The Mountains Sing Read online

  The

  Mountains

  Sing

  a novel

  Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2020

  For my grandmother, who perished in the Great Hunger; for my grandfather, who died because of the Land Reform; and for my uncle, whose youth the Việt Nam War consumed. For the millions of people, Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese, who lost their lives in the war. May our planet never see another armed conflict.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Though major historical events are real, the names, characters, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  The Tallest Mountains

  Red on the White Grains

  The Fortune Teller

  Getting Up and Falling Down Again

  The Great Hunger

  My Father’s Gift

  The Land Reform

  The Journey South

  The Walk

  My Mother’s Secret

  Destination

  The Country Bumpkin Boy

  The Way to Happiness

  My Uncle Minh

  Facing the Enemy

  My Grandmother’s Songs

  The Trần Family Tree

  The Tallest Mountains

  Hà Nội, 2012

  My grandmother used to tell me that when our ancestors die, they don’t just disappear, they continue to watch over us. And now, I feel her watching me as I light a match, setting fire to three sticks of incense. On the ancestral altar, behind the wooden bell and plates of steaming food, my grandma’s eyes glow as an orange-blue flame springs up, consuming the incense. I shake the incense to put out the fire. As it smolders, curtains of smoke and fragrance spiral toward Heaven, calling spirits of the dead to return.

  “Bà ơi,” I whisper, raising the incense above my head. Through the mist veiling the border between our two worlds, she smiles at me.

  “I miss you, Grandma.”

  A breeze gusts through the open window, holding my face like Grandma’s hands once did.

  “Hương, my beloved granddaughter.” The trees outside my window rustle her words. “I’m here with you, always.”

  I set the incense into the bowl in front of Grandma’s portrait. Her gentle features radiate in the incense’s perfume. I stare at the scars on her neck.

  “Remember what I said, Darling?” Her voice murmurs on the restless branches. “The challenges faced by Vietnamese people throughout history are as tall as the tallest mountains. If you stand too close, you won’t be able to see their peaks. Once you step away from the currents of life, you will have the full view. . . .”

  Red on the White Grains

  Hà Nội, 1972–1973

  Grandma is holding my hand as we walk to school. The sun is a large egg yolk peeking through a row of tin-roofed houses. The sky is as blue as my mother’s favorite shirt. I wonder where my mother is. Has she found my father?

  I clutch my jacket’s collar as the wind rips through the air, swirling up a dust cloud. Grandma bends, putting her handkerchief against my nose. My school bag dangles on her arm as she cups her palm against her face.

  We resume walking as soon as the dust settles. I strain my ears but hear no bird. I search, but there isn’t a single flower along our path. No grass around us, just piles of broken bricks and twisted metal.

  “Guava, be careful.” Grandma pulls me away from a bomb crater. She calls me by my nickname to guard me from evil spirits she believes hover above the earth, looking for beautiful children to kidnap. She said that my real name, Hương, which means “fragrance,” would attract them.

  “When you come home today, you’ll get our favorite food, Guava,” Grandma tells me.

  “Phở noodle soup?” Happiness makes me skip a step.

  “Yes. . . . The bomb raids have stopped me from cooking. But it’s been quiet, so let’s celebrate.”

  Before I can answer, a siren shatters our moments of peace. A female voice blares from a loudspeaker tethered to a tree: “Attention citizens! Attention citizens! American bombers are approaching Hà Nội. One hundred kilometers away.”

  “Ôi trời đất ơi!” Grandma cries for Heaven and Earth. She runs, pulling me along. Streams of people pour out of their homes, like ants from broken nests. Far away, from the top of the Hà Nội Opera House, sirens wail.

  “Over there.” Grandma rushes toward a bomb shelter dug into the roadside. She pulls up the heavy concrete lid.

  “No room,” a voice shouts out from down below. Inside the round pit just big enough for one person, a man half kneels, half stands. Muddy water rises to his chest.

  Grandma hurries to close the lid. She pulls me toward another shelter.

