Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Duong Thu Huong, author of Paradise of the Blind and Novel Without a Name (both from Penguin) is an advocate of human rights and democratic political reform, and was expelled from the Communist Party and imprisoned without trial in 1991. The Vietnamese government has effectively banned all of her novels. She lives in Hanoi.

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Memories of a Pure Spring

Penguin Books

Chapter One

Vinh stood motionless, his heart pounding. The pale gray of his eldersister's face deepened by the minute, turning to violet. The rustle ofwhite uniforms, the antiseptic smell mingled with the pungent stenchof sick people lying around him; this suffocating atmosphere transfixedhim. Vinh could barely breathe. His temples pounded, a relentlesscadence, like the beating of a drum that transported him back, twelveyears earlier, to his father's funeral.

    "Who is the patient's family here?"

    "I am."

    "Brother ... or husband?"

    Two opaque eyes, as cold as those of a fish, looked up from undera pair of glasses. The long, frail face of the nurse reminded Vinh ofsomeone he had once met but couldn't recall.

    "Younger brother."

    "Where is the patient's father?"

    "My father is dead."

    "And the husband?"

    "He's ... also dead."

    The nurse looked at him again, suspicion flashing across her silveryeyes. Then she stood up. "That's all. Sign here. The next of kin hasto confirm the state of the patient."

    Vinh pressed his hand against the table, signed his name for thefirst time in his life. Eighteen years old, and all he had done was scrawldoodles of animals on the backs of his school buddies' T-shirts. Onhis exam papers, he used to trace a big letter V with a curly line underit, like the tail of an earthworm. Today, he really signed. He stared athis sister's deathly pale face against the bed; the inky black lines of hereyebrows seemed to tremble, like the life and death in the trace of hissignature.

    "There, underneath, write the day and the month, then your familyname. You may leave now." The voice seemed to rise from the tomb.The young man fled, weaving through a crowd of admirers that hadgathered outside the door to the hospital corridor.

    "Who's that?"

    "Her little brother, apparently."

    "Oh? I thought it was her husband."

    "I heard he was dead."

    "Oh, no he's not. He spends his days drinking like a fish. He'sdrunk from dawn to midnight."

    "A beautiful woman's destiny is always tragic."

    Their whispers pursued Vinh. As he turned down a corridor, hebumped into a pot at the foot of a wall.

    "Idiot! Are you blind?" An old woman's high-pitched voice piercedhis eardrums. He didn't dare turn around, he walked faster, stridingpast the examination rooms, the contagious disease section, the venerealdisease section, the morgue, and out the door to the cemetery behindthe hospital.

    Night was falling, and the tombs, newly dusted with joss-papergold, glistened oddly in the sunlight. Bushes of heliotrope, mint, andcherry faded in the evening light. Wild chrysanthemums glowed in thedusk. Vinh knelt down on the grass between two tombs. Huge hedgesof cactus encircled the cemetery, looming in front of him. In the distance,the lush green of rice paddies. The sun melted over the fields.Vastness. A melancholy beauty.

    Vinh began to sob.

    "Oh Papa, oh Mama, why did you abandon me like this?

    His tears overflowed, sudden, hot.

    It was the first time in twelve years he had cried like this; witheach breath the tears came harder, faster, choking him: tears like asquall, a flood that carried him into a delirium, not just of pain butof release. Something gentle, too, something like happiness glistenedin the tears; he wailed like a six-year-old boy.

    For more than a decade, the memory of his father had been absentfrom his mind. If there was a spirit that flickered for him in theshadows of the night, a perfume that still reached him, it was hismother's. But now, across the empty desert of the last twelve years ofhis life, the old man had suddenly come back, following the call ofhis son's voice. Vinh could smell the acrid sweat of his father's blackpajamas, the aroma of fish grilled over a campfire at the base of acasuarina tree.

    They had buried him on a blazing July afternoon. Funeral bannersfluttered above the heads of the cortege that advanced, zigzagging,cloaked in a swirling cloud of red dust. A flaming halo aroundthe sun, like a ripe fruit hanging in the sky, spilled a searing lightonto the earth. Space seemed warped, bent under the waves of dizzyinglight, in the deafening buzz of the flies. A crowd plodded insilence, weaving its way through tall reeds bleached white by heat,ripped and tattered by the salty sea wind. Dazed, they walked as ifnumbed, as if hypnotized by the sun and the salt carried on the wind,by the funeral dirge and the sound of trumpets, flutes, two-string lutesthat wailed through the hills of reeds, echoing over the white dunesalong the sea.

    Oh Papa, why did you abandon us? His two sisters wailed, their sobspiercing his young heart.

    Vinh wore the white tunic of mourning, the straw hat. He movedthrough the crowd, leaning on a bamboo cane. He had stopped weeping,but tears still stained his cheeks, mixing with the dust, stinginghis face. He didn't dare raise his hand to scratch; as the only son,Vinh had to walk backward in front of his father's coffin, maintain adignified, solemn bearing until they returned to the house.

    Oh Papa, why did you abandon us like this?

    Their wails sounded like the cries of wounded birds. They werejust a few miles from Trang Nguyen Lake. How many times had hisfather taken him there to hunt birds? Father and son had woken beforedawn, when fog still cloaked the treetops. Vinh had huddled againsthis father; though he felt like clutching his father's shirt, he didn't dare.

    You're the only son, the pillar of the family.

    His father had taught him this lesson when he was three years old.That sentence hung around his neck like an invisible whip ready, atany moment, to strike his back. Sometimes, it brought him a kind ofsatisfaction; it was a vague, but nevertheless real sensation. One stormynight at the age of four, Vinh had practiced being a man, the pillarof the family. It was pouring rain. The sea howled like a starvinganimal. Vinh stood trembling outside in the courtyard. His father hadordered him to stand there, while he sat inside and glared out at hisson. His mother, in a corner of the room, begged him to let Vinhback inside.

    "Please ... please ... he's too little."

    "No."

    "Please, do it for me ... let him in ... please."

    "No."

    His father's charcoal eyes flashed rays of inky black light. Vinhclenched his fists, forced himself to stand straight. With each crack ofthunder, his heart stopped, his blood seemed to freeze over. He lookedaway from his father, avoiding his gaze, imagining his own heaven: thesilky panels of his mother's ao dai tunic that always smelled of lemongrassand jasmine. In her pockets, he could always find a few coinsto buy sweets or caramel-coated peanuts.

    Lightning flashed, blinding, turning the clouds to silver....