The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  “We had the revolution to liberate the people, but, at the end, what we have is only a miserable drama in which decent and honest people can find no place to stand. Those who can make it are forced to be dishonest and disloyal. Or at best, little people like this old man must look upon life as having two sides—like some kind of reversible armor. When I was still young, people were not that bad. It’s the new society that pushes them down the slope.”

  “Well, good-bye, oldster. I’ll stop by and pay you tomorrow,” the customer says loudly, then lays the empty cup on the settee and walks out.

  Vu waits until he is far away then asks, “Do all your clients drink on credit like that?”

  “It’s not on credit, it’s theft. They say that but they never pay a cent.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Oh, clearly you are someone who doesn’t hang around stalls. When I first saw you I knew that already. A guy like that was called an ‘informer’ when the French were here. If I do not give him free wine, he will find stories to tell the police and spoil my business.”

  “I see…”

  The old man continues: “You guess correctly. I do not have a lot of time to play around. Today I have a bad headache so I am looking for some diversion.”

  “That’s it. That’s life. Everyone has issues that cause headaches and heartaches.”

  The old man lowers his voice in a consoling manner, and, a few seconds later—as if he wants to express his sympathy in a more effective way—he asks: “Do you wish to have another cup of wine? This time it’s on me.”

  “Thank you, sir. I am not a heavy drinker, even with your wonderful wine here,” Vu replies.

  At that moment, he sees his wife with a bicycle on the sidewalk. Even from a distance, he can see she is looking pale. Because of the cold weather, she is draped with a large blue woolen scarf, making her face sadder. Vu stands up.

  “It’s so cold, what are you doing outside?”

  She looks up quietly with a reproachful air. Guessing their situation, the proprietor quickly says, “Why don’t you give your bike to your husband to put across the street? I guarantee no one will steal it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Van replies and gives the bike to Vu. Then she sits down in the stall, shivering from the cold.

  “Please warm up with some ginger bud tea,” the proprietor cheerfully offers.

  “Thank you, sir. Here you also have ginger bud tea?”

  “I have everything. For I have lots of regular customers. Those ladies prefer only ginger bud tea.”

  Again he bends down under the settee, pulls out another box containing many dark brown lacquer cups decorated with golden flowers. At that moment, Vu returns. He is surprised to see this owner like a magician with all sorts of boxes underneath the bamboo settee. He says, smiling:

  “How many other boxes do you use to store your various cups?”

  “I already told you. Special guests deserve precious objects. To such a beautiful person, I dare not sell tea in a ceramic cup.”

  “My goodness: such gentility!”

  “Not really. I am just clay feet that happened to be born on the Yen Phu dike,” he remarks, his voice as if in song, his face full of pride. “My parents were not wealthy, but they had enough to get me educated through high school. Thus people say: ‘Not gentlefolk, but at least comfortable.’”

  “You must have been very talented when you were young,” says Van.

  “Oh, please don’t. It’s too much. But, in reality, during my youth I was not bad…Pas mal.”

  The old man’s French surprises both Vu and Van. Vu smiles.

  “You still remember French? That’s very strange; people in your generation have given all their learning back to their teachers.”

  “I am half a century old; my brain is slow and my tongue stiff. But there are some words scattered in my head. It’s like sprouts of watercress in the early January fields. They still threaten that French is the enemy’s language, so I challenge them by once in a while using a few words to see what they will do to me.”

  “Aren’t you afraid some will snitch on you?”

  “I worry more if they will snitch about my wine. But snitching about some broken pieces of French does not concern me. I do not fear reprisals as would a government official. I am a black ass who sells drinks by the sidewalk, the lowest-down-in-the-abyss kind of person. Is there any lower place that you can fall to?”

  Silent, each follows his or her own thoughts. Then a very young but already heavyset woman with reddish complexion steps in. She cheerfully greets everyone, then turns around to ask the owner:

  “Old man, sir, you open your stall so regularly. It is cold, why don’t you wrap yourself in a blanket and sleep?”

