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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 8 NUMBER 2 JUL 2006
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The Sacred River Will Never
Be Drained Dry A
SHORT STORY BY NGO THE VINH
translated by the author
NGO THE VINH, doctor, member of the editorial staff and the editor-in-chief of
Tinh-Thuong magazine, a monthly published by students of the School of Medicine
(Saigon University), former 81st Airborne Ranger M.D. during the Vietnam
War serving three years’ imprisonment in re-education camps after 1975. After
released, he worked as a Physiatrist
at Saigon Rehabilitation Centre and the
School of Physiotherapy in Saigon. His novel Vong Dai Xanh (The Green
Belt), published in 1970, won the 1971 National Prize for Literature. Vong
Dai Xanh 2nd edition was published in 1987 (California: Van Nghe,
1987). After Gio Mua published in
1965, Bong Dem 1964, and May Bao 1963, Vong Dai Xanh is the fourth book of the author
published before 1975, after several requests for permission to publish met
refusal from the censorship Bureau in Saigon. Through
nine wide openings the River of Nine Dragons flows into the sea, The
long river sings its formidable endless song. Nguyên Sa
From the Sacred
Mountain at an elevation of 15,000 feet in the lofty Tibetan Highlands, from
somewhere in the immense whiteness of snow-covered mountain slopes, the Mekong
River originates and swashes downstream as a major river of Asia. From its origins, that frenzied blue river
takes a length of time, over numerous rapids, across many climatic and
demographic regions before reaching Viet Nam where, embracing a sacred land,
it takes on the name Cửu Long
Giang, River of Nine Dragons, stretching its nine branches all the way
to the South China Sea. It is a known fact
that after leaving Cambodia and entering Viet Nam, the river splits into Sông
Tiền and Sông Hậu (Tiền River and Hậu River), which
rivers then subdivide and empty into the sea through eight mouths. But because nine is believed to be a more
auspicious number by geomantic divination, Tranh Đề is counted
even though it is merely a very tiny estuary. This is similar to the case of the area called Thất
Sơn, (Seven Sacred Mountains), where the favorable number seven is
chosen for its name even though in actuality there exist more than seven
mountains. One may wonder when
the name River of Nine Dragons was coined.
According to Gia Định Thành Thông Chí—Chronicle of
Gia Định, a fortified township known during the French period as
Nam Kỳ (Southern part of Vietnam) -- the name Cửu Long was created by Trịnh Hoài
Đức. Born in the Fukien
area of China in 1765 -- the same year of birth as the great Vietnamese poet
Nguyễn Du—Trịnh migrated to Trấn Biên (which would later be
called Biên Hòa), where he passed the national civil service examinations and
subsequently served both Emperors Gia Long and Minh Mạng, ranking high
in the hierarchy of civil mandarins, and known by the pseudonym Cấn
Trai. Together with Lê Quang
Định and Lê Nhân Tĩnh, Trịnh studied under the renowned
master Võ Trường Toản.
Well known for poetry, these three scholars were referred to by their
contemporaries as Gia Định Tam Gia Thi (Three Great Poets of Gia
Định). When talking about
the Mekong delta, the native land of Điền and his sister Bé
Tư, images of rice and floods immediately come to mind. To co-exist with floods is nothing new to
those who live on the banks of the river which is interconnected with a
tangle of canals and ditches. Those
inhabitants expect the annual arrival of floods which bring not only layers
and layers of silt deposit to render rice fields more fertile, but also
plenty of fish and shrimp. That is to
say nothing of the great service provided by floodwaters in washing away
harmful acid sulfate from the soil, and in removing some portion of
chất độc Da Cam / the toxic Agent Orange still embedded
deeply here and there in the dead forests ever since the end of the
Vietnam War. It seemed like ages
ago, but Điền could never forget the biggest flood in the year
when, having just turned ten, he was considered almost grown-up by country
folk. It had been around the middle
of May when the first rising floodtide, vivid red, from upper reaches poured
downstream in torrents. “The red
color comes not only from silt sediment; in some years the water was mixed
with blood,” Điền’s father had said without further
elaboration. Only much later when he
grew up did Điền come to understand the meaning. It turned out that the blood came from
hapless Vietnamese victims beheaded and dumped into the river by Cambodians
during their brutal depredations along the border. At the sight of that
rising water, everyone in Điền’s village had known immediately
that the flood season was on the verge, promising a huge deluge, judging from
the familiar warning signs: red ants abandoned their nests and transported
their eggs up to treetops; swarms of small honeybees coming from the
mountains also made their hives higher in elevation. Unlike the fierce Red River in the north,
both Tiền River and Hậu River, even during intense flooding,
usually rise gradually until they overflow the riversides and spread
out. This more gentle flooding
results from the fact that a portion of the flood waters reverses course and
empties into the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. However, what had
happened in that particular year was quite unexpected. Not only was the flood bigger and its
current faster, but it also came about ten days earlier than usual, which
caught farmers unprepared. The flood
waters flowed uninterruptedly downstream, dragging along dry twigs and
batches of duckweed adorned with violet flowers. Steadily the water level increased from eight to twelve inches
per day, so fast that even floating rice became submerged, its stems not
being able to elongate rapidly enough to keep its grain heads floating. Water completely overflowed canals and
fields, powerfully swept across roads, to the extent that one could not tell
where river ended and fields began.
