“That’s enough, it’s the New Year and you eat like monsters, worse than those who went hungry in 1945.”
“What? Let the men be themselves. If on the New Year you have many guests come to eat at your house, in January your business will prosper.”
“Each river has its banks, any garden small or large has its fences. Every banquet will eventually end. Let’s go and let the hostess rest.”
“Let’s go. I am very anxious.”
The men may have had firm dispositions, but, in the end, they had to understand that when the women speak up it means the hour has come. One fellow poured a final cup of wine down his throat and then said, “OK, gentlemen, let’s empty our cups and get going. There is an old saying: ‘A man’s order does not equal a woman’s heft.’ People nowadays add: ‘Wife comes first, then heaven.’ OK, we must look around at the people and follow them.”
“You are really henpecked!”
“I am indeed henpecked, I yield to you to hold your head high. Who else is henpecked like me?”
“Me.”
“Me too.”
“Me also…”
The women clapped their hands in praise, while laughing wildly when they saw their husbands unsteadily stand up. At the end only two unhenpecked husbands were left. They looked left and right and realized that all those around them had stood up, so they were compelled to put their cups down:
“OK, let’s go! Darn those annoying women. It was getting to be such fun.”
The wife of the unhenpecked guy stood behind the other women, silent until now: “The heart of one is like the heart of another, ladies. Unfortunately, our elders taught us that heaven will give you whatever you despise. After enduring awhile, you get used to it…”
“Oh my, today this old broad is pretty gutsy.”
The very-sure-of-himself guy looks at his wife with fierce rolling eyes, half surprised, half threatening.
Encouraged by the views of those around her, his wife becomes angry: “We all have skin and flesh. Other women dare; I have to stand up as well.”
At this moment, the hostess starts to intervene as she senses the atmosphere growing tense. Taking two steps, she inserts herself between husband and wife, smiling more happily than ever before:
“The lady is right; all humanity should sing strongly, sing out loud!”
Then she looked around, smiling. When she saw everyone taken aback by her too literary metaphor she said, “Among all of you men present here, I recognize eight Party members in all. You couldn’t have forgotten the song swearing loyalty to the Party under the Party’s flag, now could you?”
The Party members looked at one another, each trying to trigger the others’ memory, but all ended up with the words stuck in their throats. Then Miss Vui clearly spoke each word and each sentence:
“Rise up all you slaves of the world,
“Rise up all that are hurt and poor,
“We must destroy the old regime quickly…”
“Well, do you remember now?”
“Forgotten, really.”
“We defer to you. The day we joined up, we learned some lines to get by. When we were in, that was that. It didn’t brings us rice, clothes, or money, why bother to remember?”
“But I bet you all will remember all the minute details of Mr. Quang’s story. Is that true or not?”
“You don’t have to say so. Neither will we deny it. We do not have to wring our brains to remember what happens in the village and hamlets; it’s like remembering our pillows at the head of our beds. And those songs from somewhere and nowhere, brought back from China or the West, why bother?”
“Exactly!”
At the moment, one of the unhenpecked guys speaks up: “I’ll bet all of you: Is the story over?”
The loudmouthed woman answers first: “What else if it hasn’t ended. The end: he marries her, she sneaks into his bed…What else do you want?”
“That’s such woman thinking. Your brain is no bigger than a grapefruit, your eyes can’t see farther than two arm lengths.”
“Yes, we are indeed stupid, let you guys be smart…Clearly you are the haughty ones with your pride big like a large basket.”
“Listen carefully here: the drama is just beginning. Don’t you all see that?”
“I don’t see anything at all. They love each other, they cross the mountains and rivers, they legalize their marriage, who dares to interfere?”
“Miss Vui, have they gone through the process?”
“I’m not sure. I heard people speculate this and that.”
“If they have not done the formalities, then the man is a widower and the woman has no husband, what can be done to them? Thousands of years ago our ancestors married, had children and grandchildren; who then needed a marriage paper with the government’s red seal?”
“The marriage paper is not a big deal but the garlic bulb is. That’s the problem.”
“What about this garlic bulb? You mean the pair of testicles that dangle in the crotch of our pants, right?”
“How can you be so dense? Testicles are testicles and a garlic bulb is a garlic bulb; each its own kind. At night do you mistakenly touch your wife’s clam and think it’s the teapot on that table or not?”
“Your comparison is so damn complicated.”
“Complication is a fact of life. Now, who dares bet with me that the story of this family is over? For me, the curtain has just closed on Act One. And Act Two will be full of scenes. Well, who dares play?”
“You guys are timid like the field crabs. Nobody dares speak up?”
“No way, I’m not stupid.”
“Why bet with you? If it gets out in people’s ears, we’ll get nothing, just their cursing. In the past, his family has not harmed anyone.”
“Enough! Don’t make a molehill into a mountain! Whatever is to happen will happen. On behalf of us all we want to thank the hostess. New Year’s Eve this time was fun, really fun!”
The group scrambled to light torches, turn on lights, and put on their coats to leave. When the lights started twinkling along the paths of the middle section, a rooster had crowed to welcome the first hour of the new year. A dog’s barking followed people’s steps. The sky was black like squid ink and the air was still. Miss Vui turned off the storm light, started to clean up the house under the light of a row of homemade beeswax candles.
In her mind, she anxiously thought: “Whatever is to come, will come!”
She knew that everybody else was also waiting like her. With their cautious attitudes, rural people never dare participate in a messy situation but they secretly follow all the developments and also secretly want them to fall out according to their own analysis. Always holding on to the illusions that make for an analyst, one who has power over people living hard and lonely lives, Miss Vui felt a secret dream stirring in her soul, similar to a fetus kicking in its mother’s womb. She felt that “something will happen, if not sooner then later.” She remembered the angry pair of eyes of Chairman Quy when she had described to him the two-story house with seven rooms newly built for the old couple in Khoai Hamlet. Because Mr. Quang’s house was in an old-fashioned style, one-story high but very spacious and all the framing timbers made of real wood, and Quy’s house was much inferior. And now the father of the whore Ngan had a two-story house — how could he bear that image? Intuition told Miss Vui that this love story would eventually bring on a great storm. But what kind of storm, the wind blowing from the top of the high mountains or from the distant ocean, no one could predict.
All of a sudden, the old cat in the kitchen jumped out and curled around Vui’s legs.
“Go away, crazy one…”