The Zenith (64 page)

He dares not answer. He has no courage to answer. His provocateur no longer smiles but contemptuously shrugs his shoulders. After throwing him a condescending look the specter steps over the president’s head to leave through the window.

The president feels his nostrils burn.

“Oh my god, why am I shedding tears so easily? Old age, infirmity, or for other reasons? A man should not cry so easily like this. I have changed. When did I go bad?”

He curses himself fiercely, but tears keep falling, slowly rolling down his temples then soaking his hair. And in his ears, the doctor’s familiar singing is heard:

“My beloved one…”

“Ha, ha, ha…”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…”

Fits of irreverent laughter break out and immediately he sees the large round face, the drooping cheeks and chin of Chairman Man. He appears in the ashen purple light; his complexion the striped green of a gecko. With a solicitous, cheerful manner, he examines the president as a child might examine a cricket.

The president raises his voice angrily: “Why are you here, Mr. Chairman?”

“You imply that I am an uninvited guest?”

The president is quiet.

Chairman Man smiles: “Why don’t you answer directly? This is no longer a game of eventualities, or playing around with diplomacy. You and I are yin to the other’s yang, but whether we like it or not, neither of us now has any influence on the politics of the two neighbors. Nevertheless, you are now like Napoleon on St. Helena; you have no reason to be circumspect.”

“Mr. Chairman, I don’t know how.”

“Well, you’re very polite, with the politeness of whites. But you and I both come from simple rural people. I am from Hunan and you from Nghe An, the dirt-poor city where the farmers chew on sweet potatoes instead of rice, more miserable than the Hmong hill tribes who make corn cakes and corn
soup. Being a rural person, just act according to your roots. Why show off the kind of politeness you learned elsewhere?”

“Would you please consider changing the subject, Mr. Chairman?”

“What will you do if I do not change the subject?”

“Dear sir, don’t forget you are a guest.”

“Oh, I have long forgotten the difference between host and guest, even though I still play at diplomacy. For me, all those in front of me are but game in a struggle with the Lord of the Jungle.”

“I know you see yourself as the true Lord of the Jungle, and the Americans and the Westerners are only a bunch of paper tigers. If you so believe in your own strength, why don’t you take direct responsibility for this war?”

“You are wrong. If indeed the Americans and white-skinned Western devils are just paper tigers, then why did we let our vassals in the south start the game? I am not yet able to swallow the white men because, to my mind, they are too big a bait for my throat. Did you ever read the story of the boa swallowing wood?”

“My country is small, my people are poor. I have no intention of becoming a boa, therefore, I don’t concern myself about swallowing others.”

“That is your first stupidity. If you are a king and just tie your thoughts up in a dream, then you don’t deserve to sit on the throne. The king must dream differently from ordinary folk. One who rules is not on a parallel path with those who are ruled. Because of such demeanor, you lost the struggle. Also because of such behavior, you are ruled by your own subordinates. It is the old saying: ‘Many tigers defeat a ferocious one.’”

“The ‘many tigers’ act under your direction. Thirst for glory clouds their conscience and blinds their eyes. Because of dark amnesia, they are flattered by those shining words from the big brothers, therefore they are determined to throw themselves into this war at all costs. They trust your encouragement: ‘Hit the Americans, they are only paper tigers’…”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha…You’re not bad! All along I thought of you as the best little soldier and the most feared from the south. My estimate is not wrong. Intuition never misleads. On the contrary, it is to me the most thoroughly reliable of all our mental faculties. You are pretty good! I confirm that you are worthy of being a gentleman. The only regret is that you lacked ‘opportunity.’ Then and now, when we discuss heroes, we tend to emphasize military experience. I am more practical. I believe in heavenly destiny. Heaven did not support you. Or, to be more accurate, your destiny is softer than mine, therefore, you cannot win this round. Such as this the old ones left to fate. Heaven decides. That is why you have eyes but are blind, a chicken
becoming a crow; you put power into the hands of betrayers. Because heaven dictates is why your subordinates trust the words I say as if they believed in the gods. Even if we painted the rocks white, they would not turn into cotton balls. A square cardboard box will not change into a brick. I, forever, am King of the Northern Palace, and your world is forever just a gate for the little people in southern China to use when they need to borrow some pepper. The little piece of land you claim to be your fatherland of mountains and rivers is only an isolated district that we, sooner or later, will seize. Now you understand that this war is one of the best games I have ever played; a little game that costs nothing. In this game, I don’t really need any plan or schemes, but only need reuse one of the ancient thirty-six strategies.”

