Workplace Justice: Rights and Labour

Resistance in Vietnam Tu Phuong

Nguyen
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/workplace-justice-rights-and-labour-resistance-in-viet
nam-tu-phuong-nguyen/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Television in Post Reform Vietnam Nation Media Market

Giang Nguyen-Thu

https://textbookfull.com/product/television-in-post-reform-
vietnam-nation-media-market-giang-nguyen-thu/

Human Rights and Social Justice Joseph Wronka

https://textbookfull.com/product/human-rights-and-social-justice-
joseph-wronka/

Human Rights in the Extractive Industries Transparency

Participation Resistance Isabel Feichtner

https://textbookfull.com/product/human-rights-in-the-extractive-
industries-transparency-participation-resistance-isabel-
feichtner/

Civil Resistance and Violent Conflict in Latin America

Mobilizing for Rights Cécile Mouly

https://textbookfull.com/product/civil-resistance-and-violent-
conflict-in-latin-america-mobilizing-for-rights-cecile-mouly/
Human Ecology of Climate Change Hazards in Vietnam
Risks for Nature and Humans in Lowland and Upland Areas
An Thinh Nguyen

https://textbookfull.com/product/human-ecology-of-climate-change-
hazards-in-vietnam-risks-for-nature-and-humans-in-lowland-and-
upland-areas-an-thinh-nguyen/

Hindu Women's Property Rights in Rural India: Law,

Labour and Culture in Action 1st Edition Patel

https://textbookfull.com/product/hindu-womens-property-rights-in-
rural-india-law-labour-and-culture-in-action-1st-edition-patel/

Reimagining Administrative Justice: Human Rights in

Small Places Margaret Doyle

https://textbookfull.com/product/reimagining-administrative-
justice-human-rights-in-small-places-margaret-doyle/

Climate Justice and Human Rights 1st Edition Tracey

Skillington (Auth.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/climate-justice-and-human-
rights-1st-edition-tracey-skillington-auth/

Demanding Justice in The Global South: Claiming Rights

1st Edition Jean Grugel

https://textbookfull.com/product/demanding-justice-in-the-global-
south-claiming-rights-1st-edition-jean-grugel/
CRITICAL STUDIES OF
THE ASIA-PACIFIC
SERIES EDITOR: MARK BEESON

Workplace Justice
Rights and Labour Resistance
in Vietnam

Tu Phuong Nguyen
Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific

Series Editor
Mark Beeson
University of Western Australia
Crawley, WA, Australia
Critical Studies of the Asia Pacific showcases new research and scholarship
on what is arguably the most important region in the world in the twenty-­
first century. The rise of China and the continuing strategic importance of
this dynamic economic area to the United States mean that the Asia-Pacific
will remain crucially important to policymakers and scholars alike. The
unifying theme of the series is a desire to publish the best theoretically-­
informed, original research on the region. Titles in the series cover the
politics, economics and security of the region, as well as focusing on its
institutional processes, individual countries, issues and leaders.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14940
 Tu Phuong Nguyen

Workplace Justice
Rights and Labour Resistance in Vietnam
Tu Phuong Nguyen
Centre for Governance and Public Policy
Griffith University
Nathan, QLD, Australia

Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific

ISBN 978-981-13-3115-2    ISBN 978-981-13-3116-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3116-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960835

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Anton Balazh/shutterstock

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
To Mom and Dad
 Copyright Acknowledgements

This book contains materials from the following publications:

1. Nguyen, T. P. (2017). Workers’ Strikes in Vietnam from a Regulatory

Perspective. Asian Studies Review 41 (2), 263–280. <Copyright
The Asian Studies Association of Australian>. Available at https://
doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2017.1298568
2. Nguyen, T. P. (2017). Legal Consciousness and Workers’ Resistance
in Đồng Nai Province, Vietnam. Asian Journal of Comparative Law
12 (2), 311–333. <Copyright National University of Singapore>.
Reprinted with permission. Available at https://doi.org/10.2017/
asjcl.2017.18
3. Nguyen, T. P. (2018). Labour Law and (In)justice in Workers’
Letters in Vietnam. Asian Journal of Law and Society 5 (1), 29–47.
<Copyright Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University 2018>. Reprinted with permission.
Available at https://doi.org/10.2017/als.2017.29

vii
 Acknowledgements

This book starts as a PhD project that I conducted at the Department of

Political and Social Change, Australian National University. I owe a great
deal to many people and institutions for their support for the completion
of the thesis and subsequent revisions.
I foremost wish to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis panel, Prof
Tamara Jacka, Assoc/Prof Sally Sargeson, and Assoc/Prof Philip Taylor,
for their tireless intellectual guidance, professional advice, and support. I
am especially thankful to Tamara for her patience, dedication, and meticu-
lous editing that have helped tremendously in transforming my ideas and
writing. I also thank Dr Kim Huynh for his professional tips and useful
questions to push me to go beyond the comfort zones, and Dr Nick
Cheesman for his willingness to read short extracts from my thesis and
offer important advice on the socio-legal scholarship.
I have also been indebted to various forms of support from people
other than my supervisors. Wendy Baker’s selfless editorial assistance and
our many thought-provoking e-mail exchanges and hour-long conversa-
tions have helped me transform my drafts and ideas. Prof Kanishka
Jayasuriya, who used to be my honours supervisor, has inspired me to
pursue this academic path. In addition, I am also grateful for many advice
and suggestions from senior academics at conferences, graduate and young
scholars’ workshops, and from anonymous reviewers on my journal arti-
cles. Academics, colleagues, and administrative staff at the Department of
Political and Social Change have also made my research journey fun and
memorable.

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My revision of the thesis into the book has benefitted greatly from feed-
back and comments of Assoc/Prof Lynette Chua, Emeritus Prof Benedict
Kerkvliet, Dr Kim Huynh, and Prof Tamara Jacka, all of whom I sincerely
thank. Prof Haig Patapan, Director at the Centre for Governance and
Public Policy, Griffith University, where I work as a postdoc, also provided
constant support during the completion of the book manuscript. Many
thanks also to the team at Palgrave Macmillan for their editorial assistance.
At the heart of my book are the voices and stories of the factory workers
whom I was fortunate to meet, talk, and feel inspired during my field trips
in Đồng Nai Province. I thank all of them for sharing their thoughts and
extraordinary journeys, as well as people who have helped me make my
fieldwork less challenging. Finally, I am indebted to my parents, brother,
and husband for always trusting me and meaning so much to my life and
imagination.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Labour Law and the State’s Management of Labour

Relations in Vietnam 23

3 On the Shop Floor 49

4 At Union Offices and to the News Headlines 81

5 ‘Defending Their Rights and Interests’: Bringing Law to

Workers’ Residences119

6 Core Workers’ Legal Mobilisation153

7 Conclusion183

Appendix: Fieldwork Notes195

Index197

xi
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Number of strikes in Đồng Nai, Hồ Chí Minh City, and Bình
Dư ơ ng compared to total strikes nationwide from 2009 to
201412
Table 3.1 Strike demands in industrial zones in Biên Hòa, Nhơ n Trạch,
and Trảng Bom, 2010–2014 51

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Once more, with all respect, I urge the leaders of all state agencies in the
province to promptly intervene to save our lives. We are genuine employees
who have no rights, lack equality, and experience a lot of coercion by the
company.

This desperate plea comes from Mrs Nguyên who has worked for six
years in a garment company in Đồng Nai Province. She lodged a com-
plaint and petition against the company management after perceived
legal violations and unfair treatment. Mrs Nguyên exhausted her legal
arguments accusing the management of illegal wage policies and a lack of
transparency in employees’ bonus payments. This extract from one of
Nguyên’s complaint letters is similar to the kind of rightful claims
brought against the abusive power of political and economic elites in
authoritarian regimes (O’Brien and Li 2006, pp. 2–3). In making these
claims, resisters exhibit a consciousness of their legal rights as well as
knowledge of appropriate state law and other normative reasoning to
mobilise popular support and demand justice. Similar to many other fac-
tory workers in Vietnam, Nguyên was abandoned by the trade union that
purported to serve in the workers’ interests. For the past few decades
after the country opening its door to private and foreign investment,
Vietnamese workers’ struggles to have their voices heard have been both
enabled and stifled by the legal and political systems that are supposed to
protect their rights. Workers’ accounts of resistance, both verbally and in

© The Author(s) 2019 1

T. P. Nguyen, Workplace Justice, Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3116-9_1
2 T. P. NGUYEN

writing, are ­underpinned by their consciousness of the socialist state’s

legal and political structures.
This book seeks to capture and comprehend factory workers’ resistance
in Vietnam through an examination of their values and ideals of rights and
justice. In particular, it investigates the extent to which values, language,
and practices derived from the Labour Code, which is the key labour leg-
islation in Vietnam, contribute to shaping workers’ views of workplace
relations and providing justifications for their resistance. I understand
resistance as acts that question or challenge power arrangements, author-
ity, or practices of subjection, and focus on two forms of workers’ resis-
tance: factory strikes and complaint writing and petitioning. In Vietnam,
strikes, which are largely spontaneous and without union organisation,
have been the most popular form of workers’ resistance. Strike demands
have varied, but they all represent challenges to managers’ conduct and
policies on the shop floor and, less frequently, state laws and policies (Trần
2013, 2007). Other forms of resistance, such as petitioning and complaint
writing, while not as vocal and explicitly confrontational as strikes, also
deserve attention as they represent valuable testimonies of workers’ expe-
riences on the shop floor in relation to labour law and their desires for
justice. As will be shown in subsequent chapters of the book, these actions
give expression to workers’ grievances and demands that have been either
silenced or suppressed, and question or challenge existing practices by
company and factory management and, at times, by state authorities.
The 1986 reform in Vietnam, known as dô̵ ̉i mới (renovation), gave rise
to the development of private domestic and foreign investment and
marked a shift in labour relationships from a socialist to a market-based
perspective. The Vietnamese Labour Code, passed in 1994 and most
recently amended in 2012, laid the groundwork for the state’s regulation
of labour based on the rights and interests of employing parties within
their contractual relationships. In practice, the evasions and violations of
labour rights enshrined in the law have led to a rise in factory strikes that
bypass the legal procedure for labour dispute resolution. More than 70 per
cent of strikes from 1995 to 2010 occurred in foreign enterprises domi-
nated by Taiwanese, Korean, Hong Kong, and Japanese investors (Trần
2013, p. 200). Thus, despite making up less than 4 per cent of all regis-
tered businesses in Vietnam,1 foreign enterprises are central to the preva-
lence of labour unrest in the country. The government, meanwhile, has
continued to promote the importance of attracting foreign investment; a
government decree in 2009 includes strike prevention and labour dispute
 INTRODUCTION 3

