|
by Xuan Cang It was the 29th of Lunar December, two days before the arrival of the Tet holiday. I handed over the communal People’s Committee to the vice chairwoman so that I could take some time for myself. I told my son May:
"You are forbidden from touching any fruit in the garden. If you don’t listen to me, you won’t have a summer holiday at Sam Son Beach this year. Is this clear?" I had already promised him a summer holiday at Sam Son Beach if he behaved and did well at school. My son knew I meant what I said. No fun at all. For quite some time I had been planning an afternoon like this – one where I could pick the fruit in my garden by myself in order to prepare a tray of five fruits (including bananas, oranges, kumquats, pomelos and lemons) and place it on the altar to welcome Tet, according to tradition. An afternoon like this represented the joy and happiness I had waited for for quite a long time. I was both nervous and scared. This was my first five-fruits tray of the year. Year in and year out, it was always the same – I was the person always in charge of preparing our tray to welcome the Lunar New Year. If I did not want to do it for some reason and asked my wife to do it for me, she would cast a sidelong glance at me, saying: "No, I can’t! This is man’s job, you know." No, this year’s fruit tray would be different from those in previous years. I would call it the five-fruit tray of a man’s life. Every story needs a head and a tail – a beginning and an end. My village was once called Thao Dien. There were low-lying fields with sedge and other types of grasses growing wild, taking up even more land than the rice plants. In this region, there were water-logged fields year round, but our village was lucky because it lay on top of a diamond-shaped mound, a bit higher than the other villages. And so the village got another name: Con Thoi. For half the year villagers would do everything on a boat; whether it was a wedding ceremony or a funeral, all activities were done on boats. I remembered that when my paternal grandmother died, my father and his brother had to sink her coffin into the water before they could cover her grave with earth. I was admitted to the Communist Youth Union when I was 17. Two years later I was the secretary of the local youth union and two years after that I was promoted as the leader of the communal militia unit. I was up to my eyes in work and I had little time to leave the village, except for once on a trip to Lao Cai in the northwest of the country. I also travelled another time to Tay Nguyen (the Central Highlands) to look for the remains of fallen comrades, who had given their lives during the war. The leaders of the locality were always as busy as bees. We worked hard but could never find a way to help the locals rise out of poverty. We all waited for the water to recede so we could increase our agricultural production, either by selecting short-term good-quality seeds or by planting sweet potatoes between rice crops to make full use of the soil. However, there were also some conflicting ideas concerning the development of production in the village. Some leaders held that we should develop a market where some specialty restaurants could open. Some others believed capital should be mobilised among the locals so that we could develop farms in the mountainous area. But the final product of these plans was corruption and social ills. All the local war veterans had fought hard against these things. Fortunately while we were suffering from really hard times a man leading groups of scientists to the village named Professor Truong visited. They arrived with an introduction letter from the district leader. At that time I was vice-chairman of the communal People’s Committee in charge of agricultural production, militia, police and family planning. "I’ve been here several times as a traveler. I took a close look at the land in this region and chose your water-logged land to help make you rich. I am the only person who can tell you this. Whether it is successful or not depends on you," he said. At that time I was confused. I couldn’t tell what he meant. But on his first day in the village he asked me to take him to the thatched hut that was owned by the leader of our village, a war veteran named Han. "I just saw the picture of a five-fruit tray on your altar. You know, after only a few years you’ll have a real tray of five fruits directly from your garden; you won’t need to go anywhere to buy these fruits," he said. "What? What are you talking about? You’re talking about a miracle, you know. How could I have such a garden here, on this land?" I replied. "Your garden is right there," he said, pointing out over that vast water-logged rice field. Then he started to tell me how. Yes, it really was a miracle. For generations, our ancestors could never have thought of it. He went on to ask me if my family had the guts to alter some of our rice fields that were on higher ground – to take several thousand sq. metres of this water-logged land and turn it into a fish pond and an orchard, with a two-crop rice field and a lot of pigs and ducks. Then he said that one day I would rip that picture of a five-fruit tray off the wall and pick fresh fruit from my own garden. I would be able to put them on the altar to worship my ancestors and set a good example for the villagers. That was how the story began. What he told us to do was this: On this water-logged land, we should wait until the water receded and then dig a pond in its centre to hold the water. The earth we dug up should be used to form an embankment around the entire field and to serve as a garden. In the middle should be a rice field. It would be hard work, but we would have a terraced field – the top would be used as a garden, the middle as a rice field (a two-crop rice field at that because water flow could be regulated), and the bottom would be a pond where to fish. As far as the garden was concerned, it was necessary to improve the soil so that it could support fruit trees intermingled with assorted beans, peas and vegetables. "Can you imagine it now?" Professor Truong asked me. "If you have any planting techniques, you should fertilize the soil and grow a grove of bananas, some papaya trees, lemon trees, watermelons and so on. With all this hard labour, do you think you could produce enough fruit for the five-fruit tray to welcome Tet and to report to your ancestors within the first year?" Listening to him, I was mesmerised. I made a report to the local Party Committee and then launched a training course with lecturers from the Ha Noi Eco-Economic Institute. Han was the first to volunteer to alter his rice field as a test. For my part, I had a brighter idea: the top part of the land would serve as a pig sty, then fruit trees would be planted, then a pond to raise fish and ducks with a rice field surrounding so that we could grow two, even three, crops a year. On the banks of the pond, I secured some concrete poles to make a trellis for gourds and pumpkins. Immediately I dug a pond that first year and Professor Truong came and gave me five pomelo trees as a gift. Eventually my garden was able to yield five, even seven, types of fruit for my Lunar New Year fruit tray. Even now it’s hard to imagine how I could afford not to have such a garden at my house. Years before, it was only in my dreams. For that first crop, I could hardly wait for the first harvest of pomelos for my tray. I waited until dawn, then took a garden knife and cut down a bunch of ripe bananas. This reminded me of my grandmother, because when she was alive, every year at Tet she had gone to the market and bought a handful of ripe bananas. Then I picked a pomelo to remember my grandfather, who had always dreamt of having a pomelo tree in front of his house. I continued to pick kumquats from the dozens of trees in my garden for my father. When father was still alive, he had always gone to the market to buy a kumquat tree. I was about to pick some apples when Han shouted from the lane: "No need to pick any apples. I have a giant branch of apples for you here." "Thank you. Let me pick you some star fruit. This is a very special star fruit tree from Gia Lam I got when attending a meeting at the Ha Noi Eco-Economic Institute a few days ago." The basket was so laden with fruit I carried it with great difficulty into the house. Then I ripped the picture of a five-fruit tray off the wall. I carried a tray to the altar and lay the handful of bananas in the middle, and arranged and decorated the other fruit around the bananas. I wanted to cry with joy and happiness. Postscript: One detail I wanted you to know, readers. I missed a telephone call one day. It was a call from Professor Truong. I immediately called him back at home. A voice on the other end replied that he had been dead for two years. I was moved and dumbfounded after hearing the news. Professor Truong, a scientist, had helped I and my villagers escape from poverty. Our gratitude to him was so great that we intended to go and express our sincere thanks to him, but he was no longer alive. It was a great loss to the peasants, who had followed his instructions to get rich; it was then we knew we would make it. Translated by Manh Chuong Nguồn: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/
Related Items:
|
