The Zenith (26 page)

For seven full weeks Mr. Quang stayed at home. He asked monks to come and pray for her on the day her soul returned, otherwise commonly known
as the forty-ninth day after death. Then, instead of music, chanting and the ringing of wooden gongs were heard throughout the night. He presented thirty trays of food to serve relatives and neighbors. Then, early the next morning when the sky was still black as ink, he took the horse cart down to the town. The neighbors heard the clip-clopping of horseshoes on the patio and saw the storm lantern dangling on the carriage frame, spilling light through the fog:

“He is a foreman on a construction site, why is he taking a horse cart? He must be building houses and selling goods, too, no?”

“Only heaven knows. Someone with as many friends as he has can do anything. Now he is indebted up to his neck. He’s got to find ways of making money.”

“True, talent comes with bad luck. Heaven gives a way to make money, then it sabotages you with a wife transformed into a hungry devil.”

“That’s nonsense, as if when a hungry devil afflicts a family, the only way out is to bury it alive.”

“What you say, sir, is frightening to the ears. But pity us, it is really terrifying. Since my birth until today, I have never seen such a thing. Just thinking about it is enough to give me goose bumps.”

The neighbors gossiped, and every time they did, they felt pleasure about their own situation, whatever small happiness they had was in their own hands according to whatever their fates had allotted them. The cold spring of that year hit like a nightmare. It was followed by an unexpectedly muggy and hot summer filled with thunderstorms. Pouring rains in June and July made the streams overflow, breaking up many sections of road. The cleanup from the storms and the road repairs cost much money and labor. Cicadas popped out in swarms in the late summer. Their singing all day and all night prevented the elderly from sleeping. Children went through epidemics of first flu and then white fever. Their crying sounded like ripping cloth and made the air more oppressive and suffocating. Just as the weather can suddenly change, so, too, can life. Old worries return to the anxious and puzzled minds of the people, relentlessly vibrating like the sound of cicadas. Ignoring the meetings and warnings from the government, the villagers resolved to bring, during the summer festival, the monks from Lan Vu temple down to the two temples at the foot of the mountain to chant prayers and dissipate the bad weather. Usually the summer festival is given only one day, but that year, because of all the many unusual occurrences in heaven and earth as in their daily lives, the villagers celebrated for three consecutive days with flags
and banners hung all over the temple courtyard. From old to young, villagers sat cross-legged and respectfully chanted prayers, hoping that the anger of the spirits and deities would disappear.

Mr. Quang returned to the village on the last day of the summer festivities. His horse cart was the only one in Woodcutters’ Hamlet to have a top, therefore villagers could recognize it right away. He seemed thinner than before. Wrinkles now framed his eyes but his jovial laugh had not changed. In half a spring and one full summer, he had paid his debts, both capital and interest, and had given each creditor ten meters of cloth as a gift. Neighbors looked at him as if he were a lost soul fallen from the moon. They whispered and speculated among themselves about all the ways he could have made so much money. But the speculations were just that: unanswered questions. No one guided or found the path of this particular person. He lived beyond the imaginations of rural people. Not only did he direct people from Woodcutters’ Hamlet but he also recruited people from neighboring districts to work in wood and cement in district public projects. After arranging tasks for a work crew, he would turn responsibilities over to his trusted partners and disappear in his horse carriage. A few weeks later, he would return to check the quality of the work, to discuss and reach agreement with superiors as well as with the lower-level staff assigned to the project, and then after a dinner with wine for the workers, he would raise and empty his cup along with everyone, laugh loudly at all the funny jokes, and disappear like a magician. No one could ever follow him, but he had a special way of checking up on everyone, even when away. One couldn’t expect to fool him. Of course he had never cheated or lied to anyone, and the group of villagers that followed him down to work in the city knew the rules of the game, so no one ventured to cross this successful personage.

After paying all his debts and sharing a meal with his children and grandchildren, his horse carriage again clip-clopped down the road one early morning. This time music from the Suong Mao radio he carried by his side could be heard. This machine that looked like a black brick but could produce all kinds of songs, even high-pitched singing, was nonetheless a mysterious object in the eyes of the villagers. Even the district officials were unable to possess such a strange thing. The neighbors opened the doors, looked at the horse carriage, and listened to the music, which was fading away.

“He is very with it!”

People would comment:

“If you are not with it, you are not the man Quang. Who else could dare to order a banquet of thirty full trays for the forty-ninth-day memorial of a wife? Even after a hungry devil had consumed his wealth.”

“If she were a normal, sweet person up until the very minute she jumped into her coffin, he would have ordered three hundred full trays for the banquet!”

“You would have to say so!”

“How old is he to look as firm as a female crab?”

“She was sixty, he is sixty-one. They married according to the rule: a girl is older by two, a boy by one.”

“Ah! Already sixty; then he doesn’t need to think about remarriage. From now on, his only remaining task is to collect money to put into his pockets!”

