In this region, kapok trees are planted for residential use, not for public or commercial use as are banyan trees planted near river piers to prevent erosion, pink shower trees with beautiful blossoms to enhance the landscape, tamanu trees for making chopping boards, and sakae trees for constructing monkey bridges. Only those who have sophisticated taste plant a kapok and even then only one in a corner of their garden. During sunny months, kapok pods look like bats’ wings dangling in the wind. They gradually drop off the trees and land on the ground. People dry them in the sun and then keep them in bamboo baskets or sacks. When they are not too busy with farming, they peel the kapok pods, remove the seeds, and put the fibers into a sack again to dry further. The fibers are used to make pillows and mattresses. In this rural region, local beds have not only regular pillows but also bolster pillows.
In fact, this story has nothing to do with kapoks. I briefly mention them so that you can imagine the scene further. Let’s imagine that there is a woman who, as a habit, always refreshes her pillows before Tết. She lives in the city, so there is no land for a garden, and thus no kapok. But that doesn’t stop her habit. She tells the pillow shops in the market to save some sacks of the fresh, cotton-like kapok fibers for her. She doesn’t know how to drive a motorbike, so she carries the puffy sacks home on a bicycle. She washes the pillowcases, opens the pillow protectors, and throws away the old fibers or dries them in the sun to make them soft and fluffy again. She stuffs new fibers inside, which smell fresh and natural. Her pillows are like children who wear new clothing for Tết. The pillows lie all over her bed. She stuffs them with a half-century of emotions and suffering. If Heaven blessed her with beauty and dignity, Heaven also challenged her.
“If I don’t hug a pillow, what will I hug?” This is what she says when I glance at the white pillows that occupy her tidy bed. She doesn’t punch me in the chest or do anything violent, but it feels as if I had been punched in the chest, making it hard to breathe. What if he had just crawled in like everyone else, what if he hadn’t been overly cautious by lying down on his back before sliding into the bomb shelter. What if . . .
My dear friends, she used to be very beautiful, undoubtedly. She was a Phong Điền countryside woman with ivory skin and elegant manners. Her face was slightly angular, not a meek oval face. Her youthful years carried her down the river’s currents, like hyacinths floating on the water with newly blooming purple flowers. And he was waiting for her somewhere; people call it fate. They were compatible. He was a stalwart and caring gentleman. He was also from the countryside, the same district but from a different commune. Back then, I was a clumsy rural Southern adolescent while they were already a perfect golden couple, although back in those days nobody would describe them with such flowery words.
“You know, it would be weird if my hair hadn’t turned gray,” she’s cried out many times. Her hair turned gray remarkably, right after 1975, when she was only thirty. She doesn’t dye it because that would be time-consuming and useless. I feel like someone punched me in the chest again and I can’t breathe. What if he had just crawled in like everyone else, what if he hadn’t been overly cautious by lying down on his back before sliding into the bomb shelter. What if . . .
I had heard about them before I met them in person. They were in the same subcommittee and made a perfect couple, people said. But . . . What if he had just crawled in like everyone else, what if he hadn’t been overly cautious by lying down on his back before sliding into the bomb shelter. What if . . . ?
During the war, she used to go to a farmer’s house located on a river embankment where her twin daughters were being cared for. That day she was with her daughters. Her husband’s injury, caused by bomb shrapnel, was not life-threatening, but it was severe. She was beautiful and he was a wonderful husband. I didn’t witness the injury and by the time I joined the military, she had already sent her children to her family in Phong Điền so that she could devote all her time to taking care of him in the hospital. Then, she returned to her subcommittee, and he was transferred to the subcommittee that I had just joined. It was said that he had requested the transfer because they needed some time away from each other. Everybody was concerned about it although they understood the situation very well: he could no longer fulfill his role as a husband, so there was no need for him to be by her side.
