8

Date …

A long video clip set the scene happened in the context of the year 1956 was a sad one. What Duc Ham talked to Duc Vinh when he was expelled from school: “Social order would be changed” was proved to be correct in 1954 and what Duc Vinh informed his mother: “You would be unhappy if you stayed at home” was proved not to be wrong in 1956 as well.

Mrs. Doctor of Letters Nguyen had never expected to be involved in such a troublesome circumstance. She only played “a subordinate role” in all previous changes such as Mr. Nguyen was captured, her family was separated. But then, she was “a principal character” and she had to enter “the stage”. She was considered as “a big landlord” in the agrarian reform movement in 1956 and she was denounced publicly.

“The girl” Vu Thi Ngan didn’t completely understand the universal truth in the new era: “The poor people were good and the rich were bad”. Everybody was then enlightened without knowing the reason why. Affluence and precious property were nothing. What people needed was immaculacy and hard working so that they were able to receive their distribution helpings including “three bowls of rice and three shirts”. That was the most valuable at that time.

Mrs. Doctor of Letters was “died for sure” according to such “point of view”. She couldn’t do anything with her tens of hectares of fields, many houses and the paddy covered all corner of the houses.

The “wind” of reform blew in But Nam area which was changed into another world within a day. Everybody’s thoughts were totally different despite their bodies were unchanged. Everything had turned topsy-turvy as if their legs were pointed upward and their heads were stuck on the ground …

I didn’t blame anyone when I filmed that long video clip but truthfully recorded what had happened in the Stone Farming House. I loved reality – a plain truth without concealing, adding or cutting details. We described exactly the same to what had happened in the past and considered our film as a “keepsake” for our generations yet unborn, as a minor for them to “learn from experience” or to be enlightened at least.

There was no life leading with full of fresh flowers and sweet gall. A blossom sprig was full of thorns and the bitter galls were beside the sweet ones. As human beings, we had to of course struggle with the sun, the rains, the winds, the storms, the snow, the tornadoes … when we presented on earth and lived under the sunlight. Even the beautiful and sweet scented flower which was beginning to open was whipped by heavy shower so ferocious that it shed its petals and faded its scent despite it harmed no one. Nobody could do anything on “life”. The whirlwind was ready to scroll anything and beat it to a pulp or made it be lost sight on the ground or in the sky even it was a butterfly whose wings were as thin as a streak of lovely autumn sun. That was life and we had to accept it.

The poor people who were awoken to the revolutionary ideas had associated each other in forming the terrible strength and thus they could defeat their invaders. They were rising again from their dark lives. They had everything in their hands and they had wrongly acted beyond measure. The advantage which was immoderately used would become disadvantage. If the yesterday good was applied in the following day it had to be considered and adjusted. Nothing could be sure that the yesterday effectiveness would be suitable to use in the next day. We could use a boat to sail across the river but not the road.

A revolution could be infantile and have small mistakes but basically it had a sound leadership. When the enormously general trend machinery ran some unlucky destinies could be chafed according to the law of nature. Understanding that matter and following “Zen” philosophy, I didn’t blame at all and so did Mrs. Doctor of Letters. She had “had” lots of things such as: beauty, wealth, luxuriousness and good offspring. It would be also OK for her to “loss” a bit …

Revolution had officially admitted its infantile thoughts beyond description which caused several mistakes in land reform. Therefore, a campaign formally named “Correct the mistakes” was launched later on. How great the revolution was! It dared to look in the face of the truth in order to develop. Nothing had been “absolutely correct” without having a bit “dark side” since human beings presented on earth and the life existed up to then. The basic importance couldn’t be forgotten due to such dark side. Everybody’s sorrow was a problem throughout the ages unless they stayed in paradise. “Involving in a bit of desolation” attacked earthly people with nobody excepted, even the prince or princess.

Life had laid a red carpet for Miss Vu Thi Ngan and it was also rolled at times …

Mrs. Doctor of Letters was called for a meeting at the office of agrarian reform Team located in But Nam temple in the very cold and overcast morning. The team leader was in Chinese shirt. His glacial face showed the power of a strictly social order controlled by poor peasants who had ability to overthrow any longest-standing thing even the most primary instinct: human liked wealth and material. Revolution could give up the man’s habit of loving material. How talent it was! Anyone who owned the material and wealth was a sinner.

Mr. and Mrs. Poor peasants were standing around Team leader. They were the poorest people in But Nam. They used to take career as share croppers to earn money for paying the taxes. They were hired laborers; bone-lazy or indolent people who bit off more than one could chew; people who had neither hearth nor home or had no roof over their heads; bonzes or even the thieves … All of them hadn’t got enough food to support their lives for years. They ate that day without caring what they could have the following day. The people who were always so hungry that they had to gaze at the ground in order to look for bulbs of manioc and potatoes, shell-fish and tree-frogs for living appeared to lift their heads, to be other people’s parents with the power of life and death in their hands and they were struck dumb as well because they didn’t know the reason why they were handed over such a big power.

-       Listen! Thi Ngan! – The Team leader informed – From now on, the agrarian reform Team and the poor peasants in But Nam announce that your family is big landlord. You own 20 hectares of fields, 10 cattle, and many houses in the Stone Farming House. You hire servants, ploughmen, trans-planters, rent land and get land rent. You exploit the poor people’s labor. You bleed the poor people’s strength for making your fortune. All your assets including your houses, fields, gardens and paddy will be confiscated and divided among farmers. You will be kept under surveillance and you have no right to go anywhere out of But Nam. The Stone Farming House will be day and night blockaded by militia. You are forbidden in dispersing your property, rice or in concealing. You have to stand trial for receiving your criminal exploitations which will be stated by the poor peasants during the last tens of years when the public denouncement is going to be organized by But Nam “people’s court”. You are farmers’ enemy who can’t stay under the same airspace with them …

Mrs. Doctor of Letters was standing there. Her face showed no emotion and motionlessness while her white hair was trembling. She half-understood what he said …

Vu Hung cycled from provincial army section to the Stone Farming House that afternoon. He took the job as chief of Thanh Do provincial army section after getting peace. He was loaded with work so much that he could only meet his wife in the Stone Farming House every two weeks. Lan Vien didn’t stay with her husband as he was only offered a room which was 18 square meters large with neohouzeaua roof and earthy walls was for living despite his title could be considered the same to military commander of the old days. He had to come to collective dining-room for every meal … Vu Hung rushed directly into the house of worship.

-       Mom! – He said while his strong arms were embracing his small old lady – Pleased forgive me! I can’t do anything. I have never expected what had happened – Hung wept noisily – You have loved me since I was an orphan staying here at the first day. You are good-hearted, gentle and righteous. How you can land in a pitiful plight like this.

Lan Vien cried. Mrs. Doctor of Letters cried. There was a funereal expression on their faces. Ham cycled home from Hanoi. He appeared at the gate after everybody had just stopped shedding tears. One more man joined in the group of people who restarted crying. They sobbed violently. Nothing could burn out their pain but their tears.

Everyone sat round the table in the evening. They discussed the matter after getting calm:

-       Hung and Vien! – Ham said – I know this thing would sooner or later happen with us. Working for Central committee, I have known about the policy of land reform whose target is to take the rich’s fields and divide among the poor. It’s correct. It’s welcomed without any questions. Revolution must be like that. I think our family will share our 19 hectares of fields among the indigent farmers with pleasure and we keep I hectare only. We happily volunteer. According to my opinion, confiscating property and denouncing publicly can be applied to contumacious landowners who insist on holding their fields only. Denouncing publicly is used to knock their ascendancies out. Our family is revolutionary member. Our father is against French. I and Hung joined in resistance war. We will be the first people who take voluntary devotement in advance as a mirror. We should be welcomed.

