“Dai, your parents have already passed away, and mine will too someday. Only you and I exist. There is no reason for us not to be together and spend the rest of our lives together. I beg you.”

  Dai was moved by my words. Finally, days after this conversation, he agreed with my proposal and discussed the process for adopting a child. I was no longer anxious. On the contrary, I felt delighted, like a person walking on clouds. Our love had been rekindled.

  Dai looked at me affectionately now. His deep eyes opened wide and seemed to brighten. Suddenly he embraced me tightly, so tightly that I felt my heart was breaking into pieces in his arms. His lips were warm against mine. I couldn’t breathe.

  20 / A MORAL MURDERER

  LAI VAN LONG

  Lai Van Long was born in 1964 in the central highland city of Da Lat and currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City. He is a news reporter for the Ho Chi Minh City Police News and has won many awards for his work as a journalist. In addition, he has published two collections of short stories and three novels. Several of his stories have been translated into Chinese, French, and Japanese, including “A Moral Murderer,” his most famous story, which was highly controversial when it was first published in the early 1990s and cemented Lai Van Long’s reputation as a provocative and fearless writer. The story deals with several issues that are considered “sensitive” by the Vietnamese government: the personal appropriation by communist officials of land previously belonging to the bourgeois class; peasants’ disaffection with the propaganda of the revolution; forced political indoctrination in Marxist/Leninist thought; and the use of reeducation camps. More than anything, this story highlights the anger of the lower classes who felt betrayed by the empty promises of the revolution.

  * * *

  The following folk lyrics, which were associated with his memories of a distant past, now became his philosophy of life:

  A prince inherits his father’s throne,

  While a Buddhist monk sweeps fallen leaves …

  He didn’t know when he had first memorized these lyrics and who had been the first person to sing them to him. All he knew was that when he was an elementary school student, the meaning of the lyrics evoked in him feelings of inferiority and aspirations for a better life.

  He had survived thanks to his mother’s years of suffering and hard work. She had been a street vendor, selling sticky rice from a bamboo basket, and she carried him—her child—with her all around town. She was penniless and had spent years looking for her husband, who was gone. She had no relatives. His mother’s body became wasted and her eyes were sad, both of which made him pessimistic and quite reserved at school. He grew into a shy boy who tended to alienate himself from all social interactions.

  In 1975 the roaring sounds of cannons and planes filled the air and the townspeople were bewildered. South Vietnamese soldiers, the last symbol of a regime that was about to be annihilated, took off their uniforms and tried to escape, lest the communists find them and exact revenge. For twenty-four hours, the city turned to anarchy—destruction of buildings, robbing, pillaging, and vengeful acts. Bloodthirsty people cried out cheerfully while others grieved their losses and hid quietly as they awaited what would come next.

  He was sixteen then. He and his mother, the sticky rice vendor, divided the remainder of their uncooked rice into small containers because they needed to prepare themselves for the worst. He sat outside and guarded the front door of their dilapidated house and prayed for the safety of their shelter. However, his worries were unnecessary because those who had the guts and strength to become robbers were too busy destroying things, robbing, and shouting, especially when they ransacked big stores owned by wealthy families who had already deserted the city.

  Three prisoners escaped from jail and used pistols to shoot and destroy the iron gate of a local judge’s house. The door of the mayor’s mansion was left wide open so that people could come in and share in the wealth that had formerly belonged to the mayor. The mansion’s security guard ordered his fellow guards to remove an antenna from the roof and cart away a television set. They even used a GMC truck to move out all the valuables. When lawlessness reigned, violence and power became synonymous.

  At noon the following day, tanks and military vehicles of the “other side” entered the city. The entire town rushed out to watch the communist liberators. Communist red flags with a gold star flew on the roof of the mayor’s mansion and even above the most dilapidated huts throughout town.

  At noon the day after that, order was restored after public loudspeakers announced a death penalty for robbers and pillagers. The peace of the first few days, characterized by anxiety, resembled a layer of fog covering the town. A change in history didn’t make a huge difference for poor people, who eventually still had to worry about putting food on the table. Before, this part of town had been populated by hired laborers and working-class people who had had various kinds of jobs. Then the liberation occurred. The hired laborers, the construction workers, and the street vendors stopped doing what they had been doing, and everybody now had the same job, no exception. In the morning they all carried baskets and machetes with them and went into the woods. In the afternoon they traded their chopped wood for rice at the community hall.

  The sticky rice vendor’s son, who was in the tenth grade, dropped out of school and joined the town’s proletariat. He collected wood and sold it as a street vendor. On his first day doing this, he felt embarrassed. Whenever he walked by an area where people knew him personally, he tiptoed and lowered his head. However, his mother was always by his side in times of tribulations and hardships, so he soon became used to his new job.

  In July 1977 the government encouraged people to resettle in the New Economic Zones. He and his mother were selected for resettlement. According to the program, young people who were seventeen or older had to live together in the youth volunteer camp.

