THE BICYCLE
I saw the change, the avalanche coming from the peak of the hill while getting larger and destroying everything in its path.
1 - Hi, I am John.
It makes you feel out of time, somehow, as if you have fallen
asleep and woken up in a kind of dreamy lotus-land, where
everyday is the same as the one before. Perhaps that is why
so many people retire to
that they won’t die, because they are a kind of dead already,
just by being here.
David Lodge,
I had put the huge mirror at the back of my bicycle, tied it hard so that it will not fall in the middle of the road and shatter into thousands of tiny pieces to multiply the unpleasant picture of the city. But how could I know that the brakes will be too loose to make me panic? Instead of arriving the landlord’s house to get my deposit back in return to the new mirror, I ended up in this mechanic shop, right at the corner of a busy junction. He easily fixed the brakes but kept telling me that I had to change the brake hoods for more stable ride. I told him that I am leaving the country tomorrow morning and the new owner of the bike must solve the problem. He asked me who will be the new owner. I shrugged my shoulders and waved my hand quickly as if I am screwing a light bulb. He understood my “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” and said “Let me wash it one last time before you sell it”. I said ok believing that it won’t be so costly and my bicycle deserves this last gesture after all it has done for me. For a moment I thought about the new owner of the bicycle. I tried to sell it but no one wanted to buy it so far. I have no more time. I am flying back to my home country tomorrow morning. Either I will dump it to a ditch where scrap metal collectors will find and dismantle it or just leave it on the sidewalk so someone will steal it. If I lock it, then the thieves will steal it piece by piece. Maybe first they will take the front wheel, then the seat, then the crank set, then the chain set, then the pedals… Each piece will live in another bicycle like the organs of a generous old man who donated his body just before giving his last breath.
I looked at my bicycle one more time, untied the mirror, put it on the floor and sat at the corner of the street where the mechanic is running his shabby shop and waited while he washed it. A pretty young girl came to the shop on her motorbike and sat on a dirty-looking chair. She was just beside my mirror so I could not take my eyes off both of them. Her tight jeans were giving a generous outlook together with her five-fingered pink socks and high-heel shoes. For a moment she seemed like a sparkling pearl in a filthy oyster. The walls were greasy, the floor was all black. And there she was sitting like a beauty queen, waiting for her motorbike to get ready. At that moment I realized that how it will be fun if I smile to her and ask her for a dinner on my last night. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to her. It wouldn’t be fair to me either. I am leaving this place tomorrow and the last thing I need is an attachment. I turned my face straight to the mirror and tried to ignore her existence. Soon watching the traffic on the surface of the mirror and remembering my past eleven years in this country made me forget everything about her, about the shop and about my irresistible desires.
If I had another life, would I also have messed it up like the existing one? Surely if I knew that I am going to be given another chance, I would be wasting this one for the sake of the second one or if it is possible, for the third or the fourth one. None would be so different from this one, I believe. What I am missing at this desperate sequence of disappointments is actually not unique to me. Volunteer dementia is a common disease among young people of my generation, forgetting past as if it did not happen, ignoring the future as if it will never come. “Carpe Diem” was the motto of my youth, the people who share the same lifestyle with me in this country. I did! I seized the day, I seized almost every day of my life! But now, one day before I leave this tropical place, the hidden truth, the reality which I did not want to see during my last eleven years of stay in
As soon as I arrive home, torture will start, the anxiety of being lost in all those years will settle in my heart like a handful ashes cover the surface of expensive jewelry, making them look like useless metal pieces. It will look like I have been to nowhere for all these eleven years. My sisters will think that one day I left home to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned home for the last eleven years. They will think that I was unreachable, uncontactable or even unwanted… Their lives turned stages like marriages, pregnancies, births and deaths. Mine was frozen! Not one step forward, not one step back! Like a wreckage of a ship at the middle of
Here everyday is the same, like we are in heaven and God gave us elixir of eternal sunlight together with cheap beer and wine. Life here does not have the rhythm of life I left years ago. Here it is an endless vacation as if we are given a special deal of timeless life. If Omer Khayyam lived in this century, he would love to be a Western man in
Look at this traffic, the cars and motorbikes are like a sequence of ants, unstoppable flow of living creatures. Babies on the motorbikes, whose bodies are tied to their mother’s belly, may not know the chaos they are in right now but since they will grow up in this chaos, for them this will be the only way of living, the only way of driving. The young boys driving their motorbikes with deadly kamikaze attitude make everything scarier. The young girls whose whole bodies are covered by gloves, masks and sunglasses –ironically, sometimes not the cracks of their asses- can give an impression that the sunlight is the only enemy in this country. However, all these secondary precautions make them not to see the real danger, the chaos which emerges from people’s ignorance of the rules. Everybody on the road moves with the same instinct: “go forward” and “do not look back unless you hear a big noise”. Instead of standard traffic rules, most of the people use “eye contact” and “body language” in traffic. In a country where everybody drives slowly, there is no need for helmets or side-view mirrors. The first and the only rule is freedom. Once you have the motorbike, you are free and anything tries to regulate your mobility is an enemy. There is no another rule as far as I know. If there is, then either the rules are not clear enough to make sure everybody understands or most do not care about them because there is no one to catch them for the violation. When the traffic gets stuck, then motorbikes and bicycles flood the sidewalks, like a river which gets angry when its bed is disturbed by the people.
There is no right or wrong on these roads. Here is an accident right now, as I waited. A minivan crashed into a motorbike. The motorbike driver is being taken to a nearby hospital by his friends. Minivan’s driver is waiting for the police. There is a fight going on between the friends of the unlucky motorbike driver and the furious, probably a bit scared van driver. Whoever shouts more wins the battle. Normally motorbike drivers are the victims because of their poor-looking clothes and their almost non-existent voices compared to car drivers. But this time the victim’s friends do not give up. A pregnant woman screams and cries as if this is the end of the world for her. Some other women try to calm her. The situation does not seem to go anywhere. So many shouts, screams and cries scatter to the sky at the same time like an unorganized orchestra. The result is predictably unbearable. They all wait for the police who will come and evaluate the accident, find the guilty side and if possibly fine him.
I look at the road to understand whose mistake caused the accident. It seems that motorbike was making a left turn where he is not supposed to make. But also same thing can be said for the van as well because it was passing to the right-end lane without giving any sign. None of the traffic lights indicate ‘left turn’ as a part of their regular flashes. In fact, as far as I know there is no ‘left turn’ in the entire city. Therefore it is the discretion of the drivers when and how they will make a left turn. The law says lesser-power motorized vehicles must yield to higher powered ones. This automatically makes motorbike driver guilty for not yielding to the van. But there is another problem as well: Since the road has three different separated lanes (One small lane for motorbikes and bicycles, and the other two lanes are for rich drivers with luxury cars. A luxury car can enter motorbike lane to take or leave passenger but if a motorbike occupies the other lane, the police will fine the driver), it is hard to decide which lane the driver is going to choose for the one who wants to know the path of the car in front of him. So then it depends on people’s instincts, their personal choices, their driving skills and the amount of compromise they want to give. When neither of two gives up their right of going first, we see the inevitable end…
Accidents occur on this junction like little fights emerges in children’s games with an inconsistent set of rules. Rules are loose and children cannot figure out the clear difference between obeying the rule and following the tradition. Maybe they shouldn’t! Only this way they can keep their innocence, their pureness. Whenever they initiate rules like adults, then they become like adults. They get angry, form teams to fight, have weapons to hurt each other. Like those in “Lord of the Flies”, they even kill each other. But here in this city, almost all drivers behave like children. What else can explain the flow of motorbikes with thousands of honks at the same time as if all have some sort of sound detectors behind their heads? How can we understand the drivers who swirl around the pedestrians on crossings instead of slowing down or even stopping? Is there any logical explanation for the three separated lanes in a large road, of which only one is used efficiently by the motorbikes and the rest are given to speed crazy truck drivers? I have even seen two red Ferraris roaring for a green light on to start their one kilometer race on this so-called highway…
I sometimes enjoy watching this chaos from the window of my small apartment, making silly forecasts on different cases and entertain myself with these people’s struggles. I do it because I love it. Otherwise how could I live in this country for eleven years? I came to
Back in that time there were few foreigners on these streets so it was not so difficult to find a teaching job at a small school near the hotel I stayed. Then my repetitive days started. Everyday was the same as previous one but as long as there is no suffering in it, then why not to repeat. Don’t we all like sex even though it is almost the same thing? How many different combinations of pleasures can a man create in the bed? I bet it is limited but even though it is limited, he still does it because it is fun. My repetitive days were exactly like this. The days were inside the four walls, making money for the prospective evening funs. I had no concept of saving money in my first seven years so what I earned was spent on drinks and girls. Days were boring because it needs to pass with the yearning for the darkness. If not teaching, I usually spent my days at my room, sleeping, watching TV or reading. Once darkness settles then I am out, like a bat which enjoys flying swiftly in the dark without hurting itself or anybody else. I had a couple of friends, sharing similar destinies with me. I met them in the evenings, drank until the secrets of our past pour at the middle of the table like the beer spilled from the tumbled glass and broke everybody’s heart in the bar.
The more I stayed here the more I got used to the frozen reality of time. It was not there any more! I was living days for the sake of completing them with a nice ending. Like a man stuck under the snow and waiting the end of the day for the rescuers come and save him. It was all about time! The final moments of the day were the most important parts. At the beginning I had great troubles to get girls to my bed but soon I learnt a bit of the language and local customs, then it was time to pick the flowers. There are good and bad girls, like anywhere else in the world… Most of the bad girls are prostitutes who look for dollars. However I am only interested in the bad girls if they are not prostitutes. From the beginning I despised the idea of paying for sex, paying for pleasure which flows only at one direction. I hate it not because the girls are ugly or wearing heavy make-up. No, they might be beautiful too! But I cannot get the point to have a prostitute who will entertain anyone –young, old, fat, thin, healthy, sick, clever, idiot etc…- as long as the man pays the money she wants. What I wanted was the cosensuality, to give as much as I take. I did not want to masturbate with the help of a poor girl who needs money for either for her little brother’s education or for the sick buffalo at her village. Most of my friends go with prostitutes whenever they have chance. The stories I hear from them after their quick funs are sometimes beyond belief. They talk about their performances as if they talk about an animal which has no soul, no ability to think or judge, no skills to love but only to massage particular parts of their bodies. I sometimes thought that what if these guys stayed at home and just masturbated by using their loyal hands! Wouldn’t it be the same thing? Since in both ways, there is only one person having fun.
