from Troyes 3
a novel by
luong minh dao
The five young applicants, female and male, including Ly, had followed the receptionist and disappeared behind the door to a brightly lit corridor. Van was left in the waiting room. Van and full of afternoon sun, the room had a large glass door and two large windows open to the blue gravel walkway alongside the facade of the building. Sofas and armchairs of dark blue and green leather-like materials were put close to the walls and the windows. In the center of the room, there was a crystal statue of a human form slightly bending forwards and extending its right hand to a riose-quartz ball that lay on an orbit of clear crystal above its head .
The reception office was at the left side of the room behind a partition wall of red bricks at the lower part and glass at the upper part. There were about a dozen of computer monitors sitting on a long table, behind them were chairs with dark blue cushionned backs. In front of and far from the table, there was a counter running from one end to the other of the partition wall. Van wondered why the counter was so long though there was only a reception window .
" Perhaps , there is a long-legged stool behind the window," Van thought, " but the receptionist was standing when she talked to us some minutes ago ?"
Van sat down in the armchair and looked to the door behind the statue.
" Either the statue or the big lunch of instant noodles Ly gave me at her house before we went to this job interview makes me feel so sleepy ?" Van wondered .
He looked around, trying not to fall asleep. Then the applicants appeared at the door, and one by one, they walked into the waiting room. The receptionist gestured to Van to follow her. They want into the corridor.
" The General Director will see you " , she said and stopped in front of a large door of hardwood.
She knocked two or tree thimes, and Van was certain that the person inside could not hear her. She opened the door. It was a very large and very bright, so bright that Van could see only the director' s silhouette. He stoop up and walked to Van. They met at the center of the room.
" Good afternoon ", he said, extending his hand to Van, his voice was cheerful and friendly, " I read you résumé ".
" Good afternoon", Van said, shaking his hand. " Thank you, Sir ".
" You can call me Basho . Let me show you around," the director said .
He went to the door, Van followed him. They passed by some more wooden doors and then, turned right on another long corridor .
" In our countries" , the director said, " the legal systems are similar, taking sources from French system. "
" Yes, sir," perplexed, Van said, thinking of Japan and the periodicals Dalloz and Sirey.
" I wish that I could read your books some day, " the director said, turning his head to Van . " You wrote them in Vietnamese ?"
" Yes sir. But, in the first days of my country's unification, they burned all the books written in the South during the old regime . " Van said, thinking of the confiscations of books had had happened in every street in Saigon .
" I am sorry," the director said. " My father was in Vietnam once ", the director said, turning his head away," a long time ago ".
They continued walking in the corridor. On both sides, there were glass walls and doors to immense rooms ; inside, there were long tables on which were displayed many different types of electronic equipment. In another room, a man in white suit with a white cap and a white mask covering his nose and his mouth was trying on one of the several miscrocopes on a table. Behind him, also miscrocopes were set on five or six more long tables. The director stopped in front of the door and knocked at it. The man turned his head and looked up. The director made sign with his hand to praise the man. He left the miscoscope, turned towards the director, and bowed to answer. The director smiled and walked away, and the man continued his job.
" Also those lenses are for aircraft cameras ," the director said, stopping at another glass door.
Van saw many rows of a variety of objects he never had seen before on a large table, and he did not know which the lenses that the director just mentioned were.
" Do you think that we can perform prfectly the mounting?", the director asked.
" Certainly yes .." Van did not know how to answer, smiling .
" I agree with you " ," the director continued his walk and said ." Performance quality always depend on management of resources ."
Van could not remember how many turns they had made and how many glass rooms of different types of works they had passed by because the corridors were similar to the paths in a maze. They went back to the director's office from another direction. Van sat in an armchair in front of the desk, and the director, in his huge armchair.
" Our branch will start functioning in two months. When either the post of legal or administrative director is open, you are the first person to hear from me. I put your résumé here, always on the top of my desk ", the director said cheerfully, putting his hand on Van's folder, which Van had mailed to the company a week before.
