“Was it because of his scholarly disposition that he was squeezed and turned into a kind of brainy doll encapsulated within this power machine?”
Vu kept thinking about this possibility while waiting for the prime minister to regain control of his emotions. Do had been crying for a long time, even before Vu had stepped into the room. The history book was open to collect the stream of falling tears. Two pages were swollen in spots.
“He weeps not only for Miss Xuan. He weeps for himself, too. That’s for sure!”
Vu walked over, putting his hand on the prime minister’s shoulders as if to say good-bye.
“We won’t find any help coming from the brainy doll, not a drop besides his flowing tears. The magnificent building before us is just a little row
house bereft of all hopes. But we cannot give up. Where there is water, you scoop.”
On reaching the street he told the driver, “Let’s go to the house of Comrade Deputy General Secretary. As of now he is not yet in his office.”
“Yes. Offices will open in ninety minutes.”
The driver turned back to Hoang Dieu Street, famous because it held the former residences of the palace majordomos. Two rows of trees stood firm like marble in the cold dew. Vu told the driver to stop and let him out so that he might find a stall to get breakfast. Then he leisurely walked to Deputy General Secretary Thuan’s house. This house had been the substantial villa of a French official, but the Party’s Central Committee had renovated it to provide better security. They had replaced fences with masonry walls, adding a second gate and a watchtower, so that people looking in had the impression of a seminary or ammunition warehouse. Vu stopped before a huge barrier gate, painted in stripes of white and red like a gate at the train station. A large lock, bigger than a hand, dangled at the main entrance. It was not yet time to open the main gate, but the guard had seen him. Hurriedly he had come over and opened the secondary gate for Vu to enter. Then the guard climbed back up the watchtower to observe him. Vu felt that gaze sticking to his back. Instinct told him that from now on, everywhere he went, he would be watched closely by naked eyes as well as through officially issued binoculars.
“I did not expect things to get to this point. But if you want to play, you accept the rules. Let’s see what they can do to me.”
Though his disposition was rather sweet, Vu could get stubborn when challenged. He walked straight to the villa.
Then the owner called to him from the garden on the left: “I am here, Vu, my friend.”
“Good.”
“I am over here. Don’t you see rows of yellow roses full of blooms? Come here. These flowers last for only a couple of weeks, and this kind of rose is especially rare and hard to grow.”
Thuan had been standing in the garden, wearing blue pajamas with white stripes. Indeed, the garden of yellow roses was in full bloom. The petals were soft like thick velvet. Their color was between the color of ripe lemon rind and the yellow of an egg: a soft and dreamy yellow; a gentle fleeting color like a suspicion, as if it could fly and rest on the wing of a dragonfly or a butterfly, as if it could vaporize like fog.
Under normal circumstances the small vista would have been worth admiring. But at this time, beauty just inflamed him.
“Your garden is really beautiful. Your roses are exquisite,” Vu said as he approached his host. “I have never seen roses this fresh and beautiful. Paradise cannot exceed their perfection. In this life how many are able to enjoy such things?”
Thuan remained silent before this question, which contained no hint of reproach. Putting out his hand to shake, he walked toward Vu, then whispered: “I stand here to wait for you. You don’t have to fight with me. We can go to the end of the garden to talk safely.”
They walked beside each other between the rows of roses toward the end of the garden, where irises circled a plot of needle grass that ran along the foot of a wall. The two stood in the middle of the tender green grass.
Looking around, Thuan acknowledged, “Here the reeds cannot grow.” Then he turned to Vu and asked, “Who gave you the news this morning?”
“A disguised voice, as if the nose was covered or was stuffy from a cold. And you?”
“Also the same voice informing me, not quite at five thirty a.m.”
“With me, also about that time.”
“Who do you think informed us, with such an intentionally distorted voice?”
“Why are you asking me? You belong to the Politburo—assistant general secretary of the Party. To refer to old times, you are one of the four pillars holding up the dynasty. Me? I’m just a marginal guy, so many ranks below you. Properly speaking, I am the one who has the right to ask you.”
