Filled river

Nguyễn Bản

(Translated by Nguyễn Trọng Long)

Mão dropped in on his daughter. Baby Lưu rushed to hug her father but she still kept calling him Uncle, a habit from her babbling time though she had been blamed for that and she was, too today:

-         He’s your dad, you must call him dad!

She burst out into tears, escaped and pasted her face up close to the door. I felt sadly stirred up.

What he said made me more stirred up. My body got the flesh creeps. I could be still unchanged, Couldn't I change? My first love, I already buried it and went out of my mourning period. My resentment was over, too. Was it real that my heart had become cold?

-         Please soothe her; I have to go washing the clothes.

Actually, no sooner had I been able to keep my tears from rolling down when I arrived at the riverbank.

The river had flowed away lots of fond memories, it was the river I had intended to drown myself after each annual leave, each advanced annual leave to slovenly take my daughter to Hai Phong city and backed home with more indignity each.

I still had kept thinking that almost drivers had illicit love affairs and then was fed up with and that no one could love Mão as much as I did. During the five years of waiting, when Mão was till on military service on Southern West frontier, all money I earned was spent on visiting him to meet my fond remembrance. My father scolded at me and cursed that Mão was a man with white eyes and dark lips, a crafty, designing man, unbelievable. But In my eyes, his eyes and lips were dark and red.

-         I need to live with him only one day, a happy life

- Hey, having wished for only one day, it had served you two years until Baby Lưu babbled. Crying for what?

Đoan wiped my tears off. Đoan, who was ever a frontier soldier, too, but from the northern frontier, was now an electrician of the company.

All right, All the same, I would go about with someone. I thought so, a couldn't- care-less type. Simply, Đoan was an unmarried young man, two years younger than me; he had no lacking of young girls. Before, we still kept informality, “Đoan, help me repair the circuit breaker”. “Ice-cream? Your older sister will give you one”. “What! Sister?”… And Đoan smiled, his small steady white teeth made him look so young possibly until his old age. Unexpectedly, Đoan really fell in love with me; he loved me with his eyes and with the affection from Baby Lưu. She clung to Đoan all the time. Rumor had it that a love affairs between an unmarried young man and a woman in desolation, left far behind by her husband. Đoan’s uncle (a younger brother of his father) - a vice director became furious, slapping him on the face right in my room. Baby Lưu hugged Đoan’s legs sobbing.

My mind was more confused when my mother in law came and advised me to take unpaid leave for several months to open a tea shop at her house facing the sidewalk by Filled River, living near each other, everything would possibly calm down.

But two months later, sixty similar nights, Mão came home at 2:00 am with strong smell of beer, having wash very noisily, then lying beside me like a strong and fat buffalo beside a cicada, facing away and snoring until next morning

Had Mão waken up and held my hands (just hands enough) at one night, I would have burst into tears.

- Have more wash, washing with my tears to recover consciousness, what a dull man! a wicked betrayer!

Mão directly spoke out that he fell in love with another woman:

-         To live with each other or not, it’s the truth

-         I can’t live under this situation

-         If so, write divorce paper. I will sign

The divorce paper was written by tears, tears swallowed in and condensed as black ink. It was not necessary to get Mão’s signature.

Đoan was not angry with me:

- Better to do that way for nothing to concern any more. One thing, I had missed the Baby so much for several months.

I signed the divorce paper alone, becoming plaintiff.

Being fed up with womanizing after two years. Mão came to me many times, atoning for his faults with persistence.

- But, short of Daddy Đoan, the daughter would die of sadness.

- She’s my daughter. I am her only dad.

- If so, please try, I am afraid that it’s too late to be her daddy now.

And this afternoon, Mão did try. Baby Lưu cried again. Mão sadly said:

-         Ok, let her call me Uncle, It’s better than saying “Daddy”  and then having to face up the door crying.

My tears dropped down again at the riverside

Lying beside Đoàn at night, I asked:

- Has the river got its soul?

- Sure

- When it was filled, does its soul still exist?

Good gracious! Why haven’t I loved Đoan as much as i did to Mão though I had tried my best?

- Please don’t be angry with me... It isn’t true that I don’t want to love you much more than that, is it?

I have been swimming with Đoan in another river flow.

Still, my tears kept rolling down my face this afternoon. Were they the last teardrops of the river which was now the filled river?

Was it your soul, the filled river?