Doors slammed shut, people clattered down stairways, as exhortations rang out over the loudspeakers: ‘Compatriots, pay attention please, pay attention please compatriots. Enemy aircraft are approaching…’ Lights went out all around town. Patrol cars drove on darkened streets, their own lights masked.
Kien ran against the flow, groping his way upstairs to his father’s attic studio. It was quite dark and the air was full of choking dust. The stink of wine and paint was everywhere and small bats flew by him uncertainly. ‘Oh, Daddy,’ he said softly.
There was a breathless silence in the attic, in the building, and across the entire city. Despite the blackout order, Kien lit a small candle. Looking around he was astounded. Where were the paintings? The unfinished one on the easel? Those in frames in the corners? All were gone, as if by magic.
The end! Kien had no doubt about it then. This was a graveyard. Every image, every trace of his father had been wiped away, replaced by a nothingness. His father had quit the world, gone in a sleepwalker’s dream, taking with him forever the deathly yellow paintings.
He had left only his son in this world.
Kien, deep in thought, slowly emerged from the building. In the east he could see, under cumulus clouds, a dim glow. The all-clear siren sounded and he realised the glow was from the moon. It was an ominous sight. Future glows in the night would not all be natural, and the sirens would not be for drills. It was the start of his seventeenth year in life, this icy spring of 1965.
Phuong knew all about the cremation of the paintings. ‘It was a crazed, barbarous ceremony, a rebellion,’ she recalled, when describing it to Kien later. Phuong had witnessed the scene, but no one else in the building, even Kien, had known about it.
That night his father had felt the touch of death. Quietly and systematically, he went on an orgy of self-destruction, shredding his canvases then burning them.
There had been an affinity between his father and Phuong since she had been in her early teens. It was not a father–daughter relationship, nor an uncle–niece relationship for that matter. It was a confused, blurred relationship, based on some shared obsessions and liberal eccentricities. He became extremely fond of the girl and his affection showed in his sad, silent regard for her.
The very characteristics of his spirit, his eccentricities, his free-flying artistic expressions and disregard for normal rules that annoyed others were what attracted Phuong to him; she was a kindred soul.
The old man and the little girl would sit side by side for hours, often not uttering a word. She could sit by him calmly whereas normally she would be restless and excitable, above all merry. When she sat by him watching him paint she seemed captivated by the mood.
When she was older her visits to watch him paint were less frequent, yet she was the only one, other than Kien, who visited the secluded attic studio. Kien’s father would eagerly anticipate her visits. Often she would bring alcohol and cigarettes for him, something Kien had not done. Occasionally she heard him mumbling to himself.
She was sixteen, and already very beautiful, when he said, ‘You’re really beautiful.’ Then as a veiled warning he had added, ‘You will be unhappy. Most unhappy. These are perilous times for free spirits. Your beauty one day will cost you dearly.’
He had promised her a portrait of herself in oils on her seventeenth birthday, but Phuong was horrified at the thought, imagining he would portray her with a long, drawn face as he usually painted his subjects. He had even gave his fairies long faces, with seaweed for hair and lemon-coloured skin. He died three months before she turned seventeen, rendering the fears irrelevant.
The fateful night when he had imagined Death calling him, she had been present. He ordered her to make a fire in the back yard and to help him carry all the paintings down from the attic. She knew then he was about to die.
She seemed to understand and to agree that the burning had to take place. It had to be so. She had deliberately not called Kien, because of this. Still, she was frightened, and immersed herself in the ritual destruction to dispel her fears. It became a fantastic, flickering unreal atmosphere, giddying her as the flames leaped up. Phuong was forever haunted by that eerie night, of the lasting strange, yet pleasurable, pains that flowed over her in those passionate moments.
Only the artist himself knew precisely why he went on his orgy of self-destruction, and why he had wanted Phuong, and Phuong alone, to be his witness and helper. She didn’t realise it then, but later she saw in it a prophetic message of destruction characterised by that night. The love of Kien and Phuong had been as doomed as those paintings.
She had intended to tell Kien about that frenzied night of destruction as they stood together beside his father’s grave at the funeral, but she couldn’t bring herself to torment him further.
It was on Kien’s final night in Hanoi that she told him. He was leaving for the battlefront the next day. It was to be the last night of their pre-war lives, their last moments of youth.
These had been the final hours of their secure, pure and happy youth, those years and months counted in pleasurable days before the fateful hour arrived to leave. It came soon enough. The next day it was to be a single step onto a convoy, heading for the front.
They had been sweethearts for as long as they could remember. Phuong lived in the room next to his, they sat at the same desk in the same classroom in the same school. She rode behind him on his bicycle to and from school. His sweetheart was now the most radiant beauty in the entire Chu Van An school.
Yet neither of them had other close friends. Others seemed to be unable to penetrate their cocoon of friendship. It was a desperate, pure love, which ached within them and brought frustrations and occasional resentment for the times which imprisoned them in this unnatural state.
The Youth Union members resented them, teachers were deeply concerned, and there were so many others caught up in the patriotic campaigns which denounced any form of liberalism or romance.
There were frenzied campaigns championing the ‘Three Alerts’ and ‘Three Responsibilities’ and harshest, the ‘Three Don’ts’ which forbade sex, love or marriage among the young people. Love affairs for ninth- or tenth-formers were regarded as a disgrace, unpatriotic.
Phuong’s burning, sensuous and conspicuous beauty had infuriated the authorities and her peers. She bore herself confidently, even rashly, paying little heed to the demands of the prudes. Kien, equally, met their objections with an uncharacteristic obstinacy.
‘We’ve done nothing evil. We’re innocent. We don’t try to influence others. Our affairs are our own business,’ he responded to one critical teacher.
Kien and Phuong became inseparable, like a body and its shadow. They clung to each other as if there were no tomorrows, as if there were no time to lose and every moment should be spent together. At nights, in bed, they tapped Morse Code messages to each other on their dividing wall, and dreamed of the natural progression of their love, the ultimate intimacy.
Then came that wonderful April afternoon, with the cicadas singing and the flame trees in full flower, a day made for reckless abandon. Although all students were to dig trenches across the schoolyard that day, Phuong had come to school deliberately wearing her concealed swimsuit. When the formal ceremonies for the dedication of the trenches were about to start Phuong had whispered to Kien: ‘Let’s go. Leave the straw heroes to their slogans. I’ve got a really pretty swimsuit on, so let’s test it.’
They both swam out, far from the shore, not turning back until dusk. Exhausted and weary, Phuong clung to Kien. Night fell quickly and bright, scattered stars lit the sky. Kien carried Phuong in his arms, water dripping from her, and placed her gently on the fresh, cool grass. He lay down beside her, stimulated by the swim, bursting with health.