Every evening, just as the lanterns began to glow and the last rays of sun slipped beneath the tile rooftops, Ông Vinh sat on a low stool near the river with his đàn nguyệt resting on his lap.
Two strings. One crescent body.
Worn smooth where his fingers had plucked it for more than fifty years.
Children called it “the moon guitar.” Tourists paused, unsure whether to take photos or simply listen. And he—gray-bearded, hunched, eyes full of gentle distance—just played.
He didn’t perform. He remembered.
Each note, slow and soft, felt like the voice of someone long gone.
A mother’s lullaby.
A soldier’s farewell.
A lover’s promise spoken under rain.
He had once played in tea houses, at Tết festivals, during weddings and funerals. Back when people listened—not out of curiosity, but reverence. Before karaoke machines. Before pop speakers blared outside souvenir shops.
His left hand trembled now. He sometimes missed a note.
But when he played “Lý Con Sáo”, or the intro to an old cải lương aria, the river seemed to hush.
No one knew that the lute was a gift from his brother—long dead.
Or that he had once played for a girl who became his wife, then a memory, then incense smoke at an altar he tended alone each morning.
Sometimes, someone dropped a few coins into the straw hat at his feet.
He didn’t play for that.
He played because the song hadn’t left him.
Because the moon still rose, and it still needed a voice.
And in that golden dusk, with the river reflecting lanterns and age,
Ông Vinh plucked the strings again,
his fingers callused,
his shoulders tired,
his heart still tuned
to the old, aching key
of a country that remembers its music
in the hands of an old man
sitting by the water,
playing to the sky.