The Zenith (79 page)

He could still remember as if it were yesterday how to slow-cook a congee made of half sweet rice and half mung bean; how to sift rice gruel so as to have rice milk to keep in a thermos; how to milk a female buffalo, wait for the milk to curdle, and then keep it in such a way as not to produce whey. In Xiu Village, there were no cows, as people had raised only buffalo. The babies were fed only buffalo milk. An could also remember the wooden basin in which Little One used to be bathed, with him on one side and Nang Dong on the other, both dipping their hands in the water and rubbing the dirt off Little One. That was real life, yet it felt like a game. For they themselves, An and Nang Dong, were still in their early teens. That “game” linked the three of them in a strange love. That was why, even though he had been married to Nang Dong for ten years by the time he went into the army at the age of twenty-seven, no one had questioned why they did not have any children. Also, at the time, the fact that a couple was slow in having children was not something as serious as would be the case today. Nonetheless, it was still considered an irregularity. Little One lived wedged in between the two of them, surrounded by a very colorful love. All three had felt satisfied with what they had, so neither Nang Dong nor he had sought out a doctor to treat her infertility, as advised by their neighbors.

The resistance war ended suddenly one year after An changed his name. He did not have an opportunity to return to Xiu Village, because his wife found
him on exactly the day the various columns were getting ready to liberate the capital. Nang Dong clung to him, laughing and crying all at the same time. Tomorrow, she would be living with Little One in the city of Hanoi. How about him? Fate had once more smiled on him, for his unit was stationed in Ha Dong, a mere ten kilometers away from Hanoi, not more than one hour by bicycle. In their case, it seemed as if the doors of Paradise had opened for them.

However, from the very first day he had come to visit them, An was not pleased. Walking along the long and dark corridor, he had wondered why they could put Little One in such an ordinary apartment, even though it had three high-ceilinged and roomy chambers, along with a separate kitchen and closets. Even so, it was simply the upper floor of a common person’s house, the home of any well-off urban resident. His Little One was now the queen. Could it be possible that a queen would be put in an ordinary basket, to live among the common people? Could it have been because they were Tay tribespeople? Could it be that a Tay queen was not entitled to the same privileges as one who was pure Vietnamese?

Though torn by these thoughts, An had not given them any voice. For both women were at the zenith of joy. The war was over, now they could be certain that they would live. After so many years of separation, now was the time of reunion. No one could ask for more than that. Now all three of them could sit around the same tray table of food. And if it was not quite like being in the old huge house on stilts, surrounded on all sides by deep forest, it was still the comfortable upper floor of a small house, the dwelling of city people.

After dinner, An had asked Little One, “Is the president happy that you live here?”

“Oh yes. He says that we have to live simply. Like the common people.”

“It means, then, that you are happy, right?”

“Yes…I am happy. I love him.”

“Does he love you?”

“Of course,” Little One had replied, raising her voice. “He’s very much in love with me…” Her cheeks had suddenly reddened. “He’s a very good husband.”

That night, while cradling Nang Dong, An asked, “Let me know, is our Little One truly happy?”

“Yes, she is. You don’t have to worry. She is very, very happy. Though he is old, the president is still potent in bed.”

“How do you know?”

“Being from the mountain, we are not shy about these things. I have directly asked Little One about it. She says that in having sex with the president she is happier than with her first lover.”

“Is that so? In that case I can feel at ease.”

He was at ease for about two years. At times though, he became unhappy when he rode his bicycle around the quarters reserved for the generals and the main architects of the regime and observed how their ethnic Vietnamese wives lived in separate villas, surrounded by trees and gardens, with guards standing in front and Volga cars to run their errands.

Then when the president’s first child, a daughter, was born, joy made him forget both his unhappiness and his jealousy. Each Sunday, An would ride into the city feeling like a child going to a festival or an adolescent guy going to meet his love. Now he could be a father and Nang Dong a real mother. They no longer had to slow-cook mung bean congee and milk female buffalo. Life in the metropolis may have been confined somewhat but things were much more convenient, and both of them found themselves as excited as a forest going into spring whenever the baby laughed. All that time, the baby’s real mother could afford to sleep her fill or watch them take care of her bastard child with eyes full of satisfaction.

An never met the president in that house because he could stay only until 6:30 p.m. on Sunday. After dinner, he had to ride his bike back to Ha Dong before the night bugle sounded at 9:30. He knew that the office of the president usually had Little One summoned to go to the palace to be with him, but on occasion when he could arrange it, the president would go to visit his wife and daughter around midnight—it was the president himself who had given the daughter her name. An ancient name, ethically meaningful: Nghia (“Duty”).

When first told of this, An was somewhat frustrated: “There’re lots of fine names, why give her, my niece, such a straitjacketed name? In my company there are at least three guys with that name: Tran Trung Nghia, Dao Duy Nghia, and Ngo Thanh Nghia…”

“Oh, don’t be angry.” Little One smiled. “She’s the president’s daughter.”

His wife, Nang Dong, also joined in: “She’s right. Being the father, he has the right to name her.”

An didn’t answer.

But starting the following week, he started calling the baby by the name that he had come up with for her: “She’s born in the year of the goat, so I’ll
call her Mui. In this way she will be easy to take care of. Come, Mui, come here to your uncle.”

