Then U' has got married! The news spread like a squirrel running all over Lung Thang Hamlet. It was unheard in this hamlet of the Thai people that a girl got married after she was 20. So Then U'’s marriage at 27 was more than strange. Shaman Then Sa put on his robe in a hurry and made offerings to Sua, the mountain god, to pray for peace in the hamlet.
For the last two months, a group of people digging for gemstones had turned up from nowhere and pitched a tent in the area. During the day, they were at the digging site, leaving behind a sick-looking boy in rags to keep an eye on the tent. Every morning, as she went to the field, Then U' saw the boy standing by the door, his face gloomy, eyes fixed on the Nam Bo Stream.
On Tet xap xi day, or the festival of the Thai that falls on 15 of the seventh lunar month, Then U' did not go to the field. She took newly ground sticky rice flour and mixed it with water to make cakes. Then she took a bowl of ant eggs she had collected the day before to make the filling. Although she lived alone, she made the cakes every Tet xap xi to offer the mountain god. The cakes steamed fragrant all over the house. She would use boiling water from the pot to kill the chicken when the cakes were well done. The young hen had been caged for over a month and fed with only rice to fatten it for the occasion. She wondered if down under the stone tomb, her mother was welcoming Tet xap xi as well. Then U' continued to observe the festival exactly as her mother had taught her before she died. The only difference was that Then U' killed just one young hen and made only five cakes, the custom being that the number of hens killed depended on the number of family members — one chicken and five cakes per person being the norm. When the food was cooked, half of the chicken dish and three ant-egg cakes were placed on a small banana raft to be floated down the Nam Bo Stream. Mother said that this was reserved for the person she loved best. The remaining portions were placed in the middle of the yard and offered to Sua Mountain God.
That day, Then U' heard the boy crying out for his father. Thinking he was in some kind of danger and alone at home, she rushed down and saw two men carrying the father back to the tent. One of the men told her in Thai, "A snake has bitten him, and we do not know what to do. Please help him if you can." Then U' nodded and ran home, took three chicken eggs, hurried to the stream to pick five mulberry leaves and five grass buds which she chewed and mixed with egg yolk. She wrapped the mixture around the wound after removing all the clotted blood. She had learnt this from her mother. Many people who’d been bitten by the green snake, the most poisonous of all, had been cured this way. The gemstone diggers ran back to site when they knew that there was somebody taking care of the boy’s father. Left alone with the crying boy, Then U' was touched with pity. She consoled him, "Your father will recover, so don’t worry. But he should stop digging stones for quite a long time, you know. This snake is very poisonous."
The boy took to calling her aunt, and it seemed that he had not had anybody to talk to for quite a long time. He spoke to her at length about his family. His house was in Ta Ao Hamlet. His mother had gone missing in a flash flood the year before. The bereaved father and son had nothing to eat, so they left the house and had come up here to earn a living by digging stones. His father was ailing, so they had gone a few days without food. He wished his father would recover soon, and have a large pot full of steamed rice like the days when his mother was still alive.
Then U' told him, "My house is just over there. Come and get some rice to cook for your father." The boy’s eyes opened wide. It was the first time somebody had made an offer like this, and he followed her without hesitation. From that day, he tailed Then U' all the time. With her treatment and care, the wound healed gradually. She fed him with good food, so he recovered fast. The father was moved when his son told him about what Then U' had done for them.
One evening, father and son went to see Then U'. He told her that his father was a Thai from Bong Hamlet and that he had strayed to this area during the French occupation. His father had told him that if the mountain god had not become angry one year and rained stones in an avalanche that had destroyed several hamlets at the foot of the mountain because the offerings made that year were not pure, he would have been married to a girl in this hamlet — Lung Thang. That night, Thin U' offered him the half-bottle of alcohol she had got for Tet xap xi, and he told her his father’s story.
***
During the time the French occupied the Luc Yen area, his father lived in dire poverty, and had to slave under one local master after another. Having no clothes for the winter, he had to use the bark of the sui tree (an elm variety) after fetching it from the forest. At the urging of a friend, who also worked for the same master and could not bear the hardship, he left the area and came to Lung Ma Hamlet, near Lung Thang, to work as porters carrying logs for a French boss.
