Iam a park cleaner and gardener. Few took notice of my work. Only I am aware of how much I do. Some say it's a kind of inferiority complex but I don't know.
It's a routine with endless cycles of patrons. The elderly arrive early in the morning for their daily workouts. When they leave, assorted people converge on the park from every path of the city. At noon they all leave for lunch. The elderly, accompanied by their grandchildren, visit again in the late afternoon. Young people don't come until evening.
The cycle breaks only on Sundays and the New Year holiday. There are occasional exceptions to this regular parade when at lunch time ardent couples come here necking for a time then with draw in their shared silence, or a greedy old man picks up a young woman to fool around with in some bush, or sometimes a middle aged man enters the park clasping a plump elderly woman by the waist. These exceptions, I spit scornfully. Only one exception made me worry. She was an old, ordinary-looking woman.
Day after day, a plastic bag in hand, she came to sit on a stone bench where she silently arranged her betel slice with a detached indifference that revealed either sorrow or idleness. She was slender in appearance, but quite unlike city folk in her rough movements. The way she sat there seemed not to belong to high society, nor to the lower classes.
Sometimes she took a walk. Without effort, her steps carried her somewhere purposelessly. At other times, she would sit looking into the void. Once I came near, hoping she would start a conversation but she avoided me, shifting to another place.
For a whole year, that stone seat seemed reserved only for her but when she was not there, no vestige of her was to be found, not even the betel grounds.
So I grew worried when for many months, she was nowhere to be seen. I feared she had taken suddenly ill. That would have been a pity.
Her sudden appearance put me at ease again, though she looked thinner and more remote. She still wore her simple purple silk dress and a thin black velvet scarf over her white hair tied in a bun. As always, she held her plastic bag. She was now as silent as a shadow.
Once, twice… for what seemed like forever she came and went at regular intervals like my monotonous work, my monthly salary, my daily toil, the never-ending cycle of life to which I was resigned. Over the constant drone of the mower, I set to thinking about my lot. Everyone must accept their fate. Maybe that's true. That old lady comes and goes, everyday, all alone. She must have a very easy life. Maybe not, who's to say?
As for me, in my early childhood, I was as miserable as an orphan: I had to stop going to school at a very young age. Then I got this job, married and had children. I was lucky to have a happy family with a good husband and well-behaved children.
Now, thankfully, I am satisfied. I have few aspirations, little thinking. So I couldn't bear to see anyone worry, even if I don't know what they worry about, or are afraid of. Why that old lady's presence made me uneasy I didn't know. I didn't exactly pity her. In a way, she was my obsession. In the morning when I came to work, she was there chewing her betel.
I observed her silently. She would chew betel for the sake of chewing, then search her bag and sit in silence.
When it was noon, she left the park with her bag at her side.
In the afternoon, she returned.
It was that regular repetition I could not stand.
One day, when it started to rain heavily, I decided to follow her. She quickly grabbed her bag and as she hurried away, nodded to the guard. She went along the street to a corner, stopped in front of a mansion, opened the gate and slid in. Feeling frustrated at being unable to follow further, I turned back to the park.
At that moment a car with colored window glass entered the driveway.
I felt my worries from then till now uncalled for. Every day I passed that well-secured mansion with its carnations in bloom. The second storey windows were all shut as though they had been closed for a very long time. Apparently the mansion did not belong to people of an ordinary class. The old woman was no ordinary person. Such houses on the street level were well used, not remaining closed in such a market-orientated period.
After that secret was uncoverd, for the next two months, for reasons unknown, the old woman stopped coming to the park. The mansion stayed closed to all except the car which came late in the afternoon. Her seclusion upset me. Then one day, the street in front of the mansion was lined with cars, buses, even trucks, all full of wreaths of flowers. Groups of somber faces came to visit and paid their last respect to the old woman. The death notice with her picture was posted at the gate. I suddenly felt alone. The old woman was no more. The old guard at the gate murmured to himself looking over to the mansion, "Poor old woman, she died without any mourning."
"So many wreaths. She must be a VIP," I said.
The old guard gave me a pitiful glance, "No, her son is the VIP. They're wreaths for the living."
I turned and wiped the tears from my eyes.
- Trung Trung Đỉnh