“Yes, all that I have known from the start,” the president responds. “You did not come up with the strategy of ‘Tigers Fighting in the Mountain’ but copied it from ancient commanders who had used it many times. During the Sino-Japanese War you rang bells and blew whistles and said, ‘Resist Japan; save the nation,’ but your army hid along the border roads to safeguard your forces, leaving the Nationalist Army to fence with the fascists alone. In reality, you used the Japanese to destroy your political opponents. Waiting for the big war to end, you kept your army secure gathering strength to destroy the Nationalists. Now, not only the Chinese people but more than half of the world besides thinks that destroying the fascists was your work. But history is not written only once as letters are engraved on tombstones. All deceitful schemes sooner or later will be exposed. Future generations have the right to rewrite all the histories, and their power lies beyond your reach.”

“Future generations? I have yet to see the faces of future generations. At least as of now. My shadow will be over China for a very long time.”

“Do you need glory like one who gets to be remembered in a shrine? You can create glory with fraud?”

“Only idiots don’t cheat in the game of political chance. You seem to know everything, so why can’t you imitate me?”

“Because I am me and you are you, Mr. Chairman. No one can change their place; also, no one can teach how to be smart, because humans vary one from another. However, I know that this war is destiny’s cruelest playground, and, if our punishment is to be drawn into pieces by four chariots, then the most brutal charioteer has been directed by your own hands.”

“You know, I acknowledge what you say. But you only know it after your hands and feet are all tied up. You know it only when you have become a
living ghost. Someone who is king but no longer has soldiers is only a dressed-up puppet.”

“My life of struggle did not teach me with sufficient experience to predict and resolve all contingencies.”

“I feel you have had sufficient experience. Your weakest link is your conflicted stance between East and West. That unresolved orientation has planted a seed of destruction inside you. First is your understanding of democracy, a kind of bread baked by the white devils. Here is the root cause of your failure. You were an obedient student of the West, while your closest subordinates were indigenous only. Therefore they simultaneously suspected that you had affection for the French and took advantage of the Western principle that the majority rules to bind you like a butcher ties a pig before bleeding it to death. The blood that flows in you is Eastern and calls you back to the old temples, wherein for thousands of years Confucian literati lit incense and bowed up and down praying before the teachings that the virtuous should rule. You forget that no one ever saw the faces of the mythical Sage Kings, Yao and Shun, in this life. Those two puppets really were created by the government to educate a bunch of underlings and to tame the masses. You allowed yourself to embrace the passion of sacrificing for a cause, of sacrificing for the common good; therefore you had to follow your subordinates like an idiot. You forgot that those in the East eat with chopsticks and distinguish kings from subjects very distinctly. Between a king and his subjects there is no equality, nor any trust. There is only use or rejection. The word ‘comrade’ I borrowed from the West to direct the mandarins and the little people exactly as a magician directs his army with charms and spells. It was like a lemon rind, a ghost’s shadow, and yet you believed it to be the meat of the fruit and a real personage. Death comes to you because of this misperception. Oh, ‘comrade’! A fancy word created by a few guys with beards. Do you see how I treat those I call ‘comrades’? I suck the blood from their veins as a farmer releases water from a field. I take their blood to clean the steps that lead to the throne, because the color red is the color of power and glory. Nothing can represent the color red better than human blood. Those who stand to the left or the right of the king are always the warriors of his bedchamber. You have to know how to kill them right away before they take time to think about hiding knives in their shirtsleeves. That is the art of governing. It has been well tested for thousands of years. As a king in the East you didn’t even know that law. You wanted to build your nation according to Western standards, so you let someone else manage recruitment and placement of personnel. It was like giving a sword
to a cabal of enemies. In the game of power we cannot even trust blood relatives, so how can we trust strangers?”