  “Attention citizens! Attention citizens! American bombers are approaching Hà Nội. Sixty kilometers away. Armed forces get ready to fight back.” The female voice becomes more urgent. The sirens are deafening.

  Shelter after shelter is full. People dart in front of us like birds with broken wings, abandoning bicycles, carts, shoulder bags. A small girl stands alone, screaming for her parents.

  “Attention citizens! Attention citizens! American bombers are approaching Hà Nội. Thirty kilometers away.”

  Clumsy with fear, I trip and fall.

  Grandma pulls me up. She throws my school bag to the roadside, bending down for me to jump onto her back. She runs, her hands wrapping around my legs.

  Thundering noise approaches. Explosions ring from afar. I hold on to Grandma’s shoulders with sweaty hands, burying my face in her body.

  “Attention citizens! Attention citizens! More American bombers are approaching Hà Nội. One hundred kilometers away.”

  “Run to the school. They won’t bomb the school,” Grandma shouts to a group of women lugging young children in their arms and on their backs. At fifty-two years of age, Grandma is strong. She dashes past the women, catching up with those ahead of us. Bounced up and down, I press my face against her long, black hair that smells like my mother’s. As long as I can inhale her scent, I will be safe.

  “Hương, run with me.” Grandma has squatted down in front of my school, panting. She pulls me into the schoolyard. Next to a classroom, she flings herself down a vacant shelter. As I slide down next to her, water rises to my waist, gripping me with icy hands. It’s so cold. The beginning of winter.

  Grandma reaches up, closing the lid. She hugs me, the drum of her heart throbbing through my blood. I thank Buddha for the gift of this shelter, large enough to fit us both. I fear for my parents on the battlefields. When will they come back? Have they seen Uncle Đạt, Uncle Thuận, and Uncle Sáng?

  Explosions draw closer. The ground swings, as if it were a hammock. I press my palms against my ears. Water shoots up, drenching my face and hair, blurring my eyesight. Dust and stones rain through a small crack onto my head. Sounds of antiaircraft fire. Hà Nội is fighting back. More explosions. Sirens. Cries. An intense burning stench.

  Grandma brings her hands together in front of her chest. “Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật, Nam Mô Quan Thế m Bồ Tát.” Torrents of prayers to Buddha pour from her lips. I close my eyes, imitating her.

  The bombs continue to roar. A minute of silence follows. A sharp screeching noise. I cringe. A powerful explosion hurls Grandma and me against the shelter’s lid. Pain darkens my eyes.

  I land feet-first on Grandma’s stomach. Her eyes are closed, her hands a budding lotus flower in front of her chest. She prays as the thundering noise disappears and people’s cries rise into the air.

  “Grandma, I’m scared.”

  Her lips are blue, trembling from the cold. “I know, G
uava. . . . I’m scared, too.”

  “Grandma, if they bomb the school, will . . . will this shelter collapse?”

  She struggles against the confined space, pulling me into her arms. “I don’t know, Darling.”

  “If it does, will we die, Grandma?”

  She hugs me tight. “Guava, if they bomb this school, our shelter might collapse on us, but we’ll only die if Buddha lets us die.”

  We didn’t perish that day, in November 1972. After the sirens had signaled that it was safe, Grandma and I emerged, shivering thin leaves. We staggered out to the street. Several buildings had collapsed, their rubble spilling onto our path. We crawled over piles of debris, coughing. Billowing smoke and twirling dust burned my eyes.

  I clutched Grandma’s hand, watching women kneeling and howling next to dead bodies, whose faces had been concealed by tattered straw mats. The legs of those bodies were jutting toward us. Legs that were mangled, covered with blood. One small leg had a pink shoe dangling. The dead girl could have been my age.

  Drenched, muddy, Grandma pulled me along, walking faster and faster, passing scattered body parts, passing houses that had crumbled.

  Under the bàng tree, though, our house stood in glorious, incongruous sunlight. It had miraculously escaped damage. I broke away from Grandma, rushing ahead to hug the front door.

  Grandma hurried to help me change and tucked me into bed. “Stay home, Guava. Jump down if the planes come.” She pointed toward our bomb shelter, which my father had dug into the earthen floor next to the bedroom entrance. The shelter was large enough to hold us both, and it was dry. I felt better hiding here, under the watchful eyes of my ancestors, whose presence radiated from the family altar, perched on top of our bookshelf.

  “But . . . where’re you going, Grandma?” I asked.

  “To my school, to see if my students need help.” She pulled our thick blanket to my chin.

  “Grandma, but it’s not safe. . . .”

  “It’s just two blocks away, Guava. I’ll run home as soon as I hear the siren. Promise to stay here?”

  I nodded.

  Grandma had headed for the door, but she returned to my bed, her hand warming my face. “Promise you won’t wander outside?”

  “Cháu hứa.” I smiled to assure her. She’d never allowed me to go anywhere alone, even during the months absent of bombs. She’d always been afraid that I’d get lost somehow. Was it true, I wondered, what my aunt and uncles had said, about Grandma being overprotective of me because terrible things had happened to her children?

  As the door closed behind her, I got up, fetching my notebook. I dipped the tip of my pen into the ink bottle. “Beloved Mother and Father,” I wrote, in a new letter to my parents, wondering whether my words would ever reach them. They were moving with their troops and had no fixed addresses.

  I was rereading Bạch Tuyết và bảy chú lùn, immersed in the magical world of Snow White and her friends, the Seven Dwarfs, when Grandma came home, my school bag hanging off her arm. Her hands were bleeding, injured from trying to rescue people trapped under rubble. She pulled me into her bosom and held me tight.

  That night, I crawled under our blanket, listening to Grandma’s prayers and her wooden bell’s rhythmic chime. She prayed for Buddha and Heaven to help end the war. She prayed for the safe return of my parents and uncles. I closed my eyes, joining Grandma in her prayer. Were my parents alive? Did they miss me as much as I missed them?

  We wanted to stay home, but urgent announcements from public broadcasts ordered all citizens to evacuate Hà Nội. Grandma was to lead her students and their families to a remote place in the mountains where she’d continue her classes.

  “Grandma, where’re we going?” I asked.

  “To Hòa Bình Village. The bombs won’t be able to find us there, Guava.”

  I wondered who’d chosen such a lovely name for a village. Hòa Bình were the words carried on the wings of doves painted on the classroom walls at my school. Hòa Bình bore the blue color in my dream—the color of my parents returning home. Hòa Bình meant something simple, intangible, yet most valuable to us: Peace.

  “Is the village far, Grandma? How will we get there?”

  “On foot. It’s only forty-one kilometers. Together we can manage, don’t you think?”

  “How about food? What will we eat?”

  “Oh don’t you worry. Farmers there will feed us what they have. In times of crisis, people are kind.” Grandma smiled. “How about helping me pack?”

  As we prepared for our trip, Grandma’s voice rose up beside me in song. She had a splendid voice, as did my mother. They used to make up silly songs, singing and laughing. Oh how I missed those happy moments. Now, as Grandma sang, vast rice fields opened their green arms to receive me, storks lifted me up on their wings, rivers rolled me away on their currents.

  Grandma spread out her traveling cloth. She piled our clothes in the middle, adding my notebook, pen, ink bottle, and her teaching materials. She placed her prayer bell on top, then tied the opposite corners of the cloth together, turning it into a carrying bag to be wrapped around her shoulder. On her other shoulder hung a long bamboo pipe filled with uncooked rice. She had already packed up my school bag with water and food for the road.

  “How long will we be away, Grandma?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps a couple of weeks?”

  I stood next to the bookshelf, my hands running over the books’ spines. Vietnamese fairytales, Russian fairytales, Nguyễn Kiên’s Daughter of the Bird Seller, Treasure Island from a foreign author whose name I can’t pronounce.

  Grandma laughed, looking at the pile of books in my hands. “We can’t bring so many, Guava. Pick one. We’ll borrow some more when we get there.”

