Drunken Love by Que Son (to read list TXT) 📖

would be moved to the undeveloped areas of the country, mostly in the highland and the coastal regions, and organized into collectives to farm the land. The house that Eve’s family left behind would be possessed by the local government, and they would be given a small money compensation. So a week later the family packed up to leave.

 

It was a long journey, from one end of the country to another. They carried whatever they could, and sold in the flea markets whatever they had but could not bring with them-- furniture, for instance. Eve and her parents, her little sister, and two brothers, arrived at a farming collective on the edge of Ca Mau province, near the sea, after a three-day journey by train and buses. The officials assigned them a piece of land and they started to build for themselves a hut with materials provided by the officials and help by the people who had come before them. The first night the family had to scatter and sleep in the neighbors' huts. It took them two days to finish their hut. Then they settled into the routine of the collective: all worked together in the field and ate together in the common kitchen. Eve was excited about her new life; she felt that it was much better than the life in the city she left behind where it was difficult to find food. At least over here, as long as one worked, food was guaranteed each day. Eve and her sister belonged to the "young pioneers" group who did light work and were allowed to stay home to tend the family's vegetable gardens. She did not miss her previous life in Da Nang at all, even though she still had a sister there, the one she loved, the one who married a guy from a rich family that had two houses on the city's main street.

 

One year into the new life, the sister in Da Nang wrote and asked the parents to allow Eve to come back to the city to live with her. And Eve agreed to go. The first time she set foot in the house of her sister's husband she felt as if she had come into a familiar place even though she had never seen the house before. Eve was happy to see her sister again but somehow felt that the love that they had had for each other when they were younger was no longer strong. The sister gave her some money and she went to the train station to buy things from the people there and resell them in the market, like she had done before leaving for the new economic zones. In the evening, she would go back to the sister and her husband and baby-sit their little boy while they were out having fun. Eve was sad that sometimes her sister was severe with her for some very trivia infractions--things like inviting a girlfriend home.

 

One morning Eve was sitting and reading a book in the bedroom of her sister when suddenly someone came into the house and walked up the stairs outside the window of the room. Hearing the footsteps, she looked up and saw a boy. The boy stopped also and looked at Eve full of surprised because he had never seen this stranger in the house before--his house. Then after a fraction of a second, not saying a word, he walked on. Eve suddenly felt shaken almost to the point of panic, but as the shock subsided, a strange feeling took over her and made her overwhelmingly happy but she could not understand why. She had never felt like this before, and the feeling was wonderful. The boy looked so familiar. She realized that it was the boy whose image she had carried in her mind all these years, the boy of her daydreams since she was twelve. And she became immediately convinced that they had known each other for a very long time but exactly when it was she could not be sure; and on seeing him, she felt as if she had found something she had lost. Her heart beat fast and she was breathless. After immobilized for a while, Eve stood up and walked out, glancing back to see if there was anyone looking at her. She walked to the river and sat on a bench and looked at the blue water and saw the boy's face again. That dark skin and thick lips and intense eyes. That was the boy. That was him. And the happiness stayed with her all morning. At noon, she returned to the house and wished that the boy was not there because the shyness she would feel on seeing him might be too much to bear. She cautiously asked her sister about the boy and her sister said that it was Adam, the younger brother of her husband who had just returned from one of his runaways. Adam. How old is he? He's your age, Eve. Then they dropped the subject and Eve became silent with a vacant look in her eyes. That boy had taken her soul. That year she was seventeen.

