Nguyễn Bản
Translated
by Nguyễn Trọng Long
The program attracted me at once though I turned on the TV in
the middle of it.
She was
not beautiful, even a bit below the average, neither was the female MC.
Moreover, the MC was rather talkative, making it less emotional naturally from
viewers. Despite that, I did not turn off or switch in to other channels as usual. Perhaps partially
because she was a teacher in the mountainous town where I ever worked as a
teacher and had a love affair with my student and I considered as my
second home country. I attentively watched any TV programs about that
mountainous province until the end, even though they were about pioneer soccer,
forest planting or flood… etc. Perhaps, it was because her destiny that had
almost nothing lucky, in addition to, her name was Fate which sounded as
if ready to accept all the creator’s whimsicality.
She was
not beautiful and not made up, all her expressions, tongues and stories were
naturally plain without any force as if it were born to be so. It was not
because she was a national-level talented teacher of literature but herself;
love was love, blame was blame, sadness was sadness, knew no way or incapable
to do differently. She talked about her job, pupils’ sentiments toward her and
about herself. Her parents were not only poor but also had many children, so
she suffered from poverty and shortage when she was a child, then she got
married to a frontier soldier, who was also so poor. She had to saw patches on
his pants. She gave birth to a girl baby at the age of 26, The baby was just
six months old as her husband had to be on business. He gave every penny, total
of 8 thousands to his wife, equal to 20 thousands dong now.
- You
gave me all, how can you manage?
- I
don’t need it. You have to bring the baby up. Any penny is better.
He
accepted to keep 2 thousands after he was strongly forced. Then he never came
back. One evening, he steered an ambush to wait for a serious robber in a
mountainous alley. When the robber arrived, he immediately knew he was
ambushed, at once he threw out brenade to escape. Seeing a delay fuse of the grenade sparkling,
he shouted at once: “Grenade, lie down!”. Then he lay over the grenade and
died. From then, she became a martyr’s wife and the six month baby was a
martyr’s child. It was eight years ago.
The
MC asked her at the end of the program: “Do you want to send any messages to
border defending soldiers?”. She replied: “I hope you continue fighting bravely
to eliminate the dishonesty and cruelty, bringing a peaceful life to people…”.
She paused for a moment as if for more thought and continued :”a bravery but to
be with a clever and resourceful mind… because behind you….”. She paused
a moment for more effort to continue: “there're your wife, your children and
other beloved ones”.
The whole hall clapped hands. Of course, I would clap my hand if I were there.
Besides the emotional affection like other people, I wanted to clap hands
because she could speak out what was deeply hidden in her heart. The thoughts
probably ever harass her, spoken before everyone openly, frankly and unhidden. Somehow,
she was just a woman, firstly a woman, a current woman, a boat without any
landing stage, a train without any railway station just like a song’s lyric.
I felt sympathetic towards her. In addition, It was considered as my second
country, so I felt she was like my compatriot, and so was my colleague. I like
her natural simpleness but very feminine. Right after that evening, I asked
anyone I met, if having seen it, whether they had the similar thinking with me,
if having not, I exactly reported to them how it was her message to the
soldiers, a pause to weigh and another to get more energy to continue.
I made up my mind to see the woman, who knew maybe there were many things worth
talking and writing?. Her name, i already knew, was so fateful. Her address, I
already knew, too: Y junior high school of the town. It was not far from the
school I had ever taught. In the end of the year, It was celebrated its
fiftieth year foundation, I was certainly invited as I was one of its first
several teachers. Having long wait, I became rather impatient, once I
intended to send her my short stories as a present to for make acquaintance,
but then felt hesitant. Things
usually don’t go on as our imagination, The reality is sometimes simple and
idle but much more human than things we imagined. So I accepted to wait for the
celebration day.
During
the waiting days, I sometimes thought of her, I calculated and found out she
was thirty three or thirty four years old. The daughter was eight or nine years
old. Was it an obstacle for her to find a new home port? Life was till so long,
how it was as if a boat were floating on waterways forever. Luckily, she had
her own house. She was authorized a piece of residential land on which she
could build a fourth class house. It was possibly over the bridge. Long time
ago, in French colonialists resistance war, it was a suspension bridges, its
surface was made of several layers of bamboo wattle, now it was possibly a
concrete bridge. Her house was at the road side or deep in the alleys by the
foot of mountains? The wind from the borders blew up like when I had been there
noisily like horns’ sound, she would hold her daughter tight listening to the
wind? She was 35 years old. I knew and wrote about another woman at the same
age; monthly cycled over 30 km over rivers, ferries to live with her lover for
seven days because he was the best lover and the strongest man in love making
she had ever met. What about her? Did she choose anyone or every night silently
sit to correct exam papers for pupils, make lesson plans after her daughter had
gone to bed without any sigh or stand up, open the window, look out into
the dark night, dream wildly for someone’s steps?.