In low-lying areas, the water rose almost to the roofs of houses, its
undulating movement tattering branches and twigs. On thatched and tin roofs were seen people and dogs emerging
from the flood, in the company of a few dispirited chickens. In contrast, flocks of ducks, the swimming
birds, nonchalantly displayed their unruffled feathers. Điền and his younger brother
and sister sat timorously on the roof of their house. To spare the girl embarrassment, their
mother allowed Bé Tư to keep on her trousers, while the two brothers
went completely naked rather than wearing wet clothes all day long. The sky lowered, consistently appearing
darkish as if drenched with vapor, and was only blessed with warm sunlight
around noontime, even as below it the flood waters continued to rise, immense
and cold. Golden rice fields were no
longer seen; instead, ripples of water were speckled with gracefully undulating điên
điển blossoms in bright yellow. From early morning, Điền accompanied his father in a
small sampan to gather điên
điển / sesbania flowers and to fish for cá linh, a popular fresh water small white fish. Duckweeds
are marked with violet flowers Điên điển adorned
with yellow blossoms Điên điển plant is called Srock Snor in
the Khmer language. It grows wild
along the banks of canals and rivers, yielding yellow blossoms which, if
gathered early in the day, will make a delicious soup or a salad mixed with cooked
shrimp. But if gathered late, when
the sun is already high, the blossoms will be no longer good, having a bitter
taste. Oblivious of the
flood and cold wind, Điền was delighted with the silver-white
little fish trapped in the net. One
eats white fish in the rainy season, black fish in the dry season. Điền well appreciated the
familiar adage that tells of a rhythm in life of the Delta. Indeed, uncountable numbers of fish were
now swimming down from the Tonle Sap Lake.
It took Điền and his father only just more than half a
morning to fill up several tin boxes with fish. They intended to keep some to eat and save a portion to make
fish sauce, and sell the rest in the market.
The so-called market was actually no more than a few scattered bamboo
stands temporarily moved to a part of the road not yet submerged in water,
which served fellow villagers for the duration of the flood. A few days earlier,
Điền’s father had dived into the deep water and cut and salvaged a
few bushels of rice. Now that the sun
had come out, father and son spread them on the road to dry. It was hardship, but they endured it
without complaint, tolerated it with perseverance, in the manner that had
been lived for more than 300 years by one generation after another of
migrants from a few provinces in Central Vietnam – from Thuận Hoá and
Quảng Nam. Those early settlers
had followed the Nguyễn Lords in their southward movement, the aim of
which was to clear and develop wild wetlands where “up in the mountains
mosquitoes cried a flutelike sound, down in the water leeches swam like round
noodles in a Southern soup dish,” as described in a folksong. Back then, people believed that the banks
of the river were fully inhabited by spirits and ghosts, alongside poisonous
snakes, tigers and crocodiles. By
association, Điền could not help recalling a more sentimental
folksong: Stranger,
since you have come all this way, please stay. When your trees take root and your plants grow green, You may
return, if so desires your heart. Not only until trees
took root and plants grew green, Điền thought with amusement, but
even after having had a family blessed with children and grandchildren, none
of the initial migrants ever quit the lush delta and returned to their native
villages and towns. The summer-fall crop
in that unlucky year was thus considered completely lost, the suffering made
more intense by loss of lives, most of them children, including a boy named
Sanh who had been Điền’s intimate friend since they were
first-graders. Loss and pain notwithstanding,
everyone kept a close watch on the flood level, waiting for the moment when
the water began to recede before throwing themselves into cleaning up their
houses and fixing damage, and in sowing whatever remaining rice seeds—in
other words, they would begin the planting process once again. Was it ever too late to begin from the
beginning? Regardless of what anyone
might say, Điền’s memory of his childhood in the village was
filled with more joy than sorrow.