That was the point of view among the people of Woodcutters’ Hamlet. They wanted a loyal and dedicated husband like Mr. Quang to stay a widower until the end of his life so as to live up to their ideal of a completely moral person. Just so do people need to lean toward a moral ideal, as long as that ideal doesn’t apply to them. Then, at the end of that winter—to be more accurate, on the twenty-fifth day of December—Mr. Quang abruptly brought back a young bride. A young woman with good skin and good form, her eyes shining sharply like a knife, her eyebrows long across her temples to the roots of the hair. That first day, she sat on the bar of the cart as it passed along the village road, chatting with him while shaking her legs and laughing out loud. Many mistook her for Quy’s daughter:

“What? The girl Mo suddenly fills out so quickly?”

“Your eyes must have a cyst, how could Mo be that big? She weighs no more than a handbag at the most.”

“Could it be Man, who is only fifteen? Her laugh is very different and is hard as nails. I am sure it’s not her.”

They did not have to wait long. Right that evening, his patio courtyard bustled with neighbors. The storm lamp was hung in the middle of the patio and shone out to the front and back gardens. People drank tea, ate all sorts of cakes and candies, and listened to him make a brief introduction:

“This is my new wife. Her name is Ngan.”

Nobody had time to say a word before the girl stepped up and smiled broadly:

“I greet all of you as my elders. Thank you for coming to congratulate us. In a day or two we will become neighbors.”

The villagers stood mute. The dream of the ideal husband collapsed, dissolving
like the lime-plastered walls of a house buried under a fallen mountain. Besides, the bride was too young and too beautiful, to the point that everyone lost their breath. She wore a green silk, short-sleeve blouse; her breasts were full and alive, as appetizing as two bowls of sticky rice firmly pressed. Her buttocks were curved, a nice sight under her shiny, black sateen pants. Just like her legs, bulging every time she walked, and creating excitement among the men each time the wind would blow against them. Her eyes were also black like sateen, shooting out rays of fire that made hearts beat wildly.

Clearly, Mr. Quang understood thoroughly the hidden thought of the men as he said half joking, half serious, “The district town is full of women as beautiful as my wife and more so. For whoever wants it, I can make an immediate introduction.”

As if someone pulled on their tongues, the men said:

“Of course we want one, but with no money in our pockets, what girl would take us?”

“A patched heart is no different than a healthy one; I’d take a beauty. If you can find one who is half as beautiful as your wife, I will be your assistant, looking after your fields and gardens without pay until your death.”

“Don’t believe that guy, he’s well known for fraud. Those who lent him money have yet to get a penny back. If you want to help, help me here.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, did you hear that? We are old friends, but when it comes to women, friendship is for nothing.”

The chattering continued while Miss Ngan withdrew to the kitchen to boil water for tea and bring more cakes and candies to offer the guests. People sat around past midnight. It had been two years that his spacious house had been dark. Now it regained the once familiar warm atmosphere. Even though conversations were bursting like firecrackers, the neighbors’ eyes searched around for his sons. Quy was not there, neither was the youngest, Quynh. If it had been someone else, there would be some snide questions put, such as:

“Where did the oldest and the youngest masters go? Not back yet?”

“The family adds a new mouth, so where did everyone go?”

“Today is the day to welcome the stepmother; it’s proper for the sons to make tea, open cigarettes, and invite the neighbors over.”

Villagers do not lack oblique and twisted ways. But because Mr. Quang had high status and because poor people in the community were indebted to him in more than a hundred ways, not just twenty or thirty, all kept in their throats any word pickled in vinegar and hot peppers.

That night, on their way home, people blurted out:

“The older son doesn’t bother to attend; the youngest fled. This family will soon be a mess.”

“A mess around Mr. Quang—impossible. One look at his face tells you all you need to know. One like that wouldn’t even blink if his house were on fire.”

“Baloney! Even with a steel heart one can’t eat when children revolt!”

“Let’s see who’s right! You won’t have to wait long. Either today or tomorrow, what is good will emerge. Who’ll take my bet?”

There was no need to bet, for on the next day, everyone saw Chairman Quy come to visit his father. He loudly knocked on the door. Annoyed, Mr. Quang asked:

“Who makes such a ruckus?”

“Your son.”

“Go away, I’m still sleeping.”

“Dad, open the door. I have something important to say.”

“Nothing needs to be said this early. I’m just back from far away, I want to lie down and rest my back.”

“Dad, wake up. I have—”

“This is my house, I can sleep as long as I wish.”

“But I have to go to work in the village office.”

“Going to work is your business, sleep is mine.”

Chairman Quy stood for a while in front of the closed wooden door, his face intensely red. Then he had to give up and leave.

The neighbors held their breath as they overheard the dialogue between father and son, missing no sentence or word. Older men and women with salt-and-pepper hair fixated on such a rare village melodrama, knowing that the play would have many acts to come.

The next day, the neighbors puttered around, working gardens, picking beans or peanuts, sorting corn—finding any tiny job that allowed them to follow every sound that came from Mr. Quang’s house. They saw his doors open out really late: was it nine thirty, ten, or even noon? Probably around then.

“Old Quang is now a city person. Country people don’t dare sleep that late.”

“Country or city, one has only one head, two arms, two legs, and a third one dangling among the long hairs. In your sixties, even if you are as strong as a bear, you can pound a young wife with hips like that only once and then you will need ten hours to get your breath back.”