Anguli Ma

Chi Vu

Anguli Ma
A Gothic Tale

Chi Vu

Anguli Ma A Gothic Tale

GIRAMONDO

First published 2012

from the Writing & Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney
by the Giramondo Publishing Company

PO Box 752

Artarmon NSW 1570 Australia

www.giramondopublishing.com

© Chi Vu 2012

Designed by Harry Williamson

Typeset by Andrew Davies

in 10/14.5 pt Minion Pro

Printed and bound by Ligare Book Printers

Distributed in Australia by NewSouth Books

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Vu, Chi.

Anguli ma : a gothic tale / Chi Vu

ISBN 978-1-920882-87-7 (pbk.)

ePDF 978-1-922146-73-1

epub 978-1-922146-74-8

A823.4

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

For James

The truly present moment has no connection whatever with the past or the future – it is independent of what has gone before or what will follow – it is a different dimension to the flowing of time.

V.R. D
HIRAVAMSA
,
The Way of Non-Attachment

It is on disaster that good fortune perches.

It is beneath good fortune that disaster crouches.

L
AO
T
ZU
,
Tao Te Ching

The Monk

His fingers are arranged into beautiful mudras. He lowers his eyelids and returns to the breath, and sinks into the perceptual world. The she-oaks and river red gums have within them light from the sun and nutrients from the soil. These are transformed into mottled bark, sinewy trunks and slender limbs, and roots like long black hair digging into the earth.

In the sunlight, he stares at his hands which faintly remember blood. Tension leaves the monk's body. He notices the slightly softer breathing, the ease flowing in his arms and legs, a softness to his gaze. He observes the dying down of his anger, and the diminishing of its light.

Đào

Anguli Ma had arrived the day before.

“I am enquiring about the notice on the window of Bà Sáu's grocery. I am in need of a room, nothing too expensive.” His eyes searched the landlady's round face, her smooth unadorned neck.

“The room out the back's already taken; it was advertised more than five months ago.” That was when the girl had moved in, with nothing but her two large plastic bags.

“Are you sure?” Anguli Ma said, and added with a lazy grin, “I'll be honest with you, I'm a simple man so I don't need anything that would make me worry unnecessarily.”

That's all very well, Đào thought, but there was still no room. She expected that he would become angry or at least mildly annoyed at having come out here on some outdated information. When she lifted her gaze, what she saw instead was his acquiesced frame beginning to turn away.

“Where is your
quê
?” she asked.

“My
quê gốc
is in the North,” he rounded out her question for her, “but my father was a teacher so we emigrated to the South in '54.”

Đào was somewhat impressed – his people were either wealthy, intellectuals or Catholics and had chosen to uproot from their
quê gốc
rather than live under the Communists.

If he'd said they were '45 migrants, then she might have thought differently. She herself did not witness the gruesome scenes of small children collapsed in the street during the famine time, of food vendors fighting back the hordes of starving peasants who snatched at their precious, dangling baskets. She had only heard the whispered stories, carried to the fertile South by those who managed to flee death. Đào shifted her weight to the other leg, adjusted the jade and gold bracelet on her left wrist.

“And what do you do now?”

“There's a place around here in Braybrook offering work. I'm unsure if I have the kind of experience they're looking for, having only been a
sinh viên
during the war. We just learnt how to read thick books and recite poetry, nothing of use for our new lives over here.” He looked down at Đào carefully to let his words sink in. He followed her own gaze down to her fingernails, which were discoloured by turquoise lint.

“We can hardly be fussy about the way we earn our rice nowadays, can we?” Then he smiled at her conspiratorially, intimately, as though whatever differences they might have had in the old country, they were in the same boat now. Anguli Ma arranged his features to be amiable, uninvolved, as though he was describing someone else's life and not his own.

Đào could see that his face was that of a Northerner, with the taller nose and high cheekbones and forehead. This son of a teacher, this former student during the war, now reduced to manual labour.

“The job available here is only for two or three months, then I'll be heading north to do farming work outside of Brisbane.”

“Is your family over here?” Đào felt herself softening.

“No. I am alone unfortunately,” he replied.

With that, Đào's stomach had decided. She had an empty garage, which might be adequate for a short period, and she could allow this fellow to stay for a few months or so. And she would earn some extra money during this time too. Despite being impressed by his family
background, Đào charged him a premium for a garage with a jammed car entrance and a warped wooden door on the side.

