Now there’s already an open-air café, and on its manicured green lawn are cushioned chairs, colorful umbrellas, and a well-dressed waiter. Just last night, I heard, a singer had stood there and belted out folk songs on the bright, colorful stage—the same spot each morning where street girls used to delouse their clothes, and thugs divvy up their loot. Well, since you’re here, just take a seat, it’s already New Year’s Eve. I’ll tell you a story that happened in this park some seven or eight years ago. The story of Miss Nạn.
When seeing an unattractive woman, some people would try a clever remark like, “She’s as beautiful as a homely man.” This kind of veiled mockery would miss the mark with Nạn; it would still be too kind, considering her pathetic, almost grotesque appearance. Who could have named her Nạn? Why not Hồng, or Nhạn, Thanh, or Mộng Điệp? Whoever named her thus must have thought that giving her one of those names would ruin the honesty of language.
Nạn had a thin patch of hair, sunburnt yellow, on a half-bald head. Her eyes were crossed, her lips dark purple. Her arms were bent like ladle handles, and she walked with a crooked, limping gait. Her skin was bluish, marked by a mix of burn scars and light and dark patches. A generous soul might hope that underneath such appearance, there could exist an exceptionally intelligent mind, for the Creator must have subtly bestowed on her some beauty of intellect. But no. Perhaps because malevolence is ubiquitous and ever flaunting, Nạn had come into this life in the worst possible circumstances, a misfortune beyond all misfortunes.
One morning, when Nạn was two, three warplanes suddenly appeared in the tranquil sky of the countryside, circled a few rounds, then dropped a round of bombs for no reason. The village burned. Trees and grass burned. Once again stones and bricks shook and ached. From the fields, Nạn’s parents ran back toward the flames. Both grandparents had been killed, and Nạn was missing. Thinking their child also died beneath the house that had burned down to embers, Nạn’s parents wept, from time to time sniffing the air, trying to catch her scent. Then, in the tearful afternoon, someone unexpectedly found Nạn lying unconscious in a bamboo thicket, covered in ash and still-hot embers. Nạn was saved, but her body now carried a new meaning: Life incinerated right onto human flesh.
When Nạn turned three, her father died. War continued to spread. Evenings and nights came with sky-tearing explosions. More and more people fled the countryside for the city. Young men left the sea for the jungle. The village chief began circling around, making advances on her mother. He said two sleeping together would be less afraid of death than one, all shivering and lonesome. Terrified, the widow quickly packed up, her child under her arm, forsaking her birthplace, her ancestral land, the village well and riverbank known since childhood, and hurriedly boarded a smoky, coal-powered train heading south.
In those times, Sàigòn was a place of money and vanity, but also a pocket of darkness, its evil specters circling; a realm of frivolity under a degenerate, hazy spell. Nạn’s mother, alone and helpless in the city, quickly ran out of what little money she had saved, her rice-harvesting and vegetable-picking skills from the country now useless. Begging, prostituting, or slaving as a house servant were her only options. The desperate woman knocked on countless doors. Finally, a man said he could help.
“If I help you, it means you’ll have to sleep with me,” he said. “You still look young and pretty.”
“If you want me to sleep with you then you’ll have to marry me. My current situation is so difficult. I’ll owe a debt of guilt to my late husband for taking another man.”
“That’s fine. Morally taking care of things will surely please your late husband in the afterlife.”
The second husband, Bảy Rô, was a warehouse and dock worker with the build and strength of an ox, the vulgar mouth of a sailor, and a “work hard, drink harder” kind of ethics. A beast lurked within him. They were together for almost two years, then the inevitable happened. One late night, Bảy Rô came home, piss drunk. Eager to pick a fight, he began:
“Hey little woman, why do you always bitch whenever I drink? Who the hell are you to mess with the wisdom of ‘a man without booze is like a flag without wind’?”
“I beg you. Please go to sleep.”
“Lecturing, bossing me again. My money, my boozing. What is it to you, you nosey tramp?”
Worn out and defeated, the woman lowered her face in silence. Circumstances had made her resigned to the whims of fate. She was afraid but powerless, anxious but without the means to change her situation. She lived the slow death of a crab helplessly trying to escape the frying pan, to the amusement of party drinkers.
