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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1 JAN 2006
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PATHS OF ANTS A
SHORT STORY BY KINH
DUONG VUONG
translated by Pham Viem Phuong
Kinh Duong Vuong, pseudonym of
Nguyen Tuan Khanh, artist, poet, and short story
writer, born in Kampuchea in 1941, known as Rung for his painting, Dung Nham/Co Dong for poetry, and Kinh
Duong Vuong for short story. He had contributed to
numerous literary magazines in Saigon, including Bach Khoa,
Van, Van Hoc, Y Thuc, Chinh
Van, Tan Van. Dung Nham/Co
Dong's poems and Kinh Duong Vuong's
short stories recently appeared in a number of literary periodicals published
in the US: Van Hoc, Hop Luu in California, Song Van in Florida. Kinh Duong Vuong's Chiec Mat Na Cuoi, the first collection of short stories, was
published by Van Moi Publisher in 1997. 1 The forest couldn’t hide its rudeness and brutality. It didn’t
have an attractive and mysterious look of an undiscovered world. The secrecy
surrounded everything hiding malicious plots. Beasts and birds of prey had nothing to do with his feelings of
fear and disgust, but human being did. Behind a tree, in a mass of green foliage, under rotting leaves
and grass. Everywhere. A stroke of a scimitar. A poisoned arrow. A spiked hole. A shot from a sniper. All of them hid somewhere and appeared out of the blue to turn
bodies full of life into inanimate objects, bringing young souls that were still
in a daze to the old man holding a scythe who never got tired of his job
regardless of his illness. “But it’s unfair and stupid to blame the forest for, or consider
it as, cruelty. Doing so means being ungrateful to the fresh stream water,
sweet fruits, fragrant flowers and beautiful birdsongs. You must be fair to
nature,” he said to himself. “Nature is always impartial but human beings
are. It’s human beings who have exploited nature,
committed crimes and spoiled it completely.” But the darkness kept covering him and filled him continuously
with the waiting death. It was the darkness that was queer, very hot and
sharp, and sank into his flesh like icy and smelly fangs of a beast. It was
the darkness that made human flesh rotten when it entered a body like venom
of black snakes did. It’s his disgust with the silence and barbarous sounds,
and his desire for light; peaceful existence, honesty and friendship that
made him show prejudice against the forest. *** Beside him, Hoang’s body was doubled up in a kneeling position
but his knees didn’t touch the ground. His head and upper part of his body
leaned forward as if he were trying to keep walking. His arms folded at right
angles. Fingers grasped nearby branches desperately. Hoang died hiding his face in tall grass. Hiding his pale and thin face stricken by hunger. He died on time so he was saved from a slow death from thirst
and hunger. Thank God, thank a lot. Oh! It failed to sooth him and his love
for his friend turned into resentment. A resentment and grief at absurdities. An obscure figure with bared claws and fangs like a powerful
monster appeared and then vanished. It pressed down heavily on his heart
hurting him badly. His anger was mixed with sorrows. Was it a result of a total
impotence? Didn’t it weaken both mind and body of himself and all young men
of his generation? Was it a miserable fate for the whole country? 2 He couldn’t fathom his feelings. He couldn’t grasp the concept
of the division between life and death. There was no longer any distinct line
between them. He felt confused. He asked himself: “Am I dead or alive?” But
it didn’t matter to him. Having known he was alive, he didn’t feel happier
because he knew he was in the world of the dead. He felt Hoang’s cold and
stiff body. “Is this his corpse or mine? Is he dead or asleep?” But the
poisoned spike that pierced his side brought him back to reality. “Hoang was
really dead.” The poison penetrated his body and took his life quickly. In
the twinkling of an eye. Life and death was determined within a twinkling of
an eye. Nobody could foresee anything. People couldn’t foretell and he seemed
to have a sweet dream. But there was no difference when he woke up from the
dream. It’s the truth. Hoang walked only a few steps before him. When he stretched his
hands out to part a bush and slipped through the opening, something went
snap, which sounded meaningless. Hoang doubled up as if being cut down, and
pressed his hands against his belly. He rushed towards Hoang and called in an
undertone, “Hoang, Hoang! What is it? Oh! Hoang, Hoang!” Hoang made no reply.
