Tạp chí Da Màu – Văn Chương Không Biên Giới

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Oakland Night. Question

Phùng Nguyễn
♦ Chuyển ngữ: Đinh Từ Bích Thúy ♦ 0 bình luận ♦ 30.04.2007

translated by Đinh Từ Bích Thúy from “Đêm Oakland. Câu Hỏi”

Night is about to end when Đức and I get inside his decrepit car. Thiện stands underneath the arch of his apartment complex, waving goodbye. Yesterday afternoon, Thiện and Đức came to see me at my hotel. Thiện’s hair, which goes past his shoulders, made me a bit wary. But this feeling did not stay with me for very long. Thiện is courteous, affable, easy to be with, even romantic—I realize this afterward. Lying on a sofa in Thiện’s apartment, during the predawn hours, I let my mind wander along with the singing and guitar music of my new friend. Suddenly, certain thoughts came to me—thoughts that at first seemed fragmented, irrelevant, but in fact were related to Đức’s question, posed to me earlier. The question was raised, as if it was a natural part of the conversation—exchanged above foaming beers and plates of blackish blood pudding at a restaurant in the town where we congregated last night.

Đức anh I would get together in a city, toward the Southern part of the state, where neither of us live. I have the sense that Đức never lives long enough in any city to be considered a resident of that city. He lives alone, has no real responsibility to anyone, travels often, and travels anytime he pleases. That fact alone makes me extremely envious. On the other hand, I am older than Đức, old enough to kill and to be killed legally before Đức had the chance to participate in the grownup game we call war. Besides, the fact that I was born and grew up in a poor village in the countryside, filled with the omnipresent traces of bombs and bullets, has sufficiently unsettled him. Inside the walls of an elegant villa, separate from all the dangers of war, people could fall prey to the extravagant demands of their minds. Đức had told me about his complex, precocious thoughts about war in a composition written during his last year in elementary school.

Regardless of all the differences in age and war experience, I think Đức and I belong to a group of those who stand precariously on two rafts floating in two opposite directions. We try to keep our balance on our rafts so we won’t fall in the black chasm of confusion gaping directly beneath us. Indeed, I may be more successful than Đức in steering my raft against the current, back into the past. There are things in my past that will pursue me for the rest of my life. For several years now, I have gone backward rather than forward. Those who are Đức’s age, or younger, like his friends, used to surprise me with their ability to speak about things besides phở, Huế beef noodle soup, and rice bits (cơm tấm) in Vietnamese. Long after my initial surprise had subsided, I concluded that perhaps my reaction had originated from the fear of having my last “lifesaver” snatched from me, that being my native knowledge of Vietnamese. When a person can no longer depend on certain things in life, the fluency in which he speaks his mother’s tongue in an environment that does not value this asset can prove many other things—including the coy desire to express his loyal adherence to his own dreary past. Lately, when encountering Đức’s young friends, I have come to expect from them the ability to express abstract thoughts not only fluently but also trenchantly. So I wasn’t surprised when, earlier, I heard Thiện and Đức argue passionately about issues related to fresh assertions in a newly published work by a historian that has greatly attracted the younger generation’s attention. Of course they argued in Vietnamese. Also, I wasn’t the least bit surprised later when Thiện, hugging his guitar, sang his latest song in English until the early morning hours, in his rather clean and orderly apartment.

When the war ended, Đức was old enough to carry with him the ashes of the past, at the same time he was too young to cherish them as the only assets upon which a person can stake his claim. It seems as if this bit of ashes occasionally gets stirred up by something or someone, creating a dust cloud that would choke Đức and make him cough. It wasn’t a coincidence that he selected for me Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World when we visited his favorite bookstore at a little corner near the heart of San Francisco. After laboriously mulling over the ideas raised in this novel with my limited English, I realized there are several issues that have occupied and will occupy Đức in the years to come. I also realized that these issues, if my thoughts are not without basis, have long ceased to trouble my conscience. If I were to make an analogy about my involvement in the war that had come to pass, I often think of myself as a gambler who has lost everything in his last round, at first a bit perplexed in trying to sort things out. Since the winner would not forgive my gambling losses and let me start over, my complaint or regret over my own folly would not change anything. So I, the gambler, decide to depart the gambling scene, consoling myself that in any event I have finished my round, albeit disastrously. After a while, this notion that I-have-finished-my-round has become a trite mantra for several difficult situations. But not for every difficult situation. When Đức’s question came up, or rather, floated hesitantly toward my direction above a table full of empty beer bottles and cigarette butts, I imagined catching something anxious and beseeching in his gaze. But I ignored the question. I did not want to answer such a question. Perhaps, it has also been my question. But to whom would I ask this question? At any rate, I still think I owe him my answer, perhaps because for me, it has been more than just his beseeching gaze.

When his car turns into a road leading out to the freeway, Đức smokes his first cigarette of the journey. He will smoke nonstop throughout this trip, and at times will be seized with hacking coughs. San Francisco is thirty minutes away. If I want my story to end before morning, I better start now.

The whole village, including me–who was a child then–knew the story of how Mr. Thiệp hanged himself from his ceiling beam during one summer afternoon. But why he did what he did might have been known only to a few among the grownups. But I was sure little Kình did not know. Little Kình did not know a lot of things, including how to talk in full sentences. Little Kình was Mr. Thiệp’s son, older than me by seven, eight years. If I had called anyone else of Kình’s age “little,” my mother would not hesitate to whip my buttocks nice and good with her mulberry stick until I ceased to be insolent. But from childhood I had heard everyone in the village, including my mother, call him “little Kình” or “little crazy Kình.” They said madness ran in his gene pool, even Mr. Thiệp himself was far from being sane. At the funeral, I stared at little Kình. Wearing funeral clothes made of white gauze, on his head a white funeral band, his hands carrying a pot of incense, little Kình walked behind the hearse, his face vacant. I was disgusted to see his thick upper lip, like a hanging sheath, at times would roll and lick his lower lip constantly dripping with slimy saliva. My disgust at seeing little Kình was telling, since village children, including my ten-year old self, always looked shabby and filthy. A poor village funeral was a dreary, somnolent affair. Nothing to stir my interest. If it wasn’t for little Kình, Mr. Thiệp’s funeral would have been even more dreary.

Little Kình did not go to school. Was there any crazy person who could go to school? He worked as hired help in the village. His mother also worked as hired help. She was a hired weaver for Mr. Cửu Nhì’s family. The soil in my village was alluvial soil, mostly sand and gravel, not ideal for growing rice. People grew melons, peanuts, green beans and red beans, corn, tobacco, and mulberry from which the leaves were taken to feed silkworms. Alluvial soil was dry soil; to plant anything one had to water the soil constantly. Little Kình had the strength of a full-grown man, so he was hired to water the fertile patches. Both owner and hired laborer would collect water from a small pond into two giant bamboo-woven buckets caulked with tree sap, then, carrying these buckets from a wooden pole, would walk over to the dry field. The pole, dipping and rising rhythmically from the laborer’s bent shoulders as he walked, would cause droplets of water to slosh around the rims of the bamboo buckets before spilling over the earth. And so it went, from morning to noon, from noon to dusk.

About two years after Mr. Thiệp hanged himself from his ceiling beam, my village began to bustle. One day, the National Liberation Front showed up near dusk, rounding up the entire village committee–from representative, legal delegate, to village registrar and secretary—like a huddling mass beneath the village’s flagpole. The Front dragged habitants from five surrounding hamlets to my village’s headquarters for a meeting. Each member of the village committee was singled out to be criticized, then released at the end of the meeting after each had sworn to the Front not to be collaborators for Diệm or the Americans. It was a close call for these committee members. Three days later, South Vietnamese soldiers came up from the district, in a confused hubbub of dogs barking and Garant rifles going off in staccato refrains. Then the district soldiers retreated to Vĩnh Điện. The Front again rounded everyone up for a meeting. In spite of all these going-ons, from day to day the villagers continued to take up their hoes and carry their buckets to weed and water the field.