I know that the government policy has the difference between the landlords who fought against French and contumacious reactionary landowners. How the revolutionary people here can add up two elements into one group as though they want to root out and extirpate like this … As subordinates, they have wrongly carried out their higher authorities’ policy without distinguishing between our side and enemy’s side. They wipe the floor with anybody who is the wealthy.

-       I am a soldier. I can’t understand everything in detail but “fight” – Vu Hung expressed his view – However, I think the policy is right according to what brother Ham said. All the things had been implemented bureaucratically, divergently, wrongly. They don’t know what is right or wrong when they do like this. It just like we are fighting each other or the right hand beats the left one. It’s the same to the event that I led my “Grey Tiger battalion” to “Three Goddesses base” for attacking.

-       That is the theory and the reality was happened like that. How we can complain when the sun is so high and far away – Lan Vien added – The only thing I know is that our mother is going to be denounced publicly and is considered as a reactionary. She is put under house arrest. Our house is besieged and all our assets are going to be seized. What should we do now? – Lan Vien continued weeping noisily – We are going to die …

Hung and Ham were helplessly painful. Four of them discussed all night but they found no line of retreat open. Should Mrs. Doctor of Letters fled? Where to flee? Everywhere is under the same sky. Go to Hanoi where covered a distance of 30 kilometers and But Nam militia had no reason not to come there, put the rope on her neck, escort her on foot to But Nam as if she was a sinner. She might be repeatedly beaten on her way. Everybody had the right to strike “class enemy”. She was even accused of showing a clean pair of heels and was violently treated without anticipating. Everybody seemed to “go mad” under such an atmosphere.

She could hide herself in Thanh Do province but she couldn’t get Hung’s help or protection. It was a nearer distance between the commune and the province. But Nam militia would go as far as Provincial Committee and ask committee-man to force Hung in escorting her to the commune. It was Hung’s turn. He would be involved in the crime named to shield and to conceal “class enemy” who was fleeing revolution …

They were completely hopeless as they had no solution.

-       We can’t be drowned together. Hung and Ham have to be on your guard. You can’t be seriously involved. In other words, the less involvement you get the better you are – Mrs. Doctor of Letters advised. It was unexpected that she was calm at the “worst luck” moment – I will take a risk on this occasion. To denounce publicly was to utter ironical innuendoes against me, to expose my mistakes before seizing my property. I may not be put into prison. It’s impossible …

-       Who knows … The famous landlord Nguyen Thi Nam whose offspring joined in resistance war used to support revolution so many things. She was under sentence of death as a “typical sample” and a “mirror” that were used to encourage the movement.

Everyone had their whole bodies flagging from hearing such above mentioned saying. Lan Vien screamed of painful.

-       No! It can’t happen with us – Ham set everybody’s minds at rest.

Mrs. Doctor of Letter recalled the moment that agent provocateurs captured her husband Nguyen. His figure was pressed into the hermetic truck while his hands were bound together behind his back. She imagined she could be in the same circumstance.

-       No! You will be only denounced publicly and your assets will be confiscated. Our family has a very happy fate and a great blessing. We are hearted. Our mother is good-natured and humane. Nobody dares to do anything on you – Hung confirmed.

-       Lan Vien! You have to immediately follow Hung to the township. – Mrs. Doctor of Letters ordered. She felt confident after receiving Hung’s saying. It was true. She had never done any heartless or unrighteous things on anyone all her life. Nobody would be out for her blood.

-       I won’t go anywhere – Lan Vien started up – I can’t leave you alone at this moment. I will die if you die.

Ham and Hung felt stinging pain again due to their uselessness and helplessness. They were ashamed and both looked thankfully at Lan Vien.

The clack clack sounds appeared at part-house. Two undernourished minutemen were curious on the watch. Hung took a look and recognized the wooden bell striker’s son and the market sweeper’s boy in But Nam. They both had to wipe their nose mucus which was running towards their lips all the time although they had grown up. Hung used to whipped at their backside several times because they refused to attend “one two one” training during the war time. Life was changed. They were then poor peasants’ “representatives” who were keeping landowner’s family under observation in order to prevent them from dispersing their property.

-       You know who I am – Hung talked with muffled sounds – Grey Tiger used to kill hundreds of French and puppet soldiers as easy as take young frogs’ lives. I will seize one’s feet and wipe his head at the stone to an instant death without saying a word if he makes me get angry. I am not to be bloody damn cared.

-       Yes … We know – The two militiamen stepped backwards …

Hung pointed at Duc Ham and asked:

-       Do you know who is he? He is the high ranking chief officer who is working for Centre Committee and he himself “argued” with French at Geneve Convention. He debated so fluently that Foreigners had to give up all resistance. You see. He is escorted and protected from Capital to District by a whole squad. He alone cycled home from District because he is simple and condescending with people. Anyone who dares to loiter and provoke him will be left to rot in prison. I had to carry the gun like this to preserve him – my supreme leader – Hung drew his revolver, cocked it clap clap and then breeched …

The two undernourished minutemen shrank their bodies. They lick their thick nose mucus which was running on their lips and pusillanimously looked at Hung with wide-open eyes.

-       Do you know the high ranking chief officer’s grandfather? “Grand Marshal General of the army” Great Oldest Uncle. Have you ever heard his name? – Hung asked.

-       Yes, we have … Our militiamen had already studied the documents about our ancestors’ invaders fighting traditions that mentioned the name Great Oldest Uncle …

-       OK! Good! You have known that “Grand Marshal General of the army” Great Oldest Uncle was beheaded by French and had been died for a long time. However, he had supernatural power. His shade appeared everywhere. It speechlessly strolls with his head on his hand closed to his side. Everyone should be careful and not to tantalize Great Oldest Uncle’s descendants otherwise one will die without leaving the corpse by his “lunar” sword which is invisible as though the moonlight flashes in the air and our head “smoothly” drops. We then become decapitated ghosts. How fearful we are! … So many cases like that. I know a lot and a great deal of pretentious guys had landed in such circumstances.

Mrs. Doctor of Letters is Great Oldest Uncle’s daughter in law. He loves her so much and they are of harmonious moons. Great Oldest Uncle will take anybody’s head if he dares to be disrespectful towards her. He much more loves Lan Vien as she is his son’s child. Great Oldest Uncle will take the heads of his whole family including his father, his mother, his better half and his offspring if he dares to rub her up the wrong way. You know. All members of his house will automatically drop their heads as if the figs fall.

The two minutemen shiver with fear. Hung “friendly” whispers with them:

-       I had “experienced the treatment” from Great Oldest Uncle’s wraith once. At that time, I answered Mrs. Doctor of Letters back, scolded her and gave Vien a thick ear. And then, my life was oppressively choked out of me by Great Oldest Uncle’s beheaded wraith on that night. I bowed to ask for mercy and undertook to serve Mrs. Doctor of Letters and Mrs. Vien all my life from that day on. You see. I was released. That is the reason why I, tycoon Grey Tiger who scares no one on earth still have to be Mrs. Doctor of Letters and Mrs. Vien’s “servant”.

-       You are Mrs. Vien’s husband … You still have to “help” – The two poor peasants were struck dumb.

-       You still have to fuss them …

-       Do you know which title I am? I am a provincial leader of regular troops and Civil Defense. You yourselves are my two “black pawns” which belong to my strength. I am just like a chessman named “male general” on a checkerboard named three kinds of button. Who else you should obey but not “male general”. I am your commander-in-chief. I will commit my staffs to arrest and sentence you to death if you are aimless against my order. Do you feel fear when rubbing up your memories about my shooting at the puppet soldiers in the combat of the old days? Pank pank … I had never missed my marks.

Hung took out his pistol, cocked a gun and squinted when aiming.

The two minutemen who belonged to the strength “unit” of Hung’s provincial army section slipped away behind the column of a house.

-       However, Mrs. Doctor of Letters is a landlord at the moment – Hung slapped his “soldiers” on the shoulder in an informal manner – Her “shortcoming” is that she is too rich compares with you. Even so, she is only a person with one “shortcoming” in the superior’s view but not in your eyes. The higher authorities will give her a chance to “correct her mistakes” and you don’t not involve in this matter. You will be casuists if you draw near it. Understand! …

The two minutemen had left. It was the turn of Hung and Ham to carefully consider the way to depart from the Stone Farming House as soon as possible. Hung had already suppressed the two malnourished and stupid chaps. Nevertheless, Hung and Ham themselves were afraid of such undernourishment and stupidity that had a terrible strength like the non-stop spread of the dark.

Hung and Ham set out in the next early morning after having almost sleepless the night before. “The save letter-box” chosen as their information convention was barber’s shop Pho Phung in District Town. Pho Phung used to give a haircut to French, puppet people and Vietminh without distinguishing their political point of view. He cut anybody’s hair. Based on Pho’s information, Hung comprehended lots of reconnaissance news. Hung then had to use that foundation. Hung and Ham would come there for haircut and made an appointment with Lan Vien to come there as well because they were not able to openly visit the Stone Farming House where was besieged and blockaded by the poor peasants anymore.

Date …

… The reform Team and the “low-ranking poor peasant generals” presented at the Stone Farming House for their inventory of assets after three days of announcing the “title” of big landowner. They drew a chart of houses, counted the quantity of buffaloes, cows, chicken, pigs and paddy carried in bamboo mats, bags and warehouse. They put all the dishes, bowls, blankets, mosquito-nets, clothes, bronze pots and copper trays … into the store and clocked it. Mrs. Doctor of Letters and Lan Vien were questioned about their golden ear-rings and necklaces. Both handed over one or two pieces. It was unreasonable for a mandarin family who had no gold at all. However, they didn’t have much in deed except for some tens of taels which were concealed by Ham in Hanoi. Nobody was so foolish that they left there for offering the poor peasants. The Team and the poor peasants discussed the plan how to “divide the real result” within a week. The “officers” “distributed” to the wooden bell striker who was homeless “ventilation” space near the temple so that it would be convenience for him to help the village work. He was then the first candidate in the list of property “receiver” in the Stone Farming House. The second one was the market-sweeper who used to stay in tent or inn in the market in order to “do his job”. Next were “super-excellently” poor peasants, the most indigent people and the wanderers who were “taken root” and “got in touch” to become the key reform …

After settling the housing problem, the other assets such as buffaloes, cows, paddy, furniture and all the things belonged to the Stone Farming House were divided among poor peasants who would be inspired and thus had driving force to continue looking for “landlord”.

That was a “strict” revolution. They root and branch confiscated from the valuable properties such as fields and houses to the small things like clothes … so that they could annul and eliminate the rich’s reputation from time immemorial. The boot was on the other foot. The wealthy became the “poorest” people. That changed at the root of the world concept: From that day on, people had to hardly labor in order to accumulate property for the whole society but not for their own use. For any individual person, to feed and clothe himself properly was OK. If he was rich he would become a sinner or an object which had to be annihilated …

Everybody turned out to “scare” of being rich …

… After setting up the plan, the But Nam delegation of poor peasants including around hundred of people who formed two lines entered the Stone Farming House to receive their present from dividing the real result. The loads of rice were carried in flocks. It was undernourished year. The poor peasants could only manage a bowl of rice once some days. Therefore, their eyes lit up when seeing paddy and their “hatred for exploitation class” flamed up fast. The poor peasants were going to beat to an instant death anyone who prevented them from taking paddy. That was the truth but not the joke. To seize the paddy satisfied the right of scrambling for food and saving ravenously hungry stomach. Rice was cooked immediately. Thick smoke was going up above the pots of “30 centimeters diameter”. The sweet smell of cooked rice pervaded the air and pleased the “army” who had to slurp porridge recently with dilated nostrils. How extraordinary the atmosphere was in an eager bustle! The capture chicken cried quack quack and pigs under arrest squealed loudly. About hundred of people were “given a feast to their troops” on the spot at that day. That was the first procedure before starting on “class revolution”.

The Team leader held a register and read loudly and dignifiedly:

-       Ms Nguyen Thi Ty will receive a buffalo, the “real result” number one.

Ms Ty laughed lightly showing her black teeth. Her eyes were glistening. She took steps forwards to get the familiarly strong and fat buffalo. She had a “manlike figure” which was big and huge bulk and she knew how to plough the field although she was a woman. She “drove” it in the person of herself when it was a buffalo calf. They “struggled” with all the landlord Doctor of Letters Nguyen’s fields. Their perspiration watered the land, the soil was turned over with curved surface and she received her wage only when the paddy was going to bring to the owner’s store after the rice was yellow-ripened. She then owned such the buffalo. It refused the reactionary landowner in order to work for its true owner – the person who had identified herself with it.

The buffalo wide opened its shining black eyes with a tender look as a witness to an attribute of the Creator: Life sometimes made a volte-face which was completely contradictory with the normally universal truth created by the Creator himself. The buffalo made soft and resounding lows like the buoyant trumpet welcoming the change.

The flock of chicken quacked while they were fleeing the “reform low-ranking generals”. However, they had no ways to escape as the “reform low-ranking generals” used to be the thieves who could capture the chicken without making any sounds. Some yellow fowls turned tails and moved with great speed. They seemed not to admit the Creator’s “new universal truth” as they saw through such “low-ranking generals” who always had the lassoes with them in order to arrest the dogs running on the streets without asking for the owners’ permissions. Nobody could peacefully observe the present situation but the herd of pigeons. They flapped their wings, flied high and far to the sky, freely and carelessly hovered and looked down at the world affairs.

The Team leader stood on the high platform at the doors of the house of worship in the Stone Farming House and was surrounded by poor peasants who were listening to his announcement.

He was there with his very tall shape as though the God was granting favors or giving a scatter of properties on earth. His bony and stony face radiated halo.

-       Mr. Nguyen Van Chuot, the poor peasant will receive a silk Vietnamese dress as the real result. – The Team leader’s voice echoed like a bell modulating.

Nguyen Van Chuot stepped on “honorary dais”. The silk “real result” dress was put over his shoulders and covered his fiber of vegetable sponge-like clothes which were dirty and full smell of urine and had a stink.

Chuot had already seen “parents-like” mandarin in that dress on his court. He looked so powerfully that Chuot felt fearfully. Chuot wasn’t then less authoritative than him as Chuot could “give a false denunciation” by saying a sentence: “That person used to exploit me by hiring me as a ploughman and made me undernourished” and thus the pity guy would easily become a landlord if one “lived comfortably” in But Nam and dared to treat Chuot disrespectfully by accident. The target was set and But Nam officers had to mobilize the masses to “express their sorrows if they were unhappy” so that landlords and village bullies were overthrown. They had to look for enough quantity of landowners. They could only find out a “big landlord” Vu Thi Ngan and several small ones. They still lacked so much families who were landlords compared with the target. Chuot was the poorest person in olden times. He took hired ploughman as his career. One would be a landowner at once if he was “recognized” by Chuot.

So many people had to smile happily, lower their heads and respectfully welcome Chuot from a far distance otherwise they had to duck out of his sight as fast as possible so that their images could slip his “memory” …

… The poor peasant Nguyen Van Chuot in the silk dress did the rounds of the room to “make a performance” in front of everybody. Then, he went slowly and leisurely to the main altar in the hall of the Stone Farming House.

The altar in the Stone Farming House was by its very nature luxurious and everyone knew about that. Its red lacquer doors painting in fresco were brightly trimmed with gold. The horizontal lacquered boards engraved with counter sentences were displayed in abundance. The impressive “throne” was placed on the high position. The picture of Doctor of mandarin Duc Nguyen in regalia was sparkling under the candlelight. The “benevolence for returning village” plate was arranged under the red parasol …

The Team leader got into a panic when thinking of his praying in front of the altar and the prestigious fame of the poor peasants would be lost.

-       What are you doing? – He asked.

Chuot made an arch smile. Everybody observed Chuot with concentration as though he was an officiating priest who was “carrying wine tray in a religious procession”. Thwack! Chuot jumped up pat on to the altar as if he was a real mouse whose jump was quick and in good order – the meaning of his name Chuot was a mouse. He took a porcelain tureen which was produced under Thanh dynasty and containing the water for worshipping. Chuot opened its lid and put it in the middle of the throne.

Everybody looked dazed and wondered which game he is playing. The secret hadn’t revealed till the last minutes. “The scene of the play” was then displayed by Chuot.

Sitting enthroned on the throne like a king, he tucked up his silk lap, slipped off his trousers and used the tureen to contain a mess which he had just made before putting on the lid. Then, he phlegmatically went out as if there was nothing happened while people were laughing, giving “oh, ah ha” sounds and talking about that “extraordinary event” …

An item which was “out of the scenario” of the confiscation was showed. Unexpectedness arrived in the person of the Team leader. He felt something like “impoliteness” but he didn’t dare to criticize as the poor peasants themselves were “ghost soldiers” who appeared due to his “incantation” and were out of control. He might receive unpredicted result if he did something against such “ghost soldiers”. He explained to himself: “This action is the symbol of burying the power of landlord class which contains in the historical mess”.

It was “OK” and amazed as well. It showed the poor peasant’s “idea” or “implicit intelligent” that would strongly develop if it was given a chance or it was supported …

“Feeling easy” with his thoughts, the Team leader went on with his scope as “a god granting favors”:

-       “Poor peasant” Ly Van Luy will receive the iron bed of Hong Kong style – He continued reading.

“Poor peasant” was then considered as a pronoun like “boss” in Chinese language or “sir” in English … It meant the upper class.

The bed was displayed. It had a white painting frame with paisley pattern and a spring-mattress on it. Doctor of Letters had to hire a cart to carry it when he bought it.

Ly Van Luy used to be called as Tuy Van Luy because he always got drunk. His face was quite red and its skin seemed to be so thin that the water could run whenever it was dug by toe nails. He was exploited rather from alcohol than landlord class. He would buy wine if he had any cents. According to the theory, if he was a poor peasant how he could afford to have wine for drinking. Actually, Luy became poor peasant because of drinking. He became poor peasant anyway despite of the method. He was a stroller who lived in squalor. Nobody accepted to be his wife. People hired Tuy Van Luy to do their housework, clear the bamboo stocks, bail out the water in the pond, tidy up the gardens all year round. The old Short-sighted Deputy Village mayor’s Second wife was plump. Luy still wanted to work for her although he had already cleared the bamboo stocks. She showed her unclothed breasts when she was bathing under the moonlight. Luy hid himself behind the root of streblus and watched her out of the corner of his eye. He stole her short skirt and used it to cover his face. She discovered his action and come to his place at mid night. She put her plumpness on Luy’s face so that he could lick. Her favorite thing she loved doing was to press it against the men. The old Short-sighted Deputy Village mayor seemed to recognize something “unusual” between his better half and the guy Tuy Van Luy so that he sent Luy away and strictly forbad Luy from coming near to his house. Tuy Van Luy had kept in his mind about such conflict for years and then he took advantage of an opportunity to denounce Short-sighted Deputy Village mayor who had exploited him to the point of satiety. As a result of that, Short-sighted was “considered” as an “important” landowner. Well! He had received catastrophe due to his spouse’s plumpness. How disastrous it was!

-       How an immaculately poor peasant like me can lay my back on the spring-mattress on which the spousal landlords used to sleep with each other. No, I won’t. I will use it as a partition of my piggery.

The whole poor peasants applauded Ly Van Luy’s “standpoint” …

… Mrs. Doctor of Letters and Vien were driven to the corner of the yard. They had “nothing” but their clothes. One “major” approached them and checked their pockets to see whether there was any gold or silver kept in them. Making capital out of the circumstance, he felt the breasts of an old lady and her daughter and “class-enemy” had to stand still without daring to say a word.

They were sent away to the corner of the garden where the wild cow cage was located at last. That was the house the Team leader “distributed” to the landlord. All other spaces in the building belonged to poor peasants from that day on.

It was “enough” for their lives with a peck of rice, a blanket, a pot, two bowls, four chopsticks … that was all the Doctor of Letters’ “fortune”. That was a few things which the God gave. Let that be a law of “receiving and losing alternately”. The heaven offered and then the heaven dispossessed all.

It was called very “humane” treatment because it was granted privileges to the standard of a family which had Doctor of Letters who was against French and the relative who joined in the revolution in the North of Vietnam otherwise they would be driven into a corner no mater how they could survive with nothing in their hands …

Mrs. Doctor of Letters’ denouncement happened in District Town on 23^rd day of 12^th lunar month when people worshipped the Kitchen God. Every year, the Lares would ride on a carp to the Heaven and report all the states of their master of the houses to the Creator during last year on that day. That year, there was no Tet at all. Anyone who celebrated the Tet of “seeing the Kitchen God out” would be accused of “superstition”. On the other hand, nobody had the heart to slaughter the chicken or cook the sticky rice due to fearfulness. Everybody with a rice and sweet potato ball departed for District Town in the early morning.

The Lares and Kitchen Gods might be very hungry that year. They flied to the Heaven and gave a full account of the upheaval in panic stations: What a marvelous world on earth! Everything was changed. All the rich was confiscated the property and denounced. The enthusiasm among the poor people became as strong as a waterfall. It was afraid that the momentum of the developing impetus would take the delegation of poor people to the Heaven and denounce the Creator …

It had a piercing cold. Mrs. Doctor of Letters in ragged shirt and with a worn-out conical hat on her head was escorted by militia beside her both sides. She was followed by Lan Vien who was also in ragged shirt and with a worn-out conical hat on her head. A beauty was then a death because it was disliked. Lan Vien had to apply the resin of the sweet potato leaves on her pinky-white cheeks so that they could have a face smeared all over.

The grass in the yard of District court was stunted. The previous “seizing power in the District building” had taken place there. Duc Vinh had delivered the records, seal and mandarin square that were the insignia of the old government power. And then, his mother’s denouncement was also taken place there.

A row of long desks where “reform officials” and important poor peasants sat was arranged on the high platform. The people were squatting on the grass. Because that was a typical denouncement, the villagers crowded there to “experience” so that they could organize the “small landlords”’ denouncements in their hamlet.

Mrs. Doctor of Letters was taken to the “stage” and her head was pressed down by a minuteman.

-       Thi Ngan! How can you own as many as 20 hectares of fields? – The denouncement was started.

Mrs. Doctor of Letters didn’t know the reason why as well. Mr. Doctor of Letters Nguyen had passed the doctor examination when he was 16. He was appointed to the position of District Chief whose perquisite was used to day-by-day buy fields until getting the current quantity of lands without appropriating from anybody.

-       Why didn’t the poor people have even an inch of land to drive a stake in but you had as many as 20 hectares?

One more time, she wasn’t able to answer the question. There was no reason for that but their poorness, their lack of money.

-       You didn’t have to toil and moil. The paddy was repeatedly carried to your house when the crops came due to your renting land and getting land rent. Why?

Mrs. Doctor of Letters was speechless …

-       It means you exploited the farmers’ labor – the magistrate “helped her in answering”.

