The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  When he is tired of his wife’s petty tricks, he usually thinks:

  “Rats, life is like that! She is just a woman, an ordinary woman among thousands of women, born that way among thousands of beings.”

  Besides, he knows that living in any family demands negotiation. Without compromise, no community is possible. But he knows for sure that he cannot live with a woman who lacks morality. An ordinary woman with all the ordinary shortcomings would be acceptable. But an immoral or cruel woman, that would be another story. Like this side of the river or that side.

  Today’s conversation has pushed him over to the other side. The danger is obvious. Already he can see the roof of his home torn off and its walls cracked open.

  “No one can measure the depths of a woman’s heart. No one knows for sure what thoughts are buried in their minds, what feelings hide in the deep, secret recesses of their hearts. And I have lived with her for more than thirty years.”

  Decades; so many ups and downs; so many warm memories; so much shared sadness. How can he count all the times at his wife’s bedside during her many miscarriages? How many paths had they walked; how many forests and streams had they crossed? Under how many temporary roofs during nine years of unsettled living in the resistance, with the sky as a tent and the dirt as a mat? How many times had he boiled water with herbs for her to wash herself and her hair? How much rice soup had he cooked for her when she was ill? How many days and how many nights?

  He finds it so vast—all those eventful years, that stretch of a life now gone forever. He feels a lump in his throat as he thinks of the path ahead: a lonely life, like a desert spread far to the horizon, with no shelter, no shade trees. An invisible and shapeless desert that leads straight to the grave.

  “From where and since when did this venal jealousy arise? It can’t have been an ugly feeling that developed from disappointment in the son, an obvious failure of a mother. It can’t be that simple. So if this cause makes no sense, then this jealousy has been nurtured for a while, since those days before the resistance was victorious, and all that had to have happened in the Viet Bac resistance zone.”

  All these wandering thoughts bring him to the intersection where the road forks: to the left is the road that leads to Quang Ba; to the right is the curve of the Yen Phu dike leading all the way to the northern part of the city. In the middle of the fork, a group of concrete pillars has been erected to support gigantic panels that display the government’s strategic slogans. Striking red letters shine on a white canvas that is stretched on a steel frame a little higher than ten meters. One has to bend over backward to be able to read them. He knows by heart all those sorcerer’s sentences. In truth, he had imprinted them in his heart and mind with a frightening determination:

  “All the cadres, all the soldiers, all the people resolve to defeat the invading American bandits.”

  “If the mountains remain, if the rivers remain, the people will remain. Once the American bandits are defeated, we shall restore the mountains and rivers tenfold more beautiful than they were.”

  A gigantic panel holds a portrait of the president in military uniform, his finger pointing to the zigzagging road along the Truong Son Mountains heading into the south. Above the picture is written:

  CROSSING THE TRUONG SON RANGE TO SAVE THE NATION!

  Under the picture is written the echoing reply:

  UNCLE, NEPHEWS, AND NIECES ALL TOGETHER INTO BATTLE!

  The huge, blown-up portrait of the president on that highest panel was his, actually his. The National Museum had asked to put it in an exhibition called Vietnam Is on the Road to Victory!

  He had taken that picture unexpectedly while accompanying Elder Brother to the battlefield, with a very old Conrad that a Russian reporter had given him before going to China on his return home. At that time Elder Brother had just recovered from a bout of dysentery. There were no vegetables; meat and fish were only for display; for many long months there had only been salted fish and boiled bamboo shoots, bringing more than half the people on staff down with dysentery. At the end even Elder Brother, a little better treated, but older than most, had to endure the same disaster. A disease shared fairly. Then, Elder Brother had joked:

  “Everybody is equal before dysentery!”

