Week Two: A Fool and His Gold
The Good-Luck Fish
In the tiny Vietnamese fishing village of Ben Tre Hôi the rains had finally ended, exiting far more quietly than the flash and crash of their arrival six months earlier. The villagers emerged from their bamboo-covered doorways, smiling at the sight of the season's last vibrant rainbow, which stood out in bold relief against the dark-clouded sky. When the sun finally pierced through the clouds to reflect brilliantly in the multitude of varying-sized pools left across the landscape, the scene looked much like a star-filled night sky brought to Earth.
Small puddles of ever changing, brightly colored water covered the ground like mirrored footprints as the children burst onto the road from their houses. Their laughter filled the streets again after long months of nothing but the monotonous pattering rain and echoing wind. Binh and his sister Cam raced down the road springing over and side-stepping as many puddles as possible.
“Binh!” his mother called. “Do not disturb the puddles where the good-luck fish hide!”
“Yes, Mother.”
Cam tugged on her older brother’s coat sleeve. He barely noticed in his hurry to find his friends. She tugged again.
“Little sister, what do you want?”
“What are good-luck fishes?” she asked, her hand still holding onto her brother’s sleeve.
“You mean ‘fish,’ not fishes. They’re enchanted fish that hide in the rain puddles. If you catch one and make a wish, the fish must grant it or you may take him home and cook him for dinner!” With that he raised his arms as if to scare Cam away.
“But, Binh, what is a wish?”
“Good question!” he laughed. “Thao! Pin! Come tell my ignorant sister what a wish is.”
Thao waved at her friend and ran across the road. Pin was right on her heels.
After some minutes, the four children had left the village in the distance. As they were walking down a puddle-strewn side road, something in one of the shimmering pools caught Pin’s eye. It was a beautifully glistening fish, perhaps a small koi or a very large beta. Upon closer inspection, however, Pin decided the fish looked a little like a mixture of both and a lot like neither. Its fins were full and fiery. Unfortunately for the fish, there was barely enough room in the puddle for it to gorgeously stretch out to its full length.
“Thao, I found a good-luck fish!” Pin shouted, pointing down at the pool. “Hurry! Come look before he disappears.”
The other three children ran to the puddle and peered in, each pair of small eyes squinting against the reflected light from the sun and the enchanted glow that illuminated within the fish. The fish billowed its fins and swished them majestically this way and that through the water of its tiny prison.
“Oh, look! He’s violet!” gushed Pin.
“Now he’s teal!” said Thao, pointing. “Wait, he’s red!”
“Turquoise. That’s turquoise!”
“Orange!”
“Indigo!”
The list went on and on. Every time the fish turned to move, his color changed and the children cried out the corresponding word to match the new color.
“Let’s catch him in your hat, Pin!” shouted Binh as he grabbed Pin’s hat.
“Good idea! And then we can take him home and eat him!” said Cam.
“No, Cam. We want to catch him so that he will grant our wishes,” explained Binh as he quickly lowered the hat into the puddle. The flash of fins and splash of rainwater from the puddle told the children that Binh had let the fish slip away.
“Binh, you never told me what a wish was!” Cam sighed.
“Oh, I’ll tell you, Cam,” said Thao taking her hand. “A wish is something that you want, but don’t have. I wish I had a nice big plate of cheo thöng to share with everyone.”
Before she could even close her eyes to imagine it, a large platter appeared before them, filled with mung beans, lotus seeds, potatoes, seaweed and coconut. It was drizzled lightly with sugar syrup.
“Thao, do you see that?” whispered Cam, still holding her hand.
“Binh, do you see it?” Thao whispered from the side of her mouth. She was trying desperately not to move, fearing the plate might be just an illusion.
Pin grabbed a handful of the dessert and stuck it in his mouth.
“And it tastes as good as it looks!” he declared.
Pin’s hat was forgotten in the puddle as the children surrounded the platter. They each took turns eating, delighting in the delicious flavor.
“But this means,” started Binh with his mouth still full of dessert, “the story is true. We have found a good-luck fish!”
He grabbed the hat and again tried to catch the beautiful fish. After several more attempts he succeeded. The children were speechless as he held the dripping wet hat high in the air.
“I wish for a kite!” Binh yelled. A large multicolored kite materialized before him, shaped like the fish.
“I wish for a new hat!” said Pin. Immediately a bright new silk hat appeared on his head.
“I wish for a new doll,” said Cam, squeezing her eyes tight. A doll appeared in her arms. She was made of delicate porcelain and her dress was iridescent, just like the fish’s fins. “I also wish for a pushchair, a dress to match my doll’s dress, and a new pair of shoes!”
“Slow down, Cam!” Binh laughed. “Let everyone get at least one wish before you get everything you want.”
Every item appeared out of nowhere. The children giggled and continued to add wish upon wish for several more minutes. Finally, having run out of ideas, Binh opened the hat and dropped the fish back into the puddle with a loud kerplunk.
“What’s wrong with him, Binh?” Cam asked. The fish seemed smaller, and his color wasn’t changing nearly as much.
“We must have held him out of the water for too long. He’ll be fine.” Binh beamed as he gathered up all the things he had wished.
“Binh,” started Thao. “I don’t think he is alright. I think he’s,” she paused for an instant and then mouthed, “d-y-i-n-g.”
“What does d-n-g-y mean?” asked Cam. She had misunderstood the characters*.
*Vietnamese uses characters instead of letters.
“Oh, it means that you’ll have to hurry home and tell your mother all about the good-luck fish!” said Pin.
“No!” exclaimed Binh. “But you should go home and wash your hands before supper, or mother will come looking for us.”
Cam put her doll into the pushcart and began to walk up the road towards home. She glanced back only once, but the others were smiling and waving.
“Maybe he’s just hungry,” guessed Pin. “I’ll give him some of my biscuit.”
The fish swirled around in the remaining puddle water, but its color did not improve. The children tried to feed it what remained of the cheo thöng. The bits of food floated in circles on the surface, but the fish refused to eat any of them.
“Binh, we should go get your mother,” said a worried looking Thao. “She’ll know what to do!”’
Pin nodded in agreement.
“She’ll be angry with me for hurting the good-luck fish,” Binh sighed. “It's best that we leave him here and go home. Perhaps tomorrow he will be gone and we won't have to think about it.”
Pin and Thao did not look convinced, but agreed to go home and hide all their wished for items until morning. They walked carefully up the main road of the village avoiding the remaining puddles, which still caught the dying evening sun and glittered this way and that.
“Remember,” said Binh, walking to the porch. “No one must discover what we have done.”
“Yes, Binh,” said Pin.
After a long pause Thao agreed, “Yes, Binh.”
Sometime later, when Binh arrived home, he threw his kite and other things under the porch. He noticed his sister had done the same with her wishes. Her shimmering dress lay abandoned and covered in mud beneath the pushchair’s back wheel. The doll looked at him with unblinking, unforgiving, eyes. He wondered what had become of her new shoes.
He removed his own shoes reluctantly and walked slowly into the house. The smells of peanut oil, ginger, and chamomile hung in the air. He wasn't hungry. The sweets had filled him up, but the thought that he had hurt a good-luck fish was making him feel genuinely ill. He looked around the small single room, but could not find his little sister. His mother was boiling water for tea and rice and cutting up vegetables.
“Mother, where is Cam?” he asked carefully.
“I thought she was with you and your friends. I didn’t see her come in, but I was in the garden looking for a nice cabbage for tonight’s meal. Perhaps she's under the porch again? I’ll go look.” And with that his mother stood up and began to walk to the door.
“No!” he shouted. “I mean, no thank you! It’s too muddy out there. I’ll find her. Stay here and rest.”
She eyed him suspiciously, but sat back down on the cushions. Picking up her parchment, she began to make a list of items to buy at the market the following morning.
“Your father will be home shortly with the fish.” Her words almost stopped him in his tracks. “Don’t be late for supper!”
“I won’t be long!”
And with that he was out the front door and down the steps to the road. He gave a thorough look under the porch, but Cam was not there. He scanned the other houses across the road, but she was nowhere to be seen. As he ran down the road a fresh breeze blew towards the village and he thought he heard her singing one of the old fisherman songs their father had taught them. It was a very sad song. He paused only long enough to make certain that it was her voice before he raced down the road towards the singing.
“Binh!” called Thao rushing down the road with Pin. “Please wait for us. We’ve been waiting behind your house. We watched Cam go down the road.”
