by Vu Xuan Tuu

I was sent to the hamlet of Piat to give guidance to local farmers. As a white-collared man from the district’s agricultural division, being sent to the grass-roots level was really quite strange. I intended to refuse but eventually decided to try.

Actually, I came from peasant stock, so it was not quite right to say that I was only a white-collared man. I also resolved to do actual farm work; I knew well that if I shouted orders from afar, I would be hated.

From the district centre, it took me half a day to ride a bicycle there. After that I had to climb three hills and wade across seven streams before I arrived at Piat. I asked communal officials about the meaning of the word Piat and discovered it meant "gradually sloping rice fields". I was placed in the home of a man named Khau. His name, in the Tay language, means "rice plant". He worked as strongly as a horse and was a big eater as well. His parents had died when he was born. I lived with Khau from the time when the moon was a crescent to the day when it was full before he and I became ceremonial brothers. According to the custom of the Tay ethnic minority people, once a brotherhood is sworn, the two people must regard themselves as blood relatives. Customarily, as I saw the sun first, I was Khau’s older brother. Even though I was the elder, I was so new to this place that I had to ask him everything.

Every morning, when it was seven by my Poljot wrist watch, I went to a grapefruit tree beside a stilted house and struck the bell to call the whole co-operative to work. Khau, the head of the production team, often overslept. When the bells were loud enough, he would get up, go outside and cup his hand around his mouth to call: "It’s time to work!" Yet, he did this only for the sake of formality because all the houses were hills away from each other and shrouded in a thick mist. How could they hear his call? However, what he did was lauded by the leaders of the commune.

The Piat Agricultural Co-operative was located near the communal office of the People’s Committee, so it was considered the centre of the area. I had often taken notice that Miss Phai was always present at the earliest time even though her house was on the other side of the hill. She was still single and not so pretty. But with a fair complexion, she was good looking. Phai means cotton in Tay. Whenever Khau decided to appoint her work, he was often strict.

"When you rake grass, you should take two steps ahead and one step back. Why did you make only one step ahead and one step back?"

"But the instructor from the district told me to do so," Phai answered.

Khau looked at me and I tried to explain the confusion: "When I was still in my village, I used to do as you said by raking the field to and fro many times and as a result we uprooted the rice plants. So I think we’d better forget this way of farming."

Khau heaved a deep sigh in disappointment. He closed his notebook, clipped his Truong Son-labelled fountain pen onto his shirt pocket, but he forgot to cap the pen, so his shirt become soaked with ink. Having seen it, Phai exclaimed: "Oh, God!"

Khau calmly capped the pen and clipped it again to this shirt pocket. Then he cast a fiery look at her that made her so scared as to turn away.

At that time, the forest was still very close to the houses. Striped wild pigs often came and ate with domesticated pigs. Wood grouses often came in search of food under the stilt houses with domesticated chicken.

One day, a colony of monkeys came and destroyed the maize field. So my brother Khau showed me how to make a gun by using a metre-long section of a narrow steel bar. I was taken aback at the idea, because I thought a gun normally had a hollow barrel. It seemed that Khau could read my mind, so he smiled. Soon, I came to understand what he was doing and helped out. We both moved a big piece of wood and planted it under the stilted house as a prop and then we tied the steel so tightly, the piece of wood would perforate the barrel.

It was most important to bore it straight. So Khau held the drill while I did the boring work. The metal shavings shot out as hot as fire.

Afternoon in and afternoon out, after work from the field, we got down to boring the steel bar. Young people in the hamlet rushed to see us and even helped us with the work sometimes. But Khau held the bar obstinately and nobody else.

Finally the gun was made. Having chosen a good day, we both went up to the hill for a trial. We laid in ambush on the edge of the field and looked for the rock where the leading monkey often sat to give commands to his colony. Some time later, we saw several monkeys appear, look curiously around and then rush down to the maize field and pluck the corncobs. The gun fired the first shot that made the monkeys so scared that they fell down in a swoon. I intended to take some home for meat, but Khau stopped me, saying that the monkeys were like humans. Some time later, these monkeys came to their senses and dragged their feet back to the forest. The monkeys did not have the guts to return to the maize field again.

