Memories of a Pure Spring - Softcover

Huong, Duong Thu; McPherson, Nina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140298436 ISBN 13: 9780140298437

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Memories of a Pure Spring is a mesmerizing portrait of modern Vietnam and its people who struggle to survive under the complexities of a post-war regime. During the Vietnam war, Hung, a well-known composer, becomes enchanted by the voice and beauty of a young peasant girl named Suong. He invites her to join his troupe; she becomes his wife and his star performer. But after the war, Hung loses his job, setting off a series of events that drive him and Suong into a destructive spiral. One of Vietnam's most popular writers, Duong Thu Huong draws on her own experiences to describe life at the battlefront, the conditions of a "re-education" camp, and the texture and rhythm, scents and sounds, of a provincial Vietnamese city. Most of all, she tells a haunting, universal story of failed love.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Duong Thu Huong, author of Paradise of the Blind and Novel Without a Name (both from Penguin) is an advocate of human rights and democratic political reform, and was expelled from the Communist Party and imprisoned without trial in 1991. The Vietnamese government has effectively banned all of her novels. She lives in Hanoi.

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Memories of a Pure Spring

By Duong Thu Huong

Penguin Books

Copyright © 2001 Duong Thu Huong
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0140298436

Chapter One

Vinh stood motionless, his heart pounding. The pale gray of his eldersister's face deepened by the minute, turning to violet. The rustle ofwhite uniforms, the antiseptic smell mingled with the pungent stenchof sick people lying around him; this suffocating atmosphere transfixedhim. Vinh could barely breathe. His temples pounded, a relentlesscadence, like the beating of a drum that transported him back, twelveyears earlier, to his father's funeral.

    "Who is the patient's family here?"

    "I am."

    "Brother ... or husband?"

    Two opaque eyes, as cold as those of a fish, looked up from undera pair of glasses. The long, frail face of the nurse reminded Vinh ofsomeone he had once met but couldn't recall.

    "Younger brother."

    "Where is the patient's father?"

    "My father is dead."

    "And the husband?"

    "He's ... also dead."

    The nurse looked at him again, suspicion flashing across her silveryeyes. Then she stood up. "That's all. Sign here. The next of kin hasto confirm the state of the patient."

    Vinh pressed his hand against the table, signed his name for thefirst time in his life. Eighteen years old, and all he had done was scrawldoodles of animals on the backs of his school buddies' T-shirts. Onhis exam papers, he used to trace a big letter V with a curly line underit, like the tail of an earthworm. Today, he really signed. He stared athis sister's deathly pale face against the bed; the inky black lines of hereyebrows seemed to tremble, like the life and death in the trace of hissignature.

    "There, underneath, write the day and the month, then your familyname. You may leave now." The voice seemed to rise from the tomb.The young man fled, weaving through a crowd of admirers that hadgathered outside the door to the hospital corridor.

    "Who's that?"

    "Her little brother, apparently."

    "Oh? I thought it was her husband."

    "I heard he was dead."

    "Oh, no he's not. He spends his days drinking like a fish. He'sdrunk from dawn to midnight."

    "A beautiful woman's destiny is always tragic."

    Their whispers pursued Vinh. As he turned down a corridor, hebumped into a pot at the foot of a wall.

    "Idiot! Are you blind?" An old woman's high-pitched voice piercedhis eardrums. He didn't dare turn around, he walked faster, stridingpast the examination rooms, the contagious disease section, the venerealdisease section, the morgue, and out the door to the cemetery behindthe hospital.

    Night was falling, and the tombs, newly dusted with joss-papergold, glistened oddly in the sunlight. Bushes of heliotrope, mint, andcherry faded in the evening light. Wild chrysanthemums glowed in thedusk. Vinh knelt down on the grass between two tombs. Huge hedgesof cactus encircled the cemetery, looming in front of him. In the distance,the lush green of rice paddies. The sun melted over the fields.Vastness. A melancholy beauty.

    Vinh began to sob.

    "Oh Papa, oh Mama, why did you abandon me like this?

    His tears overflowed, sudden, hot.

    It was the first time in twelve years he had cried like this; witheach breath the tears came harder, faster, choking him: tears like asquall, a flood that carried him into a delirium, not just of pain butof release. Something gentle, too, something like happiness glistenedin the tears; he wailed like a six-year-old boy.

