Tết That Year, After the War [Tết năm ấy, sau cuộc chiến]

Translated by Ryan Nelson and Lê Thị Khánh Hòa

Less than half a month after the day of peace [April 30, 1975], I departed Sài Gòn and returned to the Central Highlands to carry out the task of recovering the remains of [wartime] martyrs. In early 1976, after being discharged from the army, I returned to the north. Hitching a ride with Group 559, I arrived at Vinh (Nghệ An Province), where I boarded a train.² Six years before, our battalion had left Hà Nội to march into the South. The first leg to Vinh was by train. At that time, my battalion had fifty-one men from the capital. Traveling back to my hometown, only I remained.

I arrived at Hàng Cỏ [train station] at midday on the twenty-sixth day of the twelfth lunar month. It was a cold, wintry Sunday. I knew that this architecturally beautiful train station, which dated back to the early twentieth century, had been bombed in late 1972, but I was still stunned to see the ruins, and I had to sit down and collect myself for a long time on the platform. Returning home from this train station, I walked along Nam Bộ Road. Light rain fell, but I removed my helmet, unbuttoned my shirt, and welcomed the fragrance of my beloved city after many years of separation. I walked along at a brisk pace, following the tempo of my quickening heartbeat. I walked by Cửa Nam Market, then came to a stop right after passing the railway crossing when someone called out my name. A woman rushed out from the tailor shop in front of house number 44 and grabbed the strap of my backpack: “You’re back, you’re back, my dear…” Then, crying, she shouted: “Kế, your friend has come home. But oh, my son, why are you never coming home again?” Her cry was fierce and wild, then it suddenly trailed off. It was the mother of Kế; he and I had attended the same class at Bưởi High School.³ I joined the army before Kế, so I had no idea that he had also enlisted. People in the house ran out to assist the mother. I just stood there, speechless. I was unable to hold back my emotions; the sobbing burned my chest.

The tears of reunion shed in front of Kế’s house triggered a sudden feeling of fear once I stood in front of my own gate. This apartment complex of about ten families had sent four boys and girls to war. Perhaps I was the only one to return. This thought caused my heart to constrict. I barely dared to open the iron gate and tiptoe across the yard. The house was as still as a pagoda during the mid-day slumber.

My mother and father had not received news of my return, yet when they suddenly saw me at the doorstep, they neither cheered nor uttered a word. I embraced my mother. She cried softly. “Bảo has passed away; his family received the death notice last week.” Those were the first words my mother said to me. Then, she added: “And Hưởng’s death notice came last year.” That night, my mother prepared a family reunion dinner. But we spoke in hushed tones, with the windows closed and the lights dimmed. Bảo’s family was mourning on the other side of our wall, and Hưởng’s parents just across the yard.

The next day and for many days thereafter, fathers, mothers, wives, and sisters from the neighborhood quietly arrived. Rejoicing at my returning alive, they came to see me and ask for information about their loved ones. What could I tell them? I had served in the Tenth Division, stationed mainly in the Central Highlands. But the war took soldiers on countless gloomy, interminable paths that covered our entire world, paths along which my comrades had laid down their lives. “Have you heard anything about my son Đức? His unit fought in the Plain of Jars…”⁴ “In his last letter, my older brother said that he was serving on the Long An front…” Anyone returning from war likely faces such questions and can probably sympathize with the “agony of peace” that I felt inside of me, as one who alone seemed to have survived and returned.

Because I was one of the first members of my unit to return to the North, I carried in my backpack many letters penned by my comrades to their families in Hà Nội. I was happiest in the days leading up to Tết, going around, bringing boundless joy to my friends’ families.

I delivered more than twenty letters to more than twenty addresses throughout the city. My father ferried me around on his clattering bicycle. He insisted that I not ride by myself. In those days, Hà Nội was not the chaotic scene of motorbikes and cars it is today. But my father was still afraid, what if…

Delivering letters to the families of my comrades was also a chance for father and son to hit the town. My dad took me to try on a pair of shoes at an “illicit” shoe shop in Phất Lộc alley. (I was still wearing my set of Suzhou-style military fatigues, but, for Tết that year, I ditched my rubber sandals for leather shoes.) While strolling the streets, my father and I stopped to eat at an “illicit” phở shop in the attic of the Cồ family’s house on Hàng Đồng Street before grabbing some drip coffee at an “illicit” café along Gạch Lane. Years ago, right before I joined the army, my father took me to those same places for phở and coffee. Back then, due to the war and the prospect of separation, my father was sad and burdened with anxiety, so he remained quiet. But even after seeing me return alive, there was still a deeply melancholic air about him, though he was of course very happy that I had returned.