One day, I came home from a meeting at the People’s Committee office, but Khau was not there, only Miss Phai sitting outside the house with a notebook in her hand, which recorded her work days in the co-operative. Strangely, I saw a big carp hung at the head of the staircase. Miss Phai said in a low voice: "I’m coming to compare notes of my work days last month." Then after glancing at the fish, she continued. "My father asked me to bring this fish to both of you. He just netted it at the Con havine where Mr Khau usually has a bath.

"What a big fish!"

I said it only to praise it, but Miss Phai looked down at her breast, her face scarlet.

I took her home through a trail running over the saddle hill. It was sunset and flocks of birds were flying back to their nests in a hurry. Miss Phai turned her head to talk.

"Have you picked up a lot of our Tay language?"

"Your people are teaching me. While walking on the road, I can say ‘Kin hy’ meaning to take the jungle path and ‘Kin vay’ meaning to return. Is that O.K.?"

Miss Phai was holding her sides with laughter to such a degree that she fell down on the roadside. Her black skirt turned up, revealing her white thighs. The notebook she was carrying was thrown away. Her head scarf loosened, making the hair beneath fall down onto the grass. I was confused. All I could do was laugh with her. From the hillside, I saw smoke belching from the rooftops in Piat, which made me long for my home.

It took Miss Phai quite a while to get up. When she did, she tilted her head and straightened her hair. Her breasts were as full as grapefruits and her nipples were clearly visible under the thin cloth of her blouse. I turned away, feeling shy. Suddenly I heard her order: "Please pass me that scarf!"

I hesitated before I stooped and picked it up for her. Her soft hands took mine. Her eyes became so brilliant.

"…and my notebook too, please!"

I kneeled down and got the notebook. Her two hands took mine again and she gradually pulled me down on her soft, hot body.

All of a sudden, she pushed me away and got up quickly. I was dumbfounded. Something was dropping on my back. There were bullets littered on the grass I recognised Khau’s bag. I looked up, beholding Khau sitting on the branch of a tree. He said he was watching for the monkeys. Yet the monkeys had disappeared a long time ago. I sat there in disgrace. Miss Phai took to flight as if she was being hunted by a ghost, throwing away her scarf and notebook.

***

Khau had been recruited into the army, leaving the stilted house and that devilish gun to me. I lived in the house but I never used the gun. On the main pillar near the kitchen, the owner of the house mounted the tail of the carp given by Miss Phai the other day. The tail was spread out like a paper fan, embracing half the pillar.

At first, I thought I would be in Piat for a couple of months. But the district’s agricultural division decided to make it a lifetime posting.

Piat was really a sloppy rice field. The hamlet lay right at the foot of a hill. The Tay people live high on the hill and did the farming in lower areas. On the hill they plant palm trees, whose leaves are used to roof their houses. During my early days in the hamlet, I spotted what I thought was a large animal that looked to be covered in feathers. One day, I came closer and it turned out to be a water mill covered with dried palm leaves to block the sun and rain.

Whenever there was rain, the palm forest rustled restlessly, making people anxious. I never found another place where heaven and earth mingled so harmoniously as Piat. So, in the Piat hamlet, there were many children in each family and the girls were amorous.

Miss Phai tried to avoid me since our forest encounter. One day, I took a bold step and looked for her. While I was still in the middle of the hill, I heard some music from the tinh instrument and Miss Phai was singing a Tay folk song in a soft voice.

Now I live separately from you, feeling so anguished

A swallow separated from a swallow, leaving so much love

A bee separated from a bee, missing flowers so much

I wonder if I could meet the bee next year....

I came back home, feeling so silly. So I looked for the khao quang wood and a gourd to make a tinh musical instrument. Having finished the instrument, I crossed the saddle hill to bring the tinh to Miss Phai. The instrument expressed my love for her. We had a picnic that day, and she has slept on my mat ever since.

