Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Translated by Khanh Phuon
His biography:
Year of birth: 1939
Hometown: Minh Quang Commune, KienXuong District, Thai Binh Province; Current residence: Hanoi City
Profession: Thirty years of journalism, Radio and Television Editor. Member of Vietnamese Journalists Association, member of QuangNinh Provincial Literature and Art Association.
Main published works: Many scripts for the documentary film and feature films; Many short stories; Special Novel “Earth and Blood” published by Vietnamese Writers’Association and already translated into English; Many short scripts and autographed reports in magazines and online newspapers…
The bear claw
Dr. Giang Kim Huyen is a good respiratory specialist. After several years of studying in France, she works as Head of the Intensive Care Department at Lung Hospital of a big city. No one told her that she was a Muong lady. Even though she is old enough to get married, she is still pretty, agile and resourceful. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Dr. Huyen’s work became even busier. She and her colleagues have to work on duty at the quarantine area to treat patients.
On a cold night, at the end of the year, the emergency bell rang, all people who are on duty quickly put on heavy protective clothes and rushed out to greet patiences. A male patient is rather old, thin and disheveled, probably had a hard-working life, but still retains some features of an educated person, high forehead, bald head, wide eyebrows, large and long earlobes. Everybody has own job to do, colleagues work quickly, smoothly and accurately.
Holding a computerized tomography film in her hand, Dr. Huyen shakes her head and says to her colleague: “It’s dangerous, the incubation period has passed, the virus has diffusely penetrated the respiratory epithelium, leading to damage the lung parenchyma…Combined with diabetes, the HbA1c index exceeds the allowable threshold”.
Immediately, many doctors together discuss on a treatment plan and transfer the patient to a special isolation room. Doctors and nurses are on duty 24/24h. Huyen still is not reassured, she is more available to monitor breathing, temperature, blood pressure and directly gives food and medicine to the patience. Busy all day long, having to wear heavy protective clothes, every time changing, a colleague has to help her. It is so hard.
Filing a medical record, Dr Huyen is surprised: What’s his name? Where is his hometown? Phone or other informations, nobody knows. At reception, a taxi driver covered his face, parked the car, finished his job, and ran away. At this time, here, the hospital’s policy is that absolutely no one allowed, only doctors are on duty. Cannot ask any one, luckily in his pocket there was a small piece of paper with a few words written: “I am at low blood glucose because of diabetes. Please give me a candy. Thank you!”
That’s all. But it’s enough to see that this person has an experience. Temporarily to give him the code N102. There have been many such cases. When returning the jar of ash, the deceased people have no hometown, so they have to place them at Long Phuong Pagoda, so that their descendants would know to find them. All procedures for the deceased people are taken care of by the pagoda. The searching job for the sicks is taken care of by the hospital’s administrative department.
The phone rings, Doctor Huyen hurriedly listens.
“Hello mother, it’s me”.
On the other end of the line, mother says.
“Daughter, you haven’t come home these past few days. I’m really worried.”
“Don’t worry, I am still healthy.”
“I heard there’s a lot of Covid patiences. Be careful, daughter.”
“Don’t be afraid, mom. I am the doctor!”.
“Yes! That’s good. Take care of your health!”.
On the bed, it seems that Mr. N102 overheard the story of Huyen and her mother, he raises his hand as if begging. Coughing came, tired, short of breath, eyes wide open fiercely, wanting to say something in his head but no words came out, mouth moved… His eyes made Huyen shaking. Nearly twenty years ago, when her father was about to die, there were also two fierce eyes of a bald man yelling like that. A fate of poverty, Huyen and her mother remained silent to pass the time. The humiliation has now faded, but the hurt is still there…
***
In the following days, following the treatment regimen, patient N102’s health improved: He is able to eat rice, coughed less, still had to be on a ventilator but less and his heart rate increased.
The patience N102 is more improved, Huyen gets weakened. After many days and nights of hardship, her resistance could no longer bear it. The Crona Virus is transmitted from patients to doctors and nurses. The whole hospital is shocked, an emergency order is issued, Dr. Huyen is placed in a special isolation room, providing all conditions for treatment.
