Khanh Ha
Mother Yesterday I took Mrs. Rossi to Ông Đốc town to see a doctor. She had a running fever. Both mother and daughter were in the doctor's office and I was there with them as an interpreter. It could be the sun, or insect bite, the doctor said. The forest can be a scourge. I translated what the old doctor said. He administered intravenous antibiotic and Mrs. Rossi rested for a while. When we came out on the street, the forenoon sun was so strong she stood back on the curbside and donned her straw hat. She looked darker now not because her face was shaded. The peasant's skin she got was from day after day riding in the sampan then going into the forest. Her crow's feet showed in deep grooves when she squinted her eyes watching a wedding procession down the street. Standing hunched, hand locked in Chi Lan's, Mrs. Rossi still had that quiet determined look. I wondered how much longer before those soft blue eyes began losing their dogged expression. Water was receding on the street after a hard rain and a wind-born stink came from the waterfront where fish was being sun-dried. Chi Lan pointed toward the procession. "Mom, look!" The bride in her long white dress stood frozen before a large puddle of water. The procession stopped. Then the bridegroom and his best man hoisted her up and carried her across the street, not even rolling up their pants legs. The rest followed, sloshing through the water. You could hear everyone laughing. Mrs. Rossi smiled. She looked tired but relaxed. Perhaps being here with her daughter instead of in the forest brought her enjoyment. We walked back to where I parked the Peugeot and the noise the swiftlets made in the bird colonies had her cock her head, listening. Holding her mother's hand, Chi Lan explained to her about the chirpings, how the town's breeders dedicate a whole story of their homes as a bird colony, as both of them were finding their steps on the rough parts of the incline of the street, where broken street surface was patched with hewed logs of mangrove and date palm. We stopped at the café, also a brothel, and I bought them each a café sữa đá, the Vietnamese iced coffee with a dash of condensed milk. I knew Chi Lan had told her about the upstairs rooms with red-bulb wreathed window shutters in pink, because Mrs. Rossi kept looking back. The port was empty of the fishing boats. Where have they gone, Mrs. Rossi asked. I told her that after the full moon all the boats would head out to sea for days. Why after the full moon, she said. Before that time, I said, the water was moonlit and fish wouldn't bite the bait, so all the fishermen stayed in town getting drunk day and night and the brothel was as busy as a soup kitchen. Then one night, when the moon became a waning crescent, the boats were unmoored and one by one they left the river port, taking with them the owl's eyes painted on both sides of the bow, those wakeful eyes day and night having longed for the return to the sea. * The roadside inn where I live and work is old in the deep south of the Mekong Delta. During the Vietnam War this was IV Corps that had seen many savage fights. Though the battle carnage might have long been forgotten, some places are not. They are haunted. The owner and his wife of the second generation are in their late sixties. The old woman runs the inn, mainly cooking meals for the guests, and I would drive to Ong Doc town twenty kilometers south to pick up customers when they arrive by land on buses or by waterways on boats and barges. Most of them come to visit the Lower U Minh National Reserve, a good twenty kilometers north of the inn. When we came back to the inn, I hung a hammock on the veranda for Mrs. Rossi to take her siesta. She received a glass of iced lemonade from me and, stopping the swing with her bare feet on the floor, took a healthy swig. With one leg stretched out, she pulled up her pants leg. "Giang," she said, glancing up at me and down at her lower leg, "your tobacco water is a wonderful remedy. I wore socks I soaked in that water and no leeches have ever bothered me since." I was glad to see no fresh bite marks on her ankles. I asked her if she felt any better from the fever and she nodded, pressing the chilled glass against the side of her face, flushed from the afternoon heat. Chi Lan came out with two glasses of lemonade. She handed me one and sat down on the floor, knees drawn to her chest. I caught her gaze over the cup's rim, serene eyes, elongated and pretty, this orphan child having been displaced to grow up into a comely