Hearing no response from his wife, Bảy Rô roared furiously:
“Why stop me from drinking, your fancy highness?”
He suddenly grabbed a big porcelain ashtray and threw it at his wife. With a loud, spiteful laugh, and a drunk’s double-vision, he aimed for her face but the ashtray flew straight at her shadow on the wall, shattering into pieces.
He stumbled out the door, self-congratulating: “Take that, you fucking tramp. Typical, worthless trash.”
In the darkness of night, Bảy Rô naturally found his way to a drinking joint. There he buried his face in his own scar-ridden, soulless pit, letting the beast, wild and stupid, step out of its human shell—not to feed on sweet roots or hunt tender prey, but to sink its teeth into itself, licking its own blood, chewing its own bones. The beast had drifted through timeless nature via the unconscious, invading many a trance-like sleep while its human eyes were wide open.
Having narrowly escaped her drunk husband the night before, the miserable woman was killed in an accident the next morning. Perhaps due to sadness and self-defeat, or some other reason, she rode her bike directly under the platform of a ten-wheeler. At the time, Nạn was just a small child, unaware that the loss of her mother would leave her adrift in the world. Nạn lived in deprivation, lacking proper food and clothing, until the day Bảy Rô decided to kick her out.
Actually, he did give her some money and some old clothes thrown in a bag. His act of mercy was pulling her out of the house by the ear, and advised: “Get out. Fuck off and disappear, you little zombie. Don’t ever come back, you hear me? From now on the park is your home. Go there and you can eat, sleep, or snore, whatever you want.”
*
As a ten-year-old girl, Nạn had no way to fully grasp what life—like a deep pan filled with burning oil—had in store for her. She wandered aimlessly through the streets. Fortunately, as her Maker had given her an underdeveloped mind, she was happy and playful, innocent like a gibbon or deer, oblivious to the cold, hunger, and hardships of the streets. Like a soul already elevated from the corporeal, she seemed unburdened by life, untouched by sorrow and shame. She walked the city streets like a calf frolicking on grassy hills, or like colorful figures endlessly circling a festive Mid-Autumn lantern. Nạn was like a saint, not asking for anything from this world.
“Go live in the park. It’s where you’ll find your kind.” Nạn remembered Uncle Rô saying. And she innocently thought that, except for this cesspool in the middle of the city, there just wasn’t anywhere else that would take her.
If one park rejected her, she would find another so-called grass field and try to blend in. Throngs of exposed human beings had already convened there. Early morning fires were often lit for overdue meals served next to a ditch, under a tree, on pavement, or by some debris-filled path. The sky could be gray or pink, the weather rain or shine, the park-dwellers could hug each other tight and go to sleep anytime, then wake up the next morning to use the public faucet to rinse their mouths or scrub their bodies while exchanging verbal insults.
A new day, a new short future. Little bodies with bloated but empty bellies would wander far into the city, haunting store fronts, transportation hubs, ports, and docks. The children would plunge their heads into stinking trash heaps, and with hook sticks or nimble hands, dig out some sourly spoiled, mold-covered piece of something society had disposed of, to bring back for repurposing, eating, or selling to salvage yards. These children were “the dust of life.” At dawn, you would also find them crawling in sewers under the city, picking, sorting, groping in the sludge for things on the way to the mouth of the river; some would drown, not getting out in time before high tides flooded the sewer drains.
But who could stop them, this army of misery, from dreaming of one day hitting the jackpot, like finding a gold ring, or a bar of silver; for some had indeed found bullet-proof vests, grenades, pistols, marine compasses. The country had attained peace, but the people were still in need of homicidal instruments!
Amid these miserable creatures, there were those who loved to cheat, steal, and rob among themselves. One would be thrown in the slammer in the morning, and another would be back on the streets in the afternoon. Many girls kept hooking to support their jailed hoodlums. Some, even in chains, wore defiant grins, vowing payback, seeking revenge on life, threatening to cut their brethren’s throats. It was an unspoken rule: beneath the city’s shining and colorful lights, there were lives in darkness whose dawn did nothing but reveal their clustered, crawling existence in the mud.
