the work of Ta Ty
RIVER OF THE TIME
TRAN THI BONG GIAY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trần Thị Bông Giấy was born in Huế, Central Việt-Nam, and grew up in Sàigòn, capital of the Republic of Việt-Nam.
Graduated as a violinist from the National Conservatory of Music in 1967; and B.A. in Literature from the University of Arts in 1972, she had performed with numerous orchestras and bands in Việt-Nam as a violinist before and after 1975. She moved to Paris, France with her family in 1982, and then to San Jose, California in 1986.
Her first novel in Vietnamese, River Of Time, was first published in 1989, documenting her music tours in Việt-Nam and life in Paris. This work has readily inspired deep appreciation in many readers worldwide.
Since then, she has been the Editor in Chief of Văn-Uyển Magazine, a Vietnamese quarterly literary magazine. She has also written and published 14 more books afterward.
The author is now living quietly with her unique daughter in San Jose, California.ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Trần Thy Hà was born and raised in Sàigòn of Southern Việt-Nam. She moved to California in 1988 at the age of eleven and began to take private piano lessons from the author shortly afterward. As one of the best students, she appreciates the author’s artistry. This led to the translation project of River Of Time in 1996, and Hà finished the translation a year later at the age of twenty.
She earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of San Francisco in 1999 and was a recipient of the university’s Mel Gorman Scientific Award. Since graduation, she worked abroad in London and performed research in phosphate and oxygen distribution in the Northwest Atlantic through an oceanography program by Sea education Association and Woods Hole Oceanography Institute.
She currently works in clinical data management at Clinimetrics and resides in San Jose, California.
INTRODUCTION
Mark Berkson received his B.A. from Princeton University, his M.A. from the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University, and his Ph. D. from Stanford’s Department of Religious Studies, where he wrote a dissertation entitled “Death and the Self in Ancient Chinese Thought: A Comparative Perspective.” He has taught at Stanford University and the University of San Francisco, where he was the 1997-98 Kiriyama fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim. He has also published and presented papers on topics including classical Chinese thought, comparative religious ethics, and interfaith dialogue. He is currently Assistant Professor of Religion at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he specializes in Asian religions and comparative religion.
INTRODUCTION
The United States has gone through many stages in its attempt to come to terms with the legacy of the Việt-Nam War. In the immediate aftermath of the war, there was disbelief, anger, fingerpointing and grief. Then, for a while, there was silence. The pain of confrontation was repressed, delayed --but it could not be eliminated.
In order for healing to take place, we had to begin the processes of both individual soul-searching and a collective national conversation on Việt-Nam.
First in a trickle, then a torrent, writers and filmakers began to struggle with the issue of the war. Particularly through the medium of film, the issue was once again raised in public consciousness. The silence was replaced by dark, often wrenching films, The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, each in their own way trying to struggle with the meaning of the war and its aftermath. For the most part, however, the pens and the cameras have belonged to Americans. We have never really heard the stories, the poems, and the cries of the Vietnamese people. As great a physical and psychic toll as the war took on the United States, the suffering of the Vietnamese was immeasurably greater. Its land, the precious earth from which the Vietnamese draw food and strength, is still pock-marked with craters, filled with mines and slowly recovering from the assault of poisons. Over a million people, many of them noncombatants, were killed. Prosthetic limbs are a common sight. And yet we have not really heard the people of Việt-Nam speak.
There is still another problem. To most Americans, "Việt-Nam" means "The Việt-Nam War". Because Việt-Nam has always been an object to us, a painful part of our story, its relevance is usually seen in terms of the twenty years of violence and mutual distrust that marked the relationship from the 1950's to the 1970's.
However, even if we see Việt-Nam simply in terms of war, we must realize that the Việt-Nam war was a war that extends back to the 50 years struggle with the French that began in the mid-19th century, and still further back to Việt-Nam's ongoing attempt to preserve its own identify in the face of a Chinese influence that was, by turns, philosophical, political, cultural and often military. In the words of one scholar, it has been a "2,000 year struggle".
Although war has had an enormous impact on Việt-Nam, Việt-Nam is much more than a battleground, a fact that many Americans are only beginning to discover. It is a country with a history of its own, a culture that has produced beautiful poetry and literature, and as we learn from the author, a musician able to bring notes to life through written words, rich traditions of music and opera.
Việt-Nam is also land, rice paddies and bustling cities, farmland and villages. And most of all, it is its people. People who are both in Việt-Nam rebuilding their country and their lives; and people who are scattered across the globe feeling, in varying degrees, either like citizens of new lands or an exiled people still waiting to return home. In order to understand, we must begin listening to their voices. Trần Thị Bông-Giấy's is a beautiful voice with which to begin this journey. Her perspective is shaped by time spent in three places, three cultures intertwined in a tragic story, now struggling to find reconciliation, Việt-Nam, France and the United States. Trần Thị Bông Giấy is an author who doesn't spend much time on explicit political statements, diatribes, arguments or theory. She is very much a writer of the particular and concrete, not the general and abstract.
Here is an intimate journal of meals shared and concerts remembered, of conversations, images, personal encounters --open this journal and both Việt-Nam and France come to you in all of their sights, sounds, textures and smells. She brings to us numerous people whose lives have been shaped, in many different ways, by the conflict. We see connections being made across cultural boundaries just as we see the divisions that still exist within them --Vietnamese, like Americans, still split passionately over the war. Her diary is filled with stories and characters that stay with the reader long after the book is put away.
The author's experience of Việt-Nam is particularly revealing, for she is describing the world she was away from for years and then returned to. There is an extra vividness that comes out of seeing one's old home with new eyes --it makes the experience both richer and more painful. But there are really two journals here --for she not only shows us Việt-Nam through the eyes of one who has returned, she also gives to us the experience of a Vietnamese making a life in Europe.
The author's personality shines through in the book. She is a fiercely proud and deeply sensitive woman; she is a person of tradition facing a world of change and uncertainty. Above all, she is an artist, and her words can be so lyrical that the line between prose and poetry begins to disappear.
In conversation, as in music, it is often the quiet but strong voice that holds one's attention. Trần Thị Bông Giấy's is such a voice. Slowly, through a moving story or memorable character here, a reflection on a poem or thoughts about an opera there, the motifs are woven; the piece comes together as a whole. The effect builds up as you keep reading, until you feel you have come to know this person and her country better.
True understanding can never occur between a subject and an object. It only emerges between two subjects. In order to understand the Vietnamese people, people whose lives are intertwined with ours, we must not simply talk about them --we must genuinely listen to them. We are very fortunate, then, that Trần Thị Bông Giấy's book has been translated into English-- and that the translation was done with such skill and sensitivity by her brightest former piano student, a twenty-year-old who is so close to her –Trần Thy Hà.
The book teaches us again an important lesson about literature --that while it is always about the unique and particular, it also speaks universally to all human beings; for in the voice of another, we hear back, in a new and powerful way, our own speaking about loss, struggle, and hope.
MARK BERKSON
PhD., University of San Francisco
SF. May 1998When you return, where is your place?
The river rushes down in white foams
A friend’s old wishful tune lingers
A magic string to seal memories!
(Hoàng Trúc Ly)I
Paris.
It is very windy. The wind whirls madly, pounding on the windows and bending the tree branches around the house cruelly. Autumn has come. A thin sweater can barely keep one warm. In the chilly kitchen with that faint burnt smell of wood in the stove, I suddenly feel a deep stir in my soul: something so dear like the sweet smell of smoke from ages ago...September, 1978. As part of the performing tour, the opera company stopped at Central Việt-Nam. Our first destination was Mũi-Né, a small village right next to the sea near Phan-Thiết City of Hàm-Thuận District, Thuận-Hải Province.
Right from the first afternoon when stopping by a store at the village entrance with some friends, I was drawn powerfully to the dramatic melancholy of Mũi-Né, a sadness that lasted throughout my five-day visit. The sky always kept a gloomy shade. Red soil hugged the sloping sand hills in a tight embrace. Puffs of cloud hung low, tempting one's hand to touch it. The fresh, cool air breathed in a rich scent of the warm sea.
Five short days here left enough memories to remember for life. By a corner on the sand, Hạnh and I lived temporarily in the run-down wooden shack of a woman whose husband was a sailor. Late at night after the show, I lay on the bed and listened to the pleadings of the sea. Dawn greeted me with the sea's moaning. The walks in the evening dusk from the shack to our stage were filled again with the sea's wild screeching. The everlasting sad melody from ages ago touched my heart to the core. I love the sea madly though I was born in Huế, grew up in Sàigòn, and spent a great deal of time on Dalat's foggy slopes. I still cannot figure out why I love so much those crazy and wild sounds, sounds of such tragedy and power that no piece of music could possibly capture them fully; no song could portray tenderness as well as the kiss of the waves on the smooth sand when the sea was calm.
