A country hot boy. Short story by Hoang Anh Ngoc translated from Vietnamese by NGUYEN Thi Thuy An

Hót boi nông thôn

De Hoàng Anh Ngọc





A country hot boy

Translated from the Vietnamese by NGUYEN Thi Thuy An





I like clean houses. That the beds are well made, that the teapot and cups are drained, without brown tea stains. That the glasses are clean, with no trace of limescale or bad smell. Especially in the kitchen, my fear is that the gas stove will be greasy, the colander with wilted or even decomposed vegetable leaves, the lid of the rice cooker blackened with handprints, with dried grains of rice all around and the bottom moldy. I'm also repulsed by the sink full of vegetables, bits of meat and fruit peelings, which have been there for weeks or even longer.



Clean houses aren't necessarily pretty. Many of the houses in town are beautifully built, but inside, you're swimming in a sea of garbage. The house of an acquaintance of mine is a good example. As soon as you enter the living room, the lingering smell of grease from the kitchen catches your nose, followed by all those dirty dishes on the table and in the sink. To get to the kitchen, you first have to get past all kinds of toys, then a whole heap of mangoes, watermelons, noodle bags and plastic bags in a total mess. It's hard to tell whether the clothes for adults and children crumpled up on the sofa are dirty or clean (they probably aren't, since she doesn't pick them up). In the toilet, the situation doesn't improve: on the plastic seat, drops of yellowish urine undoubtedly came from the four-year-old boy who doesn't yet know how to pee properly; wet panties lying on the shower head drip onto the enamel, whose white color has turned into a sad color of rice soup with giblets. Her house is no exception.



I don't dare say I've been in many houses in town. Since I don't work for a company, I don't have many friends or colleagues. But among the houses I've been in, very few are really clean and tidy. In the countryside, it's even rarer. That's why this clean house made such an impression on me.



The hostess of this house, in her seventies, lives here with her youngest son, in his thirties. I met this man on the way to the village, looking for his house, in the company of an agricultural executive from the research center. At first glance, he was wearing a large helmet, and I called him Uncle, not being able to make out his features. But when we reached the courtyard of his house, he took off the helmet and "appeared in his true form" (a common expression in fairy tales) a handsome, sturdy yet charming man with well-tanned skin that testifies to strength and contrasts with his smile full of kindness.



It's hot and heavy. I hasten to remove my shoes and enter the house. As the flower-patterned floor tiles are clean, I resign myself to leaving my shoes in the courtyard, certain that they will be soaked by the rain. On the edge of the bed, my mother listens to our conversation, sometimes even joining in. After five minutes, her son has to leave for a while on business elsewhere. I notice that he has put my shoes and my French friend Juliette's flip-flops on the veranda, out of the rain.



Mother takes over the conversation. She makes no secret of the pride she feels for her son, talking about the farm (where she and her husband used to work), the cows, the grass, the corn and the rice. He takes care of the ten cows on his own, and also cuts wood for a carpenter's shop. Although he works hard, the cowshed at home is among the best in the village: the cows are beautiful and in good shape, the cowshed is very clean and the quality of the milk is guaranteed.
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It's easy to see that he's the best. Raising dairy cows is hard work. You have to get up early every day, around 4:30 a.m., to clean the barn, feed the cows, milk them, transport milk to the company's weighing station, then cut grass and fertilize the meadow. Not to mention growing rice and winter vegetables to provide more food for the cows in winter when grass is in short supply. Farming lasts from morning till night. Many families would like to increase their cow numbers, but are short of manpower. In many households, the husband and wife, taking on the work in pairs and exhausting themselves to the extreme, manage to look after six cows at most. If they want to do more, they have to join forces with their families or neighbors. If they had the means, they could hire someone. As for him, although he's on his own, he can take care of a dozen cows.



In rural areas like this, good-looking men aren't very plentiful, so a handsome, dynamic man like him is even rarer. Already, he stands out from the average crowd and has become a rural hot boy. A hot boy (3B: hump, good, handsome) here is even easier to identify than in the city. Indeed, to recognize whether a man is really good, young girls have to rely on what he does, not on what he says. In the village, there's no need to look too far: what he's capable of doing is right there in front of you: the cows are fit and giving plenty of milk; in the courtyard, the lychee trees are heavy with fruit and added to that, a few hectares of corn are being harvested. Although the farm work is overwhelming, the house is always tidy and clean. What's more, he makes nice little gestures full of masculine gentleness, such as putting your shoes out of the rain, or hesitating to show us around the cowshed because he's too busy to clean it yet.
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While in town, out of every ten hot boys, there are self-proclaimed hot boys or those considered as such, one or two really are, as for the rest, everyone is hot in their own way. Some men hang out in offices waiting for the day's work to end, while others chat in sidewalk cafés or tea rooms, or on web forums - how can you identify a real one? Every boy wants to show what he's made of... a man, dynamic (which reassures us), he has great plans for the future, he's courageous. But what he's really done, we'll never know. Man is by nature a being of facade. In the office, he wears a mask. In front of beautiful girls, he wears another mask. In the city, young men wear many masks and hide part of their true personality. Even if you've fallen in love with him, you sometimes wonder: what's his real face? How can you avoid making the mistake of choosing a deceitful type? How do you know you're giving yourself to the right person? You can't, unless you trust your fragile instincts, but then the success rate is extremely low in this immense sea of people.



That's why I think it would be easier if I were a country girl. Certainly, lots of girls here want to be his wife. He's so handsome. A person with true beauty is very rare these days. If I were a village girl, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him. And I wouldn't need much either. I'd just have to be next to my beloved. I'd get up early in the morning and help him cut the grass and clean the stable. I'd clean the house and cook for him and his mother. She won't complain much because I'm tidy. I know how to behave and I'm not naughty or lazy. If I were a girl born and bred in the countryside, and all I knew of my life was the rice paddy and the vegetable garden, what could be more wonderful than to find a man like that? Has there ever been a more exciting subject than strong, handsome, dynamic men? As soon as we see them, we women go completely crazy. It reminds me of the story of Chí Phèo, when he was still a human being, the third wife of Ba Kien ordered him to massage her legs, then higher and higher. There's nothing shocking about this story, it's quite logical.



His obvious manliness has had a distinctly positive effect on our conversation, Juliette and I are all happy and comfortable even with a power cut and it being terribly hot. And with the visit of two girls like us, both mother and son feel invigorated. Enthusiastically, they are so absorbed in the conversation with the executive (while I converse with Juliette), that they are surprised and silent when I interrupt them. But in reality, it's Juliette who wants to know about the family's future plans (I almost burst out laughing when I saw their eyes widen at the sentence I translated). The mother bursts out laughing, spreading her ten fingers, bending them and spreading them again. She says she'll buy twenty more cows if her son marries this year. He becomes modest, smiles sweetly to defend himself: "My mother is joking, you mustn't believe her". Then, on both the French and Vietnamese sides, the conversation resumes merrily.



That day, thanks to my encounter with this man, I found the atmosphere radiant and airy, despite the drizzle. When you're unhappy in life, beautiful positive things make life less sad. I thought I was the only one, but Juliette is also bewildered by this handsome man. Sitting on the back of my motorcycle, she suddenly asks me: "Do you think it's strange? That a man like him isn't married yet? He's not bad-looking at all? And it's the first time after working together for over a month that Juliette, a discreet and shy girl, asks me about love, the Vietnamese idea of love, marriage and lots of other intimate things. The two of us eat yoghurt and chat about everything. I can't remember what stories we told, only Juliette's phrase: "It's too hard to be a woman". This phrase has no connection with what I've just told above.
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