by David Miller
2. The Story
Cun knew that death was about to claim him. His legs were already cold, and a deep chill was rising through his body. When it reached the top of his head, he knew it would be the end, his final parting with life.
Cun opened his mouth. His thirst was so great he could feel his throat shrivel. He had an enveloping bodily sense that his life was being cornered and crushed. He knew he could not escape this time. Death was upon him. It stuck out an invisible tongue and, black as night, slowly licked Cun’s eyes closed.
More than ten years before, Cun was found in a drainpipe that had been sunk near a stream on the outskirts of the city. The stream was a pitch-black run-off of waste water. It was full of rubbish and supported patches of dust-covered water hyacinths. The broken cement drainpipe was laid across a small dirt road, so that the wind blew into it from both the stream on one side and the fields on the other. Cun lay in a pile of stinking rags and was purple with the cold. And if you are wondering why he did not die there and then, it was certainly because of old Ha.
Old Ha was a beggar at the market. It is not clear why he was groping around the drain on that day, but as he stood on the road he heard the sound of crying. It seemed to come from under the ground, as though it was welling up from hell. The old man shuddered. The afternoon was fading into evening as the last rays of the setting sun illuminated the creamy clouds on the horizon and swept forbidding streaks of wintry light across the face of the earth. The northern wind was howling around the low stalls in the deserted market-place. This was the right time of day for demons, and it was the kind of landscape in which ghosts could easily appear. Old Ha had lived almost all his life without fearing people, who only inspired love or hate in him. What he feared was inhuman.
The old man was limp with fear. The wailing was certainly real. He pricked up his ears and listened. It was the sound of a young child crying. Without knowing what he was doing, he ran stumbling down to the edge of the river. Still gripped by the sound of the crying, he looked towards the road, and there he saw a child lying in the drainpipe.
Old Ha came gradually to his senses when he realized it was not a ghost at all. With his soul back in his possession, he realized how fortunate he was that the demons had lost an opportunity to snatch it. He crawled back up to the drainpipe, stuck his hand inside it, and pulled out a small child. Its arms and legs were freezing cold.
The old man picked up the child in his arms and carried it back to his shelter in the market-place. He called the child Cun, which was a name people often gave to puppy dogs. This was because the child had really not developed into a human being. It was strangely deformed with an enormous hydrocephalic head and soft, seemingly boneless limbs. This meant that it couldn’t stand upright, but fell over and lay flat on the ground. However, the extraordinary thing was that Cun had an unusually beautiful face.
Cun lived with the old man and did not perish because he possessed two odd powers. One of these was in his eyes, for they aroused fear in everyone around him. If people passed Cun without throwing a coin into the torn hat on the ground beside him, they did not feel at ease. The second of Cun’s powers was his ability to bear extreme suffering: he could bear hunger and cold with such indifference that it seemed his body was made of some indestructible material.
Old Ha took a liking to the deformed child. With Cun he could more easily make money from begging, and he carried the child everywhere. At the Phu Giay Festival alone, he made as much as he had made in several years of begging by himself. His way of working was very simple. He would leave Cun lying on his back with his battered hat beside him in the middle of a crowd of people. That was all there was to it. Cun would squirm around, and his eyes would do the work: “Hey, Sir! Madam! You are human beings; think of someone like me who is not-yet-a-human.” Old Ha, who would be hiding somewhere near by, would appear when the hat was full of money, gather it up, and leave. Sometimes, the old man slipped Cun a few crumbs of corn cake, the way people feed chickens they are taking to market.
Old Ha regarded Cun as a son. Naturally, he didn’t pay much attention to the boy: he was busy. Just as people with other professions are always occupied, beggars have plenty to do too. In old Ha’s world, the fate of a cripple didn’t count for much. He never felt uneasy about leaving Cun weak with hunger or shaking with a fever when he went off drinking or gambling. The old man himself had been as hungry, as ill, and as cold as that many times. In the world of beggars, people use a child for two or three months to attract sympathy. Then, when the child dies, they throw it on to the rubbish heap, as though they are discarding a broken basket. There is no difficulty in finding another one. When you are cold and hungry, you don’t care about anything, least of all ethics and human feelings.
