By Phan Hon Nhien

It was already September. From the cool air of autumn the weather turned unpleasant. The high wind with tiny raindrops blew from the valley through the narrow mountain path. During the night, it rained cats and dogs. The murmur of both rain and water seemed crawled into the filmmaker’s deep sleep. A wet atmosphere suddenly swept over the place and spoiled their plans.

In the morning, the early sunshine pierced through thin clouds drifting here and there in the overcast sky. It was now seven o’clock, but it seemed a far cry to dawn. Vinh pushed off the blanket and approached the window, whose glass panes were covered with a thin layer of white vapour. The wind had stopped blowing. He stretched out his right arm to the bedside lamp to take hold of his packet of cigarettes and precious carved lighter, but the latter was nowhere to be found. All of a sudden, he remembered that during the previous night his rest house had blacked out and Hoan, his girlfriend, went downstairs to fetch a few candles. Perhaps after finding one piece and lighting it, she left the lighter somewhere; she was such a carefree teenager. Opening the drawer, Vinh found a single box of matches. He stroke them, one after another, but the high humidity kept all but one of the matches from sparking brightly. The nasty smell of sulfur spread over the room. The door was left ajar without its lock. He did not know where she had gone. Usually she got up late after he had already worked on his laptop for a few hours. He intended to spend just two days in this small town; however, he was compelled to stay there for nearly a week.

As for Hoan, she hated this small mountainous town. Its tranquillity made her unbearable. She insisted they fly to the littoral city nearby as he had promised before their trip. Nevertheless, until the third day of their temporary residence, she had seemed very happy with their stay.

Although he had known her for half a year, his affection for her became more and more passionate.

***

Vinh opened one of the window panes and began smoking. Some sparkling of light were dancing amid the tops of pine trees then spreading over the dark valley. Several taxi motorbikes carrying a few sleepy women whose heads were covered by woollen shawls were heading toward the market place. Suddenly, from behind the thick bushes on the other side of the road, a brilliant dot loomed larger and larger and dashed toward the rest house like a whirlwind. Hoan, with a big showy beret on her head, wore a thin skirt made of cotton.

"Look at me, dear," she said to him while she stood at the hedge of the compound, brandishing her large towel, crying loudly and turning her grey eyes towards her lover.

"Come back to our room at once unless you want to catch cold," he told her angrily.

"I’ve just come back from the spa. How wonderful!"

"Up here with me," he said to her softly.

"Can you take me upstairs in your arms? I’m too cold to go further," she said as she trembled in the cool wind.

Frightened a bit, he shot downstairs. The reception desk was deserted. He hugged her then carried her upstairs and pushed the door open with his right leg. She rubbed her nose on his neck and giggled. He put her down on the bed. The fragrance of her body mingled with the odour of the spring water. Her small chest looked fairly white in the dim light. The furniture in the room seemed disformed when Hoan’s arms pulled him down.

Vinh lay motionless for a while to enjoy those minutes of happiness. After a few moments of ecstasy, she got up and walked to the table on her bare feet then picked up a few dry pieces of biscuit and ate them with great relish. He stared at her, smiling.

"Don’t be so careless, my dear. Somebody downstairs might look up and find you in your birthday suit through the open window," he reprimanded her softly.

"I don’t care a rap about that. Look, somebody is coming to our place," she observed with surprise.

"Who’s that?"

"It seems to me that that’s the guy who came to the spa a few days ago. I stole his beret."

"Are you mad?"

She turned back with angry eyes. Leaving the window, she paced towards the bed and put on her cotton skirt. Glancing at the cine-camera hanging on the wall, she asked him:

"Are you going to shoot a few stills this morning?"

"Yes, certainly. Will you go out with me?"

"No, I feel awfully sleepy."

"Then I’ll try to come back early."

"You’ve just received a letter from your wife, haven’t you? By the way, have you opened your yahoo mail-box?" she asked loudly.

"It’s no concern of yours," he replied.

He got up, quickly put on his casual clothes and hung his camera bag on his shoulder, feeling quite at ease like a professional hunter leaving everything unpleasant behind in order to enter the jungle. He thought about Hoan sitting on the bed and staring at him angrily like a mad animal facing the hunter.

***

This girl took up all his free time and strength. He met her when they worked together for a group of Japanese TV filmmakers shooting a documentary dealing with environmental issues. Hoan was hired to work as an interpreter whenever foreigners spoke with the locals, although she was not very good. To make up it, she seemed to put all her energy into their affair. Day after day, she conquered him completely. Sometimes he wanted to end this secret love affair so as to return to his wife Minh in their cosy nest, but whenever he heard her soft voice on the phone, all his good intentions came to nothing. Being a capricious lady, now she was very interested in his career; now she regarded it as a good-for-nothing job. Meanwhile, he tried to keep his schedule going on as usual: writing co-operation projects, choosing scenery for experimental shooting, returning home before eight o’clock and sharing his day with Minh. But he was well aware that sooner or later, his furtive relations would be disclosed.

Time and again, he asked himself whether his wife knew anything about his disloyalty. Minh worked diligently and all her concerns went to her designs with great ambitions. More than anyone else, he knew that she was very clever. Under her cold and tolerant appearance, she could see the inner thoughts of her opponents. He liked her balance in nature, but it also made him fear her. Her intuition never put a hard question forward that might make him uneasy. Even when the gap between the couple was noticeably reduced, Minh kept the door of her soul closed to wait for a certain thing to come. She loved Vinh in her own way, and vice versa, Vinh always hoped that things would stand the same forever.

Three weeks ago she informed him of her intention to fly to Stuttgart in order to work for an architecture company that was constructing high rises for urban areas.

Vinh was notified of her expected journey while he was thinking of breaking up with Hoan.

"Your design seems quite perfect. Is it necessary for you to go to Germany?" Vinh asked his wife, in hopes that she would delay her trip.

"I would like to look for something else."

"What are you looking for, and where?"

"I’m not sure about it. But certainly, it must be something special at a certain place."

"Your discontent has made you do this, hasn’t it?" he asked her, a bit frazzled.

"Being without anything to look forward to would be more unstable," she replied indifferently.

"It’s up to you!"

"So much the better."

"When will you come back here?"

"I don’t know. Maybe I’ll e-mail you later. Don’t be that tense," she observed.

"No, I’ll take it easy."

Their tedious conversation made him a little frightened.

***

On the morning that Minh went to the airport to fly to Stuttgart, he was too busy working with his colleagues to see her off. In the evening, when he came back home he found himself seemingly stranded on an iceberg, chilly and confused. Suddenly, Hoan rang him up saying that she had just lost her purse and was quite at fault and was hungry as well. She wanted him to pick her up to dine out and go sight-seeing to relieve her boredom. It seemed to him that she was cheating him. But it did not matter. She was badly in need of him, that’s all. He drove to her workplace. At dinner, she ate and talked a lot and laughed to her heart’s content. After the meal, on the way home, she told him to halt in front of a boutique where he bought her a bright red silk blouse embroidered with flowers.

***

Sometimes Minh thought of fixing her marriage by having a baby. Some of their friends had tried to put off having children because they were so in love that it seemed a bit unstable and fleeting. One day, she told her husband softly, "Let’s wait for another opportunity. I want to be sure when we need a baby." Vinh let her decide the issue of paramount importance.

But when Hoan came to him, he recognised her innocence and a rebellious character in the same woman. The world around him suddenly changed noticeably.

Early in the afternoon it turned rather hot. A driver took Vinh to the foot of a mountain where the old forest remained intact. He wanted to capture some images of the old Pine trees. It took him so much time that the driver could not wait for him any longer.

"Some guy in a beret promised to pay me a lot of money and I agreed to his proposal. Now you can walk to the guest house alone. Your way home is mostly downhill, so you won’t be too tired," he told Vinh. Suddenly, he missed Minh and their last meal before she had left for Stuttgart.

"You think its all right that we’ll both be gone from home?" Vinh was ill at ease before their parting.

"I know that you’d go somewhere else. Who can stay at the same place forever?" Minh remarked, looking over his head. Her look caused him pain. He was afraid that she might know the truth about Hoan. His ambivalence silenced him.

Vinh returned to the town fairly early, at about five in the afternoon. He was tired of walking. At first, he wished to come back to the rest house with Hoan immediately, but with second thoughts he dropped in an internet bar to check his e-mail. He hoped for a message from Minh. But when he opened it, there was nothing but junk mail. His absence from home meant nothing to anyone, which meant his presence was arbitrary. Surely Minh was engrossed in her new job in Germany. He sat motionless on a wooden bench staring out of the window. From afar echoed the noises of the engine of the taxi motorbike he had hired that morning. The vehicle grumbled past the middle of the slope. On the motorbike sat a familiar young man. His hair flapped in the wind. Sitting close to him was his Hoan with the gaudy beret atop her head. She hugged the stranger passionately with the countenance of a child satisfied with the adventure. Vinh darted to the door and followed their movement. Her figure was getting smaller and smaller; only her peals of laughter could be heard.

