Category: SHORT STORIES/TRUYỆN NGẮN

A couple of times I would wake up in the middle of the night, but this time I found a stranger next to me. “Can I stay here with you” – the stranger would quietly plead – “there’s no other shrub left!”. I asked: “Where are you from?”. “From the village” – the stranger replied, a little less shy. It was a girl, her voice crisp, kind and sweet. Naturally, as a reflex action I would have stood up straight away, but after so many days either laying down or on my knees, my feet were like jelly, all wobbly. I could not rise further than my knees, my arms raised in front of me, not sure why. The young woman grabbed my hands, her hands soft, gently pulled me down. “Sit” – she said quietly – “they’re nearly here!”. The scent of the young woman overwhelmed my tiny familiar grove of trees. My fears were somewhat suddenly lighter. Perhaps they will come. The four hands held onto each other, locked on tighter onto each other. We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, as though it was a preordained meeting, two pairs of teardrops rolled slowly down the two pairs of cheeks to shatter upon two pairs of youthful knees. We grabbed onto each other, groaning in the deep darkness of trees.

No longer participating in any kind of social gathering and exchange, I am often alone looking out at the mead. Completely speechless, wordless, unless another person was nearby, and it is their words that would come out of my mouth. I had in submission surrendered my lips to the people around me, while I sat and waited, to see who would be the next person. Who will pass by with talk of nothing void of a beginning nor an end? I was watchful, as though for a burglar. And of course without warning, a stranger said: “Demons meet up there on the third floor, right next to the writer’s headquarters”.

Day after day, life continues at a rapid pace, always in a rush, where people leave to seemingly never return. There are the lonely nights, the mead in disarray due to some bloody war, the thrashing of endless living, the heartbreaking screams, the gratifying splattered blood and flesh across the horizon. In the end, as the sun rises, all is back in its place as it were, any evidence erased by the wind. Where we now live, is the residence of the night, of the conspiracy to harm, of the lurking agreements and handshakes in the dark. Hence, now and then the wind howls in bitterness, now and then, the clouds weave such laden pitiful images, and the flowers, the wild daisies silently carry their pain upon a patch of meadow bleached white in snow.

I rounded up seven rainstorms on Mount Chư Mang, layered them like an apocalyptic tsunami, did you see my love, would it be so hard to believe? The storm at the very end was of an age in shorts oxen herding, stealing potato roots smearing mud chewing wiping sludge off our eyes beneath the rain. The torrent a top achingly cold came solo from afar, heard the water seeping into bone pitied the tiny innocent heart, with all his paths leading into a barren desert. Placed above is the rain from a blistering land of sandstorms sweeping away the old trees. Then above an unexpected storm on the path to a nervous breakdown during that search for fun, in the half-light the four walls of the mountain pale white, chilling, lucky though, still in my hands the warmth of another.

In the middle of all the digging, an abyss appeared beneath his feet. Unable to find his shadow in time for the burial, noon, in Mount Chư Mang, he had to bury himself.
He said: “Who are we burying? Why does it feel like we’re burying ourselves?”.
“Firstly, we bury our arms. The arms tired for how many seasons, now need a rest, to stretch out, to set free the clouds of doubt, love and loss.

By Nguyễn Văn Thiện, translated by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm