The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  “Hold out your hands to catch water from heaven; how can you ever catch everything that people say?”

  That clever saying brought her some calm. She consoled herself: “To heck with life. Isn’t it useless to worry about catching the rain from heaven?”

  Thus, again as always, Miss Vui was her father’s daughter: Mr. Do Vang, the one with a pragmatic mind. She knew that she could ignore all the village gossip, because in the past such gossip hovered like kitchen smoke over the roofs of those who had clout or who stood out from their neighbors. Something she could not ignore was Mr. Quang himself. For a long time, she had known that he was a popular person, with a good heart and generous to his neighbors; but, too, he did not shy from pulling out a sword to confront those with wicked hearts. Even though she had let her imagination fly around the man with a thick beard, she could not have foreseen that he would calmly speak loudly for his children and the neighbors on all four sides to hear the truth: “Before I married your mother, for a whole year I took her to Truc Vang mountain.” If he dared speak so boldly, what would keep him from insulting her to her face in a rude and cruel manner when he learned that she had gone all the way to Khoai Hamlet? Just thinking about this made her whole body hot and her face feel as if burned. With sweat breaking out on her head and on both temples, she looked back at Mr. Do and spouted out these words:

  “Dear father, divine and wise father, please show me the way.”

  Mr. Do did not say a word, but stared at her sternly. She suddenly remembered a comment from someone in the crowd: “The father is so good-looking; why is the son so homely?”

  She had never fully thought about that point. It was clear that when Quy stood next to Mr. Quang it was like trees of two different types growing next to each other. The father openly resembled a gentleman; the son totally the opposite—not only so skinny but with a face dark like the inside of a closed jar, and a stare distant and dangerous. Miss Vui had never seen Quy look anyone straight in the eye. His eyes, sunken in their sockets, under a constant cloudy shadow, would dart, if not to one side, then often down, as if he were searching for something underground.

  “Like that, but still Quy has been village chairman for several terms. And at every election the Party secretary from the district personally came to work with the village committee for that result.”

  A thought suddenly crossed her mind and she cried out: “Oh my god! And nobody knows!”

  The morning of the second day of the New Year, Miss Vui rode her bicycle down to the district town. There, it took her a long time to find someone selling tea and sweets. Business was bad; sellers put up stalls on the sidewalks hoping for customers spending their spare change on the New Year. Normally a cup of tea cost 50 cents, but that day, the stall keeper charged five times more, 250 cents, when no privilege was given to buyers to bargain, because it was still the New Year holiday. The street was deserted, only a few kids out playing with firecrackers on both sidewalks. To please the seller, Miss Vui drank three cups and ate three overripe bananas, left over from the previous week. Then she gave the owner 3,000 cents and said:

  “These are both to pay you and to wish you a prosperous New Year.”

  “Thank you.”

  The seller smiled broadly out to the ears in front of a rural customer who was ten times more generous than one from the town:

  “You are so generous, heaven will bestow on you goodwill to enjoy and keep.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” she replied amicably, and asked her the way to the chairman’s and secretary’s homes.

  “Our village is very far, many urgent issues had not been solved in the year. Therefore, I have to come to the district on the first day of spring to resolve them.”

  “No matter how urgent they are, you should wait until the sixth day, miss. I’ve done business here for more than ten years. Customers like you come mostly from faraway areas like yours to take care of problems, public and private. Nobody dares to walk into the chairman’s residence before the sixth day.”

  “I don’t intend to bother the leaders at their office, but my village has some farm products I want to give to the district cadres to show our gratitude for the concern shown by the Party and the government.”

  “Ah, I understand.”

  The stall owner laughed more loudly, then with her eyes looked over her customer with her bicycle up against the sidewalk. Miss Vui quickly added:

  “My task is only to find the right location. Tomorrow or the next day, our village chairman will personally bring the gifts up.”

  “Of course.”

  Not waiting for the owner to ask more, she pulled out a 5,000-dong bill and put it on the cigarette plate.

  “Here’s for you, to make up for the time you gave me.”

  “Thank you, miss. I will take you right away,” the owner answered and without hesitation turned to the alley and shouted,: “Hue, where are you? Come and watch the stand for your mother. Quick!”

  Hearing no reply, she shouted again: “Hue! Come watch the stand, Hue!” She called out relentlessly, knowing that selling tea all day would never bring as much money as accommodating Miss Vui. A young girl about seven or eight finally popped out from the alley, her feet trudging in an old pair of sandals.

  “I am here, Mother. Where are you going?”

  “I have an errand; you don’t have to ask!”

  The child sat on a chair behind the stand, curiously looking at the big female customer, as imposing as a temple guardian statue, setting her bicycle down on the street as her mother climbed on behind, holding tightly on to Miss Vui’s back, like a tiny frog hanging on to a watermelon.

