Short story: On the banks of Na Pha

Illustration: Vu Thuy

I urged the children to go home before it got dark. They tried to stay in the school yard to play for a while before they slowly started to go home. I sat at the stream, the flowing water sounded like the voices of the ancients, whispering, in tune... Who knows, maybe the stream was telling me the story of my father in the past. Or maybe I imagined it to calm my silent search.

***

My father was ordered to go to the border when I was only three months old. He hid his tears so he wouldn’t look back. My mother smiled strangely and discreetly. My father wrote home every month, but only she read the letters and then put them away with tears in her eyes. My mother put on makeup every night and then calmly handed me over to her to go to the theater in a man’s luxury car. My mother was an actress in an art troupe. Did acting take away some of her emotions? I couldn’t explain it even when I was grown up.

Dad's letters became less frequent because of the long patrols in the deep. When I learned to read, I took out Dad's old letters and spelled them out. Those were my first lessons. Mom walked past the study table, the scent of perfume or hair lingering in the air. My reading never stopped Mom. Mom was beautiful and distant, even I didn't dare touch her. Then one day Mom left the old house, not long after receiving Dad's death notice. Grandma sighed as she looked at Dad's portrait, the old man's tears either sank into it or faded into her hair, I didn't know. She gently lit incense on the altar, I didn't know what she said, but I saw Dad smile calmly behind the white smoke.

Dad's comrades came to visit my grandmother and me. Uncle Khai, who later wrote a letter of recommendation for me to teach at Na Pha Primary School, could not hide his emotion when he gave me Dad's diary. The city night was strangely quiet, snuggling up to him, I closed my eyes and imagined that it was my dad. His voice was warm and deep like Dad was whispering...

Na Pha is all mountains. Mountains cover everything. But people still cling to the mountains to live and cling to the spirit of the sacred land. Every day, border guards like my father and uncle Khai have to go deep into the mountains to reach the villages. The journey to the hearts of people is more difficult than the high mountains. Na Pha has A Tua's house, the richest in the area, but this is also the biggest obstacle that my father's unit has to face. For many years, A Tua's house has become a place to store income as well as the obedience of many poor people around the area. A Tua gets people's obedience by spending a little money for them to work for him. People in the area, because of poverty, defy danger to cross the border to the other side to bring drugs back. Then with the same drugs, he spreads white death to many young men in the village. A Tua keeps getting richer while the villagers become more and more exhausted and overwhelmed. His hidden power covers everything. Those who do not obey can only quietly leave this land.

But May, A Tua's daughter, is different from her father. Her beauty and soul are as pure as a stream. Since childhood, May has known many people who were tormented by her father, her mother died when her father forced her to overdose on drugs. When my father's unit went to the village, the times she secretly went to listen to the soldiers talk moved her and she vowed to join the soldiers in bringing light to her fellow countrymen. Those conversations made the girl fall in love with him without her knowing, even though May knew my father already had a family in the lowlands. May found love in a place where the two of them were separated by invisible boundaries. A Tua realized the change in Na Pha since the soldiers appeared. He felt his monopoly was threatened. Like a wild beast that did not want to lose its position, he was resentful and resentful.

Knowing that May had feelings for the border officer, he hastily agreed to marry her to a business partner on the other side of the border. May's wedding was also an excuse for them to deliver contraband, which was the largest shipment they wanted to send across the border. That plan was discovered by my father's reconnaissance team, May pretended to agree to the wedding to solve the biggest drug case at that time. A silent but fierce war was carefully prepared by both sides. When the wedding procession was about to cross the border, where the waterfall flows into Na Pha stream, the border soldiers appeared.

Many years later, the locals still recalled the heartbreaking story, when the stubborn criminals had surrendered, A Tua suddenly grabbed his daughter to threaten the soldiers. Because he was subjective that it was his father, May was not on guard. A Tua wanted my father to put down his gun and take May's place. Not only because of his pure love for that girl, but also because of the trust of the locals here urged my father. Without hesitation, he sacrificed himself to keep May safe. Like a cornered animal, A Tua pulled the fuse, the two bodies were thrown up and fell into the waterfall. The Na Pha River was at its deepest, with the strongest flow, burying all traces. May screamed but it was too late, her screams were drowned out by the sound of boiling water.

***

The mountains of Na Pha now peacefully lean against the sky, like the eternal stability for many lives who have chosen to anchor themselves to the mountains. It has been three years since I came here to teach, and I have not stopped asking for news about May. Those who knew the story at that time all said that she had disappeared without a trace after many days of not finding the bodies of my father and her father. Had the person she loved the most and her closest relative melted into the mountains or drowned in the streams?

As I grew up, I understood my mother’s choices better. My father’s diary revealed the story of the matchmaking between our grandparents. Then my parents fell into loneliness when they did not belong to each other’s lives. I don’t know if my father sensed something, but in the last pages of his diary, he expressed his desire to free my mother. My father always loved and idolized my mother when she transformed into emotional characters on stage.

The Na Pha stream where I sat was peaceful and clear, as if unaware of the fierceness and depth at its source. In the twilight, I realized that the little student was still wandering around picking flowers by the stream. “Lanh! Why haven’t you come back yet? What are you doing there?” The little student looked up, startled, holding a bouquet of flowers in her hand: “I came back by the stream, saw the linh son flower blooming so I picked some to give to my mother, my mother really likes this flower, it doesn’t always bloom, teacher.” A thought pierced my heart, linh son flower. The flower mentioned in my father’s diary.

“Na Pha day... month... year! Linh Son is a rare sight in life, it is the sacred flower of the mountain. Not many people know about this flower, thanks to my sister I was able to touch Linh Son. Linh Son is as real as a dream, touching it makes it seem to disappear....”.

I didn't know what my father was about to say, but I understood that Linh Son and that girl had a special place in his heart. The little girl mentioning Linh Son made my heart flutter strangely. Trying to suppress my desire to know, I asked: "Linh Son, why is there a flower with such a strange name, a flower this beautiful but I've never seen it before?" "Teacher, my mother told me that Linh Son usually blooms once every ten years or so, and not everyone gets to see it, and the flower only blooms when Na Pha is about to have a big change or event. My mother saw Linh Son blooming thirty years ago." My father's story thirty years ago came back to me clearly, my father sacrificed himself but since then Na Pha no longer had to suffer from drugs and the rule of A Tua. Lanh's mother also saw Linh Son blooming thirty years ago, could there be such a coincidence? Unable to control myself, I asked: "What is your mother's name?" The girl looked at me confused and surprised and said: "My mother's name is Van". I looked down at the Na Pha river, feeling lost as if I had just lost something.

After three days of non-stop rain, Na Pha was like a giant wound caused by flash floods and landslides. This was the biggest flood in decades, and the border guards reported that many people had died and gone missing. The rain stopped, and teachers rushed into the villages to check on the situation of their students' families after the flood. I arrived at Lanh's house when she and her mother were busy cleaning up the house when the water receded. I breathed a sigh of relief as I walked in, and what caught my eye was a picture of a soldier placed on the altar. That smile and gaze looked at me with love and affection. I stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the house until the elderly woman walked closer. Gently and gracefully like the clouds on Na Pha mountain, she looked at me. At that moment, I realized that in her eyes there was something that seemed to burst and melt.

Arm