As Cun grew up, he gradually became conscious of his fate, and this forced him into an awareness of the circumstances in which he lived. At the time of this growing awareness, there was war and many people died of starvation. The weather was very cold. Cun and old Ha lay rolled up in two gunny sacks on the veranda of a house, about a hundred metres from New Market on the outskirts of the city. Old Ha coughed repeatedly. He was very weak and had not been able to get up for a number of days. Occasionally, he coughed up blood.
“Cun, you’ve grown up. I’m about to die. You are about to lose me, your main support in life,” old Ha whispered weakly. “Actually, I’m not your main support. You and I live together … like earthworms, crickets, bees, ants.” The old man had a fit of coughing, then cried: “Human beings don’t live like us. Good heavens, why do they persecute us like this? We only want to live like everyone else, but are not able to.”
Cun listened attentively, then turned away and left old Ha to sob and wail to himself. He did not say anything. He was already familiar with the situation. He lifted his hand across the torn gunny sack to cover his belly. Cun sighed. He was exhausted. For more than ten years he had been a beggar, and there was nothing he did not know about the life of the downtrodden people. “… Who are beggars, we are beggars … with torn clothes and no rice we become beggars… .” He knew how the meaningless lives of people were filled with misfortune. They lived like him, like old Ha, like earthworms, crickets, bees, ants. Cun only suffered more because he was deformed. Cun was not a full human being; he found it too difficult to do what everyone else could do. As he got older, Cun saw increasingly that there was nothing easy about standing firmly on the face of the earth. He continued to tremble, continued to take three steps, overbalance, and fall on the ground. His arms and legs would not do what he wanted them to do.
Around the time of his awareness, Cun had also become anxious for no apparent reason. He didn’t understand why he thought or dreamt so much of Dieu, the mistress of the house on whose veranda he and old Ha lay. Miss Dieu, who sold goods at the market, always gave off the strong scent of cheap perfume mixed, as country girls often mix it, with a touch of naphthalene. She had a pair of small eyes and a very delicate nose with quivering nostrils. She was full of mischievous jokes and laughter. She called Cun the “Blob-with-the-Beautiful-Face”.
“Hey, Blob-with-the-Beautiful-Face! I’ll give you a cent. Come to the door tomorrow morning. You are like the star of change bringing good fortune to this house. When people go to the market and see you, they rush in to do their shopping, as though they are ransacking the place.”
Cun laughed timidly. He bent down to pick up the cent, but fell over on the ground. The coin was three bricks away from his hand. He stood up, held one knee to maintain his centre of gravity, and reached out with his free hand. Again, however, he fell obliquely to the right. The coin was now a further brick away from Cun. Miss Dieu laughed like a butterfly on the veranda of the house: “Hey, Blob-with-the-Beautiful-Face! You missed by a long way. Try and get up! Try once more and see how you fare!”
Cun was so pleased he laughed. Good heavens, he’d made her happy. Cun stood up. He tried to hold both knees. That seemed to work. That’s it, that’s it… . All he had
to do was to try a little harder and lean over to the left so that he could reach the coin. He gasped and broke out into a sweat. Cun estimated the distance and smiled. Then, at the same moment as he leant out to pick up the coin, Dieu jumped down and moved the coin one brick to the side. She shrieked with laughter. Cun lost his poise and fell down. He smashed his head on the bricks and, although he was bleeding from the mouth, he ignored his injury. The woman’s attractive nose made him suck in his breath as quickly as he could. She had never been as close to Cun as that.
Cun laughed heartily. If he had known how, he would have sung.
Old Ha sat quietly at the corner of the broken wall feeling pity as he looked at Cun. The old man stood up sluggishly, went over to the coin, picked it up, and put it into his pocket. Dieu stopped laughing. “You miserable old man,” she snapped as her lips tightened impertinently. “The coin wasn’t for you at all! I’m sure you’ll spend it on drink.”
