Bui Nghia

Vann’s youngest sister was getting married and he went back to his home city for the special banquet. The air of this summer evening was humid and the salmon colour of the moon made its roundness more mysterious. The stars were diffusing light in the heavy atmosphere overloaded with tiny water molecules and were unusually twinkling in the northern part of the sky.
Their parents lived in a cosy house located in the suburbs of the city. It had a great garden with green fruit trees in the backyard : mangos, Jack fruits, guava, papaya…. When he arrived at the table which was set near the well, plenty of people were gathering around. When their family started conceiving the garden years ago, it was the place he washed the body after a long and hard weekend work day planting trees or vegetables.

Vann’s sister in her white dress introduced him : ‘My brother, he’s from Paris. He can speak four languages : Vietnamese, French, English and Chinese.’
They lifted their heads and approved of his skill : ‘It’s a lot, you’ve a remarkable brain.’
He was barely kidding and said ‘I’m only bilingual since I speak 4 half-language!’
His sister replied ‘My brother, don’t be modest, you will see they are more exceptional than you. This is a special table.’
She glanced at the woman sitting in front of him : ‘Explain to him who you actually are’.

He didn’t know how old the woman was. It was difficult to say her age.
She said ‘ On your right, these men and women have some fantastic abilities. On your left, these people see with incomparable senses of time and we can qualify them as -Time people -. For example, this young man is able to read your past; What is his secret ? A gift of God. You know, our appearance is a result of the past. This man sees your soul, not your spirit but your soul ! Tell him what he did yesterday ! ‘
The young man smiled ‘Well, easy, easy…He took the plane and he has just arrived this morning after a long and hard trip. I’m seeing dream images still impressed on his face’.
‘Wooaaw’ Vann thought ‘It’s right, what’s happened ? Where am I ?’

‘And the man sitting behind me’ She was speaking with a marvellous voice ‘He can analyse and foresee big events in the future. He is not a fortune teller but a visionary’.
‘How is it possible ?’ He was surprised.
The old man smiled ‘Every talent needs knowledge. I read a lot and work hard to have this faculty. I’m not the only one. Many people in the world have it. Bill Gates for example, he could anticipate the future, our behaviours, the way in which all of us like to be led on. And he makes money with his talent. This is not my stuff, so I’m always poor.’
Everybody laughed.

‘And you, Madame’ Vann asked ‘What is your special gift ?’
The old man took the floor ‘I’m a society visionary but I cannot say what is going to happen immediately, right now and right here. She’s seeing the recent future. Show him what you know, my lady !’
She spoke with a confident voice ‘Your name is Vann, I know that’
He was so surprised. This was the first time he saw them. ‘ How could you know my name is Vann ? It’s amazing !’
She replied ‘You have just said your name’ He didn’t understand ‘But you didn’t know my name five minutes ago.’
The old man explained ‘She said that the present for her was not only a short instant, the thin limit between the past and the future, but for her, the present was continuous and endured much more than the present for us, with five minutes before and five minutes after.’
She added ‘In American literature, they call the people like me Golden men or Golden women. Have you read these books ? I just see more sequences of time than you.
Some champions in sports have the same talent as I. They can anticipate where the ball will be, on the left or on the right ! Do you know that in tennis, when a good server can hit and throw the ball going at more than two hundred kilometres per hour. How can the receiver run fast enough to touch and get back the ball when the maximum speed of the fastest man all over the word is about forty kilometres ? These champions are Golden men. They can see the recent future or in other words, they anticipate the future.’
He didn’t understand the whole explanation but anyway, it seemed crazily logical.

‘You are freaky people.’ he said. The lady smiled ‘No, not freaky, but talented.’
He drank and he drank a lot. Whisky before the meal and wine during the meal. His head became lighter but red. The light wind in the garden was so pleasant.
‘Freak for freak, talented for talented. What’s next ? Nothing would surprise me now !‘ He went right ahead to the unknown and darkness.

