Chapter Three: Love stories during the Vietnam War period
The Teacher Mr. Huong
Mr. Huong, a teacher, was the principal of Cai Con Elementary School in a beautiful village on the banks of the Mekong River in downstream Vietnam. It’s a prosperous village, with fertile rice paddies and tropical fruit trees all year round: grapefruits, oranges, tangerines, bananas, sweet potatoes…
Fish gather here, because there is a convergence of seawater and freshwater from the Upper Mekong as it reaches the sea – indeed, it’s the promised land for humans on this planet earth.
On the other side of the river, there is a fishing village. The fishermen are very well off, because they catch lots of fish.
Late at night, in the moonlight, when oil lamps light up an area of water (there is no electric power here), they work energetically, happily – in the distance, there is the sound of folk songs telling of a boy who flirts with a girl: “Darling, don’t marry a husband far away, sometime in future when your parents get old and weak, nobody will offer a bowl of rice and a kettle of tea… to them” – the song echoes through the quiet emptiness of the night, people are mesmerized – they are living a veryhappy life in the peaceful countryside.
Mr. Huong had a son who was 10 years old and a daughter Viet Hong, who was two. His wife, Mrs. Huong, was an ex-teacher, who left the school after having children.
A teacher’s aim is always to try to educate children to become good and useful people for the next generation – besides, the school also needs the support of the parents in teaching the children. So Mrs. Huong left the school to take care of her children and family. It’s much better that way.
According to her, women should only work at most50%,when they don’t have children or have children who are six or older. The women do mainly housework –, and this helps their husbands to relax after a day of work.
Mrs. Huong had two close friends from childhood who lived nearby: Mrs. Sau who had a 10-year-old son nicknamedX1and Mrs. Nam with her daughter Loan, who wa