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A love song
by Ly
Lan
 I
needed a friend, and badly. I phoned Loan and
asked her out to lunch at a nearby restaurant.
While she scanned the menu, I opened out:
"For the past few days, I’ve been unable to do anything.
My mind is wandering all the time."
She did not deign to look up from the menu.
"Looks like you’ve fallen in love," she said.
"I’m afraid so," I replied.
She laughed, but her eyes remained intent on the menu:
"There seems to a love mania these days. None of my
acquaintances have been able to escape falling in love."
In the afternoon, sitting in front of the PC in my
office, I tried to look for letters sent to me by
e-mail. At ten past two, there was nothing at all. At
three sharp, none. Ten to four, Loan’s letter. It was
not addressed just to me, but to all of us:
"We’ve got a first-hand report. Thu Thu’s fallen in
love!"
I deleted it at once, and resolved not to check the mail
again. It was not much of a resolve. At half past four,
I opened the file again. Nothing! Repeated the manoeuvre
at five to five, before going home. Nothing again. I
gathered the unfinished documents to place them in my
cabinet. If this situation lasted until the end of the
week, I would certainly be sacked. Who would support me
then? How could I let things go on like this? I would
have to focus on my work.
The next morning I had to check the English translation
of a consignment contract with RJ Company against its
original, contact PIP to reconfirm an appointment
between Mrs Nhu, our deputy head and a customer, and see
off Mr Thoi, our boss, who was leaving for Ha Noi on a
business trip.
The door to the Director’s room opened and our boss
stepped out with an attache in his hand, closely
followed by Mrs Nhu with his jacket on her arm.
"Here’s your coat," she told him.
"No, I don’t need it any longer," he answered.
Looking at them, I smiled. Mrs Nhu returned to her
office.
"A good journey to you," I said to him.
"Thank you for your efforts in arranging things for me,
and for having got the air ticket as well," he told me.
"It’s my business, sir," I replied.
Just then Mrs Nhu went out with her handbag on her
shoulder and closed the door behind her. Both of them
walked to the lift.
I’d nearly finished checking the contract when the
telephone rang. It was Mr Thoi.
"I’ve left behind something important in my room. Can
you go in and take a yellow envelope out of the breast
pocket of my coat, and take a taxi to the airport? I’ve
just checked in, but I’ll wait for you at the lounge
door. Please hurry!"
His coat was hung on the back of his chair behind his
desk. With the yellow envelope in my hand, I called a
taxi.
He was standing in the corridor of the domestic
terminal.
"Sorry for troubling you," he said. "These things
shouldn’t be seen by others. You haven’t looked, have
you?"
"No, no. I did not dare," I answered.
He winked as if I was an accomplice with him and stood
close to me. He opened the envelope, took a few
photographs out, and showed them to me. The first one
was a half-naked man lying prone on the bed with a young
girl kneeling at its foot, massaging his legs. The
second was the same half-naked man sitting on the bed.
It was Mr Thoi.
I looked up.
He smiled, saying, "These are nothing. Let’s look at
some others."
He placed the photographs at the bottom of the pile and
showed me the other photographs, shuffling them like a
photographs. The very first one he pulled out was that
of a naked man and woman making love.
"I’m sorry. I must... return to the office," I mumbled.
He winked again, smiled and placed his right hand on my
left shoulder in an intimate gesture. I pulled away,
glared at him and left.
In the taxi going back to the office, I looked at the
hundreds of motorcycles going to and from on the road,
and thousands of pedestrians rushing in different
directions. That was life. People had to earn their
living and so did I. As a greenhorn in the office, I had
to face two terrible people: Mr Thoi and his darling,
Mrs Nhu. When I started working, I was told that
previously she’d been an accountant at the State-run
factory where he was the deputy director. A few years
later, they’d set up their own company. He became the
director and she, the vice-director of the new
establishment. Their relationship was rather complicated
– partners in business, and a courting pair. Mr Thoi had
his own family, while Mrs Nhu was a divorced woman
without any children. I did not care about their affair.
Working with Mrs Nhu, I always kept at a safe distance
from her. The memory of him winking and smiling sent a
shudder through me. Nevertheless, he was not as
dangerous as his darling.
As soon as I got back to the office, Mrs Nhu called me
to her room. There she asked me lots of questions and I
replied frankly. She asked me what was inside the yellow
envelope. I said that I did not know because I did not
open it. She couldn’t think that he had opened it and
showed them to me, but was suspicious because he had
called me, not her on the mobile phone, when he
discovered that the yellow envelope was missing. And
she’d just left the airport along with the driver. She
was unable to ask me why, of course. She just threw me a
threatening look.
