Dragonflies’ festival on the rain clouds

Nguyen Ban

         Thanh insulted me as a faithless lover and raised her hand intending to slap my face. If I was really faithless, I would probably let her do it. Maybe I should have been relieved. But I had not been faithless at all; I still loved her as before. If only my wife had learned that I had had romance with her, so she slaps me, I would offer my other cheek to receive willingly other slap of my wife. But I believed that my wife would only weep and pounded at my chest, had she learned the truth. I had once boasted that my wife only could cry then smiled but did not know to be angry with me. It was not my exaggeration. It was exactly the truth. However, Thanh insisted me to divorce my wife. I seized on her arm, pressed it down and said;

“You mustn't be insolent!”

Then it was all over.

Luckily, it had not been smashed. However, I could not but feel sorrowful, and desolate. For several months, this feeling had gone on and on. I could not do anything completely. I felt sad when it rained, when the wind blew. At morning sunlight, the same sadness, and on twilight, sadness, the more. Some color of clothes, a hair style, a couple of thighs on motorbike that looked similar to Thanh’s, all caused also me sad, my wife asked:

“What’s the matter with you?”

I was startled as if be caught red-handed:

“Oh, no, nothing at all”, I laughed off.

My wife looked at me, smiling meaningly;

“I thought someone kidnapped your soul”

I forced also a reluctant smile:

“As if I was so easy to be seduced by friends and let astray by demons?”

She pressed her index finger against my forehead, and shook her head, smiling again:

“Look at the face now playing the role of a silly clown! But come on, providing that don’t bring demon in, to take feast with us!”

So was my wife, why insisted me to divorce her? Moreover,  I had two children who were already university students. Why destroy such a cozy home by my misbehavior?

        I considered it as misbehavior, not misconduct, because I still loved and appreciated my wife, I would never destroy my family. Upon thinking about misbehavior, as any other man,  I had often tried to find all sorts of possible reasons, from romance of kings, of famous men… to drivers, even to the inn boss, whose wife introduced one after another of her two younger sisters to him to be his concubines, to justify my fault.

        Of course, Thanh was younger and higher- educated than my wife, and so was her social position. But whenever, I returned home from Saigon, where I lived together with Thanh, or whenever she came to Hanoi and we had secret meeting at the hotel, I always had guilty feeling toward my wife. In those moments, I often showed my love with her more tender than usually, which made her feel somewhat strange about it and told me that I was freak. Freak, all right. Tell me anything, providing that I felt less repentant.  If only I could tell my wife: “I feel guilty about my romance, but I cannot abstain from it, then punish me, I would accept it anyway”

         Perhaps, I was also guilty with Thanh. I did not dare to say blatantly to Thanh that never would I divorce my wife. Every time she raised this question to me, I only hemmed and hawed to postpone it, letting me have time to arrange it little by little because it was not a simple thing to do at all, and Thanh had admitted it, as she had been also in the same circumstance, before acquainted with me, then loved me, she had to take three years to perform the divorce process with her former husband.

    Thanh took me to a fortune teller, then to a professor of folklore with a side trade of astrology to see if we might have a union by fate. She even took me to a pagoda to beg Buddha blessing our love, I also willingly pleased her. Thanh urged me:

“You must bow and pray as others!”

Then, bow and pray, no matter, I reluctantly did some bows, but deeply in my heart, I felt ashamed of myself because since my younger age and from my family tradition, I had already disliked superstition, idol trading, and kowtowing unconscious statues peeled of paint or repainted, I pleased Thanh for stuff thing because I was bewitched in loving play. We were a couple of actor and actress displaying a loving scene on the stage, scene in, scene out, getting along well with all sort of lighting and sounding method, on all kinds of stages. Sometimes, we asked ourselves that what play we were doing? A somersault in a circus? A couple of dancers on the ice rink? Or a lambada dance? We were loving each other or we were being bewitched, or we were only two compulsive gamblers who only won but did not lose.

“You told me my skin smell as butter, didn’t you?”, Thanh once asked me.

“Yes, I did. It was fatty as butter and somewhat badly burned like burning hair, a little bit wild so it charmed me so much.”

“Does your wife have the smell?”

