The Zenith

by Duong Thu Huong

  That history is tied mysteriously to the name of the old land: Bac Ninh, which was the capital in ancient days. The special quality of residents in a capital city is that they consume more than people living elsewhere. The traditional Bac Ninh banquet was usually described with the word “tang,” stories, as in a house with two, three, or five stories. Bac Ninh banquets come in numerous categories: two-story banquets, three-story banquets, five-story banquets (four-story banquets are rare). Each story is one full brass tray of food. A two-story banquet presents all the food on two brass trays. Just extend that definition to visualize a three-story banquet or a five-story one. Surely no one stomach can hold all the food of a three-story or a five-story banquet, but serving such banquet trays can be looked at from two points of view: respect for guests or ostentatious display of wealth (actually, it is the same thing whether done graciously or crassly).

  The second characteristic of residents in a capital community is that they talk. They like to talk, to carry on about life’s vicissitudes, and their ability to so talk exceeds that of those who live elsewhere. Sometimes that ability develops to extremes, leading to the habit of embellishing everything. Anyone could become an amateur writer or an almost poet. Such need to create can only propel itself through a unique window frame: building on precedents. Thus, one can find many different versions of the history of the three families who started Woodcutters’ Hamlet, transforming a desolate mountainside into a busy community with the sounds of people walking, the crowing of cocks, and happy singing. The people of Woodcutters’ Hamlet built the Lan Vu temple and two others lower down the mountain, the northern region being well known for its numerous pagodas and shrines. The need to contemplate a temple landscape is one way to embrace nostalgia for traditional environments.

  Woodcutters’ Hamlet consists of three parts: the upper, middle, and lower sections. The upper part sits right at the foot of the mountain range, where the first three families settled and built their commune. Many generations passed, young people got married, gathering husbands and wives from many walks of life, set up farms, and erected houses on the surrounding slopes, configuring them into the middle and lower sections of the village. Up in the hills, inhabitants of these two sections plant both dry and wet rice along with tea bushes while growing cassava, cauliflower, and kohlrabi on the lower slopes. Families who live in the upper commune are considered pillars of the village and are naturally respected according to a set of old customs about which nobody knows for certain when they were established or by whom. Thus, Mr. Quang, the unlucky woodcutter, was one of those personages who always sat on the foremost mat, who were always listed in the first rank of those who had the most power in Woodcutters’ Hamlet, one of those who the village chairmen as well as party secretaries had to ask for their opinion, had to get their approval, when something needed to be done. Fifteen years ago, around 1954 when the following story occurred, his eldest son had been village chairman. Mr. Quang was then both a village elder and had sired a person of power.

  In the autumn of that year, his wife had fallen ill. She was then close to sixty and had given birth to eight children, so her strength, though not completely gone, was like a lamp without much oil. At the Mid-Autumn Festival, her personality had suddenly changed. She became extraordinarily ravenous. In the past, she had always disdained food and drink, eating only two bowls for show at each meal. At banquets, she raised her chopsticks only to please her husband and children. Suddenly, that mid-August night when the kids started in at the banquet, everybody saw her dash to the tray of rice cakes, fill her plate, then go sit in a corner to eat them in a flash without drinking a single cup of tea.

  Everybody knew that rice cakes made for the kids at the Mid-Autumn Festival are usually very sweet. Even those who have a sweet tooth can finish only two of them and they have to drink at least a potful of tea to wash them down. But she finished eating a full plate, which meant at least six large cakes, of which in the past she could eat only one corner before shaking her head in disdain. This sudden development rippled throughout the village like an earthquake. But it was strange that she did not care to pay any attention to those nosy eyes around her; she acted like one distracted. She had only one real concern: for the foods she suddenly craved madly. Her obsession with food slowly became a mysterious terror for everybody, beginning with her children. She doted on honey from young bees. Each morning she poured a cupful of honey, sat and consumed it glumly with a stack of sesame rice sheets or with half a basket of boiled cassava. She devoured pork, beef, then chicken and duck, then shrimp and fish. At lunch she would eat an entire pig’s leg or a whole steamed rooster. At dinner, she would wolf down eight or nine bowls of rice accompanied by salty braised fish or brined small shrimp with roasted peanuts and a basketful of watercress or stir-fried cabbage. One day when the family’s flock of one hundred chickens was almost gone, with only a few very young chicks and two old hens left for breeding, she went into the coop and took out more than two dozen eggs to make pork omelets to have with two plates of sticky rice, which she ate voraciously like a wild animal. The capacity to eat like that was three times that of a farmer from the south whose job is to dig the ground, five times that of her husband, and twenty times that of herself only a few months before. Because the family was well off, Mr. Quang spoiled his wife. The whole family found ways to satisfy all her peculiar requests. But her kids were frightened and the village people whispered hush hush behind their backs:

  “It is not really her; it’s a hungry ghost that has invaded her. Look closely, her eyes are glazed like one who has lost her soul, and when she eats, she does not look at anyone at all. Our elders taught: ‘when eating, watch the pot of rice; when seated, look around you.’ A wise one would glance here and there before raising their chopsticks. Only those who are taken over by a ghost would bend their head and eat like a duck being filled with snails, like a pig being forced to eat mush, without caring to see if the one next to you can get a bite or not!”

