The Zenith (34 page)

“OK, let’s go! Darn those annoying women. It was getting to be such fun.”

The wife of the unhenpecked guy stood behind the other women, silent until now: “The heart of one is like the heart of another, ladies. Unfortunately, our elders taught us that heaven will give you whatever you despise. After enduring awhile, you get used to it…”

“Oh my, today this old broad is pretty gutsy.”

The very-sure-of-himself guy looks at his wife with fierce rolling eyes, half surprised, half threatening.

Encouraged by the views of those around her, his wife becomes angry: “We all have skin and flesh. Other women dare; I have to stand up as well.”

At this moment, the hostess starts to intervene as she senses the atmosphere growing tense. Taking two steps, she inserts herself between husband and wife, smiling more happily than ever before:

“The lady is right; all humanity should sing strongly, sing out loud!”

Then she looked around, smiling. When she saw everyone taken aback by her too literary metaphor she said, “Among all of you men present here, I recognize
eight Party members in all. You couldn’t have forgotten the song swearing loyalty to the Party under the Party’s flag, now could you?”

The Party members looked at one another, each trying to trigger the others’ memory, but all ended up with the words stuck in their throats. Then Miss Vui clearly spoke each word and each sentence:

“Well, do you remember now?”

“Forgotten, really.”

“We defer to you. The day we joined up, we learned some lines to get by. When we were in, that was that. It didn’t brings us rice, clothes, or money, why bother to remember?”

“But I bet you all will remember all the minute details of Mr. Quang’s story. Is that true or not?”

“You don’t have to say so. Neither will we deny it. We do not have to wring our brains to remember what happens in the village and hamlets; it’s like remembering our pillows at the head of our beds. And those songs from somewhere and nowhere, brought back from China or the West, why bother?”

“Exactly!”

At the moment, one of the unhenpecked guys speaks up: “I’ll bet all of you: Is the story over?”

The loudmouthed woman answers first: “What else if it hasn’t ended. The end: he marries her, she sneaks into his bed…What else do you want?”

“That’s such woman thinking. Your brain is no bigger than a grapefruit, your eyes can’t see farther than two arm lengths.”

“Yes, we are indeed stupid, let you guys be smart…Clearly you are the haughty ones with your pride big like a large basket.”

“Listen carefully here: the drama is just beginning. Don’t you all see that?”

“I don’t see anything at all. They love each other, they cross the mountains and rivers, they legalize their marriage, who dares to interfere?”

“Miss Vui, have they gone through the process?”

“I’m not sure. I heard people speculate this and that.”

“If they have not done the formalities, then the man is a widower and the woman
has no husband, what can be done to them? Thousands of years ago our ancestors married, had children and grandchildren; who then needed a marriage paper with the government’s red seal?”

“The marriage paper is not a big deal but the garlic bulb is. That’s the problem.”

“What about this garlic bulb? You mean the pair of testicles that dangle in the crotch of our pants, right?”

“How can you be so dense? Testicles are testicles and a garlic bulb is a garlic bulb; each its own kind. At night do you mistakenly touch your wife’s clam and think it’s the teapot on that table or not?”

“Your comparison is so damn complicated.”

“Complication is a fact of life. Now, who dares bet with me that the story of this family is over? For me, the curtain has just closed on Act One. And Act Two will be full of scenes. Well, who dares play?”

“You guys are timid like the field crabs. Nobody dares speak up?”

“No way, I’m not stupid.”

“Why bet with you? If it gets out in people’s ears, we’ll get nothing, just their cursing. In the past, his family has not harmed anyone.”

“Enough! Don’t make a molehill into a mountain! Whatever is to happen will happen. On behalf of us all we want to thank the hostess. New Year’s Eve this time was fun, really fun!”

The group scrambled to light torches, turn on lights, and put on their coats to leave. When the lights started twinkling along the paths of the middle section, a rooster had crowed to welcome the first hour of the new year. A dog’s barking followed people’s steps. The sky was black like squid ink and the air was still. Miss Vui turned off the storm light, started to clean up the house under the light of a row of homemade beeswax candles.

In her mind, she anxiously thought: “Whatever is to come, will come!”

She knew that everybody else was also waiting like her. With their cautious attitudes, rural people never dare participate in a messy situation but they secretly follow all the developments and also secretly want them to fall out according to their own analysis. Always holding on to the illusions that make for an analyst, one who has power over people living hard and lonely lives, Miss Vui felt a secret dream stirring in her soul, similar to a fetus kicking in its mother’s womb. She felt that “something will happen, if not sooner then later.” She remembered the angry pair of eyes of Chairman Quy when she had described to him the two-story house with seven rooms newly built for the old couple in Khoai Hamlet. Because Mr. Quang’s house was
in an old-fashioned style, one-story high but very spacious and all the framing timbers made of real wood, and Quy’s house was much inferior. And now the father of the whore Ngan had a two-story house—how could he bear that image? Intuition told Miss Vui that this love story would eventually bring on a great storm. But what kind of storm, the wind blowing from the top of the high mountains or from the distant ocean, no one could predict.

