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by Di Li I was unable to utter my well-prepared confession until the end of the day – "I don’t love you anymore." Over the past year, day after day, I had intended to express my feelings but I never had the courage to do so. Soon, our clock would strike 10 and we would go to bed to make love after our evening tea.
Still sitting at the dinner table, we were waiting for the water in the pot to boil. My wife was reading a daily while I watched the news on TV. In reality, I did not know what she was reading. Frankly speaking, I did not pay any attention to the gunfire in the background of the news bulletin resounding either, simply because I was staring at the pot on the gas stove. Usually, when it boiled, she would stand up to fetch the tea set, clean and dry the cups, pour a little boiling water into the empty tea pot and the cups to warm them up a bit before finally making the tea. When served, we sipped the tea little by little. That was our evening ritual. We enjoyed our idle moments after a busy day at work, free from phone calls, housework and collectors seeking tax, water and electricity payments, and so on, while listening to our son play during his music lesson before he went to bed. We were usually silent for half an hour or so. "Do you want to add a little more jasmine to our tea?" she asked after thirty-five minutes of silence. I really wanted to talk about something, anything, say the 0.3 per cent rise in Viet Nam’s consumer price index compared to the 0.5 per cent GDP decrease in the US, which could drop even further next month, or something like that. "Today my boss has decided to cut our salaries down by two-thirds and next month he plans to begin reducing staff," I finally mentioned. "Today…," she interrupted me abruptly. "Hey, darling,…" she said, staring at me. "What’s the matter, honey?" I asked her. "You put your dirty socks on my pillow." "Really? I’m awfully sorry," I apologised. I immediately stood, picked them up and tossed them into a pile of dirty clothes ready for washing. Back at the table I found her making tea. I saw a stain on the checkered tablecloth that reminded me of a visitor who had dropped in on us during our Christmas Eve party last year. That night, a group of us were all quite tipsy and I wasn’t sure who he was: a friend of mine or an acquaintance of hers. As the party was drawing to a close he jumped up and recited a poem he had learned by heart. When he finished he posed the following question, "Could you please give me a definition of love?" Silence again! But, he seemed quite happy that no one offered an answer. "Love, to some extent, is like a tripod. If it exists as a passion, it’s focused on libido. If it is shared, it’s about friendship, and if it’s merely a sacrifice, it stems from pity. As a whole, these three factors are indispensable in love. Among those of you present here today, who’s short of any of them?" posed the stranger. One of the guests offered him a cup of tea, in part to prevent him from bothering the host further, and partly to help neutralise his intoxication. However, in his excitement he swept the cup away, spilling tea all over the tablecloth. He continued delivering his tasteless speech. I once asked my close friend about his sex life – he replied briefly: "Three times a week, 30 minutes each time." "What about passion?" "What’s that? As I just said, ‘three times per week, 30 minutes each time.’ On the weekend, 45 minutes at most." Curiously enough, the answers to the "tripod" question turned into a broader survey. Most people answered "three times a week, 30 minutes each time." As for me, it was about the same but sometimes for less than 30 minutes. "Hey, darling!" "What’s up?" "The evening news just announced that the electricity rates might increase by four per cent if we consume up to 100 kilowatts." "What about up to 50 kilowatts?" "Up by three per cent." "What was it before?" "Three per cent." "Oh dear, how ridiculously foolish!" *** This afternoon, before leaving my office for home I found a photo saved in my computer by chance. Sadly, I had left it unnamed a long time ago. Although the lighting was a bit dim because it was taken on my cheap mobile phone, it was still clear enough to recognise our faces. We were standing in front of the red walls of an abandoned roadside hut. The picture was taken about two years before our wedding day. I remember that day well. I carried her and all of her heavy, bulky bags on my dark blue motorbike on a trip out of town. We had been traveling for two successive days without rest, so we were travel weary and covered head-to-toe with red dust. Several times I noticed she was nervous as we crossed over the dull and gloomy pass. "You’re tired, aren’t you?" I asked her. "No, not really." "Hungry?" "No." "Sleepy?" "No." "Cold?" "No," she answered with a moan. At the foot of the pass there was a vacant shed. It seemed destined to shelter unlucky travellers at the half-way point of their journey. I stopped my motorbike. "I want…," I confessed. "So do I." We got off the motorbike. I lifted her out of the luggage carrier, where she was sandwiched with all the bags, large and small, and led her directly into the shed. Suddenly, the vehicle fell over and the petrol spilt profusely from the tank all over the red ground. At first we only planned to rest there for an hour or so but in the end we stayed for more than two days, due in part to the constant heavy rain, leaving the road too muddy for us to drive over, and