"Why did you have to take a taxi, instead of riding your
motorbike to the airport?" she asked.
I thought of telling her that he’d asked me to take a
taxi, but, on second thoughts, decided not to respond.
What was the point? I’d better not demand a refund for
the taxi fare. From now on, I would have to confront
them both.
The next day, a shower of letters were waiting in the
mail. Everyone in the gang wanted to know:
"Hey! who’s the guy?"
I deleted all the messages. Usually e-mails from friends
are harmless. But now it might cause some trouble, and I
had to be on guard.
The telephone rang again. The door of the
vice-director’s room flung open. One of our customers
wanted to know how to rectify a technical problem. I
transferred the message to the engineering section as
Mrs Nhu walked past my desk towards the lift, then
abruptly returned to her room. I gathered the minutes
sent to me from various departments, grouped them in a
list with different items and presented them to her. She
told me that in addition to summarising the minutes, I
had to put down my comments. I’d never done it before.
If I did as she asked, I was asking for more trouble and
making the situation worse. Anyway, I took the list back
to my desk and re-arranged them in another way more
suited to her taste.
The bell rang again. It was just a fax coming in a-
four-page document describing the KLM company’s new
products in English. I presented it to her and she told
me to translate it into Vietnamese. This was another
task that I’d not had to do before. What I usually did
was to make a summary of the contents of a particular
document and forward it to the concerned department,
say, marketing. I had to use an English-Vietnamese
dictionary to do the translation.
I was consulting several new words and expressions when
the phone rang again. It was Mr Thoi. I asked Mrs Nhu to
take it. A few moments later, the bell rang again. It
was Mrs Nhu asking me to re-write a letter I’d finished
the day before. She said it did not match her opinions.
I wrote a new note, answered the phone, translated the
document and amended the summary. But at five to five,
everything remained unfinished.
I grouped the documents into different files and placed
them in their pigeon-holes. When everybody had returned
home, including Mrs Nhu, I returned to my PC which had
not been switched off. I opened an MP3 file. Lionel
Richie’s voice resounded warmly.
It seemed that a burden had been lifted off my shoulder.
All the troubles of today were gone. Richie’s voice
flooded the room. I picked up the receiver and phoned my
lover. I could hear the phone ring on the other end and
the sound of the receiver being lifted. In the
background was the same song, Hello, but at different
bars. "And in my dream I kissed your lips a thousand
times." For a few minutes, I could not utter a word.
My boyfriend at the other end of the line did not say
anything either. We let the music mingle and let our
emotions run in our veins and our hearts beat to one
rhythm. Happiness, passion or some such similar emotion
was surely appearing on my countenance. But they all
disappeared in the twinkling of an eye, as I looked out
of the window and saw Mrs Nhu stepping in. I hurriedly
looked for the mouse to stop the music. The warm sounds
of music came to an end and I heard the sound of the
receiver being hung up abruptly. Mrs Nhu looked askance
at me, but her voice was more warm this time:
"Thu, you haven’t gone home yet !"
"I’m just about to leave," I answered.
From the day I’d started working with her, I had never
been so embarrassed. The fact that I stayed for a couple
of minutes after the business hours was quite ordinary.
What was strange was that she suddenly came back to the
office. When she came and left was not my concern, it
was her business and as the vice director she could do
whatever she wanted. I said good-bye to her. As I
reached the door, the telephone rang. My heart leaped.
Maybe my lover was calling me. I was going to step back
when she picked up the receiver. We stared at each other
for a few seconds. Her countenance turned pale and her
eyes sparkled with hatred. Yet her voice remained warm
and soft:
"You’ve crossed out my mobile phone number in your small
directory, haven’t you?"
I closed the door and ran to the lift. Whether or not
she thought I was waiting for her darling’s call, I did
not know. She might have thought that the previous call
had also been his. They must have phoned each other
again and again with suspicion, engaging the line and
preventing my sweetheart’s call. I walked across the
street to a public booth. I dialled his number many
times, hoping to hear his voice and that of Richie
singing, "I just called to say I love you." There
was no response.
Maybe he had left his office. He might have been roaming
the streets like me, looking for him among the multitude
of people and vehicles. Amid the noise, the music from
his heart rang out, warm and soft: "Where are you, my
darling? What are you doing?... I want to tell you that
I love you."
Translated by VAN MINH |
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