Sadness is like a sad fence...
People in the fishing village often hum that folk song after admiring the bright yellow apricot tree every time Tet comes. Over time, people only say the first sentence, afraid that saying the second sentence will ruin the joy of Tet or because of some other meaning. The apricot tree has really made an impression in this fishing village with its jubilant flowering. Flowers on the branches are dense, which is normal, but every year hundreds of flower buds keep pushing out from the trunk, from the old moss roots, from the rough lumps that appear here and there on the branches. The apricot tree blooms miraculously, only a few hundred dry brown buds, but after one night, all the buds shed their husks and divide into thousands of flowers, densely packed, crowded, lush green, each tiny stem carries five or six large flower buds. Then when spring takes its first ivory steps into the yard, the apricot tree welcomes it with a solemn welcome by quickly putting on a bright yellow coat, so yellow that anyone who sees it feels excited in their hearts.
This twin apricot tree always blooms the earliest in the year, as if the ancient apricot tree has transformed into it, every year after New Year's Eve it puts on a yellow coat, Mr. Thuan often says. And every time he stops to recite a poem by King Tran Nhan Tong:
"The pistil of the plum blossom is broken,
Plum blossoms of the later years.
Absolutely know spring good intentions,
I am so sad at night…”.
Then he explained to Thuan:
Apricot tree blooms before December
After the first month, many flowers bloom.
Spring is clearly good
But what if the customer is still sad?...
When he was young, Thuan did not fully understand the profound meaning of the poem, but he had known it by heart. Thuan's father was a teacher and his family lived in this fishing village. He and Hoa's father, a neighbor who made fish sauce, were very close. They often expressed their admiration for the twin apricot trees growing between the fences of their two houses. Every time they set up a table here to sip some wine, their conversation would spill over into the night.
One time during Tet, both families gathered around the dining table under the apricot tree. Mr. Thuan, slightly drunk, grabbed a handful of apricot petals in his hand and told the old story "Mai Hoa Trang":
…Princess Shouyang, the beloved daughter of Emperor Wu of Song, on the day of her marriage ceremony, slept under the roof of the Ham Chuong Palace. A gust of wind blew, and plum blossoms fell and fluttered in the air like a swarm of large butterflies that had just descended from the sky. There were thin plum blossoms that landed on her face, but Shouyang could not brush them away. The palace maids gathered to help her, but they could not, so they all tried to imitate the princess by painting beautiful plum blossoms on their foreheads. From then on, this makeup style called “Plum Blossom Makeup” spread everywhere from the countryside to the city streets…
After listening, Hoa stuck the apricot petals on her forehead and leaned over to ask Thuan: "Do you think this princess is beautiful?" Thuan smiled but did not answer, partly because he was embarrassed because both families were present, partly because he suddenly had a premonition of something unpleasant, afraid that the story "Mai Hoa Trang" would affect Hoa's life...
No one knows when this pair of apricot trees was planted, Thuan's mother said that ever since she became a daughter-in-law in this family, she saw it there, between the fences of the two houses. The three main branches of the tree are evenly distributed, the largest lower branch falls entirely on Thuan's side, the middle branch is slightly larger, spreading out to Hoa's yard, the neck and top of the tree are slightly curved but the branches also spread evenly on both sides. Thuan and Hoa, since they were little, learned to walk together under the two shady apricot canopies in front of this yard. There was a time when Hoa was called a princess by Thuan and used a branch of apricot trees thick with yellow flowers to tie to her hair. When they grew up, they sat and studied together under this pair of apricot trees and even the anger of the two children also used the apricot trees as the boundary between this side and that side. As Hoa grew up, she became more and more graceful with her smooth white skin, rarely seen in this coastal area, and her extra crooked tooth that was very charming every time Hoa smiled. Even when she closed her eyes, Thuan could still see that crooked tooth.
No one knows when the task of picking mai leaves on the 15th day of the 12th lunar month was assigned to Thuan and Hoa. No matter how busy they were, they both remembered the day of picking mai leaves, and even eagerly looked forward to that day. They picked each mai leaf and chatted animatedly, until their hands touched on the branch to grab the last leaf and then burst out laughing as if the mai leaf picking had just ended. Every year on the first day of Tet, the twin mai trees were always the place where the two families stood to take family photos when the traveling photographer came to offer them. Some years, when they were so happy, the two families even took photos together, everyone's lips smiling brightly like flowers, and Hoa's father even hinted: From now on, the two families will be considered as one...
One day, the twin apricot trees were still shining brightly with their coats of yellow apricot blossoms, but no one was taking pictures, no cheerful smiles, no New Year greetings were exchanged like every year. The apricot petals quietly fell yellow in a corner of the yard, only occasionally the wind would come to tease them, blowing them up for a moment before sadly falling back down.
The night before the wedding, the bride Hoa made an appointment to meet Thuan. Hoa was in tears, saying that she only loved Thuan but had to accept this marriage to save her parents from bankruptcy. That same night, Hoa hugged the person she loved and what had to happen happened. The woman who had become a bride in the morning cried a lot, buried her head in her lover's chest, regretting until the third cock crowed.
Thuan's Tet holiday later often passed blandly! Thuan just sat in the house, looking at the bright yellow apricot tree through the window, his left chest heavy, occasionally smacking his lips: "Why did it bloom so early?" Apricot blossoms bloom the earliest in the year compared to other flowers, Thuan knew that, otherwise the apricot blossoms would not be respected, would not be called apricot blossoms. Perhaps that reproach was aimed at another person. In recent years, many Chinese men have come here, they spend a lot of money to buy land, get married. Hoa is also one of them. Since Hoa followed her husband away, Thuan has been quietly picking the leaves of the apricot tree but only as a chore, no longer interested.
* * *
In the blink of an eye, more than fifteen years have passed since he left his homeland. His freelance journalism career and his daily bread have pushed Thuan to travel all over the six provinces of the South, all over bustling Saigon. He can't remember how many Tet holidays he has spent away from home. Sometimes, he misses them so much that he wants to return home to celebrate Tet, but he keeps putting it off. Partly because the fishing village has disappeared. After the solar eclipse, people flocked to see it in large numbers, and the fishing village gradually disappeared. People say that fishing village is like a sleeping princess who suddenly woke up. People talk about a bustling, luxurious, and bright resort capital that has formed right on the foundation of the fishing village. The fishermen of that poor coastal village have sold their land and houses to investors in tourism.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented mass exodus, with people from the Central, Eastern, and Western regions all rushing to flee from big cities.
Returning to the countryside! Never before have the two words "returning to the countryside" been so urgent and pressing, people had no choice, at the boundary between life and death, the door of death had opened, the only way left was to flee. Fallen leaves returning to their roots, the elderly returning to their hometowns, the young also returning, they had to return. Thousands of Honda motorbikes packed with wives, children, dogs, cats, and belongings crowded the roads out of the city from early morning until late at night. In that "flood returning to the countryside" to escape the terrible epidemic, there was Thuan.
As the car rushed down the steep road, the view suddenly became wider and wider, the blue sea appeared, the white-capped waves in the distance gradually became clearer and clearer. Thuan's heart was filled with tears. He was home! He was really home! His hometown was here! And at this very moment, Thuan was embarrassed to realize that he had no one to return to. After selling the house near the sea, his parents moved deep into a field behind the sand dune. The resort expanded into the sand dune, and his parents moved again to the rice field village. During the next three years, with hasty and hurried house moves, they met each other in the afterlife.
Some kind of attraction pushed Thuan to turn the car into a resort with a sign in two languages, Vietnamese and Chinese. Thuan vaguely remembered his old home somewhere, vaguely remembered but everything was very different now. The wide, flat asphalt road had replaced the red gravel road with two rows of coconut trees providing cool shade. The half-corrugated iron, half-thatched houses were gone, the cool sandy beaches under the coconut trees where fishermen sat mending their nets, the long rows of baskets were gone, the fishing net-pulling ground was now a beach full of Westerners and Chinese people lying and sunbathing. Thuan finished checking in at the reception desk, opened the door, and lay down on the bed with white sheets, still not understanding why he came here, before that he had absolutely no idea where to rent a room. Was it a random push?! Thuan was swept away by the crowd fleeing the city as if by some huge force, and his lying down in this room was also due to some force of attraction that he could not explain. The journey of nearly two hundred kilometers had left Thuan exhausted and he fell asleep without realizing it.
