The Zenith (4 page)

He sighs deeply, a habit he had acquired in the last few years. Many times he had tried to get rid of it but without success.

The young soldier comes right up before him and clicks his heels in greeting. “Mr. President, I report to ask your permission to go down the mountain.”

He asks, “It’s already time to change the guard?”

“Yes, sir, in three minutes and ten seconds, but the other team is already up here,” the soldier replies, lifting his wristwatch to check the time in an attentive and proud manner. For sure, this is his most valuable possession, an article the government provided for his professional use.

“Indeed, it is five o’clock.” The president speaks as if talking to himself while glancing out and around. The two night-duty guards have come up to replace the chubby soldier, their footsteps clunking on the gravel. Because the wind is calm, the noise is amplified in the mountain isolation. The two soldiers approach together and solemnly bow to the president. He makes a familiar and gentle gesture, responding to their formality, to allow them to perform their duty as assigned. Meanwhile, the chubby soldier leaves the temple yard, turning down the beaten path. Because of his weight, the sound of his retreating steps is louder than was that of his two ascending colleagues. He hears small stones being kicked loose from the sides of the path, rolling down and hitting the mountainside.

The president returns to his lodging just as the food-service team presents his evening meal. As it is not convenient to prepare his meals in the sparse temple kitchen, they are prepared in the guards’ kitchen, and someone brings them up to him. A doctor regularly eats with him, to check the quantity and quality of his meals, and sleeps in one of the three rooms on the right side of the temple.

When the president walks into the room, the head cook steps up: “Mr. President, please eat your meal while it’s hot.”

He looks at the dishes set on the table and says, “You work hard all day, and you still climb up here. Why bother? It’s OK to let others bring the meal up to me.”

“Mr. President, I want to personally inspect whether the food is good or not.…If there is disappointment, I must change the menu to your satisfaction.”

“You know that I am not picky about my food.”

“I am fully aware that you never want to trouble anyone. But your health is a national treasure. We are honored to serve and to protect you.”

The president silently sits at the table and says nothing more. The assistant cook sets the electric rice warmer on the table and, along with the cook, steps out. Naturally, he knows that they are watching him discreetly
from behind the door. Because they really respect him and truly worry about his health, he feels forced to pretend that he enjoys the food, while in reality, he can’t taste any flavor in what he is chewing and swallowing. Then he waits for them to clear the table, blurts out some compliments while sipping the white longan pudding, and listens to their respectful farewell before they return to their base. Sitting alone, he listens to the footsteps of a group of people mixed with their laughter. Turning off one light, he looks out into an empty space framed by the window. In the dark, the tree branches take on peculiar shapes. The light shining on the leaves makes a thousand bright eyes, and every time the wind shakes, these eyes blink with a look, sometimes playful, sometimes dangerous.

At this time, his heart no longer has that unsettling feeling. The heat in his lungs dissipates, leaving him with an incredible emptiness. His heart is like an abandoned house, where the wind freely and playfully blows, chasing the residing ghosts. His heart is like an uninhabited island after the birds have gone, leaving behind a heap of feathers on the grass.

He sits disengaged for a long while, not knowing what he is thinking. But suddenly a frigid shiver runs through his flesh, bringing up goose bumps all over his body. Some muttering cry behind him. He turns around. The incoherence won’t stop. When he turns right, the cry comes from the left wall, and when he turns left, the cry changes its place; like a child’s game of hide-and-seek. He stands up and looks at all four directions, seeing nothing but the set of four lacquer vases: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Then the cry comes directly from the top of his head, hanging there, disconnected, fleeting…

“Is it my own cry? My own quiet scream coming from beyond the horizon, or her final cry, my beloved?”

He wonders.

But he does not want an answer.

A truly painful cry from the girl or a silent scream from himself, it doesn’t make any difference. For a while, for a very long while, he has had the habit of suppressing his thoughts in silence. Those thoughts are like sunken boats, piled up at the bottom of the ocean, buried in slimey mud, where aquatic plants thrive. For a long time, his words have been murdered like unfortunate sailors beheaded by pirates, their bodies thrown over and left on the sea bottom; and the unceasing waves become moving graves, screaming and whispering nonstop to let the ghosts settle in the womb of the dark sea.

The dead calm sea.

For a long while, too, he has had a habit of looking at his own thoughts as if they were someone standing out in the hallway and peeking back in through the keyhole, curious and ashamed of the indiscretion.

In coldness and hatred, his thoughts run away like a shivering little snipe in the field, beset by the sounds of people in pursuit, fearfully hiding in furrows and thornbushes. Under pressure and feeling oppressed, his thoughts sink as if in a muddy field or marsh. As the months and years pass, these thoughts fade like a newborn in an incubator with little oxygen, dying slowly.

But now, some upset is breaking out. Some sort of disturbance like an earthquake or the warning signs that a tsunami is coming or an insane volcanic eruption is on its way. He realizes the thoughts are distant, having faded away, but now like a thousand tattered pieces of an old shirt are suddenly coming together, trying to reassemble their former shape. Those dying newborns suddenly open their eyes and cry in the incubator. Those months and years suddenly, hurriedly return. Is this a miracle of the gods or a sorcerer’s curse?