Nạn lived among such company for a while, but found she could not blend in. They were a mass of floating debris, seemingly congruent from afar, but in fact driven by their own selfish needs. Nạn couldn’t adapt to this world of deceit, back-stabbing, and generally thuggish behavior. Her hands not yet bloodied, how could she have the kind of contempt and hatred shown by those whose lives were stolen by life itself. Each park had become its own turf, ruled by its own gang of devious and violent criminals. They would fiercely guard their territory against the surrounding world, the so-called realm of civility and decency.
Eventually, life pushed Nạn into Banyan Tree Park, where she would stay. Back then, the park was a mysterious wilderness. The hundred-year-old banyan tree cast its vast shade over a sprawling area encircled by villas and buildings. A cluster of brown aerial roots descended from the high branches like a sorcerer’s beard, whispering, rustling, its mysterious murmurs echoing. Only one single banyan tree, but it was a jungle. Only one main root, but it was a huge dwelling with many discreet rooms, partitioned by walls of interwoven roots. Streetwalkers brought clients here even in broad daylight. Motorcycle thieves stripped and chopped their stolen prizes within its depths. Once, the body of a hit victim dangled in the banyan’s shadows for days before being sniffed out. It’s worth mentioning that the park sat on a sprawling piece of land, facing a complex once called Gia Long Palace, where wartime ambushes and battles were fought, leaving unforgettable marks in history.
Every dented pot has its own crooked lid, every Jill has her Jack, and so it goes. As ugly as Nạn might appear to others, there were still lustful bastards wanting to rape her. Street love had no use for flowery language, art, or music. Just keep on pushing, grabbing, groping until submission, then mounting like wild animals. One afternoon, as yolk-cream sunlight dotted the moist, leaf-covered ground, in a hidden tree hollow, a gang of youths held Nạn down to sample “the goodies inside.” Grandpa Mùi came across what was going on, busted in, and gave the whole gang a good beating. Nạn was saved.
*
Grandpa Mùi was an elder, a top dog, in this neighborhood. He’d survived enough street combat to earn the fear and respect of local gangsters. His past remained a mystery. No one knew how long his rap sheet was, or how many people he’d killed, but around here he’d shown himself to be a man of compassion and principle. He protected Nạn and did what he could to feed and raise her like his own daughter.
He worked any job he could find—day worker, dockhand, restaurant guard, bike valet—and upon returning around four o’clock in the afternoon, would have some food for Nạn, though not much. Then he’d hang up his nylon hammock between two tree branches, read some newspapers, sing traditional opera songs, have a few sips of rice liquor, or settle straight into a peaceful nap.
On this particular day, the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month, just two days before Tết, Grandpa Mùi sensed a restlessness in his heart. With the melancholic chill clinging to the grass and trees, the sacred silence of heaven and earth, he suddenly longed for his wife and children, his garden of vegetables, the rose myrtle-covered hills, the names on ancestral tombstones. Poor and broke, he felt so desperately sad he could die. Every year, the time of Tết would come as a damning misery, an enemy to the hungry and destitute. That afternoon, he’d already rolled up his hammock and sold it at the market for some extra cash. Then he’d bought a bit of food, some cakes and fruits, a bundle of incense, and a bottle of rice liquor. He’d also made sure to get Nạn a new pair of pants. “Poor child, I just can’t let her ancestors see her pantless during Tết.”
The sporadic pops of firecrackers echoed through the air, signaling that New Year offerings were being prepared throughout the city. Grandpa Mùi looked at Nạn warming herself in the sun, and said:
“Grandpa gifts you a pair of pants. They’re brand new. Poor little thing, it’s Tết and everything!”
Nạn looked up in quiet bewilderment, not knowing whether to thank him or to reject the gift. With a mind as murky as lake water, she just smiled, but then, as if by some will of heaven, her eyes welled up with tears.
“Go find a tree hollow and change into your new pants, child.”
The new pants, though made in Việt Nam, felt smoother and more lustrous than her skin. Stepping into a secluded space formed by the banyan roots, she shed her old tattered pants and pulled on the new ones. For the first time, she enjoyed the caress of fabric against her legs and thighs. The last gusts of winter rustled through the roots, weaving slats of sunlight into a shimmering dance that cut her shadow into fragments. A life in pieces, cut up by sunlight. The light patterns suddenly turned cold, mythical. She smiled in the shadow of the leaves, vaguely sensing a glimmer that a sea change was possible.