Night at Mũi-Né was sad like teardrops. The sobbing waves from afar echoed continuously throughout the nights. Their melody groaned as if some restless ghosts still lingered by the black sea, soothing my soul and lonely sleep.
Paris.
The wind screeches every once in a while, rushing through the window and freezing the room suddenly. Autumn in Paris is not as sweet as in Việt-Nam (even though my native land did not really have four distinct seasons). Here, autumn is only beautiful in appearance with bright coats and golden showers from falling leaves on every street. After all, Paris still does not bring that sudden sweet vibration within my heart, the way the sky of Việt-Nam turned gray unexpectedly to signal the coming of autumn.End of September, 1978. Tour at Phan-Rí Area of Bắc-Bình District, Thuận-Hải Province.
Once again, Hạnh and I lived together in a rickety thatch house like a hut, hugging feebly the slope that runs from the beach to the market.
Waking up in the morning, I looked through my window as people anchored their boats outside and dragged nets onto the sand. From afar, the fishermen’s shadows resembled little black dots moving across the blue background of the vast sea. The bustling market stayed busy all through the early morning. Women with tanned skin sat in front of fresh fish baskets; their faces showed a complete exhaustion. Seeing the members of our company, they perked up slightly before bending down again with indifferent glances at the swimming fishes in the baskets.
September fog hung low. A few old carriage drivers sat to wait for customers, chatting with each other at the thatch store near the market entrance. The delicious smell of coffee blended with the pungent fish and sea odors of the fishermen; the tanned skin of women and the booming talks of carriage drivers brought out a unique warm flavor to mornings in Phan-Rí.
The distant horizon of Marseille Port in southern France, as mentioned in Fanny by Marcel Pagnol, had captured my deep love during school days, and materialized again today in this thatch store of a foreign, dismal town. The innocent dreams of long ago rose up, stirring strange thrills and soothing away so much discouragement of life.
I hid among the old carriage drivers while sitting on the long bench, listening to their stories, and waiting for my cup of hot coffee. I was a mere stranger to them, but for me, this sky, this store, and even these people seemed to have lingered in my distant memories.
The September morning sky in Phan-Rí remained desolate. My heart sank along with that mood as I walked alone on the smooth beach. The sea called out to Marius, the lover in a novel by Pagnol, filling him with regrets for a lifetime. At certain times, the sea brought out vague regrets in me as well.
Paris.
Once, Daniel asked me, "If now, one of your wishes could come true, what would it be?" I did not hesitate to reply, "To return to those days in Việt-Nam!" He was surprised, "Why those days and not these days when you still have the right to request for a return to the native land?" I did not answer the question, knowing that he would never understand the enormous loss in my heart ever since I left Việt-Nam. True, I could still request for "a return", but it will be the return of a "different" person from my previous self, of a daughter abandoning the poor family to find her own luxury. Now, even if I return, those warm sentiments of old will no longer stay the same, and in my heart, I will never be able to fill up the bitter emptiness.October, 1978. Tour at Tuy-Hòa City, Phú-Yên Province.
From Phan-Thiết, our company went straight on Highway I to Tuy-Hòa, a city next to a Rằng River's mouth with Tây-Nguyên Plateau as the river source.
Before 1975, Tuy-Hòa was the main town of Phú-Yên Province. After 1975, the two provinces, Phú-Yên and Khánh-Hòa, became Phú-Khánh Province with Nghĩa-Bình Province in the north, Gia-Lai & Kontum Province in the northwest, Lâm-Đồng Province in the southwest, Thuận-Hải Province in the south, and the Pacific Ocean in the east.
In the afternoons of that whole week at Tuy-Hòa, before arriving at the theater, the five of us from the Modern Music Division usually went together to the corner street bar near the train station. I did not really know why I joined the world of Vietnamese opera. Maybe an accidental bend in the road? I became bored with the dragging afternoons on the sidewalks of Gia-Long and Nguyễn-Trung-Trực Avenues, sip- ping black coffee while my life lacked a definite purpose. I disliked the uncertain life without any hopes for the future like those glasses of bitter wine my friend and I used to drink hastily each night at the street bar near Vạn-Hạnh University. Besides, Sàigòn did not have its comfort anymore with the coming of the Communists' gray uniforms; it did not stay interesting with those restrictive rules designed to chain the people to the government's system. Maybe the opportunity to enter the life of Vietnamese opera originated from that.
At least, the opera was still a relatively free society when compared to this world full of restrictions. At least in the opera company, we could still keep the label "artist", a prestigious term to the Communist government. And at least, the traveling desire could be fulfilled through many performances across the country.
During the afternoons in Tuy-Hòa train station, we sat and drank wine, drank space and time as well. In October, the city began to turn chilly with cold wind. Central and South Việt-Nam do not have a distinct autumn like the North. Nevertheless, in my opinion, this season of October is still always "the mid of fall"!
Fall in Tuy-Hòa during my one-week stay showed vividly the season of farewells. The train's whistle blasted forth gloomily. The train station was constantly busy with people coming and going. Stores by the sidewalks were bustling from the presence of customers and sales clerks. The dynamics of Tuy-Hòa breathed most vibrantly through these activities.
Fall also passed by the parched gravel roads, the church's roof near the train station, and the lonely, empty roads. What was that element in this city, full of death and life all at once? In the train station, the passengers rushed back and forth. At the end of the horizon, clumps of cloud constantly painted portraits for autumn. The clouds of fall always had a drained countenance: very low, very scattered. And one almost never had a moment to rest from the race with Time.
In those afternoons at the Tuy-Hòa station, I sat with my friends, watching the sunset drift to the bottom of my glass. The strands of wine did not warm my heart but only whispered sadness and loss.
The glasses of wine poured forever, but I was not drunk. It was the wailing of the frantic train's whistle, the gloomy church in the distance, and the sound of hurried footsteps racing to catch the train that intoxicated me.
Scenes of Việt-Nam by simple brush strokes were hastily stored in my memories, a strange inheritance that anybody could possess for oneself.
Paris.
Claudia and Daniel call me on the phone around eleven o'clock in the morning and ask if I want to go to the coffee shop. In truth, Paris does resemble Dalat City in certain aspects as some of my friends have noticed. It has the same laid back atmosphere with people wandering from store to store for hours, people enjoying the same mindless boredom as they gaze at pedestrians passing by the windows.
A faint sadness passes through me, filling Claudia and Daniel with surprise. Daniel says to me, "You are so moody; I can never predict it. One minute, you're very happy, and yet, the next minute, just as sad!" Then, he smiles, "Like those cable elevators in run down hotels at Paris." (He gestures to imitate the up and down motion of an elevator). I broke down in laughter, "You should compare me to the tide instead. An elevator is used by human hands and only goes up and down according to the buttons being pushed. On the other hand, humans cannot control the tides." I continue, "The tidal waves sometimes turn angry and pounding, but sometimes peaceful and soft. And during those calm moments, nothing can describe the beauty of the sea, except pure artistry."October 1978. Sông-Cầu city, Phú-Yên Province.
“Water treads casually through Sông Cầu
When will our pains end?”
Our group anchored at Sông-Cầu, a beautiful small city by the coast of Central VN with romantic scenery and beaches full of coconut trees and refreshing plants. The group raised up the stage at an area right near the beach, on Highway I.
A special memory arose from the midnight snack of our opera group at the bus station after each night's performance. The experiences in opera up until then still had not given me enough time to really understand that thearical life. Each night, the glamorous characters on stage stood in stark contrast to the exhausted faces without makeup in the day. The competitive life of long tours forced one to bury all emotions under a thick layer of lipstick and foundation. Everything seemed so strange and yet, so very attractive.
Halfway 'til dawn, the bus station of Sông-Cầu became even more active. The stores lit up brightly. The gulls lined up next to the food racks on the sidewalks, patiently waiting. The roar of engines called out to the passengers, and voices fought to overpower each other. At a table by the street bar, I sat with our entire opera group and listened rapturously to a blind man beating out rhythms and singing Bài Chòi Traditional Songs. The dragging voice with Tuy-Hòa accent echoed out smooth, tragic melodies in the middle of the night, a mysterious and thrilling experience for me. My soul opened up like a flower in full bloom, loving this poor dried-up land of Central Việt-Nam that I might never have a chance to visit again.
In this wandering life, I often saw bus stations and markets, but really, no place had the fire of life as blazing as the bus station of Sông-Cầu at midnight. It seemed like Time could not mark His boundary here, or maybe this bus station repre sented a special symbol of a ghostly world where in this ancient street bar, every customer was a Knight, holding a sword and leather jars of wine, and the old blind man became a poet singing rhymes of old amidst the steady drum beat. And then those yells for noodle bowls, the thundering footsteps, the calls for customers from the Underworld Inn nextdoor –everything combined in one mythical echo. At dawn, when the booming croaks of roosters sounded forth, this bar shrunk down, evaporating into thin air just before sunrise arrived.....to be continued....
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. Updated: 29.11.2008.