***

Dinner was poorly served for Vinh in the dining-room of the guest house. All was quiet. At the next table, an elderly couple was playing cards. Regularly, they put their own cards on the table, looking uninterested. In another decade perhaps, Vinh and his wife would do the same if they were still together. That idea made him nervous. A waiter brought him some more peaches.

"Will supper be served for you and your wife right now?" he asked Vinh.

"Wife?" he replied surprisingly. Then remembering Hoan, he nodded his head. "Yes, you should, she may return here at any moment," he added.

"What will happen if she doesn’t come back."

"It’s none of your business," Vinh replied, getting angry. He blushed all over. The two old residents turned back and stared at him with icy expressions.

Vinh went upstairs to his room. He slammed the door open with a kick. Fresh air swept over his face. He began to pack his belongings and placed them all in his suitcase. The next morning he hired a taxi to return home. He would leave this place as soon as possible.

When he was sleeping soundly, she came back. Turning up the bedlamp a little, she sat down on the bed and started taking off her shoes and stockings. Vinh glanced at her, eyes half open. She stood up, took off her red blouse and stretched herself. A silhouette of her slim body cast onto the wall. The contour of her curved lines could be seen vaguely in the dim light. Her upper jaw with white teeth bit at her lower lip. Her eyebrows shrank as if she had been lost in thought. All of a sudden, she bent down, picked up a shoe and threw at the opposite wall. Half a minute later, there was a knock at the door.

"Would you mind not making such noises, please?" the elderly man from next door entreated.

"Why not?"

"Because my wife can hardly sleep, and this is the last journey in her lifetime."

The door then closed. The sounds of his slippers gradually faded away in the dark. Hoan returned to her place and sat down. Suddenly, she burst into tears. Her shoulders trembled violently. Vinh got out of bed, poured her one glass of warm water then asked her, "Why did you come back so late?"

"I went to the mountain top with the guy I had met at the spa. I stole your precious lighter and bartered it for that trip. Are you mad?"

"It doesn’t matter. Well, you’d better go to sleep," he told her.

"You don’t love me any longer, do you?" she asked.

"Stop your midnight tricks. It would be nice if you could wise up a bit," he replied sarcastically.

Burying herself in the blanket, she burst into tears again for a while before falling asleep. He put some more clothing into his suitcase. At any cost, he had to leave this place. At dawn while he was taking his luggage to the door, Hoan woke up.

"You’re abandoning me, aren’t you? How can you have the heart to forsake me in this condition?"

"Stop it, will you? You know what you wish, don’t you? Keep on living the way you do. Nothing is a tragedy! I want out of this situation," he answered.

"What can I resort to? Everything seems to be slipping away through my fingers. I’m frightened."

Suddenly, she turned pale and collapsed on the bed. Panic stricken, he darted to the bed.

"I’m badly in need of you," she whispered. "I love you dearly, only you. I don’t know whether you’re falling in love with me or not, but I need you." She wrapped her arms around his neck.

***

Vinh’s life lead farther down an unfamiliar path. His affair was full of uncertainties, while Minh’s figure drifted in and out of his memory. ‘Nothing is sustainable forever,’ he told himself. Even the notion about love and the attachment to family – all were merely hallucinations. But how could he do better?

One Sunday morning, he found a postcard from Minh in the letter-box. It was sent to him from Stuttgart. His heart lifted as he foolishly hunted for the image of her among the crowds strolling down the street. There appeared the picture of a coffee house in the open air on Scholossplatz Avenue with a background of green hills hiding the horizon.

Turning the card upside down, he read her writing:

"My work here’s getting on well. Nothing to complain about! I hope you’re leading whatever life is more suitable to you. I won’t see you any longer. I think we’re lucky to change our living conditions. Is it a sign of bravery? Wish you the best of luck!"

***

That young man stood silently on the bridge. How much water has flown away under it, only God knew. He looked up at the sky. The white clouds, similar to those printed on the card, were drifting away slowly. They were moving so quietly that everything in this world seemed unchanged.

Translated by Van Minh