Chapter Two: Saigon 1956
"It was a story he had heard many times before. Never quite the same
version, embellished on each occasion by his father or, more recently,
his uncle, with a novel nuance designed to suit the contemporary prevailing
winds. Nevertheless he never tired of its retelling. His uncle cut the
figure of an old man now, certainly appearing more than his claimed sixty
four years; there was a discernable shake to his gnarled hands as he drank
his jasmine tea, his yellowing wispy goatee beard precociously portentous
of history yet to be made. (They would swear, the surviving family members,
in decades to come that Hung’s uncle was the spitting image of Uncle Ho.
Some with pride, others, long since deprived of that resource, stoically
and without attachment. Some things just are, with no necessity for whys
and wherefores.) Now a respected village elder, a veteran of Viet Minh
sorties against both the Japanese and the French, Bien’s reminiscences
had passed into local lore. It was rumoured that he knew Nguyen Ai Quoc
himself, that he’d known him before the latter had set off on foreign
quests. Uncle Bien had certainly been away during the Dien Bien Phu victory
almost two years ago: it was tacitly accepted that he’d been there, in
the rough of it. Bien himself never claimed any such involvement, but
he never actively discouraged the rumours either. Every Tet, when families
reunited and spent time honouring dead ancestors, this story was re-told.
Some of the smaller children were sleeping. Hung glanced at his younger
brother and sister, staring in rapt attention at their uncle Bien, and
felt a pang of sorrow. Forcing it from his mind, he settled on his haunches
in a dark corner of the hard dirt floor of their two-room house: he would
listen one last time to the story of his father."
I am still writing this one...don't hold your breath. I am about ten thousand words into what will probably be five times that when finally finshed - this project has a mind and a will of its own.
I hope to add a progress report on the home page, including speculated publishing date...
The following slightly untidy page is a collection of writings which may or may not make it into the novel in one form or other:
