LatinosUSA

Truyện ngắn Lê Vĩnh Tài
Translation by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

“Are you cold?” his voice was both worried and unsure. “Definitely not,” she replied. “I’m wearing a very thick woolen jumper.” “It’s a bit tight”, he added.

“No, it’s alright”, she corrected him.

Life is absolutely beautiful to him. He had an adorable beautiful young wife, and she continues to turn his life upside down even when he is preoccupied with other people, with her thick woolen jumper even when it’s not cold.

She asked him about his plans for the night, then added: “Listen, young man, if you’re inviting your friends over, I will have to wear my thickest woolen jumper.”

He understood her reservation, and he knew he didn’t have to justify anything when their guests eventually turned up. They understand her condition, only she is oblivious to it. Everyone around her kept her condition to themself the way he would secretly shave in the bathroom.

Years back, the same jumper drove him crazy. A young woman lying across the bed, wearing a jumper with a turtle neck so beautiful he couldn’t imagine her in anything else. The woolen jumper through her warmth spoke to him, even when her hands were cold. The two of them were woven together like a woolen jumper, with the softness and warmth from her front door, during the cold autumn evenings they had dated.

.

“Who will come tonight hun?” She asked him again, her voice sounded breathless as though the rolls and rolls of yarn wrapped thickly around her feverish body were choking her.

“They’re all coming.” He replied as he fiddled with the flowers in a porcelain vase on a side table next to her hospital bed. Quietly he stared at the white wall. The wires over her hospital bed were haphazardly weaved into each other, no different to the yarn in her jumper he thought… His voice was husky: “Your parents, your little sister, your closest friends…”

She was quiet for a moment before she said, “Can you help me change all that? It feels wrong somehow, you know that. I’m in my last stage, I don’t like a lot of people, it’s too noisy.”

He understood, he knew she didn’t want to look at their awkward smiles. “It won’t be like that”, he said as he pushed the oxygen tank closer to the bed and then he proceeded to draw a thick blanket over a portrait he drew stretched out rather thinly in a frame. He was worried her jumper was not enough to keep her warm. He cried: “It’s very cold outside, but I know you will be nice and warm.”

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Lê Vĩnh Tài, the poet and translator born in 1966 in Buon Ma Thuot, Daklak, Vietnam. The retired doctor is still a resident of the Western Highlands and a businessman in Buon Ma Thuot.

Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm, the blogger, poet, and translator, was born in 1971 in Phu Nhuan, Saigon, Vietnam. The pharmacist currently lives and works in Western Sydney, Australia.