Thuan quietly sighed, looking down at the grass near his feet as if the answer could be found among the tiny shoots. Pausing, he then slowly explained: “I know I am at fault, because, in a Politburo meeting on the issue, I promised to guarantee the safety of Miss Xuan and her two kids. I did not expect things to happen like this.”
“You didn’t expect? Perhaps you did expect but washed your hands and let others act.”
Thuan looked up at him. “I am well bred and well educated, Vu, my friend. Therefore, I ask you not to suspect me of doing anything so grotesque. If not for my sake, then at least with a forgiving heart in respect for the departed spirits of my parents. They were good people. I do not lie, above all with someone like you.”
His voice was shaking and his thick nostrils started to redden. Vu knew that he was being truthful, and that eased a bit the rage burning in his heart.
“My mistake was the very fact that I did not learn what to expect,” Thuan continued. “I didn’t expect all the dark turnings of human hearts. I was thinking as if I were still living at the front: when all in the Politburo were of one mind, then everything would proceed exactly so; no need to be concerned. This event takes me aback. The game has changed; the times are different but my simple thinking is stuck in the past. Now, it has happened. What to do?”
“It has happened and now you just whine about what to do? That is really the simpleminded talking!” Vu interrupted. “Thuan, just once, try to put yourself in the place of others. At this moment, you are standing here and talking to me. Later, you will walk fewer than a hundred steps and you will be in a majestic house; in there, your wife, your kids and grandkids—the whole crowded flock. In that company, nobody must endure isolated loneliness, and none of your little ones will have to worry about being orphaned or exiled; exiled in their own country.”
To escape his inquisitive and angry look, Thuan looked over at the lichee bush in the corner of the garden next to the main gate. Then, lowering his voice, he said, “I know I have failed the Old Man.”
“What do you think about that person? Now, how will the Old Man live knowing that those who claim to be his comrades have killed his loved one? Do all of you—twelve people with the most power in this country—think that the Old Man is not a person but only a rock? Because you were the first—and you were the one who spoke up strongly—to oppose the recommendation to normalize the relationship between Older Brother and Miss Xuan. Because your words were decisive, having power to obtain consensus from the others. I carefully asked Do about that meeting.”
“I know that you are extremely angry, not only with me but with all those who opposed that relationship. Really, we acted in the interest of the country, and also because of the Old Man’s prestigious stature.”
“I think all the time about the notion that you usually call the ‘charisma’ of leading cadres, that those who lead the way for the people must be role models or idols. I find that an odd and imposed concept. Life is filled with old men who are madly in love with younger women. Not only royals but little people, too. If I am not mistaken, your paternal grandfather had a twenty-year-old concubine when he was seventy-two. Is that true or not?”
“It is true, even though my grandfather was only the chief of a small district. I still remember the sight of my grandfather taking a nap, his head on the lap of the beautiful twenty-year-old as she gently fanned him. I also remember my grandmother eating her meals with those two people in the
main house, and our family taking ours separately in the side residence. I also remember the concubine could sing the ‘
Kieu’
poem very well, and when my grandfather was inspired he usually asked her to sing to entertain guests. All that is very true, Vu, my friend. But when it comes to Elder Brother, such cannot be accepted, because he does not live for himself alone. He is the compass, the torch to light the way, for all the people.
“And because of that shining torch, the Old Man must be castrated like the eunuchs were in the old days, or forced to live in hiding like a smuggler? All of you invented this role for him; starting with Miss Minh Thu carrying her sleeping things to the house at the resistance zone. If the Party were to ask you to marry Miss Minh Thu instead of the woman you are bedding now, how would you take it?”
Thuan was silent. He cast his eyes down and continued to look intensely at the grass under his feet.
“I do not fully understand the terms ‘comrade’ or ‘brother-in-arms’ that you speak as if singing with the tip of your tongue. Really, I don’t understand,” Vu continued. “For all time, people have bonded together through understanding. Little people with little voices still know the saying ‘Everyone has bones and skin; cut anyone, blood flows.’ Any Buddhist most likely understands the famous teaching of Gautama: ‘All blood is red; all tears are salty’…Catholic teaching also says, ‘Treat others as you want to be treated.’ Whether the religion is Eastern or Western, this is what is taught about good behavior.”
