Short Story Bar At Midnight - Quán Rượu Nửa Đêm

Near closing time at midnight, the bar had become almost empty of customers. The bartender shook Dinh’s shoulder gently.

 “Hey, wake up. It’s closing time.”

Dinh rubbed his eyes and looked around, dazed. His left shoe had fallen off onto the floor. He stooped down, picked up the shoe, and put it back onto his foot.

“What, it’s closing time already?”

“You’re the last customer, kid. It’s midnight.”

Dinh slipped his hand into his pants pocket, took out a dollar bill, and placed it on the bar top as a tip. Then standing up, he waved goodbye to the bartender. Dinh’s figure cast a long shadow on the street as he disappeared out the door of the bar and into the night.

oOo

Mr. Rico, the bartender had known Dinh for quite some time. The first time he walked into the bar by himself, Dinh hadn’t even had time to open his mouth before Mr. Rico frowned and brushed him away with his hand saying,

“We don’t sell ice cream here, kid.”

Dinh gave him a knowing smile.

“I don’t want ice cream. A brandy Manhattan, please.”

“Alright, show me some I.D.”

Dinh drew his driver’s license out of his wallet and handed it to the bartender who examined the picture, then stared at Dinh with a look of disbelief.

“Good God, this little baby faced Asian kid is more than old enough!.”

Occasionally, Dinh dropped in to have a drink, usually by himself, late in the evening. He would find his seat at the bar, then call for a brandy Manhattan, or once in a while, an Absolut vodka. He’d smoke a few cigarettes, and then take off around midnight when it was near closing time. A couple of times he dozed off right on the bar top.

Dinh’s face held a hint of mischief, with his wide forehead and his short hair that wasn’t combed, but instead spiked up with gel. His brown eyes, when smiling, were creased at the corners, but normally, they simply looked sad. Dinh was reticent. At first, Mr. Rico thought that he couldn’t speak English, but eventually he found out that Dinh just had a quiet disposition. Nevertheless, when he met the right person, or found the right topic of conversation, Dinh didn’t mind talking; in fact, he talked a lot. Occasionally the bartender noticed attractive women sitting next to Dinh trying to make time with him, inviting him out, but the boy simply thanked them and shook his head. Curious, the bartender asked, “I’ve been waiting for a long time, but those women have never opened their mouths to ask me for anything except a drink, not to mention ever asking me out. Why don’t you go with them? You’d definitely have a good time.”

Dinh gave him a bored look, saying nothing. But the bartender didn’t let it pass.

“Hey kid, are you normal?”

Dinh looked back at the bartender and asked,

“Do you have a daughter?”

“Yeah, one. Why? …Oh… little…rascal!”

By 11 at night, the bar had only a few customers, so Mr. Rico often pulled up a stool in front of Dinh’s to talk. He learned that Dinh was studying psychology in college. Whenever he finished studying, if he felt he could spare some time, he would go to the bar for a drink, then go home to sleep.

“When I first saw you, I thought you were Chinese.”

Dinh shook his head and gave him a peculiar look.

“My last name is Nguyen. Chinese people don’t have that last name. Do you know who the last king of Vietnam was?”

The bartender yawned, shaking his head as he looked disinterestedly at another customer walking into the bar.

“Nope, but I saw The Last Emperor, so I know the last king of China was Pu-yi.”

Dinh banged his hand down on the bar top.

“You gotta go home and review your world history. The last king of Vietnam was Bao Dai. His last name was Nguyen.”

Mr. Rico pursed his lips and snorted loudly,

“Who cares about your little country’s history?”

Dinh looked at Mr. Rico and offered him a crooked smile. The bartender had an ordinary appearance. His father was Mexican, his mother Italian. He had a bent nose and straight black hair cut into a flat top. He had a hefty stomach for his middle age, probably due to too much beer. His demeanor was cheerful and friendly; he liked to talk and never stayed angry with anyone for long. When he heard Dinh say that the last king of Vietnam had the same family name as he did, the bartender, slinging a white towel over his shoulder, slapped Dinh’s hand gently.

“Hey, that means you have royal blood.”

Dinh curled his lip cynically.

“You know what royalty means in Vietnamese? It means belonging to the family of the king. But I think a little bit differently. In Vietnam, only the king can wear yellow. That means that the royal family is connected with yellow. Do you know what color the fluid people excrete is?”

Mr. Rico shook his head wearily.

“For a young kid, you sure are bitter.”

Once in a while, when he had a problem with his computer, Mr. Rico asked Dinh to come over to his house to help him fix it. In return, Mr. Rico would cook for him a traditional Italian meal of spaghetti and garlic bread. Once the table was set, Mr. Rico and his high school aged daughter sat down with Dinh to eat. If Maria had some math problems that she couldn’t figure out, she’d bring them out after dinner to ask “brother” Dinh for help. But Dinh didn’t think much of Maria. A few times he brought an Asian girl with him to the bar. Later, Mr. Rico found out that she was Japanese. Looking at the way they spoke to each other, he knew that Dinh was very interested in the girl. Another time, Dinh came to the bar with an older Asian man. At first, he thought it was Dinh’s father because he heard Dinh addressing the man as “father.” But upon asking him, Dinh said no.

