A brother with the heart of a friend

My longest early journey was from Ha Tinh to Thanh Hoa when I was six years old.

It was the summer of 1960, my grandfather packed his bags and left for a very special reason. Although he was not a high-ranking official, he was a high-ranking official in the village, and had three sons and three daughters. When the youngest daughter turned sixteen, her family wanted to marry her off to a well-off family in the neighboring village to ensure a good match.
The youngest daughter, whom my father called his aunt, strongly opposed the forced marriage, refused to eat for many days, cried, and asked relatives for help, but to no avail, because what my father said was an edict, and no one dared to disobey. Then, one morning, the whole family was shocked when they entered her room and found that she had left home at some point, taking only her clothes with her.
My grandfather asked his family to search everywhere, but there was still no news. In 1945, Nghe Tinh was in the middle of a general uprising, seizing power, the mandarins, village chiefs and district magistrates were no longer there, there was no means of transportation, only messages and prayers. This story was widely told at the village market, and the family had to endure the sadness, waiting for fate.
In the summer of 1960, when all of us children were standing at the village communal house listening to a commune propaganda officer climb a tree to read the news on the loudspeaker welcoming the first five-year plan, we suddenly saw an old woman carrying a large bag, dressed elegantly, with a boy of about thirteen or fifteen years old, asking about an elderly person standing next to me. She asked for the name of the village, my grandfather's name and the names of several neighbors. I looked closely at her and had a feeling of something extremely close, even though she spoke with a northern accent and the names she asked were the first I had heard, because in the past no one called her by her birth name. I looked closely at her and saw many features and gestures that were exactly like my grandfather's.
At that time, many people came, and my grandfather immediately recognized his sister after many years of wandering.
The story is long, but the general idea is that the aunt ran away from home, just kept traveling, staying wherever she could, eating whatever people gave her, along the way she met a young man from Thanh Hoa, the two of them went all the way to Quang Nhan - Quang Xuong to make a living.
So I went to the North with my grandfather to visit my sister's family.
It seems that from then on, Thanh Hoa countryside became close and attached to me. I met and made friends with many Thanh Hoa people, when I was in the country, as well as in many countries I have been to.
In the third year of studying Soviet Literature with Mr. Nguyen Kim Dinh, when he said: "I have the qualities of a scholar, every morning I read Russian like rote to avoid forgetting", I thought he was a scholar from Nghe An. Later I learned that since childhood, he followed his father to Thanh Hoa to teach, so his personality bears the strong imprint of the two regions Thanh and Nghe. He rarely talked about regions, but I heard him often mention Duc Tho, the birthplace of famous people of the nation. At the same time, he also often told about memories of Thanh Hoa when he was young, helping me understand more about the land that gave birth to emperors.
One morning in late autumn 1978, I was sitting there fixing the chain of Mr. Dinh's Thong Nhat bicycle that had come loose when I saw a young teacher with a fair face and brown leather shoes passing by to greet Mr. Dinh. When he passed by, I curiously asked who he was. Mr. Dinh proudly said: Mr. Dinh Van Duc, a Linguistics major, had just returned from his graduate studies in the Soviet Union.
During the subsidy period, literature teachers, when going to class, either wore plastic sandals of all kinds, or rubber sandals, or even wore a pair of sandals like Mr. Khoa. Only Mr. Dinh Van Duc, Mr. Nguyen Phan Canh, Mr. Do Ngoan, Mr. Nguyen Lai, and later, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Nguyen Duc Dan also wore high-class leather shoes. In September 1981, I went with Mr. Nguyen Duy Chinh and Mr. Tran Hinh to visit Mr. Bui Viet Thang's house. We saw him wearing a pair of fashionable leather shoes. We all looked at him as if he were a wonder. When we asked, we found out that Mr. Thang's wife had just returned from a business trip to Sweden and bought them for her husband.
After a brief meeting, about two weeks later, when the Faculty mobilized teachers to repair the volleyball court and dig a drainage ditch next to the water spinach field near the dining hall, I met and became acquainted with Mr. Dinh Van Duc. That year, he was only 35 years old, had just defended his PhD thesis, and had just returned to work. I secretly admired his face when he talked to everyone during the break and felt as if he had gathered all the quintessence of Vietnamese intellectuals trained in the socialist Soviet Union. With a soft, charming voice and a smile always present on his youthful face, he made the young cadres fascinated and although no one said it, it was certain that everyone was "dreaming of Russia".
Like Mr. Nguyen Kim Dinh, Mr. Dinh Van Duc talked about Russia with boundless love. Through the stories he told, I understood that he lived his life to the fullest during his years in Russia, visited many places, met many friends, and had many memories of the most brilliant years of his life. And especially, he read a lot of Russian books, from professional books to literature books. It can be said that he did not waste a single "inch of time", leaving never to return, as the ancients said "an inch of time is worth a thousand times, an inch of gold is hard to sell an inch of time - an inch of gold is worth a thousand times, a half-century has to go somewhere - a half-century has to go somewhere".
In those years, while we, like Tran Hinh, Nguyen Huu Dat, Tran Ngoc Vuong..., including Bui Viet Thang, Mai Ngoc Chu, Pham Gia Lam, Tran Nho Thin, Pham Quang Long, were still considered "overage" cadres, Dinh Van Duc was able to sit at the same table with the elders in the department. When meeting, the young cadres often walked lightly and spoke softly, while the teachers spoke frankly, and all of them spoke very well.
