Truyen ngan tieng Anh

Short Story

(30-03-2008)

Men are so small

by Ngo Phan Luu

The rain didn’t stop for four days. Rooftops sagged under the weight of the water. When it suddenly stopped on the fifth day, the sky was sunless. As the air started getting cold, chills ran up people’s spine not from the weather but from an enveloping fear. What lurked overhead was no longer a sky, but an immense dome laden with lead. The colour warned them of an oncoming danger.
The Ba River suddenly started to rise as the God of Water began to wield its power. The water from the Ba River filled half of Mr Quyet’s earth-walled house. Thirty-six other households in Nghe Thuong village were similarly inundated. Danger fell on the village. Mr Quyet placed a wooden table on top of a sofa upon which his entire family perched. He knew the extent of the situation, that he was on his own, that he couldn’t wait for help to come. It was every man for himself to make an escape.
From the table, he stepped down on to the floor. The water rose up to his chest. He looked back worriedly at his mother, wife and three small children sitting disorderly on the table. He knew that in two hours time, the water would catch up to them. He decided at that moment they had to leave, to go to Mr Bay’s house, his neighbour. He ordered,
"Ty, lock your arms about my neck now." Having said it, he put his back close to the table so that his son could do as he had said while he stretched his arms to carry his two other children Com and Hoa. He then turned back, "I’m moving our children to Mr Bay’s, so sit still there and wait for me!"
As he spoke, his wife and mother seemed not to hear him. They kept silent, staring into the distance. It seemed that fear had turned them into statues. Tension had turned their faces into stone. They did not dare to look at him because it seemed that he had the same face as theirs. They had eyes but they dared not look at anything, anywhere. Those were the terror-stricken eyes of powerlessness when faced with death that silently crept closer. It was an immense, paralysing fear. Mr Quyet carried his children to the door.
Mr Bay’s house lay near the edge of rice fields, very close to Mr Quyet’s. It was a newly built brick house with an attic. Mr Quyet had thought of this attic, far above the water’s reach and decided to move his children there. If his family were allowed to stay in this attic, he would be reassured.
Once at the gate, he groped his way along the edge of rice fields. He was surrounded by an endless span of ash-grey water. His two children Com and Hoa were soaked to the bone as he carefully made his way along. Water rose swiftly under his legs. He came to a stop fearing he might drop his son Ty, but Ty’s tight grip kept him safely in his father’s care. He walked on and on and step by step over the rugged broken stone-paved path he could hardly see under the flood. The putrid smell of the water made him dizzy, as garbage caught in the flood passed by his face. After making it half way across the water, the man dwarfed by the vast sea of the flood pushed on fighting the cruel hand of nature.
Out of the blue sky, he felt a chill on the back of his head. He quickly turned his head to see a bail of straw floating against his back. He stood firm against the obstruction as it pressed against him, not leaving him and his children alone. Stunned, he dipped his children Com and Hoa into the water, but after their panic he quickly stood back up. The current of the water picked up. The bail of straw stuck to his back and to his sides. He tried with all his might to escape the straw’s hold to no avail. Suddenly, the straw seemed to wrap itself around his legs, lifting him up and pulling him along with the current. Helpless, the trio was pulled under the water as the straw flowed by, indifferent to its victims. Mr Quyet wasn’t sure when exactly he lost his children. He only noticed his son Ty was no longer locked around his neck. He found himself alone in the water, fighting the strong current and trying to surface. At that moment, he knew he wouldn’t see his children again. Their lifeless bodies were likely floating somewhere underneath the bail of straw.
Still fighting for his own life, he suddenly had an idea. Upon seeing a bush in the distance in Mr Lam’s rice field, he swiftly snatched up the bail of straw and used it as a buoy to swim towards the bush. He figured he could anchor onto the bush to stop the bail of straw so that he could search for his children. He no longer felt like himself, but like a wild animal fighting for survival. He directed the bail of straw to the bush where he finally came to a halt. The bush was holding strong, with its roots reaching deep into the ground, bringing him a brief moment of relief and safety. The thought of his children drove him to dive into the bail of straw and shred it to pieces as he furiously looked for his children. The final pieces of the wrecked bail floated away straw and there was no sign of his children. Their bodies had been carried away by the strong current. Upon this realisation he bit his lip and pressed his teeth together as his eyes began to swell. The scene in front of him, of rushing tides destroying and carrying everything in their path, started turning dark as his vision left him. The tears never came. He leaned against the bush, breathing hard.
