Thephong by Thephong, the writer the work & the life - autobiography / The phong - 2

Thephong by Thephong..., autobiography
dai nam van hien books, saigon 1972


                          Thephong by Thephong:;
                       the writer, the work & the life
                                       autobiography by Thephong

        
                                                    CHAPTER ONE


    The French Army suffered an ignominious defeat in Nghĩa lộ on October 16, 1952.  They were driven out of the area completely by the Resistance forces.  I had received no news from my mother in  Làng Bữu since.  Two years previously I came to Hanoi.  Then, I was in the Fourth Form and I began writing.   One day, I came to the Cathedral to look the coffin of  Major Giradin, killed at Nghĩa lộ.  On my way home I became thoughtful.  I felt little pity for Giradin, but the sight of his coffin reminded me of my native village.  He was the son of a commander of the unit stationed in Nghĩa lộ.

    Giradin's mother was a Thai woman.  After an exile which lasted many years, he returned to Nghĩa lộ, but did not recognize her.  At his death, the Nghĩa lộ and felt  not pity for him on the ground he was an ungrateful son.  As for me, I deeply loved my mother.  When I had no connection with her I was sad as if I were maimed.  Memory after memory came to my mind.  I was the third son in  a family of five children and the only who survived.   My father used to beat me when I was a child.  Being very active, I got into the habit of chasing hens and ducks on the farm.  Once my body was covered with stractches caused by thorns.  My mother told me she should die if I did not stop because she knew I was not afraid of being flogged.  Though I loved her well I could not help playing.  And my mother wept. I felt remorse and went to bed beside her.  I did no have dinner I slept till daybreak.   As a man, I still thought that I could not live far from my mother.  In 1946 when the Expeditionary French Army came to Làng Bữu the Việt Minh arrested my father.  They feared my father might be forced into the French camp; Alexandrie's  army moved to China on March 9, 1945 and seized Thái country as a military base.  In those days, I learned plouging and planting  seeds in paddies. Some time later, I occasionally served as an interpretor to the post chief; I did not remember whether he was Lt Logier or Lt Defoly.  The French officers liked me  well.  But he who helped me well into middle life was Lt Henri Guilleminot.  On the occasion when he returned to France for vacation, he persuaded my mother to let me go with him.  My mother turned down when the offer as I was her only child.   When he came to Vietnam for the second time, Henri Guilleminot had been promoted Captain.  He came to see me in Hanoi. He used to write to me,  urging me to study hard and become a good Vietnamese citizen.  He sent me  a cash present of one or two thousand piasters during two or three years; the peculiarity was that the money was enclosed in ordinary mail.  The day I flew to South Vietnam, he was reported the battle of Điện biên phủ; I still remembered that he mentioned second-lieutenant Raymond Maikowack in one of his letters; a Corsian warrant officer in the Third Company.  After Guilleminot was a prisoner at Điện biên phủ, he was transferred to the Vietnamese Army and he took command of the Training Center at Sông Lũy [Central of Vietnam] from 1955 to 1956.

   After reading the book  Les rescapés de l' Enfer wherein author Bornett mentioned Henri Guilleminot, I came to see him in Sông Lũy.  We spent a happy time with nostalgic memories.   I always brought with me the unfinished novel   The Wounded Soldier * .  Every day I came to Chàm Pagoda with a rifle, and sat writing there.  In the afternoon
 I swam in the Lũy River.  In 1957, Henri Guilleminot came back to France and from then on.  I had received no news whatever from him.  I wrote a story relating ou stay at Làng Bữu, which I titled The Soldier form Casablanca .**
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* Người thương  binh liên khu   ** Người lính Casablanca [TR]

    When I  came to Hanoi for study, I had to earn my living.  I faced hunger for the first time.  This completely killed whatever enthusiasm I had for my student career.  I was all the more sad  those around me were rich and happy.  In my despair I planned to write many novels.  Some friends of mine ill - treated me.  Disappointments stared me in the face and I saw not one ray of hope on the horizon.   I then decided to go to Saigon.  Nguyễn thế Hiển was my only close friend in those days.  The Theater of Hanoi had to big verandahs, so I came there to sleep after wandering nights.   In a joking voice Hiển said, ' You'll philosophize like a real tramp'.  Some other people including Khải, the son of a stuff-dealer in Hàng Đào St, gave me money.  I was ready to come to Saigon shortly before the 1954 Exodus when I had one thousand piasters in my pocket, and the love of adventure in my young heart.  I refused to complain of my hardships, nevertheless, it is not easy at all to forget bitter experiences in the school of life.  The seemingly endless line of words as long as the national highway depicting those days in found in my first page I put the following sentence:' Kropotkin said ' My only heritage is myself '. I am so pleased I want to use this as the introduction to the autobiography dedicated to the two persons whowere all the world to me :  ' Mother and You ' .

