Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

Que received the long line of village ladies who wanted to touch these unimaginable fineries and see them close up. Months later, to be sure, the balance was to be restored when the young woman, having run out of both make-up and a place to wear it, reverted to her normal rural self. Like all the rest of us she would once again wear cotton until it fell apart and her feet would be bare, her skin dark from exposure to the sun and the wind.

  Something else Que brought back was of interest to a wider set of people, many of them elders of the community. This was the village’s first radio. Her aunt in Sai Gon had given her a small wireless set and some precious batteries to go with it. Mrs Sau’s husband set it up in a place of honour in their home, and honoured guests were invited in to witness the miracle. The house was soon crowded with village people, with an overflow in the front yard.

  In a hush of anticipation, the set was switched on, and to the general astonishment, disembodied voices filled the air. For a moment, people were simply too dumbfounded to speak, but soon there was an outbreak of muttering and then volleys of comments from the visitors. An old man uttered, “There must be some tricks to this.” A woman seemed to agree with him, “There must be some people hiding on the roof or inside some walls around here.” Mrs Lua, then in her seventies, was positive that the voices belonged to ghosts. And ghosts, she loudly maintained, were not to be trifled with!

  * * *

  We may not have had radios in the villages of the delta back in the fifties but the air was always full of sweet sounds, among them the calls of the vendors. Heavy goods like rice, potatoes, drinking water were brought in by boat. Each merchant had a distinct sound or cry. Goods light enough to be carried were borne on the vendor’s shoulders in containers and set down while a sale was being settled.

  At meal times we might wait to hear the clacker of the noodle soup man, or the tinkling bell of the ice cream boy. The distinct traditional call of the fish lady, the knife sharpener, the barber, or the sliced fruit man could come anytime during the day. Some warbled as they sang their call while others had high-pitched voices and long calls. All were instantly recognizable. The range of goods and services was enough for most of our needs. I often bought fresh tofu in syrup and young coconut juice at the doorstep of our house. We could even have our clothes dyed by the dyeing man with his pans of jet-black liquid. People wore clothes until they had lost their first colour and then gave them a new life in black, the destination of nearly all garments for daily life and work.

  In our village there were no cars, no bicycles, and no telephones. But the air was full of the tinkling and warbling of bells, and calls, of the paddling of boats, and the gentle padding around of people and their animals. The singing of frogs responding to children, the low flute-like sound of the mosquito swarms, the calls of goats, chickens, and the occasional grunting of a pig reminded us always of the animals we shared our land with.

  Several times a year the men of the village gathered for the staging of a cockfight, sponsored by Mr Ba Dan, who was also the principal host. He and his family were converted Catholics. He had been a collaborator under the French and had received a fair amount of land by them. Although Mr Ba Dan would not be considered wealthy elsewhere, in Truong An he was rich. He had several concubines acquired from destitute families. He was known as “the Great Master” and had a reputation for being extravagant. On one occasion, one of his concubines had lost an earring and couldn’t find it in the dark. Mr Ba Dan sent an order to one of his servants to bring him a Frenchmade lighter. Everyone watched the great master in amusement. He took his cigarette between his lips, then proudly dipped into his trousers’ pocket and pulled out a huge stack of Indochinese piasters. Now holding a large value bill, he signaled the servant to light its edge. With the bill alight in his hand – as a torch, the great master bent to the floor and started searching for the earring. Quickly a second bill was lighted and this went on – one bill after another – until the stack of money was nearly gone. No earring was found. Having done his best to please his beloved mistress, the great master let out a sigh and returned to his seat. He lifted one leg and crossed it over the other. He looked comfortable, with chin pointed to the ceiling, while eyes were half-closed. He was contemplating. Another servant handed him a Cognac. His concubine wiggled her hips, rose up, and walked out of the room. The great master turned his head toward the door. Without saying a word, he watched her body in motion and listened to the rustling sounds of her silk dress.

