Fourth Uncle in the Mountain: The Remarkable Legacy of a Buddhist Itinerant Doctor in Vietnam - Softcover

Pivar, Marjorie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312314310 ISBN 13: 9780312314316

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2006

Synopsis

Set during the French and American wars in South Vietnam, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is the true story of an orphan, Quang Van Nguyen, adopted by a sixty-four-year-old monk, Thau, who carries great responsibility for his people as a barefoot doctor. Thau manages against all odds to raise his son to follow in his footsteps and in doing so saves him, as well as a part of Vietnam's esoteric knowledge from the Vietnam holocaust. Thau is wanted by the French regime and occasionally must flee in to the jungle, where he is perfectly at home living among the animals. As wise and resourceful as Thau is, he meets his match in his mischievous son. Quang is more interested in learning Cambodian sorcery and martial arts than in developing his skills and wisdom according to his father's plan. Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is an odyssey of a single-father folk hero and his foundling son in a land ravaged by the atrocities of war. It is a classic story complete with humor, tragedy, and insight, from a country where ghosts and magic are real.

About this title

About the Author:

Quang Van Nguyen is the son of one of South Vietnam's most beloved spiritual masters, Thau Van Nguyen. Quang became a Buddhist abbot before fleeing Vietnam in 1987. He now lives in the United States.

Marjorie Pivar has worked for the past twenty years as a Shiatsu therapist in the field of alternative medicine. She lives in Vermont.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One
My Father Comes for Me

July 1959

Cai Mon Village, Mekong Delta, South Vietnam

One hot day in July, I looked up at the flesh-eating sun and taunted, “I can lick you with a flick of my hand. Oh, you don’t believe me? Well, didn’t you know that my father is the most powerful sorcerer in Vietnam? He can go to the forbidden mountain anytime he wants to. Watch out, I’m going to squash you like a lightning bug.” I sucked in my breath so strong that I sucked the storm clouds closer and closer together until they banged into each other and snuffed out the fire-breather. They crashed together a second time and split themselves open like fish bellies full of roe and sprayed me with their wet bullets until they coated me in armor.

Our ducks appeared around my legs looking for worms, but I found them first and put them into my calabash gourd. I grabbed my net and my line and took off down the path to meet my friends. It was good fishing weather.

I was going to fish by the big bridge about half a mile from my house. It wasn’t really bigger than any other bridge, it was just longer because it crossed over the widest river in Cai Mon. It was a kind of meeting place. In the blurry distance I thought I saw my father coming across the bridge. He didn’t come to visit very often, only six or seven times a year.

I ran closer and peered at him through the raindrops. He was carrying so many packages that he could barely hold on to the handrail. Someone who didn’t know who he was might have been alarmed to see an old monk balancing along a single bamboo pole in the rain with so many things in his arms, but I was never afraid for my father, even though he was older than a grandfather.

I wondered what kind of food he brought for us this time. He didn’t eat much meat, but sometimes he brought sections of a roasted pig that he had received as payment for chanting at a funeral. He liked to bring me special treats we couldn’t get in Cai Mon, like French butter cookies and coconut caramel and sugarcane rock candy. This time he was carrying more than usual. It was too good to be true. My mouth started watering. He called out to me, “Quang, hurry, take this before it falls into the river.”

He handed me two bamboo birdcages full of birds. In his arms were three more cages. He must have just bought them from a birdcatcher at the Cai Mon bus stop.

“I didn’t bring you any presents this time, because today I am taking you home with me.”

“Can I go with you another time? Trung’s father said that Trung and I could help him on his fishing boat this week.” They fished on the Mekong and sometimes on the ocean. The best part was that on the way home Trung’s father grilled up all the fish, lobsters, and shrimp we could eat.

“I don’t think so, son.”

We walked in single file back to the house. We always walked in single file so people going the other way could have room to pass on foot, bicycle, or motorbike. Nobody liked to step into the tall grass just in case a Communist guerrilla or a French soldier had put a land mine there overnight. I had to walk fast to keep up with my father.

A big canal ran through my aunt’s backyard. We kept our boat moored to a tall willow tree that shaded the house. My favorite tree was in the front yard. It was a trung ca tree.

Aunt Gioi (pronounced Yoi) used the boat to stock up on provisions for her store. It would take us a long time to get to the market because she would always go on the smaller rivers, in order to avoid the big boats and ships on the Mekong River. Aunt Gioi told me that when she was a girl in Cai Mon, it was dangerous to go on the smaller rivers because of the crocodiles. She said that the oldest and wisest ones could hold on to the rushes, and whack you right out of your boat with their tails and gobble you up.