    I was born at Yên bái on July 10, 1932.  My mother related that I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper even at an early age.  She had to stay in the hospital for three long weeks when the province was ravaged by the  biggest flood ever,  My mother was very soft on me.  Unlike her. my father used to beat me.  I accompanied him to his various teaching posts Động lâm, Hiền lương, Đại lịch ... I was aged ten when I came out the first rank in the primary school examination held at Đại lịch . I was  love-starved boy, my sexual instinct developing very early.

    While I lived on the farm, I loved Hoàng thị Hải. After  school, we returned home on the same road.   I still remembered the day I managed to get the first love letter into her hands. I thought out a trick as I was not bold enough to hand it to her.   I hid behind a bush after leaving the letter on the road.  A boy happened to go past there and picked it up.  Hải and I had a violent quarrel.  Later on, I wrote in her exerise- book three words
 ' Je vous aime' . Being two classes my junior, she did not know what they meant.   She asked the teacher about it.   A young man whose heart I did not capture.  So, he related the whole thing to the principal, my father.  I was whipped and had to kneel down for two hours.

    Afterwards we really fell in love with one another.  Recalling the incident, Hải used to laugh and wonder why I did not write the three words in Thái or Vietnamese. In golden afternoons frequent in North Vietnam, we walked  along the road; she sometimes collected moss and  caught fish in the stream, we also lay side by side in the buffalo keeper's cottage.  I would never forget the times we played hide-and-seek in the abandoned house at Khe  Phưa . The owners of the house,  young couple, had left following their child's  death because they thought it was haunted. We lived together until the Great Day *.  I lost her when the French Army invaded Làng Bữu.
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* 1945 Revolution .

     My second sweetheart was Quán, a Thái woman.  Her husband was a partisan. She did not like him as she was forced to marry him after she was taken in an operation.  I loved her until the day I came to Hanoi to further my studies.  I had no time to say her goodbye; so, I came to the riverside left my footprint on the sand and told myself that it was my love-token.  When I was aboard the plane, I suddenly caught sight of her. I felt so sad ! My mother  and adoptive mother were angry at my loving her. [ I should not love a married woman as there other girls, they thought.]

    During my stay  in Hanoi, I loved miss Đặng thị Ngọc Oanh, one of my classmates.  She and I were among the best students in French.  Our love lasted for nearly ten years.  As for marriage, I refused to think of it on the ground that her mother was a bar owner. * Later, she got married, then committed suicide but was saved on time, and we met again.  But our wedding never took place.
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*  in Vietnam bar is a sort of night club

    It was because of Oanh that my relation with Cao Mỵ Nhân  became sour.  Before  Mỵ was Linh Bảo. [ I only mentioned my most memorable love-affairs.  Those interested may read my first autobiography ' Looking Back at Midway of Life '].

    Linh Bảo was a  writer six years older than  I.  We wrote to each other in 1957.  This love delighted me most.  Every day, I typed my book A Brief  Glimpse at the Vietnamese literary scene from  1900 - 1956   * and expected  her letter from Hong Kong.  In those days I lived with Lt-writer Văn Quang.  I would have arrived at the thought of suicide, had I not met  Võ thị Diệu  Viên **.  I find this period worth recording, as it is typical of the bitter life common among writers today.   Some time before, I could not pay for allowances and two thousand piasters on cigarettes in my six-month-long stay in Xóm Chùa to write the book.  Poor embroiderers, they could not afford to cook for me  any longer.  And I had to go.  I tore up about two thousand books which  I could no bring with me; they pilled up on the bed.  Although I had suffered much - when I left my aunts' house, came to Hanoi and wrote for dailies People *** and Democracy ****; when  I was a  tramp in Hanoi - I had never been so upset as this time.  A publisher, Mr  Lê văn Thoan agreed to pay fifteen thousand piasters for three thousand copies of the first edition of my book.  I got five thousand when we signed the contract.  For some unknown reason, he gave up the project.
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*        Tổng luận 60 năm văn nghệ Việtnam 1900-1956 [tập 4]
**       Võ thị  Diệu Viên is the real name of Linh  Bảo 
***      nhật báo Thân dân
****    nhật báo Dân chủ

     I had the habit to sleep soundly as soon as I lay down and to get up very  early.  But in those days, I could not sleep well at night and  woke up very late.  I began taking throughtful looks back over my shoulders. My father always asked me to  get up to   pratice gym.  I hated him because this.  By the time I was ten or eleven I always took a siesta, and I was never tired of sleep.  When grown up, I wanted to express my gratitude to his advice. He was alas, no more.  I recollect two things about him.

