The Zenith (57 page)

Many a time, she had told herself, “I have everything. Only one thing I have not dared. Maybe I should and see what happens.”

Just the thought made her face burn hot from shame. What she had wanted to try is exactly what she had often spoken of with contempt.

Thus, she did not expect that he who had stood indifferent to all the tricks she had deployed would be the first one to bring the subject up. At lunch one day, as they sat silently eating, each looking in different directions as they had done at all meals since they had slept separately, he suddenly told her: “You have done everything. What about the last one, why don’t you do it to make the circle whole?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I am not a nosy one, but, because I left a book in a drawer near the bed I was forced to go up to get it. I see that you have a living room that is identical to that of Fishmonger Tu. As to the last trick, why don’t you do it?”

“Are you trying to humiliate me?” she screamed.

Calmly he replied, “In this life, no one can humiliate another. One can only humiliate himself or herself.”

“Each of us has only one life,” she responded with an enraged heart. “Why not enjoy it? Only those who are stupid or blind or missing something in their character would not find out how to live for themselves.”

Then she told herself, “I will do it. I will do it! But then, don’t you complain!”

She imagined her gorgeous living room full of young men, with loud music and red wine and champagne pouring out in streams. Scenes of pleasures would happen not only in movies but under the light of her own chandelier.

That imaginary episode of revenge lasted only a few seconds until she saw herself as that ugly and decadent woman Mrs. Tu, which made her want to puke. She returned to her private hell of unrequited love, a hell that cannot be driven from her mind.

“Why don’t you drink some tea, dear?”

Seeing his wife quiet, Vu pours tea and gives it to Van. Not refusing but not saying “thank you” either, she takes the cup from his hand, puts it to her mouth, and swallows several big gulps. He pours himself a cup, and then also drinks it quietly. Before them, the big lake shines silvery gray. Not a pleasure boat in sight; only fishing boats that bobble on the water in unrelenting competition to make a living. The wind is strong. As soon as a net is thrown it is blown back against the side of the boat, making the boat shake with its nose diving forward as if it were being pushed down to sink. The fisherman drives his boat in circles to dismantle the net and to avoid the wind. Thus, life continues. Vu contemplates that little drama and wonders, “If I lived as that fisherman, would I be happy, or at least would life be less troubled?”

Such questions have no answers, so he continues drinking his tea. He realizes Van is looking at him.

“Tea is spilled down the sleeve of your shirt. This material cannot be cleaned. Cleaning will tear it.”

“Sorry, I didn’t pay attention…” he says, adding, “You are indeed perfect…on the material side.”

“On the spiritual one, I am a zero, a despicable one. Is that what you want to say?” Van responds, rolling her eyes like one ready to dive into a fight. At the same moment, her face becomes pale and her heart begins to beat nonstop. He
looks at her with a hint of surprise and hesitation, and an unavoidable feeling of pity.

“Do you need to be reminded of the talk we had yesterday afternoon? You were also there when I was speaking in the living room. Eldest Brother congratulated me for having a wife like you, beautiful both in person and in personality. I know for a fact that, since the resistance war until now, he has sincerely admired you.”

She blushes but does not reply.

He insists: “Or do you think the Old Man was being diplomatic?” Van is silent. He continues: “You do not want to answer because you know that what the Old Man said is totally genuine. Your nicknames of ‘Miss Battlefield’ and ‘Miss City Beauty…it was the Old Man who named you so; no one else. Isn’t that true?”

Still no reply from her.

He smiles. “Yesterday, I reminded you of his compliment because he requested it. He sent his regards to you.”

“But you reminded me in a mocking manner! You know that,” she said, exploding.

“I already said no one can humiliate you but you. The same with mocking; only if your true self does not mock.”

Her face is white pale. After some inner debate, she bows her head and says intelligibly, “I kind of know that. That is why I came up here to look for you.”

“Ah, that’s why…” He lets out a cry, an unconcerned, almost insignificant one. In the meantime, his eyes never stop following the fishermen’s boats, which increasingly fade away on the silvery waves of the lake.

“He does not care about me. He does not love me any longer, not even a little bit,” she thinks to herself, and in her despair, she suddenly screams:

“You are a miserable husband. Why don’t you turn around and look at me? At least I am still in front of you, talking to you. Not even a hint of courtesy left.”

“Oh, is that so?” Surprised, he turns around and looks at her. “All right: now I turn and look at you, I will try to be courteous to please you and try to be like a gentleman…Is that all right?”

She does not answer and he continues: “I’m listening to you now. Will you go on?”

“You can’t drop that style of speaking, can you?”

“I myself do not understand when I start talking like that. Maybe it becomes a habit that is hard to break.”

“Vu, dear, we’ve had
some very happy times together. Do you miss those days at all?”

“I miss them terribly, if you want to know the truth. I miss them and I am very unhappy, many times more than you can imagine. But I am not one of those who pretend to forget, who pretend to be blind or deaf. This is the crux of all the misfortune under our roof.”

“I still love you. Or else things would be different.”

“I know. Thank you.” He laughs reflexively. “But now you can do anything; including taking up Fishmonger Tu’s lifestyle. I will not intervene. You have the freedom to act to your satisfaction.”

“You do not want to understand the truth. You didn’t change, even after half a century.”

“What truth?”

“The truth that you always look at life your own way, just your own. But life follows its own course, not yours; and that is why, always, you stick your nose out to get it hit; always, you stand against rivers and in front of storms.”

“I am sorry. I’m forged and nurtured by my parents. When I met you, I was middle-aged. I cannot change to satisfy your wishes.”