My father and I quietly drank coffee, quietly walked the streets, quietly turned off into the flower market on Hàng Lược Street to pick out a peach blossom branch. My father avoided saying anything about the war. He did not ask me about battles, the assault on Buôn Ma Thuột, the attack on Sài Gòn…⁵ My father understood how much I wanted to forget so I could have peace in my heart and enjoy Tết. It was not until that Lunar New Year—after ten years of war since 1965—that my family once again displayed a bunch of narcissi, a pot of chrysanthemum, and a branch of peach blossoms. I also bought a string of firecrackers, but on New Year’s Eve, changed my mind and decided not to light them upon the advice of my parents. The sound of firecrackers is like a joyous bustle, but many families had nothing to be joyful about despite the arrival of peace.

After thirty long years of suffering and praying for war’s end, Hà Nội tentatively welcomed its first peaceful spring since the winter of 1946. That’s how I viewed things. I wasn’t aware of any jubilation or loud celebrations taking place. During that Tết, throughout the neighborhoods where ordinary Hanoians lived, I observed a contemplative atmosphere mixed with joy and sorrow—contemplative, because there were so many thoughts running through everyone’s mind as spring arrived.

I heard firecrackers crackling on New Year’s Eve, but they sounded gentle and warm, not intense, deafening, and ostentatious like the firecrackers of later years. At that time, after the war’s end, the crackle and explosion of Hà Nội’s fireworks gave off the gentle, pleasant aroma of black powder manufactured in Bình Đà Village, not the overwhelming gun powder smell of those ferocious firecrackers imported from China in later years.

One very strange thing I still remember clearly is that the New Year music was very gentle. That Lunar New Year was a peacetime holiday as well as a victorious one, but we did not hear loud martial music anywhere, not from the public loudspeakers on the streets or the theaters around Hoàn Kiếm Lake. When it came to expressing jubilation for the victory, there was only the song “As Though Uncle Hồ Was with Us on This Happy Day…,” but other songs people sang were “Join Hands in a Great Circle,” “First Spring,” and especially “Song of Hope.”⁶

It was also strange that during Tết, movie theaters didn’t show any heroic-themed films. At Kinh Đô Theater near my house, they had to screen The Fire of Vengeance in the Coconut Forest [Lửa hận rừng dừa], a flashy, noisy, and very Chinese film.⁷ But close to Tết, they replaced it with The Scarlet Sails [Cánh buồm đỏ thắm].⁸ Tháng Tám and Công Nhân Theaters did the same, screening that dream-like film. Kim Đồng Theater featured The Passerine Bird [Con chim vành khuyên].⁹ Although it was a wartime film, it exhibited a profound love of peace beneath the surface. As for the humble Bắc Đô Theater, hidden away beneath a bridge, they snuck in some old films that had long been in storage. I don’t know if it was an “illicit” screening or not, but they showed The Cranes Are Flying [Đàn sếu bay qua], an excellent film despite dramatizing long-banned revisionist and pacifist themes.¹⁰

The afternoon before Tết, my old classmates from the tenth grade gathered at my house to share a New Year’s Eve dinner with me and my parents. That evening, the whole class took a stroll together along Hoàn Kiếm Lake. It was a ritual among young people in Hà Nội to visit the lake before New Year’s Eve and admire the lights, people watch, and participate in the festivities. Only around the lake could we bask in the festive lights, and there was less risk of sudden power outages.

I felt blissful amid the swelling crowd, surrounded by continuous joyful chatter, laughter, and singing. It seems that it was not until that evening that I truly understood the happiness of returning alive in peacetime. I felt like a 17-year-old student again. My friends from tenth grade gathered around me, laughing and chatting. Everyone wanted to walk close to me and put their arms around me. I felt their affection and their friendship even more than I did when we were still in school together.

After circling the lake, the entire group went to Thủy Tạ snack bar and grabbed two tables next to the railing near the water. Thủy Tạ was only open until 10:00 p.m., and by the time we had arrived it was already half an hour past closing, but because our group included Lan, the manager’s daughter, we were allowed to stay a bit longer. The weather was glacial and the ice cream freezing cold, so we huddled together for warmth. When the time came to say goodbye as everyone started to return home to greet the New Year with their families, Lan burst into tears. Lan’s house sat at the start of Hàng Gai Street. A short ways away, at the beginning of Hàng Cân Street, was Cường’s house. Cường, our class monitor for cohort 10C, sacrificed his life at Quảng Trị in 1972.¹¹ Because someone mentioned Cường, Lan broke out in tears.

I fell silent. Not until that moment did I realize that the so-called get together of the “entire class” at Thủy Tạ was, in actuality, only sixteen people. And I was the only boy. The size of cohort 10C on the day of our high school exit exams was an even forty students. Fifteen girls, twenty-five boys. All the boys went off to war, but why was I the only one sitting there with the girls?

Living in peace is the ultimate form of happiness in all human existence. To be alive and to enjoy peace is the greatest happiness that human beings can ever experience but that happiness can also be, at the same time, a source of utmost anguish. This was the way I thought about my life, about my generation, starting that evening when I reunited with my surviving classmates next to Hoàn Kiếm Lake.