girl, always exuding liveliness and consideration. Mrs. Rossi, her American mother, adopted her in 1974 when she was five years old. She's eighteen now. Having been sick, Mrs. Rossi stayed home. She came to this region to search for the remains of her son, a lieutenant who went missing-in-action during the Vietnam War. I had recommended Old Lung, a war veteran, whom Mrs. Rossi eventually hired to help her search for the bones of her son. Back then, within a year after the war, people here were familiar with the sight of the poor citizens who traveled to this land looking for their lost husbands, sons, relatives. Sometimes you would see soldiers but they didn't stay at the inn. They would camp in the woodland with their trucks and it would be a week or even longer before they left. There were many soldiers coming to this region. Came in organized groups called Remains-Gathering Crew. During the war thousands of them were stationed in this region, always deep in the swamp forest. Many died. Most of them died from bombing and shelling and ground assaults. Deaths were common back then. And death discriminates no one. In that forbidden swamp forest you had flesh and bones of the soldiers on both sides and the flesh and bones of Americans. All lay under the peat soil. We also had new guests who arrived at the inn ten days ago. A couple from Ireland. They drove down long-distance from Hồ Chí Minh City. The husband was some sort of a journalist. Since their arrival he had gone around the U Minh region always with a camera, a backpack, and a palm-sized voice recorder. The wife, in her late thirties, made friends easily with us. When she first heard of the purpose of Mrs. Rossi's visit, she said to her, "Jasus, ye break my heart." Mrs. Rossi smiled softly, her pale blue eyes blinked a few times as Maggie said, "Tell me, love, how on earth can ye find anything in such a place? In that wilderness God doesn't plant a sign that says, Dig here! Ye know what I mean." "Mr. Lung has a method," Mrs. Rossi said, her voice trembling a little. "He's done this before. So we kinda divided up the area and went from one section to the next. We'd spot a mound of earth here and there and I was all excited to see any of them. He'd dig and dig, bless his old heart, 'cause he never stopped going till I begged him to take a breather. Then all he did is take a sip of water, have a smoke, and then he'd be back at it. Most of the times we found nothing. A few times we found bones, human bones, and God Almighty I'd feel myself shaking. And you know something? You can't tell one skull from another. They all look like they were cast from the same mold. But come to think of that. Those unclaimed bones, unidentified skulls must've belonged to some unknown soldiers and that's why somebody like me is still searching for them. Or they might've already given it up." Listening to Mrs. Rossi, I couldn't help thinking the same thought. You can't tell those skulls apart. You can't tell a Vietnamese skull from an American skull. Mrs. Rossi coughed a small cough and her white-haired head kept shaking like she couldn't chase away something unpleasant in her head. "One time we found this Penicillin bottle among the bones. It's closed tight with a rubber cap. Mr. Lung opened it and there's nothing but a piece of paper inside. Well, he doesn't speak English like you, Giang, but after a lot of gesticulating and with much pidgin English, he got me to understand that it had to do with a soldier's identification. Things like name, combat unit, rank, birthplace and hometown. He said back when the Remains-Gathering Crew would arrive searching for the remains of their comrades, the bones they found with no Penicillin bottles would be brought back with those identified and buried in the National Military Cemetery. Except that the unidentified bones would be interred in the section for the remains of unknown Vietnamese soldiers." * Now over the road the heat was glimmering and the air quivered. You could hear the cicadas singing in the tree tops, pulsing across the air, in the tangles of hummingbird trees and sea almond trees and palm trees, an ethereal cadence coming and going, at times dying down then suddenly flaring up so near in the grove of bamboo fencing the front of the inn that you thought you were in the coppice of the golden-hued bamboo lambent in the heat. I asked if they had ever seen the bamboo flowering, and Chi Lan, gazing at the tall bamboo, said, "Is it true that soon after they flower they will die?" "Yes," I said. "Some species flower every one hundred years and those of the same kind flower simultaneously all over the world. I had seen the bamboo flower one day in the forest when I was your age." "The massive flowering?" she asked. "Yes," I said, "The once-a-lifetime phenomenon." Then I told them about the moment when the greenish-yellow pods opened and the petals unfurled, mauve and trembling, and every clump of golden bamboo turned pale purple. Mrs. Rossi shook her head, smiling. "I won't live long enough to see such wonder." * In the evening we sat on the veranda, the air now cool, and the breeze brought a tinge of mud from a canal across the land. Mrs. Rossi reclined in the hammock, her loose shirt untucked hanging down to her thighs, its whiteness a pale luster in the dark. Both Chi Lan and I sat in the metal folding chairs, looking toward the road. Mrs. Rossi said she was thinking of Maggie and her husband. She really liked Maggie who was a barrel of fun. The Irish couple left on the day Mrs. Rossi felt sick. Before leaving Maggie held Mrs. Rossi's face in her hands, said, "'Bejeezuz, thissi awful. Ya shoud quit going into de forest and see de trees. Dat's roy, love. At ya age ya should rest. Ya should drink plenty tamahtoe juice and take plenty vihtamin. Now, I always thought I was out here enjoying meself, but I didn't. I wish ya find what ya lookin for over dere." I told Mrs. Rossi I missed the sound of Maggie's laughs when Chi Lan reminded me that I also forgot to cook a dish of snake meat for them. She stopped and looked toward the road. A street peddler was pushing his cart and a boy, silhouetted against the glowing lantern hung behind him on the cart, was walking and striking his bamboo clappers. The tok-tok-tok kept cadence with his steps. I said, "You must try that man's noodle soup." "Phở? " Chi Lan said. "No, hủ tiếu, Chinese-style noodle soup." "I'd love to try it," Chi Lan said. "Mom?" "Sure, dear," Mrs. Rossi said. "Anything." The man pushed the cart to the veranda when I called him. He parked his cart as I told him to make three bowls. The boy sat down on his haunches, gazing up at Chi Lan clicking her camera while the man prepared the dishes. He sliced the pork belly into thin cuts, stopped and pinched a handful of egg noodles and dropped them into the boiling iron pot, then quickly strained them and placed them into a bowl. His hands went deftly garnishing the bowl with the meat, then bean sprouts, sautéed garlic and shallots. He wiped his hands on the rag hung on the handlebar and arranged three wontons on top of the bowl and squeezed a lemon wedge on it. Ceremoniously he ladled the pork-based broth, his arm dropped alongside, his head tilted watching the ladle hover and empty itself when steam rose from the bowl in the wavering lantern light. A pungent fragrance wafted up to the veranda. The man fitted the bowl with a pair of chopsticks and a spoon and the boy carried the dish up. I told him to give the first bowl to Mrs. Rossi. "Do you want to sit at his cart and eat?" I asked her. "Sure," she said. "I want to try that." She walked barefoot down the steps to the cart and the man pull out a folding wooden chair for her. She placed the bowl on the metal ledge and motioned her head for us to join her. We sat at the cart, watching the man prepare each bowl, the air warm and wet with the noodle odor. After we were done eating and the noodle cart left, the tok-tok-tok of the bamboo clappers becoming distant sounds, I made café sữa đá for each of us and we sat in the dark on the veranda, sipping coffee. Mrs. Rossi's voice came across in the creaking of her hammock, "It's so pastoral here sometimes it makes you wonder why your life is so complicated." "You mean this rural life?" I turned toward her. "Yes." She put her glass on the veranda floor. "My son told me about this river. Around here somewhere. Said it was covered with white water lilies and full of fragrance. I wish I could see it the way he saw it. Just once. So help me God." I could hear Chi Lan sigh. "Can we take her there when she's well again?" she asked me. "Certainly," I said, then to Mrs. Rossi, "You crossed that river just about every day when you rode in the sampan to the forest." Mrs. Rossi sat up, lifted her glass before putting her feet down. "That river we came in from the canal? I didn't know that was the same river my son was telling me about." "Ma'am," I said, "that's the Trẹm River. You'll see the river stretch with water lilies much farther up toward Upper U Minh. They used to grow so wild they covered the