The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  That comparison suddenly reminds him of the darkroom where he once made a living by printing photographs, a boring and ungrateful occupation where one was imprisoned all day in darkness with the smell of silver salts. In the afternoons when you stepped out of that little prison, your eyes blurred and your back hurt.

  “Actually, no, that old darkroom was a place I chose so that I might buy lousy bread to get through the days. Now, here is my real prison with a whole army of guards. Why? Why did I let them push me into such deprivation?”

  In the end, he is incapable of forgetting; nor can he escape. He is trapped to return again and again to the frightening dream he had just experienced during his nap. He cannot avoid her. She stands somewhere, right behind his back. She casts a huge shadow over him, looking lovely and lonely. He feels she has just emerged from somewhere frigid, from a spacious, snow-white space where rivers freeze into clear crystal, where woods of dry trees and grass leave imprints in the wild space of dark branches crooked like snakes, where flocks of blackbirds fly while uttering imploring cries like peeling bells to summon the ghostly spirits. How strange! She never set foot across the border; she is locked in the sleeves of his shirt; she offers a life of fleeting happiness later to be thrown straight down into hell. Then in his dream she becomes an eternal companion. Wherever he lives, her shadow is there. He sees her on the boat across the sea; he sees her in the alley in Paris; he sees her wandering on the street of a quay:

  “My beloved! When are we going to see each other again?”

  That lyric rises up in the empty air and hits his heart. More and more he feels that his soul is akin to a mountainside confronting an ocean on a stormy day, where the thoughts advance nonstop like the ocean waves crashing against the cracked rocks, in an eternal struggle without a victor.

  “I could have had happiness with her. I should not have backed off before them. Those who had warmly called me ‘Venerable,’ ‘Eldest One,’ and those who I had considered my soul mates, close brothers who shared with me their handful of rice, real ‘pals’ as they used to call themselves. Turns out all those ‘should bes’ and ‘can bes’ were misunderstandings. In a special instant, all values turned upside down just as if we had believed films about life and then life itself appeared.”

  On that day when he had requested the Politburo to make public his relationship with his young wife, all the smiling faces of his “buddies” suddenly became dour:

  “Mr. President, you should never bring this subject up. It is ‘taboo,’ to put it exactly and accurately.”

  This from Thuan, who was pretty fluent in French. Only half those present understood the term he has used—“taboo.” Those who hadn’t understood that word expressed themselves brutally and without mincing their words.

  Sau followed Thuan. He stared at the president as if he were surprised. Theatrically, he suddenly pursed his lips and firmly asserted, “Women. I think, Mr. President, you bring up this subject to please Miss Xuan, and that is your only purpose. I am sure this request starts with Miss Xuan; or from the coaxing of her family. And our president is far too smart to recognize that this is something that is unacceptable.”

  “Naturally it is impossible. C’est sur,” stressed Thuan, using French as was his habit.

  Waiting for the uncomfortable feeling to pass among those not familiar with “the language of the enemy,” another leading comrade, named Danh, said, “Even if it is Miss Xuan, we cannot be lenient. Women only think of the roofs over their heads, their own self-interest, but the president must respect the interest of the nation and the people over all other considerations. Our revolution is successful because all the people together trust your leadership. Your image brings strength to the nation. We cannot let that image be defamed.”

  Comrade To raised his voice to object: “How ‘defamed’? We should not use such loaded or extreme words.”

  Immediately Sau turned around and retorted strongly, “We need not be shy; we don’t need to weigh our words. We face the life or death of the revolution. The needs of the revolution are at stake; we must protect those interests at all costs. Thus, now is not the time to play with words or choose one over another.”

  “Comrades, don’t be so harsh. In the end, all questions are to be resolved in a calm manner by consensus,” Thuan intervened, lifting his arm and continuing in a firm manner as if to have the last word. “I believe that all of us are of one mind: the matter of recognizing Miss Xuan cannot be done. We cannot even think about it. I hope that, in a spirit of high responsibility before the whole nation, Mr. President must accept this decision. We have no alternative.”

  “Mr. President is the elderly father of the nation.”

  Sau followed with his lips still pushed out in a subtle smile: “The elderly father of the nation is the roof that shelters the people. For years now, the people have known this metaphor. Mr. President needs to remind Miss Xuan about this point, if she continues to demand that she be officially recognized.”

  At that moment, he felt his tongue stick in his throat. Sweat ran down his spine and his feet were cold as if they were soaking in ice water. Those well-known faces had suddenly become plastic masks all puffed up, twisted, and bumpy. How could he find understanding and trust among those deformed people? All that he had firmly believed in had been a complete misunderstanding. A high wall just collapsed inside his heart. His soul emptied; his brain became paralyzed. He suddenly became mute. He could not move his lips. After a moment, his powers returned. A fleeting warning came on, making him quiver. He had to calm himself first before he was able to speak:

  “If the Politburo has decided, obviously I have to accept. But, dear comrades, do not forget that Miss Xuan is my close associate, together we have two children, and these children are my own blood and flesh.”

