the daily searches, when we were obliged to stand face to face with them. They needed to be sure that we had only the essentials, like them.
One day our ten roomers dragged us to their bathroom, accusing us of stealing a fish they’d been given for their evening meal. They pointed to the toilet bowl and explained to us that the fish had been there that morning, hale and hearty. What had become of it?
T hanks to that fish, we were able to establish communication. Later on, my father corrupted them by having them listen to music on the sly. I sat underneath the piano, in the shadows, watching tears roll down their cheeks, where the horrors of History, without hesitation, had carved grooves. After that, we no longer knew if they were enemies or victims, if we loved or hated them, if we feared or pitied them. And they no longer knew if they had freed us from the Americans or, on the contrary, if we had freed them from the jungle of Vietnam.
Very quickly, though, the music that had accorded them a kind of freedom found itself in a fire, on the rooftop terrace of the house. They had received an order to burn the books, songs, films—everything that betrayed the image of those men and women with muscular arms holding aloft their pitchforks, their hammers and their flag, red with a yellow star. Very quickly, they filled the sky with smoke, once more.
W hat became of those soldiers? Much has changed since the brick wall was put up between us and the Communists. I went back to Vietnam to work with those who had caused the wall to be built, who’d imagined it as a tool to break hundreds of thousands of lives, perhaps even millions. There had been reversals, of course, since the tanks first rolled down the street that ran past our house in 1975. Since then, I had even learned the Communist vocabulary of our former assailants because the Berlin Wall fell, because the Iron Curtain was raised, because I am still too young to be weighed down by the past. Only, there will never be a brick wall in my house. I still don’t share the love for brick walls of the people around me. They claim that bricks make a room warm.
T he day I started my job in Hanoi, I walked past a tiny room that opened onto the street. Inside, a man and a woman were arranging bricks into a low wall that divided the room in two. The wall got higher day by day, until it reached the ceiling. My secretary told me that it was because of two brothers who didn’t want to live under the same roof. The mother had been helpless against this separation, perhaps because she herself had erected similar walls some thirty years earlier between victors and vanquished. She died during my three-year stay in Hanoi. By way of legacy, to the older child she left the fan without a switch, to the younger the switch without the fan.
I t’s true that the brick wall between those two brothers can’t be compared to the one that existed between my family and the Communist soldiers, nor do these two walls carry the same history as do old Québécois houses—each wall has its own story. It is thanks to that distance that I’ve been able to share meals with people who were the right arm and the left arm of Ho Chi Minh without seeing the rancour hovering, without seeing women on a train holding old Guigoz powdered milk cans in their hands as if they were jars of magic potion. For the men shut away in re-education camps, it
was
a magic potion, even if the cans held only browned meat (
thịt chà bông
): a kilo of roasted pork shredded fibre by fibre, dried all night over the embers, salted, then salted again with nớc mấm obtained after two days of waiting in line, two days of hope and despair. The women lavished devotion on those filaments of pork, even if they weren’t sure of finding their children’s father in the camp they were setting off to visit, not knowing if he was dead or alive, wounded or sick. In memory of those women, I cook that browned meat for my sons now and then,
One day our ten roomers dragged us to their bathroom, accusing us of stealing a fish they’d been given for their evening meal. They pointed to the toilet bowl and explained to us that the fish had been there that morning, hale and hearty. What had become of it?
T hanks to that fish, we were able to establish communication. Later on, my father corrupted them by having them listen to music on the sly. I sat underneath the piano, in the shadows, watching tears roll down their cheeks, where the horrors of History, without hesitation, had carved grooves. After that, we no longer knew if they were enemies or victims, if we loved or hated them, if we feared or pitied them. And they no longer knew if they had freed us from the Americans or, on the contrary, if we had freed them from the jungle of Vietnam.
Very quickly, though, the music that had accorded them a kind of freedom found itself in a fire, on the rooftop terrace of the house. They had received an order to burn the books, songs, films—everything that betrayed the image of those men and women with muscular arms holding aloft their pitchforks, their hammers and their flag, red with a yellow star. Very quickly, they filled the sky with smoke, once more.
W hat became of those soldiers? Much has changed since the brick wall was put up between us and the Communists. I went back to Vietnam to work with those who had caused the wall to be built, who’d imagined it as a tool to break hundreds of thousands of lives, perhaps even millions. There had been reversals, of course, since the tanks first rolled down the street that ran past our house in 1975. Since then, I had even learned the Communist vocabulary of our former assailants because the Berlin Wall fell, because the Iron Curtain was raised, because I am still too young to be weighed down by the past. Only, there will never be a brick wall in my house. I still don’t share the love for brick walls of the people around me. They claim that bricks make a room warm.
T he day I started my job in Hanoi, I walked past a tiny room that opened onto the street. Inside, a man and a woman were arranging bricks into a low wall that divided the room in two. The wall got higher day by day, until it reached the ceiling. My secretary told me that it was because of two brothers who didn’t want to live under the same roof. The mother had been helpless against this separation, perhaps because she herself had erected similar walls some thirty years earlier between victors and vanquished. She died during my three-year stay in Hanoi. By way of legacy, to the older child she left the fan without a switch, to the younger the switch without the fan.
I t’s true that the brick wall between those two brothers can’t be compared to the one that existed between my family and the Communist soldiers, nor do these two walls carry the same history as do old Québécois houses—each wall has its own story. It is thanks to that distance that I’ve been able to share meals with people who were the right arm and the left arm of Ho Chi Minh without seeing the rancour hovering, without seeing women on a train holding old Guigoz powdered milk cans in their hands as if they were jars of magic potion. For the men shut away in re-education camps, it
was
a magic potion, even if the cans held only browned meat (
thịt chà bông
): a kilo of roasted pork shredded fibre by fibre, dried all night over the embers, salted, then salted again with nớc mấm obtained after two days of waiting in line, two days of hope and despair. The women lavished devotion on those filaments of pork, even if they weren’t sure of finding their children’s father in the camp they were setting off to visit, not knowing if he was dead or alive, wounded or sick. In memory of those women, I cook that browned meat for my sons now and then,
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