A small move behind her back. Immediately her heart sank. She turned round, her neck stiff as if she was turning to see from two ends thousands of miles away from each other. A cat! She breathed out lightly and a sudden smile lingered on her lips. The three-coloured cat had jumped from the windowsill, its tail lashing against the leaf of a calendar. The model looked at her playfully, a conniving look.

Nobody there. She lay on the floor, the folds of her skirt spread out like a fan. She pressed her cheek to the floor and enjoyed its coolness, delighting in the murmuring sounds that echoed from the surface.

Nobody there. The grassy hill in the picture was smiling with her. The sun threw its light all over. Still prostrate, she stretched her body and reached out with the brush to add some finishing touches on the canvas.

Nobody there. She was singing to herself. A line from one song linked to another line from another song. She kept time by tapping the wall with the stub of the brush.

Nobody there. The phone rang. She stopped short, then she swung her hand, the brush hitting the receiver hard as she lifted it.

"Is that you, dear?"

"Yes."

"I’ve some more work to finish, so I cannot come home now."

"Have you?"

"What are you doing?"

"I’ve just got up. I’m starving."

"...So, why don’t you have some breakfast?"

She cast a sidelong glance at the phone before she put the receiver down. What was I doing before I got this phone call?

***

After about a week, she started cleaning up the house. This meant going to the market to buy some food and putting it into the fridge so that she could cook something for her husband when he came home. He never informed her of his return in advance. He entered the house always out of the blue sky. Sometimes she even dreamt of his coming home, his hands cupping her face. She opened her eyes. He was standing by the bed, the finger with the tiny ring placed on her forehead...

"Have you just come home?"

She always greeted him with these words after his business trips. They seemed to mark a space in the past while preparing for the next trip at the same time.

"You’ve just come home" – She looked out at the door and spoke out loud, almost shouting as if he was hiding himself somewhere outside. The door was still shut in silence. She rushed and slammed it open. Emptiness! She burst out laughing, recognising that she wanted him to come home. Oh! It would help end her dangling anxiety.

Why do I have to be waiting in nervousness? Why do I have to lift the phone every day? Anger rose up suddenly. She ran into the room, oblivious of her hands smeared with paint. She opened her suitcase... ao dais, dresses, skirts... blue, red, yellow ... She collected them and threw them from the bed. She was searching for something. Yes. There it was, the shorts and the white shrinking blouse. She used to wear them when she went out to paint, easel on her shoulders, and the heads of young men invariably turned as she passed them.

Who could stop her from wearing them again and taking a walk this afternoon?

He would be home this afternoon. She knew it. When it was night, at the latest. So she would not be home until late in the night.

She went into the restaurant, and sipped the bitter coffee with pleasure. A boy showed her a stack of lottery tickets. She smiled, drawing out sheets of paper and pencil. His smile widened when he saw his bony face on the paper. As she left the restaurant, she asked a cigarette vendor passing by to stop for a moment. Like the boy, her frowning face broke into a broad smile when the sketch was finished.

Then she stopped by a bar to have a glass of lemon juice. Later she bought a loaf of bread to eat as she walked...

She kept walking aimlessly, still in an enthusiastic and rebellious mood, until the stars began twinkling in the sky and her legs were dead tired. She was about to stop and enter another bar, but turned away as it was very crowded. The next bar was crowded as well, but she decided to enter anyway, her shyness disappearing. It was a good feeling to see all the eyes turn to her, just like the old days...

When she’d first expressed her desire to enrol in the fine arts class, her brother had teased her: "When you draw an elephant, make sure to have a footnote saying this is an elephant." At her first exhibition with other young artists, nobody paid any attention to her work. The next day, the papers were scathing in their criticism.

What did he say then? She could not remember, only that she’d buried her face in his shoulders, sobbing out her dejection.

Her mother had said: "A girl had better marry a man who loves her, rather than the man she loves." But was it that only he loved her? Into her married life she’d brought along the gait of unruly Hai, the waving hair of Trung, the large eyes of Dinh, the musical sounds of An, the tramp...

"Better marry a rich man for a stable life," her friends had said. But there were not just rich men among those who’d been wooing her. Besides, she could make her own living without depending on others. It was just that she could not make a real painting by herself. Yes, one that could make her fully satisfied!