Nature is rich and also could be unfeeling, and sometimes hard but
more often beneficent to human beings, he thought. When the Delta does not suffer high floods, a rice surplus can
be counted on, orchards prosper with a large selection of fruit varieties,
and fields are populated with fish and shrimp and frogs. “In the afternoon the crow tells the
kite, Ông Chưởng Island is full of fish and shrimp,” a
folksong joyfully remarks. It is
common knowledge that not only are local crops plentiful, they also carry a
unique deliciousness drawn from the quality of the soil in the Delta’s
fertile fields and orchards. Điền
remembered how he had thoroughly enjoyed his regular summer visits to his
paternal grandmother in Bến Tre, where he had consumed to his heart’s
content ripe tamarind fruit, sweet coconut milk, coconut candy, coconut puff,
shrimp stewed in coconut milk, and butter-fried white larvae found in the top
of the coconut palm tree; not to mention divine dishes prepared by his
grandmother, like catfish braised in caramel sauce in a clay pot, and sour
fish soup. Years later, living abroad
where there was a surplus of foods, Điền never had the experience
of eating anything approximating such Món Lạ Miền Nam / Wonderful
Dishes from the South as vividly described in a book of that title by
writer Vũ Bằng, or of drinking a glass of coconut milk with the
mellow taste nourished by the Delta’s soil.
Similar to Bồng Sơn and Tam Quan in Central Vietnam,
Bến Tre in the South—where belonged Điền’s paternal
lineage—was a land of the coconut, the type of palm tree that in
Điền’s opinion was useful from crown to roots. It was probably because of that view that
the thesis he submitted for graduation, to the well-known College of
Architecture, Cal Poly State University at San Luis Obispo, was a design not
for a modern shopping mall in Hanoi or Saigon, but for a light-filled
house completely built with materials taken from the coconut tree,
suitable for farmers living in the Mekong delta. The popular metaphor
for an immense field—as one where an egret can fly with its wings completely
outstretched—was in Điền’s memory associated with the times, as a
child, he had gone hunting for field rats and egrets in the rice fields. He had more than once engaged in these
activities in the company of his childhood friend Hộ. Having smeared
mud all over their faces except the eyes, the two would go to the middle of a
certain field where they would lie down waiting for the birds to come – any
of them from cattle egrets to white herons to fiery storks. All they would need to do was to
immediately jump and catch the one who came within their reach. Hộ, having no fear of being pecked
at the eyes, would doggedly remain on his back, waiting without moving a
muscle for as long as it took a fooled bird to virtually alight within his
arm’s reach; this clever ruse made him the only one between them who could
catch egrets. Điền was
never successful in this game. On the
other hand, he and his sister Bé Tư were skillful in catching a lot of
soft-shelled crabs which their grandmother would preserve in salt, or use as
the main ingredient in her famous dish bún riêu, crab noodle
soup. Điền admitted that
it was fun to engage in the game of egret hunting. He was told the flesh of the cattle egret was rancid, that of
white heron more tasty. But the
thought of eating egret congee and meat of field rat turned his stomach, and
he never cared to try. Recently
Điền again met Hộ who had earned no less than a
doctorate. When Điền
reminded him of their time of rat and egret hunting, Hộ only laughed. Though still attached to rice fields and
fruit tree plantations, Hộ had other passions as well. If not busy with teaching and research, he
would be seen spending a whole day at a time, rain or shine, with a group of
students studying agriculture and forestry, moving around some fields,
attending to newly transplanted rice seedlings. They were experimenting with techniques of intensive
cultivation aiming at four and a half crops per year, by weekly, when the time
was right, transplanting and harvesting the rice in alternate plots of equal
size. It was their hope to increase
annual rice output of each acre from 15 tons to 30 tons, guaranteeing to
raise levels of export and of domestic consumption during the 21st
century. It was Hộ himself who
earned the utmost credit for introducing HYV, High Yield Variety, rice to the
Mekong delta, which achievement rested chiefly on his success in persuading
farmers to do away with their habitual methods of cultivation, to abandon old
varieties of rice for the short ugly-looking rice plant which was sure to
produce greater volumes of grain.
