After this incident, Mr. Quang became famous, not only within Public Works but also all over the town, as a hero, a Prince Valiant come to life. Thus everybody was happy.
When everything had returned to normal, the romance commenced. Ngan found a way to meet him at the inn, with a gift in one hand and two bottles of medicinal wine in the other.
“Please, let me thank you, sir. If it hadn’t been for you, I would not have escaped that guy.”
“It was nothing. I am a man; if I meet with injustice, I can’t ignore it. Others coming across such an immoral thing as that would certainly do as I did.”
“Life is not like that. You just speak humbly,” she said with determination, leaving him without a comeback. Then he saw the two bottles of wine that she put on the table.
“You brought wine for me?”
“Yes, exactly right. Why are you surprised?”
He smiled: “Who fermented this wine?”
“I did.”
“So, you’re an alcoholic?”
“No! Not an alcoholic, but I know how to drink.”
“Really?”
“First, nobody thinks women should drink. But we are a bunch of painters. We stretch our arms all day long. At night when we go to bed, we feel pain from our shoulders down to our hips. My aunt steeps a mixture of herbs in wine made from good sticky rice. Drinking one cup at night before bed takes away the pain. I follow her instructions, and indeed there is no pain and I sleep very soundly.”
His thoughts quietly wandered. For the first time in all his life someone had given him wine, and it was a girl! In more than forty long years living with his wife and children, she’d never thought of buying him a gift, nor had his children. In this family, it seemed as if he had had to take care of everybody, worrying about everyone else’s life, with never a reciprocating concern. Always it had been: “Tell your father, he will decide.” “Whatever you want, tell your father. He’ll make it work.”
To Mr. Quang this had seemed only natural, because he had been the father, the husband, the pillar of the family. All the inconveniences of life had piled so many heavy burdens on his shoulders. In carrying them all, he had had no time to think of himself. Now, at sixty-one, he suddenly felt his heart shifting; within him there was another man who needed attention and love.
While his mind drifted in thought, she looked around and picked up a cup from the inn’s tea set and poured it fulclass="underline"
“Please try a sip and see.”
He lifted the cup and sipped, finding the wine very good even though the herbs had taken away the taste of the sweet rice.
She looked at him attentively, asking, “How is it?”
“I find the wine really good. Maybe it would be better without the herbs.”
“How can you be so simple? My aunt sells her medicinal wine for ten times more than a liter of ordinary young wine.”
“Yes, I am still such a simpleton!” he replied, and as he looked at the girl the thought emerged quickly that she had been part of his life for a long while, since before the time he and she had each appeared on this earth. Perhaps, he imagined with some awkwardness, in their past lives lived long ago, lives he could not visualize just as we cannot see the dark side of the moon but know that hidden half nonetheless exists. Even so, those far-off incarnations hidden away among many layers of cloudy memories could be efficacious, even though a person could not apprehend them.
“Real or unreal; unreal or real? Why suddenly do I find life really strange?” he asked himself as he continued to look at the woman who stood not more than two yards away. That day she had also worn a green blouse, the same pineapple leaf green she had worn when he had seen her that first time. Her eyes were strikingly beautiful; now he could clearly see each of her lashes. Her brows, long like two strokes of black ink, extending from the middle of her forehead to her temples, almost touching the roots of her hair.
“This young woman is really beautiful! A person out of a painting!” he thought to himself. Suddenly he felt very pained, knowing that she would leave very soon and he would never see her again. Then she would live out her life, and that life would have no connection to his. And him, surely he would pass his old age in this boardinghouse, or in his old home in Woodcutters’ Hamlet, or in a horse carriage on his trips to and from those two locations, with so many messy and tiring family matters. With all his calculated plans, his worries, all the arrangements he constantly had to juggle among a handful of supposed loves ones — those thought to be so close to him but in reality so far distant, those so used to putting burdens on his shoulders without thinking of all that he must taste, all that he must endure, all the bitter bile and burning peppers that he had to swallow — he could now no longer live tranquilly. After this encounter, life ahead of him would be so lonely. And what of him?
This train of thought left him feeling lonely and lost. He experienced a strange weakness, of a kind he had never before encountered that filled up his soul and burned his nostrils. Fearing that he might cry in front of her, he quickly grabbed a cigarette, inhaled forcefully, and twice lifted his face to exhale. Large tears filled up his eyes and rolled down both temples. He forced a cough and annoyingly cursed:
“The tobacco in this inn is the crappy kind from Tien Lang.”
And the young woman, she just stood there, puzzled, looking at the wine cup in his hand, still wondering why he didn’t like this medicinal wine but preferred the kind that was ten times cheaper — he…the hero who had saved her from a desperate situation.
At that instant, the innkeeper stepped in to remind him that his meal was ready and to ask whether he needed additional food for his guest. He suddenly realized the awkwardness of the situation: she had come all the way from the work site, which had taken her two and a half hours, and now it was high noon. He hurriedly said:
“Please take care of food for my guest.”
Then, turning to her, he asked: “Would you care to share the food with me?”
“Why ‘care to’?” she asked quite sincerely.
And he smiled: “Because you think of me as a simpleton.”
“Oh, I was just blabbering.”
“So, really now: What do you think of me?”
“I find you…find you…a very good-looking older man.”
After so replying, she burst into laughter. Maybe because she found her own answer ridiculous. Her laughter took a heavy weight off his chest. In that laughter, in her smiling eyes, he detected a promise. He no longer saw life’s desert spreading out before him. He no longer felt threatened by her departure. In his innermost mind, he secretly enjoyed this auspicious gift of destiny. Walking out of his room, he loudly called out to the innkeeper:
“Make me an elaborate meal, OK? I have a special guest today!”
Just as Quy had predicted, on New Year’s Eve everyone in Woodcutters’ Hamlet, except Mr. Quang and his young wife, came out to watch the opera Thi Mau Goes to the Temple. They did not attend for several reasons. First, they were in love — in the steamy, hot phase of love. Miss Ngan had the energies of youth, of course. But for two years Mr. Quang had been deprived of a woman’s touch — since the day when his wife had come down with the hungry demon ailment. For both, their marriage was like a downpour during a hot drought. Second, all year they both worked down in the city, where there were constant opportunities to attend theater performances, new music, movies, and singing contests; they were not as deprived of entertainment as were the residents of Woodcutters’ Hamlet.