The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  He bends his head to continue drinking tea, looking at the yellow liquid that resembles the color of the curry he had eaten before he had left Guangzhou in China. The rest house at Guangzhou—a vacation that had been exactingly prepared like a contemporary over-the-top Broadway play. The whole time he had been there, the cook had made only Vietnamese and Chinese dishes. For his last meal, the Chinese cook had gotten the idea of cooking Indian food for a treat, knowing that he was soon to leave. The meal had been good. Before getting on the helicopter he could still taste the flavor of curry mixed with oil in the rice. It made the color of the dish quite attractive: a smooth and shiny yellow, a color depicting warmth or happiness.

  A military helicopter had taken him that night back to Hanoi. They had told him they had to use a helicopter to fly real low and so avoid the antiaircraft defenses. War often turns misjudgment into farce. To ensure his safety, they had been forced to use a ragged, obsolete piece of machinery.

  The pilot had seemed nervous, even agitated. He wanted to say something but stopped. The president had looked at the soldier and immediately felt confident.

  “I have ridden in carts drawn by buffalo. Riding in your plane is a luxury. Don’t worry.”

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot had replied, then sat down at the controls. The president’s four bodyguards had sat at each of the four corners as specified. The flight began. When the helicopter had risen up the necessary height over Guangzhou, it had shaken and bumped around like a buffalo cart rolling over crumbling mountain roads. The moving air around them was like many waves continuously dropping down, mixing in with the clouds. The night was ink black. He could see only a vast black space, with no moon or stars. And so they had flown in silence to the next zone. But once the helicopter had crossed the border, tracer antiaircraft rounds shot up, plowing narrow lines of red fire. Each time, those lines of fire had come closer. He knew that they had entered the no-fly zone defended by the antiaircraft units in the northeast area, from Lao Cai to Quang Ninh. The pilot brought the helicopter down under the red streaks made by the tracer bullets. His stress had caused his eyes to bulge out from his face and sweat to roll profusely down his nape, soaking the collar of his uniform. Sweat had also run down to his hands. The president still remembers the image of those hands, thick and firm, with hair on top and on the last knuckles of the fingers. He recalls fixating on those hands, as did his bodyguards. They had been unable to do anything but breathe anxiously and glue their eyes on the hands of the pilot. That had been the longest plane ride in his life. Each minute going by had been an anxious one—listening to the puffing sound of the old engine, waiting to see what would happen. The pilot and the four very young guards dared not say anything: he knew fear had turned them so stonily silent.

  Finally, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief and showed him the Long Bien bridge. He tilted his head to look through the glass to see the familiar bridge in the faded light of a city during wartime. Without turning his head backward, he said, “Inform the president: we will land in a few minutes.”

  Hesitating a little, he had continued: “If nothing special happens.”

  The president had replied, “If something special happens or not, one person is in charge. On this plane you are the pilot, not me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot answered, eyes looking straight ahead. At that moment, the helicopter started to circle. The soldiers, who had just begun to relax, now again were afraid, and their worry contaminated the small cabin.

  The plane circled a second time, then a third.

  Silence weighed heavy in the air. Strangely, however, at that moment a calm suddenly came over him followed by a playful smile.

  “Certainly, every game has to end. At least, the people will see the last scene of this play. Won’t that have some benefit?”

  The pilot suddenly turned around and spoke: “Mr. President, the landing lights are placed in the wrong position.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, one hundred percent.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that if we land based on the landing lights as positioned, the plane will fall right in the middle of Dinh Cong Lake.”

  He was quiet; he could almost hear the wild beating in the chests of the four guards. After a few minutes, he asked, “Have you been flying for a while now?”

  “Mr. President, not quite as long as some others but I know all the airports of the country like the palm of my hand,” he replied with the determined manner of one who is cautious and has a sense of responsibility.

  The president was satisfied, because from the start he had trusted this person, a soldier among thousands whom he had met only for the first time. He smiled and said, “In the old days, great weavers wove in the dark. They only needed to hear the sound of the shuttle and the tempo of the thread bobbins to know what was going to happen. The palace selected outstanding weavers for the court using this criterion. We call such proficiency a test that challenges the skills of expertise. I find you are a good pilot. Therefore, just use your expertise.”

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot replied. He finished flying his fourth circumnavigation then began to set the helicopter down in the middle of a pitch-dark area. Suddenly, the guard on the president’s left grabbed his arm and squeezed, half in seeking comfort and half in wanting to protect him from danger. The grabbing fingers—hard as nails—hurt him, but quietly he bore the pain. Then they heard the wheels touch ground.

  The pilot had turned around to ask, “Mr. President, should we keep the lights on or turn them off?”

  “Keep them on to give us light,” he had replied.

  Right then, like magic from a devil or a saint, an entire building materialized before their eyes: the central building of the military airport. All the glass windows were brightly lit but no one could be seen. By instinct, he turned toward the line of landing lights, and caught the gaze of the pilot at the same time. This row of lights was placed along the lake. Black-painted steel posts kept them off the surface of the water. The instant when they clearly could see the scene was when all the lights were turned off like the torches of flying ghosts. At the same time, the large doors of the central building of the military airport had opened wide. Out from the hangar had stepped a group of people, eight in all: Ba Danh, Sau, four bodyguards, and two others, for sure high-ranking cadres at the airport.