Convinced farmers later dubbed HYV Lúa Honda (Honda Rice). Its high productivity helped them rake in
extra money, so much so that they could afford to purchase Honda motorbikes,
and Honda electric generators which provided them with power in the evening
to watch TV. Their most favorite
program was the weekly Saturday show of renovated theatre cải
lương, and the second most watched program featured “teacher
Hộ” who would answer their questions related to rice cultivation. Indeed, the achievement which saw Viet Nam
turning into the world’s second biggest rice exporter had to be credited to
Hộ and the Department of Agricultural Science at the University of
Cần Thơ, Điền considered. Modestly, Hộ protested that the credit should have gone
first to the farmers’ efforts, then to the support from UNDP and the
International Rice Institute. Hộ was
originally from Bến Tre, the native land of Đồng Khởi,
the general uprising movement of the intelligentsia of former South
Vietnam. Having issued from a
farmer’s family, he was robust and healthy.
His family was poor, but that did not prevent Hộ from becoming a
good student of Mỹ Tho high school from which he graduated with
honors. Subsequently he was awarded a
Colombo scholarship to study in Australia, where he earned a B.Sc. degree in
agricultural engineering and went on to obtain a doctorate with a voluminous
dissertation entitled “The Ecosystem of the Lower Mekong Basin”. Hộ declined a teaching job offer
there, as he never entertained the idea of living and working abroad. The path he took as a committed
intellectual—clinging to the Delta soil and its rice fields, living in
harmony with plants and trees as well as with relatives and fellow villagers—could
be said to be full of difficulties, if not to say adversities. Hộ showed
little concern for references to his designated status after 1975, as an
intellectual being lưu dung, kept thanks to the communist
government’s forgiveness; and certainly not being lưu dụng, kept on and used for his abilities. The vast difference in meaning and feeling
between the two phrases is marked by a single dissimilar tone, as a medical
doctor pointed out to Hộ. After
the Geneva Accords of 1954 divided the country, the physician had chosen to
stay on and serve at Phủ Doãn hospital in Hanoi instead of fleeing to
the South like a million other people.
In spite of that, he had been placed in the former category lưu
dung. Even twenty-five years
after the experience of humiliation, the man still talked about it with
bitterness. No matter how he
himself was classified, Hộ worked 14 to 16 hours a day, more energetic
than those who were voted as advanced model workers. Besides teaching and research, he also
personally managed a newsletter designed for transmitting common scientific
knowledge to villagers. The bulletin
dealt with many subjects, from topics close to home such as familiar local trees grown in the backyard like cay mu u or Calophyllum inophyllum, that could absorb and thus remove some
acid sulfate from the soil, to distant matters like a space shuttle in
another country. There was nothing so
unusual about a space shuttle, the going and coming of which being so
frequent that it had stopped being a hot topic in the world at large. But even so, Hộ had to pay a price
when writing about it. Năm
Lộc, a Communist Party member in charge of propaganda and instruction, whose
educational level was no higher than seventh grade, and who continuously
lectured on “the indispensability of the Party nature in science”, demanded
that Hộ add to his piece of information the comment that, even though
the US had produced the space shuttle, the Russian progress in space science
was still half a century ahead. In a
meeting of the paper’s staff, Hộ frankly protested that such a comment
was not correct, and proceeded with displaying photos and data to support his
repudiation. The result was that his
item about the space shuttle did not make its appearance in the
newsletter. Hộ told his
colleagues that he would rather have it unpublished than giving out disinformation
in the field of science. In his
opinion, this incident represented not a struggle between the old and the
new, or between capitalism and socialism.
