Anguli Ma (6 page)

Then, there were people around, spilling out of the concrete slab homes. They had heard the sound of the body being struck and then the three men's voices. They were in a housing estate area, full of old people in pastel-rendered prefabricated homes.

“Poor dog, poor dog, I will take him to the vet,” Anguli Ma announced in English.

The small crowd started to talk more quickly and loudly, but a little old Italian lady, eyes no longer bright said, “What an animal lover he is…”

They chucked the dog with the blood and black fur into the boot;
they drove away and drank more whisky. They listened to its rasping breathing in the back, sometimes loud, then sometimes so weak that it seemed the animal was finally expiring. But then the breathing would come back again.

Their car drove through the western suburbs, with neat gardens and milky, overfed children. A land so sparse and peaceful that the newcomers believed that it was empty space, unmarked and un-storied, a barely populated land uninhabited by wandering demons and limbless men from wars that dragged on for millennia.

Still the animal in the boot had not died.

The sedan parked out the front of Đào's house. They went along the side path, and Anguli was scruffing the dog around the neck, carrying it. It was whining, struggling to get out of his embrace.

“Which tap? Over here tap?” the workmate asked. There was the bathroom-outside that he shared with the girl and the old woman.

“Close that door,” Anguli told the workmate.

They taped its legs, its muzzle with gaffer tape. The dog's forehead was smeared with its own saliva. Its barrel and chest floor were collapsed. Its coat was lustrous underneath the drying blood. Both he and the workmate knew that the dog would, for a shiny moment, acquire the vocal chords of a human and the eyes of an angel, and that this was not to be trusted. Anguli Ma held the dog's body between his legs and stretched its neck under the tap. His right hand reached out to Young
Triều to pass him the blade. The workmate turned on the tap, struggling with the stiff handles. Anguli cut its throat under the running water. Blood flowed, swirling into the black drain hole. The body of the dog released its shape, and quietly folded in half in his hands.

They cooked three dishes on a butane stove in the garage. Dinner was served up. The men relished the special occasion, and the workmate quoted ancient poetry:

Sống trên đời/ăn miếng dồi chó

Chết xuống âm phủ, biết có hay không?

“What is
dồi
?” Young Triều asked.

“Sausages,” the workmate explained. “In this lifetime, one tastes a piece of…”

Young Triều continued, “And, after you die…and descend to…
âm phủ
?”

“To Hades, to hell…” the workmate's voice was warm in the darkness of the garage, “who knows whether these morsels will be offered or not?”

“I am unsure if this here is Hades or not, but if so, the second line has been answered!” Anguli drunkenly proclaimed.

They laughed and continued eating. The talk turned to more mundane things, what they'd seen on
tivi
.

“What about that dog?”

“What dog?”

“In the desert…”

“Yes, the dingo that's eaten the baby.”

“Everyone's saying the mother did it, and her weak husband helped her.”

“They dressed their baby in black – the colour of death for them.”

The men were quiet for a moment.

Young Triều was the first to speak again. “In this country, the dog eats the man,” he said mournfully.

They all looked at each other and laughed so hard that their bellies hardened in ache and their eyes squeezed out little tears. Their laughter roared in the upside-down world.

They continued drinking until Young Triều passed out again. Cigarette smoke clogged the garage room. Now it was only Anguli and the workmate left. They had exhausted their bravado and were two blind men; they continued drinking despite their blindness. The strange night had reminded them of the old world. They shouted to each other to keep track of their progress.

“The last time I had this much fun was…” The room was spinning so. “Hahaha.”

“Yes,” someone punctuated.

They kept losing track of each other…in the blurry, roiling room.

“A large group of us, post-game drinking.”

“What year?” Anguli shouted.

“Seventy-five.”

Something still stabbed at their organs at the mention of that year.

“Friends?” a lifeline was thrown.

“Yes, twenty.” They could see one another again. “Our team won – it wasn't really about the winning, we were drinking like devils because it was ‘Seventy-five'.”

His voice was so very soft now, and the room seemed suddenly calm and quiet. Even though in the lead-up to the Fall of Saigon, everyone knew what was about to happen.

“The end
của một cuộc đời
,” the workmate concluded.

In that stillness, they avoided each other's eyes, for losing a homeland was like losing someone who knew you intimately, and whom you knew intimately. In this abyss, Anguli Ma and the workmate realised that their old life, and youth were both gone forever.

And so their drinking brought them a blindness that was preferable to the bright vastness of their daily lives in this new
âm phủ
, this
other
layer of Hades. Somewhere in the depth of their sorrow, the two men became isolated from each other. With their spirits empty, they cried, quietly in their seats.

Đào

Early in the morning, she swept up the wet, black fur. The bristles of her broom became soaked in blood, painting the tiles with slowly diluting washes of red. She had to stop herself from throwing up in moments of nausea. Đào decided she would conceal this from her tenants. That's what I'll do, she thought.

The old woman heard the scraping of the broom, and stepped out of her studio quietly. She saw that Đào was already up and cleaning. Đào tried to hide what she was doing, but the old woman soon saw the bloody scene.

“He brought over his friends. I won't let him bring them over again,” Đào said.

Bác did not speak for a long time. So long that Đào had almost forgotten she was there and resumed sweeping the wet floor.

Finally, the old woman said, “When you were on the boat, did you…think things?”

“Yes, there was nothing to do but think. Some of the younger women went mad looking on that vast, fizzing sea. Why are you bringing this up now?”

Bác tried not to sound too bitter. “None of us knew whether we were going to meet with god or the devil out there. And as we waited, we made promises to ourselves, our deities and Ancestors that if we
got out we would live our lives better. I did it too, until I lost my son.”

“Bác
Æ¡i
, it was very tragic about your son. But dwelling only on the past will make us sick. I can't afford to get ill…things are different now. Try to think more about the present Bác, and the future. The past is gone.”

The old woman remained in a dark mood. “We think we left this behind when we escaped.”

“Left what behind Bác?” she said quietly. “Women cleaning up after men?” Đào continued sweeping.

“Left behind
ma cô hồn
, in the old world.”

Đào stopped. Wandering, hungry ghosts. Unable to be reborn as a human or animal, unable to enter heaven or hell because of their gruesome, untimely deaths.

“We think we have a new beginning because we escaped the terror, and came to a new land. But we haven't left them behind, they came with us! Can't you see it?” Bác's gaunt face and grey eyes were unwavering in the morning light.

Đào begged the old woman not to tell Sinh, who was still asleep at this early hour. “Bác
Æ¡i,
Bác
đừng có nói về việc này cho
Sinh
nghe nhé
?” Đào said, trying to keep her voice low.

Bác pressed her thin lips together, bitterly.

“I beg you,
con lạy
Bác, please don't let Sinh know.” Đào whispered with hysterical fear.

Đào made sure she watched Sinh go off to work later that morning. Đào sat there in the kitchen, waiting for Anguli to awaken. She tried to read the newspaper. The feature was about a beloved songstress who had, to the delight of her fans, managed to escape and resettle in America. The muse of Vietnam was free. Đào was agitated, and could not take in much else of the news.

At midday, Anguli Ma staggered gently from his garage across the yard, passing the old woman, who looked at him with cold eyes before going back into her studio room. Đào confronted him in the kitchen.

“Whose animal did you steal and kill?” Đào screamed.

“We did not steal it. It was on the road, injured.” Anguli answered in a neutral tone. He was staring at the almost bare laminate table.

“You brought it here?”

“Calm down. What have we done wrong?” He suddenly turned to her, and drank in her rage.

“What, are you stupid?” Đào stumbled and recovered, “This is not our country.”

Then he laughed at her, “You take everything so seriously, don't you? You're so funny. You live by yourself, you've forgotten how real men are?”

Đào refused to be unsettled by his dismissiveness. “Everything we do is suspicious to them. They turn their noses up at our fish sauce, our green oil, our large gatherings, our tightly knit way of living.”

“How're you going to settle in here, if you get scared of everything that happens? You're always smiling and obedient,” he said, watching her humiliation rise. “How are you going to make anything happen over here?”

“My neighbour can call the police about this,” Đào offered her threat indirectly.

Anguli's smile froze. “So we got drunk – but it was already on death's door and nothing could have saved it – I know about these things.”

Đào looked at him.

“You can believe me in this…Yes, it was inconsiderate of me to leave the mess, I shall clean it up,” he reassured her. Đào found herself beginning to soften under his apology. The doorbell rang, then rang again.

“
Trời ơi!
” Đào cursed.

Her son Trung called out from the front of the house.

“I will clean everything up. Yes,” Anguli Ma said.

“It's already been done!” Đào snarled at Anguli. “I cleaned it up so the others didn't have to look at it, you shit. I'm waiting for the day you leave!”

Trung was unlocking the front door with his keys, so she had to put
her anger away, and make sure that all was clean and presentable for her
hụi
meeting. The
hụi
meeting!

Đào walked away from Anguli, to attend to her
hụi
scheme and all the people who were part of it. Anguli Ma's black eyes remained on her, eyeballs rolling. Đào watched his body grow tense, blowing up bigger with red anger. He was going to erupt if she walked away from him now.

Đào got to the front of the house and ushered Trung and little Tuyết into the living room and closed the frosted sliding doors.

“Is anything wrong,
Má
?” Trung asked.

“No, no, nothing. I've just been doing a lot of cleaning this morning,” Đào managed to both summarise and omit the truth of her blood-stained morning.

“So I'll pick her up after work.” Then, to his daughter, “Okay, see you Tuyết. See you tomorrow night.”

As he was walking back to the front door, Trung asked Đào, “
Má
, look how crowded it is in here. Why do you keep everything?”

“I need them.”

“We don't need to hoard this stuff over here. How do you manage to find anything?”

“My memory is still good, don't you worry.”

The Brown Man

Abased, he runs to the plateau with the gnarled, weeping tree hoping to see the monk. He is covered in nervous sweat and upon arriving, finds the bench empty except for the monk's cloth pouch resting on a tussock of grass.