Now little Kình only worked as hired help for Uncle Tám Thơm’s family. No one knew what befell Uncle Tám, but his body was pale as a leaf, with him all curled up on his wooden bed twenty eight days a month. Every morning Auntie Tám would carry two hoes in front, followed by Sister Hạnh carrying two buckets containing a large areca sheath filled with rice mixed with reddish corn and a pot of steamed greens. Sister Hạnh was eighteen years old that year. She had finished elementary school and now stayed home to help her mother plant mulberry bushes and feed silkworms. Arriving in front of Mrs. Thiệp’s house, Auntie Tám would slow down a bit, calling out “Little Kình, let’s go,” then continuing on. Every time, Kình would quietly emerge, on his shoulders a pole with two old buckets and a large hoe. He would open his mouth, making some unintelligible sounds of greeting to Sister Hạnh, his face bright and happy.

Three months after the Front rounded up the village committee, the district sent up some people to take care of administrative matters. I heard they came from either Phú Bông or Phú Bài. During the day they worked at the village headquarters, with guards standing at the gate outside. At night they retreated to their homes near the district for security reasons. From time to time the Front would show up for meetings, chiding the villagers why do you let those good-for-nothings come by and boss you around. After chiding the villagers, the Front would vanish, sometimes for an entire month. Meanwhile the village registrar, Mr. Hồ Luyện, would make frequent visits to Auntie Tám Thơm’s house “to be in touch with the people.” No one knew the reason for his visits, whether it had to do with Uncle Tám or Auntie Tám. Several months went by, when Uncle Tám fell dead after having a coughing fit that lasted for three days, then the people weren’t sure if the village registrar’s visits had to do with Auntie Tám or Sister Hạnh.

One morning, Auntie Tám carried the bamboo buckets containing her areca-sheathed lunch filled with thin slices of yam and a pot of steamed yam leaves. Stopping in front of Mrs. Thiệp’s house, she called out Little Kình let’s go then walked on. Emerging from the yard, his shoulders burdened with buckets and hoes, Little Kình bit his lips in silence. Sister Hạnh was not there for him to open his mouth and greet her with his happy, mangled sounds. Sister Hạnh was sick with something that no one knew. Maybe Auntie Tám knew. Or Mr. Hồ Luyện might know. He had visited Autie Tám’s house for six, seven months now. The next day Auntie Tám carried the buckets and stopping in front of Mrs. Thiệp’s house she again called out Little Kình, let’s go then proceeded on her way. After a while, she stopped. Little Kình wasn’t behind her. Little Kình wasn’t in the yard. Little Kình wasn’t in the house. She went back and forth. Then sitting on the sidewalk, dusty and covered with dry bamboo leaves, she began to sob.

Little Kình had gone away. Sister Hạnh’s illness did not abate. She hid inside the house, seeing no one. Every morning Auntie Tám carried her buckets and her hoe toward the field, all alone. In the summer I did not have to go to town to attend school, so during the day I would wander in the field, catching belligerent coal and fire crickets from under damp patches of grass and putting them in an empty milk can which I then hid in a corner of the garden. If my mother found out she would whip me. She often worried about me stepping on landmines or falling into some bamboo spike trap. One day I followed my friend and walked all the way to Thanh Châu across the river to catch fire crickets. I did not return home until dusk. While I was worried about being whipped nice and good, to my relief I found out that the Front had returned that evening. My mother would have to attend the village meeting, and wouldn’t be around to whip me. It was as I had guessed. The echoing loudspeakers were rallying the people to attend the trial of Hồ Luyện, evil collaborator of Diệm and the Americans. I nearly jumped with joy. I hated Mr. Hồ Luyện. My mother hated him too. She often complained to my grandmother, wondering why there were men of his ilk who often preyed on orphaned, defenseless women.

I pushed and shoved my way close the row of chairs where men of the Front were sitting. A guerrilla soldier, rifle in hands, was walking back and forth and yelling at a group of children fighting for seats, but to no avail. After a while the trial began. Our group of children, following the adults’ lead, also stood and saluted the red and blue flag next to a picture of the Chairman of the Front placed right in the middle of the ceremonial altar—called the nation’s altar. We were familiar with the ritual of saluting the flags. Blue, yellow, red–all were pleasing to the eyes. And those big wigs in their portraits, compared with the dark-skinned village peasants, always looked so handsome and dignified, not unlike Vietnam’s ancient emperors.

