The Mountains Sing Read online

  As I escaped on an imaginary journey into the South, the bombs fell onto Hà Nội—the heart of our North. Whether it was day or night, at the clanging of a gong, Grandma would clutch my hand, pulling me toward the mountain. It took thirty minutes to climb, and I was never allowed to rest. By the time we reached the cave, gigantic metal birds would be thundering past us. I held on to Grandma, feeling thankful for the cave, yet hating it at the same time: from here I would watch my city being engulfed in flames.

  A week after our arrival, an American airplane was shot and its pilot managed to fly his burning plane toward Hòa Bình. He ejected with a parachute. Other planes strafed and rocketed the area as they attempted to rescue him. Much later, we emerged from the mountain cave to see torn body parts strewn along winding village roads. Grandma covered my eyes as we arrived under a row of trees where human guts hung from the branches.

  We passed the collapsed village temple. Sounds of a commotion rushed toward us, followed by a group of people who ushered a white man forward. Dressed in a dirty, green overall, the man had his hands tied behind his back. His head was bent low, but he was still taller than everyone around him. Blood ran down his face, and his blond hair was splattered with mud. Three Vietnamese soldiers walked behind him, their long guns pointed at the white man’s back. On the right arm of the man’s uniform the red, white, and blue of a small American flag burned my eyes.

  “Giết thằng phi công Mỹ. Giết nó đi, giết nó!” someone suddenly shouted.

  “Kill him! Kill that bastard American pilot,” the crowd roared in agreement.

  I clenched my fists. This man had bombed my city. The aggression of his country had torn my parents away from me.

  “My whole family is dead because of you. Die!” a woman screamed, launching a rock at the American. I blinked as the rock thumped him in the chest.

  “Order!” one of the soldiers shouted. Grandma and several others rushed to the sobbing woman, took her into their arms, and led her away.

  “Justice will be served, Brothers and Sisters,” the soldier told the crowd. “Please, we have to bring him to Hà Nội.”

  I watched the pilot as he walked past me. He didn’t make a sound when the rock hit him; he just bent his head lower. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw some tears trickling down his face, mixing with his blood. As the crowd followed him, shouting and screaming, I shuddered, wondering what would happen to my parents if they faced their enemy.

  To chase away fear, I buried myself in my book, which took me closer to my parents. I inhaled the scent of mangrove forests, sniffing the breeze from rivers crowded with fish and turtles. Food seemed to be abundant in the South. Such food would help my parents survive if they made it to their destination. But would the South still be this lush even with the American Army there? It seemed to destroy everything in its path.

  Approaching the last pages, I held my breath. I wanted An to find his parents, but instead he joined the Việt Minh guerrillas to fight against the French. I told him not to, but he had already jumped into a sampan, rowing away, disappearing into the white space that expanded after the novel’s last word.

  “An should have tried harder to search for his parents,” I told Grandma, pushing the book away.

  “Well, in times of war, people are patriotic, ready to sacrifice their lives and their families for the common cause.” She looked up from my torn shirt, which she was mending.

  “You sound just like my teachers.” I recalled the many lessons I’d learned about children considered heroes for blowing themselves up with bombs to kill French or American soldiers.

  “Want to know what I really think?” Grandma leaned toward me. “I don’t believe in violence. None of us has the right to take away the life of another human being.”

  Toward the middle of December, whispers circulated that it was now safe to return home, that the American President Nixon would take a rest from the war to enjoy his Christmas holiday of peace and goodwill. People left their hiding places, flocking down to the roads that led them back to our capital city. Those who could afford it hired buffalo or cow carts or shared a truck. Those without money would walk the entire way.

  We didn’t join them. Grandma asked her students and their families to stay put. Buddha must have told her so. On December 18, 1972, we watched from inside the mountain cave as our city turned into a fireball.

  Unlike the previous attacks, the bombings didn’t cease. They continued throughout the next day and night. On the third day, Grandma and several adults ventured out to get food and water. It took Grandma so long to come back, and she brought Mr. and Mrs. Tùng with her. As Mrs. Tùng moaned about her knees, Mr. Tùng told us that the Americans were using their most powerful weapon on Hà Nội: B-52 bombers.

