The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  He stopped a few moments to process his many memories, then asked, “But, if you were using simplicity to create prestige, why didn’t you personally practice it first? Why didn’t you ask for a simple thatched-roof house with climbing vines on the fence out in the suburbs, rather than live in this overly imposing house?”

  “You forget that I must administer the work of a nation.”

  “So the Old Man is just a puppet for you guys?”

  “The Old Man is higher than us by a head. He is the top leader of the people.”

  “Because the Old Man is the top leader of the people, therefore the woman who sleeps in the same bed had to live in an ordinary flat in a narrow alley. And the woman who sleeps with you lives in this spacious, majestic villa. Because the Old Man is the top leader, the very soul of the Fatherland, his young wife had to be killed by you all, killed as if she were a rabbit, while the women who sleep with you all—I want to emphasize here that this includes my own wife—can ride in Volgas to go shopping, to buy clothes, candies and cakes, and cosmetics, at the international stores. By what moral principle do you guys authorize yourselves to do such things?”

  Thuan did not answer; he squished some invisible thing on the grass; he did not look up. A lonesome and cold spring breeze was blowing. After a while Thuan cleared his throat.

  “I apologize. I am disappointed that our talk has hit a dead end.”

  “We hit the dead end because you all refuse to assume responsibility. You are all just like kids who throw rocks at a bird’s nest: when a stone hits someone, cutting his head, and he falls down and bleeds, they all run away. Is that comparison accurate or not?”

  “I have never had a concrete answer from Brother Sau. When I called this morning, he was not home. The secretary on call said that he was running in the sports center. I think her death is an act of overreaching excess by the minister of the interior. It’s possible that Sau only gave some general instruction. Quoc Tuy acted according to his own hoodlum instincts. They assigned him; I had warned Sau about this minister’s criminal past, but Sau ignored it, saying that we should trust the innovative and constructive abilities of revolutionary cadres.”

  “What that means is that this is beyond the scope of your duties. Or more accurately, you have no responsibility whatsoever.”

  “I am very sorry that things turned out this badly. I will try my best. Nevertheless, you should try very hard to understand our situation.”

  Then Thuan waved his hand to show the rows of iris with curly petals bordering the lawn like lace around a woman’s shirt. “You should look over there.”

  Vu bent down but he did not see anything besides the purple petals; they were shiny, full of water, and cared for regularly. The garden was really beautiful. But that exquisite beauty angered him all the more.

  “I don’t see anything at all besides the beauty of this garden. But that beauty is now like thorns that prick my eyes.”

  Thuan’s face was somewhat puzzled and sad. He pulled on Vu’s sleeve and showed him a large spiderweb between two iris stalks. On it was a fly, caught but struggling.

  “Do you see that fly in the spiderweb there? Doesn’t it bring some analogy to your mind? Prime Minister Do as well as I can easily meet the same fate as this miserable insect. Previously I had never thought of this. It is the death of Miss Xuan that has opened my eyes. Things have changed. The game has taken a new turn. Just look around us: sentries, bodyguards, the cook, the gardener, the driver, as well as the house servants and the garbage collector for this area, all belong to them. In just a few years everything has changed. Two years ago, we shared a meal of red rice with salted fish in the mountains; all were of one heart and one mind. Now, with a house and a large garden, nothing is as it was.”

  Instinctively, Vu shivered. He suddenly visualized the cowardly pettiness of people, including those with power and position—the most enlightened minds of the nation, pillars of the state. Looking straight into the deputy secretary’s face, he smiled and said, “The most important and most decisive thing is this change: when we were up in the mountains, we all were committed to the big cause, ready to accept any sacrifice, even death. Now, because of large houses, servants, and sentries all around the yard, no one retains a warrior’s honor. Wealth and glory have turned people into docile horses and sheep.”

  The secretary’s face reddened; his fleshy nostrils quivered. He turned away to avoid Vu’s look.

  Vu continued: “Whatever happens, we have to protect the Old Man’s two children. And for you, your conscience will tell you how to act.”