Even though Aunt Gioi had enough money to have a French-style house, she built a small thatched house with a dirt floor. You could say the dirt floor was one of the fanciest things about her house, because she had it prepared with sea salt and packed down very hard to keep the insects out. It was the color of ground coffee. Your feet would get muddy if they were wet. My aunt didn’t mind me playing on the floor and getting my clothes all dirty even though she made them all and washed them herself.

Although she could have hired help, she didn’t trust anyone in her house. She used to have people doing the housework and minding the store, but she was robbed many times. What they were really after were her gold teeth. All but four of my aunt’s teeth were made of gold. She would take them out after meals to wash them. Every night before going to bed, she hid them carefully in case someone was looking in the window. She was afraid someone might try to sneak in while she was asleep and steal them right out of her mouth.

My aunt had no children of her own. After her husband died, she adopted a two-year-old orphan girl. When her daughter was eighteen years old, she robbed my aunt. The girl knew where my aunt kept her valuables buried under the floor. One day she came with her boyfriend, and they dug up all her money and jewelry. My aunt forgave her, but the girl kept stealing money until my aunt had to tell her to leave. That broke my aunt’s heart because her daughter never came back home.

My aunt was seventy-three, but still strong like my father. Even though she was old, she still liked to look beautiful. Her husband had been a Catholic with a good job in the government. My aunt got used to being with French people and wearing French makeup. She colored her hair black and even wore a hairpiece to fill out her skimpy bun. If she ran out of makeup, she would lick red incense paper and rub it onto her cheeks and lips.

“What happened to the trung ca tree?” My father stopped short and was staring in disbelief at our missing tree. It was a shocking sight. Our house looked as if it was missing a vital organ. Our giant trung ca tree had been reduced to a stump about two feet high and four feet wide.

My aunt was always spanking me for climbing that tree, but I did it anyway. She didn’t understand that tree was my mother, who would never drop me. I could climb to the top on a moonless night in the fog. I felt her strong, caressing arms against my body as I slid along her bark like a slippery eel so fast that she could never catch me. I was lucky to have a trung ca tree for my mother, because she was the wealthiest tree of all. She had many hidden chambers where she hung her jewels for me to eat all year round.

My trung ca tree was the tallest in our neighborhood. People treasured them, because they provided the thickest shade. I could sit at the top and throw stones at our neighbors’ thatched roofs to warn the nestling mice that a green snake might be approaching. I could see the canals being sucked into the great dragon river and then see the water rising up again, later in the day, filled with more fish. From up there, I could see the blue smoke of the cooking fires and smell which of our neighbors were having fish for dinner and which of them were having just rice.

One evening I came home after helping our neighbors with their rice harvest and saw my tree sprawled across the yard. At first I thought it had been hit by a bomb. Sometimes the French hit our houses by mistake. They were bombing the jungle all around Cai Mon to kill the Communists who were hiding there. The Communists had already kicked the French out of the north and were trying to get us southerners to finish the job. But southerners are different; we like religion more than politics.

I screamed for Aunt Gioi, because I thought she was dead. She came running out of the kitchen clutching a handful of noodles. She looked at me and said sadly, “You climbed too high, Quang, I told you many times.” It was true. She told me every day and I never listened.

I didn’t cry when I saw Tien, my favorite storyteller, lying in his blood after a bomb hit his shelter. But when I saw my tree-mother’s face pressed into the dust, straining to turn her head for a breath of air, the tears swarmed down my face like fire ants and bit into my sunburned cheeks.

I made contact with her contorted limbs and tried to find my place again. She couldn’t hold me anymore. I turned my eyes respectfully away from her splayed limbs.

It took many days for the neighbors to cut her up and carry her away. I didn’t ask where they were taking her.

“Quang, what happened to the tree?” my father repeated.

“Aunt Gioi gave it to the neighbors, because she was afraid I would fall.”

My father set the finches, canaries, kingfishers, and lorikeets down under the jackfruit tree. Birdcatchers catch all kind of birds and sell them to people who roast them to eat. The rain had stopped and the mists rose up from the puddles like the spirits of fallen soldiers. My father’s voice wafted through the muggy air like incense. He always chanted for the birds before letting them go. He prayed for them to find their mates again and for Buddha to keep them safe.

I interrupted, “Ba, If I go with you, when will I come back home to Cai Mon?”

My father took me by my shoulders and looked into my eyes and said, “When you were just a baby and I couldn’t take care of you by myself, Aunt Gioi and I had made an agreement that you would live here with her until you were old enough to begin your education. You are nine years old now. It is time for you to begin your spiritual training and to learn about medicine. One day, you will become a healer and a medical doctor as your grandf...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0312314310
• ISBN 13: 9780312314316
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384