The Zenith (12 page)

“You all have already eaten a while ago?”

“Sir, the company cook is preparing lunch.”

“Oh, is that so?” he mutters. For a time he had been eating irregularly, not even three meals a day. Often he even forgot to eat, and eat well, so that the people could trust in his good health. Forgetfulness is the faithful friend of old age, a friend we can’t shake off no matter how much we try. He turns and enters the room to sit down before the tray with his breakfast. A bell-shaped bowl has a lid covering it. He turns over the hot lid, moist from steam:

“Ah, so today the cook gives us rice gruel.”

The fragrant smell of onions and herbs arises; that fragrant smell so familiar to cooks of long ago. Rice gruel with onions and herbs is light on the stomach as well as a remedy for flu. He has known this fragrance since early childhood.

“Sir, please take your food before it cools,” the chubby guard reminds him, his eyes not leaving the president’s hands.

He bends his head down to see the finely sliced scallions and the herbs as nicely cut as Chinese bean thread noodles, sharply reminding him of the time when he was sick and the girl showed off by cooking rice gruel for him. The gruel unskillfully cooked by the girl had whole rice grains in it and the scallions were still on their stems.

“Little one, you’re a girl from the mountains…! Mountain Girl: you are our nightmare, little one, our private nightmare…”

“Oh, please, Mr. President…” the soldier blurts out, tilting his head to hear some low noise. After a minute:

“An airplane is coming up, Mr. President, do you hear it?”

“I don’t hear anything. The ears of someone over seventy can’t compete with those of an eighteen-year-old,” he answers with a smile.

He looks to the east. The sun had already been up for some undetermined time. It is a completely ordinary day; the sun wants to hang just like a ripe orange suspended in the air, as a gentle sun, not one of sheer brilliance. A sun still undecided in the middle of a dream; a drowsy sun that could signal something ordinary like a burning areca nut or something like a carriage furiously bringing fire to burn all the land on a cursed planet. The white clouds still swirl like the sea around the mountaintops, but around the sun is a light blue halo. A blue completely surrounded by a strange darkness.

That blue was the color of endless summers. Why has it appeared today?

While he stands looking at the sky to the east, the phone in the corner of his room rings stridently. The chubby guard runs in to answer and comes back to report:

“Mr. President, sir, the helicopter has arrived. The office invites you to go down to the landing strip.”

“Has Chief Vu come up?”

“Yes, Chief Vu will accompany you with a bodyguard to take part in someone’s funeral in Tieu Phu hamlet. After that, Chief Vu will follow you back to the pagoda. The program has been set.”

“I will change clothes.”

“Sir, you need to finish all your rice gruel, as the day is very cold. The first squad of guards will come up here to accompany you down to the landing strip.

“Clothes must be chosen.

“Mr. President, sir, all is ready.”

The mountain roads curve back and forth like a chicken’s entrails. Hearing the sound of music, one might think it was close at hand, but the curved road makes its source rather far off. On both sides of the way, bushy bamboo blocks a traveler’s progress. But the special singing to send off a soul is continuously melodramatic. First notes from a one-string zither, then those of a flute and a two-string fiddle. As the first refrain ends, up comes the voice of a male singer, low in tone:

Like blossoming buds in spring, like colorful and fresh leaves in the summer, turning yellow in the fall or in frigid winter, life on earth is in the Master Craftsman’s hands. Who can escape this great game?

From nothingness, our parents give us human incarnations; we cry as we greet life; we laugh the laugh of a child; we set off on our way, under the burdens of carefree youth, and put them down when our breath weakens and our health evaporates.

He listens to the singing, quietly surprised because this is the first time he has heard such verses, even though he has lived in his own country for so many years now:

“Why only now do I know of these folk songs? Did they just pass by like a wind and I didn’t pay attention all those years? Had the government forbidden the people to sing such sentimental lyrics? But life is both birth and death, melancholy is the living twin of happiness.”

“Mr. President, please let me carry your overcoat.”

A guard steps up to take the overcoat he has just taken off. He gives him the overcoat; then suddenly a throbbing pain runs through his spine. Sweat wets his forehead; he dabs at it with a handkerchief but it won’t subside. As the hour of Sending Off the Soul approached, he had intended to visit the unfortunate family, but he had no right to make them wait. Besides, so many people had to accompany him. To his front, the first squad is walking with the village chief, a tall, lanky woman who looks partly French, having shoulders broad like a cross and so bulging with muscles that any man looking at her would feel intimidated. She wears traditional clothes, a long hanging blouse made of thin blue cloth, trousers of shiny black satin; but then she had put on canvas shoes with white laces, the kind athletes wear. Her face is large with slanted eyebrows and jaws spread wide on both sides, and a neck thick like a column but red. Her strength and her firmness would overwhelm the powers of ten men combined. At his back walks the second squad with the deputy village chief and the village policeman, the two men equally small and short and similar in age and dress, wearing cadre shirts and green khaki pants. But the police chief has a large leather belt to hold his pistol. The two squads form a small detachment of four rows. The path is narrow, but on his left is Vu and the medical doctor and on his right the
commander of the guard company, Le. Thirty yards behind them is an armed platoon to fend off kidnapping by aerial assault.

“Mr. President, please take your medicine before attending the funeral.”

It’s the doctor’s turn to make the request. The president stops and swallows a handful of medicine with a cup of ginger water Then they continue walking. This portion of the road is more rugged. On both sides, the bamboo does not bend over but intertwines into a wall. The leaves weave themselves into a bright green roof. It’s high noon, thanks to the roosters crowing from the hamlet to the east to the hamlet on the west, from the higher villages down to the lower ones. The crowing of the roosters, like the melancholy sounds of the singing, doesn’t stop, as if they cannot break the unseen silence that rules over the scene, reinforcing it instead. This silence is uncompromised like clear crystal and more unyielding than steel. A vast silence. It seems as if it hides some forest over the sky’s horizon.

The sound of singing now sounds very close, but they still have to cross a turning, curving stretch before they can arrive. A crowd has gathered right at the compound’s entrance, waiting for him. Teenagers in proper uniform line up in two rows of honor, holding flowers and flags, with camouflage umbrellas on their shoulders. Behind them are all the residents of Tieu Phu hamlet, men and women from middle age and older. There are no young men left in the village, for they have been drafted to fight or have enlisted in units of the Fighting Youth in support of the front lines.

“A true wartime scene. When the men are gone, when only women washing clothes on riverbanks and plowing the fields are left. As the ‘
Chinh Phu Ngam’
poem described—in isolation, the village is lonely…”

His thought abruptly ends as the crowd recognizes him.

“Long live the president, long live, long live!”

“The president will live forever with the mountains and rivers!”

“Long live the Democratic Republic of Vietnam!”

“Long live the president!”

He realizes that the singing to send off the soul has stopped, because all the musicians with their flutes and zithers have stood up to get a better look at him. Those wearing headbands of mourning with their eyes still swollen also come out to welcome the honored guest:

“They have left the corpse alone in the house. My visit, it turns out, has brought disruption to this family.”

At first the cheering is awkward and reserved but then turns more heartfelt as if everyone forgets that they should be in mourning. This thought makes him feel that his presence is inappropriate. Waiting for the crowd to be less enthusiastic, he gestures with his hand to signal for silence. In an instant, everyone is dead silent. His heart palpitates as he recognizes his ability to persuade and the power of his personal presence. That strength has not been lost with the years.

“Dear kith and kin.”

As he speaks, he observes the eyes of the people. In those eyes there is a foolish adoration, an unconditional submission that he has known all too well. Now, that longstanding perception no longer excites him.

“Why can’t they love me differently? Why can’t they both love and respect everyone equally?” he thinks to himself as he continues to address them:

“Dear kith and kin, please let me thank you sincerely for the heartfelt words of welcome with which you greet me. Don’t forget that we are here to attend a funeral, not a meeting or a conference. I am just an ordinary visitor like everyone here. I suggest that we all be quiet, everyone returning to their places so that the funeral can proceed smoothly.”

Always his words command; commands full of supernatural might or saintly power, even he doesn’t know for sure. The people quietly disperse, so quietly that he can hear his own breath. The family returns and stands around the coffin. The musicians resume the melodramatic singing to lead the departure into eternity:

The guards stand outside. The village chief and Le accompany him to call on the host representing the bereaved family. They have to cross a huge patio, one covered not with tiles but with slabs of green stone each about two feet on a side, placed in perfect alignment and giving the area in front of the house where the funeral is to take place the look more of a temple patio than a country villager’s front yard. The residence compound is built in the form of a “gate”: the main building in the middle, with five very large rooms and antique tiles on the roof, and two houses, one on either side, no less
grand, each one also with five rooms facing the large patio. As he quickly looks around, he thinks:

“The doors are high and the rooms are large but when you leave for the last time, you have only your empty hands.” Then, in spite of himself, he sighs deeply.

From behind, Le steps up and gives him an envelope: “Mr. President, this is the money to donate in consolation.”

Mechanically he takes the envelope, not knowing how much money it holds or how much is enough. The memory of generous country customs, the fleeting images of funerals, weddings during his youth, all now faded, have not left a single mark. In his daily life now he never touches money or any other kind of expensive object. In reality he has never had money in his hands though his picture is on every piece of paper currency used throughout the entire nation. But he sees that the eyes of the villagers are discreetly looking at the envelope in his hand, and, for the first time in his life, he is confused about the real value of those flimsy pieces of paper that one can spend.

A suspicion makes him frightened: “How much did they put in it? Will they disappoint these people?”

It is true that life asks us only for hard, practical value. But only far too late do we ever understand just what such value is and where it lies.

“Always after the fact,” he thinks in French.

Another silent sigh resonates within his heart.

“Please, Mr. President, approach the altar.”

The female village chief guides him, going up first with him following; this tall woman with the broad shoulders of a very practiced martial arts adept could be a professional bodyguard.

“Why hasn’t the Ministry of the Interior recruited her for a bodyguard? That is a waste of talent,” he thinks as he steps up before the altar. It is a large standing chest, the upper part for an altar and the lower part for storage, made from four special kinds of wood, elaborately carved with dragons, unicorns, tortoises, and phoenixes with mother-of-pearl inlays, more a work of art than something for household use. The cabinet is placed against the middle of the wall opposite the main door. A large bronze incense burner is smoking. Two vases are filled with amaranths and peonies and varieties of wildflowers. He places the envelope on a large porcelain plate with a deep-jade-colored glaze, filled with other envelopes handmade from all kinds of paper scraps.

“I, your humble servant, am very grateful, Mr. President.”

“I, your humble servant, thank you.”

A woman and a young boy come up before him, formally bowing down on their knees to him. He feels disturbed because people kneel down like that only before sainted spirits or the altar for their ancestors.

“Don’t; no need. Please have the family stand.”

He lifts the child up, realizing that what he had suspected yesterday was correct: the child is about twelve or thirteen. The loosely fitting mourning shift hiding his body makes him look smaller. The mourning headband has slipped down to his nose, but when the boy looks up, he sees a lovely face with long, finely drawn eyebrows and the eyes of a man.

“The child is good-looking; he will be very handsome when he grows up.”