  Thus, Miss Vui came directly to the residences of the Party secretary and the district chairman. After her ride, sweat trickled down her spine. Now, all the ten things she had suspected were true. Quy owed his position as village chairman to the directing hands of his father and not to some good fortune; nor especially to his own prowess. Miss Vui stared at the houses of the two district leaders: each had two stories, with four rooms on the lower level and three on the upper one; each with an open yard about thirty square meters surrounded by a wrought iron fence, so that each owner could sit and drink tea while looking at the moon for some night inspiration. Each house had stairs inside and outside leading all the way up to the top floor. Each had a large patio down below with a walkway filled with white gravel. Each house had a pair of concrete and steel phoenixes on the roof—all upper-class decor and architecture. The very same style as graced the new home of the teacher in Khoai Hamlet.

  It was dusk when she returned to the village. The sounds of a drum arose from the empty lot. Afraid that villagers would involve her in an entanglement, she went around on the other side of the bamboo ridge. The detour was long because there were more than ten separate ridges on which grew all kinds of bamboo, forming necklacelike strands of pearls. The beaten path was uneven, so her bicycle bounced up and down like a wild horse. But her heart jumped more wildly than her iron horse when she pedaled past the foot of the Golden Bamboo Ridge, the highest ridge, which was thick with golden bamboo. That golden color was the same as wedding threads on the bushes of mums in the country gardens. That golden color spilled in the afternoon sun like thousands of gold threads or a piece of superior silk. That golden color shimmered as in a king’s palace or in mandarin robes. Miss Vui looked into the golden bamboo forest on a spring day and thought of a woman who had been there hundreds of times with her lover, but was now lying in peace in a tomb. Will she return on another old spring day or not? Then she thought of herself: Why had nobody ever taken her into that grove? Her secret dream dissipated into smoke, and she wondered if, from then until she lay in her grave, some man would ever extend his hand to her and say:

  “I love you…” or: “Dear Vui, from now on we will live together!”

  She arrived at the alley at dark. For sure, no one saw her rush the bicycle to the middle of the patio. She tied the gate tightly. Then she opened her door and d
ashed into the house. She did not bother to change her dusty clothes, and, throwing herself on a pile of quilts, she began to sob. She sobbed in rhythms, at times in a crescendo like an injured boar. She cried to the full, overflowing, without restraint. She cried madly. She cried more sadly than on the day Mr. Do had died. She cried with all the passionate hurt she didn’t know she had, like a hungry child that gobbles up the bread given him. It may be that with all those falling tears, her soul became lighter.

  The next morning, on the third day of the New Year, Miss Vui, dressed formally and most properly, carried a large branch of cherry blossoms to Mr. Quang’s house.

  “This man does not lack anything but white cherry blossoms.”

  All night she had debated the idea back and forth. As soon as morning came, she took a saw out to her garden and cut a large branch that had both blossoms and buds to take as an offering.

  She had guessed correctly in her choice, because there were only peach blossoms in Mr. Quang’s garden and not the blush and white cherry variety. White ones are hard to propagate and need special care and Mr. Quang, away the year round, was unable to grow them. In the village, scores of people grew cherry blossom trees but most cultivated the yellow variety, with skinny branches and small flowers. Only her garden had white cherry blossoms, a large kind with branches full of flowers that spread out evenly. They were the imperial type of cherry blossom for which Mr. Do had gone all the way to a village growing Japanese trees to get proper seeds. When he was alive, he had guarded the tree like he would gold. After he died, Miss Vui continued to care for it as he had, even though she was not as passionate about it as he had been or enjoyed the pleasure it could provide as he had. But Mr. Do had been her sole idol: whatever her father wanted or did, she wanted or did, no matter the cost. She had no expectation that, just then, the white cherry blossoms would be her savior.

  When she approached Mr. Quang’s house, no other callers had yet arrived. Miss Ngan and Mrs. Tu were sitting in the middle of the kitchen, plucking chickens. Seeing her, they both stood up to greet her. Miss Ngan smiled.

  “Good morning, sister, I present to you my New Year’s wishes.”

  Mrs. Tu was bubblier:

  “On New Year, a dragon comes to the shrimp’s house; we will certainly have luck this year.”

  Miss Vui tried to look at the black jade eyes of her eighteen-year-old hostess. Smiling when she presented her New Year’s wishes to them, her heart was beating hard in her chest. Then Mrs. Tu called out:

  “Big Uncle, a guest has arrived!”

  To Miss Vui, Mrs. Tu urged, “Please go to the front room, we are finishing up our task.”

  “With your permission,” she replied and walked up the three steps. Standing in the door, Mr. Quang waited for her, wearing an old-fashioned silk suit.

  “The old man plays tough; his style is so different,” she thought to herself as she bowed her head, greeting her host as the cadres in town would do, while silently evaluating the way a hero like him dressed. She had expected that with a young wife, he would wear a white or egg-colored shirt, at least a “blouson,” with a pair of straight-leg pants, according to contemporary urban styles. But, Mr. Quang had adorned himself with a local silk suit like the elders, worn quite loose. Additionally, he did not have his hair cut short, but left it shoulder length, tied up with a rubber band as did carefree travelers in the old days. His beard was jet black and circled his jaw, bushy like grass and curly like those of Westerners. Strangely, in that old-fashioned outfit, all his chest and shoulder muscles stood out handsomely. In this outfit, he was extremely handsome, the incarnation of a great warrior, which would be hard to find not only in Woodcutters’ Hamlet but anywhere in the district.

