The desolated Owl’s Picture

Translated by Nguyen Trong Long

Taking the newspaper, she was petrified with amazement to see his name again and voraciously read his short story. It was the very story hidden under a straw litter in which he and she had changed their dreams together so many times.

The story ended with the agony of the insurgent troop’s leaders. He wrote: “Too fast, so magical, the whole vast western area was occupied by the insurgent troops. Prefectures and strongholds had collapsed one after another as if he had just been wakened up from a dream. It was usually believed that dreams were just fantastic, aspiration was still aspiration. However, the fire was actively furious, flare wings was thrashing about, reflecting into his face just like bird wings with the reddish glow of the sunset. The wings kept flying higher and higher up to the aspirational sky… but right in this small fortifications… was she able to see the bird wings from the troops in the other mountain range?”

Soaring up to the aspirational sky… And how about her crazy thoughts? And the picture, which he drew and presented to her, was sometimes thought as if it had been presented to her in a dream?

         She opened the wardrobe to look for the picture among some old documents kept for a long time, a marriage registration certificate, her husband was dead long time ago, a birth certificate copy of her daughter who had got married, and some of her husband’s certificates of  merit, daughter’s and hers…. Now those things became both deficient and redundant to her.

The picture was drawn in an ochre color. An owl perched on a broken stele by a temple of literature, among alternative military posts and watchtowers like mishmash. All were shaped on a bright moonlight night. The full moon had ochre color, too but with more lighted color.

 Her daughter entered her university that year, which was about a year after her husband died, the daughter asked her when she took the picture to see:

“What’s the picture?”

“It’s of my friend”

“I don’t understand its meaning?”

“A desolated owl is meditating about the tragedies of the history and the nation.”

“What about the moon behind? It’s surely Mum, because Nguyet means moon?” She looked at her curiously as she asked.

“It’s me”.

As if the daughter could not endure, she pressed with another question:

“Had you got married to my dad then?”

“Yes, already, for about a year.”

She replied and remembered her marriage at the same time. She got married when she was about to graduate from university. Though she was not compelled, she did not actually love her husband. Many people told that she was beautiful. Her husband was her classmate and loved her. Her father in law was one of the university’s management officials transferred from the army. Her dad, an official of French colony resistance war, was a newspaper editor. He involved in some articles for “the right wing”, but he got more troubles because he had a brother who was his mother's stepson fleeing to the South and it was rumored that he worked as an editor for a newspaper there. Many of her friends were not allowed to study at university that time because of their family profile, girlfriends knitted wool for hire; boyfriends transported goods by carts, worked as street hairdressers or worked at construction sites. Her family profile had nothing better. She was apprehensive of being expelled from university all the time. It was her dad who hurriedly took the blouse he used to wear in the resistance war when he saw a police motorbike stop at the other side of the road, one guy got off, and the driver still kept sitting and let the engine on. But nothing happened; they just dropped in on a neighbor’s and then left. Her dad breathed a sigh of relief. She got married not irrespectively of reckoning on her father in law’s position to make sure that she could graduate from university and get a job easily. She had to frankly confess to herself so just a month later. She hesitantly intended to tell all to her daughter but then decided not. The daughter continued asking her as she recognized her hesitance:

“Why haven’t your friend visited you, especially after my dad died?”

She thought in silence, you had met him at the railway slope, the man who carried a snake basket in the year of evacuating from B52 bombs but she just told her:

“One could have one’s secret corner inside the soul in which there is a private light, Even though let others enter or get the light bigger, they could see nothing or they would see white lights into the black ones, green lights into the red ones.”

“Did my dad know your secret corner?”

“I don’t know, but perhaps not, that’s enough, you made too many questions to me. Leave alone with the picture please”

It was right, the daughter did not understand that she had to crush her own heart with her little weak hands trembling, both her hands and heart got burned, it was partially because of the daughter.

She looked at the picture and into the owl’s eyes as if wanted to find the unsafe flame again, to ask and to be answered. She stood up to look at the mirror. Her hair had been mixed with some ash-colored ones, it was not as soft and burnished as it used to because tens of years had gone by.

She once again took the paper, lying on bed, dragging the blanket, coving haft her chest and reading his story again. It was still from the old story of which the last edition was attached with the picture and lead to numerous unexpected problems later.

She closed her eyes to return to the secret corner, to get the light of ochre color brighter, to return to the hallucination, dreams, and crazy thought then.

That year, she was just twenty one, she got married. After university graduation, her husband got a chance to learn Russian in Gia Lam in order to continue his study in Soviet Union and she was assigned to be a teacher at a newly founded teacher training school in a province nearby Hanoi.

Actually, at first, she hated him a little, she thought that he seemed a bit self-conceited. She never forgot the shortcut way to the school over the field, September paddy got ripe with a very sweet smell of green rice flakes, and she felt cheered up. Though she knew for sure that the school was right at the hill ahead, she still asked him for the way politely when she met him. He unflinchingly turned round: “Just keep straight ahead until you see the watchtower on the top of the hill.”, and then went straightly away without any warm regards though he knew she was a new comer teacher. And later on, being of the same literature teacher team, living next door to each other, and her room was separated from his only by a bamboo lattice.