  “They will die tomorrow, those with unlucky fates. The four bodyguards will be destroyed instantly,” the president thought to himself. “But the two airfield officers? Will their lives go on for one or two more days, or the whole week?”

  The lights on the grass had started to come on. The pilot asked, “Mr. President, can I turn off the engine?”

  “OK, it’s time to do that.”

  A stepladder had been brought over by the airfield officers. The president stepped down, and warmly shook the hands of his two subordinates.

  “So glad you are back, Eldest Brother. Welcome.”

  “Greetings to you, Mr. President. Were you pleased with the scenery and the friendly people of Guangzhou?”

  He had smiled. “Yes, I am very pleased, extremely pleased. Thank you, younger uncles.”

  And his life then had returned to its normal routine.

  For many days afterward, his mind had been preoccupied by the image of the helicopter pilot. For sure, he had lost his life along with the four young soldiers. He had never seen them again. His regular guards were rotated periodically, faster than the wind changes the season. What about the gifted pilot?

  In his eyes, that pilot had saved his life. His was one of the faces that obsessed him almost all the time. That face was a mirror reflecting back such a bitter truth: he was powerless vis-à-vis those to whom he was indebted.

  “I am the most powerless among the powerless. I am so grateful but am the most faithless one among all those who don’t repay their gratitude. It is a truth that no one can believe. It is also a humiliation that I canno
t share with anyone.”

  5

  Vu puts on his coat and walks into the hallway.

  He sits on a wooden bench and listens indifferently to the noises coming his way. Earlier that morning at about five a.m, the patient opposite him had breathed his last. The doctor on duty summoned the morgue attendant and the personnel management cadre to come and complete the procedure to transfer the corpse to the morgue. The other patients wiggled their necks somewhat like worms to observe everything with unfocused, dispirited eyes. Terror has turned their already pallid faces into completely colorless ones. The atmosphere got so stifling that Vu put on his coat and silently left the room.

  The hallway is deserted, with only dim lights along the wall shining on the green benches. The quiet temporarily alleviates his mood. With his back against the bench, Vu looks at the opposite wall and sits thus for a long while, without thinking of anything in particular. A moment later he can hear birds chirping; dawn was breaking.

  “What charm makes me pay attention to these birds singing in the early morning?” Vu asks himself, for during the years he had spent in the Viet Bac woods he never paid much attention to them. Not finding the answer, Vu closes his eyes and continues to listen to the chirping. For some reason, all these bird songs bring him an extraordinary joy in living which nothing else at the moment can.

  Just at that moment, the rolling gurney approaches carrying the dead man, who is covered in white. The person pushing it is the morgue attendant, a big man with a swollen face and expressionless eyes. His facial complexion has the yellow tone of a corpse. Following him are a few administrative personnel and nurses. The doctor on duty stands by herself at the end of the hallway, leaning out the window to look at the trees in the garden. Perhaps like him, she is listening to the birdsong. Now Vu understands why he is paying so much attention to the birds singing at dawn; it was like that on the morning he first heard of Xuan’s murder. He recalled how he had suddenly stood like a statue to listen to the birdsong even though the driver had started the engine in the driveway. It had been a mere instant but a fateful one. The little birds did not know that they brought him strength; they were actually the buoy that saved him at the very moment he was about to sink.

  And this is the second time.

  This time, however, it is the death of an unknown person but it comes just when he feels threatened. For he is in shock both bodily and spiritually. His situation makes him feel like a sinking boat being battered by the waves and nearly capsizing. It is a call to find a purpose for his life.

  “I am seeking this song like a drowning person grabbing at a raft that a savior has just flung down. The song of birds, the immortal beauty of nature. Are you, then, our companions, companions who never betray us, the very support of mankind, a support that never collapses?”

  The doctor steps toward him. A night of hard work has left wrinkles on her forehead. For the first time he takes note of her: an average face revealing deeply engraved traits from the countryside. When she comes face-to-face with him, she stops and says with a smile:

  “Good morning, did our work keep you from sleeping?”

  “I have plenty of time to make it up. Don’t worry.”

  “Will you have visitors today from your office or your family?”

  “Oh yes, like usual. Thank you, Doctor.”

  Having just been transferred from a military hospital, she hasn’t had enough time to learn that, when he had been hospitalized, the doctor in chief there had requested that Van not be permitted to visit him. For it was precisely arguing with her that had caused his spiritual shock, which had led to his sudden arterial tension and his passing out. They were forced to conclude that she was the pathological agent; therefore, contact between the two of them has to wait for the doctor’s recommendation. Vu feels quite at ease. He’s free. Initially he wasn’t the least bit interested in his family, and had forgotten her name; her image was gone for good.

  But today, as the gurney takes the dead man away, he is suddenly assaulted by a concern: “If I go unexpectedly, what will happen to Van and the boy?”

  As soon as the question occurs to him, he smiles to himself.