  She instinctively bent forward and stepped back, because Mr. Quang’s breath bathed her face like the hot wind of a muggy summer, a summer full of storms and lightning.

  “Greetings, miss, early in the year.”

  “On New Year’s, I wish you all things well,” she replied while leaning the large branch of cherry blossoms against the sideboard next to the altar.

  Mr. Quang looked at her. “Please sit down. We have tea perfumed with jasmine or with white mums. We also have tea from Snow Mountain and red cherry blossom tea, too. Which would you prefer?”

  “As they are all your own teas, they must all be good. Please choose whichever one you like,” she replied, finding her voice trembling. Not yet knowing why, she felt a lump rising in her throat with a strange feeling impossible to control, like a wild stream running through the fields of her soul, a vast and deserted field, actually. Frightened, she thought: “This is goofy; why am I suddenly feeling this way?”

  Forcefully, she tried to restrain herself but to no avail. Miss Vui hurriedly bent down to fix the back strap of her sandal, her eyes intentionally staring at her toes, scrubbed clean, above a green floor:

  “Look at this! Look at this! I do not have dark feet like the women and girls in Woodcutters’ Hamlet.”

  She repeated it several times to herself and her pride enabled her to regain her calm. No woman or girl—in Woodcutters’ Hamlet or in the entire district—had feet as fair as hers. Even though she worked hard, Miss Vui protected her skin and her feet as others would care for their eyes. Whether rain or shine, in summer or in winter, she always wore thick socks and canvas shoes with rubber soles, just like Westerners. One time, a delegation of Russian professionals visited the village; Miss Vui thought their complexions as fair and fine as rice paper. She thought they preserved such complexions by wearing socks and shoes all year round. Then Vui was only thirteen but a precocious awareness of beauty had already obsessed her. From that day on, she demanded that Mr. Do always buy shoes and socks for her; since then her wearing shoes and socks had become routine, just like eating and drinking. When all the working villagers went barefoot or wore skimpy sandals, people found it weird that a young girl would adopt the foreign custom of wearing shoes and socks all year. Because tropical summers are long, to wear shoes and socks is torture. Sweat quickly wets the socks and makes them smelly. Moreover, wearing shoes and socks was a public challenge to common custom that others dared not make. But Miss Vui could not have cared less. For her, all gossip, all harsh criticism from villagers, was just like a hatching of cicadas that live for only a summer. Come fall, whether they want to or not, they all have to crawl back into the ground.

  When she looked at her feet, which were white like peeled boiled eggs, she knew they were her way out—a lifebuoy thrown right when she was about to drown. After locking the aluminum clasp in a meticulous manner, she looked one more time at her fine skin, fairer than that of city girls, to find a point of emotional support as a fighter finds an auspicious position in the ring. Looking up, Miss Vui was now able to speak in a formal manner, as she did when having to open meetings of village committees.

  “At the New Year, here is a branch of white cherry blossoms as a gift from a poor family; please do not think unkindly of it.”

  “You are poor?” Mr. Quang said, laughing out loud and asking further: “Do you think that because I make my living elsewhere, I know nothing of what is happening here?”

  “No, of course not,” she replied, bashfully looking down because her host’s teeth were white like pearls, and even. They shone like white lightning when he laughed. She asked herself: “Does he smoke a pipe or cigarettes? What man can keep from smoking? How does he keep his teeth as nice as the teeth of those who are only eighteen or twenty?”

  Mr. Quang continued: “The villagers told me that you acquired a generator of the best quality, and have the most up-to-date storm lamp, better than my own lamp. Pretty soon, you will be the wealthiest one in the hamlet.”

  “I don’t dare.”

  “But you have the heart to give me the cherry blossoms. I accept. For me it is indeed the most perfect gift for spring. We have a vase with brass handles, later I will put it in.”

  He poured tea. She looked at the rising vapor, dreamily asking
herself why she couldn’t be the one to arrange the cherry blossoms in that vase. Why not? Perhaps because a long time ago heaven or some spirit had forgotten some duty that should have been done?

  Daydreams flit away very quickly. Miss Vui resumed the imperative mission she had come to accomplish: removing herself as a target for the man now sitting in front of her.

  “On the coming of spring, I come to present my wishes, to congratulate the new arrival and to bless the new happiness. But I also have something to tell you. I’m not sure whether you will welcome this.”

  “Oh, I am not a district or provincial Party secretary, so you don’t have to beat around the bush. We are neighbors, in a village, in the countryside; we can talk about anything.”

  “Then I wish to set a time to meet after the five days of the Tet holidays. When you have time, please stop by my house for a visit.”

  “That’s fine; I also must go and present my New Year wishes. What goes around, comes around.”

  Miss Vui had not finished her tea before guests began noisily pouring onto the patio. She stood up to leave, but, before she left, she stopped by the kitchen to politely say good-bye to Miss Ngan and Mrs. Tu, where those two had retreated into their kingdom. In the kitchen, pots and pans were scattered all about. The aroma of coconut sticky rice mingled with that of honey-glazed fried chicken, making an overwhelmingly sweet fragrance.