The Zenith Page 6

  There is a kind of pain that tugs like the leeches do, that grabs the heart tightly at its deepest recess and never lets go. Real leeches are not that dangerous; you can let them suck the blood of water buffaloes until they grow as fat as your big toe. Once satiated, they just fall off. You can drop those blood-filled leeches into a pit of active lime, and in that way most effectively massacre these parasites. But when facing a lingering pain, people become paralyzed, unable to pull the parasite out from a bleeding heart.

  Vu does not remember in which book he read about this. But suddenly the thought returns, like smoke from smoldering hay hanging over the field of memory.

  Suddenly, cheerful laughter catches his attention: popping out of the door frame between the canteen and the kitchen is a group of four young girls, each one round, with red cheeks, twinkling eyes, and a face full of happiness. The two in the front carry a big basket with a heap of sesame balls. The two behind, even more hefty, carry the largest size of army pot, probably with broth for the beef noodle soup. Behind the four girls comes a fellow with skin dark as a burned house pillar and shoulders square as a Tet rice cake, carrying a basket of sliced noodles. It’s time for the canteen to serve the morning meal to the soldiers at the airport. Vu looks down at his watch; at that moment a gong is struck briskly.

  After three slow and three fast rings, the airport soldiers happily enter, every single one of them with his hair well groomed, his uniform well pressed, his complexion smooth and pinkish, clearly the most important, pampered group of soldiers in the corps. They walk while joking around, exchanging stories and conniving looks.

  Out of curiosity Vu follows them with his eyes, thinking: “In this group of good friends, who, I wonder, will take a knife and stab whom? Who will pour poison into whose glass of water? And who will lure whom into a spot that has been mined?”

  The young soldiers see him. They stop chattering, raise their hands in salute, and follow one another to sit at a row of tables on the right side of the room, an area reserved for middle-grade meals.

  The canteen is only one room, serving only one kind of sesame ball and one kind of beef noodle soup, but it is divided into two sections. The area where he sits is reserved for higher-class meals, the floor having been raised some six inches by a platform that has had a veneer carefully applied, one that shines like a mirror. Also, the chairs and tables here are made of good wood and the tables are covered with white tablecloths. The cups, plates, and bowls are nice, thin Chinese porcelain. The area on the right, at a lower level and reserved for middle-grade meals, has a brick floor. Here the furniture is of plain wood, there are no table coverings, the cups are aluminum and the bowls and plates of Hai Duong porcelain, the kind that is thick like tiles but chips easily. Dividing the two areas, as if to clearly mark the separation, is a row of carved wooden posts hung with strings of paper flowers in various colors. In a disdainful, aloof manner Vu looks at the strings of shiny flowers and smiles cynically as he thinks to himself:

  “What is the difference between a bowl of upper-grade noodle soup and middle-grade soup? Maybe the first bowl holds twelve pieces of beef and the other only six or eight pieces. Is it that the first bowl gets more sliced onions than the second, or that its broth might have more fat or more pepper? Oh, this practice is so far from the ideals of all those who joined the revolution. After many bones have been broken and much blood spilled, all so that life falls back to counting the pieces of meat put in a bowl of pho or on a plate of food…”

  He quickly gulps a mouthful of hot tea, suddenly recognizing the familiar path that leads to purgatory. But the shiny paper flowers grab his attention. The thought of caste division, of the dominion of power, of precarious and unchanging conditions of man’s existence…all of these permanent tensions rip and tear his heart like a pack of leeches.

  Yesterday morning, as soon as he had arrived at the office and before he could even put his briefcase on the desk, the young secretary had hurriedly run in to report that the administrative office of Central Party Headquarters was summoning him unexpectedly. This secretary, skinny with a pale, greenish face and an anxious disposition, looked really pathetic:

  “Chief, please leave immediately, Leader Sau is waiting.”

  Vu laid the briefcase on the desk and said slowly: “Who gives that order?”

  The secretary looked up with big, round eyes and lowered his voice as if he had to whisper: “Leader Sau himself called by phone not ten minutes ago. He called not just once but twice.”

  “He called twice because he likes to exercise his voice,” Vu replied.

  But when he saw the shocked face of the secretary, confused and terrified, he quickly added: “Prepare my documents.”

  “Yes, Chief. Leader Sau said that it’s a special meeting, so you don’t need to bring any documents as usual.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Vu put the leather briefcase in the cabinet, and folded some newspapers to bring along. He had planned on such reading to pass the time while driving. But once in the car, he felt anxious so he threw the stack of papers in a corner.

  “What special development could have happened today?” Vu thought to himself. “For a long time he hasn’t called me urgently like this, not since the day when the pack of cards was flipped open.”