“So who was it then? Don’t tell me he’s a church father.”

Dinh knitted his eyebrows as he gazed at Mr. Rico intently.

“You have Mexican roots, Catholic, right?”

The bartender jutted his chin slightly.

“So?”

“Yeah, he’s a church father. I have a class with him, philosophy.”

“If you hadn’t told me, I’d have thought that he was your blood father.”

It came as a complete surprise, but after Mr. Rico’s comment, the expression on Dinh’s face became deadly serious as he looked straight into the bartender’s eyes and said slowly but clearly,

“I have no father.”

The bartender thought he’d heard wrong.

“Sorry! I didn’t hear what you said. Did you say you had no father or that your father...died?”

Dinh repeated with the same terse precision,

“My father is still alive, but that man is not my father.”

The bartender threw up his hands in confusion.

“I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”

Not paying attention to Mr. Rico, Dinh looked dully into his cocktail glass.

“My father is alive, but I...I don’t accept him as my father.”

Mr. Rico looked around the room; the red and green bar lights flickered, casting shadows on the few customers who were still left. The distant sound of jazz music made the place seem all the more deserted as the hour neared midnight. Pulling up a stool in front of Dinh, the bartender looked down at him. In a slow and sympathetic voice, he asked,

“My young friend, what happened?”

Dinh clutched his glass, clinking the ice cubes as he lifted it to his lips. The bartender patted Dinh’s shoulder gently,

“Let me get you a fresh one. This one’s on me.”

As the bartender poured more alcohol into the glass, Dinh watched, tapping his fingers absently on the bar, his other hand supporting his chin. The bartender carefully placed the brandy Manhattan in front of him. Taking the glass in his hand, Dinh didn’t drink right away; instead he swirled it around. Finally, he picked it up and downed the cocktail all at once.

“The man that you would call my father escaped Vietnam by boat, leaving behind my mother and me. At the time, I was still in my mother’s womb. He made it to a refugee camp, and afterward settled in the U.S. For the next ten years, he wrote no letter to his family except for one informing us that he had made it to Pulau Bidong island in Malaysia. After I was born, my mother tried to do all sorts of work. But she was too honest, and as a result, she got duped again and again. Eventually, the little fortune in wedding presents given to the newly married couple was used up. Hitting hard times, my mother found work as a maid, later as a laborer, then finally she took me in her arms to go...begging. For a considerable length of time, I was fed with charity rice from strangers. My grandmother, a widow since she was young, had brought up her two daughters by herself. She was against my mother’s marriage to my father, but my mother didn’t listen. The day they got married, my grandmother lay in her bed refusing to accept her son-in-law. After the wedding, my father and mother moved to the city. Upon hearing her neighbors say that they had seen her daughter and grandson begging on the streets, my grandmother immediately took the bus to the city. There, she sat down and waited in front of the market where my mother would go every day to open her hand and beg for money from strangers. Out of shame, my mother refused to return to the village, but she did agree to let my grandmother take me back with her. According to my Aunt Hoa, my mother’s only younger sister, I was just two years old at that time, and in a bad state—infected with tinea, scabies all over, and very pale. When she got me home, my grandmother boiled water with lemon grass and alum to treat my scabies. She made porridge and bought sweetened canned milk to feed me. Aunt Hoa would come over everyday to breastfeed me. Those were the conditions that I grew up in for a time, next to the dry garden of betel behind the house, vines that my grandmother would pick and sell at the village market. After two years, when I was four, my grandmother passed away. Aunt Hoa took me in and raised me along with her three children. But then two years later, her entire family received permission to resettle in the U.S. because her husband had been a soldier on the American side in the war. Then another woman, a friend of my mother’s who had two children overseas, brought me into her home. A year later, she left to resettle in France with her daughters. In the end, I was taken to the Love Orphanage run by the Sisters of St. Paul.

“The day my mother received sponsorship papers, she went to the orphanage to ask for her son back. At the time, I was twelve years old. Seeing this strange woman in front of me, I refused to follow her. Instead I cried, clinging tightly to the white robe of Sr. Anna, the one who had been caring for me and teaching me during those past five years. After my mother took me to stay temporarily in my grandmother’s empty house, I couldn’t stop crying. I refused to eat for several days and developed a serious fever. When Sr. Anna came to visit me, I stopped crying and ran to her. Desperately grasping her robe, I begged her to take me back to the orphanage with her. My mother eventually agreed to let me go.

“I returned to the care of Sr. Anna, and refused to go to America. Finally, Sister took me in her lap and said softly, ‘When you get there, you will have to study hard, get a job, and send money back, so I can take care of the other children like I have been caring for and teaching you. If you don’t go, in the future, I will not have enough money, and the orphanage will have to close.’

“I listened to Sr. Anna, and at thirteen I got onto a plane headed for America. Two days before leaving Vietnam, in the afternoon, my mother arrived at the orphanage and asked Sr. Anna to let me go with her to visit my grandparents’ tomb. My mother lit incense at the two graves laid side by side, then sat for a long time in front of my grandmother’s grave. Finally, she turned to me and said, ‘Dinh....’ I looked at her, waiting. ‘I....I am sorry.’ I turned dumbly toward the image of my grandmother on the tombstone. I remember I was silent, not knowing what to say. I glanced at my mother and noticed that her eyes were red. ‘I have just asked for forgiveness from Grandmother. Now I am asking for your forgiveness.’

“In America, when I was in the 11th grade, there was a time when I followed a group of friends to go out and fight with...with gangs of Mexicans and blacks.” Dinh looked hesitantly at Mr. Rico.

“A Mexican guy got me pretty good on my right shoulder with his knife. Pressing hard on my wound, I ran home. That day, my mother had gotten home early, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of her busy cooking in the kitchen as I passed by. Seeing with my hand covered in blood, she ran upstairs after me. I rushed into my room and slammed the door. All of a sudden, I saw nothing but light, everything dazzling and bright. Spinning along with the light, I fell down onto the floor, unable to lock the door in time. Then I saw Sr. Anna in her shining white habit walking softly into the room, placing a wet towel over my forehead. I saw gushes of blood spraying directly onto her robe and face. I screamed and awoke from my nightmare! When I opened my eyes, I discovered that I was lying in my bed, with a tight bandage wrapped around my shoulder. My mother was sitting next to me. She said nothing, but smiled gently, a generous smile-- like that of Sr. Anna whenever I was punished by Mother Superior; the holy smile of Sr. Anna every time she saw me nodding off during evening prayers; the heavenly smile of Sr. Anna whenever she brought me a hot bowl of porridge, with its mouthwatering aroma of onion and pepper, and placed it next to my bed when I was ill. I looked at my mother for a long time. Finally, for the first time in my life, at the age of seventeen, I reached out to take the hand of the woman who gave birth to me, who carried me in her arms begging for two years, and I called out to her...‘Mom...’

“The stab wound was pretty deep, causing me to suffer from a serious fever. The next day, my mother called in sick. She drove to the school and asked for permission to keep me home for a week. She then took me to the doctor. He stitched up the wound and prescribed antibiotics. She wanted to take the entire week off from work, but I told her, ‘You go to work. I feel much better now.’ She squinted her eyes and smiled, that same understanding smile of Sr. Anna! The next morning she returned to work, but she’d check up on me about every two hours. When she got home in the afternoon, she’d prepare porridge with minced pork, black pepper, and onion. For the first time in my life, I felt the stirrings of love for my mother in my heart. For the first time in my life, all the deep anguish and resentment towards the woman who gave birth to me began to evaporate into thin air. For the first time in my life, I accepted the fact that I had a mother...”

Dinh paused, looking lost in his own thoughts.

“And before that?” The bartender asked, breaking the silence.

Wiping the corner of his mouth with a napkin, Dinh said,

“I just thought I was an orphan, with no mother and father...”

Crumpling the napkin into a paper ball, Dinh continued.

“One night before leaving home for college, I worked up the courage to bring up the incident at the grave of my grandparents. I asked my mother why she said those things to me at my grandmother’s grave. My mother looked at me with a sad and distant expression. ‘That day I went to say goodbye to your grandparents. I feared not having another opportunity to visit them later on. When I was standing in front of Grandmother’s grave, I...I apologized to her...’ My mother paused hesitantly. I asked her, ‘Did you apologize...because...you didn’t listen to her?’ My mother shook her head in decisively. ‘No! I didn’t apologize for my marriage decisions. Even to this day, I have never regretted marrying your father. Perhaps your father doesn’t love me the way I love him. But in matters of love, I do not regret having loved your father, and having married him.’ I looked at her shining eyes, and waited silently. ‘I apologized to Grandmother because I was absent in the last days of her life. I also apologized for not fulfilling my responsibility toward you...’ My mother swallowed then continued, ‘I told grandmother why I decided...to go begging. I told her what happened a long time ago...

.‘...There was a time when I took Dinh in my arms to go work as a domestic helper, a maid in other people’s homes. Then I was shamed and humiliated by those people... A rope had been tied to the horizontal beam of the house and fastened around my neck. As I prepared to kick the chair out from under my feet, the two-month old baby lying in his cradle woke up and started to cry ceaselessly, refusing to stop. Why did he cry? I didn’t understand. Just fifteen minutes before, I had fed him streams of warm breast milk. I had thought that would be the last time he would press his face against his mother’s chest, the last time he would laugh heartily, kicking his legs about, making innocent eh, ah sounds. His cries awakened me from my delirium. I decided to step back down... After you brought your grandson back to the village, I met a woman. She took me into her house to help her with her chores. I thought I had met a kind person, but I was wrong. This woman was a seller, but not of things. Her merchandise was women. Once again, I was forced to do things that brought me shame. This time, I completely collapsed, no longer able to stand up. I let go of life...Living in such a condition, how could I return to the village to face you, or my little sister, or my son?’...

