That noon Miss Ngan said to her husband, “Hey, you handsome old stud, that big gal who came early this morning has a crush on you. Do you know it or just pretend not to?”
“How could I know it?”
“Right, why should you know everything? West, east, north, south—all four quarters and eight directions—there are plenty of people under heaven,” Mrs. Tu interjected, clearly proud.
Mr. Quang looked at his wife, curious: “Why do you think that she has a crush on me?”
“Oh my god, really?”
She pouted. “The way she looks—as if she is high on the pipe. If it is not from a nightmare, then it comes from having a crush on a guy.”
“Truly? Like what?” Mr. Quang asked again, and then laughed loudly. “Hey, little one, if I hadn’t been destined to meet you, then there would be plenty like you wanting to enter my doors. I do not have to carry a gal as big as a temple guardian back home so that day and night I would have to work out to win a family competition.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Tu, quickly slipping in her opinion.
“For a year now, there have been so many who sent me betel nuts, bean cakes, and even Hai Duong black cakes. Thanks to your charm, I have had no time for a matchmaker because I was full of sticky rice and sweet soups.”
Miss Ngan looked at her husband then at Mrs. Tu, shaking her jade earrings and giving a broad, satisfied smile: “OK, I give in to the two of you, uncle and niece! It’s so clear that you are one pillar, one post.”
Miss Vui walked home troubled, wondering if Mr. Quang was aware she had gone to Khoai Hamlet. Because his laugh had been both open-minded and playful, she could not divine the answer. The same with his look—it showed cheerfulness and forgiveness when he beamed; when it turned darker, reflecting a vague bitterness, she could not detect the cause. Besides, she knew that after the first day of New Year, people had flocked to Mr. Quang’s house, the ideal location to enjoy traditional hospitality. His generosity as well as his classy style were beyond all competition. She visualized the huge patio, the spacious rooms furnished with first-class wooden furniture that he had bought from those brought low by the land-reform campaign; the tea sets displayed on the sideboard; the antique celadon plates and the vases with brass rims that no other village family could afford. She also brought to mind the muscular yet slim body in the silk outfit, the bright smile like pearls in a basket. She suddenly felt like a papier-mâché puppet that had collapsed, ripped apart by that man’s sharp insightfulness.
“Maybe the old man knows everything. Not just maybe, but for sure he knows everything. From yesterday to today, he has had one guest after another. For sure someone has retold everything that happened under my roof.”
She recalled the deep wrinkle on one side of his mouth when he had laughed and asked flippantly, “Am I a district or a provincial Party secretary?”
This last detail convinced her that Mr. Quang knew everything. Now she could only hope to benefit from his generosity.
Arriving home, Miss Vui was very tired; a degree of weariness she had never experienced as an adult. Letting herself down onto a chair, she reflectively looked at her feet, the fair pair of feet in the blue rubber. She wore shoes and socks all year round to preserve her white skin. But today, when it was cold, everyone could see that she was showing off by wearing rubber sandals. Someone as sophisticated as Mr. Quang would not say anything, but would know it full well. Oh, those white feet of hers. They took so much work to maintain but did nothing to change her physique.
“I am still a woman who wears shoe size forty-three. All my life these feet have found leftover shoes. These feet are permanently sentenced to project masculinity. These feet cannot be cut down or repaired. Nothing can hide them.”
Tears welled up in her lashes, and for the first time in her life, she turned toward Mr. Do’s image with resentment, saying, “Father, why did you make me? Giving me a life so that I have to endure so much pain and hardship.”
Tears clouded her eyes, such that she could not see clearly the image of her father. Then, on the altar, Mr. Do also cried.
From about the tenth to the end of the first month, rain fell nonstop. People looked up to the sky and complained:
“How strange, it’s only the first month and we already have this kind of rain.”
“This temple-cleaning rain comes early, it means we won’t even have rice porridge.”
“Pray to heaven; don’t let the people suffer anymore. We just had an epidemic of grasshoppers, then one of worms.”
“You can’t rely on what people can do for themselves but only pray to heaven.”
“People’s capacity has limits; heaven’s rule is limitless. Our ancestors prayed to heaven for thousands of years, so today I, too, pray to heaven.”
“OK, after you’re done praying to heaven, we have to find a way to plant some potatoes. If we lose the rice harvest by bad luck, at least we will have something to feed our stomachs.”
People collared each other to plant off-season potatoes. Afterward, they went together to harvest mushrooms. During this season, mushrooms grow like figs; with luck you could fill a sack with fourteen pounds or more. Fresh mushrooms stir-fried with pork fat alone is quite tasty. Wealthier families would add a few grams of beef marinated in garlic and thorny basil and stir-fry it with vermicelli for a divine dish. For families with small children, the women could chop fresh mushrooms and add pork and scallions to make meatballs to add to rice or wild cress soups. In addition, village families could dry mushrooms and sell them to urban restaurants, from the capital to towns in the lowlands as well as the highlands. That year’s mushroom season marked the first time Miss Ngan went up into the woods with a team of women from Woodcutters’ Hamlet. It was also the first opportunity for this nonlocal bride to participate in a community undertaking. First she went with Mrs. Tu because Mrs. Tu was her guardian angel and the person closest to her after her husband. And when her relationships with neighbors grew warm enough, or appeared to be warm enough, she went with the ladies and girls living next to her house. Each group included from five to ten pickers. They brought along food and antidotes for poisonous snakebites. Each year there was only one official season for harvesting mushrooms, so every girl and woman in Woodcutters’ Hamlet would go into the woods.