Old Ha stood crestfallen like someone who had done something wrong and expected a thrashing. Dieu disappeared into the house, while old Ha squatted down and wiped the blood off Cun’s mouth. He picked Cun up by the armpit and guided him towards the market.
Miss Dieu had gradually worked her way into Cun’s life. He thought about her endlessly. He visualized her every move, heard her voice, imagined her laughter. He paid no attention to old Ha’s tear-choked utterances as he lay beside him. Some time later, old Ha vomited and, as he did so, he pinched Cun’s face so hard with his gnarled fingers that the burning pain suddenly brought Cun back to his senses. Cun opened his eyes. He was startled to see that old Ha’s face had completely changed. It was waxen and distorted, so that the vertical flute above the upper-lip was tilted to one side. From out of the old man’s mouth there lapped a flow of black blood. He tried incoherently to say something. He tried to press a small purse into Cun’s hand. Cun crawled to his feet. He understood what had happened: death was appearing before him. It was there. It lurked very deep in the pupils of the old man’s eyes and killed the colour in them. Cun sobbed. Although he was only very dimly aware of it, he had lost his mainstay, the mainstay of his earthly existence.
After old Ha’s death, Cun’s fate did not change radically. He was still hungry and cold. But, in the terrible winter of that year, Dieu married an unfeeling young man who carried merchandise. Cun followed every detail of her life, and his observations made him feel that she was not very happy.
Cun was not deceived. Three months after the wedding, the husband made off with his new wife’s property and fled to the south with a lover. Dieu had lost everything. She fell ill and was so unhappy there were times when she contemplated suicide.
Nevertheless, her spirits eventually started to lift. The day that her illness seemed to pass and she began to recover her appetite was a gentle summer day. She sat in her room, looking out into the street. The sunlight shimmered on the canopies of the shady fig trees, the mango trees, and the ornamental shrubs. Nobody else was at home, and all that could be heard was the disconcerting sound of wood-borers grinding away in the corner of an empty closet.
Miss Dieu thought of the market and her small-goods shop. She wondered when she would be able to have another shop like that. She looked sadly out into the street. Then, suddenly, she saw Cun sitting up on the veranda, outside the door of her house. He was feeling for something with his hand in a purse. Miss Dieu kneeled down and looked out of the window as Cun opened a cloth envelope that old Ha had given him. The envelope was made of dark brown cloth with black stitching and was as small as a chicken’s gizzard. Miss Dieu gave a sudden start when she saw some gold rings glittering in the palm of Cun’s hand. She felt a chill run down her spine. Her arms and legs shuddered violently, and a thought flashed through her mind.
“Hey, Blob-with-the-Beautiful-Face!” She hurriedly pushed the door ajar and squatted down beside Cun. “What have you got in your hand there?”
Cun raised his head, stretched out his hand, and said in a tone of spontaneous pride: “Rings. These are the gold rings old Ha gave me.”
“Real gold or fool’s gold?” Miss Dieu inquired as she grabbed Cun’s hand. “Let me have a look,” she said, now holding three rather heavy rings in her hand. “Let me have a look.”
Miss Dieu took each ring and let it fall gently on to a slab of stone. She listened carefully. She held the rings up so that they flashed in the sunlight. She put them into her mouth and bit them. “Good heavens, it’s real gold,” she gasped. “There’s a whole family inheritance here. This Blob-with-the-Beautiful-Face is truly rich.” She blanched, laughed, cried, and thumped Cun’s body repeatedly with her small fist. “‘Real gold is not brass. Don’t test it in the flame that burns a golden heart.’ You little puppy! How is it that I haven’t known you till now?”
Cun, whose face had broken into a euphoric smile, swooned with bliss. “Come in here, come in here, you rich little puppy,” Miss Dieu panted, as she closed the door and pressed Cun’s body down into a chair. She put on the rings, then clasped her hands behind her. She stood right up close in front of Cun’s face, and arched her body like a bow in front of him.
