he did not have to join the Vietnamese communist army to fight the Chinese and the Cambodians (what was left of the Khmer Rouge) in 1978. Unlike the man who ended up in Norway, this friendly waiter ended up on one of the Spratlys islands. By then, they had run out of food and water. He was so thirsty he tried to drink the Pacific Ocean, only to throw up…The ocean, of course, could not be drunk! Sea water is never drinking water.

(To Memoir: how can my American husband and outsiders understand all this? Intellectually my husband will understand because he is intelligent. But emotionally, he cannot.)

***

For a long time, I kept thinking about these four Vietnamese men: the college student who believed in a California-based Vietnamese anti-communist resistance, the musician who could no longer find his Saigon so he wrote his song instead, the man who slept on the dock waiting for the rescue boat that paradoxically took away his safety blanket, and the waiter who had tried to drink the Pacific Ocean.

They have opened their lives to me, somewhat, at random, because our paths crossed. I kept comparing them to my American husband, who never went looking for the ghosts of Saigon, who never lay on a cold ground to wait for a fishing boat, who never drank the Pacific water, and who did not believe in any Vietnamese resistance movement.

When I thought of these four men, nostalgia overcame me, as though I became these men. Surely I am a teacher, but that does not mean there is a protective connection, as with my students. So where is the connection that made me feel so sad?

***

I couldn't understand why the nostalgia....

...until my aging parents needed me, and in taking care of them, I had to learn and relearn their lives. I began to understand their marital relationship: back in Vietnam, and then here in America. (To Memoir: I am skipping my parents' marriage.)

It was then, in loving and re-loving my parents, that I saw myself as the bridge between my parents and my younger siblings who understand my American husband better than understanding our own Vietnamese parents. The terror hit me when I realized that when I am gone, that bridge is gone.

That was how I began to understand me and my nostalgia. Call me simplistic, but it kind of went like this: In a country of 80 million like Vietnam, 51 percent has always been female, the majority, and the other 49 percent is male, the minority. The majority takes care of the minority. The 51 percent is all ME, the female. The other 49 percent? They are all my father, uncles, brothers, and all the sons I could have had.

What's Vietnam then? This 51-49 split.

What does it mean to be a Vietnamese woman who serves as the bridge between her parents and her siblings and their children, those who don't want or know such bridge?

As the bridge, I am the 51 percent bearing the other 49 percent’s pain, as my mother has borne my father's pain. With the 49 percent's sadness in me, I must have engulfed the entire culture into my heart.

(The Memoir has a gap here. But it goes on to say...)

This past year, I left my American husband (after 10 years of pondering over his prenuptial agreement, which I never signed….not yet, and he loved me enough to marry me without my signature on the document, but the understanding between us is as clear as contractual terms in print ).

After 10 years, we never began that official honeymoon in Paris where he would bring me to the Ritz, and then to Monet's garden, because the prenuptial sat between us always, and our respective careers also built the invisible wall between us. Those walls kept me in America, and off my husband went to Europe. So I called him my husband for 10 years while that paper was never signed and our separation became a way of life.

(To Memoir: I am skipping all the details about how I left my husband.)

After I left my husband, I decided, very consciously, that I would fall in love with a Vietnamese man, whose family members had died together with all that “resistance movement” from French Indochina to communist Vietnam. Some man who could take in him the 49 percent who had fought for the liberty of their people.

I decided to love this man before I met him. Very unlike my normal self, I performed no due diligence on his background, disposition, character, or motive. We didn't even need to date. I ignored any side of darkness in him because I was already blinded by...light! All I need was his Vietnamese name. And the light of the rescue boat!

So that was how I consciously decided on the form of my love for my parents and for the culture. It would become my love for this one man, the 49 percent loved by the 51 percent blinded by the light.

All sounding like a dream…Not just any dream, but a long incomprehensible nightmare that took into its darkness all of the 49 percent who were my father, uncles, brothers, and could-have-been sons. The nightmare left the other 51 percent blazed in the light of a rescue boat that split the darkness. So the other 51 percent became confused and ravaged in the blindness of light.

(The Memoir again has a gap, so we never know what happened. She goes on to end:).

And then I found out….

The Vietnamese man that I had decided to love, i.e., to whom I decided to transfer my love for my parents and their Vietnamese world, is nothing but the dream itself. In that dream, there is the blinding light that sweeps us back into the culture where we all become homeless and stateless, once more.

Where is the terror?

The resistance may be phony. The music may be phony. The rescue boat may be phony. Even the salt that remains on the tip of the tongue of someone who tries to drink the Pacific Ocean may also be phony.

The terror lies in the paradox:

To take on exile to find a new home sometimes is but a return to homelessness. Escaping makes the darkness of the wait become our best friend, our only friend. And although the rescue boat, signaling our paradise of America, has saved us, it has also forever taken away our emotional safety blanket.

Once a refugee, always a refugee. The refugee that lives in exile repeats the single day that has become his or her loss, over and over again. (Hollywood even made a movie about this paranormal experience.)

Bond has become bondage!

The terror is:

I have indeed become the 51 percent that's called "female" of the forever ravaged Vietnam.

Uyen Nicole Duong copyrighted December 2010, edited June 2017.