In the dream of that deep sleep, there was another dream. Thuan saw himself picking mai leaves while chatting happily with a girl who had a charming smile because of an extra tooth. When there was only the last mai leaf left on the branch, when their hands touched, Thuan pulled hard, the girl leaned against Thuan. A fragrant scent made that coastal boy overwhelmed and ecstatic. Thuan ecstatically hugged the girl tightly. The flesh of two people of the opposite sex touched, burning hot inside each other. Thuan passionately kissed her soft, sweet lips. She pressed close, blended, sank deep and disappeared into Thuan's muscular body. Thuan was ecstatic with happiness, his body drifting gently on the gently rolling waves. Drifting forever. Drifting forever. Floating, floating forever... And suddenly when Thuan saw a mai leaf stuck tightly to her forehead, the waves of water also disappeared in that same instant. Thuan hugged the girl and fell, falling and falling, with nothing to hold on to, nothing to hold on to. Thuan stammered, kicking his legs frantically until he landed on the white sand. Opened his eyes. Rubbed his eyes three times. Still no one. No one. Beside him was only the pair of apricot trees that used to have bright yellow flowers. Could it be that the girl with an extra tooth was the soul of this pair of apricot trees?! Thuan gently stroked the trunk of the apricot tree when suddenly a gust of wind blew, thousands and thousands of yellow apricot petals fluttered down, filling the space around Thuan. The fragile, bright yellow apricot petals quickly withered and clung to his skin like inseparable scars. Thuan struggled to remove each apricot petal from his face and neck but could not. The fear made Thuan more and more panicked. The yellow apricot winds continued to wrap around Thuan, covering his eyes, nose, and mouth, making him unable to see anything, making him suffocate, his chest heaving, his mouth open, struggling to take in every bit of air… Thuan screamed in horror and woke up. The pure white ceiling and the pure white sheets on the bed woke Thuan up, he quickly remembered his escape from the city and how he got here. A sad film slowly played back. The dream left Thuan bewildered for quite a while.
Thuan felt hungry and was about to wash his face and go out to find something to eat when the image that caught his eyes through the window made Thuan stop.
A very familiar looking apricot tree. Thuan rushed out and circled to the outside of the window. That was it! The engraved names of prince and princess T and H were now just faint scars. Thuan sat down, his hand caressing the rough bark of the tree. Here was the twin apricot trees of Thuan and Hoa's family. Everything around them had changed, only it was still the same, a little bigger, a little older, with a few more branches but still the same shape, two large branches leaning to either side.
* * *
On New Year's Eve, the resort owner held an outdoor party for all the remaining guests. Due to the pandemic, they arranged the tables far apart to comply with the 5K. No fireworks, no dancing, just a song called Happy New Year by ABBA played over and over again from the speakers available in various places in the garden.
The Chinese boss, holding his Vietnamese wife and two mixed-race children, offered champagne and New Year wishes to each table. As they approached, Thuan shivered, recognizing the familiar crooked tooth and the makeup of a plum blossom on the forehead of the elegant boss in the embroidered cheongsam. Thuan bowed his head, raised his glass and mumbled his thanks. After walking a few steps, the boss turned back to look at Thuan. Walking with her husband to another table, the boss kept turning back to look at the lonely man, alone at a table on New Year's Eve. He said nothing, did nothing, the glass of wine seemed motionless in his hand, his eyes seemed motionless, looking but seemed to see nothing. The music and the lifeless steps made the woman feel like she was drifting, drifting, drifting forever to an unknown place.
After only a few days of Tet in the resort, Thuan was surprised to see that his hair had turned white. Every night, Thuan’s dreams always featured a yellow apricot branch falling off the old twin apricot tree. And in those dreams of his old friend, Thuan’s mouth always mumbled a folk song from the coastal village, whether intentionally or unintentionally, leaving the last part unfinished: “Tet is Tet for both families!... Tet is Tet for both families!... Tet is... Tet... for... both... families!”.
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