One man from the Front came up and said something that went on endlessly. I started to feel sleepy and nodded off into someone’s dark, sunburned back in front of me. I didn’t come to until Mr. Hồ Luyện’s name was called out. The man who talked for a long time was the prosecutor of the people’s court. He was citing all the sins of Hồ Luyện. Many, many sins, any one of them could have easily finished Hồ Luyện. Finally the prosecutor concluded that even to kill Hồ Luyện three times over would not offset the blood debt that he had incurred against the people. But it was rather strange. The evil Hồ Luyện was nowhere to be seen. Usually you would see the defendant, hands tied behind his back, sitting in a corner with a resigned, passive face waiting for his sentence to be read aloud. The younger kids started to whisper about Hồ Luyện’s absence. The grownups also wondered audibly about Hồ Luyện’s absence. The prosecutor, also a member of the Front, stood up and explained why Hồ Luyện did not show up at today’s trial. It turned out the traitor was too cowardly to face the people. He had been shot dead by a member of the Front at dusk while trying to flee. The prosecutor said the warrior who punished Hồ Luyện was a blood relative of the local people. He turned around and called, “Comrade Kình please come and meet the people. Comrade Kình? I couldn’t be sure. But it had to be little Kình and no one else.

Little Kình was wearing black pajamas like those members of the Front, over which he draped a brown oilcloth, worn like a poncho, and a hat made out of woven bamboo and covered with oilcloth in the same tan color. He also carried on his shoulders a long Indochinese rifle with an attached, fixed bayonet. He walked stiffly and awkwardly like a zombie. With eyes staring straight ahead, little Kình finally stopped on the third step of the committee’s meeting area. The light from a “manchon” gas lamp shone on his thick, sheath-like upper lip closing tightly over his lower lip as if he was trying to contain in his mouth a hyper, mischievous frog. All of a sudden little Kình raised his left fist, shouting “Down with the evil collaborators and traitors who work for Diệm and the Americans.” Good heavens, little Kình not only had joined the Front but also knew how to shout slogans. Perhaps the grownups were as taken aback as I was, since no one shouted after little Kình except for those members of the Front. Then little Kình shouted, “Hurrah for the National Liberation Front.” This time we all joined in enthusiastically. It was a rare occurrence to hear little Kình shout slogans. Little Kình continued to shout several other slogans with hurrahs or denunciations before abruptly falling silent and rigid. The prosecutor from the people’s court then stood up and escorted little Kình toward the back. Out in the village’s yard, us children were in a commotion. It was like market day. Everyone wanted to let everyone else know that we were friends with little Kình. As for me, I wanted to bow down before members of the Front. Crazy as little Kình was, he only had to join them for a few months before knowing how to shout slogans so amazingly.

That night, I slept deeply and soundly until noon the next day. As soon as I appeared at the threshold of the kitchen, my head freshly drenched with water from the outdoors cistern, I saw my mother’s angry face. She was holding her mulberry stick in one hand, and with the other hand the milk can that contained my crickets. Surely these crickets had made so much noise they caused her to lose her temper. I turned my back and ran out the backyard, ignoring her loud scolding.

Climbing through the opening of a fence, I got inside Autie Tám’s garden. Breathing with relief, I was finally safe, at least for now. Walking along the side of Auntie Tám’s house, I thought about seeking refuge at my uncle house in the neighbor village of Định An until the evening. The sounds of people talking behind one of the bamboo walls of Auntie Tám’s house suddenly startled me. At this time Autie Tám was still in the field, and Hồ Luyện had been shot dead, could it be that Sister Hạnh was talking to ghosts? I looked through an opening of the bamboo wall, and saw little Kình’s large, raft-like back. Little Kình was completely naked, his back and buttocks marked with lesions and pimples, going up and down on top of Sister Hạnh, his mouth chanting something nonstop as if in prayer. Sister Hạnh was lying face up, with eyes tightly shut, her slightly tumescent belly rose up, then descended, every time little Kình’s heavy, awkward frame pushed and pulled above her. They were doing husband and wife business. It was disgusting. Little Kình was especially disgusting. His mouth was hanging open, with saliva dripping down, his thick upper lip contorting. Little Kình’s voice was muffled by his panting, so I had to listen closely before I could make out the words. He kept repeating some slogans that had nothing to do with what he was doing. Sister Hạnh, with eyes tightly shut, never said anything. I grew bore, aware that my empty belly now was making loud, protesting noises. I carefully, quietly backed away to the front gate, then started running at full speed to my uncle’s house.