“The gentle sounds of crying were interspersed with silence as tears rolled down my mother’s cheeks. I took her hand and lightly pressed it between mine...

“That evening, I slept well, a peaceful sleep. In my sleep I could hear once again the songs that my mother used to lull the pale, weak child in her arms to sleep. After that time, occasionally my mother would appear in my dreams. She would be wearing white clothes like the robes of Sr. Anna. Her hair was long, black and shiny. With a magic wand in her hand, she would wave toward a vast space filled with twinkling silver stars. I would run after her, loudly calling out, ‘Mommy!’ I would stoop to pick up the stars that my mother would drop down from the sky. The countless stars would fall through my fingers and stick to my body, transforming me into the brightest star in the sky...”

Mr. Rico blinked quickly. The bartender’s eyes glistened under the bar lights as he exclaimed,

“What a sad life!”

Dinh didn’t reply. He remained silent, distant, absorbed in thought. Then he continued, “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t fainted that day. Maybe now I still wouldn’t have a mother. But because I lost consciousness and was unable to lock the door in time, my room was left wide open for that woman to step in and into my heart. She helped an orphan boy into bed. She tenderly bound up his wounds of flesh and spirit. She stilled the streams of blood flowing from his injured body and heart. She carefully covered his burning forehead with a cool and comforting towel, soothing away the smoldering anguish and resentment. Such was her way, never opening her mouth to say anything reproachful, but only patiently waiting.”

The bartender nodded at Dinh’s observation.

“And what about your father?”

Dinh looked at Mr. Rico, then down at the polished countertop of the bar. He casually took a cigarette from behind his ear, struck a match, and looked ponderingly at pondered the streams of white smoke gradually disappearing into the air as he exhaled. Mr. Rico opened his mouth about to speak, but Dinh cut him off with an abrupt gesture of his hand.

“My father? That man deserted my mother and me for nearly ten years-- never a phone call, only a letter when he made it to the refugee camp, and then the sponsorship papers. A long time ago, I used to think that perhaps it was because of his difficulties with his new life. Later on, I found out that for a while he’d been living with another woman, an old lover. The two of them put their money together to open a Pho noodle restaurant. It was going well, but in the end, the woman deceived him and succeeded in taking over the restaurant. He was left empty handed. After that incident, he started the application process to sponsor my mother and me to come to America. Three years later we were reunited. On the day when we met him at the airport, he looked at my mother, the woman who had taken her baby in her arms to go begging, and he cried. Then he turned to look at me, a dark-skinned little boy, thin as a stick. My mother said to me, ‘There’s your father. Son, go on and greet your father.’ Looking at the strange man, I refused to open my mouth or say a word. When we arrived at his house, he handed me a plastic toy gun. I took it but I still refused to say anything. My mother reminded me, ‘Thank your father,’ but I stubbornly looked down the red carpet of the living room. My father became angry and gave me a hard slap across the face, ‘Ill-bred child! Are you dumb?’ Turning to his wife, he asked, ‘That’s how you teach your son?’ My mother’s face became pale. She turned to look at me as I threw down the gun. Then I went out to the front yard and sat down alone.

The bartender frowned.

“Why did you do that?”

Rubbing his forehead, Dinh gave a long sigh and replied hesitantly,

“I...I’m not sure. I don’t really understand why I did that.”

After another heavy sigh, Dinh continued,

“The next day, he took my mother and me to complete the residency papers. Then he drove me to school and got me enrolled. Being a new kid in a strange land, I felt alone, yet I distanced myself from the two people in my house. Aunt Hoa’s house was close by, so after school got out, I would go straight over there. I hung out with my cousins; one was my age, another was older, and one younger. We played basketball in the yard, we played ping-pong and videogames; sometimes we went to the mall or the library. I would always eat dinner with Aunt Hoa and Uncle Ba and my cousins. When I got home, I’d walk straight upstairs, lock the door, toss my school bag onto the desk, and climb into bed to sleep.

“Then, one night my father stopped me at the door. He said, ‘You’re not an orphan. You have a home, a father, a mother. Why do you have to go begging for leftovers at someone else’s house? The father of those kids is a scoundrel. His children won’t turn out any better. I forbid you to hang around with them, starting tomorrow.’

“My mother had told me that when Uncle Ba was younger, he was quite a ladies’ man. I don’t know much about his man-about-town past because no one brings it up, but I do know that Uncle Ba loves me. When I lived with him in Vietnam, he would do things that seemed like he was clearly on my side. Whenever I got into fights with my cousins, it didn’t matter whose fault it was; he’d make his son lie down and he’d give him a few lashes with the whip. As for me, he only made me kneel down, and then he’d pretend not to notice when he saw me furtively standing up. Many times when he took his boat out to sea, he’d take only me with him. He taught me how to fish, how to catch the arca hiding between the rocks or deep below the sandy seabed. He taught me how to make a slingshot to catch birds, how to fly a kite in the afternoon. Whenever he came back from a trip out, he’d always bring me a mango or a stick of sugarcane, sometimes an ice cream bar. He’d tell me, ‘Go eat outside. Don’t let anyone see.’ Once in a while, he’d take me with him to eat hu tiu. I knew that he loved me, but didn’t know exactly why. I guess maybe he saw that I was a lost orphan just like him, because once he told me that he didn’t know who his parents were.

