The Mountains Sing(28)

The man dropped my legs. “Shush, be quiet if you want to live, Di?u Lan.”

My heart was in my throat when I heard my name. Crouching down low, the man got closer to me. A dried bottle-gourd dangled on a string in front of his chest. I could see his face now: weather-beaten and haggard.

“Who are you?” I wriggled away from him.

“Run, Di?u Lan.” He unlooped the string of his bottle-gourd, giving me his water. “Get out of here, before Wicked Ghost finds you.”

“My mother . . .” I turned back to the road we’d just traveled. “Please help her.”

“I’m sorry . . . Madam Tr?n . . . she’s no more.”

“No!”

“Shush. They’ll hear you. Leave now or they’ll catch you.”

I tried to stand up. “Take me back to my mother. Take me back now! She can’t be dead.”

“Di?u Lan, listen to me.” The man gripped my shoulder. “Please . . . believe me. I work for Wicked Ghost, but I am indebted to your parents. My wife nearly died in childbirth. Your parents found a doctor. They saved her, and they saved my son. If Madam Tr?n was alive, I wouldn’t have left her there.”

The man’s words were sincere, and they cut into me deeper than any whip. Wicked Ghost had killed my mother. Blood had to be paid by blood.

“My name is H?i. Your brother C?ng knows me.” The man nursed water into my mouth. “I’m sorry I came too late. I’ll find your mother a good resting place, I swear.” He pulled something out of his shirt. Ears of corn. They were the reason for his bulging belly. As he put the corn into my pockets, I remembered something. Something that made me cry out in anguish.

“What is it, Di?u Lan?”

“Uncle . . . my mother had a gold and ruby necklace in her pocket. If I’d remembered to offer it to Wicked Ghost—”

“Then you could have saved her?” Mr. H?i shook his head. “If you assume so, you don’t know him at all. That man is beyond evil. And did he give you the chance to think?” He pointed at the path to my right. “It’ll lead you back home, hurry.”

As I wobbled forward, Mr. H?i disappeared into the trees. I told myself not to forget his name. H?i means ocean, a deserving name for a man whose compassion ran deep.

I don’t know how I found my way out of the forest and how long it took me to get home, but I know that Mr. H?i saved your mother and uncles, Guava. The ears of corn he gave me enabled them to survive two more weeks, until a kind Catholic priest came to our village, bringing some food. Later, the Vi?t Minh helped our villagers attack the Japanese and French rice supplies.

But help came too late for many. The Great Hunger claimed more than half of V?nh Phúc. Many families had no one left to carry their name forward.

The Great Hunger gobbled down such a big part of my life, taking away not just my mother but also my sister-in-law, Trinh.

Oh, Guava, I used to think that we were the ones in charge of our destinies, but I learned then that, in time of war, normal citizens were nothing but leaves that would fall in the thousands or millions in the surge of a single storm.

For months after my mother’s death, whenever I slept, I saw her slumped against cracked soil. I’d wake up screaming, telling her that I was sorry for not being able to save her. I was twenty-five years old, and had seen both my parents murdered.

Mr. H?i came to visit us after the Great Hunger. I knelt before him to thank him. He took C?ng, Hùng, Mrs. Tú, and me to my mother’s grave. He’d laid her in a corner of Nam ?àn forest where wildflowers blossomed through all four seasons.

Mr. H?i told me he’d searched my mother’s pockets as well as her surroundings but couldn’t find the necklace. He helped us retrace the path my mother and I had taken before we reached the cornfield. We looked under the bushes and fallen leaves, hoping to find that remarkable piece of jewelry. But there was no hope. Many people were there, taking away and burying dead bodies. Any of them could have found our family treasure and kept it for themselves.

Oh, Guava, I wish I still had your great-grandma’s necklace to give you. It was the Tr?n family’s heritage.

We returned Mr. H?i’s kindness by giving him a piece of our field. He tried to refuse it, but we didn’t let him. If there was someone from our village whom we could trust, it was this man who had risked his life to save ours. Years later, when we rebuilt our family business, Mr. H?i became the supervisor of our workers.

I knew Mr. H?i was kind and brave, but I didn’t know that one day he would once again be our savior.

So, you must be wondering what happened to Wicked Ghost. When I came home from the cornfield, Hùng and C?ng sharpened a chopping knife. They found Wicked Ghost drunk and alone in his house. Wicked Ghost was crazy; he dared Hùng and C?ng to kill him. He said that my mother had died of hunger. He said he knew nothing about the necklace. Hùng and C?ng could have hurt him easily, but they turned away. They weren’t as evil as Wicked Ghost, you see. Anyway, after the Great Hunger, Wicked Ghost could no longer harm anyone else. He was always drunk, talking and crying to himself. Perhaps the spirits of those he killed had come back to haunt him. Gieo gió g?t b?o—He who sows the wind will reap the storm.

In 1946, one year after my mother’s death, Wicked Ghost disappeared. It was rumored that he, his wife, and their young daughter had moved to the wife’s village, somewhere in the middle region. I didn’t care where he’d gone, I was just glad that he left. Years later, when I became a Buddhist, I learned that I should forgive people for their wrongs, but when it comes to Wicked Ghost, I can’t, Guava. I don’t ever want to breathe the same air as such a terrible man.