“On this point you might be right…”

“Not ‘might’; I
am
right. Right meaning ‘uncontestable.’ Don’t hesitate at the frivolity of words. People pay dear prices for misunderstanding them. But I, how am I to explain your misunderstanding?”

“Perhaps due to my lack of experience or my lack of intelligence. Perhaps in the special situation of our country it was hard to find a better solution.”

“You’re pretty smart when considering the big picture. But you’re stupid once you mix up what is true with what is not, it’s just playacting without having to live that role for real. Being king is the greatest role on life’s stage. But one has to realize that it is an act. And that insight must be preserved, nurtured regularly just as people must regularly maintain both their souls and their bodies. Your misery is that you have an actor’s blood and sometimes you cry, you smile, for real; you put your true self into the character. Therefore, you cannot keep up the role of a ruler all the way to the end. Now I will tell you the difference between a king and a little thespian. A king acts but always knows he is in a role. Anytime he takes off the mask and throws it in the cupboard, he can do anything he wishes even if totally contrary to his role, but he forces the courtiers and the people to accept it as natural. Emperor Ch’ien Lung of China was the most appropriate example of this. He was extremely smart, very literate, and accomplished in martial arts. His calligraphy was beautiful and fairylike; his poetry glossy like green jade. He fully taught his officials and the people the Four Books and the Five Classics and other moral principles. That was when he assumed the role of ruler. In other moments, he could take off the face of kingship and throw it somewhere in a corner, and live true to his own self. Do you remember the tale of his kicking his queen until her fetus died?”

“I remember.”

“Do you remember his love affair with Ho Ch’in?”

“Of course I do.”

“Very good, thus do you remember that Ho Ch’in had plotted to kill the crown prince, Fu Ching, how many times?”

“Twice, if I am not mistaken.”

“Right, twice. And if Minister Liu had not insisted, the crown prince would have become dust. And still Ho Ch’in was favored. His personal wealth was more than the state treasury. This demonstrates that Ch’ien Lung’s adoration of Ho Ch’in had more to it than the life of the crown prince and the national interest. And definitely Ch’ien Lung was not a
weakling or a frivolous dreamer. What, then, prompted him to behave like that, if not satisfaction of his sexual appetite? If not to caress until satiety a body that contained the soul of ruler? As a bisexual, Ch’ien Lung was passionate for both man and woman but I believe that in reality his homosexual proclivity was stronger and the more dominant. Because in those days, homosexuals were despised and teased, that is why he built a series of pavilions for them in the inner part of the palace to hide them from the people. If the court had released his harem to the countryside, for sure two-thirds of them would still have been virgins. There: open your eyes to see the game as played by real rulers. Not just Ch’ien Lung; rulers of every dynasty were the same.”

“I know. And you are sure that successors should follow this tradition?”

“You rank me too low; to be accurate, you look at me with irreverent eyes. That same irreverence of the ancient clans of the hundred Viet peoples in southern China. You need to understand that I am not a successor but a founder. I laugh at how the old kings and lords used women at such cost but with such little effect. I don’t need to build red chambers and towers. I don’t need to check expenses for red bodices and trousers. If you drive them into a corner, the female cats will scratch each other and disturb my sound sleep. My home is mobile. A modest vessel on dry land is a thousand times more convenient that an extravagant oceangoing sailboat even though it can visit the six continents. The land is vast; the mountains and rivers grand; I select women from wherever I happen to be. Not twenty-year-old mountain girls as you did, but all youngsters ages twelve to sixteen. The younger they are, the fresher their life-giving sap. I regain my youth and nourish my libido thanks to those growing girls.”