     First, my father was a very good caligrapher, but an unsucessful writer.  I  still remember his nom de plume Vị Nguyên  on a page of his diary.   And I regret his not knowing that I have followed in his footsteps in a most glorious way.  Second, a painful incident which might have cost my own life.  In Làng Bữu, there was a stream. Swollen with the long rains;  its water was turbulent the day when my father ordered me to go by opium for him. There were many servants, but I was the best horse rider and I knew how to choose the right brand of opium.  On the other hand, he had always counted on my bravery; I had to cross the stream.  Standing on one side of the stream, my mother looked at me.  The water made an angry clatter along the rocks.  The horse was completely exhausted near reaching the other bank. The  strong current carried it into  the nearby falls. I tried my best to move to the surface and swam until I reached a half-submerge fallen branch.  My poor  mother witnessed the whole event.  When I brought opium home, I hoped my father would show some concern about me.  But following was his question, ' Do you have opium for me ?'. I nooded, with a heavy heart.  Satisfied, my father took opium , walked in his smoking den,  and said nothing more.  My mother  burst into tears, embraced me, bubling some words of thanks for Buddha'd mercy.  Long after, as a grown-up, I still could not forget this.  I have been betrayed by opium addicts many times since.  And I said to  Hiển , and some other young friends, ' I can forgive any conceivable sin, except addiction to opium.  To an opium-addict who comes short of smoking, his father, mother, child, and sweetheart mean nothing ... even what he likes best of all becomes worthless.  Love, filial piety, conjugal love, and friendship are of  no earthy use in his eyes.  He can even tell lies to his own father; so, in case you are cheated by him, you may find  solace in my own story.  My father asked me about opium instead of the life of his only child'.

    I often  ask myself, ' Is there anyone who fails to notice the hills of poppy when he pays a visit to Nothern Vietnam or Laos in Autumn ?'  He will  surely be shocked at the glamour they bring to wild places and at the same time the dark promise of the harm to come.  The way the beautiful flowers of variegated colours bloom so hotly in the morning, then close in the evening hurts our hearts.  The distillate opium is more harmful than a  A-bomb... In the past century, China had to face a great calamity, the Opium War. Considering this we can figure out its effect on a frail individual like my father.

    Usually, an opum-addict is beset by many complexes.  He stoops when he has not enough opium; he became arrogant when he has plenty of it.  An opium-smoking husband would like his wife to do same thing.  This is why I revered my mother for she had not fallen in this deadly trap even when my family could well afford that.

                                                                  ***

    The morning when I got up late, I always put my hands under the blanket, as I did not want to see familiar faces.  Fortunately, they did not like me either for I had borrowed money from them.  It hurt me badly to see my presence bothering them.  So, every time Mr or Mrs Nụ [the manager of my boarding-house, and my cook in Xóm Chùa, Tân định, Saigon] asked for money .  I wanted to disappear from this earth  Once more, I was compelled to go to may aunt's house in Bà- rịa province.   On the way to Bà-rịa I decided to borrow money from her.  Alas, once in her house, I just could not open my mouth every time I wanted to deal with this touchy matter.  My aunt advised me to stop writing and to be more realistic in life.  She added that she did not want to see me pursuing a miserable career while her life was so easy and happy.   I could not choose but return to Saigon, to the  horrible boarding-house.  I came to Kim Sơn shop to sip iced coffee and felt a bitter sadness.  During those days I met Quách Thoại whom I called ' le poète maudit ' *.  When he died, nobody cared to bury him and medical students studied dissection on his cadaver.   Unable to bear the hyprocritical attitude of his relatives and friends : they did not give him to eat when he  was alive and pronounced heart-rending eulogy upon his death - I wrote a biography of the poet.  Thoại' s elder brother Lý hoàng Phong could not allow such disgrace.  They planned to sue me at law, but at last, they did not.  Instead, they submitted an article of Tự do Daily **, which  was rejected.  After days of hiding, I plucked up courage to come back to the boarding-house and feel the shame induced by my failure to pay for allowances .
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*    In French in the text [TR]
**  Liberty  

    I once came home very late in the night.  Entering the room, I felt myself a prey to melancholy.  After all, my  aunt was right.  Mrs Hưởng, my next door neighboor, raised her voice to  say to me,'  Hello ' .  She added she had reserved for me sugared cereal soup and  sticky rice in the ladder.  Of course, this did me much good.  Her love for me was laying the flattering unction to my soul.

   I came to her bed, feeling so drepressed.  At first, she refused, saying that there was another person by her side.  I told her to tell me the story of her life so that I could later put it down in a book.  She threatened to relate it to her husband whom I took as a brother.  But, this time, I decided not to quit.  I lay down by her side.  And it was  with understandable reluctance that she finally gave up.   At dawn, I heard Mrs  Hưởng talking with Mrs Nụ. That the person who slept with her was a woman chagrined by her husband.  That she had chased her out of the house.  I could not help smiling with myself. Women's behaviour is so unpredictable we can hardly guess anything right about it.  The recession of this tide always leaves a hole in the beach.  The beach likes the hole and still pretends the contrary.

