The Ragworm Season of Tu Ky

The twentieth of the ninth month, the fifth of the tenth month.

That saying holds only dates. It names no creature, no hour, not even a year.

By the lunar calendar, those two dates lie only about half a month apart. The sky itself measures that stretch. On the night of the twentieth, the moon is already waning. Each night it grows thinner. Then come the last nights of the month, fully dark and moonless. Early in the tenth month, a new moon peeks out, a curve as thin as a thread. The moon goes out and kindles again exactly once, and then the fifth of the tenth month arrives.

People of the northern delta repeat that saying to remember the days when the rươi leave their nests. Rươi are small creatures of the ragworm family. They live all year in the mud of the river bed, or under flooded rice fields. They stay where river water meets the tide. The water there is neither fresh nor salty, and people call it brackish. No one can farm or breed rươi. They come on their own, and each year they rise only with a few tides.

The saying is only a few words, yet each person hears it differently. Some people take it as two set dates. The rươi rise on the twentieth of the ninth month, then again on the fifth of the tenth. Others take it to mean that the rươi rise in great numbers on the days between those two marks. A few also say the words in a different order. It is the experience of earlier generations, passed from mouth to mouth.

Tứ Kỳ lies in what was once Hải Dương. Today that land belongs to Hải Phòng. On the bank of the Thái Bình River, an older farmer keeps a rươi field. The river brings silt and fresh water to meet the tide. The rươi here are plump, with short legs, and they are known for tasting far better.

The people of Tứ Kỳ say the rươi come in the ninth month, through the tenth, and on into the eleventh. Those who work the rươi, like this farmer, also find they often rise on the last and first nights of a month.

An old folk verse goes: When will the tenth month come, with the rice bowl white and the rươi bowl full. Once the rice is harvested and the first cold of early winter sets in, it is the turn of the rươi in the mud.

Rươi can live only where things are clean. That is why the farmer plants just one rice crop a year, with no chemical sprays or fertilizer, so that the rươi will stay. At the end of the ninth month, the farmer goes out to watch the field. The rươi rise in numbers when the weather turns and rain is near. The farmer knows the day but not the hour, so there is nothing to do but wait. Then one afternoon, the air turns chilly. Gray clouds close over the sky, and a fine drizzle drifts down.

The tide comes in. At the sluice gate, the farmer turns a winch, and a chain hauls the gate slowly upward. River water follows the tide into the field, to call the rươi up.

Then comes the waiting. As dusk falls, the rươi begin to push up out of the earth.

Night comes. The farmer carries a lamp to the edge of the field and shines it on the water, to see how many rươi have risen. In the circle of lamplight, the rươi swim up to the surface. The light shows the little creatures clearly, their bodies in many segments. Along each body run countless fine threads that move it through the water. Some are pink, some pale green, some light brown, and some white.

Slowly the surface of the field turns red, until a whole stretch of it is red.

The ones swimming in that light, people still say, are only the back part of the rươi. When the season comes, that part grows full and plump, breaks away, and floats to the surface. The front part, a small head with large eyes, stays behind in the burrow and slowly grows a new tail. How true that is, no one yet fully knows. People only know that the rươi rise with the moon, with the tides, and with the turn of the weather.

The farmer checks with the lamp a few more times. On some nights, the rươi keep rising until nearly dawn. But once they have risen, if the wait runs too long, they die. Only when enough have come up does the farmer open the sluice, and very slowly. If the water drains too fast, the rươi get stuck in the soil.

At the mouth of the sluice, the farmer has already tied a long net bag, shaped like a tube. The water flows through, and the rươi drift into the belly of the net. The farmer tips them out into a basin, sifts them clean, and packs them in ice.

At first light, the iced batches of Tứ Kỳ rươi are already on the road to Hanoi, still perfectly fresh. Rươi do not live in Hanoi. Yet Hanoi has a dish called chả rươi, and even a street that carries the name Hàng Rươi.

In the countryside, people braise rươi, or roll them up in lá lốt, the heart-shaped leaf of a plant of the pepper family. In a Hanoi kitchen, someone in the family puts the rươi in a basin and changes the water several times. The cook washes them gently so they do not break, stirring lightly with chopsticks. Then the rươi are mixed with minced pork, egg, dill, onion, and a little peel from a strong-smelling kind of mandarin orange. Only a little, because too much makes the dish bitter. Everything is done with a light hand, and only then does the pan go on the stove for a quick fry.

On the night of the fifth of the tenth month, the thin new moon has already leaned toward the west. Beside the Thái Bình River, the farmer's lamp shines down on the field once more.

All year long the farmer keeps the field water clean, and the rươi give back the nights when the moon goes out and kindles again.