  At 5:00 a.m., reveille sounded in the camp. Everybody enthusiastically had their morning exercise. Then a fire was lit in the kitchen and the smell of cooking sweet potatoes and maniocs filled the air. At 7:00 a.m. everybody was ready to go to work in the field. At 11:00 a.m. they had lunch—rice mixed with ground corn, pumpkin soup, and baked dried fish. At 1:00 p.m. they went back to work. At 5:00 p.m. they ate dinner right where they were working. At 7:00 p.m. they worked the night shift until 9:00 p.m. In the evenings when there was not enough electricity or there was a storm, they gathered for political instruction. Thousands of people sat by a fire listening to one person lecturing on “Pavel and the October Revolution.”

  If there had been no afternoon of October 21, 1977, he—the son of the sticky rice vendor—and thousands of other people would have become the Pavels of the New Economic Zones. But that was not his fate, because it turned out to be an unforgettable afternoon. He who had been fatherless suddenly had a father.

  His father returned in a military Jeep with a driver and bodyguard. He had the look of a prideful hero. His hair was gray, bald above the forehead. He wore a faded uniform, and his dark skin indicated that he was an experienced man.

  When they were finally reunited, his father and mother both cried. He was astonished and became madly happy due to such a wonderful surprise. Just a one-minute rendezvous between them erased eighteen years of longing and desperation.

  The secretary of the village, who had the rank of captain, and the commander of the Youth Volunteer Association paid his family a formal visit for the first time. They lavished compliments on him when they shook hands with his father, a lieutenant colonel they referred to as “Comrade” and he called Dad.

  He was very surprised at the commander’s obsequious behavior because one morning not long before, the commander had criticized his squad for not completing their duty, reprimanding them with harsh words: “You guys are remnants of the former regime! You prefer dancing and drinking over working in the rice paddy! All of you must work harder!” But now, good fortune had knocked on his door and given him a father who appeared quite late in his life but made significant changes.

  His father, Mr. Suu, was able to rescue him from Squad 1, Platoon 3, Company 9 of the Youth Volunteer Association, as well as his mother from her shacklike house roofed with eight pieces of tin, the standard housing for citizens resettled in the New Economic Zones. His family now moved back to town, where his father “offered” him and his mother a luxurious mansion as a gift. The words “Villa Pensée” were engraved in a piece of marble across the front gate.

  When they threw a party to celebrate the new house and the family reunion, Mr. Suu got drunk and formally announced, “Thank you, comrades, for offering this ‘Revolution’ house to us. The district leader, who had the rank of major, used to be the owner of this mansion. His father was my father’s boss prior to the August Revolution, and thirty years ago, I was the servant of his pampered son named Sang. I was fed two meals a day just to wash, groom, and feed his valued horses. Comrades, as you can see”—his father pointed to the back to the house—“the district leader didn’t give up his obsession with horses when he moved here from the central highlands. That five-compartment horse stable over there stands as clear evidence of his bourgeois lifestyle. Have you guys been able to help Sang get rid of his horse obsession in the reeducation camp?” Laughter echoed all around. The alcohol got everybody high, and so did the feelings of victory.

  That afternoon, eighteen years after his birth, the son firmly believed that he would have a more fortunate destiny.

  And he was right. He was compensated for his previous hardships; he was able to continue his education. If the word “compensation” had carried its full meaning, he would have become a history researcher, as he had always wished. But a new “offer” was made, and now he had to drop out of college at the end of his sophomore year in order to become a worker in an automobile manufacturing factory in the Soviet Union.

  Rather than sit in a lecture hall and library enriching his knowledge so he could eventually become a member of the intellectual bourgeoisie, he would become a factory worker, a job where he didn’t have to use his brain. After a few years, he would be able to buy an electric rice cooker, an iron, and pots and pans, and take them back with him to Vietnam. In addition, he would have the “background of a worker who had been trained in a socialist, technologically advanced country in the use a five-kilogram hammer.” This was one of the reasons why, with no hesitation, he became so excited about going abroad. So he went.

  Meanwhile his parents stayed in Vietnam and worked diligently. After many years of fighting in the war, Mr. Suu now lived in the luxurious mansion that had once been owned by his former boss, the enemy of the working class. Mr. Suu gained an insightful appreciation for the victorious revolution in which he had participated. He enjoyed the mansion, “booty of war.”

  Although he was a quiet person and rarely revealed his feelings, his wife sometimes caught him standing at the front door, touching the marble columns on the front porch. Mr. Suu once said to her, “When my father and I were the servants of Sang’s family in Hue, we always stayed in a storage room or a buffalo and horse stable, and we did not dare set foot in the house. A maid did all the cleaning. There was no place there for men like us. We would be beaten if we stepped with our mud-stained feet on the tile floor.”

  Mr. Suu’s wife then told her husband about her years of living miserably in other people’s homes. “They threw us out and refused to give us shelter. I could put up with it, but I felt sorry for our son. He couldn’t invite his friends over because where we lived was not what you would call a real home.”

  “The only way to stop generational poverty and servitude is by joining the revolution,” Mr. Suu stated quietly, a triumphant declaration to put an end to suffering.

