A LADY FROM AFAR.

Nguyen ban

He came to me, with a complete daze of expression, differently from usually. I asked:

“What’s happened?”

“No, nothing”

I was going to say that it seemed he was bewitched by a fiend, he went on:

“But there is. A lady from a picture walked out. Have you ever believed in the legend Bich Cau’s strange meeting?”

Why did he ask that? What about he was dreaming?. Was he confessing that he had committed atheist behavior?

I asked again:

“Is that the stubborn writer begin to trust into the legend?”

“Just being lovesick. That’s all.”

I amazingly looked at his  natural honest face, and could not help but throwing a jest:

“Lovesick? At such an age, dear Sir? When did you intend to play a modern clown?”

He realized that I did not intend to completely joke but he insisted:

“But really lovesick! Any term could not be more correct. Here she is.”

Then he gave me a photo taken him with a young woman in a simple clothes, but determined posture, and with an intelligent face, a restrained smile and a faraway  but self-confident look. Looking at her, I asked:

“Then, this lady went out from the picture and had been photographed together with you? And now, Where is she?”

“She’s gone”

“A legend indeed”

I gave back the photo, unintentionally turning back it: “To my dearest writer.” A precise but broad handwriting.

“Since when?”

“Just recently, a month ago.”

“And now she had reentered into the photo?”

“Very likely. Like a dream.  I can’t remember anything?”

He told me that when she just went away, he did not remember at once anything about her, even with all try. Days and nights, he longed for her, he desired to hear again her voice, to see again her face, her mouth, her hair, her eyes, her body…  all that had become involved to him in his life, but at the same time become distantly imaginary. He said that formerly, one could be sick, even died for love, he was not to such an extent. But always in this state of mind, he would not be able to do anything right, and would grow dull, stupid. Therefore, he reluctantly accepted to translate several English novels of third class readers, to get money for a travel to Saigon, as had been committed to her, at the same time to reduce the longing.

I suddenly remembered that once I had recommended him to remove the Russian picture “The strange lady” before his desk:

“Don’t hang it. It’s a haunted one, Russians even said that.”

Now it was not the one on the picture, but a real one already. And he was hanging her in his mind. He was and would be bewitched miserably. I tapped him on the shoulder with my sorry feeling for him:

“ Hellas! My turkey cock, have I told you that literature brings ill luck to the writer?”

He was my writing fellow. We got befriended ourselves from a seminar on short stories about thirty years ago. I always remembered his speech:  “…. I don’t like to take notes. I don’t write things that I have to take notes to help my memory. I write only things that I can’t remove them from my mind, my heart, my soul…”.  Now he was incapable to remember anything about her. He had to let himself stew in his own juice in order to temporarily forget her. Then he would be sad to full, and his shoulders would be more burdened with the human sadness. People said that every of his short novels were sorrowful, any joy in it, from the first, was along with sorrow, any beauty was loomed in the anxiety. I sometimes joked telling him that he was punished by heaven. As usually, he often smiled defending himself slightly that how could he do, life was originally more sorrowful than joyful, in totality, how much one could get joy? One pretended to be joyful only to fill up the sorrow inside. But to give him the due, deep in his sorrow, always existed a hidden discontent for the desire to get a better thing.

He was my confided friend. Many times we stayed up all night in discussion, with same and also different opinion on the problems of conviction and spirit. He said that on the young age, he liked so much to pay visit to the site of pagoda and temple, and usually alone, to experience and prove conviction and spirit but he stopped it for a long time. He said that pagoda must be shady, mossy, discolored, completely desolated and calm, bell and wooden-box castanets must be thoughtful, meditating on earth, now it was too colorful, too splendid, too noisy, too tradeful, he could not stand it, because he had no conviction, he pay visit to pagoda not for conviction. I protested: “But conviction is necessity of spirit life, and is socialist solution well simplified and rationalized on the denominator, from a real number field R. A mere fly plus a sheer conviction could have enough power to push us over when we were at the dead lock and disillusioned.”

