The austere woman dropped in the lake a bunch of red lily flowers like blood, the flowers drifted along the stream and then scattered, floated.
Red Lily Flower
By Pham Van Anh
Every year, on the full moon day of lunar April, Mrs. Chuong requested a cyclo to take her to a small alley beside a muddy ditch full of garbage. She got out of the cyclo, walked to near the edge of the city’s sewage moderator lake, and then stood silently for an hour looking at the old peeled-off walls French villa on the other side of the lake. Then the austere woman dropped in the lake a bunch of red lily flowers like blood, the flowers drifted along the stream and then scattered, floated.
The waiting cyclo rang the jingle bell, crawled out of the bumpy and muddy alley. It was heavy carrying a silent space.
The full moon of April, the old French villa, the bloody lily branches, the half-gray-hair woman stood silently by the lake…
That same afternoon, a small maid in the lonely old house rowed a boat to the middle of the lake, picked up the soggy lily branches, yellow chalk mixed together forming swirls of scum on the cyan water.
The small woman, roll-bare hair, mahogany shirt, silk pant sit on the couch, shivered as taking the soft petals due to water. Carefully inserted into the simple eel-skin terracotta vase. Five mourn petals bowed their heads, each drop of pale pink water would fall. The flowers cried!
*
The two women used to be sister-friends in the bar. The pianist, the singer, there were pairs everywhere. They valued each other talents, together spent nights whispery like two soul mates. They lived quietly – singing lives. They stuck together because they were both unrecognized children adopted by the Head of the education ward. Chuong was two years older as an older sister, Hue as a younger one, calling each other like everyone in the same board.
Chuong was fonder of the instrument than singing, in the body of bones and coldness. The two arms were long, blue white but every time played with the instrument, hand tendons arising along the carpus, the blood flow seemed to be able to see every drop of singing instrument in the veins. When Hue’s beat hand was crispy, Hue’s voice was sweet, and then Chuong’s finger was also fingered smoothly.
Both skillfully sowed seeds in rice fields. Although Mr. Boss family was well off, still required family members to take care of the farming. Mrs. Boss was still up at night, working with everyone else to make a mix soup to bring the goods to Tong market in the morning. Chuong often took the job of pushing the mill harder and let Hue sifting rice in the corridor. While holding her shoulder and pushing the mortars grinding together, Chuong silently watched her friend.
Hue’s hair was tangled on top of her head, with a towel ring. The simple face was blurry, sometimes pink under the firelight from the kitchen. The sound of rice jolts exhilarated on the floor. Two round arms raised and lowered softly. And especially the two virgin breasts behind the thin silk would dance and sing.
Since when, Chuong suddenly fell in love with intense nights. Love with all of the body’s senses. During the nights, she could let the sweat run down her bra, bare thighs, and every pore of her tense-up body waiting for the black tongues of darkness to fondle her. She often dressed in black at night, turned the wick of the lamp very low, and then pushed the mill. A dark shadow merged into the dark space, passionately mastering the black space in the kitchen.
At the corridor head, Hue calmly worked without knowing a calm stage with a play keep to change roles and fierce climaxes rising up in her friend heart. Sometimes, she looked back into the kitchen in surprise. Amidst the pitch-black darkness, the dull kerosene lamp glowed a dimly lit space, weakly.
The rumbling sound of mortar was mixed with the sound of heavy footsteps on the ground. If she didn’t know that the girl with her hair braided from her childhood was leaning on her shoulder to push the mortar in there, she would have thrown away all the baskets and ran upstairs because in the dark there was only darkness, absolutely not to see her friend’s form.
In the last days of winter, the ward are busy repairing the instruments, sharpening the lutes to serve the towns, the generals joining to the assembly groups, communal festivals and sacrifices of the neighboring villages. The weather was cold, and begonias were shown their buds. Begonia leaves were big, veined, dark green and intertwined. For decades, Mr. Boss garden has been planted with begonias. At the end of the year, someone asked to buy, but only for relatives and friends.
