Rather than sit in a lecture hall and library enriching his knowledge so he could eventually become a member of the intellectual bourgeoisie, he would become a factory worker, a job where he didn’t have to use his brain. After a few years, he would be able to buy an electric rice cooker, an iron, and pots and pans, and take them back with him to Vietnam. In addition, he would have the “background of a worker who had been trained in a socialist, technologically advanced country in the use a five-kilogram hammer.” This was one of the reasons why, with no hesitation, he became so excited about going abroad. So he went.
Meanwhile his parents stayed in Vietnam and worked diligently. After many years of fighting in the war, Mr. Suu now lived in the luxurious mansion that had once been owned by his former boss, the enemy of the working class. Mr. Suu gained an insightful appreciation for the victorious revolution in which he had participated. He enjoyed the mansion, “booty of war.”
Although he was a quiet person and rarely revealed his feelings, his wife sometimes caught him standing at the front door, touching the marble columns on the front porch. Mr. Suu once said to her, “When my father and I were the servants of Sang’s family in Hue, we always stayed in a storage room or a buffalo and horse stable, and we did not dare set foot in the house. A maid did all the cleaning. There was no place there for men like us. We would be beaten if we stepped with our mud-stained feet on the tile floor.”
Mr. Suu’s wife then told her husband about her years of living miserably in other people’s homes. “They threw us out and refused to give us shelter. I could put up with it, but I felt sorry for our son. He couldn’t invite his friends over because where we lived was not what you would call a real home.”
“The only way to stop generational poverty and servitude is by joining the revolution,” Mr. Suu stated quietly, a triumphant declaration to put an end to suffering.
A few years later, Mr. Suu was promoted from lieutenant colonel to colonel before his retirement. Half of his life had been dedicated to the revolution, and as a reward he and his family now lived in a very nice house. Mr. Suu thought there would be nothing to worry about. Although social status and privilege affected all social relationships, Mr. Suu, a retired officer, only cared about his own “privilege” within the territory of the Villa Pensée. In other words, he now had enough time to enjoy his privilege within the limits that society dictated.
The mansion still had its original architecture. Right next to the fence at the back garden was the five-compartment horse stable. A few hundred steps from the stable was an A-shaped, two-floor house with dark purple walls and a jade-green floor. The balcony was supported by a row of pillars tiled with white, black-veined marble. There was a beautiful 2,000-square-meter garden in front of the house. The walkway was covered with white pebbles all the way from the gate to the garden, which was divided into two sections: on the left was a tennis court and on the right was a flower garden and a pond with an artificial island in the middle of it. Around the pond were willow trees with branches drooping gracefully until they nearly touched the water. At the center of the garden was a water fountain in the shape of a mermaid, and next to her were statues of two little boys.
The design of the grounds of the mansion was indeed “art for art’s sake,” as the bourgeois class would say, and it was useless to Mr. Suu, a retired military officer, so he decided to change it.
First he converted the pond into a fertilizer pit; then he cut down the thick conifer and willow trees and removed the concrete from the tennis court to clear space to grow sweet potatoes. He planted poles in the ground around the mermaid statue, tied wires to the mermaid’s head, and connected them to the newly planted poles and branchless willow trees nearby; this he used as a sturdy trellis to grow pumpkins and gourds. Because the soil had never been used to grow anything, it had a lot of nutrients and his vegetables grew very fast. He and his wife also began raising several pigs. Eventually they converted the Villa Pensée completely into a self-sufficient communal farm.
Then, in mid-November 1988, Mr. Suu received an unexpected letter:
Saigon, November 3, 1988
Dear Mr. Truong Van Suu,
After thirteen years in your reeducation camp, I have been released. Over the last ten years, you have paid no rent for living in my Villa Pensée. Isn’t that more than enough for the “blood debt” that a “puppet of the American imperialists” has to pay?
Soon my wife and children will join me here from France, and we will file the legal paperwork to reclaim ownership of the house that you are now living in. I am writing to you in advance so that you will not be surprised and will have enough time to prepare everything. This is the law of a civilized society, of course. I assume that a high-ranking officer like yourself will understand.
You and I are not strangers, so I hope that you will not create any difficulty for us in this matter.
Thank you, and I wish you well.
Lam Quang Sang
Mr. Suu was more surprised that not long after this, he was requested by the authorities to verify the facts presented in the letter.
Six months later, around noontime, a shiny new car entered the Villa Pensée. Three elegant, wealthy-looking people got out of the car and walked directly toward Mr. Suu, who was standing against a pillar and looking at the street. A big, tall
