THE NAIL

Nguyen Duc Tung

English version by Vo Thi Nhu Mai

Once, trying to save a bent, rusty nail, I hit the hammer on my left ring finger, causing it to swell and hurt for days. Blood running under my nail, condensed, dark black. You asked why I had not used a new nail.

Anyone I know has an iron box containing household tools such as hammers and pliers, scissors and nails, rulers and wire, for errands around the house, like hanging pictures, fixing cabinets, fence posts. Your mother also had a box like that, taking it with her to our home after getting married. Anyone like that would have in his or her box many bent nails. They could not be thrown away, nor should they. A nail thrown in the trash, or worse, on the street, is dangerous. A nail in the wall is a useful nail.

A curved nail needs to be straightened, not only to save money, it does not cost much, but also to correct a mistake that you made earlier. Negligence or clumsiness always needs to be fixed. More than that, a nail needs to live out its life, optimally. Every human being, every animal, every plant should be allowed to live to the end of its life. Now we use another nail like that, after bending it straight, to clamp the wooden clips together. We will use wooden braces to make the roof extension of the house on stilts in the garden, pergola. Why do we need it? Last night a summer jasmine started sticking its thin fingers through the fence, right in the rain. Now those wooden braces have been built. I would like you to stand on them, bouncing around to see if they hold up.

Long ago, my father, means your grandfather, also ordered me to do the same when I was eleven years old. If your grandpa came back today, he would walk across the wooden floor and stomped his feet really hard to see if it came off, if there was a sound, just a tiny sound, he would stop to listen, crouch, there would be definitely a gap there, another nail would be needed. Sometimes no gap was found, I gave in. But not him, he would be back a few more times to check, listening to the creaking sound of the wooden floor. And after hours of working hard, he would stand up straight, stretch his arms. I saw his bare back, his undershirt, his tanned skin forming a circle around his neck. I could feel the satisfaction of the job.

Once I was a playful boy. What I had achieved, I learned them all from your grandparents. Those memories were passed on not only through the teachers’ lectures, which we would talk about in another letter, but also in the nail box one autumn day, in a rusty and bent nail. An old bent iron nail on a weekend in October can tell a story across generations of its life, and sometimes, our memory in life.