Begonia root was inert, dry and sinewy for thick and fragrant flowers. Under the begonia trees, the two girls planted a few lily bulbs that were brought by the teacher Huu from the town. Hue chirped, “Chuong, can you see, you are likely those begonias, strong and kind. Chuong will protect the soft Hue branch from being crushed by rain and wind, right?” Chuong didn’t answer, the mouth revealed a pair of shiny teeth. That was not the season for lilies blooming.
The night of New Year’s Eve, the whole family gathered around the ancestral altar. Mr. Boss dressed his clothes to respectfully offer incense, the happy family prayed for a new year with favorable rain and wind, and the well singing ward. Mrs. Boss wiped off the betel juice crossing her mouth, simply wished a few words and then took out each coin and gave lucky money for new age of each person.
The oldest singer was invited to sit and lead the song to keep the rhythm for the young singers to sing. Her voice had loosen and short of breath, but Mrs. Boss and Mr. Boss still kept at the singing ward to do a few odd jobs without sending home like other wards. That was somehow a way of gratitude to the female singer who once served for the singing ward.
Singing and chanting for a long time, the whole family turned off the lights and went to sleep. Only Chuong quietly went to the kitchen to light a fire, sitting thoughtfully as if something was wrong. She untied the folds of her shirt, unbuttoned each beautiful button, and then slipped her hand under the thin bib, her right breast was thick, tight, and painful. She gently stroked the chest, a feeling of comfort spreading.
The fire crackled to dispel the coldness running out of the kitchen. The silent mill radiated the cold air of the stone. She left her bare chest and ran to push the mortar. There was no rice in the mortar, the two grains of stone happily ran on the pulley, creaking out loud squeaking sounds. It seemed that in the past few days, the fire of her lust rising up has penetrated into each stone vein, turning the cutting mill full of love.
The corridor was quiet, now Chuong knew that Hue was asleep. She carefully put her shirt back on, lit the lamp, and tiptoed back into the house. The room was plastered with mud mixed with straw. The sound of a lost cricket wailing in the hollow of the earth. The curtain was dropped. Hue lay on her side with hair long, for a while she turned back to make a creaking bamboo. The cot next to her has also been let down, the straw pillow was placed neatly. The bottom lute instrument hung on the dirt wall between the two girls’ cots. The long neck with 11 keys opened wide square eyes to the night.
Chuong stood on the threshold looking at friend for a long time. At that time, she longed to scream with lust like a pig and dance on rooftops looking for a love mate like a wild cat. She ran all the way to the kitchen, gasping for breath, her heart tightening with a sensual desire, blood vessels racing. Ven dog lying under the cypress tree, raised its neck to look, then circle again, bury its muzzle in the crotch to avoid the coldness.
Suddenly, Chuong put her hand on the breast again. The right breast was full of stretch, the nipple pointed up defiantly. She switched to her left breast, groping in surprise at a small piece of flesh, with a wrinkled nipple… For years, she had held the piano so tightly to her left shoulder, so girls’ skin had run away, leaving the left breast hollowed, full of stretch marks running along the patch of skin that had previously covered the warm, tender breasts of puberty. She sobbed softly, tears whispering …
Chuong avoided her friend, she aware of her passion for the little singer. Then she asked Mrs. Boss let her go out to the bar with the singers. Hue was very sad but inherently timid, she did not dare to ask her friend why. She only hesitated to watch Chuong holding the instrument to move to the ward. At night, she pushed the rice mill alone. The two chopping boards slowly turned. She missed Chuong terribly, a strange feeling of nostalgia that made her curiously and scared.
She realized the formidable attraction from Chuong. Sometimes when singing, she fell that Chuong’s eyes looking at her strangely, it smoldered with embers. She had seen that look when Teacher Huu looking at her lovely. The teacher asked someone to speak to the Boss to be his wife, but she did not agree. Partly because she couldn’t bear to leave her friend alone, partly because… she couldn’t even name it. Her body was silently responding to a heartbreaking call far from someone unknown.
The cutting boards were very worn but the owner did not want to change. They were like a pair of lovers who have become acquainted with each other and were secretly in love. The sound of the mortar slid on the trough, each white grain in turn flowing down the mouth of the basket waiting below, turning Hue more excited. She found herself resting her shoulder against the exact dent in the glossy brown wood Chuong had previously held, holding the hand to the spot where friend sweat had soaked, a jumbled, inexplicable joy engulfing her.