“please, don’t mention my wife here by then”

   Perhaps, I would have shouted: “Shut up, you witch!” If she added another such line.

And as though being aware that it was rough, she embraced my neck in a wheedling voice:

“It’s only joke, why get angry?”

       At least, every two months, I tried to get reasons for a business trip to Saigon to be with Thanh. As for Thanh, she did the same. Each time she was in Hanoi, I often stayed late with her at the hotel until midnight. But Thanh did not agree, forced me to stay overnight. I could not please her for that, and told her blatantly that I could not set a bad example to my children. Next day, Thanh always interrogated me what I had shared with my wife last night, and also told me roughly that once, she had troubled herself to come up with me, she did not want to share me with anyone including my wife.

      Thanh urged me more and more to divorced  my wife every day in an earnest way. Once I went took me to Nguyen, her friend who had divorced his wife, mainly to learn from him about divorce experience. At that time, I was not so familiar to him, so I felt somewhat a bit shy and confused.  But she pressed me. I was embarrassed, and did not know to set the awkward thing to do, only pleased her. Impatient she said on my behalf:

“He wants to hear some experience from you about divorce process”.

   Nguyen smiled:

“It’s easy, write a divorce request paper and send it to the local civil court with fifty thousand VND for the court fee.”

“But how did you make your wife sign the paper?”. Thanh asked him for me.

“Once, one can’t stand, it’s no use signing together.”

“But how did…”

“Oh, only me to sign, I became plaintiff and her, defendant, and that made this crazy woman angrier, then, it was half done

“And what about the other half?”

“I conceded the more lucrative property part to her, then everything was done.”

I asked him:

“But what about the reasons?”

“You told Judas: when the rooster crow for the third time, you will betray me. I am not God, so I could not wait for the third time.”

Leaving his house, Thanh told me:

“You see, no need for both to sign.”

I was a bit offended, so I said harshly:

“But my wife isn’t Judas!”

Thanh was more aggressive:

“But I also am not a female dragonfly that can sleep on the fence after love-making in the rain clouds. I need a nest, a very nest.”

      Once in a summer, Thanh came to Hanoi. It was hot. I took her on my motorbike to the suburb, far from the city center some twenty kilometers. I rented a thatched roof tent by a lake, and we took a fishing here, to enjoy the fresh air, and to relax. When we prepared to return, it suddenly became thick cloudy. Dragonflies swarmed out over the surface of the water. They were flying up and down, male and female curled their bodies, connected their tails to mate in the air.

Thanh told me:

“I lived in the country when I was a little girl, but this is the first time I have seen dragonflies welcoming rain clouds”.

“Is it like a festival?”

“Sure, but it isn't like by nature”

“The nature of festival is the harmony, the harmony between heaven and earth, between plants and animals, between people and people, especially between male and female. Some old people told me once that now, you, young people liked to poetize boy-girl affairs, but in………. they went to festivals mostly to take romance. The ancient theatre performing during the night was an opportunity for young to touch each other and make love.”

Thanh gave me a dirty look:

“You always drag the matter into this thing”

“Oh, I am really serious.”

“Why people called it dragonfly?”

Because after rain cloud  male festival, each go its own way, one land on the fence, the other on the bush to sleep….. then they wait for a next rain cloud.”

“The saying: to seek the dragonfly nest was from that?”

“Exactly, they don’t have nest, and don’t form couple.”

“Then you and me, we were only dragonflies?”

I suddenly felt pity for Thanh, I held her head and buried it in my chest:

“No, you and me, we were a couple, and we will have a nest.”

         But those were only my reckless words in my emotional mood. How could I build another nest? However, a sum of money that I had earned beyond my salary, from some awards and author’s emoluments that I still concealed from my wife,  I gave all to Thanh so that she could exchange her small room for an apartment of two bedrooms on the third floor so that I could stay there whenever I was with her. During the day, her son was at school, so we were completely free.

         I could only do that, and could not damage my own nest, in which my wife, whoever spoke of her, was always fully praised by them. Especially, once at a newspaper office, one woman journalist had dropped me a hint:

“In these times, how can exist a woman who was ever such a decent wife like her?