Meanwhile, the doctors in the department had enough data to prepare a medical history for Mr. N102. His name is Nguyen Tien Nhan, no wife, nor children, or house. Having just been released from prison, without a job, wandering around the market, people sympathized with him, allowing him to take a fish cart from Ha Long and then deliver it to the stores in the wholesale market. He is greedy, works little, eats a lot.
During the days when the city is quarantined to prevent Covid, no one is allowed to go out. Staying at home is patriotic! Anyone who goes out must have a certificate from the ward. Mr. Nhan carries essential goods (shrimp and fish) and has the right to go around every street and alley to every house. In addition, he is enthusiastic even into the forbidden areas (areas with many F0). Even if gets infected, he let is be, he thinks that he is old and try to earn more money to take care himself in the future, because he cannot rely on anyone. The old man smiled brightly.
Near Lunar New Year, every house buys more goods, just relying on the delivery people. Mr. Nhan is busy, forgot to eat, had low blood glucose, weak, dizziness, and fell onto the street in the red coastal area surrounded by Covid virus. Panicked, the staff are on duty, wearing blue protective clothes, gets him into a car and drove to the hospital. Not knowing what his situation is. Finished!
After a period of intensive treatment, with the support of good doctors, Dr. Huyen completely recovered and returned to normal works. Patience Nhan, third nasal test, positive. But diabetes index is not decreased, eye fundus complications, brain tumor. The Hospital Director decided to transfer him to the Endocrine Hospital for specialized treatment. Before leaving, one last time is checked to prepare discharge documents.
***
Dr. Huyen directly does an ultrasound on both sides of the neck. Having a headache, Mr. Nhan groans softly, unbuttons his collar, and reveals a silver necklace, the silver-wrapped bear claw. Huyen is startled and calmly reads the letter P (her father’s name is Pheo) embossed on the pattern. Why does he have this bear claw? Is it from Giang A Pheo’s father? many thoughts in Huyen’s head. The story is so strange and painful. Many years buried deep in her heart, today it comes back.
Huyen hometown is far away, in the high mountain. In the morning, a rooster crows and the three countries of Vietnam – Laos – China can hear it together. That is Dien Bien, with many beautiful natural landscapes. Since ancient times, ancient Vietnamese people lived and resided in Tham Khuong and Tham Pua caves. Bauhinia variegata bloomed white in the forest, heaven and earth were in harmony, the sounds of forest birds singing love, the sound of the flute calling friends. Huyen’s house was on a high mountain covered with clouds and cold winds all year round.
Looking down from above, the mountain and forest landscape was like a giant picture, with stilt houses, thatched houses of different sizes scattered along the roadside, along streams and even in dense bushes. In the distance, UVa stream was murmuring.
Father of Giang A Pheo went to the forest to catch deers and pigs, many months traveling to the forests of Laos and the forests of Yunnan, China. Mother Tao Thi Mui, stopped teaching, went to the fields to plant corns and cassavas, hung around the fire, and did some embroidery. During the rainy season a few years ago, both parents, villagers and the school were swept away by huge floods. Lost everything. Father Pheo was afraid and carried each other to the top of the mountain. They could avoid the flood, then suffer by barren and dry soid all year round. They had to hunt wild animals to support the family.
Although living in remote and poor, mother still tried her best to send her daughter to school. Giang Thi Lem, three years old, was carried by father Pheo on his back over three hills, swinging two rope-bridges across the stream to go to the school to find the education. Only education can make a good person, that’s what mother taught daughter. When she grew up, she was sent to boarding school. Giang Thi Lem changed to Giang Kim Huyen to be nicer.
***
A colleague called out suddenly, interrupted her thoughts:
“Dear! There’s an urgent order. Patient N 102 cannot be transferred.”
Huyen turns back:
“What’s wrong?”
“Fear of contagion”
“He’s still very weak.”
Assigning works to the colleague, Dr. Huyen goes to a room to call:
“Mother, it’s me.”
