"Newspaper! Newspaper! One thousand and one divorces. Interviews with AIDS victims, How the bride behaves on the wedding night…" The boy waved his loud speaker shouting the titles he learned by heart. The bus was going to move. A passenger hesitated then decided to take some money and handed it to the boy. As caught in contagion, passengers around bought newspapers.
A fat woman wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, "How heart-breaking the pieces of news are!
Married then divorced, the boy became a street child…" A man with glasses straightened his long neck, pointed with a finger, cleared his throat and in a serious tone, "The year'94 is the year of the family, international family protection year!"
The first time the boy looked at the newspaper.
He had never read newspapers, he himself a newspaper boy.
He just knew by heart sensational titles to shout without knowing what he was saying. A man at the back of the bus returned the' 94 Model paper, "Hey, give me a paper like that woman's!" The boy looked at the pad of papers: only one left, the one which made the fat woman cry. But he wanted it reserved for himself, "No more. Those newspapers sold out."
He got off, rushed to that house forgetting about his papers. The light was shining down, and then came up a storm. How come he (that man) came home late today? He was hungry, afraid that papers were wet, that he could not sell the rest of the papers. Four years earlier, he had said when he abandoned his mother and him, "I don't want to steal you from your mother. You are her only relative left." It was true now. She was sick and he earned a living by selling newspapers.
The two of them were living in a shabby room, as if made of paper.
By late noon, that man came back in a car, helping his young child down. He looked at the newspaper boy who had his hat down to cover almost all his face. The boy handed the papers to him. That man never read this kind of paper. But the child snatched the paper from the boy. The father and child entered the house, leaving the newspaper boy outside staring in. The window was then opened wide. They put their heads out of the window. A paper boat, made from the paper with that article in "One thousand and one divorces" floated out with peals of laughter mixed with the rainfall. A lady's voice sounded, "Honey, close the window or our child will get wet."
The boat soaked, bobbed out to the sewer.
The newspaper boy rolled the rest of papers in his hat, ran out in the street shouting in his rough voice, "Paper, paper, one thousand and one divorces…"
- Đặng Anh Đào