She was merry with a playful thought that she would call him Uncle as a niece normally did though she guessed that he was just about 10 years older at most. But later, she was told lots of stories about him while he was a high school teacher. One story told that he belonged to the course instigating disorder among several universities, instigating students’ forum, he was always attached whenever reminding him: the student of Mr. T, Mr. Th.  Another told that he openly sang the praise of Yugoslavian constitution translated by a classmate of his. And it was also told that he threatened not to attend the regular teacher council meeting if the office secretary and vice president of Communist Party Cell still kept going beyond their listening role and discussing about teachers’ professional knowledge. Next, he would be fired if he did not have his credit for participating in French colony resistance war and a cousin who was the province president. Even though, he was still suspended from his job and assigned to support flood resistance and to do tax jobs in districts and communes. Then, thanks to some of his stories published by Literature Magazine and broadcasted in the late night short story programs by the voice of Vietnam, he could be restored to his teaching job. After having heard so many stories about him, embroidered or not, true or false, she rejected the playful thought, she thought of her dad and felt a little sympathetic towards him.

But a real sympathy came from a flame. One night, it was a wet one. Matches could not be fired, she finally had to take a kerosene lamp to him after she and Quy-  a roommate who was a geography teacher had kept passing the buck to each other.

He passed a match box to her, but she refused and said that she could light her lamp from his because she saw that it had a broken stand bulb upside down. It looked quite mischievous on his desk.

He joked:

“Afraid that you would get back an unsafe flame”

Playing on words was one of her father’s and her strong points. She responded immediately:

“Unsafe by being broken or a bad luck?”

“Both”

“I just ask for a flame to light”

“You would feel disappointed then.”

“Why so?”

“You see, it’s lighting gloomily and shielded by only a broken bulb.”

She understood what he said. She looked at him. Then they burst into laughter together, which deleted their first complex.

Later visits to him, she still saw the broken bulb, she asked:

“Not yet replaced a new bulb?”

“Nope. And since I put it upside down, I have always compared myself with it, though it was broken, it still tried to shield and keep the flame lighting on.”

“Why are you so pessimistic?”

“I have always been so thoughtful, especially since I returned to live in such a bizarre chaos”

She got startled:

“What chaos did you mention?”

“Don’t worry. I meant both a temple of literature and the enemy’s military post, which we are living in now. Do you know by whom the temple of literature was built?”

“I… just a newcomer. How could I know it?”

She made a slip of her tongue to address “em” (em means I, the Vietnamese way of addressing to show great respect to older brothers or sisters or a female to a male in love). And since then, it was impossible to change and she did not want to change it anymore because she was so little and tender in comparison: ages, knowledge and even sorrows.

“Have you ever read “bleeding party” yet? *

“It’s the story I like best in the book.”

“The province Chief Mandarins doubling as a military affairs chief officer held a bloody dance show for a French ambassador to see. He was the one who built it.”

“Was that true? If it was, it was really horrible. Why did such a somber paradox exist?”

“It did exist. I lived a few years there to work as a high school teacher, then I am here, in the very house you and I are in now, do you know the former French intelligence agency used this house as an interrogating and torturing room during French occupation”

“So terrified, what you said sounds so terrified, bleeding dance and then interrogating and torturing. High possibility, I could not sleep tonight.”

“What do you fear for? But only one thing you should be vigilant over is the mice in here. When I worked at the high school, they bit off my cap and tore my diary in my drawer…”

He suddenly paused and showed her a clacking position on the roof beam.  A timorous mouse was looking furtively at them.

“Look, it’s lurking.”

There were really so many mice here. They took away Quy’s soap bar, bit off one of her traps.

As predicted, she could not sleep that night. Adversities were contained in a paradox: A silent firelight was inside the broken bulb. She prepared her lectures and corrected exam papers in the interrogating and torturing room every night. The enemy watchtower connected the temple with the left apartment used as a bureau. The watch tower rose over the temple, so it was on top of the bureau. Mice chased each other in a strident gibber. One of them fell down on top of the mosquito net.

She was lost in her thoughts of the chief of the department Dinh Chi Ngo. When she first saw him, she felt an antipathy towards him though she was taken to see him by her father in law, this guy showed her father in law and her a great warm in a planned style for a future exchange, therefore, he decidedly forced her to work in the teacher training school where she could live near the town, which had more advantages though she was a fresh graduate and had not  a day of teacher training. But the antipathy at first was shown right in his very face with protruding blood red eyes, his facial muscle made segments with a little curly hair and thin lips. His face had half western African expressions, half primitive Mongolian ones, it looked foolhardy, evil and even brutal. Ngo used to be only a village teacher and his position was in the ascendant from the mass education movement.  He could laugh and talk as nothing happened when he was given a nickname by teachers: Rotoco (alcohol, dog meat). Ngo openly lighted incandescent gas lamp and played mahjong and gamble cards. On checking districts, he always took a double- barrel gun, Ngo liked gun-shooting, the double- barrel gun would break what bird wings? And the deputy minister Nho, who had a great influence and a great confidence in him.

