by Ho Anh Thai
“Last night, I got to the streambed again. It was the fourth time I dreamed of it. This time I climbed up onto some big, round, water-worn boulders that looked like giant fruits. I sat there upon one of the stones. The guide waved at me to keep following. But before I had time to stand up, the shadow disappeared . . .”
She bowed her head slightly. Her hands clutched at her face, which was immersed in some distant world. I sat silently, unsure how to help.
Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps stamping heavily in our direction. Mai Trừng shook herself and snapped back to reality. Giềng was carrying a basket of freshly steamed sweet potatoes. “Have some, you two,” she said, bringing the basket over to us. “The specialty of this area is this particular kind of potato. Its insides are saffron colored and firm, sweet, and buttery. If you take it with good strong green tea you’ll never forget the taste.”
I’d met Giềng, a woman of average height with unusually large feet, the afternoon before. She always went barefoot, each day shouldering several loads of water from the foot of the mountain up to the pagoda. It was the middle of a drought. Not a drop of moisture in the sky. For years the pagoda had just used rainwater gathered in a large cistern. But now the rainwater was exhausted, and they had to depend upon the efforts of this devoted, hearty peasant. Touched, I gave Giềng my pair of size 42 Bata shoes.2 She tried to thrust her thick feet into them, but couldn’t. Her feet must have been at least two sizes larger. Her feet didn’t fit her body; they were heavy and sorrowful, covered in scars, wounds, and painful calluses.
Giềng planned to leave at once, but Mai Trừng quickly grabbed her by the hand. “Aunt Giềng, Auntie Miên told me that, in the old days, near your checkpoint there was a stream. Do you remember it?”
“That’s right, there was a stream. Sometimes the three of us would even go there to swim and wash. And that’s where your father gave his life.”
“Do you remember how to get there?”
“It’s been so long. After the war no one had a reason to go back. I can’t remember the way.”
She shook her head and started to head back to the temple with her shoulder-pole and the two containers of water. Mai Trừng kept clinging to her hand. She spoke as if she were following a path in her own memory.
“I’ve been to the stream in a dream. But the stream has dried up. And in the center of the streambed there are some big boulders. There are three huge ones, like three mangoes running into each other . . .”
“That’s it!” Giềng shrieked nervously.
She told us that the three girls had always thought of those rocks as their own. When they would strip down to bathe, each would sit upon one of the rocks, just like three little mermaids. But the three of them never swam at the same time. One would bathe while the other two would hold their guns and keep watch on either side of the stream.
“How could the stream have dried up?” Giềng asked, as if speaking to herself, as if she were remembering regretfully. “You’ll have to dream again, then, and remember the road; that’s sure to be miraculous. Oh, the only thing I remember is that the area was known as A Si. But I can’t remember the way.”
I hoped that she was right, that Mai Trừng would be able to follow the old trails and find a trace of her parents. But I had a feeling that, for Mai Trừng, each dream was really a grueling journey. Those who voyage in their dreams exhaust themselves as much as those who scale gorges and ford rivers.
The next morning, she told me that she’d dreamed of the three mango-shaped rocks again. After that she’d followed the edge of the dried bed upstream. Arriving at large patch of trees overgrown with lush green moss, she turned right toward the rocky side of a mountain. There she found the remnants of a decomposing thatch hut. She heard the voice of her guide ring out, low and warm: “So, child, you’ve found the road; now you must take it.”
It was clear. Mai Trừng had to follow the road. There she would find her parents’ graves. I opened my notebook and recorded the name of the region, A Si, the mile-marker number designating the left turn off of the highway, the landmarks to find the dry streambed, and the way from that landmark upstream; and Giềng was able to confirm the route up from the streambed. In her limited recollection, there was still that distance.
I told Mai Trừng that I would go with her. She silently took my hand.
I went out and bought a shovel and crowbar set. Two machetes. Two raincoats. A few lengths of nylon fabric. Canvas shoes and rubber boots for both of us. Flashlights and butane lighters. Water and canned food. Mosquito and leech repellent. Everything went into two tourist backpacks. In addition, I had a compass ready on my wristwatch.
