by Do Chu
Kien held his smoking pipe in his hand as he sat listening closely to the story being told by Lang, an ornithologist. He had just thrown three pieces of wood on the fire.
"Oh dear, things will soon be in chaos!" he exclaimed, as he put out the flames. "I didn’t know what eco-environment meant before hearing you. Now, I understand it a bit better, and I am shocked. How many times will foolish men try to destroy our beautiful countryside?"
Kien then turned his attention to the storyteller. "How many more days will you stay here? If the worst comes to the worst, you can spend Tet with my family. Surely, these days local officials are too busy to welcome you," he said.
Lang was in the midst of writing his doctoral thesis on ornithology. He was now seeking out more information about birds to strengthen his knowledge. His friends and fellow lecturers at the National University of Ha Noi had affectionately named him "Lang the ornithologist". His studies on birds were amongst the most erudite in the field. For his latest reseacrh, he was preoccupied with classifying various types of birds in the plains of North Viet Nam – a niche subject, requiring great detail and focus.
His wife Kim Thuy always seemed to be nagging him. She scolded Lang for leaving at Tet.
"You are a crazy man!" she shouted. "Leaving the comfort of our home to go crawling and hiding for days on ends in the mountains. Do you really think that you will find a new type of bird? What a silly job. I don’t know why the authorities are willing to pay for such good-for-nothing guys! Only journalists are real ecologists, who dedicate their life for the protection of the environment, not you and your gang." Her words hung for a moment in the tense, silent air.
After another painstaking minute passed, she placed a book in his hand, while he made his way across the court, bag in hand.
"This is a novel called My Sorrows. It has just won the Golden Stink Bug prize. It’s been translated into dozens of languages across the world," she said is a soft voice, before raising it again in heated passion.
"The author of this work is my friend, a divorced knitweaver in Hang Mam. For a young woman in her position, there aren’t many options. She can kill herself, or she can get brave and try to penetrate the literary circle. She made up her mind to live by her pen, and she invited me to attend a literary course with her a few years ago. But in those days I was too stupid and didn’t take her up on her offer. Now, I’m left feeling like I missed my golden opportunity. But, it’s not too late. Next year, I’m determined to start writing novels. If she can do it, so can I. I’ll be earning money for cultural work".
Lang responded to her with a quip. "I believe you. No one will compare to you. Next year perhaps, I’ll write stories, then people from the villages and city will, too. Nobody will ever go hungry again. How glorious we’ll all be!"
It turned out that a career in ecology was quite unstable. The more Lang thought of it, the more complicated things seemed. He was beginning to doubt his ability to achieve his goal. He was interested in the unnoticed destructive impacts on nature by human beings all over the world. It was not merely the classification of birds or the greenhouse effect, or even the destruction of the ozone layer. It was much more than that.
Lang sat alone in a thatched-roof hut in a coastal village with Kien’s family. The family had set aside space for him to carry out his research. "Such a revered scientist must have a decent place to study," Kien said to his wife.
The couple kept busy working in the fields all day long. It was the time for transplanting the summer rice for a bumper crop in time for Tet. They had a large family with five children to support – two boys and three girls. Except for the eldest son, they were all still too young to help their parents and were only able to run the odd errand here and there. They did this from dawn to dusk and often returned home with dirt and sweat-stained faces. Lang unintentionally became house caretaker for the clan.
On his wooden desk lay colourful pens and pencils, Chinese and English reference books and magazines, and the novel his wife had given to him. On its cover, a young girl in a sexy mini-skirt held a beautiful rose in her hand.
The village was teeming with mosquitoes. Sometimes, they darted at his face like hostile arrows and remind him how horrible the ecological environment of the area had become. At one time, birds could be seen everywhere in this place. Each had their own season. Pelicans came in the 10th lunar month during the harvest, vultures came for the floods, starlings and storks when the earth was newly ploughed. The storks would perch on the backs of grazing buffaloes, but now, there were no birds.
Kien sat by Lang’s side in the veranda, smoking rustic tobacco. They both listened in silence to the sounds of the waves crashing onto the shore.
"In the spring of the year of the monkey, we suffered the most terrible Tet." Kien said, as he began to tell Lang about his time at war. "We stayed in the jungle and ate only one bowl of thin porridge a day. We were only allowed one bowl of rice per squad of three," he lamented.
"I carried my wounded comrade-in-arms on my back day after day for half a month. I wasn’t concerned about my weariness, but the threat of death by hunger and disease. One morning, I went to the stream nearby to catch the earth worms by turning over the heavy rocks on the bank. I took them back to the encampment and cooked them with a bowl of rice, after washing them carefully. We relished that food, except for my wounded friend.
"You’ve just made this porridge with earth worms, haven’t you?’ he asked me angrily.
"Yes, that’s right. We need to eat to stay alive.’
"I’d rather die than have your soup,’ he insisted.
Kien paused for a moment to gather his emotions. "A few days later, he passed away from loss blood and hunger. When the war was over, I returned home and married the girl he had loved before going to the frontline."
"By the way, Lang, you’re a scholar, so you’ve travelled extensively, right?" But, have you ever taken part in a kestrel-hunting party?"
"No, not yet," Lang replied.
Then he told Lang a long story about bird hunting.
"There was a secret to the game, that I didn’t know in those days. ‘When the church bells rang at midday, my girl and I started hunting kestrels, me bare bodied and her in her bra. If you go hunting alone, you can’t catch anything, no matter how strong you are. You need a girl, who is secretly in love with you. She will chase a kestrel to your place with her passion. If you come back home, please ask my honey whether she still remembers the day we both tried to catch a red-becked kestrel in the deserted alluvial plain. Next spring, when you come back here, I’ll lead you to the estuary to see the game for yourself," Kien said.
For many successive days, Lang wandered around the river’s mouth. It was full of marshes. He often had to wade through the mire to find his way out. It was not easy for him to catch a kestrel because, in addition to vast expanses of mud, there were sharp-edged leaves and deep-growing roots to contend with.
It would be a long time before the flocks of kestrels returned and Tet was drawing near. Perhaps, Lang thought, it was high time for him to say goodbye to the good-natured couple and their obedient children.
Tet is always a profound turning-pointing for the Vietnamese. Joy is shared among the family and grief is driven out of the house.
Lang decided to take a train to go home to be in his study in the upper floor of that five-storeyed building. He would resume his scientific research in the company of his beautiful wife, Thuy. She was a literary sophist, in stark contrast to their teenage neighbour who spent her day himming trashy songs to herself.
He could get a doctoral degree at any time. But becoing a fully-fledged ecologist would take a long time.
"Well, a real eco-system can be found only here," he said to himself. His intuition told him that he should leave the polluted city where he lived to settle in the country.
The north-easterly wind suddenly swept over and made him tremble all over. He glanced in the direction of the river mouth, where several torn sails were spread wide in the wind.
Far beyond spread the deep breathing sea. The rising sun gave off bright, warm rays. Church bells rang through the still air. He stood motionless in the vast, deserted expanse. The mud’s odour tugged at his heart. With all of his soul, he wanted the see the flocks of red-becked kestrels returning after the harvest.
(from Viet Nam News)
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