Over the radio, she listened to the announcement of another storm approaching, but this time she felt a strange sense of relief.…
14 / THEY BECAME MEN
PHAM NGOC TIEN
Pham Ngoc Tien was born in 1956 in Hanoi and graduated with a B.A. in literary studies from Hanoi University. He has been a member of the Vietnam Writers’ Association since 1997 and has won several awards for his fiction. His most famous work is a collection of short stories called They Became Men. The title story addresses an aspect of the soldier’s experience rarely acknowledged in Vietnamese fiction: the fact that many young men were still virgins when they went off to fight and die in the war. By celebrating the female character at the center of the story—a woman who sleeps with multiple young soldiers—Pham Ngoc Tien challenges the traditional Confucian values that had dominated Vietnamese society for thousands of years and dictated how a “virtuous” woman should act.
I
The MC’s voice rang out loudly over the speaker system: “Pham Van Ngoc, a junior majoring in literature at University X, will be presenting her research paper titled ‘Sacrifice: The Unique Fate of Women in the War to Defend the Country.’ ”
The morning session of the conference was almost over. The audience of literature majors culled from different universities was getting tired and restless.
“Not war again!” some of them cried out.
“This is a forum on literature, it has nothing to do with war!”
“What’s the point of digging up some outdated past?”
“What does she know about the war, anyway?”
The student, Van Ngoc, hesitated at first as she reached the stage. Then she walked confidently to the podium. Her elegant white ao dai and kind face immediately silenced the unruly crowd. Her posture and mannerisms were determined and confident, but her voice trembled slightly as she began to speak.
At first it seemed there was nothing out of the ordinary in her presentation. She shared some of her research findings and several examples. The audience was quiet throughout—a kind of indifferent silence. Her topic was nothing new. Everyone already knew and accepted that women had made tremendous sacrifices during the war. It wasn’t until the conclusion of her presentation that Van Ngoc posed a rhetorical question about a specific kind of sacrifice and the role it deserved in any honest accounting of the war, that the audience started to get restless. What was she talking about? Why was she bringing this up?
The audience began to grumble even more vehemently as Van Ngoc finished her presentation. Her usually rosy face went suddenly pale. Their voices were like the sound of gunshots.
“You’ve turned the entire value of sacrifice upside down!”
“There’s no need to talk about this filthy subject!”
“This is crazy!”
“Get her off the stage!”
Van Ngoc’s entire body shuddered; then she collapsed suddenly behind the podium. After a few seconds she got up and ran off the stage, then stumbled her way out of the conference hall altogether.
I couldn’t bear it any longer and finally ran after her. I found her in the hallway outside, crying. It was like something extremely heavy had overtaken her otherwise innocent face. As she saw me approaching, she wiped away her tears, then said hurriedly,
“You were a soldier and you’re a writer. Please help me understand. The war happened not that long ago, so why do people seem to forget so quickly? Why won’t they acknowledge the sacrifice those women made? Is it just old-fashioned morality? But it was wartime! Why should they think this is something that somehow blemishes victory? Please answer me!”
I remained silent.
“My father,” Van Ngoc continued, “was a soldier who became a man after his experiences with one of these women. She helped him overcome many challenges. You know that, and yet you remained silent back there. This woman helped my father in more ways than anyone can imagine. No matter how much time goes by, we can’t let people question her dignity.”
Again I said nothing.
“Why won’t you help me tell the truth about these women? Why won’t you help me fight for their honor?”
I couldn’t bring myself to speak. There was nothing really for me to say. So instead I took her hand and held it tightly in my own. But with all of her strength she tore away from me and ran quickly down the hallway.
I stood there all alone for a moment. From the conference hall I heard the speaker announce, “Nguyen Trung Hieu, a senior at University Z, will now be presenting his paper titled, ‘Illusive Poetics in the Surreal Poems of Han Mac Tu.’ ”II
She was twenty years old and had been in the military for one year. The war against the Americans was at its peak. She was stationed at a small base deep in a section of the jungle where heavy bombing had destroyed most of the dense foliage. After long, grueling marches, different companies of soldiers would stop at the base to rest before going into combat. Female soldiers were rare at this particular jungle base. There were only five females out of the over one hundred soldiers stationed there. And she was the only one from the city. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, as she readily admitted, or at least wouldn’t have been considered so back in the city. But in the wilderness of the jungle, amid the cruelties of war, her beauty seemed mesmerizing: her smooth, lithe body; long silky hair; and fair skin.
Next to the base was a creek. The water was clear and calm, though it wasn’t deep; the reflection of the golden moon often shone off the bottom. She was well educated—she’d been studying literature before dropping out to volunteer for the army—and the other soldiers would criticize her for her bourgeois habit of bathing in the morning, typical among female soldiers from the city.
One morning, as she made her way down to the creek, the air felt unusually chilly. It was like autumn had suddenly arrived overnight.