“My mother said that Uncle Ba and my father were in the same class from elementary school until high school. After graduation, Uncle Ba enrolled in pharmacy school, then quit later on to join the Da Lat Military Institute. My father didn’t pass the high school exam, and so he had to join the army. Before 1975, my father was a cadet under Uncle Ba’s command. A few years after arriving in America, my uncle went back to school, graduated, and became a head engineer in the same company where my father worked on the assembly line. According to Aunt Hoa, in the time before I came to America, my father once asked a close friend to help him land the position of technician, but Uncle Ba was silent in the matter. After that, my father cut off all relationship ties with Uncle Ba. I have never seen my father step into Aunt Hoa’s house. He hates my aunt’s children, especially their two sons. He said, ‘They look promiscuous just like their father.’

“The afternoon after my father banned me from seeing them, my cousins called and asked why I didn’t go to their house. I told them, ‘My father forbids me to come over.’ I failed to notice that he was standing right next to me. When he heard what I said, he snatched away the phone and slapped me several times, ‘You blabber mouth.’ When he struck me, I became angry and grabbed the phone, thinking to call the police, but he caught hold of me and tied me up. Then he hung me from the horizontal beam of the garage, and relentlessly thrashed me with a cane. It wasn’t until my mother knelt down before him begging for my life did he throw down the cane, get into the car and drive away.”

The bartender’s eyes were wide open in shock.

“My God, how could your father be so cruel?”

Dinh’s face remained cold, like a block of ice.

“I didn’t even cry when I was hung in midair. I gritted my teeth, refusing to let any sound come out of my mouth as the cane came crashing down on my body. I didn’t say anything when my mother lifted me down and untied me. But I was sick for a long time from that beating. I waved my mother away when she brought in a bottle of hot oil for the purple bruises on my body. I flung the bowl of porridge down on the floor when she tried to give it to me. I threw the pills that she left by my bed out the window. For two days I lay groaning and moaning, struggling against my nightmares. My mother ran to Aunt Hoa’s house for help. The next morning, as soon as Uncle Ba saw my father busy fixing the computer motherboards at work, he drove straight over to my house, took out the hot oil and rubbed it into my bruised skin. Lifting up my head, he fed me spoon after spoon of porridge. He took medicine and mixed it with water, stirred it, and told me, ‘Go ahead and drink it.’ It wasn’t until I fell into a deep sleep that he left the room and returned to work. After that day, I stopped refusing to eat and began to take my medicine...”

The bartender asked,

“How old were you at the time?”

Dinh bit his lip and thought,

“Hmmm...about fourteen. I was no longer allowed to go over to Aunt Hoa’s house. So I decided to join a gang at school. At first I just hung around with them. Later, I started smoking dope, getting into fights... Every time I walked into the house, my father would start yelling and cursing. I would head straight to my room and close the door. But those times when he was feeling down, drinking by himself, then he wouldn’t let me off so easy...

“...In his drawl, with alcohol heavy on his breath, he’d say to me,

‘Where ya going boy?’

‘I’m going to my room…to study.’

‘What is a gang banging scoundrel type like you gonna do in life? You’re just gonna end up begging on the street. Come and sit down here.’

My father kept on talking but I was still headed for my room. He raised his voice, ‘Don’t you hear me boy?’

‘I have to go to my room to study. I have a test tomorrow.’

‘I don’t give a damn about no test. I’m your father. Whatever I say, you’d better listen. Don’t you remember? The reason you and your mother had to go begging on the streets was because I wasn’t around!’

I stopped. I looked up at the ceiling. Then slowly, I turned back to face him, and I said,

‘Of course, I remember. I know that I am the son of a beggar. But you know something? I’d rather be a beggar. I don’t have a father. I never had a father!’

Then I turned back around, opened the door and walked straight out of the house.

‘Are you leaving for good?’

‘No. I’m going over to Uncle Ba’s,’ I retorted.

Later, my mother sneaked over to her younger sister’s house. Seeing me playing chess with Uncle Ba’s oldest son, she looked at me and gave me an understanding smile. After that, she sat down to talk to Aunt Hoa and Uncle Ba for a while. When I saw her stand up and get ready to leave, I thought for a moment and then decided to quit playing chess. I stood up and followed her out. We walked home together.”

“I can’t say for sure, but...but I guess that if not for your mother, you’d probably have left that day, right?” the bartender asked.

Dinh rubbed his forehead again, then looked out the window.

“Maybe. But I knew I still had Sr. Anna. Now that I am older, I’ve come to realize that her words to me were a mission. I had to go to school, had to graduate, had to make money to send to the orphanage. There were times when I was down and I’d be lying alone in my room, and her image would come into my mind. I’d see her patiently teaching me math problems. I’d see her silently sitting by my bed watching me cry on New Year’s Eve. I’d see her shaking her head in disapproval when I’d get into fights during mealtime at the orphanage, when she’d sternly tell me, ‘You cannot do that.’ Because of Sr. Anna, after I graduated from high school, I stopped hanging around with my gang buddies. Because of Sr. Anna, I enrolled in college, and found a part-time job at the school.

“During these past years, I’ve been living in the dormitory. I haven’t been home once. I still see my mother regularly on the weekends. She brings Vietnamese food for me...

“Friends have invited me their homes for Christmas, but I always refuse. On Christmas, I like to be by myself in my room listening to music. I like ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. He’s totally poor and has nothing in his hands except for a little drum. But he is much more blessed than I am, for he has a drum, even though it is just a little one, in his hands. I…I feel like my hands are completely empty. Turning them over and looking down, I only see myself, and my sad, empty life. Reflecting on the time that has passed by, I only see dark shadows. After the Midnight Mass, I go back to my room, turn on Christmas music, and then I fall into deep sleep. One time, on the night before Christmas, snow fell and covered the entire city in a white blanket. I was really sad and so I decided to go wading through the snow, wandering the streets. The wind was so bitter that I couldn’t even feel my ears. But then, suddenly I saw your bar...”

The bartender frowned, deep in thought. With one arm supporting his chin, he spoke hesitantly,

“I guess...maybe when you saw other families being happy, all the people gathered around one another, you felt bad right?”

Dinh glanced up at him and said nothing. Mr. Rico asked,

“Why didn’t you go to your uncle’s?”

Dinh took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled,

“When I was little, I thought that his family was also my family. Now that I’m older, I don’t have that feeling anymore. Aunt Hoa’s not my mother. Uncle Ba loves me, and I love him, but he’s not my father.”

Dinh adjusted his position, stretched and reached his arms back to massage his shoulders.

“In my third year of college, I signed up for a philosophy course. The instructor turned out to be a Vietnamese priest...

“At the podium, after writing the words Gen. 2-3 on the board, Fr. Tien turned to the class and said, ‘One of the main ideas of the story from chapter 2 of Genesis is that humans are born into the world blessed with happiness and in happiness. The garden of paradise had already been established before humans were made. But unfortunately, according to Genesis 3, the first two humans acted against nature, and thus they destroyed the natural order of paradise. Because this original natural order was destroyed, a new order began to come into being. Since that time, pain and suffering has spread over the earth. Confucius in the East also had a perspective similar to that of the Jewish people regarding happiness. He said, originally humans were good, and happiness filled their hearts. With Buddha, it’s different. According to him, desires will bring you nothing but suffering...’

I raised my hand and interrupted the professor.

‘What do you think about a situation where there are people who have just been born, and already they’re breathing in unhappiness. These people don’t want anything, but suffering always knocks on the door of their hearts. In such instances, I believe that they suffer and are unhappy. In other words, they are the very embodiment of suffering and unhappiness.’

After philosophy class that day, I often went to Fr. Tien’s office to see him. I asked him many questions about the relationship between people and unhappiness. Some time later, when I got to know him better, I told him the story of someone who had a father and mother, but became an orphan. And how in the end, the boy found his mother, but he was still lost and without a father. I told him about the nights when he would be studying and suddenly he’d become enraged with himself, with life, those times when he wanted to strike a match and burn down the entire room, to burn himself! In the spring, there was a cardinal’s nest right outside his window. The mother cardinal laid an egg, and a small bird hatched. When afternoon came, he saw the bright red-feathered cardinal sitting on the tree branch, and he watched as the mother lovingly nourished her eager chick with the food she’d found. He snatched it, wanting to squeeze the life out of the tiny bird that lay chirping and struggling in the palm of his hand. But in those moments of anger, the face of Sr. Anna in her white robe would appear to him. She’d squint her eyes as she looked at him, smiling her generous, sympathetic smile, and shaking her head disapprovingly. She’d say to him, ‘You cannot do that.’ He’d leave his room to go out, or head for the bar to get a drink… I asked Fr. Tien why I was born and raised in suffering.”

“What did he say?”

“…Straightening his back with both elbows on the table, his fists supporting his chin, Fr. Tien looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. I am happy for you because you found your mother at last. But I feel sorry because you still do not have a father. I am angry because your father has been cruel to you. But you know, Dinh, life is a sum of our experiences-- of sadness and happiness, tears and laughter. If people paid more attention to joy and laughter, their lives would have less pain and sorrow. You were born in unhappiness and grew up in unhappiness. But you failed to pay attention to one thing. That is, your unhappy life also had moments of joy and happiness. Your grandmother was a source of happiness; Uncle Ba was a source of happiness; Sr. Anna was an angel who brought you much joy; your mother once planted the roots of unhappiness in you, but she has already removed them, and replanted in its place the tree of joy.’

Standing up, the priest moved towards the office window and looked outside. The green trees and grass of spring waved in joyous abandon, trying to reach ever higher into the fresh air. Turning around, Fr. Tien looked at me.

‘If you close your eyes, your life will be full of darkness; you become a dark shadow, an embodiment of darkness. But if you open your eyes, your life will be full of brightness; you become a bright light, an embodiment of light, and you become a light for others. With your eyes closed, you only see yourself surrounded by suffering; you turn into suffering, an embodiment of suffering, and you bring suffering to those around you. If you open your eyes, you will recognize that you’re not the only one suffering. Your mother suffers, you father suffers, and the son who doesn’t accept him also suffers; your grandmother who met your mother living an itinerant life also suffers; your Uncle Ba suffers because he is also an orphan; all the children in the Love Orphanage of Sr. Anna suffer; the entire African continent is suffering. Countless people in the world are living and breathing in suffering.

‘Dinh, it only takes one act of closing or opening one’s eyes to change his life completely.’”

oOo

Recognizing Dinh’s figure through the front window, Mr. Rico stepped completely out from behind the bar. The bartender opened the door, spread his arms wide and embraced him in a tight hug.

“Who’s this guy? My God, I thought I’d never see you again!”

Mr. Rico’s booming voice attracted the attention of many curious customers. With one arm around Dinh’s shoulder, he led him over to the bar.

“Come here, come here. Let me buy you a drink...On second thought, you can have as many as you want.”

Forcing him down onto the bar stool, the bartender went on and on, not letting Dinh get even a word in.

“Brandy Manhattan or Absolut Vodka? You see? I still remember what you like. Take a look at this stool: it’s still exactly where it used to be. Ever since you disappeared from this town, sometimes I’d look at the stool at think about you, wondering where on earth you could be.”

Dinh was moved by this outburst of emotions from his old friend. Sitting down, he tried to make amends with Mr. Rico.

“I’m really, really sorry...”

The bartender interrupted even before Dinh finished apologizing.

“I called you two or three times, but the operator said your line was disconnected. I wanted to go find you at your house, but I didn’t have your address. When you first left, I felt pretty lonesome. A couple of times, I even made a trip over to the Vietnamese shopping area and I walked around looking for you. But finally, I gave up.”

When Mr. Rico finally stopped talking, Dinh squinted his eyes, rubbed the tip of his nose with one hand, and looked closely at the bartender.

“Thank you, thank you. But I think you’re being too kind... This is too much… Without me, you still live happily. Don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t look like you’ve been wasting away with sorrow.”

The bartender stopped what he was doing and looked down at his belly, massaging the thick round bulge.

“I see you still haven’t given up your taste for sarcasm.”

Reaching across the bar, he pushed a brandy Manhattan towards Dinh. In the other hand, he held up a glass of beer.

“Cheers to our reunion, my little friend.”

“Nice to see you again, my old friend.”

Dinh and the bartender both brought their glasses to their lips and downed the entire contents in one go. The bartender set down his glass, now empty except for some white foam at the bottom. Looking at Dinh’s glass, which held only a couple of ice cubes and a red cherry, he said, “It sure has been a while since I’ve had a beer that tasted this good. Hey, tell me where you disappeared to for these past three years?”

Dinh straightened his back and shook his index finger back and forth.

“Unlike what you may think, I did not go begging on the streets. I’ve just returned from Ghana.”

Mr. Rico’s eyes widened.

“Ghana? Ghana where? What city is that?”

Dinh rested his elbow on the bar and leaned forward, his left cheek supported by the palm of his hand. He shook his head back and forth with an amused smile.

“You gotta go home and review your geography. Ghana isn’t a city. It’s a country in Northwest Africa.”

Not the least bit bothered by Dinh’s mockery, Mr. Rico pressed on, his voice filled with curiosity.

“What did you do over there?”

Dinh raised the first two fingers of one hand to ear level and wiggled them,

“I work for the Peace Corps.”

The bartender slapped his forehead and laughed,

“Now I understand. No wonder!”

“Miko...”

Mr. Rico interrupted,

“Who’s that?”

Dinh replied, surprised,

“The Japanese girl...She came in here with me a few times. You’ve forgotten already?”

Mr. Rico’s brow was furrowed in concentration as he tried hard to remember.

“Miko, the Japanese girl, who could it be? Oh, yeah, I remember now. The girl that came into the bar but only ordered a coke...”

“You wanted her to drink beer?” Dinh sat straight up, interrupting the bartender.

“Alright, alright. Whatever. Please continue.”

With a satisfied expression, Dinh continued his story.

“Miko likes to travel, and she suggested that I also join the Peace Corps. At first I was hesitant, but a month after I graduated, I still had no job, so I decided to follow Miko to Ghana. After a month of training in Ghana’s culture and language, we began our work.”

“So what work did you do?”

“Miko worked as a nurse. That’s what she got her degree in. I taught English and worked in an orphanage. When I first arrived in Ghana, there was no orphanage there yet. So I contacted the local authorities asking for building supplies. Thanks to the support of the local people, we were able to build a Love Orphanage II, with room enough to care for 50 children. There are classrooms for kindergarten and first grade. I am the assistant to the principal who is a native...”

As the bartender listened to Dinh talking about his work in Ghana, he studied the changing expressions on Dinh’s face. Even in the dim light of the bar, he could tell that Dinh was thinner and darker. Mr. Rico thought to himself, “He’s gotten rather tan. That hot African sun certainly spares no one. I’ll bet if those women that used to hang around here saw him with his tanned skin, they’d be willing to go home and sell all their belongings and give the money to him.” Studying him, the bartender also noticed that Dinh had lost the mischievous expression on his face, and in its place were traces of thoughtfulness. “I wonder how old he is this year. Let’s see...he graduated from high school at 18. He was in college for 6 years. I remember attending his graduation ceremony...Then 3 years in Ghana. My God, this kid is already 27 years old.” Dinh’s eyes seemed to reveal less sadness than they had in the past, and although his hair was still cut short, it was no longer spiked straight up with gel, like it had been before. “Maybe they don’t sell gel over there,” Mr. Rico mused, as he pondered Dinh’s gel-less hair.

“Hey kid, I forgot, I mean, my little friend. Please forgive my habit of calling you kid. You’re a grown up now. How long are you in town?”

Dinh smoothed his hand over his hair, and then lifted his arms in the air to stretch his back.

“Miko and I will be on vacation for three weeks. We’ve decided that we’ll both return to Ghana to work there. Miko went back to Japan to visit her family. I’m here in America to visit my mother...”

Dinh stopped mid sentence. His left hand remained on the bar, but his right hand began to spin the glass slowly around. The bartender did not say anything out of sensitivity. Dinh examined the glass thoughtfully. He swallowed the saliva in his mouth. The adam’s apple in his throat moved up and down. Then, supporting his left cheek on his right hand, he swallowed hard again and stopped turning the glass around.

“I’m sorry...I...I still don’t have a father.”

He said this without looking at anyone. After a moment of hesitation, a minute of silence, he straightened up and looked directly at Mr. Rico.

“My friend, maybe you think I am a disobedient son. And if so, I am really sorry! But as you know, when it comes to emotions, no one can be forced. Don’t you agree?”

Dinh continued,

“When a child is born, the woman becomes a mother, and the man becomes a father. But if those people don’t care for their child, they lose their right to be parents. My mother brought me forth into this life. She raised me for two years, but then she left me to the care of other women until I was twelve years old. When I first became conscious of my existence in this world, I saw that my mother was my grandmother, my Aunt Hoa, and Sr. Anna. Thank heavens, I finally found true maternal love. I am no longer an orphan without a mother. But as for my father, he stepped out of my life even before I came into this world. Perhaps he blamed it on external situations. I’ll give him that. But when he met me again, he wanted to reclaim his parental power. That couldn’t happen. I could not feel that the man who greeted me at the airport was my father. During the five years that I lived in his house, that man never did anything different or tried begin a new emotional relationship that never was.”

Dinh pursed his lips.

“My youth has gone by. I cannot relive my childhood, and I know that for a long time, I and my dark shadows were one. But I don’t want to continue living in the dark, complaining and crying. I want to live in the light. That’s why I decided to join the Peace Corps.”

When he finished these last words, Dinh calmly set his hand back down. The look in his eyes brightened, and he smiled as he smoothed back his hair.

“You want to know something? Before leaving for Ghana, I wrote a letter to Sr. Anna, and while I was in Ghana I also called Vietnam to talk to her. I said to her, ‘Sister, I don’t have much money to send to you to take care of the children.’ She laughed and said, ‘Why worry? There are many people around the world sending me money.’ Sr. Anna also told me that she no longer sold rice rolls. I asked why, and she told me it was because she no longer had an assistant. You know why she said that? It’s because I used to help her set up the stall every morning. She would sit and serve while I bussed the tables and washed the dishes. She told me that the Love Orphanage was now caring for 100 children. You know, before, she and the Mother Superior were only able to handle 25 children.”

Mr. Rico squinted his eyes.

“Maria still often asks about you.”

“What is she doing now?” Dinh asked curiously.

Mr. Rico’s chest puffed up in pride.

“Second year in college. You know what? She also studies psychology.”

Dinh laughed.

“Will she be home tomorrow afternoon?”

“Probably… This semester...I think...she only has classes in the morning,” Mr. Rico replied hesitantly.

Dinh leaned forward, his chest pressing against the bar.

“Can I drop by tomorrow afternoon? How about making us your famous traditional Italian spaghetti?”

Scratching his head, Dinh continued,

“Since I’ll be there tomorrow, I want to tell her that if she still considers me her brother, she’d better get ready to buy a present for her nephew.”

The bartender’s eyes grew wide with surprise. It was only at that moment that he noticed the gold wedding band on Dinh’s finger. He slapped his cheeks with his hands, his jaw dropped, and he said in a loud voice,

“My God! When did you get married?”

Dinh leaned back against the bar stool, folding his arms across his chest.

“It’s been over a year now. We got married in Ghana, in the St. Paul Chapel of the Love Orphanage II. I apologize for not inviting you to the wedding. It was so far away that you probably couldn’t afford the trip.”

The bartender waved his finger in Dinh’s face, shook his head and laughed; his laughter filled the entire bar near closing time at midnight.

Nguyễn Trung Tây
Translated by Anthony Duc Le