The nurses carefully helped his father from the ambulance banquet to the hospital carriage. The doctor placed a ear canal on his chest to show signs of life. They drew out gray hair, carefully examined the wound on his head, and quickly moved him to the X-ray room.
His mother slurred her eyes and cried. She was so perplex that she could not open a rope to pull her handbag to find her husband's identification documents.
It was still dark outside, with light clearly seeing each grain of rain hitting the roadbed. It burst into pieces and quickly disappeared.
He sat next to his mother, staring at the X-ray room, the door was closed. He waited for someone to ask about the situation but no one showed up. Time is slower than the stop.
He asked his mother: "With whom do my three children go to the forest to get bees?"
I went alone. Who would you rather go mountain with if you hesitate? If only a few buffalo watchmen discovered it, it would be a rotten disease for anyone" - his mother said as she stood on her knee.
He calmly looked towards the suction hall and could clearly hear each air flowing in and out regularly in his lungs. Finally, the camera door was opened, the nurse held the paper and rushed towards the cash register. Anxiety at the emergency room suddenly issued a notice:
"Patient Nguyen Quyet Chien, 62 years old, where is his family?"
He jumped up like a spring knife and immediately went to the counter to check the procedures.
"I am a relative of Mr. Chien. How is my father's situation?" - he asked and took his eyes deliberately into the paper tray.
"You calm down. Currently, the old man's condition is very serious and he needs emergency surgery. He filled out the information and signed here. Then go to the other side to pay the hospital fees. Are you covered by insurance?" - the receptionist said.
He trembled and wrote his father's name and signed below to accept all risks during the surgery. His mother stood behind her and shed tears, the old lady shoved and fired. He hugged his mother's shoulder and helped her sit on a cold iron chair like ice.
He helped a number of nurses push the shift bang to take his father into the operating room. He tried to see his father again. At this moment, the story of life and death is lying around in front of him, seeping into every thought of him. The father's face was bruised, his cheeks were swollen, and blood was growing in his left ear, his eyes were still closed. The fall on the branch was too high, causing him to faint on the spot. Maybe he no longer has pain from a deep coma. His bones may have broken into pieces. He heard his heart aching.
The door was just closed, he turned around and hugged his mother and cheered home.
Its okay for me. Mom, don't be too scared! The doctors here are the best in the country, so they will only save your three children" - he comforted his mother. And his mother, who gave him birth, was beyond her comprehension and encouraged him somewhat half-heartedly at this moment. She remained quiet.
"My mother said that my father was a waste, and that he would get old and quit this job. We are old and eager to spend time climbing in the mountains. The cocoa trees have their grandparents living there too - his mother kept mentioning his fathers bee burning.
He sat on the chair, looking at his purple hands filled with wrinkles. There, the trace of time seems to have never been erased. His sleeves with rough bottles are nothing compared to the hardness of his father's bottle. That time, he went to school on the street, holding his father's hand and saying goodbye in the clay yard in front of the house. His tears have weded his father's hands. He looked straight into his eyes and said firmly: "Hum, you should hide your tears inside!".
Her hands are big with her fingers as stiff as cold steel. Perhaps because of his big, strong hands and strong black figure, the village gave his father the nickname Chien Tau!".
He is proud of his father's brave name. He longed for the drops of honey and raw wax inside every time his father brought his backpack to place in front of the porch. He chewed the pickled sticky rice, inhaled the sweet honey, and swallowed the flexible wax in his stomach. His greedy children were once as drunk as thorny as a horse bear. He fell asleep all day.
During his drunken period, he could clearly hear his father's voice laughing. He listened to his grandmother scold his father for not keeping his appetite. She said: " Two people are like two drops of water! Fate is stuck together in the end. He did not understand grandmother's words, but when he saw his father's face staring at him lying on the music video inactivity, he absorbed the pain and the bond began to appear.
That day, his father was slapped by a gray bear with a broken jaw and a cracked skull. He was hospitalized for nearly a year and it took him two years to recover. He planned to drop out of school, but his mother kept crying. Also because of that incident, his father agreed to give him to the owner of the orphanage to raise him to study. He was taken to an isolated school near the edge of the sea, far from his hometown. Many nights he heard his tears falling on the blanket. I miss my mother and some younger siblings very much.