“This government has only a few hundred with your rank. No one has to bear all the hardships and shortcomings that you do.”

“You can free yourself from your ties to me. You have the full capacity to start a new life.”

“But I love you,” she shouts, tears streaming down. “Why? Why can’t you understand that simple fact?”

Vu is silent. A question sneaks inside his head: “When a woman loves, she believes she can do everything, even the craziest, the most illogical of things. All in the name of love. Is that really love? Or is it a way to accommodate some spiritual demand? Or a means designed to satiate corporal desires? ‘Love’—maybe the most un-thought-through term in the human vocabulary, the one that is the most abused and carries the most hidden meanings.”

Van cries. She pulls out a handkerchief to wipe her nose while he turns the empty cup in his palm. The wind off the lake howls and reddens the coals in the stove, making them pop. Warmth spreads and envelops them. Vu looks at the stove, waiting. But his wife cries for a long while, so he pours himself another cup of tea.

“Have you calmed down?”

“…”

“We are getting old. No need to shout like that. I do not want the stall owner thinking that we’re not stable mentally.”

“I only want one thing. That we love each other as in the past.”

“I also want that. But time does not turn back. Time has its own law, like you just said. Life goes by only on the path it draws for itself.”

“I will do anything you wish, as long as you love me like before.”

“Thank you.…But I firmly believe that you can only do everything according to your wish, and because you—”

“You refer to the living room upstairs? I can ask the workers to carry all that stuff to the dump tomorrow.”

“That only creates gossip. You are aware how people look at that kind of woman.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I cannot ‘want’; what I ‘want’ for you is impossible.”

“Impossible because you always look at things in a wrong way vis-à-vis others. It was like that in the war zone. Things that people find obvious, you fiercely oppose. Things that people think are impossible, you find ways to get done.”

“What you are trying to say? Really, we seem not to have a common language anymore. Strange. Will you please explain?”

“Don’t pretend!” she says, her voice rising again.

He turns to look back as a signal that the stall owner can clearly hear their argument.

She stops and finishes the cold cup of tea to regain her calm. Then she continues: “At the front line, everybody agreed with the choice of Miss Minh Thu for the president. You were the only one who vehemently objected all the way to the end. You alone cast a vote for Miss Thanh Tu. Do you recall the journey to recruit soldiers in the cities in the lower plains? It was Sau who gave that order so that everything could go smoothly.”

“I remember. I understood that, back then, that people purposely pushed me away so they could do as they wished.”

“But that was the responsibility of the organization, for the Old Man. How was it your personal responsibility?”

He looks at his wife, as if he were looking at some strange woman from another land, from the Sahara Desert or from the Antilles Islands. And she turns red at his glance. She repeats, with less confidence:

“That was the organization’s task. How can it be wrong for me to say that?”

He slowly asks, “Van: If I were one-eyed, buck-toothed, and only three
feet tall like a circus midget, would you nevertheless have loved me and married me?”

She remains quiet.

He looks at her attentively and continues: “Or if I were an albino, or had rickets or six fingers and toes, would you have married me?”

She does not answer and turns away to look at the west lake.

He continues his line of argument: “I remember the first time I met you, the hamlet high school girl, leaning her back against the door, with dreamy eyes, holding in her hands
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
. Perhaps I fell in love with you out of that vision. Now I ask you: If I were Quasimodo, the hunchback, would the beauty To Van agree to take me as her husband, or would she not?”

She continues to look at the lake and not answer.

Then he keeps on, asking, “Those things you don’t want, why do you force them on others? Why did you impose your cruel wish on someone as decent to you as the Old Man was? Was it you who gave the idea to the association chairwoman to send Miss Minh Thu with her sleeping gear to the big house?”

Van turns around, looks at her husband, and says, with a natural manner mixed with some surprise, “Because Brother Sau asked for my opinion; because everyone agreed with my idea; because the Old Man was not normal. Why can’t you see that?”

“The Old Man was the nation’s president. He was the soul of the revolution. Anything else?”

“The Old Man is the Father of the Nation…you forgot that title.”

“So?”

“Your question is silly. As the Father of the Nation, the Old Man cannot live like ordinary people. If you are full of rice, you have to stop eating meat. You are a learned and intelligent man, how can you not understand this small fact? Brother Sau and many others asked me that.”

“Ah, ah, ah…”

Thunder rings in his head, not once but many times. The string of thunderclaps mimics the peals and clangs of fate that will explode on Doomsday. Vu feels that thousands of strings of mines have been placed in his brain, and now the first one has exploded, triggering a second one and making for a chain reaction.

In a storm, lightning always flashes before the thunder. That sequence happens to him in reverse. The thunder explodes first before bundles of bright lights arrive. All things appear so clear down to the very smallest details, as
mountains appear in the horizon of a clear autumn, as gardens appear when fog evaporates away under the brilliant sun of June.

“I begin to understand people’s logic; when you are full of rice, then you must give up meat. When you are made a saint, or the Father of the Nation, you are not entitled to ordinary happiness. That is why they forced upon him an old woman, one that had many times been offered in marriage from one unit to another, like a charitable donation, and no one wanted to take her. An old maid, of eighty-four pounds and thirty-four years.

“Why didn’t they think of the Old Man as a king? A king in the old days had the right to fulfill all his sexual desires, no matter how brutal or immoral. If the Old Man had a young wife, that would have been only a very humble consideration.

“Why didn’t they think that if the Old Man enjoyed a little happiness, he would have been more whole both physically and mentally, and thus could have done more for the nation?