He does not know. He cannot know. But the calm sea erupts. He understands that the person from the past has returned…

Someone knocks at the door. At first gently, then with more urgency. He suddenly realizes that it’s time for the doctor’s visit. He will take the president’s pulse before he retires to his room across the temple patio.

“Today, I would like to go to bed early,” he says before the doctor appears in the door frame. “Why don’t you get a good night’s sleep? I will call if I need something. Is the telephone in your room working?”

“Yes, Mr. President, the technician fixed it. It rings loudly…In any case, please allow me to check you.”

“There is no need, you checked me carefully last night. Twenty-four hours can’t knock out a life. Go to sleep. And I’m telling you ahead of time that I will smoke one or two cigarettes.”

“Mr. President…”

“I haven’t touched the cigarette box for three consecutive weeks. But tonight, I will smoke. Once in a while, we should indulge a habit.”

“But, Mr. President…”

The doctor hesitates. He wants to say something but stops. Maybe he wants to say that cigarettes are the president’s enemy…that the president
must stop, the sooner the better, that his own duty is to put an end to the craving whenever it develops. But it’s like water off a duck’s back for both he who speaks and he who listens. The doctor realizes that his speaking would be useless. After a few minutes of hesitation, the doctor bows slightly and says:

“Mr. President, I wish you a good night.”

“I wish you a good night, too.”

The doctor disappears in the darkness.

A few minutes later, a light comes on in a room across the temple yard. A baritone voice is heard singing: “
My love! How long before we see each other?
”

The president tilts his head, listening. For quite a long time, the man has not sung this love song. The doctor likes to sing but perhaps because he lives so close to the president, he shyly sings only marches or folk songs. Perhaps tonight, since he gave the president permission to smoke, he now gives himself permission to sing a love song.

“My love…Where are you now?”

Word follows word; the light sounds fly like a twirling kite in the summer skies. That faraway summer…That summer, the wind from Laos blew through the western mountains, wildly hissing on the dry and cracked plains, where large cracks turned into huge ones, zigzagging like the veins of unfortunate mountain gods. Thirsty birds had stopped singing, but, in exchange, kites flew up in flocks. Wheat-colored ones, green ones, and yellow ones; the colors of the spring butterflies…Those kites danced close to one another in the skies, like intersecting dreams, like fires of moral purpose burning in the very last seconds for a warrior falling into the abyss.

“My love…”

The smooth voice takes him to another summer, with the cool shade of trees and the sounds of flowing streams. To sunsets in the fields shining into the house…

“Where are you now?

“Our love is from a distance, but our hearts miss each other…”

The night is now calm because the wind has stopped blowing. There is no moon. Not even stars. Only a mysterious black color. The mountains, the waterfalls, the forest, the gardens, the woodcutters’ village down below, and the faraway fields are all submerged in the silence of the thick night. A vast, suffocating, black space. In this still time, each word of the song spreads like the dissemination of ringing bells.

The president lights a cigarette so he can hear the song more clearly:

“My love…When are we going to see each other?…”

Now he hears sobbing from right behind his neck. This well-known sobbing makes him sit dead still. He dares not turn around. Three times he deeply inhales the cigarette smoke, believing the smoke will clear his mind, chasing away all fancies and confusing visions. He is wrong. The sobbing does not disappear but resonates clearly by his ears to the point where he can hear panting as well. A face all wet with tears leans against his cheeks. A flood of tears; freezing tears. He lights his second cigarette, then a third, letting out the smoke continuously, but he still feels the cold tears.

“Oh, my love…”

The singing voice still rises. But no, it is not the singing, but his own calling out. However, he dares not say the words out loud, so all they are is a singing in silence.

“Please, little one, forgive me…please, little one…”

His eyes are burning. In a dreamy moment, a faint warmth crosses his eyelashes. The cigarette smoke is dispersing with a flicker; it rolls out like clouds in a stormy wind at dusk; the fading smoke spreads like fog over pond water in the spring. Is his life nothing but ethereal mist, the movement of clouds and whirling wind? Is his authority no more than the fleeting enchantment thrown by opera-house lanterns?

“Please, little one, forgive me…” He speaks with bowed head, not knowing that the doctor is at the door.

“Mr. President…”

He looks up and it takes him a second to recover.

“Why aren’t you singing? I really like your singing. You have a fantastic voice. You could be a professional singer.”

“Mr. President, you are too kind.”

“I am not being diplomatic with you.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Why did you return?”

“I was told that you didn’t smoke just one or two cigarettes, but many…It’s extremely dangerous to your health.”

He looks down at the pack of cigarettes and realizes he has smoked half of it. Thick smoke still fills the room. The doctor stares at his face. Maybe he sees the stains of the tears. The president takes a handkerchief, wipes his face, then clears his voice: “I indeed smoked too much. The smoke burns my eyes.”

“Mr. President.”

“It does not matter. I will stop right now.” He squishes out the cigarette in the tray right in front of the doctor. Then he stands up, stretches, covers his mouth with his hands as if he is yawning: