Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

  Then one day all of the wild animals had their monthly meeting and made a complaint against the buffaloes. The Elephant, who chaired the meeting, suggested, “Now is perhaps the time to do something about the buffaloes. Let’s appoint the Tiger as our representative and take a message to them. Tell them to stop invading our lands, stop stealing our food, and start to earn their keep. If they refuse we will punish them.”

  The Tiger went to look for the buffaloes. When he found them, he climbed onto a tree and called out, “O buffaloes! Please hear me!” The buffaloes were surprised and raised their heads to look around. One buffalo answered, “Yes, we hear you. Who are you and what do you want?”

  The Tiger immediately said, “We want you to live in your own field, to gather your own grass, and to start bathing. You are such a disgrace to the animal kingdom with your behaviour.” One great buffalo, without hesitating, answered, “Be gone with you! Go tell your friends if they do not like things the way they are, then leave this forest. We are not common animals, we are mighty beasts. No one should tell us what to do. If you and your friends bother us, the great buffaloes of this forest will destroy you all.”

  When the Tiger reported to the committee of animals on his meeting with the buffaloes, all started to shout and chatter at once. The Elephant trumpeted for order, then said, “Friends, we will ask the Divine Order for his guidance. Let us pray.” After the prayer was finished there was a great silence. Then suddenly a gentle voice came from the air, “Animals, you are right. Too long the buffalo has lived in disgrace. He has made no effort to change his ways. He must be punished. All the tigers of the forest will now go and attack the buffalo herd!”

  Immediately, the tigers set out on their mission and carefully planned their big battle. During the fight many of the buffaloes were killed. Those who survived used all their strength to stumble to a stream where they lay in the shal- low water to heal their wounds. Their beautiful horns had been flattened and bent backwards. A few days later the buffaloes held a meeting. The older and wiser buffaloes thought it would be better to go back to their own territory but the young ones wanted to fight to the end. While they were arguing and bickering, a strange voice spoke to them, “Buffaloes, you have been punished for your selfish way of life. From this time on you will be beasts of burden, a consequence of your greediness and laziness. You will be ugly because you boasted your greatness and beauty, and you will enjoy wallowing in mud and water because of your filthiness. You must go now to the nearest farms and start to plough the rice fields to earn your livelihood.”

  And so the water buffaloes went and were made to plough the rice fields forever.

  My immediate family and I lived in a simple, one-storey house with an earthen floor and walls and roof covered with dried leaves from the water-coconut palm. The house was surrounded by trees and flowering shrubs and was only a few steps from the Catfish Stream, a branch of the river in front of my grandmother’s house. My mother raised chickens and ducks in our yard but no pigs until the day she bought an adorable piglet and gave it to me to take care of. He was still about the size of a cat, pink with very light hair. I let him wander about wherever he pleased and named him “No”. He enjoyed chasing after children and they enjoyed chasing after him. He often slept inside the house on the earth floor. The only food I gave him was a creamy substance from inside the rice husks, a little like wheat germ. Twice a day I measured the powder into a large wooden container, then added water to it. My little pig grew fast and became quite attached to me, grunting at me whenever I left the house and greeting me in the same way when I returned. He always heard my footsteps in the front yard. He knew exactly when it was time to eat and would happily make his way to the corner of our backyard, until I arrived with his dinner.

  Once No grew to his full size, my mother told me we would have to sell him and I was heartbroken. Inevitably, the merchant arrived in his wooden sampan and came into the house with a giant black iron scale to bargain with my mother. The pig squealed when it was forced onto the scale, and I started to cry. The merchant gave my mother the money and took No away in the sampan. I was in distress for months, which infuriated my mother, “Don’t you keep crying and lamenting! If you don’t shut up, I will let you go hungry tonight.”

  In our village people ate mostly fish, shrimp, crabs, fruit and vegetables, a lot of rice, and sometimes small servings of meat. My mother had erected a trellis on which we grew cucumbers, squash, winter melons and bitter melons. Our vegetable garden was filled with tomatoes, eggplants, mint, basil, coriander, lemon grass, and lettuce. There were several large jasmine shrubs around the house, and a huge flowering gardenia tree in the front. In the evening hundreds of white blossoms filled the air with sweet fragrances. We also had two fruit trees in the back garden – the coconut tree my father had planted after my birth and a guava. I found it hard to wait for the guava fruits to ripen. I sometimes went up into the tree and sat there like a monkey, eating too many un-ripened guavas until my stomach went into full rebellion.

  Fish were plentiful in our streams and rivers and I began fishing at age four, always accompanied by a family member. From age seven I could go on my own and did so quite regularly. Sometimes I went with Uncle Muoi to a large river for serious fishing with a net. I also liked being on a boat and one day Uncle Muoi’s son Hung and I took my uncle’s sampan out to the water palm jungle, taking a knife with us. We were both ten years old at the time. Hung could swim very well but I didn’t. I myself loved the sweet kernel inside the brown shells of water-coconuts and it was my idea to go out that day, without telling anyone.

  Our sampan passed slowly along the waterway by the side of the jungle, and soon we saw a huge cluster of coconuts over hanging the edge of the river. I tried to pull out a few nuts but none would go free, so I grabbed an entire bunch, all at once, and, wrestled with it, until the sampan tipped over. “Hung! Hung! Help me! Help!” I cried out in distress. Hung tried to stretch over to my side of the sampan but it was too late. We both plunged into the water, making a huge splash. Hung was in tears and tried desperately to reach me. He swam over and grabbed my foot. As soon as my head came out of the water, I heard his shouting, “Keep your head up! Put your feet on my shoulders! Can you stand up?” I followed his instructions, while he shouted again, “Both feet, not one! I’ll hold still … Don’t fall! Careful! Careful!” I successfully lifted myself onto Hung’s shoulders, with one hand grabbing a palm leaf branch. “Now! See the large trunk over there? Right over there!” His voice was shaking as he was out of breath. While holding my feet firmly on his shoulders with his hands, he shouted again, “Ready to jump! Now go!” I leaped over and fell onto the large trunk of the water palm, grasping it like a monkey. Hung got out of the water after me, and we both managed to turn the sampan right side up and rush home as fast as we could. We never told anyone about this incident. Without Hung, I would have drowned.

  Hung soon developed seizures. Nobody could tell for sure whether his condition had any connection with an earlier head injury at the school playground, incurred when the nearby garrison was attacked by Nationalist raiders. His mother, Uncle Muoi’s wife, had taken him to several traditional healers but there was not much improvement. I witnessed more of his seizure attacks than anyone else because I often played with him. Every time Hung fell to the ground and his body started to convulse, I would hold his hands very tightly and call out his name. When his body stopped shaking, I used green leaves to wipe away the saliva bubbles from his mouth. One of the activities that he and I enjoyed was chasing dragonflies around the gardens. They came in all different colours – green, yellow, red, brown, and even striped. From time to time we caught giant green grasshoppers in the rice fields. We took them home to roast over the fire. Hung and I enjoyed eating them, at least until my paternal grandmother told us how sad she felt for the grasshoppers.

  In the village, cooking was always the women’s domain. The kitchen was a separate hut, off-limits for most men in most households.
Uncle Muoi enjoyed grilling fish but he did so in the open air. He would take a small bamboo stick and poke it through the length of the fish, usually a large walleye, mackerel or pompano and completely cover the fish with mud. He planted the spear upright, leaving the fish above the ground, piled dried hay around the spear and started a fire. When the mud dried, it could be cracked open to reveal the most deliciously cooked fish.

  My mother liked to catch snakes and would use the meat as the main ingredient for rice porridge. One day she discovered some snake eggs in a corner of the house, which led to a search. We eventually found an orange snake curled up under a pile of bamboo baskets. It took fright and slithered up into the rafters. My mother stacked several baskets to stand on. She beat the ceiling and walls violently with her bamboo stick. Finally she hit the snake, which landed lifeless on the floor.