Sister Sáu, my uncle’s daughter, took me home when it got dark. The Front was preparing to retreat. Little Kình was among the group, looking a bit lost, his confidence from the night before had disappeared. Tomorrow my village would change leadership again.

This time South Vietnamese soldiers came from the province. There was also Mrs. Hồ Luyện, coming with the soldiers to receive her husband’s body. Arriving in front of Auntie Tám’s house, Mrs. Hồ Luyện went right into her yard, crying, cursing the bitch that had killed her husband. Autie Tám and Sister Hạnh were behind the house’s bamboo walls, staying mum. Our group of children congregated around the house, seeing the whole spectacle as if we were watching a circus show. This time the soldiers stayed in our village and nearby locations for a whole month, long enough for me to know almost everyone by sight. The summer went by rather peacefully. As long as the soldiers stayed here, the cannons from the district only aimed toward the mountainous area on the other side of the Cái River. In the afternoon I would often visit the soldiers at their viewing tower, listening to their rambling gossips. I was not to be outdone, so I told them about the shocking tales that had happened in my village. Like the story of Mr. Thiệp who hanged himself from the ceiling beam. Like the story of his crazy son who followed the Front and was cured of his craziness. The soldiers laughed so hard after hearing my stories, asking why I didn’t join the Front as well. I got mad at them, saying so you think I am crazy too?

The last days of summer were long and sad. Gone were my coal, fire and iron crickets. Even the koi with their bright, showy tails had vanished beneath the irrigation canals. In a few days I would again go back to school in town, sharing meals with my devilish, obstreperous friends at a boarding house.

At night, a pale, new moon appeared on the horizon. Without telling my mother, I ran to the viewing tower at the edge of the village to sit dejectedly next to a soldier, who didn’t look much happier. Maybe he missed his family. From the direction of the village’s wooden bridge, I heard the wind rustling among the bamboo hedges. I lay back on the thin, filthy wall of the watching tower, drifting into sleep. I went on sleeping until midnight, when shouting voices startled me into consciousness. Then I heard the ear-shattering noise of rifle shots. The soldier standing guard had hit something beyond the fence of the strategic hamlet. From the village, other sounds came forth: the urgent, rhythmic knock knock of wooden fish drums; the lower-pitch rattling from tin barrels; and the loud, echoing wouf wouf of barking dogs. At first, these sounds seemed fragmented, but gradually merged into a deep hum like the hum of locusts. By the district’s order, we had to alert the surrounding areas with our bells and drums when sensing danger. I followed the soldier through the fence made up of sharp, bamboo spikes, and came to a large, writhing form on the ground.

Under the pale light of the moon, I recognized little Kình. Blood had seeped through his chest and belly, glistening under the moonlight. I screamed oh Kình then fell down next to him. His thick, sheath-like upper lip was rolling back and forth, drool mixed with blood giving his mouth a slick sheen. With glazed eyes toward the crescent moon above him, little Kình kept babbling on certain words and phrases that had nothing to do with what was happening to him. This was the third time that I heard him utter these phrases. The last time was when I saw him naked, showing his pimpled buttocks and doing husband and wife business with sister Hạnh. The first time was at the trial in absencia of Mr. Hồ Luyện. Little Kình had two more spasms, then became still. I looked up at the soldier, little Kình was crazy, why did you shoot him? The soldier did not respond but turned away from me, the rifle on his shoulders hard and stiff like a dry log. That night, long, slow sobs could be heard from Mrs. Thiệp’s house and a baby’s cries from Auntie Tám. Sister Hạnh had given birth to her firstborn. A son, with a large, flat nose like Mr. Hồ Luyện’s.