-       You have to be overthrown because of your exploitation. Do you admit?

She had already toppled no matter whether she accepted or not.

-       Do you acknowledge your heinous crime?

-       “I” didn’t do anything wrong – Mrs. Doctor of Letters lifted her head – Because they didn’t have any fields, they voluntarily begged me to let them transplant rice seedlings on my fields and they would pay me a bit paddy as land rent when finishing the harvest. I didn’t force anybody.

-       Ah! You are as obstinate as a mule, aren’t you? – The “judge” beat his hand on the table.

-       Down with the stubborn landlord – The slogan was clamorously shouted.

The loudly repeated sounds made her afraid. She imagined the scene that she was drowned at sea of saliva spitted by a forest of people who were “feeling a vindictive hatred for landowners”.

Like the “seizing power in the District building” in the old days, each of them stepped forwards and gave the District Chief Vinh a blow and he would be soon a rag bag. What a crowd! How dangerous they were in their unquestioning stimulation! Mrs. Doctor of Letters’ pair of legs was shaking like a wet dog warming itself by the fire. She was too weak to stand. She hurriedly prayed them with her hands clasped together:

-       “I” would like to receive my guilt of having too much property and fields. “I” would like to leave it and become a poor person with ragged shirt and worn-out conical hat.

-       Good! Your landlord class had known how to surrender – The magistrate praised her.

The denouncement was attended by witnesses with whom the court “took root, got in touch” and discussed in advance to air their grievances. In the famine year, a “poor peasant” lived in Gia Binh village riskily stole plain rice flans and dry pancakes in the market. He was knocked into a cocked hat. Passing by such a scene, Mrs. Doctor of Letters had brought him to the Stone Farming House and let him work as Vu Hung’s “assistant”. Ngat (the aid’s name) filched eggs for sucking, Lan Vien’s perfume for wearing on his body, District Chief Vinh’s Co-tape tobacco for smoking after a few months only. What a snobbish attitude! He used luxury articles without concerning to his “manioc” condition. Being afraid that the momentum of the developing thievery would cause the loss of money and jewelries, Mrs Doctor of Letters quickly “sacked” him by letting him be back with his “streets in the market” so that he could freely rob plain rice flans and dry pancakes.

That was all. However, the Team had “collected” him and asked him to take the stand.

-       School-ma’am Ngan! I was a little boy you didn’t like – the poor peasant Ngat said loudly and dignifiedly – You sent me away out of your house and I had to be very hungry. Why your daughter Lan Vien could use scent and I couldn’t. Why your son District Chief Vinh could smoke delicious Co-tape and I couldn’t. I didn’t have anything and thus I had to ask for my interests. I had to wrest. There wasn’t anything wrong with my action.

-       You didn’t do wrong! Sir! You were extremely correct!

The second person who aired her grievances was an old emaciated woman. Her feature shone with joy to her heart’s content.

-       Thi Ngan! – Said she with a victorious voice – I and you are the same age. I know you when you were young. You were always beautiful and luxurious. You always ate delicious food and good clothes. You always had servants and helps. And I always have a face smeared all over. I am poverty and over head and ears in work. I have never tasted any tidbits and thus I always have desire for food. I am hungry year after year. Formerly, I considered the thing that you were happy and I was miserable was because of the destiny determination. I would have nothing if I moaned or complained angrily.

But now I know: there wasn’t any fate at all. We won’t be unhappy anymore when we overthrow your class …

My rags will be transferred to you from now on. Seeing your currently living in misery and want, I am overjoyed. What a joy to my heart’s content! How equitable it is! The heaven offered you everything and then the heaven dispossessed all those things. And hence, you have nothing like me. Why you are as pretty as a fairy and I am as ugly as an owl. How unfair the “classes” are! Why your offspring are talent and really people and mine are hard working. I want you to be a prisoner in order to “pay the penalty” for your comfortableness which you had had up to now.

The old poor peasant dragged a half-smile out of her lips and shrieked with overjoyed laughter hah. She looked like an actress … She told about her miserable time when she was a hireling who had to transplant rice seedlings on the Stone Farming House fields under the cold of winter days or the intense sun. She told about the unfortunate life whose owner hadn’t had an inch of land to drive a stake and had to be a hireling all year round. Even so, she still couldn’t afford enough food for living. She was very happy as she would have her own land where she could live by doing farming after the reform was carried out. She had never dreamed of having a piece of land but then she got it for free. Nothing could give her the happiness but that thing …

It took the whole morning to finish the denouncement. There was no special “faults” since Mrs. Doctor of Letters Nguyen was only a housewife who minded the Stone Farming House. It would take canton chiefs and village mayors who were bent on winning at any costs while they were working to have much crime. The only guilt which Mrs. Doctor of Letters Nguyen had was the “richness”. So, the poor peasants almost had the same accusations. The eye of day was moving out of the overcast clouds at mid noon. Hundreds of people attending the denouncement were as quiet as the grave without any noise caused by whisper. Everybody gave neither a cough nor a move. They weren’t thirsty. They didn’t pass water. They were as inflexible as wooden statuses because of too fear. They felt that they would “lose” their lives with greatest ease if they weren’t careful. How good-natured Mrs. Doctor of Letters was! However, she was still denounced like that …

Date …

Ham couldn’t imagine the violence could reach its maximum level like that despite he had already estimated the horribleness and the extraordinariness “people stood on their heads and their legs pointed upward”, “the white color was changed into black one” of reform. The soldiers and the high-ranking superiors who contributed to the current success of revolutionary achievement were dazed as well because they didn’t expect such a fantastic situation. The power was slipped off their hands and dropped into the poorest and the most foolish people whose “curriculum vitas were poor”. All the people who used to live through the French resistance war would be nothing if they were descended from the upper class as though everything was controlled by “ghost soldiers”. The trend of “extirpating the intellectuals, riches and honors, landlords and village bullies” whose content was doing whatever it like as if it was a tornado in deed didn’t operate exactly the same to the slogan, though. The tornado was formed in the East Sea. It worked and created the strength by itself. Nothing could prevent its devastation. Were there any walls which could resist a hurricane? Were there any people who could set obstacles to a squall?

The tornado was established in the border and influenced the country. It became stronger and more frightful when it landed on the continent. Everything was disappeared but dead leaves which were circling in its rotary move.

Ham met a lot of high-ranking leaders who were in passive status and took care of themselves. Their conditions then turned out to be insecure when facing with the poor’s unlimited authority which was handed over to the poor by unknown person. The poor was a machine which was supplied the energy and it would create the capacity of envy the poor hated the rich when it came into operation. The machine had no eyes and it ground everything.

The news was passed down orally: Many secretaries and chairmen of communes and districts were condemned to death and received life-sentences. Lots of secretaries and chairmen of provinces were incarcerated in the underground shelters which was so dark that their eyes grew dim. A great deal of superiors working for Central ministers and majors took “papers” from their local poor peasants and they had to come back their hometown for being denounced and captured without getting any preventability. That was also applied to “Team leaders” even who were conducting the reform if they belonged to the “above mentioned elements” and their family statuses were discovered. Their local government would call them back and punish them and they had to be inflicted on a criminal. That was an absolute “revolution” without having any exceptions. Many army commanders’ natural fathers who were the rich by nature and supported their sons in learning were denounced as well. The generals who were directing ten thousands of soldiers were resigned to get stuck. They even didn’t dare to present at their hometown and let their daddies alone with hunger, thirst, incarceration and death sentences due to implication. Anyone who “was implicated in landlords” would be judged guilty by the poor peasants no matter that one was the “Heaven”.

The poetic and good-natured villages were badly ruffled up by the tornado which destroyed to the roots and overthrew all the basic universal truth the human beings had built up since time immemorial. The thing built up since time immemorial was reversed within a second in the twinkling of an eye.