  “If I could sleep like you all, I would be a young man, not an old one.”

  “You may be an old man but there are plenty of interested ladies. In Yen Phu village alone, there are seven at least.”

  “Wash your mouth out; you talk nonsense.”

  “You wash my mouth! Who is going to cheer you up? Who else brings you rice cakes and pressed sticky rice every day from those interested ladies?”

  The woman giggles with devilish delight, and the stall owner, Vu, and his wife laugh along. Piles of flesh shake on her ample body, her face bright red with simple happiness; she makes the little stall warmer. When she is done laughing, she takes out a cloth to wipe the sweat on her forehead, then says, “I am leaving. In the afternoon when the little boy comes over, please feed him.”

  “Don’t worry, you don’t have to remind me,” the old man says, scolding her.

  The young woman cracks a broad smile: “These days this old man is quite arrogant. With only two weeks without inquiry from ‘the ladies,’ he turns sour.”

  She doesn’t wait for the old man’s reaction, turns around, and bids farewell:

  “You two, please stay and enjoy. I am going.”

  Then again not waiting for their reply, she briskly crosses over to the other side of the street, takes the handles of the watercress cart, and pushes it down the street. After turning the cart toward Quang Ba, she firmly moves it along.

  Vu looks in her direction and says, “That woman is really strong and is definitely a good person.”

  “Her look tells her character,” the old man observes. She may be cheerful, but she was widowed when she turned twenty. She raised three kids by herself. She does not refuse any work. She works like a buffalo from early morning until dark. Thus she never opens her mouth to complain.”

  “Why did her husband die so young?”

  “They are both people from my village. They were friends from the time they wore open-crotch pants, and they married just when they turned eighteen. When the wife carried their third child, the husband was drafted. He never even set foot on the battlefield, but just as he crossed the border with Laos, he was blown up by a bomb.”

  He stops talking and pours himself a cup of perfumed tea and drinks it straight down as if to swallow something. Vu thinks silently as he remembers the banners hung at the intersection of Quang Ba road:

  “Eldest Brother is right to say that this war shall become the greatest regret in history; that this defeat—the most bitter in his life—could not have been prevented. For him, this war is actually a national decapitation under the pretense of having the people drawn and quartered. It is the four wheels of destiny’s cart and our people are the ones who will be pulled and severed to death.”

  All of a sudden a car’s repeated honking bursts out loudly. Vu steps out of the stall and looks. A convoy of military trucks has been blocked by a train of carts carrying quicklime left standing in the center of the road. The haulers had stopped at some tea stalls to warm themselves. Hearing the honking, they now all hurriedly step out to push the carts up onto the sidewalks. Instants later, the liberated trucks, covered with camouflage tarps, zip noisily by.

  The stall owner, looking at the dust flying on the street, tells Vu and his wife, “S
ir and madame, the two of you should not stay here longer; the place is going to be very noisy and dusty. In a little bit, a flock of construction workers, carpenters, will stop by. It’s better if I move the hot teapot and the stove to the back room. I don’t have a lot of money but my property is fairly large.”

  “You are most sensitive and considerate. We do not know how to express our thanks.”

  “Please don’t stand on such ceremony! I don’t have much opportunity to meet people I can talk to openly from my heart.”

  The old man stands up briskly and with an agility belying his age. After the tray of tea is prepared, he takes his dear guests to the rear, explaining, “My parents left me a garden over a thousand square meters, thinking I would have lots of children and grandchildren and so later I could build more houses. They did not expect my fate was to be single; it is already tiresome to look after some of the houses they left behind.”

  He leads them across a patio made of leaf-pattern tiles with three houses on the shore of Ho Tay Lake. This house is only for drinking tea or contemplating the view. The middle house has a pond with goldfish; the inner one a rock garden with bonsai landscapes.