  A few years later, Mr. Suu was promoted from lieutenant colonel to colonel before his retirement. Half of his life had been dedicated to the revolution, and as a reward he and his family now lived in a very nice house. Mr. Suu thought there would be nothing to worry about. Although social status and privilege affected all social relationships, Mr. Suu, a retired officer, only cared about his own “privilege” within the territory of the Villa Pensée. In other words, he now had enough time to enjoy his privilege within the limits that society dictated.

  The mansion still had its original architecture. Right next to the fence at the back garden was the five-compartment horse stable. A few hundred steps from the stable was an A-shaped, two-floor house with dark purple walls and a jade-green floor. The balcony was supported by a row of pillars tiled with white, black-veined marble. There was a beautiful 2,000-square-meter garden in front of the house. The walkway was covered with white pebbles all the way from the gate to the garden, which was divided into two sections: on the left was a tennis court and on the right was a flower garden and a pond with an artificial island in the middle of it. Around the pond were willow trees with branches drooping gracefully until they nearly touched the water. At the center of the garden was a water fountain in the shape of a mermaid, and next to her were statues of two little boys.

  The design of the grounds of the mansion was indeed “art for art’s sake,” as the bourgeois class would say, and it was useless to Mr. Suu, a retired military officer, so he decided to change it.

  First he converted the pond into a fertilizer pit; then he cut down the thick conifer and willow trees and removed the concrete from the tennis court to clear space to grow sweet potatoes. He planted poles in the ground around the mermaid statue, tied wires to the mermaid’s head, and connected them to the newly planted poles and branchless willow trees nearby; this he used as a sturdy trellis to grow pumpkins and gourds. Because the soil had never been used to grow anything, it had a lot of nutrients and his vegetables grew very fast. He and his wife also began raising several pigs. Eventually they converted the Villa Pensée completely into a self-sufficient communal farm.

  Then, in mid-November 1988, Mr. Suu received an unexpected letter:

  Saigon, November 3, 1988

  Dear Mr. Truong Van Suu,

  After thirteen years in your reeducation camp, I have been released. Over the last ten years, you have paid no rent for living in my Villa Pensée. Isn’t that more than enough for the “blood debt” that a “puppet of the American imperialists” has to pay?

  Soon my wife and children will join me here from France, and we will file the legal paperwork to reclaim ownership of the house that you are now living in. I am writing to you in advance so that you will not be surprised and will have enough time to prepare everything. This is the law of a civilized society, of course. I assume that a high-ranking officer like yourself will understand.

  You and I are not strangers, so I hope that you will not create any difficulty for us in this matter.

  Thank you, and I wish you well.

  Lam Quang Sang

  Mr. Suu was more surprised that not long after this, he was requested by the authorities to verify the facts presented in the letter.

  Six months later, around noontime, a shiny new car entered the Villa Pensée. Three elegant, wealthy-looking people got out of the car and walked directly toward Mr. Suu, who was standing against a pillar and looking at the street. A big, tall man with gray hair, wearing a pair of gold eyeglasses and a gray suit, extended his hand for a handshake and said,

  “If I remember correctly, you must be Mr. Suu. It’s been thirty years …”

  “Yes. It’s me, Mr. Sang.” Mr. Suu used his right hand to shake Mr. Sang’s hand and his left hand to push the door open. “Please come in.”

  “I probably don’t need to repeat what I said,” Mr. Sang said.

  “Of course not. So when will you move in?”

  “In fifteen days,” Lam Quang Vinh, Mr. Sang’s son, replied rudely.

  “In fact, we didn’t intend to make this request, but you have ruined this house too much,” said a woman wearing a blue dress, a white fur jacket, and lots of valuable jewelry. She spoke in an intentionally demeaning tone because she saw sweet potatoes growing in the tennis court and pumpkins and gourds in the flower garden.

  With the help of the authorities, everything was settled to make sure each party’s requests were satisfied. In short,

     1.  The plaintiff was compensated with a small amount of money equal to the cost of Mr. Suu and his wife’s labor invested in gardening and raising pigs for the last three years.

     2.  While waiting for a new house, Mr. Suu and his wife were “allowed” to reside temporarily in one of the compartments of the horse stable.

  Both parties agreed to comply with these conditions.

  Under Mr. Sang’s ownership, the mansion was restored to its original beauty, as well as its elegant, artistic, and bourgeois look. The mansion became the headquarters of The Viet-kieu Trading Company and symbolized the restoration of bourgeois power. The attractive word “Viet-kieu,” associated with dreams of huge investments in U.S. dollars, became irresistible to some communist opportunists who had once subverted the former regime with their own blood.

  Two months after the grand opening of the company, thanks to the use of the word “investment” in an advertisement, cars with various kinds of license plates came frequently to visit the Villa Pensée. People said that once, when the chairwoman of the company had donated thousands of dollars to renovate a military cemetery, the vice president of the province had, by mistake, called her “Comrade.” The following day, the news talked about this incident as if it were a thank you to her from thousands of fallen soldiers in their graves.