But the one who made her feel more uncomfortable was the deputy director of school Vu Dich, a politic teacher, held as a school division party secretary, who was transferred from a bookshop manager by Ngo. The most uncomfortable and sultry thing was his laughter. When he laughed, nobody understood whether he was laughing or just baring his teeth, it suddenly burst out and suddenly dropped mute. Moreover, his face was so polished with sparse eyebrows above his single scarred eyelid eyes winking behind the short-sighted glasses. Dich liked wearing traditional brown trousers and wooden clogs. Clacking sound of his wooden clogs suddenly appeared and disappeared from one teacher’s room to another’s.

She lost sleep that night. She could not remember how many nights she lost sleep by such things.

But she could remember that she came to him from a flame and a broken bulb.

Her dad was also a broken bulb. She did not feel hesitant to tell him about her dad and herself. When the tricycles were gone, her dad got a sigh of relief and hanged his blouse over the chair, he said:

“My dad was afraid of even some papers, let me take it out for you to see”

He approached the bed, opened the case, and carefully took out some crumpled and torn papers.

“Do you know why they were torn and crumpled like this?”

Then he explained immediately without waiting for her reply:

“It was because that it had to be hidden under chicken’s straw litter. My dad worried so much and hid it there. The chicken litter was hanged inside the pig shed. So shrewd, wasn’t he?” He smiled.

But the pig shed roof leaked right down to the chicken litter. When the draft short story was taken out, it was blurred, papers  stuck together, they were all torn when unsticking them, only some newspapers were not completely crumpled and torn. At first, my dad denied: “You put it somewhere else, I don’t see you bring it home.” Later on, some of my stories were published, my dad told me the truth, but his face still remained worried

“What was the story about, which he had to hide?”

He said that it was written about his own great grandfather thirteen generations ago, exactly as described in his family annals and in one of the dreams that he re-appeared.

One doctor who was the first assessor of the minister counselor- the top position in the time of Trinh Cuong- Trinh Giang administration, who was famous for moral integrity, resigned when he saw the regime become corrupt. King Le dropped in on him on a sightseeing tour surprisingly, one of fixing nails accidentally broke, so the horizontal lacquered board (engraved with Chinese characters) fell down. Giang, who used to have hatred for him, accused him of attempting to assassinate the King, and then he was driven to suicide. Before he died, he told his descendants:  “….The court did so because the royal residence has so much power, so much benefit, mandarins hustled each other for tittles and bonuses, they were so haughty and luxurious, so lascivious and corrupt. There are more mandarins than grassroots. The grassroots could not afford to breed them, they were hungry and in disorder. It is not clear between true and false. Cruelty and virtue are not differentiated. The Lord consults about politic affairs but wants only sweet and deceitful flattery from his subjects and ignores truthful rumor from common people. I frankly advised against those things and was of course hated. I was once appointed as a chief envoy to a mission in China, I ordered to deliberately replace the water of Co Loa Well with normal water to break the precedents of paying tributes of Lieu Thang golden effigy and water of Co Loa Well, Ch‘ing dynasty could not clean pearls bright, they resisted me, I explained that it was because our national vitality had changed. So after I die, I would dissolve in the vitality, giving additional contribution to the change, so no need to cry…”

He came and taught here, wandering inside the stone stele house to find the doctor’s name among the stone steles, but he could not, so he went to find it among broken pieces of stone steles down the hill side, all he could find there were only rat holes. One night, he dreamt that the doctor re-appeared and told him: “The sun and the moon circle is twelve. Twelve hours, twelve months, twelve years, and then twelve generations. I can see your temper, I am worried about the return of the circle, and who knows whether the remaining nail will not break and the board will fall down on your head.”

The dream was rather sad, so it had to hide. The short story also had to be hidden. She said that it was so interesting and why he had not rewritten. If necessary, she would dream again together with him. Then she really dreamt as she wished.

She dreamt that the doctor had been in tune with her and him to sing a song:

 One bright star,

One falling one.

Two bright stars,

Two falling ones…

The shout of Ngo from the mouth of the watchtower: “It’s completely incorrect, sing again!

One bright star,

One falling bird wing.

Two bright stars…

Bang, bang, the double- barrel gun fired from the loophole of the watch tower.. two bird wings fell down…

He once again dreamt of entering the pig shed to see the hen litter. There was a flock of newly- born chicks cheeping, winking their dark eyes, innocently looking at him. He got bewildered in front of the naïve living creatures. But where was their mother, why were there only orphanages left? He was frightened to look around. He heard his dad’s voice: “thieves caught her away last night!” Alas! He was in great torment as looking at the rumpled straw. At the bottom, there appeared vaguely the draft of the story scattered with chick bugs. It was still there with the chicks losing their mother? Some drops of water fell down from the leakage of the thatched roof with a clapping sound. The chicks were riotous. It rained again? But where it was from, the doctor’s voice choked with emotion: “It’s not the rain. It’s my teardrops. I made some of your letters blurred!” He was startled. Outside, the rain strongly clapped against banana leaves behind the house. The kerosene lamp was till flickering inside the broken bulb on his drowsy sleep.

