The Zenith (32 page)

In the bright light of the storm lamp, the shiny new porcelain teacups, small and large plates of candied lotus seeds, watermelon seeds and pumpkin seeds, and all sorts of candies and cookies were displayed upon two large tables placed next to each other under a flowery tablecloth as at a wedding. A warm and festive atmosphere spread through the two sections of the house where the villagers sat close by one another according to their neighborhood or their kinships. Such atmosphere made people easily excited and openly expressive. They spoke loudly like horns and drums, from the story of Mrs. Coi’s daughter-in-law in the upper section who had triplets to that of Mr. Tu, the drunkard in the lower section who had intentionally hit his buffalo calf to cripple it and thus have a reason to butcher it; from the story of the actress who played Thi Mau with breasts so small that each time she moved, the rubber lining in her bra went up and down in such a hilarious manner, to the story of Mr. Huan’s daughter in the next hamlet who conceived a child out of her uterus and was brought down to the district clinic, costing them lots of money but to no good end: the baby was stillborn…

Then some guy spoke up loudly: “Hostess: I have a bad habit of being hungry all the time. Is there any chance I can find a piece of cake or a minced pork roll?”

Miss Vui stood up and said, “Yes, right away.”

But the man’s wife protested: “You really are ungracious; can’t you hold out until midnight?”

The husband replied, “Why should I wait? I am hungry during the death anniversary dinner for my father but I should be full at New Year. We are neighbors and she has the kindness to invite us.”

The wife further explained: “The food is no big deal, but they will have to use a knife and cutting board; they will have to clean and wash their hands. It’s so cold!”

At this point, all the neighbors jumped in: “Leave him alone. If he is hungry, he cannot just sit there drinking tea and eating candies and cookies like all of you ladies.”

“That’s right. I agree. Hey, Miss Vui, may I have some wine? We men need
to have some wine to feel in business. Our elders taught us: no drinking; no ceremony. I dare put it differently: no drinking; no New Year’s Eve. Who’s with me?”

“Me!”

“Me too.”

“Me also!”

“And me too, aunts and uncles.”

“That’s fine, nothing difficult. But among you ladies, who is willing to give me a hand?”

“Yes, me here. I shouldn’t have married a blockhead, so it’s payback time for me.”

This voice came from the wife of the greedy guy who had first asked for meat. Three other women, wives of those gentlemen who adhered to the belief that without wine you are not a man also agreed to help. The tea party was thus transformed into a sit-down dinner with minced pork rolls, wine, rice cakes, bamboo soup with spare ribs, braised pork belly, and pickled cabbage. Even though it was a spontaneous meal prepared within fifteen minutes, there were enough dishes so that the men could lift their chopsticks happily.

Two trays of food and two large bottles of wine were put on two large platform beds placed across from each other. The men excitedly dug in. Each table had six people for a total of twelve. Miss Vui placed a chair between the two beds so that she could pour wine on both sides.

“Ladies, feel free to drink tea and savor the candied fruits. I have to entertain the men,” Vui declared.

“Just take care of them; don’t worry about us.”

They said that, but the women brought over their tea and goodies to tag along behind their men and eavesdrop on the conversation. People never forget that this is the best part of the evening, after the opera, of course.

Khoai Hamlet was the poorest hamlet in Hung My village. But for generations Khoai Hamlet had had beautiful women. Its residents had only this as a point of pride and only this to compensate for the hardships they endured from generation to generation. In particular, the girls in this village had very light complexions. Even when they worked long hours in the fields, only their hands were a little darker from the sun, compared with women from other villages. People said it was because of Khoai Hamlet’s proximity to rivers and mountains, the clean and breezy air making the complexions of the girls and women fresh all year round. Second, their eyes resembled those
of Cham women, large and deep with long and curvy eyelashes. It was said that years earlier, a group of prisoners from Champa had been exiled to Khoai Hamlet to cultivate virgin land for a victorious general given the prisoners by the court as a reward for his services. The defeated Cham soldiers then lived and mingled with local people, and, because they were good carpenters and masons, generating wealth for the general, they gained permission to marry local sons and daughters. The children of such couples therefore had large eyes, so clear but so sad, like autumn’s ending.

Miss Ngan was born in this poor hamlet that took great pride in the attractiveness of its women. Her mother was the most beautiful woman in the entire district, but before any provincial official or district worthy could take notice, she fell for Ngan’s father, a village teacher. He had grown up in a miserably poor family in a poor village, but because he was the only child, his mother and father had tightened their belts so that he could learn enough words to become a first-grade teacher. He was extremely indebted to his wife for marrying him and not joining the regional organization or waiting for some other wealthier, more upscale suitor. From her childhood on, Miss Ngan had heard her father recollect:

“Your mother had been selected for the regional cultural organization. She was inferior to no one. Only good fortune made it possible for me to marry her.”

When fully grown, Ngan’s beauty was greater than that of her mother. Her father both taught and worked in the fields and he wove baskets in the evening to earn enough money for her to study up to the junior high level. He nourished an unhidden dream:

“You are more beautiful than your mother was. And you have been educated. Certainly later on you will be happier than Miss Nga from Moi Hamlet; one day you will take a plane or boat to pass beyond the seashore.”

So her future was planned in advance, like a painting that had first been carefully sketched before an artist came to apply the paint. She would be selected for the central cultural organization or the central political headquarters. She would go to places like Russia, China, and other countries as naturally as eating her daily meals—what an honor for the entire extended family!

Her parents were preoccupied about their two sons and in their minds assumed that Ngan would apply herself exactly to their plan. By sixteen, her striking beauty was seducing many in her circle, not to mention a few young teachers in the district’s junior high school. Like a light that attracts insects at night in the middle of the fields, inviting the moths to come and dance, intoxicating
them, then burning them, Ngan’s fresh and smiling disposition led to punishment for many classmates, because the school forbade students to follow their affections before they had reached adulthood, which was by law eighteen years of age. After witnessing many young men fall off their horses for her, it was her turn to be thrown down—not by those naive boys her own age, but by a literature teacher, an exemplar, married, with three children: Teacher Tuong.

Nobody really knew how their affair began. Teacher Tuong lived with his wife and children in the family compound for teachers in the district school, a row of houses with tile roofs and narrow patios, divided into small lots, all similar in construction and materials, built cheaply and sloppily. In front of this housing compound there was some open land used by teachers and students for volleyball and basketball. Behind the compound was a vegetable garden that enabled the teachers to make ends meet. People often saw Teacher Tuong with a can watering the kohlrabi and cabbage in the afternoon; and his wife could be seen at dusk with her pant cuffs rolled up, briskly chasing chicken around the pen, or out around midnight with her flashlight, picking up eggs. She was a small woman, very skinny, always with an air of sadness showing on her face, which was somewhat pointed, like a bird’s head. They had lived in the commune since their marriage, Mr. Tuong having been appointed to the district school after graduating from the mid-level provincial teacher training college. His wife sold medicines in a pharmacy. They had three sons, the oldest thirteen, the middle one eleven, and the youngest, most likely unplanned, only three. Who could ever imagine a romantic, passionate love affair occurring between a young woman of sixteen, strikingly beautiful like a full moon, and a teacher close to his forties, who, when he forgot to shave, had a face dark like a closed jar, his clothes old and tattered, his teeth and fingers stained yellow by tobacco smoke? When the story broke—that is, when Ngan became pregnant—everyone was beside themselves with astonishment. They all wanted to know the reason for what was to them a totally unjustifiable romance. The story of the teacher and the student falling in love made noise everywhere, pushing forward like fire spreading or water boiling over:

“A devil’s work; definitely an evil spirit!”

“There is no evil spirit, that’s just old superstition. I think the guy’s a smooth talker. People say men fall from their eyes, women from their ears.”

“Eyes and ears, yes; still, there must be a reason. Why on earth would a young girl fall in love with an old man the same age as her father? She must be mad! If not, then this guy gave her Love Potion Number Nine. Once my cousin, a
laborer in Tay Bac, had a Thai girl put a love charm on him. Each time he tried to find his way back down to the plains he turned mad, rolled his eyes, and mumbled all in Thai. The family had to let him go up and live with that woman.”

“Until now?”

“Exactly! His wife had to wait five years to ask the village to give her a divorce so that she could remarry. Their two children were sent to my aunt and uncle to be raised.”

“I don’t believe in love charms or potions.”

“I do!”

“I think this teacher has a way of enticing women and girls that we don’t know.”

“What way?”

“Maybe hypnotizing. This guy may look skinny, but when he looks at anyone, they feel as if they’ve been nailed down, no longer able to move. I think that girl’s soul was sucked out by those eyes.”

“Perhaps. But why didn’t he ever seduce others? Doesn’t every class have more than a few pretty ones?”

“True. Before this he had no affairs? If it’s a question of seduction, of promiscuity, something would have happened long before. Fifteen years have passed; there was no lack of pretty girls; why wait for Ngan?”

“Because destiny planned it. When the month and day arrive, the child comes out of the mother’s womb. Just so, when the month and day arrive, disaster also shows its face.”

“You think of it as a disaster? I believe it’s good fortune. Nothing else: sleeping with a virgin girl as beautiful as a fairy. No different than finding paradise.”

“But after paradise comes hell. I just heard that Ngan’s father aggressively sued the school, and took a knife demanding to kill Teacher Tuong, who had to flee to the city. I heard he accepted his punishment to relocate elsewhere.”

“Relocate where?”

“I don’t remember exactly, but for sure somewhere up along the frontier. Up there, he was assigned to a nowhere place, teaching new recruits in a noncommissioned officers’ training school. Schools that train high-level officers are usually near big cities, but training schools for NCOs are always tucked away in areas where dogs eat stones and chickens eat gravel. There, even watercress is hard to find. All year long the only food is dried fish and shrimp paste.”

“Serves the dirty old man right! What goes around quite rightly comes around. He had enjoyed the gift of virginity, had tasted the body of a girl whose skin is like peeled cooked egg, then for the rest of his life he has to suck on dried fish, that’s fair.”

“If I were young Ngan’s father, I too would take a knife and give him a slash. That was the end of a girl’s life! A sad fate for a beauty!”

“You’d give him a slash, then you’d have to sit in jail and peel the calendar day by day. It takes two to tango; it took the two of them…why slash him?”

“You are really stupid. By law, eighteen years make you an adult. Ngan is only sixteen. To sleep with her, only the guy breaks the law. That crime is called seduction of a minor. Actually, he should have been indicted and sent to jail for at least four years. But his father’s older brother is a judge in the provincial court. For that reason he got no prison time.”

“Really, I didn’t know that.”

“You don’t read the law?”

“Where’s the time for reading law? I work two shifts, sometimes three nonstop. Six days a week. Sometimes on Sunday I must also make some sacrifices for socialism. When I get home, the only thing I want to do is sleep. I’m too tired to climb on top of my wife, so much for reading law!”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Twelve.”

“You should read the law now. If you sleep, just close one eye, the other should be left open to look around. If you don’t, there might be some guy your age that would like to call you father-in-law.”