Rather, it was a conflict between truth and falsehood. Were he to make just one single step
toward accepting a lie, Hộ believed, he would himself quickly
degenerate and become corrupt like a number of his colleagues in the
North. In his straightforward view,
no matter where and when, every citizen must bear part of the responsibility
for both the good and the bad deeds committed by the regime under which he
lived. The land reform program which
had been implemented in North Vietnam in the 1950s, complete with denouncement
and accusation of landlords in public trials, could not have been easily
carried out in the South; and even if it had been, it could not have gone to
such a drastic extent. Coming from the
South, Hộ extended his network of friends and colleagues to North
Vietnam and overseas. He became
associated with the Mekong Forum Group, the members of which he had never met
face to face but only had come to know well through the Internet, their
common denominator being genuine concern for the future of the Mekong River
and human ecology in the Mekong delta region. Among those distant friends, mention should be made of Duy, an
M.D. who lived in the U.S. and taught molecular biology and genetics at
Stanford University. Duy was born in
North Vietnam, grew up in the South, and graduated from a university in
America. Though authentically of
northern roots, Duy held an extremely biased view of the riverine culture of
the Mekong delta. In his opinion,
during the upcoming millennium, the center of Vietnamese civilization would
no longer be the Red River delta; it would shift to the Mekong delta. Even civilizations once glorious spared
neither decline through the passage of time, nor decay marked by negative
impacts on the environment brought about by people. To use genetics terminology, one would say that the gene of
such a civilization had become exhausted and defective. Duy reflected that during the last 50
years alone, as the protracted war wreaked havoc on a divided Vietnam, people
and their language were taken advantage of in the interest of divisive and
deceitful political purposes, resulting in the exhaustion of the mother
tongue. Words no longer carried their
true meaning. Mind and heart were no
longer one. Even ordinary honest
people had become a rare image in literature. Against the length of the history of Vietnam, that span of time
was insignificant, yet it had a detrimental mutation effect on the
roots of Vietnamese civilization.
Also in Duy’s belief, the young and healthy gene of the
riverine civilization of the Mekong delta would dominate and replace the old
gene, and would have the potential to restore the heritage of the entire
country which was now on the verge of bankruptcy. Hộ did not
share Duy’s extreme negative viewpoint.
Nonetheless, such a new and fresh perspective made him ponder. Hộ himself had great faith in the civilization
of rice, or more inclusively speaking, in the orchard civilization—to
borrow the subtitle Văn Minh Miệt Vườn
of a well-known book by Sơn Nam on life in the part of the Mekong delta
where fruit tree plantations predominate.
The Delta as a whole was the cradle of civilization for generations of
pioneering explorers made up of simple and honest people, who were at the
same time generous of heart, not yet contaminated with outdated practices and
bent by restrictive rites and rituals.
Aspiring for restoration, the country was definitely in need of a
social order of such ingenuousness. During the flood
season, Bé Tư remembered, many portions of the roads were submerged in
water, which made it impossible to travel overland, and one had to use a boat
to move around. It was a truly
tropical climate marked by heavy showers which came as suddenly as they went. But there was no shortage of cool breezes
caressing and refreshing one’s face, bringing with them tiny drops of water
generated from the waves splashing against the hulls of boats. This was not the
first time that Bé Tư came back for a visit to her native land. In fact, she had returned many times to
visit several bird sanctuaries for which she had made every effort to raise
funds, largely eliciting help from organizations like the American
Conservation Group (ACG), the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), and the
International Crane Foundation (ICF).
Keen on studying the lives of birds, after having graduated from the
University of Colorado, Bé Tư turned herself into a young and
well-respected researcher in ornithology and the factors involved with
environmental protection. Tràm Chim
Nature Reserve, the bird sanctuary located in Tam Nông District,
Đồng Tháp Province, was the image of paradise she had in mind, so
close, right in her home country, and at the same time representing a remote
beautiful Shangri-la still remaining on this planet. She also realized that Tam Nông District
was not only a habitat of immense Melaleuca forests where all types of tropical
vegetation grew in marshy wetlands, but also a cradle for the cycle of
birth and growth of hundreds of species of invertebrates. In addition, the annual Mekong River flood
waters brought in numerous fish and shrimp which made up an endless source of
food for birds. Bé Tư could not
help being surprised to notice that baby cranes doubled their weight within
only a few weeks of living in Tràm Chim.
For several years now, during the dry season from October to May, she
had arranged to come back to this place as if going on a pilgrimage, for the
pleasure of beholding migrant birds flocking here from very distant
horizons. Her joy grew greater with
each visit as she witnessed a steady increase in the number and size of
flocks of migrant birds. The weather had
shifted and the rainy season was now gone.
