Swiroset.com

Ly, now a very old lady, 102 years old, survived the war years, as she had told her friends, over and over again: “Wars are won at will, and they are also lost that way, they are lost.” find the root.” and hits the will.” She has an old stiff upper lip, from hating that nephew of hers, the one who died some thirty years ago, Danh, she even survived him, she says, “Some battles are won just by waiting for the other person , not taunting him, they can see it coming.” She knows he wasn’t named Ly for nothing (Vietnamese for Lion). But back to Danh, he was her antagonist, if she ever had one. She called him “The Bad Seed” or “The Bad Apple… there’s one in every bunch…!” among other names.She doesn’t miss him, but she does miss An, her brother, the one she killed, like Cain and Able.

After they left the boys in ’79, and left for her to raise, Danh went crazy, he had become a big fan of drugs, taking them even in public. Lots of people in the neighborhood had been tricked by him, lots of nasty stories. He had told his neighbors, if not a hundred times, “I really loved him at first, and then I liked him as much as I could.” And she meant what she said.

But here she is sitting, in that same old kitchen, now it’s 2002, at the same old table, the same one she had thirty years ago, not forty years ago or so, she bought it ten years before those two girls. , Zuxin and Ming, tricked her into taking the children, oh, she doesn’t blame them, they didn’t have any of her blood on them anyway. But she’s sitting there, with a beer, spinning the glass in a circle with her hands, wondering, I guess, how she got through those hard days with Danh. One thing is for sure, she no longer hesitates to get up and see who comes in the front door and runs out the back if it’s Danh, she’s been dead a long time. She no longer smokes cigarette after cigarette either, wondering when she might come back.

She is playing with her hands now, thinking: he was like a wolf. Like the plague, she had asked him to leave once, but he never did. But what he hated the most, even more than punishing and robbing her, was killing those filthy rats: let me explain this, the way she told her neighbors:

I’d take rats, yes, rats, I’ll never know where you got them, maybe along the river bank, I’d take half a dozen rats, or one or two, as many as you could carry in a sack, and take them into the house, towards the sink, a heavy butcher block was always there, by the edge of the sink, he would put the rat one at a time, on top of the block and put waxed paper in the sink, then he would take the butcher knife, the heaviest he had , kind of a stubby thing, but it had a thick, solid wooden handle, it cut right through the bone and meant to butter, or clean the skin. he played with the rat a bit, he grabbed it by the tail, the rat tried to get free, scattering all four on the block, then with the butcher knife over his head, he brought it down hard, then everything… What he heard was a strong blow, when the knife hit the block. Then he would hold the headless rat by its feet, over the sink, still squirming for a moment, and watch the blood drain from his body. He would do this to any and all rats, one to six, whatever number he had.”

Nº: 707 (19-1-2011)