  But no skill in catching living things could match that of Uncle Muoi’s wife – Mo Muoi. She was a physically powerful woman and needed to be, with thirteen children to look after as well having to keep house and raise domestic animals. When I was a baby, Mo Muoi nursed me with her breast milk once each day while my mother worked in the rice field. She was never ill. Her specialty was catching mice with her bare hands, often one in each hand, with little apparent effort. The performance always left us children flabbergasted.

  My mother’s eldest brother Phan was a carpenter and, like many of our neighbours, a follower of Caodaism. He was quiet and reserved, soft spoken, and had very gentle manners. Having his head completely shaved, he looked like a monk. Uncle Phan was a vegetarian who would never kill an animal, not even a fish. He made wooden furniture for the villagers and they paid him with buckets of un-husked rice. He also made a beautiful mo, or wooden bell – a round hollowed-out object made of wood about the size of a grapefruit – for his Cao Dai shrine. In the evening he would beat the bell with a tiny stick, “Lock cock! Lock cock! Lock cock … ” while praying.

  Uncle Phan rarely talked politics or wars but his two sons, Bao and Huan, were fully aware of what was going on in the world around us. One day they decided to abandon all farming work to their wives and sisters to join our elder cousin Hinh. Uncle Phan did not show any emotion when they left but that same evening he went to his Cao Dai shrine and prayed for them. His wife was crying and could not eat that night. When Bao and Huan came to say goodbye to my branch of the family, I asked them where they were going. They gave me a smile, “Little Sister, we are going to join big brother Hinh.”

  “But why don’t you wait until Grandma finishes making the hammocks for you?” I asked. “How are you going to sleep in the jungle?”

  “We have to leave today.” They responded. “But we will come back to collect them later.”

  Uncle Phan’s house was near my grandmother’s and shared the same river. At the side of his house was a large pond where he grew mostly yellow and white lilies and some pink lotus. During each full moon my grandmother received a bunch of lilies or lotus from him. I often volunteered to bring her the flowers. I loved to inhale their pure fragrance. Sometimes when nobody was around I would slip into the pond and play in the water until my whole body was scented, just like the lilies themselves.

  The lily pond attracted several varieties of frogs – green, yellow, black, and striped. There were also a few rough-skinned ones that were much larger than the others. Sometimes several frogs just sat on top of a lily pad and made no noise at all. At other times they were jumping all over the place and singing with their inflated chests “croak, croak, croak … ” Their voices would become much louder when children came to the pond and disturbed their peace. My cousin Dzung, Uncle Phan’s third son, guarded the frogs to make sure nobody would catch them to eat, as the frogs had become friends of the children.

  The best time of the year, though, was the harvest. It was invariably accompanied by songs and poetry and playful exchanges between young people. In our village the girls and boys would congregate and the girls’ songs were funny and provocative:

  A gang of men is worth three piasters

  Let’s lock them up inside this cage

  Then ask the ants to carry them away

  A woman is worth three hundred dollars Let’s spread out a bed of fresh flowers

  And invite her to have a seat.

  …

  As children grew older and reached an age when courtships became more serious, there were strict rituals to be followed. Young men and women weren’t normally permitted to be in close contact with each other. Girls were taught to be demure and open flirting was considered outrageous behaviour. The courting signals were thus very subtle and restrained. Holding hands while walking together was a sign of very serious commitment. There were few chances for physical closeness except in the dark of the communal centre where an opera or a musical play was being performed. In those circumstances, surrounded by all the neighbours, one might sit close enough to sense another person’s thighs or shoulders. But girls and young men for the most part met in separate groups and didn’t mix. When Hien met her future husband, I was with her at an evening opera.

  The traditional opera, known as Hat Boi, was like that of the Chinese. Everyone loved it. The stories were universally known and contained legendary characters, princes and princesses, famous generals and wicked enemies, wise men and amusing fools, mandarins, dragons and magic monkeys. Virtue always triumphed in the end and evil was punished, kingdoms were lost and gained in the process and there were always points of high drama that made the audience feverish with excitement and anticipation, even if everyone already knew the story from beginning to end.

  The singing was formalized, the theatre sets simple but the costumes were highly elaborate. Much use was made of masks and such gestures as the fingering of a beard would carry significant meaning. Each performance was monitored by a person of honour who sat in the audience with a wooden bell, or mo on his left, which made a clacking sound, and a drum on his right. If all went well with the acting he banged the drum and the audience cheered and stamped their feet, but if he wasn’t happy with the performers, he sounded the mo and groans of protest arose from the spectators.

  My mother’s favourite entertainment was not the traditional opera but a modern form called Cai Luong, which only began to develop in the 1920’s. When I was a child there were about forty troupes in the South performing this genre of musical play. The stories were more human and down to earth than those in traditional operas. They were full of the kind of real-life drama people could relate to, such as a love triangle, a fatherless child, or the sudden death of a young girl. The audience would be brought to tears by the songs, and the actors and actresses who performed Cai Luong became celebrities with a wide following.

  In Truong An, the operas and modern musical plays came several times a year and they would run for three consecutive days and nights. There was always one or the other to coincide with the celebration of Ky An, the annual festival of prayer for the village’s peace and prosperity. The audience consisted of officials, people with money, farmers young and old, labourers male and female, young men and women and children, all sitting on wooden benches in one of the large communal huts.

  Hien and her future husband, on their second meeting at the theatre – and their first real date – became engaged. She was seventeen and Than proposed marriage to her. He gave her a little package of white silk, containing a beautiful comb made of jade, the symbol of his love and commitment. For a wedding to be amicably agreed upon, an arrangement had to be made by the traditional matchmaker or a respected elder person in the groom’s family. The calendar of the seasons had to be taken into account. In my village, and generally in the delta, the wedding season was from the ninth moon to the first moon, or October to February. This fitted into the cycle of the rice crop, the village’s main means of survival. Work in the rice fields was divided into two seasons, the first beginning in the fifth moon (June), and the other in the eleventh (December). Each season required three months of full-time lab
our at different parts of the cycle. At other times the work was easier, consisting mainly of the maintenance of dykes and ditches. When the rice was growing – ripening ‘like a young girl,’ as it was said, and the green shoots were slowly rising from the water, there was a long period when people could relax.

  Life in the tropics is without a real winter or spring, but there is always variety in the environment. A day can contain many moods, heavily overcast at one point and then brilliant sunshine shortly afterwards. There can be morning mists, gentle breezes, wild storms and still air. We always had spectacular sunsets and bright moonlight. We never knew snow. We had a chant that went:

  A day has all four seasons

  Morning is spring

  Afternoon is summer

  Evening is autumn

  And night is winter.

  There was, of course, no television when I was little; but even if there had been any, we had no electricity. I did not visit a cinema until I was thirteen, and that was in Sai Gon. There was not even a radio, at least not until our neighbour’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Que, went to Sai Gon to visit her aunt for a few months. Her return was marked by two separate gatherings of excited and curious onlookers who flocked to her parents’ house. The first group to arrive was all the girls and women of the village, who wanted to see what a Sai Gon lady really looked like. My mother went and she took me along with her.

  The word had already spread that this country girl had come back from the city transformed and that we would see things never before witnessed in the village. The rumours turned out to be absolutely right. Que now wore face powder, lipstick, and nail polish. She wore mascara on her eyelashes, and her hair had been curled. She wore a silky dress, and beneath she wore an absolutely amazing thing called a “bra”.

  And she was wearing shoes!

  Above all else, she had on an array of the most fancy glittering jewellery.