He replied: “really? Then whenever, I am at the dead lock and disillusioned, I will try to prevent myself from slipping wrongly into the fly channel.”.  Then he smiled going on: “I am an atheist, so I don’t perform Buddish five abstinences. I do abstain only from drunkenness to prevent from stomach trouble, and from speaking, writing nonsensically or falsely.” It was impossible to say that he was so self-confident or only too honest. The former wife once had told him:

“You can’t be a spy or a detector.”

“Why not? you had told me that I was brave and intelligent already.”

“But in waking time, you don’t know to hide secret things, in dreaming, you speak openly all that you have resented.”

“That depends. If it is adultery matter, I don’t”

“What a fearful thing! But you had told that you had sticked the hymen on your forehead, right?”

Right, he had told that, but she did not know the implication, and would never know it.

Several first years living together, once she told him:

“Afterwards, whenever your children grow up, I will tell them that their father had been an eagle with broken wings, who know only to fly up but never to crawl up.”

But then war happened, facing several difficulties, she always reproached him: “Why did you always take care of quixotic matter like that?”.

For her, the question “ to be or not to be” must be taken its literal meaning above all. In that situation, if you wanted to be an Eagle, you must exist first. His former wife bought a piglet and a flock of small turkeys then told him: “Cadre families all around also keep them”. He moaned: “Heaven! At that way, I would also be transformed into pigs and turkeys.”

Day by day he was lost both his own first and last name which had been appeared as an author of some first stories. People asked him: “Mr. Thuy (Thuy – his wife’s name), is your wife at home?”. Children called him: “Mr. Thuy, your turkeys are going to the ditch!” He did not want to correct. It doesn’t matter with what name. In fact, what does it matter? However it was not that sometimes he did not want to shout: “My name is X….X..”. He was not hard-bitten yet. But people bore no malice. They needed Doctor Thuy more than her husband. He could not help but consecrate his name for the peace of his family. Could he do otherwise?, in that circumstance, people were living on the stage that question “ to be or not to be” had to be taken on ground.

One day back home from work, she asked him:

“Health department selects physician to work as specialist in Africa, would I take a test?”

He was eager:

“Of course, as it were.”

“But I only know bits of English”

“Don’t worry, I will teach you. Some tests of infant diseases, prepare yourself in Vietnamese language, then I will translate them into English and teach you.”

The next day, she brought home a set of pattern and told him:

“Do it for me, it must be given back right this afternoon.”

“But it must be your very written letter.”

“Keep doing, I will write out.”

“I am busy this morning, then we will do it in the evening.”

“So, would I stop it?”

She asked him with a very play hard-to get tone. The very thought embedded deeply into his heart busted out at once:

“Then stop it! You think that I wish having some motorbike that you would bring home for me? Money, social post, false fame… was worth only a dry straw mess. In fact, I only wish that we would get away from each other for three to five years in order to release from the karma. Do you know?”

Many times, she told him that she had to go on duty some days, he was glad that he would have few days in relief. But she almost went back home right in the evening, and each time like that, the depressed feeling went on rising to torture him.

   It must be until the divorce, after to experience many times the painful question “to be or not to be” he could recover the sensation that he was truly X…X. but not Mr. Thuy. However, the last year, there was still a young man cordially asked him:

“You look so familiar! I am sorry, are you Mr. Thuy?”

He was rather missing, because since ten years ago, nobody called him Mr. Thuy again, so he could not help but embarrassing:

“Mr Thuy? So be it. But why do you know me?”

“Formerly, you were my neighbor. I had helped you to look for turkeys, don’t you remember?”

How could he remember who helped him look for turkeys; who had called him Mr Thuy. But why haunted him steadily that thing? Between the broken wings- Eagle wavering above the clouds and the turkey cock on ground at that time, there was really nothing to notice again. People were impotent to concern about anything though it was prostitute, theft, murder, corruption, bribery….to extent of billion or hundred billions, when they had to earn every coin but they realized that the distance between the rich and the poor grew further and further, not to be frightened on time. People submitted to their fate, the one brought a small bottle to buy on credit one quart liter of fish sauce, the other had to bring his ill child to Mrs physician Thuy, to get a more cautious medical advice, and free from motorbike parking fee. Outside, on the road,  the megaphone shouted loudly to the extreme power, despite the fact that anybody did not want to hear: “Please, read this article: The murder of his wife… a quadrilateral love of a sida-girl…advanced technical rat sticky gum, inventive monopoly og…”, and somewhat surpressed even the loudspeaker of an advertising car for a special music and song night. “Impression of three dragonflies’ band”. Life at that time was so…so… The question “To be or not to be” was not on ground again but hanging in the mid-air, natural and more impartial.