“Now? I’ll bargain, OK!” Miss Dieu laughed. She spoke with her thoughts sparking like lightning flashes in her brain. “You must first give me these three rings. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have them. You are still a beggar. How about it? Do you agree? I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Cun nodded with the corners of his eyes full of tears. He felt only pleasure, for he had made her happy. She had recovered. She was strong. Cun was enraptured.
“How about it?” she cajoled, as she bent down and rubbed her forehead against Cun’s. “What are you looking like that for?” She pealed with laughter. “Tell me, tell me. What do you want now?” Cun raised his hand, but only made a vague gesture in space, because he was unable to activate the sinews in his arm. People who light incense sticks in front of an altar also make gestures like that.
“All right, I understand now,” Miss Dieu said. She sat down beside Cun and fondled him. “You are also a bastard! You men are all the same… . But it’s OK… . It’s all right. That’s the price we women must pay. It’s OK. I’m only afraid that you can’t perform, that an ill-bred husband of mine still can’t make me pregnant.”
Miss Dieu pulled Cun out of the chair and slammed him on to the bed. Cun was terrified. He screwed his eyes closed and pushed his face down on to Dieu’s quivering, vaguely blue, translucent nose. He was like someone flying in the clouds. He suddenly felt all the bitterness of his life flow away in a flood of unknown relief.
In the end, Cun had forgotten about all the time he had spent sitting in the street. “That means we’re square!” He could hear the sound of Miss Dieu’s voice somewhere; he understood that he had just experienced something really wonderful; he felt empty, but had a sense of surpassing exaltation that dizzied and dazzled him.
Cun did not comprehend that this was the only opportunity he would have in his miserable life to experience this feeling. But this opportunity, in all its strangeness, would give Cun a son in nine months’ time.
Nine months later, Miss Dieu gave birth to a son. Some months before, she had said to Cun: “Hey, Blob-with-the-Beautiful-Face, you are about to have a child! I couldn’t have believed that anything as strange as this would have happened either.”
Cun was so happy he was beside himself. He didn’t eat or drink, and all that was left of him was skin and bones. He could not believe he was going to have a child. Someone who was not-yet-a-human-being could still have a child. Cun visualized it very clearly: it would move strongly across the face of the earth, it would never lose its balance, it would smile as it went through life, it would wear a halo shining with many colours.
Cun lived in an agitated state during the last months of Miss Dieu’s pregnancy. He became seriously ill; his greatest fear was that death would strike him before he knew what the child was like. He prayed daily for death’s forbearance, and his prayers were
answered. Death would wait until the minute his son was born, so that he could take his place on earth.
On exactly the day that Miss Dieu gave birth, Cun crawled from his stall in the market to the window of her house. It was drizzling, and the penetrating cold numbed Cun’s body. His head was burning – from time to time, he passed out. Only a little over 100 metres was a great distance for Cun. Every metre he dragged himself along the road he struggled with death. It was there, as black as the night falling around him. Cun continued to edge himself along, metre by metre, as it pulled him back down into the mud.
While he dragged himself along with blood oozing out of his ear, he groaned. He reached the veranda outside the lamplight in the window and fainted. When he regained consciousness, Cun felt as though some immense object was pressing on his body.
Cun opened his mouth. Thirst. His throat felt dry. In all his weary life as a beggar, he had never been as thirsty as this. He tried to hold his breath to regain his strength. Alternatively, he passed out and regained consciousness, while he waited for a sign that his child was born. Then, in the middle of the night, Cun was suddenly startled by the sound of a trembling cry inside the house. It was the wailing of a newborn baby boy. Cun knew that his child was born.
Cun smiled blissfully and sank into unconsciousness. A very light wisp of wind glided over Cun’s still face.
Cun was dead. It had really been short, this life of someone who was not-yet-a-human-being. It was the winter of the great famine of 1944.
3. Conclusion
After I’d finished writing Cun’s story, I took it and read it to the literary critic K. He turned pale as the story unfolded.
“That’s not correct!” he said, pulling the manuscript out of my hand. “You’ve fabricated the story! You need to get it straight. The reality was very different. How could you know what my father was like?”