The Zenith (18 page)

Smiling, he says: “I let you go first.”

“No. You are the man.”

“In our time, man and woman are equal.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You did. Everything that happens in our household shows not only that you believe women are equal to men, but also that women can influence men with their feminine ways.”

“I only act exactly as other women do.”

“But I married you and I didn’t marry the others. And this we agreed with each other before we got married…have you forgotten?”

She is quiet because she has not forgotten. With all the months and years of living together, and especially after they had a son together, why is he absolutely not conceding?

“I have not forgotten. But I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Why is a father so indifferent to his own child, then so affectionate with one of another?”

“One of another?”

He turns around and looks straight into her eyes for an answer. Unable to avoid his gaze, she replies slowly:

“Suppose he is the Old Man’s son. It’s still not like having your own natural son, one who carries your family name, one who will carry a stick and roll on the ground during your funeral and mine, one who will light incense at our altar as well as those of the other ancestors, on both paternal and maternal sides. Is that what you want? Your adopted child doesn’t have the Tran family name; the blood that runs in his veins is not Tran family blood.”

Now he understands: pride is the most powerful feeling in life. Any child is a very important product in which one can place all hopes and surround them with so many deep emotions. Any child, no matter how he turns out, is a sacred idol for a father and a mother. Because he no longer accepts this blinding conviction, he has hurt her sense of pride. This is what makes her angry. She can’t forgive him or the unfortunate child either.

He recalls an old verse that his high school teacher had read during a discussion at the end of one week:
A person’s self-centered heart is a wild animal, a cruel and blind animal. No proper consideration can stand steady before such a beast. No breath of conscience can make a dent because such a beast has no heart.
That skinny teacher with eyeglasses thick like the bottoms of glass cups had imparted so many useful things. The older he grew, the more he missed his old teacher as the fisherman misses the lighthouse.

Seeing him silent, she continues: “Do you think I’m missing the truth?”

She looks at him intensely, not hiding her sense of victory.

Then he turns around:

“Do you believe that our son will live up to all his responsibilities as you hope? Just take his uncle as a mirror and you’ll see a true reflection. Please try to look straight at the truth, at least this once. Though you hope that Vinh will be better than his uncle Tung, can he not become a duplicate of your younger brother, and so another reflection of your mother?”

Immediately her face reddens brightly, the red spreading to the roots of her hair by her ears and on her temples. He knows that he has hit the target, that she cannot deny that their son is the exact duplicate of his uncle, a kind of unintelligent urban playboy, selfish and without scruples. Many times he has had to embarrass himself to intervene so that her incompetent and lazy brother could have a place to live. For sure, in a not too distant future, their
son, too, will have to hide in his father’s shadow to find a place to stay. This eventuality even the neighbors already know. But she cannot accept defeat. A mother’s pride is stronger than wild animals. Standing up, she shouts in his face:

“Even then, he would still be your son, your very own son. He is the eldest son, who will carry on the Tran lineage!”

“This is your last card, right?” he asks in a calm manner, a bit exasperated.

That calm is what she dreads the most. His eyes look to the river’s far side, where the sunlight spreads brilliantly all along the sandy shore and on the rows of leaning houses that stand beside the ferry.

“First you should sit down because I do not want to see you behave like that vulgar seller of fish sauce, Tu.”

She sits down, in tired fashion. Her face turns a darker shade. And while he does not have any anger in his voice, his soul has changed its tenor. What’s left there is an indescribable pain. Without looking at her, he says:

“I am like other fathers, I long for a son to carry the family name. I have tossed and turned and have been torn for many years watching our son grow. I also dreamed up so many hopes. The more I despaired, the more I dug in to build up more new hopes. Maybe men are different from women; their love always has limitations when it comes up against the truth. A man’s love cannot, all of a sudden, become unconditional. At some point it must break down when it hits a wall of reality. Then people speak of ‘broken dreams,’ or ‘illusions.’ In general, one must have broken dreams to grow wise. When a dream breaks, one can’t just close one’s eyes and walk into the muddy pond. They have to open their eyes to see the path clearly and avoid falling into the slimy mud to die there a stupid death. I have no more hope for our son. From the day he first screamed at Trung in the middle of a meal and in front of everybody, that he had a right to hold a bowl only when he had handed over his ticket, I understood that my son and your son does not carry any Tran blood, but only that of the Phams. I have no hope that he can bear my family’s name.

“So you carry hopes that later Trung will carry a stick and roll on the ground for you?” she asks with obvious bitterness.

“No. I don’t hope for that,” he replies slowly. “Perhaps I no longer have such a need.”

She bursts into tears. First, she tries to suppress them. Then, afterward, she lets her rage go. It has been a long while since she has cried, cried without holding back, cried like a peasant, with all that sobbing and wailing, with the intensity and manner of one who is jealous, who has been disappointed,
enraged, and oppressed for so many years that now it all needs to come out in a cleansing. He quietly listens to her crying and blowing her nose noisily and forcing herself to cough and cough.

The time just passes.

The sun reaches the horizon. The reflection of the Long Bien bridge on the water now turns to the faded pink of the crab apple flower. The cornfield around them is dry of dew, the leaves shaking crisply. A child’s laughter coming from the fishermen reminds him of happy days in his own childhood, leaving him thinking:

“I had a good family where discord over selfish interests did not undermine affections. But that was just luck. To talk of luck is just to say that people don’t have enough power to make it happen. Luck is a gift from heaven or a blessing from some holy spirit. Who can know if we will pick up or not pick up some ripe fruit that has fallen in our path? When I married Van, I hoped that our child would take after the teacher Vuong in the event he was not fortunate enough to inherit the good qualities on his paternal side. Who could suspect that he would end up with the character and traits of the notorious woman who sold fish sauce? He is the heir of Mrs. Pham Thi Tuyet Bong.