She had a different dream. She dreamt that her dad, he and she together followed the doctor, each held a torch in hand, lifting up themselves, pressing their chests against the acute cliff, and colorful clouds with strange shapes were hanging about above their heads. They climbed up the mountain to find dark red sunflowers. “On the behalf of what man are you?”, “On behalf then?  Freedom! On behalf of you, how many crimes ones had committed” *. “Have flowers ever been lonely?”-  “Evolution starts from loneliness”. Though it was her who asked if flowers had been ever lonely, she said he asked that question when the dream was retold.

Dreaming also wastes vitality, long dreams makes ones tired. She proposed that whether the dream should be removed from the story. Then, he said that it was nothing different from showing the village my family annals, people would think I was a moonstruck one. Then, she suggested the doctor appear again and advise him to swim with the tide, such an upright and moral integrity man as he was, not only had he been removed from the first assessor tittle of the minister counselor but was also poured a cup of arsenolite into his mouth. He said he would be whipped for making his great grandfather a clown. Becoming tired, the two people turned to talk about moral integrity and heroes. Heroes often leaned their shoulders on the nation, they were received, their mistakes, even crimes, when in the name of history, were often overlooked and they became famous and bright with halo. On contrary, moral integrity was unobtrusive and lonely, even was turned away to avoid corollary. Heroes together with the peoples affirmed the right of existence. But moral integrity silently mingled with the nation vitality, arousing green color, purity, promoting evolution. Just within Le dynasty, previously three generations of Nguyen Trai were executed to death penalty, Tran Nguyen Han was driven to suicide, then the Doctor’s turn. Finally, all were proved innocent, one fast, another longer. But the history inevitably had to exist like that? Had the history flow always to be hooked by the nails?

He usually joked, even with the wooden clogs.

“Mr. Ngo really doesn’t know how to use people. Dich, who read voraciously tens of complete works unsold, was demoted from head position into assistant one, was not allowed to be commanding General”.

In those moments, Dich just bared his teeth in smiling, giving out a nonsense curse between jest and earnest:

“Bloody your tongue, it’s worth being burnt incandescently”.

 Waiting for meal to be served in the dining room, being bored with gossips, then changing to talk about “all for one and one for all”. He said that what one would live for if not for oneself and  joked: “Today’s meal has just three thin pieces of fat meat, for you, I pick up mine to give you. For me, in response, you give all back to me. To and fro until it becomes dark, the result is that it becomes a mixture of vegetable and meat and it turns out to waste all half a day”. ..

He was a man of joke. He joked even with dreams. But literature was something different, not for joking. He said he would temporarily try rewriting the short story with the dream of picking up dark red sunflowers, because the dream included her father, her, his great grandfather, and him, the nephew, it would be less lonely. Then he wrote it and she still dreamt. She dreamt of his whisper that he loved her. But what about her husband? Her husband? The pair of wooden clogs scowled at her: “Right, your husband”. “But it was just a secret love, she still slept with her husband. No, there was nothing secret in the temple of literature. There was not any thought in secret there.  But her husband did not share dreams with her. And he was going to Russia. But what would her husband learn? He bustled in cleaning up, briskly hanged the mosquito net, and urged her to go to bed though it was earlier than 9:00 pm. So much there were for you!  Dich said, you must be faithful to your husband. But she still slept with her husband- No matter what happened, you should remember you’re living in the temple of literature… Dich shouted at her in a hoarse voice.

She dreamt so. Because his eyes cheered up several times when she said, Saturdays, she came her mum home to sleep, wheedled with her mum. Because the moment his eyes looked at hers. Because of his eyes, she could see everything in them, and Quy could, too.

But it was just his eyes only, nothing else.

He still kept addressing to her in a polite way. He was too thoughtful, he avoided touching  her hands. Well, there should be a kitty. The kitty that students had  given him to catch mice, the mice were so insolent recently. At night, they danced with plunking sound on the guitars left in his room by music teachers. Alas! The kitty was so little and weak while he was so clumsy. She was afraid it would die. She usually had to take it to her room to take care of it.  It prowled around her after eating, then came back to meow in his room. Why did it like his room? Possibly, he was really its very owner. It was also possible that he often stayed up late and it could be with him longer. Some nights, it stayed with her, it crept through the mosquito net, and it rubbed its body against hers. She had pity on it so much. Once she abruptly took it up and held it tight, he looked at her, which made her blush. What a poor kitty! it was going to know how to catch mice when its owner had to leave away.

He finished writing the story with the dream of picking dark red sunflowers. He passed her to read. She sat and talked with him after having read, she talked about picking flowers and about her childhood. He told that when he was in his first grade, he played truant, he went home and gave his family servant five pennies for keeping secret from his dad. A new teacher came in replacement for the old one who had just died. The new teacher had rearranged the layout of seats, and arranged him to sit next to female pupils. He played truant because of feeling shy. In the afternoon, his dad came home, while sitting and drinking, his dad took him to sit on his thighs and ask: “How about your study at school today?” feeling his dad’s affection, he frankly told him the truth. The servant got surprised with wide open eyes and he was given a few whips. He said as he was smiling after having told the story, he would always confess in spite of such serious whipping for his whole life.