  On the way to the front, the Old Man always joked like that. His jovial way of speaking, full of images and hidden meanings mixed with gestures, made him especially magnetic. The Old Man knew that he had magnetism; Vu had witnessed more than a few people intensely listen to him with their mouths wide open. He recalled that Ms. Xuan had loved the Old Man during that time. The fateful romance had begun in the 1953 campaign. 1953; definitely that year. It was said that was the year of the Snake: Quy Ti, the green snake. The resistance had one more year before it was over.

  He remembered the stream over which he took Xuan for the first time on the way to the Old Man’s house. He was the first and the only person this mountain woman had confided in. That stream had been as transparent as glass; one could see clearly the fish that swam around the mossy plants, the crabs that suddenly crawled out of cracks between the rocks.

  “Oh, oh, oh!” The girl had exclaimed with joy and immediately bent down to catch some crabs and put them in the Cham cloth bag on her arm:

  “Let the cook make sour soup for the president…we have enough for a pot.”

  He didn’t know what to say but was obliged to wait and watch her check all the cracks to catch any unfortunate crab that came within her sight. It must have been at least fifteen minutes later before they resumed their walk. Xuan shook the bag in her arms and smiled happily:

  “Tonight the president will have a good bowl of soup.”

  “Right. Crab soup with wild watercress. What a perfect dish!” he replied as he took in her beaming happy face.

  There was a spontaneous naturalness, a simple angelic presence in this woman like wild grass, a freshness like a wildflower. She stirred the young souls of men. She brought together spring and youth—a priceless gift, something heavenly that neither power nor money could obtain. Not to mention an exquisite beauty that made birds fly and fish dive before her.

  He understood why Elder Brother loved Xuan, even though he never spoke of it in words.

  Nothing is more difficult to hide than love. One can hide big spending, wealth, dreams and wishes, hatred or pride. But nobody can hide love. Love is like poverty, if you consider it from that point of view. That’s what he had learned from Elder Brother’s convoluted love; even though he was a leader, even if he had passed through many past romances in his wandering life. But this girl was his greatest love, his last love in an unhappy life.

  Gusts of wind blow on his face, dreamingly.

  And the sounds of birds singing rise from the guava trees along Quang Ba road, sounding both real and unreal. He pensively looks at the huge picture, the image of a person to whom he is bound more than to his own blood and flesh. The sunlight gliding on the oil brushstrokes makes the portrait become lively, as if someone had poured on it a layer of silver sparkles. This kind of technique is more appropriate to theater art and this makes him uncomfortable. But it presents the old features fully: that gaunt face in profile, with cheekbones and nose bridge, those bright shining eyes with which he can read every glance:

  “His arms are bone skinny in the loose sleeves of the shirt. Exactly from when we were starving, when bowls of cooked cassava were flavored with bright red pepper and salt.”

  He remembers the black piece of soap that looked like dog feces, made by the local shop, using ingredients that, if disclosed, all the soap producers on earth would be ashamed of. Eventually, that miserable time passed. Every time one stepped into a stream to wash clothes, the soap foam floated dark gray like bubbles of sour earth from the fields; it was horrible. But making up for that were the sounds of young military cadets singing loudly and of wild birds chirping. And hopes rested on a victorious tomorrow. Our people had never lived in a present reality. We lived only with an
d by hope. That never-ending resistance survived thanks to hope.

  But then what about this war? Perhaps the companies of soldiers who today advance down along the Truong Son mountains separating North Vietnam from Laos are just as we were in the old days: hoping and thinking of a bright tomorrow. The saintly Old Man who still leads their way shows the same face and bearing of that saint of the old war in the Viet Bac. With just one difference: he is no longer a true saint but only an embalmed corpse on a short leash—a zombie!

  “It was I who gave them that picture; now they exploit it like a weapon of amazing power. Who could have predicted that?”

  That particular angst has been stewing for a long while.

  “Who could have predicted that?”

  No longer is that picture in his family album. The negative was lost with the Conrad camera on the day of victory in the fall of the year Giap Ngo. When the troops had marched in from the five gates, all the units and organizations had excitedly set off for Hanoi…Hanoi, Hanoi with its beloved thirty-six old quarters, the cherished city that had been taken from us for ten years. Nobody had wanted to be late even by a day.

  “On to the capital! On to the capital!”

  That had been the cry in everybody’s heart in the chaos of good fortune. When happiness fills up your soul, a few items will be forgotten, or a few things will be misplaced or lost. That is normal.

  But if that photo had been used in an exhibit of portraits or for any other artistic purpose, maybe he would not have felt such remorse. But it was being used in the war against the Americans, a pot of war that boils flesh, a war that Elder Brother had predicted and had tried to avoid from the beginning. Therefore, a bitterness never ceased to gnaw away at his heart. Yet he recognizes at the same time both the shameless games that people play and his own failure. That state of mind is more terrifying than death itself.

  A convoy of trucks approaches from the Quang Ba road, each one completely covered over. Crossing the empty space to enter the city, the trucks throw up thick dust. He knows for certain that the convoy carries supplies to the front. All day, every day, convoys carry ammunition and food toward the south. Every day ships carry cadets south to Thanh Hoa and Nghe An. From those two provinces, the units will disperse in different directions according to their orders.

  And this fact is certain: every day blood will spill.

  But spilling blood has been the norm of life over the long history of the Vietnamese people, a people for whom each era has been delineated by war. Furthermore, for this particular war, those in command offered a compelling logic to for their orders:

  “Our people are heroic; such a people will defeat every enemy; such a people cannot lose very much in a war.”

  With that kind of logic, blood spills in silence, bones will fall in silence, the names of the fallen will be enveloped in darkness and fog.

  Is this just fate?

  Is this just fate or is it a choice?

  Fate: because the Americans had chosen the south as a dike to contain the Communist wave.

  Fate: because the north had fallen into the hands of one inflicted with insanity. He wanted this war at any cost: a war that would build for him a colossal monument, the most colossal one in the history of all wars.

  “The war against the Americans must be ten times bigger than the war against the French, so the monument will be a thousand times more imposing!”

  This end had been fixed right from the start.

  The memorial had been built in the imagination and in daydreams since the beginning of the war.

  How damned! History’s game pitting red against black; the most facetious black comedy of all is the spiritual punishment of a whole nation planned secretly inside a madman’s skull. And how many millions had voluntarily given their lives believing that their sacrifice was necessary for the future of their motherland, for the honor of their race, when in reality they are only a pack of sheep led into a gigantic incinerator to justify the theory of a ghostly corpse that has decomposed under the black dirt?

  “Does he truly believe in Marxism or does he only borrow Marxism to achieve his dream of conquest?

  “Marxism is nothing more than a large cloak in which to hide this dream of imperial glory. He is nothing but a traitor who usurps a throne using the oldest tricks in the book.”

  These thoughts drill through his heart as usual. These thoughts had left a well-trodden bare path in his brain. In recent years they obsessed him more intensely. Many illogical points can be understood only as time and space retreat. Now he has no doubt. The one who had harmed Elder Brother was the one the Old Man had most loved and trusted. But this one cares not for the people, and is not moved by the sincere guidance of the leader. He needs only power and glory.

  He needs glory at all costs.

  He is the one who at any cost must throttle his teacher.

  He is the one who must find any means to kill his father. He can accomplish all this because the people admire him unconditionally. That is the price that has to be paid for being ignorant and cowardly. This reality is not fate but belongs to the phenomenon we call “victimization through collusion!”

  For a long while, plagued by doubt, he questioned himself many times. But never did a true answer arrive; not until the Ninth Party Conference. At that landmark conference, all the cards were turned faceup. The majority of the delegates sided with Ba Danh and Sau. They wanted a victory more worthy than that won in the resistance war against the French. They wanted this new war. It was an addiction; an addiction beyond their control. A fateful romanticism that seduced an entire people in a mad rush. The passion to be a hero is fiercer than any sexual fixation. In the burning fires of sexual desire, no logic survives. When Sau decided to move the resolution for the war, Elder Brother walked out into the corridor to smoke alone. He returned to the room, looking out through the window, smoking nonstop. His heart pounded hard in his chest. An invisible fear weighed on his mind. An unnamable concern churned his stomach. A dreamy sadness like gray clouds filled the four corners of the sky. Vu had wanted to go stand behind Elder Brother but didn’t dare. Even Elder Brother himself could not explain his cowardly action, although those around him all looked at him as if he were the last hero of the epoch.