  “They said they want to bomb us back to the Stone Age,” he told us, gritting his teeth. “We won’t let them.”

  Hà Nội burned and bombs fell for twelve days and nights. When the bombings finally stopped, it was so silent, I could hear bees buzzing on tree branches. And like those hard-working bees, Grandma returned to her class and the villagers to their fields.

  A week later, a group of soldiers arrived. Standing on the temple’s remaining steps, a soldier had a smile stretching wide across his gaunt face. “We’ve defeated those evil bombers!” He pumped his fist. “Our defense troops shot down eighty-one enemy airplanes, thirty-four of them B-52 bombers.”

  Cheers erupted around me. It was now safe for us to go home. People hugged each other, crying and laughing.

  “I’ll never forget your kindness,” Grandma told our hosts. “Một miếng khi đói bằng một gói khi no.” One bite when starving equals one bundle when full.

  “Lá lành đùm lá rách,” Mrs. Tùng replied. Intact leaves safeguard ripped leaves. “You’re welcome to stay with us at any time.” She clutched Grandma’s hand.

  I smiled, enchanted whenever proverbs were embedded in conversations. Grandma had told me proverbs were the essence of our ancestors’ wisdom, passed orally from one generation to the next, even before our written language existed.

  Our hearts bursting with hope, we walked many hours to return to Hà Nội.

  I had expected victory but destruction hit my eyes everywhere I looked. A large part of my beautiful city had been reduced to rubble. Bombs had been dropped onto Khâm Thiên—my street—and on the nearby Bạch Mai Hospital where my mother had worked, killing many people. Later, I would go back to class, empty of my fifteen friends.

  And our house! It was gone. Our bàng tree lay sprawled across the rubble. Grandma sank to her knees. Howls escaped from deep inside her, piercing through the stench of rotting bodies, merging into a wailing sea of sorrow.

  I cried with Grandma as we pushed away broken bricks and slabs of concrete. Our fingers bled as we searched for anything salvageable. We found several of my books, two of Grandma’s textbooks, and some scattered rice. Grandma picked up each grain as if it were a jewel. That night in my schoolyard, we huddled against the wind with people who had also lost their homes to cook our shared meal of rice mixed with dirt and stained with blood.

  Watching Grandma then, nobody could imagine that she was once considered cành vàng lá ngọc—a jade leaf on a branch of gold.

  Three months earlier, as my mother got ready to go to the battlefield, she told me Grandma had been born into one of the richest families in Nghệ An Province.

  “She’s been through great hardships and is the toughest woman I know. Stay close to her and you’ll be all right,” my mother said, packing her clothes into a green knapsack. Trained as a doctor, she had volunteered to go south, to look for my father, who’d traveled deep into the jungles with his troops and hadn’t sent back any news for the past four years. “I’ll find him and bring him back to you,” she told me, and I believed her, for she’d always achieved whatever she set out to do. Yet Grandma said it was an impossible task. She tried to stop my mother from going, to no avail.

  As my
mother left, Heaven cried his farewell in big drops of rain. My mother poked her face out of a departing truck, shouting, “Hương ơi, mẹ yêu con!” It was the first time she said she loved me, and I feared it’d be the last. The rain swept across us and swallowed her up into its swirling mouth.

  That night and for the next many nights, to dry my tears, Grandma opened the door of her childhood to me. Her stories scooped me up and delivered me to the hilltop of Nghệ An where I could fill my lungs with the fragrance of rice fields, sink my eyes into the Lam River, and become a green dot on the Trường Sơn mountain range. In her stories, I tasted the sweetness of sim berries on my tongue, felt grasshoppers kicking in my hands, and slept in a hammock under a sky woven by shimmering stars.

  I was astonished when Grandma told me how her life had been cursed by a fortune-teller’s prediction, and how she had survived the French occupation, the Japanese invasion, the Great Hunger, and the Land Reform.