r­esolution as necessary measures to facilitate foreign-funded production

activities.2 While strikes in state-owned enterprises are undoubtedly under-­
reported, the cultural alienation between foreign managers/supervisors
and Vietnamese workers is an important factor in arousing and escalating
shop floor tensions (Trần 2013, p. 197).
The Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) remains the
only recognised trade union in Vietnam. It claims to represent the entire
Vietnamese working class and serves under the agenda of the Communist
Party of Vietnam (CPV) in the interest of maintaining regime stability.
Under the pressure for reform following the waves of factory strikes, the
VGCL has exerted a greater voice in law and policy dialogues for the ben-
efit of employees (Knutsen and Hansson 2010; Do and van den Broek
2013). There are also increasing efforts to enhance the bargaining capacity
of company unions affiliated with the VGCL on the shop floors. However,
these positions are often filled by management personnel, leaving the
workers voiceless. These efforts have neither increased workers’ bargain-
ing power nor addressed the persistent distrust between them and the
organisation that claims to act in their interests.
The subject matter of this book relates and contributes to the broader
literature on labour resistance in post-socialist countries of Vietnam and
China. While not presenting a comparative study, it draws from works
conducted in China which provide useful perspectives and insights into
the case studies in the Vietnamese context. Both China and Vietnam have
experienced transition from central planning to a market-based economic
system, starting in late 1980s and 1990s, under the leadership of the
­ruling Communist Party and its socialist legacies. These countries have
also reformed their labour law regime following market principles while
recognising only one legitimate trade union, the All-China Federation of
Trade Unions and the VGCL, respectively.3 The VGCL to date has had
more institutional power than their China counterpart, at least in their
capacity to participate in developing key labour policies at the national
level (Quan 2015).
The brunt of economic transition in post-socialist Asia falls foremost
upon the state workers, who became redundant following the restructur-
ing or dismantling of state-owned enterprises. In the socialist era, employ-
ment was based on workers’ loyalty and obedience to their managers and
the state in exchange for a modest income and guaranteed social welfare,
rather than on legality and formal labour contracts (Hurst and O’Brien
2002, p. 357; Walder 1986). As economic reform put to rest the socialist
4 T. P. NGUYEN

state’s promises of welfare and lifelong employment, these workers

launched protests and lodged their petitions to call upon the state and
management to uphold their moral obligations (Lee 2007; Chen 2000;
Hurst and O’Brien 2002; Trần 2013). Viewed from a moral economy
perspective,4 the redundant workers’ sense of grief turned into vocal pro-
tests in particular when their minimum living needs were no longer secured
and when they believed that managerial corruption had added to this situ-
ation (Chen 2000, pp. 45–48). Those state workers who demand their
pensions also held the state and managers accountable for their now
impoverished livelihoods (Hurst and O’Brien 2002). They acutely felt
that a breach of reciprocal duties and a denial of the socialist contract had
occurred when their pension was not paid in part or in full after all their
years of service to the state enterprises.
The next wave of labour unrest was led by a new generation of migrant
workers, who left their rural hometown to look for jobs and better incomes
in growing urban and industrial areas. In both China and Vietnam, eco-
nomic reform and integration into the global economy have produced a
surge of growth in private domestic and foreign businesses, which are typi-
cally labour-intensive and export-oriented, and a high demand for manual,
unskilled labour. As businesses have sought to maximise their profits and
drive down labour costs, the new, mostly migrant working class, has been
subject to exploitation and varying forms of managerial control on and off
the shop floor (Chan 2001; Chan 2008; Pun 2005, 2016; Friedman and
Lee 2010; Friedman 2014; Trần 2013; Pun and Smith 2007). These
workers, at the same time, lack the institutional capacity to organise and
collectively bargain with the state and capital. Their experience of a per-
petual cycle of exploitation, powerlessness, and desperation has led these
workers to take illegal spontaneous action, mostly in the form of strikes
and protests, to demand decent wages and working conditions. Since the
Labour Code was introduced in Vietnam in 1994, factory strikes have
continued to break out in large numbers each year: they climbed to a peak
of 993 in 2011, then dropped to 601 in 2012 and 293 in 2014 (VGCL
2015). In China, while official statistics for strikes are unavailable, differ-
ent sources have suggested that hundreds of thousands of labour disputes
took place across the country from 1993 to 2010 (Elfstrom and Kuruvilla
2014, pp. 454–455). The prevalence of workers’ collective action against
the law is a significant challenge to the legal regime that has endorsed a
wide range of employees’ rights in accordance with international labour
conventions.
 INTRODUCTION 5

From a Marxist political economy perspective, state law is an aspect of

the superstructure that controls and immiserates the workforce in the
interests of the ruling and powerful classes. Law functions as a political
and ideological tool to safeguard the capitalist mode of production and
sustain its machine of labour exploitation (Steinberg 2010; Cotterrell
2006). In post-socialist China and Vietnam, the growing political alliance
between the state and capital (especially foreign capital) in export-­
processing zones and industrial regions in the south has significantly con-
strained workers’ institutional power (Pun 2005, 2016; Nghiem 2006;
Trần 2013). Consequently, the promulgation of labour laws is rendered
unfavourable to the workers’ interests and contributes little to protecting
or advancing labour rights (Chan and Siu 2012; Chan 2008; Trần 2013).
In particular, while employees now in principle have extensive individual
rights in accordance with international conventions, the lack of collective
rights, such as the right to strike and to form independent unions, serves
to entrench workers’ disadvantage vis-à-vis the state and capital. The phe-
nomenon of factory workers’ disruptive street actions in Vietnam and
China during the past few decades is a reaction against the capitalist power
structure,5 of which the law is a part.
Still, disadvantaged workers have shown that state law is neither irrele-
vant nor detrimental to their aspirations for justice. Workers have become
more familiar with the legal language and know how to navigate the legal
avenues, thanks to the state’s consolidation of its legal regime (Lee 2007),
its legal education campaign (Gallagher 2006; Hui and Chan 2012), and
a variety of forms of legal support run by non-governmental migrant
organisations (Becker 2014). To be clear, the Chinese state is more proac-
tive than Vietnam in disseminating legal knowledge and informing its
population of the benefit of using legal avenues, despite both states dis-
playing a similar rhetorical turn towards formal legality in regulating the
public sphere. In China, workers’ actions such as lodging complaints and
disputes via administrative bodies, filing labour lawsuits, and invoking
legal labour rights fall within the broader phenomenon of citizens’ ‘right-
ful resistance’ (O’Brien and Li 2006; Lee and Hsing 2010). Rightful resis-
tance is defined as ‘a form of popular contention that operates near the
boundary of authorized channels, employs the rhetoric and commitments
of the powerful to curb the exercise of power, […] entails the innovative
use of laws, policies, and other officially promoted values to defy disloyal
political and economic elites’ (O’Brien and Li 2006, pp. 2–3). Workers’
engagement with law in turn inspires a growing academic interest in
6 T. P. NGUYEN

‘rights consciousness’ (Wong 2011; Lorentzen and Scoggins 2015), which

refers to the way a person understands and perceives their legal rights. Of
course, one’s consciousness of law is not static nor does it develop in a
linear fashion; it is subject to fluctuation and change as one actually navi-
gates the legal system to demand redress (Gallagher 2006).
From the rightful resistance perspective, law is not just a set of uncon-
tested rules enforced by the state and its legislative bodies. Rather, it can
be appropriated by societal actors for purposes that might work against
state interests. Analyses informed by this perspective acknowledge the
political endorsement of rights within new laws and policies as the key
factor that enables rightful claims and individuals’ demands for rights
protection. These actions indicate individuals’ consciousness of their citi-
zen rights, and, at the very least, show that legal institutions have had a
certain role to play within contemporary societies that previously were
bound by customary moral norms and respect for social hierarchy rather
than by codified written laws.6 The literature therefore lays the ground
for further interest in the contribution of state law towards advancing
social justice.
While previous studies provide useful insights into the causes and nature
of workers’ resistance in post-socialist contexts, we need a more holistic
approach to understand what state law means and how it matters to
Vietnamese workers’ notions of justice in their resistance. The main prob-
lem with previous studies lies in the way they view and conceptualise state
law, and, more importantly, how it relates to other norms and values in
shaping the relationship between the state, workers, and management. In
particular, while the political economy scholarship takes a top-down
approach and examines law predominantly as part of the state-capitalist
structure, studies that take a moral economy perspective generally take
little interest in state law. Although they offer valid explanations as to how
and why the majority of workers in China and Vietnam have bypassed or
turned away from legal rules and procedures, they fail to acknowledge, or
properly address, practices, values, and meanings derived from the law that
underpins workers’ expectations, language, and acts of resistance. The
rightful resistance literature has brought the law back in, yet it tends to pay
attention to instances when citizens deploy the legal system and legal dis-
course in an explicit manner. This focus also does not produce an adequate
assessment of law as it overlooks instances when law contributes to resis-
tance and citizens’ consciousness in a subtle and tacit manner.
 INTRODUCTION 7

This book seeks to overcome the analytical shortcomings in previous

studies by taking a socio-legal approach that explores the relevance and
meaning of law through its interaction with non-legal sets of norms and
practices. It takes interest in the different values underpinning workers’
framings of workplace problems, demands, and ideals of justice, and the
relationship between these values and their experiences and understand-
ings of labour law. In doing so it is able to reflect upon different threads
of understandings and perspectives about law, morality, and justice as
discussed in previous studies, and evaluate the possibilities and con-
straints of law in addressing workplace injustice. In this sense, findings
of the book also contribute to our understanding of law and society in
post-socialist regimes in Asia, which to date tends to treat law and other
sets of moral norms and precepts as oppositional, conflicting, or sepa-
rate from each other (see, e.g., Phạm 2005; Gillespie and Nicholson
2005; Koh 2007; Yang and van der Wal 2014; He and Feng 2016). This
book illustrates that law penetrates more deeply into social life than
what conventional scholarship has shown. As law interacts with other
normative orders in shaping the way workers justify and deal with their
grievances, the relationship between law and morality becomes fluid and
complex.

