At the time An had been in the army for two years. For two full years he had not had one single piece of news from home. This run-in with his relative made him happy for months. His joy was like a slow-burning coal, which kept the fire going without getting extinguished.
On that very day, An went to his battalion commander and said, “Report to the leader: from this moment on I am no longer Nong Van Thanh but Chi Van Thanh.”
“Why?” asked the surprised battalion commander.
“Because my uncle who is the chairman of the village committee has so decided. My village contains only twelve households, so whatever he decides, the people in the village just do as told. A relative whom I’ve just met told me so.”
“Is your relative among those serving in the people’s labor force being bivouacked right in front of our camp?”
“Yes. That’s precisely true.”
“Nonetheless, there must be a reason to change one’s name or family name. For who would suddenly decide on something like that, out of nowhere?”
“I report to you, sir, there surely must have been a reason. But that reason is known only to my uncle and the old learned scholars in our village. We, as the younger ones, are not entitled to ask,” An smilingly responded.
So seeing, the battalion commander also laughed along and said, “That’s OK. We’ll respect the decision of the local leaders.”
So saying, he quickly gave an order to his assistant. The latter took out the unit registry, rubbed out the word “Nong,” and replaced it with “Chi.” That was it. In the maquis everyone was a volunteer joining the army to fight; nobody needed any advantage or privilege, and thus one’s wishes could be easily addressed. Additionally, he was from an ethnic minority and the minority peoples were the firm foundation of the August Revolution and of the protracted resistance. Every leading cadre knew this principle: “In all situations, minority cadres and fighters are entitled to privileged treatment.”
“Our Little One has now become queen!”
An’s joy at that fact had stayed with him throughout the remaining days of the resistance, together with his new name, Chi Van Thanh. It seems that the new name brought An much good luck even though no one in the battalion, from the officers down to the soldiers, quite knew the secret source of this good fortune. An was promoted beyond normal expectations because of his fighting valor. The luckiest stroke, however, was that, having gone through many battles, he was still whole, not even grazed by a bullet or anything else. He did not have a chance to meet with Little One although he knew that she had left Xiu Village to go and live in the government’s headquarters in the Viet Bac maquis. His pride in her lightened his soul. As far as he was concerned, she was like a little sister or even a daughter to him. He wasn’t quite sure. The ties that bound him to her were nothing like the normal ties between a brother-in-law and his wife’s sister.
Nang Dong being his companion since infancy, when Little One was born it had been he along with Nang Dong who had taken care of her. Her father, Mr. Cao, who was multitalented and also lived a multifaceted life, had left the village and gone into the wide world until the age of forty-two, when he came back and married a beautiful girl twenty-three years his junior. When she died giving birth to Xuan, he was already over fifty. At that age no man could be expected to carry around a baby or feed it with bottle and milk. In his huge house the sawmill occupied the main room, the altar to his wife the outer room. As for the inner room, which was used as a kitchen, he had divided it with wooden partitions into three smaller ones. This is where the two children, then aged nine, had taken care of the half-orphaned sister, still red in a cradle. For two full years An had lived in one of the three small rooms, the middle one being used for holding the baby’s cradle, and the last room reserved for Nang Dong. Mr. Cao slept right in the kitchen so as to keep the fire going. In front of the baby’s room a dish holding a candle burned all night. When the baby woke up it was either Nang Dong or he who would rise to change her diaper or feed her. In rare instances when they had trouble waking up, Mr. Cao would ring a bronze bell to shake them out of sleep. The sound of the bell ringing in the deep night left a memory that would never leave him; it was like some sort of rudimentary but lively music that joyously sounded in his childhood days. He also recalled with fondness the deep ceramic dish that held beeswax with a wick made up of rough cloth the size of a chopstick. The flickering light would project their silhouettes on the walls.
He could still remember as if it were yesterday how to slow-cook a congee made of half sweet rice and half mung bean; how to sift rice gruel so as to have rice milk to keep in a thermos; how to milk a female buffalo, wait for the milk to curdle, and then keep it in such a way as not to produce whey. In Xiu Village, there were no cows, as people had raised only buffalo. The babies were fed only buffalo milk. An could also remember the wooden basin in which Little One used to be bathed, with him on one side and Nang Dong on the other, both dipping their hands in the water and rubbing the dirt off Little One. That was real life, yet it felt like a game. For they themselves, An and Nang Dong, were still in their early teens. That “game” linked the three of them in a strange love. That was why, even though he had been married to Nang Dong for ten years by the time he went into the army at the age of twenty-seven, no one had questioned why they did not have any children. Also, at the time, the fact that a couple was slow in having children was not something as serious as would be the case today. Nonetheless, it was still considered an irregularity. Little One lived wedged in between the two of them, surrounded by a very colorful love. All three had felt satisfied with what they had, so neither Nang Dong nor he had sought out a doctor to treat her infertility, as advised by their neighbors.
The resistance war ended suddenly one year after An changed his name. He did not have an opportunity to return to Xiu Village, because his wife found him on exactly the day the various columns were getting ready to liberate the capital. Nang Dong clung to him, laughing and crying all at the same time. Tomorrow, she would be living with Little One in the city of Hanoi. How about him? Fate had once more smiled on him, for his unit was stationed in Ha Dong, a mere ten kilometers away from Hanoi, not more than one hour by bicycle. In their case, it seemed as if the doors of Paradise had opened for them.
However, from the very first day he had come to visit them, An was not pleased. Walking along the long and dark corridor, he had wondered why they could put Little One in such an ordinary apartment, even though it had three high-ceilinged and roomy chambers, along with a separate kitchen and closets. Even so, it was simply the upper floor of a common person’s house, the home of any well-off urban resident. His Little One was now the queen. Could it be possible that a queen would be put in an ordinary basket, to live among the common people? Could it have been because they were Tay tribespeople? Could it be that a Tay queen was not entitled to the same privileges as one who was pure Vietnamese?
Though torn by these thoughts, An had not given them any voice. For both women were at the zenith of joy. The war was over, now they could be certain that they would live. After so many years of separation, now was the time of reunion. No one could ask for more than that. Now all three of them could sit around the same tray table of food. And if it was not quite like being in the old huge house on stilts, surrounded on all sides by deep forest, it was still the comfortable upper floor of a small house, the dwelling of city people.