All of a sudden, the old cat in the kitchen jumped out and curled around Vui’s legs.

“Go away, crazy one…”

She shouted while kicking with her legs, “Meow, meow, ow.”

The animal jumped to one side, crying out miserably, its eyes turning toward her, round with fear and surprise. She clicked her tongue: “I forget. It’s not fed yet. All night I was busy with guests and forgot about the cat.”

Leaving the pile of dishes she was cleaning, she went to the storage cabinet and took out a large salted fish and put it on the cracked dish reserved for the cat.

“Now it is your turn…”

The animal approached the dish, continuing to cry, its eyes always following its mistress as if it could not understand or forget Miss Vui’s rudeness. She suddenly laughed:

“Stop meowing and eat…”

Then she sat opposite the animal to make it realize that her anger had passed. When the cat lowered its head to the fish on the plate, she suddenly had a strange thought that she was like a cat: a cat waiting for its prey in the dark. But not an old cat—rather a female cat that is very young and full of vitality. That thought made her smile to herself for a while.

After the cat had finished eating, licking its lips with satisfaction then running to the other room to curl up in a bed made out of leftover materials, Miss Vui continued to clean the house and wash dishes. Gigantic candles burned brightly from the house to the kitchen, their light plentiful and wild.

She did not have to live frugally like most women with five or seven kids in tow. This New Year’s Eve banquet had satisfied her. While washing the dishes, she hummed the song “Rise Up, All You Slaves of the World.” She was proud of her extraordinary memory and because her literary aptitude was suddenly on the rise. When she was done washing the dishes and cleaning the house shiny like a mirror, it was sunrise. It was cold, but damp sweat ran down her spine. She said:

“A bath first! Thus, this year, before and after New Year’s Eve, I bathe twice.”

That was unusual, because people usually avoided bathing after New Year’s Eve. But single people like to worship the patron genie of cleanliness. This genie brings them a pride that those with children, grandchildren, husbands, and wives have no right to enjoy.

When Miss Vui finished her bath, the clock struck fifteen minutes before seven in the morning. Fog still covered the young mountains but the rows of trees started to appear faintly with soaking wet leaves. The mistress looked at the patio for a while, dreamily. Then she locked the door and went to bed:

“What will come tomorrow?” she asked herself while leisurely stretching her large body under the quilt.

What must happen, will happen!

But people don’t need to be armed against life with literature and words, and don’t need to waste time waiting. That afternoon of the first day of the new year, what-must-happen came to life.

It happened when Vui’s house was still shut. Snoring like thunder rose up high and fell down low, like the singing of people dragging timber logs, spreading through all five rooms of her house. What comes to life, life raises up. Act Two of Mr. Quang’s family drama that she secretly awaited had begun. Unfortunately she did not witness the curtain rising, even though she was the only person who had climbed ravines and crossed streams to get all the way to the distant Khoai Hamlet.

It is customary on the morning of the first day of the three-day Tet celebration for everyone to dress nicely, to replace incense on family altars, and to make remembrance offerings to the ancestors. In the early afternoon, after the offering, families may bring the offering food down from the altar to partake of a joyful meal that will ensure plentiful rice wine and tea all during the coming year. After the banquet comes the time for welcoming guests to the family home. Then, each family host welcomes his sons and their wives, his daughters and their husbands, and scores of grandchildren. There must be trays of five kinds of fruit for the children to eat to their heart’s content. There will be red lucky envelopes with cash inside to distribute fairly among the grandkids, no distinction being made between boy or girl or between the children of sons and the children of daughters. There must be candies and cakes and many kinds of different candied fruit for people to munch with tea.

This year, Mr. Quang’s house had only the newlyweds. Master Quynh still lived in the lower section with his maternal grandmother. After the failed negotiations by the two uncles, it was Quynh himself who had come up and asked his father for his clothes and other things, plus a sum of money large enough to pay for his tuition and activity fees. After living with his maternal family for a week, the young man had realized that nice words cannot mint money. The grandmother and the two uncles only provided him with empty advice or ineffective actions. They could do no more. Therefore, Quynh accepted living there as if in a boardinghouse, making monthly contributions for his food. The young man did not want to return to his family home, partly because of pride and partly because of his stepmother’s beauty, which inflamed his emotions. Obviously the father understood his son’s heart and did not force the matter.