Seventy years, from a shy boy coming out of the village to a technology engineer. The memories in the village kept fading away like water flowing away from the source and reaching the estuary. He forgot that his father was still the one who collected bees on the top of Jesus' mountain. He saw it as a pleasure, not a drop of honey to support his family through hunger. He found his childhood difficult, but to some extent he was lucky enough to escape the countryside. If life is a mixed light and dark color group, pink is still a strong color in him. Everything that he has experienced is just the material to enhance that brilliance. With the money he sent home, his mother repaired the floor, re-inserted the windows and added a corrugated iron roof. His father was of course quite satisfied with him.
His mother still nodded in the shady darkness. Occasionally, she urged him to go to the operating room door to see the results. He still comforts me to believe in the doctor.
His mother was still sitting on an iron chair as cold as ice. With her back reaching out, she grabbed the puppets back, pointing them high and the columns became bulbs behind her. Looking straight into his eyes with a kind look, she asked:
"If the three of you don't get away with this, what will you do? Can I wait another 3 years for my child's wedding?" - the mother of the card-shaped rabbit asked.
"The death of your father is more important. Her child's proposal is a lifelong story. Mom, don't worry! he said.
But your father told me that your childrens stories are always more important than their lives. Just as long as you and your father live, thats enough, his mother said.
Mom, dont think like that! he said.
"Living until the end of my life, I found raising children to be the biggest thing, and in this, I was not fully devoted to my children. Don't be angry with me, Mom and Dad!" - his mother said slowly.
Mom! Please don't say that," he said.
A cold, bitter feeling runs through his mind. For a long time, even though he had not spoken or thought, there were moments when the suffocation came over him. It comes to mind, endless endless questions that no one can answer, over time have turned into a deep worry. Now he understands that not only did his parents reject him, nor did his brothers less love him than push him out of the family.
Also unable to blame him, the 14-year-old son hugged the pile of torn clothes to greet his parents and then said goodbye. Leaving behind the fields and mountains covered in fog.
Do you know why I often go to the forest alone? his mother asked. Then she whispered to herself as if talking alone, her eyes still not looking up.
"Once, my mother saw her father crying under an ancient gourd tree. He cried and crushed his head on the trunk, covered his hands in the rough shell of the tree as if he had choked. He missed his children and blamed himself. His mother once thought that he liked to wander alone in the forest to find freedom, but that was not the case. That was definitely the moment he grumbled his loneliness. Parents also know that their children are very lonely....
He hugged his mother in his arms, quietly listening to her tears flowing. He thought he was sad like a cold star, far away from where the sunlight did not shine. The place where the warmth of the family has cooled like a generation of ice and ice. But he was wrong, there was no sadness, pain and cold like the separation of children. He did not understand that the day he passed away, his father was in more pain than cutting off his intestines. But perhaps, he had imagined it to this day. He accepted being helpless and cruel by the world, but he was determined to be different from him. He had to leave the forest. Perhaps he was strong enough to endure the pain to stop him from himself and find another future.
The father was transferred to the emergency room with a breathing tube stuck directly into his nose. The room was cold. The ting ting of the machine is the final sound as if signaling the vital signs.
Three people were lying there with their bodies immobile, their breathing was as light as a lake, everything dusty in this life had been shaken away. He took a warm towel to dry the skinny back of his head. Wings and big toes. The trio's hands were slightly apart, no longer stretched, it was as if resting. your feet with your thumbs rough and your calves are white. Perhaps his father's heart no longer beats strong enough to pump blood to the farthest parts of the body.
A week later, many weeks later, the hospital corridor became his familiar sleeping place every night. There, he witnessed the biet thieu scenes, the screams of despair and the bodies being pushed onto the music video. Night and night, the smoke is still haunting under the old thuong in the middle of the yard with the night-time wishes to go into the future.
Never thought about his father and the memories flooded back like now. He saw the house and his childhood, each old story as if a movie in the past flowing back.
One day, lying down in the hallway, he dreamed of following his father wandering into the honey-filled potholed forest. Wild bees make nests so thick that he only needs his hands to get that shiny and sweet yellow honey. The bees come in to collect him in the dust bags, but his dream makes him feel no pain at all. He was like a superhero walking in the mists and sweet honey. He saw his father going ahead, holding bright torches, and the bees flying far away when there was smoke. He turned around and looked at him sweating with a gentle smile filled with love. He saw his father's shoulder blades hanging down on his shoulders due to the heavy burden of gallbladder. He followed his father around but couldn't find his house until someone called him up so she could work hard to clean the hallway.
He looked over the glass door. My father was still there and the moment before, the father and son were together in the deep forest. He hated the truth that was permeating his life. I wish I could sleep in that dream forever. Outside, light rains are spreading sideways with the cold wintering into the skin.