Mr. Thanh Quang who was Ham’s high-ranking superior was harassed with worry. His own daddy was a Viceroy of Tonkin whose family had hundreds hectares of fields. Mr. Quang had been against his “feudal father” since he was a child by having frugal meals, dressing clothes used in the house. Leaving school, he took part in demonstrating and meeting against French. He was arrested. He didn’t declare in spite of being beaten. He fell upon his activities when he was released. The revolutionary ideal was as bright as the sun which was flaring in his heart. His “organization” was suspecting him because of his “past” and his “social background”. He had the title but his power was being competed.

Ham had the same condition. He had to face the unavoidable fact of life once he was living under the canopy of the heavens. What would happen had happened. One evening, Ham was called to receive the decision: He had to be temporally absent from work for attending the long-time “re-education” class. There, Ham had learned the theory of “class struggle” in the history of mankind society before writing his “thorough self-criticism”.

The content of his letter of thorough self-criticism had to show his concept of class revolution. It had to state the natural shortcomings in his “above mentioned element” such as: think nothing of manual labor, despise the poor folk, love coming in for delicious food and well dress, look on with indifference to other people’s miserable lives, be fond of his own property, haven’t been self-sacrificing for the sake of everybody or sacrificed his life for other people, calculate and do thing out of self-interest, have individualistic ideology …

The specific examples had to be produced evidence. The more sincere he wrote the more enlightened he proved. Then, the directions of self-improving revolutionary etiquette should be pointed out.

Ham struggled with the letter of thorough self-criticism. Ham used to take his nib in smoothly writing hundreds of French and Vietnamese articles but then he was in a quandary and there were no words in his mind. It was more difficult than to write a novel which was full of cock-and-bull stories. He had to “sincerely” state out his non-existent guilty which meant that he had to invent the faults. What he concocted had to sound like the real one so that he could receive the acceptable sentence otherwise he had to be put into prison due to the too serious offense …

It took a month for him to finish his letter of thorough self-criticism. However, it was still not enough details, or in another words, it wasn’t a good expression. It didn’t describe the truthfulness in good faith when it was read. So, he had to rewrite. Even so, the second copy wasn’t OK. It could be assumed as a stubbornness which could accuse him of a heinous crime. He had to be careful with stubborn aspect!

Ham sat beside the lamp to write it night after night. The first part was his shortcoming in his childhood: He was born in a mandarin family which was so rich that he turned out to be depraved and lazy. His activities from wearing clothes to washing hands and legs were always helped by servants. That had performed his natural exploitation since then.

He had a lot of time for studying French when he attended Albert Sarraut School. He was very good at French. He respected French and disdained Vietnamese mother language. French language was daily used whenever he began to speak. That showed his thought of disowning his origin since then.

The unluckiness that he was expelled from school when it only took him one more year to get certificate of Administrative Law and then he could be accredited to District Chief appeared to be his good fortune. His condition was regained. He would be died for sure without that point.

The second part was the period since he joined in resistance war up to then. He had to describe how his natural exploitation was displayed in his doing business. That part was more difficult. There wasn’t any non-existent guilty formed in his mind despite he had kept thinking. The fabrication faults had to be suitable and reasonable otherwise it would be assumed as the lack of good faith. Ham had to “compose” the situations which had happened when he was on assignments such as he didn’t perform harmonization in three following aspects: eating, staying and working at the same environment with laborers, he looked down them because of their illiteracy, filthiness, insanitariness, he didn’t shared the delicious food but put aside for eating alone, he didn’t such and such behave whole-heartedly … and so on. That proved the lower middle class of his.

The third part was the engagement of abandoning his descended class. He hadn’t finished writing that part for a half month in spite of his great exertion. The paper was wet with tears. He didn’t remember how many times he had written before he tore the loose sheets. To write “abandon descended class” meant to write a letter of declaration which stated that he would break off with his own mother and he had ensured to completely sever relation between mummy and son from that day on.

His god! Could he afford to do such a thing?

One of Ham’s re-education classmates whispered in his ear:

-       Your family’s blessing is as big as a temple. Thanks to your achievements such as to write many columns which were against French, to be expelled from school, to voluntarily join in resistance war, your shortcoming that your elder brother was a District Chief in the old days and he is now working as a member of puppet regime in Sai Gon, South Vietnam was skipped.

Some people who have the same curriculum vitas to you were sack without restraint. However, being discharged was better than being captured, being tortured to see whether they were spies who were merging into the resistance ranks in order to destroy from within. That is horrible!

Ham’s worries reached the top. Ham swaggeringly fought for universal truth without scaring anything or to be a prisoner even when he was a student. If he was sent to jail he would be a soldier whose head was flashed halo, he would become the “leader” of the youth and the students. Knowing that meaning, French “insisted on” not committing Ham to prison although Ham scolded colonialism and called an independent whenever he began to speak.

And then, Ham had become another person after years of vicissitudes. He was timid and pusillanimous. He was rejected by his office in the context that the social dictatorship was organized as closely as a wedge, the thought and the ration were “distributed” and controlled. What was Ham going to be? Was he able to be as a normal person?

Ham would have everything if he was a regular member of his organization. Ham couldn’t be sacked otherwise he would die and he would be private citizen like the wanderers on the pavements, the lowest class. Ham clenched his teeth and wrote on the letter of declaration: “… I, Nguyen Duc Ham, would like to break off with the big landlord Vu Thi Ngan … We are no more mother and child … We aren’t relatives at all …”

The board of re-education leaders looked at Ham with pleasure and informed him their decision: You were dismissed from your current position of Deputy Manager in “Vietnam agency” and work for a new organization: Central Agriculture Committee. Firstly, you re-educate and improve yourself by fact-finding trips at agricultural bases and you can practically search the Vietnamese rural areas.

Ham breathed a sigh of relief. He had an “escape from death”. One late afternoon, Ham invited his classmate – regrouping soldier Thuan Phong, a knight of the brush whose hometown was in South Vietnam to have coffee by the West Lake which was boundless and wild. The winter sun was trembling. Several birds looked weak and were lost sight in the clouds and Ham seemed to feel the image of his condition.

-       My “breaking off” declaration will be sent to my mom in the Stone Farming House. What a heart-breaking event! – Said Ham – Your father won’t know about your “breaking off” connection with your dad declaration as he lives in South Vietnam.

-       It’s correct. So, I am not as sorrow as you – Phong said phlegmatically – “Agrarian reform” had been applied there but he still has around thousand hectares of fields and his landowner title was remained unchanged. His half quantity of fields was taken in order to divide among the poor people.

-       Does your family have some thousands hectares of fields?

-       Yes, it does. The land in South Vietnam was wild with innumerable and extensive fields …

-       My family was considered as a big landlord despite the fact that we had 20 hectares only.

-       The soil in the Red delta is valuable and rare – Thuan Phong sipped his very strong coffee. He looked thoughtful. The winter sun shone its light on his graceful and student-like face whose owner was exquisite talent painter. However, his youthful and unaffected look and smile were withered due to three months of violent re-education.

-       What have I done when I refused a royal life whose owner was a landlord in West Vietnam in order to be here if I am not faithful to revolution? – Phong asked – Even so, I was requested to write a thorough self-criticism.

-       Ham added – You are the same to me. Nobody forced me to leave Hanoi for Northernmost Vietnam and joined in nine-year resistance war in an area of green forest and dusty mountains.

-       This reform is an incomprehensible “event”. I believe that our supreme leader will reconsider it.

