How Five Creatures Got Their Calls

On a summer night in the countryside, anyone who lies very still and listens will notice something strange. Out in the fields there is not just one call. There are many, rising from different places. One comes from the reeds along the bank. One comes from down on the water. One comes from far up on a distant hill. And one more, a rustling one, comes from right under the roof.

Stranger still, each of those calls sounds as if it were saying real words, a whole sentence. But every sentence is left unfinished. It gets halfway and trails off, as if someone had begun a sad story and could never bring it to an end.

People of old heard those sounds and told a story to explain them. What follows is a gentle retelling, adapted from that old tale and told in its own way. The tale says that those scattered calls in the night were once the words of a few friends who lived as one household.

In those days, the egret, the night heron, the cormorant, a bird called the dủ dỉ, and the francolin lived together as close as blood relatives. A little mouse joined them as well. They went out to the fields together to find food, and waded through the water together, feeling for small shrimp. Whenever they caught a basket of shrimp, they gathered round and shared it out evenly, so each got a portion. When there was plenty, they all ate their fill. When there was little, they all went hungry. As evening came, the whole group headed home, calling cheerfully to one another along a stretch of the river.

So they lived gently side by side through many seasons of rising and falling water. Each worked its own field, but what they owned they kept in common, and they trusted one another completely.

Then came a harvest when the friends gathered up the whole season's yield, to divide it into clear shares. The trouble was that most of them could not read or write, and could not tell one number from another. Only the mouse was quick, and knew how to write and count. So they gave the mouse the account book to keep. It would note who had taken how much and what was left, so that the sharing would be fair.

Everything should have gone smoothly. But the egret grew greedy. It quietly talked the mouse into keeping the book a little wrong, writing the egret's own shares smaller and its friends' shares larger. The mouse went along with it and bent over the book to change a few numbers. In one place where the book should have said 30, the mouse wrote 90 in its neatest hand.

When the day came to open the book and do the sums, everyone stared in dismay. The book said that the night heron, the cormorant, the dủ dỉ and the francolin had each taken more than their share, and now had to make it up. They had nothing to pay with but their fields and gardens. Sum by sum, almost all the land of the four passed into the hands of the egret. None of them could read the writing to argue, so they swallowed their sorrow and accepted it.

After that sad harvest, each went its own way. The household that had once been so full and happy scattered like a shoal of shrimp breaking apart.

The francolin had lost both field and garden, and had nowhere left to shelter. It wandered off alone, up into the high hills, and never came back. But even there, it could not forget the days when the friends crowded round to share their shrimp. So to this day, on the hillsides, the francolin still calls out its longing. Tiếc rổ tép đa đa. Tiếc rổ tép đa đa. The words mourn a lost basket of shrimp. The call sounds full of yearning, as if it will always miss the days when the friends were all together.

The cormorant lost even its very last share. It felt so wretched that it could not bear to face anyone, so it plunged into the water to hide. Every so often it comes up and lets out one startled cry. Thua rồi, ớ cộc. The words cry out that all is lost. Then it dives back under, as if ashamed to be seen.

The night heron lost its field and had nothing left to forage in. So it waited until dark, then slipped out to the fields of the egret to pick up the odd shrimp left behind. It only dared to feed at night, when everything else was asleep. As it flew, it called in a hoarse, rueful voice. Thua một vác. Thua một vác. The words say it has lost a whole load. The call sounds like a lament for a full burden that came up short.

The dủ dỉ sold off everything it owned. Its fields to the east and the west were gone, and in the end it had to work for hire. Once it had owned property, and now it had nothing. So in the night, the dủ dỉ still sighs aloud. Đông Tây tứ chí, bán hết. The words say that east and west, on all four sides, everything is sold. It is as if it still grieves for the land, bounded on four sides, that is no longer its own.

As for the mouse, who had held the pen and altered the book, it gained nothing at all. The land went to the egret, and the mouse was left with only remorse. It thought of its four old friends, who had lost everything because of its pen. It felt deeply ashamed, and could not look anyone in the face.

From then on, the mouse no longer dared to go out by day. It crept into dark holes, under houses, into rice bins, living alone and out of sight. Whenever it heard footsteps, or an old friend's voice drifting near, it darted off to hide. It could not bear to meet those it had made suffer. And in the dark, now and then, it gives a small, choked squeak. Chín chục. Chín chục. The words mean 90, the very number it once wrote wrongly. It has clung to the mouse ever since.

Only the egret lived at ease. The wide fields were all its own, and day after day it flew back and forth over plots that had once belonged to everyone. But it was alone in the empty fields, with no one to call out cheerfully as evening came. However wide the land, it only felt bare.

So tonight, when many calls drift in from the fields on every side, it is easy to tell whose they are. On the hill, the francolin still mourns its basket of shrimp. Down in the water, the cormorant cries that it has lost, then dives out of sight. The night heron, feeding in the dark, laments the load it lost. The dủ dỉ grieves for its fields to the east and the west. And somewhere in the dark, the mouse repeats the number 90 that it can never forget.

Those five calls rise by day and by night and break off, like five half-finished sentences from an old story. It is the story of a few friends who once shared one basket of shrimp. Because of a single book that was not honestly kept, they scattered, each to a different place. And they left behind, in the summer night, calls to one another that are never spoken in full.