Spring

So I had officially become a city girl. It was a city on the delta, the most important metropolis in the country.

I used to be a country girl, a mountain girl, but I became a citizen in a wink. So simple. A Ha Noi guy loved me, and I felt the same for him. At the end of the day, we decided to go to the altar.

The wedding was organised only a fortnight before I received my graduation diploma from college. My girl classmates, from the same part of the country as me, all said that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Others retorted that I was lucky, because I was beautiful. I said nothing about it, only smiled, expressing my gratitude to heaven and earth for helping me marry the person I loved and rid myself of my rural life in that desolate far-flung area.

My husband’s name was Nha, Dang Tuan Nha, an architect of urban planning. He was not so special, apart from his bright eyes and clever face. He was a man taciturn by nature. It was good for me, but I sometimes felt dull about it, because I was a woman.

We met at a friend’s birthday party. I was still a law student then. After that our relationship developed, simply as a tree grows from the soil. The crucial moment came on a Saturday night when he rode his bicycle to my boarding house to take me to the cinema. Once we’d arrived at the cinema, he said it was too stuffy that day and suggested going back to his house so we could enjoy the cool air on the terrace. Anything would do for me, I said.

Back at his house he told me to go and wait for him on the terrace. A moment later, he was back with two roasted sweet potatoes, one for him and one for me. The potatoes smelled delicious. I ate quickly as I was used to doing at home, without thinking, and urged him to do the same:

"Please eat up! What are you thinking about?"

"Oh, nothing. I just wish... "

I burst out laughing.

"What do you wish for?"

"I.... I wish to marry you!" he said, looking stupid.

"Me too!" I said to him, still chewing the potato.

Having heard my response, he immediately pulled me downstairs, straight to where his parents sat watching television. He addressed them with a serious face:

"Mum, dad, we’ve decided to marry each other!"

"What? Why have you delayed until today?" – his mother said, her eyes were wet.

"It’s very.... very good!" his father said, hesitating for a minute, then continued, "Thuy, you should concentrate on your coming graduation exams. If you have anything difficult in terms of your subjects, don’t hesitate. But Nha should get everything ready for your wedding now, so that we can take your wife home at the end of the year!"

"We’ll have a grandchild next year, won’t we?" his mother said, looking far away, then she smiled a happy smile.

All these things had made me so happy that I felt over the moon, floating through the clouds. I could not sleep. I tossed and turned all night.

My husband’s house was on Hang Gai Street, near an ancient, large leafed banian tree in downtown Ha Noi. His family were intellectuals. His grandfather had been a railway engineer. His father was a senior economic expert in the city, and his mother was a university lecturer, specialising in folk literature. In short, the street I lived in was in an ancient quarter and my neighbours were all polite and civilised and respectable. What more did I want?

After the wedding, I remained unoccupied for only about 10 days, and then I wanted to go and find a job. I applied for a job at the city’s Justice Department and luckily, I got it.

My husband and I lived on the third floor, and we had a small terrace with a lot of vases of flowers and bonsai trees. My husband liked nature. He watered the flowers and trees every morning but he had never pruned them.

One early morning, when we were still in bed, out of the blue, we heard a bird singing somewhere. He moved and slowly got up out of the bed to tiptoe to the door and opened it. He stood in silence there, looking dumbfounded like the stone lion in the yard of the communal house. Having come back, he looked blue.

"I haven’t heard a bird singing for a long time. It seems that birds are coming back these days and make their nests on that banian tree.... But if you listen to it attentively, its song is quite different from that when I was still a little boy hearing it. Do you think it is because I am now an adult?"

It did not matter to me if the bird sang or not, but to please him, I smiled in agreement. After that, for several weeks, before going to bed he did not close the door to the terrace, saying:

"We can hear the bird singing more clearly this way, it is the music of heaven and earth, you know!"

All was well until one morning, which started off like all the other mornings. The bird started twittering as before, but my husband suddenly jumped to his feet, rushed to the door and closed it. A dead silence fell upon the room. I was greatly surprised at it.

"Why did you close the door, dear? The bird is singing!"

"The music is so flat!" he cried.

"Nothing different from the other days, I think." I tried to hold back a laugh, because the "music" was the same as all the other days.

He looked at me.

"When I returned from work yesterday afternoon, I discovered the bird song came from some birds in cages outside Mrs. Lanh’s house," he said.

For goodness sake, I thought, the birds are all the same. I started to think my husband was a bit queer.

Some time had passed after our marriage when my husband said:

"I haven’t been to your home village yet, so when spring comes, we’ll go and visit your parents up there. What do you think?"

"Oh.... yes!" – I said indistinctly. I was really happy at heart, but felt a bit worried. My family lived in a mountainous area with no convenience and comfort. But I thought I could not delay the visit for long. So we prepared everything and headed off in the car on the second day of the Lunar New Year.

***

My home village was in Son La, a mountainous province in the northwest. My great-grandparents had settled there for several generations. My house was located in Hoa Dao (Peach Blossom) Hamlet, quite separate from other houses and far from the district market. So, whenever we wanted to go to market, we had to get up so early; when we got home, it was late in the afternoon.

