Two Tall-Tale Tellers Meet

The road to the district market stretched on and on. On both sides lay fields of young rice, smooth and green all the way to the horizon. Sunlight poured gold over the dusty road. It was the quiet of midday, and the only sounds were the steady chirp of crickets and the soft thud of footsteps on the dry ground.

From one end of the road, a man came walking at an easy pace, leaning on a bamboo stick. From the other end, another man was drawing closer, a cloth bundle slung over his shoulder. Step by step they came nearer, until they met right at the banyan tree in the middle of the road. Both stopped there to sit and rest in the cool.

These two had never met, yet they shared exactly the same habit. It was the habit of telling a story a little bigger than the truth. Any fish they caught always grew one hand span longer in the telling. Any bunch of bananas they brought in from the garden always gained a few more hands. In the villages of old, neighbors had a teasing name for this habit. They called it nói dóc, which means telling tall tales. The trouble was that each man was quietly certain that in the whole region, he alone was the finest teller of tall tales.

Resting in the cool shade of the banyan, the two struck up a conversation. At first it was just idle talk, about the sun and the rain and how far the roads were. But before long, the old habit began to itch in both of them.

The man with the bundle cleared his throat and went first. He pointed toward a distant river glinting behind a row of bamboo, then began at his leisure.

"Well, friend, I have traveled here and there and seen a great many strange things. But the strangest thing of my whole life was a ship. Oh my, a ship so long that no one could ever imagine it."

The man with the stick raised his eyebrows with interest and asked how long this astonishing ship could possibly be. The man with the bundle saw his chance, and the more he told, the keener he grew.

"This long. A young man of exactly 20 stood at the bow and set off walking toward the stern. He walked and walked. By the time he reached the middle of the ship, where the mast stands, he looked back. His hair and beard had already turned as white as fine thread."

The man with the stick clicked his tongue and nodded, as if deeply impressed. The man with the bundle saw that his listener seemed to admire him. That pleased him even more, so he told the rest of it.

"And that young man still was not done. He kept trudging on toward the stern. He walked until his back was bent and his legs shook. Then he lay down and closed his eyes forever from old age. And still he had never caught sight of where the stern might be. Now that, friend, must be the longest ship under heaven."

The man with the stick heard him out and only smiled. He showed no surprise at all. He calmly stroked his chin, as if a long ship like that were nothing worth mentioning. The man with the bundle felt a little deflated. How strange, he thought. A story as huge as that, and this fellow's face does not even flicker.

As it turned out, the man with the stick had been waiting for exactly this moment. He unhurriedly laid his bamboo stick down, pointed up at the sky, and began to speak.

"That ship of yours is long indeed. But you have not seen anything yet. What I saw was a tree. A terribly tall tree. It was so tall that birds flying up past it tire their wings before they reach halfway up the trunk. And its top disappears right into the place where the white clouds drift by. No one can guess how much farther it reaches."

The man with the bundle burst out laughing, sure that his companion was just talking to win. He pressed him to say how tall this fearsome tree could really be. That was just what the man with the stick wanted, and he went on at an easy pace.

"Let me tell it properly. At the top of that tree, a bird had built its nest. One day the bird carelessly dropped a seed from the branches. The seed fell and fell. After falling a long way, it met rain and sun, and it sprouted. It took root right there in the middle of the sky. It grew into a young tree, flowering and bearing fruit like any other."

The man with the bundle heard this and his eyes went wide. The man with the stick carried on calmly, in a voice as firm as a nail driven into a post.

"That young tree grew up and bore fruit. The fruit dropped seeds, and the seeds grew into a grandchild tree. The grandchild tree bore fruit, and its seeds grew into a great-grandchild tree. And so it went, one generation of trees after another, a long line of seven generations. And yet the very first seed that fell from the top still had not touched the ground, my friend."

The man with the bundle was full of admiration, yet still a little sore inside. He could not bear to let his companion beat him so easily. So he fired back a challenge, meant to corner him once and for all.

"No tree in the world could be that absurdly tall. What kind of tree drops a seed that falls for seven generations and still does not reach the ground? A man who tells tall tales should keep them within some kind of reason."

The man with the stick had been waiting for exactly those words. He did not hurry to answer. He just looked at his companion for a while, letting the question hang in the midday sun. Then he smiled slyly and slowly turned the question around.

"Think about it, friend. If there were no tree in this world that tall."

He paused for a beat, deliberately leaving the sentence hanging right there. Then he finished it at his leisure.

"Then there would be nowhere to find enough timber to build that endless ship of yours."

The man with the bundle stopped short for a second at those words. Then, little by little, his face relaxed. So the tree that pierced the clouds was there all along to supply the timber for his own long ship. Two tall tales, told by two strangers, had fit together snugly, as if the two men had planned it all in advance.

At that point, both men saw it all at once. The man sitting across from each of them was no ordinary teller. Each had just met someone cut from the same cloth, someone who loved telling stories bigger than the truth, exactly like himself. They looked at each other, and without a word between them, both burst out laughing.

The two of them laughed helplessly under the banyan tree, laughed until tears ran down their faces, slapping each other on the shoulder. One praised how wonderfully long the other's ship was. The other admired how masterfully tall the first one's tree was. Neither would admit defeat, and neither had the heart to tell his friend he had lost. For both of them quietly understood something. In this life, meeting someone who could tell tall tales as well as oneself was no easy thing.

When they had rested enough, the two agreed to walk on together. They strolled to the district market, and the whole way they kept trading stories. From the ship they moved to the tree and back again, and every story grew a little bigger as they went. People at the market saw two strangers walking along, laughing and chatting merrily. They took them for old friends meeting again after many years.

Vietnamese grandparents have told this tale of the two tall-tale tellers for many generations, just for the fun of it. Every time it reaches the part about the tall tree grown for ship timber, everyone listening bursts out laughing all over again.

The road to the district market still stretches on and on as before. But since that midday, the sunlit, dusty road has carried two shadows walking side by side. They fade bit by bit behind the row of bamboo, and their laughter drifts far away on the wind.