“Dear Vu, but there is only one thing…” Thuan replied.
“What?”
“That the Old Man agreed to pay the price. He himself had no objection.”
“Given the procedure on decision-making, by himself the Old Man could not carry the day against twelve. To be more precise, only Do wanted to support him. But in the end he was pressured by the majority, therefore he changed his mind to follow you all. Thus, for good reason, the Old Man was an absolute minority. The Old Man relied on your understanding, you who had been both his comrade and his younger brother. From the beginning of the revolution until now, everything was done based on feelings of brotherhood. But the Old Man did not realize that things had changed; that the convivial past had died. And its dying really began right after the army left the mountains and jungles to control the cities. From that point on, all brotherly comrades became no more than merchant partners with their goods on a ship in the ocean; to protect their interest in the cargo, they would throw anyone overboard just to lighten the load. Then, as you looked
on, the Old Man was no longer a beloved older brother but simply an animal to be sacrificed up to the god of the revolution. Above all, this revolution brought profit to all of you worthy beneficiaries. Am I right or wrong?”
Thuan did not answer; he stood like a statue, his eyes glued on his slippers, the kind made from perforated leather with open heels for use inside the house. Vu looked down on those fancy shoes; without knowing why, the sight of them intensified the fire in his heart.
“You are more lettered than the other eleven Politburo worthies. You are fluent in both Chinese and French; by heart you know the old and new annals. You knew damn well that when the Old Man married Miss Xuan, one man married one woman who married one husband; it was not some polygamous arrangement like that of our famous mandarin under the Nguyen dynasty, Nguyen Cong Tru and his third wife. Tell me clearly: Why was it OK for Nguyen Cong Tru but not for the Old Man? Did you ever think of that before?”
“To tell you the truth, I never thought about it this way.”
“Well, to tell the truth, what were you thinking of? What was in the brainy skulls of those who considered themselves the Old Man’s trusted younger colleagues?”
Thuan did not answer.
Inside himself, Vu felt a falling wall of flames pushing him down, almost turning him into ashes along with all those who were related to him.
“I have to get away from here,” he thought to himself. “I have to go right away. I cannot stand this guy in the striped pajamas and open-heeled shoes. This man who nonchalantly smells his fragrant roses in the garden.”
Trying hard to suppress his rage, he said, “I must go; there are the Old Man’s two children. I want to warn you up front: if you do not immediately stop them, these hoodlums will carry on and those two kids will perish. Then you yourself will not survive if you still have a conscience, or whatever’s left of one.”
“Hey, Vu,” Thuan said, still looking down, staring at the grass as if seeking moral support or consolation from the green stalks, “I know you are very angry with me. It’s lucky you haven’t reached the point of rage or revenge. Because everybody knows that, emotionally, you are closest to the Old Man; that in the resistance zones it was you who went to the city to meet Miss Thanh Tu; that it was also you who intervened to stop Miss Minh Thu from bringing her sleeping gear up to his house; that it was you who took Miss Xuan over there, too; that you were the one person Miss Xuan trusted and relied upon to organize her entire life; that you were the only
one with whom the Old Man could talk about everything without reservation or formality. We have not forgotten all those meetings. We only needed to hear the two of you laughing to know how deep the affection was. Then, we were all very grateful to heaven for providing the Old Man with such a sympathetic and companionable younger colleague. Because all of us were busy with family, only you could volunteer your time to be with him. We also know that it was because of that closeness that you were shortchanged, as the Old Man held himself back, never proposing any favor or any special promotion. As for you, you also held back because of that relationship, so you silently accepted the downside. For that sacrifice, whether or not we wanted to, we had to respect you. For me, I ask for your understanding, if that is possible. Really, I didn’t expect things to turn out so terribly. Really, I wish the Old Man had kept his private life in the dark, to thoroughly validate the image of a father of his people, a patriarch filled with feelings and convictions for the extended family of the nation. I believed that our arrangement made good sense. It was I who suggested that Miss Xuan agree to live in a little second-floor flat in the old quarter just like any other citizen. Because I believed that providing such an uncomplicated example would bring the Old Man more prestige in all our eyes.”