***

She walked into the house, feeling both a little frightened and stubborn about the confrontation. He sat by the table, his suitcase still by the foot of chair, shoulders lightly touched with dust shining in the nearby light. The light also highlighted the bitterness in his face.

"Have you just come home?"

He nodded, saying nothing. His silence caught at her breath. It was better that he’d get angry so she would retort. Now it was she who had to speak first. "The painting your friend ordered is finished. This afternoon I was roaming the streets to make some interesting sketches."

"I see." He looked at her absent-mindedly. "There is one man asking you to do a painting for his daughter’s 18^th birthday. Is there anything to eat now?"

She ran into the kitchen, feeling remorseful. Busy as he was with his business, he did not forget to introduce her as an artist – an artist! She was not just an employee of the cultural and information service, painting posters for the anti-social evils movement, and sometimes, hoardings for shops.

... A painting for an 18-year-old girl, for a new house, for a new coffee house...

"I don’t understand much about painting, but my friends say that your paintings have got a soul," he’d often said that.

She smiled with happiness. It was not the masterpiece that she wished for, but it was quite different from the work in her office. He was speaking on the phone. "Are you painting?" "Yes," she said happily. Sometimes, moved that he was so attentive, she asked: "When are you coming back?" He replied, but was seldom punctual.

"Business makes it so difficult to be punctual," he would say, looking away.

Nobody there. Only pictures and pictures... Mountains and forests, the sea, waves, clouds, the moon, the stars... The clouds were blue, the waves, silver, the forests, green with leaves...

His distracted question sparked a search among the heap of sketches. Faces she’d accidentally come across on the street, the strokes of nostalgia. She mixed the colours, the brush moving about nervously. Then the pain, as she recognised that what she’d been yearning for was yet to come. Lacking a brush stroke, just one stroke, with the colour already available, but it was beyond her. She slashed at the canvas, criss-crossing it with strokes until it was unrecognisable.

One day, two days... She was surprised and then relieved. She no longer felt troubled. A week passed... She began to wait and when the second week came, she found she no longer had the heart to take up the brush. At home, she waited for the bell to ring, and at the office, she found some reason or the other to be close to the phone. She rushed at it every time it rang. But he was silent. She tried to remember what they’d told each other before he left. Nothing. Only a small practical joke by her to take revenge on his looking around. As he took his suitcase and walked through the door, she grabbed the telephone, saying out loud "Yes, this afternoon." Only that.

Only that!

She phoned him, but the answer was always the same. "Our boss has just gone out. Would you like to leave a message?"

She cracked her fingers. He could not treat her like this. Like a little girl. She bitterly recognised that he treated her as a little girl, while she’d imagined that she’d had immense power over him! Her mother had often said: "Men come and go, you know." But now it was not just love. He was the only one who’d brought her paintings beyond the house’s walls. Without him, her dreams would lie in silence, letting time pass by.

She suddenly remembered that her aspiration would never be realised. Without him, this distant truth had become clearer than ever. She looked at the brush in her hand as if it was a strange object she was seeing for the first time. This new realisation was devastating, exactly like the time after her only exhibition, but then, she’d had him at her side.

Sadness and a strange feeling filled her heart and spilled over.

***

The express bus arrived at noon. Her luggage was the latest painting rolled into a bundle, and it provided the reason. Finally she’d found a reason for herself – "I’ve brought this painting here so that you can hand it over to the customer in time". Was this the last painting? Was it the last meeting between the two? She’d figured out in the end that in every office there was a female employee who was young and beautiful. She’d never thought of it before.

There was nobody in the office. Only him and... the paintings! She stopped, covering her mouth to prevent a scream from coming out. The paintings were piled over each other to make a fire. The smoke rose over the canvas frames and broke into a big strange flame as if it was taking along with it the blue of the sky, the silver of the waves, the brightness of the stars and the fairy-like colour of the moon... .

"Why haven’t you ever painted human beings?" She suddenly heard the question that she’d been asked one day. Was it he who had just cried out? No. He sat there like a statue, hands clutching his head, smoke rising from the paintings. Paintings that he’d said his friends had ordered over the last two years.

She was being turned into a stone at the threshold with the last witness in her hands.