And Hoang would never speak to him. Hoang’s body gave some slight twitches,
he tried to raise his head but it seemed to be held down by an invisible
hand. It flopped down, exhausted. “Hoang got caught in a booby trap,” he
thought in terror. A spike pierced Hoang’s side like a pitchfork that went
through the abdomen of a frog. He ran his fingers along the spike to touch
the wound. Blood that was to clot stained his hand. It felt cold and viscous. Hoang died on the spot before he could say anything. He died without uttering a scream. His crooked fingers groped hopelessly in the dark. And that’s
all. At the night of the graduation ceremony in Thu Duc Military School, Hoang was one of students assigned
to keep the sacred fire at Trung Nghia Monument. A friend said playfully, “Eh, Hoang, why
should you guard it? Nobody wants to take your place. You can go there first
and feel free to write your name, as big as you want.” Hoang said, “OK! It’s
very good. I could find room for my name and enjoy some scent of incense if I
come back soon. If you come later, there is no place left and you become a
homeless ghost.” And now, his words came true. Hoang came back soon to take his
place and had his name carved on the stone slab. He reunited with his fellow
classmates who had come back before him, along with his familiar or strange
seniors. “Hoang! You died before you could say any words to me, and to
your friends who have to keep living after wandering with you for a time on
the path without direction. We have tried many times to give it some
direction but… this job is not more useful than a sleep and many of us had
decided to have a sleep, a very long sleep. “I remember nights spent with friends after sweating a long day
of drill, we used to look at flares in the dark sky above trying to guess
what direction it was and what was happening over there, or recall some
terrifying battles we watched on the silver screen. “I remember many a quiet and hot noon when fifty fellows of us
were in barracks filled with the smell of sweat and startled from time to
time by the thunder of American 105-millimeter cannons by the barbed wire
fence of the fifth watchtower. “Night and day, and then day and night, fleets of helicopters
and jet-fighters dropped thousands of bombs down to the nipa
forest only some four kilometers away from our school – the distance we
worked out based on the time between the flash and the explosion. We could
see column of smoke rising high. At nights, helicopters hovered around the
school seeking for enemies with their searchlight and fired long rounds from
their machine- guns. They flied so low that the searchlight seemed close to
the barbed wire fence. “We only heard tell of war then and practiced fighting a war and
everything was only theoretical. All disasters were only echoes to our ears.
We never witnessed or really took part in it until now…” 3. He moved Hoang’s body from the spike, laid it on dead leaves,
and sat down. The effort made him exhausted. Then he hastily laid himself
down stretching his arms and legs. He lay there in the dark in which many
bright colors blurred and changed. They moved incessantly in both vertical
and horizontal directions with invisible wings, appearing and then
disappearing. They developed into flowers of all colors of the rainbow that
stood out against a velvety black background. A strange feeling ran through
his body. He sensed this feeling increasing and his body becoming lighter.
His awareness of his body was losing, he thought his body had vaporized and
slowly vanished into thin air. He tried in vain to identify where his limbs
were. It seemed that his body had decayed and the awareness of it floated
over a dark ocean. His body was then a vague concept falling from
nothingness. In such a state of physical exhaustion, he tried to resist, but
at the same time he seemed to expect this feeling to reach its peak. He
wanted to do something to resist it but the action he considered as a great
effort to escape from this state brought him to a sticky end. Like a bubble
that burst in water, or a cloud disappeared in the sky, the delirium came,
like a gentle wave, and carried him away. He saw himself turning into a night
crawler that curled up in cold soil with two arms bent close to his head as
if he were in a womb. He was plunged into total darkness. Winds blew
everywhere. She came on a young camphor leaf growing in a spring morning. The
leaf flew around and her light blue dress waved. Her dark hair flew backwards
showing her forehead. Her eyes narrowed playfully and her full lips looked
like pink segments of grape-fruit. The leaf landed on his forehead. She
leaned and put two slender fingers on his cheeks. Her lips moved gently, “I’m
here with you.” “Thanks,” he answered softly with eyes closed. “I bring you
some food and water.” She took cakes and a bottle of water from a small bag.
