Chapter 10 Vinh Long

First in Vinh Long, and later in Hanoi.I once mentioned Vinh Long, but not in Hanoi.Vinh Long, as I have said, is a settlement in a remote area of ​​Cochin China.Located in Wuwazhou Plain, I think it can be said to be the largest watery place in the world.When I was eight or ten years old, an incident happened.Like thunder, or like religion.In my life, this has happened.I have lived to be seventy-two years old, and it still seems like it happened yesterday: the tree-lined lanes in the residential area, during the noon break, the white residential area, the avenue full of buttercups along the road, and no pedestrians.The river is also sleeping.So she drove by in her new black Limoux.Her name was probably Anna-Marie Strait.Also called Stratey.She is the woman of the administrative district executive.They have two children.They had relocated here from Laos, where she had once had a young lover.It's all here: as it is written in The Song of India.The young man stayed in Laos, where they met in that residential area, far north up the Mekong River.It was there that he killed himself.In Luang Prabang ④.

① In today's southern Vietnam, it is the background written in some novels by the author. ②Anna-Marie Strait, this character has appeared in the author's novels "The Madness of Noel V. Stein", "The Vice-Consul", and the film "Song of India" and other works.This character was also written in the novel. ③ "Song of India", a script written by the author in 1973 and made into a film in 1975, which was rewritten from the author's novel "Vice Consul". ④ In today's Laos. The big river shared with these two lovers flows down a thousand kilometers and passes through this place, which is Vinh Long.I still remember the feeling that arose in my childlike form: exposure to a knowledge that should have been forbidden to me.The world is so vast and magnificent, and has a very obvious complexity.In this regard, a word must be invented to describe what people clearly know but do not understand.All this must not be said, not to anyone, not to my mother, I know, about this moment of life, my mother, to her child, she has lied in the past.I must keep that knowledge to myself.That woman has been my secret ever since: Anne-Marie Strait.