Then it was the time to get on the road. The two of us, with Ki, drove in one car. We returned to what was, in former days, the road down to the war. We looked like two provincial officials on assignment. As we drove deeper into the highlands, the road became deserted. Now and then we passed groups of minority tribespeople scattered along the way. Their complexions were dark, tawny, and coarse. Soon the road faded into oblivion, the people faded into oblivion, the entire highland forest faded into oblivion.
After two days, we approached the A Si region. It was time to leave the car behind. I drove it into a small highland town—actually, just a cluster of houses along the sides of the road. Everyone, children and adults, ran out of their houses to gawk at the car, which was for them a rare and luxurious sight. None of the guesthouses wanted to take responsibility for watching the car. In a town like this, an automobile was like a flying saucer from another planet. People would crowd around, hang off walls, climb trees, and even climb onto the roofs of houses to stare at it. All day. All night.
In the end, I had to drive to the local police station. I produced my identity cards, my driver’s license, and my certificate of ownership. I told the officers that Mai Trừng was going to find the graves of her mother and father, who had given their lives in the A Si area during the war. The station chief agreed to watch the car for us. He told us that, if we needed, he could recommend a soldier from the area, by the name of A Dai, as a guide.
What could be better?
We humans strapped on backpacks, shovels, and crowbars, and—along with Ki—climbed onto four Minsk3 motorcycle taxis, and headed up into the mountains of A Si. As we passed a mile marker Mai Trừng yelled out for the drivers to stop. She announced that she recognized the right turn, just like the one she’d seen so many times in her dreams.
We let the motorcycle drivers head back to town. A Dai carried Mai Trừng’s backpack and tools for her. He and I walked ahead, wielding the machetes to carve a trail through the trees, underbrush, and clinging vines. After we’d gone a short distance, Mai Trừng started to get confused and embarrassed.
“No, no, this isn’t working; you have to let me go first.”
A Dai said that he vaguely remembered a dried-up stream somewhere around there. And he insisted we let him go first and try to find the way. He turned straight down a very lightly worn path on the right without waiting for an answer. But Mai Trừng called out after him, “I recognize the way.”
She pointed to the left. There was no trail in that direction. Just tangled vines. It took us a while before we were able to hack our way through the forest and open up a pathway.
We struggled through all the way to lunchtime. Mai Trừng surged forward and then fell back, slashed her way through to the right until she came to a ravine, then cut back left until she discovered a long-forgotten path. Grass grew tall and thick, covering everything. As if in a trance, she kept walking straight ahead. Walked like a sleepwalker. Actually, she walked like someone was leading her by the hand. We followed after her as closely as we could, but we almost lost her more than once.
Around two-thirty in the afternoon we came to the streambed.
It was exactly like Mai Trừng’s dream. Exactly like Giềng’s memories. In the streambed were countless stones, worn smooth. And sticking up out of them was a group o
f three large boulders that looked like mangoes stuck head to head. I suddenly imagined those three mermaids, white and soft, sitting on them. They smiled mysteriously behind a veil of smoke and fantasy.
The stream was just a river of white stones, shimmering and sparkling. Some were the size of fists, grapefruits, or pumpkins. Scattered here and there were stones as big as water jugs. Largest of all was the cluster of three head-to-head mangoes. They were all part of this dried-out rock stream winding its way through the forest.
Mai Trừng sprinted across the streambed. When she reached its left bank, she raced along its edge. As she was running, she suddenly slipped and stumbled once, flung herself up, and then collapsed with a gut-wrenching scream. She lay with her back upon the ground, her body quivering, her breath ragged—like someone being gutted. Her hands and feet were frozen, as if someone were holding them tightly.
A Dai and Ki started to run toward her, but I signaled for everyone to stand still and stay quiet. Mai Trừng’s body convulsed in waves. Convulsed in waves. Finally, her hands and feet went slack, and she lay motionless.