Ignoring their calls, he sprinted as fast as he could back to the puddle that held the good-luck fish.
When he arrived Cam was sitting with her back to him, peering into the half-empty puddle. The splashing had stopped and the water was motionless. All that remained was a dark red tangle of fins and scales.
“Binh, how did we kill him?” Cam asked. Her back was still to Binh, but he knew she was crying.
He sat down beside her and slid his arm around her shoulders. She turned and cried into his chest. Her little hands were clenched tightly around her new shoes.
“I came to give them back,” she sobbed. “They were too beautiful. Too perfect. But not worth the life of the good-luck fish.”
A soft glowing light began to issue from the remains of the fish lying in the shallow puddle. It wrapped its way carefully around Cam’s small frame, continuing to grow until it surrounded Binh too. They both had their eyes shut tight with tears and didn't notice. Suddenly, Cam realized that she could no longer hear the birds singing.
“Binh,” she gasped, “what's happening?”
“I don’t know. Hold tight.”
A bright beam of light flashed from the good-luck fish into the air before them. The light hung in the air and began to change shape. As the colors grew more brilliant the form became more distinct. At last the beautiful form of the good-luck fish, with fins and billowing tail swaying in the crisp ocean breeze, emerged from the dusting of light just as Thao and Pin arrived breathless at the puddle.
“Now you understand, my little ones,” said a voice filled with wisdom and power, "that you should not think only of yourselves. Your wishes might have fed your village for a year, but you wished instead for selfish things that were nothing more than trinkets.”
Cam shivered and drew closer to her brother.
“Cam,” the fish called. “Fear not, I'm speaking to you now because you alone returned and offered to give back the most precious of your gifts in exchange for my life. You shall neither be forgotten nor ever forget me. None of you will.”
With that the fish’s spirit disappeared in a brilliant flash of colored lights like fireworks. Cam held onto her brother for a moment longer. The children walked home in absolute silence. Each wiped the tears from their faces and pretended to smile.
After dinner, when it had grown dark and they could hide their shame beneath the cold moonlit sky, they buried the remains of the good-luck fish in a deep hole, along with all of their misguided wishes.
In the tiny Vietnamese fishing village of Ben Tre Hôi the rains had finally ended, exiting far more quietly than the flash and crash of their arrival six months earlier. The villagers emerged from their bamboo-covered doorways, smiling at the sight of the season's last vibrant rainbow, which stood out in bold relief against the dark-clouded sky. When the sun finally pierced through the clouds to reflect brilliantly in the multitude of varying-sized pools left across the landscape, the scene looked much like a star-filled night sky brought to Earth.
Small puddles of ever changing, brightly colored water covered the ground like mirrored footprints as the children burst onto the road from their houses. Their laughter filled the streets again after long months of nothing but the monotonous pattering rain and echoing wind. Binh and his sister Cam raced down the road springing over and side-stepping as many puddles as possible.
“Binh!” his mother called. “Do not disturb the puddles where the good-luck fish hide!”
“Yes, Mother.”
Cam tugged on her older brother’s coat sleeve. He barely noticed in his hurry to find his friends. She tugged again.
“Little sister, what do you want?”
“What are good-luck fishes?” she asked, her hand still holding onto her brother’s sleeve.
“You mean ‘fish,’ not fishes. They’re enchanted fish that hide in the rain puddles. If you catch one and make a wish, the fish must grant it or you may take him home and cook him for dinner!” With that he raised his arms as if to scare Cam away.
“But, Binh, what is a wish?”
“Good question!” he laughed. “Thao! Pin! Come tell my ignorant sister what a wish is.”
Thao waved at her friend and ran across the road. Pin was right on her heels.
After some minutes, the four children had left the village in the distance. As they were walking down a puddle-strewn side road, something in one of the shimmering pools caught Pin’s eye. It was a beautifully glistening fish, perhaps a small koi or a very large beta. Upon closer inspection, however, Pin decided the fish looked a little like a mixture of both and a lot like neither. Its fins were full and fiery. Unfortunately for the fish, there was barely enough room in the puddle for it to gorgeously stretch out to its full length.
“Thao, I found a good-luck fish!” Pin shouted, pointing down at the pool. “Hurry! Come look before he disappears.”
The other three children ran to the puddle and peered in, each pair of small eyes squinting against the reflected light from the sun and the enchanted glow that illuminated within the fish. The fish billowed its fins and swished them majestically this way and that through the water of its tiny prison.
“Oh, look! He’s violet!” gushed Pin.
“Now he’s teal!” said Thao, pointing. “Wait, he’s red!”
“Turquoise. That’s turquoise!”
“Orange!”
“Indigo!”
The list went on and on. Every time the fish turned to move, his color changed and the children cried out the corresponding word to match the new color.
“Let’s catch him in your hat, Pin!” shouted Binh as he grabbed Pin’s hat.
“Good idea! And then we can take him home and eat him!” said Cam.
“No, Cam. We want to catch him so that he will grant our wishes,” explained Binh as he quickly lowered the hat into the puddle. The flash of fins and splash of rainwater from the puddle told the children that Binh had let the fish slip away.
“Binh, you never told me what a wish was!” Cam sighed.
“Oh, I’ll tell you, Cam,” said Thao taking her hand. “A wish is something that you want, but don’t have. I wish I had a nice big plate of cheo thöng to share with everyone.”
Before she could even close her eyes to imagine it, a large platter appeared before them, filled with mung beans, lotus seeds, potatoes, seaweed and coconut. It was drizzled lightly with sugar syrup.
“Thao, do you see that?” whispered Cam, still holding her hand.
“Binh, do you see it?” Thao whispered from the side of her mouth. She was trying desperately not to move, fearing the plate might be just an illusion.
Pin grabbed a handful of the dessert and stuck it in his mouth.
“And it tastes as good as it looks!” he declared.
Pin’s hat was forgotten in the puddle as the children surrounded the platter. They each took turns eating, delighting in the delicious flavor.
“But this means,” started Binh with his mouth still full of dessert, “the story is true. We have found a good-luck fish!”
He grabbed the hat and again tried to catch the beautiful fish. After several more attempts he succeeded. The children were speechless as he held the dripping wet hat high in the air.
“I wish for a kite!” Binh yelled. A large multicolored kite materialized before him, shaped like the fish.
“I wish for a new hat!” said Pin. Immediately a bright new silk hat appeared on his head.
“I wish for a new doll,” said Cam, squeezing her eyes tight. A doll appeared in her arms. She was made of delicate porcelain and her dress was iridescent, just like the fish’s fins. “I also wish for a pushchair, a dress to match my doll’s dress, and a new pair of shoes!”
“Slow down, Cam!” Binh laughed. “Let everyone get at least one wish before you get everything you want.”
Every item appeared out of nowhere. The children giggled and continued to add wish upon wish for several more minutes. Finally, having run out of ideas, Binh opened the hat and dropped the fish back into the puddle with a loud kerplunk.
“What’s wrong with him, Binh?” Cam asked. The fish seemed smaller, and his color wasn’t changing nearly as much.
“We must have held him out of the water for too long. He’ll be fine.” Binh beamed as he gathered up all the things he had wished.
“Binh,” started Thao. “I don’t think he is alright. I think he’s,” she paused for an instant and then mouthed, “d-y-i-n-g.”
“What does d-n-g-y mean?” asked Cam. She had misunderstood the characters*.
*Vietnamese uses characters instead of letters.
“Oh, it means that you’ll have to hurry home and tell your mother all about the good-luck fish!” said Pin.
“No!” exclaimed Binh. “But you should go home and wash your hands before supper, or mother will come looking for us.”
Cam put her doll into the pushcart and began to walk up the road towards home. She glanced back only once, but the others were smiling and waving.
“Maybe he’s just hungry,” guessed Pin. “I’ll give him some of my biscuit.”
The fish swirled around in the remaining puddle water, but its color did not improve. The children tried to feed it what remained of the cheo thöng. The bits of food floated in circles on the surface, but the fish refused to eat any of them.
“Binh, we should go get your mother,” said a worried looking Thao. “She’ll know what to do!”’
Pin nodded in agreement.
“She’ll be angry with me for hurting the good-luck fish,” Binh sighed. “It's best that we leave him here and go home. Perhaps tomorrow he will be gone and we won't have to think about it.”
Pin and Thao did not look convinced, but agreed to go home and hide all their wished for items until morning. They walked carefully up the main road of the village avoiding the remaining puddles, which still caught the dying evening sun and glittered this way and that.
“Remember,” said Binh, walking to the porch. “No one must discover what we have done.”
“Yes, Binh,” said Pin.
After a long pause Thao agreed, “Yes, Binh.”
Sometime later, when Binh arrived home, he threw his kite and other things under the porch. He noticed his sister had done the same with her wishes. Her shimmering dress lay abandoned and covered in mud beneath the pushchair’s back wheel. The doll looked at him with unblinking, unforgiving, eyes. He wondered what had become of her new shoes.
He removed his own shoes reluctantly and walked slowly into the house. The smells of peanut oil, ginger, and chamomile hung in the air. He wasn't hungry. The sweets had filled him up, but the thought that he had hurt a good-luck fish was making him feel genuinely ill. He looked around the small single room, but could not find his little sister. His mother was boiling water for tea and rice and cutting up vegetables.
“Mother, where is Cam?” he asked carefully.
“I thought she was with you and your friends. I didn’t see her come in, but I was in the garden looking for a nice cabbage for tonight’s meal. Perhaps she's under the porch again? I’ll go look.” And with that his mother stood up and began to walk to the door.
“No!” he shouted. “I mean, no thank you! It’s too muddy out there. I’ll find her. Stay here and rest.”
She eyed him suspiciously, but sat back down on the cushions. Picking up her parchment, she began to make a list of items to buy at the market the following morning.
“Your father will be home shortly with the fish.” Her words almost stopped him in his tracks. “Don’t be late for supper!”
“I won’t be long!”
And with that he was out the front door and down the steps to the road. He gave a thorough look under the porch, but Cam was not there. He scanned the other houses across the road, but she was nowhere to be seen. As he ran down the road a fresh breeze blew towards the village and he thought he heard her singing one of the old fisherman songs their father had taught them. It was a very sad song. He paused only long enough to make certain that it was her voice before he raced down the road towards the singing.
“Binh!” called Thao rushing down the road with Pin. “Please wait for us. We’ve been waiting behind your house. We watched Cam go down the road.”
Ignoring their calls, he sprinted as fast as he could back to the puddle that held the good-luck fish.
When he arrived Cam was sitting with her back to him, peering into the half-empty puddle. The splashing had stopped and the water was motionless. All that remained was a dark red tangle of fins and scales.
“Binh, how did we kill him?” Cam asked. Her back was still to Binh, but he knew she was crying.
He sat down beside her and slid his arm around her shoulders. She turned and cried into his chest. Her little hands were clenched tightly around her new shoes.
“I came to give them back,” she sobbed. “They were too beautiful. Too perfect. But not worth the life of the good-luck fish.”
A soft glowing light began to issue from the remains of the fish lying in the shallow puddle. It wrapped its way carefully around Cam’s small frame, continuing to grow until it surrounded Binh too. They both had their eyes shut tight with tears and didn't notice. Suddenly, Cam realized that she could no longer hear the birds singing.
“Binh,” she gasped, “what's happening?”
“I don’t know. Hold tight.”
A bright beam of light flashed from the good-luck fish into the air before them. The light hung in the air and began to change shape. As the colors grew more brilliant the form became more distinct. At last the beautiful form of the good-luck fish, with fins and billowing tail swaying in the crisp ocean breeze, emerged from the dusting of light just as Thao and Pin arrived breathless at the puddle.
“Now you understand, my little ones,” said a voice filled with wisdom and power, "that you should not think only of yourselves. Your wishes might have fed your village for a year, but you wished instead for selfish things that were nothing more than trinkets.”
Cam shivered and drew closer to her brother.
“Cam,” the fish called. “Fear not, I'm speaking to you now because you alone returned and offered to give back the most precious of your gifts in exchange for my life. You shall neither be forgotten nor ever forget me. None of you will.”
With that the fish’s spirit disappeared in a brilliant flash of colored lights like fireworks. Cam held onto her brother for a moment longer. The children walked home in absolute silence. Each wiped the tears from their faces and pretended to smile.
After dinner, when it had grown dark and they could hide their shame beneath the cold moonlit sky, they buried the remains of the good-luck fish in a deep hole, along with all of their misguided wishes.