The Mountains Sing(25)

We told each other not to venture out of our village. We had to stay away from the fighting among the Vi?t Minh, the French, and the Japanese, which was growing more intense. We’d hoped for the First Indochina War to end, but it was escalating. Three years after my father’s death, the war found us at our home.

THIS TIME, THE war came in the form of N?n ?ói n?m ?t D?u—the Great Famine of 1945—which killed two million of our countrymen. Rather than being a vicious tiger gobbling us down, the hunger was a python that squeezed out our energy, until there was nothing left of us except skin and bones.

By April 1945, I was so weak that I didn’t care whether I lived or died.

“Di?u Lan, wake up, Di?u Lan!” One morning, I heard Mrs. Tú’s call. I wished the housekeeper would leave me alone. But then, a sound made me open my eyes.

It was the faint cries of your mother. A five-year-old baby then, Ng?c was resting her head on my stomach. Next to her, your uncle ??t, barely four, lay silent. Your uncle Minh called me. I slowly turned and gazed at him: a hollowed face, dark rings around sunken, yellowish eyes; he was a seven-year-old skeleton.

I sobbed, gathering the children into my arms.

“Mama, I’m so hungry,” Minh whimpered.

Mrs. Tú held out a bowl. Steam rose from her hands but no smell of food.

“Banana roots, perhaps the last ones your mother and I could find,” she said. Her skinny arms trembled and I knew she, too, was starving.

I scooped up the black stew, blowing it to cool, feeding the children, and when they’d had enough, I shared the rest with Mrs. Tú. The banana roots tasted bland in my mouth, but I was grateful for each bite.

As Mrs. Tú lay down, lulling the children to sleep, I looked at what remained of our house. In my brother’s room, an old blanket had been folded neatly and piled on top of two worn pillows. Above a cracked cabinet, the ?àn nh? poked out its broken pieces. I wondered whether our lives would stay like the instrument, shattered and unable to sing. The living room was barren, except for a makeshift bench. What had the Japanese done to our furniture? They’d invaded our village, calling us sympathizers of the Vi?t Minh. They beat up people for no reason, taking away everything of value: money, jewelry, furniture, pigs, cows, buffaloes, chickens. They robbed us of all our food. They made all villagers uproot our rice and crops, to grow jute and cotton for them. Our family could no longer pay our workers. All around my village, people had gone crazy with hunger. The last drops of water had been scooped out of ponds to catch any remaining fish and snails. No insect could escape human hands. Edible plants were dug up for their trunks, leaves, and roots. It didn’t help that a terrible drought had ravaged our whole region, sucking our fields and creeks dry.

My dear husband wasn’t home. His mother had died from starvation. His father was growing weak but refused to come and stay with us, believing that his wife’s soul still lingered at home and needed company. Hùng had told me he hoped to find something to eat on the way to his father, but I didn’t know what. There was no food for sale at the market. Nobody had anything left to sell.

We’d longed for food to reach us from the south, but nothing. Japan and America had been fighting in other parts of the world, and now American bombs had exploded onto our land, destroying shipping lines, ports, roads, and railways.

I had to do something to keep my babies alive.

In the garden, naked of greenery, my mother squatted on bleached soil, poking a stick into the earth. I staggered toward her. “Mama, where are Brother C?ng and Sister Trinh?”

She lifted her haggard face. Most of her hair had turned white, thinning on her skull. “They went to the fields.”

I thought about the cracked fields and hundreds of hungry villagers out there, searching.

“Have you eaten yet, Mama?”

“Yes, banana roots.”

Picking up a stick, I started digging with her. Dry soil pushed back against my hands. Surely a manioc or sweet potato was hiding somewhere. This part of the garden used to teem with those plump roots.

After a long while, my mother said, “We have to go look for food.”

“But where, Mama?”

“The forest. There’ll be wild fruits and insects.”

“But that’s too far away.”

“Fifteen kilometers, maybe.”

“It takes three hours at least. I’m not sure we can make it.”

“Listen, Di?u Lan. Every patch of earth close by has been dug up. We must go further. Còn n??c còn tát.” While there’s still water, we will scoop. “The forest is our remaining hope.”

“I’ll go, Mama. You stay here—”

“No! We’ll go together.” My mother clutched my shoulder. “Without food, the children will die. They’ll die, don’t you understand?”

In the kitchen, I filled a bamboo pipe with water, looping its string around my shoulder, then picked up a chopping knife. Reaching for two nón lá, I put one on my head and gave the other to my mother.

We unlocked our gate, stepped out and secured it again. A horrific stench made me gag. Nearby, a rotting corpse lay face down on the dirt road, green flies buzzing around it. A bit further on, the body of a mother embraced her baby in their death. Several corpses were scattered in the basin of our dried-up village pond.