She joked:

“Would you keep playing truant if you were arranged to sit next to girl pupils now?”

She was out of the blue as he gazed at her and boldly said:

“If shared the desk with Nguyet, surely I would not and would accept any whipping”.

Then he blushed and she did, too. It was not in her dream any longer, and he was not whispering. Finally, he did say it out. What the story would go if there was no pounding sound of the wooden clogs from the left. The sound usually stirred up the quietness and silence necessary for memories of childhood and their friendship that way.

“Well, Mrs. Nguyet’s here. You are two preparing lectures in collective way or what else are you doing here?”

“Just gossiping, what’s going on?”

“You have a guest”

“Who’s that?”

“A family member… your father in law”

It was assumed that guy would leave right after that and she would stay some seconds to tell him something, but unexpectedly, the guy took the draft of the story “Sunflower” she had just returned him, sat and read it. She boiled over with suppressed anger and left for her room to see her father in law.

Everything was clear,  he loved her secretly. And she did not want to resist.  She wanted together with him to climb over unstable and sharp cliffs up to the top of mountain to pick up flowers. But she could not help getting startled as she thought of her father in law, the pair of knitting-needles, the hair dresser’s equipment box and the sound from the mouth of the watch tower. And of the bamboo lattice between his room and hers, which once her hairclips rubbed against the bamboo splints making spine-chilling sound.

Unexpectedly, Quy was so kind to tell her: “Dich is seeking any information about you from me. I said that he was so ridiculous. If you knew this, he would be reprimanded and lost his face. But you’d better be vigilant over that guy of bookselling”.

But there was nothing happened between her and him. She had nothing to fear. Was it possible that a secret love is sinful?

Everything almost came to an end. The day she attended at his class for teaching method reference, the lesson “Kieu visited Dam Tien’s tomb”. It was the very wooden clogs in the name of school managing board that required her and another teacher of literature to attend at his lesson together. When the lesson almost finished, he said, individually ,he did not like a Dam Tien ghost who invariably haunted Kieu, he only wanted a Dam Tien, the very be-wronged victim ghost waking up to reality, when reappearing, must comprehend, then take pity and protect the one on the same boat. He talked about Kieu story but she felt as if he had talked privately with her, as if blamed her for having heart to get rid of him, leaving him to pick the flowers alone, and all of sudden, it was as if she had fallen into a trance. If she could not collect her wits and restrained her temper, who knows what would be going on?

Everything came to an end but in a different way.

Quy told that after having read the draft “Sunflowers” , the wooden clogs had denounced it as an evil work to Ngo, the chief of education department. She said, “They are collecting evidence about him. You’re close to Mr. Nguyen, tell him to be cautious. Ngo said, this time, a file would be set up and he would be fired ”.

She got so worried and told it to him. He said he had a hunch of the trouble, therefore, he already tore the draft and intended to write in a different direction, and should not daydream in these times. The broken nail and the cup of poisonous drug would develop a love story between a cordial student and the youngest daughter that the doctor loved so much. The theory of national vitality would be a bridge of love for the couple  with  an aspiration to clear the history flow. They would join in a rise up in arms at the end of the 18^th century. He said he regretted so much that his teacher of history, who who had taught him in Buoi School, then again taught him in resistance war time,  was already dead. If the teacher were still alive, he would visit and consult him about further writing.

Then he showed her the picture that his teacher drew and presented him when he left school to join the army in the French colonialism resistance war. The picture was drawn by a brush, in Chinese ink, the kind of watercolor painting. An owl was perching on a pine tree branch. His teacher interpreted: “In the western culture, an owl is a symbol of a meditator, a philosopher. Its head shapes like an M letter standing for meditator. The pine tree branch symbols for evergreen, purity.”

She liked the picture so much, especially its meaning. She urged him to hang the picture to find source of inspiration and meditation, creating sympathetic understanding bonds for writing. She had not thought that a disaster could come from the very picture.

The picture made many people become curious and discuss for and against. A kind of night birds had a deeply sad sound just like the call of the Death.

He explained it was just a souvenir from his old teacher, his dedication and signature were still there. But he did not explain the picture’s meaning, he said what if they commented unfoundedly would hurt his great respect for his old teacher.

She said in jest to Dich: “He hanged with a view to sending mice away”. But Dich figured that she hinted at him. The wooden clogs went to and fro. He said: “Owls are a solitary species, which have no flocks, do not know how to sing, but only make deeply sorrowful sounds. If I got a double-barreled gun from Ngo, my first shot would knock this ugly bird down”.

He trembled, his face became pale, but she was also standing there, she boiled with anger, too:

“But you need a hound to go hunting, you only need Ngo’s gun but a hound, don’t you?”

He turned around at once, looked menacingly at her:

“And you, too, you are also transforming into an owl”.

Sniggered at him and pointed at her chest:

“It is waiting for your second shot”

He left and turned round with a crafty laughter:

“So brave, it’s worth praising”

Why she acted so in front of several people’s astonishment there. Possibly she thought of a dream, but did not remember what rank of the dream was: One bright star, one falling birdwing… bang bang.. two falling birdwings.