Van wanted to say that it might be an error, but the director stoood up and extended his hand to Van .
" I hope that I see you very soon " , he said .
Van closed the door behind him. Walking into the waiting room, Van was happy that he remembered the way to go back. Ly still was waiting for him to give her a ride home. For almost two months after the graduation from The Electronic Institute, they submitted applications and went to interviews together. Once or twice, Van did not give out his résumé to give Ly more chance to be hired. That day, they rode together since eight o'clock in the morning from an interview to the other and had a break at noon for lunch at Ly's home. She masde for him a bowl of instant noodles and an egg, and Van still felt very full.
"How was the interview ?" Ly asked, standing up.
" I don' t know how to tell you ," Van said, and both of them went to the door.
In the large parking lot, Van opened the car door, and Ly stepped in. Van leaned against the door and looked at Ly.
"You looked very tired," Van said. " What happened during the interview ?"
"Nothing special," Ly said. " After the interview, they gave me the information about salary and benefits, and, of course, a promise. Do you have any hope ?"
" I don't know ."
Van closed the car door and went to the driver seat. He was happy that Ly did not ask further. The traffic was still very light on the way to Ly's home. He stopped the car in front of the house. Ly waited in the car until Van opened the door.
" We do not have any interview tomorrow," Ly said. " Would you like to come and watch a movie with me ? I have a new one my fiancé gave to me yesterday ."
"I'll give you a call ." Van said after a slight hesistation .
Van's apartment was not far away. He parked his car on the street and walked down the yard of green grass and up the stairs to his apartment . He did not go inside. Sitting on the floor of the balcony, he looked to the yard. Behind the green vine wall on the left side of the yard was the apartment of his friend who was running a Vietnamese magazine. It was alomost the middle of the month, and the next month's issue had been printed and mailed to the subcribers and some bookstores, his apartment was dark inside. Van missed the sounds of the word processor printing. Van usually worked late with his friend to type news, criticals articles, and literary works, or to do lettering and pasting. Van always typed his own works, and his friend paid him for his literary works only, not his manual job. They both understood that the payment was a symbolic gesture and related more to friendship than to work value or copyright. The payments were not large to cover Van's apartment rent but enough for Van's food.
Van sighed when he thought about the next month's rent . He did not want to move down to live with his friend and sleep on the couch in the magazine office. He could not go back to his relative's restaurant to ask for a job in the kitchen again because he had been fired when he had asked for a short vacation to see a friend in another city after working for a half year for board and lodging only. Until that moment, Van did not know why he had been fired.
" Of course, there were many possible reasons ," Van thought," but the real one I don't know."
Van thought about the recent meeting with the director of the electronic company and failed to find the cause of the conclusion.
" What it confusion?" Van thought. " Was it a misunderstanding of my résumé? I don't know ."
Van stood up and opened the door of his apartment. It was warm inside .
Van parked his car on the other side of the street and crossed the road. He walked to the light yellow building of the General Relief office. There were some men smoking quietly in the font yard . The office was not as crowded as Van thought. Van took a form from the shelves on the wall. The form was simple except a puzzling question that Van had to check his wallet to answer.
He was the third person in line.
" Do you have the paper?" the social worker asked the woman at the window.
" Yes", said the woman, handing him the paper.
" Is this your correct address ?" the worker asked, looking at the paper .
" Yes, it is ".
" We'll mail the check to your home ,"
" Goodday" said the worker after a short silence, " Next ".
The next person stopped forwards. They talked for a while .
" I give you an appointment for the fith, is it alright ?"
" Nothing sooner ?"
" No. At ten ?"
" Thanks."
" Next ".
Van stepped forwards and handed the worker the application form.
"Thank you." the worker said; then he read the paper from the top to the bottom.
" Good. Can you work ?"
" Certainly, I can ."
" How much cash do you have ?"
" Five dollars, I just checked my wallet ."
"Good," the worker said, writing some words on the square at the top of the paper. Wait in the next room. "
Van went into a smaller room. He sat down in a chair next to the door. The office was on the other side of the room, seperated from the waiting area by a partition of a counter and glass wall. There were two windows. Above the right window, there was a sign of two lines, " Workfare" and " Make the Community Better" , and above the other, the sign was shorter, " Assistance " . Van remembered that a student in the Electronics Training Class had talked about his fascinating workfare experience. He had been sent to a beautiful park to collect trashes for the whole week. Some days, the weather had been sunny, and the park in the early morning, dream like. He had seen the buildings of Spanish architecture stand up along the blue-asphalted roads and could imagine that women and men on the balconies were looking down at the festivity full of colors and music in the street. Some days, the weather was rainy, and the park seemed stepping back into a painting of the Romatic era sleepy and dream-like.
A worker stepped into the office behind the partition, he opened the " Assistant " window and called Van. Van walked to the window .
" This is your work site," said the worker, handing Van a piece of paper. " You start working Monday next week. And here are your seventy dollars ."
The worker counted and handed the money to Van.
" Please sign here and come back for the rest with the certificate of workfare completion ."
" Thank you", Van saId . He signed the form and put money into his wallet.
" Good luck," the worker said. He closed the window, and Van left the room.
Outside, the sun was very bright, and the street, quiet. Standing at the gate of the Service, Van missed the shadows of tall trees along the sidewalks in a certain city. He remembered the first days after the end of the war in Saigon.
Every morning, Van had to report to his old office. The street was quiet, in the bright sun, tall trees spread their shadows into the large front yard of the courthouse. He and some of his colleagues had to do nothing except cleaning the huge wasted building full of trashes of several types the soldiers of the Liberation Front left behind when they withdrew from that temprary post. Then, they had to listen to the fierce criticisms of the old regime delivered by the new judges coming from Hanoi. One morning, Van and his colleagues were gathered around the long table in the conference room. A new judge in grey suit was sitting at one end of the table, in front of him, there was a list of names and numbers typed into three columns.
" Some of you used to drag gullotines over the entire South part of your country to harass our comrades, " the judge said after clearing his throat," but the Revolution always inclines to clemency and consideration for your future ."
He paused and rested his right hand on the list.
" We went into the city at the end of the month, and your puppet government fled away, leaving you behind without paying your salaries. But, the Revolution cannot let you suffer privation; you will have one tenth of your previous salaries until the promulgation of a long term policy."
Some of Van's collagues expressed praise in their voices and on their faces, others looked humiliated, heads bending. Van thought that the decision was absurd, but he felt relaxed because, the day before, he had thought of selling the furniture in his living room for his daily needs . Van, quiet, leaned his back against the chair. The judge gave the list to the person sitting beside him.
"Please go to the accountant-cadre's desk," he said; " then, you may go." He left the conference room.
"It 's enough for a day," Van thought. He left tired and left the gate of the social office for his car on the other side of the street. Van drove home, trying not to think about what could happen in the near future. For a long time, since the second year living in concentration camps in his country, Van had considered all events in his daily life the necessary impredictable crossroads that opened to the immediate choices confronting him. To him, a plan for the future was only a vague forward route , and its backbone was only a living set of canons of human dignity that he had to redefine every moment.
Leaving the sidewalk, Van stepped down the yard, the mail carrier just finished distributing mails into the boxes.
" Good morning," Van said." Do I have any ?"
" Hello my friend," the mail carrier said cheerfully; " you have a letter from France "
"Thank you. From France ?"
" From France , yes, " the mail carrier said; " Goodbye." Smiling, he waved his hand holding some envelopes, and walked towards the road.
" Thank you; goodbye, " Van said. He stood beside the mailboxes until the mail carrier stepped up the stairs to the sidewalk.
Van took his mail and went to his apartment. He sat on the top step of the stairs and looked at the envelope. It 's was Kim 's letter from the Foyer des travailleurs Migrants in La Chapelle-Saint Luc, a suburb of Troyes. For a long time, Van did not think of her. Van opened her letter, it was short.
"... I wanted until now to write to you ," she wrote," because I did not know how to express the feeling I had after Dan wrote to me about your conditions. Now I recognize that language is always relative, and just to say that I understand you is enough ".
" We divorced, and he is running after a young girl . I gave birth to a son eights months after I came here. We have some difficulties, and I felt lonely, but, it is alright. I think that after refining my French, life will be easier for me. I have many things to talk to you, and I believe that to be frequently in touch with each other will make our days full of life ."
Van went to his apartment, wondering why Kim waited until that moment , and why the letter arrived that day. He put the letter and the workfare paper on the table where he usually wrote stories and articles for the magazine. Sitting in the sole chair at the table, he started at the letter. In a short moment, Van felt irritated and thought that
Kim' s letter reminded him some paintful aspects of his daily life that he avoided to think of. Van had a little pressure in his temples and did not know whether he was angry or anguished .
" It could not be so miserable ," Van thought.
Van looked to the window. Outside, the street was quiet. He understood that he could neither cry nor shout.
That morning, Ba had asked him to clean up the storeroom and to work with telephone calls only when he had time . Putting the last boxes of used clothes on the shelves, Van was satisfied that the storeroom was very tidy, and there was enough room for new items arriving tomorrow from various donors. Van went to the rest room and washed his hands and his face; he felt relaxed. The telephone rang when he went back to his desk.
" Refugee Assistance Association " Van said to the receiver.
" I do not speak English," a female voice at the other end of the line said in Vietnamese.
" No problem . How can I help you?" asked Van.
" I am assigned to your office for workfare ," I do not how to start ."
" Let me transfer you to Ms. Johnson, she is the person in charge," Van answer," she speaks our language. Hold on".
Van pressed some buttons and hung up the receiver. It was the last day of his work assignment. The first morning he came here, Ms Johnson, the person responsible for workfare in this site, gave him a janitor's job. When he picked up from the storeroom the tool bucket and the broom with a long handle, he heard someone call " Monsieur le judge " . Van turned his head and saw a man of the age about fifteen years older than his, he was talking towards Van, smiling .
" What are you doing here ?"
" Good morning, work fare assignment ," Van answered.
" This ?"
" Yes. Mr. ... "
" Call me Ba, so I can feel younger," the man said. " I know that you cannot recognize me, enginneer Ba ."
" I am sorry that I cannot remember where I met you ."
" You don't have to. I used to work with you father in the same department in our country, he always considered me his young brother. We talked about you very frequently. I talked to you one or twice when you came to see him in his office. You performed very well your fonction in your homeland ."
Van tried to remember him but failed.
" And this job, I will do very well too.," Van said and smiled cheerfully.
" How is your father now ?"
" He still in Vietnam. He wrote me twice ."
" Why don't you sponsor his departure ? Our association can help you ".
" He did not want to go, and I am an unemployed proletarian,Van laughed and
said, " How can I ?"
" Don't say so. It takes time to settle down," he laughed and said . " Let me talk to Ms Johnson to let you help me with telephone calls ," Ba said. "Leave them there ".
Van put back the bucket and the broom. They walked to Ms Johnson's desk at the back office
Van stood up and waved his hand to Ba; he was talking to a woman at his desk.
"Just a moment," Ba said to the woman," I'll be back right away."
Ba walked to Van's desk.
"Thank you very much," he said," I am sorry that I let you do the hand work alone. The clients came continuosly. Without you, I don't know how to handle the store room."
" You are very welcome," Van answered.
"Today is your last day ?"
" Yes ."
" Why don't you volunteer to work here, just part-time to wait for an opening," Ba said. ' We will have one very soon ."
" Thank you, I will."
" Thank you," Ba said and extended his hand to Van.
Van shook his hand.
" I will be very happy to see you soon," Ba said." I missed your father and the old days ."
" Thank you, I'm happy working here ." Van said." I will return soon".