A Socio-legal Account of Labour Resistance

in Vietnam

Building upon the tradition of socio-legal scholarship7 that situates law

within other cultural and normative understandings, this socio-legal
account evaluates to what extent law underpins social interactions and
influences individuals’ behaviour and consciousness, which ranges from
compliance with power and authority to resistance. Different socio-legal
scholars have defined law in various ways and examined it through differ-
ent contexts. Sally Merry (1990, p. 5) defines law as consisting of ‘a com-
plex repertoire of meanings and categories understood differently by
people depending on their experience with and knowledge of the law,’ and
explores how the American working class bring their social problems to
the courts and/or later confront the court’s authority. Michael McCann
(1994) studies law through legal conventions, discourses, and practices,
examining how rules and communication surrounding state laws inform
individuals’ understandings of their rights, and how outcomes of litigation
8 T. P. NGUYEN

reinforce or alter those understandings. Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey

(1992, 1998) treat law as a cultural schema and a resource that shapes
individual behaviour and social relations. Their study focuses on how law
matters in ‘taken-for-granted acts and agreements’ (1992, p. 732) outside
formal institutional settings and what law means to ordinary people when
they encounter or confront problems in everyday situations.
Drawing from these scholars’ approaches and focusing on labour rela-
tions in Vietnam, this book understands labour law as a combination of
three aspects. (1) The labour law regime, that is, legal institutions and
processes set out in the Labour Code; state policies and regulations associ-
ated with the Code; and measures, such as the establishment of strike
action teams and legal aid activities, introduced by the state to enhance
implementation of the law and associated policies and regulations. (2) The
language used in the Code and other aspects of the labour law regime, and
the values and understandings embedded in it. (3) The practices through
which law and associated state policies and regulations are implemented
(or not implemented) by officials, factory managers, and others. The book
examines how these three aspects of labour law influence the way factory
workers justify their claims and the type of actions they take to resist and
demand justice against abusive management. It argues that labour law is
only one factor shaping workers’ articulation of what is fair and unfair and
one aspect of what generates their resistance to injustice. The way workers
turn (or do not turn) to labour law depends on their perceptions of the
relationship between the law and the morality of workplace behaviour.
These perceptions, in turn, are constructed through their experiences on
the shop floor and with legal institutions and processes, and are shaped by
both socialist ideology and long-standing cultural norms.
Further analysis of the values and perceptions underpinning workers’
resistance, as expressed in interviews and verbal and written accounts, will
contribute to addressing the following questions:

–– How and to what extent do workers draw on labour law to make

sense of their relationship with management, the state, and unions,
and of their workplace problems?
–– How do workers use the language of labour law to demand jus-
tice? In employing that language, do they mean to condemn ille-
gal practices and call for a proper implementation of law, or do
they want to convey a different set of norms and expectations
about workplace behaviour, or both?
 INTRODUCTION 9

–– In their demands for justice and acts of resistance, do workers

evoke a sense of legal rights or other notions of rights, and what is
the relationship between their different notions of rights?

The answers to these questions will be elaborated along two strands of

socio-legal enquiry, concerned with, firstly, how individuals perceive and
act in response to grievances in their everyday lives, and, secondly, how
they engage with, avoid, or resist law. The first strand of enquiry is
informed by Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat’s (1980/81) exploration of how
disputes emerge from the way affected parties make sense of and interpret
their experiences. How people react to an injury incident, from naming to
blaming and claiming, is contingent on the subjective views of the injured
towards related events and situations. In this social construction of dis-
putes, language and understandings derived from certain state laws and
policies provide individuals ‘with a powerful set of interpretive tools’
(Marshall 2003, p. 661), among other sets of non-legal frames and expres-
sions. Thus, in examining law as part of dispute experiences, scholars have
found varying narratives that may be constructed by or clash with particu-
lar laws, and these narratives in turn account for individuals’ decisions to
escalate their grievances or drop their cases.
For instance, Austin Sarat’s research (1990) provides insights into the
way American welfare recipients navigate the legal service and bureaucracy
to claim their benefits. Most frame their problems in terms of their per-
sonal needs and based on a sense of urgency, before invoking formal rules
as a last resort. Another study of sexual harassment in US workplaces
reveals that female employees rely on legal standards as well as other ‘inter-
pretative frames’ to decide whether their experiences constitute sexual
harassment (Marshall 2003, p. 659. See also Quinn 2000; Marshall 2005).
These other interpretative frames stem from their views about male domi-
nance in the workplace, professional dignity, and sexual freedom, and
often play a major role in their judgements of and reactions to their col-
leagues’ behaviour. Indeed, it is precisely these other non-legal construc-
tions of workplace conduct, which were somehow internalised and
tolerated by the harassed, that have limited law’s power in protecting
female employees against abusive practices.
The second strand of inquiry, on law and resistance, situates law within
the nexus of power relations at a micro level and investigates how
­individuals’ actions represent conformity to and/or resistance against the
power to which they are subjected. This strand of enquiry investigates
10 T. P. NGUYEN

resistant acts and behaviour concealed from the public view and, impor-
tantly, ‘the way in which people make sense of the law and legal institu-
tions’ (Ewick and Silbey 1992, p. 734), that is, their legal consciousness.
Studies of legal consciousness are not limited to an examination of sub-
jects who have experiences with laws and law enforcement institutions,
but also extend to those who refuse to obey or who evade law (Engel
1998; Ewick and Silbey 1998; Gilliom 2001). These varying uses and
attitudes towards law can be explained by the social and cultural contexts
shaping individuals’ lived experiences.
Socio-legal studies also present a critique against those that tend to
treat consciousness as a unilinear cognitive development or as epiphenom-
enal to resistance. Viewing consciousness as embedded within social and
cultural practice, Ewick and Silbey (1992, p. 742) highlight that:

we see legal consciousness as something local, contextual, pluralistic, filled

with conflict and contradiction. The ideas, interpretations, actions and ways
of operating that collectively represent a person’s legal consciousness may
vary across time […] or across interactions […]. To the extent that con-
sciousness is emergent in social practice and forged in and around situated
events and interactions […], a person may express, through words or
actions, a multi-faceted, contradictory, and variable consciousness.

The story of an African-American working-class woman covered in their

research exemplifies the various expressions and contingent nature of con-
sciousness. While this woman was incorrectly charged with causing a car
accident, she nevertheless accepted and obeyed the court verdicts, but
later returned to appeal the verdict with assistance from her employer and
a local attorney. In their analysis, Ewick and Silbey attend to not only this
woman’s concrete actions in response to the charge she faced but also the
way she perceived the charge and the court procedures. As her experiences
transformed from being subject to the law enforcement authorities to
employing available resources to contest their power, her consciousness
shifted from conformity with to resistance against law and the power exer-
cised through it.
Research on labour resistance in authoritarian contexts like China has
benefitted from disputing and legal consciousness approaches. In her
2006 Law and Society Review article, Mary Gallagher notes that the legal
consciousness of employees who receive formal legal aid is varied and can
be contradictory rather than emerging and developing in a singular linear
 INTRODUCTION 11

fashion (2006, pp. 785–787). The author demonstrates that through their
legal experiences, aggrieved workers developed a consciousness of
‘informed disenchantment’ (p. 783): having gained legal knowledge and
access to legal institutions to fight for their rights, they were subsequently
disappointed by the functioning of the court in delivering redress. The
plaintiffs’ previously high expectations of the legal system were under-
mined by their real experiences of it as involving complicated processes
and being more favourable to their employers (p. 804). Xin He, Lungang
Wang and Yang Su (2013) also utilise the idea of legal consciousness to
explain collective actions of wage claimants to demand compensation,
such as occupying government offices or threatening suicide. He and col-
leagues argue that wage claimants’ ‘cultural perception of justice’ (2013,
p. 709), which embodies the notion that one should be fairly paid for
one’s work, drives them to take disruptive actions. This research takes into
account the role of the state’s laws and regulations as well as other sets of
norms and values in conceptualising individuals’ legal consciousness.
These studies offer valuable insights into the social (in)significance of law
in a post-socialist context, yet they still leave unaddressed the complex,
rather than contradictory, nature of the relationship between law and
other sets of norms and values in shaping the form of consciousness. This
book suggests that the relationship between law and morality in post-­
socialist regimes is complex and mutually reinforcing. It extends the ana-
lytical focus beyond instrumental and strategic approaches to state law and
policy, that is, whether and how workers succeed or fail in deploying state
laws to seek redress and pursue their causes. In this study, workers’ acts of
resistance, such as strikes and lodgement of letters, present the appropriate
settings through which to unpack practices and ideas about law. In look-
ing at workers’ verbal and written accounts, I highlight the importance of
understanding workers’ interpretations of their workplace experiences
prior to their actions and to certain events surrounding labour disputes.
These experiences include workers’ interactions with shop floor managers,
supervisors, and their fellow workers; the emergence of workplace griev-
ances; and other experiences (e.g., their past engagement with legal aid
and law enforcement institutions) that motivated workers to seek justice
or prevented them from doing so. These experiences are crucial to our
understanding of how law penetrates workplace relationships and how it
enables and/or constrains workers’ contestation of managerial power. The
analysis also fleshes out different values that shape workers’ claims-­making,
12 T. P. NGUYEN

and in turn shed light on the socio-cultural contexts shaping the construc-
tions of workplace (in)justice in Vietnam.

