Minh has known her for more than a month.
She cowered on his verandah. Minh guessed she was his mother’s age. She was a beggar in decent clothes.
She reminded him of his mother, who was in the countryside. He opened the door and asked her in.
That afternoon, the rain lasted long. It was lunchtime. Minh asked her to have lunch with him and they conversed. Seeing that he had a lot of books, she asked, “You are a teacher, aren’t you?”
Minh nodded, feeling that it didn’t sound right to say that he was out of work.
The old woman rejoiced, “What a blessing! My daughter-in-law is also a teacher. I appreciate it, because … after all …”
Minh changed the subject, “Where do you come from?”
“Up in Nghệ Tĩnh. A real poor country, beyond your imagination!”
“How about your children and you’re here…?”
After a sigh, she said, “I have two sons and two daughters; all grown-up and poor”
“Though poor, they have their responsibility for…”
“Thank you, son. But all my children love me, they have their own families to feed, though. I love them all the more, they being so poor. I am not very much heartened to ask them… Tears often flow down, son!”
Minh didn’t seem to be of agreement. She contin-ued her story, “I’ve got used to the hardships. When my husband died, I was just thirty, I had to work for others to be able to feed my children. Sometimes, I had to sow seeds all night long, once I slipped and fell onto a bamboo bush, I was blind in one eye. How miserable I was! All my life! To tell the truth, to be a beggar is a blessing to me. It’s like working.”
Minh was surprised. She nodded, “It’s true, in my country, it’s not easy to be hired. My son, a veteran, is a woodcutter, only earns five thousand đồng a day. As for me, I’m old, weakened and handicapped, a real burden to my children. No – Then I heard people say that in Saigon people are wealthy and generous, so beggars earn a lot of money. It set me thinking a lot. At last, I lied to my children that I would move to my husband’s country… and took the train to Saigon.”
“How much do you make a day?”
“You wouldn’t believe it… but about twenty, thirty thousand đồng.”
Minh startled, “Maybe, yes.” She explained further, “Maybe because I’m old, blind and people have pity on me. You know, healthy people can’t be beggars, or just for a short time. And you know, fake handicapped people, fake wheelchair people, children are forced by their parents to beg…
Oh, my God, maybe they are not their own children…
Then, but come dark, after taking showers, they get together, drink, play cards, go to restaurants”.
“Unbelievable. Beggars can make so much money and then go all out like that”. Minh smiled,
“You go to restaurants, too?”
She nodded honestly, “It costs more to cook one’s meals. I come to restaurants and ask for rice left over by diners. Only under special circumstances do I have to go to an economy-class restaurant. They charge me cheap. Only five hundred đồng instead of regular price of two thousand đồng, kind of charity”.
I was startled when I made mental arithmetic. I asked, “You save money for your children?”
“Please, don’t laugh at me. I’m saving for my child’s marriage.”
“????????”
“You see, as I’ve told you, my country is poor, very poor. People make it a point for their children to start a family so they support themselves. Even my two daughters are to be given free but no one bothers to get them. Young men must have some candy – in my country, five kilos of candy is generous!
I’ll buy candy here, both cheap and tasty. I’ll buy three kilos of meat. Meat is two times as cheap as it is here. Let me see, what else do I need? Dozens of rolls of pancakes, half a kilo of tea, a pair of wine bottles, and some betel and areca… The entire cost is about thirty thousand đồng, approximately what you earn a lucky day of begging, then my son has a wife. Does that work well? The one thing afterwards that counts is to give them some hundreds of thousands of đồng to do business with. That’s so big a sum of money down in my country”.
Minh rejoiced when he heard that. How heartrending it was!
He felt so upset, “Royalty for a poem is equal to a day’s begging…
How many poems of his get printed in a newspaper a month?”
That afternoon, then, she arrived with a wound on her head and some strain of dried blood on her blouse. Surprised, Minh asked, “What’s the matter with you?”
She shook her head, “A fake beggar was envious, he mugged the money I had from me and pushed me down on the street.”
Minh was anxious, “Was it serious?”
“No, not so… Oh, my god, even beggars are not spared.”
“What about money, you lost a lot of money?”
She emptied her inner pocket, “Lucky me, he didn’t know…”
Then she squatted, flattened the small money bills and classified them saying, “This time, I’ll go back to my country and get a wife for my youngest child, that’s all.” She sighed, “Maybe I’ll be a beggar no more. I have my grandchildren, house and paddy fields. I’ll have to go back there, though it’s a poor place.”
With Minh staying silent, she hesitated for a moment, then said, “And you, son, get married, it is time? Or let me introduce someone to you? Afraid you don’t like country girls.” Minh forced a smile. She went on, ‘I’ll take my children here to see you… but don’t tell them I used to be a beggar.”
She trembled, “I’m not ashamed for my part, but I want to keep their faces”. She let her tears drop, which, Minh noticed, glittered from the blind eye. She bowed and said, “I do believe that I am blind in one eye is a great blessing God bestowed me”.
- Nam Tuấn