  On getting out of the car, he passed the guards—bones and flesh standing as still as wooden statues, faces held up at a right angle, chests extended as ordered, rifles pointing straight up toward the sky. Their profession was to be just like that: a display of earthly force, a means of threatening and menacing outsiders. Such display was familiar to him, so why had he suddenly felt different, surprised and unfriendly? For a long time now, he had seen in this daily exhibit only a boring presentation. But today, he realized that it had been set up solely for him, designed to warn him alone. The emotionless faces of those wooden statues hid a danger that he couldn’t yet detect. As if there were some kind of unseen plot filling up space; as if there were some kind of suffocating gas in the air, or a snake’s venom, or a poison…an invisible killer slipping into his lungs. He abruptly turned around to look at the soldiers even after he had already stepped inside the garden. Then he tried to analyze his strange sensations but was unable to come up with any satisfactory explanation. In such a state, he walked through the garden full of vibrantly colorful spring flowers, while his mind searched in the midst of a dark tunnel of bewilderment and suspicion. Before climbing to the third floor, he glanced up and saw Sau already standing there, looking down on the garden. He waved at Vu. Vu’s face flushed as he thought that Sau might have witnessed him turning around and looking at the soldiers; and very likely had guessed at the secret thoughts being born in his brain. The soldiers were Sau’s, chosen by him, paid by him personally, and he personally designed their privileges and applied disciplinary fines. Those soldiers without question would follow his personal orders. That was a reality known to all.

  Sau waited for him in the hall so that they could together walk into the reception room, which was very spacious, more like a place to play pool or ping pong. Next to some couches set beside one another, there was a table along the left wall, also ridiculously large, on which there were many assorted glasses and cups from different countries lined up in a long file for tea and filtered coffee. A young lad was busy there preparing drinks.

  Stepping into the room, Sau ordered: “Stop, leave it all there.”

  The servant disappeared at once like a ghost. Then Sau’s hand pointed him to a low armchair: “Sit down. Today I have business to take up with the Department of Foreign Affairs. I can’t receive you as long as usual. We shall work together quickly.”

  Having already sat down, Vu stood up at once, saying: “If you are busy, I will leave. We can meet another time.”

  “The matter is urgent; that’s why I summoned you so hurriedly.”

  “Even if urgent, I will still work according to procedures. I don’t want to bother others. I don’t accept working in a pat
chwork manner.”

  Sau stopped and looked at him attentively, as if stunned. Apparently nobody had dared talk with him that way for a long time. Apparently, too, it was very hard for him to swallow. And, apparently, he was not prepared to react to such a situation. An awkward moment passed.

  He suddenly smiled: “Why, now, do you get angry so easily? In the past people said you were cool like Jell-O…”

  “However you are born, you die the same way. That’s how it was put.”

  Playfully, Sau shook his head: “That’s not true. Your character changes with time. I have changed, not to become angry like you, but more playful. There’s this interesting point…”

  He started laughing loudly, a very delighted laughter: “What I am going to say is not easily understood by those like you who have Confucian blood running thick in you; in fact, it even seems absurd…Listen here…”

  Sau approached close to his armchair, bent over, and laced each sentence with a delightful and unhidden malice: “In my old age, I suddenly like to look at pretty girls. It’s like cigarettes or pipes—you stop for decades then suddenly you crave them…If not for my work, each morning I would go to West Lake. There, at sunrise, groups of girls come to exercise and row boats, all of them about sixteen or seventeen, all pretty as if in a dream.”

  As he finished talking, he turned and went to the table against the wall, to pour coffee into two black cups. Vu quietly looked at the crow’s-feet around his eyes, realizing he had aged even though he still had that big and tall body with a light skin, the gift of a princely body bestowed by heaven, that he usually assesses half seriously and half in jest during casual discussions: “My body has enough strength to hold twelve different lifetimes, with enough agility to serve thirty-six women with dedication, from nubile ones to middle-aged beauties.”

  Behind every one of his jokes there is always someone buried in some deep forest corner, on some isolated trail, or in some dark prison cell. Vu looks at his pink, fat nape reaching up from the collar of his black shirt and wonders: “This morning, who is implicated in all these flirty jokes?”

  Sau had come back with two cups of coffee in his hands. The aroma diffused throughout the room. He squinted and asked: “Don’t you find this coffee exquisite?”

  Vu replied: “I’ve only smelled it, not yet tasted it.”

  “Silly, you only need to smell coffee to know its quality. You are not yet a connoisseur.”

  “I have never held myself out to be a connoisseur of anything. But, based on my experience, there are many foods that you only smell and don’t eat. Like fried fish marinated in poison, for example. When I was still living in the small town at home, I saw my neighbor bait a dog that way.”

  “Ha, ha…” Sau burst into laughter, laughter that resonated throughout the room and then out into the hall. A girl poked her head in, then disappeared at once. Sau put a cup of coffee in front of him and said, “Drink…You do have a gift for argument…Really, I should have assigned you to run the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

  “Really?” Now Vu also laughed. “Then correct the mistake; it’s still not too late…”

  He started to sip his coffee.

  On the other side of the table, Sau also began to drink quietly. A huge gold ring on his fourth finger, about the size of a railroad screw head, reflected on the black glaze of the imported cup.

  Vu ponders as he looks at the twinkling reflection on the porcelain glaze. Black coffee in a black cup. How exquisite! You really should be an interior decorator for private homes or a painter for the stage. That way fewer people would die unjustly. Meanwhile, Sau had put his cup on the table and stretched out against the low armchair. The collar of his black shirt contrasted with his fair and pink complexion, still full of sensuality even though blotted with age spots. He likes the color black. He has dozens of black shirts. In receiving foreign guests or when appearing before the people, he has to wear white shirts and suits, but on other occasions he always wears black shirts. This is a preference worth noting. It could be his careful way of grooming, caring for his smooth skin. It also could be to create an image of a gangster in black dress or of historical martial artists dressed in black. No one dares to discuss this openly, except Vu. One time, he opened the topic, going on the attack:

  “You are really very seductive in a black shirt…contemporary and youthful, too…in a black shirt, you look ten years younger…that way you cheat life out of ten extra years,” Vu had told him once during a lunch break at a conference when all the delegates had sat down at their tables. Sau had appeared shocked, he couldn’t believe all that his ears had just heard. But Vu had carefully added: “I think that it’s the way you use colors to shine over the others. It’s an old game, been around since the beginning of the century, actually, nothing new to it at all. Furthermore, what you do is already enough to create an impression. The mechanisms of power are in your hands—with the power of life and the power of death. Why do you still need to wear black shirts?”

  “You, you…” Sau had stuttered, his face pale with anger. The people around them were also pale from fear. But Vu had calmly looked at him. A split second passed; Sau smiled. Responding to this smile, Vu had smiled, too, the smile of someone about to step up to the gallows. In that moment of dead silence and cold animosity, Sau had said with warmth and friendliness: “Have you been stung by a bee? How does the wearing of a black or white shirt have any influence on the people’s welfare?”

  Vu had smiled cynically: “It does! Wearing black shirts saves on soap. That way, you are a good role model for young people. The only thing is, ten kilograms of soap cost less than a bottle of French perfume, which I see you bring home from every trip abroad. You carry a suitcase full for your primary and secondary ladies inside and outside your home.”

  “I give up,” Sau had politely replied but then added: “You need to be more understanding of others. Not everyone can live like a monk as you do. Men are like roosters; they must know how to show off their combs and wiggle their tail feathers.” At this, he smiled faintly and left. The other delegates had sat dead still while shuffling their chopsticks and passing bowls around…

  Three weeks after this, Vu’s oldest brother came up from the countryside. He didn’t rest after the drive and together they went to the flower garden by West Lake, where the rock jetties are covered with duckweed roots and dead ephemera. Right away, without any hesitation, his brother said:

  “Someone told me everything. Do you plan to die?”

  “I am still alive because I don’t fear him. Otherwise, my grave by now would have been covered with green grass.”

  “He is an unusually dangerous type. His kind only comes along once in a while. Have you already forgotten the lesson of Le Dinh?”

  “I have not. But I am not in the same situation.”

  “I am very worried for you…If something should happen to you…”

  Vu squeezed his brother’s hand and looked at his face with great warmth and trust:

  “Dear brother, in such a situation, we can only rely on family loyalty. We will do all that we can. Success or failure is up to heaven.”

  The elder brother choked with emotion: “I only worry about you; as for me, I will pass. In our family, you are the only one with hair, I am bald. They won’t pay any attention to me.”

  “I am no different from you. We have no line of retreat.”

  They held hands and said nothing more, because at that moment, from the Quan Thanh temple, a couple emerged. They crossed Co Ngu Street and walked toward the brothers.

  Sau’s voice suddenly rose and startled him: “Why, by now you must be able to assess things accurately, yes?” Immediately Vu put down his cup of coffee.

  “Good! Indeed, it’s very good.”

  Sau leaned completely back against the chair, in a posture of commanding nonchalance, his arms positioned symmetrically on the arms of the chair.

  “Are you hooked on coffee or on tea?”

  “I like b
oth, but I’m not hooked on anything. Now, tell me what you have to say.”

  “Obviously something’s up.”

  He stopped as if waiting for Vu to continue asking.

  Fully familiar with Sau’s tactics, Vu distractedly looked out the windows, as if he had forgotten the matter, or the subject was nothing to be concerned about.

  Finally, Sau drank the last of his coffee and said:

  “The office just informed me that the Old Man has requested to go down the mountains and visit with some citizen.”

  “What citizen?”

  “A woodsman who fell into a ravine and then died on a stretcher on the way back to the village. I’ve asked you to come so that you can go and advise the Old Man to give up this idea. Right now we are in the middle of a hundred, a thousand things to do. The Old Man shouldn’t complicate matters.”

  “The Old Man is president of the country. He established the Party…How can I mentor him? Who came up with this weird idea?”

  “This is not a weird idea but an intelligent recommendation. Brother Ba has decided on this. It is also Ba who had the idea, right now, that you are the only one who can explain things to the Old Man.”