The Field Research

This research employs qualitative case-study analysis of documentary evi-
dence and fieldwork, conducted from December 2014 to April 2015, and
from December 2015 to February 2016. The field site is Đồng Nai
Province, one of the top regions of rapid industrial development in the
south of Vietnam. The Đồng Nai Labour Federation, which is the provin-
cial branch of the VGCL, is well reputed for its emphasis on promoting
legal education to factory workers. The Legal Aid Centre (LAC), affiliated
with the provincial labour union, has been in operation for more than two
decades and has become a model for legal aid activities in other industrial
hubs. Đồng Nai is also an industrial hub that, together with Hồ Chí Minh
City and Bình Dư ơ ng Province, accounts for the highest incidence of
strikes and labour disputes in Vietnam since the early wave of foreign
investment in the 1990s. From 2009 to 2014, strikes in these localities
account for 60–70 per cent of strikes happening over the country (VGCL
2015, p. 1). In Đồng Nai, the number of strikes per year climbed steadily
from 1995 to 2005, peaking at 185 in 2008, then dropping to 36 in 2014
(Đồng Nai Labour Federation 2014. See also Table 1.1 for national and
provincial figures). In this province, I concentrated on three areas: Biên
Hòa city, Nhơ n Trạch, and Trảng Bom Districts, which have the largest

Table 1.1 Number of strikes in Đồng Nai, Hồ Chí Minh City, and Bình Dư ơ ng
compared to total strikes nationwide from 2009 to 2014
Year Đồng Hồ Chí Minh Bình Dư ơng Nationwide Percentage of (A),
Nai (A) City (B) (C) (B) and (C)

2009 42 70 71 342 53.6

2010 147 62 131 507 67
2011 168 201 328 993 70.1
2012 47 109 234 601 64.8
2013 39 97 103 384 62.3
2014 36 81 71 293 64.1

Adopted from VGCL (2015)

 INTRODUCTION 13

numbers of enterprises and have been fraught with strikes. Labour ­relations
and labour dispute mediation in these areas are overseen by the upper-
level unions, which are VGCL branches at district levels and within indus-
trial zones. Around 50–60 per cent of strikes in these areas have occurred
in January–February, when workers expect a wage rise and year-­end bonus
from the company management.
I obtained most of my data by conducting semi-structured in-depth
interviews with migrant factory workers, who make up around 60–70 per
cent of factory workers in the province. It was much easier to approach
migrant workers, as they live in concentrated rental areas, whereas local
workers, already residents, are scattered throughout the province. A yet
more substantial reason for focusing on migrant workers is that the added
financial burden of living away from home may influence the way they
articulate their demands and grievances.8 I should note that my interest in
migrant workers does not stem from any evidence that they have organ-
ised for collective actions through native-place networks, nor that they are
often the most vocal informal strike leaders (Pringle and Clarke 2011;
Trần 2013). The focus of this research is not on how workers organise,
but on how they draw upon law and other discourse and practice to justify
their grievances and actions.
The way I designed interview questions was informed by Ewick and
Silbey’s approach (1998), which aims to explore how legal language and
experiences permeate people’s everyday experiences. Ewick and Silbey
explain that in designing their method, they ‘did not want [their] ques-
tions to imply or enforce a conventional definition of law and legality,’ nor
‘ask people about their legal problems or needs’ (1998, p. 24). They
therefore directed their interviewees to start with a depiction of casual
events and stories about their neighbourhood, work, and family, and then
asked more structured questions as interviewees mentioned particularly
telling stories or legal matters. I found this a very fruitful way to unearth
the relevance of law in social and often taken-for-granted contexts.
In a similar way, I did not frame my interview questions around legal
terms, such as ‘(collective) disputes (tranh châṕ (tập thể)),’ or ‘rights and
interests,’ but tried to elicit and analyse whether and how interviewees
refer to these terms in their response to my questions. My approach is
slightly different from Ewick and Silbey’s in that most of my questions
centre on workers’ concerns and experiences at work, although I allowed
interviewees to freely talk and elaborate on their other family and social
concerns in their responses. In general, I found it useful to frame q ­ uestions
14 T. P. NGUYEN

around common language, using terms like ‘strikes’ (dình ̵ công), ‘griev-
́ ̵ ̀
ances’ (bức xúc), and ‘problems’ (vân dê). In trying to ascertain how
workers understand justice, I also did not use the word ‘fair’ or ‘just’ (công
bằng), or the opposite word ‘unfair’ (bât́ công), in asking questions.
Interviewees’ responses to my general questions about details and past
events at work have sufficed to elicit their views and experiences of (in)
justice. Compared to a direct observation of strikes, which are unpredict-
able and might be deemed politically sensitive, this method of interview-
ing workers in a commonplace setting allowed me to contextualise and
appreciate workers’ situations without risking harm to them for their par-
ticipation in the project.9
My research participants, however, are also different from those of
Ewick and Silbey. These authors make it clear that they are interested in
exploring the voices of a diverse group of people rather than just those
who ‘lodge their complaints, voice their grievances, seek their rights, or
demand justice’ (Ewick and Silbey 1998, p. 20). My research, in contrast,
takes interest in those who have expressed dissatisfaction. My interview
questions therefore were more structured around workplace complaints
and grievances, but I usually asked in general terms and allowed workers
to talk freely and at times digress from the questions. In analysing the
interview transcripts and notes, I was able to see whether and how aspects
of labour law arise in their interactions with and perceptions of the unions,
their management and state authorities, as well as their justifications for
silence or resistance.
Unknown to the area and not having previous contacts with workers, I
first approached an acquaintance from the local Youth Union in Nhơ n
Trạch District who knows the locations of workers’ residences. I then
approached potential participants by accompanying her to workers’ rental
areas on Sundays, bearing in mind the names of a few companies where
strikes had occurred.10 The rental areas are located in small alleys, about
ten minutes by motorbike to get to from the main roads. There are usually
15–20 units in each of these rental areas, which sometimes have an entry
gate and a board of regulations (regarding tenants’ behaviour) hung up by
the landlords near the gate. Most of the units that I visited have a half
storey upstairs and can accommodate a family of four including children.
The living area where I sat and talked to the workers, which is about nine
square metres, is also an area for dining and sleeping. Even on Sundays, it
was sometimes difficult to meet workers, since they were often working
overtime. When they were at home, workers would often have their doors
 INTRODUCTION 15

open, with their children playing and running around. They would often
be engaged in chatting with their neighbours or cooking meals together.
Later on in the field trip, I approached friends, acquaintances, and relatives
of core workers11 (công nhân nòng côt), ́ who helped with the recruitment
process but did not intervene during the interviews. There were refusals
from potential participants, mainly because workers are hesitant to talk
about their workplace conditions to outsiders. Thirty ordinary workers,
ranging in age from 25 to 55 years, agreed to participate in the research.
They worked across six different companies belonging to the food, wood
manufacturing, and footwear and garment industries. In the remainder of
the book, very limited information about each company will be disclosed,
so as to protect the identity of research participants. All interviews with
workers were conducted either at their rental units, workers’ social gather-
ing place near their units, or in cafés.
Another important research participant group was the core workers
who received legal training from an Oxfam-funded project. These workers
are different from other workers in that they are knowledgeable about
labour law and have more contacts with union officials at district and pro-
vincial levels as a result of their legal training. I approached these workers
through the lawyer from the LAC. My interviews with them were struc-
tured around issues similar to those discussed with ordinary factory work-
ers. In addition, I asked general questions about their opinions and
evaluations of labour law, policies, and disputes, and more specific, detailed
questions about the role of the state and union in protecting workers’
interests. I had several follow-up interviews and conversations with them
during the fieldwork. There were in total 14 participants, including five
women, in this group. The small number of female compared to male core
workers is due to the nature of legal aid commitments and funding. Briefly,
the time demanded of legal aid prevents female workers with family com-
mitments from actively engaging with this activity, and, therefore, only a
small number of them were known to me during my field trip.
Other data used in the book were obtained from interviews with union
officials in upper-level unions, which are local branches of the VGCL,
labour mediators in the city/district labour bureaus, officials of the indus-
trial zone authority (IZA), and the labour lawyer. All these interviewees
are key parties overseeing labour relations, legal aid activities, and settling
labour disputes in the province. Lastly, I interviewed a manager and a
human resource manager in two strike-affected foreign-owned companies,
to learn how they understand and evaluate the current Labour Code as a
16 T. P. NGUYEN

factor that stirs up or contains labour disputes in their companies. I

obtained access to these two interviewees through the IZA. It was impor-
tant to approach workers and their managers through two separate chan-
nels, so as to protect workers’ identities and ensure that their sharing of
information with an outsider was not known to the managers.
Other sources for the book include workers’ complaint and petition
letters, obtained from union offices in Đồng Nai Province and from work-
ers themselves, with one letter published in the national labour newspaper,
Labour (Lao Động). Within these letters I am interested in whether or not
workers draw on the language of the Labour Code and associated policies
and regulations in describing their grievances and justifying their actions.
A close reading of these written accounts complements the verbal narra-
tives as they provide powerful testimonies of the way workers depict their
experiences on the shop floor and articulate a sense of (in)injustice. Other
sources used for this research include policy decisions and official guide-
lines relating to labour relations, labour disputes, and strikes in the field
site province, as well as news articles published online in national and
provincial newspapers focusing on labour issues.