At twelve, I was too easily distracted to impart meaning to the things that I had witnessed. Little Kình’s death slipped through the cracks of my memory after the first two weeks of the new school year in town. Even when I reached twenty, I was still preoccupied with so many other things to worry about incidents that had become part of the faraway past. Especially when I had to confront miseries that were larger than those that I had previously experienced. Only until much later, after the war had long passed and the wounds it caused had become more bearable that I began to think, now and then, about little Kình. I thought about little Kình especially when I would hear, on this side or the other side of the globe, the shouting slogans similar to those I heard from little Kình’s lips during the three different occasions long ago. When Đức asked me what had caused people to stand on this side or the other side of the battle line, I would think of little Kình. So I thought I should share with him this story, full of holes and speculations, to help him toward an answer that perhaps I, too, would want to find out. I am not an eloquent story-teller, and the story itself is an erratic one. Besides, the things in this story, at best, could only reveal a very small part of the whole, like a tiny trace of paint blurred and hidden under other colors in an abstract painting about a tumultuous era that has receded but not completely forgotten. One time I thought I had found an explanation for little Kình’s tragic fate when I heard about incidents that led to his father’s suicide. Several years before slipping his head through the noose made of coconut fiber, Mr. Thiệp had brought at least two other men to their deaths. Mr. Thiệp’s uncle and the uncle’s firstborn were taken from their hiding place by the Việt Minh, brought to a camp in Châu Mưu on the other side of the Cái River and executed along with their comrades who were members of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. Their deaths ensured Mr. Thiệp’s safety. This discovery might have helped me guess the reason for Mr. Thiệp’s suicide, but it still has not, to this day, explained the strange relationship between little Kình and sister Hạnh or little Kình’s compulsive slogans. Nevertheless, I have reasons to believe that little Kình never understood the true meaning behinds those hurrahs and denunciations uttered from his distorted lips shiny and drippy with saliva.

In the car now filled with cigarette smoke, Đức continues to sit silent. I have no idea what Đức is thinking, but I know he has listened to the whole story. Suddenly I begin to doubt myself. In some way, I have tried to answer Đức’s question by telling him a story that I’m not even sure if I have grasped its true meaning, and at the same time hoping that he would fully understand. Right at this moment I know I’m not at peace with myself. It wasn’t a coincidence that Đức suggested An Artist of the Floating World when we both visited a bookstore that he seems to know quite well. Perhaps the detail that I added to explain Mr. Thiệp’s death—something that I already figured didn’t add much to the story—has caused him to ponder. Is the finale that Mr. Thiệp had chosen for himself– thirteen years after the bloody execution at Châu Mưu–too brutal, too harsh, compared with the peace that Masuji Ono encounters at the end of Ishiguro’s novel—peace found in the bright smiles of young people greeting each other in front of modern buildings, newly erected on top of the ashes and ruins of yesteryear’s quaint neighborhoods? Was Ono’s dream—a “floating” vision, sustained by “sincere” artistic passion, to help the Emperor create a New, Great Asia, less reprehensible than the once shining dreams of my compatriots? Above all, what has kept Đức and his friends from disavowing the cheerless past that my generation, for lack of choice, has held on like an inseparable part of our remaining lives? Why have I never asked myself these questions when seeing young people holding hands, going to restaurants in bustling Vietnamese enclaves in Western cities, where they order phở or Huế beef noodle soup and speak to each other words and phrases from languages other than their, my, mother’s tongue? Is it because the younger generation has already seen movies about the Vietnam war made by famous foreign directors, with actors speaking Chinese and scenery shot in Burma or Malaysia? Is it because they have read history books written by equally famous historians 10,000 miles away from the battle fronts where my friends and I had shed our blood and bones? Is it the fear—my own fear of having to face the younger generation’s notions of the Vietnam War, collected from these reconstructed lens–that has made me avoided them? I think about the loneliness that Đức and his friends must be living with everyday—the loneliness in their search for meaning—as if any meaning could be extracted from the war’s extravagant toll, imposed on my generation and Đức’s generation, for things or causes that had happened long before us. Perhaps I owe him more than an answer for the question that hovered above the foaming beers and the plates of blackish blood pudding in the restaurant in the town where we congregated last night.

Đức leans over to light his last cigarette of the journey. I turn the passenger’s window half way down. Threads of smoke fly pass me, out the window and dissipate into the damp and cool San Francisco air. The car is heading toward Bay Bridge. Night and Oakland are behind us, now.