On the afternoon of the thirtieth day of the lunar month, Grandpa Mùi called Nạn over and said:
“Little grandchild, you’re all grown up now. There are only a few more hours left until the New Year. We have to welcome spring, celebrate Tết, hope for better luck in the coming year, maybe lightening the burden of this slaving life. But first we must remember and honor our ancestral spirits. Without our ancestors we wouldn’t be here. So at the time of the old year’s passing, I’ll make offerings to my ancestors under this banyan tree. If they can’t help us be better off, at least they’ll understand our humble circumstances. So I’ll also make offerings to your ancestors too.
Everybody together. So wherever you go tonight, remember to come back here just before the year’s passing to pay respect to your ancestors.”
*
By routine, in the late afternoon, as the banyan tree’s shadow was falling across the boulevard, Nạn made her way to the old cathedral. She stood there, gazed blankly at her surroundings, then wandered to sit by the riverbank.
Without its usual hustle and bustle, the park seemed listless during the waning hours of the year. Business was slow for the streetwalkers. Under the warm sun, in the hopeful air of the coming spring, two girls—one knocked up, the other chronically ill—sat on a park bench, offering each other “supplementary affection.” Finger-combing through each other’s shirt and hair, they performed several rounds of search-and-destroy missions against body crabs and head lice. Each enemy met a swift end between their teeth, followed by a faint popping sound.
The wind carried a whiff of perfume from the houses of the rich on the other side, where a well-dressed girl stood on the balcony, watching the sky turn pink. Groups of carefree young men and women on motorbikes sped by, laughing merrily on jubilant streets. At the roundabout flower basin, near the public faucet, Old Cường, a lame man in ragged clothes, was chasing his wife, shaking his cane as if threatening the heavens. His wife, running for her life, cursed back at him. His cause seemed just: it was already New Year’s Eve but she still hadn’t borrowed money to buy him a bottle of rice liquor.
Nạn sat at the riverbank for a while, then continued her aimless wandering. A small flame, or perhaps a tiny explosion had burst through the fog in her mind: she understood why dewdrop clung to her eyes, why the wind chilled her heart. Even a wild bird might ache with longing in sensing the rebirth of a new season. Everything felt both intimately close and impossibly distant, real yet ethereal.
“I am indebted to Grandpa Mùi. I was deceived and cheated in this predestined realm of ignorance.”
“You are in human society but not part of humanity. You are what could be, the possibility, the wide open original source, where pain, agony and humiliation rush in to stay hidden, seeding suffering. But you have closed the door to sin.”
“I can never be It.”
The evening’s atmosphere deepened into purple, like an ink blotter absorbing the year’s joys and sorrows, trials and tribulations.
On this side of the river, a crowd gathered around a street martial artist who was performing feats for public donations. Pressing a sharp knife to his bony chest, he directed a boy to strike it with a large hammer. At the ferry crossing, people scurried around, like tiny ants in a microcosm of blood and sweat. The body of a drowned boy was pulled from the river and placed at the foot of a towering statue in a heroic pose, its hand firmly grasping the hilt of a sword. The statue was black bronze against the black evening. Light faded on damp, mold-covered walls. The winds were held back by skyscrapers. Yellow plum blossoms and red firecrackers brightened restaurant windows, as people rushed about, trying to scrape the last bit of time from the departing year.
“I am beggaring . . .”
Nạn had tried beggaring but quickly found herself unsuited to this profession. The rules of life are ruthless. People love beauty, sympathize with broken lives, but distance themselves from ugliness. In their snap judgment, Nạn wasn’t exactly a cripple to deserve sympathy. No limbs were missing, just a hobbling gait. She wasn’t blind, just cross-eyed. Her dark skin was fine, if a bit patchy.
Manifesting in this world, you’re a loveable daughter of a semiconscious Creator. And you dimly remembered what Grandpa Mùi had instructed: “Must be back in time to observe New Year’s Eve.”
Now she stood before a luxurious restaurant, in her hand a few crumpled, sweat-soaked bills. She pressed her face against a window, peering into the dimly lit interior. Inside, amidst tables laden with extravagant food and drink, people discussed everything under the sun: capitalism, socialism, theism, atheism, business investments; the quest for a just and classless society with no exploitation; the irony of progress leading to a decline in culture; and the need to gather rare gems of ethics and morality in a desert of soulless materialism. Nạn vaguely felt that she was a lone specimen, different and separate from the human species she encountered daily. They seemed superior, aloof, driven by competition, yet acutely aware of the inadequacy of having two legs less than animals.
