“Beautiful women are like flowers; they blossom early and die in the evening, because blue heaven has bestowed upon them a gorgeous beauty that causes many people to covet and envy them.”
The beauty of Nang Dong and her sister had only grown more and more pronounced, to the point of surprising him. Time, it seems, had no effect on them; on the contrary, the months and years seemed to have matured their beauty, making them more attractive, more mysterious. On numerous occasions An had witnessed passersby stop, struck dumb by the sisters’ beauty; they looked at them as if they were seeing river or mountain goddesses. In Hanoi, one could “light torches to illuminate the forest” and never find that kind of beauty—enough to make fish stop swimming and birds fall to earth.
An felt like he had been in love with Nang Dong since the day he was born. It was only much later that he realized his wife surely must have provoked desires on the part of men who came across her. In that way, he came to understand why the old king could fall head over heels in love with Little One. It’s impossible for any man not to be moved by the sharp-swordlike beauty of such women, who, besides, have simple and holy souls that promise years of family happiness. Although Nang Dong was totally unaware of all these things, An realized that he was in possession of a magnificent fortress. To protect that fortress, one needed both intelligence and courage. The pride inside him was always accompanied by vigilance. In the case of Little One, did the old king think like he did, he wondered. Or could it be that, given the fact that he was the king, instead of treasuring the rare love of a soul like hers, he would give himself the luxury of considering her beauty to be no more than an exotic dish?
These dark thoughts he dared not express to anyone. An did not want to burden the minds of the two sisters, whom he loved more than he loved himself. He became a silent witness to all their happy and joyful and hopeful conversations.
“Will you go to the Presidential Palace tomorrow?”
“Yes. A driver will come for me at nine.”
“Have you thought really hard about what you will need to tell him?”
“There is not much to prepare. I will tell him only one simple sentence: since we have now both a boy and a girl, we need to legitimize our relationship before the law.”
“That will do. Tomorrow will be a busy day. I will prepare dinner earlier than usual, and you should remember to breast-feed the boy at eight.”
The following day was a Sunday. An took little Mui out in the morning, telling the two women that he would be home late. At lunch, he took his niece to a pho restaurant, then to the circus for the three o’clock matinee. After the circus, they went home. Little Mui went straight to sleep while he quickly gobbled down some food so he could get back to his barracks. He did not ask at all about how Little One’s meeting with the father of her children had gone. An still remembers the questioning look of his wife as she was ironing her sister’s dresses. As for Little One, she was so busy feeding the boy that she did not have time to worry about the unusual silence of her brother-in-law. Or it may have been that she was so filled with happiness and projections of the future that she was not paying much attention to what was going on around her.
An blamed himself for having been so strangely indifferent; an indescribable sadness was tearing him apart. So one day passed after another. Whether he was in training or out on exercises with the soldiers, An felt like he was living in a dream, as if his feet were not on the ground but walking in the clouds. He could not understand why. Sometimes his memories took him back to Xiu Village, with reflections on happy days. At other times memory took him back to That Khe town, to the school where he had stood way above the other students. Or he would picture the tea-fragrant house of his history professor, whose wife was a jasmine tea merchant. He had sometimes come by to help the family fold tea bags while listening to the professor tell all sorts of stories, both apocryphal ones and official ones from Chinese history or from Vietnam’s own dynasties, tales from the San Guo Ji (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) or Dong Zhou Lie Guo (The Vassal Countries of Eastern Zhou), which the professor knew by heart. At other times he felt his heart oppressed with a vague concern that was surrounding him like a gigantic spiderweb.
One Saturday evening, after military exercises, An grabbed a bicycle. After going only a few hundred meters, the front inner tube exploded. He found a repairman, who explained, “Sorry, Comrade. There is no way to fix it. You need a new one.”
“Please try real hard. We don’t live in a time when I can be given a new inner tube.”
“I already looked carefully. I promise you: if I can’t fix it, no one can. That’s guaranteed.”
There was no option but to take the bike back to camp and borrow one that usually carried food. Because the food bike had priority, its inner tubes were always new. The food team lent him the bike on the condition that it be returned the next day at noon so that they could have enough time to get to the afternoon market. After arguing awhile, An was able to extend the time to 3:30. That would give him enough time to take Mui to see the music and dances of the town’s youth group. Content with his victory, An hurriedly pedaled to Hanoi. By the time he arrived, the streetlights were already on. Mui was not standing on the balcony waiting for him as usual; he was definitely late, he thought to himself as he walked the bike through the long hall under dim lights. In the yard, he saw little Mui playing with two other kids, the grandchildren of an old lady in the neighborhood. Seeing him, the little girl rushed out to kiss his cheeks.
An wanted to take the girl to the house, but the old neighbor said, “Just leave her here to play…her mother told me so…”
This seemed odd, but An didn’t feel comfortable asking anything further of the old lady. He went upstairs, where the two women were waiting for him by a tray table with food. Seeing their faces, he understood half of the truth, but he said, laughing, “You must be about to faint from hunger, right? Sorry I’m late. Let me wash my face and then we can eat. I had to borrow the bike from the food team; mine has a burst inner tube.”
“The army doesn’t even have enough inner tubes to use?” his wife asked.
“Inner tubes are rationed for all government-issue bikes. And the priorities do not extend to shirts, underwear, rice, and food. What do you have to feed me today?” An said, changing the subject.
Dong replied, “Today I made banana shoots with steamed pork and Vietnamese shrimp paste.”
“Next meal, I suggest you cook traditional sour beef soup.”
“People say that the sour beef soup of Lang Son is better than ours in That Khe, because they add spices to the broth—grilled onion and ginger, cinnamon, star anise, and other things—as secret ingredients. If you want, when I am free I will go to Mam Street to try it out. After eating it a few times I will figure out the recipe.”
“Yes, why don’t you try that? Lang Son sour soup has been famous for a long time.”
Thanks to this dialogue, they were able to forget temporarily all the troubles and finish their meal. But when tea was served, he could not pretend to be cheerful. The gigantic spiderweb encircling them was pulling tight its choking threads. He was the male, the eldest of the family; he must be the first one to speak the truth:
“Now, let’s deal with our issue. I am waiting to hear.”
Little One was still silent but his wife said, “On Sunday, the issue was presented to the president; he agreed but had to wait for the consensus of the Politburo. On Monday the subject was brought up because that was the day of a regularly scheduled meeting. But the president’s idea was not accepted. Not one supporting vote.”
“For what reason?”
“Because they do not want the president to have his own family. They want the president to be only the elderly father of all the people. Thus…thus, that was the resolution of the Politburo.”
“They forced the president to accept their decision? Or did the president want to follow them?”
Dong remained quiet. Neither his wife nor Litt
le One could reply. But An wanted to get to the core of the issue. He asked Little One:
“You saw the Old Man what day after that meeting?”
“Friday. Around eleven a.m., the president sent a car to pick me up.”
“How did he explain it?”
“The president said that, by Party principle, the minority has to surrender to the majority.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said that he knows I have suffered lots of disappointments…that we have to be patient and live in the shadows for a while to wait for an opportune moment to persuade the Politburo members.”
“When he said that, how did his face look?”
“I don’t remember, because I was bent over, wiping my tears.”
“Was he smiling or crying?”
“The president was also crying. He held me and said, ‘They really lack compassion, they have no empathy for us.’”
“‘Us’ here is who?”
Little One looked at him as if she did not understand what he was trying to say.
An answered himself: “‘Us’ here means he, you, and the two kids. To speak naturally: four individuals in one family. If it were a normal family, then it would be a complete family.
In the same instant, another bitter question arose in his mind: “Unfortunately there is another and different ‘us.’ That ‘us’ is a small group that includes me, my wife, and you—three related people who cannot be separated; a relationship that is living and intimate. This relationship stands outside the president’s awareness as well as his concern. But ironically, what happens to him will strike our heads like the sword of destiny. It will not bring on glory or wealth but, for sure, nothing but painful loss. Intuition never lies to us.”
He looked at Little One’s sad eyes and his heart hurt. What would he do now? What could he do to salvage the situation, to protect his loved ones from the wicked wind? He: the only man in this tiny family. Why did destiny push them to this point? An felt suffocated. He stood up to open the windows facing the yard. He turned around and said:
“Dear one: now we must be calm to think. I do not clearly understand the Politburo’s intentions. In the past vigilance was needed when a king became too enamored of a queen. Especially when the king was old and the wife was young and beautiful. The worry of our national leaders is based on the corrupting experiences of history: Duong Minh Hoang was passionate about Duong Qui Phi; Tru Vuong was enamored with Dat Ki. In our history, General Trinh Sam was passionate with Dang Thi Hue. But all these cases are totally different from our situation. All these beauties of Chinese kings lived in luxury with silks and precious jewelry. Each step Duong qui Phi took was on a water lily made of gold. Dat Ki’s castle was decorated with silk and brocade and each of her meals was worth several taels of gold and her coach was carved from jade and made with gold from its cushions to its roof. Then, court mistress Dang Thi Hue of our country, relying on Lord Trinh Sam’s love for her, freely abused gold and silver, brought many relatives to the court, and covered for her brutal brother Dang Mau Lan. Wherever he went, Mau Lan robbed people of their wealth. Whomever he met, women or young girls, if they pleased his eyes, he would order his soldiers to set up curtains in the middle of the marketplace so he could rape them over and over. Whoever dared resist, he would kill them right then. His brutality and troublemaking angered both the people and the court officials. Many complaints submitted to the king requesting punishment for Mau Lan were all ordered by his relative in the palace, Mau Phi, to be torn up or burned. In the end, an officer stabbed him to death then voluntarily turned himself in to Trinh Sam. In contrast to those three cases, we have no connection to luxury or brutality. We live here like below-average people. I am the only male in this family, and I have never robbed or raped anyone. Your children were born in the most plebeian of clinics, with no medical staff from the president’s office. Little Mui and her sibling have grown up just like any other kid in a low-level cadre’s family. We have never had any benefit or advantage; we have never touched any property or power of the state. How can they treat us like this?”
Nobody could answer him. Both women cried gently, their heads lowered. An understood that no one could answer him other than heaven itself, but only if heaven would be moved by compassion for their situation. But he had never encountered such a heavenly being. The various spirits and the souls of all the ancestors that they worship were often mere smoke that floated over the altars on New Year. Now he did not know where to find the mind of heaven.
“Do you dare ask the Old Man directly about what I have said?” An asked, his voice rising, and Little One cried louder, her sobbings more pronounced. His wife looked at him, begging. Anger continued to overflow in him as a pot of rice soup comes to a boil on a simmering fire.
“Little One, you must ask him for clarity, for your life, and the life of your children.”
“I did ask, but the president said he must live as an example. And that, if I love him, I have to accept that. And when the two children grow up, the situation will change.”
“When the kids grow up? Heavens, he is now over sixty! Will we have to wait for him to get to be eighty in order to live in an official manner with the people? How sad for our Little One! How bitter for the children of an old king! Our nephews—kids who, whether they like it or not, are related by a blood tie…”
Then another question rushed to him that he could not suppress: “Dear one: Do you truly love him?”
Little One looked at him, perplexed: “What are you asking?”
“I want to ask if you truly love him or do you love him just because he is the country’s president?”
“I love the president…I love…” she replied, then burst into stronger sobbing.
Dong looked at him, angry: “What’s the matter with you? Did a horsefly bite you?”
“No,” An replied awkwardly. He realized that his anger had pushed him too far. Perhaps he had wished for his sister-in law to have a different destiny. The strings of a tragic destiny had tied her up with an old king—an old king she happened to love. Love is so tauntingly unsettled! Not because he was someone with high position but foremost because he was a good husband, even though only a husband on occasion.
“Is this old man a good talker, a great flirt with women?” he wondered to himself, but immediately he intuited that this old king was not a good talker in that way but was able to move Little One’s heart with soft and passion-ate words that younger men couldn’t summon forth; that he could make her love him by tender and sweet gestures that locals were incapable of performing—all the foreign manners that he had acquired from the West. Such strength was not that of a hunter who raises his rifle to aim at his prey, because it was not intended to harm the prey but only sought to conquer its heart. Such strength was shapeless but he sensed it forcefully as if it were a fire burning. Such strength he had held in his hands as well. He thought back to warm nights in Xiu Village, when he would return from the town of That Khe. In the spacious house with dancing light full of neighbors, his uncle would have prepared a large container of wine. The deep wooden tray would be full of savory appetizers along with cakes and fruit. His aunt would have roasted a basketful of sunflower seeds before preparing tea to serve the guests. The neighbors, old and young, would sit around the room. Standing in the center, the student would recount all the stoic, pastoral, and magic stories of the lowlands as well as ones from other mountain regions—the complete warehouse of knowledge that his teacher in the district school had handed down to him. His uncle, sitting next to him, would give him a look both loving and proud, bending his head to conceal his pride from the guests. His uncle was renowned for his salve made of tiger, bear, and deer horn gelatin. Knowledgeable and wealthy people everywhere would come for gobs of the thick, pasty ointment produced in his house. The very money the uncle had made from selling those jellied ointments had been used to pay for seven years of An’s education. But when hearing An praise the sound of a Truong L
uong flute or comment on the death of Quan Van Truong or describe the Bach Dang battle with a shout of “Sat That,” the uncle would feel the admiration of those who are illiterate before one who is fluent in reading and writing. And that admiration walked very close to the edge of fear or passion. The conquering power gained by becoming cultured had been the most important conditioning agent during An’s youth, even though he had been only a secondary student. An understood that all he knew was only one small grain of sand compared with the president, who had traveled to the four corners of the world for twenty years, who spoke both Chinese and Western languages. His stored intelligence was thousands of times larger than his own, and thus, that Little One loved him was not a strange thing.
“Yes, you are a thousand times capable and powerful. But nonetheless, you came into this family’s home after me. Before the ancestral altar of the two women, I have the right to light incense. Now, under these circumstances, my wife and I are those who will care for your offspring. In the end, you will be indebted to us, dear old king.”
That evening passed ponderously. Later in bed, Dong held him tight. They made love in a quiet way, like their first time by the stream of Son Ca Falls, at the age of fifteen with all the welling up of a wild and boiling zeal. He slept till nearly noon the next day. When he woke, his wife had gone to market and Little One had taken the two kids down to the yard to play with the old lady neighbor. An opened the window wide to look at the three of them playing under the old tree. His eyes were glued to that scene but his mind was all foggy, and totally empty; not one thought appeared distinctly. Not one feeling could he put into words. An felt that he had become a wooden statue that could walk around and talk, but was devoid of feelings. He remained in that unreal state for a long while until his wife returned. Dong put the food basket on the floor and looked attentively at her husband. Then, as if feeling his strange mental state, she took him into the bedroom, where she held his head gently, pressing it against her bosom. Her familiar warm flesh and the tender softness of his love made him slowly rise from the cold water of his emotional numbness. He burst into tears. He cried loudly like a woman; painfully, like one who is hungry and cold; he cried like a child lost in a train station.
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