The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  “Are you tired, Mr. President?”

  “Sure, I’m tired. But not so much that I have to ask you to carry me to camp,” he replied and briskly went up the slope. From here on, the forest was dense. Everybody uncovered their flashlights. Between the two sides of the path, rays of light intermingled in front of him. He felt enthusiastic. He thought of the joy waiting for him. Meeting young people was relaxation to him, like recess for elementary students.

  Ahead, lodgings were bright with burning lights. The door frames were burnt orange, a vibrant color in the night. The sound came of children singing to the beat of clapping hands. When he stepped forward, they all stood up and sang loudly to the clapping instead of using words of welcome:

  “Our mountains and rivers will be grateful to you generation after generation,

  We hear your voice resound among the rivers and mountains,

  Let’s all go together, advancing down the road to liberation,

  Let’s all go together, listening to the sacred soul of the southern land calling out to us…”

  All those fresh and youthful faces, those bright eyes, and the bright fires of that night…he remembers them clearly to this day. Was it because they had registered at the same time with one face, a couple of eyes, a smile as red as if it carried lipstick, a flock of shiny black hair? Was it because all this had registered at the same time with the image of her?

  Oh, no, no!

  Maybe time had dyed everything the color of a magical cloud. The truth is, that after that night, he hadn’t longed for anything else. The exact truth is, that when his sleep came on, he would recall that glorious night with a light and floating joyfulness: people singing, fires, the xoe dance of the mountain folk, and skirts fashioned from scintillating cellophane paper. A boy of about twelve had sung “Song of the Mountain Girl” in a marvelous tenor voice. And finally, a pair of clear brown eyes had looked straight at him across the fire.

  Oh, those doe eyes, doe eyes!

  His heart sang a high note of admiration:

  “How could there be such beautiful eyes? I never saw any other such eyes. A rare gift from the Creator! Are not heaven and earth extraordinary?”

  It is so true.

  Exactly so true.

  After that, he could not remember anything, as work had pressed down on his shoulders. A campaign; then another campaign. A battle front collapsed on the east but expanded to the west. A vitally essential operation was put in motion. An opposing operation brought problems. A network of enemy agents was discovered with half of its members caught and held in jail and the other half reduced to inactivity, widely dispersed or hiding in the shade. The internal situation gave rise to problems that needed redress. The country had a dire lack of culturally able cadres who could handle proselytizing missions and foreign affairs.

  He really did not remember anything else.

  The months and years passed.

  And so passed the vicissitudes of a life. Each life is like an uncharted river, with no one able to foresee its twists and turns, its corroded passages or filled embankments, where its waters will run calm and where they will become rough. Are we not each trapped in fate’s long, wide net? Are not the twirlings and turnings inside each of us nothing more than a clown’s performance?

  If only he could have guessed his fate, he would have turned in another direction…If only he could have foreseen his future, he would have avoided heaven’s net.

  But every “if only” is just a long sigh coming at the end. Every “if only” is like the sound of falling rocks. One hears the loud noise and the breaking only when the rocks are about to hit bottom. Who can raise hand or foot to stop rocks when they fall from mountaintops into deep ravines? Who?

  This question might be a bit lame, and he does not want to believe he has a soft heart. The brave resolve of a revolutionary coupled with pride in dialectical materialism stops him from believing in fate. However, his continually nagging mind still awaits an answer. And the answer is buried in the fog along the horizon before him. Thus, whether he likes it or not, he still has to remember one occurrence, one point in time, when, suddenly, his aging heart was pierced.

  That had been a fateful summer day.

  That noon, General Long had invited him to review plans for an upcoming military campaign: the 1951 fall-winter offensive against French bases. He had been satisfied, from the beginning of the resistance up until that very moment, and felt he could now breathe lightly with relief as he thought to himself:

  “The wheels start to turn. We have passed through the wobbling phase of the war, a phase with a thousand difficulties. This summer opens up a new phase.”

  That summer was in the year of Tan Mao.

  He had been born in a Tan Mao year. Summer had come late but was not too muggy. He had planned to wear a set of maroon civvies, but after a few minutes of pondering, he changed into a military uniform. He knew that in uniform he looked younger and more handsome. His slight carriage fit well with either civilian or military clothes. In uniform, though, he could easily assert his charm and power of attraction. In uniform, his features seemed fresher and softer, and in his mind all the songs of his youth rushed back. Those verses lingered on, hidden away within him and bringing him an elation that only he knew. After changing into uniform, he had told his bodyguard that he would go to General Long’s cave all by himself, a very short and familiar walk. He had wanted to reclaim for an instant the freedom that had been confiscated. A forest road, the sounds of birds, monkeys, leaves…but most of all, to walk alone, to think by himself, to admire the scenery by himself…such was truly happiness when one’s life was so tightly tied up with a group.

  Completely happy, he walked briskly without paying any attention to his surroundings. About halfway along, suddenly someone cried out in panic:

  “Stop! Please, Mr. President, stop!”

  “Don’t take another step. Please, Mr. President, don’t!”

  Looking up, he saw two girls dangling from a large branch of a fallen tree. They were frantically looking for a way down, their faces very red, their mouths spattered with fig grains. He knew they had been up there sharing the figs, so busy with eating them that they did not see the pedestrian inadvertently invading their world and breaking up their rare opportunity to snack well. When they had suddenly recognized him, they had no time to get down, therefore they had frantically called out to stop him. Then the pair desperately sought a way to escape.

  “Be careful! Be careful or you will fall.”

  It was his turn to cry out in fear when he saw the two of them hugging the tree, sliding down at one scoop like little monkeys.

  “Careful!” He cried out and could not help smiling.

  “Why don’t you come down slowly? Sliding like that, you might fall easily and tear your clothes.”

  Now on the ground the two girls looked down at their roughed-up clothes.

  “Mr. President!”

  One girl spoke out and looked up at him.

  The president was stunned: it was that pair of eyes! Those doe eyes; the final fixation on that night of celebration four years ago. He recognized the young girl from years past who had stared at him across the fire. In an instant, the images, the colors, the sounds, the memories of that evening’s walk with the chief of staff were reborn. Completely. Revivified. After four years, suddenly the ashes of forgotten memories were cleaned away by a gust of wind.

  “The late children’s festival. That night of celebration moved to the fourth day of the sixth month.” The thought moved like lightning. At the same time, a succession of thunderclaps exploded, pressing his head to burst open: “Then she was fifteen! Now she is nineteen!”

  Yes, it was her!

  It seemed that he had stood there silent for a long time, embarrassing the girls. They looked at each other, then at the tree, then down at the ground.

  “We’re sorry, Mr. President!”

  “We didn’t see you, sir.”

  “We…”
/>   He didn’t understand her babbling words. He only saw her delicate doe eyes, which looked like deep lakes or dewdrops dangling on a leaf, her curved lashes blinking incessantly like the fluttering of a sparrow’s wings. He saw clearly only her full red lips tainted with pieces of fig innards that highlighted her two rows of teeth as bright as pearls. He found her face filled with innocence but having as well that special seductive magnetism given by heaven to a woman who would be known as capable of “rocking the nation and upsetting a city.”

  He cannot remember what he did to calm the girls down. He also cannot now remember how the girls bade him farewell and how they took their leave. He cannot remember now what he had said to her at the parting moment. His spirits had been topsy-turvy. His heart had beaten as hard as if he had been in his twenties. In that stormy state, sounds coming from all four sides had sounded like a huge choir singing around him—the singing of an invisible, imaginary crowd. Could it have been a forest ghost or a mountain god? The happy cries of a forest lord or dangerous screams from a gaggle of old sorcerers? A fleeting fear had made him stand still. He had stood like that for a while after the girls were long gone. He had listened carefully to the singing of the mysterious choir, had felt the air trembling and twirling, had seen gigantic and shapeless waves curve around and soar. Miraculous space was an ocean and he was a boat that had been thrown to the waves without his consent, without his calculation, without his hesitating…

  A…a…a…

  A…a…a…

  He had listened to the sounds ringing from the four points of the forest, following him as a wake follows a ship that has been jolted and pushed into misadventure, some cruel melodrama authored by destiny.

  That night he had written in his pocket diary: “Tan Mao Year.”

  In the Mao month.

  Noon. I had…

  But even the most intelligently curious mind could not have completed the unfinished sentence.

  “Mr. President, please come in for your meal.”

  For a while now the chubby guard has been standing behind him.

  “You all have already eaten a while ago?”

  “Sir, the company cook is preparing lunch.”

  “Oh, is that so?” he mutters. For a time he had been eating irregularly, not even three meals a day. Often he even forgot to eat, and eat well, so that the people could trust in his good health. Forgetfulness is the faithful friend of old age, a friend we can’t shake off no matter how much we try. He turns and enters the room to sit down before the tray with his breakfast. A bell-shaped bowl has a lid covering it. He turns over the hot lid, moist from steam:

  “Ah, so today the cook gives us rice gruel.”

  The fragrant smell of onions and herbs arises; that fragrant smell so familiar to cooks of long ago. Rice gruel with onions and herbs is light on the stomach as well as a remedy for flu. He has known this fragrance since early childhood.

  “Sir, please take your food before it cools,” the chubby guard reminds him, his eyes not leaving the president’s hands.

  He bends his head down to see the finely sliced scallions and the herbs as nicely cut as Chinese bean thread noodles, sharply reminding him of the time when he was sick and the girl showed off by cooking rice gruel for him. The gruel unskillfully cooked by the girl had whole rice grains in it and the scallions were still on their stems.

  “Little one, you’re a girl from the mountains…! Mountain Girl: you are our nightmare, little one, our private nightmare…”

  “Oh, please, Mr. President…” the soldier blurts out, tilting his head to hear some low noise. After a minute:

  “An airplane is coming up, Mr. President, do you hear it?”

  “I don’t hear anything. The ears of someone over seventy can’t compete with those of an eighteen-year-old,” he answers with a smile.

  He looks to the east. The sun had already been up for some undetermined time. It is a completely ordinary day; the sun wants to hang just like a ripe orange suspended in the air, as a gentle sun, not one of sheer brilliance. A sun still undecided in the middle of a dream; a drowsy sun that could signal something ordinary like a burning areca nut or something like a carriage furiously bringing fire to burn all the land on a cursed planet. The white clouds still swirl like the sea around the mountaintops, but around the sun is a light blue halo. A blue completely surrounded by a strange darkness.

  That blue was the color of endless summers. Why has it appeared today?

  While he stands looking at the sky to the east, the phone in the corner of his room rings stridently. The chubby guard runs in to answer and comes back to report:

  “Mr. President, sir, the helicopter has arrived. The office invites you to go down to the landing strip.”

  “Has Chief Vu come up?”

  “Yes, Chief Vu will accompany you with a bodyguard to take part in someone’s funeral in Tieu Phu hamlet. After that, Chief Vu will follow you back to the pagoda. The program has been set.”

  “I will change clothes.”

  “Sir, you need to finish all your rice gruel, as the day is very cold. The first squad of guards will come up here to accompany you down to the landing strip.

  “Clothes must be chosen.

  “Mr. President, sir, all is ready.”

  6

  The mountain roads curve back and forth like a chicken’s entrails. Hearing the sound of music, one might think it was close at hand, but the curved road makes its source rather far off. On both sides of the way, bushy bamboo blocks a traveler’s progress. But the special singing to send off a soul is continuously melodramatic. First notes from a one-string zither, then those of a flute and a two-string fiddle. As the first refrain ends, up comes the voice of a male singer, low in tone:

  “.…Soul, oh soul, don’t you turn your head back

  Soul, oh soul, don’t regret your earthly life”

  Like blossoming buds in spring, like colorful and fresh leaves in the summer, turning yellow in the fall or in frigid winter, life on earth is in the Master Craftsman’s hands. Who can escape this great game?

  From nothingness, our parents give us human incarnations; we cry as we greet life; we laugh the laugh of a child; we set off on our way, under the burdens of carefree youth, and put them down when our breath weakens and our health evaporates.

  “Water runs down and hair changes color.

  The Master Fisherman spread his net over the four seas.

  Life—a vagabond—is like the flashing wings of the butterfly…”

  He listens to the singing, quietly surprised because this is the first time he has heard such verses, even though he has lived in his own country for so many years now:

  “Why only now do I know of these folk songs? Did they just pass by like a wind and I didn’t pay attention all those years? Had the government forbidden the people to sing such sentimental lyrics? But life is both birth and death, melancholy is the living twin of happiness.”

  “Mr. President, please let me carry your overcoat.”

  A guard steps up to take the overcoat he has just taken off. He gives him the overcoat; then suddenly a throbbing pain runs through his spine. Sweat wets his forehead; he dabs at it with a handkerchief but it won’t subside. As the hour of Sending Off the Soul approached, he had intended to visit the unfortunate family, but he had no right to make them wait. Besides, so many people had to accompany him. To his front, the first squad is walking with the village chief, a tall, lanky woman who looks partly French, having shoulders broad like a cross and so bulging with muscles that any man looking at her would feel intimidated. She wears traditional clothes, a long hanging blouse made of thin blue cloth, trousers of shiny black satin; but then she had put on canvas shoes with white laces, the kind athletes wear. Her face is large with slanted eyebrows and jaws spread wide on both sides, and a neck thick like a column but red. Her strength and her firmness would overwhelm the powers of ten men combined. At his back walks the second squad with the deputy village chief and the village po
liceman, the two men equally small and short and similar in age and dress, wearing cadre shirts and green khaki pants. But the police chief has a large leather belt to hold his pistol. The two squads form a small detachment of four rows. The path is narrow, but on his left is Vu and the medical doctor and on his right the commander of the guard company, Le. Thirty yards behind them is an armed platoon to fend off kidnapping by aerial assault.

  “Mr. President, please take your medicine before attending the funeral.”

  It’s the doctor’s turn to make the request. The president stops and swallows a handful of medicine with a cup of ginger water Then they continue walking. This portion of the road is more rugged. On both sides, the bamboo does not bend over but intertwines into a wall. The leaves weave themselves into a bright green roof. It’s high noon, thanks to the roosters crowing from the hamlet to the east to the hamlet on the west, from the higher villages down to the lower ones. The crowing of the roosters, like the melancholy sounds of the singing, doesn’t stop, as if they cannot break the unseen silence that rules over the scene, reinforcing it instead. This silence is uncompromised like clear crystal and more unyielding than steel. A vast silence. It seems as if it hides some forest over the sky’s horizon.

  “Soul, oh soul, please look ahead

  Let the dust of life settle behind your back.”

  The sound of singing now sounds very close, but they still have to cross a turning, curving stretch before they can arrive. A crowd has gathered right at the compound’s entrance, waiting for him. Teenagers in proper uniform line up in two rows of honor, holding flowers and flags, with camouflage umbrellas on their shoulders. Behind them are all the residents of Tieu Phu hamlet, men and women from middle age and older. There are no young men left in the village, for they have been drafted to fight or have enlisted in units of the Fighting Youth in support of the front lines.