Once, as he pulled a log down from the top of the mountain, it was raining hard, and the ground was slippery. He lost his footing and fell down, and the log fell on him, breaking his legs. The boss had no more use for him. He lay motionless in the corner of a hut. A Thai woman took him to a quack who could heal the fractures. When he recovered, she adopted him. She had a rather good looking daughter named Paong, whose father was a leper who’d been tied to a bamboo raft and floated down Nam Bo Stream. The girl was given a wide berth by the people of the hamlet including the boys. She developed tender feelings for him, seeing that he was hard working and good-natured. He responded and they decided to get married. Her mother was very happy about it. She planned an offering ceremony to Sua Mountain God, to pray for their marriage after the harvest of the next crop. Without warning, the wrath of the mountain god triggered the avalanche of stones, and they came rolling right into their home. He heard Paong scream as he himself was thrown up, landing on a stone slab as large as a bed that slid quite a distance before it stopped. He looked back, and there were stones all over the area. There was no way Paong and her mother could have survived. Stricken by grief and panic, he went down to the Bong Hamlet and lived on the assistance of the people there.
It was in this hamlet that the stone worker’s parents met. His mother was an immigrant from the delta who worked as a hired hand. When he was two years old, his mother died. Later, after he himself had been married for just two months, his father died unexpectedly.
The voice of the stone worker died out, his eyes turning glassy as if the alcohol was taking effect. Then U' let him lean back on the kitchen wall and nod. She did not pay any heed to the boy tapping on her hand, pointing at his father, laughing, two front teeth missing. She was thinking about her mother. Her mother, whose name was also Paong, had told her about the terrible avalanche of stones that had thrown both her grandmother and mother far away. They had lain unconscious until noon. Was it the same avalanche? Mother also told Then U' that her father who was from the Giauy people living in the distant Tuuc Min Hamlet in Phuu Yeon province. He had joined the colonial military garrisoned in Lung Ma Hamlet. One day, as he pursued the Viet Minh, the Viet Nam Independence League which was waging a resistance war against the French, he passed through Lung Thang and saw Then U'’s mother catching snails in the stream, then wooed her. At first her mother did not respond, but later, when she found out that the village boys were trying to avoid her, the daughter of a leper, she became afraid of loneliness, and gave in. She had given herself to the soldier, certain that he would return to marry her after being demobilised. Her wait was in vain. She had brought up Then U' alone. Mother died when her daughter just turned 21.
When her mother was still alive, she had floated the cakes down the stream every Tet xap xi, saying that it was for the person she loved best. Then U' had not known who this person was, but she continued her mother’s practice after her death, hoping that the person her mother loved most would recognise it.
The arrival of the stone worker and his son has changed her life. In the past, whenever she went to work in the fields, she would lower the bamboo fence to protect the door and pull down some tree branches to show the entrance to the house. She did not do this anymore because the boy was there to guard the house for her. She cooked meals for both father and son. After the meal, the stone worker would sometimes chat with Then U' until late in the night. She felt strange feelings kindled in her heart. One night, a storm struck suddenly, raising strong winds. The house creaked, and branches of trees snapped of noisily. Then it was raining hard, a torrential downpour that was the heaviest ever. Then U'’s house was leaking. The house was like an open yard. The three persons huddled together, trembling until daybreak. The next day, everything had been flattened, and the gemstone diggers’ tent was nowhere to be seen. The stone worker and his son moved into Then U'’s house, and they became a couple, but it was not known exactly when this had happened. Her sudden marriage was the talk of the Lung Thang Hamlet for quite a long time. But it gradually died down, and the villagers called them the Then U' couple.
***
That would have been the end of the story if it were not for the vision that the shaman had when he was once praying to Sua. He suddenly saw white clouds gathering around the mountain top in the form of a huge bear, its mouth wide open, tongue sticking out, two front legs pointing to the Lung Thang Hamlet. The priest took this as an ill-omen, and the people in the hamlet were greatly afraid. They offered chicken, alcohol, sticky rice and even opium to appease Sua.
Bach A Thao lived at the foot of the mountain. He told hamlet elder Ly A Chau and priest Then Sa that he had dreamt that the mountain god had returned to the hamlet to blame the villagers for permitting the gemstone diggers to come and dig up the god’s fairy garden. Sua had told him in the dream that if the Then U' couple were not driven out of the place, he would have another avalanche of stones raze the entire hamlet to the ground.