I cannot tell how many girls I have been with but I can remember their stories one by one. The girls with the names including only three letters, the girl who studies medicine but still amazed with the hardness of erected penis, the ugly girl who speaks some English and uses it only to get handsome foreigners to a cheap hotel room, the young lady who wears blue shoes and dancing at the middle of the bar, feeling guilty of kissing a married man and going with a young one –me- to compensate, the little young bourgeoise who likes to dominate everybody and everything around herself, the girl from garment factory whose only fantasy was being spanked while having sex... In fact my last relationship after breaking up with my girlfriend Thi was with a married woman who needed only one thing from me. Actually I should not call it a relationship. It was a set of mechanical repetitions of certain movements which never had chance to turn to a real relationship. Even when I was closest to this woman I was thinking of driving Thi’s motorbike in the narrow streets of the city, feeling Thi’s hands over my laps, her soft breasts on my back. Thi’s face or the love she felt for me was my rescuer at the moment I knew that I was doing something wrong. Unfortunately it was not strong enough to keep me away from doing wrong things repetitively…
I met Ngoc in a phone shop when I wanted to buy a new phone for myself. She was the manager and apparently the only one understanding what kind of telephone I wanted to buy. She was unusually tall and despite her age she was still looking good. When I looked at her deeply I saw something more than a married woman’s experienced face. She was cunningly beautiful and too good to be true, she was full of desire. I bought the phone, somehow we exchanged telephone numbers and the same evening she called me to ask if my phone was ok. From that moment I understood that it is the beginning of something new, something open to discovery or something open to misery as it happens in many occasions. She kept calling me in next days to ask how I was, what my job was, how old I was etc… Then one day we met at a large seafood restaurant where you can park your motorbike inside the restaurant and the fish at the front door looking at their future consumers.
Her story was believable and I was not stupid not to understand her expectations from me. She was married for eight years with a loving husband and a 6 years old son. Her husband has a great business of selling mobile phones in different parts of the city. She is managing one of the shops that her husband owns. They have a happy marriage life except for one thing. Her husband had diabetics a few years ago and after starting the treatment, he lost his sexual power completely. He cannot do anything with his penis so for the sake of her wife’s satisfaction; he used his finger. But this wasn’t enough for her. After one year or so with the finger of her husband, she started to seek for something more practical –bigger as well as she says and smirks- . She bought a dildo from an online shop and asked her husband to use it on her. But her husband rejected helping her because he thought that a machine cannot be better than his fingers and she insults him by asking such a thing. Brokenhearted and disappointed, she lost her hope in dildo as well then she started seeking for something real, a real man with flesh and bones. A real man who have a functioning penis! That is how she saw me! I was a giant erect penis to fulfill her dreams, to take her to over the clouds and to make her feel like she is a real woman whose freedom can be penetrated by an organ which can erupt at the end as a result of excitement. That is what she wanted: the contraction, the change in size, the eruption, the exhaustion…
Days later, after having a lunch at the same restaurant third time, she invited me to her hidden apartment which she rented by herself just for having fun. It is hard to forget that afternoon because of the secrets it carries. Don’t we all remember the moments we lived but we cannot tell anyone? She parked her motorbike in front of the apartment where the guards sitting beside and play cards. Then she turned her motorbike 180 degrees so that the front side will look at the street. I did not ask her why she did this but it wasn’t difficult to figure out anyway. She was a married woman and does not want to be seen by one of her customers or friends. And also until we entered to the building she did not take off her gangster mask and helmet. These little cautions also made me feel that what I am going to do in a few minutes is actually quite against the social norms. To have relationship with a married woman is not my preference. However I thought it from another perspective. It is all how economy works: Demand versus Supply. She needs something and I have what she needs. If she can also give me what I need from her, then the exchange must be moral. Everybody is happy, including the ill husband who is not aware of this insulting behavior because his wife will be happier and will cause less trouble for him. As long as he does not know what we have done, our act does not hurt anyone. Then it is ethical…
Proud of my own self-justification, we went up to the stairs. Her shoes were clapping in each step she takes and I was trying to stay away from her, fearing that someone might see us that close. We were like two strangers, climbing the stairs to go to different apartments, to have different destinies. We did not look like a couple but we did not look like to separate universes either. There was something illicit in our steps, something to hide from all the residents of the world. Each step she takes was a hammer on my head, nailing the guilt to my mind despite my humble thoughts of ethics. Stairs were unusually long, like a never-ending labyrinth which aims to take our last breath from us and in return gives only the tears and fatigue. Her apartment was in the fourth floor but climbing these four floors was one of the longest journeys I have ever made. I did not understand what made me so anxious about the situation. I have done the same thing many times with many other girls. Of course, all of them were younger than me and all were single. But this time, it was different. It was like stealing a precious stone from someone and claiming that it is yours because the owner did not take care of it well. But he tried, he wanted to help her, he wanted to satisfy her in any way he can. Just because he is sick, does he deserve this? I felt a sharp pain in my stomach but could not decide whether it is from the fish I just ate or the guilt settling on my soul. When we arrived to her door, I was almost getting back but she assured me that everything is going to be alright. I should not worry too much. It is just for fun and she needs it after two years of abstinence. I nodded silently without saying a word as if any word I will use will make me wrong. Then she opened the door, the sunlight attacked my eyes like a wild animal asking me not to do what I am going to do soon. I pulled the curtains to stop the scream and sat on the dusty chair.
She said “Don’t sit! I don’t have time” To my surprise, she clutched my hand and dragged me to the bed. I was like an animal taken to the slaughterhouse. I was not ready yet, not horny, not even desireful, still busy with the grumbling in my belly! But she wanted me to act on her as if I am a sex machine with a button to turn on or off. While she was taking me to bed I tried to catch a glimpse in her eyes to check whether it is pure lust or it is something from her story. I could not read anything on her face. It wasn’t like any other woman’s face I have seen before. No cheer, no excitement, no desire! I sat on the bed and tried to make her relax. She commanded, “Take off your clothes! Hurry up!”. Then she started taking her own clothes off. Within one minute, we were both nude on the bed.
At the beginning I still believed that I could do this for her even though I may not enjoy a second of it. But then her rules got more rigid: Do not touch me, do not kiss me, do not fondle any part of my body… All these things can be done by her husband so I am not supposed to enter those areas which are covered by her dear husband. My duty was only to penetrate her body with my manhood. I wanted to reject her but did not know how to say it. At the end, I did what she asked me to do and entered her body. Normally this happens like a fish jumps out from a small aquarium to dive into the ocean. The freedom spreads my body and I swim in cool water for as long as I can. But ours was difficult since we did not prepare for it. I was fully erect but she needed to get excited more to take me inside her without having any pain. When I said this, she said “No, just do it! Don’t worry about me” For me, to enter a woman’s body means to touch the points inside her body which she cannot touch by herself. It has a secret meaning like conquering a land which is ready to accept me without any additional treaty. In this case, it was painful like I was having a resistance which might come from either from her body or from my mind. I had the burning feeling on my penis for a few seconds and later the sensation eased a bit but did not stop entirely. I did not know what she felt but I imagined that she must be suffering more than I was.
I looked at her face for a second. She seemed happy and content. Her eyes were closed as if she does not want to see how I am struggling on her body like a wounded bird in the rain. Her face was shining with the dim light coming through the curtain. A light breeze was helping the little flowers to dance in front of the window. I asked her to change our position so that I can avoid the possible cramp but she rejected by shaking her head to both sides. Then I continued my duty, she continued her dead silence. The voice of two young girls hanging clothes on the roof of the building was coming inside the room like they are more real than us. We were puppets, dangling at the end of the ropes, controlled by no one in the air. Their laughter was made me even more worried as if they were watching us. I kept moving on her body but somehow I felt that the power was leaving my muscles. Then I discharged quietly, like the rain outside, without much trembling, without any extra feeling to masturbation. She looked at my face to ask if I wanted to do it again. I wanted to say, “never, never with you again”. But I did not want to hurt her feelings. I wanted to leave this place without giving her a wrong impression about me. I said “Of course, I want but I don’t feel so well. I guess the food was a bit heavy for me”. She nodded, stood up on the bed and get dressed. A few minutes later she was ready to leave. I lay on the bed, under a thin bed sheet, pretending I am not feeling well in my stomach, actually feeling like a dirty cockroach. She gave me the apartment’s key and asked me to return it to the reception when I am ready to leave. She left the room without giving me a good bye kiss. But she said “You have a gorgeous cock!”, looking at down there and smiling with a witty face. At the moment I realized that she does the same thing with many men just to get what she wants. This room must be the house of many other victims. Maybe they weren’t like me and they really enjoyed what they did. She comes and goes like a lightening before the rain, leaving only regret behind, bringing fear and excitement to the lonely hearts. After she left the place, the same silence occupied the room, this time wilder and stronger. At the end I was in someone else’s room with a troubled mind and sick stomach. I felt like I am in a vacuum which is ready to take me and turn me to nothing. I thought about the disgusting thing I have just done. Did I do it for her? For myself? For the proud of being a man? For listening to the demand of my little organ? It seemed no one was happy after my decision…
That was the last time I had sex with a woman in this country. Then I could not overcome the embarrassment I took on myself. I wasn’t even sure that I was the victim or I was the guilty one. Under the bed sheet, I felt like I was a hunter who just shot a wounded deer and caused big trouble for its newborn cubs. After I left the apartment that evening, I never answered her calls, never replied her messages. I threw away my telephone together with its sim card and decided to leave this country. I realized that I have done everything I can to keep me sane but if I continue living here, I will never be able to have an ordinary life again, the life I consider as decent, responsible, away from self-justifications. Then here I am, after struggling to sell my dear bicycle for two weeks, still at the same point. The mechanic guy is smiling with his yellow teeth saying that the bike is ready. I paid him a bit more than what he asked me and put the mirror at the back. Now it is time to find a person to sell this bike or give it to someone who needs it. It seems the police will never arrive to this junction to evaluate the accident. The friends of unlucky motorbike driver and van driver are still arguing, throwing a yellow helmet which carries a peace sign on it to each other and swinging their fists in the air. I pass beside them without looking at the known picture of this city but I know the mirror behind me records everything happens on these roads. The girls with gangster masks closing their faces and the little boys riding bicycles to race with motorbikes are all looking at my mirror to see themselves, to see their own movie, to see the life as it is. The young couples hugging and kissing each other in the privacy provided by their motorbikes are shy to realize that motorbikes do not cover their delicate bodies and as a result deny the existence of the mirror like the king in the story “The Emperor is Naked”. I slowly drive my bicycle until I see a boy crying beside the road. I stop and ask him “why” with an expectation that I might actually help him…
2 – Xin Chao – Toi
But the gestures and the stances of the mannequins that he bought and displayed so much resembled the customers and the crowd that flowed by his store window, they were so ordinary, so real and so much “of us,” that nobody paid them any attention. Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book, 57
My stupid brother lost his bicycle again. This is the second bicycle he has lost within one year! What an idiot! I told him many times to take good care of it, lock it whenever you park and do not give it to your friends. Now he is afraid to say it to our father. He wants me to be his envoy. When he has no one to go he remembers his sister because he knows I will never break his heart. I said ok then what? How can we find the bicycle? It is the needle dropped in the bushes! We went to the police station, described the bicycle and gave them our house phone number. They said they will call us when they get a clue. I don’t think it is possible to get it back anyway. There are millions of bicycles in this country. And most of them look like the one my little brother had. Even John, my ex-boyfriend had one bicycle. I have never seen it because when we met he usually left his bicycle at home so that he could drive my motorbike in the city. Now I am wondering how the police will locate the thief and find the bicycle before it is resold to someone else or dismantled in a scrap metal shop. There is no real point in trying all this but anyway if our father asks us then at least we can tell him we have done our best. He works hard to make our life better and the worst thing we can do for him is not to appreciate his efforts, to ignore his care, not to pay enough attention to the things he gave us. After leaving the police station I told my brother to go home so I came to this internet café to chat with “Trai xa xu”.
