After this incident, though I tried very hard on the battlefield and fought bravely and was awarded several medals, I was never admitted to the Party. If I’d been a Party member, I might have been considered for a government position in my village after the war. And I wouldn’t have had to live like I have.
I already knew the difficulties of trying to share the truth. If I told people what I’d seen that night on the river, who would believe me? Besides, I would have to reveal the name of the promiscuous woman, even though her husband was still alive and healthy and they seemed like a happy couple. It was only normal, I figured, that people told lies and betrayed each other for moments of carnal pleasure. If I revealed the truth, the couple would break up and their children would be homeless.
But it was impossible for me to stay silent. So I told people about it, only I didn’t mention the woman’s name. Nobody believed me. They said that I’d fabricated the whole story while I was in the hospital. They laughed and hated me even more.
My beloved family’s cold attitude drove me crazy. After I left the hospital, my wife started avoiding me. She didn’t want to talk, or sleep in my bed. She even refused to eat with me. At every meal we were left waiting for her while the food got cold.
I put up with this for about ten days. Then, finally, I told my wife the name of the promiscuous woman one day when my children were still at school. Right away, my wife ran to the couple’s home to verify the story. The husband listened to what my wife was saying and became furious while his wife cried and called me names—bastard, son of a bitch, slanderer. “You were drunk that night, and I stayed home with you,” the wife said to her husband. “I didn’t go anywhere. This is slander! Where’s the evidence? He just wants to disgrace other people!” To honor and preserve her dignity, the wife ran into the kitchen and got a rope to commit suicide. But her husband believed his wife and took the rope away from her. Within an hour the woman’s husband showed up at my house carrying the rope. He didn’t say a word. He just put the rope around my neck and pulled until I fell down. Then he punched my face until my nose started to bleed.
It was the same life lesson I’d learned in the military, only more intense. But back then, at least I was still a soldier. Now I’d been robbed of my manhood, and this made people think I was depraved, including my wife. She treated me now like an animal. And my children didn’t want to be close to me since I was called a depraved man and a eunuch. I was all alone among my own family.
But even worse was the fact that I, as a man and former soldier, could no longer fight in the carnal battle because I’d lost my gun. There were other “depraved” men in the village, but only I had been castrated, people said, because of my so-called extreme depravity. This gave my wife the right the flirt with other men.
She was in her early thirties and still had a strong sex drive. At first she was tactful about going out with other men. But she eventually concluded that I was the one who had betrayed her, so she had to take revenge. She could never forgive me, because forgiveness was for those who could heal a broken relationship. We couldn’t be happy just by sitting down, looking at each other, and saying, “I love you.” Happiness also required carnal pleasure. Even if our love was pure, sex was a must.
Though I was unable to have sex, it seemed like my wife’s sex drive increased tremendously. Eventually she started telling me about her sexual encounters with other men. At first they did it in private places, but then they started doing it right in my house. I felt powerless and deeply insulted. I couldn’t stand it any longer and thought about committing suicide.
But I knew that I must live—live for my children. I would not let them go hungry and drop out of school. For over a year, I lived in a hut built for a duck herder out in the fields near the mouth of the river. I sent my children all the money I earned and only kept enough to live on. I didn’t want to see or interact with anyone.
Vang, Vop’s youngest daughter, went to the village pier every day. The riu fishermen, after plunging themselves into the river water all night, came to the pier in the morning to sell their crabs to traders from Hai Phong and Quang Ninh. Vop was no longer a young man, but he still went riuing for louse crabs every day during the season, using a pair of old reading glasses to see the crabs more clearly.
Vang didn’t have school in the mornings, so as soon as she woke up she would run to the pier and meet Vop, then take some money back to her mother. Taking a break from selling his crabs, Vop embraced his daughter and smelled her hair, which was moist from the early morning mist. When Vang asked why he didn’t live at home anymore, Vop got teary-eyed. “I have to live here to earn money for you and your sisters to go to school,” he replied. “Why do other people live at home but still come here to catch crabs?” she asked. “Well, they are different,” Vop said. He
