After 20 years, Bang decided to return to Doi junction. All seemed unchanged. As before, the arid hills and slopes were scattered with patches of myrtle bush. The junction was 30 minutes' walk from the nearest hamlet and people rarely passed by. What surprised Bang most after 20 years was finding a solitary tea stand at this remote intersection. The surrounding area stretched vastly in every direction, but in daylight it was possible for passers-by to see the distant hamlets. Newcomers, however, would be sure to lose their way, particularly by night.
Twenty years before, Bang was such a newcomer. The first day he came to Doi junction, he was returning from three days' leave before his military unit headed south. The whole unit had moved to a nearby station and Bang hurried to catch up with them. From Bo District Town he walked as far as Doi junction when it began to get dark. Suddenly, Bang was lost. He sat down to smoke and waited, but not a soul passed him in the darkness, only the wind rustling the myrtle bushes and tall grass. He finally decided to choose a direction at random and set off. After one hour, Bang realized to his surprise that he was approaching the same intersection. Again, he chose a different road at random, and again after an hour of walking he arrived at Doi junction. Each road seemed to go around in a circle. Bang sat down to think, breathing hard, finding the situation both confusing and funny. He pulled himself together and started down the last road out of the intersection.
After several minutes of walking, Bang glimpsed a distant light. Overjoyed, he quickened his pace, eager to have located his unit and to be with his comrades again. In the night, the light looked so near, but it was well over a kilometre before he reached it. It turned out to be a pile of burning grass.
Near the fire was a small house, which Bang approached. A young woman was within. Seeing the stranger, the woman started in alarm, but relaxed as soon as she realized the man was a soldier. She looked at Bang, laughing lightly, and asked, "Have you lost your way at Doi junction?"
"How did you know?" He responded in surprise.
"That junction is haunted. People get lost there all the time. I am Luu. Please come in and have some tea."
"I am in a great hurry," Bang said nervously, "I only want to ask the way."
"The more nervous you are, the more lost you will get," Luu laughed again.
"Without a guide, you'll go round in circles for eternity."
Luu smiled held out a bowl of boiled water to Bang. Then she went into to the kitchen and brought back a basket of manioc, saying "Please, have some manioc. We grow it here ourselves."
Now Bang could see Luu's face. What a beautiful girl she was! What night was it tonight, he asked himself, trying to remember the date on the lunar calendar. It was the night he lost his way and found a small house. And inside that house there was a beautiful girl. It was really like a fairy tale. All the stories he had read in books seemed to come true somehow or other in life. Bang looked into the house and saw a green mosquito net hanging down like a fishing net.
"Have your parents gone to bed?"
"Only my sister and I live here. Our parents are dead. You want to go to Choi Hamlet, don't you?" She asked, changing the subject abruptly.
"How did you know?" Bang was again surprised.
"There is an army unit stationed there tonight."
"It's my unit. Please tell me the way there," Bang asked.
"It's only five kilometres, but now it is too late. You will stay here tonight, and then tomorrow I will take you there," Luu said.
"But I have to go now... "
"You'll lose your way! There are dozens of trails to choose from. If you don't know the way and go there by night, there is no way you will know which trail to follow. Moreover, the poisonous 'tailless snakes' come out onto the road at night. They bite cow and man alike, and they are lethal."
After a last moment of hesitation, Bang decided to stay at Luu's. Of course he was not afraid of the tailless snakes. It was just that this meeting was so unusual to him, and he was intrigued. Naturally his judgement was also affected by Luu's beautiful face and warm, soft voice. They went to the well together so Bang could wash his face. The well shaft was as small as a clay pot, but it was as deep as the eye could see. "What a deep well!" Bang marvelled. Luu smiled and said, "The deeper the well, the cleaner and purer the water is." The water was so cool that it could quench even Bang's fatigue.
After washing up, they sat on the bamboo bench on the veranda. The moon illuminated the shadowy hills.
v "Why is this junction so mysterious? I kept walking in circles and coming back to the same point," Bang asked curiously.
"I told you, it's haunted," she replied.
"Haunted?" Bang smiled. "I haven't been afraid of ghosts since childhood. I'd like to see a ghost."