He is my new friend. I met him on one of the many online dating web sites. In these days, meeting through web sites is more common among youth because there is less chance of missing the target. You know what he likes, what he looks like, what he does. If you want to meet a man who is at least
After breaking up with John, my heart became impenetrable vacuum for any man. Now I know it is hard to believe what men say and what men think are the same things. Mostly men say things that their lovers might like to hear. But this dream cannot continue indefinitely. Sooner or later the truth spreads like the tea in the bag emits into hot water when a little shake disturbs the delicate balance of the glass. I really loved John, wanted to be with him forever, wanted him to love me by the same way but he was a disturbed man. I tried hard to win him but the more I tried the more he felt irritated with my care and attention. At the end I lost him. He was sophisticated like women who know what they want from men. “Every woman is a map and every map requires time to be understood.” he used to say with a smirk on his thin lips as if he is telling a truth which is not known to many others. Then he used to add “but no map needs more than four colors!” I knew his four colors and I wanted to have all of them to make him happy. Blue for freedom, yellow for loyalty, white for innocence and red for charm were his combination of a good map. In fact, Thi of today is very different from Thi of a few years ago. I can easily admit that John’s contribution is undeniable in creating today’s Thi. I definitely became more feminine, more cheerful, more desireful for my own freedom and more mindful about myself. He made me a different person with his liberal thoughts. I now feel like I know what I want in this life and I know what I will do next. He taught me being free from watchful eyes of my parents and also showed me how I should stand alone, strong and stiff.
I sat in front of the computer. “Trai xa xu” has sent a message, saying he will be online at 5 pm. There is also one surprise e-mail from John with a title of “Good bye
Anyway, he has gone and will never come back. So I should not think about him any more. But then why am I still remembering his name, thinking about him, talking with him in my dreams, feeling that he is watching me and laughing at my childish absurdities, keeping the things he gave me in a special blue box? It is like a tooth has been extracted from my mouth and my tongue keeps penetrating the gap between two other teeth. Digging the wound more and more to torture myself will only cause infection and infections heal hard…Why is it so difficult to bury a dead love for a girl like me? Is it because there is not a new one yet? But is it possible to have a new one while the disturbing ghost of previous one is around? Can Trai Xa Xu replace John; can he kiss me like John did, can he hug me like John used to do with his large arms? I don’t know any of these yet. What I know is John was my first love and now I wonder how it feels making love in Vietnamese, in my native language. Isn’t it strange? I am more afraid of loving someone who speaks my language, who knows my culture, who understands and does not blame my people’s way of life. Because then I will be naked in front of him all the time. He will know the reasons behind all my behaviors and there will be nothing to hide.
After John, I think I still don’t know what I am looking for. Maybe I still love John; maybe I can still forgive him for leaving me. But can I forgive him for having an ugly affair with a married woman? No I cannot! He cannot be the same John any more! John I knew cannot be this guy, sneaking in someone’s apartment just to have sex and leaving the place like a thief… Something must be wrong with him. Today he e-mailed me not to say “good bye” but to check whether or not I still answer his messages. No, I will not reply his message because if I do, he will think I still care for him. Not answering a man’s message can be the worst possible torture for that man. Fortunately I am mature enough to understand this. It is like leaving a person alone at the middle of a desert where the nature behaves as a labyrinth for him.
This internet shop is new. The owner knows why the young people come to his shop so he put a video camera on the top of every computer, headphones for voice chat and a nice bathroom with large mirrors behind the shop. We need the cameras to show our faces in front of our prospective boyfriends and we need the mirrors to refresh our make-ups. To create some privacy, the owner made little wooden cubicles for every user. The cubicles do not have doors like telephone booths but still it gives some confidentiality to the user. Young people come here to have a new identity which is free from social bounds. Once you are in front of the computer, you can be someone else. You can change your name, your job, your school, your marital status, your sexual orientation and most importantly your personality. A cruel boss at the office might be a kind man in these rooms; a loyal housewife could turn to a promiscuous woman hunting for men. The irony is we are all in this internet café to find a friend but we never look at each other. If the boy at the corner is looking for a girlfriend, so why not me but someone at the other end of the cable, he never knows, he has never seen? This must be so called “@-generation” for which the tangible reality gradually fades away in the virtual alternative.
That is all I understand from this place and also since it is new no one in my family knows here, even my little brother. Then I am free here, free from all family bounds, free from all social connections. My name is not Thi in the chatroom. It is “blueberry_girl_VN”. Although I have never seen a blueberry in my life -I don’t even know what a blueberry looks like-, I feel like this name suits me. She is a bit different from me. She likes going out with many friends, listening to classical music, reading fantasy novels and drinking beer. The similarities between Thi and blueberry_girl are the ones I cannot hide after I meet the person face to face. Yes, I really like tall boys with thick eyebrows. I like hanging out at cafes and I like being called “sweetheart”. I study business at a private university. However, Thi never listens to classical music, never reads fantasy stories, rarely goes out with many friends and does not really like the bitter taste of beer. It really does not matter what I really like for most of the boys because soon they realize that I am ready to continue chatting, they forget what I like but concentrate on their own lies. They must know that there is no truth in chatrooms, there are not many people standing in the cyber world as they are in real world. Most of the people hide their dark sides and try to shine with their bright faces. But sooner or later the truth emerges from the rubbles of lies. How far you can build lies on each other without having any inconsistency? Is it possible to create a new world from the lies without having some special skills?
For example, this boy, called “traixaxu”, keeps saying that he has been to overseas. Yes, he did! That is why he calls himself “boy away from home”. That can be an advantage for him to get Vietnamese girls who look for prospective rich husbands. A man who speaks both English and Vietnamese, a man who has money and job in another country, a man who might take his girl to his dreamland and make her the princess of his life. However, after talking with him half an hour, I learnt that he has been to
A few years ago, my mother told me that when I had been born both my parents were a bit disappointed because I was not a boy. My father needed a son to keep his name continue. My mother also needed a son to keep her husband at home. In those years they did not have much money but since I was not a boy, they started to think about the second child. It is always like this in
My little brother came seven years after me. It is hard to believe but my parents waited this long in order to have more financial security. My father left his job at government office and began his real estate business. Somehow he obtained large lands outside the city –now they are also in the city and huge buildings are being constructed there- and slowly and slowly he started to sell them. I remember the day my brother was born. My mother rushed to the hospital on motorbike and she came back with a baby on her bosom. At the end they were happy. The boy my father promised to his parents and the boy my mother promised to her husband finally arrived. After that day we became a real family as if the missing taste in the meal has been completed, the sweet syrup has been added to the drinks. My father started to treat me as his own child because he could not discriminate one of us from the other. I was like a kid forgotten at the local market and once my brother arrived they remembered me and came to pick me home. Suddenly we had many visitors, uncles, aunts, grand parents… They all raided in our house to see my brother. And of course they could not ignore me. Somehow they realized that they had a granddaughter who also needs love and gifts. Although this growing attention towards my little brother annoyed me at the beginning, especially thinking of myself as a parasite benefiting the love chamber created for him, I get used to live with it. There was a big age difference between us so I became his natural mentor in the absence of my mother. He was not my rival but my responsibility, my first job. The more I took care of him, the more I noticed that he is far from being my rival.
The years I lived my childhood were the years change came to
My mother also believes that the needs of women were the real factors that accelerated the speed of change in
She keeps saying “We did not know the titillating power of red before. Red was the flag, it was the solidarity and community. Now it is seduction.” Girls now know this very well. Life moved from monocolored to multicolored form and of course women are the ones who benefited from this variety. In the past there were plastic, low-heel shoes everywhere. There was no choice, no way for a woman to make her own preference of cloth. Everybody was equally poor, equally non-existent but they did not want to be equal in terms of clothes and smells. There were no hair-dressers, no quality fabric, no shops… And look at the girls now: tight jeans, tight tops with spaghetti straps, brand name G-strings, high-heel shoes, hats, sun-glasses, a colorful handkerchief tied across their faces like they just finished robbing a bank, classy motorbikes, expensive mobile phones… They have everything!
“We were raised to be model women for the communist
Here he is! While I was thinking about the future, he signed in. Is this a good sign? I will wait for him to start the conversation. The old, conservative game Vietnamese girls like to play whenever the opportunity emerges! Girl waits for the boy to make the first move. It still works because I am not the one who wants to chat with him, he is the one! I keep the right to reject him if I want. In fact this is one of our biggest secrets. Leave the robe tight, do not let it loose and do not let it break. Show but do not let him touch, let him touch but do not let him kiss, let him kiss but do not let him … This goes on until the girl gets the security that he will not leave her after getting what he wanted. To make it difficult for the boy is exactly like asking an expensive wedding from the groom. We like having the image of “ignorant to sex”. We don’t need it, do not ask for it, and can live without it. So sex is only for him, an award for his patience, a reward for keeping his promises. This, of course, makes us stronger, like a tree at the middle of the desert, defying the heat, we challenge the fun sex can offer. Like Tom and Jerry, the little mouse knows that the big stupid cat will be chasing no matter how small the mouse is, how worthless it is. It is an eternal game and it has been proven millions of times that it works well for the good of the society.
Traixaxu: Hi blueberry_girl_VN
Traixaxu: Hi! Are you there?
Traixaxu: You appear online but you don’t answer my messages, are you busy?
Blueberry_girl_VN: Ohh, hi! I am here… Sorry I was a bit busy.
Traixaxu: Busy with what?
Blueberry_girl_VN: I was writing an e-mail to a friend. Just sent it!
Traixaxu: A special friend?
Blueberry_girl_VN: Yeah! A friend at my school! Why do you ask?
Traixaxu: Boy or girl?
Blueberry_girl_VN: Well! I would rather not to answer this question. He or she! It does not matter and definitely it is none of your business at this moment. Do I ask you about your friends at your school? How many girls did you talk with today? Whom did you eat lunch with?
Traixaxu: ohh! You can ask! No girls around me!
Blueberry_girl_VN: I am not asking because I don’t want to know.
Traixaxu: Anyway, I am sorry then!
Blueberry_girl_VN: Khong sao…
Traixaxu: Are you angry to me?
Traixaxu: I am sorry! I did not mean that.
Traixaxu: Come on! Here is a flower for you: -----<--@
Blueberry_girl_VN: How was your day? We only chatted one time. I don’t know you much.
Traixaxu: It was the same as all the other days. I went to the school in the morning, came home in the afternoon. The tutoring school I go in the evenings to teach Mathematics to middle school students cancelled the class so that is why I am here now, chatting with you.
Blueberry_girl_VN: So you are good in maths? I hate maths! I hate anything with numbers and this semester I have to take Statistics course. I don’t know how I will pass… I am already lost.
Traixaxu: Statistics! I can help you if you want. I studied it two semesters ago but still I can remember the basic principles easily after a short review.
Blueberry_girl_VN: Thanks for the offer. I want to deal with it by myself first. If it becomes a serious problem, then I will ask your help. Thanks anyway!
Traixaxu: No problem! Hope you will pass. I like numbers because they are perfect. There are no defective or morally corrupt numbers. They are all well-defined.
Blueberry_girl_VN: interesting… so what do you do in the evenings? Besides adoring numbers like no one else does!
Traixaxu: I stay at the dormitory so I have to be there before the gate is locked at 10 pm. I eat outside around 7-8 pm then go back to my room to study.
Blueberry_girl_VN: That is it? School, work and study? Nothing else?
Traixaxu: I also enjoy reading but I guess it is normal for a university student. Everyone reads one thing or another…
Blueberry_girl_VN: ohh good! I like reading fantasy novels. Harry Potter-kind things? Do you like fantasy staff?
Traixaxu: No, I am not really into fantasy fiction. More interested in real things, real stories… I don’t mean that fantasy stories are not real but they are difficult to read, even difficult to understand.
Bluberry_girl_VN: So then I am smarter than the average!
Traixaxu: I also started writing some fiction recently.
Blueberry_girl_VN: You mean writing stories by yourself?
Traixaxu: yeah, I create stories in my mind and write them. Like a writer but I did not get published yet. Just writing for fun… To make myself more satisfied in my lonely life.
Blueberry_girl_VN: Cool! If you have anything that I might like, please send me. I would like to read. I think it must be a good way to get to know you.
Blueberry_girl_VN: Why are you lonely? No friends?
Traixaxu: Sure. It must be the best way! A writer cannot hide himself in his stories. Wait a few days more. I am now writing a nice story. I will finish it soon. Then I will send it to you.
Blueberry_girl_VN: What is it about? The story you are writing now?
Traixaxu: It is about a bicycle, a stolen bicycle which moves in the city from hand to hand and witnesses the true colors of life. At the end it will be trashed by a reckless truck driver!
Blueberry_girl_VN: A bicycle? Hi hi hi!
Traixaxu: What is funny?
Blueberry_girl_VN: Nothing… My brother’s bicycle has been stolen today and I just came back from the police station.
Traixaxu: Sorry to hear that! It must be hard to find it. There are millions of bicycles in this city. And many thieves dismantle them and sell piece by piece to make more money.
Blueberry_girl_VN: I know but there is nothing else we could do so we went to the police.
Traixaxu: I c… What about u? What do you do when you have free time?
Blueberry_girl_VN: Not much. I have to take care of my little brother because both my parents work. He is always in trouble. A few days ago he had a fight with some other boys in our building and today he lost his bicycle.
Traixaxu: I am lucky because I have no brother or sister. It is good to be the single child.
Blueberry_girl_VN: I have no complaints. The wall you lean on can make you weaker. Be careful! My brother makes me a more responsible person.
Traixaxu: Wooowww… Big words… I like it.
Blueberry_girl_VN: if not teaching big words to a young writer :-[
Traixaxu: any plan for this coming weekend?
Blueberry_girl_VN: Nope! Why?
Traixaxu: I am planning to visit an art exhibition in district 1. Paintings and some modern art pieces. If you are not busy, then you can join me. After the exhibition we can sit and drink something at a café. What do you think?
Blueberry_girl_VN: It is so early to make plans for the weekend. Let me think about it. I will send you an e-mail by this Friday.
Traixaxu: Good to hear. At least you did not say no!
Blueberry_girl_VN: Do not have much hope! I might say no… But if I say yes, then probably I will also bring my Statistics assignment. You can help me to get a high mark ?
Blueberry_girl_VN: I need to go now. My mother must have come home already. She might get angry if I go home so late, leaving my little brother alone at home… Bye
Traixaxu: No problem! Bring your assignment.
Traixaxu: See you later then… I will wait for your e-mail.
Traixaxu: Byeeeeeeeee
Traixaxu: gone? Take care!
Blueberry_girl_VN is offline and cannot receive messages now.
Traixaxu: I am going home as well.
Blueberry_girl_VN is offline and cannot receive messages now.
I left the internet café and began walking on the crowded streets of district 5. The semi-darkness of the evening already took over the roads, leaving some sort of melancholy behind. When the sun sets down on the west side of the city, I always feel the same poignant euphoria exploding inside my body, moving like a wild animal, driving me towards never ending memoirs. I watch the city like I watch myself in the broken piece of mirror from John’s bedroom, like those poor workers sitting on deck chairs in the afternoons and staring at the filth and listening to the boisterous motorbikes while inhaling the fumes and drinking their iced black coffee. Bee-like motorbikes are everywhere, buzzing around every corner, filling up any space they can find, flooding to the sidewalks or opposite lane whenever opportunity appears. I feel this is the way people live in this country. Creating short-cut solutions without considering the potential risk in them makes life unbearable here. The motorbikes definitely created a new mode of life for my country’s people. The individuality shows itself the most when people ride on their bikes. They are careless, reckless, risk-takers and even immoral when they are on the steering fork. Since it is hard to catch them or no one will bother chasing them, it is the way people show their real faces which are less bounded by the legal attachments. Most of the people do not let the motorbikes interrupt the continuity of their life. That is why it is easy to see drivers talking on the phone, smoking, eating, drinking, talking with another motorbike driver, spitting, holding a large object with left hand while pumping gas with their right hands. I even have seen a man sitting at the back of the motorbike and injecting himself some sorts of drug while his friend was in control. The privacy provided by their motorbikes is invincible as long as they keep driving, as long as they leave the world behind them to an unexplainable oblivion.
I walked on these streets many times together with John, feeling his presence besides me… We never walked hand in hand with John because that privilege is given to those on motorbikes or those parked their motorbikes in the city parks. Here is the park where the young prostitutes looking for customers when the darkness falls in the city. They hide behind the trees, behind the motorbikes and whenever they see a man walking alone, they show themselves like a pale rose, picked from the tree and stepped over many times by unknown feet. John used to say it is hard to make these women believe that he is walking alone because he wants to be alone. Many Vietnamese deny the fact that these women sell their bodies for a few dollars. They might be looking for friends, for one-night stands but it cannot be money! If my people see women from other countries are arrested for prostitution, they would have no problem in believing it. But when it comes to Vietnamese women, it is hard to convince them because may people see the nation as a large family. Then those girls become sisters, mothers, aunts… They feel responsible for their wrong-doings and to solve it they deny it because denying a fact is the best way to stay away from the responsibility of the problem.