This was the first time Điền had returned to Vietnam with
his younger sister, Bé Tư. His feelings
were quite different from hers, owing to the vast difference in their
respective life experiences. He had
endured hardship during years of military service, encountered great
difficulties when plans to escape from the country were discovered which
resulted in the communist police shooting at his boat, and had been
imprisoned and tortured mercilessly to be left with deep scars on his cheeks
and forehead. Knowing full well that
they did not share political views, brother and sister were determined not to
discuss current affairs. This journey
had a clear-cut purpose for Điền, complying with Hộ’s
request that he study the feasibility of building the proposed light-filled house with materials taken entirely from
coconut trees found in the Mekong delta. Điền had
achieved the first step in studying a method of mixing two local materials:
coconut fibrous husk and clay, supply of the latter being almost
inexhaustible from Bến Cát digs.
Chemicals were then added to manufacture a type of pre-fabricated drywall able to withstand humid
weather and prevent water permeation during the flood season. On another level,
Điền entirely shared Hộ’s perspective on human ecology. The two were against the viewpoint held by
the Central Hydraulic Group based on their experience of the Red River, a
viewpoint which resulted in a plan to build dams on the Mekong River for
flood control, at the expected cost of billions of dollars. This plan would translate into a cutting
off of the lifeline of the Delta dating back a thousand years. Hộ maintained the desire to co-exist
with floods in a secure and happy way, making full use of endless sources of
silt, fish and shrimp brought in by flood waters which also did an excellent
job of washing away harmful substances from rice fields. Hộ even allowed his mind to go
further when he talked with passion about the majestic beauty of the southern
land during the flood season, which he perceived as full of potential for
tourism development in the future. He
thought that the Mekong delta, in both the dry and rainy seasons, presented
unique features which distinguished it from any upper reaches of the river;
and its scenery, so filled with life, would provide attractive images to be
captured in the lenses of tourists’ cameras: areas of garden houses coolly
shaded throughout the year by green fruit trees; floating markets at the Cái
Bè Canal and Tiền River Confluence; floating markets at Phụng
Hiệp Seven Corners, the meeting place of seven perfectly straight
canals that spread out in radial arrangement like a brilliant water star,
which in fact the French used to call Les
Étoiles; modern floating villages engaged in aquaculture at the
confluence of three streams in Châu Đốc; Thất Sơn
(Seven Sacred Mountains), once inhabited by Taoist mystics; relics at
Ốc Eo attributed to the civilization of the bygone Phù Nam Kingdom; and
the Tràm Chim Nature Reserve enlivened with dances performed by cranes and
other migrant birds. Hộ asserted
that what he visualized was no mere dream; it was already made real by its
inclusion in the plan of the World Tourism Organization when this outfit
decided to designate the Mekong River
as one of the world’s ten most outstanding tourist attractions for the year
2000. It was virtually impossible
to stop Hộ when he began to talk about the future of the Mekong delta,
as if it was a blue horizon expanding infinitely. Điền
planned to build the first model house of coconut-tree materials, based on
his architectural design, on the foundation of his uncle’s old house. This old house, since it was located in a
low-lying area, and since it was built over an earth floor, had mud walls and
a thatch roof made of leaves of the
nipa palm, had become
desperately out of shape under the impact of several high floods. The uncle was a former teacher of both
Hộ and Điền.
Retired, he had been living a poor and honest life in that dilapidated
house. “Nephew, in our time, to live as an honest person is very difficult,”
he said to Điền, in an unobtrusive way reminding him of a highly
regarded moral value. The
uncle-teacher did not complain, and had never been heard blaming anyone. In his heart Điền had nurtured
the thought that the first model house, a product of his heart and mind,
would be especially reserved for such a decent person. He imagined how happy he would be if his
model house—built in the same traditional structural framework of three
sections and two wings, more modern but in no way going against harmony with
nature—was accepted and preferred by local farmers, so that in the near future
it could be included in development planning for the whole area. Before going to Tràm
Chim, Hộ took Điền and Bé Tư for a visit to the
floating market at the Cái Bè Canal and Tiền River Confluence, seen as
a potential future tourist attraction.
