The Zenith Read online

  “Mr. President, the tea contains Lingzhi fungus jelly and medicine for your heart. The doctor has urged you to drink it while still hot. That’s why we cover the tea with a special cozy.”

  “OK. Leave it on the table for me,” he replies, thinking, “Poor me; not a moment without being watched.”

  The commander puts the tray on the table and repeats, “Please drink it while it is still hot.”

  “Thank you. I just heard the scream of a small child down in the valley. Do such accidents happen often?”

  “Not often; but every year, according to the local people. Mr. President, you need not overly concern yourself about it. It’s not good for your health. I already sent my deputy to take some guards down the mountain to help.”

  “Can’t the government do something to prevent such accidents?”

  “Yes, of course. But…” the commander replies with some surprise, his eyes shining with a devilish light and irreverence.

  Once again the president realizes he has blurted out an unwise question.

  “I know that acts of God or destiny are beyond human intervention. Nevertheless, the government should do as much as it can—”

  “Yes, it does!” Le interrupts him. “The government will certainly take the victim to a clinic. From here to the district town is very far. The family alone can’t do it. And the government will help with the funeral if the victim is too poor. First the Youth Brigade, then the village Party secretary, after that others as well.”

  “I would like to visit the victim’s family,” the president says, surprising himself with this sudden thought. Le stands still for quite a while. Then, attempting a smile, he politely says, “Mr. President, you are still under treatment and still in a situation where you must pay strict attention to the pace of your recovery. Attending the funeral at this moment would be very unhelpful. In addition, from the top of the mountain down to the valley is more than three thousand feet. A young soldier would feel tired, so for you…”

  “You brought me up the mountain and now you are reluctant to take me down?” the president says coldly.

  The commander, again shocked by the unusual reaction, says, with a stupid look and his voice rising,

  “Mr. President, when we bring people up the mountain, we must mobilize military aircraft. At this moment, every aircraft has been sent to the front to carry the wounded.”

  “What?” He raises his voice in retort, not hiding his anger. “Every week I receive a report from Central Party Headquarters. Each report is full of news of successes. What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Sir.” Le bows. It is hard to read what is behind the narrow but square forehead that thrusts up like a cliff, a notable forehead resembling Stalin’s. Le often bragged and threatened his comrades: “Don’t cross me! Don’t you see this forehead—one exactly like the Great Stalin’s!”

  At this moment, the commander lowers his head in thought. After a moment, his back stooped low, he says, “Mr. President, if you have decided, I will report back to Hanoi.”

  The president stands up and walks to the garden, realizing that the brown-faced fellow is slowly stepping back and away. Now anger squeezes his heart; a wave of suffocation surges up his throat. At the same time, his lungs fill with a hot steam, like that rising out of a steamship’s boiler. Both the steamship that had taken him from the country and the one that had brought him back had had the same fire now burning his breast.

  A plum branch stabs at his temple. He quickly closes his eyes. At this instant, the cry of the boy in the valley rises again. This time the boy stops screaming. His cry is now only a moaning floating in the wind. He thinks, “I guess perhaps help has arrived.”

  Out of the garden he heads toward the gate with the three arches. The wind blows from all directions. After halting a moment, it thrusts through the clefts in the mountain, chasing the clouds over to one corner of the sky to unveil a space of sweet blue. Thanks to the clear sky, the president now sees the clumps of woods below. In the space among the pines, the bodyguards’ quarters look like matchboxes lined up in a row. Next to that is the weather station, built from stones quarried during French times. There is a winding road that leads down deep into the valley where a medical team can now be seen taking the injured one on a stretcher back to the village. The group walks one by one like a file of ants.

  Looking from up high, the president thinks he is watching ants holding on to each other while climbing a reed stalk.

  “Father, oh, Father.”

  The wind changes direction, blowing from the valley up the mountainside. The cry of the boy swirls up and unfolds. He cries without stopping. Perhaps the father did not survive. Pity the one with the unfortunate destiny and pity the child who is about to endure life as an orphan.

  He thinks and instinctively closes his eyes. The sound of the wind in the pinewoods throws itself into a vast space.

  The president feels the wind touch his face, feels the damp cool of spring, of old forests, and of all the wildflowers on the mountain’s flank.

  “Father, oh, Father.”

  Suddenly, he opens wide his eyes because of a pressing question: If I die, will the child cry? Will he love me like that son of a woodsman, crying for his father?

  This thought stops him in his tracks, his feet planted before the three-arched gate, as if he had just banged his head on a stone wall or been hit by an ill wind.

  Obeying orders, the young bodyguard had been sitting in front of the temple but never ceased to watch the president. Seeing his pale face, the guard rushes up:

  “Mr. President, please return to your room. You might catch cold or slip and fall. Since morning, the ground has yet to dry.”

  Then he grabs the president’s shoulders tightly and guides him toward the house. The president wants to brush off the guard’s grip but his own arm is warm. His entire body is also warm, and, when pressed against him, that warmth gives vitality and gladdens the soul. All you need is to stand beside such a person and you will get this feeling. A good and healthy youth. He thinks and agrees to follow him into the room. There the tea has been cooling. He sits and drinks his tea with bitter thoughts.