river with only a narrow passage for boats, and when the flowers are in full bloom you could smell their scents way upriver and downriver." "It must look like a painting," Mrs. Rossi said, "the way he described." "I'm sure he must have had an artistic eye." Mrs. Rossi sipped her iced coffee then, palming her glass in her lap, gazed into the night. "Look at that!" she raised her voice. In the bamboo grove a blue light glowed, drifting knee high above the ground. It was so dark the incandescent blue looked eerie hovering. "What is that?" Chi Lan asked. "The blue-ghost fireflies," I said. "It's their mating season." "Fireflies?" Mrs. Rossi said, sitting up. "Why aren't they blinking?" "They are not the ordinary fireflies," I said. "Not the flashing ones. They only glow. The males." "Those lights are from the males?" "Well, the females glow too. But they don't have wings. They stay on the ground. They need much moisture and ground cover. During the day both males and females hide under the leaves on the ground. I used to see them when I was a North Vietnamese soldier staying deep in the forest." "So if you destroy the ground and the forest," Mrs. Rossi said, "like the war did, then you destroy them too. Am I right?" "Especially the females," I said. "They can't fly." "Especially the females," Mrs. Rossi said with a chuckle. "The source of life." "They're beautiful," Chi Lan said. "I need them for my photograph collection." She went in and came back with her camera. She knelt on one knee on the top step, clicking off several shots, and the flashlights made quick bright bursts. Then just the blackness of night. "They're like winged ghosts," Chi Lan said. I coughed into my hand as Chi Lan turned to look at me. I had refrained from smoking whenever I was with her. As she sat back down in her chair and Mrs. Rossi now lounged in the hammock, swinging it side to side, I told them about the blue fireflies and the ghosts of soldiers I witnessed at Old Lung's place. Mrs. Rossi, upon hearing the ghost story, said perhaps the ghosts needed a medium to show themselves and the fireflies' blue lights were that medium, just like earth, water, fire and air made up the medium of the living human beings. She said once in the forest, in a damp, shaded place she had sensed somebody's presence in there with her. She had gooseflesh. She said she believed the woman innkeeper's story about the sound of human crying in the forest on rainy nights following a muggy day that made the air thick like vapors rising from the bogs and the vaporous air was the right medium for otherworldly manifestation. I told them the story of five hundred French paratroops who were dropped into the U Minh forest in 1952 and all of them disappeared in the mangrove swamps forever. One night, I said, I was standing at the window of my room smoking a cigarette and the night was full of the sawing of crickets, the clicking of bats, the harsh squawking of night herons up in their tree colony, and as I listened mindlessly to them I heard a thump then another. There I saw two clods of dirt resting on the window ledge. How they landed precisely side by side I did not know. Neither did I know where they came from. The following night it happened again. I had to tell the woman innkeeper about the incidents. She said, "They want to be fed." "They? Who?" I asked. "Them dead people," she said. So she put out on the rear veranda a bowl of cooked rice, a plate of boiled chicken, a bundle of bananas, lidded with a dome cover. After that there was no more incident. Mrs. Rossi said she believed that through the praying and worshipping that we keep in touch with the supernatural. She said she saw many shrines in the land and she understood that they remind us of things beyond us. But God will hear you only if you are sincere in your praying, because faith is something not seen, not touched, therefore not explicable to mortals. It was the first time I saw her cry.
Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh (2012, Black Heron Press) and The Demon Who Peddled Longing (November 2014, Underground Voices Publisher). A three-time Pushcart nominee and a two-time Best of the Net Award nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Waccamaw Journal, storySouth, Greensboro Review, Permafrost Magazine, Saint Ann’s Review, Poydras Review, The Underground Voices, Moon City Review, The Long Story, Red Savina Review, DUCTS, Lunch Ticket, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Sugar Mule, Yellow Medicine Review, and other fine journals.
|