  “I am still reminded of her. Is it out of love or just from my sense of responsibility? Or perhaps I miss her as a slave misses his master, as a masochist misses his sadistic torturer, as one condemned to death thinks about his executioner. A pathological memory. This proves that, at heart, any person is just an animal enslaved to habit.”

  Vu jumps up and walks along the hallway, afraid that if he keeps on sitting there his own contempt for himself will crush him. As he walks, he still looks down at the hospital courtyard. The gurney carrying the dead man is crossing the main courtyard heading toward the morgue, a tall white concrete building lying behind the funeral parlor. On the stone benches laid out around the flower urns, people are already sitting here and there. They may be recuperating patients out to enjoy the fresh air and get away from the stuffiness of the hospital rooms. They could also be families of patients. He has been in the hospital for two weeks now, and is used to the rhythm of his new life. After coming out of his induced coma, he recovered very fast, but at the same time, he could hardly stand a patient’s life. The various smells of injections and medications, of diseased and debilitated bodies, of disinfected bathrooms and toilets; the faces of patients, which for the most part remind him of wax masks or starched shrouds. Eyes half dead as if they have lost their life shine, at times abject and pleading and at times showing curiosity or despair, lust or envy…In brief, a psychological world so terrible as to make him shrink in horror. But gradually, because he had no choice, he has found loopholes through which he can breathe, can help himself to brush off all sad thoughts. He ironically compares himself with those living underground or in tunnels, gluing their noses to ventilation hoses to get some oxygen and smell the sky. His biggest life jacket is the central garden in the hospital. He is in the habit of loitering in it whenever he has free time. Even when it drizzles, he still walks slowly around the flower beds, looking up at the vaultlike bowers of the trees to spot birds and listen to their querulous songs. In his pocket he always has ready a couple of napkins, for he is often the victim of the birds, believing in the peasants’ credo “seeing shit means that wealth is coming your way.” He only wants to be close to an animated, inspirational world such as that of the birds. The songs of these little ones are angelic, a gift from his guardian god, a raft mysteriously thrown down by the creator in an invisible great flood.

  His wanderings have brought him in contact with a number of patients who more or less share his mood. They, too, cling to the garden as if holding on to a remaining corner of paradise. They run into one another, bow slightly in a friendly and silent manner, then go on their way. When tired, Vu will go to the canteen and sit at a corner table near the window overlooking the back garden of the hospital. There, for a couple of hours, he will sample the contents of a teapot with a madeleine, listening to the humming bees behind him, to the salesgirls chatting away or the hospital guards. This is the quietest moment, allowing him to talk to himself about life, ideals, his job, his family, the roads that he has traveled and those that remain ahead.

  “Has the Great Task turned rotten?”

  That question turns around and around in his brain like the dharma wheel. That soft, almost teasing question from the guy with thick lenses—the thickness of a bowl’s foot—works like a death sentence: Has the love boat smashed its hull and his dream gone up in smoke? Has the revolution to which the entire people committed themselves ended up as no more than the stirring of thick mud at the bottom of a well so as to expose the dead carcasses of marine animals or ill-smelling seaweeds and mosses? How can he swallow such bitterness? How many people have fallen? How many young men’s lives have been cut down like spring grass mown by the scythe of Death? Oh, how many, how many?

  With time, what had started as a suspicion is in danger of becoming a certitude.

  “It’s no
t that I am swayed by what those two talkative guys said. The reality has been sinking in for a long time now but no one is courageous enough to face it. Those standing outside the power structure surely must have a more objective view of things. It’s possibly because of their station, or more precisely because they have chosen to roam freely that they look at events in a more detached way. For it’s impossible to deny that the majority of those around me are no more than toads and tree frogs living in the mud.”

  Together with this bitter thought, he reviews the long line of faces that crowd around him on the reviewing stand. These drivers of government include scoundrels and cheats, robbers and thieves, and low-class prostitutes…all of whom can be summarized in a word: trash. Wealthless and without principles, they move according to a violent passion, a passion that allows them to accept all sorts of cruelties, all measures of inhumanity. Their underlying strength is the thirst for power. Their licentious and limitless greed grows out of their original misery—an unsatisfied need for unconscionable revenge owed to sufferings, losses, hatred and vicious enmity accumulated over many months and years!

  Memories of the Ninth Central Committee Plenum have not yet faded. It marked a fateful turn in the nation’s life and had brought the fall from grace of the one who had worn the most beautiful armor.

  It had been a muggy morning, as muggy as the atmosphere suffocating the entire gathering. Though all the ceiling fans were turning at their highest speed and the standing electric fans were sweeping and blowing, everyone was stifling in the heat. Now was a most crucial moment, for they were casting their votes for the nation’s political future. Of the more than three hundred and fifty representatives, the faction for war had a crushing majority whereas the peace party numbered fewer than the fingers on both hands. But courageously they held out to the last, out of a sense of responsibility for the fate of the nation. The first to stand up was Le Liem, vice minister of culture. Because Vu was in the row right behind him, he could clearly see the sweat soaking through the back of Le Liem’s shirt. Nonetheless, he went on speaking, not sparing one word or omitting one idea: