He knew that sometimes we had to pay a huge price for a small mistake. Because of his experience, he’d always had a fear of separation. And I think he suffered from a crushing feeling of self-loathing, which one day might have consumed him, even if it hadn’t been for that lazy early afternoon in October.
People also can be punished for making no mistake at all. For example, Vinh turned his back on me because of a war in which neither of us had been involved. I caressed his hair because I wanted to look him straight in the eyes and hoped he’d turn around and say something like, “Stop it, Grandpa, or I’ll punch you in the face.”
But Vinh said nothing. Instead he pinned me to the ground, suffocating my chest with his knees. I struggled to free myself as I stared up into his dark eyes, which were spotted with small broken blood vessels.
“Vinh,” I said, trying to smile, my mouth all twisted and contorted. “Don’t play like that. We’re brothers.”
“Brothers …” Vinh repeated sarcastically. He laughed, then finally let me go. He walked away, still obviously agitated, as I lay there trying to catch my breath. My heart sank. I went down to the first floor and quietly watched Grandma as she slept. I wondered about how much she must have suffered, knowing that her two sons were fighting on opposite sides of the war. Was it any wonder that, with her unreliable memory, she had cried on that October day and still brought it up now, seemingly at random?
“My son Ut Hon waved at you cheerfully and jumped up and down saying, ‘Brother Hai! It’s me, Ut Hon!’ But you shot him anyway. I can see it very clearly.…”
Lazy early afternoons in October returned to our neighborhood. Nobody paid attention to the intricate flecks of light that danced on the ground of the front yard. At the market, which was never really crowded with customers, Mother was busy rearranging the racks of cigarettes she sold. Father wasn’t interested in flecks of sunlight. He sat quietly as he typed up a customer’s request for a land purchase. His face looked withered and his hands resembled pieces of dry bone. I knew he was tormented by the question, Did I really shoot my own brother? When Grandma took her nap now, her face usually wore a frown, and sometimes she’d moan quietly in her sleep. It seemed like her dreams were eating away at her life. Vinh and I still secretly skipped our noontime nap. In the yard, I climbed a tree and dropped dry branches on his head, hoping that he would take the bait and react, retaliate, and maybe rub his snot on my face or punch me and call me Grandpa. Then eventually we would smile at each other and everything would be back to normal.
5 / A CRESCENT MOON IN THE WOODS
NGUYEN MINH CHAU
Nguyen Minh Chau (1930–1989) was born in the central northern province of Nghe An and is known mostly as a novelist. He is perhaps most famous for authoring a 1978 essay in the national Military Literature Magazine in which he called on his fellow writers to be less propagandistic in their writing and to depict the war with more realism and humanity. “A Crescent Moon in the Woods” was first published in 1970 and made into a film in 1980; in 2014 the story was performed as a musical at the Hanoi Military Theatre. The moon is a recurring symbolic trope in Vietnamese literature, often associated with romance and unrequited love. In this story, Nguyen Minh Chau juxtaposes the idyllic love between the characters Nguyet and Lam against the cruelty and everyday drudgery of the war.
The flame crackled as it burned the wick of the candle made from an old condensed milk can filled with oil. They were deep in the woods. It was quiet except for the sounds of a flowing creek in the distance and the persistently melancholic song of two lone birds. The time was past midnight, but a dozen drivers from the oil delivery team were still awake, scattered at random around a bamboo hut, some sitting, some standing. A folded piece of corrugated cardboard had been placed around the candle to diffuse the light that illuminated their tired faces. Outside the hut, the rough country road was gutted with bomb craters and knee-deep tracks from their trucks. It had been raining all night. The rain meant an opportunity for the transportation platoon to spend some downtime together. The atmosphere inside the bamboo hut was boisterous; sometimes their laughter seemed to shake the entire woods. Was there anything in life more jovial than a night like this when the drivers from various routes returned from their assignments and gathered together? You might expect them to want nothing but rest, especially after several sleepless nights behind the wheels of their trucks. But no one felt sleepy.
Before one person had finished their story,