The darkness spreading in the kitchen, the furnace fire died down rising weary fires on the wall. She felt that she had changed as if she had more Chuong’s strength from the inside spreading to her. She found Chuong’s game in the dark. Only darkness can tenderly share, protect, and complicit with her and Chuong in the body game. She found herself mingling with the dark, she dyed back the sky, the fields, the village… nothing could stop the darkness’s steps, it poured over everything, blurring all colors, blurring all physical limitations. Darkness had no gender.
Quickly it was already June. The lily clumps were so good, green leaves entwined, covered the fat white buds, rising proudly. The tenacious lily waited until April to bloom. Five red crimson with deep yellow sepals revoked many meanings. Hue happily ran to find Chuong: “lily, red blood lily, Chuong, come home with me soon. The flowers have bloomed”. Being pulled out of the singing room, Chuong took a long on her back hurriedly ran after Hue, the string was laden with the weight of the instrument, pressed against her left chest, causing her pain.
When the two arrived, the lily branch was gone. That day was the full moon day, Mrs. Boss saw a beautiful flower branch and she cut to offer to the ancestral altar. The base of the flower was about the size of a big toe cut diagonally, drops of resin alternately flowed into a milky white stream that settling on the ground. That night, the two girls spread out mats and laid in the middle of the yard, the white part under the lily was cut like a newly opened wound, in pale and anemic form.
At midnight, the main house only remained a small oil lamp on the altar, revoking the shadow of incense sticks. In bed, Hue was fast asleep. Only Chuong was tossed and turned, unable to close her eyes, back and forth from time to time. She sat and stared at the body of her friend lying on the bed next to her, her eyes was bloodshot. Several times she approached, tried to lift the curtain to gently stroke Hue’s cheekbones, nose and long hair on the pillow, and then quickly retreated, constantly cursed herself for a sick. The instrument laid blankly at the corridor. Chuong looked to find the bamboo nail in the instrument case, strumming the “Send a letter” tune.
The sound was melancholic. The sound of the ropes sounded like painful of half-finished merry. Hue was silent in the screen. In the pale moonlight, her friend was engrossed in a dark dance, each soft sob trapped in her painful larynx. Unconsciously, Hue sat cross-legged, her arms wrapped around her head, engrossed in friend’s dance. In the night, the two girls’ faces filled with sensual passion suddenly turned into two sad women. The next morning, only the instrument was left, its surface still was wet with a few poetry:
“Singing life dating for a future birth
People not wanting to go, flower falling down
Committing to long dust and rain
The door preventing the wind curtain, the moon holding a key”
Hue held the instrument in her arms and cried. She felt like just being had a part of her body. Painful!
Three months later, Hue became the wife of teacher Huu, moved back to live in an old house by the lake.
*
The season of lily was over. The woman in the old house quietly came to the altar. She had a feeling that the last season of her life. For decades, on the full moon of April, she stood on the balcony hidden behind the flowers looking down at the lake. The old people still came to drop flowers for her, still had a thin figure, her hair was tied in a low bun, neatly covering her bony, ascetic face. She turned the old iron box, took out a set of faded bamboo beats, and then sat cross-legged on the couch and sang. She choked on her words, her jaw stiffened, and her hands fell to the ground with dry sounds.
The funeral was quiet, the small people rowed a boat to pick up flowers, wore white mourning, and hold a photo of the deceased. The season of red lily flower has ended. For some reason, that morning, the lake’s surface was still as red as blood-soaked tears and softly singing.
_________________
Poet Pham Van Anh, is Major in Army and author, born in 1980 in Vietnam. She has Master’s degree in Political Science. She is Member of Vietnam Writers’ Association, has published 11 books of prose and poetry and got 8 national literary and musical awards. Her books include – I salute I (poetry book); Love season (poetry book); Corner (poetry book); Finger whorl (short story collection); The silent march ((memoir); Cunninghamia (epic poems); Border path that sewed spring (notes); They who raise red flag (notes); The Art of war for pandemic fight (notes) and Tracing the alluvial (notes).
(Translated into English by Khanh Phuong)