The patrons talked and laughed, ate and drank merrily, called for and paid their bills, and said they’d meet again soon. Nạn went to an open window, trying to reach for a chicken drumstick on a table littered with leftovers. She was extremely hungry; the craving drove her to tears. But the drumstick remained out of reach, making her slip and stumble, like an animal unable to keep its balance on this earth.
The walk along Catinat Street, from the river toward the old cathedral, was magical. The rows of trees on either side seemed to lean into each other for a kiss, forming a dark green archway against the fading sunset. Then night arrived in a delicate perfume. The usual clamor subsided, leaving only the distant echoes of firecrackers.
*
At the crossroads, Old Biểu and his son were still busy patching up tubes and tires, charging last-minute customers inflated prices. Fire used to vulcanize bits of rubber was producing billows of acrid smoke. Evening descended on the motherland, prodigal children returned, and wanderers yearned for home and hearth . . . . “I’m coming back to honor my ancestors.”
Now the park was pitch black. Any lightbulbs the city had replaced in street lamps would immediately get smashed by the “dust of life” denizens. Making a living in a brightly lit park was next to impossible. Nạn made her way through that encompassing darkness. The banyan’s whisperings intensified her loneliness and isolation. Here and there, people huddled around flickering flames, lit by whatever flammable material they could find.
For some, it could be a fun gathering in the spirit of the season. Under the banyan tree, Old Cường and some old buddies had a little drinking party on the grass. They shared personal stories, ranted about the past, dreamed about the future, and cursed the present.
Old Hag Đảnh and her family gathered around a kerosene lantern. Laid out on a tarp upon the ground were some cakes and fruits, incense and candles, chipped earthen bowls and plates. Next to them, a pot of blood cake porridge had been simmering on a makeshift stove made of three cylindrical bricks. She was slicing some slimy, sinewy meat blobs on a sidewalk tile used as a cutting board. For Tết, her little boy got a new pair of pants with gaudy floral patterns, but he complained they were too big. “Just hold on, by next year they’ll fit,” she said, dipping a spoon into a large bowl of diluted cattle blood. In the night’s flickering, macabre light, the broth’s not-quite-red, pinkish color looked horribly disgusting.
Old Hag Đảnh really loved her husband and kids. She’d sweat and toil all day, anywhere, for wages that really amounted to chump change. Near dark, she would drop by the state-owned butcher shop to beg for leftover blood stuff on the cement floor, a gooey mixture of blood, hair, even feces excreted by animals during slaughter. This prize could only be obtained through her privileged connections with the butchers. She would take it home and, in the spirit of the Communist Party’s slogan, to “liberally promote initiatives and improve techniques,” turn it into soup for her family. Without her enduring hard work and sacrifice, the family would have starved. But she remained cheerful, optimistic for a bright future, always promising herself: “One day, I’ll have my own house and my own farm again, I’ll get it all back. You bastards can’t just rob and plunder from me without consequences!”
Nạn sat by Old Hag Đảnh’s happy family for a while, then headed back in the direction of Grandpa Mùi’s. But she had to pause for an incidental spectacle. At the roundabout flower basin, where no one had ever seen a single bloom, two lovers were freestyle wrestling. In an earlier part of the drama, this morning, Miss Toan had given her makeshift, seasonal husband some money to shop for Tết. He made it just to the end of the block, saw a street card game, was suckered into it, and got cleaned out. After a preliminary round of cursing and yelling, Miss Toan, her blood boiling, decided to teach him with her fists. “You menstrual-blood-licking son of a bitch. I sell my pussy to feed you and you don’t even know how to hold onto your lunch money.”
But Miss Toan’s anemic, street-worn body against her husband’s drug-addled frame simply meant a protracted battle of classic street insults punctuated by lethargic clawing, kicking, and wrestling—as both were fighting with empty stomachs. “Who wins over whom?” Nạn wondered.