Quy’s wife and children also went but with another group, and both parties found ways to avoid each other. Inevitably, though, there were times when the two groups would touch noses, and clashes between the adversaries were unavoidable. Each time, people would recount the details openly all over the village, as if they were reporting on national or international soccer matches.
According to the general assessment of villagers, Quy’s family held two positions: first, they were local people and the saying “the old bullying the new” reflected a custom that had been practiced for thousands of years. Second, they were more numerous, being three, while the opponent was by herself. But even so, those advantages could not touch even a hair of the leg of Mr. Quang’s green-shirted gal. Villagers related in a very detailed manner how on the first encounter, Quy’s wife cast a look filled with taunting and disdain at Miss Ngan. Right away Miss Ngan turned her head and stared squarely at her adversary, not backing off even an inch, completely overwhelming her husband’s daughter-in-law, who was bone-skinny, weighing less than ninety pounds, and all wrinkled like an old shrew. When Quy’s two daughters spat at her once, immediately Miss Ngan spat back twice. Those encounters were usually silently witnessed by other villagers; everyone looking the other way and feigning ignorance; nobody daring to ask for a halt or to offer mediation. Once, though, Quy’s youngest daughter stridently offered a challenge:
“Are you good enough to dare?”
Miss Ngan smiled drily and tilted her head:
“Don’t you bank on that adage, ‘two against one’; if you don’t lose an eye, you will be crippled. Me here, I’ll go three against one. Are you up for it?”
That time, Quy’s th
ree family members swallowed their rage and kept quiet, given the fact that this former painter could strike them left and right with her husband’s rod and smash them hard. And for sure, none of the neighbors would side with them to strike back at the “green-shirted whore.” The patio of the “green-shirted whore” had become a club for the villagers, and it was now many times more merry than when Mrs. Quang had been alive. People ate and drank, talked merrily about this and that under the roof of the house; now even if they had wanted to, they could not turn on, and hit, one who had received them with such hospitality.
During that time, the village chairman was not to be seen. All administrative paperwork for the villagers was done by the assistant chairman. It was said that there was a twelve-day training class for the village chairman up in the district and following that, a ten-day training session for village Party secretaries. Quy was both village chairman and an assistant Party secretary. After his training with the government, he would stay on to attend the Party training course in place of the village Party secretary, who was at home with his wife and their new baby. Before he left, he had called on Miss Vui.
“Does my father know about your visit to Khoai Hamlet?”
“You think we can hide it from him?”
“Did he ask about anything?”
“You don’t understand your father. He does not even care to touch that subject. Not even a word.”
“My father is no dummy.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“So, what did you two talk about?”
“How to raise cherry blossoms, pink and red ones. How to raise bees, change species, use pollen, or improve the hive. There is no end to his interests.”
“Let me ask you this: Do you think the two of them were able to register at Khoai Hamlet? Because the teacher there is nephew to the village chairman.”
“People guess they did; no one is sure. On one hand, the village chairman cannot tell on his nephew. Because if he openly registered Miss Ngan’s marriage, it would be a slap in the face of his nephew. On the other hand…”
“What other hand?”
“I don’t know.”
The secretary dropped her sentence halfway. In her mind appeared all the houses that Mr. Quang had handily built. The Khoai Hamlet chairman could never otherwise get an opportunity like that; at the very least he got a new tile roof and bumpy and crooked walls were replaced with smooth brick, plastered with cement from top to bottom and painted a bright yellow. Additionally, borders filled with white gravel like in public office buildings ran along the foot of the walls; for people in Khoai Hamlet, this was very classy living. Thus, even though his house had only one story, it looked attractive, majestic like a peacock among a flock of thin-feathered and scrawny ducks and chickens. Quy was impatient with Miss Vui’s nonchalance. He gruntingly hardened his voice:
“What do you say? Why are you half closed, half open like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know, who does? You are the only one from Woodcutters’ Hamlet to go all the way to Khoai Hamlet.”
“That is why I am going to endure your father’s blow. And you cannot even cover me with your back,” said Miss Vui, now mad and screaming back, staring at Quy; after a heinous look passed between them, the two allies quickly became enemies. After a second of stillness, the spinster suddenly stood up, shoved her chair, and moved her arms as if to chase chickens:
“I said I don’t know. That means I don’t know. If you want to know the whole thing, go investigate in Khoai Hamlet.”
Quy did not say another word; his face darkened like clouds before a storm. He walked to the door while Miss Vui turned to go into the inner room. Neither said good-bye.
Down in the district, Quy’s stomach churned upside down as if he had eaten raw opium. It was like a piece of cloth caught in a wheel, rage making him dizzy and relentless. He could not see anything but “the green-shirted whore.” The green-shirted whore—someone who suddenly had fallen from the sky or blown in from a strange land in a whirlwind.
“That green-shirted whore! My mortal enemy. That green-shirted whore!”
Where had such animosity come from? Quy was unable to fathom his own rage because he lacked both intelligence and courage; he did not understand why he was so furious over a woman from another area. It seems that animosity is like a kind of alley cat or lost dog that suddenly runs straight into the yard to howl bitterly and bark madly. Or a kind of bitter seed that a wandering wind brings over and plants in people’s hearts, where it sprouts and grows leaves and clumps of roots faster than weeds do; spreading, crawling deeply into each cell until the person is nothing more than a corpse operated by animosity’s pulsating wires. The usual words appear in his mind, the usual voice rings in Quy’s ears:
“The green-shirted whore, the one who takes away the house that I have the right to inherit; the one who shatters my family; who separates father and children and who makes my mother bitter in heaven.”
Thus Quy never dared admit to himself that this “green-shirted whore” made him completely lose his balance each time they met, that even the first time, his whole body felt paralyzed, like a crab within the grasp of a toad, its eight claws shriveled up waiting for death, or like a kind of mouse that is totally stiff from the hypnotizing eyes of a snake and losing all ability to defend itself. During that moment, his whole body went rigid like a dead one, then afterward burned as if on fire. Those conflicting and extreme feelings played out back and forth inside him. He felt that his destiny was now in the hands of another person, and the body wherein he resided was nothing more than the shell of a boat with its wheel and sails directed by the hands of an invisible and powerful wicked spirit. From that day on, every time he saw those shiny black eyes of hers, the blood in Quy’s veins quickly came to a boil. The boiling blood flowed up to his face like a fire, making his skin burn and his head turn, and everything suddenly became vague and unclear as if seen through the smoke of rice hay burning in a dry paddy. He did not even catch that when he saw her, his throat suddenly choked, like someone eating yams and swallowing the wrong mealy type without a drink of water; and his breath suddenly became short as in one who climbs a high mountain but lacks endurance. On the first day of the New Year, to keep his calm when dealing with his father, Quy had to pinch his palm until it bruised with black blood. And when his father had chased him out along with his family, he still felt the half of his face that looked toward the kitchen frozen by the expectation of seeing the “green-shirted whore” once more. A hidden expectation, invisible and uncontrollable, made him walk like a soulless one imitating a zombie’s stride. The familiar patio of his parents’ house suddenly turned into an unstable desert. And the door frame of the kitchen turned into the opening of a mysterious cave holding the potential danger that a transcendental animal would appear with the ability to take one simultaneously to hell and to paradise. He had crossed that patio with a hurricane blowing in his soul. But Miss Ngan had stayed inside. His attack had completely failed, leaving no hope of consolation or salvation.
Now each day the antagonistic encounters between the “beautiful whore” and his wife and children grew more and more tense while his own rage escalated.
“That Vui has betrayed me; she does not want to help us anymore. That female elephant without a mate has fallen for my father. That old man eats up all the good fortune out there.”
Painfully, Quy realized that he could never measure up to his father. And this feeling was eating away at him day and night. After one of these sessions of torturing himself over his shortcomings and shame, sometimes he would sit up and calculate the ages of his father and himself. This was the only way Quy could find some consolation. Without question, he was still young, and youth is the strength of champions. Heaven had given him time and heaven gave him opportunity. There was an undeniable difference, a deep pit that could never be filled, between an old man of sixty-one and a man of forty.
“I c
annot accept being pushed out to live empty-handed. The fight cannot end that simply. I still have ways to act. I don’t need that big broad, I can still do things by myself.”
This last thought preoccupied Quy during the entire three weeks of orientation from district and provincial cadres. When the sessions ended he skipped the celebration and headed straight to the city to the district construction complex. Villagers had told him that Mr. Quang was still in Woodcutters’ Hamlet, helping his young wife to dry mushrooms. It was a lucky break, actually. At the complex, Quy avoided the area for contract workers because most of them had been recruited by Mr. Quang from the district. He lingered along the rows of food stands outside for a long while, to spot the house where the workers from Ha Tay—the gang of “Coolie Girls”—resided. Finding the cave of the “green-shirted whore,” Quy went on sitting at a food stall until dark, then ambled over to the construction complex after buying two packs of cigarettes to give to the night watchman.
“I have a brother who works in Mr. Quang’s masonry group. He wants to find out about a girl painter from Ha Tay. My uncle and aunt asked me to check her out to see if she behaves properly before deciding to go on with the marriage. For such an upright purpose, I hope, Comrade, you can help me.”
“Comrade, do you have papers?”
“Right here.”
Quy handed over the cover letter that came with the instructions to attend the district and provincial orientation sessions. The entrance guard bent over to read. Then he looked up at Quy and with a flattering manner said:
“Please do enter, Comrade. Be careful, part of the road is still slippery because by this time we have turned half the lights off and many parts of the public area are still muddy. May you find success.”
“Thank you,” Chairman Quy replied with satisfaction. The reserve of the entrance guard made him more confident and excited.
The Zenith Page 28