One winter morning, just after Tet xap xi, Then U' had got up early to prepare breakfast for the family before they left for the fields to sow maize, when the hamlet elder, the voodoo priest and a group of young men entered the house. Ly A Chau stood in the middle of the house and shouted, "You must leave here immediately! Because of you, Sua has threatened an avalanche of stones that will kill all of us. We will dismantle your house and return the ‘fairy garden’ to our mountain god right now."
As soon as he finished the speech, without letting the couple say anything, priest Then Sa placed a tray of steamed sticky rice and a boiled chicken in the middle of the yard and burnt incense. The young men then started to dismantle the house. Minutes later, the house had become a desolate place. The family went up to the stone field strewn with logs and craters, vestiges of the gemstone digging site. They set up a temporary hut. Every day, husband and wife took turns to go into the forest to fetch fruits, or to the terrace field for some manioc or maize. With the assistance of some good people, they were able to borrow some food and pigs and chickens to start a life again.
By sheer dint of hard work day in day out, the Then U' couple were able to overcome their plight of dire poverty. Their maize and rice fields gave them bumper crops. The boy, so thin in the past, was now a strapping young man who could help his parents with a lot of heavy work. The Tet xap xi that year saw the family sitting around a heaped food tray after the cakes had been floated down the Nam Bo Stream to the best-loved person and offerings made to Sua. Just then, Ly A Chau, now head of the Lung Thang Hamlet, and two forest rangers called on them. It was the Thai custom that when a guest dropped in after dinner, he or she should be invited to partake of the meal. The cup of alcohol should be filled to the brim, and the guest had to drain it before talks began.
Ly A Chau informed the family about the government’s policy on reforestation of the upstream area of Nam Bo which had been destroyed by the gemstone diggers. He introduced the two forest rangers, saying, "Mr. Tuu and Mr. Sinh here will supply you with tree strains and guide you on tending them. The state will lend you money for food and other expenses. When the trees are big enough, the state will pay you the rest of the money for cultivating and tending the trees."
Then U' looked at her husband and son, not really understanding what was being said. Tuu then explained that the state would pay them to regreen the forest. At first, an advance would be given, and the remaining sum after the trees were big enough for the forestry department to take away for planting. The family understood. More alcohol was drunk and a cordial atmosphere prevailed. Two weeks after the Tet xap xi, they started digging holes to plant the trees.
Five festivals had passed, and the whole area upstream Nam Bo was green again with the efforts of the Then U' family and other households. The gemstone digging sites were now covered with trees. During the last Tet xap xi, Chau made offerings to Sua on behalf of all the people in the hamlet. That night Sua came to him in a dream, a green hat on his head and a silver beard floating down like the Nam Bo Stream. His stick was as straight as the forest trees, and a shining halo surrounded him. The god’s voice was as gentle as a lullaby permeating the deep forest in spring, "O sons of the mountain, you have understood my desire and fulfilled it. The forest is now green again as in the past. I will not open the gate and let the stones roll down any more. Heed my words. From now on, never let the forest bleed. Never let strangers come and dig up treasures right under your feet."
The next morning when the Cac Ca bird had just started its song on the hill which was now dressed in a soft green coat sequined with dew drops that shone like divine eyes of gemstones lying deep under the ground for years, hamlet head Chau went to visit the Then U' family. Then U' was feeding sows in the yard. She cordially invited the guest into the house. The stone worker was now nearly 60, but still looked fit. He bade the guest to sit by the fire. Sipping a cup of hot tea, Chau told his host about the dream. The erstwhile stone worker sat motionless, so silent that the cracking of firewood could be heard all over the house. After the story, he suddenly seemed to awake from a dream, letting out a cry that made Then U' and the boy run towards him.
"The stone flood has gone away! No more avalanches from now on! Where is the mother of eau (stone) (he had named his son eau because stone had been a lifelong wound that had been impossible to heal)? Please bring me the jar of snake-alcohol."
The alcohol was brought, and the hamlet head invited to drink. Two cups for them and one cup for the owner of the forest. The liquor jar was full of green snakes, the most poisonous in the Sua mountain area, but now it was a tonic. The liquor level in the jar dropped gradually....
Out on the newly planted hills, the canopy of trees loomed large, and flocks of birds sang merrily, praising the immense green of the forest and the mountain.
Translated by Manh Chuong