Chapter Outline
The book is structured as follows. Chapter 2 discusses key aspects of
Vietnam’s labour law regime, including the Labour Code, the govern-
ment’s annual minimum wage adjustment, the union’s legal aid activities,
and union and state discourse about strikes. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 are
dedicated to analysing verbal and written accounts of three forms of work-
ers’ resistance. Chapter 3 draws on interviews discussing workers’ griev-
ances in strike-affected enterprises in Đồng Nai Province, with an in-depth
focus on a food processing company. The recurrence of strikes in the case-­
study area from 2010 to 2014 enables an exploration of the link between
the local state’s strike settlement measures and workers’ acts of resistance.
I posit that the regulatory effects (or failures) of strike settlement and pre-
vention partially do contribute to the recurrence of strikes. But the more
important contributing factor lies in the state’s and management’s failure
to meet what workers understand to be their moral obligation to award
the workers a fair payment for their labour.
Chapter 4 analyses workers’ letters lodged at the upper-level union
offices in 2013 and 2014 and a grievance letter that made news headlines.
The chapter examines the extent to which the language and values embod-
 INTRODUCTION 17

ied in labour law shape and construct workers’ accounts of their experi-
ences on the shop floor and the contexts in the lead-up to their writing.
These letters are telling not just because of the channels and audience to
which they are directed but also because they reveal important perceptions
of labour rights and the fusion of legality and morality in workers’ pursuit
of justice.
Chapter 5 looks at the legal aid project and explores the views and
activities of core workers involved. It sketches out the key functions of the
LAC and how messages about workers’ capability to defend their rights
and interests are circulated through the provincial labour news. The sec-
ond part is about core workers’ interactions with ordinary workers, specifi-
cally concerning their beliefs and attitudes towards the role of law and
legal aid in advancing labour rights. Chapter 6 explores three stories of
core workers’ involvement in letter writing and mobilisation against unfair
practices at their company. Individually, two of these workers also brought
their management to the union office and to the court. Drawing from
interviews and core workers’ letters, I demonstrate whether and how their
understandings of workplace grievances and ideals of justice differ from
ordinary workers mentioned in the previous chapters. The remainder of
Chap. 6 will follow up on the resolution processes and outcomes after
workers lodged their letters. The aim is to grasp the dynamics of their legal
consciousness through the course and resolution of their petitioning pro-
cess. The final chapter (Chap. 7) revisits the link between law, morality,
and justice in post-socialist regimes and the debate on rights conscious-
ness. It also reflects upon the nature of law and popular resistance in
authoritarian regimes, and evaluates the role of law in generating social
change and advancing social justice.

Notes
1. Foreign enterprises account for 2.7 per cent of all enterprises in Vietnam in
2015, dropping from 3.9 per cent in 2000 (General Statistics Office
2017a). However, registered foreign capital has increased over the year,
jumping from US $6.84 million to $24.1 million from 2005 to 2015,
despite suffering a significant fall after 2008 following the aftermath of the
Asian Financial Crisis (General Statistics Office 2017b). The total dis-
bursed foreign capital has seen a more stabilising trend since 2008, ranging
from US $10 to $14 million each year.
2. Government of Vietnam (2009). Decree 13/NQ-CP on the directions
and measures to attract and manage foreign direct investment in the future.
18 T. P. NGUYEN

3. See Chan and Norlund (1998) for a comprehensive discussion of Chinese

and Vietnamese labour regimes.
4. James Scott’s moral economy framework (1976), which traces the values
that shape social relationships and inform understandings of justice in pre-
capitalist peasant society, has been referred to occasionally in analyses of
labour resistance in China and Vietnam. For Scott, subsistence needs are a
fundamental right of agrarian societies and infringement of this right has
been a major cause of peasant resistance in times of crisis (Scott 1976,
pp. 6–10). Having their subsistence needs fulfilled becomes a benchmark
for peasants to judge whether the state and landlords are treating them in
an ethical or exploitative manner.
5. I use the term ‘capitalist’ here to refer to a model of development in which
the state allows and facilitates the growth of private capital. I note, how-
ever, that Vietnam in particular still holds on to socialist ideology. The
proclaimed ‘socialist-oriented market economy’ (kinh tê ́ thị trướng dị̵ nh
hướng xã hội chủ nghı ̃a) is a ‘multi-sectoral commodity economy that func-
tions according to market principles and follows the management of the
State under the leadership of the Communist Party’ (Central Committee
of the CPV 2011).
6. In Vietnam, the saying ‘the king’s edict stops at the village gates’ (phép vua
thua lệ làng) (Wells-Dang 2014, p. 162) is often quoted by legal scholars
to illustrate the dominance of local social values over new state laws, which
are seen as transplants of global standards.
7. An offshoot of the law and society movement in the USA, socio-legal
research has moved beyond legal studies of texts and formal law-making
processes and shed light on the relevance of law in individuals’ pursuit of
justice and social movements (Merry 1990; Ewick and Silbey 1992;
McCann 1994; McCann and March 1996). This law and society intellec-
tual movement emerged in the 1970s and originally centred on illuminat-
ing the gap between ‘law in the books’ and ‘law in action’ and uses
‘methods of behavioral science’ to examine how law matters in people’s
approach to social problems (Liu 2015, p. 3).
8. Other sources have also stressed the socio-economic disadvantages of
migrant workers compared to local workers, which are mainly due to the
household registration system (hộ khẩu) in Vietnam that ties a citizen’s one
and only legal residence status to their household (Hoang 2011). Migrant
workers thus face difficulty in accessing social services, such as public
healthcare, childcare, and children’s schooling, at their destination
provinces.
9. My involvement in a strike that is deemed politically sensitive, if by chance
discovered by the state’s civil security forces, might have caused trouble for
the workers with whom I talked.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
voir une procession de silhouettes en robes rouges, une lente
procession de créatures recueillies. Est-ce que ce sont là les lamas
rouges dont j’ai entendu parler ? les lamas femmes dont l’abbesse
est une Khoutouktou ? Qu’est-ce que c’est qu’une Khoutouktou ?
Mais en descendant la rivière, j’ai cru voir cette procession qui
me précédait et quand je me suis détourné il m’a bien semblé que je
la voyais disparaître avec lenteur dans un bois de palétuviers
chevelus.
J’ai, ce jour-là, fait fortuitement la rencontre du temple de Ganésa
et je me suis rendu compte qu’il était assez proche de la lamaserie.
Cela rend plus vraisemblable l’hypothèse qu’Eva en fuyant a été
recueillie par les lamas.
J’ai marché dans les galeries, j’ai descendu les escaliers, j’ai
traversé la cour intérieure. J’ai vu les statues d’animaux, les
éléphants caparaçonnés, les pythons de marbre enroulés sur eux-
mêmes, les buffles à demi ensevelis sous les plantes parasites. Le
mystère de jadis était toujours là.
Les Ganésa dans leur cellule de pierre tendaient les mêmes
objets avec leurs quatre bras, au-dessus de leur gros ventre.
Pourquoi ces objets plutôt que d’autres ? Je me suis creusé la
cervelle pour trouver une explication. Une conque, un disque, une
massue, un lotus, pourquoi Ganésa tend-il ces objets ? Peut-être
parce que l’abondance, le courage, la force et la beauté sont les
qualités que produit la sagesse en méditation.
Mais comme la sagesse est impressionnante quand ses
symboles sont reproduits circulairement et qu’il y en a des
centaines ! J’ai été soudain saisi d’un frisson et d’une éperdue envie
de fuir.
Sur le chemin de ronde qui domine le monument, une confuse
procession rouge cheminait à travers les pierres.

Je me surprends à avoir de violents regrets relatifs aux livres. Il y

a des choses que j’aimerais savoir et que je saurais si j’avais lu. A
quoi peuvent bien penser ces nonnes et ces moines bouddhistes qui
s’enferment dans des couvents ? Je sais pourquoi les nonnes et les
moines de l’Occident se sont volontairement retirés du monde et ont
renoncé à ses plaisirs. Ils obéissent à Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ
qui le leur a conseillé. Mais ces païens ? Je me souviens qu’à
Singapour les hommes les plus honnêtes et les plus désintéressés
étaient des bouddhistes. Je me moquais d’eux parce qu’ils ne
mangeaient pas d’animaux. Je disais en parlant des Jésuites de
Bukit-Timah : voilà de vrais prêtres ! Ils chassent, ils tuent comme
moi et ils mangent le gibier avec des appétits d’ogres. Le seul prêtre
bouddhiste qu’il m’a été donné de connaître, je l’ai tout de suite
détesté et je l’ai fait condamner injustement comme voleur.
Maintenant le rohi-rohi a chanté pour moi, je ne voudrais pour rien
au monde manger de la chair d’un animal, et quel sacrifice ne suis-je
pas prêt à accomplir pour retrouver le lama au chapeau de paille et
lui poser quelques questions.
Je lui demanderais ce que les animaux sont, par rapport aux
hommes, qu’est-ce que c’est que cette histoire de réincarnation dont
j’ai entendu parler comme d’une croyance hindoue et que j’ai
toujours considérée comme une absurdité des païens. Je lui
demanderais ce que c’est qu’une Khoutouktou, ce que c’est qu’un
lama et de me donner des détails sur la personnalité de ce Manou
qui a dit ou écrit cette phrase que je n’ai pas oubliée :
— Celui qui a tué un chat, un geai bleu, une mangouste ou un
lézard, doit se retirer au milieu de la forêt et se consacrer à la vie
des bêtes jusqu’à ce qu’il soit purifié.
Je lui demanderais s’il est vrai, comme je le crois, qu’il y a des
rois, des prêtres et des sages parmi les animaux, c’est-à-dire des
êtres plus avancés que les autres dans l’évolution et si ce sont eux
qui passent les premiers dans le règne humain, de même que parmi
les hommes, ceux qui sont purs comme monsieur Muhcin atteindront
un stade supérieur à l’humanité bien avant ceux qui sont sots
comme mon cousin, fats comme le capitaine Giovanni, grossiers
comme moi-même. J’ai connu un souverain redoutable des bêtes, le
tigre de Mérapi ; un magicien versé dans la science des
envoûtements, le crapaud qui tua ma mère ; un affectueux et fidèle
ami, un ange de délicatesse, l’éléphant Jéhovah. Je lui demanderais
dans quelle mesure il y a des récompenses et des châtiments pour
les vertus et les fautes animales, et si ce n’est pas nous qui, avec
notre impitoyable haine, rejetons les bêtes vers le mal dont elles
voudraient s’échapper. Je lui demanderais si la solitude dans la
forêt, prescrite par Manou, est suffisante pour la purification et si
celui qui a écorché ne doit pas être écorché, si celui qui a mangé ne
doit pas être mangé à son tour.

Je me suis retiré au milieu de la forêt et je commence à me

purifier.
Le premier qui est venu est le babiroussa sauvage que la
captivité avait jeté dans le désespoir. J’étais assis devant la cabane
quand il a paru dans les buissons. Il a labouré le sol avec ses
défenses. Il s’est tenu immobile en me considérant, puis il est reparti
avec une vitesse inimaginable.
Mais il est revenu grogner et s’accroupir à quelque distance de
moi. Je sens qu’il n’a aucune terreur et même qu’il me manifeste
l’amitié d’un compagnon pour un autre compagnon de la forêt. Mais
son amour de la liberté est si grand qu’il préfère laisser un certain
espace entre nous. On ne sait jamais ! a-t-il l’air de se dire. Il ne
demeure jamais longtemps. Il traverse les lianes enchevêtrées
comme un bolide et à chaque retour ses grognements ont quelque
chose de plus familier.
Je me rappelle l’histoire de saint Antoine qui me fut contée dans
mon enfance. Cet ermite égyptien avait aussi un cochon pour ami
dans sa solitude. Est-ce dans la destinée de tous les ermites ou cela
tient-il à la parenté qui rend si proches l’espèce humaine et l’espèce
porcine ?
A cause de l’exemple du babiroussa le singe trapéziste est
descendu de branche en branche et a fini par élire domicile sur le
toit de ma cabane. Il s’y tient toute la journée et il ne le quitte que
pour aller précipitamment faire du trapèze et des sauts sur le banian,
aux mêmes heures régulières où Ali le Macassar apparaissait
devant sa cage en faisant claquer sa cravache.
Puis presque en même temps sont venus les opossums, une
mangouste, des orangs et un tapir de Bornéo. Je reconnais le tapir
comme étant celui qui m’a appartenu à ses rayures en zigzag, à sa
queue trop courte, à son nez trop long, à ses oreilles bordées de
blanc. Il me regarde avec ses petits yeux latéraux qui sont remplis
de mélancolie. Il n’y a pas de tapirs à Java. Celui-là a dû errer à
travers la forêt, longer la rivière, plonger dans ses eaux, car il est un
peu amphibie, dans l’espoir de rencontrer une créature faite à son
image, avec une épaisse peau comme la sienne, une queue
minuscule, un nez mobile et trop long. Il a besoin de ne plus être
seul et il manifeste par de rauques sifflements sa satisfaction de me
rencontrer. Mais il s’appuie contre ma cabane et j’ai peur qu’il ne la
détruise par son poids. Je me hâte de lui faire un petit tas de tendres
feuilles de cassier dont je le sais friand, afin de le faire changer de
position.
Et d’autres animaux viennent encore. Des paons font de grandes
étoiles dans les buissons, des salanganes blanches volent au-
dessus de ma tête, un renard montre son museau curieux, un
menura superbe à queue lyriforme allonge son cou non loin de moi
et la tortue de la rivière Tachylga, reconnaissable aux caractères
thibétains de son écaille, vient manger des boulettes de riz que je
pétris pour elle de mes mains.

Cette nuit, c’est la pleine lune. Elle s’est levée extraordinairement

tôt et elle découpe les branches des arbres, elle dessine les
sentiers, elle fait du ciel, de la terre et de la forêt, un grand paysage
de marbre glacé.
J’ai fait entrer dans la cabane, pour y dormir à côté de moi, un
jeune opossum roux que sa famille a oublié en s’en allant chercher
un coin commode pour passer la nuit. Il s’est installé au pied de la
statuette de la déesse, mais de temps en temps il vient se poser sur
ma poitrine et il la gratte avec la patte comme s’il voulait y faire un
trou. Je me réveille et je me réjouis de ce réveil que je prolonge le
plus longtemps possible, dans l’espoir qu’il me permettra de
découvrir quel est le mystérieux porteur de riz.
Et comme je guette le silence à travers les fentes de ma cabane,
je suis enfin exaucé.
Le pas que j’entends est très léger. C’est celui d’un homme qui
marche doucement sans chercher à déguiser le bruit qu’il fait. Je le
vois écarter les lianes de la main droite. Sa main gauche tient une
jarre suspendue à une courroie. Il est vêtu d’une robe de cotonnade
rouge qu’une ceinture serre au milieu du corps et je crois bien qu’il
porte sous cette robe un pantalon européen ridiculement court. Il n’y
a aucun mystère dans son allure. Il s’avance comme un homme qui
accomplit une tâche simple et quotidienne, il verse dans la jarre qui
est devant la cabane le contenu de celle qu’il apporte. Il le fait
méticuleusement. Il la retourne jusqu’à ce que le dernier grain de riz
soit tombé et il s’en va comme il est venu, en balançant, au bout de
la courroie, la jarre vide.
C’est lui. Je viens de le reconnaître. C’est le lama que j’ai fait
condamner à la prison. Mais d’où vient que je ne m’élance pas sur
ses traces et que je ne tombe pas à ses genoux pour lui demander
pardon ?
Je demeure à ma place, la main posée sur le cou du petit
opossum et une grande joie m’emplit le cœur. Je sens que les
paroles entre nous sont inutiles et qu’il y a dans le don nocturne du
riz une fraternité qui n’a pas besoin de langage pour être exprimée,
un pardon silencieux comme Dieu lui-même n’en donnerait pas de
meilleur et qui ne demande pas de remerciements.
Cette nuit-là je ne me suis pas rendormi.

Le crayon avec lequel j’écris va être entièrement usé et je vais

avoir rempli bientôt le dernier feuillet de mon carnet. A quoi bon
écrire, d’ailleurs ? J’ai appris en écrivant ce qui m’arrivait et ce que
j’éprouvais, tout ce que j’étais susceptible de m’enseigner à moi-
même.
Je déposerai ces feuillets ici pour que ceux qui me cherchent les
trouvent et puissent déduire par cette lecture que leur recherche est
inutile et importune. Car on me cherche. J’ai entendu ces
nostalgiques bruits de tam-tam où il y a des souvenirs de fêtes
d’enfance et des évocations d’Eva perdue. Cette cabane est trop
proche des endroits où vivent les hommes. Demain matin je me
mettrai en marche vers le sommet du mont Mérapi où est le cratère
d’un volcan et qui passe pour inaccessible.

Je suis né des bêtes, ce sont elles qui m’ont engendré. Elles se

tiennent au delà de mon père et de ma mère qui appartenaient à la
race des hommes et je les vois toutes qui me font des signes. Que
de poils, que de plumes et que de nageoires ! Mes ancêtres sont
réunis autour de moi, ils lèvent des trompes, ils font claquer des
mâchoires, vibrer des antennes, crépiter des mandibules. Je
distingue le geste de prière de leurs mains palmées, je devine sous
des rotondités de crânes l’effort de pensées patientes. Tous ils ont
été laborieux à leur manière, ils ont mis au monde une espérance.
Le crocodile sous les vases des fleuves, le singe dans son domaine
d’écorces et de feuilles, l’oiseau dans l’air, le fauve dans son
mystérieux charnier, la taupe dans ses ténèbres souterraines,
chacun a inconsciemment formulé le désir de vivre sous une
enveloppe plus parfaite, avec des organes plus compliqués, deux
jambes seulement, pas de poils et pas de plumes, une tête
d’homme. Je suis l’enfant entrevu dans ces méditations millénaires,
je suis le dernier mot de la bête, ce que l’effort terrestre a eu tant de
peine à modeler, je suis la bête elle-même dans sa dernière
incarnation.
Je vous aime, ô mes parents porteurs d’écailles ; vous qui avez
quatre pattes pour marcher, vous qui avez d’épaisses fourrures et ne
pouvez les ôter s’il fait chaud, vous qui êtes nus et n’avez pas
l’ingéniosité de vous recouvrir de vêtements, vous dont le principal
souci est la nourriture de chaque jour, vous à qui la nature a fait des
becs pesants, des bosses difformes, des cornes embarrassantes,
des cous disproportionnés, je vous aime pour l’insouciance, pour la
résignation, pour la fidélité qui sont vos vertus essentielles, le
présent que j’ai reçu de vous et dont j’ai fait si peu de cas.
J’ai franchi, pour vivre à vos côtés, la porte des hauts ébéniers
qui se dressent au seuil de la forêt et je suis entré dans le royaume
de mes pères. Ma haine s’est changée en amour et je comprends ce
qui m’était demeuré caché. J’entends des paroles pleines de
tendresse dans les jacassements des perroquets ; je vois des
élégances incomparables et un merveilleux sentiment de la beauté
dans la grâce un peu maniérée avec laquelle le geai bleu lisse ses
plumes ; je pénètre les entretiens philosophiques des immobiles
marabouts et je demeure plein de respect devant le sentiment de la
mort que révèlent les enterrements des fourmis.
O mes parents, au cœur si vaste et si simple, je jure de ne plus
me servir de mon intelligence qui est la vôtre pour vous détruire.
Votre vie sera désormais à mes yeux aussi précieuse que la mienne.
Mais comme la chose la plus naturelle est difficile à réaliser ! Me
voilà rempli de scrupules. Comment me délivrer de l’importunité du
moustique avec assez de délicatesse pour ne pas lui donner la
mort ? Mon Dieu ! N’ai-je pas tout à l’heure écrasé un ciron inoffensif
qui passait sur la pierre où j’ai posé le pied ! Et si je respire avec
force, n’y a-t-il pas de minuscules et innocentes créatures que je
projette loin du soleil, dans les ténèbres de mes organes, et qui y
périront injustement ?
 LA DERNIÈRE NUIT DANS LA CABANE

C’est un froissement régulier, langoureux, terrible en même

temps, qui glisse sur les murs en branches de ma cabane et qui me
réveille durant la dernière nuit que j’y passe.
La lune est tellement éclatante que l’on y voit presque comme en
plein jour et que je me demande tout d’abord si ce n’est pas quelque
prodige céleste qui a enfanté cette clarté intermédiaire entre la nuit
et la lumière du soleil.
Qu’est-ce qui fait ce bruit si proche ? Je regarde et il me semble
d’abord voir une procession de lamas rouges. Ils vont tout
doucement et ce que j’entends est le froissement du coton de leur
robe sur le bois.
Mais non. Comment n’y avais-je pas pensé plus tôt ? Comment
n’est-il pas venu plus tôt ? C’est le tigre de Mérapi, le tigre borgne, le
tigre géant, celui que j’ai martyrisé, moi, l’homme.
A travers les interstices des branches je vois son mufle énorme,
son œil vert et phosphorescent et il me semble que la cabane
craque légèrement quand son dos s’y appuie en glissant. Je songe
que la porte est fragile, ne tient qu’avec une petite liane nouée qui
forme crochet et que le plus léger coup de patte la ferait ouvrir.
Mais je n’ai aucune terreur. J’éprouve même une bizarre
allégresse, celle de ne pas savoir ce qui va exactement se passer.
Jamais je ne suis entré dans la cage du tigre, jamais je ne me
suis trouvé face à face avec lui. Ma rage ne s’est exercée qu’à
travers des barreaux et il a dû accumuler en lui, comme seules
peuvent le faire les bêtes, une somme extraordinaire de vengeance
insatisfaite. Je connais cette faculté animale qui permet de garder
pendant des années dans la mémoire le souvenir de l’offense.
 J’entends le tigre gronder derrière le mur de la cabane. Il ondule,
il cherche une ouverture, il attend.
Et moi, assis à côté de la statuette de la déesse Dorjé-Pagmo, de
la déesse à tête de porc, je songe que j’ai injustement torturé cette
créature sauvage, car le tigre de Mérapi n’avait pas dévoré Eva, la
nuit du temple de Ganésa. Je le sais en cet instant avec une
certitude absolue.
Je me mets à réfléchir.
Le tigre peut très bien tourner autour de la cabane et ne pas
évaluer sa solidité, ne pas penser à donner un coup de patte sur la
porte. Les animaux, quelquefois si ingénieux, sont d’autres fois plus
naïfs que des enfants en bas âge.
Si j’élevais sévèrement la voix tout d’un coup et si je lui donnais
l’ordre de partir, peut-être s’éloignerait-il docilement. Il m’a si
longtemps vu et entendu commander comme un maître. Puis, il y a
dans la parole humaine une organisation rythmée qui impressionne
les bêtes. Je me souviens d’un chasseur d’Australie qui échappa à
des loups qui l’entouraient rien qu’en leur criant, à voix intelligible,
l’ordre de partir.
Mais je ne veux pas intimider le monstre borgne que je me suis
plu si longtemps à torturer. Il y a en moi un confus désir, même
davantage, il y a une nécessité de me trouver désarmé en sa
présence.
Non seulement je n’ai pas de haine contre ce tigre, qui a été le
cauchemar de mon existence, mais encore j’ai pour lui de la pitié à
cause de sa fureur aveugle de tuer, une sorte de sentiment fraternel
à cause de la ressemblance que j’ai eue avec lui.
Je regarde au dehors. Le tigre tourne et gronde. L’imaginaire
procession des lamas rouges a disparu. La rayonnante nuit a
cristallisé la forêt et fait de chaque arbre un bloc d’argent ciselé. Il
me semble que mon esprit est baigné dans le ruissellement des
vérités premières et qu’il va s’élancer dans l’espace illimité.
Je me suis levé et je me suis approché de la porte. Un rayon de
lune tombe juste sur le front de la statuette de la déesse. J’examine
la liane nouée par Chumbul et qui forme un crochet primitif. Je
donne un tout petit coup avec mon doigt et je fais sauter ce crochet.
D’ordinaire la porte s’ouvre toute seule. Cette fois-ci elle n’a pas
tourné. Je comprends aussitôt pourquoi. Le tigre est appuyé contre
la porte. Il n’y a plus qu’à donner une petite poussée, le tigre se
déplacera, la porte s’ouvrira et nous serons face à face.
J’ai écrit ces dernières lignes à la clarté de la lune et avec assez
de peine parce que mon crayon n’est plus qu’un ridicule petit bout de
crayon. Je déposerai les feuillets sur lesquels j’écris au pied de la
statuette de la déesse, puis je pousserai la porte.
O seigneur, je suis la bête. Donne à mon âme la fraternité
nécessaire pour être compris et aimé par les bêtes. Fais rayonner de
mon corps l’amour que j’éprouve afin qu’il se répande sur mes frères
de la forêt. Permets-moi de les aider et de les guider afin qu’ils
deviennent meilleurs, comme je le suis devenu.
Et je trace encore pour terminer cette prière que je ne comprends
pas et que je répète à haute voix :
— Om, Mani, Padmé, Aum.
 LA LETTRE DE MONSIEUR CHARLEX

Voici la lettre de Monsieur Charlex, chargé par le gouvernement

français d’une mission archéologique à Java et que j’ai trouvée
épinglée à la suite des deux manuscrits que je publie. Le premier de
ces manuscrits forme un grand cahier dont certaines pages ont été
arrachées et il est écrit dans une écriture ferme et régulière. Le
second a été griffonné plutôt qu’écrit sur les feuillets d’un petit carnet
de poche. La lettre de Monsieur Charlex les complète. On peut
déduire de sa lecture qu’au moment de son départ pour Java,
Monsieur Charlex fut prié par le possesseur des mémoires du
dompteur Rafaël Graaf de faire une enquête sur leur auteur à
Batavia et à Djokjokarta.

Batavia, 1er mai 1874.

Ce que je vous écris n’est que le résumé rapide de mes

recherches. J’ai tant de notes à recopier, tant de croquis et de
reproductions de bas-reliefs à classer et à mettre au net que
j’ajourne à mon retour en Europe des explications plus détaillées. Je
n’ai, du reste, que peu de choses à vous apprendre.
J’ai questionné dès mon arrivée à Batavia toutes les personnes
de la société hollandaise qu’il m’a été donné de connaître. Toutes
sont au courant de ce qui est arrivé il y a quelques années à
Djokjokarta. Mais il me semble qu’après avoir passionnément
commenté l’événement on s’en est désintéressé. Chacun conclut de
la même façon.
— Le dompteur de Singapour, celui qu’on a surnommé l’homme
qui vit avec un tigre, était une brute que Mademoiselle Varoga a
connu pour son malheur. Il est devenu fou, tant pis pour lui. Existe-t-
il encore ? C’est possible et cela n’a pas d’importance. Mademoiselle
Varoga est maintenant princesse de Matarem et elle vit très
heureuse aux environs de Bantam, dans les domaines de son mari,
le descendant des anciens empereurs de Java, qui est un poète et
un érudit.
On ajoute en parlant d’elle des phrases telles que les suivantes :
— Quelle créature romanesque ! C’est une hurluberlue qui s’est
assagie. Elle avait déjà fait plusieurs fugues, notamment à
Singapour, où elle courait les fumeries. Elle fait partie de ce genre de
femmes qui aiment les poètes, les dompteurs et les officiers de
marine. Mais comment expliquer qu’elle s’est enfermée dans un
couvent de nonnes bouddhistes dont le prince de Matarem eut
beaucoup de peine à la faire sortir ? C’est peut-être que le
bouddhisme a un puissant attrait sur certaines âmes.
Le capitaine d’un vaisseau de commerce français qui avait fait
escale à Singapour m’a dit qu’un procès était engagé là-bas entre
Mme Graaf, installée à Zanzibar, et un cousin du dompteur qui
habite Goa. La fortune et les propriétés de Rafaël Graaf ont été
mises sous séquestre.
Mais il est arrivé que sous l’influence du climat, les jardins de
Singapour, sur l’emplacement desquels était jadis la ménagerie, sont
devenus une forêt vierge. Dans cette forêt vierge des crocodiles qui
avaient dû être oubliés ont pullulé et constituent maintenant un
danger pour le quartier chinois.
Je vous rapporte à peu près mot à mot une phrase que j’ai
entendue dire à un professeur au lycée de Batavia, qui passait pour
très versé dans la connaissance du bouddhisme et des religions de
l’Inde. Cette phrase n’a qu’un rapport assez éloigné avec l’histoire
du dompteur de Singapour et elle ne fut pas prononcée à son
occasion, mais elle permet toutefois des rapprochements assez
troublants.
Ce professeur parlait des pouvoirs acquis par certains fakirs à la
suite de longues méditations.
 — Les fakirs ont une connaissance secrète de la puissance du
son. Ils arrivent à enfermer dans les vibrations causées par certaines
syllabes des influences qui agissent à distance sur ceux qui
entendent ces syllabes. Ils instruisent leurs disciples et ils prétendent
les rendre meilleurs, plus élevés dans la hiérarchie des êtres, rien
qu’en leur faisant répéter ce qu’ils appellent des mantras.
L’invocation qui, de toutes, est la plus mystérieuse, renferme le plus
d’occulte pouvoir quand elle est formulée selon un rythme dont il faut
avoir le secret, est celle-ci :
— Om, Mani, Padmé, Aum.
Comme je vous l’avais promis, je suis allé à Djokjokarta et j’y ai
séjourné quelques jours. Le voyage est long et fatigant. Le chemin
de fer qui doit réunir Djokjokarta à Samarang est encore en voie de
construction. Les travaux que l’on est en train d’accomplir
bouleversent ces paysages et leur donnent une physionomie
différente de celle qui est décrite dans les cahiers de Rafaël Graaf.
J’avais plusieurs lettres de recommandation pour le résident
hollandais de Djokjokarta. C’est un homme aimable mais simple, et
peut-être un peu brutal. Il affecte de croire que le dompteur Rafaël
Graaf est mort depuis longtemps et que tout ce que l’on dit de lui a
un caractère légendaire.
— Un homme ne peut pas vivre à côté d’un tigre sans être
dévoré par lui, m’a-t-il dit ; opinion sur laquelle je fis des réserves,
puisqu’il s’agissait en cette occasion d’un dompteur et qu’il est avéré
que certains hommes qui exercent cette profession possèdent une
espèce de magnétisme qui réduit la volonté des animaux.
Le résident, comme je lui objectais cela, ne m’a pas caché
combien il trouvait cette opinion absurde. C’était celle, a-t-il ajouté,
d’Ali, le principal employé du dompteur. Et il me raconta les
difficultés qu’il avait eues avec lui au sujet du rapatriement du
personnel de la ménagerie et des recherches à entreprendre pour
retrouver Rafaël Graaf, recherches pour lesquelles Ali voulait
mobiliser toute la garnison de la résidence.
 Il fut obligé de le faire expulser du territoire de Java, car il tombait
dans des rages insensées toutes les fois qu’il entendait émettre
l’hypothèse de la mort de son maître et il menaçait de son kriss ceux
qui n’étaient pas de son avis. C’est Ali qui retrouva la deuxième
partie du journal que vous avez en entier en votre possession.
— Ce fut une fameuse histoire que cette affaire de la ménagerie,
m’a dit encore le résident, le jour où j’ai pris congé de lui. Je ne me
place qu’au point de vue du chasseur, le seul intéressant. On peut
tirer maintenant à Java un gibier qui n’existait pas auparavant. J’ai
vu un zèbre galoper dans une plantation de café et un officier de la
garnison a manqué dans la même journée un tapir qui se baignait
dans la rivière et un animal qui courait sur deux pattes et
n’appartenait à aucune espèce connue.
C’est alors qu’ont commencé mes tractations avec les gens des
villages. Je vous fais grâce de toutes les difficultés que j’ai
rencontrées. Les indigènes restent muets et détournent la tête dès
que le mot Ganésa est prononcé devant eux. Ils se refusent
unanimement à servir de guide à l’étranger qui veut explorer la
région de Mérapi et de Merbarou. Les trois villages qui entouraient
l’indigoterie de Monsieur Varoga sont presque complètement
désertés. Les Javanais considèrent que le malheur est un être réel
qui habite certains endroits où il se plaît plutôt que d’autres. Les
événements qui se sont déroulés successivement il y a quelques
années leur ont fait penser que le malheur avait élu domicile aux
approches de la forêt de Mérapi. Ils estiment que le meilleur moyen
pour l’écarter est de garder un silence absolu sur tout ce qui est
relatif à l’homme qui vit avec le tigre.
Cet homme, le dompteur de Singapour, n’est aperçu que très
rarement. Ceux qui l’ont vu de loin se sont enfuis avec épouvante.
On sait qu’il habite la partie haute du mont Mérapi et qu’il ne
descend presque jamais dans les vallées.
Je n’ai pu recueillir à son sujet que deux témoignages, mais ils
sont probants. Les voici :
 Une femme de la région du Merbarou prétend avoir vu l’homme
et le tigre, dormant à côté l’un de l’autre, la tête de l’homme posée
sur le mufle du tigre, comme sur un oreiller. Elle a gardé, paraît-il, de
l’émotion causée par cette rencontre, un tremblement nerveux dont
elle ne s’est pas débarrassée. Elle donne un détail assez curieux et
qu’elle peut difficilement inventer. Elle a vu un singe gibbon
suspendu à une branche, faisant, à côté de l’endroit où étaient les
dormeurs, des exercices de trapèze dont elle aurait goûté le
comique si l’effroi ne l’avait pas fait s’enfuir.
Un Malais qui portait un sac de farine à la lamaserie de Kobou
Dalem s’est trouvé nez à nez sur un sentier avec le dompteur de
Singapour. Le fameux tigre marchait à côté de lui. Quand le
dompteur a aperçu le Malais, il a saisi la bête par la peau du cou,
comme l’on fait à un chien que l’on sait méchant et il a fait signe au
Malais de s’éloigner, ce que celui-ci a fait très rapidement.
J’ai interrogé le Malais sur l’aspect extérieur du dompteur.
Il m’a affirmé lui avoir vu sur l’épaule deux petits oiseaux
appartenant à une espèce assez rare, celle des béos. Il riait et
chantonnait doucement, en regardant les oiseaux et son visage
reflétait la joie la plus paisible.
Peut-être celui qui a cherché la purification a-t-il trouvé en même
temps le bonheur, dans la solitude des arbres, parmi les bêtes
réconciliées.
 TABLE

PREMIÈRE PARTIE
Pages
La Fumerie de Singapour 7
Le Cobra et le Crapaud 17
La Jeune Fille à l’Échelle 29
L’Étrange Indigoterie 42
Première Rencontre avec le Tigre 53
Le Jeune Homme à l’Échelle 71
La Robe de la Princesse Sekartaji 80
Le Tigre humain 86
Le Temple de Ganésa 97
La disparition d’Eva 104
Le Tigre prisonnier 118

DEUXIÈME PARTIE

Les Yeux du Tigre 127

La Souffrance des Bêtes 133
La Visite de monsieur Muhcin 147
Inès 153
Le Chapeau de Paille 163
Les Sam-Sings 175
La Chanson du Rohi-Rohi 183
Le Départ d’Inès 190
La Ménagerie délivrée 205

TROISIÈME PARTIE
Le Solitaire de la Forêt 223
La Dernière Nuit dans la Cabane 244
La Lettre de Monsieur Charlex 248

Établissem. Busson, Imprim., Paris. — 30-9-27.

ALBIN MICHEL, Éditeur, 22, Rue Huyghens,
PARIS

Vol.
BARBUSSE (Henri)
Lauréat du Prix Goncourt 1916
L’Enfer 1
BENOIT (Pierre)
L’Atlantide (Grand Prix du Roman 1919) 1
Pour Don Carlos 1
Les Suppliantes (poèmes) 1
Le Lac Salé 1
La Chaussée des Géants 1
Mademoiselle de la Ferté 1
La Châtelaine du Liban 1
Le Puits de Jacob 1
Alberte 1
BÉRAUD (Henri)
Prix Goncourt 1922
Le Martyre de l’Obèse 1
Le Vitriol-de-Lune 1
Lazare 1
Au Capucin Gourmand 1
BERTRAND (Louis)
de l’Académie Française
Cardenio, l’homme aux rubans couleur de feu 1
Pépète et Balthazar 1
Le Sang des Races 1
Le Rival de Don Juan 1
Le Jardin de la Mort 1
BOCQUET (Léon)
Le Fardeau des Jours 1
 CARCO (Francis)
Bob et Bobette s’amusent 1
L’Homme traqué (Grand Prix du Roman 1922) 1
Verotchka l’Étrangère 1
Rien qu’une Femme 1
L’Équipe 1
COLETTE
L’Ingénue Libertine 1
La Vagabonde 1
CORTHIS (André)
Pour moi seule (Grand Prix du Roman 1920) 1
L’Entraîneuse 1
La Belle et la Bête 1
DERENNES (Charles)
Vie de Grillon 1
La Chauve-Souris 1
Émile et les autres 1
Gaby, mon amour 1
DESCAVES (Lucien)
L’Hirondelle sous le Toit 1
DEVIGNE (Roger)
Ménilmontant 1
DONNAY (Maurice)
de l’Académie Française
Chères Madames 1
Éducation de prince 1
DORGELÈS (Roland)
Les Croix de Bois (Prix Vie Heureuse 1919) 1
Saint Magloire 1
Le Réveil des Morts 1
Sur la Route Mandarine 1
Partir 1
DUCHÊNE (Ferdinand)
Au pas lent des Caravanes (Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Algérie 1921) 1
Thamil’la (Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Algérie 1921) 1
Le Roman du Meddah 1
Au pied des Monts éternels 1
DUMUR (Louis)
Nach Paris ! 1
Le Boucher de Verdun 1
Les Défaitistes 1
La Croix Rouge et la Croix Blanche 1
ESME (Jean d’)
Les Barbares 1
HERMANT (Abel)
Le Cavalier Miserey 1
LEBEY (André)
Le Roman de la Mélusine 1
L’initiation de Vercingétorix 1
LOUŸS (Pierre)
Aphrodite 1
La Femme et le Pantin 1
Les Chansons de Bilitis 1
Les Aventures du Roi Pausole 1
MAGRE (Maurice)
Priscilla d’Alexandrie 1
La Luxure de Grenade 1
MILLE (Pierre)
Le Diable au Sahara 1
L’Illustre Partonneau 1
MIRBEAU (Octave)
L’Abbé Jules 1
Le Calvaire 1
POURRAT (Henri)
Gaspard des Montagnes 1
A la Belle Bergère 1
RENARD (Jules)
L’Écornifleur 1
ROBERT (Louis de)
Octavie 1
Paroles d’un Solitaire 1
ROLLAND (Romain)