The lady continued ‘On your right, this man can remember all phone numbers of the city’
’Jeez, this is the first relatively normal thing said at this table. I have seen that on TV before.’ but Vann asked to the man ‘Do you feel flattered when your are a telephone book ?’
The man protested ‘No, you can call me a computer but not a flat phone book. You know, the exceptional point is when I close my eyes, the latest picture I have seen, can stay for a while. And when I want to remember an event, all sequences come back in my mind as if I saw a film. My memory is a videotape recorder. It’s so scary since it is a bad experience. A nightmare when these pictures get back and they are so real in my mind !’

There were a dozen of chairs around the table and one of them was empty.
The man sitting on his left inclined his head back and looked at the gate. He asked ‘Where is May ? It’s late and she hasn’t come yet ?’
The woman answered ‘She’s working hard today but she will arrive soon.’
The woman sitting just next on his right wore glasses. She looked pretty in her well-ironed dress. Vann looked at her ‘Are you more outstanding than those I have met tonight ? Could you walk on water or could you fly high in the sky ?’
‘No, not at all’ Her voice was calm ‘I am a philosopher and I have answers for the infinitely small and infinitely great. What would you like to know ? ‘
He replied ‘I don’t know, you all are so strange and extraordinary.’ She interrupted him ‘Do you want to know where is the limit of the universe ? For example.’
He didn’t understand what she said but what he knew that they were not at the same size as the universe. And the universe could be an open or a closed space, or even the universe is curved, what is the point ? He thought ‘Whatever ! When I was a kid and small, my universe was my parents house, the garden or simply the dark and deep well and I had no conscience where the bottom of my well was. Now, my universe is my friends, Paris, France or other countries for those I can get a visa to visit. I have changed and I am still changing. Now, when I visit the country where I was born, everything becomes smaller. Perhaps, when I saw the limit of the universe, I would be changing into another form, not likely a man. We understand the system when we are similar or have the same size as the system. Well then, the time we need to reach this limit, is so long that I could never see the end of the space because we live less than thirty thousands days. It’s not long enough to complete the full trip.’
He didn’t really mind what the truth was. In his brain, everything was enlightened and puzzled at the same time.

‘Oh, she is here, May, she looks fine tonight.’. Thi was coming and sat next to him. Her eyes were brilliant but dreamy. ‘Wooaaw, she is my type.’ He whispered.
Her voice was melodic and pleasant. He was completely seduced by her presence.
He asked a stupid question ‘ Your name is May ? ‘
Surprising answer ‘No, it is my surname.’
‘What is your real name, in fact ?’ He asked.
‘Could you guess what my name is ?’ She was amused.
Vann was too drunk and he didn’t care about what he said ‘Your name is Thi’. She answered ‘You are mostly right.’
He didn’t remember what happened during the rest of the conversation but they were very close. He could breathe her faint perfume as if it had been emanating from a fresh rose . At the end of the wedding and before leaving, she offered him a piece of jade.
She said ‘For our short minutes together, and jade would protect people from accident.’ and her thin shape with dreamy eyes disappeared at the end of the street.

The day after, he still kept her perfume in his mind. When Vann met his sister, they talked for a while about the banquet. He asked ‘Do you know where May lives ? Is she a friend of yours ?’
His sister sharply answered ‘I don’t know who she is, my brother.‘
‘She arrived late and she was the last guest of my table. You know, she is the one with dreamy eyes.’
‘No, there were only you and the other guests and nobody arrived late yesterday night.’
She laughed at him ‘You were bloody drunk. She is only in your imagination. She doesn’t exist, my brother.’
He didn’t know what to say and went desolately to the well in the garden. He murmured ‘Probably, I drank too much. Yesterday, I met unbelievable people during an intense moment like a dream turning into reality. On the other hand, I believed talking with a person, certainly pretty, but I could have met her whenever in my life; this woman, she doesn’t really exist.’

In the garden, the wind was slightly whispering and he heard the clapping of the leaves. Then, he put a hand into his left pant pocket and he pulled out a piece of pale green jade.