    In the following nights, she told me to come to her bed.

                                                               ***

   I had to come to Bà-rịa once more to borrow money from  my aunt.  But that  time, I came to Vũng tàu first upon the invitation of one of my readers who had took up writing for some time and now ran a beef shop there.  I had decided to try a change  of atmosphere.   I had to wait for  him as T. was busy killing a cow.  In the afternoon, he came to Saigon for a wedding, I was told.  I stayed one more night without seeing him. 
  T. had a brand-new typewriter.  I sat there typing passionately as I had been acquainted with it just a short time.  And I spent the whole evening typing the birth certificate in my pocket.  After that I pulled a drawers and found a sealed envelope with these words : THIS BELONG TO MILLIONAIRE TRẦN HOÀI .   I tore it out of curiosity nd found many 
VN $ notes.  My God, here was the savings of a wound-be millionaire.  Thinking of Mrs Nụ and her husband cruel hint that she did not get my money out of her love for me and the sum of VN$ 2000 still unpaid for drinks taken in Văn Sửu Coffee in Nguyễn văn Sâm St.
 I decided to come back to Saigon immediately with the monet of  Trần Hoài.

   After settling all my debts, I began to fear.   I had taken ten thousand piasters, not a trifling sum. I left my hair uncut so that T. could not recognize me - a thing I later found awfully funny.   I also thought I was hunted as I was ure he had reported to the police.  Some time later, Bông lúa Magazine Office, I received a letter from T.  Half in fun and half in anger, he insisted that he was not Trần Hoài, and the sum was his friend' s.  He believed I had bought a typewriter.  He advised me to sell this typewriter and refund him.   I wrote to him that I admitted I had borrowed money, but I did not give any further information [ Could he imagine that my cloud of debts was caused by the writing of A Brief Glimpse at the Vietnamese litearary scene from 1900 to 1956].  The tone of the letter was that of a detective story with sentence like, ' I' ll find out the guilty, because of finger-prints left'.  Although I felt wretchedly unhappy, I could not help smiling.   One year passed, and one day, I saw him going out of Thanh Thế Restaurant, a very frail and sick man then.  He disclosed that he had been in St Paul  Hospital.  When he asked money, I let him see my contract  with Phạm văn Tươi Publishing House on my book  Prewar Writers *, a volume in my series of Vietnamese literature history.   I would get ten per cent of the price of each copy.  I told him I would meet him once I get money and promised to come to the hospital the following week. But I did not come as I got money at all, the publishing of my book being delayed indefinitely. [ Perhaps because Phạm văn Tươi found that no mention is made of Phạm cao Tùng - his pen name- in my manuscripts].  He translated books for the series Teaching Yourself  books.  When he returned the manuscripts he gave some of his books.  I still remember  the one by Phillipe Giradet, a Frenchman.  Why should I write on him ? He was only a translator.
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* Nhà văn tiền chiến 1930- 1945 [ TR]

   Now Trần Hoài has been the author of one novel, some translations and the publisher of a  Saigon popular literature magazine.  Incidentally, I met him once or twice in a magazine office. We were introduced to one another as follow,' This is Mr Thê Phong and this is Mr Trần phong Giao '.  He shook hands but said no more to each other thereafter than a fozen hello or two.  As for me, I did not forget I owed him a debt.  And I was sure he recognized me in spite of my short hair which I got intentionally.  The introducer certainly felt uneasy, witnessing the coolness from both of us ; so, he emphasized that  Trần phong Giao was a famous writer and at the same time the editor of a ' great' magazine to draw my attention. Did he not know of our secret relation ?

    To return to the above- mentioned sum, I usd it to pay all my debts.  Impressed by my VN$ 500 notes, the landlady let me stay in her house for another six long months without prepaying.  I resumed the writing of my book.  Once again they had to ask for money. And naturally I could not satisfy them.  Before going away, I could only manage to bring with me all the manuscripts by carrying by carrying them little by little. I had to leave behind blankets, mosquito-net, suitcase and clothes. Uyên Thao and I met in this period, and we liked each other well.

   I still had  a lover-affair prior to my departure. There lived in Mrs Nụ' s house the deserted concubine of a soldier.  Miss Năm Châu Đốc teased me but I refused her love. My tangled affair with Mrs Năm Hưởng still caused  acute remorse.  She moved away before I did, and I set out searching her, but in vain.  She had  child with me and all I could do was to buy her a Hepatrol with the money given by a friend for a packet of Philip cigarettes.  Every time I had money, I wanted to meet her and our child. When you read this, do come to see me, my dear child !
    []

                                                                                       [to be continued : chapter two ]

    the phong