"There really are ghosts there," Luu said, raising her eyebrows at him. "Some buffalo traders passing by the place were murdered by thieves. Now their ghosts haunt the junction to scare strangers."
"Have they ever bothered you?"
"Only once, when we first moved here after land redistribution." "How did you get away?"
"I didn't. I sat there, crying all night. When the sun rose, the ghosts disappeared. And I found the way home then."
v Bang and Luu sat in silence after that. The moon seemed brighter. Crickets chirped. A light breeze blew.
"How long are you stationed in Choi Hamlet?" Luu asked Bang.
"Confidential," Bang teased her. "Only one month. I was just on my way back from R&R."
"How many children have you got?"
"Do I look like a father?"
"Not at all," Luu chuckled, "but it is quite common for soldiers to marry before going of to the battle field."
"Not me."
"What about a sweetheart?"
"No."
Bang then looked straight into Luu's eyes, keen, black eyes beneath full eyebrows. They gazed at each other. And then they both turned away, sitting in silence for a long time. They spent the rest of the night talking dreamily, as if they were talking to a third person. At first light, Bang got up to go. Luu accompanied him as far as the limits of Choi hamlet, and then turn back towards home.
Three days later, Bang went to see Luu. They went up to the hill of cassava trees. Bang gave Luu paper and a pen.
"I don't need these things," Luu said.
"To write letters," Bang replied.
"To whom? I have only written to one person in my life. But I did not have the address, so I stopped writing."
"Please keep them and write to me."
"You'll leave for the battle field in a few days' time and after that I won't know where you are."
"I'll write to you."
"Really?" Luu raised her eyebrows.
Bang said nothing, only nodded his head. From that day, whenever he had time, he rushed to see her. Luu took Bang to the Doi road junction and showed him the way to go without losing his way among the criss-crossing roads.
"Why don't you and your sister live in the hamlet? So far away, you must be lonely," Bang asked.
"We're used to it now. Anyway, our loved ones are here," Luu said, looking toward the far-away hills. Her sad eyes brimmed with tears. Bang moved closer to Luu, asking quietly, "Are your parents buried at the foot of that mountain?"
"Yes. And also my friend. He was bitten by a poisonous snake. That is why I don't want to write any letters."
Bang saw the tears running down her cheeks. He took her hands. They were soft and warm.
"I'll write to you," he said.
"I'll be expecting your letters very much," she answered.
Bang's unit left a week earlier than planned. Luu took Bang to Doi junction one last time. They stood there side by side, looking towards the hills scattered with graves. She held his hands tightly. It was so windy that afternoon.
At last, Bang said, "I've got to go." Luu turned to look at him and couldn't hold back her tears. Bang embraced her. When she had quieted, he said, "I'll come back here to look for you. Do wait for me. Don't move to anywhere else. Can you wait for me, Luu?"
"I can," she said. "I'll wait for you all my life."
v Bang never forgot those days at Doi junction, but it took him 20 years to return there. He had been wounded in the war and had no children, but had done well enough for himself and even had a car. Many times in the past he longed to return to the intersection but stopped himself. "What's the use of finding her? It would only put her in an embarrassing situation," he told himself. He had written to her, as promised, from the field, and she had not written back. Although it tortured him, he thought it better not to return. But finally, he decided to go to her, and tell her he had stayed single, a man of his word.
By car Bang went back to the junction, his adopted daughter Minh in tow.
"Dad, is this the Doi road junction?" Minh asked as she climber out of the car.
"Yes, sweetie."
"Where is Miss Luu's house?"
"Quite near here. Let's go to that tea shop and ask if she still lives here."
Bang and Minh walked towards the tea stand. A woman of indeterminable age invited them to sit and eat boiled manioc. When she looked up, Bang started in amazement. It was Luu. The beauty and freshness he remembered were gone, replaced by ill health and failed expectations.
He imagined she must have married, had children. And his anxiety suddenly vanished. Luu also recognized that the man sitting in front of her was Bang. She was dumbfounded hearing Minh calling him dad. Through the years she waited for Bang, Luu had refused to marry despite the advice of others. She strongly believed that Bang would return one day, or if he died that someone would notify her. But now her confidence was crushed. He had a wife and a daughter. He was a happy man. He looked so smart and even had a car. He surely was an important man now.