  “Oh my; the patio is so large, why don’t you put the fish pond outside?” Vu says.

  The old man replies, “I know that putting the pond outside would give it the right look, but the neighbors have a ghost cat. Anyone with a pond outside would find the goldfish all eaten up.”

  Vu has never heard of cats eating pond fish before, but he dares not ask more. The stall owner puts the tray on the low table, between two armchairs.

  “Why don’t you two sit here, you can drink tea and chat. Here it is shielded from the wind, but I will bring out a little stove because it is cold. At the stall I have a bigger one to heat water for tea.”

  The old man turns around and leaves; he later returns with a little stove with red hot coals that he lays in front of them.

  “In two hours, there will be a street vendor with sweet rice cakes and pressed sticky rice. Do you want to call her in here?”

  “Yes, thank you, sir. This is more than enough. Later if we are hungry we will call for more,” Vu replies.

  The old man smiles with satisfaction while with his hand he scratches his beard, grown long down to his chest.

  After he leaves, Vu tells his wife: “Now is a time for us. In such an idyllic spot it would be regrettable to speak of what is sad.”

  Van is silent; she is giddy in the oversized armchair. Finally, she finds a blanket that she rolls up and puts against the back of the chair, and then she leans on it. Vu glances at the dark circles under his wife’s eyes.

  “What is so urgent that you had to look for me in this cold weather?”

  “I am your wife, isn’t that enough?” she retorts in a taunting manner.

  He does not answer but looks out to the lake. Since their discussion near the cornfield along the Red River, they no longer shared a bed. He had moved down to the first floor; he now worked in the living room and slept in the children’s room, for they no longer lived at home. But one time, seeing him asleep in Trung’s bed and not in their son’s, she had screamed:

  “I know why you sleep in that bed. What can you say about a father who does not choose the warmth of his own son?”

  He had coldly replied, “Because there is no warmth but only a bad smell!”

  It was true—Vinh has bromidrosis, a genetic condition passed from Mrs. Tuyet Bong and Master Tung down to their son. Not just in his armpits but all over; if he goes even one day without a bath, all the creases of his shirt smell rancid and grow black with stains. Thus, to avoid further issue with her sickening jealousy, Vu had brought into the house a low, foldable bed, which he slept in at night in a corner of the living room, with an old green curtain surrounding it. His sleeping area was simple, like the overnight accommodation given a guest from the countryside or a soldier on emergency leave.

  Left to herself, Van had hung a beautiful Ukrainian lace curtain in place of the blue one. She replaced the old lights with a most sumptuous chandelier from Moscow. She acquired a living room set just like the one in the living room of the Russian Embassy. She had obtained a Rigonda phonograph, with all the records that the sophisticated have. Then she acquired a new glass cupboard to display all her Bohemian crystal glasses and cups and all her Chinese tea sets of paper-thin porcelain. Opposite that cupboard was placed an impressive buffet, in which were stored all kinds of cookies and candies along with many foreign wines brought by hand from Moscow, Prague, and Budapest, the places most favored by officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These were—undeniably—objects of the utmost luxury for the tens of millions of little people who daily lined up to get their rations of mildewed rice. Her bedroom could not store everything, so she took over his old office for that purpose; her bedroom was no longer a place for sleeping but an extravagant living room, full of light and very inviting. Nightly she turns on the three-tier chandelier, the lamp of the wealthy, to admire her looks as they are reflected in the glass windows. Or she turns up the volume of the record player to lie in bed and cover her ears so that her eardrums will not burst. But when she sees the neighbors poking their heads out their windows and looking toward her house with inhibited contempt, she hurriedly turns it off out of fear. All these things she does to taunt him are ineffective. Maybe the love he had for her has died. It drowned in the Red River. Now it is only a ghostly corpse, decaying at the bottom of the abyss. On the other hand, she is not able to love him, or more accurately, she cannot stop loving him despite the mismatch and differences between them. Maybe because of those contradictions she loves him more, which makes her miss him more. Such a tormented marriage is a misfortune, because at the dawn of old age, everyone should live with a spouse in harmonious affection, tightly spun out of all the preceding years and months.

