by Ho Anh Thai
Wife’s freaky talent often screwed things up.
And every situation she screwed up, she created herself.
Take tonight. She had made a great effort, embalming herself in the bathtub, soaking her body in seductive perfume. She had striven to imbue the room with the scent of roses by lighting a perfumed candle that stood in the midst of a plate of aromatic oil. She had placed a vase of flowers on the table. Two no-smoke candles twinkled from the corners of the bedroom. A selection of serenades from a CD filled the room.
All of this was for Husband. To mobilise his passion. To seduce him. And Wife had got her wished-for end. Husband, his arm wrapped around her hips, had pulled her to him the way people pull a container box to themselves before breaking the seal. The container in this case gave itself carte blanche to the exploring hands; it promised to hold great gifts inside.
But...
The container suddenly sprang up from the bed. Shaking off the role of inanimate object, Wife suddenly came back to herself. Became, that is, a woman sensitive to every odor. Her eyes flashed. Slid to the right. And left. And right. Her nose crinkled and crinkled, sniffed and sniffed. Right. And left. And right. Her index finger pointed and pointed, pecked and pecked as if she was locating the place. To the right. And left. And right.
"There’s a dead rat in this room," she muttered.
"There’s a dead rat in this room," she repeated, as if she were chanting a prayer.
Husband whined. Like a fisherman who had just lost a big fish because of some freak interference.
But it didn’t matter how big the lost fish would have been. Wife had swiftly forgotten the aim of her evening’s endeavours. The couple turned the bed up-side-down, searching for the rat. They shone their flashlights into the darkest corners. Noisily pulled out drawers and flung open boxes and cupboards. Finally, the lingering smell of dead rat guided her to the right place. She shrieked. Here it is. The dead rat was lying just behind the CD player, still playing a selection of serenades. Not far from the plate of rose-scented aromatic oil. The rat had died around 7pm. It had begun to rot and stink at the exact moment Wife smelled its reek in the air. Immediately. Not a second later. The rat had died from rat poison bought by Husband and tossed into the corner. It contained red-dyed grains of rice and its package advertised that after eating the poisoned rice, the rats would run out into bright places to die so that there would be no need to search for them. Just collect their corpses. But reality is always different than the label.
Those who are brilliant in a particular field are called "Master" by Vietnamese. So it was that Wife had been nicknamed Mistress Sniff by Husband. She could sniff out any smell from any place, like a dog picking up a scent. That evening Husband brought the garbage bucket downstairs, went to the end of the block of flats and dumped it into the garbage bin. Then he returned to his flat, washed the bucket in the kitchen and so had admirably fulfilled his duties. But. After dinner, Mistress Sniff began to wrinkle up her nose, the way she did whenever she scented anything strange. "I smell rotten lemon," she said. "You must have left something in the bucket. You didn’t pour out everything. There must be a lemon peel somewhere inside."
Now Husband had great confidence that he had performed his serious duty as a garbage dumper carefully and competently. He was very sure that Mistress Sniff had only imagined the smell. Now Mistress Sniff rose to the heights of her mastery to declare that this lemon was strange, different from the lemon they were used to. It was a kind of chap lemon, yellow rinded and big as an orange, she insisted. Now Mistress Sniff has reached a new level of delusion, Husband insisted. This family had never consumed that kind of lemon.
OK, let’s bet, she said. If Mistress Sniff lost, she would take out the garbage instead of her husband for an entire week. If Husband lost, he would continue in his noble evening duties of being the trash dumping expert and dish washer.
Husband, of course, lost.
They tore up the kitchen, but at first could not find any unidentified object. But then Mistress Sniff shrieked, here it is, and Husband was no longer confident that he would be relieved of his garbage position. Triumphantly, Wife turned the garbage pail upside-down. Glued on the bottom of the plastic pail was a shard of wet, sticky lemon; the kind called chap, big as an orange, with a yellow rind. It was a segment from a chap. Only then did Husband remember that after he had dumped the rubbish into the garbage cart, he had put the pail by a tree and had taken the opportunity to exercise his arms and shoulders in the open air. Your only duty and you can’t do it properly, Mistress Sniff nagged.
His life was controlled by the clang of the bell from the rubbish bin. It haunted him like a ghost. Every day at 6pm, hearing the cling clang from the road, he would jump up, snatch the bucket and headed downstairs. He, of course, had prepared it neatly. Poured the full bag into the half-full one. Loaded the big garbage bag into the small one. Cautiously, so he would not drop anything. If there still remained any little leftover garbage in the house, Mistress Sniff would tear the whole house apart all night long to look for it. She would nag and grumble. Garbage was the antagonist in their lives. The clang of the garbage bell sounded in his dreams.