I turned at the corner to the street where my house is located. A traffic police is negotiating for the bribe with a foreigner who was driving against the traffic. The foreigners who enjoy the life in
In front of a fruit shop, there are chickens and ducks whose feet are tied to each other so they cannot run away. Apparently these animals are spared from daily sales. Two of them try to walk but fall abruptly. The other two waiting calmly, already gave up, watching the ceremony of colorful motorbikes. Behind, there is a barber working in the dim light of the street on a little boy’s head. The boy is looking at a fractured mirror and watching the city behind his trimming hair rather than watching his own face. A woman is burning some paper houses and cars in front of her shop to make sure that her ancestors will be happy with her sacrifices. Two-storey house and a luxury car with mirror-like windows are in flames, licking the last drops of the oxygen on the street. One of the mannequins beside the door of a boutique is looking at me with judging eyes as if my clothes were out of fashion. I stopped walking to stare at this happy mannequin. I glanced at her eyes, her nose, her entire outlook. I see nothing Vietnamese on her body. She is an imported appearance which now occupies every possible channel in the society. We see them on TV, on newspapers, on brochures, on cinema… We want to look like them, we want to wear like them, we want to smile and even cry like them. My mother went to
A few steps later I am in front of my home. Somehow I feel like I have to walk more to know about my city and my people. The more I walk the more pictures I will be able to take. But it is getting late. My father will probably not care about what time I arrive home but my mother is extremely anxious about me. At home there is a strange atmosphere, like the air is removed together with daily noise of laughter and jokes. Television is off –quite strange- and my mother is in the kitchen, frying some vegetables with beef. The smell of fish sauce invades every room in the house like an angry ghost looking for revenge. My father was sitting in the living room alone, doing nothing but looking at the black screen with worried eyes. I looked at all the rooms one by one to see my little brother and finally I found him in his room. He did not want to open his door. When I insisted that I brought him his favorite chocolate, he slowly moved towards the door. First he unlocked the lock and keeping his foot behind the door, wanted to check if I was telling the truth. But fortunately I am still stronger than him. I leaned on the door with my shoulder so he could not keep the door ajar. The door opened, he was on the floor. His face was pale, eyes were frighteningly reddish, and his body was trembling with his unstoppable hiccups. It seems he told what happened to his bicycle to our father by himself –becoming a real man!- and father has beaten him a bit to give him a lesson. Bicycle is stolen and he paid the price! Fair enough! He was punished for what he did. That is why my mother is quiet in the kitchen –she stays away whenever father deals with his son- and that is why my father did not greet me when I entered the house. My brother stood up and hugged me as if I am his mother. I caressed his head, wiped his eyes and nose and asked him to stop crying. But his was hysterical and did not look like it will stop soon. So I stayed beside him, watching his guilty eyes sinking in the every object he stares at and waited him to fall asleep. When he eventually made it to the calmness of the sleep, I left his room and quietly went to my bedroom. It was the next morning that my father knocked my door, asking me to come with him to pick the bicycle from the police station. Apparently police found my brother’s bicycle and my father was still so angry at my brother that he did not want to go with him. What made him so angry could not be the loss of a bicycle! It is the irresponsibility of his son, the unpromising future of my little spoiled brother… He is the sign of my father’s failure. The more my father sees his son’s bad behaviors, the more he gets angry like a captain watching his own ship sinking before his eyes.
3. Xin Loi! Ten toi
After the interview, the manager called me up and asked me what I told the reporter. I told her that I only talked about wages. She asked me if I told the reporter whether the company still beats workers. As soon as she questioned me, she asked me to leave. Interview with Nguyen Thi Lap, a worker for Sam Yang in Cu Chi, HCMC
Here I am! Minh, the construction worker, the husband, the elder brother of a young man who is now suffering from his injuries of a motorbike accident and most importantly, the father of a boy who has been accused of stealing a bicycle! I told the police chief before he put me in this jail last night: Neither my son nor I stole a bicycle. I did not see it with my own eyes because I was not there at that time. It was just after my brother had an accident at the junction so I took my brother to the hospital. My wife also came with my brother’s seven-month pregnant wife just after me. At that chaos of the accident, I totally forgot my son. He was somewhere close to the junction, in the crowd of people gathered from nearby shops and houses –just came back from the school as I remember-, probably watching our fight, listening to the cries of his aunt, trying to understand how the pain could be so unbearable. But we had to leave him there, playing with other boys or more likely doing his daily routine of wandering streets, working for his pocket money.
When I came back from the hospital, I saw him riding a bicycle on the road, happy and cheerful. First, I thought he borrowed it from one of the other boys on the street but no, he told me that a young foreign man gave it to him. The man told him that he was leaving the country soon so he did not need the bicycle any more. He could not sell it so he wanted to give it to someone and it happened to be my son. It is hard to believe, yes I admit! No one in this world gives a thing without taking another thing. However, I could not think of my son making up a strange lie like this. If he said “I found it” or “My friend gave it to me”, I would think he was lying. How in the world a ten-years-old child will make up a story like this? He does not know how to speak English except for a few words like “shoe shine, sir” or “you buy postcard, sir”! Therefore, I believed him. At the end of the day, he is my son and as a father to see him happy is all I need. Besides, I needed to take a few things with me and get back to the hospital to stay there overnight. I did not want to spend all my evening interrogating my son about a bicycle. The day already had its mark on me. It was a bad day and soon I realized that the accident was only the first blow of the storm.
Yesterday was the worst day of my life and I am hoping that it will stay as it is. My father used to say “Once the fate hits your ass and makes you crawl on your knees, then it will only get harder to stand up again”. I cannot think of anything else but these words all night… The room is hot but still the floor is cold, the walls are humid and the air is as stinky as a plate of spoiled rice forgotten under a shelf. I spent the entire night in this cell, squatted like a man defecating in the bushes, leaned back on the wall as if I am waiting to finish my last cigarette before getting into the bus. I ate nothing except for a small piece of bread in the afternoon. My stomach is upset either because of the hunger or because of the wet walls I am leaning on. I tried to lie down and sleep but the cold diffuses from the floor towards my inner organs like the first rain of the year is sucked by the dry soil of the rice field, quickly and expeditiously. Police chief said he would let me go with a warning if I confess that my son stole the bicycle. He said the owner of the bicycle will be coming this morning and I will have the chance to talk with him and ask him for mercy. If they do not file a complaint against me, then I will be free. But for this I need to be honest, meaning I have to confess to a crime which I did not commit. This also means I should not be honest. However, I am not ready to waive my dignity and do it as he wishes. In another way, I also want to get back to the hospital so I can be next to my brother in his last days.
Yes, the doctors said he does not have many days to live. After the accident at that junction, he is in a coma; neither speaks nor opens his eyes. I was with him, in that smelly room and all I see was my brother lying on the bed unconsciously, his head has been wrapped with several layers of white bandages, one of his arms was broken, one foot was twisted, a piece of metal from the motorbike he was driving was stuck into his torso like a spear. He was connected to a machine that pumps air into his lungs constantly, making him semi-alive… The biggest damage was at his throat where the loosely tied strap of helmet cut through his flesh during the crash and left a huge slit beneath his chin like a second mouth. So much blood was lost and the wound was too large to get fixed immediately. Doctors say there is a little chance that he will survive and even if he survives it is impossible to let the brain work properly again. What they mean is that my brother will not be my brother any more but a mentally-retarded man who needs ten minutes to say “Can I have some water?” and also needs help later to get rid of that water from his body.
I don’t know anything about medicine but it reminds me the summer months of rice fields. There is a point of no return in village life, a point that might claim all your harvest, all your work for half a year. If the rain does not cool down the earth on time, the rice crop will get dry, the plants slowly will bow down and finally burn out. Now two things make me worry. If he survives, someone should be taking care of him all the time. But we cannot afford it. My wife and I are working at the construction site all day. As a man, I feel terrible whenever I see my wife doing that heavy job with other men like carrying cement bags but I have no choice. If we want our son to have a good future, if we want to save some money for our future house, we have to work hard. If I work alone, my entire life will not be enough to complete the roof of the house we are planning to have in our village. That is why we left our village and came to the city. We had dreams to fulfill, dreams to run for… Now it seems all our plans are shattering into pieces. I am in custody and if I do not confess to the crime I will be sent to Chi
Who can say life is easy for a man like me? Yes, time changed and now people can buy whatever they want, can go wherever they wish. But this is possible only if you have money and power. If you don’t have money, then you will just sit and watch those who enjoy their lives. That is actually what we do in the evenings, sitting on the filthy sidewalks or at the corners where some wealthy young people eat and drink in luxury restaurants with their colorful clothes, sparkling faces and adorable jewelries, watching them with envy, smoking our last cigarettes and going to our shabby shanties with sighs and mumbling thoughts as if one day we can be like them. Quite frankly sometimes I feel as if I am defiling their holy gatherings with my envious stares, with the smoke coming out from the tip of my cigarette as enlarging circles, disappearing in the darkness of the night like my vanishing existence in this city of millions. Thinking about the past, remembering the days in which life was humble and bearable, everybody was equally powerless is my only point of escape in these nights because these thoughts are still keeping the purity of the life we left behind, the thoughts which are not contaminated by the prospective flamboyant dreams.
The village we left was a peaceful place to live and raise the kids. Everybody was equally poor and nobody was complaining about it. Life was collective, collaborative. Since everything was shared, there was no point in fighting for more. When someone needed help, everyone rushed to give a hand. Neighbors were like relatives, caring and cooperating all the time. The days and nights were equally silent because we were all busy making our lives from the earth, from the rain, from the hard work of harvest. There were no idle people in the streets; everyone had something to do for a day. Maybe we were not eating the best food on earth but still we were not hungry. Food was enough for everyone to appreciate life and its immense beauty. Now, jealousy is filling all the gaps. All my young friends at the construction site work for two things: a fancy mobile phone and a quality motorbike. That is their dream and once they have enough to buy these two, they will go back to their villages, show their hard-earned gadgets to their prospective brides. It seems like the colors took over the surface of the city also took the control of people’s lives. People work for colors, for having those colors, adoring them and even abusing them.
My primary school teacher used to say time is an invisible graveyard. It sucks and swallows everything around us, then sends them to the oblivion, to the forgotten land. In order not to fall in that bottomless hole, we need to invest in what we know as the best. For the poor like us, the only possible investment is our children. We did not study to be a doctor, to be a teacher but we all wish our kids will be able to achieve things we never dreamed of. That is why I keep telling my son to study hard, to be an irreplaceable expert, to be a person whom people will need forever or at least people will feel his absence when he is not around, not like us, the construction workers who can be replaced in a minute by thousands of unemployed, poor young villagers. We are interchangable units, like pepsi cans or motorbike tires. Being irreplaceable is the same as being invincible… I learnt this when it became too late. My son will learn it earlier, before he reaches to the point of no return.
