Other Moons

between him and his wife. In fact, to his surprise, Nam found that he loved the baby as much as he loved Xuyen, and he felt miserable when he had to conceal this love. Sometimes, if he was in a particularly good mood and Xuyen was busy, he would hold the baby and help wash the cloth diapers. Nam’s internal psychological debate raged on, but the prejudice within him always triumphed. He refused to let the baby inherit his last name and insisted that the child call him “Uncle,” not “Dad.” At night, when Nam heard his wife crying while she held the baby in her arms, he wanted to come to her, to caress and comfort her, and do something kind to make her feel better, but he decided not to. Lying quietly in his small bed underneath the window, he’d just stare up at the ceiling, or he’d go outside and walk and smoke until the morning. In moments like this, sometimes he’d get angry. He was frustrated with Xuyen, with the baby, and most of all with himself. The situation seemed hopeless. It was his personality, and nothing could be done about it.

One day, Nam stopped by my house for a visit.

“You have a few days off to visit your hometown, so why are you just sitting at home?” he asked loudly as soon as I opened the front gate. “Writing again?”

“Yes,” I replied. “That’s my job.” I motioned for him to sit. “Please have a seat.”

The baby was older now, running around the village with the other children, but his family remained the same. People said that several times the local authorities had advised Nam to reconcile with his wife, but he refused to listen. We all knew that Nam was a reasonable man, but once a thought entered his mind, it was not easy to get rid of it.

“So Nam,” I asked, “are you still ‘at war’?”

Nam said nothing. From his facial expression I could tell that he was sad. After a while, he said, “Look, what can I do?”

“Why can’t you just have ‘peace’ with her?” I said gently. “You must know how much you’re making Xuyen suffer.”

“Don’t you think I also suffer?”

“That’s why you should let this whole thing go.”

Nam sat in silence. Then suddenly he said, “Let me ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you believe Xuyen’s story? I mean, the story of how she got pregnant?”

“Yes, I do,” I replied.

“Well, I don’t.” He stood up. He seemed furious all of a sudden. “No! Never!”

“But at the end of the day that isn’t even important,” I said, getting angry myself. “What’s most important is that she waited for you all those years and she still loves you.”

“Mr. Author, you talk like it’s an easy thing,” Nam said sarcastically, his lips barely parted. “Everything is so simple to you guys.”

He said nothing else and left.

You see, a person who had spent fifteen years on the battlefield, who had done extraordinary acts of heroism, who had overcome thousands of dangerous challenges, had nonetheless failed to overcome a relatively minor obstacle to end suffering for himself and his beloved woman. This seemed unfair and extremely depressing. How were we supposed to convince him?

In February 1979, when the border war with China occurred in the North, Nam volunteered to rejoin the military. Xuyen didn’t oppose this decision and only said, “You’re leaving again, and I will wait for you, no matter how long.”

“And every night, will you dream of me coming to visit you?” Nam asked, derisively. “Will you be pregnant again when I come back?”

“Yes,” Xuyen said, ignoring his tone of scorn. “But please believe me. I’ve always loved you and only you. If I get pregnant again, the baby is yours.”

Nam said nothing and left quietly. He never returned.

Several years have passed, and Mrs. Xuyen has become Mrs. Elderly Xuyen. She has aged and become frail. She is still waiting for her husband, like she did during the war. And like before, she never receives a letter from Mr. Nam, who has become Mr. Elderly Nam.

This was their personal story. At first I had no intention to write about it, but after considering various factors, I decided to go ahead and write all this down. I imitated the French author Andre Maurois, who wrote The Return of the Prisoner, and published this story in a local newspaper with a tiny hope that if Mr. Nam reads it, he will change his mind. Mr. Nam, Mrs. Xuyen, and I are all from the same village. I think none of us has the right, therefore, to be indifferent to the fate of others.

 12 / THE CHAU RIVER PIER

SUONG NGUYET MINH

Suong Nguyet Minh was born in 1958 in Ninh Binh and currently works at Military Literature Magazine in Hanoi. He joined the army in the 1970s and was among the Vietnamese troops who liberated Cambodia from the genocidal Pol Pot regime. He writes mostly about war and its effects on the Vietnamese countryside and its people, and has published one novel and many short stories. Like other female veterans found in Vietnamese fiction, the character of May in “The Chau River Pier” is portrayed as a heroic but damaged and somewhat lost figure. May has been changed by the war in a way that comes into stark relief when she returns to her village on the evening of her former fiancé’s wedding to a younger woman. It is painfully clear that May, a seasoned battlefield medic now missing a leg, cannot pick up her life where she left off before joining the army. Still, she manages to become a mother by the end of the story, fulfilling that traditional gender role even against the slim odds offered by the harsh realities of her postwar life.

San got married the same day Aunt May returned to the village. The water in the Chau River was red. Waves lapped against the lone