| Muller | Hitchhiking Vietnam
Page 172 |
They materialized out of nowhere - a hoard of them, a tidal wave, pounding across the hanging bridge on their way home from school. When the children caught sight of me they stopped dead with shouts of wonder. They gathered a short distance from me and held a serious discussion at the top of their lungs, pushing and shoving to make themselves heard. One girl, older than the rest, slipped away and disappeared around the corner. I was sure she would return with the local police, or at least a sour-faced elder or two. She reappeared with a double handful of speckled red fruit the size of large grapes, and without a glance in the direction of her friends stepped forward to offer them to me. She stopped a little way away and carefully leaned forward, as though feeding a wild animal that might not take her gesture for a friendly one. I smiled and patted the ground beside me. Behind her the dam broke as the howling mob virtually bowled her over to accept my invitation. They swirled around me, snatching at the fruit, touching my hair and clothes, showing me with snorts of laughter that the soft berries had first to be kneaded into pulpy blobs to remove the bitter aftertaste. I wanted to stay on the swaying bridge but they saw nothing unusual in the peaceful scene below us and soon dragged me off to knock down more fruit with sticks and pick succulent clover shoots from the muddy paddy walls.
They were remarkable mimics, these children, parroting snippets of songs in several languages as we marched up the hill with home-made carts in tow to practice kamikaze courage on three-inch, wooden wheels. We played pick-up soccer with a rotting chunk of wood that rapidly disintegrated under the onslaught of three dozen dexterous bare feet and a pare of clumsy sneakered ones. We made our way along the river to a crippled, leaking waterwheel. The boys clambered over it like monkeys until one slipped and got stuck where the buckets full of water dumped continuously on his head, to the delighted shrieks of his suddenly unhelpful friends.
