The Story of Con Tui

In a small forge, a pair of hands is always at work, and no one ever looks at them.

Those hands grip the handle of the bellows and pull it down, then push it up, down and up again. With each pull, the charcoal in the forge flares red, then dims, then glows red again. The smith stands on the other side, hammer in hand, his eyes fixed on the burning piece of iron. Everyone who stops by the forge watches the hammer. Few watch the hands at the bellows.

Those hands belong to a young man named Con Tưi.

This is a story of the Cơ Tu people. The Cơ Tu are a people who live mainly in central Vietnam, near the border with Laos. For generations they have lived in the mountains of Tây Giang and Nam Giang. They have lived in Đông Giang too. That land is now part of the city of Da Nang. One of their hamlets is Arớh, in Tây Giang commune. A man lives there whom the whole area calls Elder Bríu Pố. He is one of those who still keep the old stories of his ancestors, and he carves them into wood so the young can see them. The story of Con Tưi is one of the stories he tells. The Cơ Tu tell it to answer a question that people ask again every afternoon when rain is on the way. They wonder why, before a really heavy rain, a sudden gust of wind blows up first, and only then a long roll of thunder sounds overhead.

Their answer begins in a place no one would expect. At the forge.

A Cơ Tu forge is built of earth, and its top dips down like the palm of a hand. The charcoal burned in it comes from a kind of forest wood. It smolders, yet it gets hotter than 1,000 degrees Celsius. Forging takes two people. One holds the hammer, and one works the bellows. The one at the bellows cannot rest. When the air stops, the fire dies down. When the fire dies down, the iron cools. And once the iron has cooled, no amount of hammering will shape it.

That forge makes the knives, the machetes and the hoes for the whole village. Every blade must go through the file and over the whetstone before it gets a handle of buffalo horn. Whenever the forge is lit, the children of the hamlet gather to stand and watch. That is also when the seasoned smith passes his craft on to the young.

Con Tưi grew up to the sound of that hammer. He lived with his uncle. The two of them were smiths for the whole village, and yet their home was very poor, and they had to count every meal. He was gentle, and cleverer than people thought. In the village, when people spoke of the two smiths, they spoke of the uncle. The nephew was like a shadow beside the forge. He was always there, but no one expected anything of him.

Then, for a while, the uncle forged something strange.

It was not a knife for the hillside fields. Nor was it a machete for clearing grass. He forged a long blade with a broad face. It was as wide as a whole banana leaf. When it was finished, he stood it against the wall. And there it stood for a long time.

Then one day, Con Tưi walked up along the stream.

He was not looking for anything. The story says he simply walked, and by chance he came to a strange place. It was not a place where people could live. It was the lair of a serpent. And there were two young women there, both of them very beautiful.

This was not the kind of snake that slides through the bushes, the kind people meet in the fields. The Cơ Tu call it Gur ga'yang, the giant serpent spirit. The elders say it lived in the sky, and that it flew down. It did not fly down to live among people. It came down to harm the villagers.

Con Tưi went home. He did not shout, and he did not run to call anyone. He walked into the house, lifted the blade as wide as a banana leaf down from the wall, and went back up toward the stream. He went alone. Behind him, no hands were left on the bellows. The charcoal in the forge slowly went dark.

The villagers did not see the fight. They only saw the sky. But what they saw that day can still be seen, on afternoons when a very heavy rain is on the way.

The bright day suddenly turned dark. Clouds piled in from the mountains, thick and low. Then a gust of wind tore through, the kind that bends a whole stretch of forest at once, and it rushed on along the stream. Right after the wind came a boom overhead, long and slow, rolling from one mountaintop to the next.

The Cơ Tu say that sound was the tail of the serpent spirit thrashing. It thrashed because it was in pain. It was in pain because somewhere up there, the young man from the bellows at the forge stood between it and his village. In both arms he held a blade of iron as wide as a banana leaf.

Then the wind slowly died away, the boom rolled off toward the mountains, and the rain poured down. The rest happened beyond the sight of the village.

Con Tưi won that fight. He led the two young women out of that place, and the three of them came down the mountain together, following the stream back to the village. The sky above the village was only sky again. The whole village lived in peace and happiness, as it had before.

But one thing in the village had changed.

Before, when the forge was lit, people watched the hammer. After that day, they watched the hands at the bellows too. The person the whole village walks past every day might be the very one who steps out ahead of everyone.

As for the serpent, it did not vanish from Cơ Tu life. It stayed, only in a different way. In a Cơ Tu hamlet, everyone gathers in the gươl. On the posts and the roof beams of the gươl, many patterns are carved into the wood, and the most familiar of them all is the serpent. It is linked to Ka'xanh, a god in the beliefs of the Cơ Tu.

In Arớh, Elder Bríu Pố has carved more than 200 figures in relief on the wood of the gươl. For this story he also carved a statue of its own, and he gave it the name Coon Tưi têch Gurgadang.

On any afternoon when a very heavy rain is on the way, anyone who stands in the yard for a moment will find that the wind still comes first. It gusts once, the leaves flip over to their white side, dust blows sideways across the yard, and the clothes on the line slap against each other.

Ever since then, whenever a long boom sounds overhead, Cơ Tu children know they are hearing the sound still rolling back from that fight. It is the sound of the tail of Gur ga'yang, somewhere very far away, up there. And down here, in a forge built of earth, the charcoal still flares red and dims in time with a pair of hands at the bellows. Only now, whenever the forge is lit, the whole village knows which way to look.