- Tạp Chí Da Màu – Văn chương không biên giới - https://damau.org -

flash stories by Tran Doan Nho

Posted By Trần Doãn Nho On In Các Số Da Màu định kỳ,Da Màu số 14,Dịch Thuật,Sáng Tác,Truyện chớp,Từ Việt ngữ | No Comments
Tran Doan Nho 

Bush

Before leaving Vietnam for Indonesia, Bush said to Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, admiringly:
“Your country is a wonderful place, where people don’t have to waste their energy speaking their mind, just a waste of time and national budget.”
Upon arriving in Jakarta, pointing at the booing anti-Bush crowd outside the palace, Bush said to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyon, high-spiritedly:
“Your country is a wonderful place, where anyone can freely speak up what (s)he is thinking, to help you make right decisions.”
At night, Bush confided to Laura in bed:
“There’s no place as wonderful as our country, where we can freely say what we don’t think, and freely think what we don’t say.”
“Oh, I love you, George!”
 
 
Laptop
translated by Đặng Thơ Thơ from Laptop (damau.org 14)
 
Thirteen-year-old Tiffany, plum complexion, inherited all her mom’s fresh daintiness and her dad’s attractively tawny wildness. Delighted, her mom, twenty-nine-year-old Vanessa, then remarried. Stepdad Kenneth was forty, exceptionally fond of his wife and her own daughter.
Hastily, Tiffany started dating. Vanessa worried. Kenneth seemed unconcerned. On her birthday Kenneth gave Tiffany a brand new laptop. Very moved, Tiffany surfed the net tirelessly. She chatted nights and days. After vowing her fidelity to someone in the chatroom, she dumped her boyfriend.
 
The other day, coming home from shopping, Vanessa caught no sight of her daughter.
Tiffany was gone forever. Mean time, Kenneth was out of sight.
Vanessa then made friends with the laptop.
 
 
Eureka

Since his childhood, the wise man had been enamored of high ideals.  He learned from books that all ideals would lead to these three things: truth, goodness and beauty.  Therefore, he buried himself in book reading. 
At the age of a little over 20, he had become very famous.  Amid perpetual upheavals of his times, people had hoped to see for themselves the birth of a savior sage.
      When he reached thirty, a fellow villager ventured to come close to him: “Sir, have you found them yet?” 
Deeply in thought, he replied: “I do not fear not to be able to find them.  What I fear the most is that I should come up with half-baked truth, half-baked goodness and half-baked beauty.“
At his forty, came a sage from the West. He smacked his tongue: “I’ve found truth without goodness, goodness without beauty, and beauty without truth.”
At his fifty, came a philosopher from the East. He remarked: “All I’ve found is that goodness is inherent in truth, beauty inherent in  goodness, and truth inherent in beauty.“
As he turned sixty, nobody came. He said to himself in a tone full of enlightenment: “It’s been done.”
      One day, he was seen running naked in the street, laughing and shouting in a voice of extreme contentment: “eureka eureka eureka…eu…re…ka. (1)
      People were cheerfully following him when he stopped and, without a word, straddled his feet to summon his elderly strength and, with his ten fingers, wrote these characters down on the ground, one sharp and strong stroke after another:

眞 善 美
 

All the three words were sparkling as if having halos around them.
No sooner had the wise man finished writing than he dropped dead without saying a word.
 
———————————————————————————————-
(1) “I have found it,” a cry of triumph on a discovery, attributed to Archimedes (287-212 BC) as he found the upward force exerted on an object in water
translated by Trần Ngọc Cư from “Cụ” (damau.org 14)

 

translated by Đặng Thơ Thơ from Bush (damau.org 16)

 

bài đã đăng của Trần Doãn Nho