“I just finished cooking, daughter, come home and eat soon!”.
“I’m so confused!”
“What is it?”.
“Mothẻ, look at the two bear paws I put in the cupboard, what is it engraved on?”
“There’s no need to see it. One is M for me. One is your L. What’s so strange? Can’t you come back and see it?”
“What about my father’s?”
“There is the letter P, but it’s already been taken. No more talking about it, it’s heartbreaking.”
So Huyen understood and recalled:
On that hunting trip, Father Pheo and his two friends in the village invited each other to the vast Yunnan forest to set bear traps. Three days later, they brought home a huge, shiny black bear. They shaved its hair, peeled its skin for meat, took a bile and boiled its bones. Each person took a little, and brought meats to the market to exchange for rice and clothes.
The most precious thing was the bear paw. Father Pheo chose the three most beautiful ones and brought them to Mr. Phong’s house, the best silversmith in the area. Father hired him to engrave the initials P, M, L of the three people’s names. Father Pheo happily believed that bear claws can exorcise evil spirits, helping people who were often haunted, weak, mentally unstable, and had insomnia like mother Mui. Huyen often cried at night. To wear it around her neck, she would be as quiet as a cat lying in the kitchen…
***
Mr. Nhan kicks off a blanket and tries to get up. With great difficulty, the doctors are able to tie his legs to the edge of a bed that keeps him to lie still so that the infusion lines and breathing tubes would slip out and blood flowing. But his mouth is still mumbling, speechless.
Dr. Huyen directs the work while continues to call her mother:
“Tell me again, who took that bear paw with the letter P?”.
“A doctor like me”
“Where is he?”.
She spoke for a long time, about something like this: After two months in the hospital, Pheo’s condition became more and more serious. He kept coughing, unable to breathe, had a heart attack, his legs were as swollen as pillars. They sent him to Hanoi for laparoscopic surgery, which the mountainous hospital could not do. Border Guards carried him by a hammock. The road was so far away, how can mother Mui know?
Huyen was studying for the final exam and preparing for the university entrance exam and had to apply for a reservation so that she and mother could take father to Hanoi. It took two days of struggling and vomiting before reaching the port. Finding a hospital, a taxi around the streets, and paid double money. No matter it was, as long as father Pheo had medicine, he would be able to live.
However, the hospital was closed on Saturday. Two days and nights they laid on the garden stone bench, waiting. The few sticks of rice that mother prepared that was not enough. Father Pheo ate porridge and mother and daughter ate a piece of bread. Early on Monday morning, a kind woman came to the garden to handed him straight to a doctor, whispered: “Blessed him, line up, a good doctor, go”.
A person standing next to him shouted loudly: “Don’t interrupt, line a document there!”. The kind woman cursed: “Fuck you, the doctor’s family member.” Inside the door, a man in a white shirt reached out and pulled Father Pheo in. The door closed. The kind woman pushed Huyen and her mother away and breathed a sigh of relief: “That’s it, give me two hundred, noodle has gone up in price, I’m sweating.”
Huyen and her mother were stunned, the woman said, “Hurry up, I find another case.” Someone called in: “A broker.” Huyen realized the reality. She tried to find money and gave two hundred. Just then a voice called out: “Are patient Pheo’s family here?”. Huyen said loudly “Yes”. Mother and daughter pushed the door in, Huyen was pushed out: “Just one person.”
A moment later, mother cheeks were wet with tears as she led Pheo’s trembling and pale body step by step. Huyen ran to hug him. There was no more room. Hundreds of chairs were full, temporarily supporting him to lean on a wall to relieve fatigue. Huyen happily asked her mother:
“So fast, mother?”.
“Got on the operation table, then had to get off immediately.”
“What’s wrong?”.
“No payment yet!”.
“How much?”.
“Sixty million! Where can we find the money? I’m going to die, daughter!”.
“Why so much?”.
“Who knows, the doctor told me to order something, it’s very expensive to buy it in America.”