  Under Mr Ba Dan’s cockfighting arrangement, all the chosen cocks would be brought to Truong An from other villages in a special boat. If it were to be a big tournament, the news would have spread to several villages and there would be a large and noisy crowd of expectant onlookers waiting to see the line-up of birds. There was always a second boat accompanying the cockboat, carrying beer, wine, and food to be used between the tournaments. Uncle Muoi was passionate about cockfights and he always had a pair of birds ready for each tournament. A typical cockfight event would last for about three days. The winners would be invited to a great feast at Mr Ba Dan’s house afterwards. To me, the vicious fighting between each pair of cocks was not a fun event and I rarely watched it.

  For the most part, my childhood years in the village were a time of slow peaceful routines, determined by the rhythms of the rice crop and the calendar of traditional festivals. Life did not have great comforts but it had many simple pleasures: the taste of a coconut or a water melon, eating Uncle Muoi’s grilled fish, the opera and musical plays, the girls singing and laughing, the sweet scents of our flower garden and my grandmother’s poon tree, a fresh breeze, and the nights so quiet you could hear snakes slithering after mice in the undergrowth.

  But these peaceful routines of my childhood were to be interrupted. One day, without warning, but in a never-experienced crescendo of hissing, then screaming, then ear-splitting roaring, came the first deadly weapons. Then came the military men and their metal machines. The air darkened with heavy smoke and burned with flashes of gunfire.

  What had already become commonplace in other parts of our country now came, day after day after day, to Truong An.

  BEGINNINGS OF LOSS

  “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey”

  Kenji Miyazawar

  My paternal grandmother came to live with us in the village when I was two. I was her first and only grandchild at the time, and she always told me, “My child, I came because I wanted to be with you.” Her possessions and furniture hardly suited the conditions of village life, and before she moved, she sold or gave away everything she could live without. Nonetheless, when she left the city of Can Tho one spring day in 1953, she needed a large horse-drawn wagon to carry her remaining belongings. These included a sideboard inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a rosewood dining room set, a mahogany divan, a canopy bed, a grandfather clock, two trunks of blue and white china, a trunk of silk dresses and beaded slippers, four porcelain high stools, and a set of copper cookware. Concealed under her clothing was a long black silk tube in which she had hidden a number of gold bars, several of them recently bought from Granduncle Ba’s gold shop.

  After two days of traveling by horse and carriage, my grandmother and her possessions arrived at Thanh Chau, the town closest to our village. From that point on everything had to go by boat, requiring several hours of rowing. She spent the night in the town while waiting for my parents to arrive the next day to accompany her on the last leg.

  As soon as she arrived in our house hostilities broke out between her and my mother. It was inevitable. In addition to the traditional antagonism between in-laws, there were huge differences between them in social and cultural background. My mother made it clear from the beginning that she did not want my grandmother interfering in the running of the household, especially in the kitchen hut, which was separate from the main house and close to the vegetable garden. However, as my mother worked long hours in the rice fields most days, much of the cooking ended up being done by my grandmother
. It didn’t keep her daughter-in-law from criticizing her cuisine.

  And there was the gold bracelet.

  My grandmother brought it as a gift for my mother – a beautiful carved object depicting apricot flowers and leaves. My mother tried it on briefly, then immediately hid it away and never again wore it. Was this because she didn’t like it? No, at least not on the surface. One day my grandmother asked her, “Daughter, you have not worn your bracelet at all. Don’t you like it?”

  My mother gave a sharp answer, “Madame! The women in this village never wear any jewellery and I am not about to arouse their jealousies by parading such a large piece of gold in public.” Besides, she said, “It wouldn’t be safe to show it anyway. Who knows what may happen.”

  With those comments, my grandmother began to worry about her own valuables. Without telling anyone, she put most of her gold bars into a ceramic pot, standing them upright together inside, then buried the pot in the ground under the house. The house was supported on many wooden poles and she marked the nearest one to show exactly where the pot was buried.