After spending a day with him, I immediately recognized that he was the kind of man that any woman in search of happiness would want. He was mature, the shape of his mouth looked cheerful, his eyes were calm, he talked politely, he was hardworking. No wonder it was said that they were compatible. But his skin started to grow pallid and dull. He looked reserved, and his laughter was no longer jovial. This is unusual for a person possessing such positive traits. A few days later, I saw him whittle a bunch of short bamboo sticks, wrap cotton balls around one end, and tie the sticks in small bundles. I asked, and he replied without hesitation, “I have constipation; I need to eat more fiber, like sweet potatoes or papayas, but I can’t find them here. Whenever I defecate, I need to use these sticks.” I shuddered but couldn’t imagine how the bomb shrapnel must have wounded his intestines. I saw his wife wrestle with her plight and misery every night. What if . . .
It is impossible for a bolster pillow to replace a man who joins the revolution. Women like us rested our heads on diaries and a few notebooks, and held an ammo box, or a memento from the war, tightly in our arms. A strap attached to the ammo box allowed us to carry it across our bodies while marching. We coiled it behind us in the mud before worming our way down a secret trench, keeping all necessary personal items in that ammo box, including an olive mosquito net, a plastic hammock, some clothes, a mirror, a comb, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. You might want to know where we kept our towels or scarves. Well, we carried a large piece of parachute fabric on our backs, also seized in battle, for camouflage, and we wore checkered scarves around our necks, which functioned as towels, or as something to keep us warm, or to drive mosquitoes away. I held the hard, cold ammo box while lying on my side, imagining how she, my pitiful friend, was also holding an ammo box whenever she missed her husband and couldn’t sleep. Nobody separated them; they had confronted their dilemma: they couldn’t leave each other, and they couldn’t be together, either.
He often rowed a boat to visit his wife. He departed in the early evening so that he could go to work in the morning. However, after each trip, he would no longer be the same person as before. He was losing confidence, his skin became more pallid, his face more gloomy. The men in his company were polite and said nothing. They asked no questions, and what could they have asked anyway? Of course they couldn’t ask something like, “Did you and your wife have a good time?”
Behind his back, they talked about his situation hesitantly: “When they meet, they only hold each other and cry.” I couldn’t imagine him crying or holding her tightly against his chest and listening to her sob. If she cried too much, her tears eventually would dry up. Every day I looked at him from different angles and saw that the muscles around his mouth rarely moved, causing a depressing atmosphere to surround him.
She didn’t visit him often, and when she did, she always stayed with him for two or three days. A young man named Liền helped her row a small boat to reach him. She sat at the bow and held a paddle. She made her own broad-brimmed hat and blouses. The dark color of her blouse highlighted her beautiful skin; her long hair flowed down her back, reaching her tiny waist. Her husband would hurry toward her, smile genially, touch the bow of the boat, and anchor it with a rope to a Y-shaped tree branch. Then he would look at me mischievously. He wanted to be a matchmaker for me and Liền, who, according to him, was a tall and robust man, with wavy hair. Liền was around my age—and so compatible. I realized that he was fond of Liền simply because he gave him and his wife something interesting to talk about whenever she visited him. I had no special feelings for Liền, but I admit that I liked his youthfulness and strength. Liền often stayed and hung out for a while with them, and he always asked her before leaving when she wanted to return to her subcommittee so that he could come and fetch her.
On unofficial days off, she turned me into her younger sister. She offered me tips for when I would be married. How to add spices to a pot of sweet and sour soup. How to cut herbs properly and how to throw them into the pot once the fire was turned off so that the herbs’ color remained green. How to make caramel sauce when cooking braised dishes. How to make chili and garlic fish sauce for a fried fish dish. How to properly cook white cowpeas with coconut milk sweet soup. Her voice was clear, her heels soft, her eyes had nice edges, her mouth was charming, and, most importantly, she knew how to manage a family budget efficiently. All men wanted a wife like her. When visiting her husband, wherever she sat, he sat behind her and wrapped his arms around her to help her with whatever she was doing. At night, on the bamboo bed, beneath mosquito nets, I heard them whisper, sniffle, turn their bodies to kill mosquitoes, and then whisper again.