    For more than a decade, the memory of his father had been absentfrom his mind. If there was a spirit that flickered for him in theshadows of the night, a perfume that still reached him, it was hismother's. But now, across the empty desert of the last twelve years ofhis life, the old man had suddenly come back, following the call ofhis son's voice. Vinh could smell the acrid sweat of his father's blackpajamas, the aroma of fish grilled over a campfire at the base of acasuarina tree.

    They had buried him on a blazing July afternoon. Funeral bannersfluttered above the heads of the cortege that advanced, zigzagging,cloaked in a swirling cloud of red dust. A flaming halo aroundthe sun, like a ripe fruit hanging in the sky, spilled a searing lightonto the earth. Space seemed warped, bent under the waves of dizzyinglight, in the deafening buzz of the flies. A crowd plodded insilence, weaving its way through tall reeds bleached white by heat,ripped and tattered by the salty sea wind. Dazed, they walked as ifnumbed, as if hypnotized by the sun and the salt carried on the wind,by the funeral dirge and the sound of trumpets, flutes, two-string lutesthat wailed through the hills of reeds, echoing over the white dunesalong the sea.

    Oh Papa, why did you abandon us? His two sisters wailed, their sobspiercing his young heart.

    Vinh wore the white tunic of mourning, the straw hat. He movedthrough the crowd, leaning on a bamboo cane. He had stopped weeping,but tears still stained his cheeks, mixing with the dust, stinginghis face. He didn't dare raise his hand to scratch; as the only son,Vinh had to walk backward in front of his father's coffin, maintain adignified, solemn bearing until they returned to the house.

    Oh Papa, why did you abandon us like this?

    Their wails sounded like the cries of wounded birds. They werejust a few miles from Trang Nguyen Lake. How many times had hisfather taken him there to hunt birds? Father and son had woken beforedawn, when fog still cloaked the treetops. Vinh had huddled againsthis father; though he felt like clutching his father's shirt, he didn't dare.

    You're the only son, the pillar of the family.

    His father had taught him this lesson when he was three years old.That sentence hung around his neck like an invisible whip ready, atany moment, to strike his back. Sometimes, it brought him a kind ofsatisfaction; it was a vague, but nevertheless real sensation. One stormynight at the age of four, Vinh had practiced being a man, the pillarof the family. It was pouring rain. The sea howled like a starvinganimal. Vinh stood trembling outside in the courtyard. His father hadordered him to stand there, while he sat inside and glared out at hisson. His mother, in a corner of the room, begged him to let Vinhback inside.

    "Please ... please ... he's too little."

    "No."

    "Please, do it for me ... let him in ... please."

    "No."

    His father's charcoal eyes flashed rays of inky black light. Vinhclenched his fists, forced himself to stand straight. With each crack ofthunder, his heart stopped, his blood seemed to freeze over. He lookedaway from his father, avoiding his gaze, imagining his own heaven: thesilky panels of his mother's ao dai tunic that always smelled of lemongrassand jasmine. In her pockets, he could always find a few coinsto buy sweets or caramel-coated peanuts.

    Lightning flashed, blinding, turning the clouds to silver. Thunder,like an earthquake above his head. Vinh let out a sob, but remainedglued to the spot. His father suddenly got up and went out, scoopingthe boy up in his arms.

    "Not bad, my son."

    Vinh burst into jagged sobs, choked with hatred. He squirmed outof the grip of those iron hands and ran headlong into his mother'sarms. She covered him with her perfume of faded flowers, wiped histears. Vinh nuzzled his head under her armpit, falling into agitated,turbulent sleep. He saw birds fluttering over water, a rain of tiny blossoms.Suddenly the storm burst over the garden of honey locust trees;Vinh dreamed he had tied his father to the trunk of an old tree withcord they used to lash together planks of wood. His father's back wascovered with welts from a whip ...

    Now the old man lay in a red lacquer coffin, hoisted on the shouldersof eight of the strongest timber men in the guild, the same menwho had carried his body back from the forest. They had found himthere: his face a ghostly shade of gray, eyelids as puffy as if he haddrowned. He must have wept a long time before dying. His mouthwas swollen too, as if his last words, imprisoned between his teeth,had burned it.

    For three months he had exhausted himself felling trees, bindingthe trunks into rafts. Going down the river he was caught in an icystorm that had chilled him. In the middle of the jungle it was impossibleto find a doctor and the medicine they had brought along hadalready been used up by other members of the guild. Vinh's father wasthe leader, and a leader had to make sacrifices for his men. His deathwas part of his job, his duty in those circumstances. His eyes wouldn'tclose, revealing pupils the color of lead, a look of stupefaction anddoubt.

    That year Vinh was just six years old. Mien, his eldest sister, wasfifteen, and Suong—the future "nightingale with the crystal voice"—wastwelve. The two sisters walked behind the coffin; Vinh walkedahead, a little man at age six. On the road through the village, he hadoverheard the murmurs of the crowd.

    "Where is his wife?"

    "At home. When they told her the old man was dead, she collapsed.Fainted."

    "That man's fate was as black as a dog's. A wife as frail as a slug.When he was alive, he bent over backward to support her. Now thathe's dead, she's not even here to mourn him, to roll in the dust andopen the road to death."

    Vinh ran back behind the coffin, whispering to his sisters: "Rollin the dust ... roll in the dust ... roll in it or people are going to insultour mother?

    His sisters looked up at him, uncomprehending, their faces streakedwith tears. The six-year-old man furrowed his dark eyebrows andscreamed at them: "I told you to roll in the dust, did you hear me?"

    After he finished speaking, Vinh strode back to the front of thecortege, leaned on the bamboo cane and continued walking backward,his back hunched over like a real old man. The two sisters ran pastVinh, far ahead of the cortege, and then threw themselves on theground, rolling in the dust and sand, sobbing:

O Father, why have you abandoned us? The earth is vast, its roads countless, How will we know to find you?

    The wild birds, hit by bullets, used to cry like this before they fellinto the lake, Vinh thought. He wiped his face with his hands. Sweat andred dust stuck to his palms. His sisters' faces were also filthy. Their longhair cascaded down their backs, a dense, black flood. Vinh's hair wasthick too. Brothers and sisters had been cast in the same mold. Theirfather had left them the same dark legacy: black hair, black eyes, blackeyebrows. It was as if a thousand nights had been distilled in them.

    The shrill wail of a trumpet, like a bird's cry, rose, then suddenlyfell. The funeral banners unfurled, held taut for a moment in a gustof salt wind.

    "Stop, stop here," boomed the voice of the funeral director. Theyplaced the coffin on two ropes held parallel, then lowered it into thegrave. Each gesture was slow, silent. No one said a word. Everythingsunk into a numbing sadness.

O lost soul, o lost soul ... If you hear our prayers ... Find the way, the path home to your father's village, Don't ever stay far from your mother's village ... If you hear our prayers ... Find the source of the wind Find the foot of the wave ... Like the white kite, like the wise sail ... find the way home ...

    This song to bear the soul rose first on the rasping voice of anold drunkard, then swelled as the crowd joined in chorus. Every timethe cry "O lost soul!" rose, the orb of the sky seemed to tremblefitfully in a red halo of light. Waves of light rippled and danced inspace like thousands of crystal boats chasing each other on the sea.Only the cluster of flies wasn't swept up by the mournful song; theystill stuck to the coffin, swirling up in a cloud of filthy, black dust. Aswarm of them tried to poke their way through a crack in the casket,their taut bellies tipped upward. Vinh couldn't take his eyes off them,these flies were eating his father's flesh, the first man in the family.Now that he was the man in the family, would they eat his too?

    "Oh, Father!" wailed Suong, jumping down into the grave. Shethrew herself on the coffin, oblivious to the disgusting swarms of fliesthat stuck to her neck and face.

    Her tiny fingers clenched the lid of the coffin as if she could pullher father back, as if he wasn't a corpse that had already begun toreek.

    "Pull her out ... pull the child up!" cried an old woman.

    Two men, woodcutters, jumped down into the grave at the sametime. They pulled her off the coffin and pushed her up onto theground. Another grabbed Suong and dragged her away from the grave.Then they hurriedly filled it, since gusts of sea wind were gatheringnow, making the stench stronger.

    Vinh felt tears sting his cheeks again. He rubbed his eyes. Standingthere, just three paces away on the patch of dry grass he saw a wraith,pants lightly fluttering like silk clouds: It was his father. The figurelaughed, his eyes flickering mischievously, casting rays of black light."My son ... I've gone already. From now on, you're the only man inthe family, the pillar ..."

    Vinh opened his mouth to speak, but the words choked in his drythroat. He watched, mute, as his father gently waved, then skimmedover the reeds, the rippling white dunes, moving out toward the sea.Vinh's heart raced, full of fear, full of envy ...

    Twelve years had passed. He knew now what he had wanted then.

Evening fell. Vinh got up, ready to return to the hospital. Cherry treeshung low across his path, thorn bushes scratched his legs, as if to blockhis way. Once his mother had told him that handsome boys and girlswho strolled in the cemeteries often met the souls of dead youth, whowould lure them into their embrace. Perhaps a young virgin has transformedherself into a thorn bush to hold me back? An old legend, just an old legend ... butwhy does it call my name?

    "Vinh, Vinh ..."

    The young man ripped a thorny branch that had hooked the legof his pants; his face burned. When he looked up, the voice calledagain.

    "Vinh, Vinh ..."

    It wasn't the ghost of a young virgin, but a young man; Tan, astudent Vinh had just met on the municipal volleyball court.

    "Hi Vinh, I've been looking for you."

    "What for?"

    Vinh looked Tan over. The only son of one of the richest families in town.He's probably never wept in his life.

    Tan furrowed his eyebrows. "I heard about your sister's accident.I just came to see you."

    "Thanks," Vinh replied coldly.

    The two young men walked toward the hospital. The rice paddies,the houses, the streets, even the horizon seemed heavier, fading to aleaden gray, then sinking under a tide of dark shadow. Sea wind blewacross the fields of casuarina trees, a shrill, piercing whistle, like thesound of fabric tearing. The sky exhaled smoke that unfurled over thetowns, heavy veils of it that fell on the rows of yellow lanterns.

    "Your sister ... Is it serious?" Tan asked, as they reached the hospital.

    Vinh sighed. "I don't know."

    They reached the hospital, walked down the corridors, past therooms. Behind the windows, patients watched them with a distractedgaze. There was light in the recovery room. Vinh pushed open a whitedoor stained with sweaty fingerprints.

    "Come in."

    A gigantic back blocked Vinh's passage; it was the nurse on duty,seated in the middle of the room, shelling peanuts. The glare of theceiling light illuminated her hair, her huge head.

    "How is my sister, doctor?"

    The woman wheeled around. "I'm not a doctor, I'm a nurse. She'sbetter ... but we've got to keep an eye on her." She bent back over herpeanuts, pinching them nimbly between her fingers.

    Suong lay motionless on the bed, strapped down by a tangle oftubes and IVs linked to bottles of liquid arranged on a table by herside. The star singer of central Vietnam was now just a little girl buriedunder white covers, a pale child that they had barely saved from drowning.Only her black eyebrows still glistened like two deft strokes ofChina ink.

    Vinh stood silent, watching her, forgetting the young man by hisside. He remembered a distant hill covered with rose myrtle, a placeshe used to take him. The way she led him by the hand, consoled him,her voice like a thin wisp of smoke.

    Sleep my child, sleep.

    Suddenly the door opened. A man appeared, pressed his faceagainst the glass door panel, almost fell down. But he caught himselfin time, staggered, then stood swaying in the middle of the room. Helooked drunk; his eyes were bloodshot. His face must once have beenhandsome, with that straight nose, large, finely drawn mouth. His thick,wavy hair, flecked with gray, fell across his forehead. His breath reekedof alcohol. The nurse noticed, threw down her handful of peanuts, andstood up.

    "What do you want?"

    "I'm looking for my wife."

    The nurse stood in front of the man, staring him down. He staredback at the woman, who loomed in front of him like a temple guard.

    "I'm looking for my wife," he repeated, then stepped forward,gesturing. "I'm looking for Mai Suong, the famous singer. You tellher this. You tell her she can't run away from me. As long as I'm alive,Suong, you have no right to die!"

    Distracted by her curiosity the nurse suddenly remembered herduty. "I must ask you to leave!" She snapped, pointing to the door.

    The man tilted his head, tossed his hair. "What did you say?" Atthat moment, he spotted Suong. His haggard, drunken face suddenlylit up and he rushed toward the bed.

    "Ah, Mai Suong, I found you?

    "Stop him!" the nurse shouted.

    Vinh jumped on the man, grabbed his arm, and twisted it behindhis back. The man winced from pain. He leaned over Vinh.

    "Vinh ... how dare you?" He stared, wide-eyed, in surprise.

    "I'm going to strangle you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you!" Vinhscreamed. He wrenched the man's wrist with all his strength, so hardthat the man couldn't speak from the pain.

    "Throw him out!" the nurse ordered.

    Vinh dragged him out of the room, down the corridor, across thecourtyard, arriving in front of the iron gate. He shouted to theguard: "Don't let this drunk guy back in! He's making trouble." Thenhe returned to the recovery room. Tan was standing by the foot ofSuong's bed, staring at the transparent tubes that poured all sorts ofliquids into her veins. From the back he looked to Vinh like a filmstar.

    He's a head taller than I am. He's handsome. He still has a father, a mother,and he's rich to boot. Heaven has truly given him a lot.... Why is he so concernedabout my sister? When did they meet?

    "That ... that was the first time you hit someone, wasn't it?" Tansaid without turning around.

    After a moment, Vinh nodded. "How did you know?"

    "I watched you."

    "You're very observant."

    "What if you had been stronger, taller?"

    "It's not because I'm small or weak ... it's because ... he's the fatherof my nieces."

    Vinh gazed at the woman lying on the bed. As if he could seehimself, a madman bent over at the river's edge, searching the wavesfor an image of himself that the months and years had carried awayon the current.

One July day, who knows whether it was an angel or a devil who senta buffalo-drawn wagon through the mountain hamlet where the threeorphans lived together. Vinh was ten years old, Suong just sixteen.Sister Mien was nineteen and married already, but only six monthsafter the wedding, her husband had been mobilized for the army. Mienhad taken her sister and brother into her own home, to care for them.A godforsaken mountain village, a few sparse rice paddies; here peoplemade a living off the pepper trees and the timber.

    That morning, Mien had gone into the forest with the other villagewomen to look for wood. Suong and Vinh stayed back to weed thepepper garden. That afternoon, they both took refuge in the shade torest, stretched out on a dry straw mat at the foot of a tree. As Vinhslept, Suong sang to herself. Suddenly, the dry, rhythmic creaking ofthe wagon echoed at the top of the hill. Vinh sat up, opened his eyes.Buffalo-drawn wagons rarely passed through their region, though trucksand tanks packed with soldiers crisscrossed the neighboring village justten miles from their hamlet. The wagon shuddered to a halt at thetop of the hill. The old driver, a huge guy with dark, glistening skinand a black turban wrapped around his head, shouted at the top ofhis lungs. "Calm down you, calm down."

    His voice echoed through the valley. "Calm down or I'm going tobring out the whip."

    Behind the old man, two men sat perched on top of bundles ofwood. As the water buffalo spread its legs and planted its hooves inthe ground to brake the wagon, which was about to slide down thehill, one of the two men leaned forward and whispered something intothe old man's ear. Immediately, the man sat straight up and broughthis whip down on the buffalo's head.

    "Vruu vruu ..."

    The poor animal hunched its back, pulling the shafts of the wagonright down to the ground, its back as pointy as a termite's mound.There was a grating screech and then the wagon came to a halt. Theman who had whispered in the driver's ear jumped down and strodetoward Vinh and his sister. He wore a dusty flowered shirt and washedout soldier's pants; he didn't look anything like the mountain people,nor like the soldiers who passed through these parts. He walked slowly,arms swinging, relaxed, tossing his wavy hair as he went, like a well-fedcow returning to the stable. Suong still hadn't noticed anything;she kept singing.

    "Some people are coming ..." Vinh said.

    Suong stopped abruptly and sat up. Just at that moment, the manreached them. He sat down naturally, right next to them.

    "Why don't you keep singing?"

    Neither Vinh nor Suong replied. The man wasn't offended, he justlaughed.

    "You sing very well ... please continue."

    "No." Suong replied coldly, which pleased Vinh. But he saw hissister blush, lower her eyes, and stare at the holes in the sleeve of herblouse. Furtively, she hid the tom fabric by putting her hands underher armpits. Vinh suddenly felt a wave of hatred for this stranger.What right did this man have to embarrass his sister? The man lookedstraight at Vinh, amused. Vinh turned away. But he had spotted abadge pinned to the man's shirt collar: a tiny guitar on a half sun. Theenamel glistened like fish scales. Vinh had never seen such a beautifulobject. Once, when his father was alive, he had taken all the kids intotown, treated them to cakes, ice cream, coconut juice. They had riddenon carousels, shot down prizes in the carnival stands. But he had neverthought to buy them a souvenir. For the first time in his life, Vinhglimpsed something like the sparkling pins of gold and jade that hadfilled the legends of his childhood.

    The man noticed the look of awe on Vinh's face. He pulled offthe pin and handed it to the boy. "It's yours."

    "No!" Vinh shouted. He pulled his hand back abruptly and nestledagainst his sister.

    The man burst out laughing. A gay, booming, slightly mockinglaugh. He held out his hand. "Here, you're not going to die from it.If you like it, I give it to you."

    In the palm of the man's hand, the pin shimmered like a star fallenfrom the firmament. Vinh's heart raced, his ears burned. This magicalobject fascinated him. He clenched his fists violently to resist. The manlaughed again. His laugh echoed through the valley.

    "Come on, take it. I'm a grown-up and this kind of thing doesn'tinterest me anymore." His eyes shone tenderly. Vinh looked up, staredat the man. He wasn't old, but his temples were specked with a fewgray hairs. Somehow this touched the child. Vinh took the pin fromthe palm of the man's outstretched hand, like a souvenir from a fairytale.

    The man watched the child pin it to his chest, then turned to theboy's sister.

    "Little sister, I heard you singing. You sing very, very well."

    "No, I don't. I don't know how to sing."

    "Have you ever been to a performance by our town's artistictroupe?"

    "Yes, once."

    "You sing as well as their star singer ... no, you sing a thousandtimes better, I'm sure of it, and if we train you ..." He fell silent,gazing at the small valley, the path that wound down the hill, thewagon that patiently waited for him, the plantations of pepper treeson the other side of the road, the wild hills that undulated as far asthe eye could see. Suong, her head lowered, contemplated the straw onthe ground, her hands still thrust under her armpits to hide the holesin her old blouse. After a long silence, the man glanced at his watchand said: "Do you want to become a singer?"

    "I don't know ... I'd have to ask Mien."

    "Who is Mien?"

    "My older sister."

    "Why do you have to ask?"

    "My parents are dead. I live with her."

    "Oh, I see." He nodded, pulled a pad out of his pocket. "Whatgrade are you in?"

    "I'm in the fifth grade ... I mean, no ... I left school during thesixth."

    "To help your sister with the pepper trees?"

    "Yes."

    The man rapidly scribbled something in his notebook, tore off thesheet of paper, and handed it to Suong. "Here's my address. I can giveyou lessons. If your sister allows you to join the provincial artistictroupe, come find me. I can help you become a singer."

    The man didn't wait for her answer. He got up, turned, and walkedtoward the wagon. Brother and sister watched, mesmerized by thisstrange visitor, as the sun fell low on the horizon.

    That night, planes bombed the road on the other side of themountain. The gas lamp clogged their shelter with smoke, its flamesdancing in the darkness. Suong pulled the piece of paper out of herpocket, handed it to her elder sister. They whispered and cried in thenight. Vinh tried to hear what they were saying but sleep overcamehim and he drifted off on the wood planks that served as their bed.

    A few days later, Suong gathered her clothes in a cloth knapsackand left.

    "You be good, little brother."

    "When are you coming back?"

    "As soon as I can."

    "I don't want you to go. I'm not going to let you go!"

    Suong's eyes brimmed with tears, which then streamed down herface. "Oh, but I have to go ... please, make me happy."

    Mien leaned toward the boy, took his hand. "Let her go. Withluck, she'll be able to study. If she stays here, I won't have the meansto help her continue her studies."

    Side by side, the three orphans wept.

    Suong had found a buffalo-drawn wagon to take her to the coastalregion. Mien and Vinh followed her with their eyes as the wagondisappeared in the distance. The red dust swirled on the steep hills,blurring Vinh's vision.

    For seven years, that red dust would sting his eyes. Vinh regrettedit, reproached himself. If only I hadn't yielded to him, if only I had refusedthat pin ... if only ... would Suong's life have been better?

Continues...

Excerpted from Memories of a Pure Springby Duong Thu Huong Copyright © 2001 by Duong Thu Huong. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0140298436
• ISBN 13: 9780140298437
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Terminal Video; n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com; ; Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,; Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,; Italien