A retired officer, his neighbor who had been graduated from a Russian Mass culture college, was more impartial. Day after day, he wore eyeglasses selling cigarettes and registering the evolution of lottery prize, once got to ask him:

“How much do you get emoluments per short story?”

“About two or three hundred Dong.”

“Only that?”

He put out a sympathetic smile, told him honestly:

“I had studied seriously lottery prize, would you put half of your emoluments for gamble on lottery, you would also get that sum, then prevent brain fag”.

“It’s the same as if to eat yourself to prevent from hunger, to spice with dog meat?”

The retired officer joyfully gave an incentive to the joke.

The writer added:

“Then, why don’t you do it?, what is the use of trouble selling cigarettes?”.

The latter frowned:

“You know, my wife is so terrible, she controlled every coin.”

Asking so for joy, why did not he remember that once this old man begged him for only five hundred Dong (the price of only one cigarette), because he had a wonderful dream on that lottery number. There, could it really was mass culture? He felt fed up, dropping his pen, shut the door, came to a woman teacher of a high school, his friend’s wife. She asked him:

“Do you still write story now?”

She asked as other acquaintances usually did, perfunctorily. Because she had too many things she had to take care, and even had so many things to amuse. And literature for her was at most for amusement. He answered perfunctorily for a perfunctory question:

“Only so so!”

“Yes, to prevent from sorrow. In fact, all is frivolity. Can’t change anything.”

That’s really? Only to prevent from sorrow?

All is really frivolity? Before and after to complete a story, how many sleepless nights had he to experience. The character in it struggled, sulked or criticized him: “Is it really me, Mr. Writer?” How much eager and passionate was he at the beginning, he would be as much as harrassed and restless in the midcourse, then he had reduced the heat to prevent from burning. What am I doing?

No, life was quite different. It was just its superficiality. Human status was not that. Clenching his teeth, he crumpled his rough draft as to tear his heart. That was just to prevent from sorrow and play frivolity?

If it were just frivolity, what is the use of sloughing one’s skin? Any living creature finally had to come back to the dust. Was it really, taking the name Mr Thuy then returning to his very name X..X.. just for frivolity? A dog even had its name. No, it was the matter of Hamlet, matter of truth and falsehood.

Lately, we sat in the meal inn, where customers were mostly writers. One recalled about some of his awarded stories. He said that awards acknowledged by readers were possibly valuable, otherwise, some years, even months later would be mouldy. Another sitting obliquely against us rounded his goggled eyes said bluntly to him: “But It is a belt, without it, the trousers would drop.”

Hellas! He had gotten over so difficulties to keep the hymen on his forehead to prevent from adultery, then this man considered it as prevention from dropping the trousers, so  he should not have reproached his retired officer neighbor and the woman teacher, his friend’s wife.

The matter made him always remind himself that he should not write anything that people blamed: “Lately, X…X write nonsensically!”. Of course, there were always many kinds of readers. And there were readers who made writers feel assured. In general, he was often assured although he did not write so much, and always obeyed his own principle that to write only the things that he could not drive out, otherwise, they would always obsessed him. One reader wrote him a letter with the last line: “Please, understand that one farmer, though far from you several thousand kilometers, living in the South West furthest frontier of our nation, pay his esteem to you through your “ the desolated owl story..”. Several persons came to his very house, among them, there was a writer from Saigon city. He was moved because the latter had written an essay about his selected stories book. The latter told him that this book was on loan from a young lady teacher of a university, then reminded him seriously not to betray the love and the admiration of the readers:

“…. Do you know that the young lady teacher had your selected stories book carefully having hard cover…”

Indeed, hearing that, he could not help feeling happy but not going so far as to not believe to his ear. Was not that the farmer at the furthest South West had also pay esteem to that story? And a water worker who sometimes came to spend the night to guard his house for him whenever he was away overnight, whose wife often joked that her husband was falling in love with him, also preferred that story than his other awarded ones. Indeed, that story had also an award, but only on readers’ referendum, and very lean on money, but he treasured it the most. And now, he once more got a reader’s award. However, he still kept vigil to ask himself that he was really worthy or it was only her impulsion which could lead him to be mistaken. People often had imaginative things adding to their impulsion in order to flatter themselves, a ridiculous but imperceptible habit. One often liked to spit saliva over one’s shadow.