She was not beautiful and was thirty years old. Five or seven years later,
looking at a mirror, she would suddenly realize wrinkles, nervures down in her
hands, start when seeing combings on the pillow.
I had
to wait until 20th Nov.
Then the telephone finally rang and the invitation came with a message that I
prepared to make a fifteen minute speech.
On the
day I left, it was a rainy and cold day. Though it was in winter, it lasting
raining heavily. On arrival, it was so hard for cars to pick up us. I sat next
to Nguyen Thuy Ngan on the car, a young reporter of a newspaper, an old pupil
of the school. Though when I left the school for my study in university, she
had not been born, writer s and reporters were naturally close to each other,
so we could keep friendly relationship at once irrespective of the big age gap.
I told her about Mrs. Phan and my intention “extra tears”.
-
So Master must take me with. Possibly I could write an article. I won’t violate
your copyright for certain.
I shook
my head:
-
What’s the copyright? I got a bad habit of feeling much more than thinking
while feeling was just only the first step of consciousness process and
finally..
Thuy
Ngan interrupted me with a smile:
-
Finally, you and I will get on the bus back to Hanoi after the celebration.
That
night, the school treated us the dinner. In my eating table, there were Thuy
Ngan of course, and a husband and wife worked seven or eight years after me,
now also retired in Hanoi, next to them was a present teacher at the age of
approximately 50. In the middle of the meal, I asked about Mrs. Phan in junior
high school nearby. The present teacher immediately replied:
-
That’s it, Master. It turns out to be that everything has two sides. It was
said one thing on TV, but it’s another thing in real life.
I
started at it and cast a look at the young reporter, at the same time I caught
the same look from her. The home teacher stopped a moment and then asked me:
-
Do you know who she loves?
I
sighed with a relief, it had been thought of another story. I picked up and
drank up my glass of beer, was glad:
-
Congratulation to her happiness.
The
present teacher stood up immediately like a spring:
-
But she loves a boy who was her pupil before.
I
cautiously asked:
-
What’s his job?
-
A teacher in the same school.
I
sighed of relief again and
as usual and could not keep cracking a casual and nonsensical jest:
-They
must be under a charm each other!
The
teacher edited my joke at once:
- Not
each other but under her charm, Master
I kept
calm and continued:
- What about people’s attitude?
- Just
pretend to respect but keep them at arm’s length except for his mother.
- The
mother’s against them.
- Not
only object but she was on her knees before her: “I beg you, please, free him.
We were ever colleagues at least.”
- And
her?
-
Sobbing: “it’s not me, I asked him not, I did turn off, use strong word but it
didn’t work. How could i?”.
- Are
you acquainted with her?
-Not
much.
- Could
you please introduce me and the reporter to meet her? Possibly …
She
responded at once without any hesitation:
- I’m
afraid impossible.
- Why?
-Since
that story happened, she had kept closing the door from anyone.
- Possibly,
we’re stranger, it could work?
The
teach reluctantly accepted:
-Yes,
Maybe. Let me try!
The husband
and wife teachers sitting at the same table just listened . And the wife then
started taking part in:
- A
friend of mine also had a son who was in his second student at a university
several years ago, he tutored a twelfth grade girl pupil in his summer
vacation, then fell in love and asked to marry to the girl’s mother, who was
ever a retired mobile traditional music singer. His parents must bear
accepting.
Everyone
asked:
- What
then?
- Get
divorced after two years… The woman declare she had two happy years anyway and
had nothing to blame the student.
The
present teacher sat silently and kept from speaking:
-She’s
a singer, actress.. but a teacher must be absolutely different. As my own
case, my husband was dead for nearly 20 years, left me two kids. Now one is at
university, the other already graduated.
I wanted to tell the teacher I ever went on foot three hundred kilometers from
this school to have a interprovincial meeting and returned on foot to the
school after five days of meeting. Need people do the same now? But I didn’t as
I was in the need of her help.
The next day, after the celebration meeting, I looked for the present teacher.
She immediately said without waiting for my asking.
- Phan
doesn’t accept to receive anybody.
Thuy
Ngan smiled as she told me:
-Your
plan has been broken.
- Maybe.
