Chapter 11 The Twin Ladies Violerega

—— Huang Biyun (Scan proofreading: Y.Yan) Her name must have been Violega.The passenger and cargo ship slowly entered the Saigon River, and the scenery on the embankment changed from purple to black.At that time, she was wearing a Vietnamese silk gown with embroidered beans and red beans, and a pair of lacquered wood clogs inlaid with pearl oysters. Her long hair was coiled on her head, and her body was very thin in the first night. When the boat arrived, she noticed that her face was covered with wrinkles, as if she had suffered a lot. "Sir, Rose." But behind her passed slowly a line of armored personnel carriers, then another large military vehicle, and the spears and bayonets of the South Vietnamese soldiers gleamed in the dusk and night.I raised the camera, and the woman smiled obediently and shyly: "Five hundred guilders, sir."

She is still soft and shy in the dark.There are mosquitoes at night, and the bed in the hotel room is hung with a mosquito net, and the mosquitoes are still roaring outside the net.We groped for each other in the dark, and she took off only her loose stockings, the orchids blooming like spring on her bosom.This is the first time I have come into contact with a female body, and I was surprised and surprised.And she just said in broken English, "Five thousand guilders, sir." We hugged each other quietly under the mosquito net, and there was a blue light outside the street. A tank drove past in a caron-caron way, and the street was very quiet when it went away.Borrowing a bit of dim blue street lights, she raised my hand, bounced it up suddenly, and hurriedly explained something in Vietnamese, maybe it was a curfew.Before I could answer, she took five thousand guilders and left, leaving behind a bouquet of slightly wilted roses that gave off a scent.I rushed to the window facing the street and shouted: "Hello, hello." Someone waved an orchid embroidered on a gown across the street.I think she took off her gown in the dark.I threw down the bunch of slightly withered roses and said loudly: "What's your name?" The voice repeated back and forth on the silent street.At this time, the night sky lit up signal flares, like fireworks.

"My name is Valoriega." I suspect this is just my hallucination.The next day, Saigon City was still full of tricycle drivers, hawkers selling bananas and condoms, and thieves.War has never existed. I drank a cup of EYPRESSO from Vietnam at the coffee shop opposite the "Continental Hotel". An embroidered bamboo gown, I saw me from a distance, and raised my triangular straw hat to greet me.I called her: "Velloreca. Viroreca." Only she wouldn't hear it, because there was an explosion. After the explosion, it was very quiet, like a silent film of a movie, which was rustling and then suddenly cut off, only reflecting gray and white strips of light.A startled boy is leaning against the wall, still holding the steering wheel of his bicycle, but the body is missing.Blind thieves fumbled for watches, fountain pens in the upturned dirt.Verorejia fell on the ground, her face was still surprised and shy, she didn't know what she was looking at, there was a slight smile on her mouth, and she still held a postcard in her hand.

It will be more than ten years before I return to Vietnam.I have changed from a student who first came to France to study architecture, dropped out of school, and became a member of the French Communist Party. I also connected with the working class of the third world in Marseilles, recruited party members, and canvassed votes during the general election. The Vietnamese revolution succeeded in 1975, and the Chinese Gang of Four had collapsed in 1976. In 1978, I was considering leaving France and quit the Communist Party. At this time, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam invited European Communist Party members to visit the construction, and I returned to Vietnam.

I still saw Violega.The airport was covered with red cloth strips and flowers. She wore a military uniform and a red star hat, and greeted foreign guests under the portrait of Ho Chi Minh.I was taken aback, hurriedly picked up the camera, and took a picture of her. When the spotlight flashed for a moment, she actually saluted to the camera: "International friends are welcome to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." - No.Verorega doesn't speak French, her voice is never loud, and she is not old at all, but her face is still between blooming and withering, with fine wrinkles.I had no choice but to say: "Very familiar. Maybe I saw it when I came to Saigon more than ten years ago." She just gave me a faint look: "Impossible, I have always lived in Hanoi. And, sir, please remember that Saigon has changed its name Ho Chi Minh City."

The red flag of Ho Chi Minh City is flying, and huge revolutionary slogans stand in the streets. The streets are much wider and colder. It seems to be familiar with Saigon in my impression, but it is actually a different scene. In the new economic zone we visited the revolutionary fervor.Rows of thatched huts, rice green like the sea, fat prawns in the pond, and children laughing and chatting loudly, it really is a paradise on earth.But I was in a thatched hut, out of line, smoking a cigarette, roosters clucking and pecking at the house, naked and unattended dirty child, howling.Verorega came to see me.We faced each other silently in the dark hut.After a long time, we asked, "How many people starve to death in the new economic zone?" Viloriega was in front of the window, and the sun outside the window was very bright. She was just a shadow, turned around slowly, and said, "I love me. Forgive me.” He turned around again, with his head raised very high: “When the U.S. military bombed Hanoi, I was sent to a barracks outside the city by my parents for shelter. Sometimes there were documentaries about beating U.S. troops in the camp. I I was very happy to see it, and clapped my hands. When I returned to Hanoi, on the way home, I saw a huge US military B-52 plane dropped in the lake. Before I got home, there were broken tiles everywhere. I frantically scratched and searched, But since then, my home and my parents are gone. The Party is my home, my parents. Sometimes I wake up in the orphanage at midnight, dreaming that I am clapping my hands, and cry alone.” She gently Even though she was still wearing a military uniform, she was very charming at the moment, and said in a low voice, "Because I love my country, so..."

