When he got back from the hospital, Quy assembled his family and ordered a cease-fire:
“Now it is more difficult to feed people than before; you should stop temporarily. When our family regains its prosperity, we can have babies again.”
“Whatever you teach, Father, we will put into action,” the two sons-in-law responded obediently.
The order from the head of the family came a bit late. Quy and his wife already had three sons: Phu, Chien, and Thang. Because of the saying “three sons, no wealth; four daughters, no poverty,” they therefore sought a fourth child. This time it was indeed a girl, but she died twenty days after birth from untreatable pneumonia. The daughters Mo and Man each had little ones on their backs and four-month-old babies in their wombs. They gave birth to these babies almost at the same time, but neither child ate adequately. Both mothers and babies were pale like green leaves. Quy’s wife was only seventy pounds, with skin folds on her neck. The two daughters were not much older than twenty but their cheeks were full of lines that looked like cat’s whiskers. For this large army, worrying about food was gut-wrenching. There was neither time nor money left to worry about pants, shirts, and blouses. Therefore, villagers chatted with disdain every time they saw the family:
“Look there, the girls Mo and Man are now older than Miss Ngan by ten years.”
“Exactly. Thus the grandniece-in-law is older than the step-mother-in-law. How extraordinary. The stepmother-in-law is prettier and younger each day. In the old days our elders compared an exquisite beauty to a fairy descending to our realm. A descending fairy is as good as it can get.”
“They are so wealthy, why don’t they have more babies?”
“I heard the wife wants to but he doesn’t. He said, ‘One little Que is worth ten other children. One can be precious; not many.’”
“Yeah, you have a point. One piece of gold in the hands is worth more than ten pieces of lead in the pocket.”
“That family is really happy: a beautiful wife, a handsome son, the husband maybe old but still good-looking. As the saying goes, ‘One eats white rice with a bird’s egg omelet.’”
“The husband is handsome, the wife beautiful; they just need to look at each other and they are full.”
No one could ever deny that Mr. Quang’s young wife was a living embodiment of this saying: “Mother of one; one for the eye.” Many villagers felt she had kept her childhood looks. After giving birth, Miss Ngan’s lips seemed redder and fuller than before, like a fruit full of juice, promising the taste of orange in her kisses. Her breasts were more ample, too, like two grapefruits hiding under a thin blouse. And her thighs, like the rest of her body, evoked an overflowing feeling of blooming flowers, full of love’s fragrance.
On days when they went up to the woods to cut firewood or down to the fields to farm — tasks for men only — residents of Woodcutters’ Hamlet gossiped quietly with one another:
“In our lives, only Mr. Quang is really happy. At best, a king could only wish for his wife to be that beautiful.”
“Yeah…in Russian movies, many of the stars are her inferior. Mr. Quang was right to spend his money and wealth on a house for his parents-in-law. How many can produce such beauty in a child?”
“I heard she is being selected for the national artistic troupes.”
“What a pity. If she is in the national troupe so many will be washing their eyes.”
“Stupid…to go national, then she will never want to set foot in this very remote place.”
“Oh yeah…I forgot.”
“Now, I want to ask you one thing: Suppose you could sleep with a beauty like her just once and the next morning go to the guillotine, would you do it or not?”
“Of course I would do it. How long is one’s life?”
“Oh, no, I am not that naive. Beautiful she is indeed. Before such a beautiful woman any man would drool, but there is too much else to take care of in life.”
“Like what?”
“Family, clan, grandkids’ futures, graves of the parents. It’s stupid to obey the tuber’s priorities.”
Such conversations blew like gusts from this mountain to that, from one valley to another. And life in Woodcutters’ Hamlet continued on in the calm rhythm of farming communities. Villagers continued to see Mr. Quang’s horse cart coming and going to the fast tempo of jingling bells. Each time he returned, the light in his patio shone brightly and there was cheerful chattering blended with voices from the Suong Mao radio, sometimes the news, sometimes the high-pitched singing of performers such as Thuong Huyen:
“Quietly listen by the side of the stream, a birds flits from here to there…
Quietly listen to my heart, it sings my love for you.”
Dying away, winters called out to spring. Summers were barely over when shivering dew arrived to announce long and stormy autumns. Time went by and little Que turned five, the age when children in Woodcutters’ Hamlet must begin their formal schooling. The village had but one elementary school. But the upper, middle, and lower sections each had their own separate kindergartens, each with two divisions: a lower one reserved for kids three and four; an upper one for kids four and five. The five- and six-year-olds were put together in a starter class that taught writing and simple math, preparing them for the first year of elementary school. There, the children also learned how to dance, to sing, to draw in the sand and on the chalkboard. They learned the first lesson in relationships. For these good reasons, every village parent understood that kindergarten was in reality the most important class of all. In truth, little Que should have started school long before, but being an only and a precious child, both his mother and Mrs. Tu spoiled him, so he skipped the lower division of kindergarten. At home, the two women taught him words, how to count, and to add and subtract simple numbers. When he turned five, they had no reason to sequester him any longer in their loving arms.
“This year, little Que has to go to class like all the kids in the village,” Mr. Quang ordered.
“Yes, I thought about it,” Mrs. Tu said.
Miss Ngan was silent, but she opened the cupboard and handed Mr. Quang a brand-new bag full of books, notebooks, pens, and chalk…all the necessities for Que’s first day in class.
Year had followed on year — life had flowed on like a large river ever shoving forward its sediments, trash, and foam. It seemed as if Miss Ngan had almost forgotten the terrifying, brutal events that had occurred after she had first set foot in Woodcutters’ Hamlet, forgotten those people who had stood in the dark shadow of her husband’s past. And them? For sure, they remembered her, because those who stand in dark shadows usually see very clearly those who stand in the bright light.
When the day came for the beginning of kindergarten for children in the upper section, each mother had to bring her child to school. Not only the children, but also the mothers were nervous. That day, with excited hearts, mothers held their kids’ hands to take them out of family territory and entrust their care to people under another roof, turning them over to strangers, like a mother bird pushing her babies out of the nest in order to teach them forcefully how to fly — with hearts a bit torn, a bit worried, a bit hesitant, but, in the end, full of hope.
As there was only one building in the entire section for the initial learning and starter classes, an encounter between the two hostile families was unavoidable. The school sat on top of a hill, under the cool shadow of an old, spreading elm, with its leaves green and birds singing cheerfully. In front, there was a large yard with a fairly smooth gravel surface, in the middle of which was a tiny flower garden surrounded by grasses. At recess, the children were free to play and roll. The side of the hill slanted down to a row of eucalyptus. That row of trees ran along the country road, where mothers would arrive from two directions, corresponding to the two resident quarters of the upper section — one to the north and one to the south.