Van left the room for Ms Johnson's office. She was not there. Van saw his certificate of completion on front of her nameplate on her desk and a short note saying that she had an outside conference and could not see him. Van wrote a short note to say thanks. He took the paper and left the building. Van suddenly remembered the last phone call, and then, he felt relaxed, thinking that it would go back to the front office. Van did not know why he could be so anxious about that call.
Van picked up the rest of his worfare pay at the Social office and went home. He felt hungry when he opened the door of his apartment . He made a cup of instant noodles and thought about Ly. He did not call her last week as he promised after the last job interview, he could not understand why. " Its seemed as unreasonable as the interview itself." Van thought. The smell of instant noodles was dull. Van poured noodles into a plate and ate them.
" It is missing something," Van thought;" perhaps some piquant sauce ."
Van remembered the first bowl of rice soup he had on board of the rescue ship after drifting fourteen days on the ocean without food and water. The cook of the ship had given him a small bottle of red pepper sauce. He had added a small amount of that red liquid to the soup, and instantly the soup had changed its smell and taste.
Van stood up and put the plate and the fork into the kitchen sink. After he finished washing them, Van went to the table in the living room. He lit a cigarette and sat down. The sun from the window brightened a corner of the table, and Kim' s letter was still there, open. Van picked up the letter and read it again.
Foyer des Travailleurs Migrants
Apartment No. 1120. Rue Roger Thieblemont
Route de Paris, Pont d' Orléans
10600 la Chapelle Saint-Lac
France.
Van wondered why the address was so complicated but did not give him any images of Kim 's shelter. Under her signature was a further message :" You remember me and understand me, do you ?"
" Yes," Van thought," I cannot forget the fourteen days of storm on our frifting boat.
I cannot forget the night, when you panicked and shook violently your little daughter, she was crying for water during her sleep. I stopped you, and you hold firmly my hand to calm yourself down."
The little girl died on the first day on the resccuing ship, remembered Van. A sailor and Van wrapped her body in a blanket and put her into the large freezer, beside the ship's provisions. She was cremated ina Japanese pagoda near the refugee's camp. In their camp, many nights Kim stayed up late to talk about her hopes. The morning she left the camp, Kim told him to hold the urn of her daughter's ashes.
" Kiss her for the last time," Kim said, getting into the bus.
Van kissed the urn and gave it back to Kim at the bus window. Van stayed beside the road until the bus dissappeared behind the camp gate.
Folding the letter, Van felt isolated and lonelier than the days he had been in concentration camps in his country.
He remembered the late afternoons when the prisonners were working in the labor field deep in the forest, sitting alone behind the barbed wire fence, he looked at the sky above the trees on the far hills and the land unlimitedly vast outside. He believed that there was a cherished place for him somewhere in a certain period of time, either the past or the future.
When Van woke up the next morning, it was still dark. After he finished his morning routine, Van sat sown at the table.
" I cannot explain," he wrote to Kim, " why I have postponed writing to you until now. I really cannot explain why I failed to do earlier a so simple and so reasonable act -- to extend my hand and accept the help from you. No, I am not allowd to explain because explaining is simply searching for an excuse ... "
Van paused to light a cigarette, then he continued the letter.
" ... Both the past and the present confuse me. I feel isolated, and even in my dream
I suffer loneliness. I miss the days on our escape boat and in our refugees ' camp; I miss your presence. Please answer me ..."
Van went to the post office right after he finished the letter, when the street was still dreamlike.
Then, fifteen days later, Van's letter was returned to him. On the envelope, Kim 's address had been totally crossed out; beside it, a short line of handwriting said,
" N ' habite plus à l'adresse indiquée. " Above Kim's name there was the red
" Return to sender" stamp.
Sitting still at the table, Van stared at the envelope. The yard below the window was sunny and quiet. Van understood that he was waiting for nothing . []
luong minh dao
***
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tưởng nhớ
LUONG MINH DAO
[i.e. Đào Minh Lượng,
tác giả tập thơ VÔ CÙNG
(Sài gòn 1961)
blog Virgil Gheorghiu
Saigon, July 18, 2020
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