When we returned to Ho Chi Minh City, she shared a car with me, and it was dusk and night.The car broke down, and we watched the sky slowly darken outside the car, and the stars scattered all over the sky seemed to be as intimate as the sky and the ground. We broke up under the red flag and the portrait of Ho Chi Minh, and the silver band played the Internationale: "Indege Schonnel, it must be realized, this is the last struggle..." Amidst the sound of clarinet drums, the revolutionary comrades stood in silence, but she Salute me from afar.I said loudly, "Goodbye, Violega."

After returning to Marseilles, I received a postcard from her, signed "Villereca".He added: "If my name is Viloriega, it must be some time and space. We met once, but we can no longer recognize it. Because no matter the individual or history, it seems that there is only one time. But in fact, everything is beyond the personal and historical perspective. It's repeating. We'll meet again, past and present." I also returned to Hong Kong, and became a small businessman back to work, engaged in timber trading with my partners, and came to Vietnam again. By the Saigon River, at dusk and sunset, Japanese film advertising signs replaced revolutionary slogans.I said: "Ho Chi Minh City is still as beautiful and slow as it was 20 years ago." The Vietnamese business partner who received the reception said: "Is it? Is it the same as before?"

Even Viloriega, who is thin and wrinkled, wears an executive suit and works as a sales manager for a French-Vietnamese joint venture Peugeot.We are the first batch of customers since her company opened half a year ago, and she entertained us hospitablely.I only picked up the camera and kept the third face of Veroreca.I'm old, so I keep my composure.She is also generous and fluent in English, French and Mandarin. She was originally a Vietnamese overseas Chinese who returned from France. In the restaurant on the top floor of the Saigon REX Hotel reopened after the reform and opening up, the violin played Baglini, and we also ordered Bocardi red wine.Violet Regardo drank some, suddenly looked at me, and said in French: "I have met this gentleman, is he in Paris?" "I live in Marseilles." "Then...is he in New York?... ...Christmas in 1974?" "Oh, no, I went to Montreal that Christmas." "Is this...in Singapore." "I haven't been to Singapore, maybe it's in Saigon." "Saigon? I I came back to Saigon for the first time in 1989, are you there?"

I still dance with Violega on the dark red dance floor.The middle-aged band actually played WZNASIMONE's WILD AS THE WIND, and the male singer was also very sad, almost depraved.She felt it, smiled slightly, and said: "Time makes people old." I was startled, and said: "To me?" She smiled and said: "To you and to me, the distance will always be the same. How fair." I was surprised However, she is tactfully cruel.I had no choice but to say: "Look, there were smart and cruel business women in Vietnam in the 1990s." She then said, "Do you think there are only prostitutes or patriotic cadres in Saigon? The times are different."

When she came home, I was a little hesitant. It was cool in midsummer, and the Saigon River brought a slight fragrance of grass.I invited her to walk along the Saigon River: "I came to the Saigon River 20 years ago, and I was still a young man full of expectations." Violet Jia said: "The Saigon River is better. Whether it is war or peace, it is still good. Sufficient flows from north to south, never saying old and not getting tired." I suddenly understood that the dead were like this, day and night, so I gently shook Veroreca's hand. Her body was strong and graceful, but the small dimple in the back was very shy, as if strong, shy, and shrewd Verorega had all rolled into one.And I was also very crazy that night, leaving semen again and again in this ferry hotel built on the Saigon River.Verorega just hugged me tightly, frowning.I asked her, "Does it hurt? Don't you like it?" She always shook her head, and then spat out a bloody tooth with an "ah", turned to me, and said with a weird smile, "It's a denture." The sun pierced through the gap, and the "crack" sky brightened.Verorega was fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed, and said softly: "I hate to say goodbye. You will get up to catch the plane later. I will find you in Hong Kong, and I will expand my business to Southeast Asia. " She turned and left.Half awake and half asleep, I asked her, "Are you Verorega?" She turned around, bowed, stepping into the pose of a dancing girl, and said, "Verorega never existed, it was just your hallucinations." I looked at the three photos carefully on the Saigon River under the scorching sun, the frightened Viloriega, the revolutionary salute Viloriega, and the chic and casual Viloriega.I set fire to three inexplicable photographs on deck: personal and historical, unabashedly repetitive.The dust drifted slowly onto the Saigon River, commemorating the beginning and end of a revolutionary era.But no matter when, Verorega is there, facing war, revolution, and construction calmly, so that the wrong history can return to its original place-although it is different because of understanding-human beings are in difficult mistakes, If you learn smarter, you can coil up your long hair. In the rich plains of Indochina, you can smile slightly, be stubborn and stable, and rely on hope to live out your will and beauty. For generations to come, you can say clearly: " Yes. I am Verorega." This is the most beautiful and strong woman I know.