LatinosUSA

mèo by Đinh Trường Chinh

A short story in Vietnamese by Trần Băng Khuê
Translator: Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

1.

I’m not sure what I wanted to write when it comes to them. A dog, A cat. They came to live with my family. The dog is a Corgi, nearly two years old. The cat is a Calico cat only two months old. The dog occupies the front of the house. The cat occupies the back of the house. Each day, as soon as the sun is up, (until darkness comes crashing down, the iron gate shuts), I’m preoccupied with the constant state of the dog’s sadness, and the cat’s loneliness. (Not my parent’s problems, not my little sister’s ill fate, not the worries of the toothless kids who have been abandoned by the man who gave birth to them or the obsessive people out there in the world). 

Each day, I would contemplate the dog’s sadness, the cat’s loneliness after they had stuffed their bellies with food. They have such an easy life. They have so much time. They nap then they sleep. They play and then they play again. And yet, they were sad, they were lonely right in front of me. Bored, hour after hour, the cat paced back and forth, walked up and down, went out then came in, rolled left and then right in the rooms at back of the house; while the dog crawls in and out from under the table in the front yard as though it’s waiting for an opportunity to wag its tail, send a look of tenderness towards me, or another member of the family. (but the adults are too busy with nameless tasks out at the shops or in the street, or busy catching butterflies or playing with the bees if they were retired, while the kids were busy with their masks getting ready to go to school in the morning).

2.

Then, for some time, my preoccupation with the dog and cat in the house had stopped. I pondered the extent of my imagination. I saw sadness holding a banana leaf and went on an adventure late one night. They didn’t know where they were going. They didn’t have a promised land to settle down and build their home, use the crescent moon to plant and harvest wheat (or to slaughter animals for meat if needed). Sadness holding the banana leaf is a woman. Loneliness shouldering the crescent moon is a man. They have not found their promised land, and yet, they were so quick to cut out a heart from the banana leaf in the dark. They dreamed of a love like Adam and Eve. 

What I saw, and seen were merely in a dream. A dream dangled in my sleep last night, as two drops of water as salty as the sea fell out of the corner of the two thirty plus years old eyes at five in the morning. I told someone about how I was crying at five in the morning. I told them, they didn’t believe how I could possibly dream something as weird as that, didn’t believe in my two teardrops. Rare is faith. No one could ever dream of faith. The world is vast and savage. Sadness holding a banana leaf. Loneliness shouldering half the moon. They were side by side. Where were they going, home was where?

3.

They ask me about my dreams.

I pointed at the scars on the tips of my fingers, I used to peel apples with the kitchen knife. I pointed at all the scars I had collected through my childhood. I remember the monthly bloodshed when I was old enough. I remember the baptism one April Fool’s Day. I remember a wedding that was not perfect. I remember the first time and the only time I was flustered in kneeling in front of the confessional screen in a church. 

I would ramble without touching on the subject of dreams, when they push the issue? I thought, why should I explain my dreams to anyone? Why should my dream be on display for anyone? Why do I need to expand on the subject of my two tears being as salty as the sea at five in the morning? Especially at this very moment, when I’m trying to listen to The King Beneath the Mountain by Clamavi De Profundis. A sad song, a lonely voice without reason.

4.

When the rain stopped. I remembered that I still have a sad dog at the front of the house. The night dropped down clandestinely seeped through the gaps in the iron gate. And the small lonely cat hid itself away in the storage shed at the back of the house, playing with the shadows, scaring the odd mouse that for a long time now refused to abandon the cracks and corners full of scraps. I know what the dog at the front of the house wants? I know what the kitten that had just left its mother and was more accustomed to its new life with new people wants? I tried my best to give them what they wanted for each meal, and satisfy their taste buds. The dog needs a bit of meat with rice. The cat wants a small portion of fish. (as long as it’s not the kind of fish with whiskers, I know).

Me, I need my dreams.

I remember the dreams I have lost on those dark fields. I want to go back there and find them. Then, I find myself lost in other dreams. They unfold in so many colours. They were constantly pulled, bound together in bundles, bunch up to after explode, fade, and then they were gone. I hovered, sat on the floor, watched the kitten move slowly, meowed sweetly as soon as it caught my eye. I thought about the dog. It was clear that he wanted me to be there to pat its two coloured fur. 

No one asks me about the dream that had made me cry at four, or five in the morning anymore. I still listen to the same song over and over again. The song begins with a soprano. Accompanied by a strong ensemble. The tenors’ deep lonely voice was warm to the last note. I tried to picture them as though they were characters in my dream. The soprano holding a banana leaf walking in front. The tenor shouldering a crescent moon followed her from behind. The sky couldn’t bear a single star. I know that it is not easy for Thémis to let go of the bright stars in her garden of stars, sparkling beauty and radiating truth into any forest or field.

Darkness dropped on top of the roof. 

The adults were resting their arms on their foreheads. The kids were fast asleep.

Just me. Me alone in the end quietly remembering a dream as I watched the sparse light seeped through the gaps in the window. Or sitting on the white tiled floor distracted by loneliness pacing back and forth meowing, listening to the barking sadness at the iron gate outside. 

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Trần Băng Khuê, born in Vietnam in 1982, lived for a period in Auckland, New Zealand. A talented writer and an aspiring artist who currently lives and work in Huế, Vietnam.

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.