For us, that period of time was still very happy, later on, my father got tired of beating us. He was indifferent, cold, and said a few short sentences when he needed to say something. My father
gave the ducks to the two of us, and in his free time he would sit and carve knife handles and chopping boards, or quietly carry his fishing rod to go fishing, both to earn money and to avoid having to look at the
children of a heartless mother. As a result, the boat seemed small, but it was extremely wide, with only three people struggling, but many years passed, my sisters and I still
felt distant from our father. Once, when we were on the river, Dien pretended to fall and sink, I pretended to scream loudly, my father was a little startled, about to jump into the water, but then he calmly sat back down, continued to carve, probably remembering that Dien had been wading in the river since he was four years old, how could he drown?
We knew it was hard to ask for anything more, just a little bit of father's heart was enough to be happy. My father was like a ceramic object that had just been through a big fire, still the same shape but cracked, so we only dared to stand far away and look, tenderly caressing it, otherwise it would break.
And the boat, the fields, the vast river forever
Dien and I had to learn how to survive on our own. Sometimes it was surprisingly easy… Thanks to Dien being bitten by a cobra, we learned how to distinguish the teeth marks of poisonous snakes. It left a pair of teeth marks on Dien’s ankles like two small, deep holes. Of course, it was thanks to the kind harvester who carried Dien a distance of