  As the war continued, it was Grandma’s stories that kept me and my hopes alive. I realized that the world was indeed unfair, and that I had to bring Grandma back to her village to seek justice, perhaps even to take revenge.

  The Fortune Teller

  Nghệ An Province, 1930–1942

  Guava, remember how we used to wander around the Old Quarter of Hà Nội? We often stopped in front of a house on Hàng Gai. I didn’t know anyone who lived there on Silk Street, but we stood in front of the house, peering through its gate. Remember how beautiful everything was? Wooden doors featured exquisite carvings of flowers and birds, lacquered shutters gleamed under the sun, and ceramic dragons soared atop the roof’s curving edges. The house was a traditional năm gian, with five wooden sections, remember? And there was a front yard paved with red bricks.

  Now I can tell you the reason I lingered in front of that house: it looks just like my childhood home in Nghệ An. As I stood there with you, I could almost hear the happy chatter of my parents, my brother Công, and Auntie Tú.

  Ah, you ask me why I never mentioned to you about having a brother and an aunt. I’ll tell you about them soon, but don’t you want to visit my childhood home first?

  To go there, you and I will need to travel three hundred kilometers from Hà Nội. We’ll follow the national highway, passing Nam Định, Ninh Bình, and Thanh Hóa provinces. Then we’ll turn left at a pagoda called Phú Định, crossing several communes before arriving at Vĩnh Phúc, a village in the North of Việt Nam. The name of this village is special, Guava, as it means “Forever Blessed.”

  At Vĩnh Phúc, anyone will gladly show you to the gate of our ancestral home—the Trần family’s house. They’ll walk with you along the village road, passing a pagoda with the ends of its roof curving like the fingers of a splendid dancer, passing ponds where children and buffaloes splash around. During summer, you’ll gasp at clouds of purple flowers blooming on xoan trees and at red gạo flowers sailing through the air like burning boats. During the rice harvest season, the village road will spread out its golden carpet of straws to welcome you.

  In the middle of the village, you’ll arrive in front of a large estate surrounded by a garden filled with fruit trees. Peeking through the gate, you’ll see a house similar to the one we saw on Silk Street, only more charming and much larger. The people who take you there will ask whether you’re related to the Trần family. If you tell them the truth, Guava, they’ll be astonished. The Trần family members have either died, been killed, or disappeared. You’ll learn that seven families have occupied this building since 1955, none of them our relatives.

  My beloved granddaughter, don’t look so shocked. Do you understand why I’ve decided to tell you about our family? If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.

  The Trần family’s house is where I was born, got married, and gave birth to your mother Ngọc, your uncles Đạt, Thuận, Sáng, and your aunt Hạnh. You didn’t know this, but I have another son, Minh. He’s my first-born, and I love him very, very much. But I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. He was taken away from me seventeen years ago, and I haven’t seen him since.

  I’ll explain what happened to him later, but first, let me take you back to one particular summer day in May 1930, when I was ten years old.

  I was startled awake by the sound of thudding, deep in the heart of the night, a rhythmic, hollow clunking. “Who’s making so much noise at this hour?” I complained, turning sideways, to find Mrs. Tú, the housekeeper, snoring next to me. Her name, Tú, means “refined beauty,” but if you met her, you might be frightened at first. A deep scar zigzagged from her mouth to her left eye. On her right cheek, flesh had melted into a mass of wrinkles. Mrs. Tú wasn’t born that way, though. Years ago, before I popped out from my mother’s stomach, a fire had gobbled up most of Vĩnh Phúc Village, reducing Mrs. Tú’s house to ashes, killing her husband and her two sons, burning her almost to death. My mother brought Mrs. Tú to our home and nursed her back to health. When Mrs. Tú recovered, she decided to stay and work for us. Over the years, she became part of our family.

  Years later, Guava, it was Mrs. Tú who risked her life to save mine and your mother’s.

  That early morning, though, the sight of our housekeeper calmed the frantic wings inside my stomach. I was thankful she’d agreed to leave her room to keep me company for the last few nights.

  “Wake up, Auntie Tú. What’s that noise?” I whispered, but she continued to snore.