Several days later, he was summoned to the Department of Education. At school, she was impatient and so anxious to know what was going on. This time, he would meet Ngo- an absolutely atrocious sewer-rat. With such thought, she was more on tenterhooks and anxious about him.

He came back at noon, other teachers were already gone for the first period. A truly fierce struggle had really happened. Ngo rushed the desk, flailing the chair against the ground, furiously opening the wardrobe, taking the dictionary, rustling and turning the pages up and down and shouting at him: “This is also Mé, méfier, to doubt, and here, médire, speaking ill of someone, méchant, wicked, more here, maudire, swear… what about those meanings? Ngo cited a series of events, both old and new, assailing political thought, making oblique hints,  doing  an ill or a bad turn, writing a short story with an ill content, wicked, to be against the slogan “One for all.”, mocking at leaders, violating regulations, adding personal opinion into lectures, seducing married women, hanging the picture with somber intention. Ngo forced him to quit the suspicious relation between males and females, to put the picture away, he cast a white paper sheet to him, requiring him to write a personal review. He threw the paper sheet down the floor, professing not to quit the relation with her, because there was nothing dubious and not to put the picture away, because the picture was the symbol for good aspiration of ideas. In the end, he said: “I don’t fear hereditary chief habit at all.” Ngo jumped up to catch the telephone and talked with a some person… while he left.

“Ngo is just a rabid dog, why did you tease him?”

She said and both kept silent. A silence was really stuffy and more stressful as it was a hot and muggy noon from new sunlight at the beginning of summer in April. All of a sudden, a storm rose up. Wind and dust from the hill foot obscurely rose high up. Then, the sky was shrouded in dark clouds. A first rain of the rainy season. It rained so heavily.  Thunder and thunderbolt  roared. The two people looked out the rain without any words. She wanted to say something to him, but could  not find what to say. He did not need any comfort at the moment. She only felt worried. Furthermore, he was about to have his period and she also had to teach the next period. She looked at the watch. There was fifteen minutes left for him. Possibly the rain would stop then. Unexpectedly, he suddenly stood up, with a cap and a raincoat, hiding books and lesson plan notebooks inside the raincoat.

“I have to go now, goodbye”

Then he rushed out, meanwhile, there struck a very strong thunderbolt right after a dark green flash of lightning.

“Mr. Nguyen!”

She screamed so loudly. Why had you to rush out under thunder and thunderbolt like that? She knew that he loved her faithfully and nothing dubious. Was he disappointed?  He boiled over with silent indignation and braved all that way? It was due to her asking him to hang the picture? No, he never thought that way. She screamed, but why he did not turn around. The rain slashed at his body strongly. Thunder and thunderbolt shook violently, sinuous lightening split the sky.

She rushed to her room to take a hat, a raincoat and a lesson plan notebook, following him.

“Mr. Nguyen, wait for me please!”

She was panting as she was running and calling after him:

“Mr. Nguyen, oh my god, why was it so? Mr. Nguyen.”

He turned around, waiting for her. She walked close to him. The rain still slashed strongly. The road was so muddy. In the air, the thunderbolt’s god footsteps moved around so noisily. There came up again a flash of lightning so dazzling. A hard and dry thunderbolt had smell of burning somewhere around.  The buffaloes got startled and ran across paddy field crazily and uncontrollably, then ran again , turned back, ran as fast as their legs csould carry one, and then each ran its own direction.

He whispered to her in the sound of rain:

“Do you fear, baby?”

The first time, he had called her baby, the sound: “baby” mixed into the clap of thunder.

“I just got startled a little.”

When the couple arrived at the gate of the high school which was lent to the teachers’ training school, the thunder only buzzed somewhere from the horizon.

That night, she braved all out and went out with him, it was both the first time and also the last one to be with him. She had a hunch that love could be only allowed to show up so. They walked to a low mountain, on top of which there was a devastated church, four kilometers away from the school. It was built by stone and there remained only several solitary walls. The full moon was so bright. The plants and landscape seemed to be cleaned after the storm. Everything, even Madonna bas-relief, the cross left on the main door wall and stone steps where the two people were sitting, all were silent and clean. The moon, the moonlight also seemed to be more bright and cleaner.

He put his hands on both of her cheeks and gazed passionately at her.

“Why do you keep looking at me?”

“Look at a surrealist portrait!”

“Not a waken-up ghost, is it?”

“No, It’s a flame, a smouldering fire inside a broken bulb, it’s printed in your eyes, but for me, you were both gained and lost, just like in a dream, in which we came across a precious asset that we wanted to keep forever and die with it but when we woke up, we were still alive but where was the flame?”

Then he looked fixedly at the picture. The picture melted, and so were the moon, the cross and the collapsed walls. There remained her heart beating so rapidly. She let him unbutton her shirt, pressing his face against hers. He said it sounded just like drumbeats of dyke rescue, signaling a dyke was going to breach, then it also sounded just like drum sound driving away eclipse of the moon in the old nights, he said again it sounded like drumbeats urging a martyr to step on the cross, and his body trembled and required to be martyrs together with her. In panic, she pressed more strongly his head into her own chest and stammered:

“Don’t, dearie, please don’t.”