  Then he turned his back and walked away.

  “Good-bye, Brother.”

  “Let me walk you out,” Thuan said, and the two strolled away from the rows of roses to the gate. While walking, the deputy secretary said the final words: “I will bring the subject to the Politburo. I will intervene with all my ability. I will beg the Old Man’s pardon and hope he will forgive me.”

  “It’s up to you,” Vu replied coolly, extending his hand to shake with the same coldness. Then he walked toward the main gate because now the barrier had been raised and the two heavy steel doors were open wide. The shiny Volga approached from the garage, stopping in the parking lot. Fifteen minutes were left before offices would open. He saw Thuan hurriedly go up three steps and into the house. There was enough time for him to change his clothes.

  2

  “Uncle: your ration of morning porridge. Go to your room and eat it while it is still hot.”

  With a broad smile the nurse gives Vu his breakfast. Vu looks in the enamel bowl: meat porridge cooked in a huge pot then scooped out into large aluminum saucepans to be divided among the one thousand people in the hospital. A quiver shakes all of Vu’s body. Suddenly he is afraid of this communal dish. Perhaps some heavy memories check his appetite; perhaps the death of his roommate makes the porridge stale in his mind.

  Vu looks around at the few female relatives who are there taking care of the patients in his room. Among them, he notices a bony woman, quite tall. He had seen her before, carrying her husband to the bathroom as if he were a three-year-old. The story was that this husband had left her in their village for fifteen years while he had lived clandestinely with a female cadre at the front. And, after the liberation of the capital, he had then bedded a city widow. Now, close to earth and far from heaven, he could rely on no one, so he’d had his children summon the “skirted woman with the blackened teeth” to care for him. This country woman doesn’t like the hospital’s food. Now she is in line, holding out an aluminum plate, waiting to receive her husband’s portion of rolled rice-flour pancakes.

  Vu immediately presents his bowl of porridge: “Hello, Sister, I don’t feel like eating today. Can you help me out?”

  “Yes, that is so nice of you, thank you, Uncle,” she replies cheerfully. “I’m waiting for the pancakes and will take them to our room.”

  Vu then walks toward the end of the hall. He thinks of strolling around the garden a couple of times; when tired he will go to the cafeteria to drink coffee and eat sesame balls. At least they are not as awful as the thin meat porridge. Vu purposefully goes down the stairs. He does not notice a man running after him.

  “Brother Vu…Brother Vu…Brother Vu…Wait for me…”

  The guest calls three, four times.

  Vu turns around. “Brother Bac!”

  The older brother wears a palm-leaf hat, his clothes the brown outfit of a real farmer, his hands full of small and large bags.

  “Forgive me, I was busy walking…”

  The two men stop in the middle of the stairs and look at each other. The older brother says, “Nobody told me until yesterday, when Thao’s daughter stopped by the house.”

  “That’s true,” Vu replies. “Van couldn’t tell you because she caused the physical and mental breakdown that led me here…And the organization, I asked that they not tell you, to spare you worry.”

  “You’re mistaken! You and I—we come from
the same stock, why hide it?”

  “Because you already have too much to worry about,” Vu replies.

  “What is all that you have brought?”

  “Oranges and bananas from our garden, and honey from our own hives…Only some ocean shrimp did I buy to grill them myself.”

  “You still treat me like a little child.”

  “Well, child or grown man, you are still my kid brother.”

  The two look at each other. Two men with salt-and-pepper hair, the younger one with more salt than pepper, the older one with more pepper than salt. There is a moment of emotional silence before the older brother awkwardly smiles and says, “How awful. You worry too much, therefore your hair is much whiter than mine. A farmer’s fate has its hardships but also its blessings. Each day we eat simple meals; when the sun rises, we start singing; not a worry.”

  “You: not a worry?”

  “Now, let me put these bags away and we—two brothers—will go down to the cafeteria for some refreshments. In the hospital, it doesn’t smell nice. Just stay here and wait for me.”

