Catfish and Mandala Read Online Free Page A
Author: Andrew X. Pham
sunset.
Back in the compound, the murky pond captured the clouds fleeing from a crimson waning of light. Prisoners bathed and washed their clothes at the far end of the shimmering water, across from the latrine.
Dinner was rice and catfish soup. They fed the catfish at dawn and ate them at dusk. Then the indigo light fell and silence crept in.
The loudspeakers crackled to life. A smothering stillness glassed them off from the world.
âStand outside your hut when your name is called. Pham Van Thong â¦â
They came with their oil lamps and dragged Thong out into the dark.
The next day, Thong climbed off the back of an army truck at an unmarked crossroads. The truck spat blue exhaust at him and rumbled back on the dirt track. He stood barefoot and penniless under the blazing sky, looking down the forked roads before him.
3
Fallen â Leaves
Winter of 1961 in Phan Thiet, Vietnam, came in wet and cold, a damp cloth over the fisherfolkâs heads, mildew in their lungs. Along that scraped-up seacoast, ill winds scoured villages like bold ravens, reaching through thatched walls and clawing around crevices with impunity, pilfering the souls of the weak and the unsuspecting.
Thong and Anh lived in a one-room shack, nailed together in a back alley of the fishing town. They were young, in love, and strong, but their hands were like old peopleâs, seasonally water-crinkled from mopping the concrete floor and tending the leaky roof. A baby girl, their first child, slept peacefully in her cribâa cardboard box on their bed. They were cheerful about their meager lot, joking that the heavens were so generous to their rainwater cisterns, they hadnât had to visit the village well in a month.
They were vulnerable, though they did not know it. Their happiness was an unshielded beacon. Those who eloped did not have the protection of their dead ancestors.
One gray day, an ill wind slipped through their curtain-door and wrapped its wings around their first child. The baby girl took sick and became as red as chili-pickled cabbage, then as pale as ivory. She was feverish, then cold. They rubbed her with heat-oil, but the heat did not come back into her tiny chest,
which was hardly bigger than a loaf of bread. No money for medicine. No silver coin to scrape the ill wind from their baby girl. They fretted and they summoned the midwife, but she could do little. No money for Western doctor, Western medicine. The baby coughed. She cried, would not suckle her milk. Another morning, she was cold. Died during the night, not yet a year old.
4
Clan-Rift
Four months ago, I emerged from Mexico and returned to the Bay Area, jobless and homeless. I did something unthinkable in America: I moved home to my parents. It was the perfect Vietnamese thing to do, fall back into the folds of the clan. Free food, free shelter while you lick your wounds and plot your resurrection. My non-Asian friends pitied me. My Vietnamese-American friends wondered why I hadnât lived at home in the first place; a good son doesnât leave home until he is married.
It doesnât matter to me. I have to accumulate funds and settle my affairs. I tie up loose ends, freelance all sorts of work for the extra cash, do it all in silence, the whole time wondering if the flash of desert inspiration was only a fluke. No one, not my brothers or my best friends, knows about my plan to bicycle to Vietnam. They say, Andrew is finding himself. Heâs trying to get his life in order. Heâs still getting over Trieu. She really devastated him, cheating on him and leaving him like that. When I finally tell them, I lie. Going up the coast, I say. Just going to ride my bicycle up toward Seattle, maybe British Columbia. Itâs safe. Once-in-a-lifetime thing. Itâll do me good. I donât tell them I might not be coming back.
On the dawn of my departure from San Jose, California, I wake groggy from a night of tossing in wistfulness. I fetal
Back in the compound, the murky pond captured the clouds fleeing from a crimson waning of light. Prisoners bathed and washed their clothes at the far end of the shimmering water, across from the latrine.
Dinner was rice and catfish soup. They fed the catfish at dawn and ate them at dusk. Then the indigo light fell and silence crept in.
The loudspeakers crackled to life. A smothering stillness glassed them off from the world.
âStand outside your hut when your name is called. Pham Van Thong â¦â
They came with their oil lamps and dragged Thong out into the dark.
The next day, Thong climbed off the back of an army truck at an unmarked crossroads. The truck spat blue exhaust at him and rumbled back on the dirt track. He stood barefoot and penniless under the blazing sky, looking down the forked roads before him.
3
Fallen â Leaves
Winter of 1961 in Phan Thiet, Vietnam, came in wet and cold, a damp cloth over the fisherfolkâs heads, mildew in their lungs. Along that scraped-up seacoast, ill winds scoured villages like bold ravens, reaching through thatched walls and clawing around crevices with impunity, pilfering the souls of the weak and the unsuspecting.
Thong and Anh lived in a one-room shack, nailed together in a back alley of the fishing town. They were young, in love, and strong, but their hands were like old peopleâs, seasonally water-crinkled from mopping the concrete floor and tending the leaky roof. A baby girl, their first child, slept peacefully in her cribâa cardboard box on their bed. They were cheerful about their meager lot, joking that the heavens were so generous to their rainwater cisterns, they hadnât had to visit the village well in a month.
They were vulnerable, though they did not know it. Their happiness was an unshielded beacon. Those who eloped did not have the protection of their dead ancestors.
One gray day, an ill wind slipped through their curtain-door and wrapped its wings around their first child. The baby girl took sick and became as red as chili-pickled cabbage, then as pale as ivory. She was feverish, then cold. They rubbed her with heat-oil, but the heat did not come back into her tiny chest,
which was hardly bigger than a loaf of bread. No money for medicine. No silver coin to scrape the ill wind from their baby girl. They fretted and they summoned the midwife, but she could do little. No money for Western doctor, Western medicine. The baby coughed. She cried, would not suckle her milk. Another morning, she was cold. Died during the night, not yet a year old.
4
Clan-Rift
Four months ago, I emerged from Mexico and returned to the Bay Area, jobless and homeless. I did something unthinkable in America: I moved home to my parents. It was the perfect Vietnamese thing to do, fall back into the folds of the clan. Free food, free shelter while you lick your wounds and plot your resurrection. My non-Asian friends pitied me. My Vietnamese-American friends wondered why I hadnât lived at home in the first place; a good son doesnât leave home until he is married.
It doesnât matter to me. I have to accumulate funds and settle my affairs. I tie up loose ends, freelance all sorts of work for the extra cash, do it all in silence, the whole time wondering if the flash of desert inspiration was only a fluke. No one, not my brothers or my best friends, knows about my plan to bicycle to Vietnam. They say, Andrew is finding himself. Heâs trying to get his life in order. Heâs still getting over Trieu. She really devastated him, cheating on him and leaving him like that. When I finally tell them, I lie. Going up the coast, I say. Just going to ride my bicycle up toward Seattle, maybe British Columbia. Itâs safe. Once-in-a-lifetime thing. Itâll do me good. I donât tell them I might not be coming back.
On the dawn of my departure from San Jose, California, I wake groggy from a night of tossing in wistfulness. I fetal
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