  Her furniture was eventually distributed all around the house. It may have looked strange and out-of-place in such a rustic setting. But I loved to climb over the high porcelain stools that now stood in the living room. She had her own bedroom, for which my mother made a pair of soft-yellow curtains. Sometimes I got to sleep with her there. Her window overlooked the small pond at the side of the house with its white and yellow water lilies. I knew nothing then of the tragic circumstances of her life. All I knew was her kind voice, her tender embrace, her cooking, and the wonderful stories she told me.

  My grandmother had been born in Long An, a suburb of Cho Lon. Cho Lon itself had always been known as the Chinese district of Sai Gon, and it was there that she met her future husband, who was Chinese. She was twenty years old when they married and a classically beautiful woman. He was from Fukien province in China and had a trading business in silk and spices that took him on trips to Laos and Cambodia as well as China. They went to settle in Can Tho soon after they were married.

  My father was her only child. When he was six months old, his father left on a business trip to China and never came back. In fact, he was never heard from again. My grandmother never found out what happened to him. One possibility was that he was trapped by the revolutionary tides that swept across China after the collapse of the Manchu dynasty. It was an anarchic period in the great country to our north, one filled with danger and violence and in which any individual might be maimed, robbed or killed. Many simply disappeared. It is also conceivable that my grandfather simply abandoned his wife to her fate.

  My grandmother went through a long period of intense grief and suffering. She waited for him -- in vain, rather like the stone statue on the cliff in a story she used to tell me. In that story, a young woman and her child had been abandoned by her husband in unusual circumstances and every day she carried the child and stood on a cliff to wait for him, until one day both mother and child turned to stone.

  My grandmother never quite came to terms with what had happened. In her solitude she would lament:

  Sunset after sunset

  Many sunsets I long for you

  I miss you in that white tunic

  And the scarlet scarf over your shoulder

  My father, who grew up without a father of his own, developed very slowly as a child. And he didn’t walk until he was two. He was raised with the assistance of his maternal aunt, Di Ha, who was often exasperated by his crying. At his first steps my grandmother shouted out to her mother, ‘“Look! Mother! He is walking now!” The child’s grandmother was pleased but not Di Ha, who responded sarcastically from another room, “So finally an old baby can walk. Nothing to be excited about, my dear!” My grandmother always felt that her son had been grieving with her over the loss of his father and this had delayed his development. She became much more sensitive to his needs as a result.

  Once my father reached school age, his maternal uncle, Ba, stepped into his life as a substitute father. Granduncle Ba was well off and he owned a fine jewellery shop in Can Tho. He had no interest in politics or revolutionary activities, concentrating instead on his business and at the same time practising herbal medicine on the side. A handsome man, always well dressed in silk robes and trousers, he was the youngest of my grandmother’s generation and the one she felt closest to. I didn’t meet Granduncle Ba until I was twelve, when we moved to Sai Gon. Despite his intense dislike for my mother’s person- ality, he treated me as if he was my grandfather, and I was very fond of him.

  * * *

  When I was three, my mother gave birth to a baby girl. But the child was born in a breech position, and the local midwife, Mrs Qua, could not handle the delivery. The baby died at birth. While my parents were still grieving over this loss, they learned that in the nearby village of Vinh Vien, there was another newborn child whose parents had refused to recognize him. He had come out of his mother’s womb with a white membrane covering his head that looked like a hood. They called it the “white hood” (mu trang), which was equivalent to a white funeral headband. Such a birth, although very rare, prophesied in Vietnamese tradition that either he or one of his parents would soon die.

  My parents decided to adopt the rejected child. Because my father had to be away, my mother asked Uncle Muoi and his wife to collect him for us. They went off in a sampan and came back with the baby on the same day. The child wore no clothing except a triangle of beige cloth that barely covered his midriff. His hair was damp and he looked dirty. I took one look at him and told my mother to throw him away! My mother laughed and said that she’d turn him into a fine baby, complete with new clothes. When my father came home he named the baby Son, meaning Mountain.