Kneeling, she gave him one spoonful of water after another. “My poor
darling!” Her wavy hair around her neck turned into a snake whose skin was
like a velvet scarf. “Our mum is fine.” She took out a mirror from her bosom.
“It’s our mum.” The face of his mother with her lips reddened by betel nut
appeared in the mirror. “Hello, mum.” He whispered. His mother looked
lovingly at him in silence. “And here is our son.” There appeared in the
mirror a white rabbit with a trembling pink nose and jade-like eyes. “O My
darling,” she called, “O My love.” A flare shone in her eyes. He buried his
face in his hands. His body was as heavy as a block of black stone that was
growing bigger and decaying. His eyes were hollowed out, as deep as two black
holes. His teeth lost. “Honey, I love you.” She bent and kissed the swollen
lips and the neck of his dead body. She transformed into a big black ant with
its two claws like a pair of pincers gripping his neck. He pushed her away in
terror. He tries desperately to move the claws with his weary hands. He
shouted, “Let me go! Let me go! O My love! My darling... Oh! I’m only a
corpse... Oh... I...” He woke up, still in panic. The forest became clearer. He felt
comfortable. But it was the highest level of physical exhaustion that he
hadn’t been aware of. He still lay with arms and legs stretching out like a
bedridden patient. Some beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. He felt very
tired as if his body had been thinner, like short-crust pastry spread on the
ground. He opened his eyes and tried to look up at clusters of leaves but his
eyes seemed to be covered with a blanket of fog. He thought he was lying on a
revolving record and found it hard for him to tell where his body was. The
skin of his abdomen, like a block of stone, pressed heavily on his stomach,
which caused a shooting pain. He tried to take a deep breath to push up the
skin of his abdomen. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his neck. It might be
there for long but he could only notice when a black ant as big as his thumb
curved its tail and gave him a sting that made his wound sore. The pain shot
through his whole body. His blood rushed in his vein and he could suddenly
lift his arm to touch his wound and killed the ant that was sinking its claws
into his flesh. He rubbed the swollen wound and moved gently the other hand.
Lying still, he searched all of his bags and pockets and found a vitamin pill
at the bottom of a bag and put it into his mouth. Although the open sore woke
his senses, the state of numbness was still there. After a little while, with
an effort, he turned on his side in the hope of sitting up. And then he could
sit up with a jerk as a strong man out of panic. His body jerked up as if it
had been pushed by a spring when he realized he had pillowed on Hoang’s
corpse. A shiver running down his spine made him tremble. He could felt the
coldness that had penetrated his body the whole night long. He pulled his
knees close up to his chest for warmth. Dried blood made his fingers stick
together. He opened and stretched his fingers. The dried blood came off along
lines of his hand and fell down like red crumbs of cochineal. It’s dawn now.