All of a sudden she sat straight up. She wasn’t herself any longer. She was a spirit racing upstream toward its source. We hurried after her. She ran headlong through trees and bushes, until she rammed head on into a tree trunk covered in lush green moss. She fell down, and then instantly stood up again. Then she turned left, darting toward a wall of rocks. Running past the remnants of a long-collapsed thatch hut, which was now just a cluster of rotting bamboo poles, Mai Trừng still didn’t stop. She kept running. Finally, gasping for breath, she came to a halt in a clearing overgrown with dense grass.
She groped the air in front of her with her hands, like a blind person. Mumbled something. Shivered. Shivered lightly. Stronger. Finally her whole body trembled fiercely. She collapsed to the ground, her stomach on the grass. She pinched at the air as if she were clutching something tightly.
A moment later, she started to stir. She sat up. Then she crawled to a nearby patch of earth. She prostrated herself again. And her arms stretched out again as if embracing a grave.
Ki sniffed at the air a bit. His eyes were watering. He’d discovered the place of bones. He was naturally attuned to the remains of those that had passed away.
Much later, Mai Trừng crawled up. She was no longer aware of us standing just a short distance behind her. She knelt over, clasped her hands in front of her, and prayed indistinctly. After a bit, she suddenly started speaking louder and louder: “Father, I pray to you. Mother, I pray to you. Please release me; please let me escape this fate of living just to punish evil. Twenty-six years of punishing people like this . . . it’s too long.”
The wind gusted tumultuously. Here and there, layers of grass were pressed flat as if someone were pacing back and forth, thinking deeply. There was a rustling sound in the air, like people were discussing something and giving advice.
“But, Mother, as long as this world exists, there will be evil, and there will be goodness. Exterminating wickedness is something that everyone has to do. How can you force one solitary girl like me to do it alone?”
Once again, the wind blew with fury. Mai Trừng started to tremble all over.
“Please, Mother and Father, let me go back to being a normal girl. I want to love, and to be loved, like everyone else. There is nothing wicked about those who love me. Why should they face this kind of punishment?”
The sound of wind—warm, deep, and masculine—rushed out over the clearing. As if in response, a beseeching, reedy gust of wind seemed to raise its voice in feeble objection. As quickly as the patches of grass rose up, they were pushed back down.
“Mother and Father, now I beg you to let me take you to the Bảo Sơn Pagoda. There you will be able to rest eternally in peace. Auntie Giềng is there, too. She’ll take care of you and burn incense for you regularly.”
Mai Trừng knelt with her head bowed for a long time. She was listening carefully to her parents’ words of guidance from the hereafter. Two currents of wind, continued to howl in turn—one bass toned, one high and reedy—gusting past.
“I will follow your words . . . I’ll only have true happiness when you release me from this mission . . . Oh! I knew you’d understand.”
She suddenly collapsed. Tremors wracked her body again. Something was being torn from her, wrenched out partly, pulled out little by little like a never-ending length of rope. Then, it all dashed out, flew away from her body. Finally, her glassy, dazed eyes began to return to consciousness. She slowly sat up.
“This is my father. This is my mother.”
She pointed towards two spots of flat earth, just a few meters apart from each other. They looked nothing at all like graves.
Ki rushed forward. He sniffed here and there around both spots. His tail wagged back and forth in a flurry. This was confirmation of Mai Trừng’s words.
The three of us exhumed the two graves with the tools we’d brought along. The nylon sheets in which the bones were swathed had not decayed. We rewrapped the remains of their bodies in the same nylon sheets. By the time we were finished, afternoon was giving way to night, and everyone was set on turning back. We had flashlights and A Dai had planned ahead and brought dry bamboo to use as torches.
It seemed as though Mai Trừng had transformed into a whole new girl. I drove her back to Cửa Lớn. Passing through a stretch of quiet forest, she suddenly told me to stop the car. She ran to the edge of the road, which was blossoming all over with multihued wildflowers. She bent over to search among the clusters, bushes, and beds of flowers. All of them were sporting their most flamboyant, most brazen colors.
At last, she held a bouquet up to her chest as she skipped back to the car with the skip of a girl who’d just become a young woman. Her hair bounced impishly in the morning sunlight. Her face was radiant, innocent, and natural. Her whole just-grown woman’s body was suffused with the scent of wildflowers. She swayed lithely along with the rhythm of her skipping.
“These flowers are for you,” she said simply, as if she knew I’d accept them. From the whole bank of dazzling flowers, she’d only chosen those with petite stems and tiny petals. Pale lavender. Pale yellow. Pale pink. And, more than anything else, flowers of pure, innocent white. They were all wildflowers, the kind of flowers whose namelessness moved people to compassion.
As we entered the Cửa Lớn area, I drove the car along the line of casuarina trees dividing the road and the sea. Mai Trừng remembered that it was the fourteenth, and that the next day was the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month: Lost Souls Day. On the fifteenth she had to help the old bonze with the festival, which all the wandering, homeless spirits depended upon. She would pour porridge into small funnels of rolled banyan leaves and then place them all around the temple garden. The forsaken spirits have one full meal each year on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month. But, for the abandoned souls still living across this mortal world, there would be no special day of alms giving. On what day would they be remembered? How many people remembered that these poor souls were still living—living precarious lives?
We hadn’t reached the end of the wall of casuarinas. I started suddenly, and slammed on the brakes. A familiar figure was among the mix of people on the beach. I jumped out of the car, but once I was out I slowed my pace, pretending to be taking a leisurely stroll past the beachgoers. I’d just seen a woman who I’d thought looked like Yên Thanh. Or was it really her? If she saw me, would she quickly slip away?
I didn’t want to see her for revenge. Vengeance would just create, in turn, a cyclical chain of more hatred. Hatred would burn up the insides of whoever was holding it. I just wanted to see her face to face, to talk with her. What has she found? What has she lost? Has she been peaceful and happy, or not?
But Yên Thanh had vanished from sight. Maybe that was an answer in itself.
We drove to Giềng’s house first.
What’s happened here? An atmosphere of mourning lay over th
e small dwelling. A few local villagers were running back and forth. A woman tore a length into three white strips and wrapped them around the heads of each of Giềng’s three children. In the middle of the room was a poorly wrought wooden coffin. The crude carpentry had left the wood chipped, scarred, and warped.
People were preparing Giềng’s funeral procession.
Her death had caught everyone by surprise. Like a freak accident. Like an idiotic chunk of rock falling out of the sky and thudding down on her head. Giềng had complained of a pain in her stomach. Only after the pain was much worse did she allow herself to be carried to the hospital on a motorcycle. The doctors gave her a cursory examination, diagnosed her with an infected gall bladder, and announced that she needed an operation. They told her family to carry her outside on a stretcher, and go off to buy blood for transfusions and to pay the hospital fees. But what family did she have? Just a twelve-year-old son, two younger children, and an old neighbor lady that was helping them out.
The amount of money they needed to collect would buy more than a few hundred kilograms of rice. But in the city it would just cover one party with halfway-decent specialty food for a few people. For farmers like Giềng’s family, the fee represented an unheard-of sum of money. The neighbor and Giềng’s son lay her down under a clump of trees hidden by the back gate of the hospital. The only thing left to do was to hope that she’d gradually recover, and then take her home. The hopeless can only wait for a miracle. But the pain just got worse and worse. It wasn’t her gall bladder at all. It was a simple illness that required a simple but timely operation: appendicitis. But during this era of the market economy, where the principle “you have to pay to play” prevails, the “have-nots” are afforded only one right—the right to die. Giềng thrashed about and screamed in pain. She squeezed her son’s hand as if she were trying to transmit her pain and suffering through it, and into him. Then her grip began to slacken. It slowly loosened. And then she released his hand completely.