  With my mother’s breast milk, Son soon had a baby’s chubbiness. I began to like him, and he became attached to me. When he was a year old I started to carry him around on my back when playing with the other children. We fell over regularly and went squealing into the mud. He learned how to walk using a kind of tiptoe movement and had difficulty with balance. My parents were concerned about him but he appeared to be healthy and was very happy. I loved him dearly.

  When he was two and a half, Son suddenly fell ill with typhoid fever. His skin turned pale blue and he lay immobile and unresponsive. A healer was called to our house, and my grandmother sent me away to a neighbour’s. That night I slept at my maternal grandmother’s. When I was brought home the following day I kept asking where Son was, not knowing that he had died and been buried without a funeral. I begged my parents to look for him in the village and they promised. But after many days, I began to cry constantly and my father finally told me Son had died. This first loss, of my baby brother, was unbearable. I felt broken inside. I refused to eat, and at night I couldn’t sleep.

  My father tried his best to comfort me. He carried me around the garden and along the river. He told me Son’s spirit had joined the fairies and was living in the sky. I asked him, “Can I see Son and the fairies in the sky?”

  “You will see them one day,” he answered, “but only after you die.”

  He then explained to me about death and dying. He said that my paternal grandmother would join the fairies first, then he and my mother, then me last. I burst into tears and stammered out that I wanted all of us to die at the same time. The idea of being abandoned by him and my grandmother terrified me.

  One day I went with my mother to see my maternal aunt, Di Nam. After we had crossed a large bamboo field, she pointed to a small mound in the ground, “Your little brother was buried there.” I saw a sad look on her face but she didn’t want us to stop. Son’s grave was unmarked, and though only four months had passed, grass had already started to grow over the little mound of dirt. The surrounding area was full of tall reeds, dried out because of the sun. My mother was almost in tears, “It was Uncle Muoi who carried Son’s body to the site and buried him.” Trying not to show her emotion, she added, “No one else was p
resent at the burial ground that day.”

  “Why did no one go with him, Mother?”

  “It’s the custom,” she explained, “the mother isn’t allowed to accompany her dead child to the grave.”

  “But what about me?” I was quite upset. “Why wasn’t I allowed to see my baby brother being buried?”

  “No, not you either.” she cut me off. “It’s the same custom.”

  She hurried me along. The heat was intense and to reach my maternal aunt’s house we had to cross a monkey bridge (cau khi) – simple bridge consisting of a tree trunk -- and then a huge swamp, where her legs would sink up to the knees and she would have to lift me across. The next day, though, I went back on the same path by myself and found the grave. How desperately I wanted to hold my little brother in my arms! My mind now returned to the last day of his life:

  Two little chubby cheeks

  Why so silent, the two pink lips?

  Why no brightness in the velvet eyes?

  Why no breathing?

  The body is cold

  The ten baby fingers are not moving

  Oh! The end of a bitter-sweet childhood

  My very precious little brother.

  Kneeling by the mound of earth, I called out my brother’s name and let the tears flow. As I walked away finally, I observed two other graves, each with a tombstone attached to it. Why hadn’t my parents made one for Son? What was he wearing? What kind of material had they wrapped him in before he was placed in the earth?

  Several months later a little girl in my village died. I only learned about it by accident. That evening, while walking with my mother, a man passed us on the road. I noticed he was carrying a large package covered in a sleeping mat on his shoulder. The package was tightly secured by multiple strings – the same type of strings made from bark that my mother used to weave hammocks. He and my mother started to talk to each other, and I saw his sad expression, but afterward she refused to answer my questions. A few days later when I was at Mrs Qua, the midwife’s house, I heard her saying to a friend how sad she was about the little girl who’d just died. It was she who had delivered the child eighteen months earlier. I asked Mrs Qua about the package I’d seen on the man’s shoulder and she confirmed that it contained the little girl. I then concluded that that was how my little brother had been wrapped before he was buried. That evening I fell sick again and, though my grandmother took me with her into her bed, I was unable to sleep.