But there was one time when Mistress Sniff was almost defeated. She detected the smell but could not determine from where it came. She could not find out the root, the cause, the reason. That evening she stayed close to Husband. He was sitting by the computer. All day at work he sat in front of the office computer and every evening he did the same at home. Addicted. A new kind of narcotic. Difficult to kick. And here was Mistress Sniff, hovering over him like a reconnaisance plane circling around a target. What is it now, he asked, his voice edgy. He was afraid that just because of some damn imaginary smell, Mistress Sniff was about to rumble through the house all night long. Mistress Sniff did not answer. She was thoroughly focused on her smelling and sniffing apparatus. Her nose was sensitised to the merest whiff in the air. She sensed it lightly clinging to Husband’s body, faintly emanating in the air around him. Mistress Sniff silently approached her target. Mumbling to herself. Nonsense! No reason! She abruptly snatched her husband right arm and pulled it up. Then yanked the left one up. He sat like a surrendering soldier, both hands held high in the air. Wife sniffed both his armpits. No. Certainly not. No bad smell there. His armpits had been fortified by deodorant. They could not stink. They never stank.
It was an insoluable mystery.
Had Mistress Sniff gone mad? She was sensitive to smell. She was obsessed with smell. She was haunted by smell. She was noisy because of smell. And now she was confused by smell.
There was one more bit of evidence that added to her confusion. Husband went south for a five-day business trip. During those five days Mistress Sniff had to go downstairs and take out the garbage herself. Afterwards, she would go back upstairs to her flat. As usual. But twice she went to the wrong flat. Twice she had unconsciously walked straight on upstairs until she looked around and suddenly found she was on the third floor. How could it be? Her flat was on the second floor, not the third. Both times she found herself in front of the same door: flat 315. It added up to 9. A number probably popular in all games of luck. Mistress Sniff stood uncertainly before the door for a while, examining the number. Like a seasoned detective who had stalked her subject to a place and then lost all trace. Yet even without a clue, the detective was still suspicious.
Why would she go to the wrong flat? Twice. It was as if she had not used the usual criteria of space, colour and light to find her way home, but instead had followed a certain scent. But if she had located her flat by smell, she must have made a mistake. A serious mistake.
Certainly, when Husband came back from his trip, she would not tell him about it. Mistress Sniff would lose considerable credibility.
The fact was, Mistress Sniff had not made a mistake identifying that rank armpit smell. The reason for this will now be revealed shortly and chronologically.
It began like this. Every day, at about 6pm, Husband went downstairs to throw away their garbage at the end of the block. Cling clang, cling clang. He heard the bell. His reaction was automatic. It is a matter of past conditioning. You ate your meals in schools or factories or ministries by the bell. You drilled in the army by the bell. Bells had even been used as alarms during the war to warn neighbourhoods and districts when enemy aircraft were coming, and then to sound the all-clear. Cling clang, cling clang.
Husband snatched up the garbage pail and ran. If he were late, he would have to run a marathon in order to catch up with the garbage wagon. He could not let himself be late. One minute late and Mistress Sniff would shriek: Garbage wagon! Garbage wagon! Once, the wagon had passed swiftly by, like a ghost flying in the wind, and he had to run after it for about a kilometer, losing of breath.
On the very day he had to chase after the ghostly wagon, he suddenly found a relay partner. To be more exact, a woman was running in front of him. She was wearing a T-shirt and sport shorts and running shoes as if she had predicted this situation – dumping garbage means running a marathon. He was in a sleeveless undershirt and simple shorts, the way he dressed whenever he abruptly dashed out from his flat. He ran faster for several steps to keep up with her. She was beautiful. The kind of beauty seen only in the light of dusk. True beauty.
Before them, the garbage wagon was still fading away swiftly, like a sulking lover. The sanitation worker pushing the wagon felt a sudden urge to take revenge for her nasty fate. Undoubtedly a kind of inferiority complex. People around her all showing off their clean, fragrant clothes, getting on and off their scooters, grumbling and worming their way through traffic. The garbage wagon pusher grew angry, and as she did, she began to take up more and more space on the road. As she pushed the wagon, she would stop, and then pretend to be undecided about whether to start again. Deliberately, she would bar the way with the wagon when she crossed the street, creating a traffic jam.
Right at that moment both Husband and the woman ran to the edge of the pavement. The cart was sitting in the center of the road, doing its duty as a barrier. Both stopped dead, as if they had reached the bank of a river. As if they had been hunted and saw no further way to escape, a river ahead blocking them. Should they stay still or jump into the river? She hesitated. He jumped. Immediately. Snatched the plastic bag of garbage from her hand and leapt into the road like a warrior ready to sacrifice his life.
It was an act of heroism in her eyes.
But no heroic act is easily accomplished. First he tossed the garbage pail into the cart, and then he threw her garbage bag in after it. Immediately, the bag burst and trash scattered onto the road. The sanitation worker was still staring fiercely at the other vehicles as if they were the damn fools who were trying to block her wagon. As if she wanted to tell them, I’m only temporarily doing this job, and soon I’m going to find a clean, sweet-smelling job and I’ll be out of here. As the whole bag of garbage burst on the road, she just stood and stared. He had to be quick. A long-handled broom and long-handled dustpan lay across the cart, ready to smack the face of anyone who carelessly passed by. He snatched both of them up, and fighting on all fronts, swept and dustpaned, and cleaned in a flash.
As he ran back and jumped up to the sidewalk, he had the appearance of a man who has just jumped courageously into flood waters and pulled a victim to safety. Now it was getting dark. The two strolled back leisurely; it was their first chance to talk to each other. She complained about the unprofessional spirit permeating the country. Market clerks and restaurant waiters stare brazenly at customers, trying to give the impression – and sometimes even saying it aloud! – that they don’t belong in these menial jobs, this work is only something they’re doing as a stop-gap before moving up. All of them, she complained, think their present jobs are beneath them. It was the same everywhere, from peasants, to workers, to the computer programmers, to engineers and businessmen and government managers. All of them believe they deserve higher, cleaner, more sweet-smelling positions. To show satisfaction with their work, they feel, would make them seem low and foolish.
"The unprofessional spirit is overwhelming", she repeated.
He nodded. She had it all, beauty and intellect. He hastened to add that the same un-professionalism also existed in literature and the arts, in technology and economics and trade. In the movie industry, for example, scriptwriters worked as directors, musicians and painters as actors, perfoming artists did art direction, and graphic artists did the costumes. Everybody was an amateur. And even professionals were easily satisfied with anything they produced – they gave perfect tens to what were actually only fives or sixes. In the old days, their ancestors had a saying that "nine will make ten." Nowadays, it only takes a five to make a ten. So everything was half-baked and amateurish.
Now it was her turn to nod appreciatively. This guy possessed both courage and brains!
Vietnamese believe that women love the talented and men love the beautiful. And so they were immediately attracted to each other. It was the same day Mistress Sniff had spent so much time searching for, and finally finding, that squeezed lemon pasted flat on the bottom of the garbage pail. It had adhered there when Husband had put down the pail on the road and swept up the scattered rubbish.
Passion grew as the two went out to dump their garbage together. From that day on, Husband waited anxiously every day until it was time for garbage collection. Clang clang, clang clang. He would hesitate for a few moments, allowing enough time for the neighbour lady from the third floor to run downstairs. And then, he’d calculate the time it would take for the sulky garbage worker to push her cart a longer distance. At that point, he would grab his garbage pail and run outside. The greater distance he had to make up helped him buy the time to have a longer coversation. And then one day, after mutually dumping their garbage, the two came back to find the stairwell deserted. It gave him the guts to go upstairs with her to her flat. That day she was preparing onion salad, using a type of large lemon with a very yellow rind, a chap. They continued a theoretical discussion, just as if they were still out dumping trash. Maintaining that even though they were all citrus fruits, there were many categories, such as orange, apricot, grapefruit, chanh (lemon) and chap (big lemon).*
It was that evening, back home, that Mistress Sniff circled Husband, trying to figure out that what that terrible smell was emanating from his armpits. In reality, it had been caused by the onion in Ms Neighbour’s salad. Husband had hung around in her kitchen and had come across leftover onions, ferementing in the garbage and giving off the kind of stink which is only eliminated by deodorant.
As in all affairs, the two garbage dumpers needed to plot out opportunities for trysts. They didn’t need to look for a guest house. Ms Neighbour’s flat was ready. But they had snuck in and out so hastily they felt something was lacking, and they regretted its loss. One day Husband came up with excuses both for his office and his wife. He was traveling, he said, south to the centre of the country. Five days. But his "centre of the country" was on the third floor of his own building. For five days he planted himself in that flat. The couple overdosed on food and loving. Finally, exhausted and disheveled, they lay quietly together and talked about Mistress Sniff. He disclosed his wife’s special sniffing talent. Sniff. And sniff. One sniff and she would know everything. One day, he joked, she might even sniff out this flat.
Enough of this gloomy talk! But lying together inside the flat, the couple didn’t realise that it was not a joke. Mistress Sniff at that very moment was standing uncertainly outside the door. Flat 315. After she had taken out the garbage for two consecutive days, Mistress Sniff had gotten used to going up to the third floor. It was only the odours from this flat that she had not been able to sort out. It surprised her. Most likely, she just happened to pick up her husband’s scent and had followed it until it vanished beneath the door of 315. She might also have smelled the rotten onion stink familiar to her because it had once adhered to her husband’s body. These were the smells that pulled her to the third floor. But once she reached that flat, she didn’t know why she had come there.
Behind the door, Husband had not had to wait for the rubbish bell for five consecutive days. Clang clang, clang clang. The third floor flat was tightly shut, and he didn’t hear the clanging. But every day Ms Neighbour still calculated the time and went down to take out her garbage. She discussed how all kinds of sniffing would be defeated by her big yellow lemon. Just cut the lemon into two and spray it all over the kitchen and any smell would be vanquished. Need to remove a trace anywhere? Just spray this lemon on it.
The two didn’t know that destiny had arranged for them to reveal themselves. No need for Mistress Sniff to smell and search. No need for the eyes and ears of gossips to discover and report. No need for a private detective and a painstakingly prepared trap. An amateurish spirit had prevailed over the country. An amateurish love affair had grown from an amateurish garbage wagon. That evening the amateurish lover made a fatal error and flung wide the window after it had been firmly closed for days. Immediately the clang of the garbage wagon bell echoed inside the flat. Clang clang, clang clang. Completely unexpected. Husband had not heard it for days. And now it pierced his ear drums like needles. Clang clang, clang clang. He jumped to his feet. My God, why aren’t I ready? The wagon will be gone in a moment. Where’s the garbage bucket? Where’s the bucket?
He leapt up from his doze and hurled out of the door and into the hallway, snatching up the well-tied bag of trash standing ready near the door. He jumped down the stairs two steps at a time… and crashed into a person running down from the second floor. That person fell. He quickly bent down to help, but his eye was caught by a garbage pail rolling over and over down the stairs. Spreading garbage as it went.
His garbage pail.
He turned to the person who he had just helped to her feet. Mistress Sniff. Wife.
"When did you get back," Mistress Sniff screamed.
Husband was dressed only in a sleeveless undershirt and baggy shorts that revealed all the bulges of his body. It was what he usually wore at home.
"Are you taking out the trash for some woman," she yelled.
She had understood the situation immediately.
Jealousy dulled the senses. Mistress Sniff should have been able to follow the body odour and the garbage stink upstairs to flat 315. Instead, she dragged Husband into their flat. Roaring. Why are you working in an undershirt and shorts? Where are your shirt and trousers and briefcase? As she asked, she realised she had to search for all those objects. She opened the door and saw that all his spare clothing and accessories had been left in the front of the flat. Trousers, shirt and briefcase. Enough! Who brought these back? Is there a ghost in the building?
Mistress Sniff wrinkled her nose. She began to sniff repeatedly. Ah – this direction! She pointed her index finger and then ran straight up to the third floor, following her husband’s scent. Fragile. Vague. Mixed with the smell of onion. The higher she went, the fainter the trail became. But the traces of smell drew her on.
She ran up quickly. She stepped onto the third floor.
All the body odour and onion stink suddenly disappeared. Not a trace anywhere. Instead a thick, overwhelming smell tendrilled through the air. It was a pleasant fragrance, fresh and pure. It diffused through the whole corridor, emanating from all the apartment doors, not just from one. The smell of lemon. The kind of large lemon with a yellow rind. And the fragrance was fresh, different from the smell of any normal lemon, orange, apricot or grapefruit. It permeated the air, a fragrance one could only sniff and enjoy but never, ever follow like a hound to its source.
Translated from the Vietnamese by Ho Anh Thai and Wayne Karlin
* Author’s pun in the Vietnamese: chanh chap (big lemon) is similar in pronunciation to tranh chap (a dispute).
(from Viet Nam News)
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