Nevertheless, it made him really moved and feels as though he had found a soul mate. The Saigon writer had only mentioned negligently about that female reader. She had a child, had divorced, was living on the ninth floor of an old building, her former husband had a gainful employment, so he was very rich. As for him, he was inappropriate to ask more, so he only knows her first name and she had divorced, he did not even know what school she taught, college or university, what was her address. Sometimes he tried to figure her. She spoke north tone, and then she must be north people. Was she like any character in his stories? She was feeble or… No, she could not be feeble, and must have been brimful of energy with her child on the ninth floor. Was she strong and living to the fullest as the coach girl in one of his stories?

No, she was an intellect, she was strong on other way, she was strong about aspiration and dreaming. Was she easy-going, and did she like to take off her sandals walking on grass of the dike as his other female characters? What were her eyes, were they bewildered, thoughtful-seeking, passionate and fade away at the same time?  Was she easily weepy? Oh, no, it seemed that she was like all of them, but really was not like anyone. His imagination became poor, impotent. But let it aside, the matter was that she did not consider him as a fleshy turkey, but also throw the magic flowered carpet to lift up his broken wings. He longed for the chance to meet her. Many times he had intended to go to Saigon to seek her, partly by his curiosity, but he was afraid that the reality was not often poetical as it seemed.

  Who would have thought that four years later, he was given a good chance on a fine day. This day, he should have stayed in Hanoi. His daughter told him that he had an invitation card with buffet. But according to the weather forecast, it could have cold wind and rain that night . So he did not stay there. But it rained only at night and the next day was a very fine, little cold day, a middle spring day which seemed just like an autumn day. He was regretting that he did not stay to meet many familiar writers. That morning, he was boiling water to make tea in his regretting mood when someone knocked at his door. He went out. A young woman. At first, he thought that she was the collector of electricity bill, but not that, she said with a timid north accent:

“Excuse me! Is this the writer X…X’s home?”

“Right, it’s me.”

He invited her to come in, then made tea. She told to the young man along her, perhaps, a motorbike server: “You go somewhere to take coffee for a while, let me have a conversation.”

A question was fleeting short in his mind: Who’s she? A reader? Or just have him translate certain material? Thinking so, he invited her to take tea, and then asked:

“Sorry, where do you come…?”

She hesitated:

“I come from Saigon.”

“Then are you Hue?”

The name being cherished four years in his heart, suddenly slipped out unintentionally in her amazement.

“Yes, I’m Hue, but why do you know?”

“By presentiment, by longing, even by northeast wind, but chiefly by luck, so lucky”

He told her about the invitation card and the weather forecast.

“I’m luckier than you. Many people dissuaded me that I didn’t know where you are living in this town, how I can seek you. I asked a female journalist in the VTV office who had come to you, she told me that it is difficult to seek your home, moreover, you are close about your life… But I let my will have its way, I had been burning with my desire to meet you from a long time ago”

“Was it difficult to find my house?”

“No, I asked for direction, and find out easily.”

“As for me, several times, I intended to take the risk to come to Saigon to look for you, but I hesitate.”

“Why do you hesitate when you realize me at once?”

They talked as they had been familiar from a long time ago, and until that time they just can see each other. He said that he was very happy, never in his life he was so happy like that. She said she was happier. He looked at her, shaking his head:

“No, don’t say that!”

“No, I said that with my true heart. Before you, I can just be honest to the extreme.”

She told him that not only her, but her friends all esteemed highly him, but they had no chance to read almost his stories like her. She said she read his stories right after the publication, and she liked them immediately. She was fond of literature right the time she had been a school girl, then a poor student. She read and felt her heart stinging with pain, pity for, and shared with the pain, bitterness, passion, deep regret of the character who at least a part of the real self of the author. Therefore, from a long time ago, she was burning with the desire to meet the writer that she liked. It was perfectly normal, because she was only a normal person, as for him, he had been famous.

