At that moment, a loud clang sounds in the yard. Looking out, they can see a large, perplexed fellow forcefully hitting the steel sheet. The three stand up.
“It’s lunchtime,” Vu says. “Good-bye to the two of you. I have to go back to my room. Thank you for all you have said.”
“Oh, Older Brother, don’t stand on ceremony,” Tran Phu replies. “Everything is within reach. Now I have to see a friend off to the city center. Have a good lunch. Please make preparations for the young girl. Whatever can be done, we will do it; it doesn’t have to be perfect. What’s left, my sister will take care of. Next week we can pick her up.”
The two men walk arm in arm to the doors of the hospital. Vu returns to the patient section, his step light and bouncy as if walking on clouds, murmuring to himself, “Too good to be true.”
At the top of the stairs, the duty nurse comes up to him, smiling happily. “Please come and eat your lunch while it’s hot. I put it on top of the cabinet.”
“Thank you very much. I will be there soon.”
She quickly walks away but, suddenly remembering something, hurriedly turns back to say, “You got some mail. I put it in the drawer so that no one else could try to open it.”
“Well, thank you. You may be young but you are very careful.”
“You are kind. I have never been called ‘careful.’ At home my mother called me ‘the crow with its insides out.’ But in the village, my mail was often opened, therefore…”
“I appreciate it,” says Vu warmly. He hurries to his room, curious as to who might have sent him a letter. “Could it be Sau?” he thinks to himself. “Sau’s letters come in the form of some scrawled lines on a page torn from a notebook and never put in an envelope, so whoever delivers the letter can read it freely. Most often these notes are sent when he needs to have an urgent meeting. He knows I am in the hospital and can’t go out for meetings, so it can’t be him. Then who? Could it be Van? Perhaps she desires that we make one final attempt at reconciliation?” Vu goes to his room and pulls the envelope out of the drawer. Tearing it open, he sees that the letter is written on the kind of ruled paper that students use.
“A letter from the young boy. Thus, he knows how to write. The first letter in his life.”
He holds the letter, thinking back in time to when the boy had started to walk and begun to talk and to feed himself. All this seems like yesterday, but now here he is composing letters like an adult.
My dear father:
I am sending you this letter, knowing that you are in the hospital and there is no way to leave this place to come visit you. From the school to the hamlet is more than forty kilometers but there is no bus, only a horse cart. Father, please forgive me that I am not able to comfort you while you are sick. I can only pray to heaven for your speedy recovery and return to your regular activities. Here, we study well. Once in a while Vinh stays home because he has a tummyache, but I take notes for him. Last week, Mother Van came and visited us. She was very strange. I do not know what happened in Hanoi, but Mother Van stared at me and suddenly said: “Because of you our family is destroyed.”
Dear Father, it is very painful to think that I am the cause of this. I only need to know that I am your own son, which is in itself happiness. I do not want to make Mother Van suffer or to deprive Brother Vinh of his share. Maybe you could let me go down to the country to live with the older uncle. After the summer, I can transfer there, it would be no problem. As long as the family is harmonious, Mother Van and Brother Vinh are satisfied. I believe that Sister Nghia will be very happy and older uncle there will not be so lonely. Thus it would be less of a burden to you and everybody would be happy.
I also want to inform you that Mother Van came with a tall man with sunglasses. I never saw him before at the house and his behavior was very odd. While Mother Van spent time with Brother Vinh, he pulled my ear and said, “I want to know if your ear is soft or hard,” then he lifted me up. It hurt really bad: I had tears in my eyes. I almost screamed but I ground my teeth in fear of Mother scolding me. This man made me very scared. I don’t know why he was so cruel to me. Dear Father, please let me go to the countryside and every now and then you can come and visit both of us. Thus, everything will be more peaceful.
I am always trying to study so as not to worry you. I wish you a speedy recovery so that we can see you very soon.
Your son kisses you: Tran Trung
As Vu finishes the letter, dizziness comes over him and he has to lean against the wall. “Oh, my dear son. It is so sad,” he thinks. “A boy who is filial but who cannot be a son. A child born full of compassion who must live in a world of heartless and inhuman people.…Oh, it’s so sad for me, too — with the title of father but unable to protect the child who lives within my arms.…And I myself never had the chance to have such a good child as this.…My love with the beautiful woman only created something immoral, incompetent, and full of flaws. My miserable patrimony got lost in a dark body and in a darker soul. This truly is a complete failure.…
“Why does she behave so cruelly?…A woman that I held over thirty years.…It is so strange that it is only now that I come to really know the person with whom I shared a bed with for so long.…Life is like an endless performance; not until the curtain falls do we know what is black and what is white.…Oh, it’s no coincidence that for thousands of years people read and reread the Lieu Trai story, because there has been no shortage of those who lived in passionate love until they awoke one day to find out that for so many years they had taken pleasure with a skeleton.…My wife! When did she become an enemy? That guy with sunglasses is none other than Sau’s henchman! They play the game of ill treating the boy; it is a sign that they are mobilizing me for some demand on the real father. The survival of this person becomes the stick that directs others.…This blow is nothing new, but the surprising thing is that she accepts the agreement. Is it she who leads the enemy on? Why is it she?”
Black waves suddenly appear before his eyes, rising up and then crashing down, leaving him with the impression that his whole body is breaking into foam. The moaning of the receding tide is terrifying and mysterious; it feels as if it is no longer the noise of the moving sea but the roaring of gigantic beasts from the Jurassic period. All of a sudden, the edge of the low tide disappears and in its place is a horde of dragons running wildly over a vast field of vegetation. Chasing after them are giant tongues of flowing fire, climbing one on top of the other. Wherever the wind blows, the vegetation turns into a roaring fire pit. The firestorms encircle, entrap, and consume the animals. He feels that fire burning him and making his own eyes shoot out sparks of fire.
“Why am I turning into a Jurassic beast? Is this real or a dream, very strange…”
He hears clearly the fire being fanned by the wind blowing around him. Then the fire slaps his face, making him want to scream: “Water…Give me water…Call the fire truck…”
But he is unable to open his mouth. He falls down at the giant feet of one of the dragons and sees before him what will become a pile of crumbling bones once the fire is finished with it.
Then he hears vaguely, calling from somewhere: “Doctor…Call the doctor…”
“Where are the emergency aides? Bring the oxygen here.”
A dreamy thought comes to his mind: “Well, they are bringing the oxygen for the officer with the wheezing breath, with lips dark like the Lang Son plums. Strange, though: this guy is dead but still he needs lots of oxygen from the hospital?”