Afterward I fell asleep.
Only people who are really in love can understand that when a woman chews a piece of your flesh, tearing it from your body, she is only feeling true love.
The fifth time I woke up next to her, I didn’t bother checking what parts of my body were now missing. All I thought about this time was my love for her.
That is all I have now, this love. When it cools during sleep, I need to heat it up first thing in the morning when I wake up.
I also need to hate and condemn war more.
The Chinese, the French, the Americans … You were all cruel. I hate you!
I also hate those who have never gone to war with our country but plan to in the future.
Those are my last words. From a person who dies for love and war.
17 / THE PERSON COMING FROM THE WOODS
NGUYEN THI AM
Nguyen Thi Am was born in 1961 in the South Vietnamese province of Long An and earned her undergraduate degree in law in the former Soviet Union. She currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City and works as a successful businesswoman at a firm specializing in agricultural products. Although she is not a full-time writer, many of her short stories have been widely anthologized in Vietnam, and she is known for her minimalistic and subtle style. In “The Person Coming from the Woods,” the spiritual world is treated as a normal extension of the physical world. Though she claims to be frightened at times, the narrator does not seem shocked or surprised to be visited by the wandering ghost of a fallen soldier. This is the reflection of a widely held belief in Vietnam: a person who has died in a violent, unnatural way, or a person whose body is missing, can never really rest in peace; on the contrary, their soul will continue to wander lost in the afterlife, stuck in a kind of tormented, restless purgatorial state.
After graduating from teacher training college, I was assigned to a school in the west of Quang Tri province, a remote and desolate area. It was a middle school with five classes and teachers who came from the lowlands; the majority of the students were ethnic minorities. The school principal had arranged for me to live with a math teacher named Ha who was about thirty years old. We shared a small house, the roof thatched with grass. It didn’t look very sturdy. Sitting inside the house, I imagined that a strong wind could easily blow the whole thing away.
After class was over, we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves in the evenings. In winter we would walk down to a creek and collect wood that had washed up on the shore and carry it back home. At night we burned the wood in a fire in the middle of the house to keep warm. Then we’d sit and stare at the flames, engaging in deep, serious thinking, as if we were philosophers.
One night, when it was getting close to bedtime, Ha sighed and said,
“I’m ugly and getting older, so it doesn’t matter for me. But you’re young and as beautiful as a goddess and have to teach and live here. It’s such a waste.”
I laughed. “My mother says that everybody has their own special fate. Maybe one day a man will come find me here.”
“That could very well happen,” Ha said. “You know, about twelve kilometers from here there’s a border patrol station. Maybe a border patrol officer will propose to you.”
Both of us laughed cheerfully; then we crawled into bed and lay under our blankets. We had trouble falling asleep. Eventually we slept for a bit and woke up again, then slept a little bit more. It was a long, restless night.
After two months, I started to notice that this area was really beautiful on brightly moonlit nights. When we opened the door on those nights, we saw mountains and hills drowning in the moonlight. In the distance, patches of white grass waved gently in the wind. It was at moments like this that Ha made her usual complaint:
“Shut the door! This place used to be a battlefield, didn’t you know that? There are lost souls wandering all around here.”
“I’m not scared,” I said. “Why should I be? There’s no anger between us.”
Ha got into bed and covered her head with the blanket.
“Hang, please!” she moaned. “I’m begging you.”
Finally I got up and shut the door, then crawled into bed myself. I could hear the strong winds outside blowing through the woods. I couldn’t help but think that it might be fun if a border patrol officer out walking his rounds got lost and wound up here at our little thatched-roof house, talking with us, two young female teachers.
At the end of my first six months teaching at the school, I received a letter from my boyfriend. He wanted to end our relationship. His reason was simple: his family wanted him to get married because he was the only son. He couldn’t marry me because I was living so far away. If everything had ended like that, it would have been fine. But with the letter he included a wedding invitation that had a note scribbled on it: “If possible, please make a visit back to your hometown and come to my wedding.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I held his letter. It seemed obvious that he didn’t care at all about my feelings.
That night, I woke up suddenly from a strange dream. My body felt hot and my throat was dry. I got up to look for a pill, then sat down next to the fire. Ha seemed to be in a deep sleep over in her bed. Maybe she was used to this lonely life by now. I stood up and opened the door. It was October. The sky outside seemed unusually high and full of