Since early morning, the market day had brought together hundreds of
big and small vessels. The scene was
animated like a festival. Sampans
carried all kinds of local fruits in brilliant colors: bananas, coconuts,
yellow oranges, and red mandarin oranges having freshly been plucked from
trees with green leaves still attached to their stems. A few toddlers accompanying their mothers
to the market were seen sitting smack in the middle of their sampans. A small sampan was usually managed by a
lone woman, her head wrapped in a striped towel or her face hidden behind a
conical hat, who stood on the stern oaring it toward big commercial
boats. These wholesaler boats would
purchase all local agricultural products from numerous small sampans, then
resell them to warehouses at Cầu Ông Lãnh market in Saigon or all the
way to markets in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
From a distance, the scene suggested the image of numerous piglets
hanging on to their mother’s breasts.
In the meantime, sampans with roofs, which kept their products hidden
from view, employed as a marketing
strategy a long pole on top of which were seen dangling samples of each
of the available fruits and vegetables, and potential buyers would thus know
where to locate what they wanted. The boat carrying
the three young travelers had to zigzag to avoid colliding with other
vessels. The navigator eventually led
Điền, Bé Tư and Hộ onto a big boat with wooden flooring
expansive enough to contain a shop where were served coffee, seafood noodle
soup, wine, and cigarettes, including the imported Triple-5 brand. After so many years, once again
Điền was presented with thick black coffee filtered through a
cotton bag shaped like a sock, which was steeped for a few minutes in a pot
of boiling water—a coffee making method often seen in working class
restaurants in Saigon and Cho Lon.
Since the coffee was very hot, one usually had to pour it into a
concave dish to cool it off quickly, and to drink from it before hurrying off
to work. Điền also
breakfasted on a hot pao dumpling just removed from a steamer. The refreshing and animated scene was a
discovery very new and appealing to Bé Tư who had been absent from her
place of birth for many years. She
watched with fascination a motorized boat pumping fuel into a few boats adorned
with engines of shrimp-like shape on their sterns; a boat marked with a red
cross belonging to a wandering nurse who injected medicine for a fee;
retailer vessels like mobile shops displaying a hodge-podge of merchandise;
and even boats offering the service of rice husking right on the spot. Such is the culture
of the delta of which the lifeblood comes from an intricate network of rivers
and canals, Hộ
mused. He decided that he ought to
create an opportunity for Duy to come back from the US for a visit which
could extend to include the Medical School at the University of Cần
Thơ that was in need of more equipment and more grey matter. When the market
closed in the afternoon, that floating town seemed to vanish without a trace,
leaving behind a portion of the river that continued to spread out
expansively and quietly. Its silence
was broken now and then by the explosive noise of a motorized express boat
loaded with passengers which rushed by along the river, big waves splashing
sideways from its tail toward the banks and swaying the boat carrying
Điền, Bé Tư and
Hộ. After a day at Cái
Bè, the three still chose the river as a cool and romantic brown highway
to travel upon, from which they could enjoy the beauty of both dawn and
sunset. In the evening, their
boat went against the current when it entered a narrow section of the
river. All they could see was the
weak light of kerosene lamps here and there along the banks, and a moon
sliver in the sky. From a distance,
riding on soft breezes, came vague sounds of folksong like echoes from the
earth emanating from the wilderness of the past. What a place
this is! A strange landscape
Where even a
birdcall is alarming, a fish’s wriggle scary. The boat had to
maneuver between light signals to avoid getting entangled in fish nets set in
the river. Eventually, at dawn, they
made it to Tràm Chim, located in a floodplain marsh. A guide was with them, but that did not
spare the boat from having to meander through a Melaleuca forest and thick reeds. Its noise created an uproar as a flock of wild ducks was
startled and took off in fright, quacking noisily. The amazing tropical
landscape environment was rich and complex, but at the same time
precarious. Within the Melaleuca forest was a smaller forest
of birds and bird nests, their thousand melodious calls resounding far and
wide. Thanks to his childhood memory,
Điền was able to recognize the call of kingfishers and turtledoves
somewhere among bushes in the distance.