  “Be assured, Mr. President: all your loved ones will be treated properly. Just as long as they willingly live out of sight, behind the revolution,” said Thuan, who reputedly was the most mature and courteous member of the Politburo. He also was reputedly a man of moral character, which meant that, unlike his other comrades, he was monogamous. Thuan had only one wife. With that woman he had five children.

  The president no longer remembers the end of that meeting, what happened after he had received what felt like a sentence of death. He had felt as if his heart were led up to the platform where the blade of the executioner’s sword came down. The last impression in his soul was a realization of his powerlessness. For the first time, he saw himself as just a colossal wooden statue hollowed out by termites. All those buddy-buddy comrades standing in his shadow just to seek some power. In reality, they were his bosses, such brutal and immoral cronies. The whole gang lived only for what could happen below their belly buttons. More than half of them had two wives and a gaggle of mistresses. The one who appeared to empathize most with him had been Do, for he understood the life of one who has been castrated. Do’s wife had been inflicted with a delusional condition since youth. After childbirth she became a schizo. She was treated in the hospital and at institutions reserved for families of Politburo dignitaries. Do had to endure a period of no sex for a while, before taking up a clandestine relationship with a singer in a theater troupe from Zone Five, with whom he had a son. But Do was always in the minority; besides, his temperament was weak and submissive. All his life he was only an actor. For a long time, he had volunteered to be a marionette.

  The one with the most respectable reputation, who spoke in a high moral tone and who took a firm attitude during that meeting, was Thuan. He had once and for a long time been his most effective right-hand man.

  “But he was never deprived of sex,” the president thinks to himself. “He had only one wife, and with her he has five children, and both during war and in peace, the sex life of this man has run without lapse.”

  The president remembers a celebration in the Viet Bac zone. That day the cooks had been authorized to kill a cow. Local villagers provided plenty of rice whiskey. After eating
, all were tipsy and happy. Suddenly, a woman’s screams were heard coming from the family quarters, a male voice mixed with the woman’s curses and cries. Horrified, the chief office administrator ran over to inquire. He returned a bit later and reported that the wife of the warehouse warden was in difficult child labor. The more pain this coarse woman felt, the more she cursed her husband. Those around her offered encouragement. When her pain subsided temporarily, the women’s association took her to the clinic.

  This incident triggered an explosion of crisp laughter mingled with jokes, both new and old, among the revelers.

  Some guy asked, “Any of you ladies here ever curse your husband when you were in labor?”

  “None of us!” the wives replied in unison.

  A more daring wife said, “Even if we wanted to curse, we’d grind our teeth and do it quietly to let off some anger.”

  “Maybe you’re the most honest one here!”

  The president smiled in praise then continued to tease them: “But why get mad at the one who shares your bed and pillow?”

  “Because…because…”

  The woman hesitated, part of her wanting to respond, another part still unsure. Then he heard Thuan laughing; it was he who responded on behalf of the woman:

  “Because when you are happy there are two of you; but when you suffer, you bear it all alone. That’s what you feel facing the injustice of heaven and earth. That’s what anger demands from the Creator.”

  “You have a wonderful talent for getting it right,” the president said, his voice raised in praise, and then he turned to Thuan’s wife:

  “Knowing how to speak like that, he must also know how to be an ideal husband. Am I right?”

  “Ah…”

  Thuan’s wife also hesitated like the other women. She glanced at her husband and again he laughed out loud, this time without concealing his pleasure:

  “Mr. President, on this topic you are pretty naive. Theory and practice are always like two parallel lines that never meet. My wife was just nagging me all night because I broke a rule.”

  “Broke a rule? What rule?”

  He had asked the question out of genuine curiosity because he was not clear what kinds of rules there were between the couple. For his whole life, women had passed him by like rain or clouds, temporary like an inn, dreamy like a fictional beauty. Family life for him was an unexplored continent. While looking toward Thuan, the wife’s face became red like a ripe fruit, while Thuan smiled the largest smile he could manage. Then he slowly explained:

  “There are lots of rules, but no rule can withstand youth and all the rushes of one’s nature. For instance, our elders taught us that after a wife gives birth, we have to restrain ourselves for one hundred days, that was the official position. But I don’t believe any husband can fast past twenty-one days. Behind our wives’ backs, quietly I asked ten husbands: all ten admitted they broke that rule. Then the doctor has his rule: when a wife is nine months pregnant, it is absolutely forbidden to come near her bed. Me, I practice ‘jusqu’au bout’ (until the end). The day she went into labor, the night before I was knocking away.”

  “Will you stop now, you devil,” Thuan’s wife screamed, almost crying of embarrassment.

  The whole group burst into laughter, with an obvious air of complicity. He hurriedly intervened:

  “OK, OK…when the lady speaks, it’s an order. I recommend that we turn to another subject.”

  A time to remember; a time to love; a time to take revenge.

  An old verse suddenly returns. He suddenly sees the logic of the ordinary. It’s correct that there was a time. A time to remember.

  A time that has passed—a time of all those who had lived in the jungle, who had together sung the same military songs, who had marched in the same formation, who had shared bowls of rice, and who had had the same hopes. A time of suffering and dreaming, when each could share with the others all things in an easy manner. A time when people thought that love and friendship were the strong ropes that bound them tightly, despite all barriers, despite all changes.