“Our Lady Maria and the son will smile tolerantly with us” He reminded a sentence in one of his translation stories which the two cited for joking each other.

“No, she will punish us if we go over her tolerance.”

No, she told herself carefully not to be weak. But she did not want to let him know. Before leaving, her husband seemed to have left her something, not long ago, she still could feel. She was afraid that he would be sad. And she pressed his head much more strongly into her chest.

“That’s enough, Dearie. That’s much more than what I did to my husband.” She did not know why she said so but she wanted him to have something from her much better than what she did to her husband.

“I love you, possibly right the moment I came to ask you for a fire, both broken and fierce. But now nothing else could be done. You know, the day I attended at your lecturing period, I almost wanted to jump over Dich’s head to come and hold you tight.”

“Oh, my God!  It was true, wasn’t it?  Why decided not? And not tell me a word about it?”

“At that moment, I got dizzy, I had to suppress my feet down and calm down myself… That’s all there is to it. Isn’t it true that one could dare to live with all one’s heart every time?. Sometimes one even could challenge even thunder and thunderbolt but fear invisible ties. But what if I had really made the decision that day? Did you fear? How would you behave?”

“I would have opened my arms wide to hold you, pick you up, say goodbye to all students and colleagues, then we would have gone wherever we could and would have done whatever we wanted.”

She stroked his hair to comfort him.

“No more, when I die, I would evolve into a pine tree branch on which you could perch, and then would go to pick up the sunflowers together with you.”

He kissed her on her lips, her hair, her neck, and all over her chest. He was as if being reckless and did not want to restrain himself. The flame was blazing in her heart. She groaned in recognition. Then she got really filled with terror and hurriedly put it out, her heart was burning,

“That’s enough. Please come back, I fear very much”

“What do you fear?”

“All, even myself.  Too violent. I am not fit enough.”

Next, she dreamt every night. She dreamt that he was removed off her arms. He struggled just like a child. She embraced his chest and tried to pull him back. But she was too weak, so he was dragged and put into a carriage. She ran after the carriage. He leaned over, kissed her and presented her an ochre colored picture of blood stone. One hand pressed the picture against her chest, the other clung to the carriage. She ran as she was breathing. But mice bended their bodies, jumped up, very rapidly ran away and dragged her to fall prone and then the carriage turned into the red soil road. When she could stand up, her face was chafed. The carriage was smaller and smaller, sank little by little and then disappeared completely into red dust. Clouds of dust curled up just like smoke flared up from a fire.

Thanks to her father in law, she did not get any trouble, on the contrary, she was assigned to work in a research institute in Hanoi.

She had met him two times since then.

The first time was at the railway slope of a small railway station. She was taking her daughter to the evacuation area. He rode an ill matched bicycle with a basket behind. He looked much older and darker. She looked at the basket. He said it was a snake basket. Now he worked as a snake catcher. Alas! How could it be in such a plight? She wanted to scream as she did in the day full of thunder and thunderbolt. But her daughter was standing beside. She was nearly ten years old.

“Nguyet was too stunned, right? It’s too long to tell you.”

They temporarily sat down under a silk cotton tree, listening to his brief about his past life.

He was ordered to work in a military coffee farm for mind-washing in a midland province. He was managed by a company head from the middle zone. He had to dig cubic holes with the width and depth of 1.2 X 1.2 m for planting tree. The hill land was hard and dry, one soldier could dig only one hole per day but he tried his best to finish two. Nevertheless, he was still humiliated with remarks on his defects by the head “Intellectual behind the times is not so valuable as manure.” Thought activities were held every evening to mainly evaluate him. He comforted and told himself that he must leave this place rapidly because the nostalgia of society tortured him all the time. Six months later, he got released and assigned to work at a school for spoiled children in the model of Makarenko initiated by Van Nha, minister deputy of education department. He once again met the wooden clogs in the post of headmaster because this type of school needed a kind of men like Dich. He together with other teachers and police had to worm their way in the scum of society of Hanoi and Hai phong, places of remains to enroll students. But then the school was just a chaos place where Dich used to drink with Van Nha and other guests. Where was the money from? From building projects, teachers’meal, from number of students’ attendence, many students escaped after several days. They were very good at escaping and often escaped. He submitted an application of denouncement. But he did not have enough evidence. He was forced to leave his job with the reason that he accused the superiors falsely and had old offences. His wife- an elementary teacher cursed him as one abandoned by the society, a useless intellectual, left the children to him and followed a guy whose job was preparing curtains for a popular artistic troupe. Someone asked him to sell his blood together with them. He said his blood belonged to M1 antigen, which could supply for only few people who had not M antibody, otherwise, other receivers would die. Finally, he had to send his children to his parents and learn how to catch snakes.

“Colera snakes are so fierce, aren’t they?”

“Very fierce and so poisonous.”

“You don’t fear, do you?”

“I am much fiercer. But I am not fierce with you. Even I don’t want to take them out for you to see. Hope that you don’t need to be fierce in your life. You will only close your long eyelashes just like your mum’s to dream. That’s all. The sun’s so hot now. You’d better leave.”

“I leave now.” She was wet with tears as she said goodbye to him.

She did not have chance to say anything to him at that time. She left after a short while, she felt so hot behind the nape of her neck. She turned round in staggering. He still followed her with his eyes at the railway slope.

The second time, they met in Hanoi seven or eight years ago when the cardiac inflation of her husband became severe. He looked better than the previous time. He said a MA of biology, cybernetic, his old student, found him a contract at a toxic research bureau. He was asked if he had been married, he said he did not want to get remarried. She wrote her address and invited him to visit, he refused with the reason that he was so busy. From his eyes, she knew that he did not want to meet her as an acquaintance. He was asked if he had any plans of translation for writing. He shook his head and said that the MA had shown him little letters from a professor Minister, one asked him how to breed pigs and the other letter asked him for help to make an injection to his sick pigs.

That sleepless night, she did not understand what she was expecting, something very misty, vague, so simple but hard to get to know. Finally, she understood that she craved for visiting the old sight.

She arrived there at nearly 4 pm, it was an windy afternoon with the south wind at the end of winter.

The old sight was wildly devastated, so solitary and desolate. Some letters were painted with white lime and smeared over, full of holes because the lime was peeled off the side wall. The behind wall of left apartment was the bureau previously: The bureau for receiving visitors who want to see the culture area and temple of literature. Warning: To protect the vestige as currently. Land digging and any destruction were forbidden.

Since when was “currently”? What year? There were large holes as bombardment some meters away from the uncovered foundation wall with those letters. The holes were deep and shallow with different levels. The land was freshly red. It was possibly just from yesterday or right at this noon. The stele was big and wide, matched by three different stones as big as three wooden beds. It set up as a screen standing in front of the temple, some positions were broken, on which some unseemly chalk letters were written by children, “Little boy Ti did sex things to Little girl Teo”. The stele recorded the merit of temple construction by a province chief whose family name was Le. The yard’s bricks of the temple had been removed. The wall was chapped with many destroyed and chiseled pieces. The stele house lost its roof, broken tiles crunched under her feet. More than ten steles were still attached on the wall on which Doctors of Philosophy’s name were mossy. Several steles had been removed exposing bare walls. She turned into the temple. The ironwood pillars queued up silently on moist ground, base bricks might have been removed for a long time. She went through to her house where she used to live. Helas! That was the interrogating and torturing room of the security department. It was much more in ruin. A cat with green eyes from a dark corner dashed out, being frightened and bewildered to look at her. She was startled. Was it the little and so poor cat in the previous years? Was it the one she suddenly took it up and held it tight with her flushed face? Well, where was your owner? Come close to me and rub your body against mine. You still kept looking? So it was not you, how could you live until now? But it was okay, whoever you were; set your mind at rest to catch the rest of mice. And did the mice exist? What did they live on? There was no spilled rice and dropped meat, no soap, no traps, no diary or guitar strings for them to dance on any more. Or they lived on the steles? They nibbled the mossy and moist steles with dust covered? Or they wanted to fight to the at this place?.

Bricks and tiles were still crunching under her feet. She met the cat again. It was still hunting. And she went and found the traces. Things fierce but not cruel were received into national vitality. She walked through the town. The Doctor, who used to be the first assessor of the minister counselor of the king’s palace, had been driven to suicide was named for a nice street. However, the watch tower’s mouth, which was so dusty with blur traces and shady, seemed to try to suck with the wind, u, u, u.

She turned the bike around and looked down the hill side. There were houses with green trees all around instead of the old sunburnt laterite hill. Right under her feet, there was dark brown grass losing leaves.

But she suddenly recognized green beads near each grass root, just like resurfacing from the land pulse; she remembered that it was the end of winter. Tel was coming in more than a week. Spring was coming. The ground right under her feet seemed to be rolling. The land pulse seemed to be moving to replace the dark red color by the green one.

However, seeing that the fresh land layers were being dug and destroyed irrespectively of warning letters, she wanted to put up her hands to prevent: “Should not, shouldn’t, shouldn’t delete our memories, please take barbed wires to protect it and hang a sign: Visitors!  Don’t be so annoyed and gullible; don’t think that it was a temple when seeing lots of steles.”  But who would do it? The nation was overloaded with work to change. Those land holes would become swollen out and deeper. Then all of a sudden, all were over. The steles were kept as archives, wooden, bricks and tiles were returned to people. There would be a small forest on top of the hill. A eucalyptus forest or a pine tree one.

Reminding of pine tree, she missed him again, she remembered the broken bulb, though it was broken, it took its body to shield the fire from wind.

Tracing the land holes, the land color was red just like burning ashes, taking leave of a bizarre complicated mixture, devastated with so many memories. So she could not help being touched especially when she thought of the steles ill written on. If only the temple had been built a talented person, it would have been so. Then she kept thinking in undefined vague way that it was true that people would dissolve into air pulse or turned into a pine tree branch after dying.

But why did it happen only after dying?