Maybe,
because the coach must return the invitation visitors to Hanoi the next day. Of
course, if I wanted, I could stay on five or three days, even a week, then I
could catch a service bus or get a lift from some corporations ‘cars. But Thuy
Ngan had to return as planned. Suddenly I felt short of an ally and did not
want to stay on alone. It was okay , Return, but I was still much in two
minds. I thought of temporary suspension, temporary stop as possibly many other
things could happen.
About
at the end of the autumn, it meant eight or nine months later, Thuy Ngan gave
me a ring and said that she had to go there again to write about traditional
handmade silk craft restoration and asked me if I wanted to go with her. Of
course, I wanted but I was working on an urgent contract of translating some
English documents on export coffee into Vietnamese to earn money, therefore I
made up my mind to ask for her help to find out more information about the
whimsical love story and told me later.
Ngan
returned from her business for several days, I came to ask her:
-Did
you meet her?
-No one
has not been accepted to receive, Master. But I made acquaintance with some
young teach of the same school, that’s why I got quite a lot of information.
Then
Thuy Ngan briefly reported to me. Actually, Phan and the young boy were so
close before. They had intimately become fondier of each other since they taught at the
same school though their old address form was still kept “ teacher and pupil”.
Every Sunday, they ate fresh food with delicious dishes together. Then one
time, the daughter finished her meal earlier and went out to play something. It
was absolutely hard to understand whether it was because he drank quite a lot
of beer or not but he abruptly blushed to hold his teacher’s hand tight:
“Teacher, Do you know i love you?”. She got astonished: “ You got drunk”. “I’m
not drunk. I really love you. It’s a real love of a man”. “You crazy! How can
we do such objectionable things?”. “Why can’t? I think of you every night”.
“Nonsense, I’m your old teacher.”. “But I love you, so crazily love”. I swear…”.
“Come here, I tell you this”- She interrupted and dragged him to in front of
the altar for her dead husband: “Ok, now we swear for our sisterhood and
brotherhood…”. He disconnected from her hand: “No, I don’t want, I can’t
deceive myself and the dead as well.”. “Go away, get out. And never come back
here!”.
-But how is it possible for him not to come again?
I asked
as if asking myself.
-Yes,
come again, and more and more brazen, just like one who determined to learn how
to swim was no longer scary of water. Later on, at one night in Sep, the daughter
visited and stayed with her grandparents. Though it was over 9 pm, he was still
undecided to go home. The storm broke, it was a tropical storm at the end of
the season. It rained dogs and cats like a waterfall. Thunders and thunderbolts
were so furious and violent.
I asked
as if I could guess all the story’s events in advance:
- The
human being became feeble?
-
Not really if power did not fail. There struck a very near thunder just like
above the roof, she confessed to her girlfriend, it was her who embraced him
tight at that time, did not want to let go and let everything be. But right
after that she felt so shy…
- Why
was she shy?
-
She was shy, sobbed and asked the guy to forget what had just happened. It was
just a bad mistake. She said it was her mistake, not him but he drowned that no
one made mistakes and it was greatly happy. She kept sobbing, he soothed and
comforted her. Then he put on airs and said she was out of date and feudal.
What was wrong when an unmarried man and a widow loved each other?. The rain
stopped, the thunder disappeared. She urged him to go home. He determined not
to go home.
The following
days, she was still against him;
“ Look
at my face carefully, how long could you love me?”. He drowned, he already
considered her as his wife after what had happened. She got furious and
provoked that she would rather be a sixty or seventy year old man than an old
nurse maid for a childish guy. He said, it was ok, there would be babies soon,
the kids would be a good bond of their love. Gradually, she was weakly against
and begged him not to make bad reputation, which was the only thing she was
scary of. He said, being scary of rumor? Let’s go to the marriage registration
Office and make a wedding party on a good day.
- Did
she accept?
- No,
But they really love each other now and she declared what would be, would be,
it would be happy, even five or seven months, several years, let the destiny
be.
Abruptly,
Thuy Ngan asked me awkwardly:
-
What about the case that pupil fails in his entrance test into university in
two consecutive years?
I was a
little bit surprised , so I asked her:
- But
why do you ask so?
She
looked at the far distance and answered:
- It
was unintentional. There are so many surprising events in life that we can
never assume all… especially in love, right? Master.
I was
more surprised:
What
about…
Ngan
looked at me with an encouragement:
What
about what? Mater
- It’s
what you want me to write about, isn’t it?
The
young reporter answered unintentionally:
- Life
doesn’t depend on what one wants!
BN
00:14/14/12/2012
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