  “Is it human nature to cling to a group and otherwise to lose one’s balance and feel insecure when standing all alone? Is that why I stayed in the meeting room with all the rest?

  “No! I stayed there because I could not and did not want to do any little thing that would console Elder Brother in front of them all. That display of formality or that naked complicity was the most debased act in both our lives.”

  Exactly so!

  Perhaps, so.

  No, exactly so!

  He had confirmed it but for years he had tortured himself:

  “I should have stood behind the Old Man. I should not have let Elder Brother stand all alone in the hallway at the moment when he saw so clearly his betrayal by those cretins. A betrayal in broad daylight.”

  He recalls that he had glued his eyes on the window frame, where part of the president’s back could be seen inside circles of cigarette smoke, while his own brain and soul were paralyzed. He understands that, from then on, history’s path had turned sharply; that the image of the other was an irreversible stigma of loneliness, of a hero fallen from his horse, that from that day forward the fates of everyone, including his own, would change with this lonely man’s falling off a horse.

  Another convoy of trucks comes.

  This time it’s an artillery unit.

  But the barrels are lowered, covered with parachute fabric and braided leaves. Red road dust coats the tires as well as the soldiers’ faces. He waits for the artillery unit to go then turns into the Quang Ba road. He has not walked on this street for ages, partly because he has been busy but also partly because he wanted to forget a place of misfortune. But today, he had walked all the way here, and he could no longer reverse direction:

  “Why
am I setting foot on this ill-fated road?

  “Because of the ill fate, must I look at it up close yet one more time?

  “Did arguing with Van bring back memories of the past or has the spirit of the deceased coaxed me to come back for a chat?”

  He doesn’t know anymore. His steps take him along a narrow road with a row of guava trees on each side. When did they plant these trees? Nobody remembers, but they have grown abundantly like a forest. They reach out one to another, spreading over the lips of the field of flowers and the pond of watercress below. The trees touch; so do the branches, forming a full and thick tunnel that the sunlight can’t penetrate. This is a haven for gangs to rob and hide their loot; a place where rascals come to settle their blood debts; where unrestrained lovers come to make out; an ideal spot for prostitutes chased away by the police. These rows of guava trees are famous across the city for hair-raising stories, dramatic or comical episodes of forbidden love or wild jealousy.

  Was it this notoriety that incited the young and hot-blooded Quoc Tuy to choose this road as the place to murder Ms. Xuan?

  Or was it the disgraceful reputation of the place that prompted him first to shame the woman he killed?

  Or had he been scorned by the beautiful woman turning him down, so that he needed to revenge his wounded pride in addition to killing her at Sau’s wish?

  Vu looks at the rows of guava trees running in straight lines along the road back to the northwest edge of the city. Covered with dust, the trees seem to look back at him, a white-haired traveler, with leaves as their eyes.

  Then a gust of wind brings cold and humid air even though the sun still shines brightly all around. He shivers:

  “Is that wind or the soul of the pretty one?”

  “Dear Xuan, I will never forget this…As long as I live I will protect your child with Elder Brother…Do rest in peace in heaven. If you are able, please protect us.”

  Someone sobs nearby.

  He quickly closes his eyes. Teardrops fall and roll down his cheeks. His face is now wet and cold. He hears the singing of birds in the guava trees, rising and growing chirpier. The birds sing at the border between a populous city and rural fields with too few workers. Birds singing. Why do they sing so much during such painful moments in one’s life?