The Zenith

 THE ZENITH 

ALSO BY DUONG THU HUONG

No Man’s Land

Memories of a Pure Spring

Novel Without a Name

Paradise of the Blind

Translated by

Stephen B. Young and Hoa Pham Young

with the editorial assistance of Nguyen Ngoc Bich

THE ZENITH

DUONG THU HUONG

VIKING

FOR LUU QUANG VU

AND ALL THE INNOCENTS WHO HAVE DIED IN THE BLACK SILENCE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It is beyond me to write only from my imagination. Everything I have ever written has built upon true events. Even so, one needs to remember the hard fact that fiction is still fiction. A novel is neither the divulgence of self-referential musings nor the stringing together of episodes from an author’s life.

Like all my published books,
The
Zenith
is truthful to this rule. But, to avoid all unfortunate misunderstandings that might occur, I must emphasize this once again with respect to the character Tran Vu and those related to him. The inspiration leading to the construction of Tran Vu’s character came from the real story of Mr. Vu Ki, the former curator of the Ho Chi Minh Museum. On the other hand, the character of To Van is not at all related to Mr. Vu Ki’s actual wife or her family. The fictional juxtaposition of such a man and such a woman is not far from the realities of high-ranking Vietnamese during those years. Such juxtaposition is only a timeworn novelist’s invention. There should be no special inferences arising in this case.

In reality, I did not have the honor of knowing Mr. Vu Ki for I had no intention of ever inserting myself in to the ranks of the Communist dynasty. Though I had a serious prejudice against all the frivolous maneuverings and red tape of that environment, curiosity mixed with admiration in my unsettled mind and made it hard for me to control the urge to meet him. Only when I heard that he had become frail did I mingle with a group of underlings to have a look at him from afar. That was the first and also the last time. The following year he passed.

For me, Vu Ki was one of a tiny group of people who could preserve some sense of chivalry and loyalty among teachers and friends—those extremely beautiful Vietnamese virtues which the Communist regime successfully destroyed during fifty years of rule.

Vu Ki’s wife and her family have every right to feel proud to have had such a husband, a father, and a man.

Duo

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

The Story of Woodcutters’ Hamlet

Accumulated Regrets and Now Affection for him

1

2

3

4

5

6

The Unknown Brother-in-Law

1

2

3

4

5

Final Supplications

1

2

3

4

The Bright Light

DUO

“Oh, Father, Father, Father…”

The scream of a child wakes him up, and instantly it seems as if a blow from the back of the head knocks him emotionally off kilter.

“Oh, Father, Father…”

The scream rises up from the valley, the sound reverberating between the rocks, shaking the top of the trees, creating an invisible wave that agitates a large, still space.

After composing himself, he understands the screams belong to a different child.

“It’s not him, it’s not the little one…” he tells himself.

The painful feeling at the back of his head subsides and so does his anguish. The president stands up, steps out, and asks the security guard,“What happened?”

“Sir…it could be an accident in the valley. Someone has fallen from a tree or a rock, or the cliff.”

Just then, the strident sound of a siren rises from the security unit camp below. In the calm wind he can clearly hear the bustle of a soldiers’ posse gathering for the rescue…

“Oh, Father, Father, Father…”

“Oh, Father…will anybody save my father?…Hey, folks…Anyone, please save my father…”

This time he hears the desperate call of the child. The call of a boy entering his teenage years. That cry oscillates between the innocent feeling of youth and a turning to the ways of adulthood. In the cry, he can hear many different heartstrings vibrating all at once—moving with the accumulated love of months and years, reciprocating love and so many other invisible obligations, the pain of the unplanned separation, the terror of an uncertain future…All these feelings converging at once, like many different rays of light meeting at one spot. That rendezvous, he understands clearly, provides our fundamental link in the chain of our life, a hook that can tie us to the highest sublimation as well as to the last stage of depravity, a relationship
that can spill much ink in the history of mankind. Such is the binding quality of the love between father and son, the oldest melody in the symphony performed by all living creatures. A kind of antique music that the tides of time have tried in vain to destroy.