  Vu takes the bags back to his room, and after arranging them neatly in a small cabinet, returns to the stairs and the two brothers head to the cafeteria. There they sit in silence with a teapot. Both think about the last time they had seen each other. Then, almost simultaneously, they blurt out:

  “It has been two and a half years.”

  “Two years, seven and a half months,” Bac says, correcting Vu.

  Both remain silent as if waiting for the other to speak first. After a long while, Vu cries out, “I really miss Mother, dear Brother Bac.”

  “Me too.” After a pause he adds: “So strange: as we grow older we are like kids. We miss Mother like when we were six.”

  “This morning when the hospital served meat porridge, I remembered the fish porridge Mother cooked in the old days. Just thinking of it made me salivate.”

  “Yes, Mother’s cooking was famous throughout the whole region. Thus, anyone who had a big banquet would call on her. Do you remember once when she cooked catfish porridge for everyone in the family?”

  “Yes, I can still smell the nice aroma of fresh chopped ginger, dill and green onions, crushed pepper and fresh hot chilies in fish sauce. I still remember the large ceramic barrel under the eaves where she put the catfish to use up slowly. The fish jumped friskily all night.”

  Vu stops, as if he would cry if he continued. The two brothers often goofed off around that great pot of fish. One time, playing war with other kids in the hamlet, he had taken the role of the mighty hero Dinh Bo Linh. Wanting to impress the neighboring kids, he had demanded that his mom cook porridge as a treat. Of course she refused, because no one would ever spoil a child by doing such a crazy thing. The next day, waiting for his mother to go to the market, Vu had emptied a whole bag of powdered chili into the container of fish and had killed them all. After this wicked act, he had sneaked over to his grandmother’s. Back home, his mother had taken control of the situation. She was forced to turn her anger into something useful, so she had cooked close to twenty fish to make a huge pot of porridge to treat the little army of the hamlet’s Dinh Bo Linh. More than forty little guests were invited to enjoy the fish soup and many sweet desserts. His older brother, on behalf of “Warrior Vu,” had stood up to announce the reason why “Warrior Vu offers his army a victory celebration.” When the party was over and the kids with their full and happy tummies had left, Bac was punished. He had to lie facedown on the mat in the middle of the room, to receive on his buttocks twenty strikes from a bamboo stick for the crime of abetting the killings. Meanwhile Vu, unabashed, enjoyed safety in his grandmother’s protective arms, even though he had missed a meal of tasty fish soup. In exchange he had good beef soup and other goodies. Four days later his mother had come and called out from the street:

  “Vu, I forgive you. No more running away; come home.”

  This memory fills his heart with nostalgia. He thinks to himself, “He always took punishment for me. He always had to extend his arms to help carry heavy burdens. Not only during childhood, but until now, too…”

  Instinctively he looks down at his brother’s hand on the table: the hand of a real farmer with coarse fingers, all brown from sunburn, nails dark from tree sap. By contrast, his fingers are fair, like those of women during childbirth. It has been twelve years since Bac left his family in the city, turning the management of his carpentry store over to his son-in-law, in order to live in the countryside with the pretense of caring for an unmarried, childless aunt on his mother’s side, but in reality to raise Nghia, the daughter of Miss Xuan. The day Miss Xuan died, Vu had sent word for him to come, because he could not find anyone else to assume this responsibility. It was already too much for his wife to take in Miss Xuan’s son. Moreover, everyone knew that Van disliked those of her own sex. She could be friendly for a while with a few women who were clueless or ignorant, taking advantage of them or turning them into her pawns, but in her heart she wanted no friendship with any female whatsoever. She could befriend only men. She had real feelings only for those of the opposite sex. She loved him, and, besides him, she wanted a regular contingent of men around her from different walks of life; this flock of men, old and young, all circled around the city beauty like little satellites orbiting a sun, ready to serve her as needed. They admired her beauty, concealing their lust in their afternoon or midnight dreams. Thus, Miss Beauty To Van—without having a throne—had always enjoyed the pride of being a queen. Though without an official title, there had been no absence of a bright halo highlighting her name. And so heaven could not endow her with enough kindness to care for an orphaned girl. There was nothing else to do but to turn to his own family. He had asked the driver to deliver a letter of one sentence: “Dear brother, I need to see you right away, the sooner the better.”

  The car had left early, returning to Hanoi at dark with his older brother. At night, after dinner, they had gone to the garden to smoke. Bac had asked: “Will they let the child live peacefully in the countryside? Don’t forget that the farther you are from the capital, the darker it is. It’s easier for hoodlums to strike.”

  Vu had replied, “I think farther is safer for the child. She’s a female, not someone who will extend the patrilineage, therefore she won’t be on their radar. Farther away, they pay less attention. Less attention—less viciousness.”

  Then the older brother had agreed: “If so, all right. If you gather enough clothing for the girl, I will take her immediately tonight.”

  “You don’t need to go immediately tonight. The driver needs sleep. But tomorrow morning, I will ask the driver to take you and the little girl very early. However…”

  Then it was Vu who was hesitant.

  He was bothered by imposing on his brother to leave his family and his work to move to the countryside, to a life without prominence, without all the regular means of living comfortably. From supervising a large carpentry business in three hamlets, he would be forced to harvest, to garden, to pull a rickety cart to sell jackfruit, guava, pineapple, pomelo, and lichees. No longer enjoying the position of boss with staff to make your meals and get you drinks, he would have to live in a house with three large rooms in the dim light of oil lamps; he would have to cook his own meals in a kitchen filled with smoke from husks and straw. He would endure the absence of his wife and kids and his trade, because he was a craftsman with golden hands: everything he made was considered across the region as a piece of art. His mother-of-pearl-inlaid furniture was not for use but was regarded as heirlooms for children and grandchildren. Every family tried to buy some work of his—a sideboard, a buffet, or a sofa with kneeling feet—so that they could proudly boast to their neighbors, “They are Mr. Bac’s!”

  Thinking of all this, Vu had become embarrassed: “However, I think…really, I have done you wrong.”

  Bac had shaken his head. “Don’t be concerned. I have known my fate for a while. When you were at the northern front, Mother was si
ck for six long months. Before dying, she reminded me, ‘Your brother at old age will encounter much hardship. Don’t leave him alone. Others may say: “Each brother has his own fate,” but in our family we must follow this: “Brothers are like arms and legs.”’”

  Then, he had put out his cigarette and gone to bed. The next day he had taken the child to the car when the dew was still wet.

  Twelve years had passed; Bac had become a real farmer, just as Vu had predicted, even though he did not harvest. His monthly rice ration from the city came from his wife, who bought it and took it to him; this had given her opportunities to visit him. In the countryside, he had taken care of the gardens; he had raised poultry and had twelve beehives. All day, from morning to night, he had had no lack of things to do. Thus, he had raised Nghia since she was two; she had become a young woman who knew how to care for a house, how to help the father push a cart to sell fruit or animals on market days. The neighbors called them the “carpenter father and daughter,” because Bac had brought some of his tools, and, when he was free of chores, he would engage his hands in carving. The aunt had died seven years earlier at eighty-two, but Bac had remained in the countryside with the young child.

  After some silence, Vu asks, “How is she doing?”

  “She is healthy and a good girl. She is sweeter as she grows up. I fear she is too sweet and shy.”

  “Like mother, like daughter. Her mother was as sweet.”

  “The thing is: this year she reaches puberty.”

  “My gosh! How could I have forgotten that?” Vu cries out. “Oh my heaven, time flies like an arrow.”

  “Yes, you and I, we have aged quite a bit.”

  “Twelve years, you had to be separated from your wife and the kids to carry my burden.”

  “Don’t say that. Your responsibility is also my responsibility. I don’t mind it. Now, there is something bothering me: the little girl has grown. If we let her continue to live in the village, she will become a real peasant. In no time she will fall for some village guy and then will turn into a farmer. Thus, we will shortchange the young girl’s potential. Even though she lives under our protective arms, she really is a princess.”