A moment later, he vaguely saw a lead-coloured light in the distance. The flood waters passed above his shoulder. He saw from afar that the thatched roof of his house was still there. The red tiled roof of Mr Bay’s house was also still there. Everywhere the water was rising so rapidly, covering everything in sight. Breaking up the vast sheet of water were a few rooftops now barely peaking through. It all looked so dismal, so dreary. He waded back to his house, less carefully now that he felt the emptiness in his arms where his children had been. He was telling himself that he should not die in this flood. The flood wasn’t strong enough to kill him, but his mother and wife were still in the house and the flood may kill them as it did to his three children.
He felt himself fill with rage and frustration as he found himself hopeless to the mercy of nature. If the flood was a man, he would have killed him. But the flood was a flood. It gave him no outlet for revenge. He got into the house. Mother and wife were still curled up on the table on top of the sofa where he left them. The water level now brushed the edge of the table. Neither his mother nor his wife looked at him in the face or asked about the children. They didn’t ask him for anything. He stared at them just as blankly, in shock from the inexpressible disaster that surrounded them. All were silent. Only silence reigned. No voices were heard.
He waded to the cow shed. His cow had raised its jaw on the rail, breathing hard. Half of its head and its whole body were now under the water. He released the cow who started swimming with the flood. In the blink of an eye, the animal was nothing but a faint dot in the distance.
He turned back to the house. He used a reaping hook with a long handle to pull down patches of thatch from the roof to make a hole so that he could get his mother and wife out of the house. He quickly used a ladder to help mother and wife climb onto the roof of the house. He tied them with a rope to the house in case they fell into the water. The water level was now reaching the edge of the roof. The flood raged endlessly. No force could do anything about it. Mr Quyet was sure that he, his mother and his wife were likely to die.
Just a moment before he had the illusion that a flood could not kill him. Looking at the raging sea around him he knew that was no longer true. The flood was going to kill him as it had killed his three children.
Sitting on the top of the house beside his mother and wife, he looked around. He saw only a endless horizon of flood water, so vast, so immense. At that moment the fear of the flood left his body, replaced by disgust for the flood. He found it so mediocre, so vulgar. Fear had left his body, and clarity returned to his thoughts. There was no longer any doubt that the flood would kill him, but still he found himself turning his nose up to the forces of nature so vulgar, so mediocre. He despised the flood and also despised the vast universe that would bring about such an event. Inside him there was no more hatred, no rancour, only contempt. He looked nonchalantly at the floating log in the flood as it ran into the wall of Mr Bay’s house. The house collapsed. Inside that house no more lives were lost because the flood had already claimed its victims.
What defiant nature! Man cannot be killed a second time around. His own thatch-roof house began to crack. It felt as if the house was being twisted. He turned to look at his mother and wife. The two women were overwhelmed with misery, pain, and fear. In an overkill of emotion they could only stare blankly, like statues. He too had become a statue. The three statues on the roof of the house, waiting for their inevitable end. The roof was twisting and cracking amid the immense sea of the flood.
All of a sudden, the three statues were swinging. The God of Water was violently shaking the house. The roof lifted up and turned over, throwing the flood’s latest victims into the water. The sky reflected the evil of the day like a lead sheet hanging low over the sea of ashy grey flood, now with hardly a house to be seen over the sheet of water that had taken lives so easily,... so recklessly.

Translated by Manh Chuong (VietNam News)