The scene at that time would be like a post-apocalyptic movie (also other sad fantasies): the earth’s surface was lifeless, no blue, only lead-gray dust covered the silvery-white earth like stewed salt. And the sun, the blaze that annihilated all creatures that confronted it head-on, with two hundred and seven degrees of heat.
“Your hair will burn first, it smells like I burn pus,” said the father, always warning his forties son, who lately has been peeking through laminated glass. dark insulation on the dome, watching the sun outside. As he spoke, the old man held his head out, directing the son’s attention to it, proving he was not making any threats. His hair was burned, tanned the scalp. Two long stretched scar shoulder. Back then they opened the door on Underground 27 to reinforce the dome and forgot to close it, and the poor old man was lost. Moments only a few minutes but timely made the burns deep in the flesh. At the hospital, they took part of the thigh muscle and grafted it into the wounds, got infected, and then re-grafted it. The old man could barely keep his life, because he got a bit of sunlight on him.
But the son did not just for that matter but only got heatstroke out there. He realized the sun had changed color, in spite of the dark dome year after year. In his mind one after another appeared images of pink silk strings, honey of wet waves, thin glass, the hair of a worm on the leaves, the edge of a stream of woman’s hair as she bent down to kiss.
“Now is September, probably”, he dreamed, “you know from the calendar”. The old man was furious, what about September, whatever color change in the sunlight it was, it was still the sun killing it, and he was almost burned down by it.
“Beautiful is poisonous, that sunlight is like your cheeks,” said the old man. Perhaps he wanted to mention the woman who left him behind. It was also a long time ago, when the son was only nine years old, the old man had also married several more wives, but still regretted his hatred not ceasing. A person’s first love, he said, determines his / her life. Although the son felt that he lost his campaign for mayor, or the loss of his investment in the artificial rain factory, the loss of wealth after a few divorces, it had nothing to do with his first love. But the old man still dragged the mother he could no longer remember, to blame for every risk he had in his life. The past is like the tail getting longer and longer, and I don’t know when it swings back to avoid the damage.
“It’s all in the sun to go fishing in the lake,” said the dreamy son, ignoring his father’s burning attitude, and his father’s helplessness, as if the old man was standing in front of the dying sick child. The old man can hardly stop the memories of a man who used to bathe in the September sun, the one sun that has met once in his life is unforgettable. But the son grew deeper, because it had been seventeen September, before the sun began to melt everything it shone on, and man retreated to the earth, creating the Underworld.
In Underground there is also sunshine, and sun. All are recreated vividly, just like the real thing. Everything is delicately simulated, the sun is tilted early and tomorrow afternoon, the days of artificially cloudy sky, and widespread showers or thunderstorms. Rain and shine are preprogrammed from the beginning of the year, before submitting to the Underground committee, and so that no year is like any other year. People no longer remember the real light, the real atmosphere in the world they left behind when they fled. Even plants and trees are deceived by artificial light, they branch, flower, bear fruit. Sunflowers regardless of the sun, still welcoming flowers. Only rosemary, probably overly sensitive to the environment, was doomed.
But they cannot reproduce the September sun. They couldn’t coat the air mirror, a thin, sweet layer. They do not know how to make the golden color of the sun that makes the leaves of the tree drink well before they do the sowing. So every September, in Underground, there will be a bunch of people who miss the old sun so much, don’t really need to do anything, climb up the dome and look back at the old sky. The children born in Underground don’t know why there is such an absurd nostalgia, they rummaged through thousands of books, searching for pages describing the autumn sun that made them crazy, but they didn’t feel it. OK. The clever word does not fully describe the intensity of the September sun, for it was not born to be described, but let people bathe, drink, numb, or hang from a tree or sink to the bottom; so that people remember the sadness.
Like that guy, lying on the dome forever, not needing anything, looking out there. Relieved of the scene where my husband / father quit his job, lethargic as he died, every September his wife and son would travel with suitcases. Staying Underground does not mean that people give up their passion for moving, nearly plane-speed trains across the oceans, they are always happy to keep their doors waiting for customers. He went upstairs with dome, lying forever Fewer and fewer people were going up there, they forgot the September sun, or had been able to endure it, went to see it. The last news about the sunburn was decades ago, he remembers that the column next to it had written about the summit meeting about patching ozone layer. I don’t know if the sun out there has cooled down yet. Someone must open the Underground door to try it out.
“That day, sitting fishing, seeing the mist evaporating on the lotus leaf,” he said to the old man. And the father was so desperate he didn’t want to say anything, as he saw the prospect of a son opening the door on Underground 86 and walking out.
Imagine someone else remembers the real sun out there, not that people are used to rain and sun and fake sun, like a bird used to cage. Someone else came out, burned down, was better than hiding in a deep pit. Who knows, when the sun has cooled, they won’t say it because everyone living in the cage looks after each other easily.
Text: Nguyen Ngoc Tu – Illustration: Kim Duan
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