  “He will never cry for me, because he doesn’t know whose child he is. Forever, he will never know who is his birth father.”

  Then he mocks himself for being wrong when he thought that the woodsman was the unfortunate one. Who is the more unfortunate?

  Now he understands why he had the sudden desire to go down to visit the victim.

  A bitter longing mixed with a searching curiosity flowers in his heart; he wants to attend the funeral of the woodsman because he wants to experience the funeral of a real father.

  Even the Lingzhi tea cannot suppress the suffocating heat in his chest. He has a hard time breathing even though his room is large and he has opened the windows to let in the cool air of the mountains and forests. An electric heater had been placed at the foot of his bed; it gives warmth and has no smoke from charcoal. Compared with the old days, such comforts make people feel good.

  “Not to say it isn’t a touch of luxury.” So he thinks to himself as he remembers the bamboo and the dried branches that the two temple women use for heating.

  The frame of his electric heater holds a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs dancing near a fire. The blinking flames illuminate the dwarfs holding hands, endlessly circling around the beautiful young girl with blond hair. With dull eyes the president, gazing a bit long at these fairy-tale characters, suddenly stands up and goes to the window. The wind now blows along the ribs of the mountain, singing through the forests he has visited. The sloping forests threaded throughout with pine trees sweep down from the high mountain peak to the foot of the Lan Vu pagoda and rise again to the foot of the sky to the north. Lower still on the second ridge is the forest of bamboo, all kinds of bamboo—yellow ones, lime-green ones, interwoven with thorny ones, making for an unending royal symphony in the summer nights. Bamboo covers the mountain slopes as far as
the woodcutters’ village, flowing down to the foot of the mountain, there connecting with fields of tea and cassava. Then follow the terraced fields, themselves followed by fields over which the white herons can fly straight like those in the delta, fields that are cut up like patches of a fresh green dress; dotted by little hamlets and extending to the southern horizon. Before, at the New Year, people from all around would climb three mountain terraces to attend services at Lan Vu pagoda when the plum-tree orchards around it were in full bloom, a blanket of white flowers that looked like a cloud, and the wild plums also blossomed along the well-worn trails. Those who worked from dawn to dusk with mud on their feet and hands waited for this pilgrimage at a miraculous moment of their year, the moment that triggers all the secret longing, the moment that calms all the pain and loss of life that has passed to nurture the breath of hope in those who seek to ascend the trail. Is it possible that the pure white of the plum blossoms, the delicate whiteness of the apricot blossoms, the spring fog, the white clouds on the mountaintop, and the flickering white steam in the crevices could create a magical sight—an intoxicating symphony of unsullied whiteness making one feel the power of purity and eternal rejuvenation?

  Or could it be that the sounds of the temple bells and the chanting of Buddhist prayers are a balm to soothe the never-ending dark and difficult incarnations of humanity?

  For whatever reason, he thinks of himself as guilty because since his arrival, the government, to ensure his safety, had forbidden the local people to come up to Lan Vu. They had thus confiscated a little joyfulness from those people, robbed them of something unique: romantic and sacred moments in the isolated lives unfolding in this place.

  Lan Vu used to have twelve monks and nuns. The government ordered all of them to move down to two minor temples in the bamboo forest. He had to protest vehemently before the resident head nun and an assistant were allowed to stay. These two women, one young, one old, tended the garden all day, cleaned the temple, and prayed. It seemed as if they never took a break, except for sleep and two quick meals a day. A reluctance kept him from ever crossing over the paved courtyard, which became the boundary between his world and that of those who had taken vows of faith. From time to time, from his isolated world, he would discreetly glance over to see the two nuns sitting face-to-face on two old bamboo benches. Between them was a tray of food aligned exactly on a table, also made of bamboo. Even from afar he could guess how meager were those meals.

  An unwieldly curiosity obsesses him: Is it possible that they don’t feel pain and fear? Is it possible that they are completely detached from the feelings and needs of a normal person? That they hold no desire or anger; feel neither affection nor hatred, elation nor discouragement? No wishful anxiety; neither happy nor hopeless. Their lives flow like water in a canal—no falls or storms. If their lives really are that bland, he thinks, it would be an unimaginably heavy burden.

  Every time he looked at the faces, as calm as still water, of the two women in the temple, this question returns like a refrain—a math problem without a solution.

  “Mr. President, you should not stand in the wind too long,” says the chubby soldier who has just finished cleaning the two rooms and now stands behind him.

  “Don’t worry. I want to get some fresh air.”

  Then he looks at the bucket full of dead ephemera in his hands, and says: “Oh, there are so many night butterflies…”

  “Yes. Because it’s warm.”

  Suddenly the wind stops, then, as if by some coincidence, the sounds of the wooden bells and the praying stop as well. The branches of the plum trees are no longer moved by the wind, staying still as if fixed by a curse. After a split second, the old nun walks out of the temple, followed by her assistant.

  The president asks: “Your Reverence, today you pray past noon?”