  “My God, next to her are her husband and children; at times she doesn’t even care to pay them any attention.”

  “What about the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival when, despite her husband and children being there, she took for herself the whole plate of cakes and went to eat in the corner? Only weird people would do that.”

  “Yeah, that was really strange. But I don’t believe a ghost did it; neither a ghostly apparition nor a hungry one.”

  “If it was not a ghost, it could have been a demon’s spirit! Only if invaded by a hungry demon could someone eat like that. If ordinary people ate like that, they would die from burst stomachs.”

  “True indeed. If one could digest all that, it would still be a strange thing. The other day the kids boiled some eggs then left for a youth organization meeting. I didn’t want to waste the food so I forced myself to eat three. My stomach was heavy until midnight; I had to drink some wine with candied ginger.”

  “That woman didn’t eat to live but ate to die. There are always people like that.”

  “I’ll bet she’ll live for a long time. But eating like that will consume even a mountain of wealth. I can’t guess just how Mr. Quang will manage.”

  “The mouth eats; the mountain collapses! If ordinary people who just eat and don’t work can collapse a mountain, just think of someone taken over by a hungry ghost!”

  “Don’t be silly, there’s no ghost, only a disease that until now the doctors are unable to cure.”

  Mr. Quang remained silent. He quietly went into the mountains to look for honey whenever the honey jar in the house was empty, but what the bees made wasn’t enough to collect. He also took money from his savings to buy pork and beef for his wife, after the hundred chickens were all gone. Even a hundred young geese could not keep up by laying new clutches of eggs. All over the region, when anyone slaughtered a wounded buffalo or an injured calf, or old and sickly cattle, they would all call on him, because he was the most reliable customer. Nobody spent like him.
r />   He told his children:

  “I don’t care what people in the village say, your mother narrowed her mouth all her life, to raise you all; now it’s time for her to nourish herself.”

  “Everything is up to you, Father,” replied the oldest one, who was village chairman.

  Almost forty, married with three children, he lived in a separate house, but visited his parents every day. Two younger brothers had enlisted, leaving only the youngest son officially living with the parents. The couple gave birth to eight children, but now had only these four sons. Each was named with the letter Q like his father. The village chairman was Quy; then followed the twins, who together enlisted on the same day, Quyet and Quyen; and the youngest one was Quynh, the best-looking of the brothers and, it seems, the biggest flirt. Barely fourteen, he was already chasing girls with more than a little passion. Several times his mother had to run from the upper section down to the middle and lower sections, even to villages half a day away from Woodcutters’ Hamlet, looking for him. Of the four brothers, the mother spoiled the youngest the most; from food to clothing and books. Quynh was completely cared for to the point of creating jealousy among his friends. He looked most like his mother. His voice was soft like a girl’s. Maybe that was why the mother spoiled him so much. The village people said that she didn’t have hands that could raise a daughter; all those who came to her bosom perished after some months, none surviving as long as a year.

  That year the winter was painfully cold; every kitchen kept its fire bright day and night. Old people dared not leave their kitchens. At night they slept around the fire like Montagnards. Fog from the mountain spread a white net around the garden, forming a floating mass over roofs and trees. Many days the fog hovered until close to noon, with no time to dissipate before the afternoon brought down new fog. Then, following those foggy interludes, came days of continuous rain with northern winds. The trees in the yards bent their bare trunks under the whipping of the winter wind. The hissing wind leaped from the crevasses, first quietly, then roaring down upon the hamlets, bringing with it ageless laments. It was so cold that if you got a cut and didn’t have time to treat it with medicine, blood would coagulate right away, then the open skin would not heal because the skin would shrink. During that time, the people of Woodcutters’ Hamlet gathered around the kitchens of the big families, the wealthiest ones that had stored enough logs to last several winters, who had enough sticky rice and honey to offer guests without causing frowns or complaints about wasting resources.

  In previous winters, Mr. Quang’s kitchen had always been full of guests; they said that both his doors and his heart were open wide. Wide doors, a tall house, both plain and sticky rice, jars of sugar, jars of cane sugar, jars of honey—all piled up in the five large rooms of the outbuilding on the right of the compound. Peanuts, mung beans, white and black sesame seeds were stored in baskets. Mr. Quang was generous and gracious to guests. During the days of continuous rain and wind, of gray clouds hovering, what happened outside the house made a sad contrast to the festivities taking place on the inside. Neighbors, unable to go up to their terraced fields or down to their rice paddies, or to climb the mountain to make charcoal or cut firewood, all gathered in the kitchen and the three main rooms of his personal residence. There the fire was popping, the charcoal was red. The men prepared pipes, cigarettes, and tea, and conversation exploded like firecrackers. In the kitchen, women pounded flour to make cakes, or boiled sticky rice or sweet porridge, depending on their mood. When the lower door opened, several women would be carrying baskets of rice or containers of honey and lard. Rice cakes, sesame seed cakes with meat fillings and sweet bean fillings covered in honey, sticky rice with peanuts, sticky rice with mung beans, sticky rice with steamed chicken or grilled chicken—every kind of sticky rice. One could say that not even royal and princely delicacies could bring such joy and happiness during those cold winter days when people from the hamlet gathered in his kitchen. From the bedrooms to the kitchen, laughter burst out as if canned for a television comedy. Guests would laugh once, the host twice. Mr. Quang had a hearty laugh that everyone secretly admired. Those who prognosticated fortune from facial appearances said he was wealthy because of his laugh.

  Even though he was from the countryside, he knew many trades and many ways to make money off others. As soon as he came from the woods having cut wood for charcoal, you could see him with ruler in one hand and knife in the other going with a group of carpenters and workers down to the city to work on a public project. As soon as his hands were dry from farming, you could see him with a horse cart hauling tea or dry cassava to market. From there, his cart would carry all kinds of goods to sell to the cooperatives of the Zao, San Ziu, and San Chi peoples in the south and in nearby districts. From the mountains to the plains, from the plains to the seashores, he bought dry fish, dry squid, and all kinds of fish paste, traversing hamlets in the highlands where there were only mountains and hills and vegetation. Like a sea horse, he never stayed long in any one location. That was why, even though he came only from woodcutters, even during his young adulthood he had eaten in all the four directions.

  His adventuresome looks created a strong presence that made others envious and fearful. Additionally, the way he treated people made the villagers admire him. Such worldly qualities were surely rare occurrences where people are bound tightly to mountainsides. Good hearts are also hard to find there; but if found, they can’t do much good where standards of living are so marginal. In the most brutal winters, so many widowed mothers and orphaned children could rely only on his help, because the public social welfare budget, at the most, could provide no more than twenty kilos of unhusked rice. Mr. Quang never gave unhusked rice. He didn’t want to annoy anyone. Where the cooperative gave unhusked rice, he donated kindling, polished rice, fish sauce, sugar, lard, and money. As such, it was advantageous for both the giver and the receiver. Too many people were indebted to him. But he placed no demands on them, as if he couldn’t help but assist them. That practice seems a bit strange, but it gave lighter hearts both to him and to those in his debt. And his imposing house took on the role of a small village shrine, a place providing everyone with the warmth of a living community and moments of relaxed happiness; the cheerful ambience of a summer festival that brightens hard and sad lives in the mountain fastness.

  That winter, with those bone-chilling rains and interminable northern winds, out of habit people looked toward his house, but there no more did a fire burn brightly. Though nobody passed the word, no one dared come to his home. They knew that he had left with his knife and his ruler more than a month before, after relinquishing the house and its money to his youngest son. He had to go down to the town to work because the family’s wealth was gone. Nobody dared empathize with his sadness or console him. Nobody dared bring up the subject of his wife’s strange condition. For those who are humble and unsophisticated and who are used to living frugally, such a disease is a curse. It is similar to typhoid fever, tuberculosis, or dysentery in the old days. Bereft of a familiar refuge, the villagers had to turn to a family in the middle section that had newly become wealthy, that of Miss Vui, the Party Committee secretary.

  Miss Vui was thirty-two years old, never married, destined maybe to never fall in love with anyone. Or, to be more accurate, it seems most unlikely that anyone would ever fall in love with her, not because she is bad in character or in looks, but because she is several inches taller than even the tallest men in the village. With such stature, she also has massively square shoulders, as if she were made for carrying baskets on a pole, with overly developed and rock-hard muscles. Her shoulders would fit well on a first-class martial artist. One of her hands could easily knock over a guy her age. She is in the mold of her father, Mr. Vang, formerly a famous martial artist in the three provinces on the western side of the Red River, who earned quite a bit of money prize-fighting all over the north. The village residents all agree she so resembles her father that if she shaved her head and stripped
to a loincloth, she could enter the ring and make opponents shake with fear, as her father did when he was famous. Mr. Vang had a mole larger than a black bean in the middle of his neck. On this mole, hair always grew, each strand longer than three inches. Miss Vui also has a similar mole, but under her chin; each day she has to look in the mirror to cut the little tuft. If she gets lost in her work and forgets this task, the hairs grow long, oddly twisting. Perhaps all these peculiarities leave her unable to have a husband like other women. She turns every male fainthearted. Her looks as well as her strength are hot topics for the village men to discuss when they work on the cassava grass under the hot June sun or sit and smoke water pipes on rainy days. There are a thousand ways to bring up a funny story about her, usually with just a question, some fact common to both men and women in the upper hamlet:

  “Yesterday I saw Vui carry beehives up the hills. Her legs moved differently.”

  “Different how?”

  “Her legs shifted out on both sides, as if something were tucked inside.”

  “Something stuck between her legs, unless she tied there a coolee or a fox?”

  “You crazy old man, just like a saint who lies…I think someone has crossed into paradise.”

  “Fairy heaven or paradise: you black peasant who tries to be literary! Just say bluntly that someone jumped on her belly. Who would so dare risk his life? Maybe you? I see your face looking kind of guilty!”

  “Me? It would be such an honor! Many times I wanted to try, but when I saw her my penis just shrank down like one on a three-year-old. Hey, I’ll step aside for you.”