The Zenith (62 page)

“‘There’s your wife!’ Then I bent my back, bowed my head down to my stomach, and began to cough loudly. One series of coughs led to another. I couldn’t stop it. Tears rolled down, and when I stood up straight, I definitely had the face of someone who has the croup. I took out a cloth and wiped my tears. Before me, Phu’s wife also sniffled:

“‘Tell me when the funeral is. He was strong like an elephant and died so quickly. Nobody ever knows the plans of heaven!’

“‘That’s all right. Go back up. When the agency decides on the funeral
I will go with you,’ I said and then told Phu to get in the car to go to the flower garden. On the way, Phu cursed:

“‘You crazy bastard! Why make up such an outrageous lie?’

“Then I felt remorse because Doan had been Phu’s loyal friend since childhood, but facing a very stressful situation I could not find a more appropriate tale to tell. Because I had to get him out of the house immediately, only an accident or the death of a close one could ensure complete success. Taking my friend to the flower garden, I introduced him to the beauty as the gentleman who could protect her. Then I left the two of them together to reach a mutual understanding. I rushed home just in time for lunch, the old woman who had given birth to my kids annoyingly looking at the hands of the clock. If I had come twenty minutes later, the bean and fish sauces would have been spilled on the tray followed by a never-ending presentation of recriminations.”

Vu bursts out laughing. Surprisingly, he is drawn to the story, and, perhaps because of his honest disposition, he worries for the two old playboys:

“So how did you explain the pretended death?”

“Oh, every tall mountain has a trail to the top. After eating, I waited for my wife to go back to work and for the children to return to school. I then sat at the table to write Phu’s wife a short letter saying that there had been a misunderstanding. My cousin in the countryside named Toan had just died but, when I received the telegram, in shock I had read it wrong as ‘Doan.’ In short, everything was fine, except that I had to go to the village for the funeral. After the letter was written, I asked a colleague to take it immediately to Phu’s house.”

“I doff my hat to you guys!”

“I already told you, people with hats and formal gowns like you take care of the big things. We only play little tricks to enjoy some fun and we harm no one.”

“So how did you help that unfortunate actress?”

“She hooked up with Phu, becoming his mistress until love’s debt matured. Her coming to me was a mistake, like sheep ending up in a duck pen, because she only ever fell for guys who are good-looking cads like Don Juan. People are stuck with their looks. Once you pick a standard for what is beautiful, it will stick with you forever as the epitome of giving and receiving love. Given this understanding, she would pick Phu because he is much more handsome than I. As for me, I am both small and ugly but good at talking, so those who liked to hear sweet words would lean on my shoulders. That was the allocation according to the law of ‘natural selection.’ Nine
years of protracted resistance taught us the spirit of supporting the attack and the ability to take care of each other. Between us the tradition of jealousy and animosity that is notorious among Vietnamese has had no effect. That national character doesn’t enter into our friendship. That is why, after twenty years, this cell is absolutely rock solid. That solid frame of our friendship rests on the rule of complementarity and mutual support. Phu is handsome; I am dark and ugly. He is generous because he is a dandy from Hanoi; I am tight—‘Eating small shrimp and shitting out hair; exchanging nine pennies for a dime’—because my parents died early and I’ve had to take care of myself since I was ten. He is more fastidious than those well-groomed women, like a duck taking a bath every day whether winter or summer. Before he goes anywhere, he grooms in front of a mirror. He puts his nose on the collar and to the armpits and sniffs to see if it smells good, because, if by any chance a woman were to lean her head on the shoulder of a hero, then they would not faint because of a bad smell. Me, on the contrary: I don’t like to bathe. In winter, I do not go into the bathroom for one or two months, but my conscience is fine and my soul shows no pain. Sometimes my wife could not stand it; she would pour crab or meat soup on me to force me to take a bath.”

Vu cannot help but laugh again and asks, “If the ladies poured broth from steamed watercress soup over you, you would not go bathe?”

“No! Vegetable-flavored water is like plain water. I would just change my shirt. The leaders often boast that in the imperialist prison, they defiantly made public the revolutionary organization. I think when ten of them talk, not one is to be believed. But me, I am much more convincing. If you are not really dirty and there is no urgent need to take a bath, then I wouldn’t bathe. Now, to satisfy your curiosity—you, a person who has no inkling at all about the ordinary and irrelevant lives of playboys—I will tell the ending. We took the pretty and pregnant actress to the rest house in Tam Dao. There she played the role of Phu’s wife. Me, I took the rest-house manager to hunt quail in the neighboring forests. After three weeks, the manager was dead tired after all kinds of comical episodes. Every evening he stuck to me like paint. After dinner, we’d go through two teapots while chatting. In the fourth week, almost at the end of the assignment, I asked his help in taking the pretty lady to a clinic for an abortion. He enthusiastically agreed. The next morning, a car from the rest house came to take Tran Phu and his ‘wife’ to the hamlet clinic to end the sad situation, which had occurred due to ‘bad planning.’ In summary, everything was arranged to perfection. When we returned to Hanoi, the pretty young lady was already laughing happily,
no sign of despair or fear on her face as on the day she had climbed the stairs of my house. Then, three years later…”

“You are wrong, more than four years. To be accurate, it was four years and two months.”

“Well, I forget. It’s been too long to remember exactly. Four years later, we helped her get selected to join the troop of the General Political Department. In her new environment, she found her true love—an average actor but an ideal husband. The day before her wedding, we organized a farewell dinner. It was as elaborate a meal as it could have been, given the living conditions in those days. The farewell meal was intended to recall all our memories together. A few sad tears were shed and a few heartfelt thank-yous said. After that, the road took many turns. She left—forever a pink shadow. And us, we returned to our respected ladies that had birthed our children.”