  The thuds got more urgent. I yawned, hoisting myself up. Fumbling in the dark, I found my wooden clogs. Leaving my bedroom, I clip-clopped into a long corridor that ran past a large room, which stored our fields’ harvests. With my hands, I felt my way forward. Careful as I was, I still bumped my head on the đàn nhị and was startled at the low hum its two strings made. I cursed my brother for hanging the musical instrument so low, as if the awful wailing sounds he made with those strings weren’t enough. I passed the living room, where a kerosene lamp glowed on a table, spreading light onto a lacquered sofa inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A wooden platform rose up on its four strong legs—the phản divan, where my father often sat and entertained his guests. Massive pillars made of precious lim wood ran all the way from the brick floor to the ceiling. High up, another kerosene lamp eyed me from the family altar. Two lacquered panels on the wall bore poetry written exquisitely in Nôm—the ancient Vietnamese script.

  Following the noise, I emerged into the front yard. There, bathed in moonlight, my father was raising a large wooden pestle, hammering it on a stone mortar. His square face and muscled arms shone with sweat. He was pounding rice, but why hadn’t he asked his workers to help?

  Not far from him, my mother squatted on a stool, holding a bamboo tray, tossing pounded rice. Her hands jerked back and forth, forcing the husks to fly out. She looked so graceful in her movements that if it wasn’t for the sheet of rice fluttering in front of her, you would think she was dancing.

  Then, I remembered our family tradition: my parents always prepared the first batch of rice from a new harvest by themselves and offered it to our ancestors. They had begun harvesting our fields the day before, piling the fruit of their work under the longan tree.

  “Mama. Papa.” I skipped down the five steps that flowed from the front veranda to the brick yard.

  “Did we wake you up, Diệu Lan?” My father reached for a towel and swept it across his face. A chorus of insect songs rose from the garden behind his back. Muffled sounds of cows and water buffaloes echoed from stalls that ran deep into the side garden, but the chickens remained quiet inside their bamboo cages.

  “Kitten, go back to bed.” Unlike my father, my mother was superstitious and called me by my nickname, to guard me from evil spirits.

  “Ah. My lot is ready.” My father scooped his mortar’s contents into a bamboo basket. An aroma of rice perfume blossomed into my lungs as I helped him.

  I carried the basket to my mother, who was inspecting the white see
ds on her bamboo tray, before pouring them into a ceramic urn.

  “How’s Master Thịnh, Diệu Lan?” My father’s voice rose above the pounding rhythms. He’d been so busy, we hadn’t had much time to talk.

  “He’s wonderful, Papa.” Master Thịnh was a scholar my parents had just hired to teach my brother Công and me. The only school in my entire district was too far away and reserved for boys. Công and I had always studied at home with our tutor. My father had recently gone all the way to Hà Nội and brought back Master Thịnh, who appeared at our gate with a buffalo cart full of books. While most girls in my village were taught only how to cook, clean, obey, and work in the fields, here I was, learning how to read and write with a scholar who had traveled far, even to France. I was beginning to enjoy the adventures his books gave me. Master Thịnh lived with us, in the western wing of the house.

  “I’m glad he’s teaching you and Công French,” said my father.

  “But I don’t see why they should learn it,” my mother said, and I couldn’t agree more. The French were occupying our country. I’d seen French soldiers beating farmers on our village road. Sometimes they’d come into our home, searching for weapons. In our province, farmers and workers had been demonstrating against them. My parents didn’t get involved. They feared violence and believed the French would eventually return our country to us, without bloodshed.

  My father stopped pounding and lowered his voice. “You know that I hate those foreigners. They’ve been here more than sixty damn years too long, robbing us blind with their duties and taxes, killing innocent people. But we can only kick them out if we understand them.”

  “Is Emperor Bảo Đại doing just that? Studying in France to liberate us from them?” my mother asked, holding out her tray as I poured pounded rice onto it.

  “People say the French are turning him into their puppet, though. Wouldn’t it be ideal for them, ruling us via our own emperor?” my father answered, and resumed pounding.