in part because the wooden shed turned into a wonderful open air hotel. We made love to our heart’s content in front of a fire to the sounds of Kurt Cobain’s guitar coming from our old battery-powered cassette player. Staring at the photo, I smiled broadly. I glanced over at her. It seemed to me that there was little resemblance between her image in the picture and her form in front of me, although she remained beautiful with an aged face and a plump but attractive body. In all frankness, I found no good reason to end our intimacy when we enjoyed our love making three times per week. There wasn’t a third person involved. At the moment she was pouring out a hot cup of tea for me. I sipped the strong tea, even though I was not that interested in drinking at the moment. I drank it all in one, two, then three small sips. "Well, darling!" "What’s up?" I asked her a bit surprised. "You just spilled tea on the table cloth," she said in a menacing voice. "It has already been stained once. Now with another spill we should just throw it away," she threw at me. "Where is it?" "In the centre of the cloth. Can’t you see it?" "Yes, I do. You’re right." *** I ended another Sunday by lowering my weary body into an armchair close to the dining table. In fact, my weekends were never really holidays because I had a lot of work to do: visiting our grandparents, washing dirty clothes, cleaning the bathroom, going to the supermarket, tidying my son’s room, cooking meals and finally washing up. I had only a few hours to relax after lunch, on the couch in front of the TV. At the moment I was cuddling with my husband, my head resting on his arm with my right hand on his chest. He was attentively watching a women’s volleyball match. For more than thirty minutes we had not uttered a word. "Could you possibly turn down the fan? It’s too noisy," requested my husband. I did as I was asked. At once I had to lie down and rest my head on his arm to prevent my back from aching. Over the past few months I had been mercilessly tortured with a backache. Every evening before going to bed and every morning after waking up the first thing I thought of was my back. "Ouch, my back!" I moaned. "It’s hurting, isn’t it?" he asked. "You’d better go to hospital," he went on. "That’s what I’m afraid of most." "Well, it’s a must for you. Besides, you should relax more and try not to sit for too long," he advised. "What else can I do as a clerical official?" "Well in any case, you’d do better to work less, darling," he concluded resolutely. Then he continued watching the volleyball match. Meanwhile, I entertained myself by counting his movements. Every fifteen minutes he kissed me once; every five minutes, he tapped slightly on my back; every five minutes he stroked the headboard of the bed with his fingers five times. In addition to the six players on each volleyball team, I counted the spectators in the gymnasium on the TV screen. After that I counted the pieces of furniture in our room: two wardrobes, six chairs, two PCs, five flower vases, eight wine glasses and one shoe rack. That was all. All of a sudden, I remembered the moments when he had called out my name on the train to the highlands. In our carriage there were four beds. There were only the two of us lying opposite each other on the two narrow bottom berths and one old woman on one of the upper berths. When the train staff had stopped moving around and the lights went out the old lady began to snore noisily. He came over to my bed and did what I had been expecting. We did not make any noise, although the sound of the wheels running along the rails and the snores of the old lady would have drowned out any sounds we might have made. Once she stirred in her sleep and stopped snoring, which made us stop loving for a few minutes. It was a ridiculous and curious experience; he kept whispering my name softly. I tried to restrain myself by counting the number of times he whispered my name: more than ten times, perhaps! The volleyball match had gone into its third round. The number three reminded me of the tripod somebody had once talked about. I finally recalled that one of my close friends had said, "A love affair with one, two and even three factors? It’s sheer nonsense! Billions of couples make love every night without passion or sharing. And billions of others do the same because of their carnal desires. Which is more reasonable?" she winked, smiling ironically. He turned to my side and continued watching the match. Actually, we never had an irregular schedule. Every evening his bundle of papers and my mass of dirty clothes were taken care of and our son went to bed with his teddy bear clutched to his chest. Because of this ‘normalness’, I stood up quite at ease. "I want to go out for a little while, darling," I said. "Why?" "To get my hair styled." "You should do better to rest a bit." "Having my hair fixed is also a way to relax." "Right you are! Have a good time." His eyes remained glued to the TV screen as usual, except for the occasional glace at the pot of water waiting for it to boil. I was also waiting for it to boil before switching off the flame. I found no reason to stop loving him when we still talked every day, when he continued to caress and kiss me on the cheek on Sundays. I fell in love with him and nobody else when we sat drinking tea together in the evening, after waiting for the water to boil. Translated by Van Minh Nguồn: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/
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