The outstanding feature of women in the quarter is the habit of shouting. Whatever the emotion - anger, fear or joy - all find expression in high decibels.
That afternoon, in my four-storey block, the residents were just returning from work. Some women were inserting keys into their door locks, some were preparing dinner, some were about to go to the kindergarten to take their children home.
Suddenly a scream pierced the air from the second floor.
"Look, Thoan has died!"
"Who died?" Many women repeatedly.
"Thoan."
"Who’s Thoan?"
"Thoan of my husband’s unit who just returned home, that Thoan, no other!"
"Oh, God! Help!"
Half an hour later, outside the rooms of the living quarter, down at the public water tap, on the landings, a fullthroated noise of sympathy and grief resounded, punctuated by exclamations calling for divine intervention.
During dinner that night, nobody ate with good appetite. Some women, having helped their children finish dinner, felt so sad about poor Thoan that they cleared the tables without being able to eat anything.
Oh, God, just a short time ago, not more than a month, she was still here, living with her colleagues and other residents in living quarter.
Big, tall, rice crust munching, graceful, cordial, tasteless, lazy Thoan who liked singing and sang well. Only 24 years old, and she was dead, buried in the ground. It just could not be true. Nobody could believe it.
"You see," a woman in a uniform cotton jacket who abandoned her dinner was telling, in no hushed whisper, a woman in a blue woollen pullover, "if she had stayed for another month, giving birth safely, and left later, everything would have been all right!"
"She was big and strong, who could imagine that she would die?"
Tears welled up in the eyes of the third woman, plastic bucket in hand, joining the other two on the way down from the room upstairs.
"How terrible! Was it haemorrhage?"
"Yes, haemorrhage!" The woman in uniform cotton jacket said.
"Why didn’t they staunch the blood?"
"In the countryside, you see." The woman in the blue woollen pullover sniffed. "If she were in our hands in the city hospital, one would need only minutes to staunch the blood. But it was in the countryside, up in a remote area, from her house to the district’s hospital on a stretcher, it is ten kilometres. To the commune’s medical station, it is about five kilometres."
Another group of women by the public water tap were also recovering from the shock of her death, with the same regrets, the same commiseration for a woman who died during her first childbirth.
"What about the baby?" Asked a curly-haired woman washing a heap of clothes and baby nappies.
"The baby is alive."
"How unlucky the baby is!"
"Who is nursing it now?"
"Thoan’s mother."
"Is the baby a boy a girl?"
"A girl."
"Has Khanh been informed about it or not?"
"He has just been informed. A message just came at 5pm today! How terrible for Khanh! He had just carried on the bicycle two baskets of pumpkins from the shop, and drenched in sweat, he stood by the building’s steps, nervously tearing the envelope, and having read the message, he rode the bicycle straight to the bus station. The logistics men then came to report to the commanders. When I arrived there, the unit’s car was just starting out of the gate. Mr. Quan was climbing into the car, buttoning up his shirt, sitting by driver Hai. I don’t think the two men had any dinner."
"Maybe they would arrive up there at about 9 o’clock?"
"But Khanh should have gone with them, how else would Mr Quan and driver Hai know the way?"
The sighs, the commiseration, the tears. All these were not reserved for the ill-fated Thoan, but also for the newborn baby, and for her husband Khanh, the manager of the kitchen of the unit.
The compassion of these women was becoming increasingly intense, multiplying, in the same way it had only a few months ago. These same women the one in the uniform cotton jacket, the blue woollen pullover with plastic bucket and others had been intense and vociferous in their indignation: "Why haven’t you thrown her out immediately! Why didn’t Mr Quan send Thoan back to her home village? Why the hell did he let her stay here for another day, another hour? What for?"
One woman had lost a two-metre piece of cloth after she had hung it up to dry in her garden. Surprising, it was found in Thoan’s trunk after a couple of weeks. With this discovery, people found the culprit for everything that had been lost for a long time. They were so indignant, so exultant, so satisfied!