  Each time he sees the abbess, he speaks first to greet her. When he was a young child, his mother had taught him to respect those older than he. The nun is possibly in her eighties, so she must be at least seven years older. Though she is small and slight, she is still quite strong and thoroughly alert.

  The nun turns to the president and replies, “Sir, this morning we cast the I Ching and learned that a misfortune would befall the people in the area, so we had to pray sufficiently for their protection.”

  “Then, Your Reverence, those with unlucky fortunes will be saved?”

  “Sir, we cannot answer that. Whether those marked for danger will live or not depends totally on their inherited karma and their preordained destiny. We pray to ask that the Buddhas alleviate their bad fortune somewhat. If their destiny is still weighted down with this world, then we ask for them a quick recovery so they may return to their families and share this life with their wives and children. If their current destiny has reached its end, we ask for them a quick liberation, so that they can leave this worldly existence without too much pain and suffering, allowing their families and loved ones to feel some relief, and they themselves to benefit from the good karma that will bring them to a quick reincarnation into their next lives.”

  The president remains quiet, but thinks, “If it is so, then the praying does not really help humanity that much.”

  As if she guesses his secret thought, the old nun continues: “Mr. President, you are a country-saving hero, the great father of the land, the one whom we Vietnamese completely respect and to whom we are grateful. From another perspective, we are cloistered: we live in a world in which leaders like you don’t live; we believe in things you neither know nor trust. That’s why, with your permission, I would like not to reply to questions that we cannot answer.”

  “Your Reverence, please don’t take offense. My concerns don’t merit any attention, I only wish to fully understand the Buddhist scriptures.”

  “You will if you are so destined.”

  “But if I am not…” He lets out a question he cannot stop: “If I don’t have such a destiny?”

  The old nun smiles, not offended by the question, which is a bit provocative: “Sir, if you are not destined, you will never understand, even if you read a thousand sutras in ten thousand volumes, or if you sit a thousand times to hear erudite sermons.”

  After speaking, the nun points her hand toward the western part of the valley, where a mountain ridge runs straight in front of their view. “Do look at that mountain in front of us: the people here call it Sword Mountain, because of its shape. Now, please focus on the beaten paths running along the sides of the mountain—those paths that run parallel to each other and can never meet. This image is similar to the paths taken by those who are in the world. Without a different destiny, we will forever walk on only one side of the mountain.”

  With no more to say on the point, the nun steps back, bows, and apologizes: “Merciful Buddha, we humble ones should not so disturb you.”

  The attendant who stands behind, who always stands behind, also bows. Then the two turn back to the temple on the other side of the yard.

  The president looks after them in a casual manner: two women wearing brown cloth; neither particularly pretty nor charming. To be fair, during their youth they might have been girls who deserved stares, but one could not say that they were beauties. If a majority of people believe that beauty gives strength, then in their cases, they probably could not have had much confidence in having any impact. Intelligence gives another kind of power, but also one with which they would not have bested very many others. But there was a kind of strength firmly lodged in them that made them unflinching in the face of great authority.

  He knows keenly that there are very many people of great learning, those carefully trained abroad, who have real ability and are considered the brains of scientific studies, yet they are ever ready to do all that is bad and they never feel shame. Worldly power crushes their conscience as well as their self-respect. Under orders from the Party, these PhDs can easily demonstrate that it’s better for pigs to eat water buffalo manure than bran, that water spinach is more nutritious
than beef, or that children should not eat more than 200 grams of meat in a month to avoid risks of getting ill. Their writings made his face turn red but he could not dissuade them. Once the wheel starts to turn…Doesn’t this wheel carry his very own imprint?

  He sighs deeply, a habit he had acquired in the last few years. Many times he had tried to get rid of it but without success.

  The young soldier comes right up before him and clicks his heels in greeting. “Mr. President, I report to ask your permission to go down the mountain.”

  He asks, “It’s already time to change the guard?”

  “Yes, sir, in three minutes and ten seconds, but the other team is already up here,” the soldier replies, lifting his wristwatch to check the time in an attentive and proud manner. For sure, this is his most valuable possession, an article the government provided for his professional use.

  “Indeed, it is five o’clock.” The president speaks as if talking to himself while glancing out and around. The two night-duty guards have come up to replace the chubby soldier, their footsteps clunking on the gravel. Because the wind is calm, the noise is amplified in the mountain isolation. The two soldiers approach together and solemnly bow to the president. He makes a familiar and gentle gesture, responding to their formality, to allow them to perform their duty as assigned. Meanwhile, the chubby soldier leaves the temple yard, turning down the beaten path. Because of his weight, the sound of his retreating steps is louder than was that of his two ascending colleagues. He hears small stones being kicked loose from the sides of the path, rolling down and hitting the mountainside.

  The president returns to his lodging just as the food-service team presents his evening meal. As it is not convenient to prepare his meals in the sparse temple kitchen, they are prepared in the guards’ kitchen, and someone brings them up to him. A doctor regularly eats with him, to check the quantity and quality of his meals, and sleeps in one of the three rooms on the right side of the temple.