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The Caller · The Second Evening: Thirty-Three

On the second evening the sky was clear, and the tent was fuller than the first night, because word had got round that the new caller sang badly and it was worth hearing.

Hạnh did not mind that as much as she had expected. She had practised the rhymes in the shower that morning until her mother banged on the door, and she had found that if she sang to the lanterns rather than to the faces, her voice stopped shaking after the third number. Ông Sáu had nodded at that. "Sing to the lanterns," he said, "and let the people listen in."

Before the tent opened he had made her practise the cage itself. "People watch the hands," he said. "Turn it the same every time. Three full turns, not two and a half, not four. Do not look inside it. Take the ball that comes to the door, never the one you like the look of." He made her do it twenty times, with the tent empty and the lanterns not yet lit, until her wrist knew how far three turns was. Then he made her do it with her eyes shut. "If anyone ever asks whether the cage is fair," he said, "the answer is in your wrist. Make it so you could do it asleep."

She asked him whether anyone ever had asked.

"Every year," said Ông Sáu. "Usually on the third night."

The regulars had their places. In lô tô, Hạnh was learning, everybody had a place. The noodle woman sat at the end of the second row, so she could get back to her stall in a hurry. Two old men from the chess table sat in the front, side by side, and marked their cards with the same pencil, passing it between them. A young father sat at the back with a baby asleep on his chest and played with one hand.

And in the middle of the first row, every night for as long as anyone could remember, sat Bà Diệu.

Bà Diệu was perhaps eighty. She wore a green cardigan in every weather and brought her own cushion. She bought one card a night, always one, and she kept a small notebook beside it in which she wrote down every number that was called, in tiny careful figures, in the order they came out.

Hạnh had wondered about the notebook. Halfway through the second evening, she found out.

She had just sung forty-one. The tent was quiet in the way it went quiet in the middle of a game, eighty people bent over eighty cards. Bà Diệu lifted a hand.

"Child," she said. "Thirty-three."

Hạnh looked at her.

"Thirty-three has not come," said Bà Diệu. She tapped the notebook. "Not last night. Not tonight. Every other number in the thirties has come, but not thirty-three. It must be soon. It must be nearly ready." She smiled up at Hạnh, the smile of someone who has been waiting a long time and is sure the wait is nearly over. "My card has thirty-three. You'll call it for me soon, won't you?"

A few people in the front rows laughed, kindly. The chess men looked at each other.

Hạnh knew exactly what to say. It was easy, and it would make an old woman happy on the second night of Tết. Soon, Bà. It's coming. She could even make a little song of it. She opened her mouth to say it.

Beside her, Ông Sáu set down his tea.

"Hạnh," he said, quietly enough that only the front row heard. "What does the ball with thirty-three on it know about last night?"

She turned. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the cage, as if the question were for it.

"Nothing," said Hạnh. "It's a ball."

"And tonight? Does it know that the other thirties have been called, and it has not?"

"No."

"Then when you turn the handle," said her uncle, "does it try harder?"

She looked at the cage. Fifty-odd balls were still inside, rolling against each other, each of them painted white on brown wood, each of them exactly the same size and weight. Thirty-three was somewhere in there. So were all the others. The cage did not keep a notebook. Nothing in it knew that thirty-three was late, or that an old woman in a green cardigan was waiting for it. Each time she turned the handle, every ball still inside had the same chance as every other of rolling to the door. That had been true on the first turn of the first night, when there were ninety balls and each had one chance in ninety. It was true now.

The wait was real. The notebook was real. But the wait lived in the notebook, not in the cage.

Hạnh turned back to Bà Diệu, who was still smiling.

"Bà," she said, and she said it out loud, so the tent could hear. "Thirty-three has the same chance as every other number tonight. No more, and no less. The cage doesn't remember what it's done."

There was a small silence. Hạnh felt her face go hot. She had never contradicted Bà Diệu in her life. Nobody contradicted Bà Diệu.

Then Bà Diệu laughed. It was a high, delighted laugh, like a bird.

"Your uncle said the same thing to me," she said, "in nineteen ninety-four." She patted her notebook. "I keep it anyway. It's nice to know what came." She kept her card.

The game went on. Hạnh turned the handle and sang. Fifty-two. Eight. Seventy. A man at the back filled a row on seventy and won a bag of rice crackers. They started a new game. People bought new cards, or kept their old ones, and Hạnh turned the cage three times and took the ball from the door.

Thirty-three.

She looked at it in her hand for a second. It was a ball. It looked like all the others.

She sang it exactly the way she had sung forty-one and eight and seventy, to the lanterns. The rhyme for thirty-three was a short one, about three ducks on a pond, and she did not hurry it or make it louder.

In the front row, Bà Diệu marked her card, and then, carefully, wrote it in the notebook.

She did not fill a row that game. A girl in the third row did, on fifty-nine.

Afterwards, stacking chairs, Hạnh found her uncle folding the chalkboard.

"You knew she'd say that," she said. "About nineteen ninety-four."

"I hoped she would," said Ông Sáu. "It is a good thing for a caller to be told a true thing back."

"Then why didn't you tell her yourself? Tonight?"

He clipped the easel shut. "Because tonight," he said, "you were calling."

The question for your own table

Where in your house does a run of bad luck, or good, make someone feel the next turn is "due"? What would change if you said "it doesn't remember" out loud?

Something to do

Toss a coin ten times and write down each result. After three heads in a row, ask everyone what they expect next, and then toss it and see. Do it again tomorrow.

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