Then a wonderful sight presented itself: flocks of hundreds of
red-crown cranes having elegant legs almost a meter long. The birds, living and being protected in
the reserve, everyday went around catching fish in a leisurely manner, then
paired off for dance, boisterously showing off their beauty and grace. Bé Tư told Điền the names of rare
species of bird like the Black Neck Stork, and the red neck Asian type
Greater Adjutant Stork. The
latter existed only in Vietnam, and its members, thought to be on the verge
of extinction a few years back, were being gradually restored. Happily, for the first time during the
last few years, one witnessed the appearance of Eastern Sarus Cranes,
gorgeous with their smooth white long necks, red crowns spotted with white,
slender bodies on graceful long pink legs, and an elegant way of
walking. Not merely hundreds, but
thousands of cranes, as the last remaining migrant birds in South East Asia
came flying from the east to nest in Tràm Chim of Tam Nông. It was good news not only for Vietnam but
also for the whole world. Old folk in
Đồng Tháp Province took it as an auspicious sign, which did not
simply mean that good land is where birds make their nests as a folk adage
says; but more significantly than that, it alluded to their belief that precious
rare birds like cranes chose to live only in an area considered sacred on the
banks of a sacred river. Further, it was in
these people’s belief that in the Mekong delta, perhaps within the Seven
Sacred Mountains area, there was an extremely rare tree called Ưu Ðàm / Udumbara
which was supposed to flower only once every three-thousand years, and every
time the mythical flower bloomed it would presage the arrival of a Buddha to
save sentient beings. Presently,
though the third Christian millennium had only begun, by the Buddhist
calendar the year was already 2544, counting from the birth of Gautama
Buddha; and therefore less than 500 years from now, the Udumbara tree
would flower again in the Mekong delta, a sacred land. Followers of a folk Buddhist sect called Bửu
Sơn Kỳ Hương (Marvelous Fragrance from Precious
Mountains) also believed that when that time of blooming came,
Phật Thầy, the departed founder and Buddha Master whom they
worshipped, would be reborn “to enter the world and save mankind from
sufferings.” Both Man and Earth
seemed to be painfully struggling in the scorching sun, wishing for cool
water from a heavy shower. Điền
pondered on Bé Tư’s generation, born during the height of the Viet Nam
War. Delivered in the period of the
Tết Offensive of 1968, his sister was seven when that war ended. It was therefore hard to label the Viet
Nam War as the war of her generation.
And it was also quite understandable when these youngsters did not
have to carry on their backs the heavy burden of a very sorrowful past, but freely
walked straight ahead into their own futures. Suddenly Bé Tư
turned to her brother and asked, “Big brother, what’s the meaning of the
Vietnamese phrase tuổi hạc?” “Tuổi
hạc, a crane’s age? Oh, Bé
Tư, it means tuổi thọ, or longevity.” Điền still preferred to address
his sister in the familiar endearing nickname for a little girl, Little
Tư, by which she had been called when they both had lived in their home
village with their parents. Bé
Tư had been taking Vietnamese language lessons at the University of
Hanoi each summer, with the dream of becoming an instructor not only at the
University of Cần Thơ at Hộ’s invitation, but also at the
village school which for years she and her former college friends had done
their best to support. Điền
remembered when brother and sister had just arrived in Saigon, which was not
really far from the Mekong delta.
They found that very few people they talked with in that city had any
idea about the annual flood problem in the Delta. This made him understand more the same ignorance on the part of
overseas Vietnamese living at greater distances. These people, even when they learned about a flood disaster in
the land of their birth, would show their indifference. In far away places like Europe and North
America, if someone was moved and had the nerve to discuss contribution to
flood relief for Vietnam, someone else would be ready to confront him
outright: “I wouldn’t spare a single dollar to help; let that regime fully
reveal its evil face…” Bé Tư had her
own separate concerns which were not confined to Tràm Chim. She enthusiastically discussed with her
brother a project for refurbishing the village school in such a manner as to
ensure that during the flood season the teachers could still come to teach
and the children would not have to skip classes. Moved by the
unaffected and pure concerns of his sister, Điền came to realize
that he himself, like everyone else, would have to try to bury the hatchet,
forget the dark days of the war and chemical weapons like Agent Orange, forget
the Fields of Death and the scene of boats on rivers and canals filled with
blood and death when destroyed by B40 rockets during their attempted escapes
from Vietnam. Thus exorcised, he
would be able to return to that familiar current of water to bathe and wash
away worldly concerns, to live happily with the floods that would come down
every year, to be contented in both the dry and rainy seasons on the banks of
the Mekong River—the sacred river that would never be drained dry. NGO THE VINH 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 © Ngo The Vinh & The Writers Post. 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. |