Free The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

of all the people in the building. He had originally been sentenced to death, then had that reduced to a life sentence, then to twenty years. Bao didn't look like a criminal. His many years as a prisoner had turned him into a devout, religious man. Only a short time after being released this formerly dangerous convict surprised his fellow apartment-dwellers with many acts of kindness, and kind helpful words. The only reservation was his obvious sadness, betrayed by his deep, sad eyes. When he looked sad everyone felt sorry for him.
    Even such a tiny stream of life, running through this apartment building, contained so many waterfalls, so many cliffs, so many eddies and whirlpools. Children were born to life, sprouted like mushrooms after a shower of rain, grew up, became adults. The adults grew old, some of them falling away every year. Generation after generation, like the waves of the sea.
    Last summer, old Du—the great barber of Hanoi—had died in his ninety-seventh year. He was the last survivor of the prewar generation known to Kien.
    "No one, neither the Genie of Jade nor the King of Hell, will allow me to live the last three years of my own century," his loud voice had declared. He had tried to make a joke of it when Kien came visiting him. "Please write a play for me, entitled The Barber of Hanoi. I'll come up from hell to see the first performance."
    He had been a barber from the time when Hanoi gentlemen followed the ancient Chinese custom and wore-their hair braided into queues. "These days they call them pigtails, but that would have been an insult. Queues denoted authority and culture," he had said. "Under my hands three hundred thousand heads and faces have been beautified, turned from messy and rough to tidy and perfumed. Under my sculptor's hands, rough stone is turned into beautiful statues."
    Before the war his children, his grandchildren, and all his great-grandchildren were gathered around him in one big family, and although not one of them followed in his footsteps as a barber everyone enjoyed his influence and his style as a raconteur. He worked hard, creating a large, kind family, all pleasant and fun-loving. In his childhood memories Kien sees old Du's scissors and hears the snip, snip, snip, as Du tells his funny stories, interspersed with bars from the Marseillaise, sung out of tune.
    For Kien, the most attractive, persistent echo of the past is the whisper of ordinary life, not the thunder of war, even though the sounds of ordinary life were washed away totally during the long storms of war. The prewar peace and the postwar peace were in such contrast.
    It is the whispers of friends and ordinary people now attempting ordinary peacetime pursuits which are the most horrifying. Like the case of Father Du, who presided over a very large and happily noisy family. Today he is the only living male. Like Huynh, the tram driver, whose three sons all died on the battlefield. Like Sinh, wounded in the spine, more dead than alive until he finally died where he had lain for so long.
    The spirits of all those killed in the war will remain with Kien beyond all political consequences of the war.
    So many friends of the same age have long since departed, never to return. Their houses are still here in Hanoi, their images part of them. Their images also endure in the faces of the new generation.

    Kien remembers Hanh, a single girl who lived in the prewar days in the small room close to the stairs, a room which now belongs to Mr. Su. Hardly anyone now remembers why Hanh left, or when.
    Hanh was older than Kien.When he was very young he would see men quiver with lust when Hanh walked by. They would fight each other to get close to her door. The ones on Hanh's side of the street tried to fight those from the even-numbered houses across the street to stop them from encroaching on their territory, meaning the doorways on the odd-numbered side, where Hanh would walk by at least twice a day. Every time she passed,