“Me, famous?”

He bitterly interrupted her. He just wanted to tell her at once how he had lost his name. But it was not the right moment. With other people, he was always honest by nature, with her, he had to be more. He wanted to tell her sincerely that he was just fearing that, some hours later, she had gone away, and he was afraid that he would make her disappointed, that he was not deserved to her enthusiasm. Then he also wanted to tell her sincerely that he was becoming weak.

Perhaps, looking at his eyes and his awkward gesture, she realized somewhat that thing. And she asked him:

“You know my private life?”

“So so. And you are living on the ninth floor.”

“Now, I am on the second.”

“Same building?”

“No, other one, and other district.”

“So so. And you are living on the ninth floor?” He said plainly as though he knew much more. Indeed, he knew only two more things: She had divorced and had a child, but a she or a he, he did not even know, much less all was from four years ago, a long time was enough to happen so many things. He knew only to get enthusiastic about enjoying himself at the meeting. He was just like a small boy who was sensible of the fact his sister brought gifts for him at twilight. She gave him any gift, he also sensed it valuable and tasteful. She told him sitting to have their photo taken together, he obeyed, then he obeyed to stand up to have once more. She invited him to go to a restaurant, he joyfully followed her at once.

  But any joy had its end. The more cheerful at the beginning, the sadder at the end, the little boy was not little again, because the sadness of the little boy was not like the least of the one of a man, strictly speaking the sadness of man who was going to leave, may be forever the woman that he began to love. She had to fly back to Saigon. He became bewildered. He suddenly recalled the song: “Sadness” of Chopin: Why did the sunrise quickly, how I want to slow down the speed of time….. Feeling the regretful tone in his voice, she comforted him:

“Was it too shortly? But you would go to Saigon, right?”

 When she had left, he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to take her address and her faculty, her university. But the most terrible thing was that he could not figure clearly anything of the woman who had almost bewitched him, except the warm thin hand lying quietly in his hand when she left, and he did not want to part from her. Oh, why did not he ride his motorbike to see off her for a stretch of road, or to follow her to Hanoi, then see off her at the airport?. He felt that he had done wrongly all. All the afternoon to the evening, he was melancholic listless, regretful, blamed himself not to be able to do anything, could not want to eat anything.

When she left, he told her:

“This night, I must be terribly sleepless, and there would be certainly many sleepless nights on longing.”

It seemed at that time, she had told something. But by then, he had been too befuddled to remember anything. He also did not remember what she looked at him by then. Then, he was really sleepless, then more and more sleepless while he could not remember anything. Hum just to meet her, if it was  a very long time for granted. The woman that four years ago, he tried his utmost to figure her, but it is impossible, now to meet her in a very warm and hearty greeting, then to have photo taken together, to eat together, then, he was still incapable to figure her concretely. As usual, getting in touch with anybody, man or woman, though fleeting short, he also could keep in mind necessary features, and could sketch them exactly by words. Here, coming to him like that, then fading completely. Was he semiconscious by then? Or illusion? No, why could be illusion? It was clearly that he still drained up the beer glass for her. Or before her, he was only a stupid boy instead of a very writer. It should have been quite the contrary. Perhaps, he had graduated from university when she was not born yet. It could even his first story have been published when she was still being a baby. Then she came with him either, as a Lieu Trai (ghost story) lady or just only as a blustering cool wind that came to drive out his desolation?

Day after day, he was awaiting a letter carrier at his door. He trusted he would have her letter. Then it came. There were also two photos taken together with sentimental dedication: “To my dearest writer”. He felt glad again. All was true. Not a dream. But right the time after, it was new trouble. Only photo but no true person. Does the woman in the photo, the very one getting in conversation with him in a long while? He was incapable to detect the true person from the photo. The figure was here, but where was the true person? He was incapable to recollect clearly, all was still vaguely. Sometimes he had a sensation that a certain character in his story, went out from it to talk heart to heart with him, then disappeared completely in it. Day by day, in an inconsequent mind, then night by night, sleeplessly, he switched on the light, took out the photo, asking: “Are you true?” He asked but never got the answer. As for him, he could not answer on her behalf since he even did not remember her voice.

