When he now looked at the yellow and faded photographs he saw a young woman looking back at him; but the look conveyed no meaning to him. Perhaps that was further proof of his inability to fully develop his personality. Perhaps there were innate seeds of wickedness, ruthlessness, hardness and aloofness within him, for he could never recall anything much about her, or their separation, or any comforting words from her. She had constantly told him: ‘I’m a New Intellectual, dear. I’m a Party Member. I’m not an idiot, nor am I dull. You must remember that, please.’
These statements were often repeated, especially when she spoke to his father.
She had once told Kien something rather odd and awkward: ‘You’re a Pioneer now. One day you’ll be a member of the Youth Union, then one day you’ll become a real man. So, harden your heart and be brave, my son.’
He never forgot those words. If there had been other advice, or loving caresses or any gestures of maternal love, they had long faded from his memory.
At seventeen and about to join the army he finally thought of finding his mother, to learn more about her. But he discovered she had by then been dead five years.
His father had hardly mentioned her. He had avoided talking about her for his own sake, to avoid suffering. He resigned himself to his fate of keeping his family of two in modest circumstances. Later he began drinking and retreated into deep dreams and his sleepwalking.
Only now, in his middle age, could Kien truly understand those years. His father had suddenly stopped working at the museum. He no longer carried his easel on his bicycle or wandered off to paint as he had done for years. He had started using the attic in this building as his studio and confined himself there day and night in the wet, dusty air, where bats flew. He would sit there painting quietly, occasionally telling stories to himself.
It was rumoured he had been criticised by the Party members and had been dismissed and was regarded as a suspicious malcontent, a rightist deviationist.
His health declined all of a sudden and he quickly became senile, and quite strange.
Whenever he went into his father’s attic studio Kien’s heart ached and he choked with compassion. The old man’s paintings, seen dimly through the blue cigarette smoke, were diabolic. The smell of alcohol was permanent.
Twice a day Kien would bring frugal meals to his father, who crouched on a low chair in front of his easel. ‘Who’s that?’ he would say gruffly.
‘Here’s your meal, Dad,’ Kien would say.
‘Alright,’ he would answer, but he would rarely start eating.
The meals were on a tray placed on a small bamboo bed, one of the few pieces of furniture they had left. Piece by piece his father had sold the furniture. His mother’s jewels went first in those early troubled days of marriage, and they now adorned some other woman in some other house. There was almost nothing left to sell.
No one wanted to buy the paintings. His father had long ago stopped attending exhibitions, and he had been completely forgotten by his former circle of artists.
‘I’ll produce a masterpiece one day. Just wait!’ But he was usually dead drunk when he said this. It was a senseless boast to make, considering he no longer even exhibited his work.
His father could never have been successful in that era, no matter how many exhibitions he held or attended. He had been completely out of step with the times, which required artists to accede to certain Socialist ethics, to display material understandable to the working class.
Kien once heard him ranting: ‘Scrap the aesthetics. Add a philistine touch! Define clearly the social class for mountains and rivers and all landscapes. That’s what they’re demanding now!’ he shouted.
It was true. His paintings had been criticised because his work was seen to be alien to the working-class understanding of art. When he began closeting himself away in the attic his paintings had taken on their ferocious, diabolic nature.
Kien began to see life through his father’s paintings. Human beings wore dismal expressions, their faces were long and drawn, their bodies stretched. The colours were strange, too. The paintings were utterly depressing, the subjects moronic.
Nearing the end of his life, whether painting with oils or on silk, whether painting a man or a horse or a cow, whether it was rainy or sunny, morning or evening, town or countryside, forests or mountains, rivers or springs, even skies and sea, with no exception they were all done in varying tones of yellow. Yellow. No other colours, just yellow.
In the paintings the characters wandered aimlessly across unreal landscapes, like withered puppets joined to each other like cut-out figures. The tail-ender in these processions was the aged artist himself who cast himself as a tragic figure.
It was a morbid time for young Kien, for although it was a beautiful New Year, his father saw this as his last, repeatedly saying it was spring itself which urged him to depart this world. ‘At your age, when spring came, I used to look forward to all facets of life. Sunshine, happy times, plenty of wonderful activities. They were inspiring times,’ he said.
But not now. Spring was finally calling him away.
And so it happened. One day an ambulance came and collected him, while Kien was at school. People came over from the hospital to tell Kien, who left his classroom. His father was barely conscious but wanted to utter his last words to Kien.
Kien held his cold hand, which felt like a piece of bronze. There was almost no pulse. He spoke softly and clearly, nor were his words confused. But his final utterances were empty, repetitions of his vain, pitiful dreams.
Then: ‘Our era is over. From now on you have to be grown up, fight the battle alone. New times are coming, splendid and magnificent and trouble-free times. No more sadness,’ he rambled, then fell into morbid babbling. ‘Sorrow is inconsolable. There will still be great sorrow, sorrow passed down to you. I leave you nothing but that sorrow…’
True. Kien later discovered he had not even left his paintings. His father had destroyed them all, burning his precious, strange canvases one by one the night he imagined death had called him.
At the hospital bedside Kien, his eyes brimming with tears, was confused. He was unable to understand his father’s feelings, to comprehend what had tormented him ruthlessly. At his age it was difficult to come to terms with his father’s mystical, almost insane behaviour. It took him many precious years and months to gradually understand and feel some of the bitter pain of his father’s life, to understand a little of those dying words.
In later years Kien had regretted his harsh assessment of his father and his disdain for his dying words. He had been embarrassed about his eccentric father and had frequently shown dislike for his work and words when he was alive. That much was true.
It was all too late now, the love, respect, filial piety, the desire to be close and understand more of his father. All that remained was a grave, covered with earth, heaped with wreaths and joss-sticks and candles. That was the spring of 1965.
In later years he heard the refrain, like an air in his head:
The day of his father’s death was the first time Hanoi sounded its air-raid sirens. Air horns on trains and sirens on top of the Municipal Theatre building howled together in a frightening cacophony.
Although people had been warned it was only a drill the city shivered with fear; hearts almost stopped beating in panic and anticipation. The sirens were the harbinger of dark days to come.