The ancestral altar arranged by Grandpa Mùi consisted of a sheet of newspaper spread on the ground, a standing cylinder brick used as an incense holder, a kerosene lantern in place of candles, four cement tiles used as dishes holding cakes and fruits, a banana bunch, and two small cups filled with rice liquor. With the altar set and some time left in the old year, the old man felt like wandering about for a bit. A deep sadness for the scenes in the park on New Year’s Eve overcame him. In the night’s shapeless flames, the people around him looked blurry, alienated. They had been swindled by society with no chance of a comeback. A life among, but so much outside of, society.
Nạn pulled out a few incense sticks, lit them, and put them back in the hole of the brick. Then she sat holding her knees, watching the banyan roots swaying around her. She shivered in the cold, her stomach growling.
Across the street, on balconies, residents had already set up worship tables for ceremonial offerings at the precise moment of the year’s passing. Strangely, on this night, Nạn felt her mind becoming more lucid. She yearned for her mother. She saw her mother’s body, the trails of dark red blood staining the street asphalt. She saw the policeman drawing chalk lines around the accident area. The truck driver, upon seeing the gruesome, broken body on the street, had fled the scene in terror. Nạn curled up, inching her body into the shadows, hoping the darkness could shield her from cold and hunger, waiting anxiously for Grandpa Mùi to return.
Right at that moment, a young man in his twenties appeared. This angel had a plow-shaped face with shifty eyes, pointy ears, a small mouth, and a bamboo-stalk neck connecting his body to his head, which was shaped like a small dried coconut. He looked at Nạn, scrutinized her, then quickly sat down:
“Hey little girl, why are you sitting by yourself and hugging your knees?”
Nạn stayed silent. In the immenseness of night, the angel faintly detected a reeky odor coming from Nạn-the-creature. Not taken aback by the creature’s odd shape, he said in a soothing voice:
“We can talk a little if you like. Don’t be so sad. Just come over there with us, have a few drinks to wash away bad luck.”
Nạn inched away, her hand inadvertently grabbing a few dead leaves. “I can still vaguely see a person throwing a big ashtray at another person. I remember once they told me I’d been consumed by fire in a bamboo thicket near my home.”
The angel asked:
“Little girl, you have any family or relatives?”
“No.”
“Which gang are you with?”
“What is gang?”
The world has its fair share of the dim-witted, this goes without explanation. The angel understood that this little girl was very much alone, and this meant nobody would intervene if something happened. He stroked her hair. Touched her shoulder. Fondled the smooth, shiny surface of her new pants. Then he asked Nạn:
“You very hungry?”
“Very.”
“Eat this. I’ll give you some more in a little bit.”
He gave her a partially-eaten pork belly bánh mì. She grabbed the sandwich and devoured it. She closed her eyes, feeling thirsty, but the New Year altar had only rice liquor in its cups. The kerosene lantern had burned out; the incense sticks were still glowing red. Night. And still ever night. Perhaps earlier in the evening there had been some light rain, as the ground now reeked of the essence of the community: the dampened air, the urine smell from the “dust of life.” And on the thirtieth night of this lunar December, the silky and seamless darkness enshrouded everything, while the banyan tree’s tragic music rustled and whispered, echoing and eternal.
And it was this appearance-defying darkness that enabled Nạn to lose herself in, and, for a brief moment, play her own game of change with nature. “I am so grateful the Creator has surrounded me with darkness. I am proud to efface the ruinous decay along with the world around me. I am happy to dissolve my body into darkness. I can die quietly while waiting for sunrise . . . . But right now it’s still the night of the thirtieth.”
The young man seemed to enjoy watching how hungry Nạn was and how she’d devoured the sandwich. He held her in his arms, sweet-talking her. Then he slowly took off her pants.
“Just a little more, I really love you, my little angel,” he said. When she felt her angel of salvation pulling her pants past her heels, Nạn reacted weakly. But it was too late.
“I didn’t come here to admire your looks or to lay with you,” the young man said to himself, watching Nạn being stripped naked in the cold. He quickly rolled up her new pants, clasping them firmly to his chest, and disappeared into the darkness.
At that moment, Nạn heard Grandpa Mùi’s familiar footsteps and choppy cough. He called in:
“Nạn, little child, you’re back already, aren’t you? It’s already midnight, so burn some incense and bow to your ancestors for their lucky blessings.”
Sàigòn, 1989