He goes to school in the mornings. He returns when we have the lunch break so we usually eat lunch together. Then he finishes his homework in a few hours and right after that he hits the roads of district 1, looking down at people’s feet and if they are wearing shoes, asking them for a quick shoeshine. Sometimes I feel agitated when I imagine my son looking down on people’s feet and I worry that this will make him feel embarrassed by his parents’ poverty. However, I also think that a boy needs to learn that the bread is in the mouth of the lion and to get it, you have to work hard, and you have to be fearless, free from the power of other people’s inquisitive eyes. I don’t know if there is any better way than working for his own pocket money for a child to learn life. He walks on the streets, sometimes with his best friend from his school, carrying a wooden box filled with two brushes, various colored polishes, a piece of velvet cloth, a small box of wax and some old newspapers. He never complains about his responsibilities, never gets a low mark in his exams and never feels ashamed of working despite his young age. But I do feel inferior, especially when I see him enviously looking at rich couple’s beautifully dressed children or the same children playing on the streets with their expensive toys. My heart bleeds like the water oozes down from the cracks on the pot, slowly and painfully, making my day darker, creating a lake of despair at the middle of nowhere… Like every father, I too want my child to get the best thing available for him. Not being able to afford it of course hurts me. My life then shuttles between being proud of having a son like him and having the embarrassment of forcing him to work. Neither way seems like a solution… That is why I did not ask him many questions when I saw him with the bicycle. He deserves a bicycle more than many other boys do but I cannot afford to buy one. So he got it and I approved it with my silence. Now I am here, in a jail waiting for my official interrogation.
Here it is, the sound of footsteps approaching the cell door… This must be the guard. The noise of motorbike engines suggests that sunlight has already occupied the streets. Life restarts outside for most of the people, all but me, my son and my brother! The owner of the stolen bicycle must have arrived here to make sure that the bicycle he lost is the one my son was driving yesterday. If he claims so, then I have no idea what I can tell them. “I trust my son.” will definitely not work. “Maybe there is a mistake. Maybe my son made something wrong.” sounds like admitting the crime and looking for clemency. Or I can tell them “What if you lie?. Then they will put me in jail for the next five years for a stupid bicycle. Let’s wait and see…
The guard takes me to another room where there is a large table, four chairs (one of them is brought from outside) and a notebook with a few pens beside. A man and a young girl are sitting on two of the chairs. There is nothing else in the room. A large portrait of Ho Chi Minh is looking at the opposite wall, half smiling, half expecting the justice to appear. The guard gestured for me to sit opposite them and then he left. The police officer who took me from the construction site to the police station enters the room. Then he sits next to me. I am not handcuffed so I can say I am comfortable except for carrying the shame of being in an interrogation room as a suspect. The girl looks at me as if I am responsible from all the crimes committed in the city. Although she tries to avoid, I can still detect her sneaking glances, hitting my face and leaving tiny scars of guilt. With reddish curly hair and long eyelashes, she does not look like a woman who belongs to this land. I usually see women like her on TV only. Maybe her husband is a foreigner or she wasn’t born in
“Here we are!” the policeman spoke with a loud voice as if there were hundreds of screaming children in the room. “Here we are!, the stolen bicycle, the suspect, the police who caught the suspect, the owner of the bicycle and owner’s daughter.” The girl in front of me looked at the policeman with suspicious but also expecting eyes like peasants watching a clown first time in their lives, not knowing what to laugh for. She took a deep breath, “I have nothing to do with the bicycle. My brother drives it. I did not even see it for the last six months. My father should have brought him to look at this bicycle but since he is angry at my brother, he brought me.” The policeman’s eyes get enlarged as if he is looking at something exciting. Maybe he was admiring the girl’s way of expressing herself or his eyes were locked into her tight blouse. The old man looked at his daughter’s face with disapproving eyes but did not say a word. “So if you do not know the bicycle, your father must know. Is this the bicycle you bought for your son or not, sir?” the police asked. Father looked at the window side, stood up and walked a few steps forward. He touched the steering fork, the brake hoods, the seat. Then he returned to the policeman. “Yes, it is! I am 100% sure that this is the bicycle I have bought for my son.” Then the policeman turned to me. “So, what are you going to say? This gentleman, who has a successful real estate business, definitely does not need a bicycle, then definitely does not need to lie. Are you still denying that you or your son stole the bicycle?”
I did not know what to say, tried to swallow the increasing amount of saliva in my mouth with a big gulp, tried to look strong. But how strong can I be in front of the rich and powerful in a case where I am suspected to be the bad person? I wanted to say the truth but if no one believes your truth, it will never be the truth. It will stay as my truth and will go to grave with me. I gently cleaned my throat, looked directly into the eyes of the successful businessman or the failed father and started saying things I have been circulating in my mind for the entire night.
“Dear sir, you might think I am an uneducated, poor, miserable man who has migrated from the village to make some money for his family. Yes, I am poor, therefore uneducated, therefore having a simple lifestyle with my wife and my only son. We eat rice with boiled vegetables in the evenings, not grilled lobsters or red wine. Our lips are purple from working in the sun all day, our only drink is tra da, our only fun is wandering on the streets with friends or family members as if we are going from one place to another place. But no, we have no place to go! This city does not mean anything to us. Sometimes I go fishing with my friends at the canals that you may not even realize that they are there although you pass over them in your opulent cars. During the rainy season, I catch frogs in the swamps of the empty lands and mix it with the chicken meat that we can afford to buy so that our son will have enough nutrition. My wife grows a few vegetables in front of the shanty. Whatever we grow in that handful land we share with other workers. We do not steal vegetables; do not steal meat although we can if we want to. Now you are accusing me of stealing a piece of metal, a bicycle which is given to my son by a foreigner.
I told the police many times yesterday. I neither saw this foreigner nor spoke to him. My son told me that this blonde guy was driving his bicycle while my son was going back to our construction area just after the accident. Then the foreigner had some trouble with the brakes and went over a bump on the road. While he was trying to keep his balance on the bicycle, the mirror at the back slipped down and shattered into pieces. My son said that the foreign guy was so angry, so frustrated with the situation and started kicking his bicycle. But my son ran to him and asked him to stop. I don’t even know why a ten-years-old boy intervenes with adult people’s business. Maybe because he never had a bicycle in his life so he could not stand watching someone kicking the bicycle before his eyes. Then this foreigner told my son that he was taking that mirror to his landlord for the broken mirror in his apartment. Now this is broken too. He also said he is leaving the country tomorrow morning –meaning this morning- and there is no one for whom he can leave his bicycle.
- How big was the mirror?
- What? Miss!
- You said the foreigner dropped the mirror and it was broken. How big was the mirror?
- How could I know miss? I wasn’t there!
- So what about your son! Did he mention about how this foreigner guy looked like?
- No! All foreigners are the same! Tall, blonde, a bit hairy and smelly!
- Why did you interrupt his words, Thi? Let him finish… I will be late to the office.
- Ok, father… Just wanted to know…
- Wanted to know what? The size of the mirror? Why is it so important to this case?
- Nothing father! I am sorry!
- Can I continue now?
- Go ahead…
“What was I saying? Huh, the foreigner! He told my son that he needed to get rid of the bicycle before he leaves the country. Being so pissed off, he gave his bicycle to my son and walked away without looking back even once. That is it. This is the story I listened from my son and I believed with my full heart because I cannot imagine that a ten-years-old child could make up a story like this. If my son was capable of creating a story like this, I would send him to TV channels so he can write soap operas for the evenings. And suppose either my son or I stole the bicycle. Why do you think I will let him to ride it freely on the day we stole it? I should hide it at least for one month and change some pieces, make it unidentifiable, paint it in different color. Once the dust settles, he can ride it everywhere without worrying about the police. But no sir, we are poor, not stupid… I will not confess a crime neither I nor my child committed. I will not lose my dignity which is the only thing remained with me after leaving my village. Because I know that if I lose my dignity and my son hears this, then he will also be like me in the future, bowing his head for the rich and powerful, not standing for his own truth to be the truth for everyone.
Now will you let me say it one more time? We are not thieves! We never stole anything from anyone! We enjoy our lives with what we earn and what we deserve with our hard-work. On Sundays we play football in an empty land. Some evenings we get together to play cards or smoke opium. As long as the allure of opulent lifestyles stays away from us, our mood is not so different from you. We feel happy when we fill our child’s stomach, we feel great when we make love to our wives, we fly over the clouds when one of our friends wins a small prize from the lottery ticket, we laugh until our cheeks start hurting when we watch comedy shows in the contractor’s office once a week. Yes, we are poor, we are not so smart, not so educated, not so beautifully dressed, not so clean in your standards. But we are mature enough to differentiate the right from the wrong. In fact teaching my son to be a good boy is my highest priority. At this moment I worry about only one thing. Maybe you don’t know but my brother is in coma at the hospital, probably living his last moments. All I want is to be with him in his last hours, supporting his pregnant wife and promising them to be a good uncle for their unborn baby. If you think I am a criminal, you can arrest me any time. Just now, let me go to visit my brother, let me finish my last duties towards him as a brother, as a man who swore our father to take good care of him. Once I bury him and leave his wife at the village, I will be back to your cold, dark prison cell. You know where I work, you know where I live! You don’t have to worry about a man like me! There is no place to escape for the poor except for the swamps of undeveloped districts. Now, please let me go! Please!“
When I finished my long speech I looked at their eyes one by one again. There were changes in their stares but it was hard to understand what they were thinking. Only the girl seemed a bit excited to say something new. It was obvious that something in her mind was forcing to get out of her mouth, maybe tickling her tongue, maybe pressing towards her small red lips. But she remained silent like a dead bird fallen from its nest in the tree. The police took a deep breath as if he has forgotten to inhale for long time.
-So you want us to believe this modern Robin Hood story?
-What story sir? What is Robin Hood?
-Not what is Robin Hood, who is Robin Hood.
-What?
-Never mind. So Mr. …., what do you think? Are you going to drop the charges? Here is the bicycle, you can take it and go home. Then we can forget the incident as if nothing happened. Your son can ride this bicycle today as he did yesterday morning.
- Well, I don’t really care!
- Father, I believe he is telling the truth. I don’t think this bicycle is ours. It looks like my brother’s bicycle but there are thousands of bicycles outside that are the same as this one. It is impossible to know.
- Yes, but it is also impossible to know that it is not our bicycle. How can you be so sure that this bicycle is not the one I bought for my son.
- I cannot be sure but he can! You should have brought him to recognize his bicycle, not me!
- Yes, yes! But he is not here now and I have no time to waste. I don’t really care.
The police pretended that he did not hear what she said and turned his face to her father again.
- You don’t care what, sir?
- I don’t care whether this guy’s son stole my bicycle or not. I just wanted to get it back and go home. I am not pressing charges against him. It seems he already had enough troubles. He can go back to the hospital, to his brother, to his wife and son. I am a father as well. I can understand him. I have had enough for two days… Lots of things to do at work and no more I need. Just let us go…
- So you want me to close the file. Is this what you want?
- Yes, yes! Please don’t ask me again… Take the bicycle Thi. Let’s go home. I will lock it up so he will not be able to ride it at least for one month. Put in your own room. He has to learn how to take care of the things we are offering him. Thi, my dear, go and get the driver. He can ride the bicycle home. I will drive the car.
I remained quiet while listening to this conversation and watching them preparing to leave. First Thi stood up and put her hand on the bicycle. There was still something strange with her. She did not only hold the bicycle but also wanted to touch it, like a mother dog smells its puppies one by one to make sure that these are its own puppies, she was somehow thrilled with the existence of the bicycle first time, its metallic complexity, its majestic standing and its bleak odor. There was something wrong with her but I did not know how to put this in words. It is not because I am not capable of understanding her movements but because she was hiding something from everyone in the room, including her father. Something big and painful… It was in her saddened eyes, it was the tears she was hiding from her father, it was the way her body was staying motionless like a numb arm squeezed under the body after a night-long sleep… She left the room, closing her face with one of her hands, hiccupping incessantly. Her father looked at her reddish face and shook his head as if he was blaming her for her easily broken wall of patience. “The girls are like this, when they listen to a dramatic story, they cannot stop crying. Then how can you expect them to judge without having control of their emotions? That is why a father needs a son, someone who can leave his emotions behind and become purely rational when it comes to making a decision.”
Then he signed a piece of paper, which says he does not complain at all about the worker. Father and daughter left the room. I was happy at the end, like a traveler in the desert who lost his camel and at the moment of greatest desperation and physical weakness, found his camel. The only sad thing was it was not the justice system cleared me of the charges but Mr. ….’s mercy. But I don’t have time to worry about this now. My brother is waiting for me… My sister-in-law might have slept in the hospital. My son might be worrying about me…
After Thi and her father left the police station, I signed another paper that states that I will not complain about the interrogation because I agreed that it was necessary to find the truth. I have put my quick signature on the paper, I left the place and without looking back even once I went to the hospital… Unfortunately, my brother had passed away a few hours before I arrived at his bed. My wife and my son were there too, trying to console my sister-in-law who is half-fainted. They were not sure whether they should be happy to see me free or pull me into their pool of mourning. My brother’s entire body was covered with the white bed sheet. The outline of his body under the sheet showed him smaller like an emptied room. His wife was sobbing beside the bed; her left hand, not knowing what to hold but just caressing random points on the sheet. Her right hand was on her belly, holding the last gift from her husband, feeling his blood circulating in her body, trying to sense the kicks of the baby as if those were the lovely touches of her husband. The entire room was like a place no one wants to stay long. My son came towards me and hugged me as if he was afraid that the same thing will happen to me. I touched his head, took him to the bed and showed him his uncle’s pale face and purple lips one last time. At that moment, I felt I cannot stand it any longer. Things happened yesterday and this morning were too heavy for my shoulders which are strong enough to carry
I left the room with an excuse of having a cigarette outside. It was a hot day with no sign of clouds. A woman selling fruits on her bicycle passed in front of me. When I inhaled the first smoke of the cigarette towards my lungs, I felt the bitter, tingling taste on my tongue… My body started shaking lightly, my throat ached, my arms got loose… When my eyes started being blurred, I knew that something was going to erupt inside and there was no way to stop it. Then I sat on the stairs and started crying silently, looking at the road of motorbikes and bicycles, listening to the everlasting noise, watching people’s faces, keeping the tears in my eyes, trying to force the drops flow back to my heart where they belong…
4. Hi, I am the bicycle.
| Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood Susan B. Anthony, |
I am the bicycle! Not one of the many you see on the roads every day. I am the one John used to drive at the weekends when he was bored of loneliness and also needed some sort of solitude in the roads shared by many other two-wheeled vehicles. He used to call me “the iron horse” like many Vietnamese people used to call my predecessors when they have seen one on the roads first time. In fact, no phrase can define me better than that name. I am made of metal and meant to replace expensive horses in 18th century. They were expensive because it was hard to afford to feed them, yet to keep them healthy and strong to pull the carriers. I have to admit that horses served humanity for a long time and they were good companions for both soldiers and city people. However, we have to consider that human brain had been dreaming of an autonomous vehicle since it developed the wheel thousands of years ago. A vehicle which does not need a “prime mover” to go from one place to another place, a vehicle which will be self-sufficient to carry itself along with its driver was people’s dream for centuries. But it wasn’t an easy task although many people look down at me now like I am a simple piece of machine and push me out of the road like I do not have right to be there as much as they do. This makes me extremely upset but there is nothing I can do to change it. We are all the same! We are born, we grow up, we reproduce and at the end we die to give a chance to our offspring to bring a better life to this earth. The evolution is the only truth we all have to accept even though sometimes it results in our extinction. I don’t mean that I am ready to be wiped out from the surface of the earth. I just mean that we are now the minority among the other vehicles hitting the roads and it is getting harder to keep ourselves alive in the presence of increasing number of motorbikes and cars. However, it is still nice to remember how we became the bicycles of today, what enemies and friends we have got in the past… We evolved, like humans evolved from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens, we did the same thing over the last three hundred years.
Like all human infants start their lives with an encounter of two tiny cells in their mothers’ wombs, I started my evolutionary journey when the need for an autonomous vehicle hit the peak for the people in
Then the draisine or so-called velocipedes showed up. When the starvation and the freezing weather killed hundreds of horses following a volcanic eruption in Tambora, a civil servant named Baron Karl von Draise invented a two-wheeled vehicle which could move
It is exciting to remember my past although now technically I am not a bicycle any more. I should have said that “I was a bicyle” and I was a good one. I was always proud of being a bicycle, always felt the responsibility of being a strong human-powered vehicle. We gave people hope that they can manage their own mobility as they wish. We gave women courage to fight their own rights. That is why they used to call us “freedom machines”. They needed reforms in their heavy clothing fashions to ride the bicycles like men so they asked for it and eventually they got it. But naturally what unifies people also divides them. Bicycle became the symbol of emancipation of women then at the same time an object of hatred for men who want their women sitting at home and knitting sweaters. When a university in US admitted female students first time, the angry boys burned a woman effigy riding a bicycle. We were held responsible for women’s movements and were being punished for that. At the same time we are still symbol of hard work and sharing spirit for many people. That is why in
Now I am in a scrap metal shop waiting to be dismantled. After the accident, they brought me here because they thought it is impossible to fix me again. My seat tube is broken. The crank arms are crooked; the handle bar is partially destroyed. My loose brakes do not exist any more. The wheels are still connected to the main frame but many of the spokes are displaced, sticking out the wheel like spikes of a scared hedgehog. The gears are dropped and the seat is lost at the accident area. It happened at the same junction where John was watching aftermaths of a motorbike accident one day ago. This time Thi’s brother was riding me, after stealing me from her room when she was not in her room. Without knowing that the brakes were very loose, he was too fast when he came to the junction. Then a truck came out of nowhere, rushing to catch the last glimpses of the green light. At the point where the black stain of Minh’s brother’s blood was still visible, the truck crashed me, dragged both of us under the vehicle for at least
I did not kill him. I know many people will think that the love of bicycle killed him when they see the bloody accident scene but it is not fair to us. Love does not kill! In fact, we bicycles are the best friends of children. We give them first feeling of freedom, first feeling of controlling an object which is as big as their own bodies. With us, children learn that by the help of their meticulous minds, their muscles could diffuse into metals; their blood could pass through our cables and chains. Then they learn that life they have is a gift and a bicycle is a useless combination of metal pieces if they do not ride us. They love us and we love them. We teach them responsibility of being on the road and respecting others, we teach them how making a small mistake might cost them a lot. We are no more made of heavy iron and steel like our ancestors who were dominating the streets a century ago. Titanium and aluminum alloys made us so light that even a ten years old boy can lift one of us easily, can carry on his shoulder. We are safe and fast. We do not pollute the environment; we do not make that clamorous noise like motorbikes do, we do not make people lose the control of their lives once they sit on our seats. We give them a slow, patient view of their surroundings. Traffic police will not stop a person for riding his or her bicycle on the sidewalks or against the traffic. If a careful observant looks at the city, he or she will witness that mostly young kids –like school children- and old people are driving the bicycles because they are the ones who do not need speed. For kids, it is a sign of transition, for elderly it is a sign of the end of the cycle. Life starts slow, gets quicker when the person becomes young then after hitting the peak it turns down again to get slower till it stops eventually.
I said I am not the one who killed this young boy. People usually judge at first glance with their emotions, not with their reasoning skills. This boy has been killed because the truck driver was not patient enough to wait for the next green light or the boy himself was not mature enough to understand the chaos at the junction. What about the bicycle mechanic who pretended to fix the brakes? John trusted him but he did not suspect even after he hit the bump on the road and drop the mirror. He was leaving me so he did not care much about the loose brakes. Then he is responsible too. And Thi, after a morning of tearful eyes in her room, wasn’t that due to her negligence of leaving the key of the lock on her desk, in the blue box when she went to school? If she did not leave the key in the room, then her brother would never attempt to ride the bicycle.
I believe the biggest crime is committed by the city officials who do not take any precautions against the accidents occurring at this junction frequently. The only thing they need is a little light which gives sign to the drivers who want to turn left. Then the drivers coming from other direction will wait about 15 seconds more. At the end, with a little inexpensive solution, so many lives will be saved. As a bicycle I have been into that confusion so many times. John used to wait for the other vehicles to stop for him. He was a foreigner so the drivers tolerated him with a little smile. But for many Vietnamese bicycle riders, it means being exposed to insulting horns, peevish language and even sometimes blusterous shouts.
I should have started telling my story from the point Thi and her father left the police station. This way there will be less confusion for myself. When they arrived home, she put me in her room, next to the window where I can see the flow of motorbikes and bicycles on the road. As a bicycle banned from the roads, it was hard for me to watch this scene. Nothing can be more tormenting than this constant feeling of being confined in a room and of course staying next to the window made my pain more and more unbearable. Once a freedom machine and now an accomplice waiting for his term of punishment to end!
Obeying her father’s directives, she locked my rear wheel with a padlock and chain. Then she brought her brother to the room to ask whether this bicycle is really his or not. Although she knew the answer and although she knew that her brother would lie to get rid of the guilt, she wanted to hear it from her brother. The boy came, looked at me. At that point he realized that I am not his bicycle. What he did not realize is I will never be his either. He checked my gears, put his bare foot on my pedal, pressed on my tires with his thumb and then turned his face to his sister. “Yes, this is my bicycle! Can I ride it now?” Thi looked at his face, tried to save the image of a young boy who is lying while looking into her eyes directly. There was apologetic regret all over his face, there was plea for clemency. But before all this, there was a look of a boy who does not care anything except for himself. He does not know what troubles he caused for the poor worker and his family? He does not know how the boy who actually got the bicycle from John will feel cheated when he learns that his bicycle is given to a boy just because his father is an influential man. She stared at him angrily in order to make sure that he won’t expect much at the end. “Didn’t father talk with you? The bicycle will stay in my room and you are banned from riding it for one month. It is locked and it will remain locked until the end of this month. Go and wear your school uniforms. The maid will take you to school.”
After her brother left the room, she closed the door quietly as if she does not want to awake someone in her room. She took a piece of broken mirror in one of the draws beside the bed. The piece was from the first mirror they broke while making love in John’s apartment. She remembered the moment that the mirror was fractured with the quick swirl of her hand. It did not cause any pain for her hand because the large metal ring in her finger was responsible for the little accident. It did not even interrupt their love-making. The surface of the fractured mirror showed them in thousands of pieces while their moans were multiplying by the reflecting sound waves in the room. Later on, when she looked at what she has done while her mind was not functioning with the euphoria brought by John being inside her body, she realized that this mirror resembles her heart and shows how fragile their relationship was. After they finished and dressed up to make sure that the mirror will not make them feel ashamed of their nudities, John broke the mirror himself to guarantee that it won’t come out of the wall at the middle of the night later. Thi picked this large piece from the floor just before the rest went to the garbage bin. Then she wrapped it with a handkerchief and carried it home.
She held it in her hand for long time. Remembering that day and the other similar days in that room, recalling the laughters and funny talks their love produced… She remembered the smart words John used to repeat… “That which you lean on for long time makes you weaker.” he used to say whenever she mentions how much she loved him and how she can do anything he wants from her. But now she truly understands what he really meant with those words. The more she leaned on him, she became weaker and he became stronger. She had so many to lose and John had nothing to lose. Finally, the imbalance in the equation could not carry it any more. The rope is broken and the she fell into a well of mud where the only way to clean up off the mud was to forget the cause of the fall.
She rotated the mirror in her palm to different directions so that she can see more things in that piece. She saw the door, the fan, the dressing table, the wardrobe one by one. ‘How amazing that this small piece of glass can contain the entire room so easily’ she thought! Then turned it to her own face! There was a sad smile on her face and she knew that it was borrowed from one of the Holywood stars! It wasn’t her face, wasn’t anyone she knows! When the mirror's surface reflected my image finally, she released her long-time waiting tears from her eyes. For Thi, I was John. Like a gift from him or from a heavenly power who arranged all these events for her to give her the last message. She stood up and came forward to me. Her hands were soft and sylphish. Her face was bright despite the tears still exuding from her eyes. She held the handle bar grips, turned her body and sat on the seat. What was she thinking? She was imagining that John was with him riding the bicycle around the
After spending a few hours in this melancholic mood, she felt tired and lied down on her bed to sleep. When she woke up just before the noon, it was time to go to her Statistics class which she always disliked. She remembered Trai Xa Xu’s offer of help and decided to send him an e-mail for some quick assistance provided that the distance is kept the same. She left home and when she was back before the sunset, I was not in the room any more.
Her brother came home early afternoon and the first thing he did after making sure that his mother wasn’t home was to look at his sister’s room. The door was closed but not locked. I was locked with the chain which tied my seat stay with the rear wheel but the key was not hidden from the eyes which know where to look for. He easily found the key in the blue box, unlocked the lock, took the chain off and hit the roads on me as if nothing happened yesterday. No one stopped him because mother was looking for an apartment for her newly married customer, father was at work, having a meeting with some foreign business people to discuss the construction of a new residential building, the maid was busy at the backyard, taking care of the flowers. So he was outside! He felt free again, on his bicycle nobody could catch him, and nobody could ask him the questions of whys, hows and whens. At the beginning, he needed some time to get accustomed to my style. He lowered my seat and twisted the side mirror upward to see his back better. As usual, he joined to a group of his friends from the school, went with them to a football field where all the other boys playing either football or volleyball. Neither his friends nor the repair guy beside his home who inflated my tires recognized me as a diferent bicycle from his stolen bicycle. So we made the day. The accident happened when he rushed to arrive home before Thi. But he never arrived.
When the accident happened, there weren’t many people on the sidewalks. But I remember that Minh, his wife, his sister-in-law and his son were on a motorbike, driving towards their construction shanty. They were coming from a temple where they submitted Minh’s brother’s body to send to the village without any financial charge. Fortunately, there were charity institutions. He and his sister-in-law also will go to the village in the same evening to arrive at the same time with Minh’s brother’sbody.
When he saw the accident, he stopped the motorbike to evaluate the incident clearly and as soon as he saw the boy under the truck, he asked his wife to drive home. Then he dove under the truck to save the boy’s life. He saw his blood-covered face, his broken arms and the spokes sticked out from his abdomen. He pulled him out with the help of other people rushed to the area. A motorbike driver offered his help. There was no time to wait for an ambulance. He jumped over the motorbike and they went to the hospital. Minh ran to the emergency room just like he ran one day before with his brother in his arms. This time a boy in the age of his own son was the victim and he was feeling the pain of the father of the boy in his own heart. They put him on the same bed his brother gave his last breath in the morning. Bed sheet was new, as white as newly steamed rice and the room did not smell medicine any more. The bed, the walls, the little table in the room all looked new to him, as if his brother never came to there, never died there. The boy died a few hours later but Minh did not see it. In fact he knew that the boy will not survive. He did not wait because he could not take another death in the same day even though the second one was not related to him. He went home before the family of the boy arrived at the hospital. He did not see Thi and her parents running in the corridors, crying for their great loss, not knowing what they did wrong to deserve such a big pain.
It is sad! Two days ago John was riding me. He gave me to a young poor boy so that this young boy can ride me to feel the freedom his parents cannot provide him. However, it did not work out that way. I spent the entire night at the police station. Then police gave me to a boy whose bicycle was stolen by thieves, painted to a different color and put on display for sale in district 11. No one knows this except for me. And the day this boy tried to ride me, he fatally injured me together with killing himself. Now I am waiting for my executioner to come and give me the last blow.
Here is the son of the scrap metal collector, with his hammer in his right hand and screw driver in his left hand. Soon he will break my down tube and top tube. Then my life will cease at that moment. Like an umbrella cannot be called an umbrella if it does not stop the burning sun light or the falling rain drops, I cannot be called a bicycle when my wheels are not attached to a single frame. Then he will dismantle my wheels; take the inner tubes of the tires to sell to a repair shop. Then he will cut the cables of the brakes; hit the chain until it goes off. At the end, all the pieces will be put into a box and will be carried to a pressing machine. There, a weight of thousands kilogram will make me as flat as the surface of paper. After this I will be sold to bigger metal collectors who are using scrap metals to recycle and make secondary tools. Then I will return to life again, maybe as a razor or as a can containing soft drink. Sure I will no more be able to travel on the roads, watch the people’s faces, and listen to their gossips. Funny it is, once the invention of the bicycle has been considered as one of the greatest achievements of the century like steamship, telephone or submarines; now we are the ones who are accused of slowing the traffic and making trouble for those who want to drive their vehicles as fast as possible. I wonder if this will also happen to the motorbikes and cars a few centuries later. Unfortunately I will not be able to wait and see…
The hammer hit me hard but could not separate my body into two. That is how I am still talking. I saved my last minutes to John, my dear owner who cared for me more than anyone else. What happened to John? He left
Here is the second smasher of swinging of the hammer on my triangle frame. This boy is not so strong or he is reluctant to finish it early so I feel like I still have a few more words to say. Now people will say how a bicycle knows all these staff that no one knows. At the end we are made of metal, not muscles, bones and blood like the people. However, I shall not worry about cleaning myself of these doubts any more. It is Trai Xa Xu who gave me the tongue and eventually gave me life. He will meet with Thi this weekend and she will bring her Statistics assignment to seek help from him. He works hard these days to finish his last story so that he can give it to Thi when he meets her. Will she come to meet him even after the terrible accident? Will she like to read a story on a bicycle after all these events happening around me?
Trai Xa Xu does not think about his future very often. When one story finishes, he lives in a vacuum for a while but then this feeling fades away with the seeds of a new story sprouting inside his mind. He speaks for the blind crossing the street, for the poor looking for food to eat, for the rich calculating his money, for the ducks squawking while going to their deaths and even for a soon-to-be-dead bicycle like myself. So he is a writer and he thinks that writing a story means living under others’ skins. Like the fuel gives power to the motorbikes, he gave me this soul to feel and speak. Then I am here, talking, complaining, gossiping, ridiculing and even reasoning like people, most probably like him only. Whatever I said, it is said by him, whatever people will disagree with me, they should disagree with him. At the end, like all writers he is a man looking inside himself to find more about common points shared by all the people on earth living now, lived ever and will live in the future but soon he will realize that looking deeper into himself makes him only away from himself while making him closer to the others, yet at the same time keeping his soul away from the home of a comfortable life…That is why he calls himself “Boy Away From Home”.
2 November 2008 – 15:53 – HCMC, VN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could have never started writing this story without the articles my dear friend,
SOURCES
To write this story, I needed to read a few articles and a few chapters from various books. Here is the list of the works I owe the entire story’s background information.
Bicycle, David V. Herlihy: (A book on History of Bicycles with a lot of illustrations and pictures. It can be partially found on internet.) http://books.google.com.vn/books?hl=vi&id=VDlaT0KxJfAC&dq=bicycle&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=SKXVDDUEeb&sig=bTM2J5CZX9h8QDZIVQx2WJPWbIY&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA377,M1
On the back of a motorbike, Allison Truit,
Young Women and Emergent Postsocialist Sensibilities in Contemporary Vietnam, Nguyen Bich Thuan, National University of Singapore and Thomas Mandy, Australian National University
Several Articles on Bicycles on www.wikipedia.com and www.about.com
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