  “Why does this revenge arise? From hidden envy or from power crucified?”

  Those two alternatives put him at a fork in the road where either way had snakes and centipedes underfoot. So many years had passed, but still he did not fully understand the reason for this communal betrayal. Could it have been that her beauty brought jealousy to the heart of his comrades? Or had his love for her undermined the power of the organization?

  Before he had met Xuan, the resistance movement had decided to find him a woman who would be the future “Mother of the Nation.” His rejection of that proposal, followed by a torrid affair with a girl from the mountains, was the hammer that had decidedly smashed the sculpted image that his comrades had readily erected for him.

  “Who appointed them matchmakers? Everything that has happened feels like a stupid game as well as a plan of some ghost taking me to the grave.”

  He cannot remember for sure when, but about the winter of 1947 or the spring of 1948, the office had come to report:

  “The Politburo has met without you and decided that a female comrade from the women’s association will be assigned to service you.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed of the purpose of that meeting?”

  “Because, Mr. President, your responsibility is to be the highest leader of the resistance; thousands of matters await you. Thus, you do not have time to worry about your personal affairs. The Politburo had to step up and make the arrangement.”

  “But feelings between two individuals cannot be addressed in such a simple and mechanical manner. You all set the tasks, but the woman does not have any passion, so then the arrangement is a punishment for her.”

  “Don’t you worry, Mr. President! To serve you is an honor.”

  “But me, I’m human, too; I have to feel genuine emotion for the whole thing to work out well.”

  “Yes, all the officials of the Politburo say that to carry out this decision is to safeguard your health, Mr. President. According to Hai Thuong Lan Ong’s Encyclopedia of Medicine, if your yin and yang are not balanced, then all kinds of ailments will come. Your health secures the destiny of the people and the future of the nation. The whole administrative office has the obligation to take care of your health.”

  “I understand. But you cannot use that reason to solve everything so pragmatically.”

  “Mr. President, the women’s association has briefed Comrade Thu. She has agreed that serving you means to serve the revolution.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. President, the administrative office informs you that it will commence this Saturday.”

  “You don’t have to rush things like that. I have lived a few years without a partner and nothing happened,” he replied, an annoyance invading his heart. But the chief of the administrative office hurriedly went out. His quick footsteps could be heard at the top of the stairs. Then an aide stepped in and asked him to go to General Long’s bunker for a meeting. This meeting had been scheduled two weeks ago so he went right away, but his annoyance remained, similar to that feeling from the past when the widow in the short alley off Rue St-Jean had pursued him and stalked him in a blunt manner in front of all the neighbors.

  As soon as he had stepped into General Long’s bunker, right away he asked about this decision. But this fellow pretended not to hear anything; he kept busy pouring tea. Then he said slowly: “It’s only temporary.”

  He understood that they had found for him only a temporary remedy, but it was still a forced arrangement. He felt his freedom being violated.

  At the end of that week, on Saturday, he saw the shadow of a woman appear. Routinely each Saturday everyone went to the family compound except the bodyguards. Their shelter was only a few yards from his house; one could hear noises from either side of the walls. He seemed to have forgotten about “the female comrade serving the resistance.” He seemed quite surprised to see a woman approaching his quarters as the evening
meal had just ended; in the sky only a bright yellow cloud remained that shed colorless rays on the deep black trees of the forest. In that light and in the desolate space, the image of the woman was most frail and lonely.

  He wondered, “Who can it be? Who is coming here at this time?”

  In principle, the guards were not allowed to receive family members in the off-limits area. If a family came up to visit, guards could take a break and meet their loved ones in an area called “Reunions” or, more romantically, the “House of Happiness.” That house was about a stream and two hills away. Curious, he continued to peek through the window, following the one who walked with her head down. It seemed as if she were carrying some objects that made her gait both hurried and quite unbalanced: an uneasy and painful gait. The image did not stir any feeling of admiration, only pity. Pity for a man is bad, but twice as bad if it is felt for a woman.

  “What a stupid business,” he said to himself in an unpleasant manner, as if against himself. Then he looked down at the pile of documents. But an intuitive feeling told him that the woman with the unsteady walk was of concern to him and not to the guards. He then recalled the “temporary solution” that General Long had talked about and immediately a cry pierced his heart:

  “Hell! This is the woman they have chosen for me.”

  Putting the materials down, he sat absentminded.

  There were no good-looking single women left in the women’s association. All had been taken. Top among the fair ones were Van, Vu’s wife; Sau’s second wife; and Miss Tuong Vi, who came from the central performance troupe. These latter two were nicknamed the Two Ladies.” Then followed the “Three Dainty Ones,” Lan, Hue, and Nhi; three women well known in the resistance zone because of their graceful looks and domestic skills. They were tasked to assist all the international welcoming ceremonies and important celebrations, making flower displays, cakes, and all the popular dishes, as well as teaching the other women how to apply makeup. Even though they lived in the woods, these women were all pretty stylish, and spoiled with shipments of luxuries, silk, cosmetics, and French cigarettes.