Suddenly, we heard a rumor about her and Liền. Night came. A boat. Clumps of bushes. A creek. A small, remote riverside neighborhood abandoned by those fleeing the war. Bombed roads. Moments of deep feelings. Liền was a young single, and although she was a married woman with two daughters, her life had been empty for years. Their affair became a great scandal ushering in judgmental opinions. The male superiors in my subcommittee were tactful and said nothing. However, her husband started to talk more, about all kinds of topics. When he talked, he looked clumsy and didn’t know what he was talking about or what role he was trying to fill. There seemed to be a wall between him and his colleagues, and an invisible Buddha seemed to be whispering to us: “Don’t discuss it. Don’t exacerbate things. It’s a normal human affair.”
Of course, Liền had to transfer elsewhere. She must remain a dignified woman to maintain the respect of others, and her husband must remain a hero, despite his horrific wound, and play the role of a perfect husband of a woman whose reputation had been slightly tarnished. Her friendship with me ended abruptly, simply because she no longer came to my subcommittee to visit her husband. And he only went to visit her at dusk and came back late at night. I saw him a few times at correction training events or at year-end parties that united all the subcommittees. I was surprised to watch him from afar as she sat quietly and inconspicuously in a corner. She only left her seat when he walked at her side. He wanted her to be brave like him in front of others. Despite their efforts, they appeared more desolate—they both had salt-and-pepper hair, they couldn’t even smile; gloomy like a water-damaged painting in a golden frame. The campaigns in the spring of 1975 involved everyone. People ran and panted heavily, and boat trips ceased, and no happy life seemed to lie ahead.
After the war ended, each person was given a personal dwelling based on new criteria. Important bosses were offered large houses facing main streets; lower-ranking bosses were offered confiscated houses in narrow alleys. The pair moved into a townhouse in the former Army Republic of Việt Nam housing quarter for married couples. I was nobody and single, so I temporarily slept on a folding bed in my company’s kitchen. When my company threw a party or welcomed a special guest, she acted as a top-notch chef. Sometimes I visited the military housing quarter, crossing the small yard full of various flowers, to see how stuck they were in their lives together. I saw that he was still very caring, but his wife’s hair had turned miserably gray.
During the ten years following 1975, her twin daughters were in school. She shared a room with them next to the living room, which had ventilation gaps. He occupied a room at the house’s interior that smelled of old food stored in the kitchen, because the odor traveled in through his room’s ventilation gaps. He didn’t mind it at all. After ten years, their daughters had grown up and needed to share a room of their own, so he reluctantly moved his bed into his wife’s room.
She had a queen-size bed with a bunch of white pillows. She often cried out, “You see, if I don’t hug a pillow, what will I hug?” In his single bed, there was a lone pillow, a small blanket, a backscratcher made from coconut wood, a few books, some mothballs, and tiger balm. In the next ten years, their daughters married and moved out. The room adjacent to the kitchen became a playroom for their grandchildren; toys were everywhere. Their shared room remained unchanged—the big bed was full of white pillows; there was a small shelf at the head of his single bed. On the shelf sat all the kinds of pills that one sees in a hospital room.
I wander through life, but I always miss them and want to see them again. Fifty years have passed since he crawled on his back into the entrance of the shelter and was hit by bomb shrapnel. There are more flowers in his garden: mums; pompons; chrysanthemums; yellow, white, and red peonies; roses; orchids, etc. He looks as calm as a Buddhist monk although he doesn’t wear a brown robe. Her hair is as white as kite strings. She pulls her hair back into a charming bun and wears white silk clothes. Knowing that I am curious about her room, she gently pulls me to the entrance and turns on the light. The small bed has become a place to store pillows. The nightstands on either side of the big bed have reading lamps, piles of books, and various other items. I immediately notice two pillows and two bolster pillows—white and fluffy. I know which side of the bed he often sleeps on because one nightstand has the bottles, tubes, and pills that he needs.
My thanks to the pillows for helping my friend become extraordinary. And my dear sister, you’re so pure and shouldn’t be concerned about morality. You are like a kapok pod dangling in the wind and then falling to the ground. You have offered life a marvelous white gift.