“That’s what they used to say: ‘It hurts like hell.’ Only one lost hope can bring you down. A child is a most fragile bridge connecting everyone to the future. Children are a lottery, such that all who buy a chance to win can’t guess what kind of prize will come on the morrow.”

Taking out a pack of cigarettes, he lights one and slowly exhales. Cigarettes are a diversion appropriate to the situation, while waiting for her to cry her heart out and looking for a new approach to their marriage.

A stuttering child sings among the fishermen. He stands up and walks toward the sandy beach. There he finishes his cigarette and returns:

“Are you done crying?”

“Yes, I am,” she replies, but in reality she has only just exhausted her feelings.

Now she learns that everything has its proper limits, even a fit of crying to release frustration and rage.

“Now we should speak openly like two friends.”

“Like two comrades.”

“Oh no. That status was appropriate in the old days, in the northern war zone…nowadays it’s used before people kill each other.”

He went on in a humorous manner before her curious eyes: “I don’t want to kill you, we’ve shared the same blanket, the same pillow, for many, many years.”

“I am listening.”

“I know you have put up with a lot of grief after the arrival of Trung in this family. I have to be grateful to you for taking care of those two children at the same time, all these years, even with the help of your sister Nga. Honestly speaking, those were very hard years, but we were happy because together we suffered and did as best we could. Things got worse when Vinh grew up; a poor student, the more spoiled he was, the more unstructured and boorish he became. And more and more he resembled his uncle Tung, both in character and appearance, so much so that I had to turn my face away when they stood or sat next to each other. You must understand me on this point, right?”

Quiet, she looks elsewhere. He continues, melancholic:

“Bringing this up does not make me very happy because I, too, like you, am made of flesh and bones. However, after many years of hesitation, I know that the truth can’t be avoided. And, in truth, you can’t accept that your child is inferior to the child of another, no matter who that other is.”

“I didn’t mean to say that. I was too angry.”

“You didn’t mean to say that, but you thought it for a while, a long while. We live under the same roof; we should not let frustration wound our feelings. We are no longer young. You can live separately with our son. I can raise Trung because that is what I promised before my conscience. I will save him at any cost, even that of my own life. I told you that at the very beginning, nothing hidden. Now the decision is up to you. You have complete power to decide.”

“You’re filing for divorce?”

“I am not doing anything. But people can live separately even if the law still keeps them tied. Because the laws have no control over the heart.”

“Do you love someone else? Is there another woman in your heart?” she blurts out suddenly, and instantly blood rushes to her face, turning it bright red like the face of someone carrying a heavy load up a slope in the middle of June.

He looks at her: “Are you serious or are you joking?”

“I didn’t mean that you love some girl in your office or in this town.”

“Because you know as well as the palm of your hand the backgrounds and personalities of all the women in my agency, young or old, married or single. And you have a network of spies to follow them and thwart them. Isn’t that right?”

“I am not talking about those who work with you.”

“Do you mean to say it’s some woman in an embassy that I met during one
of my official trips? You often open up the lists to check. I can provide you those lists directly. If not, you can find them at the foreign ministry, or even in Sau’s office. As I know, he receives you quite warmly every time you make a call on him. Everyone knows the scheme: the wife of your enemy is your best ally.”

“You suspect me?” she bursts out, and it makes him laugh.

Immediately she knows she has overstepped, and his laugh makes her furious. He is one who is never jealous. If he were, even once, the situation might be different. But he is a straightforward man, with self-respect, and he does not allow himself to have feelings he finds demeaning, according to the moral criteria he has learned.

“Are you asking seriously or not?”

“I am sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“So, what do you mean?”

“I am not talking about anyone alive.”

“So, you are talking about…”

He stops because he cannot continue to talk, because of all the shock, the confusion, and the fear that she incites in him. But when he sees her eyes looking down, he understands most of it: not only is his wife jealous of the adopted son because he is more intelligent, better-looking, and has more character than her own, she is jealous of Trung’s mother. His mother was younger than her, prettier than her, not once but a thousand times more, even though she herself had been known as the beauty queen of the war zone during the resistance.

“She is jealous of the dead,” he realizes to himself. “How can jealousy create something so irrational and loathsome? She has nurtured these unwholesome, illogical thoughts for how long and I wasn’t aware? But I couldn’t have known, as this is totally outside my way of thinking. No one of ordinary mind would give in to such a sick and shocking emotion. It can only be a new thought. But my wife is strong; in her family no one has yet to…”

He looks at his wife intently, his jaw locked, his mind unsettled. He feels like one struck dumb or paralyzed by an ill wind, a dangerous and hidden sickness that could not be foretold, neither by a doctor nor the patient.

“A wicked wind.”

This is a sickness that can threaten a person from the neck down. Now he himself has been hit, engulfed in a state half awake and half paralyzed, seeing everything turning dark purple, half the color of the
chan chim
flower, half the color of eggplant. The face of his wife also turns faint
purple, each elastic feature agitated as if she were looking at herself in the face of a pond being hit by stones.

With glassy eyes he looks at the familiar face as it changes, all its features growing thin, breaking, quivering, and wonders if it is real or a dream. What is happening before his eyes?

“What is it, what is it that has happened to our lives?” he wants to ask, but his lips won’t open. His hands and feet can’t move either, though in a second he would have raised his hand to violently hit his wife. He freezes comatose in his emotions. Like a living corpse. Completely like that. Because he has a clear intention about his own survival.

At that moment, she recovers just in time. After pouring out all that had accumulated like a volcano, she has deflated like a beach ball, like a tire losing its air. She looks at him staring down, grasping that her words had come out of unconscious jealousy. Now it is her time to fear. She stands up and heads toward the dike.