The writer stops talking, lifting his hand to adjust his glasses on his nose, then asks Vu, “Well, have you ever heard such silly stories before?”

“No, for sure not,” Vu replies, somewhat embarrassed. “In my department, such goings-on must be brought before the cell for grading and the cadres must undergo discipline.”

Both Le Phuong and Tran Phu burst into peals of laughter. Then Le Phuong wipes his tears and asks Vu: “Then, do those who must impose the discipline dare open their mouths to propose that the cell grade the behavior of higher-ranking leaders? Because everybody knows that more than half the Politburo members have two wives. And General Secretary Ba Danh not only has two wives but, in addition, a harem of women pretending to be nurses.”

“Of course I have thought about it. But I am a lone rider and of no effect,” Vu replies, sighing helplessly.

Le Phuong continues: “This gigantic machine of dominance just keeps turning; just keeps chewing up so many people with its stinking pretense of morality and its injustice.”

Not knowing what to say in reply, Vu remains silent. His soul is overwhelmed. What this dark and ugly guy has just said is not news to him. Vu has thought about it, but only clandestinely, and has never dared, or wanted, to believe that it was the truth.

How could it be that the idealism of his youth and the idealism of so many others who had sacrificed for the revolution had come to this miserable end? How could it be that the blood of so many people had been spilled, so much gold and wealth contributed by so many generous people spent, to produce a filthy and inhuman government like this? That filth and inhumanity
were well known to him, but still he wants to believe that only a few in the machine of dominance are contaminated. Such power struggles are the curse of humanity; they strip away all good attributes and leave only corrupting greed, conniving plotting, and perpetration of cruelty. However, he does not want to admit that the entire society, in which he had placed so much hope, is immoral and sneaky. Nevertheless, it had been a gamble for which he and so many others of the same generation had pawned their whole lives. It was a joint undertaking, a communal pregnancy. What mother would acknowledge that she has given birth to a monster?

In hearing these stories, this troubling doubt from the mouths of total strangers, Vu understands that what he has suspected with fear during many sleepless nights is seen by the public as a visible and present truth. But he, like someone confined in a quarantined palace, can see only rebels as the walls collapse and fire breaks out on all four sides.

Bending his head to look thoughtlessly at his fingers, Vu sees that his nails are long and untrimmed; he clicks one with another.

Le Phuong looks at the gesture, smiles, and continues: “Now you understand why we choose to be playboys, satisfied with a small life and its tiny pleasures. It is also the way that the old folks called ‘to live while hiding.’ Because right after the liberation of the capital, we knew that the ‘Great Task’ had been wrongly done; that the love boat had foundered; and that dreams had been illusions. The day we started on the road of resistance, all had the same dream. A revolution for a backward society or a people in slavery is to be a great cleansing—like a storm that sweeps away all the garbage and brings after it a new life of fortitude. For that reason, people accept death on its behalf. To be precise: people will die for their mountains and rivers because of a brighter future. All real revolutions always liberate productive forces and expand the space of freedom. But this revolution, aside from what it did to emancipate the people, neither brought freedom nor expanded productive capacity; on the contrary, it totally destroyed all the valuable culture that had made our nation, while also destroying its productive capacity. The land reform was actually a systematic and organized slaughter of all talented and effective people in the rural areas. Thus, from the social point of view, this revolution accomplished only a disgusting dredging up of layers of mud from the bottom of the pond to pollute its surface. With that mud came the dead bodies of frogs and toads along with junk and weeds.”

He stops talking. Vu feels as if he has been slapped by someone; a strong blow. But the fellow had not taken aim at him personally. He had only announced
a truth. A truth that is the price to be paid for putting one’s neck in a noose when young; a price paid by so many other young men who had died without justice following a hallucination. When the writer spoke about this, his eyes were so sad; the pronounced wrinkles on his face deepen when he does not smile. Are his lighthearted and silly stories really a way to disguise a huge disappointment? A disappointment for an entire people!

All three of them fall silent. The other customers had left long before; there are now only three waitresses, busy plucking their eyebrows.

Tran Phu comments: “Those three girls must have just come from the countryside. If we stay here longer, they will take off their shirts to pluck the hair under their arms.”

“Yes, don’t rule out that possibility. Because they have no need to pretty up or play coy for three old men.”

“Have we really turned into some torn rags?”

“Not quite, if we look at it more objectively. The merchandise can still be used if it meets up with ladies in their thirties and forties. But these ones are very young and fresh, about sixteen or seventeen at the most—the age of our own children and grandchildren.”

“Oh, old age! Old age sneaking up behind our backs. Hey, Brother Vu, what is your take on old age?”

“I embrace it and live with it peacefully, to the extent I can.”

“That’s a smartly masterful reaction,” Tran Phu says, then he stands up. “Well, it’s almost time for supper, the patient must now return to his room. Le Phuong, will you accompany Vu back to the treatment ward? I will settle the bill and catch up with you.”

As Vu and the writer step out to the yard, they hear Tran Phu loudly call out to the girls: “Hey, if you want to groom yourselves, you should find an appropriate place. This is not the place to display womanly utensils.”

Hearing no one reply, Tran Phu suspects the girls are afraid to answer. A little later he catches up to the other two. They leisurely return to the building reserved for high-ranking cadres then part ways at the foot of the stairs.

“We wish you, Great Brother, a speedy recovery. Today, meeting a hero, I am completely satisfied,” says the writer to Vu.

When Vu gets to his room, he sees a group of nurses surrounding the doctor, a mature woman in her fifties. They had carried in an artificial breathing machine for the patient in the bed opposite his. His face is all pale; his eyes are shut tight; his lips are compressed, leaving only a dark line. Vu steps
in just as the nurse puts the oxygen mask on the patient. He quietly walks behind them to his bed.