THREE LADIES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A CORN-HILL

There was sufficient light for me to see a lady almost naked sitting in the bed. A red towel covered the middle part of her withered and skinny body, with ruffled white hair. She was looking out of the window. Stepping backwards and by having a close look at the photo from my pocket, I managed to recognise that miserable human being to be exactly my aunt: Aunt Reneù.

Aunt René was the oldest sister in a family with three ladies in Hue city.

I could not remember everything of her long stories I heard at mealtime from my mother when I was a child.

Never before had I met her. She married a French working in a power plant. Around 1945, she went with her husband to Tourane – Da Nang city. Thereafter they boarded a cargo ship to repatriate to France. Not until half a century later did a 70-year-old aunt receive a visit from her niece in a room as tiny as a nostril, on the fifth floor of a rest-home in Avignon, the South of France. I said hello to her in French.

Aunt René gave me a strange look, a weary look of a cow in a drought season. She might take me for an auxiliary nurse of the rest-home or a social worker assigned by a social organisation. ‘No body has dropped in on her for ten years,’ the person in charge of the rest-home informed me.

I approached her whispering in her ear, ‘I come to see you, Aunt Thi. I’m from Vietnam. Aunt Tho’s daughter.’ (Tho is my mother’s name).

In an embarrassing manner, I told her many things – about Vietnam in general, about Hue City: the corn hill, opposite my house, with corn sweetened porridge, with newly built pagodas, etc., trying to hold back my tears.

Her mouth was wide opened revealing a few shining teeth left. I showed her some of the photos she had sent home to my mother, my family photos, and a necklace made of around 0.35 oz of gold given by Aunt Rene as a souvenir to me twenty one years before I got married. Perhaps she might come to understand, understand something in the past about our family.

She embraced and kissed me. How strange it was to experience the feeling of a kiss in our lives!

It was only on this occasion that her niece was allowed to clean her withered and senile body. Sweat from the summer sun of France overlaid a dismal layer over her skin in need of care, in need of her relative’s attention.

Aunt Rene resembled an old woman in Buon Me Thuoc, going into a forest to fell trees in the sunshine. Aunt René’s complexion was somewhat fair but gloomy, somewhat solitary and grievous.

After combing her hair and dressing her decently so that she might resemble a human being, I called the person in charge of the rest-home asking permission to spend the night there and paid 9 francs for my dinner.

I shared her room of 2m wide and 3m long. There was a small bed, no TV nor radio. There was a white puppy. Its name was Tina. Perhaps Tina was so sad that it could not bark. There was also a Vietnamese 16-chord zither hung on the milky wall. Her room was the last one on the fifth floor comprising similar rooms where old men and women were living. They almost resembled one another: having weak sight, fond of silence so as to remind them that human life was too short, full of misfortune and predisposed to aloneness. I helped her go downstairs into the garden. It was still lucky there was a garden with twinkling green leaves and some flowers, if not, life was terribly sad there.

After dinner her eyes grew bigger, her face turned cheerful. Perhaps, there had been no occasion for her to eat so much like this. She ate Cha Hue (Hue’s beef pie) which I had offered her. Her mouth looked as if she was chewing betel-leaves.

She did not take the viscid soup, minced lamb cooked with beans, served on the dining-table. She only ate a big portion of Cha Hue. We had dinner together with many elderly persons. They resemble one another in their toddling appearance. She spoke French in monosyllables and hesitantly, the ‘style’ of a prissy old woman. Her Hue accents were too ponderous and obsolete, as obsolete as the lift of that rest-home.

Lying by her side, I took the place of Tina puppy. Tina might feel sad that night.

In a passionate manner, I told her about the city, where my mother and Aunt Chut were living, where their lives were attached to the blue river, and the intimate house with a garden sheltered by a masonry screen in Vy Da area, with a private riverside landing. Over the river, there was a corn hill. Corn was processed into various dishes: corn sweetened porridge, corn soup and broiled corn. Such blurred scenery had certainly left so many memories in the mind of the tree ladies.

My mother, like other Vietnamese people, brought up her children and grandchildren till the end of her life while Western and American people had to be admitted to a rest-home under the care of the government.

Aunt Chut, the youngest sister in the family, found her own way to repatriate two years ago. Complaining of melancholy and fearing coldness in New Jersey USA, she left her children as well as grandchildren, abandoned premises which her child, who had come there for study, had built up, and ignored her two children’s expectation.

Aunt Chut had come back to Hue to live with my mother without the need of any household register. Day after day she went to pagoda to take care of orphans. When going to Hanoi, she borrowed the ID card from my mother to buy a train ticket. She believed that no body wanted to create any difficulty for her. She expressed a wish to be buried properly after her death.

She often said that she would be afraid to be cremated and buried together with unknown bodies. She was apprehensive of cremation, fearful of the heat of fire. She feared such words as ‘exile and expatriation’.

The next morning I bought her some necklaces and rings made of cheap metal. She told me that she wished to have something to play with and advised me not to buy gold for her. It was too dangerous as she was alone.

The open air market located in the village stretched along the main road to an ancient church. There were many Arabian dealers. There were many ancient and strange-looking houses of Italian architecture. I did not fail to buy a worn-out tennis-ball and some rubber bands for her to play The and count the rubber bands.

The back of the market was crowded with people, there were various strolling bands playing in the park. There were houses with walls, even with their entrances, completely covered with paintings. In the centre of the village existed an age-old water-wheel of French style.

Sitting by Aunt René’s side on the grass in a park, I had a feeling that the warm sunshine made her happier, at least for the remaining instant of life. In front of an aunt, who was once well-known for her beauty, for her playing the 16-chord zither and composing poems but eventually turned to be such a miserable person. I wondered why and why she was so naked!

According to her, her French husband who used to work in a power plant had passed away of liver cancer nearly twenty years ago. Their son in the army had been shot dead, by Arabian gang when he attacked a military post in Africa. Their two apartments in the 8th district of Paris were leased out.

She was so sad that she had to move to Tourane in the South to escape from her past memories. One night on the way home late, she was knocked unconscious and stripped naked by Arabian gang. It was still lucky for her to be rescued and brought into a hospital in time.

In the end, she was transferred to that rest-house. Her monthly pension of more than ten thousand francs was deducted for meal, treatment, food for Tina, veterinary surgeon’s fees, etc. and she had no franc left in her pocket. Upon giving her 50 francs to spend I asked, ‘You have more than two thousand dollars every month, then why don’t you come back to Vietnam to live? Aunt Chut has been back to Hue for two years now.’

Stress and puzzlement were seen on her face to such an extent that she looked so miserable. Doubt of misfortune persisted in her eyes, especially when reminding her of the homeland she had fled.

I could not help thinking about it. Aunt René’s mind had always been obsessed for years by such information as to drive her mad and as a result she denied the homeland where she was born. I tried to calm her down, ‘You see, I’ve come from Hue to see you. I’m all right and can live as tens of thousands of other persons.’

The next afternoon I said goodbye to Aunt René to come back to Nice city. My firm had participated in an international trade fair, with a small booth in the central park, by the seaside in Coâte d’Azur.

At night there were many beautiful girls, cars decorated with flowers, procession of brass bands. There were many misfortunes deep in the sound of the African brass echoing in the crowded streets.

Why did the gap between Aunt René and me remain so big and so distant? I’d better let things run their own course!

In order to relieve my mother and Aunt Chut’s lament and expectation I told them part of the story about Aunt Rene, the relationship between Aunt Reneù and Tina. She was still alive, still ate and slept with Tina puppy but she did not play the Ti Ba guitar any more.

On the evening of that day, there were two sisters on the other side of the corn hill going to Tay Thien pagoda, next to Nam Giao Esplanade,* to incense for the peace of the souls of Aunt Reneù and Tina puppy, wishing they had a peaceful sleep in that small bed. ‘They’ differed only in one thing: in the head of an animal there was no bankruptcy, there was no perish, there was no dying state of the spirit and mind as in the head of a human being.