Huyen was startled, her limbs trembled, she couldn’t say a word. To be calm down, Huyen ran back and forth to all the rooms to ask for preferential treatment for ethnic people in remote areas. A large change box was placed right at the door, with words supporting poor patients.
Overjoyed, a manager of the cash box said: “You look like you’re really from Muong, where’s the certificate with the commune’s seal?”.
« Oh my god, it’s like that again, with all that change, is it enough to pay for the ride home to get a seal? So no result. The rich are given preferential treatment, the poor are “to wait”… Fahter Pheo is in more and more pain every time »
A sick old woman, holding a straw bag, stood up to give a seat to Mr. Pheo. Before thanking her, she said: “I can stand, just take a few cough pills and go home right away, it’s not much. Please sit down.”
Father curled up on the chair to ease the pain. Mother Mui tried to push the clinic door and rushed in again:
“Doctor, my husband is about to die, please help me!”
The doctor did not turn back and said harshly:
“Where is the payment paper?”.
My mother knelt at the doctor’s feet and begged:
“Sir, I only have this!”.
The doctor turned around:
“What is this?”.
Mother’s hands held a tiny brocade bag. Just then, a beautiful, elegant young woman walked in. The doctor greeted happily, turned around and said to mother Mui:
“You should try more until it’s enough!”.
The doctor put the brocade bag into his pocket and followed the other woman.
***
Huyen cried loudly and called out: “Dad, wake up!”. Mother Mui hurriedly ran back, hugged her husband and shouted loudly: “Villagers! help!help”…The whole waiting room was so chaos, pushing and banging on the doctor’s door. Only now did people see the doctor’s name clearly. He posted on the door “Specialist II Doctor Ma Tran Muu”. Oh!.
Clearing everyone out, only Huyen and her mother, Dr. Muu remained in the room. He glared and said:
“We are not responsible.”
In this situation, Huyen was no longer a Muong girl. Raised her voice:
“Can you say that?”
Doctor Muu waved his hands and explained:
“Come on, I have nothing to do with scissors!”.
There was a lot of noise outside demanding atonement, the doctor pushed Huyen and mother out, before closing the door, he said:
“Go down to the morgue, pick up the corpse”…
That image, that sentence was even sharper than a scissor, it followed Huyen all her life. Now when she thinks about it, she cried again.
Mr. Nhan tries to lift his arm, the wires are tangled. Like crazy, he uses all his strength to yank the silver necklace and the bear claw off his neck. Everyone tries to hold tight so he could not interrupt.
At the other side of the phone, mother consoles her daughter:
“Okay, it’s over, don’t think about it anymore, it’ll hurt your heart. Father Pheo has blessed you to study well to help everyone. I’m very happy, my daughter.”
…At that time, difficulties came, mother struggled, sad, lost her soul. Lonely in a strange land, Huyen did not know where to bury her father, hometown was far away, no money to return home. One time, Mr. Khoang lived in the next village, his wife was sick and died, so he had to get on a motorbike to take her from the hospital to the village. Uncle Khoang can do it, but what about a girl like Huyen and her mother? At that heartbreaking scene, everyone comforted them, gave them a piece of bread, some money… The old woman with the straw bag sobbed and said:
“Dear auntie!”
Surprised, she considered her mother as a younger sister. Huyen hugged her tightly and said lovingly:
“Dear auntie! Thank you very much.”
“Don’t say that. I’m also poor, living alone outside the Red River, a large land. If you don’t mind, you can move his coffin there temporarily, for a few more years and then we’ll figure it out. We’ll stay with you in a hut, cooking rice and an egg every day for him. Is that okay?”
Huyen and her mother burst into tears. It was a real dream, was this the fairy from UVa stream in their hometown? She came to earth, taught the Muong people to grow mulberries, raise silkworms, grow rice, weave cloths, eliminate evil and help the poor.
Now she has appeared here again to protect Huyen and her mother. “Dear, please let me call you Fairy Woman!”. “Alas!”. The old woman rubbed Huyen’s head and smiled through her tears.
From then, in the dark of the shabby tent, three hearts lit the fire of human love. The darkest place was the brightest…
Father Pheo had a beautiful, peaceful grave.