“Ba…ba…”

The baby could emit these sounds by the time she was nine months old. Her tongue was found to be pointed. No other baby could speak as early as she did. Her lips were the red color of a lobster while her smile was an exact copy of her father’s.

The following year when Mui was one full year old, An bought a rattan chair and attached to it a bicycle frame. Putting the baby in it, he carried her around to all the surrounding streets. On many occasions, uncle and baby went back and forth in front of the president’s palace. The baby would babble away while he peered at the palace as if he were looking at a mysterious castle or a ghostly fortress. To the man who lived there, the man An had never met or exchanged a word with, he would whisper: “Mr. President, do you see your daughter sitting on this simple bicycle of mine? You may be the most powerful figure in this land, but you are only a brother-in-law to me. For I am married to the older sister while you are the husband of the younger one, so if we were at a wine party now you would have to pour wine for me to drink. That’s how it is with the customary law of the Tay.”

Years of plenitude and seasons of abundance usually come unexpectedly. Who could have predicted that, when Mui was eleven months old, Little One would become pregnant for the second time? She had suddenly become sleepy all the time, drifting off even during meals. And little Mui, still nursing, had come down with diarrhea. No one was quite sure what was happening when an old lady neighbor said:

“This means that the mother is pregnant with child, so her milk is now contaminated…If a baby drinks contaminated milk, then nothing can stop the diarrhea. How come no one knows this?”

“Oh, truly, no one knows this,” Nang Dong had replied.

It was clear that little Mui had to be weaned right away. Fortunately, being a very good baby, she cried for only two nights then turned to taking powdered milk, sucking loudly on the bottle. It was also the case that she had been sleeping with Nang Dong, to the point where she was much more used to the smell of her aunt than to that of her own mother. It was said that the firstborn in any family tends to be somewhat slow, not very smart. But Baby Mui was extraordinarily smart. On Saturdays, as soon as the sun started to set, she would go out to the balcony to wait for her uncle Thanh.
The flow of people rolling through the street did not confuse her. Sometimes she waved her hand as soon as she saw him stop for a red light at the intersection. The black Vinh Cuu bicycle without mudguards was well known to her, as it promised many a fun ride. As An pulled the bicycle up on the curb, he would look up to the balcony and could see her right away with her ingratiating smile, her face radiant and her black eyes shining. On occasion An almost felt like he were still living in Xiu Village. For, in those faraway years, in the evenings when he and Nang Dong would come home carrying firewood, Little One would be waiting for them at the corner of the house on stilts with the same quiet and radiant smile now displayed by little Mui.

Their gentle, sweet life continued until the day Little One gave birth to her second child, in the year of the monkey, Binh Than (1956). One Saturday afternoon, when he was just about to step into the house, Nang Dong rushed out, took hold of his neck, and, with a face showing both pride and mystery, solemnly and mysteriously whispered: “A boy. Three point six kilograms. Fifty-eight centimeters long.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, we have now both sweet and long-grain rice,” he answered.

Nang Dong was taken aback for a second then looked at him and said, “It’s funny what you say.”

“How? Did I say anything wrong or mistaken, making you laugh?”

“No, it’s neither wrong nor mistaken.” She smilingly looked at him: “It’s not just a question of sweet rice and long grain. Do you forget how extremely important a boy is to a father?”

“Of course, I understand the importance of a boy to continue the line. From now on I will let you take care of the new baby, the VIP, and I will take care of little Mui, since she is the less important one.”

“Are you going to the hospital to visit Little One?”

“No, tomorrow I will go to the market, prepare dinner, and take Mui to the zoo so she can watch the tigers and the bears. Going to the hospital will be your responsibility.”

An did not understand why he reacted so. He can still remember the wild-eyed look of his wife at his answer. That look followed him as he went inside. It obsessed him like a problem without a solution. It was not until very much later that he realized it was instinct that had told him to behave as he did. That he already had the premonition that black and sinister shadows of vulture wings were spreading above their heads at the moment Nang Dong told him the news, news that should have brought extreme joy to
anyone. The next day, he took Mui to the zoo on his bicycle. On the way back, she insisted on stopping in front of the president’s palace so she could watch the guards. But they had not been there for more than a few minutes before the guards approached and asked for their papers. An showed his military ID.

The guard examined the paper carefully, then said, “This is a protected zone. You should take her to another place.”

“I didn’t want to bother you. It’s only that she wants to see.”

At that moment, little Mui spoke up: “I see soldiers.”

Probably because of the innocent babbling of the child, the soldier felt softhearted so he went away. Nonetheless, An’s heart clouded up. He looked at the house behind the pruned trees.

“What happiness is it when the father lives in a castle while his daughter sits outside looking in? What use is this twisted love affair? Had Little One failed to catch the eyes of the old king, she would have found a husband more fitting for her circumstances. In the countryside there is no lack of happy marriages. Our house on stilts was three times as large as these cramped homes in the city. Particularly the house of the father-in-law: a whole sawmill could fit in just one of its big rooms. We had land, buffalo by the herd, and pigs galore. The hundreds of hens we had laid so many eggs that we couldn’t eat them all. We had woods and streams, wild and domesticated bees, and animals to hunt. Sure, life is more convenient and civilized here but land is at a premium and people’s generosity is a luxury. Did we make a mistake by leaving the mountains to come here?”