Ham and Phong stayed in the same room in the re-education precinct. They shared the same plight. They grew closer and closer and were in each other’s pockets due to something which was similar in character. Thuan Phong’s father was “Council Quang” who was very famous in South Vietnam in spite of his appearance just like a “Boorish Oldest Brother”. One day, “Boorish Oldest Brother” traveled “Sa Goong”. He dropped in the King largest restaurant at that time. That was the place which the Governmental Elderly and Foreign mandarin usually got their meals. Seeing the hick “Boorish Oldest Brother” in the old dirty and faded South Vietnamese pajamas with an askew felt hat loitering, two waiters made gestures with their hands to say “no” at the same time and asked him to be out. Being ablaze with anger, Boorish Oldest Brother took his walking-stick broke bowls, dishes, glasses, cups, bunches of lamps, vases of water hyacinth in the King restaurant to pieces. Then he coolly suggested: “Give me the bill”. A wad of paper money was thrown out for superabundant compensation. It was a big surprise for all the present people in the King restaurant. The waiters went down on their knees in front of Boorish Oldest Brother and asked for his forgiveness. He was invited for getting service on the second floor. “Despite all that I don’t want to eat here anymore”. Boorish Oldest Brother went out, had a sit by the rattan of the noodle soup peddler and made slurp sounds when having a square meal. That was what Thuan Phong’s daddy was. He had three wives. He had once stayed in “Sa Goong “ for some days and he had married a dreamlike beauty prostitute as his fourth better half right after seeing her in a songstress’ house. Thuan Phong was her son who was a good drawer and did well in school when he was a child. He was well known as a genius.

The August Revolution and resistance war were out-broken. Thuan Phong became a “Resistance soldier” due to his friends’ persuasion. Living in guerrilla base, he usually sent letters to his father to ask for money which was used to support Resistance. The romantic “resistance dandy” was treated with kindness and consideration. All his paintings were eulogized by resistance. “Resistance dude” went on board and gathered up in North Vietnam. He had no more money to support resistance and he “gathered dust” and “was disregarded” at once.

Ham and Phong identified with each other as they had the same inmost feelings.

-       My mom and my younger sister are being blockaded and segregated. I daren’t contact them although it only takes 30 km from Hanoi to their place – Ham said – You are assembly Southerner and nobody dares to do anything on you. I would like to ask you for the help by traveling But Nam, meeting my mummy and my sister to assist them with spirit and “matter” otherwise they may die of starvation. I have already prepared in advance a liaison point which was barber’s shop Pho Phung in District Town …

-       OK! I will go there … Set your mind at rest! I scared of nothing. Generally speaking, assembly Southerners are assumed as “arrogant soldiers” in North Vietnam …

-       Thanks a lot …

A cup of coffee which was held in the hollow of Phong’s graceful hands was discharging smoke. It was too cold and Phong seemed to warm up his hands.

-       What a blessing! We still have chance to sit here and contemplate the waves in the West Lake like this – Remarked Phong – I had nothing to worry but I really concern for your circumstance.

The shop owner politely gave them two scented cigarettes:

-       You looked full of innermost feelings. You must have been not normal people.

-       Oh, no! We are workers only … - Said Ham – Your coffee is quite good. It’s not the same as other inns where coffee was mixed with maize, peas, beans of crotalaria striate roasted to black color …

-       But you know my business is very bad. I’m going to close it down. Previously, my booth was noisy with sounds of music and crowded with people. Now, it’s difficult to find out the materials. Customers don’t know how to “taste” the drink or don’t dare to come here because of the concept of luxury. Drinking coffee seems to be the behavior of “bourgeois” or “small bourgeois”. Using syrup or tea looks more up-to-date. I haven’t received any clients who have coffee like you for a very long time …

-       What an enchantingly beautiful West Lake! How wonderful it is if we sip coffee and enjoy a graceful view of West Lake – Phong pointed at the space in front of his face – How relaxed we are when seeing the surface of the water and the misty area under the winter sun over there!

-       I’m going to frequently leave Hanoi and stay in rural region. It will be less chance for me to view West Lake …

-       But the West Lake is still there and you will come back.

Date …

Hung was like a cat on hot bricks in his provincial army office on 23^rd day of 12^th lunar month. He was imagining the feature of his wife – Lan Vien – and Mrs. Doctor of Letters in the denouncement in the District Town.

-       Kha! – He called his driver – Send me to District Town so that I could take my better half. I will go directly to the denouncement place, take her to our car and we will stay here no matter what will happen.

-       Pleased! Don’t! My brother! – The trustworthy driver was a “looker-on see” most of the situation – You do like that just like you kill yourself. Mountains of complications will pour on your head. Furthermore, you can save your spouse but not your mother-in-law. How retrogressive her morale would be if your wife went out and she was there alone. On the other hand, sister Vien isn’t denounced. Let her sit there as Mrs. Doctor of Letters’ moral support …

-       Or you lonely come there and give my better half some cakes, fruits and gifts so that she can use during the denouncement although the main thing is the spiritual assistance. She still had relatives when she was in hard and dangerous state.

-       That’s OK. I do it right now.

Ham’s staff started an engine of his command car.

It was then the turn that worrying arrived in the person of Ham:

-       You must be as secretive as you can. Wait until the interval comes or the denouncement is dismissed. Then you mingle with the disorderly crowd and give my wife the package without attracting any attention otherwise we will be distorted and made a scene. Our cakes will be able to be assumed as documents and letters whose contents are against the current reform. It’s sure! I’m not joking …

-       I know …

The driver had gone. Hung sat there and imagined: He led an army to the District Town, besieged the court and arrested the scoundrel and poor Team leaders who were taking advantage of Reformation to be careless in their work. They were wrong. It shouldn’t happen like that. The policy was certainly right but they were off the line. Hung himself was a poor peasant. A “servant” had been in the person of Hung. Hung was a genuinely poor peasant. They were bone-lazy people who were indolent. They were watchmen in Buddhist temple, wooden bell strikers, market-sweepers, plain rice flan-gleaners or someone like those, gangsters … How Team leaders could rely on them in “getting in touch and taking root “ and let them control the state of affairs so that they had perfectly done wrong, impertinent and discrepant compared with superior’s policy.

Hung was painful due to his helplessness. The Reformation’s happenings should be: Landlords spontaneously shared their fields. The compulsoriness was applied when they refused to volunteer only. Then, the fields would be divided among farmers. Everybody would together have “production materials”, do farming and set up the new society from that day on. How “reformation” could set the gangsters and people who were as poor as church mice among the superiors. Everything was upset in confusion at sixs and sevens. How humane people like Mrs. Doctor of Letters whose husband was against French, whose son-in-law joined in resistance war, whose property was devoted to the resistance war and whose rice saved a great deal of soldiers in Three Goddesses headquarters from famine …  could be denounced. Where was the benevolence and righteousness of the life? Where was the common sense? Everybody turned out to be blind …

The real situation had to be reported to higher authorities. Everybody had to be strongly informed about that thing … Hung truculently wrote an endless “help” letter whose pages were followed one another. He had received sensational news while he was going to send it to provincial Secretary and Chairman of province: poor peasants in their localities had denounced them as “bully background” which stated that their parents were landlord, their generations were exploiters. They were suspects in resistance war as they were released after having been captured by enemy. Their revealing matters were raised to be investigated and ascertained. The provincial reformation Delegation had already issued an order to arrest and to throw them into the provincial prison …

Hung seemed to be struck by lightning on his ear when hearing the information. Both comrades had operated revolutionary activities since they were in clandestine organization. They had a rendezvous with death many times. They directly supplied concrete guidance to the masses in seizing power in Thanh Do, caught Viceroy of Tonkin. Later on, they directly led the movement of nine-year resistance war behind the enemy lines and the emulation movement to carry out three-year plan once the peace was set up in 1954. Even so, they were prisoners. Hung’s condition appeared to be nothing. How he could be so aggressive. He looked like a ball going flat. He started worrying.

Hung had met many old friends in the provincial re-education class. All of them were Provincial committee-men of the Party, Chiefs of departments, Chairmen of Districts whose elements were exploiters, “members of nationalist party” who mingled in our ranks, small bourgeois and offspring of landowners. Hung had the “clearest” curriculum vitae: Big landlord’s son-in-law. The son-in-law proved that he wasn’t blood-relations or blood ties. Moreover, Hung was of poorest extraction.

Having the “servant” resume, Hung should be provincial reformation Delegation Chief who had the right to find a true bill with everyone. However, what a pity! He was involved in getting married with landlord’s daughter and thus he slipped everything. He was said to be stupid and to be spontaneously stuck in trouble. He would be resigned to a ball to fortune if he was born in that family because nobody could choose parents. But, he had rushed headlong into a son-in-law status. He was considered to be so eager for feminine beauty and property that he left his class front-line in order to join in enemy front-line.

Hung’s guilty was the shortcoming of class betrayer. His problem was that he had to recognize his fault, left enemy class and returned his class. Then, his crime would be cleared.

Hung was biting a pen in stead of writing a letter of thorough self-criticism. It was more difficult than to attack Thuan An military post and arrest Vu San in the olden years.

-       I was too poor to marry anyone else but Lan Vien because I lusted for a wife at that time – Hung explained with his superior.

-       You tell untruths! You were always surrounded by so many militiawomen whose elements were poor peasants – Rejected the reformation Delegation Chief.

-       I married her because she forced me.

-       Who could compel a girl to marry you – one “Shogun Grey Tiger” who ruled the roost?

-       I married her out of revenge. I had to wait on her hand and foot in the old day. Then I got higher position and we were of equal conditions due to the present of revolution. Be my wife, she had to serve me.

-       You love and indulge your better half as though she is an egg for your raising or a flower for your fondling. You should persecute her if you want to avenge yourself.

-       I married her because we are man and woman who have to be a couple …

Hung stubbornly argued.

Delegation Chief accused:

-       You are unfaithful to your class. After all, the betrayal guilty was not less serious than the crime of being enemy by yourself, or it was even much serious than that but I don’t want to say. Not only you didn’t enlighten yourself but you contumaciously insisted on staying in enemy ranks as well despite you have already been re-educated. Your shortcoming will increase by many times.

The matter had become extremely serious …

Hung profusely perspired. At first, he looked supercilious due to his assuming of misdemeanor. He didn’t imagine that his shortcoming would turn out to be serious or very serious like that after having a spat.

-       After occupying the Thuan An military post, one soldier was going to thrust commanding officer of the post Vu San with a bayonet when seeing so many sacrificial corpses of his companion in arms. Why did you move it aside and let him live? – Delegation Chief followed the past documents and interrogated.

Hung started. His problem was getting a new serious color.

-       My Delegation Chief! I implemented our humane policy which stated that we hadn’t to shot or kill surrender people applied to prisoners of war and defeatists of Resistance government.

-       But Vu San hadn’t given up till the last minutes when his post was going to lose.

-       I didn’t dare to be against our superior’s orders …

The Delegation Chief was a poor peasant by nature. He had been promoted since the previous reform. His teeth were black. He had just known how to read and write letter. Three generations in his family took servant as their career. With the intelligence by instinct, he had already studied in time the deadly cord logic whenever cornering “class enemy”.

-       You were in cahoots with your accomplices in Thai Nguyen detention centre by arranging aspect of “loosing incarceration” for San so that he could plant cassava everyday. And then, San had escaped and stayed in Hanoi. “Spies” had succeeded in rescuing their accomplice …

The soil under Hung’s feet seemed to have a landslide. Hung had known a mass of the most important militants in Districts and Wards who were captured and accused without having any reasons such as “members of nationalist party”, “collaborators of French intelligence service”, “spies planted in resistance ranks”, “surrender people who made statements and informed the aggressors to arrest revolutionary militants”. Nevertheless, all of them usually belonged to the aspect of “above elements”. Their parents who had many fields and afforded their children studying till getting diplomas were rich. People of poor origin had never involved but Hung – the first case.

The Delegation Chief gave Hung a sympathetic look:

-       During resistance war period, I stayed in your next ward and I had known your reputation “Shogun Grey Tiger”. I admired you so much. What a pity! You didn’t die of guns and ammunitions but landlord class who knocked you out by using Lan Vien. That was a “strategic” plot. They were winners otherwise base on your resume which stated that you were a servant when you were a kid, you yourself should be Delegation Chief who supplied concrete guidance to agrarian reform whose cadres were in state of seriously insufficiency. The poor peasants in many localities looked like a headless snake were waiting for people like us to mobilize them – The Delegation Chief seemed to be “sincere” in giving Hung a line of retreat open – You are still able to be back your class front-line by writing a letter of divorce which declares that you ask for a divorce from Lan Vien like Ham used to proclaim his breaking off with his own mother …

Things happened in provincial re-education classes were many times violent again Central ones where the eyesight was larger whereas unreasonable events were freely taken place in the province due to its narrow orbit. “Extirpating the intellectuals, riches and honors, landlords and village bullies” was actually applied there with blindly decisive works and merciless verdicts. The Delegation Chief took forcibly the pens on trainees’ hands, threw them away and ropes were replaced to bind their hands together behind their backs while they were writing letters of thorough self-criticism with “confidential” words and their ancestors’ graves were being disinterred under their pen points to show their sincere. The students in re-education class became less and less. A friend in Hung’s team was Educational service chief. He got trouble because he had learned in Albert Sarraut School and he was good at French. A reason was raised: to know French meant to have a deal with French. There was no proof showing that there was no relationship with the enemy. He was put in temporary detention for investigation. It stirred the whole class whose half quantity of students were well-educated. That was synonymous with the fact that all trainees knew French since the language taught in school was French. Nobody expected disastrous destinies. What a great bless Ham’s family had! Ham would die if he was in provincial re-education class because Ham was not only “rather good” but “extremely good” at French as well. He could also write newspaper in French language …

Hung burned incense in front of the altar and shuddered with his spiritual thought: Grey Tiger had annihilated a great number of French and puppet soldiers for 9 years. Everybody would be ghosts after they died no matter they were enemies. The ghosts had neither ideological stand nor class front-line. They were out for his blood. Hung had to be careful otherwise he would be able to be a ghost that time. The nonsensical reform court whose tribunal presidents and judges were full of wooden bell strikers and market-sweepers. They would never feel ashamed of their low “academic standard” without sentencing Hung to a death condemnation due to his two heinous offences: class traitorousness and to work as a spy.

Hung’s guilty was more serious than those of Mrs. Doctor of Letters and Ham. What a deadly situation! Hung saved neither anyone nor his life even. All his swagger and extraordinary pride were disappeared. Facing the danger, Hung had no way but saving his life first. He had to be alive first despite what would happen. He asked for Lan Vien’s forgiveness. He had to subsist. He was forced to be “an unfeeling person” but the God would grant his heart.

It took him several days to be painful and to writhe in anguish. Hung dropped Delegation Chief some lines saying that he had already declared his divorce from his wife in order to be back his class …

-       My Delegation Chief! – Hung informed – I have already divorced my better half. However, can I ask provincial army driver for picking up Lan Vien here so that I can officially talk to her about this. It is thus “correct cause and strong words”?

-       No, you can’t – The Delegation Chief rejected immediately – But Nam reformation Team will deliver this certified true copy to Lan Vien. You have to stop taking up with Vien and prepare for a new mission. Drop everything in provincial army section. You are added in the ranks of cadres who are carrying out … reformation.

(cuồng phong –tiểu thuyết cua Nguyên Phan HACH-Nhà xuat bản Hội nhà văn in 2008 )