In the dense forest, sunlight hardly penetrated the leaves and he couldn’t
tell what the time was. A ray of sunlight appeared suddenly, which made him
to look up. Through an opening high above, the ray came down right on Hoang’s
face like an angry look. The bluish light reflected by the leaves made
Hoang’s face paler. The pool of the light around him was as sweet as the
color of young camphor leaves in early spring. He looked at Hoang’s corpse. His abdomen rose high because his
back was on a big root. His limbs stretched in an awkward position. On his
clothes, there were marks of blood left by some scuffles. He sat by Hoang’s
foot and looked at him. His nostrils were two holes of which some hairs stuck
out. The big and round tip of his nose rose high and looked like a small
slope. His eyes were half-closed and white, and his mouth open. His face was
still wild with terror. His crooked tooth stained with nicotine that looked
funny in a toothy smile on his face yesterday, now pushed his upper lip
outward and looked like an undersized canine. In such a posture, it seemed
that Hoang was having a strange sleep except for the fact that his open eyes
were covered with black ants whom he didn’t bother to drive away. He leaned forward and stroked Hoang’s eyes. The black ants dispersed
in panic. His body trembled. The cold from Hoang’s corpse seemed to linger on
his hand which made his skin crawl. This feeling caused him a sudden fear as
if there were a hidden enemy who would jump out unexpectedly to kill him when
he had no strength to resist. He had a nose round. Bushes seemed to have
their own ears and eyes, they stared back as if
wanting to bare their teeth. But surroundings were silent except for some
breezes that stirred the leaves. Most of the ants had left Hoang’s face aside from some that
lingered about his ears. On the tip of his nose, a small ant felt its way
down the slope. It seemed confused, turning left, then right, going forward
and then moving back as if trying to find a suitable path. At last, it went
down the slope with careful steps but its legs failed to stick and it fell
onto Hoang’s sparsely bearded chin. The vitamin pill helped him recover some strength. He wanted to
take advantage of this moment – he knew it wouldn’t last long – to do
something useful. He picked some edible leaves to reduce his hunger and
thought of burying Hoang and looking for an escape route. But his newly
recovered strength was not enough for him to dig a hole for Hoang, even a
30-centimeter deep one. His throat got extremely dry and saliva in his mouth
became thick. He reached for his hip flask in the hope of getting its last
drops of water. He turned his face upwards, carefully put its mouth on his
lower lip and held it in his mouth. Doing so, he thought no drop would be
wasted. The flask had been as dry as a bone but he kept turning his face
upwards opening his mouth waiting for an invisible drop of water. He clinked the flask against his teeth hoping a drop would
fall down but he could only hear the dry sound when the flask hit his teeth.
He leaned against a tree feeling utterly exhausted. A dead leaf from a high
branch plunged to the ground like a kite with its string broken. The leaf
fell right on a path of ants, which disturbed them. It was a path crowded
with millions of ants moving in line in the same direction. Ants with tiny
waists and full abdomens held their head close to the ground,
they looked like figures walking with their backs bent forward. They were
nosing around, feeling their way and trying to keep to the desirable direction.
At irregular intervals, leaders of the groups were like commanders standing
out from their troops. Leisurely, the king ant walked as slowly and calmly as
a middle-aged man who experienced too many ups and downs, and liked watching
his step. They sometimes stopped, craned their necks and moved their feelers. After some disorder, the ants gathered and resumed their
journey. The leaf lay there, on their way, and they crossed it like a caravan
traveling across a yellow river. In the swarm of ants, there were some who
refused to follow others. They seemed confused and lost and tried to go in
the opposite direction keeping something between their claws intact. The
whitish thing they kept was enlarged by his imagination, which made all his
senses livelier. His heart began to pound and his ears rang but his eyes
sparkled. His mouth watered. He caught an ant, picked the white stuff it had
carried and squashed it between his first finger and thumb. His head fell in
a whirl. The stuff between his fingers was starchy and sticky. It was cooked
rice. The word ‘rice’ rang in his head like a hammer blow. He had to close
his eye to bring his emotion under control. He swallowed some saliva to clear
his choked throat but it hurt as if being torn. He imagined inside membrane of
his throat was taped together. He picked some sour leaves and chewed them to
get some saliva and hastily covered Hoang’s body with dead leaves. “Take care
of my life first. Pity must be at the right time. Hoang was dead, and I’m so
weak that I couldn’t bury him properly. These dead leaves will cover you,
Hoang. I hope no hungry tiger comes across you. Your flesh and bones will rot
in the soil and from you some grass or flower will grow. Bees will come to
get pollen for their honey that will feed a bear. That will be the last
benefit you leave to the ground...” He grasped a branch and managed to stand up. Slowly, he followed
the path of ants. But saying so wasn’t correct. In fact, he had to crawl all
the way through many thorny bushes. His face and arms scratched on all kinds
of thorns and they bled as if he were clawed. Many hard thorns were stuck in
his clothes and from time to time he had to stop to take them off. Such a
simple task made him exhausted. He lay down holding his chest to catch his
breath, and thought he would never be able to sit up again and would rot away
in the thorny bushes. But the image of the white grain of rice danced before
his eyes and he felt encouraged. He managed to turn over and continued to
follow the ant path. It seemed to get longer and longer running through bush
after bush and the ants went incessantly. The surroundings suddenly became brighter. Under his unsteady
steps there appeared small spots of sunlight. The path got clearer when it
came to a grove. The ants led him to a small meadow spotted with sunlight.