It was totally forgotten that Thoan had often picked up things dropped on the way and returned them to their owners.
And fingers were pointed at hapless Thoan not just for things lost in the past, but also for things that disappeared after the incident of the two-metre cloth.
"Oh, it is sure to be that Thoan again, nobody else!"
"If you want to dry any thing, please dry it inside your house!"
"You think that if you dry it inside your house, she cannot steal it?"
"Thoan just went in here, didn’t she? What the hells is she doing in here? Now check everything to see if anything is stolen?"
Throughout this persecution, Thoan went about singing in her lovely voice, carefree, lazily munching rice crusts, as she worked insipidly in the unit’s kitchen.
Not exactly the right attitude for a repentant thief, as far as the other women were concerned.
In late November, there was a cutting down of staff. The personnel department of the unit that was considering the merits of temporarily recruited Thoan decided to relieve her of her duties as the contract had already expired. Kitchen manager Khanh, Thoan’s husband, was not very happy with the decision, but only requested that she be permitted to stay in the hospital for a short time until she gave birth, then she and her baby would return to her home village. Sometimes people are naturally cruel.
The women in the quarter could not bear to have Thoan stay back.
"Then when we all go to work, she is alone at home, she would feel free to steal!"
"That Quan is not aware of the situation at all! What’s his use in keeping her, keeping that precious thing!"
Unfortunately for all of us, just as the women were raising a hue and cry about Thoan staying back, another two metres of black silk cloth was stolen on a Sunday in broad daylight.
The person who lost it lost no time in checking her room while the suspect was away. But the wooden trunk only turned out nappies for the coming baby. "She might have hidden it in another place."
"There is no doubt about it! She is not stupid enough to hide it again in that trunk!" "Eh, ladies, Thoan is really lazy, but she is surely not a dishonest person!"
"Stealing is not dishonest? How dare you take her side!"
"She loves her child, she wants to give her baby a piece of beautiful cloth, so she is not clear-minded enough!"
"So you think I do not love my child? But should I then go and steal something?"
"How sad that Khanh has such a lazy and dishonest wife!"
"When he intended to marry Thoan, I had advised him not to, but he did not listen to me!"
" I also told him that he could marry anyone but that woman. And the result is as you can see, is debt, not a wife!"
"And it is not only Khanh’s own debt, if that woman will stay one more day, we all here will have to keep an eye on her one more day, we will have to protect ourselves, we will have to be miserable because of her!"
"You, ladies, I agreed with you that she is a dishonest person, but they have become a couple, and they are going to have a baby, so we had better not say anything like that!"
"Ah, you want to protect her, do you? Why do you protect her so strongly?"
"She will give birth to a child like we have done."
"Let her rely on our help, let her give birth safe and sound first!"
"But if she steals something from me tomorrow, will you pay for that?"
"I will go to work tomorrow, will you stay at home and keep an eye on my house?"
" What a man Mr. Quan is! He still lets her stay, what’s the use? Oh, God, why do we have to let her continue to steal things in this quarter!"
Khanh was burning with shame. He could let her stay for only a few days more. He could not bear hearing these women talking incessantly about his wife in this manner. In the middle of the week, he decided to take his wife back to the village and have her give birth to their child there.
One week later, all the women cried in chorus, when it was discovered that the wind had blown the black cloth away to a sweet potato garden behind the building. Somebody who went to dig the potatoes found it there.
The women still remember very well that morning, a cold morning, as she followed her husband to the car station, Thoan was carrying only a jute hand basket with a new conical hat placed upon her pregnant belly. She came to say goodbye to every house, with that same simple, cordial attitude of a care free person. All the women took her hands into their own, asking her to stay, the longer the better, and all of them said:
"You now, return to that remote area, sooner or later this quarter will become empty without joy! We’ll miss you very much!"
All the women seemed unwilling to take leave of her at the parting time.
I think it would be unfair to say that the women in my quarter were showing a false attachment to Thoan. They are simple, easily moved, and true to their fickle emotions.
Translated by Manh Chuong