  Many a time, she had told herself, “I have everything. Only one thing I have not dared. Maybe I should and see what happens.”

  Just the thought made her face burn hot from shame. What she had wanted to try is exactly what she had often spoken of with contempt.

  Thus, she did not expect that he who had stood indifferent to all the tricks she had deployed would be the first one to bring the subject up. At lunch one day, as they sat silently eating, each looking in different directions as they had done at all meals since they had slept separately, he suddenly told her: “You have done everything. What about the last one, why don’t you do it to make the circle whole?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I am not a nosy one, but, because I left a book in a drawer near the bed I was forced to go up to get it. I see that you have a living room that is identical to that of Fishmonger Tu. As to the last trick, why don’t you do it?”

  “Are you trying to humiliate me?” she screamed.

  Calmly he replied, “In this life, no one can humiliate another. One can only humiliate himself or herself.”

  “Each of us has only one life,” she responded with an enraged heart. “Why not enjoy it? Only those who are stupid or blind or missing something in their character would not find out how to live for themselves.”

  Then she told herself, “I will do it. I will do it! But then, don’t you complain!”

  She imagined her gorgeous living room full of young men, with loud music and red wine and champagne pouring out in streams. Scenes of pleasures would happen not only in movies but under the light of her own chandelier.

  That imaginary episode of revenge lasted only a few seconds until she saw herself as that ugly and decadent woman Mrs. Tu, which made her want to puke. She returned to her private hell of unrequited love, a hell that cannot be driven from her mind.

  “Why don’t you drink some tea, dear?”

  Seeing his wife quiet, Vu pours tea and gives it to Van. Not refusing but not saying “thank you” either, she takes the cup from his hand, puts it to her mouth, and swallows several big gulps. He pours himself a cup, and then als
o drinks it quietly. Before them, the big lake shines silvery gray. Not a pleasure boat in sight; only fishing boats that bobble on the water in unrelenting competition to make a living. The wind is strong. As soon as a net is thrown it is blown back against the side of the boat, making the boat shake with its nose diving forward as if it were being pushed down to sink. The fisherman drives his boat in circles to dismantle the net and to avoid the wind. Thus, life continues. Vu contemplates that little drama and wonders, “If I lived as that fisherman, would I be happy, or at least would life be less troubled?”

  Such questions have no answers, so he continues drinking his tea. He realizes Van is looking at him.

  “Tea is spilled down the sleeve of your shirt. This material cannot be cleaned. Cleaning will tear it.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t pay attention…” he says, adding, “You are indeed perfect…on the material side.”

  “On the spiritual one, I am a zero, a despicable one. Is that what you want to say?” Van responds, rolling her eyes like one ready to dive into a fight. At the same moment, her face becomes pale and her heart begins to beat nonstop. He looks at her with a hint of surprise and hesitation, and an unavoidable feeling of pity.

  “Do you need to be reminded of the talk we had yesterday afternoon? You were also there when I was speaking in the living room. Eldest Brother congratulated me for having a wife like you, beautiful both in person and in personality. I know for a fact that, since the resistance war until now, he has sincerely admired you.”

  She blushes but does not reply.

  He insists: “Or do you think the Old Man was being diplomatic?” Van is silent. He continues: “You do not want to answer because you know that what the Old Man said is totally genuine. Your nicknames of ‘Miss Battlefield’ and ‘Miss City Beauty…it was the Old Man who named you so; no one else. Isn’t that true?”

  Still no reply from her.

  He smiles. “Yesterday, I reminded you of his compliment because he requested it. He sent his regards to you.”

  “But you reminded me in a mocking manner! You know that,” she said, exploding.