Đào reached between the collected jars and bottles filled with bulbous pickled vegetables, vinegars, chilli pastes, fermented prawn paste, fish and oyster sauces. The paper labels on the damp, backlit bottles and jars were wrinkled. Her fridge was so crammed, she often couldn't see what she'd bought only last week from
tiệm
Bà Sáu. Đào's plump right hand squeezed between the plastic takeaway containers to the very back corner of her old fridge. Then she felt it, a small cellophane bag of birdseye chillies. Đào lunged at the bottles and jars, which made a glass squeaking sound, before she was able to reach the bag with the tips of her fingers. She gave a hard pull to retrieve her arm from the fridge. Đào trimmed a fresh chilli with a pair of scissors and crushed the fleshy slivers into some table salt, staining it with the chilli's thin red juice.

What a trio they made, Đào thought, three women in a drafty old house without their husbands, children, siblings, fathers or mothers, without any menfolk. And now this was about to change, somewhat. Her tenants waited as she returned to the table with a plate of sliced green apples and the chilli dipping salt. Đào placed the cut apples in front of them and told them about Anguli Ma.

The young woman Sinh sat forward on her seat. Her slender arms rested awkwardly on the table, and her bright, dark eyes seemed to look at something high up on the wall that Đào couldn't see. Sinh was nineteen, twenty in Vietnamese years because the period of gestation is counted, and had escaped by herself as a sixteen-year-old. Like Đào, she had a talent for finding things, and came across many useful items that people had discarded, or simply forgot and never looked for. Her dry, rough hands betrayed her occupation cleaning houses and motel rooms.

The other tenant was an old woman who shared the studio room out in the backyard with Sinh. Bác was seated partially in the light. Strands of her grey hair were combed closely along her shiny scalp, while everywhere else her skin had the texture of a soft, dry paper bag. Bác's face remained impassive when Đào told them about the new tenant who was going to stay in the garage.

Đào decided to lighten things up, seeing that she had now given them news that would surely affect their daily routines. The landlady stared at Sinh's shiny black hair which fell down to the middle of her back.

“You're very skinny, you've got to eat more,” Đào teased playfully. Sinh's slender fingers picked up a slice of apple and dipped it into the chilli salt.

“Your hair is very dark and very strong. Maybe it eats all the food that goes into your stomach.”

Bác's thin shoulders shook as she laughed at the idea of apple turning into long black hair.

“But I eat everything I can,” Sinh replied.

And it was the truth too, Đào had seen her empty a large bowl of rice, sometimes as many as three, in one sitting. But the girl could work hard as well, and it was this vigour that would ensure her survival beyond these threadbare years.

The three women heard the sound of keys jangling outside the house, accompanied by muscular footsteps.

“It must be the new stranger,” the old woman whispered.

“Stranger now, but acquaintance later,” Đào reassured her tenants. “I had a long talk with him yesterday, having him around could be useful.”

She noticed that Bác didn't respond again, but continued looking at the plate of apples.

“Don't worry, he's only staying for a month or two, if he's no good he'll be gone soon,” Đào reassured them.

The side gate clicked. Sinh's face was as fresh as an apple as she listened to the oncoming footsteps. Đào noticed the reflected white light on the girl's shiny hair, as one strand seemed to defy gravity and stand up slightly.

The women sat at the table in silence. Their ears followed the heavy, irregular footsteps as they walked down the side of the house. Outside the wind picked up and blew against all the external surfaces and the
gaps between them. The house itself seemed to whisper and gasp with his approach, for the women could hear every creak and reverberation from its old frame.

The door opened and the new tenant came in. He had a large bag over one of his shoulders. He was a tall and rather thin man who seemed to bear the weight of the heavy bag quite easily. He was no longer a youth and yet certainly not old.

“Welcome, come in,” Đào said. “Why didn't you come through the front?”

“Hello, all,” he said after taking in the room and its occupants. “I like feeling at home,” he lowered the plastic bag onto the laminate table, “rather than being a guest.” His voice had the warmth of a guitar on a still, idle night.

Through the clear plastic, the women could see the meat and bones pressed tightly against the bag. The marrow in the sawn bones was still rich and wet. The landlady estimated that he had brought twenty-five kilograms home.

“Oh, so much meat,” Sinh said, holding a polite smile on her lips.

“Work, they gave it to me. I'm at that place along the river.”

The fridge turned itself on, and a corner of the plastic bag leaked droplets of blood onto Đào's kitchen floor.

Twilight came to the old house, chilling the air. Đào cleaved the leg of pork. The tongue of her cleaver met with the solid sponginess of the wooden chopping board. Her fingers submerged the meat in fish sauce, and she covered it with a plate to let it marinate. Then she filled her large pot with the bones and water. The gas stove whispered alive, and the cold steel of the large pot began to sweat.