One afternoon, while we were crossing an irrigation channel, Phai said, "Do you know why Mr Khau...?"

I raised the eye brows, but kept silent.

"He loved me and he said it to me while the Agricultural Co-operative was building this channel. But my parents refused it. Many of his family members had died young..."

"But why did Mr Khau get angry with you?"

"It’s only his temper, you know"

I stared at the Con Ravine. It was no wonder that whenever I had asked Khau if I could take a bath in the ravine, he refused it.

***

The next year, the hamlet received the news that Khau had sacrificed himself. Someone from his unit had come to Piat and handed over his belongings. Recorded on the list were two old undershirts, three underpants (two old and one new), one old face towel, one pair of canvas shoes and one old knapsack.

I signed for the items, but something slipped off of my tongue.

"Doesn’t he have any other trousers and shirts?"

The soldier was silent for a moment and said anxiously: "Our unit was then positioned in battlefield C, deep inside jungles much more rough and dangerous than the Piat hamlet here. We had gone through thick and thin together and we were near and dear to each other. Before going to the front, we had left the new uniforms to our comrades in the same unit at the rear and we wore only old clothes."

My eyes welled with tears but Phai cried her eyes out.

"Comrade Khau was a courageous man. Whenever we had an out-of-order gun, he repaired it well. One night, our unit launched an attack on the enemy’s outpost, causing heavy losses to them, but many of our team mates also laid down their lives there. A few days later, we had come to the battlefield to salvage our comrades’ dead bodies. Mr Khau asked us to tie the dead bodies and pulled just in case the enemy buried mines under these bodies. And indeed, while we were pulling a dead body, a mine exploded nearby. Mr Khau tried to carry half the body..."

"He was always in the vanguard for everything, I know!" I said.

"The martyrs’ dead bodies had become rotten after many days, you know," the soldier continued. "When were were carrying these bodies uphill, much sloppier than that mountain on the other side of the Piat hamlet rice field, yellow water oozed from the bodies onto our shoulders, but we cleaned it with tree leaves and carried on..."

"What a pity!" Phai sobbed.

I asked in a low voice: "But how did Mr Khau die?"

"At that time, we had been ordered to wipe out a commando unit of the Sai Gon puppet army which was concentrated in the jungle. We had to advance on a small trail. When we were about to cross a stream, the head of our unit threw a piece of wood onto a stone by the streamside..."

"What for?"

"The Sai Gon puppet commandos were very cunning. They had often buried mines in the places thought to be well travelled. There was no movement after the stick was thrown. When Mr Khau jumped down, the stone rolled over and a mine exploded. He fell down into the stream. His blood spread all over the stream..."

"Oh, mother!" Phai cried again in pain.

The unit buried Khau and drew a map for his grave so that later we could bury him in his home hamlet.

After that, the soldier offered the people a That Luong cigarette from Laos, but the Piat people were used to smoking tobacco. The water pipe was passed from one man to another to smoke while villagers remembered Khau.

***

The once-sloppy hamlet soon changed for the better. There were no more water mills. I had bought a husking machine to grind maize and rice for the whole hamlet. Palm trees had been cut down and we planted eucalyptus trees in the hopes of building a paper mill. In my house, the tinh musical instrument was now hung beside the hand-made gun on the wall near the altar. In the middle of the main pillar of the house, right below the fish tail, a paper recording Mr Khau’s merits was posted. I asked Phai why she had not framed it. She said that it was more authentic that way. The owner of the house should stand against the main pillar, she thought.

At night, while rolling cotton yarn by the fire, she saw a lot of fireflies in the garden and said in a low voice: "It’s nearly the time for cotton growing!"

"Yes, "thin Khau, dau Phai’, you know."

She looked at me in great surprise, "How do you know that Piat phrase?"

"I am Piat, so why shouldn’t I know it? On the day of the dragon, we grow rice plants, on the day of the rooster, we grow cotton trees."

Against the backdrop of the quiet night, I heard water flowing from the nearby stream. The sound reminded me of drilling gun barrels in the old days.

Translated by Manh Chuong
VNS