His mother almost collapsed in the final pain when the doctor informed him that his father could not survive. He called the two younger brothers to inform them that his father would be taken home by car in the afternoon. neighbors surrounded his father for the last time, his breath gradually lightened until it stopped completely. His uncle, put his hand on his father's nose, and informed him: "My brother Chien is gone!". The sound of tears and pain flew into the sky, flying to the top of the mountain, hiding under the mist as if waiting there for a thousand years.
He suddenly felt an emptiness and at that moment he realized what it was like: Orphaned!".
His father's funeral took place on a rainy day. The countryside is covered in a cold gray color.
He didn't know if his mother's tears had run out, but he only knew that she no longer cried out loud. Her eyes were red and empty, staring at the coffin that was being lowered.
At this moment, he realized something: The fateful line that his grandmother once said was never broken. It still exists, passing through two generations. It caused his father to spend his whole life in the forest, then leave alone. That bond is surrounding him, dragging him back to the forests that once haunt him.
He released his handful of soil into the pulp as if he had released his soul into it. The sound of dry soil hitting the coffin sounded soft and cold. A strong wind swept through the cemetery, carrying the leaves of the water lilies that fell on the left. In that moment, he suddenly remembered something his father said when he took him to the forest every year: "Everyone likes sweet honey, but don't know, to get it, bees have to trade their whole lives. The same goes for those in the forest! Sometimes I have to pay the price...". He closed his eyes, allowing the cold wind to cut into his skin.
Everyone left in turn. Only he and his mother stood in front of the newly built tomb mushrooms. His mother sighed, put down a bunch of incense, and then whispered:
"I'm going back to the city. I'm worried here."
He did not answer. He looked down at the newly filled land where his father had rested. Some of him had died with his father. A part of him has returned to the forest he once fled to. And that bond of fate, even invisible, will never be broken.
It is still raining. A drop of cold water rolled down his cheeks. It could be rainwater. It could also be... tears.
The tomb of the three patriarchal brothers faces the top of Jesus' mountain. In the late afternoon, he and his mother often burn firewood next to their father's grave. He thought that his father's soul would be warmed and he could see him and his mother very close to him. The fire is the embodiment of the last warmth of the family and then the eternal wildness will return his father to the vastness of the universe.
He looked towards the mountains and decided to take a leave of absence at the end of January. He thought he would walk around the forests where his father had visited. He didn't know where his steps were, but he just walked. The rotten leaves, the sandy thorns are scattered, the trunks are rough, damp, and quiet. The strangely quiet forest. He stepped into the abyss, not knowing what to look for. The leaves cover the weak January sunlight. The fine smell of the bock forest in his nose made him suffer from goosebumps. He clearly saw the layered branches of trees, ropes, and strange shapes like thousands of faces in a corner of a red light street that he stopped every afternoon. The forest and the face of a person, the sound of birds crowing, the sound of streams, the roar of winds and leaves, a chaotic sound like the sound of cars blending among the endless flow of people. At this moment, his heart suddenly changed, he felt that space and time were mixed up in his mind. He can no longer define where the forest is or where the street is. He did not know where the trees and the people, the faces and leaves were. He felt in his loneliness a hand holding his hand towards the sun. The light burst out brilliantly, the brilliance of the loneliness of searching for him, his father, his family and the mountain that he had searched for centuries. It is a little light reflecting on the face of a person with lonely features.
His feet sank into the layer of rotten leaves, each step was a sighing sound of the old forest, like the breath of his father on the last day in the intensive care unit. The roar of the machines, the cold air of the hospital, the laboring pain of his mother - all surrounded him like an unforgettable darkness.
He didn't know how long he had been gone. The sun has never gone down the mountain. The forest is now completely black, the sound of the dead is like the whisper of the deceased. He knelt down next to an old coconut tree with his thumbs stuck to the rough shell as if to hold on to the past.
He called my father. But no one answered.
The darkness swallowed up all the sounds.
No one found him in this mountain or forest. No one knew where he was. And who knows, no one needs to know.
He thought about his mother, and the house was now just a quiet person. His mother will gather a kitchen next to her father's grave, the small fire burning in the middle of the night. But this time, no one will stand next to her, no one will watch from the darkness and then burst into tears in silence like their father.
He realized that even if he returned, he could not fill that void. He burst out laughing - a distorted sound echoing in the middle of the forest late at night. He stood up, looking towards the abyss, where the darkness spreads endlessly. A hand someone had placed on his shoulder, leading him out of the darkness.
But now, there is none left.
And this time, perhaps he doesn't need anyone either.
Da Nang, February 4, 2025