Clusters of flowers waved in the shade of trees. The path of ants divided
when the ants took different routes to go through a thick bush, and then
headed for the same place. His eyes followed them and he got surprised to see
them gather on the corpse of a guerrilla. It’s really an exciting scene when
they climbed over others in an effort to reach the stuff they smelled miles
away. He came closer. The guerrilla had fallen into a spiked hole
prepared by his own comrades. One of his leg was in
the deep hole, the other stretched out. His trunk lay
facing upwards on a bush. His face turned purplish and contorted like a clown
who dropped dead when performing a painful and terrible scene on the stage.
By his leg lay a new-looking hat made of bamboo covered in dark brown
oilcloth. The ants flocked to his hip attacking something wrapped in
banana leaves. He broke off a stem and used it to drive the ants away, and
took the parcel. He carefully peeled off the banana leaves with his trembling
hands. After the last layer, the white of a lump of cooked rice appeared
before his eyes shining like jade. The lump of rice had smelled stale but it
still made his mouth water wildly. Saliva produced so quickly that he couldn’t
swallow, which made him choke. Holding the lump of rice in his hands, he
opened his mouth and sank his teeth into the precious lump of soft jade. A
streak of saliva that he couldn’t stop came from a corner of his mouth. He
took mouthful after mouthful, chewed carelessly and swallowed hastily. The
lump was rather large and he could only have half of it. He drank water the
guerrilla kept in a dried bamboo tube. He wrapped the leftover rice and
fastened it to his belt, and poured the leftover water into his flask. He leaned against a foot of a tree for some rest. A pleasant
tiredness spread slowly across his body. And miraculously, he felt everything
had changed. It’s a sea change, from a dying state he came to the threshold
of life. The sun shone brightly about him. High above thick branches was a
patch of blue sky. The clear blue implied a lot of hope. “My neck is saved.”
He thought. He deduced that there might have been somebody living near here,
a village of some minorities for example. The thought of a possible relation
connecting him with human community made him moved. His tears came out easily
and warmed his eyes. Although he tried to prevent his hope from bringing his
imagination too far, he couldn’t help thinking about the joy of coming home
and seeing his wife, children, old mother and friends again. He saw the face
of Loan, his wife, covered with tears when learning that he had gone missing
in the jungle, and how happy she might be when seeing him appear in the
doorway. She would stand there speechlessly, overcome with emotion, and rush
to embrace him in tears, “My love! My darling!” she would sob, “You are home
again.” Yes, her husband will be home again, alone, as a hero from battle who
is still standing upright in spite of wounds on his body. Dung, his
three-year-old son, as usual, would rush out to hug his legs, which made his
walk clumsy. He would meet with difficulties disengaging himself from his
son’s hug, and he would lift him up and rub his beard on his cheek making him
laugh wildly and pat his father’s cheeks with his round pink hands. Loan,
after moving moments, would hurry to prepare water and urge him to take a
bath. He would step across the threshold and come into the living room. His
mother would be sitting on the bamboo bed looking at him. Her red eyes would
look confused as if living in a dream in which she were reborn. He would
call, “Mum!” She would say, “You poor bastard! You are still alive!” and she
would turn away to wipe the tears with her scarf. During their meal, he would
tell them how many dangers he had escaped from and his mother would certainly
put her chopsticks down and cry as she used to do whenever he came home from
an operation and say repeatedly, “My poor son, my poor son... Buddha bless you!” Beating of his heart became regular, his breathing steady, and
his body revived. The breath of life along with his blood ran through his
body. He listened to a distant birdsong. Its clear
sound echoed through the quiet forest. He suddenly heard this sound from
branches over his head. The bird had come here from some distance away. It
sang three times and fell silent for some time, as if it were a singer who,
after singing a line or two, paused to listen to
the echo of its own voice. He stretched and took a deep breath, kept the air in his lungs
for a moment before sending it out: the death of an enemy had brought him
back to life! The first thing he had to do was to bury the guerrilla, he
thought. And then he could go back along the path of ants to find Hoang’s
body and bury him properly before seeking for some route to the nearest
village. With some strength recovered, he started his job eagerly. His
sweat poured off him over the new-dug soil. He had to stop digging at times
and wiped his face with his shirttail. The bird on the top of the tree kept
singing. Its high-pitched song with an unchanged pattern of modulation was a
word of encouragement to him. It’s a friend who came on time to give voice to
the joy in his heart. He turned his face upwards looking for the new and
lovely friend. A bright blue bird on one of top branches was deep in its
singing. Its song became quicker, more exciting and compelling. Its bright
yellow chest swelled out heaving. Its blue wings shone like silk. Its black
crest vibrated. Its fan-like tail with long red feathers waved in the breeze.
He suddenly made sense of it and smiled. It was a lonely he- bird who was
sending his feelings in his song to some prospective partner. The sun was high now. He had finished digging a grave and had a
rest on the pile of earth. He wiped his face again with his shirttail and
took some sips of water from his flask. The still and quiet surroundings made him think of a park. On
that green and smooth grass there would have been flowered carpets where
parents could play with their children and enjoy pleasant moments amid the
beauties of nature. There would have been some deer grazing here and rabbits
playing around lovers. But on the sunlit grass now there was only a bamboo
hat beside a newly dug grave and a stiff corpse with a face full of terror
and despair. He stepped towards the corpse of the guerrilla with the
intention of lifting him up, but out of curiosity he wanted to know the
deceased’s name before burying him. At least he could engrave it on the trunk
of a tree, as a sign of his gratitude to a stranger whose food had saved his life, he thought so when starting to search the corpse. In
an inside breast pocket, he found a small paper packet. Running over papers
in it he gathered enough details to engrave on a tree, “Nguyen Xuan Vui, born in 1951 in Quang Nam...” He wondered whether he died the day before
yesterday or last night. It turned out that he was nearly seventeen, of the
same age as Hung’s, his younger brother. As for Hoang, he was born in Ninh Binh, North Vietnam, and
died at the age of 25. He re-wrapped the deceased’s belongings, including
some papers, some change and a small picture of a girl with an innocent face.
On its back there was a line of scrawling handwriting in pencil, “For you, as
a souvenir.” He put back the packet in the breast pocket of the deceased, and
bent forward. *** Some days later, a newspaper published in Saigon carried the
following piece of news: “Quang Nam, such day such
month... In a local operation in search of a missing unit in a forest
northeast of Quang Nam, an explosion that had
killed at least two VCs was reported. Experts said they must have fallen into
a spiked hole prepared by their accomplices. When trying to get rid of the
spike they made hidden grenades go off.” The reporter, however, failed to notice the fact that the grave
had just been dug. If the reporter were not able to pay attention to such a
big grave, he would never have ability to see on a nearby branch a hand with
a silver plate that said, Le Van Lam. Service
number... Blood type... It was his hand and his plate, thrown up and got
caught there after the explosion. KINH DUONG VUONG Translated by Pham Viem
Phuong The Writers Post &
literature-in-translation, founded
1999, based in the US. Editorial
note: Works
published in this issue are simultaneously published in the printed Wordbridge magazine (ISSN: 1540-1723). Copyright
© Pham Viem Phuong & Kinh Duong
Vuong 2006. Nothing in this magazine may be
downloaded, distributed, or reproduced without the permission of the author/
translator/ artist/
The Writers Post/ and Wordbridge
magazine. Creating links to place The Writers Post or any of its pages within
other framesets or in other documents is copyright violation, and is not
permitted.
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