 

Shakespeare feels ok that he has another part of the story written out in his mind, the part about the Eve, even though it is not too detailed. He then slowly emerges from the dream and looks around him. A man, the only other patron in the tavern, was sitting at the bar and talking at the bartender who says nothing back. The man is apparently drunk and the drunkenness shows in his slurred voice and in the fragmented way he talks. The bartender nods her head now and then while the man continues to spill his guts and she keeps pouring drinks into his glass and takes money from the stack he has in front of him. The wind is howling and the cold is creeping into the bar. Shakespeare feels cold in his bones. He looks out the windows. The street is completely deserted and the snow is blowing in all directions. He looks at the silent TV that is showing a big crowd in Times Square: people are waiting for the new year and for the ball to drop. Snow is falling on their heads and the wind is cutting into their faces but still they are blowing the horns and shouting and their faces show wild excitement. That is a tourist special. Natives stay home on New Years Eve, depressed, suicidal, and do all they can to ease their living pain and fill their existential emptiness. They take legal and illegal drugs, and drink themselves stupid. Shakespeare had been at the Times Square New Years celebration once many many years ago when he first came to New York. That night he and a friend took the train from Brooklyn to Times Square and lost themselves in the thousands of screaming and drunken people. He and the friend found and wooed two Japanese girls and walked with them to their hotel but were turned away at the doors of their room. The friend said they had lost one opportunity to fuck. The two then went back to the celebration which at that time was at its peak and the people packed the streets and they were all drunk and looked funny in their dune caps and they all screamed happy new year and blew their horns and made all kinds of noise. Shakespeare was drunk too and he too joined in the screaming and suddenly someone punched him the face. The blow appeared to come from nowhere and stunned him. But it was a light hit and Shakespeare felt a little dizzy, then he forgot about it and continued the celebration which meant more and more booze. And that was the only time he was celebrating a new year at Times Square. Now this New Year's eve, like many in the past, he is sitting alone in a bar. The clock is ticking closer to midnight; and for no apparent reasons, he thinks about the failures of his life. It was one failure after another. Who would have thought at this age he was still does not have a dime in the bank and is living from paycheck to paycheck and alone and depressed most of the time. Even though Shakespeare is happy to be reborn as a human, sometimes he remembers his past life in medieval England and he compares it with his life now and he decides that he prefers the other life. Why? Everything was much simpler then and he was not as lonely as he is in this life.

 

The bartender looks at Shakespeare and asks if he wants anything else. He says he wants more beer and peanuts. The woman brings another pitcher and two packets of peanuts. He is really drunk now and feels an urge to talk, but something in his mind tells him to sit still, to keep to himself, because if he talks, it means he interacts with people and god knows what might happen. So despite the urge to connect with another human being, Shakespeare keeps his mouth shut. But his mind is in overdrive. The images of Adam and Eve reappeared in his mind immediately after he takes another long swallow of the beer. His head starts to spin again. What had happened that brought them together when they were young only to cruelly tear them apart for life? This may be an old-as-the-earth story about boy meet girl but it always fascinates Shakespeare because it tells about a human emotion called love, an emotion that is instinctive, primitive, but yet, eternal. And in this particular case, love between the sexes, an unconscious animalistic drive that brings the male and the female together--so the species can be preserved. It is basically sexual. But in order for the sex to happen, first there must be attraction, and that attraction is called love which later will turn into lust and when the male and female connect at the hips, nature's intention is fulfilled. There is nothing a normal person can do about it, they love and make love under the mysterious and compelling direction of nature. This force is so powerful even Catholic priests who has taken vows of celibacy could not resist, some of them would rather commit sin than disobey nature. And Shakespeare thinks Adam and Eve are two very normal persons. He returns to the story:

 

Adam had just come back from one of his long wanderings. It was two years after authority changed hands and Adam had been living the life of a lost boy. That morning coming home from the train station he saw a strange girl in his brother's room. He stopped on the staircase and looked at her quickly and went up to his room and fell asleep. He slept past noon and when he woke up he went downstairs and saw his sister in law and asked her who that girl was and she said it was her younger sister who had just come from the new economic zone. Adam saw the resemblance between the two. Then Adam thought no more about it and went out to see a friend of his. He and the friend sat together in a coffee shop and listened to the music and smoked, like they did everyday.

 

In the late afternoon Adam returned home and as he walked in, he saw that girl again but this time she was sitting at the kitchen table on the first floor and talking to her sister. Adam walked past them and caught the girl's glance and suddenly his heart beat faster and he felt very shy. He said hi and went up to his room and as he walked up the stairs he felt that the girl was following him out of corners of her eyes. In his room, he sat down at the table and took