He expected to get a dream to see her though it was a very short one, providing to see her. But it was either an empty, restless dream after an all-day translating, or a dream meeting his certain character.

“Sorry who are you?”

“That’s strange! I was your dearest one, don’t you remember? Formerly, you wrote before a kerosene lamp with an upside down broken bulb on a rainy night, I went over to beg you to give me a fierce light.”

“But now, I write under a sixty watt electric bulb.”

“I know, but where is the former picture?”

“What’s the picture? – the strange woman?”

“No, the picture of a broken wings bird, and I had pointed at my chest to tell the shooter: aim your gun at here.”

“Now, you’re still beside me?”

“Aren’t that I am talking with you? Right?”

“But you’re not her.”

“Who’s she?”

“The one I just met recently.”

“But without me, there is no her.”

“Then, she is only your image?”

“No, quite different, but there is same feature.”

“What’s it?”

“The broken crystal pieces, and the smoke rainbow.”

“If I met her before to build you, whether would you be more dazzling?”

“Impossible to meet her before. Wasn’t it that you had built me from broken crystal pieces and smoke rainbow of your real life? You should consider her as your alternative character.”

“Just only a character? If that’s the case, I was so unhappy. Then, all my life, I would have had only characters. No, she’s my heart friend, she had pity on me, loved me, talked with me, had photos taken together with me. She exists before being present. She exists in you, and in my other characters. She is my search for all my life. I had seen, I had heard her speaking. And now, I don’t see anything.”

“Why did you call her? You have her call number?”

“Call her? Should I do?”

“Oh, do it. If it has no result, call me.”

“No, I had dreamt all my life, I had been so tired with dreams.”

Then, one evening, he came to me to call her. He had given up his phone for haft a year, because he almost did not call out, and calls in mostly wrong ones, one even shouted at him: “Why don’t you bring me two boxes of beer?”. He told me that he would only tell her: Say something to me, anything as well. Saigon is sunny or rainy, providing that I could hear your voice.

     The first time, she was absent. Two days later, she just had gone away, Saigon is just rainy, impossible to know whenever she comes back. The third time, she was going to teach by correspondence in a south western province. He was fed up and he called to the Saigon writer who had borrowed that stories book from her, to complain that he had failed in calling her three times.

“But it is the phone number of her mother. She is at her husband.”

“What husband? You told me that she had divorced.”

“That’s the former.”

Hearing it, he grew dumbfounded/ I laughed and told him:

“Just down from one floor. There are six floors again to fall down from the ninth floor to the second floor of the new husband.”

“Come on, just let me fall down.”

I knew, he was falling in love. To love a woman, above all, it was a very woman, as for broken crystal, smoke rainbow, close friend, indeed all was actually really. But  was not I, his close friend”. He should not have been reproached anyway. Try to put yourself in his situation, then to transform yourself into a turkey for five years only, and to secure the hymen on the forehead, then to meet such a woman, would not you grow passionate? Even less, he had searched for such a woman for all his life, perhaps even before the time he read to me such lines: Not meeting even just a single time in dreaming, but still travelling to search her all over the world.

Thinking so, I told softly:

“I just only joke.  I also want to be fallen like that. Try to translate to get money to come to her. It must be considered as a debt for a kind heart. In one’s life, there was not even such a travel. Heat up your soul. In such an jostled life for money, isn’t deserved such a travel?”

I was also bewitched, also drunken, also wanting to heat up myself, such was me, even less my friend. May be, my friend got more incentive sources, and would write better, but once more he could be broken his wings. Life from first to last was full of unpredictabilities, coming then leaving, in a terrible unstable way. But if we had to be always sober, there was no more passion and dreaming.

Then he had gone.

I could not help my friend anything. Therefore, I wrote this story, maybe he was in time at Saigon, it had been printed, he would read it, and who knows that woman also reads it, may be… may be what would be? Love for us was a disease, wasn’t it?  A disease with many complications, but we did not want to be cured?

May 1999.