  “But do farmers read books, Grandma?”

  “My parents were farmers, remember? They had all the books you could imagine.”

  I went through the bookshelf again and decided on Đoàn Giỏi’s novel, The Southern Land and Forests. Perhaps my mother had arrived in miền Nam, that southern land, where she met my father. I had to know more about their destination—cut away from us by the French and now occupied by the Americans.

  Grandma glued a note onto the front door, which told my parents and uncles that in case they returned, they could find us in Hòa Bình. I touched the front door before our departure. Through my fingertips, I felt my parents’ and uncles’ laughter. Now, looking back over the years, I still wonder what I would have brought along if I had known what would happen to us. Perhaps the black-and-white picture of my parents on their wedding day. But I also know that on the verge of death, there is no time for nostalgia.

  At Grandma’s school, we joined the throng of teachers, students, and their families, several with bicycles piled high with luggage, and walked, merging into the mass of people moving away from Hà Nội. Everyone wore dark clothes, and metal parts of vehicles were covered up to avoid reflection from the sun, for fear of attracting bombers. Nobody talked. I could only hear footsteps and the occasional cries of babies. Terror and worry carved lines into people’s faces.

  I was twelve years old when we started that forty-one-kilometer walk. The journey was difficult, but Grandma’s hand warmed mine when the wind whipped its bitter cold against us. So that I wouldn’t be hungry, Grandma handed me her food, pretending she was already full. She sang countless songs to calm my fears. When I was tired, Grandma carried me on her back, her long hair cupping my face. She bundled me into her jacket when it drizzled. Blood and blisters covered her feet as we finally got to Hòa Bình Village, nestled in a valley and surrounded by mountains.

  We stayed with two elderly farmers—Mr. and Mrs. Tùng—who let Grandma and me sleep on the floor of their living room; there was no other space in their small home. On our first day at Hòa Bình, Grandma found a worn path that zigzagged up the closest mountain and into a cave. Some villagers had chosen the cave as their bomb shelter; Grandma decided we must join them. Even though Mr.
Tùng said the Americans would never bomb the village, Grandma and I spent the next day practicing climbing up and down the path, so many times that my legs felt like they had been hammered.

  “Guava, we must be able to get up here, even during the night and without any light,” Grandma said, standing inside the cave, puffing and panting. “And promise to never leave my side, promise?”

  I watched butterflies fluttering around the entrance. I longed to explore. I’d seen the village’s kids bathe naked in a pond, ride water buffaloes through muddy fields, and climb trees to reach for bird nests. I wanted to ask Grandma to let me join them, but she was looking at me with such worried eyes that I nodded.

  As we settled into our temporary home, Grandma gave Mrs. Tùng our rice and some money, and we helped prepare the meals, picking vegetables from the garden, cleaning the dishes. “Ah, you’re such a help,” Mrs. Tùng told me, and I felt myself growing a little taller. Her home was different, but in a way, it was so much like mine in Hà Nội, with its windows sealed with black paper, to prevent American bombers from seeing any sign of our life at night.

  Grandma looked graceful as she taught in the village temple’s yard, her students squatting on the dirt floor, their faces bright. Her lesson wouldn’t end until she’d finished teaching them one of her songs.

  “The war might destroy our houses, but it can’t extinguish our spirit,” Grandma said. Her students and I burst into singing, so loud that our voices broke, and we sounded just like those frogs who joined us from nearby rice fields.

  The Southern Land and Forests, set in 1945, had a fascinating beginning. Before my eyes, the South appeared so lush, the people happy and generous. They ate snakes and deer, hunted crocrodiles, and gathered honey in dense mangrove forests. I underlined complicated words and exotic Southern terms, and Grandma explained them whenever she had time. I cried with An, who lost his parents as they ran away from the cruel French soldiers. I wondered why foreign armies kept invading our country. First it was the Chinese, the Mongolians, the French, the Japanese, and now the American imperialists.