by Song Biec

"Yes, it’s true. There is a coin up there. Please go and find it for me, dear," my grandmother’s voice echoed in my ear.

"But it’s been such a long a time, I don’t think it’s still there."

"Sure, it is."

"OK, I’ll go in one day."

Twilight was gradually closing in. Fog was curling thickly around the wall-like rocky range. The path leading to Thap Dinh (Dinh Tower) was not clearly visible anymore. Only the sound of the brook murmuring upfront could be heard. Some buffaloes were strolling home late. From a distance I could hear the diminishing beats of wooden bells hang around the home-coming cattle’s necks.

I approached a slope of grass lying along the edge of the mountain called Bai Hen (Rendezvous Ground), where my country folks often stopped momentarily to rearrange their offerings before they went up to the tower. It was also a place where young couples from the village spent flirtatious nights together under the light of the moon.

The views became so deceiving before plunging into darkness. I placed my palm upward to get that cold feeling and without warning, blurted out, "That’s why..."

Alone amid a dark and misty space, glints of my grandmother’s cheerful face flashed in front of my eyes. Her warm voice echoed once again, "There is a coin up there. It’s true."

***

"You don’t love me any more, do you? Why? Why? Why...?

"Don’t cry anymore. The moon tonight is so beautiful. It’s a wonderful night. Do you see Dinh Tower? Tomorrow when you go up there, please don’t forget to put your hand deep inside the first hole of the fourteenth brick on the twenty third step of the tower. If the coin in there is facing downwards, please don’t be disappointed. If the coin is facing upwards, it means I’ve already gone," he whispered.

"There is no coin. There’ll be no coin. I only need you…"

"So, did you go up to the tower to find it, grandma?"

"It was during the war, you know. My family had started evacuating that very night." My grandmother stared off in space, her eyes vacant and distant.

***

She put her hand into her shirt pocket and took out some small change. This was the money her daughter gave to her for a treat whenever she came to visit. But my grandmother had not spent any of it. She had only taken the money to please her daughter.

"Take it to buy sweets," Grandma told me. "On the way back, please go up and get the coin for me."

"Grandma, if I find it, would you give it to me so I could play games with my friends Tung and Chien? Their grandmothers have given them many coins."

"What a boy," my grandmother said, chewing betel. I hurried out to the road and ran very fast towards Dinh Tower. One, two, three, four... jump! I began to wonder how my small ten-year-old boy’s hand could reach for that fourteenth brick. I returned home with deep regrets. I believed the coin was lying in there.

"It’s true that there is a coin up there."

"How do you know, grandma? What if he did not put it in the hole?"

"Yes, there is one." My grandmother reacted weakly but then tried to sit up. Her two opaque eyes turned to the path leading to the mountain. Having touched her senseless legs, she turned to me and pleaded.

"Please, go up there and find it for me."

"No, I won’t, grandma."

She looked sorrowful, as if she had lost something very important. Since falling ill, she had only moped about the house and reminisced about her good old days with some man. Many times I overheard her murmuring, as if she was having a discussion with someone else. My father would shake his head and concluded she had the old-aged disease.

***

I was now in my teens. There were football matches, field trips and parties filling my time. So I repeatedly postponed my promise to my grandmother.

She anxiously awaited my arrival every Sunday evening when I would come back home. Her eyes brightened with hope and she would lean in and ask me her familiar question, "Did you go up there?" and after hearing my disappointing answer she would fall silent.

Then once it dawned on me that this was not some game to her. It was truly important. But I still did not know why. I began to wonder if my grandmother was getting ready to die. She had only had torment in her life. At eighty four, she had no more commitments, no more arrangements. I realised that when people feel so untroubled, they could easily go to the other world. I shuddered at the thought. Was I keeping her alive with my promises? Was hope allowing her to hang on?

"Please go up there and see if the coin is still there."

***

"Mother only has me as her only child left. For all these years bringing me up, she has been desperately waiting for my dad. The war, oh God, the war."

"My dear, my dear," he suddenly stopped. She raised her eyes, soaked in tears. He did not comlpete his saying but she knew very well what he meant. He did not want her to be like her mother. So many young village men had gone away for good, never to return. His fathers and then his brothers, all the same.

She was trembling, her head on his chest. That firm chest with the rapidly beating heart. She could clearly hear the pain of the inevitable separation.

"Oh, the afternoon mist. It is wetting your hair, you see." His voice quivered. She knew those dew-like tears of his were running through her hair.

"The moon is on the wane, dear, please go home. I’ve got to go up to the tower." His determined eyes deeply fixed on hers. His face glistened in the late moon light.

She wiped her tears wanting to say, "I’ll wait until you return." But his hand stopped her. Taking a deep breath, he coldly pushed her away and hastily walked up to Thap Dinh.

She watched, standing firm and motionless like a statue. The dew droplets on the grass seemed so cold now. For the first time after meeting at Bai Hen, she had to return home alone.

"I’m sure the coin is facing upwards, dear. He loved me so much."

"When you were still young, did you go to get the coin, grandma?"

"Yes, I did. I also went to find him."

***

I had gone up twenty three steps of the tower. The first hole of the fourteenth brick was clearly visible. I hesitated for a moment and dared not put my hand into the hole; the hand of a now twenty eight-year old man who had once wavered in his own love boat. Bai Hen seemed smaller now. I smiled, thinking ‘if only I were that ten-year old boy from the past again.’

Sitting on the tower step, I began counting the young couples walking up. Several decades had gone by and Thap Dinh had become old with time. The three-step stairs had become green with moss. The bricks were a soiled brown. I wondered in silence if there were anymore coins in any of these holes from other love struck couples.

I sat there in silence until the last people left the tower.

***

"Well? Was the coin lying downward or upward?" Having heard the door opening, my grandmother called out from her bed. The look in her eyes was filled with hope and brimming with expectation. Her weak arm extended towards me. My heart sank.

"Yes, there was a coin, grandma, but my hand is too big, so I was not able to reach inside the hole and get it for you."

"So I was right, there is a coin in that hole."

"In the old days, when you went to the tower, didn’t you find that coin too, grandma?"

She smiled but kept silent. For the first time since falling ill, I saw her smile. It was perfect. All the wrinkles at the corner of her mouth seemed to be playing in great joy, revealing her toothless jaw.

***

"Your great-great-grandmother had forced me to marry your grandfather, you know. Yes, it’s true. That’s the life of a woman. Who can live alone?" My grandmother was speaking to me, but it seemed she was all alone.

"But why did you still miss your lover when you got married, grandma?"

"Damn you! Are you accusing me of something, grandson? You cannot judge between love and the moral principles of a wedded couple. Yes, but I cared about your grandfather anyway."

All the villagers said my grandmother had lived a virtuous and charitable life, that’s why she had lived so long. I knew she had devoted all her life to her husband and children.

My grandfather was a strong and healthy man who had lived with her for seven years and together produced three children. Then one day he had a terrible accident in the forest and remained bed-ridden for twenty years.

"So did your lover return?" I asked her out of curiosity.

"I never saw him again. But whenever I felt hopeless I went up there to the tower. After each visit, I seemed to have added strength, you know."

"Did you see the coin?"

She hesitated, "You’ve already seen it, haven’t you? It’s the most beautiful memento in my life, you know."

"Was the coin facing upward or downward, grandma?" I blurted out.

"There is a coin up there, so I don’t care if it’s facing upward or downward now. It’s my coin."

***

That night my grandmother fell into a deep sleep. A sleep she never woke up from. She looked peaceful and content.

***

It was the same twenty third step of the tower, it was the same small hole. I sat alone just like the other day. But I knew right at the place where I now sat, there was once a girl who had stopped here hundreds of times. She had expelled and vented all the worries buried in her heart like a pious Christian believer.

"It’s true there is a coin up there." The girl was the same as me, neither of us dared touch it.

Translated by Manh Chuong