"I could recognise him, but he could pretend not to recognize me. Or he has long forgotten me, she thought. And I wasted so many years at this junction, crying and calling his name." After pulling herself together, Luu asked, "What brings you and your daughter to this remote junction?"
"I am on business. We were thirsty, so we dropped in for tea," Bang lied.
His answer was like a knife in her heart. So, he was only passing through.
Meanwhile Bang felt empty and sad.
"My darling, you don't recognize me," he thought.
"Where are your children, that you must sell tea here?" He went on with his facade.
"My children are at school," she lied back.
Bang wanted to stand up and exclaim, "Luu, have you forgotten me? I'm Bang, I've come back to you." But he contained his emotion. Things were different. Twenty years had gone by. Their lives had taken different directions. He rose sadly.
"Good-bye," he murmured. "I've got to go now."
"Please have one more cup of tea," Luu said, standing up in panic. She looked penetratingly into his eyes. They both stood motionless.
"Thank you," Bang said as if in a dream, "but I've got to go."
He left the stand quickly, memories flooding his mind. He turned back to look at her briefly. She sat rooted to the bench. "She must not have recognized me," he thought, "or she did not want to recognise me." In any case it was better for him to go now.
"He did not recognize me," Luu thought with pain. "I have aged so much. I have become a ghost at Doi junction. I wanted to call your name," she thought. "I wanted to tell you I have waited for you every day for 20 years. I wish I had known you would act so poorly when we finally met again. Do go away, adieu and farewell!"
As the car disappeared into a cloud of red dust, Luu bent down to cry. Darkness shrouded the hilly area. Luu sat like a rock in the hissing wind. At last she stood up. She looked at the tea stand she had set up ten years ago, and then took a match to it. When she had set up the stand, people had called her crazy. Each day, only a few persons passed by. She would never reveal that she had built the stand to wait for Bang to return. She had always thought that if he returned, he would get lost at the cross-roads again.
So for 20 years, Luu lived in her tea stand by a hill of manioc. It was enough for her. Over time, ailment and loneliness had turned her into a woman whose age was impossible to guess. She couldn't bear to look at her own face in a mirror.
When they arrived in the district town, Minh asked Bang, "Why didn't you find Miss Luu?"
"The tea seller was Miss Luu herself," Bang said softly.
"So you both did not recognise each other?"
"We both did recognise each other, but neither of us wanted to say anything."
"Why, dad?" Minh was surprised. "Why? Was it because she was married? Or was it that she is so old and ugly?"
"I don't know."
After that Bang decided to go back to Doi junction. He sent Minh back to the provincial capital and hired a motorcycle taxi to return to the junction, and then sent the driver back to town. The driver eyed him as if he were insane.
Darkness covered the hilly area. Bang approached the tea stand, but stopped in his tracks when he saw there was nothing left but ashes. He suddenly understood everything. He shouted out, "Oh, dear Luu!" And rushed to find her house. It was like twenty years before. He went round and round and returned to the same spot. Now he did not believe that there was a ghost, but he understood this magical circle of life. He tried all night but could not find the house. He searched for a fire's glow, like that night so long ago. Finally, as dawn brought a glow over the landscape, Bang recognized the path leading to Luu's house.
He walked into the yard. The house was the same, except for the explosion of yellow chrysanthemums blooming in the front yard. The house was locked. He looked at the house for quite a long time and then went to the well. He dropped the pail into the water. It seemed to fall endlessly, as if the well went clear through to the other side of the world. Just as he felt a surge of irrational panic, that the well was bottomless, the pail hit the water. The water echoed vaguely. Bang slowly drew up the pail. Pulling it up again seemed endless, but eventually he brought the bucket up onto the rim of the well. The strange light of early morning reflected brightly in the bucket of water. Bang splashed water onto his face. Right at that time he heard the door opening. He quickly turned and saw the house's wooden doors slowly opening wide.
Translated by Manh Chuong