I only reluctantly smiled, and did not know if I had blushed, because, deep in my heart, I was startled and felt ashamed of myself, and somehow, at the same time so happy.

        Finally, I had preserved my home nest but had lost my loving dragonfly. Just for some years ago, Thanh still had showed off to Mr. Nguyen that I called her at ten o’clock  am every day from Hanoi, otherwise,  we would miss each other very much, and assured that the phone would surely ring in thirty minutes. At ten, it really rang. Thanh took the phone: “Your boozy friend was waiting here, would you like to talk with him now”. Oh, why boozy? I did not drink at all, so did Mr. Nguyen. But sometimes, she forced me to drink: “Male without alcohol is just like a flag without wind, then it would droop!”.

Mr. Nguyen knew all shortly. On his business to Hanoi, he dropped in on me. I told him with sorry voice:

“So much regrettable, but how could I do ?”

       Thanh gave me an ultimatum requesting me to divorce my wife immediately. To divorce a wife, who always did share with me in weal or woe, especially when I had bad luck in my writing career, always being my steady and cozy support. Could I divorce such a thick-and-thin wife?

   He asked me a puzzled question out of the blue: Suppose that my wife is Thanh, Would i divorce her?

Much more surprisingly to him, I replied him frankly:

“The more, I would not, no woman on earth give me so much pleasure.”

   I answered as though I still felt the fatty smell of butter mixed with the smell of burning hair, impregnating my flesh and pervading around.

           He said he asked me so just for fun, and I should not be sorry for it. Thanh should have been only lover, could not be wife. How could she be measured against my wife, even less…

         A moment later, he added: even less she showed off lately to him her new boyfriend, ten years younger than her, having two university degrees, and if he had gone with her son, they would be taken wrongly for brothers and they liked each other very much, she said the boy had liked her for quite a long time, but still behaved like younger brother. Knowing frustrated love, he just dared to express his secret love: “I know, I also know”, she said “but I can’t. At this time and several years later, it is temporarily possible for I still have some beauty and freshness left, a woman in her forty were not yet ended her time, but ten years later, what about that freshness, that beauty?” But he persisted and did not give up. Annoyed, she dragged him up to the 17^th floor of a restaurant and said to him:

“Now, under broad daylight, let’s light the incenses and swear before the heaven to be sister and brother”.

Out of the blue, he cried and embraced her lovingly.

“How could I reject such a love?”, she concluded.

       Not only, I was not glad for her sake, but I felt jealous: “As strong as a wolf, the male in his thirty..”. Thanh liked to cite this saying and liked strong feeling. The young boy was almost twenty years younger than me. He could be a wolf for her. I tried to think badly about her in order to forget her. She was only a lustful woman as once she asked me: “Am I so lustful?”. Although by this time, I had answered in smiling: “Foolish! Such a treasure! More precious than diamond then!”. I also thought more about other things. All that is well always have a flip side especially when one tried to dig up intentionally. May be I was relieved in some time, but it was still like a splinter embedding in my flesh. No matter if letting it as it was but touched it though slightly, it stung. If only her new boyfriend would be at my age or only a bit younger than me, sadness would have been bitter.

      One year later, right at the moment I had almost been able to forget her, the smell of butter stopped obsessing me, I got the news that her young boyfriend had stolen her Dream motorbike and two thousand US dollars from her. Thanh asked some of her friends to fetch him, and finally caught him. But he had lost all in gambling and betting except his body. Some joked: Luckily Thanh was not Miss Lady, if she was, he could have bet her in order to recoup the motorbike and the sum of money.

      I could not cast away some petty feeling to get pleasure and told myself: “its right now that dragonflies were really welcoming rain clouds.”

  Then, I felt pity again for her. I took my motorbike and rode to the suburb and rented the same thatched roof tent to fish, the one that Thanh and I had stayed together several years ago for fishing, and I longed for rain clouds and dragonflies. Then to fish in thinking aimlessly who know Thanh did not return to me. And to think about fifteen million VND that I still kept secretly from my wife, enough buying a WAVE motorbike for Thanh. A short time later, dark rain clouds rolled in, the cold wind blew. And dragonflies swarmed out all around. I looked at them and compared to myself.