Mother Mui and the Fairy Woman went around the streets picking up scraps and bottles, earning coins.
Huyen begged her mother to continue studying the program she was leaving behind. Before she could not finish her sentence, the Fairy Woman said:
“Yes, go to school! We can be able to sell goods, let you study. There are a lot of beer cans these days, those thrown away items are enough for you to go to university.”
Mother Mui chimed in:
“She is very smart. One day in the high mountain, no electricity. She sit under the moon. On the crescent moon, she took fireflies and put them in eggshells to make a study lamp”
A few days later, the Fairy Woman brought to Huyen a load of old books that someone had thrown away, all kinds of books, foreign languages, dictionaries… Even computers. Huyen happily moaned, immersed herself in studying, studying, forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep.
That afternoon, Huyen went to the end of the street to welcome her mother and the Fairy Woman, jumped up and hugged them :
“I receive a scholarship and will go to France to study medicine, dear!”.
Mother Mui was surprised, trembling, speechless:
“What?”.
The Fairy Woman sat down on a pile of beer cans, pulled the hem of her shirt to clear tears. People in the neighborhood came out in large numbers. Everyone was happy.
While studying in France, Huyen was loved by the female professor, Dr. Pauline, and considered as her daughter. She taught her French. Huyen took care of her and made her look beautiful every time she went to the festivals.
She often took Huyen for tours of scenic spots in France: Notre Dame Cathedral, Eiffel Tower, Louvre Museum… Standing in front of the Mazarine Library with countless books, she said: “Vietnamese people are poor both materially and intellectually. Without knowledge, you cannot be developed. If you want to develop, you must learn. If you make an effort to learn, you will have the right to choose.
“It is not that society developed too fast, it’s that our thinking is too slow. Why is thinking slow? It’s because too lazy to study and not enough effort….” Those words touched her heart and Huyen read them passionately, sometimes for weeks in the library.
After completing the course, Pro. Dr. Pauline kept her to perform surgeries so that become proficient. On returning home, the teacher and student brought many medical equipment with them. They wished to cure poor people in remote mountainous areas, not let them die unjustly like Father Pheo…
***
Mr. Nhan is really crazy, the silver necklace and bear paw came off his neck. He sits up, whispering every word. Maybe he wants to talk. The last words are always true. “I am… Ma Tran… Muu… who caused… the… death of Mr…. old Muong… Please forgive me…this is a treasure…”. The clock on the machine monitoring his breath, temperature, and blood pressure gradually stops.
He has no wife, nor children, or house. “Please forgive me,” Giang Kim Huyen and her mother kindly acknowledged that sentence.
She takes care of everything for him. Ma Tran Muu’s ashes are placed on the altar at Long Phuong Pagoda. Mother Mui, the Fairy Woman and Huyen quietly bow their heads to say goodbye.
The Fairy Woman prayed softly: “You can go peacefully, the story in the temporary world will only stay temporarily in the mouths of the world. Kind person will forever stay. Karma is like that. Buddha.”
Mother Mui sobs and calmly says:
“After father Pheo’s death, many doctors were even worse. Then they bought equipment, made a big difference of hundreds of billions. While in prison, his wife sold two villas, took the money and fled abroad. Bad luck is never alone.”
Huyen asks hurrily:
“Why does he have father Pheo’s bear paw? Please tell me.”
“When your father was in danger and we didn’t have a coin, I had to give him the bear paw in the brocade bag and asked for help. He put it in his pocket and rushed out. Father Pheo died, I did not dare to ask for it back.”
Huyen is angry, but tries to hold back. Mother understands and softens her voice:
“At the cremation, the funeral director told me: “The bear paw cannot be burned, you should take it as a souvenir!”.
Huyen quickly asks:
“What did you say?”
“And what else! The bear paw is the exorcist, going to the underworld will help him to become a good ghost and will soon return to human life. If he goes to the nine levels of hell, will suffer from boiling oil and fire. Suffering. Poor him. Just keep burning”.
In Covid season 2021