My house was made entirely of wood. In the corner of the yard, there was a peach tree which never failed to bear blossom. The back of my house was against a hillside, looking down a small valley with rice fields. Beyond the valley were the lavish green forests that ran as far the eyes could see.

Sitting by the balustrade of the house, you could see a small stream running along the foot of the hill. On either side of the stream there were a lot of peach trees. That scenic view was very familiar to me.

We walked for over 10km. I was a little bit tired, even though I was a mountain girl. My husband seemed so happy. He looked around at everything with great interest. We arrived home when it was getting dark. My family welcomed us with open arms. There was a festive atmosphere in the house.

At dinner that night my mother prepared some special food of fish boiled with soya paste. The small fish were caught by my brother, Thuan, in the stream that afternoon. I was worried my husband couldn’t eat it. To my surprise, he wolfed it down without a word. When night fell and we went to bed, he whispered to me:

"The fish is so delicious! When we get back to Ha Noi, will you cook it for me?"

"Do you really mean it? You’re not joking, are you?" I felt a bit sensitive.

"No joke at all!" he said in a serious voice. "The fish your mother cooked has a special taste. Do ask your mother how to cook it if you don’t know!"

I did not feel hurt at his joke, but I flushed a bit.

The next morning after a breakfast of some boiled manioc dipped in honey, he asked to go with my parents to the terraced field. My father said no, for fear that he was still tired, but my brother said:

"Brother-in-law, I just discovered a very big bee hive. Do you want to go into the forest with me?"

My husband was overjoyed upon hearing it.

They returned home when it was rather late with a canful of honey in their hands. Their faces were covered in it too.

"Why are you so late?" I whispered into my brother’s ear.

"Actually, we could have been home by noon, but your husband was like a little boy. He was captivated by everything he saw. He asked me questions constantly and stopped to look at everything he met on the way. When we passed Mai Waterfall, not so strange, you see, he stopped there for a long time, looking bewildered. It took me a long time to get him to leave. On the way home, he still lingered with no intention to part from the rows of peach trees along the stream," he stopped for a moment and continued, there something the matter with him?"

I smiled, rubbing his head gently with my fingertip.

That night my husband pulled me into his lap, caressing my hair and speaking as if to himself:

"This mountainscape is wonderful, beautiful. No wonder....you’re very beautiful!"

"I would still be beautiful, whereever I was born," I teased him.

"Nonsense! You’re ungrateful to heaven and earth!. Please, pray tomorrow or else your beauty will be taken away!"

The day we were about to go back to Ha Noi, my husband asked my father for a branch of the peach tree. Having heard his words, I stopped him:

"It would be very cumbersome to take a peach branch! They are sold everywhere, you know."

"Oh, that kind of peach tree? It would never look as beautiful as the peach tree here."

I smiled and stopped my interference.

Having arrived home in Ha Noi, the first words he said to me were:

"Next spring, we will go to your home village again. Do you agree?"

I gave him a funny look and nodded.

***

The next spring, I gave birth to our first child, so I could not go with him to my homeland. I felt worried that he would be sad to go alone. But he was over the moon when he came home. He was full of stories that made me feel guilty. Why did I feel jealous of the spring in my homeland!

Gradually I came to admit that it was thanks to my husband that I discovered the beauty of my native land, of the natural landscape there. Through him, I could feel the purity of those transparent petals of the peach blossoms, enjoy the twitter of the sky birds and recognise the difference between those birds and the ones in cages. It’s like the difference between trees grown in a natural way with those in vases. Spring in my native land was permeated with bird song and the smell of tree sap.

When my son was two years old, we were able to go to my native land together. During the visit, my husband took us to Mai Waterfall for a day. We hit the road, my son perched high on his father’s shoulder, laughing, while I trudged behind them carrying a knapsack.

Finally, we found a resting spot on a green grass by the waterfall, ringed by white peach blossom. But then something happened that would change everything. A scorpion bit my son on his foot. We rushed him home, and my father went to get some herbs to heal the wound. After that my son stopped crying and slept, but he had a high temperature. The whole family had a restless night that night.

The next day he was better and my husband heaved a deep sigh of relief. But there was a change in him. For the next few days, he stayed inside the house, with a pensive expression. When he went out and was crossing the road, he looked to either side like he was guarding himself against something. He looked so troubled and absorbed.

He sat there by the window, his eyes set towards that far away forest, touched with perplexity and fear. Deep inside his heart, it seemed that there was something being cracked and broken. I looked at him, my heart filled with pity and sympathy.

The years after that, we still visited my parents as usual, but it was not with the same feelings as before.

Years later when my son had grown up into a fine young man, I understood that if standing before an early morning in spring, you should try to feel all the brilliant mixture of colours and sounds full of vitality. But don’t get too sure of yourself, because you will recognise that amid that magnificent and glorious space, there are scorpions and poisonous insects. When spring disappears, you will find it hard to feel it again in your heart and soul.

Translated by Manh Chuong

(from Viet Nam News)

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