Suddenly the entire aircraft lifted up into the air. Next to me, directly to my right, sat a man wearing a suit. He looked pale. His eyes were closed and his lips trembled.
Meanwhile, I clutched the armrest tightly. I felt like a tiny being who had been dangled over a canyon that was growing deeper and deeper.
“Clouds are floating in the sky! Do you see them?” said an elderly woman sitting in the window seat, to the right of the man in the suit.
Once the plane had reached a desirable altitude, it flew straight and level. The electric seat belt sign was turned off, though fluffy clouds were still flying outside the windows.
“The clouds are so close to us, aren’t they?” the elderly woman said. “I can touch them with my hands, just like I touch the leaves on the trees in my garden.”
The man wearing a suit opened his eyes. His lips were still closed tightly. He seemed nervous and cranky.
“I don’t know why people say airplanes can fly above the clouds,” the elderly woman said.
The man in the suit remained silent.
“There’s no direction here in the sky, so how do we know which way to go?” the woman asked.
But nobody answered her question, so she didn’t ask anything else. Instead she sat quiet and still for a moment. She was holding a rattan sack. Her small body seemed to sink deeper into the seat. When a flight attendant came past, pushing a cart down the aisle to serve the passengers breakfast, the elderly woman refused to accept her tray of food. She said she was not used to eating without a bowl and a pair of chopsticks, and anyway, she’d already eaten an early breakfast. Besides, she said, an old person like her didn’t have much money. The flight attendant politely explained that the woman need not worry since the food was included in the cost of the ticket.
“No wonder it costs two million dong for a round-trip ticket!” the woman said. “When my son’s air force friends offered me this ticket, they said it cost only a few hundred thousand dong. They were being very thoughtful, because in the countryside we don’t talk about millions—a thousand and a hundred are already hard enough to earn!”
The elderly woman lowered her tray table but didn’t put her food on it. Instead she put everything she’d been served into her rattan sack. She didn’t eat anything. When the flight attendant came by again to serve drinks, the woman asked for only a glass of water.
“Are we close to the Ben Hai River?” she asked the flight attendant.
“Well,” the flight attendant said, glancing at her watch, “in about fifteen minutes, ma’am, we’ll be crossing the 17th parallel air zone. But we’re flying over the ocean, ma’am, not the river exactly.”
“When we get to that area, will you please open this round window here for me so I can get some fresh air?” the elderly woman asked.
“Oh no—it can’t be opened.” The flight attendant laughed.
Outside the window, the sun was shining. For a moment the wings of the airplane glittered in the bright sunlight, but it was only a short moment. The sky was still full of clouds.
I felt a little dizzy, as if I were going round and round on a Ferris wheel. It was probably the storms over the central highlands that had created air pockets, because suddenly we experienced some turbulence, which caused some commotion among the passengers in the cabin. There was a noise that sounded like something cracking underneath us.
The man in the suit struck a match to light a cigarette. Although I myself was a heavy smoker, the smoke annoyed me. He should have waited to light up until after he got off the airplane—he shouldn’t have just disregarded the “No Smoking” sign right in front of him. But he was obviously scared, which explained his oblivious behavior.
Carefully, I glanced over at him. The cigarette smoke and his huge shoulders blocked my view of both the elderly woman and the window.
“Hey you, Miss Flight Attendant!” The man stood up suddenly, straightening his suit jacket. “Is this an airline or a noodle stand? An airplane or a pagoda, huh?”
“I beg you …” the elderly woman said quietly. “Sir, I beg you. Today is the anniversary of my oldest son’s death. It has been thirty years, and now I have a chance finally to visit the place where he died.”
The man in the suit hurriedly stepped over me to get to the aisle. His face was red—he looked angry and disgusted.
The elderly woman sat quietly, bent over, her skinny hands held in prayer against her chest. On her tray table she had laid out a vase of flowers, some green bananas, a few rice cakes, and three incense sticks standing in a glass of dry rice. There was a small framed photo leaning against the cup of rice.
The flight attendant hurried over. But she stopped right next to me all of a sudden and didn’t say a word. She observed in silence.
The aircraft began to climb higher above the clouds, making the floor of the cabin steep. The shrine the elderly woman had set up tilted and slid to one side. I reached over to hold the framed photo so it wouldn’t fall. I could see that the photo had been cut out from an old newspaper, but the pilot in it looked very young.
Smoke from the burning incense gently curled in the air above our seats. The incense emitted a pleasant smell. Outside the window was the bright, endless ocean.
3 / LOUSE CRAB SEASON
MAI TIEN NGHI
Mai Tien Nghi was born in 1954 and lives in the northern city of Nam Dinh. A veteran of the war with America, he has worked as a middle-school math teacher since being discharged from the army in 1976. He began writing