It must be said that the language of our teachers, like Phan Boi Chau in the funeral oration of Phan Chu Trinh, is "Three inches of tongue, sword, gun, the authorities look at the wind with fear - One feather, both drum and gong, the door of democracy lights the lamp to shine more brightly". I still remember, in 1980, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Party, there was a meeting of non-party cadres, following the policy of the superiors, to give suggestions to party members. While everyone was silent, Mr. Phan Cu De stood up, not raising his voice, but very meaningful: "I have a small opinion that, currently, many party members in our department are about ten years older than Ma Giam Sinh but do not want to do science!". Everyone applauded in unison.
After Mr. De finished speaking, he turned back to me and told me to sit in the back seat: "You are a young cadre, so be bold and say something." Because I was passive and timid, I did not dare to touch on anything that was within the scope of the Party cell, so I had to make up for it by saying a few harmless sentences as if I had attended the meeting.
Meanwhile, Mr. Dinh Van Duc, in another meeting of the faculty, spoke about the organizational aspect: "Look, comrades, our faculty leaders at this time are not in the country, they lead us from overseas."
Another student, Nguyen Truong Phuoc from the Faculty of Literature, a student whose thesis was led by Mr. Dinh on Mayakovsky, was a rather thorny announcer for Television at that time. His reading of the weekly news and comments to Party members was both sharp and interesting.
He invited me to visit his house, he gave me the house number, drew a map, and told me how to get there, which was a very Russian gesture when giving directions. Duc's family lived in a one-story house next to house number 10 Nguyen Che Nghia Street of Mr. Nguyen Khac Vien, who later became the former mayor of Hanoi and had some moves to change it, causing quite a bit of scandal in the press.
In Hanoi, in my opinion, it is a very beautiful and quiet street, it connects two big streets, Ham Long and Tran Hung Dao, never flooded, very little noise and when needed, it is very convenient to go to Hoan Kiem Lake or to Ba Dinh center.
When visiting Duc's house, the best thing was the openness and the unsophisticated conversation, so I took advantage of the time to go to his house, sometimes to give my monthly salary to Mr. Khoa, only a few hundred meters away; sometimes to go to the library and stop by for tea. It must be said that he had a wonderful childhood memory, he knew by heart the nursery rhymes and elementary school songs from when his grandfather was a teacher; and as for poems and stories from high school, wherever they were mentioned, he remembered them.
In his room, everything is simple, small, suitable for the area of ​​use, but very convenient. In particular, I noticed a small altar, hanging on the left corner of the wall. On that altar, there is only a picture of Buddha and a tray of water and fruits, but it looks very solemn, it reflects that the owner is a very careful and respectful person.
In 1981, when his wife, Hau, was studying Bulgarian at Thanh Xuan University of Foreign Languages ​​to prepare for her postgraduate studies, he occasionally sent me gifts, sometimes a package of Ba Dinh tea, sometimes a box of jam, sometimes a bag of Hai Ha candy. He said people gave it to me, but I didn't use it, so I sent it to my uncle.
The time my one-year-old baby had a fever, he hurriedly cycled with me to Mai Huong Alley near the old Bach Mai cinema to ask Doctor Hien, his wife's sister, to come and examine him. He was always dedicated and thoughtful in everything he did for himself and for everyone he helped.
Around the end of 1988, the beginning of 1989, when he returned from Japan, he came to my house on a light blue Chanel scooter with a basket attached. Like Mr. Nguyen Cao Dam who had returned from Japan a few years before him, he talked about Japan enthusiastically, praising the material civilization of the Land of the Rising Sun, but I still felt that in his story and expression there was not the same deep and affectionate affection as when he spoke about Russia.
When he no longer lived on Nguyen Che Nghia Street, but moved to A1 in Trung Tu Collective Housing Area, I still occasionally visited his new house because it was very convenient. The last time in the 20th century, I visited him after Tet, in February 1989. He showed me two treasures he brought back from Japan, which were a clock with a voice that struck the hour and an automatic camera using Kodak 200 film. I still have the color photo he took with that camera, which he printed out for me, in front of which was a vase of purple gladiolus, on the wall was a Dong Ho calendar and above it was a Buddhist altar.
From then on, I was gone forever. After many disasters befalling me, it took me nearly ten years to arrange to return to Hanoi.
I rode my motorbike to Cu Loc Street to visit him. I brought him a Golden Autumn Russian calendar, I secretly believed he would like it very much. Indeed, he stood still before the majestic and poetic Russian natural landscape, reminding him of his beautiful youth, the place he left at the end of 1978 and never returned to.
It was not until another decade later that I returned home, on Tet holiday, with Mr. Tran Hinh, but Mr. Duc returned to Thanh Hoa, I called and talked to him for quite a while and made an appointment to meet him next year.

Two years ago, when I heard that Dinh Van Duc was seriously ill, I was in a life-threatening situation and had to seek treatment for nearly a year. I asked Pham Thanh Hung to call me to inquire about my condition and wanted his phone number to contact me, but Hung said that Duc had been admitted to the French-Vietnamese Hospital for treatment and would pass on his regards later, but now no one would let him pick up the phone.
I called my acquaintances, everyone sighed and worried about Duc's health.
But with extraordinary inner strength and very good treatment conditions at the hospital, Mr. Duc escaped the scythe of death and returned to life in a spectacular way. He still reads books, writes articles and surfs Facebook regularly, still comments very wittily and sincerely. That is the measure of health and intelligence, it proves that he has completely recovered like a miracle.
From far away, I still imagine him as the first day I met him, he appeared before me as a fair-skinned scholar, wearing brown leather shoes and a bright smile.